Gift from Carlson family supports senior faculty chair

A new University professorship, the LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professorship, has been named in honor of LeRoy Carlson Sr., who graduated from the College of Commerce in 1938, and his wife, Margaret, who received her master’s degree in English in 1943.

The Carlson family has a long association with the University, with several members earning degrees at Chicago, including Margaret Carlson’s sister, Dorothea Anderson (A.B., ’40) and the Carlson’s daughter-in-law, Catherine Mouly, (A.M., ’76, Ph.D., ’86). Also, Mouly and her husband, LeRoy Carlson Jr., have two sons, Anthony and Leo, who attend the University’s Laboratory Schools.

Carlson Sr., chairman and founder of Telephone and Data Systems Inc., said his education at the University, “provided me with a new way of looking at the world, of understanding its meaning and value. I have been able to leverage that ever since.”

The Carlson professorship has been established for a scholar in the humanities or humanistic social sciences, whose work is making a contribution nationally or internationally and who is able to inspire others–including students and faculty–to great achievement.

This professorship is a senior faculty position designed to strengthen the faculty by adding outstanding senior scholars who are recruited from outside the University. The professor named to this chair also will teach regularly in the College.