The University of Chicago has announced a $75 million commitment from alumni Amy and Richard Wallman (MBA ’75 and ’74, respectively) to endow 30 faculty chairs.

The largest donation in support of faculty chairs in the university’s history will launch a $150 million fundraising challenge to create new endowed professorships in divisions and schools across the university. The couple will match new commitments of $2.5 million or more, and each professorship will be named for the individual donors who join the challenge. The resulting cohort of faculty will be known as the Wallman Society of Fellows.

The Wallmans are longtime supporters of the university; previous commitments include a $75 million gift which named the Amy and Richard F. Wallman Scholars at Chicago Booth. Amy Wallman retired as an audit partner from EY in 2001, and Richard Wallman, who currently serves as a University of Chicago trustee, was chief financial officer and senior vice president of Honeywell International Inc., and its predecessor AlliedSignal from 1995 to 2003.

“We are extremely pleased with our previous gifts, but we are particularly excited about the lasting and beneficial impacts on society that will result from the work of the Wallman Fellows initiative,” said Richard Wallman.

“We can look ahead to when 30 Wallman Fellows, with interests spanning the university from the humanities to molecular engineering, economics and public policy to biology and medicine, are at UChicago doing what we do best: defining new fields for knowledge that shape the world,” said University of Chicago president Paul Alivisatos. “These faculty will exemplify the best of how to unite academic scholarship with active work beyond the walls of the university to bring their ideas into impact in society to the benefit of humanity.”

(Photo courtesy of Art and Alex Photography)