After more than 40 years as an engineer with Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles, Richard L. Hedden wanted to relocate.

“I didn’t want snow. I wanted a smaller community and one with a university,” he says.

Las Cruces met those criteria and after he moved here in the early 1990s, he enrolled at NMSU, signing up for classes in anthropology, history, astronomy, criminal justice, and lately, philosophy.

“My focus is on those courses that were outside the engineering curriculum,” he says.

Hedden is now establishing the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies. The endowment has been funded by an initial gift from Hedden with the provision that additional gifts may be made at any time.

With this new fund, the Department of Philosophy will develop a master’s program in ethics and applied ethics by enhancing the annual salary of a new faculty member in the department, providing a graduate assistantship stipend to the department and providing income for a Philosophy Speaker Series, says Tim Cleveland, philosophy department head.

“There’s not really a program like this in the state or region,” Cleveland says.