Sometimes the right connection with the right people happens at the exact right time.    That’s certainly the case for Dr. Jay Garvey, the Friedman-Hipps Green and Gold Professor of Education and Executive Director for the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.    The gift of holding an endowed professorship came at the exact right time for Jay and his research ambitions. The professorship also allowed Jay to build important research networks and collegial communities. 

And the two incredible people who established the professorship – Sanford Friedman ‘73 and Jerome (Jerry) Hipps – also became important partners and friends for Jay as well.   

In the interview below, I delve into the details of Jay’s research, the generosity and kindness of Sanford and Jerry, and how philanthropy can change lives, near and far from the University of Vermont.  

How does it feel to hold an Endowed Professorship? 

My name's Jay Garvey, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm an Associate Professor of Education. I hold the Friedman-Hipps Green and Gold Professorship of Education and I also serve as the Executive Director for the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. I'm a feelings-oriented person, so I'll start by saying it feels very relational.

I feel very close with Jerry and Sanford, and the relationship that we have transcends just a transactional relationship at the university. We care about each other a great deal. And the most important thing about this professorship is that we have similar aims for justice and liberation through education.

A lot of what we do in this professorship - and I'll include Jerry and Sanford in these aims - is very much driven by who we are as people, as gay men ourselves, in uplifting queer and trans communities. It feels very community-centered and it feels lovely. And I have an abundance of gratitude and humility for this experience because I know a lot of deserving researchers who would also benefit from a professorship such as this. And I'm so grateful for the boundless opportunities.

How does Holding this Professorship Help Your Work?

I was at a crossroads in my researcher career.

I was looking for greater impact and influence. My research centers queer and trans people in education. And around the time right before I got my professorship, there was a large onslaught of anti-trans and anti-queer education policies happening. And as a quantitative researcher, I wanted to do more and I wanted to have a greater impact.

When I received the blessing of this professorship, it provided me the financial grounding to be able to start my research team, which is QTPiE, which stands for Queer and Trans People in Education. We started out as three members and it was small but mighty and we had a lot of purpose and a lot of clarity in what we wanted to do. We just had to spend some time to build capacity.

We decided to use the professorship money for was creating a series of grant opportunities for emerging researchers who study queer and trans communities. And that has continued every year since I started my professorship.

Every summer I host an emerging scholars program where we select one-to-four queer and trans education researchers who are interested in learning quantitative methods. And I do that particularly given the power of quantitative methods in education policy.Then every fall we offer a topical grant focusing on minority serving institutions or black, queer and trans collegians or education policy. These grants are really meant to uplift research that's not often conducted in the landscape of queer and trans education scholarship. Those grants are $1,500 each. Each person who received that grant also receives a warm invitation to join QTPiE.

Our research team started out with three people. And in the course of four years, we've now grown to 25 people because everyone who has accepted the grant has also warmly accepted an invitation to join our research team.It was just that little monetary value that was like, we honor and celebrate the labor that you're contributing to this work, and we hope that you'll be in fellowship with us moving forward. It's been the ideal situation to literally build a coalition of like-minded researchers.

What opportunities have been made possible because of your professorship? 

Something happened to me recently that made me think a lot about my endowed professorship. A national nonprofit reached out and said, we are trying to support people who are fighting against recent transphobic and queerphobic legislation at the state level.

They said, 'we're having difficulty finding experts in this arena who can serve as witnesses and provide expert testimonies to the work that we're doing.' But I know a lot of folks that are doing this kind of work and it was so illustrative of the power of this professorship that they found me through the professorship and also understood that legitimizing this work through an endowed professorship, provides a different level of advocacy in the legislative arena.

It was really fascinating that my title as an endowed professor might serve queer and trans communities in a very unique way in the legal landscape because it legitimizes this work in a very special way.

What does it mean to have donors support your work? 

We talk quite often. Not only are Sanford and Jerry great supporters of the work I'm doing, but they have become close friends.

As a small example, when my husband and I got married last August, they were among the first to celebrate that news and really reach out. And a lot of that is driven by community and relationships, which is why we do the work that we do.

But, if I could capture this moment in time with what I would say to them, I just express an abundance of gratitude and love and appreciation for the stewardship that they had with their donations. Also, I'd say thank you on behalf of queer and trans communities for bringing us into the Education Policy light through their funds. I also have a lot of love for the trust that they put in me as a researcher to shepherd these funds in responsible and socially impactful ways.

Why do you think endowed professorships are important?

The stature for a professorship really provides a platform that other faculty may not have. There's a sense of authority that comes with a professorship. People interpret my work differently with me having an endowed professorship.

I think that's a real gift that donors can provide in legitimizing and elevating and uplifting research in really unique ways.

It also means that there's going to be endurance. For example, because of Sanford and Jerry's endowed professorship, we know that there will always be a place for queer and trans research at the University of Vermont. And that is something that is so remarkable and what a legacy that they will have that will endure far beyond my own research portfolio, which is really heartwarming to feel.

Learn More

Listen to an audio interview with Sanford Friedman ’73 and Jerry Hipps about their personal connections to Jay's research. 

Listen to an audio interview with Jay about this academic journey and research. 

If you’d like to learn more about creating an endowed professorship at the University of Vermont, please contact Kevin Morgenstein Fuerst at kmorgens@uvm.edu or 802-656-3227. 

To explore all of the current chairs and named professorships at UVM, click here.