The practice of establishing various kinds of distinctive academic chairs or professorships to attract and encourage excellent faculty has been a part of North Carolina State University since at least 1946. The University's oldest endowed professorship, the William Neal Reynolds Professorship in Agriculture, supports William Neal Reynolds Professors by providing salary supplements and discretionary operating support. NCSU has named professorships that are endowed at levels that provide, from their income, support for salary supplements and discretionary operating resources. Other professorships carrying distinctive titles may or may not be associated with continuing appropriations that provide salary and support. In mid 1986, with the advice of the Faculty Senate, the chancellor established the concept of "professors of distinction" as the broad descriptor of all kinds of distinctively-titled professorships, "including distinguished visiting scholars," and provided procedures for according such distinctions upon individuals. Those procedures provide that faculty committees, comprised in the majority by individuals holding such formal distinctions, be consulted in the process of searching for or naming particular individuals in such positions and that the final review and decision on such distinctions rested with the chancellor upon the advice of the provost, the vice chancellor for research, and the dean of the graduate school.