An endowed professorship — or endowed chair — is a position permanently paid for with the revenue from an endowment fund specifically set up for that purpose. Typically, the position is designated to be in a certain department and can be named by the donor.
Endowed professorships aid the university by providing a faculty member who does not have to be paid entirely out of the operating budget, allowing the university to either reduce its student-to-faculty ratio — a statistic used for college rankings and other institutional evaluations — and/or direct money that would otherwise have been spent on salaries toward other university needs. Additionally, an endowed professorship or chair can be used by the College of Medicine – Phoenix to reward its best faculty or to recruit top professors from other institutions.