Gift to Fund Minority Health Sector Management Scholarship at Duke

Jack and Barbara Bovender of Nashville, Tenn., have given $1 million to Duke University's Fuqua School of Business to establish a scholarship program for minority students in Fuqua's Health Sector Management program, Duke President Richard H. Brodhead announced Thursday.

The gift qualifies for matching funds from Duke University's Financial Aid Initiative Challenge and will establish a $2 million scholarship fund.

"Jack and Barbara Bovender have supported a variety of areas at Duke," Brodhead said. "This most recent example of their generosity is particularly close to my heart because financial aid for students is an investment to produce the trained talent our future world will require."

In early December, Brodhead announced Duke's Financial Aid Initiative, an effort to raise $300 million in endowed scholarship support. One hundred million dollars has been committed by a group of donors to match others' gifts toward the initiative's goal.

Jack Bovender is chairman and CEO of HCA, a leading provider of health care services. He is a 1967 graduate of Duke and received his master of hospital administration degree from Duke in 1969. He has served on Fuqua's Board of Visitors since 1993.

"There is a significant shortage of minority graduate business school students choosing hospital and health care management as a career," Bovender said. "At HCA, we face this issue every day as we recruit young talent into our executive development program. Recognizing this growing problem, Barbara and I wanted to make a personal commitment to increasing minority leadership in health care. Given that Fuqua has the premier MBA Health Sector Management program in the country, a scholarship program aimed at minority students seemed to us the best way to fulfill this commitment."

Fuqua Dean Douglas T. Breeden and Dr. Kevin Schulman, director of Fuqua's Health Sector Management program, said the gift is representative of the Bovenders' continued commitment to increase the number of minorities in health care administration. "By providing funding for minority Health Sector Management students, this gift will open doors to talented students who will graduate from Fuqua ready to improve the status of health care for Americans," Breeden said.

Added Schulman, "In addition to funding this scholarship, Jack has volunteered to work with our students, speak through our Dean's Distinguished Speaker series and has even offered up his firm as a case study for our students. We are honored to be the beneficiaries of Jack and Barbara's commitment to training the next generation of health care business leaders."