A committee of trustees, faculty, students, administrators and alumni will be charged with mounting the search for Duke University’s 10th president, trustees chair David M. Rubenstein announced Saturday.
Richard H. Brodhead announced last month that he would be stepping down in June 2017 after what will be 13 years as chief executive.
The committee will be led by Jack Bovender, vice chair of the board of trustees and the retired chairman and chief executive officer of HCA, the nation's leading provider of healthcare services. The other members of the committee and additional information about the search process, including opportunities to provide input, will be announced shortly.
“Selecting a president is one of the board’s most important responsibilities, and selecting Dick Brodhead’s successor will be an especially challenging task,” Rubenstein said. “With his lifelong passion for Duke, his distinguished experience in business and his commitment to candor and hearing all points of view, Jack is the ideal person to direct this search.”
A 1967 Duke graduate who received a master's degree in hospital administration in 1969, Bovender is a longtime Duke volunteer. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012 and has served on the board of visitors at both the Fuqua School of Business and the Divinity School. During his 32-year career at HCA, Bovender was named by Institutional Investor magazine as “Best CEO in America” for healthcare facilities in 2003, 2004 and 2005. In 2012, he was elected to the board of directors of Bank of America and now serves as the bank's lead independent director. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
“I am honored and humbled to lead the process that will recruit Duke’s next president,” Bovender said. “This will be very much a team effort. I look forward to working with a diverse and accomplished committee that will help the board identify someone who can build on our strong foundation and take us yet further, while still embodying Duke’s core values of excellence, vision and integrity.”
In other business, the trustees approved a $2.4 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2016-17 that provides for strategic investments in select programs, initiatives and building projects.
The operating budget, which covers the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2016, reflects 7 percent growth from FY 2015-16. The budget includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing, but excludes Duke Hospital and other clinical components of the Duke University Health System.
The trustees also approved the FY 2016-17 capital budget, which includes planned investments of $403 million for major projects that include a new arts building, a new undergraduate residence hall on East Campus, a new student health and wellness center and the final stages of renovation for the West Campus Union and Wallace Wade Stadium.
The budget includes an anticipated 7 percent increase in institutional financial aid for undergraduate students, with university support growing to $146 million.
In addition, the university budget anticipates approximately $11 million of additional external support from federal, state and other outside sources for scholarships and need-based aid to students. About half of undergraduates receive financial support to attend Duke, the vast majority of which is need-based aid. The average aid awarded to need-based aid recipients in the current academic year was nearly $45,000.
Duke is among a handful of schools that maintains a need-blind admissions policy, under which the university accepts U.S. undergraduates based on their academic accomplishments and potential without regard to their ability to pay, and then meets all of their demonstrated financial need.
The trustees also:
-- approved a Master of Quantitative Management (MQM) at The Fuqua School of Business. The 10-month degree program, which will start in July 2017, is designed for college graduates with strong quantitative skills and little to no work experience. Most candidates will likely have backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math.
MQM will offer students the ability to study in one of four tracks: finance, marketing, business analytics and forensics. Students will be required to take courses in data science and analytics, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. The program was designed with input from the business community, including senior leaders in some of the world’s top companies.
“The key to developing strong analysts is teaching students not only how to interpret data but explain the insights in meaningful ways. We feel Fuqua is uniquely positioned to deliver this program because of its curriculum and proven track record of developing leaders who are exceptionally good collaborators and communicators,” Dean Bill Boulding said.
-- approved a new Ph.D. degree in computational media, arts & cultures (CMAC), a program that will examine the implications of the computer revolution on traditional fields in the arts, humanities and the sciences.
The program builds upon growing faculty strengths in media theory, digital humanities, the histories of media and technology, new media art and interactive technologies. It comes out of a 2013 Mellon Foundation grant to develop an interdisciplinary doctoral program in visual & media studies and follows a decade of new initiatives in this field and the development of a vibrant, interdisciplinary community of scholars at Duke.
The program is expected to eventually have 12-15 students enrolled and take 5-6 years to complete.
Students will be affiliated with the interdisciplinary arts and humanities media labs led by the CMAC faculty. These labs are involved in studies of digital archeology; emergent media arts; information science + studies; digital art history & visual culture; art, law and markets; digital humanities and other areas.
-- approved changing the name of the Program in Women’s Studies to the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, to better represent and communicate the nature and scope of the work conducted in the program.
-- received updates on strategic initiatives at the Fuqua School of Business from Dean Bill Boulding, and on the work of the Task Force on Bias and Hate Issues from committee co-chairs Linda Burton and Kelly Brownell. The trustees also heard reports on other current university initiatives and activities.