Chair, 2 professorships established at LSUS 09/03/03

Dr. E. Joseph Savoie, Louisiana commissioner of higher education, presented three checks totaling $600,000 representing the state Board of Regents’ matching funds for an endowed chair and two endowed professorships at LSUS.

The Regents provided $520,000 in a “reverse match” for the Ruth H. Noel Chair for the Curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection housed in Noel Memorial Library on the campus of LSUS. With the match from the Regents, the Noel Chair is now fully endowed at $1 million. The curatorship had been supported by a super professorship, which was upgraded to the chair.

The Regents also provided $40,000 funding matches for two new LSUS professorships, the Sybil T. and J. Frederick Patten Professorship for Excellence in Teaching in College of Liberal Arts and the Don and Earlene Coleman Red River Watershed Management Institute Professorship in the College of Sciences. The professorships are now fully endowed at $100,000 each.

The James Smith Noel Collection, which has been housed in Noel Memorial Library since 1994, is a world-class collection of rare books that has attracted scholars to Shreveport from the Far East, Canada, the British Isles and Western Europe. Thanks to his widow, Ruth Herring Noel, Noel’s passion for disseminating culture has been continued through the generosity of his widow, Ruth Herring Noel. Her gifts and permanent endowments to LSUS have enlarged the collection, sponsored seminars and lectures open to the public and enabled scholars from colleges and universities around the world to visit the collection to successfully complete their research. Her endowment of a $1 million chair for the curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection will expand these programs and bring honor to her husband’s legacy.

Rev. Fred and Sybil Patten have an extensive legacy in philanthropy and volunteering for the arts and higher education. She has been active in the arts community, volunteering much of her time with Shreveport Symphony and the Shreveport Opera, and also is involved with the LSUS Foundation and the LSU Health Sciences Foundation. Their generosity in endowing the Patten Professorship will ensure that LSUS faculty will be recognized and rewarded for outstanding teaching.

The Coleman Professorship is the first professorship to support the recently established LSUS Red River Watershed Management Institute. Don Coleman is one of the most well-known builders in Northwest Louisiana having built thousands of homes throughout the region, many of them in subdivisions surrounding the LSUS campus. Earlene Coleman is a prominent State Farm Agent and her dedication to higher education has been demonstrated not only by her financial support, but also through her service on the boards of both the LSUS Foundation and the Southern Foundation.

The Noel Chair is the second fully endowed chair at LSUS. Another chair has received full private funding and is awaiting the state’s match. With the two new professorships, LSUS has 11 fully endowed professorships and three partially funded professorships.

A major purpose of the endowed chair and professorship program is to create stronger economic development ties between the private sector and higher education. To create endowed chairs and professorships, colleges and universities must raise 60 percent of the cost from private sources.

Funding for the Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund, from which the Board of Regents draws the match for chairs and professorships, is generated through a permanent trust fund approved by voters in a 1986 constitutional amendment. The trust fund was established with about $550 million received from settlement of disputed oil and gas revenues generated in the so-called 8(g) stipulation of the Federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. A quarter of the interest earned from investment of 8(g) oil and gas revenues will continue to be returned to the trust fund until it reaches a cap of $2 billion. By 2003, the trust fund had risen to nearly $940 million. Each year, the Legislature appropriates half of the interest earnings to the Board of Regents, the policy-making and coordinating agency for all public higher education in Louisiana, and the other half to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for grades K-12.