Duke Boosts Campaign Goal

Duke University's Board of Trustees has voted to increase the goal of the university's $1.5 billion Campaign for Duke to $2 billion. The action came Saturday at a two-day retreat at which the board reviewed a draft strategic plan designed to ensure Duke's continued trajectory "as one of the premier research universities of the world." The comprehensive plan will be brought to the trustees for final approval in February 2001. The Campaign for Duke, which already has raised more than $1.3 billion, is scheduled to conclude at the end of 2003. It was publicly launched in October 1998 to seek support for all of the university's undergraduate and professional schools as well as the graduate school and the university's medical center. Duke had raised $684 million in the two-year quiet phase of the campaign prior to its official 1998 launch. The largest share of the funds raised to date has been for endowment, particularly financial aid for students, faculty chairs and unrestricted use. Fifty-eight faculty chairs have been created, for example, along with more than 360 new scholarships and fellowships. Fund-raising efforts will continue to support those institutional priorities and others identified in the long-range plan. Duke is the fourth U.S. university to attempt to raise $2 billion or more, joining Harvard and Columbia, which exceeded the mark, and the University of Southern California, which currently seeks it. Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane said the trustees' decision to increase the campaign goal reflects the board's confidence that the university is well positioned to achieve a position of genuine leadership in fields that are crucial to society. "The comprehensive strategic planning process led by Provost Peter Lange has enabled us to identify a set of major intellectual and academic priorities, with a special focus on interdisciplinarity and on strengthening our programs in the sciences and engineering, that will require significant financial investments," Keohane said. "Our deans and faculty, working together with the provost, are in the final stages of refining a plan for Duke's future that will require unprecedented commitments and investments of university resources in fields where Duke has an opportunity to provide real leadership. The trustees' decision to increase The Campaign for Duke's goal to $2 billion, following an intensive review of our planning process and priorities, is a bold statement of their belief that we are on the right track and that Duke's supporters will join with us in helping to achieve our ambitious goals." Keohane said the "remarkable success" of the campaign to date reflects both a strong economy as well as "the steadfast support of a great many people who want this institution to realize Mr. Duke's dream for it - that the university should attain and maintain 'a place of real leadership in the educational world.'" Duke was established as a university in 1924 as a result of a gift from industrialist James B. Duke. Campaign co-chairs Peter M. and Ruth L. (Ginny) Nicholas, both members of Duke's class of 1964, credited the unprecedented success of the effort to date to the strong support of Duke alumni, parents and friends who have been both donors and volunteers. "Increasing the campaign goal to $2 billion is a very large decision ... and one we did not take lightly," the Nicholases wrote in a letter sent to the campaign's volunteer leaders. "It will not be easy but the Campaign Steering Committee and the Board of Trustees felt that the time was right to take on such a challenge - Duke has never been in a position of such strength or of such promise." The institution's relative youth has meant that its endowment, which totaled $2.66 billion June 30, ranks well below the other private and public national institutions with which Duke competes for the best faculty and program support. Duke officials say that as a result of the success of the fund-raising drive to date and the return on investments of the university's endowment, the university has, for the first time since its founder's gift, sufficient resources to make large investments in academic programs, and facilities to support them, that will chart the future course of the institution. All areas of the university will benefit from the trustees' decision to increase the campaign goal. The draft plan reviewed by the trustees over the weekend anticipates significant investments in the university's graduate and professional schools, the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as in such scientific fields as genomics, global change, bioinformatics, biological materials, neurosciences, photonics and communications, bioengineering, and materials sciences and materials engineering. In November, Duke formally launched the $200 million Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy as a comprehensive approach to the broad challenges of the genomic revolution, including the study of ethical and policy issues arising from the unraveling of the genetic code and corresponding technological advances. Duke also opened in October the new John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, which will be home to 15 Duke programs spanning the humanities and social sciences. The center is designed to investigate complex social problems with a range of historical and philosophical perspectives. The strategic plan anticipates spending some $500 million for capital needs of the university's schools. Several leading private universities have recently committed more than $500 million over the next five years to new and enhanced facilities, including Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and Yale. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as a result of a new $3.1 billion bond referendum approved by voters last month, also will be investing more than $500 million in renovation of physical facilities over the next five years.