New president seeing Duke with fresh eyes
After his first year, Brodhead reflects on Duke and Durham

BY RICHARD H. BRODHEAD Guest columnist

About a year ago I spent my first day as Duke's president. It was a joyous day. I was filled with enthusiasm for my new task. I quickly received my first lesson on the unpredictable events that await a Duke president. The big news that day wasn't my arrival on the job but, rather, that the Los Angeles Lakers were interested in hiring Coach K. Fortunately, he decided to stay here, and so have I, and I can't begin to tell you what a wonderful first year I've experienced learning not only about Duke but also about my new hometown of Durham. After a year, it really does feel like home.

But it turned out that what I thought I knew wasn't always right, or at least not complete. And it also turned out that I wasn't unique in this. Especially here in Durham, people are often surprised to learn how Duke touches their lives. Here are some things I thought I knew then, and what I know better now:

* I had previously thought of Duke mainly as being one of the nation's great universities. I'd paid less attention to its role as a local employer. It turns out that Duke has 35,000 employees, more than 18,000 of them living here in Durham. In fact, Duke is the largest private employer in the Piedmont and the third largest in the state, after Wal-Mart and Food Lion. But Duke pays more than $1.6 billion annually in wages and benefits to its employees, more than any other private employer in North Carolina.

* Moreover, Duke's impact on the economy extends far beyond the wages it pays. According to a recent study, Duke's economic impact on Durham is about $2.6 billion annually.

* Then there's Duke's indirect economic impact on the local community. I learned from the Convention & Visitors Bureau that Duke students and their families, and more than a million visitors who come to campus, annually spend more than $300 million in Durham for food, lodging, and other needs. And there are more than 630 non-governmental vendors in Durham, most of them small businesses, that sell Duke at least $10,000 a year in goods and services.

* Duke's hospital and health system provide $29 million annually in unreimbursed care for indigent patients. That means that an unemployed, single mother in Walltown gets the same high-quality care at Duke Hospital or Durham Regional as somebody from Treyburn.

* I already knew that Duke was a leading research university and an essential partner with Research Triangle Park and others in the state. Now I know that its annual research expenditures total $492 million, leading all North Carolina universities in federal research funding. This includes research on cancer, AIDS, and other diseases; research on how to protect and clean up the environment; research in fields like photonics and genomics that will lead to new industries; even research on social questions like how to improve our schools or combat poverty. The federal government estimates that every million dollars in research funding creates 36 jobs. According to that formula, Duke's research programs have helped create more than 17,700 jobs in North Carolina, mostly in Durham and the Triangle.

* Now let me shift the focus to something else I've learned: Duke is a much more diverse institution than many people realize. Its commitment to a diverse student body and workforce has received national recognition. Recently, Duke has enrolled the highest percentage of African-American undergraduates among the nation's leading private universities, and our medical school leads all universities in the number of African-American students. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education rated Duke the nation's top university in recruiting and retaining African-American faculty and students, and for providing a supportive environment for members of minority groups. This past March, Hispanic Magazine ranked Duke fourth among the nation's colleges and universities in its report card on the best schools for Hispanic students.

* Duke's commitment to diversity extends to its admissions policies. It is among the very few universities that have a need-blind admissions policy for undergraduates, opening its doors to qualified students regardless of their ability to pay. There was a wonderful article last month in The Herald-Sun about Charisse Phillips and Jaymeson Morris, two outstanding Hillside High students who will attend Duke in the fall. They were among more than 18,000 students -- an all-time record -- who applied for the 1,660 spaces in our entering class. Like 40 percent of our undergraduates, and roughly half of North Carolina students at Duke, both of them will receive scholarship aid. Duke's annual scholarship grant to qualified North Carolina students averages about $28,000. That's $28,000 per student, per year. Our trustees have budgeted $55 million this year to ensure that access to a Duke education should be defined by a student's achievement and potential, not by his or her family's financial circumstances.

* Let me turn to Duke's campus. I knew it was beautiful. Everyone knows that -- you just have to spend a few seconds in the Chapel, the Sarah B. Duke Gardens, or dozens of other spots. What attracted me to Duke wasn't existing buildings, lovely as they may be; it was all of the cranes in the backdrop for the new additions taking shape on the campus, from the fabulous Nasher Museum of Art opening this fall to our new facilities for engineering, science, medicine, public policy, divinity, law, business, and other disciplines.

Under the leadership of my wonderful predecessor Nan Keohane, and my colleague Tallman Trask, Duke has invested more than $600 million in renovation or new construction. And yet, even with all of this marvelous new space for our faculty and students, Duke leases roughly a third of the commercial space in Durham. That's roughly a million square feet of space, including more than 150,000 square feet as an anchor tenant at Jim Goodmon's exciting new American Tobacco Campus project, which we dedicated last week.

I've learned a lot about Duke's economic impact, research activities, diversity, and expanding campus. On a personal level, however, perhaps the most gratifying thing that Cindy and I have learned during our freshman year is what a welcoming community we've joined in Durham.

Editor's note: This column was adapted from a speech Duke President Brodhead gave to the Durham Rotary Club on June 13. Next week in this space, Brodhead discusses the challenges facing Durham and how Duke works with the community.

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