http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/07/28/daily39.html?f=et51&ana=e_du

Austin Business Journal

Friday, August 1, 2008

Donors hope a new endowment at the University of Texas will help lure experts in biodiversity and applied ecology.

UT alums Ann and Roger Worthington have donated $500,000 to establish the Lawrence E. Gilbert Jr. Excellence Endowment, which benefits the Brackenridge Field Laboratory and research and education in ecology and biodiversity.

The endowment is named for one of Roger Worthington's former professors, Gilbert, a noted evolutionary ecologist and professor of integrative biology who has directed the laboratory since 1980.

"This is a way for Ann and I to honor Larry and the other ecologists at The University of Texas at Austin for their great work, and to send a message to our kids and the next generation that the natural world is itself a laboratory that deserves our awe, study and attention," Worthington says.

The Worthingtons hope to see the endowment grow through donations into an endowed chair in biodiversity and applied ecology. When $1 million has been raised, the endowment will be renamed the Lawrence E. Gilbert Jr. Chair in Biodiversity and Applied Ecology.

Roger Worthington took Gilbert's Plan II biology course in 1980, and he says the course opened his eyes to unintended damages humans inflict on the environment.

"Larry taught us that human efforts to control or simplify nature can have a ripple effect that may come back to haunt us if we're not careful stewards," says Roger Worthington, a California trial lawyer who represents victims of asbestos poisoning.