Provost Peter Lange updated the Academic Council Thursday on the status of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and Department of Public Policy Studies combining to become an independent school.
Lange said although the task forces that have reviewed the plan have supported the idea of the institute becoming its own school, Sanford officials would need to raise approximately $40 million for the endowment before University administrators would approve the transition.
"We had no intention of creating a school that has struggled from day one to get going," Lange said, noting that Sanford must be financially secure from the start. "There was some pressure to act immediately. We felt instead this kind of decision deserved long and careful deliberation."
Bruce Kuniholm, director of the Sanford Institute, said he estimated the fundraising would take about two and a half years. He said he was 80 percent sure that the institute could raise the funds necessary in that amount of time.
"It's a stretch. But things aren't worth doing unless they force you to stretch a little bit," he said.
Sanford currently has an endowment of $80 million. "We aren't starting at zero," he said.
The money is primarily earmarked to create about 17 new tenure-track faculty positions over the next 10 years, Kuniholm said, bringing the total number for the proposed school to 42. He added that all the professors will be able to fit in both the Sanford Building and Rubenstien Hall.
"What we are seeking this spring, both with the Academic Council and with the Board, is a clear endorsement for this strategy, subject to achieving specific financial fundraising benchmarks which are necessary for the Sanford Institute to achieve its aspirations as a school," Lange wrote in a memo to the Academic Council, adding that administrators would not seek formal authorization of the school until the 2008 to 2009 Fiscal Year.
In terms of University financial support, Lange said the school would receive a slightly larger amount than the Divinity School but less than that of the Law School or the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.
He noted that the financial setup will be similar to the one the Nicholas School shares with the Trinity School of Arts and Sciences.
The proposed Sanford School will receive tuition money for undergraduates based on the number of students enrolled in classes taught by public policy studies professors in a three-year period. That amount of money will be set for five years, unless there is a 20 percent deviation in enrollment.
"We had to make sure the financial incentives as well as the attractiveness of different part of the program, such as the undergraduate major, remain high quality, and quality is ensured or enhanced if it transitions to a school," Lange said.
Undergraduates will still apply to Duke through either the Trinity School of Arts and Sciences or the Pratt School of Engineering.
In other business:
Academic Council members tapped Lori Setton, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Karla Holloway, professor in the Department of English, and Susan Lozier, professor in the Nicholas school, for two-year terms and Chris Counter, associate professor in the pharmacology department and the cancer biology department, and Elizabeth Kiss, director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, to one-year terms serving on the Executive Council of the Academic Council.
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