In a comprehensive presentation to the Board of Trustees Friday afternoon, John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs, outlined the University's strategic plan for focusing and improving relations with the Durham community.
Burness said the University should be aware of its "enlightened self-interest" in helping the local area and emphasized a need to avoid the situation that now plagues Yale University, which is surrounded by the substantially run-down community of New Haven, Conn.
"Twenty years ago [Yale administrators] had a shot at doing something," Burness said. "They didn't, and now their campus is surrounded by totally deteriorated neighborhoods. Faculty do not want to live there. Students are afraid to live there. It's affecting everything from admissions to how their entire campus operates."
In an interview following the September meeting of the Board of Trustees, President Nan Keohane stressed the importance of focusing the University's contributions in Durham.
"Duke's efforts in the community in the past have been very dispersed," Keohane said. "A lot of people are doing tutoring, working on medical projects, dealing with issues like affordable housing and economic support, but it has been all over the city.... In some ways it makes it hard for people to get a grasp on what it is that Duke is actually doing and who is doing it."
The mission of the University's community relations initiative-which will concentrate service efforts in 12 neighborhoods closest to campus-begins with organizing this traditionally disjointed effort.
According to Burness' report, the program's goal is "to enhance Duke's ability to play a more coordinated and constructive role as a good citizen in Durham, to develop partnerships that can address compelling issues and needs identified by the neighborhoods and schools adjacent to the Duke campus, with the objective of helping to improve the quality of life in our community."
Whereas the efforts of students, faculty and administrators in every part of Durham will continue to be encouraged, Burness said, the strategic plan calls for a focus on neighborhoods in which faculty and employees of the University live and where the University's resources can be most effective.
In addition, the plan is designed to make members of the community more aware of what the University does for Durham. "Neither Duke nor Durham is aware of the breadth and depth of Duke's contributions," the report states. "Focus for community affairs will increase effectiveness and visibility."
Burness added that one of the University's largest problems is the community's perception of the campus' relative wealth.
"To those in our community, we only look rich," he said. "That was really brought home with Hurricane Fran, where most of the people living in Durham... were in a total state of disarray without power for six days and Duke was up and running and it created even more tension."
The 12 neighborhoods targeted by the plan are Burch Avenue, Crest Street, Lakewood Park, Lyon Park, Morehead Hill, Trinity Heights, Trinity Park, Tuscaloosa-Lakewood, Walltown, Watts Hospital-Hillandale, West Durham and West End.
In order to develop a partnership with the Durham community, Burness said much of the University's effort will center on the schools that serve as the anchors for each of the targeted communities. Those schools include the Durham Magnet Center, E.K. Powe Elementary, Forest View Elementary, George Watts Elementary, Lakewood Elementary, Morehead Montessori Magnet and the Rogers-Herr 6th Grade Center.
The concept of a partnership, Burness said, is essential to the community relations initiative. The University, he added, cannot go into the community and dictate the agenda. "We knew that if we tried to say what all of the problems were, this project was not going to work," he said.
As a result of working with community members in each neighborhood to define specific issues of concern, the University has identified several key areas in which it can provide assistance. Those areas include improving problems with communication and mutual respect, affordable housing, health education, health care and community economic development.
The administration's plan for community relations was praised by several trustees at the meeting, including Trustee Emeritus Samuel Cook, who lauded the University's effort to address the "tragic alienation" between the University and members of the community. Cook pointed specifically to the University's traditional difficulty in forging a connection with the black community.
"I want to commend Duke in taking this great moral initiative," he said. "I think this is tremendous."
Despite Burness' optimism for the potential of the initiative, he said that there are limits to what the University can do. "We can't create unrealistic expectations," he said. "We simply can't solve all of Durham's problems. But we can make a difference."
IN OTHER BUSINESS: On Saturday, John Koskinen, chair of the Board of Trustees, announced in a letter to Leonard Spicer, chair of the Academic Council, that members of the Presidential Review Committee had completed their evaluation of Keohane. Koskinen wrote that the committee expressed their "unanimous and enthusiastic endorsement of President Keohane's leadership."
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