After a meeting scheduled today in Southern California, fund raising will officially begin for the Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.

The move will make Claremont the first secular university in the country to dedicate a tenured faculty position to Mormon studies, providing graduate students with scholarly oversight in examining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an area of emphasis.

Today's meeting is to be held at the home of CGU President Robert Klitgaard, where "he'll do an official signing of the document and with that the fund-raising campaign will officially begin," said Bob Millet, professor of religion at Brigham Young University and a member of Claremont's LDS Council.

Armand Mauss, professor emeritus of sociology at Washington State University, says the school has struck a good balance between academic integrity and sensitivity to the LDS Church. Mauss is also a member of the school's LDS Council.

He said academic freedom has been a major discussion point with the council and the graduate school, and in formal documents outlining the arrangement. The university needed to be assured that whoever is in the chair "is a reputed senior scholar and that academic integrity would be maintained in all respects," Mauss said.

"There are no stipulations that the person would have to be a (church) member, or even that the person must be friendly to the church. What is there is that whoever is hired for that position will have a satisfactory enough relationship that he or she will have access to the LDS Church Archives (in Salt Lake City) for research," he said.

Organizers hope to begin advertising for a scholar to fill the chair this fall, and hope to have raised enough money to have the position filled in fall 2007.

The Howard W. Hunter Foundation was chartered in February as a nonprofit, 501C3 entity, Mauss said. It will raise the funding for the chair and administer the funds for that and associated programs and conferences at Claremont.

Board members include Elder John C. Dalton, an Area Authority Seventy of the LDS Church as chairman; President Hunter's son, John Hunter, as president; and Richard Hunter, another son. Joseph Bentley and Milan Smith will represent the school's LDS Council on the foundation board.

The ultimate decision about who to hire for the chair will be made by the university search committee, with input from the council and the foundation. That person will become a full-time, tenured faculty member at Claremont, "and will be expected to function like any other faculty member." The post was designed to "make sure the teaching and research done is legitimate academic research, and not something in support of the LDS Church's mission," Mauss said.