Endowed professorships are a top priority of the campaign, and these appointments mark a major step in enhancing the reputation and advancing the strategic vision of the Institute.

In early 2013, Brook H. Byers created three endowed professorships that bear his name and that are aligned with the mission of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.

The first to hold the Byers Professorships are Bert Bras in the School of Mechanical Engineering, Marilyn Brown in the School of Public Policy, and Elsa Reichmanis in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

These eminent teacher-scholars will be appointed for a five-year term with the option of renewal for an additional five-year term. Each appointment includes $25,000 annually in discretionary funds and will involve active participation in the Byers Institute, which
will enhance its national and international visibility.

In the spring of 2013, J. Louis Fouts made a seven-figure commitment to establish the Fouts Family Chair in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). Fouts decided to make the chair flexible, giving the school chair the ability to determine the most effective deployment of the funds at any level, including chairs, professorships, early-career professorships, or professors of the practice.

Later in the year, ISyE announced that the Fouts endowment would be used to fund three early career professorships — naming Santanu Dey, Ton Dieker, and Joel Sokol to the positions in recognition of their achievements in research and teaching, and of the great promise each shows within his respective field — while at the same time greatly enhancing ISyE’s ability to recruit and retain the world’s best faculty. The appointments are based on a three-year term, which started in the fall of 2013.