Since its launch three years ago, the University’s Momentum fundraising campaign has established 25 endowed chairs and professorships. A recent anonymous gift, as well as a donation from a longtime UM friend, have created new distinguished professorships that support the scholarly work of exceptional faculty.

Through the generosity of the family of the late Leonard M. Miller, renowned endocrinologist and Nobel Laureate Andrew Schally has joined the faculty as Miller Distinguished Professor in the Miller School of Medicine. He comes here from Tulane University and holds a joint appointment at the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Recipient of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology, Schally was one of a pair of scientists to first isolate and synthesize several of the communicating chemical links between the brain and the pituitary gland. He focuses much of his current work on hormonal regulation of tumor tissue. With more than 2,200 publications to his name, his discoveries have led to many widely used clinical applications.

A gift from an anonymous donor supports five additional Distinguished Professors—Charles S. Carver, David Ellison, Howard Gordon, Susan Haack, and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Carver is a personality psychologist whose research has focused on stress and coping, issues in emotional experience, and goal regulation. Ellison is a professor of French who chaired the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures from 1993 to 2003. Gordon focuses his research in physics on ocean optics and has received numerous awards for his work with NASA. Susan Haack, the Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, is a professor of philosophy and law. Plater-Zyberk is dean of the School of Architecture and owner of an architecture firm with her husband, Andres Duany.