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Atkins Foundation Gives
$2 million for nutrition program
The Robert C. Atkins Foundation has given $2 million to the Duke University School of Medicine to fund an endowed professorship as well as for research, clinical care and education in the areas of nutrition and metabolism.
Wachovia Foundation gift benefits community, Fuqua
The Wachovia Foundation is giving Duke University $1 million for afterschool programs for low-income Durham school children and for Fuqua School of Business programs.
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News Release
Gifts Creat Divinity School Professorship
(From the Duke News Service) Duke Divinity School will receive two $500,000 gifts, one from the Foundation for End of Life Care and another from the Dade Community Foundation, both located in Miami, Fla., to help create the Donald J. Gaetz Professorship in Theology and Medicine, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead announced Wednesday.
The gifts will be matched with $500,000 under the terms of the Nicholas Faculty Leadership Initiative in order to complete the $1.5 million in funding needed for the professorship.
The scholar selected will give primary service through the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, based in the divinity school. The institute seeks to improve care at the end of life through interdisciplinary practice, scholarship, teaching and outreach.
“These gifts will help the institute pursue its goals of creating wisdom around end-of-life care issues and advancing our comprehensive understanding of the needs of the dying, their families and their caregivers,” Brodhead said.
In the early 1970s Donald Gaetz -- along with Hugh Westbrook, a 1970 Duke Divinity School graduate, and Esther Colliflower -– founded Vitas Healthcare Corporation, which became one of the largest and most successful private health care companies in America. Westbrook, a long-time donor to the divinity school, is a board member of the Dade Community Foundation and is former president of the Foundation for End of Life Care.
Gaetz (pronounced Gates) is a public school superintendent in OkaloosaCounty in the Florida panhandle, and a candidate for the Florida state senate. He is active in many humanitarian causes and is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Hospice Organization.
Westbrook and his wife, Carole Shields Westbrook, have previously given or arranged for gifts of nearly $20 million in recent years to support a variety of projects in the divinity school, most notably the institute and the school’s 2005 addition, named the Westbrook Building.
“Don Gaetz is an extraordinary individual and a dear friend,” Hugh Westbrook said. “His compassionate leadership in education and human service is honored in a special way, and it will surely be extended through teaching, learning and research made possible by the Gaetz Professorship in Theology and Medicine at Duke.”
For more information, contact: Jon Goldstein, Duke Divinity School | (919) 660-3416 | jgoldstein@div.duke.edu
Sept. 14, 2005