Planned gift to endow chemical engineering professorship

Purdue alumni Larry and Virginia "Ginny" Faith have made a planned gift to the School of Chemical Engineering to be used for a distinguished professorship.

The gift will endow the Larry E. and Virginia C. Faith Distinguished Professorship of Chemical Engineering. Their generosity will support the hiring and retention of high-achieving professors who exemplify the research and teaching excellence that the Faiths are eager to champion.

"This can provide more support for the University to attract the best faculty members," Larry Faith says. "We decided that it would be a good idea to set up the distinguished professorship because we felt that Purdue was the best institution in which to make that investment."

Living in The Woodlands, Texas, Larry Faith (BS, ChE ’59) retired from Shell Oil Co. and Virginia Faith (BS, PSYC ’60) from Child Protective Services for the State of Texas. Larry Faith holds a Ph.D. from UCLA and while at Purdue he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa social fraternity and the Tau Beta Phi and Omega Chi Epsilon honorary societies. Ginny Faith holds a master's degree in social work from the University of California- Berkeley. She was a member of Phi Mu social sorority while at Purdue.

"Purdue was really the building block that made our success possible," Larry Faith says. "We really felt the need to try to pay back what we received." 

"We are grateful to Larry and Ginny Faith for their tremendous generosity," says Arvind Varma, the R. Games Slayter Distinguished Professor and Jay and Cynthia Ihlenfeld Head of Chemical Engineering. "The distinguished professorship in their names will help us to attract or to retain outstanding senior faculty, whose work will positively impact our students in perpetuity."