$250,000 Grant From Rohr for Pacific Rim Studies at UCSD

The University of California Board of Regents have approved UC San Diego’s request to establish the Rohr Chair in Pacific International Relations.

Rohr Industries Inc. donated $250,000 for the endowed chair, which will support the research and teaching of a faculty member in the university’s new Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. Rohr’s contribution brings the total number of endowed chairs at UCSD to 31.

The graduate school is the first professional school of global affairs in the nation to focus on the Pacific nations. It was designed to train professionals in international relations how to deal with the growing Pacific Rim and to provide a center of expertise and research on the area.

At the meeting, held Friday in Irvine, the regents also approved changing the name of the Marine Biology Building at the university’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography to Carl L. Hubbs Hall.

Hubbs, who died in 1979, was considered the foremost figure of his time in ichthyology and played an important role in developing marine biology at Scripps Institution. The four-story, 39,000-square-foot building named in his honor houses laboratories, classrooms and offices of Scripps’s Marine Biology Research Division.

Hubbs joined the faculty of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1944. He served as a trustee of the San Diego Natural History Museum and the San Diego Zoological Society and helped found the Wild Animal Park. He was also a charter member of Sea World’s board of directors and a founder of Sea World research institute, which bears his name.