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This visionary endowment gift was established in Elizabeth H. Harmon's memory by her parents, Dr. Frank and Judy Harmon, after Elizabeth’s passing in 2009. This endowment is to continue her legacy by supporting graduate student paleoanthropology research at the Institute of Human Origins.

Elizabeth completed her undergraduate degree in physical anthropology at Portland State University, then spent several years as a field archeologist in the Mariana Islands, in the Hawaiian Islands and in several other states, including Arizona.

Having determined she wanted to attend graduate school, she gained acceptance to Arizona State University, one of the best in the country for physical anthropology. She earned her PhD in 2005 from ASU under the tutelage of the Institute of Human Origins, then directed by Donald Johanson, PhD, renowned for being the co-discoverer in 1974 of "Lucy," the first fossil remains of a new species of ancient hominin given the name Australopithecus afarensis.

Her PhD supervisor was Professor William Kimbel, former IHO director. With her graduate work came opportunities for field experience and research in Africa, which she fully embraced, first as a teaching assistant at the Paleoanthropology Field School in Makapansgat, South Africa, then as research assistant and field manager for the IHO Hadar Research Project in the Hadar Valley of Ethiopia where both "Lucy" and the A. afarensis fossil known as the "Dikika baby" were found.

After earning her PhD and completing brief teaching stints at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Elizabeth joined the faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Hunter College — CUNY (City University of New York) in 2006. She was also a contributing faculty member in the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology graduate program.

She was a gifted teacher and scholar. Her research interests continued to take her to Ethiopia every year, where she and her colleague from the University of Montreal co-directed a paleontological field project and were developing their own research site in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia.