A new grant will allow DukeEngage to expand its reach beyond the summer months.
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations of Jacksonville, Fla., granted $190,000 to the DukeEngage program in late May. The grant is targeted toward improving the student experience before and after the actual program—specifically the DukeEngage Academy as well as programming to be scheduled after students complete their summer experiences.
This grant is the first form of foundational support for DukeEngage since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Charlotte-based Duke Endowment funded the launch of the program July 2007, which began in full in Summer 2008. Since its creation, more than 1,400 Duke students will have participated by this Fall.
“One of the things that we’re really emphasizing as [DukeEngage] evolves is enhancing the training that students get before they leave and providing opportunities for them to follow up on their experiences,” Executive Director of DukeEngage Eric Mlyn said.
The grant money will allow the program to hire more staff members, including staff unaffiliated with the University, to help with the DukeEngage Academy, Mlyn said.
As it exists now, the DukeEngage Academy is a two-day intensive program, which occurs between final exams and commencement, and offers informational sessions to students who are about to begin their summer experience. Upon completion, students evaluate the academy. Evaluation results have improved since its creation, Mlyn noted.
“One question we ask is should the academy be mandatory, and the majority of students always say yes,” he said. “Despite the fact that there may be other things students want to do, they feel it is a valuable experience.”
Mlyn said DukeEngage plans on offering a series of retreats upon students’ return to campus, such as continuing a civic engagement leadership retreat that was piloted last year. The funding will create a second retreat to help students connect their summer experience with public policy, which would include a trip to Washington, D.C. The funding may also be used to supplement budgets for program directors to host events once students are back at Duke.
Third-party DukeEngage programs, which are run by non-Duke organizations like Social Entrepreneur Corps in Guatemala, will also benefit from the grant. Mlyn said students who participate in a third-party program will be able to participate in the retreats. The program may also begin funding the third-parties directly or fund a University staff member to follow up with third-party program participants.
The fact that the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations decided to award the grant to Duke is notable because the organization tends to fund smaller liberal arts colleges as opposed to research universities, said Mimi O’Brien, assistant vice president for corporate and foundation relations at Duke. She added that President Richard Brodhead was in Jacksonville last year, where he visited the Foundations to discuss grant possibilities for a variety of Duke programs, but the Foundations was especially attracted to DukeEngage.
Jonathan Howe, executive director of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, said he was impressed by Brodhead’s deep dedication to DukeEngage, as well as how innovative the program has been for Duke. It has served as a model for similar ventures at other universities, he added.
“This seemed like an outstanding program, and our money could be used very well in further developing the preparation and for when students come back so that they get real value from their [civic engagement] experience,” Howe said. “In the special case of a university like Duke, [if we decide to award a grant] it has to be a particularly sterling program that is making a difference both at the University and at other universities.”
The grant comes at a time when applications for DukeEngage are at an all-time high, experiencing a 20 percent increase during 2010-2011 compared to last year. High school seniors also mark DukeEngage as the number one reason why they applied to Duke in their admissions essays, Mlyn said.
“The fact that DukeEngage is attracting external support, [that] a foundation that is outside of the University has decided to support DukeEngage is huge,” he said. “It’s going to allow us to do so much.”
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