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DURHAM, N.C. -– The Duke Endowment has awarded
more than $20 million to Duke University to support a number of
university priorities, including an expansion of the School of Nursing and its
programs, the growth of interdisciplinary science initiatives
and improvements to Perkins Library, Duke President Nannerl O.
Keohane has announced.

The Duke Endowment's 2003 gift includes $1 million for the
School of Nursing, with a plan to provide an additional $2
million by 2005. Nursing Dean Mary Champagne, Ph.D., said the
money will be used to help support construction of a new
building adjacent to Duke Clinic on Trent Drive, behind the
nursing school's current facilities.

Duke University's Board of Trustees approved the scope of
the new building in February 2003. To break ground on a planned
three-story classroom and laboratory facility, the school must
raise $12 million of the estimated total cost. To date, $8
million has been raised.

"We are thrilled to receive this endorsement from The Duke
Endowment for our critically needed expansion," Champagne said.
"Our growth -- both in size and in the caliber of our faculty
and programs -- is in direct response to societal needs."

The School of Nursing has grown dramatically since the early
1990s, from five faculty members then to 38 today, with the
student population growing at a similarly rapid pace. The
school also added an accelerated bachelor's degree program in
2002 and has extended its campus through distance
education.

The Charlotte-based charitable trust also awarded $6 million
for an undergraduate science initiative, bringing the
Endowment's total support for this effort to $13 million.

The science initiative, with The French Sciences Building at
the center, will allow Duke to promote close interaction among
the disciplines of biology, chemistry, physics, biological
anthropology and anatomy, mathematics and the computational
sciences. It will also create new opportunities for teaching
and research in the interdisciplinary fields that are emerging
throughout the natural sciences, such as genomics, nanoscience,
chemical biology, and evolutionary and developmental
biology.

The French Sciences Building, whose design was approved by
trustees in December, is a new $115 million facility expected
to be completed in 2006. Strengthening the sciences and
engineering, as well as promoting interdisciplinary programs,
are among the priorities of "Building on Excellence," Duke's
strategic plan that the Board of Trustees approved in 2001.

Another $6 million gift, to Perkins Library, will support
the creation of the new Information Commons, a centralized
public service area. The Information Commons area will serve as
the hub of activity at the university's main West Campus
library.

The addition of an Information Commons is part of an ongoing
$55 million project to renovate the existing library space and
add adjacent to Perkins a new building, the Bostock Library.
Construction is underway and is being done in phases so the
library can remain open.

These gifts, which came in December, were counted toward the
Campaign for Duke, which concluded Dec. 31 with a total of
$2.36 billion, the fifth largest campaign in American higher
education history and the largest for a university in the
South. In all, the Endowment's total support of the campaign
totaled more than $300 million.

"The university is fortunate to have in The Duke Endowment
such a generous partner. The Endowment has consistently
supported our top priorities, and helped us to strengthen and
grow," Keohane said. "These funds will bolster programs and
facilities that faculty and students have told us they very
much need to be successful in their teaching, research and
learning."

The Duke Endowment's gift also provides $1 million to
support the Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy (GELP).
That gift will be used toward programming and endowment. This
is the Endowment's fourth such grant to GELP.

The Endowment gift also includes $500,000 to support the
Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. Over the past six years,
the Endowment has given the neighborhood partnership more than
$3 million to support nonprofit organizations and other
community organizations addressing needs identified by partner
neighborhoods.

This year's grant will support ongoing affordable housing
initiatives, youth programming and nonprofits in the West End
and Walltown neighborhoods. It will also support the Duke Law
School's Community Economic Development Clinic to provide legal
services to nonprofits in Southwest Central Durham.

An additional $200,000 will encourage collaboration among
the four libraries of schools supported by the Endowment:
Furman and Johnson C. Smith universities, Davidson College and
Duke.

Finally, $10,000 will be awarded to commemorate the legacy
of President William Preston Few, who was president of Trinity
College from 1910 to 1924 and president of Duke University from
1924 to 1940. Few's accomplishments included overseeing the
transformation of Trinity College into Duke University, as well
as supporting the creation of The Duke Endowment.

The $10,000 gift is meant to inspire the Duke community to
remember Few with the creation and installation of a physical
likeness of Few in the Allen Building, the university's main
administrative building.

On the Medical Center side, Duke received more than $7
million, in 18 separate allocations, from the Endowment last
year. In addition to the nursing school gift, funded programs
included the Albert Eye Research Institute, which was awarded
$1 million, and a patient safety initiative, which was awarded
$696,000.

"This year's grants run the gamut -- students, faculty,
arts, science, medicine, law and policy," said Elizabeth Locke,
president of the Endowment. "This is typical of the breadth and
depth of the Endowment's support for Duke University."

_ _ _ _

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 2003, The Duke Endowment awarded more than $108
million to agencies and organizations in the Carolinas.