Oregon State University-Cascades announced Wednesday that its hospitality management program received $500,000 for its endowed faculty fund from Oregon hospitality owners Curt and Robin Baney.

The Baneys, who own the Oxford Collection of hotels, including Bend’s Oxford Hotel and a series of Oxford Suites properties throughout the western U.S., established the hospitality endowed faculty position in 2016 with a donation, according to an OSU-Cascades press release. The position is currently held by Senior Instructor Todd Montgomery, who helped start the hospitality management degree program in 2015.

“We’re pleased to have a program of this caliber right here in our (backyard),” Curt Baney said. “We’ve had several interns working in our company and a graduate in our home office. It’s what we need. OSU-Cascades has a good curriculum. With the endowed chair, we thought we could help the program to continue.”

The program now has an endowed faculty fund of $1 million, the first faculty endowed position at OSU-Cascades to reach that amount of philanthropic support.

“The Baneys are leading by example,” OSU-Cascades Vice President Becky Johnson said in the release. “Their generous gift doubles our faculty’s ability to teach innovatively and prepare tomorrow’s hospitality workforce.”