CASPER, Wyo. — Utah State University has formally announced its search for a scholar to fill its new Leonard Arrington Chair in Mormon History and Culture, as part of establishing the first religious studies program at a state-sponsored university in the Beehive State.

"We want to make this appointment before the holidays and have this person join the faculty in fall 2007," said Dean Gary Kiger of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at USU. He made the announcement during the opening session of the Mormon History Association conference Friday.

The school has been working to organize formal religious studies research for some time, and the Arrington Chair will be the second position at a secular university dedicated to the emerging field of Mormon studies.

Claremont Graduate University in California recently announced its search and fund-raising for a Mormon studies chair named after late LDS Church President Howard W. Hunter. The USU post is named after deceased LDS Church historian Leonard Arrington, whose work has become the basis for much of the scholarship that has since been produced regarding early LDS history.

Kiger also announced the selection of Charles Prebish, a specialist in Buddhist studies from Pennsylvania State University, to fill an endowed chair in religious studies at USU. Prebish has held visiting professorships at Naropa Institute and the University of Calgary, and spent a year as Rockefeller Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He is co-founder of the online Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

The religious studies push at USU is already attracting research files from other high-profile scholars who work in Mormon studies. Kiger said the school will soon receive the papers of the late Valeen Tippetts Avery, retired professor of history at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Avery, who died in April at age 69, specialized in American Southwest and Mormon history. She co-authored "Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith," with Linda King Newell, in 1984, and in 1998, authored "From Mission to Madness. The Last Son of the Mormon Prophet."Both books were formally honored by USU.

Kiger said the school is also slated at some point to receive the papers of Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of religious studies, history and philanthropic studies at Indiana University, Purdue, Ind. University. Shipps is widely regarded as one of the most knowledgeable scholars of Mormon studies who is not a Latter-day Saint.

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