NEWS

By KRISTINA HJELSAND
Office of University Development

CHAPEL HILL -- An anonymous Raleigh couple is creating a $1 million endowed professorship in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences to honor the late Chancellor Michael Hooker.

The Michael Hooker Distinguished Professorship in Biology is targeted to accomplished teachers and scholars who have demonstrated an interest in the relationship between medicine and biology and a research focus in genomics, a field of genetic research. The study of genomics involves the relationship between genetic and environmental factors and disease. Genomics research has led to promising new drugs, vaccines and gene therapies.

The professorship, which is in the college’s department of biology, will be supported by an endowed fund. The donors’ gift of $666,000 will be paid over a five-year period and will be matched with a $334,000 grant from the North Carolina Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund. The search for the first Hooker Professorship recipient will begin when the endowment reaches the $1 million mark.

Hooker, chancellor of UNC-CH from 1995 until his death after a battle with lymphoma in June 1999, was an outspoken advocate for science and technology initiatives at Carolina.

"Michael Hooker was not only a personal friend, but a great friend to the university," the donors said. "He was not only very personally interested in this field of research, he could see how important scholarship and teaching in this area would be to maintaining Carolina’s edge as a world-class research institution."

The Hooker professorship also responds to students’ growing interest in the sciences at UNC-CH. In the fall of 1999, 60 percent of incoming freshmen named biology or pre-health sciences as their intended majors, said Dr. Risa Palm, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. While an emphasis on the sciences has been a priority at Carolina for some time, the last few years have seen an acceleration of science initiatives, she said.

"Fields such as genomics and bioinformatics are now the breakthrough areas in science," Palm said. "If Carolina is to become the top public university in the country, as was Michael Hooker’s dream, we need to be competitive in these innovative new areas."

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(Hjelsand of Ephrata, Wash., is a graduate student in the UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communication.)

Office of Development contact: Speed Hallman, (919) 962-0027

News Services contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593