Internal and External Assessments: Key Findings

Faculty

The Divinity School includes some of the most distinguished theological educators in the world. Moreover, we have significant synergy within our faculty, with leading faculty working not only at the top of their own disciplines but also as creative leaders in cross-disciplinary research and conversation. In the past five years, we have retained a primary focus on theological education for Protestant ministry (as is our heritage and primary mission), but we have also broadened our focus within the faculty to include a significant Roman Catholic presence and new areas of research, such as Theology and Health Care, Afro-Christian Life and Thought, Pastoral Leadership, and Gender, Theology, and Ministry.

Our growing strength in these fresh areas of research has created both a demand and a responsibility for us to find ways to educate students in these areas at the doctoral level. We have thus developed a Doctor of Theology program, whose interdisciplinary focus on the ministries and practices of Christian communities will significantly enhance our intellectual peaks of excellence. At the same time, we will preserve and build on our research strengths in more classical areas through the shared Ph.D. program in Religion. Continuing to develop these complementary doctoral programs in strong ways, in the latter case in cooperation with the Department of Religion, will be pivotal for the Divinity School’s ability to sustain its reputation as an intellectual leader in theological education.

During the next five to seven years, the Divinity School will face six to eight faculty retirements, including at least four or five holders of distinguished chairs. In addition to replacing these key intellectual leaders, we will need to

1. build on our strength in African American faculty,
2. strengthen our women faculty,
3. recruit faculty of Latino/a and Asian backgrounds,
4. find creative ways to maintain a strong presence of tenured and tenure-track faculty focused on preparing men and women for leadership in fields of Christian ministry, and
5. maintain a healthy balance between tenure/tenure-track positions and other regular rank positions.

Students

Over the past five years, the Divinity School has significantly improved the quality of our degree-seeking student body. In 2000, we set five-year goals for both inquiries and completed applications. We met those goals within three years, and by fall 2005 our completed applications totaled more than 650 (compared to 331 in 1999), exceeding our goal by more than 60%. Our yield on completed applications has also increased, as have the general indicators of quality (such as undergraduate GPA). Our student body continues to be among the youngest of any theological school in the United States.

We are seen as a school with a strong focus on Christ and the church and as a community that welcomes people from diverse theological, ecclesial, and political perspectives. We have a denominationally diverse student body, and we have discovered a need to increase our programming for students to prepare them for ordination within their diverse traditions (and even within our own United Methodist tradition). We seek to provide a dynamic center for intellectual study, theological education, spiritual formation, and social engagement, and we are intentional in our efforts to attract the students who will be most likely to succeed not only in the classroom but also as parish and community leaders.

The most significant reason prospective students opt for another school continues to be financial aid. Because of the Divinity School’s small endowment relative to other theological schools (we are currently eighteenth in endowment size, well behind our competitors), other schools use financial aid as an inducement that we often are unable to match. This presents a significant vulnerability as we look to the future.

It is also important to note that last year we taught more than 2,500 people in our various continuing education programs. These programs are important building blocks for our emphasis on transformative leadership.

Staff

Over the last five years, the staff at the Divinity School has increased significantly. Previous strategic plans have had little, if anything, to say about the staff, no doubt because the role of the staff in the life of the school was proportionally small. However, the size of the staff has increased significantly in recent years. It will be important over the next five years to continue to recruit and retain excellent staff and to develop strong relationships between the staff and the faculty, especially by enhancing the opportunities for the staff to become more deeply integrated into the mission and work of the school.

Diversity

The Divinity School has made significant progress in the area of faculty diversity, especially in relation to African and African American faculty appointments (five appointments since the last strategic plan, including a senior African American scholar as Director of the Institute on Care at the End of Life.) These appointments are integral to our growing intellectual strength in Afro-Christian Thought and Life in Global Context and will significantly enhance our ability to attract outstanding African American faculty in the future. We have also added seven women to our faculty since the last strategic plan, and two women have been promoted to the rank of full professor, the first women to hold that rank in the Divinity School. We have also significantly enhanced our diversity through the presence of international faculty from Uganda, New Zealand, England, Germany, South Africa, and the Philippines. The greatest area of need with respect to diversity are persons of Latino/a and Asian backgrounds.

Overall, 20% of our students are from ethnic minorities; 13% are African American. We did not meet our target from the last strategic plan with regard to African American students (20%), but we also did not anticipate the emergence of two accredited theological seminaries at historically black schools in North Carolina (Shaw and Hood). Our goal for this plan is a more modest goal of 15%. We have been only minimally successful in recruiting international students and students from other ethnic minorities, particularly Latino/a, and we need to focus more effort on recruiting such students.

Unlike other schools of Duke University, the Divinity School must also address Christian denominational diversity. We are expected, as a result of our affiliation with the United Methodist Church (and their substantial financial contributions), to maintain at least 50% United Methodist faculty/senior staff and 50% Master of Divinity (M.Div.) students. This means that we must attend to denominational affiliation in our recruiting, and it also serves as a constraint on our capacity to increase diversity in other ways.

Programs

Duke Divinity School has undertaken several major initiatives in recent years to enhance our intellectual strengths, improve our capacity to recruit faculty, and strengthen our leadership with external constituencies. Most notably, these undertakings have included the Institute on Care at the End of Life (ICEOL) and initiatives in Theology and Health Care, Pastoral Leadership, the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation, and a newly emerging Center for Reconciliation. These programs have provided major strength and momentum for the Divinity School, and we will need to deepen their capacity as we look to the future. Because of the many ways in which they either do or can build bridges from the classroom to the parish and the world, and from the world and the parish to the classroom, these initiatives are a key aspect of our focus on transformative leadership and are significant embodiments of the fourfold measure of excellence discussed above.

Interdisciplinarity

The most substantial interdisciplinary initiative Duke Divinity School has undertaken is the Institute on Care at the End of Life, which includes major relationships with the Medical School and the Nursing School (as well as the Health System more generally). Our Program in Theology and Medicine has established significant interdisciplinary links both within Duke and in programmatic outreach. We have also developed a dual-degree program with UNC’s School of Social Work, and our new Th.D. program promises to offer significant new opportunities for interdisciplinary work, especially at the interface of Theology and Health Care and Theology and Social Work. We have developed ties with the Nicholas School for a proposed joint professorship (we cosponsored a visiting professor from Edinburgh in the spring of 2005), and we hope to find funding for that in the near future.

Internationalization

The Divinity School has a long history of international partnerships. We maintain a distinction between Comprehensive Partnerships, in areas of the world with which the Divinity School intends to foster relationship on several levels, and Focused Partnerships, in areas designated for more limited contacts. We currently have two primary areas identified for Comprehensive Partnerships: sub-Saharan Africa (especially South Africa and the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa) and Latin America (especially Peru and Brazil). In addition, we continue relationships with such places as the University of Erlangen, Canterbury, and Haiti through Focused Partnerships. We anticipate that the Office of Black Church Studies and the Center for Reconciliation will provide heightened visibility and strategic direction for our international partnerships as we move into the future.

Infrastructure and library

With the completion of the Westbrook Building and Goodson Chapel, Duke Divinity School is now well positioned in terms of facilities. The Divinity School library is excellent, having undergone a major renovation in the last decade. It will continue to develop its outstanding collection, especially in relation to new initiatives such as the Th.D. program, the Institute on Care at the End of Life, and emerging emphases in the Department of Religion. We will need to think carefully about the library’s role as a resource for changing research patterns in relation to information technology; the library has been and will continue to be an important leader in this work.

Information technology and communications

Over the past five years, the Divinity School has significantly strengthened its communications efforts, and we are well positioned to continue to strengthen the Divinity School’s visibility through communications in the next five years, even with relatively limited financial resources. We have made significant progress in the use of technology in the classroom and in our Web presence to external constituencies. However, we continue to lag behind other professional schools at Duke in terms of both capacity and financial resources in this area. A committee that worked through the fall on issues of information technology identified four key challenges we need to address:

1. how best to use our new technologically sophisticated space;
2. how to meet the evolving technological needs of our students, faculty, and staff;
3. how to meet the demands on technology that come with increased enrollment, a growing faculty and staff, and the expansion of interdisciplinary centers, institutes, initiatives, and programs; and
4. how to continue to serve and foster a growing external audience through the use of information technology.

Finances

The Divinity School is currently financially constrained, though relatively stable. Major budget issues loom on the horizon as we plan for the future. Our small endowment and low tuition, combined with the allocated costs of being a part of Duke University, are cultivating an instability that will be very important for the Divinity School to address adequately during the next five to seven years. Our ability to increase tuition is limited by the market, insofar as we already have the highest tuition among United Methodist seminaries, and we are near the top of all divinity schools with a sizable M.Div. student body.

Addressing the Divinity School’s long-term financial stability will require a threefold strategy:

1. recalibrating our low tuition relative to the rest of the University, taking into account the basic costs of being a school of Duke University;
2. making a significant push in development, especially to enhance financial aid and to increase the availability of unrestricted funds; and
3. planning and managing the budget carefully. In addition, we will need to secure substantial new external support to achieve some of our most significant ambitions for the Divinity School and its various programs, initiatives, and centers.

University Themes for Planning »