Tulane Professor Gene Koss, an accomplished artist who founded the Newcomb Art Department’s renowned glass program in the 1970s, has left the university a parting gift upon his retirement: a donation to establish an endowed professorship in glass.

The gift from the prominent glass sculptor and his wife, Mary, who is a Tulane alumna and retired certified public accountant, will create the Gene and Mary Koss Professorship in Glass Endowed Fund. It will support a faculty member in the School of Liberal Arts, with the preferred holder teaching glass as a sculpture medium incorporating hot glass casting — a technique synonymous with Gene Koss’ celebrated body of work.

Koss arrived at Tulane in 1976 to teach ceramics and later founded the university’s glass program with the help of alumna and former Pace Foods owner Margaret Pace Willson and her husband, Robert. Today the Newcomb Art Department boasts the state-of-the-art Pace-Willson Glass Studio — the second-largest university glass studio in the nation.

“In the late 1970s, Margaret Pace and Robert Willson made a donation that allowed me to build a small glass studio at Tulane, and they subsequently helped fund the program’s expansion,” said Gene Koss, who retired in May 2024 as the Maxine and Ford Graham Chair in Fine Art after 48 years at Tulane. “I have always been so grateful for their generosity, and Mary and I want to pass it forward to support the glass program into the future.”