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.

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 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."

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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.