Two $1 million donations from the same anonymous donor will be used to fund the first endowed chair at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's College of Engineering, UH officials announced Wednesday.
The endowed chair will be in honor of Hawaii engineer Alfred A. Yee, who helped design several structures around Honolulu including Alfred Preis’s floating Arizona Memorial and Ossipoff’s Diamond Head Apartments, which was the first precast, prestressed concrete tower in the United States. As part of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Dr. Alfred A. Yee chair of sustainability and resilience will provide funding to recruit and retain faculty with expertise in sustainability and resilience.
“This is an amazing opportunity for the college and our faculty to continue to step up as a state and international leader in sustainability and resiliency in response to climate change and its impacts like sea-level rise," said College of Engineering Dean Brennon Morioka in a statement. "We are forever grateful for this financial support, which we view as a vote of confidence by our local community that the University of Hawaii can and should lead on many fronts related to the challenges our state faces.”
UH President David Lassner added, “We deeply appreciate this remarkable acknowledgment and expression of support from the community for the critical role the University of Hawaii and our College of Engineering play every day in advancing the sustainability of our islands and the world beyond. There is no greater challenge to our future, and solutions will take all of us working together as exemplified by this gift.”
