UC Davis
Announces New Endowed Positions
April 7, 2010
The close friendship and legacies of two UC
Davis giants — Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder and the late entrepreneur
Charlie Soderquist — will be memorialized in one of six new endowed faculty
positions to be celebrated at a dinner tonight.
The Gary Snyder Endowed Chair in Science and
Humanities, pending expected university approvals, will be supported by
a $1 million endowment from the estate of Soderquist, a UC Davis-educated
philanthropist, conservationist and entrepreneur who died in 2004.
Soderquist’s estate also provided $1 million
to endow a second chair named for one of his UC Davis mentors, Donald G.
Crosby, a professor emeritus in environmental toxicology, the field in
which Soderquist earned a doctorate and later launched his successful business
career.
Those two new chairs along with the Russell
L. Rustici Endowed Chair in Rangeland Watershed Science, the Russell L.
Rustici Endowed Specialist in Cooperative Extension in Rangeland Watershed
Science, the Jan and Beta Popper Endowed Professorship in Opera and the
previously announced Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship will
be recognized at the Endowed Chairs and Professorships dinner.
“Endowed chairs and professorships strengthen
a university’s most important resource: its excellent faculty,” Chancellor
Linda Katehi said in remarks prepared for the evening, a dinner to honor
all UC Davis endowed chairs and professorships, which now number 120. “They
help the faculty excel in learning, discovery and engagement with the broader
community for generations to come. We are grateful to the donors who have
given so generously to establish these new endowed positions.”
Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the Division of
Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, lauded Soderquist for having set
an example of “involved scholarship” that created a “real connection with
the people of Northern California.
“It is especially fitting that the new Gary
Snyder Endowed Chair in Science and Humanities, which represents the distinctive
brand of humanities at UC Davis, bears the name of one of our most distinguished
faculty,” Owens said. “It celebrates our university-wide focus on collaboration,
and our commitment to a kind of humanities that engages with the pressing
issues of our time.”
The latest Soderquist gifts bring to $5.7
million the total amount that his estate has given to UC Davis. That includes
$1.2 million for the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, $1 million
for the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Graduate
School of Management and $1 million to support the business school’s Center
for Entrepreneurship.
Former Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef designated
$1 million each for the Snyder chair in the College of Letters and Science
and the Crosby chair in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
“The common denominator for Crosby and Snyder
was simple enough — Charlie loved the exceptional intellect,” Vanderhoef
said.
Snyder, a professor emeritus in the Department
of English, met Soderquist in the mid 1990s at an end-of-the-year gathering
on campus. Soderquist was a UC regent at the time.
They became friends over the next decade,
with shared interests in conservation and Tibetan Buddhism, among other
subjects. Soderquist also was an author, having published “Sturgeon Tales:
Stories of the Delta.” The book’s listing on Amazon.com still carries a
review from Snyder.
“These stories from the Sacramento River Delta
are the kind of creative and scientific myth-making that gives a whole
place life,” Snyder wrote. “A set of river-system fish-as-people tales
for grown-ups, it’s a rich mix. Geologic and oceanic lore becomes sturgeon
oral histories; Sacramento Valley history blends with catalogs of river-rat
bars and sexy fish-spawning scenes.”
The two enjoyed many wide-ranging conversations
in which Soderquist displayed an interest and curiosity “in some of the
less-ordinary lines of thought that I had been pursuing over the years,”
Snyder recalled in an interview.
“He was a very far-thinking and astute guy,”
Snyder said. “He understood and appreciated what humanism was all about,
what a humanistic education was good for.”
With the other chairs in environmental toxicology
and the Graduate School of Management, Snyder said the chair in science
and humanities completes a portrait of a complex man.
“In a way, it really reflects who Charlie
was,” he said. “The businessman, the scientist and, by putting me in the
mix, his broad curiosity, his awareness of history, literature and philosophy
is also acknowledged. I think it’s very appropriate.”
Dean Owens said the Snyder chair will be awarded
to a scholar whose work is at the intersection of humanities and science.
The first recipient will be selected from current faculty in the Division
of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
At the College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences, the Donald G. Crosby Endowed Chair in Environmental Chemistry
will support research, teaching and outreach related to the source, environmental
fate or consequence of chemicals that affect living organisms. It is also
pending expected university approvals and a recipient has not yet been
selected.
Crosby, who recalled urging a young Soderquist
to pursue his post-graduate degrees, said he was “extremely honored and
quite surprised” to have the chair endowed in his name.
“I would hope that Charlie would become sort
of a legend among our graduate students, as someone who started off with
very modest means and just through hard work — he was a tremendously hard
worker — and smarts managed to become successful not only in science but
in business,” Crosby said.
The two Rustici endowments were created with
a $1.2 million gift from Russell L. Rustici, a Lake County cattle rancher
who died in October 2008. Rustici had worked with several University of
California professors, Cooperative Extension farm advisors and specialists
who studied issues he cared about — cattle and preservation of the rangeland
ecosystem.
Selections for both of the Rustici endowed
positions already have been made.
Randy Dahlgren — professor of soil science
and biogeochemistry, chair of the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources
at UC Davis and director of the UC Davis-based Kearney Foundation of Soil
Science — has been named the Rustici Endowed Chair in Rangeland Watershed
Science.
The chair supports research and outreach programs
related to the California rangelands that Rustici appreciated and worked
to preserve. In the near term, the endowment will provide funding for collaborative
work with colleagues to prepare a new book, "Biogeochemistry of Mediterranean
Watersheds," which will be dedicated to Rustici.
Ken Tate, a rangeland watershed specialist
in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and the department’s vice
chair for outreach and extension, has been named the Rustici endowed specialist.
His research and outreach program focuses on the diverse managed ecosystems
that make up California’s rangelands.
The Rustici endowed specialist also will support
research and outreach programs related to the California rangelands, including
collaborative work with science colleagues to prepare the book to be dedicated
to Rustici.
The Jan and Beta Popper Endowed Professorship
in Opera has been established with a $500,000 bequest from the estate of
Beta Popper, who died in 2008. Beta and her husband, the late music professor
and conductor Jan Popper, spent a lifetime together producing opera all
over the world, notably in Asia. Beta, a mezzo-soprano who performed with
the San Francisco Opera, was involved with the UC Davis Department of Music.
Jan was on the UCLA faculty, but assisted many UC campuses, including UC
Davis, as a visiting professor. His books and papers were donated to the
UC Davis music department.
The professorship will be held by a faculty
member in the music department who will pursue a broad range of scholarly
and creative activities that include opera. The recipient has not yet been
selected.
“Beta and Jan Popper, both individually and
as a couple, spent their lives championing art music in live performance,”
said D. Kern Holoman, professor of music and interim chair of the UC Davis
Department of Art and Art Studio.
“Jan’s library has long supported our students
in their study of the great operas. Beta’s moving gift in memory of her
husband is certain to foster significant new ventures at the intersection
of music performance and research — precisely where our program has achieved
one of its signature strengths.”
Appointment to an endowed chair or professorship
is one of the highest honors a university can bestow upon a faculty member.
Created through funds that are permanently invested to provide annual income
in perpetuity, these endowments support stellar teaching and research while,
at the same time, ensuring the advancement of knowledge for generations
to come.
About UC Davis
For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged
in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and
transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000
students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive
health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers
interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors
in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological
Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional
schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and
the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
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