The newest recipients of one of UC Davis' highest faculty honors actually got chairs last Wednesday -- tiny metal ones with padded seats to accompany the plaques given out at a banquet in their honor. But unlike the original endowed chair holders in the 16th century, these UC Davis faculty members also got a bank account to spend on research and scholarly endeavors. The funding comes from private donors that include sculptor Robert Arneson's friends and admirers, parents of autistic children, a foundation dedicated to applied science, alumni interested in supporting the industry-campus relationship, and professors who have given their life savings to their departments. The recipients -- David Amaral, Annabeth Rosen, Richard Spencer, Richard Freeman, Clark Lagarias, David Biale, Peter Cranston and Roger Boulton -- join a pantheon of faculty members who are among our top scholars and scientists. Freeman, chair of the Department of Applied Science, says the endowment funds are particularly useful because they come without the strings typically attached to faculty grants. "I think it's absolutely golden," said the new holder of the Edward Teller Professorship, funded by the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. Freeman believes the endowment will be a significant attraction for top faculty leaders considering the administrative job of chair of the applied science department in the future. (The Hertz gift created UC Davis' only endowment specifically targeted for a department chair.) "I can use it for travel, I can have a postdoc or support a graduate student. As a [department] chair, I will never have the time to write the grants for funding that this endowed chair will offer me," he said. The campus now manages endowment assets of $51 million for its 51 endowed faculty positions. The recipients of these endowments receive a percentage of the interest earnings, which grow each year. Donors give to the university because they feel a special connection to their past, explained Julita Fong, former chair of the UC Davis Foundation Board of Trustees and retired pathologist in the School of Medicine. Her late husband, Henry, was a chemical engineer who entered the first class of the School of Law at the age of 40. The Fongs made the lead gift to the Edward L. Barrett Jr. Professorship, the first endowed professorship in the law school. "We believe in excellence in education and that there is no better way to show that than" with endowed chairs, Fong told the gathering of faculty members and donors last week. This type of partnership that the campus has forged with private givers is fairly new in the 92-year history of UC Davis, showcasing the growing importance of alumni and friends to the faculty's high quality. The first chairs and professorships were created in 1978 -- the Sesnon Chair in animal science and the Amerine Professorship in viticulture and enology. By 1990, only four more endowed chairs had been created. But the state budget crises of the early '90s and the realization that only 26 percent of the campus budget is funded by the state Legislature triggered a closer scrutiny of other funding sources to support a top faculty. Through the concerted efforts of administrators, faculty members and development officers in the past decade, the campus has funded 45 more endowed chairs and professorships -- more than a sevenfold increase. Over the years, endowed chairs and professorships have evolved into essentially the same type of position at UC Davis. Although the minimum endowment is $350,000, the gift threshold is higher for positions in the sciences and engineering. The honor is traditionally given to highly distinguished associate and full professors for either a specified or indefinite term. The following faculty members have been appointed to endowed chairs and professorships this year: David Amaral Amaral, who joined the UC Davis faculty as an investigator at the California Regional Primate Research Center in 1991, is the first holder of the Beneto Foundation Chair, created by the Beneto Foundation of Sacramento. He has been a professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine since 1995, with an appointment to the Center for Neuroscience. Amaral also chairs the doctoral program in neuroscience. A specialist on the organization and functioning of the hippocampus and other parts of the primate brain, Amaral told the audience that he and his colleagues, including professors Robin Hansen and Ted Jones, are working on a cure for autism. Over the past two years, he worked with parents of autistic children and medical faculty members to fulfill a dream of establishing the M.I.N.D. Institute (M.I.N.D. is an acronym standing for Medical Investigation of Neurodevel-opmental Disorders.) Resources like the endowed chair will help Amaral and his colleagues understand and ulimately eliminate the neurodevelopmental disease of autism, which impairs the ability of people to interact with other people and their environment. Annabeth Rosen Rosen, who joined the UC Davis art faculty in 1997, was presented the Robert Arneson Chair in Ceramics. The chair, the first in the nation devoted to ceramics, was established through the contributions of more than 300 people who wanted to perpetuate the memory and achievements of Arneson, a longtime professor at UC Davis. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and a Master of Fine Art Degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Since then, Rosen has led a productive teaching and artistic career. Her works have been featured in more than 50 exhibitions, ranging from Vermont to Florida, New York City to London and Mallorca, Spain. Her work forms significant parts of private collections in the United States, England and Wales. She has presented six major solo shows since 1986 and is a prolific author of scholarly articles and reviews and is an often-requested lecturer. David Biale The Emmanuel Ringelblum Chair in Jewish History is held by David Biale (pronounced as "beel"), formerly of the Grad-uate Theological U-nion in Berkeley. The Ringelblum Chair is named for the Polish Jew and historian, Emmanuel Ringelblum, who kept detailed accounts of the treatment of Jews in Warsaw during World War II. It is a gift from the estate of the late professor emeritus Paul Goodman, who taught American politics, labor relations and Jewish history here for nearly 30 years. Biale is the author of three major books on Jewish history, two of which won National Jewish Book Awards. In addition, he has co-authored a recent book on American Jews and multiculturalism, written about 50 articles and 30 book reviews. He has had fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Biale is working on a three-volume, multi-author project, an investigation into modern Jewish thought, and a comparative study of the symbolism of blood in Jewish and Christian traditions. Richard Spencer Spencer's exceptional track record in private industry as an entrepreneur, consultant, researcher and senior engineer brought the electrical and computer engineering professor the Child Family Professorship. The professorship is the result of a 1995 gift from two UC Davis alumni, Renee and Michael Child, and aimed at a member of the engineering faculty who excelled at fostering beneficial relationships between private companies and the university. Spencer deals with designing solid-state circuitry. A number of well-known companies have supported his re-search over the years, including Analog De-vices, Hewlett-Pac-kard, IBM, Silicon Sy-stems, National Semi-conductor and Texas Instruments. One of the more engaging activities that Spencer has fostered is a student design competition. Teaming up with National Semiconductor Vice President Graham Baskerville and other national engineers, Spencer developed an undergraduate design contest called "Natcar." This contest, which originated at UC Davis, draws college teams from electrical engineering programs throughout California, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, California State University, Sacramento, and California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, as well as Oklahoma State University. The UC Davis team will hold internal trials for the campus to see on Picnic Day, April 15, with the finals Friday, May 26, at National Semiconductor in Santa Clara. Richard Freeman The president of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, John Holzrichter, presented Freeman with the new $1 million endowed chair named after the founder of the Department of Applied Science, Ed-ward Teller. Teller, a central figure in the development of quantum mechanics, the building of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and the rise of nuclear power, was a good friend of John Hertz, who founded Yellow Cab and Hertz-Rent-A-Car. Teller urged Hertz to orient his foundation to support education in the applied sciences. Freeman heads a department with 17 faculty and more than 90 graduate students. The department works closely with three national laboratories -- Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and Sandia National Laboratories -- to find practical applications for our scientific breakthroughs. Freeman is a widely respected researcher who has published more than 175 major articles in all the important technical and scientific journals.He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in physics from Harvard, after which he joined AT&T Bell Labs, heading up several research departments for them over the course of 20 years. Freeman, who accepted a position at UC Davis in 1996, within a few months took a leave of absence to work at Lawrence Livermore as science adviser and deputy director for laser programs. He continues to serve as a consultant to the laboratory, and runs his own educational and consulting business. Clark Lagarias The new Paul and Ruth Stumpf Professor in Plant Biochemistry, Clark Lagarias (pronounced "lah-GARY-us") was introduced at the banquet as were the donors, the Stumpfs. Lagarias said he was both honored and humbled by the award. "Paul Stumpf wrote the book on plant biochemistry," said Lagarias, who pledged to mentor other young scientists as he was mentored by Stumpf. Lagarias holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Berkeley and did his postdoctoral work at the Michigan State University's Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory. He joined the UC Davis biochemistry and biophysics faculty in 1980, moving over to the molecular and cellular biology division in 1991. Lagarias' research focuses on the operations of the photoreceptor phytochrome in plants, a chemical process that plays a key role in a plant's response to its light environment. Understanding this process and learning to mediate plant responses to light have tremendous agricultural and economic implications. Lagarias is the author or co-author of more than 65 research articles appearing in such prominent journals as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He also is a member of the American Society for Photobiology and the American Society of Plant Physiologists. Two other faculty members have been appointed to endowed chairs within the last year: Peter Cranston is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Chair in Insect Systematics, and Roger Boulton is the Stephen Sinclair Scott Endowed Chair in Enology.