From the Duke News Service

November 8, 1999

Duke University alumna Kimberly Jenkins, a leading advocate for innovative uses of technology in education, is giving Duke $2 million to establish a professorship that will examine the effect of technology, particularly the Internet, on society, President Nannerl O. Keohane announced Monday.

The Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professorship of New Technologies and Society will encourage an interdisciplinary approach to examining the impact of technological innovations on society and culture, with initial emphasis on the Internet's transforming impact.

"Kimberly Jenkins has been a visionary leader in the advancement of communications technology to serve society, and particularly education," Keohane said. "The establishment of a chaired professorship for a scholar whose creative work spans a variety of disciplines will enrich our understanding of how new technologies drive societal, cultural and economic change. We are most grateful to Kimberly Jenkins for enabling us to delve deeply into the intellectual considerations of modernization and its consequences."

As an Internet2 participant, Duke is among more than 120 U.S. universities working with partners in industry and government to develop advanced Internet technologies to support the research and education missions of higher education.

Jenkins is president of the Internet Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and educational group of corporate, academic, and other nonprofit leaders that focuses on issues affecting and affected by the global development and use of the Internet. She is past chair of Highway 1, a nonprofit, Washington-based organization that Jenkins established in 1995 to improve communications between the U.S. government and the public via high-technology communications.

"With computers in more than 40 percent of American households, and over a quarter of those households regularly going online, there's no question that the Internet is transforming daily life in this country," Jenkins said. "Today, American families are using the Internet to do everything from communicating with their children's teachers and researching school projects, to booking trips to visit relatives, buying holiday gifts, locking in mortgage rates and seeking out medical advice.

"Our schools, our city, state and federal governments, our churches and synagogues — in fact, all of the institutions that affect our communities — are adjusting to the dawn of the Information Age. I hope that, by studying the transformative impact of the Internet and technology in an interdisciplinary fashion, whoever fills this new position will be able to offer unique insights that will guide our development as a society."

Keohane said the new professorship addresses two of the university's highest priorities — attracting and retaining top faculty, and expanding interdisciplinary approaches to critical societal issues.

Said William Chafe, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences: "This professorship will enable Duke to play a leading role in shaping the scholarly agenda for a new century where technology will be a critical and central presence."

A national search for the first Jenkins chair holder is being chaired by Cathy Davidson, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies, and Berndt Mueller, Trinity College dean of the natural sciences. The University Professorships are a select group of endowed chairs awarded to distinguished scholars whose work transcends disciplinary boundaries.

Jenkins began her high-tech career in 1983 at Microsoft as a software developer, where she is credited with convincing Bill Gates of the use of personal computers in education. After four years, she moved to Steve Jobs's NeXT as director of market development.

Jenkins earned bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in education from Duke, and currently serves on the university's Washington Regional Campaign Council, Trinity College Board of Visitors, and the Advisory Committee on the Future of Information Technology in Teaching and Research. She is a past member of the university's Council on Women's Studies.

Jenkins, who lives in Chevy Chase, Md., said education has been a thread running through her entire life. The mother of two sons, she is the daughter of a kindergarten teacher and school superintendent.

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