By Kellie Ann Doligale

UK’s endowment fell 32 percent in the last six months of 2008, the chair of the Board of Trustees Investment Committee said Tuesday.

At the first Board of Trustees meeting of 2009, Investment Committee Chair JoEtta Wickliffe issued a report on the current status of UK’s endowments. Earnings from endowment investments support scholarships, chairs, professorships and basic research, as well as academic and public service programs.

The endowment funding dropped $297 million between July 1 and the end of the year, from $939 to $642 million, Wickliffe said. The drop in endowments is consistent with the current economic slump, she said.

Wickliffe said the Investment Committee is concerned about the significant decline in the value of the endowment, but distributions from the endowment will not be affected for the current year.

Additional spending distributions from the endowment are calculated at 4.5 percent of the average market value over a 36-month period that ends each Dec. 31. So distribution in the current fiscal year has not and will not be impacted.

Distribution in the 2010 fiscal year will increase by 0.82 percent, Wickliffe said. But if the market does not recover in 2009, distribution in the fiscal year for 2011 will most likely decrease.

Wickliffe described the endowment money as perpetual.

“There’s no correlation between your personal money and the endowment fund,” Wickliffe said after the meeting. “What I may have lost in my personal account, I may not live long enough to recover it, but in the endowment fund, since it’s in perpetuity, it goes on forever. It has time to recover.”