Endowed Teaching Chair Contributors Build Solid Future
When the first endowed teaching chair was established at OWC nearly a dozen years ago by Vitro Services Corp., there was a need identified by the college for sustained financial support for faculty and programs of the fine and performing arts department.
The concept of funding teaching chairs – historically a province of hallowed universities – at a community college seemed novel but at the same time natural. Where else was there a clearer mission of teaching and learning taking place? Where else were dollars stretched as tight as could be? Where else could a source of financial support help attract and retain the best professors or improve teaching?
The sixteen endowed teaching chairs created through the OWC Foundation that followed and the several teaching chairs that are now on the drawing board have met objectives set forth when the joint initiative of the college and the foundation first began.
Dr. Bob Richburg, OWC president, likes to think of the endowed teaching chair program as “an insurance policy for the future of teaching and learning at our college.” He has only to point to the seven teaching chairs in the Nursing and Allied Health Department as an example of how the department’s programs have flourished through the endowed chair program.
OWC Foundation president Dale Rice Jr. says
that establishing new endowed teaching chairs
remains a top priority of the foundation’s fund
raising. “Our goal is that every department at
the college has endowed teaching chairs,” said
Rice. “We must have teaching chairs in science,
mathematics, and social sciences, then double
our number to 50 endowed teaching chairs.”
In 2006, the goal moved closer to being accomplished. The M. Elizabeth Shwiller Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chair in Women’s Athletics was created by Liz and Sy Shwiller of Niceville. The James and Christian LaRoche Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chair in Poetry and Literature became the first chair in the Communications Department through a gift by Fred LaRoche, son of the late Niceville couple.
“These contributions to fund new endowed teaching chairs symbolize the level of care and involvement each donor has with this college,” said Richburg. “Liz Shwiller and her husband have become two of our most ardent Raider fans. Fred LaRoche has honored his father’s passion for literature as a professor at OWC and his mother’s long association with the college’s communications department through the James LaRoche Student Poetry Awards.”
Richburg explained the Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chair at the $100,000 level and the Endowed Teaching Chair at the $50,000 level are each eligible for state matching funds. “We began the Distinguished Teaching Chair during the fundraising for the nursing and health programs,” he said. “Each teaching chair, no matter the level, is distinctive because of who it honors and what it means to teaching at our college.