By Eileen Conrad

UC Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor Duncan Mellichamp and his wife, Suzanne, have made a $2 million philanthropic gift to the campus to establish a cluster of four endowed chairs. The innovative gift, the second such cluster from the couple, will enable UCSB to recruit four leading scholars to launch an interdisciplinary initiative to study the effects of globalization.

The eight Mellichamp Academic Initiative Professorships provide opportunities to build centers of excellence in selected programmatic areas of rising importance that will change over time. This is the largest gift ever made by a UCSB faculty member.

With their latest gift, the couple has established a total of nine endowed chairs at UCSB, including a professorship in process control in the Chemical Engineering Department, of which Duncan Mellichamp was a founding member.

Chancellor Henry T. Yang described Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp as “campus legends.”

“In so many ways, they have helped to shape UC Santa Barbara into what it is today,” said Yang. “Their desire to give back to the campus as philanthropists, in addition to all the other extraordinary ways they have contributed and participated, is truly an inspiration.”

He added, “I will never forget the joy and honor of presenting Duncan and Suzanne with the Santa Barbara Medal, our campus’s highest honor, in appreciation of their legacy on this campus and their vision for UC Santa Barbara’s future.”

Throughout his 40-year career at UCSB as a faculty member and a campus leader, Duncan Mellichamp saw a need for the campus to be able to keep up with a changing world. Though retired from UCSB in 2003, he continues to teach a senior process design course.

“Suzanne and I decided to give away financial assets while we could enjoy observing the full effects of our gifts,” he said. “The idea of endowing several clusters of professorships, each group to rotate into a new area every 15 years, was our way to maximize their long-term impact.”

Suzanne Mellichamp, a retired schoolteacher, said she was pleased that their second cluster of endowed chairs would concentrate on globalization as the next major research emphases. Their first cluster of professorships is supporting pioneering research in the emerging field of systems biology in the College of Engineering and in the Mathematical, Life and Physical Sciences Division of the College of Letters and Science.

“We know UCSB faculty already are providing important insights into the technological, economic, and political changes sweeping over our world and its many interdependent societies,” she said. “Constructive answers have to come from our history, values, and ability to view ourselves as a single community. “

Initially, the Mellichamp chairs will be awarded as a group to top faculty in the social sciences, humanities, or fine arts with related research interests that will advance understanding of the growing integration of economies and societies around the world.

The four new endowed chairs, established at the $500,000 level, bring the total number of endowed professorships at UCSB to 64.