Contact: Monty Jones, (512) 499-4363

Date: July 15, 1999

UT System News Release

Isabella Cunningham Re-Appointed to Smithsonian Board

AUSTIN – Dr. Isabella C. M. Cunningham, a faculty member at The University of Texas at Austin and wife of U.T. System Chancellor William H. Cunningham, has been re-appointed to the board of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

Her new three-year term on the board will run through May 31, 2002. She was first appointed to the board in 1993. Since 1994, she has chaired the board’s development committee.

The Smithsonian Institution is governed by a board of regents, which appoints a supervisory board for each of the Smithsonian’s 16 museums and galleries.

Dr. Cunningham is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor in Communications at U.T. Austin. She joined the Department of Advertising in 1974 and was chair of the department from 1978 to 1985.

Dr. Cunningham is the author or co-author of eight books and numerous articles. She has been active on numerous university committees and was chair of the U.T. Austin Women’s Athletics Council for five years.

In addition to serving on the board of the natural history museum, she is a board member of St. Edward’s University, Austin Theater for the Youth, and the National Wildflower Research Center. She served on the Texas state government Sunset Advisory Commission from 1995 to 1997.

Dr. Cunningham received law and business degrees from universities in Brazil, where she spent most of her childhood. She came to the United States in 1966 and earned an M.B.S. and a Ph.D. in marketing from Michigan State University.