The University will officially launch its largest capital campaign to date at the Board of Trustees meeting this weekend.
The Duke Forward: Partnering for the Future campaign began collecting donations in a silent phase since July 2010, and will go public with about 40 percent of the target amount already acquired. The end goal is expected to be more than $3 billion. The five-year campaign will kick off Saturday at a launch event in the Fuqua School of Business attended by 700 Duke donors from around the world.
“We’ve had a good start,” Board Chair Richard Wagoner, Trinity ’75, said. “We had a specific objective, and we’ve met and perhaps exceeded it.”
Campaign organizers gathered input on the priorities from all branches of the University—including the undergraduate and graduate schools, Duke Athletics and the Duke University Health System, Wagoner said.
“It’s a chance for Duke to speak as a full community, having worked together, for what could be transformative in all the schools and parts of the University,” he said.
Universities typically silently raise funds for a capital campaign two years before it is publicly announced, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask previously told The Chronicle. This makes the campaign goal more attainable by the time it is made public.
Typically, more than 100,000 people donate money to Duke each year, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.
The 700 attending the campaign launch are alumni, parents and others representing Duke’s “most passionate, loyal and generous supporters,” he said.
The Board will also review the annual financial statement for the University’s endowment. The annual change in the endowment’s assets has not yet been released.
Although the endowment has not seen double-digit growth in the years since the financial crash, Wagoner said the University has managed to safeguard its finances this year, as it has in years past.
“Sometimes you win by not losing,” Wagoner said.
In other business
Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president for administration, will brief the Board on the Clery Act, a federal statute that regulates reporting of crimes and other incidents on college campuses. Schoenfeld noted that the Board is interested in how Duke complies with federally mandated crime reporting, following the child abuse and cover-up scandal at Pennsylvania State University that came to light last year.
“Sometimes people misread the Clery report as solely a police report, but it’s really an institutional document,” Cavanaugh said. “So you’ll certainly have policing data but information that comes through student affairs, as well.”
Duke is unique compared to most universities in that the campus boundaries for Clery reporting also include the Medical Center and its extensions. For example, that if an assault occurs in Duke Hospital, it must be noted in Duke’s Clery report. This year’s report is due Oct. 1 to the U.S. Department of Education, Cavanaugh said.
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag will present on the newest class of undergraduates and admissions trends. He will lead the Trustees in what Wagoner called a “mini-retreat” simulation of the admissions decision process, in which they will role-play admissions officers deciding whom they would admit among a group of hypothetical candidates.
Dr. Victor Dzau, chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of DUHS, will discuss ongoing institutional planning, which is intended to help the health system adapt to the changing nature of health care. DUHS has completed the first phase of the enterprise-wide planning, in which committees of senior staff, doctors and nurses investigated possible institutional improvements in areas such as research optimization and educational design. Those groups have developed their initial recommendations, some of which are already being implemented, Wagoner said.
The Board will also hear updates on Duke’s new Coursera online courses, the implementation of the house model, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, Duke Kunshan University and ongoing renovations on West Campus.
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