Legacy Gift Supports Conservation Research

Recruiting and retaining top-caliber faculty to teach, lead, and mentor students is of the highest priority for the university. Faculty awards and professorships are instrumental in meeting this goal.

James R. Cox, of Knoxville, understood the importance of faculty support. Through a planned gift, he established the James R. Cox Professorship in 2002. In 2015, Paul Armsworth was selected as the fourth recipient of the three-year Cox Professorship. The previous recipients were Beauvais Lyons of the Department of Art and Gary McCracken and Nathan Sanders of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

"The Cox program is fantastic," says Paul. "I am so grateful to the Cox family for creating this professorship. Their generous support creates tremendous opportunities for my research team and me."

Paul's work includes helping organizations implement conservation strategies. With the help of his research team, he studies the way conservation efforts interact with population and community dynamics. His work also focuses on many resource-management areas, including the protection of natural habitats, conservation of species and water quality.

"We research and develop ways to help organizations grow the positive and minimize the negative ways they are impacting the environment," he says. "Governments and conservation organizations invest billions of dollars each year in conservation efforts. These investments are intended to slow ongoing losses of biodiversity and to protect the flow of life-sustaining and enhancing services provided to people by ecosystems. In our work, we collaborate closely with federal and state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses to help them design these investments to be more targeted and effective."

To accomplish his conservation efforts, Paul works closely with his lab group.

"Science is a team sport, and we are a big team," Paul says. "There are undergraduate researchers, masters students, doctoral students, post-docs and other colleagues. We conduct a variety of research because our studies involve mathematics, ecology, statistics, and economics. We also go out into the field to get our boots on the ground and talk to people involved. The generosity of the professorship allows us to do these things."

Because of the resources provided to him through the Cox Professorship, Paul attended the National Land Conservation Conference in Minneapolis in October 2016. At the conference, Paul met with other researchers and scientists in his field and discussed conservation issues facing the Appalachian region, as well as apprising his peers on what UT is accomplishing.

"It was such an honor to be a recipient of the Cox Professorship knowing the stellar people who have preceded me," he says.

Are you looking for ways you can create opportunities like the James R. Cox Professorship? Contact the Office of Gift Planning at 865-974-3388 or giftplanning@utk.edu for more information on making a planned gift to UT.