Endowment for Faculty Excellence

Help UW CSE recruit and retain the finest faculty members

Endowed Chairs and Endowed Professorships provide recognition and support to the very strongest faculty members. They are critical to the recruitment and retention of these true leaders, for two reasons:

  • Prestige and national visibility: An endowed position carries recognition among colleagues within academia and industry and beyond. This type of recognition is an important retention tool for exemplary faculty, encouraging them to continue their important work at UW.

  • Opportunity for unfettered creativity: An endowed position provides discretionary funds that may be used for any scholarly purpose. The flexibility afforded by this is invaluable because most government grants provide restricted funds for a specific activity. While funds from grants for established research directions are critical, discretionary funds support creativity and entrepreneurial ideas - they represent "venture funding."

Endowed Chairs and Endowed Professorships differ primarily in the funding level - Endowed Professorships in CSE are funded at a level of $1 million while Endowed Chairs are funded at a level of $2 million. In both cases, the principal is invested in UW's Consolidated Endowment Fund, which has consistently performed in the top quartile of endowments nationally. Roughly 4% is available for expenditure every year; additional gains are re-invested to keep pace with inflation.

Current endowed positions in CSE include:

(The Boeing Pennell Professorship, a College of Engineering position, was formerly held by Professor Jean-Loup Baer.)


Profile: The Warren Francis and Wilma Kolm Bradley Endowed Chair in Computer Science & Engineering

Wilma Bradley, with Bradley
Chair holder David Notkin

Wilma Bradley is a volunteer, a philanthropist, a patron of the arts, an avid investor, and a special friend of the University of Washington who is keenly interested in a broad range of intellectual pursuits.

Wilma first became interested in Computer Science & Engineering after attending the UW Annual Faculty Lecture given by CSE Professor Ed Lazowska in 1996. After several years of supporting CSE Ph.D. students (and regularly attending their thesis defenses!), she established the Warren Francis and Wilma Kolm Bradley Endowed Professorship in Computer Science & Engineering, in her name and that of her late husband. Subsequent funding converted the Bradley Professorship into the Bradley Chair. Professor David Notkin was recognized with the Bradley Professorship, and now holds the Bradley Chair.

Wilma's personal involvement with CSE faculty and students, and her interest in their work and in the broad impact of technology on society, makes the Bradley Chair special.

[Click to view this profile in German.]


Interested in learning more? Contact Ed Lazowska, lazowska@cs.washington.edu, or Karen Howard Leikin, CSE Advancement Officer, 206.616.8259 or krhoward@uw.edu.

Lifetime endowment gifts of $25,000 and above are permanently recognized on the UW CSE Endowment Wall in the Allen Center atrium.

Named funds are available for gifts of $50,000 and above. Appropriate recognition, designed in consultation with each donor, is part of each gift that creates a named fund.

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Last changed Sat, 2013-04-06 10:40