Research universities like UCF pursue two closely related objectives: to educate students and prepare them for lives of engagement and success, and to advance knowledge through scholarship and research, applying our discoveries and innovations to better our world.

A single resource is vital to both: our faculty. These teachers, scholars, researchers and practitioners not only make profound differences in the lives of their students but also positively impact their colleagues, their institutions and their communities.

The very best of them are aggressively recruited by well-funded colleges and universities across the country and around the globe, often with the incentive of prestigious donor-endowed positions. Named for the donor or an individual s/he wishes to honor, named endowed faculty positions recognize the accomplishments of the holders and provide them with a permanent source of flexible funding to advance their work.

As of early 2018, there were approximately 67 such positions at UCF. In order to compete effectively against our peers — many of which are home to hundreds of endowed positions — UCF must grow that number.

That’s why securing commitments to fund 15 new faculty professorships, including deanships for the colleges, is a key priority of the IGNITE Campaign — an ambitious, universitywide effort to inspire $500 million in philanthropic support by the summer of 2019.

Now, with the announcement that he will be stepping down from his position in June 2018, UCF President John C. Hitt has agreed to lend his name and his considerable advocacy to a tightly focused initiative emphasizing the vital importance of exceptional faculty in making ours a truly great institution.

Within the IGNITE Campaign, the John C. Hitt Initiative for Faculty Excellence comprises not only a strategic effort to inspire new philanthropic commitments establishing endowed positions, it also includes a special program to increase the impact of those commitments.

With an eye to the future of the university he has led for more than 25 years, President Hitt — who holds a doctorate in psychology and began his own career as a professor — has chosen faculty support as a focus of his personal efforts to secure philanthropic support through the IGNITE Campaign.