Arts & Sciences Fundraising Priorities
A message from the dean:
“The strength of a university,” says Duke President Richard H. Brodhead, “depends on its ability to select and recruit students on the grounds of ability, dedication, and promise – not based on financial circumstances.”
We are in the final year of our three-year Financial Aid Initiative (FAI), a university-wide effort to raise $300 million in endowed scholarships and fellowships to ensure that we achieve that necessary strength — and at the same time fulfill our commitment to admit all qualified U.S. citizens or permanent residents without regard for their ability to pay, and to meet 100 percent of every student's demonstrated financial need.
In Arts & Sciences, our twin goals are $210 million for need-based scholarships for Trinity College undergraduates and $10 million for fellowships for students in the Graduate School . By the end of 2007, we had raised more than 80 percent of the FAI's $300 million total goal, and were thus able to announce an ambitious plan to make a Duke education more affordable by eliminating some parental contributions and eliminating or reducing some loan contributions.
Arts & Sciences also has other important endowment priorities – support for professorships, faculty and student research, and undergraduate programs. Gifts to endowment are invested and grow under the guidance of professional managers, generating funds to support Duke's students, faculty, and programs in perpetuity. Endowment gifts enable me and the Arts & Sciences deans to plan for the future with greater certainty than would otherwise be possible. Such gifts are a bridge between generations. Today's students and faculty are the beneficiaries of endowment gifts made in the past; today's endowment gifts – your gifts – will benefit the Duke of tomorrow.
George L. McLendon
Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences