Curators to examine unused endowments

A report detailing UM system endowments will be available at November's meeting.

By Michelle Hagopian

Published Nov. 2, 2007

The UM system Board of Curators will receive a report at its next meeting after several members of the board's Academic and Student Affairs Committee expressed concern over unfilled endowed chairs.

The curators can expect to see a detailed report of all UM system endowments at the next board meeting, MU Deputy Provost Kenneth Dean said.

Unused endowed chairs in the UM system were addressed by the Academic and Student Affairs Committee at the curators meeting in early October. Chair endowments are donations made for faculty positions and professorships, while scholarship endowments are made solely for students.

The interest accumulated from an endowed chair investment is paid out in the form of faculty salaries, said Tony Luetkemeyer, student representative to the Board of Curators.

Luetkemeyer said investments for professorships and scholarships work similarly.

Dean said some endowments are state matched and some aren't. At MU alone, there are 37 state-matched professorships that are filled, but five remain are open. There are 99 endowed chairs that aren't matched by the state and 10 that are empty, he said.

Dean said although it might seem high, this percentage is average.

"There is always an active search to fill vacant chairs," he said.

System-wide, there are 258 endowed chairs, and about 14 percent of those are vacant, said Kandis Smith, MU associate vice president for Academic and Student Affairs.

"The number of unfilled positions varies as we get new positions, as people are hired, retire or take new positions," she said.

Each department with a vacant chair has a committee to actively seek individuals to fill the spots. The Schools of Arts and Science, Medicine, Business, Law, and Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources are holding open chairs, Smith said.

Ideally, the board would like to have all chairs occupied to increase support for the UM system, Dean said.

"The reality is there will always be a turnover in terms of vacancy, but the search process often takes awhile because departments want to assure they have found the right person to fill the position," Dean said.

Smith said endowed chairs attract more accomplished faculty members.

"The endowed professors and chairs are extremely accomplished and nationally and internationally known in their fields," Smith said.

A possible reason so many chairs are left open can be attributed to the fact that endowment chair guidelines need to change, said Nikki Krawitz, vice president for finance and administration. She said the donor's requirements for the position are often too strict to find a legitimate chair.

Donors can decide which department they would like to support, as well as specify the subject matter in which to use the funding, Dean said.

"Overall, we try to use the endowments in the way the donors intend," Dean said. "They help us retain our faculty and help the university operate. Because of them, we have extra funding we wouldn't have otherwise."

The university also has a number of endowed scholarships, but Krawitz said these sometimes go unused.

"A major disadvantage is that we would like to issue scholarships on a yearly basis," Krawitz said. "When positions for scholarship endowments are left vacant, the money increasingly grows every year, but we would rather distribute it annually."

At the October meeting, Curator John Carnahan and Board of Curators Chairman Don Walsworth complained about the open endowed chairs.

Donors are also weary of open chairs because they invest a given amount of money to see they are filled, Walsworth said.

Carnahan said he was concerned that people would start regulating endowments and donating to other universities if the chairs remained vacant.

The report will be presented to the board at its meeting Nov. 29-30 in Kansas City.