A gift from the Henry Uihlein II and Mildred A. Uihlein Foundation will be used to endow the director's position at Cornell's Uihlein Forest Sugar Maple Research and Extension Field Station in Lake Placid, N.Y., over the next six years.

"I am thrilled with the Uihlein Foundation's support of the Cornell Maple Program," said Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "This gift is essential to sustaining the sugar maple research and education program that we conduct on behalf of New York's maple producers. Endowing the directorship at the Uihlein Forest has been one of our goals in securing ongoing support for the program."

The endowment is a major step in the fund-raising effort to support the Cornell Maple Program, which kicked off last year with a lead gift from Robert Bickford '50, to establish the Cornell Sugar Maple Research and Education Fund.

The endowment of the directorship is the latest in a series of gifts from Henry Uihlein and his estate. Uihlein purchased a farm in Lake Placid in 1941 and worked with Robert Morrow, Cornell professor of natural resources, to plan the harvest, package syrup, further manage the maples in his forest and design a maple processing facility, or sugarhouse. In the 1960s he donated more than 200 forested acres to Cornell for maple sugar research and education, along with funds to build a sugarhouse at Uihlein Forest. More recently, the Uihlein Foundation has supported facility improvements at the Uihlein Forest.

"We need the help of the maple industry and other friends to follow the lead of the Uihlein Foundation and Bob Bickford to complete necessary facility improvements at the Uihlein and Arnot Forests and build a more substantial education and research program endowment," said Henry.