Palm Springs residents Peter Rodler and Jim Wood have joined with the University of Maryland to fund an endowed professor for the LGBT Studies department and have also created a scholarship program in their name to assist LGBT Studies students. The Rodler-Wood Endowed Professorship is the nation’s first endowed professorship in the field, and will total at least $1 million.

“The fact that we’re giving this is nice, but the main reason that we released this information is in hopes of getting other people to contribute to other gays,” said Wood, who graduated from the university in 1972 with a degree in psychology and minors in sociology and business. “That is our goal — that is the reason for this.”

The university, located in College Park, Maryland, established an LGBT Studies certificate program last year, which allows for students to obtain the equivalent of a minor in LGBT Studies by taking 21 credits worth of courses in literature, social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. The endowment will strengthen the program by providing a permanent position for an LGBT Studies scholar, ensuring that the program stays on the cutting edge.

“The University of Maryland is really going out very far to help create equality for gays,” Wood said. “This is I think a huge step education-wise — to set aside a minor in LGBT Studies. John McKee [of the university’s development office] really saw our gift as a way to bring that program to the attention of the public who don’t know it even exists. Maybe we can get some funds and some community effort behind it and raise the profile. Maybe other universities would follow in suit.”

An endowed professorship is usually given to a scholar whose work in the field significantly benefits the area of study. University trustees will invest the Rodler-Wood endowment and the income generated from the investments will be used to pay the professor’s salary. This ensures that the position will not be cut due to budget matters or departmental downsizing. Any excess profit will be funneled into an LGBT Studies scholarship program.

Rodler and Wood, who have been together 29 years, join the growing ranks of GLBT philanthropists donating to educational programs to further the studies of GLBT people, promote awareness of their issues and ensure a stable future for GLBT youth that previous generations were denied.

“I can only speak for ourselves, but I think that the gay community has quite a bit of money and quite a bit of resources,” Wood said. “Certain ethnic groups and nationalities have put a great deal of effort into educating their children. Unfortunately, I don’t think gays have really thought about it in that regard, and that’s what we’re trying to do. We don’t have children of our own, so I’d like to help gay children who may be put out or have problems getting educated so that they don’t have to accept second-hand jobs.”

The couple pointed out that the AIDS epidemic has been the major focus of GLBT philanthropy for many years. The need for support in education, however, is fast becoming recognized as an essential element to the well being of GLBT youth.

“We’ve had an arrangement with the university for ten years that we were going give them money for a gay or minority student as a scholarship,” Wood explained. “Only in the last year or two, when they started the gay and lesbian studies program, did we convert that into funding a professorship in this branch.”

The University of Maryland’s LGBT Studies department is one of approximately 19 GLBT studies departments around the country. Similar programs exist in California at UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, City College of San Francisco and the Harvey Milk Institute.

“We’re hoping that maybe if we raise the profile high enough that the idea will spread to other colleges and universities and help with the understanding of the gay community,” Wood said.

The couple also hopes to see the LGBT Studies scholarship at the University of Maryland serve as a role model for other universities.

The idea for the scholarship came about from the couple’s desire to help struggling GLBT students who have been cut off from their parents after coming out in college and to further establish the LGBT Studies department by assisting students who may not otherwise be able to pursue their interest in LGBT Studies.

“We had a young lady friend that we knew, who was a wonderful attorney at the Federal Aviation Administration,” Wood said. “She was thrown out of their house by her parents when she came out at 17 — she was just thrown out. She had to make her way through college on her own. That’s the kind of thing that has happened and, I assume, still does happen. Our original goal was to give money to people who were thrown out by their parents, who didn’t accept the sexual orientation of their children. We wanted to step in when no other funds were available.”

The Rodler-Wood Scholarship Fund, which will award scholarships as they are donated, is designed to assist another previously established general scholarship fund at the university that helps the burgeoning LGBT Studies department. Bequests of anywhere from $100 to $1,000 are left by various individuals to the general scholarship fund, which is currently at about $12,000. When it reaches $25,000 it will be awarded every semester. Rodler and Wood’s scholarship is being used to help the general scholarship fund become permanent, and help some of the first LGBT Studies students in the meantime.

The couple will be honored April 17 in Washington, DC, along with other people who have contributed to the university’s LGBT Studies program.

Rodler and Wood encourage the GLBT community to donate to other state and local GLBT studies programs. “While the Maryland program is our pet, I hope to help any of these programs for our community,” Wood said.

For more information about the Rodler-Wood Fund, contact John McKee at the University of Maryland at (301) 405-7959. Visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com and click on this article for a link to a directory of LGBT Studies departments across the nation.