$13 Million for Scholars and Financial Aid

 

Gifts totaling $13 million were awarded by The Duke Endowment to the university for such items as financial aid, scholarships, and a new service-based leadership program for top Duke undergraduate students from North and South Carolina.
The B.N. Duke Endowment for Summer Programs will provide summer leadership opportunities for B.N. Duke Scholars for two summers. In the first summer, for example, the endowment could place pre-med students in health clinics or drama students in local arts councils. The second summer will be for study abroad at Oxford, Cambridge, or other sites where Duke has summer programs.
The B.N. Duke scholarship program awards ten merit scholarships to students in each entering class from North Carolina and South Carolina who are chosen by a faculty committee for their leadership abilities and community involvement. About 13 percent of Duke’s undergraduates come from North Carolina and 3 percent come from South Carolina. Each B.N. Duke scholarship covers the entire cost of four years of tuition.
The Duke Endowment gift also allocates $1 million in permanent endowment for the Angier B. Duke Scholarship Program, Duke’s prestigious national merit-scholarship award for undergraduates. In addition, $2 million will endow need-based scholarships in a challenge grant that seeks donors to give two-thirds of the total amount for a scholarship, with The Duke Endowment making up the rest. The resulting scholarship will be named solely for the donor. Also, $1 million will go toward a similar challenge to provide financial aid for graduate and professional students.
In addition to the $9.5 million for financial aid and scholarships, The Duke Endowment awarded $2 million to help with the construction of the Divinity School Chapel; $1 million for endowment and start-up costs for Duke’s Center for Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy; and $500,000 to help Duke meet the costs of mounting the Campaign for Duke.
One goal of the campaign is to raise more than $250 million for student financial aid; to date, about $200 million in gifts and pledges have been raised toward that goal.
“These grants touch nearly every area of the university: undergraduates especially, but also the graduate and professional schools, which Mr. Duke knew were so important,” says Elizabeth H. Locke ’64, Ph.D. ’72, president of The Duke Endowment. “We are especially pleased to support the new genome center, as this sort of start-up funding is typical of the special partnership between the Endowment and the university. We try to back the emerging ideas and dreams that lead to great new advances.”
The Duke Endowment, based in Charlotte, was started in 1924 by industrialist, philanthropist, and Duke University founder James B. Duke. Today, it is one of the nation’s largest foundations. In 1999, The Duke Endowment awarded more than $98 million to agencies and institutions in North and South Carolina.

Share your comments

Have an account?

Sign in to comment

No Account?

Email the editor