In 2008, the center named for Howard H. Baker Jr., the alumnus and politician nicknamed the “Great Conciliator,” opened its permanent building. Established in 2003, the Baker Center teaches the importance of research in developing public policies and divides its focus areas into energy and the environment, global security, and leadership and governance. Baker, an attorney who graduated from UT in 1949, was a Republican US senator from Tennessee who served as vice chair of the Senate’s committee on Watergate. He was also a chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan and a US ambassador to Japan under President George W. Bush. Baker worked with the center until his death in 2014, and he lay in repose in the center rotunda before his funeral.