The Academic Council unanimously approved the transition of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy to the Terry Sanford School of Public Policy at the council meeting Thursday.
Council members asked Sanford Director Bruce Kuniholm about Sanford's financial developments since the body's last meeting March 19. Last month, Kuniholm and Provost Peter Lange discussed how financially prudent the transition is, considering that Sanford is $10 million short of its $40 million benchmark goal.
Kuniholm announced that Sanford currently has raised $31.5 million and has appropriately scaled back plans for the school--particularly its search for faculty-to meet the new budget. Kuniholm said the transition is financially and strategically prudent for the University, as well as a "moderate" way to show progress during a grim economic climate.
"Right now we can manage within the constraints we have," Kuniholm said. "And in the interim, there's no reason not to go forward. That's what we think, that's what the provost thinks and that's what [President Richard Brodhead] thinks."
In response to concerns that the unassigned income of Arts and Sciences will decrease, Lange said funds for Sanford's unassigned income will come from other resources in the strategic fund. Arts and Sciences will operate with the same amount of money, although it is a slightly smaller school, he said.
Sanford will not become a school until the Board of Trustees approves its status at its next meeting in May.
The council also heard an update from Executive Vice President Tallman Trask and Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment, on the University's Climate Action Plan, which was drafted by the Campus Sustainability Committee and aims to make Duke carbon-neutral.
Trask said the committee's tentative findings show that the University's carbon footprint is 430,000 metric tons of emissions. Just more than half of that is a result of electricity the University purchases from Duke Power, the independent company that supplies power to Duke and is about 90 percent coal-based, he said.
A component of the effort will be purchasing carbon offsets until the University can become carbon-neutral, Trask said. The University would have to spend about $4 million a year to offset its emissions, and Trask said the University's plan is to use that money to create "real, meaningful offsets in North Carolina."
"The atmosphere is agnostic about where the carbon is coming from," Chameides said. "If we offset carbon emissions falsely, we lose in the climate game. If we offset them correctly, it can be a great bridge to 2020 or 2025.... So it's a great opportunity but it's also a great opportunity to screw up."
In addition to other conservation efforts, the University will also use natural gas as its primary heating fuel next winter, use green building technologies and try to capture renewable energy on campus.
The Climate Action Plan will have more concrete plans and a timeline, likely in September, after it presents its findings to the Board of Trustees in May, Trask said.
In other business:
The body heard an update from Lynn Smith-Lovin, Robert L. Wilson professor of sociology and chair of the Academic Programs Committee, on the committee's work throughout the year. The committee reviewed six programs and four new degree programs, recommending the transitions of dermatology from a division to a department and Sanford from an institution to a school, Smith-Lovin said.
"We would like to encourage new ideas across campus and the idea and reality that we're moving forward as an institution," she said.
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