A professor of architecture at Berkeley, Raymond Lifchez made a gift to the campus in 2008 that helped establish the Distinguished Chair in Poetry and Poetics — creating a tribute to his late wife, journalist and poet Judith Lee Stronach, that resulted in an appointment for her mentor, Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry professor Robert Hass.
In making his inspiring contribution, Lifchez took advantage of the Hewlett Challenge , a $110-million gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation designed to create endowed chairs on campus, in the hopes of attracting and retaining top faculty. The foundation provides dollar-for-dollar matches for gifts of $1 million to $1.5 million that establish these endowed chairs.
In just a year and a half since the Hewlett Challenge announcement in September 2007, funding for more than half of the planned 100 Hewlett chairs has already been matched. The 53 chairs funded thus far — some of which have already been filled — span the campus in areas of study ranging from engineering to optometry to arts and humanities.
“Donor support for the Hewlett Challenge is having a transformational effect on our campus,” says Scott Biddy, vice chancellor of University Relations. “This is the single largest gift in Berkeley’s history, and it’s already making a tremendous impact on preserving the University’s teaching and research excellence, and on Berkeley’s ability to stay competitive with the nation’s elite private institutions.”
For donors like Lifchez, the Hewlett Challenge has provided a meaningful way to sustain Berkeley’s teaching future — while honoring his late wife and rewarding a widely respected colleague. “This chair,” Lifchez says, “is gratitude for Robert Hass’s steadfast commitment to a vision that was Judith’s as well.”
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