Susan E. Lynch, an active supporter of Cornell University, has established the Susan Eckert Lynch Professorship in Science and Business in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). The new chair, the first endowed position at Cornell to promote interdisciplinary collaboration between business and the new life sciences, will advance research and teaching in the Department of Applied Economics and Management.

She becomes the first woman to endow a chair in CALS, which is celebrating its centennial year.

"At this exciting juncture in the history of Cornell and the college, when both business and the life sciences are emerging as major priorities, this is an inspiring and important gift," says Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "Susan Lynch's generosity will be felt in our enhanced ability to foster leadership at the interface of business and science where entrepreneurs and emerging technologies meet."

Lynch suggested the professorship as a means of creating synergy between two identified college priorities, business and the life sciences. "The college would benefit from having a new professorship in either of these fields," she commented. "But it will be especially valuable to have a faculty member who can bridge the two, who can show how important it is to business to have a stake in the life sciences, and how important it is to the people working in the life sciences to involve the business community with the outcomes of their research."

Lynch, a Cornell Presidential Councillor and a Friend of the Cornell Council, also serves on the advisory councils of CALS and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Previously she served on the President's Council of Cornell Women. She and her late husband, Ronald P. Lynch, a 1958 CALS graduate, endowed the college's deanship during his term as vice chairman of the university's board of trustees. Together the Lynches also funded the Ronald P. and Susan E. Lynch Professorship of Investment Management in the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Lynch Fund for Athletics. The two were honored in 1994 as foremost benefactors of the university. Since her husband's death in 1996, Lynch has continued her active support of the university, creating the Susan E. Lynch Director's Discretionary Fund in support of the athletics campaign and making a lead gift for expansion of the Johnson Museum.

"Susan Lynch has set an inspiring example for our alumni and friends, not only by becoming one of the few women to endow a professorship at Cornell in her own right, but also by responding to the needs of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in a way that so thoughtfully reflects the spirit of the university's ever-increasing emphasis on cross-disciplinary collaboration," says Provost Biddy Martin. "This exceptional gift serves as a model of creative philanthropy and a wonderful demonstration of the impact that one individual, whether man or woman, can have on the advancement of the university's academic mission."

An alumna of Connecticut College, Lynch chaired a highly successful fund-raising campaign for that school in the late 1990s. She is a trustee of the Asia Society and a member of the board of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn. With her son, Charles R. Lynch, Class of 1990, she hosts several Cornell events instituted during her husband's lifetime, including an annual CALS luncheon in New York City and the annual Lynch-Weiss campus visit, which helps Cornell's alumni and friends renew their ties to the university and remain abreast of developments on campus.