AUSTIN, Texas—The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF) has established a $700,000 endowment for the Worthington Endowed Professorship for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in Plan II at The University of Texas at Austin.
Funds from the professorship will be used for a biology faculty member and a teaching assistant for a Plan II biology course.
As a student at the university Roger Worthington, founder of MARF and a graduate of Plan II, took an evolutionary biology course taught by Dr. Lawrence Gilbert, professor of integrative biology. Worthington said he established the endowment to attract professors like Gilbert who presented a challenging syllabus and taught important scientific fundamentals.
“I hope a similar course will equip our future leaders with the tools they need to identify and measure, in a dispassionate manner, the impacts we have had on our natural world,” Worthington said. “I believe that our society will embrace the challenge and passionately commit ourselves to fixing the problems for ourselves, our future lineage and the only world we’ve got.”
MARF is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, by funding research grants and increasing awareness of the disease.
For more information contact: Robin Gerrow, College of Liberal Arts, 512-232-2145.
