The three professors will begin their new appointments in the 2025-26 academic year.
By Bennett Campbell Ferguson
May 28, 2025
Created to reflect the contributions of esteemed academics as both scholars and teachers, Reed’s endowed chairs are some of the most prestigious faculty positions that can be bestowed on a professor. Here’s everything you need to know about the three most recent professors to receive endowed chairs, who will officially begin their appointments in the 2025-26 academic year.
Jennifer Corpus
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology
Prof. Jennifer Corpus teaches courses in developmental psychology, focusing on the individual in social context and the reciprocal nature of socialization. She studies the factors that underlie students’ motivation to learn, examining the tension and synergy between intrinsic and extrinsic forms of motivation, as well as strategies used by parents and teachers (e.g., praise and reward systems). Her laboratory, the Academic Motivation Lab, combines experimental research to specify causal processes with school-based surveys and interviews to conceptualize motivation in context.
The Kenan Chair was established in 1978 by the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. According to the trust, the chair should support a “scholar-teacher whose enthusiasm for learning, commitment to teaching, and sincere personal interest in students will broaden the learning process and make an effective contribution to [Reed's] undergraduate community.”
Margaret Scharle
Margaret Rosemary Weitkamp Professor of Philosophy and Humanities
Prof. Margaret Scharle works in ancient philosophy, with special interest in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Her papers have appeared in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Phronesis, and Apeiron, Theory and Practice in Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy, and Aristotle’s Physics, A Critical Guide. She enjoys collaborative research with students, with whom she has presented co-authored papers at professional conferences, including the American Philosophy Association and the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy meetings.
Lowell R. Weitkamp ’58 established the Margaret Rosemary Weitkamp Chair of Humanities in honor of his first wife. He graduated from Reed with a bachelor’s in chemistry and is currently professor emeritus of genetics in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Because Weitkamp believes that the strong foundation in the humanities that he gained at Reed was critical to his success as a scientist, this chair is in the humanities with a preference for a faculty member in philosophy or history.
Kristin Scheible
Thomas Lamb Eliot Professor of Religion and Humanities
Kristin Scheible is a scholar of South Asian religions. She serves as chair of the religion department, co-PI for the Mellon-funded Environmental Humanities initiative, and as cochair of the Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion unit of the American Academy of Religion. Her research and teaching interests include Hindu and Buddhist history, the genre of historical narrative literature (vaṃsa) in the Pāli language, rhetorical strategies employed in Pāli and Sanskrit texts, the affective domain provoked by religious texts, and the environmental humanities.
The Thomas Lamb Eliot Memorial Fund for Religion was established in 1953 by his son, William Greenleaf Eliot, II. Thomas Lamb Eliot was the head of the founding board of trustees of ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ and served as a trustee from 1911 to 1925. Following in his father's footsteps, William Eliot was a Reed trustee from 1925 to 1941. The endowment supports religious interests and studies of Reed’s students, faculty, and community.