Updated 3:00 p.m.
The Board of Trustees elected a new chair and approved a budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year at its last meeting of the academic year this weekend.
Outgoing Chair and Democratic N.C. state Sen. Dan Blue, Law ’73, will be succeeded by current Vice Chair Richard Wagoner, Trinity ’75. Blue was elected chair in May 2009. Wagoner was elected to the Board in 2001 and has been serving as vice chair since 2007.
Two new vice chairs were also elected, according to a Duke news release. Jack Bovender Jr., retired chairman and CEO of Hospital Corporation of America Healthcare and Trinity ’67, and David Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of The Carlyle Group and Trinity ’70.
The Board also approved the budget for fiscal year 2011-2012, adopting a $2.1 billion budget, an increase from the $1.93 billion budget for fiscal year 2010-2011, the news release states. This value includes both the $1.4 billion University operating budget and $700 million in allocated funds for research and other specific purposes.
In an interview before the meeting Tallman Trask, executive vice president and the University’s chief administrative and financial officer, called this “modest increase” a positive indication of progress in the University’s financial state. He added that Duke, however, is not back to where it was five years ago in terms of its budget and ability to spend.
“It’s a lot better than it was a couple of years ago,” Trask said Thursday. “The endowment is still down by a better part of a billion dollars, but the budget impact has been fixed by taking expenses out of [the] budget. I keep reminding people that while we’re back at a new equilibrium, we are not exactly in a position to return to the way it was in the past.”
He noted that the University is entering the last year of a three-year pledge to cut $125 million from the University deficit.
“We’re fine on the base budget, but people are beginning to believe that since the sky did not fall, we can go and return to where we were four or five years ago,” Trask said. “And we’re not there. “
Trask also noted that the University’s capital budget is “way down” from previous years, as most capital projects are either being completed or are still in the planning stages, and no big projects are on the horizon.
In approving the budget, the Board would also approved the first salary increases for University faculty and staff in three years, Schoenfeld said Thursday. The increase will manifest in an additional 3 percent wage pool to be distributed at the discretion of managers based on performance evaluations.
“We have said all along that we were hoping very much to be able to [return to salary increases],” Provost Peter Lange said Friday. “It turned out that we’ve been able to do this within the bounds of a normal, though relatively tight, budget. We’re very pleased we can go back to closer to the normal.”
In addition, the Board was also scheduled to discuss matter both close to home and abroad, Schoenfeld said Thursday. Trustees received an update on Duke Kunshan University, heard presentation from Vice President and Director of Athletics Kevin White on the state of intercollegiate athletics and participated in a discussion on campus culture led by Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education, and Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs.
Kimberly Jenkins, senior advisor to the president and provost for innovation and entrepreneurship and Trinity ’76, Graduate School ’77 and ’80, was also scheduled to present to Board members on the state of translational research at Duke. The presentation would focus on the current status and developments of both social and commercial entrepreneurship in Triangle area, as well the ambitions of the University in terms of leading entrepreneurship both locally and nationally, Jenkins wrote in an email Friday.
“I’m passionate about helping Duke realize our role as a major leader in solving the world’s most pressing problems through innovation and entrepreneurship,” Jenkins said. “A big part of that is being engaged as a leader in this region.”
Trustees also heard a presentation from the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School delivered by the school’s dean Ranga Krishnan, Schoenfeld said Thursday. The president of NUS will be on campus this weekend as he is to receive an honorary degree. The presentation coincides with the first graduating class from Duke-NUS this summer.
And as with every May Board meeting, the Trustees also approved degrees of graduating undergraduate and graduate students.
Lange noted before the meeting that this weekend’s itinerary would be “pretty normal,” with less points of action and more broad discussion, especially in terms of campus culture and “the progress we’ve made there, and growing internationally in Kunshan.”
“It’s nice to have one in which the budget isn’t all doom and gloom, if not all joy and glory, but somewhere in between,” Lange said.
Trask said this meeting would address some potential plans for the future.
“There’s not a lot of big items on it this time,” he said. “There’s a lot of discussion about things to do in the future, and there’s little things like beginning work on the West Union renovations, where we are on the West Campus steam plant and beginning the West water tower project.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.