Endowment Provides Duke $13 Million

The Duke Endowment has awarded gifts totaling $13 million to Duke University for, among other things, financial aid, scholarships and a new service-based leadership program for top Duke undergraduate students from North and South Carolina. The B.N. Duke Endowment for Summer Programs will provide summer leadership opportunities for B.N. Duke Scholars for two summers. It might place, for instance, pre-med students in health clinics or drama students in local arts councils during one summer. The second summer will be for study abroad at Oxford, Cambridge or other sites where Duke has summer programs. The B.N. Duke scholarship program awards 10 merit scholarships to students in each entering class from North Carolina and South Carolina who are chosen by a faculty committee for their leadership abilities and community involvement. "We are extremely grateful to The Duke Endowment for its sustained and generous support of our students - not only through financial aid and scholarship programs, but for many other academic and institutional initiatives," said Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane. "The faith and staunch support that The Duke Endowment has provided to Duke over the years is not only vital to this university's success, but also valuable to the people of the Carolinas and elsewhere." About 13 percent of Duke's undergraduates come from North Carolina and 3 percent come from South Carolina. Each B.N. Duke scholarship covers the entire cost of four years of tuition. In 2000-01, Duke's tuition is $24,890. The Duke Endowment gift also allocates $1 million in permanent endowment for the Angier B. Duke Scholarship Program, Duke's prestigious national merit scholarship award for undergraduates. In addition, $2 million will endow need-based scholarships in a challenge grant that seeks donors to give two-thirds of the total amount for a scholarship, with The Duke Endowment making up the rest. The resulting scholarship will be named solely for the donor. Also, $1 million will go toward a similar challenge to provide financial aid for graduate and professional students. Duke has a "need-blind" admissions policy, which means that the financial status or ability of an applicant's family to pay for a college education is not considered in the admissions decision. The university then pledges to provide 100 percent of a student's demonstrated financial need -- based on a formula commonly used by colleges -- for all four years of his/her undergraduate education. About 40 percent of Duke students receive some form of financial aid. The average grant package among need-based recipients is about $16,675 each year. In addition to the $9.5 million for financial aid and scholarships, The Duke Endowment awarded $2 million to help with the construction of the Divinity School Chapel, $1 million for endowment and start-up costs for Duke's Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy, and $500,000 to help Duke meet the costs of mounting the Campaign for Duke. One goal of the campaign is to raise more than $250 million for student financial aid; to date, about $200 million in gifts and pledges have been raised toward that goal. "These grants touch nearly every area of the university: undergraduates especially, but also the graduate and professional schools, which Mr. Duke knew were so important," said Elizabeth H. Locke, president of The Duke Endowment. "We are especially pleased to support the new genome center, as this sort of start-up funding is typical of the special partnership between the endowment and the university," Locke added. "We try to back the emerging ideas and dreams that lead to great new advances." The Duke Endowment, based in Charlotte, was started in 1924 by industrialist, philanthropist and Duke University founder James B. Duke. Today, it is one of the nation's largest foundations. In 1999, The Duke Endowment awarded more than $98 million to agencies and institutions in North and South Carolina.