First Chairs of Excellence

Governor Lamar Alexander (later, UT president) announced on February 18, 1985, to a capacity crowd in the Shiloh Room of the university center that three Chairs of Excellence had been created at UT. The endowments for each of the three $1 million chairs received $500,000 from the state. Two chairs, one in engineering (materials science and engineering) and one in agriculture (ornamental horticulture), received the required $500,000 private funds match from the estate of the late Ivan Racheff, a Knoxville steel executive. The $500,000 private match for the English Department’s chair came from the John Hodges Better English Fund.