January 2, 2003

Four gifts totaling $3.1 million that will help fund construction of a new addition to Duke University Divinity School were announced Thursday by Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane.

"We are most grateful to these friends of the university, whose generosity will do so much to advance the Divinity School’s mission," Keohane said. "The Divinity School is dedicated to creating a learned clergy, and this new addition will help accomplish that, as well as all the other goals of the school."

Duke Divinity Dean L. Gregory Jones said construction of the $22 million, 47,000-square-foot addition is scheduled to start in January. Duke trustees gave final approval for the project on Dec. 6.

The gifts, made to the Campaign for Duke, the university’s $2 billion fund-raising effort, include:

• $1 million from William W. and Irene L. McCutchen of Westport, Conn. Mrs. McCutchen is a member of the Divinity School’s board of visitors and the building advisory committee. The McCutchens are 1962 Duke graduates.
• $1 million from HCA Foundation, of Nashville, Tenn., to honor Jack O. Bovender Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of HCA Inc., the nation’s leading provider of health care services. Bovender chairs the school’s Campaign for Duke committee and is an emeritus member of the board of visitors. He is a 1967 graduate of Duke.
• $600,000 from J. Rex Fuqua, of Telluride, Colo., who is president and chief executive officer of Realan Capital Corp. He is a university trustee.
• $500,000 from the Mary G. Stange Charitable Trust in Detroit. The trust has been a major supporter of the Divinity School and the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, an interdisciplinary program established in 2000 that is based in the Divinity School.

The Divinity School addition will include the 315-seat Goodson Chapel; offices for the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, admissions and student services, Duke Chapel music staff and the Divinity School chaplain; classrooms, seminar rooms and a lecture hall seating 177; a Cokesbury book store; a preaching and worship lab, a prayer room and a sacristy.

For the first time, the school will have its own dining hall, which will open to an outdoor terrace. The three-story addition will be linked to the current Divinity and Gray buildings.

"We have a great need for both formal and informal spaces," said Jones. "The new addition will allow us to provide the kind of campus experience that is conducive to Christian formation."

The new facilities also will provide essential space for the school’s growing program of continuing education, one of the largest such programs among the nation’s theological schools.

Duke Divinity School, one of seven graduate professional schools on the Duke campus, is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It enrolls approximately 475 students from more than 30 denominations.

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