The Duke Endowment of Charlotte is giving $40 million to Duke University to create more than 30 new faculty positions, university President Richard H. Brodhead announced Wednesday.
The gift from the non-profit foundation will fully endow 10 new assistant professorships and 10 associate professorships at a cost of $25 million. It also will provide $15 million to match additional funding to establish 12 new endowed full professorships. Brodhead said all of the new positions will support scholars of distinction who are expected to make innovative contributions to undergraduate education.
"As it has for more than eight decades, The Duke Endowment is helping mightily to secure Duke University's future. Our strategic plan calls for innovative approaches to what and how we teach students, particularly undergraduates, including learning in classrooms, laboratories and other settings, both on and off campus," Brodhead said.
"Simultaneously, the plan recognizes Duke's responsibility to apply the knowledge and creativity of its faculty and students to major public challenges such as improving health care, fighting poverty and protecting the environment. The primary means to these ends are Duke faculty members. Our visionary supporters in Charlotte understand and support that, and we are grateful."
Brodhead said two of the primary goals of the university's strategic plan, "Making a Difference," are to "attract and retain outstanding faculty and to increase significantly those undergraduate learning experiences that focus on research and laboratory and field experiences under close faculty supervision. Many of these positions will be in the schools with undergraduate programs; others will enable the professional schools to hire faculty who will also teach undergraduates."
Adopted by the university's board of trustees in October 2006, Duke's strategic plan (http://stratplan.duke.edu/) also identifies "interdisciplinarity" and "knowledge in the service of society" as two of the institution's enduring themes.
"The university's planning process has been careful, thorough and effective -- and a necessary step into the future for a great university," said Eugene W. Cochrane Jr., president of The Duke Endowment. "Accomplished and dedicated faculty members are essential if Duke is to maintain its place of real leadership in the educational world, a goal Mr. Duke first articulated and which our trustees have supported as Duke University has become an institution of international stature."
Duke Provost Peter Lange, who led the plan's development, said, "‘Making a Difference' seeks to promote institutional adventurousness through a disciplined strategy and to assure this spirit invades our undergraduate teaching. To do this we must attract and retain the best scholars from across the world to teach our undergraduate students, as well as our graduate and professional school students, and to conduct research of the highest caliber.
"We also seek to attract students who will seize the opportunities to engage fully in all facets of the Duke experience, whether it's carrying out research, interacting with the local community or putting their new knowledge to work around the world." Lange said.
The Duke Endowment's commitment to increase the university's faculty is the third major element of the strategic plan that it has specifically supported.
In February 2007, The Duke Endowment acted to assist in deepening educational engagement by undergraduate and graduate students at the university. It joined with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in providing $15 million each in endowment to launch "DukeEngage," a program that will make civic engagement an integral part of the Duke undergraduate experience beginning in the summer of 2008. The new program (http://dukeengage.duke.edu/) will make full funding and faculty and administrative support available to all undergraduates who want to tackle societal issues at home and abroad, and to learn from such real-world experiences.
The Duke Endowment also has supported the university's efforts to "recommit to diversity and access." In September 2005, the endowment committed $75 million for student financial aid at Duke -- the largest single gift in the endowment's 81-year history and the largest single gift ever received by the university. In his inaugural address in 2004, Brodhead had identified strengthening financial aid as one of his major priorities. He called the endowment's gift crucial to Duke's long-term ability to provide needed financial support to its students and their families.
A few months after the gift was made, Brodhead launched Duke's Financial Aid Initiative (http://development.duke.edu/fai/) to raise $300 million in new scholarship endowment by the end of 2008, with The Duke Endowment's portion being used to match new gifts. About $244 million has been raised to date, and in December 2007, the university announced plans (http://dukefinancialaid.duke.edu/newsupport/) to substantially increase scholarship grants and reduce loans for undergraduates who qualify for financial aid. _ _ _ _
The Duke Endowment, started in 1924 by industrialist, philanthropist and Duke University founder James B. Duke, is one of the nation's largest foundations and the largest in the Southeast, with assets of more than $3.2 billion. The Duke Endowment supports health care and child welfare organizations in North Carolina and South Carolina, rural United Methodist churches and retired ministers in North Carolina, and four educational institutions: Davidson College, Johnson C. Smith and Duke universities in North Carolina, and Furman University in South Carolina.
For more information about The Duke Endowment, see http://www.dukeendowment.org/.