October 31, 2003

A ceremonial groundbreaking was held Friday for a new two-story building at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy on Duke University’s West Campus as part of the fall meeting of the institute’s Board of Visitors.

President Nannerl O. Keohane, Sanford Institute Director Bruce Jentleson, members of the Sanford Board of Visitors, and key donors and supporters participated in the groundbreaking. The new building will be located across the lawn from the institute’s existing building, which opened in 1994 but no longer can accommodate the institute’s many programs due to significant growth in the intervening years.

The new $12 million building is expected to be completed before the 2005-06 academic year.

The groundbreaking comes on the heels of a $5 million lead gift by David M. Rubenstein, a founding partner and managing director of The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Rubenstein, who at age 27 became deputy domestic policy assistant to President Jimmy Carter, is a 1970 magna cum laude graduate of Duke, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

"It takes a community to implement a project of this magnitude," Keohane said. "Fortunately, true believers in our ‘outrageous ambitions’ for the Sanford Institute have stepped forward. We are extremely grateful to David Rubenstein and other generous supporters who share our vision for the many exciting teaching and research opportunities this new building will provide for our faculty and students."

Added Rubenstein, "I am very pleased to join with others who share Nan Keohane’s and Bruce Jentleson’s vision for a facility to serve the needs of the faculty and students at the Sanford Institute. The institute has become one of the nation’s leading centers for education and research in the public policy arena, and this new building will provide much needed space to accommodate its rapidly growing programs."

The institute is home to the Department of Public Policy Studies, one of the three most popular undergraduate majors in Duke’s Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The institute includes 10 interdisciplinary centers and programs, and offers graduate degrees in public policy and international development policy, as well as executive education and fellowship programs.

"The new facility also will help us accomplish the mission our founder, Terry Sanford, laid out for us: educate tomorrow’s leaders and improve the quality of public policymaking through research, professional training, and policy and community engagement," Jentleson said.

Officials said the new structure will complement the existing building architecturally, and will significantly enhance the institute’s resources for students, faculty and staff. The 46,000-square-foot facility will include classrooms, seminar and flexible meeting space, as well as the Susan Bennett King Multimedia and Instructional Technology Center. Earlier this year, the Coca-Cola Foundation announced it was committing $1 million to establish the multimedia center in honor of King, a Duke trustee emerita and a member of Coca-Cola’s board.

The facility will also accommodate several institute programs now housed at other locations both on and off campus, including the Center for Child and Family Policy; the Center for Health Policy, Law and Management; and the United States-Southern Africa Center for Leadership and Public Values.

"The new building will enable us to consolidate many of our programs under one roof," Jentleson said. "It also will dramatically enhance the Sanford Institute’s capacity to engage the world of public policy in innovative, interactive and technologically sophisticated ways through increased national and international media visibility via an on-site satellite link, videoconferencing for research and policy, and two-way distance learning."

Architectural Resources Cambridge (ARC) of Cambridge, Mass., creators of the original institute building, is designing the new building.

[back to main news page]