$10 Million Grant Creates Kenan Ethics Institute

A recently created endowment administered by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Fund for Ethics will enable Duke University to establish the Kenan Institute for Ethics and expand a campus-wide, interdisciplinary effort begun five years ago to incorporate ethics into the classroom and everyday life. The endowment resulted from a $10 million grant from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust in Chapel Hill. A portion of the endowment's annual income will support the institute at Duke. "This most generous gift will realize a dream we have held since the late Frank Kenan first broached the idea," said Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane in announcing the gift Thursday. "From the beginning, many people have been excited about, and committed to, his innovative vision of a university-based ethics initiative that supports the teaching and practice of ethics - both across the university and beyond, in the professions, in primary and secondary education and in broader public discussion." Frank Kenan, who died in 1996, was a trustee of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, which was established by his cousin at his death in 1965. The start of the Kenan Institute for Ethics follows the fall 1995 establishment of the Kenan Ethics Program at Duke - with a five-year, $2 million grant from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Fund for Ethics - to serve as a focal point for the intellectual exploration and practical application of ethics. The new $10 million grant will fund a permanent endowment held by the Kenan Fund for Ethics with the annual income supporting the institute at Duke. The Kenan Institute for Ethics will join three other Kenan institutes in North Carolina: the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the N.C. School of the Arts and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at N.C. State University. "We are delighted to be able to provide support for the excellent work on ethical issues that is being conducted at Duke," said Elizabeth Kenan, chairman of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Fund for Ethics. "We are confident that the work of the Kenan Institute for Ethics will continue to enhance the educational experience for the academic community at Duke, and have far-reaching implications for our society at large." Duke's Kenan Ethics Program has come a long way in a short time, said Elizabeth Kiss, who became the program's first director in January 1997 and will lead the institute. "We know that establishing the program took a leap of faith by the Kenan Fund and by Duke," she said. "So it is wonderful to have arrived at this new and exciting phase of our development. We are eager to expand the impact of the projects we have already begun, to develop new initiatives in business, professional and public ethics and to help tackle emerging moral challenges facing our society." New projects slated for the Kenan Institute for Ethics to pursue in the next three to five years include:

Ethics Across the Curriculum: a variety of programs supporting Duke's new two-course Ethical Inquiry requirement for undergraduates as part of Curriculum 2000. Among these is Ethics, Leadership and Service, which is a $300,000 initiative to expand and strengthen service-learning across the Duke curriculum, and a plan to develop an interdisciplinary certificate program in the study of ethics. Academic Integrity: an effort to promote academic integrity among students from middle school through university. This work will continue to be done in collaboration with the Center for Academic Integrity. Business Ethics: a project aimed at helping businesses explore everyday ethical challenges, to develop and implement codes of ethics and to find creative ways to honor broader civic responsibilities. Kenan Forums on Emerging Moral Challenges: a series of forums bringing together scholars, public officials, advocates and concerned citizens to discuss new moral challenges created by recent technological, institutional and cultural developments. The first of these will focus on ethical challenges raised by revolutionary advances in genome sciences. Ethical Issues Within and Across the Professions: an effort to foster cross-professional dialogue about ethics at universities, organizations and communities across the Triangle. Moral Deliberation in the Face of Disagreement: a series of projects exploring and modeling ethical dialogue about contentious issues, including plans for a television program on religion and ethics in a pluralistic society. The William C. Friday Award in Moral Leadership: a new annual award. Friday, who is president emeritus of the University of North Carolina and retired last summer as president of the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, worked closely with Frank Kenan in establishing the ethics program at Duke.

"We seek approaches to the study and teaching of ethics that shape people's minds, hearts and spirits and recognize that true moral deliberation occurs when theory and practice inform and enrich one another," Kiss explained. "We're interested in helping students confront the practical challenges of the world and in helping practitioners step back and reflect on their core values." Keohane said the Kenan Ethics Program already has made a difference in its short history. "Over the past four years, a truly extraordinary range of people have been touched by, and become involved with, the program's work," she stated. "While those programs with the most far-reaching changes may garner the most attention, we are just as proud of efforts that may have involved fewer people but which we believe can have a profound effect on participants." The program's success can be measured by the introduction of new ethics courses and modules and by a variety of initiatives promoting moral deliberation in campus life. It has supported course development in environmental sciences, literature, public policy and religion and the first-year writing course focus on moral deliberation involving more than 400 students in the past two years. The ethics program has also helped add a service-learning initiative to 15 courses in a dozen departments and offered faculty incentive grants for service-learning. The program has promoted moral deliberation and academic integrity on campus by bringing to Duke the Center for Academic Integrity, a national consortium of 200 colleges and universities. In addition to supporting the campus honor council's annual Ethics and Integrity Week and offering campus grants, program activities include Kenan dissertation fellowships and instructorships for graduate students, a faculty colloquium on professional ethics and the Kenan Distinguished Lecturer series. The ethics program also has worked closely with a half-dozen student organizations and run ethics workshops and training for a variety of university groups. Kiss and her staff have worked with the Duke Divinity School, the religion department and the Duke Chapel on a variety of initiatives exploring religion and ethics, including courses on clemency and on theological ethics. Reaching beyond the campus, the Kenan Ethics Program also has worked locally, regionally and nationally to promote excellence and innovation in ethics teaching from elementary school through university. Efforts have included two national conferences for K-12 and university educators on "Moral Education in a Diverse Society," cosponsored with N.C. Central University and Shaw University. The program also created the new "North Carolina Character Educators of the Year" awards program with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, the Luther H. Hodges Sr. Ethics Committee of Rotary and Rotary clubs statewide and the North Carolina Character Education Partnership. Other projects include developing a character education curriculum for urban youth in the Durham Scholars Program, supporting ethics and leadership initiatives at the North Carolina School of Science and Math and co-sponsoring the 1997 "Character Matters" conference with the Durham Public Schools. Working with the UNC Center for Public Television, the ethics program has co-produced a two-part public television series on "Moral Leadership in Public Life," hosted by David Gergen, which will air April 2 and April 9 at 8 p.m. The program also has reached out to civic leaders and business people through workshops on integrity and leadership with the William Friday Fellows program and on-site training sessions with business groups.