The University of California at Irvine agreed to establish three new chairs to expand its religious studies program, adding Jain, Sikh and modern India studies to the already agreed Vedic and Indic civilization studies Aug. 12.
Shri Parshvanath, Dhan Kaur Sahota and Swami Vivekananda, presidential chairs for Jain, Sikh and modern India studies, respectively, were present at the signing held at the Jain Center of Southern California in Buena Park.
Dr. Georges Van Den Abbeele signed the Jain and Sikh studies agreements. Abbeele was joined by Jain studies donors Drs. Jasvant, Meera Modi, Rajesh and Neeta Shah, and Sikh studies donors Dr. Harvinder Sahota and his wife Asha Sahota.
The new chairs are intended to anchor the religious studies program at UCI by securing faculty-led research and instruction in influential Indian religions and culture and help establish a multidisciplinary campus for Indian studies.
“Today’s historical event will have a profound impact on developing academic opportunities for the study and research of these two religions, which are not widely known or understood outside of India,” JCSC president Virendra Shah said in a statement.
The addition of the four chairs at U.C. Irvine marks one of the first public universities to establish a partnership with Asian organizations to develop South Asian studies.
Efforts to establish similar studies are being made at other Southern California institutions, including Claremont School of Theology and Loyola Marymount University.
Each endowed chair is funded with $2 million. Donors provided $1.5 million and U.C. matched a half million dollars.
An endowed chair is a fund that provides resources to recruit, retain and reward the finest scholars. The annual interest in the endowment provides resources in perpetuity for faculty salary, teaching, research and related activities.

http://www.indiawest.com/news/global_indian/jain-sikh-modern-india-studies-established-at-u-c-irvine/article_1f998898-45ea-11e5-b232-1f823f72f2e1.html

http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2015/08/19/indian-american-doctor-donates-1-5-million-to-uc-irvine-for-sikh-studies/

An Indian American cardiologist has donated $1.5 million to the University of California -Irvine for creating a Sikh studies department on its campus.Dr. Harvinder Sahota donated the money to the university to create a department, to be named after Sahota’s mother, Bibi Dhan Kaur Sahota, reports India West. The department will teach Sikh studies as a regular course.“My mother taught me never to degrade anyone and respect everyone,” Sahota was quoted as saying.“I still abide by the lessons she taught me as a child. I wanted to honor my mother for the woman she was and the man she helped me turn out to be,” he told the paper.A graduate of the Patiala Medical College in Punjab, Dr Sahota created perfusion angioplasty balloon in the mid-1980s. Now it is being used throughout the world, including India, Mexico, Ukraine and Russia.The syllabus will cover Sikh studies from 1469 to 2015, and beyond. The department will include graduate and undergraduate courses in Sikhism, and students will have the opportunity to visit Sikh temples as part of the study program. The university is also planning for the collaboration with Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, Punjab.The courses are expected to begin in September 2016.