Durham, NC - John F. Burness, Duke University's senior vice president for public affairs and government relations since 1991 and the guiding force behind the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership that helped strengthen Duke's ties with the local community, will retire on June 30, 2008.

Duke President Richard H. Brodhead has appointed L. Gregory Jones, dean of Duke Divinity School, to chair a 12-person search committee of faculty, trustees, administrators and alumni to identify candidates to succeed Burness.

A member of Duke's senior leadership team under three Duke presidents (H. Keith H. Brodie, Nannerl O. Keohane and Brodhead), Burness, 62, has guided the university's interactions with reporters, elected officials, community leaders and others beyond the campus. He has been directly responsible for the university's offices of news and communications, community affairs, photography and government relations in Washington, Raleigh and Durham, and has served broadly as an advisor to trustees, deans, faculty, student leaders and others across the university.

Burness also was instrumental in establishing the nationally recognized Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, through which the university has established partnerships with 12 neighborhoods near its campus and the seven public schools and one charter school that serve them. Since 1996, Duke has raised more than $16 million through the Neighborhood Partnership to support youth development and K-12 education, affordable housing, community-based health clinics and nonprofits serving partner neighborhoods. The partnership also has significantly expanded the number of Duke students, faculty and staff engaged in the life of Durham.

"John Burness has been a tireless servant of this university, leading every aspect of university communications through a period of dynamic change," Brodhead said. "He built a professional news service that has increased Duke's visibility and been very effective in attracting attention to the many important contributions of our faculty, especially in research and scholarship. As a founder of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, John had a key role in helping Duke play a more active and constructive part in the City of Durham. Further afield, he has also masterminded government relations, and projected Duke to the larger world.

"When he was reappointed two years ago, John told me he intended for this current year to be his last. We're grateful for his extraordinary career of service."

Prior to assuming the newly created senior vice presidency at Duke, Burness was vice president for university relations at Cornell University. Previously, he held the senior public affairs positions at the University of Illinois and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Widely known in the higher education community, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and state legislatures and advised numerous universities and research organizations. He also has held leadership positions with the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, among others.

"I've been blessed to work at Duke during a time of extraordinary transformation of the university to its current status as one of the leading universities in the world," Burness said. "Duke has benefited from strong and visionary leadership at the top, and I've been privileged to work with colleagues who have always asked how Duke can make a difference by doing things better and at times differently. It's been a wonderful experience, but I told President Brodhead about two years ago that it's time for me to slow down and move on to the next phase of my life. I look forward to thinking and writing about issues affecting higher education and its role in society."

Keohane, Duke's president from 1993 -- 2004, said, "John Burness has been a guiding force for many good things during his time at Duke. He has addressed numerous tough issues with clarity of insight, wit and wisdom. His work for the Neighborhood Partnership stands out as real leadership in a good cause. He has also been a consistent advocate of open communication, honest dialogue and free speech on campus. Duke is much better because of his shrewd strategic sense, commitment to people and dedication to the university."

Burness is a trustee of Franklin and Marshall College, where he received his undergraduate degree, and serves on advisory boards for the Eisenhower Foundation Fellows and two major units at Duke - -- the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and the Center for Child and Family Policy.

He has been particularly active in K-12 education in Durham. He was the founding board chairman of the Durham Communities In Schools dropout prevention program and, in 2001, co-chaired the successful $74 million Durham County bond campaign. He also served on the Durham Public Schools' Quality Council and as a director of the Durham Public Education Network. He received the Josephine Clement Award for Exemplary Community Leadership for Public Education in Durham in 2002, and the Samuel DuBois Cook Award in 2004 for his efforts to support racial justice and collaborations between Duke and the Durham community.

Burness has held other leadership roles locally, including service on the boards of directors of MDC Inc.; the United Way of Greater Durham; the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science; Downtown Durham, Inc.; the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and the Research Triangle Regional Partnership.

Burness and his wife Anne Williams live in Durham. Both of their children have Duke ties - -- Evan is a 2005 graduate and Sam is a first-year student at Duke Law School.
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More information about the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership is available at http://community.duke.edu/.