$1 million endowment to UC Merced’s humanities

A $1 million endowment at UC Merced will allow the university to establish a new leadership position to oversee research in the humanities, officials announced Monday.

The endowment came from an anonymous $500,000 donation that was matched with $500,000 from the UC Office of the President.

The new position, called the Presidential Chair of the Humanities, is meant to provide leadership and vision for humanities research at UC Merced, said Mark Aldenderfer, dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.

“From a dean’s perspective, it’s always good to have strong intellectual leadership in a program,” he said in a news release. “It is important to have someone who has a vision and can move that vision forward.”

The chair of a department is usually a member of the faculty who takes a leadership position and helps guide research, among other responsibilities. Aldenderfer said the chair will be selected through a search to begin later this year.

The money generated by the endowment will help fund the chair’s own research and teaching activities, and he or she will work closely with the Center for the Humanities, which was established in 2012 by a $2 million gift from the same anonymous donor.

“The Center for the Humanities has been very active and very successful,” Aldenderfer said. “Our goal is to bring in a distinguished candidate to put a stamp on this university’s outstanding humanities-related research with exceptional energy, vision and insight into how our activities can be extended on campus and in the community.”

The humanities chair is UC Merced’s first position to be created by UC President Janet Napolitano using the Presidential Match for Endowed Chairs, which last year allocated $4 million per campus to encourage donors to establish such endowments. In July, Napolitano said she launched the program because those faculty leaders are vital to the UC system’s efforts to attract and keep the best possible faculty.

The School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts will also get a boost in about a year, when the $54 million Classroom and Office Building 2 is expected to open. The 77,000-square-foot structure featuring the newest in educational technology is also the final building to go up during UC Merced’s first phase of development.

Classroom and Office Building 2 will have four lecture halls with seating that ranges from 90 to 210. It is expected to be the headquarters for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, though it will be used by other areas of education.

The building will also have laboratories, offices and a courtyard. It’s expected to meet the highest standards in sustainability and conservation, as well as feature a Computer-Assisted Virtual Environment – a way to create and visualize three-dimensional spaces.

This story was originally published February 9, 2015 at 4:47 PM with the headline "$1 million endowment to UC Merced’s humanities."