Harrison “Hap” Dunning Endowment Fund

Upon joining the faculty at UC Davis, Professor Dunning initiated a course in water law, which became his passion and the focus of the rest of his professional career. Dunning helped to found the environmental law program at King Hall and became one of California's most respected environmental law scholars.

In the late 1970's, he served as executive officer of the Governor's Commission to Review California Water Rights Law. He later served on the California Water Commission and the Bay Delta Advisor Council, and he sat on the board of directors of several nonprofits, including among others, The Bay Institute of San Francisco, the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, and the Tuolumne River Trust. Much of his scholarship dealt with the application of the public trust doctrine to water rights. In its landmark decision on that topic in 1983, the California Supreme Court cited the papers from a major conference Hap organized at UC Davis in 1980. Hap was given the Defender of the Trust award from the Mono Lake Committee in 2014 "for his extraordinary work defending the public trust and protecting the public's natural heritage at Mono Lake and its tributary streams." Hap was a dedicated teacher who received the William and Sally Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award in 1996. He maintained long-standing friendships and mentoring relations with many of his former students. An epitaph written for his father applies equally well to Hap: "strong of will, tender of spirit".

The purpose of this fund is to provide general support for the environmental law program at the School of Law, including but not limited to, operational support for the Center for Environmental Law and Policy, environmental law symposiums and speaker series, research fellows, stipends for public interest summer internships related to environmental law, and support for experiential learning opportunities.