The Duke Endowment Provides Capstone Gift for Divinity School Addition
January 14, 2005
The Duke Endowment's gifts were made in memory of the late Bishop W. Kenneth Goodson, a divinity school graduate and university trustee who also served on The Duke Endowment trustees board and as chairman of the endowment's Committee on Rural Churches. The 315-seat chapel in the addition will be named after Bishop Goodson.
Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones said the $1.7 million serves as a generous capstone gift and makes for a providential symmetry in support for the 53,000-square-foot addition, to be called The Westbrook Building. The building is slated to open this spring.
"The Duke Endowment, which has long been a great supporter of Duke Divinity School, was the first and the last major donor for construction of this beautiful facility," Jones said. "There is a tremendous bookend effect in the timing of these gifts from an organization that has done so much to strengthen Duke Divinity School and the church in the Carolinas. We are profoundly grateful for their leadership and support."
Total giving from The Duke Endowment for the divinity school building addition is $3.7 million.
"Bishop Goodson was beloved and admired for his many contributions to the divinity school, to Duke University as a whole, and to The Duke Endowment," said Eugene W. Cochrane Jr., president of the Endowment. "Making this additional grant for the chapel named in his honor is a fitting tribute to the man who has meant so much to all three institutions, and we are pleased to be able to make this gift."
In addition to the chapel, the new building will include extensive classroom space, offices for the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, student life offices, a refectory and other spaces to accommodate learning and prayer. It will be called The Westbrook building, honoring the Rev. Hugh Westbrook, a 1970 divinity school graduate who has donated nearly $20 million to the school in recent years. Westbrook, a pioneer in hospice care and a major supporter of the Institute on Care at the End of Life, has contributed $4.5 million to help complete construction of the building.
The divinity school is one of seven professional schools at Duke University and one of 13 seminaries affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It enrolls about 550 students from more than 30 states and several foreign countries.
The Duke Endowment, with headquarters in Charlotte, is one of the nation's largest private foundations. Its mission is to serve the people of North Carolina and South Carolina by supporting selected programs of higher education, health care, children's welfare, and spiritual life.