When Dennis ’64 and Suzanne Birkestrand gave $1.5 million to Luther to endow the Birkestrand Economics and Management Chair in spring 2016, it was a big deal, and we wanted to know more about the effect their gift would have. How, exactly, do endowed chairs and professorships work at Luther? And how do they affect the education that students get?

To learn, we went to the experts—faculty who hold or have recently held endowed positions.

First of all, these funds, given by individuals or groups, provide recognition. They recognize the value of an academic subject, the faculty member who is named to the chair or professorship, and the person or persons for whom the endowment is named—a past professor or the donors themselves. Classics professor Philip Freeman says, “Fundamentally, it’s a recognition by the college that a particular subject is important enough to be permanent.”

Alumni have used endowments to honor professors whom they especially respected. For instance, since 2007 Freeman has held the Orlando W. Qualley Chair of Classical Languages, created by a group of former students to honor “Pip” Qualley, who served at Luther for 60 years as a professor, administrator, and coach. “I meet students of Qualley—mostly retired people now—and they tell such stories of this man. They have a great fondness for him, and that’s why they endowed the chair,” Freeman says.

Endowments help pay the salary of the person who holds the position, which frees up college funds for other purposes. And as Robert Christman, the Kermit O. and Jane E. Hanson Professor of History 2013–16, points out, they also enhance the academic excellence of the institution by bringing distinction to whoever holds them, acknowledging that person’s achievement.

Endowments also bring what’s called programming money, which the faculty often put toward research expenses. Christman says this added ability to conduct research “further allows individuals who already have a profile in their discipline to continue to be leaders in their field.” In addition to the obvious benefits of having academic leaders teaching in Luther’s classrooms, professors who are well-connected and widely known scholars write graduate school letters of recommendation that carry weight.

Ultimately, students benefit in many ways from the additional resources that endowments make possible. Endowed faculty often use funds to allow students and other faculty to attend scholarly conferences and obtain specific skills training, purchase classroom resources, bring speakers to campus, and more. Endowment funds also make it possible for professors to partner with students in conducting research. Kirk Larsen, the Russell R. Rulon Endowed Chair in Biology 2013–16, says, “I extensively involve students in my research and do very little research without a student next to me.”

Recent use of endowment funds

Larsen bought three honeybee hives and placed them in Roslien Woodlands for use with his entomology students. The hives are a learning tool at a time when honeybees are encountering environmental trouble, and they give students hands-on experience. Students learn how to maintain the hives, for instance, and extract honey from them.

To further his development as a professor, Larsen attended an insect macro-photography workshop in Belize. “Because I teach about insects and they’re so small, I need to have photographs in the classroom so students can visualize what I’m talking about,” Larsen says. This summer, when some of his research students were doing a butterfly survey, he was able to photography butterflies in the field that they can use in their presentations.

Another training trip took Larsen to Mexico to the overwintering sites of monarch butterflies, which he lectured on when he got back. He is involved with the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium, and his students are doing a project on plants that are nectar sources for monarchs. “Some of the information I learned from that trip . . . has really influenced my work with students this summer,” he says.

Christman’s endowment-funded research is providing a unique primary-source experience for his students. “As a result of my research, I have translated 500-year-old historical documents into English and assigned them in my classes. Students are always excited to realize that no one else in the English-speaking world has access to these sources,” he says. He is also working on a case study of the first two people executed for their beliefs during the Protestant Reformation, which he has designed for students: “The entire project is designed as an attractive and thought-provoking introduction to the Reformation, one that will spark the students’ imagination and inspire a desire to learn more.”

Collaboration is at the heart of how Steve Holland, the Bert M. and Mildred O. Dahl Chair in Economics and Business 2011–16, has tried to use his funds. “Economics is a core social science, and having a pot of money like this allows us to integrate with the larger community better than we might otherwise. It allows us to promote economic thinking in lots of different contexts,” he says. Holland has put his endowment funds together with money from other departments to bring in speakers in marketing, ethics and public life, environmental studies, and more. This summer he hired a student researcher for a project focusing on what makes a community healthy. Ultimately, the results will be shared with the broader Decorah and Winneshiek communities.

Lise Kildegaard turned the spotlight on art in small packages as the Dennis M. Jones Distinguished Teaching Professorship in the Humanities 2013–16. “My special project is to work on things that are short shorts,” Kildegaard told Chips in fall 2015. “I am interested in literary flash fiction, micro fiction, short lyrics, poems, and art works that are small and quickly seen.” Through an array of projects, students learned to make prints, create art to illustrate short literature, design and create videos that express poems, produce and act in a play of 57 short scenes, and more.

Freeman’s research on ancient manuscripts at the national library of Ireland in Dublin each summer fuels his teaching each fall in the course The World of St. Patrick. “I’m always bringing in my own research, my own work, photographs of manuscripts,” he says. “It feeds directly into my teaching.” This summer he also used some of the funds to scout a future January Term trip to Ireland with students.

Perceptions of risk and well-being among youth in Ukraine was the focus of research by Maryna Bazylevych during her Nena Amundson ’56 Distinguished Professorship 2014–16. She involved a student in all steps of the research process, she says, “from the design part of it to fieldwork experience and analysis of data and writing a report to presenting it at the conference.” Bazlevych’s student assistant, Brittany Anderson ’16, accompanied her to Ukraine, helped conduct focus groups with Bazylevych, and conducted some interviews and ethnographic encounters on her own. Back at Luther, Bazylevych trained two other students, who received academic administrative assistantships from the Dean’s Office, to transcribe the conversations.

In spring 2016, as Bazylevych and Anderson were boarding a plane to go present their research findings at a Society for Applied Anthropology meeting, Anderson got an email saying she’d been accepted into the anthropology program at Iowa State University with a full tuition waiver and a generous stipend. Needless to say, both were thrilled!

Recognizing Luther’s influence

“We believe in Luther College, in the quality of its academic programs, and in supporting the talented faculty who dedicate their lives to empowering undergraduates to achieve. May this endowed chair be a lasting remembrance of the profound impact Luther College has had on our lives.”          —Dennis Birkestrand ’64

In creating the endowed chair in economics and business, Dennis ’64 and Suzanne Birkestrand say they hope to encourage and recognize the importance of free market–friendly perspectives on economic theory, private enterprise, and good business practices in classroom discussions.

Dennis spent 22 years in marketing and sales with the Maytag Corporation. In 1988, he and Suzanne started a distribution business for the Jenn-Air brand of appliances, headquartered in Kansas City. They then founded Factory Direct Appliance in 1993 and for 21 years offered a range of appliances to homebuilders and remodelers. They sold the business in 2014.

Appointments to the Birkestrand chair will be for three years and may be renewed at the discretion of the academic dean and president of the college. The first chair, announced at Opening Convocation on Sept. 1, is Tim Schweizer ’80.

To learn more about endowed chairs and professorships at Luther, visit luther.edu/academics/dean/faculty/endowed-chairs and luther.edu/giving/gift-types.