Alumni Contribute $3 Million To Wake Forest For Faculty

Triad Business Journal

Matt Evans

October 28, 2013

Three alumni have pledged $3 million to Wake Forest University to help it recruit and retain faculty members.

The donors — Bobby Burchfield, Debbie Rubin and her husband Mike Rubin — made their gifts in response to Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch’s “Presidential Chair” initiative launched in 2012. That effort provides support for faculty members through endowed chairs.

Burchfield is a 1976 Wake Forest graduate and now an attorney in Washington, D.C. He contributed $2 million to establish the Burchfield Presidential Chair of Political Economy.

Mike and Debbie Rubin contributed $1 million to establish the Rubin Chair of Jewish and Israeli Studies. They had previously established a separate Rubin Chair of American Ethnic Studies in 1995 and the Rubin Scholarship Fund in 2005.

“We are grateful for the generosity of Bobby Burchfield and Mike and Debbie Rubin to support brilliant and committed scholars who will have a profound effect on our students,” Hatch said. “An academic chair is the highest award the university can bestow on a faculty member, and universities with endowed chairs have a clear advantage in recruiting and retaining the most talented faculty.”