A&S Celebrates Newly Endowed Professorships

The College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences recognized 16 newly appointed endowed professors at a celebratory Investiture Ceremony last week.

The Sept. 18 event at Charlottesville’s Boar’s Head Resort featured remarks by distinguished colleagues and a formal presentation of medallions to the faculty being honored. Endowed professorships stand among the most prestigious honors bestowed by the University of Virginia, recognizing distinguished faculty for extraordinary achievement in their fields and celebrating excellence in earlier stages of an academic career.

In her introductory remarks, Christa Acampora, Buckner W. Clay Professor of Philosophy and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, acknowledged the College’s long tradition of honoring exceptional faculty members with these designations and endowments’ role in creating the resource base to identify and inspire faculty excellence.

Including the newly endowed professorships, Arts & Sciences’ faculty now includes 132 endowed chairs and University Professors, and 15 holders of named professorships.

“Each and every one of you here tonight enhances the value of that investment in excellence," Acampora said. "Not only by what you individually produce but also how you contribute to a trove of knowledge, discovery and beauty, one that benefits future generations. Truly, that is something that has enduring value.”

Several other Arts & Sciences faculty members spoke about the significance of their endowed professorships at the Investiture celebration. The Department of English’s Deborah McDowell, who was awarded the Alice Griffin Professorship of Literary Studies in 2000, opened her remarks by speaking about receiving her professorship afforded her a chance to take on important work at UVA, including the shepherding of the University's Carter G. Woodson Institute from an interdisciplinary program into a full-fledged department within the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

“To be awarded such a distinction is to receive the two things most academics covet: recognition of their work and the gift of time, time to accelerate existing scholarly objectives and projects or to launch entirely new adventures,” McDowell said of endowed professorships. “It so happens that receiving the Alice Griffin Professorship afforded me the latter, if unexpected opportunity, to engage in the kind of institutional work that Alice Griffin prized as much as she did her scholarship.”

McDowell went on to share details of the intellectual and artistic contributions of Alice Griffin and how these inspired and intersected with her own achievements.

McDowell’s colleague in the College’s Department of English, University Professor Mark Edmundson, said the Investiture celebration should serve as more than a moment of recognition for faculty who have made significant achievements in their fields.

“I think it can provide a moment on agreeably elevated ground to look forward and to ponder. Where shall I go? What shall I do next?” Edmundson said. “Having won this recognition, where shall I put my energies? What now?”

Edmundson also used the occasion to think about the future in two ways.

“The first way is obvious. Keep doing what you are doing. Keep burning forward, keep achieving, keep putting your intellect full strength into your work. Continue to excel in the terms that brought you here,” he said, citing the “keep firing forward” examples of acclaimed poet and Department of English colleague Rita Dove, Bob Dylan, Simone De Beauvoir, and Edmundson’s graduate school mentor Harold Bloom.

Edmundson then offered a second path for the assembled honorees to consider. By drawing a tighter circle and becoming a devoted citizen not only of their university but also their city and state, they should consider what needs to be done “here and now,” down to helping the adjuncts and the general faculty in their departments get a fairer deal and figuring out how to improve the lives of their support staff.

“Small potatoes, you might say, compared to addressing the best and brightest in your field,” Edmundson said. “But I haven’t found this kind of local absorption dispiriting. Anything but. It’s made me feel more at home here. As has getting involved in the current University political and cultural situation and writing about it. Doing so has made me new friends — and also a few new non-friends.”

Intelligence, Edmundson added, becomes wisdom through action.

“You have your vast learning and your experience to tap on the way to wisdom. But wisdom, I would argue, isn’t the result of sitting home in the lotus position waiting for someone to ring the bell and pose a few questions. It comes from jumping in and using your formidable intelligences to help the world, the local world as well as the great world.”

The celebration concluded with Raymond Keller, the Alumni Council Thomas Jefferson Professor of Biology, and Alison Levine, associate dean for faculty affairs and professor of French, presenting medallions to the newly endowed chairs.

Shortly before the bestowing of the medallions on the newly endowed chairs, Acampora told them that at first blush, it might seem “somewhat awkward” to wear this physical token of distinction.

“But I hope you will wear it with pride — and not just this evening,” she said. “It is intended to be worn every time you wear your academic costumes as an addition to your regalia. When you wear your medals, you are sustaining this community of honor that is enabling and activating our collective success and excellence at the University.”

The complete list of newly endowed chairholders includes:

Samuel Amago (Spanish), William R. Kenan, Jr. Professorship
Jesse Ball (English), Sydney Blair Memorial Professorship in Creative Writing
Dale Copeland (Politics), Hugh S. and Winifred B. Cumming Memorial Professorship in International Affairs
Glenn Dynner (History), Jay Berkowitz Professorship in Jewish History
Susan Fraiman (English), Clifton Waller Barrett Professorship
Thomas Klubock (History), John C. Coleman Professorship in the College of Arts & Sciences
Zhi-Yun Li (Astronomy), W.H. Vanderbilt Professorship in Astronomy
Angeline Lillard (Psychology), Commonwealth Professorship
Laurie Maffly-Kipp (Religious Studies), Richard Lyman Bushman Professorship in Mormon Studies
Alexander MacKay (Economics), James H. and Elizabeth W. Wright Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professorship
Steve Majewski (Astronomy), W.H. Vanderbilt Professorship in Astronomy
Andrew Preston (History), W.L. Lyons Brown Jr. Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professorship in Diplomacy and Statecraft
Bethany Teachman (Psychology), Commonwealth Professorship
Chad Wellmon (Germanic Languages & Literature, English), Commonwealth Professorship
Brad Wilcox (Sociology), Melville Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation University Scholarship
Xiaochao Zheng (Physics), Brown-Forman Professorship