Although the members of the Board of Trustees kept busy this past weekend with photos on the Chapel Quadrangle and other celebrations for the grand finale to the Campaign for Duke, they still managed to tackle a full agenda.
In sessions all day Friday and Saturday morning, they approved a socially responsible investment policy, a 4.5 percent increase in tuition and mandatory fees for undergraduate students for the coming academic year, and the final plans for several major construction projects.
The new investment guidelines were developed in response to concerns raised by students in Associate Professor of political science Peter Feaver's Fall 2002 seminar on Ethics and International Relations. After studying the issue of slavery in Sudan and the University's possible investments in companies that have implicit ties to the conflict there, a group of students approached President Nan Keohane to express their concern over the fact that the University did not have an ethical investment policy in place.
"I became well aware that we didn't really have a process for dealing with it, that the only way was if the president thinks it is a good idea or not, which doesn't seem like the right way to handle things," Keohane said. She noted the University had a policy in place during the controversy over apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s, but over the next decade the policy lapsed and, when reexamined, it was no longer appropriate for the University.
As officials began to survey peer institutions about their policies, they realized that Duke was "unusual if not unique" in its lack of a current policy. The guidelines that resulted from this process emphasize the simultaneous need for proper consideration of ethical issues and preservation of the "primary fiduciary responsibility" of the trustees to maximize returns on the University's investment assets.
"The policy that... is described here is at its core very similar to Stanford's," Keohane explained. "We started out by using Stanford's as our model after we surveyed all our colleagues, but it has changed through a number of suggestions with students, with the Academic Council, with the Board, with the Alumni Association and with the senior officers, so what was approved by the Board today is the result of a lot of conversations on campus."
Under the new guidelines, if the University community has expressed broad concern about an investment's negative social or political implications, the president, senior officers or members of the community may ask the University Priorities Committee to examine the issue. If the committee concurs, the president and senior officers can then forward the UPC's recommendations to the Board of Trustees, which may in turn instruct the Duke University Management Company, the nonprofit corporation that manages the University's investments, to "take appropriate action," possibly including divestment of the securities.
Although the adoption of new investment guidelines focused on the University's relationships with national and international corporations, the rest of the Board's activity this weekend was devoted to issues internal to the University.
The tuition increase, from $29,345 to $30,720, will apply to undergraduates in both Trinity College and the Pratt School of Engineering and is in line with the national average rate of tuition increase.
The total cost of attending Duke, including room and board, will rise at the same rate as the tuition hike and will stand at $39,240, up from $37,555 for the current year. Undergraduate financial aid will rise approximately 11 percent as the University continues with its need-blind admissions policy and its attempt to phase in more need-based aid for international students.
"While we were successful in achieving the ambitious goal of [raising] $250 million for financial aid [in the Campaign for Duke], that's really a small piece," said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations. "We're having to go straight into the operating budget and take those dollars out; therefore we can't invest it in faculty or libraries or whatever else."
In addition, the Board approved increases in tuition for the graduate and professional schools. Graduate students in doctoral programs will see the largest hike, at 10.3 percent, while Master's degree students will only face a rise of 3.4 percent. The reason for the disparity is that doctoral students' fellowships will increase at the same rate as their tuition, and Master's students are not fully supported through fellowships.
IN OTHER BUSINESS:
The Board was to give the final go-ahead for three upcoming construction projects.
The largest is the $115 million French Science Center, named for trustee Melinda French Gates, Trinity '86, Business '87 and wife of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates. Slated for completion in 2006, the French Science Center will be the final piece of the puzzle in the University's emphasis on interdisciplinary science research as set out in the strategic plan.
"The Levine Science Research Center was the first... truly interdisciplinary building, which opened exactly 10 years ago," Keohane said, explaining the development of Duke's interdisciplinary research complex. "[The Center for Integrated Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences] is the same, and it's designed physically on a continuum in terms of the way in which scientists will flow back and forth and to the medical center. The French Science Center will be the next, literally along the same axis, so you'll be able to walk from one end of the French Science Center through LSRC and over into CIEMAS, and see this as three big buildings, each of which is dedicated to interdisciplinary science."
Another project--$20 million worth of renovations and additions to the law school building--will create new space for faculty and staff offices, meeting rooms and student facilities, as well as updated classrooms and public spaces.
The final project the Board approved was construction at Koskinen Stadium, where the soccer and lacrosse teams play. The plan calls for two small buildings for amenities at an estimated total cost of $2.5 million.
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