Irvine : UC Irvine Will Ask for New Endowed Chair

UC Irvine will ask the University of California Board of Regents at its meeting in March to approve a new endowed chair--the seventh for UCI--that is being made possible by a $613,000 trust donation from a Glendale obstetrician, Dr. Dorothy J. Marsh.

Richard Matheny, associate vice chancellor for university advancement at UC Irvine, said Friday that the donation is earmarked for a $1-million endowed “Dorothy J. Marsh Chair in Reproductive Biology.” The balance of the $1 million will come from other donations, Matheny said.

An endowed chair is a faculty position that is given extra prestige and salary because a private source of funding provides added money to the professor picked for the position.

Matheny said the new reproductive biology chair, to be filled by a top scholar in that field, probably will be launched in the 1988-89 school year.

“A chair such as this one is very important to the university because it allows in-depth research in an important area,” Matheny said.

Marsh, 71, is the former chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the old College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons. That college, later designated the California College of Medicine, became the UC Irvine School of Medicine in 1967.