2005 State of the School

October 5, 2005

These are exciting times at Duke Divinity School. We have completed construction on our new addition, the Westbrook Building, which includes the beautiful new Goodson Chapel. We have had another excellent year in recruiting students as well as faculty. We also have significant initiatives to serve the church, the academy and the world. And we successfully completed our decennial re-accreditation review by the Association of Theological Schools. We are well-positioned to build on our momentum as we develop a new strategic plan during 2005-06. This planning will enable us to maximize our opportunities and address our challenges, both for the short- and the long-term.

Students

We welcomed an excellent class of new students to Duke Divinity School this fall. Thanks especially to the work of the Reverend Donna Claycomb, director of admissions, and her staff, we again had a record number of applications this past year. In our last strategic planning process we set a goal of 400 completed applications by the end of 2004-05. That seemed like an ambitious but realistic goal. Last year we had 653 completed applications (up from 388 in 2000-01). We also have seen a successful transition in the role of director of admissions, as the Reverend Cheryl Brown, D’04, has replaced Donna Claycomb, who accepted an appointment to serve a local church in Washington, D.C.

We have significantly increased our selectivity in offering students admission, and our yield of students accepted also increased. We successfully moved to a process of three defined periods of application review: November, February and April. The yield from our November offers of admission was unusually high, which meant that our overall class that matriculated in August 2005 was larger than we anticipated. In addition, these students arrived with a median G.P.A. of 3.62, and the median age of the entering Master of Divinity class continues to be low – this year it was approximately 24. This year’s overall entering class has an ethnic minority enrollment of 21.2 percent.

We celebrate the growing strength in our Baptist House of Studies, under the direction of Curtis Freeman, and our Office of Black Church Studies, under the direction of the Reverend Tiffney Marley. Both areas continue to show significant strength and initiative.

Our Field Education program has continued to grow in breadth and depth. During 2004-05, the Reverends Connie and Joey Shelton (both D’97) replaced the Reverend Bruce Stanley in the field education office as co-directors of field education and church relations. They have built on the strength of our work in this area, especially with placements supported by The Duke Endowment to have students serving in rural United Methodist congregations in North Carolina. Further, during the summer of 2005 they implemented a major new field education focus, “Mississippi Learning,” that placed students in settings in Mississippi that enabled them to work in areas of racial reconciliation. We also continued our international field placements, with four students in South Africa as well as two students in Uganda and one in Brazil.

Our spiritual formation program, under the leadership of Chaplain Sally Bates, is thriving. Our focus on retreats as well as spiritual formation groups is bearing significant fruit. We continue to work to deepen the ties between spiritual formation, field education and the academic curriculum.

We had an excellent year in recruiting students for the Ph.D. Program in Religion, which Duke Divinity School jointly administers with the Department of Religion. The program remains one of the flagship doctoral programs at Duke.

Faculty

We enjoyed an excellent year in recruiting new faculty. Indeed, we were able to add more very talented people than we had planned. We were pleased for the church and for Will Willimon that he was elected a United Methodist bishop in the summer of 2004, but his assignment to the Birmingham, Ala. area of the United Methodist Church left us with the need for a new dean of Duke Chapel and a gap in the divinity school faculty. We are very pleased that, after an extensive search process, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead appointed the Reverend Dr. Sam Wells as the new dean of Duke Chapel. The divinity school offered him a faculty appointment as research professor of Christian ethics as well. In addition, we invited Dr. Jo Bailey Wells, Sam’s wife, to join the school in a new position as director of Anglican studies and associate professor of the practice of Christian ministry and Bible. Jo Wells is a gifted teacher and scholar, and we are confident that both Sam and Jo will strengthen the Duke Divinity School faculty and provide terrific leadership throughout Duke University.

Over the past year the divinity school has significantly strengthened its leadership in the area of Wesleyan Studies. Professor Randy Maddox joins us from Seattle Pacific University, and he will also work closely with Professor Richard Heitzenrater on the Wesley Works Editorial Project. In addition, Ed Phillips joins us from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary to serve as associate professor of the practice of Christian worship. Professor Phillips chaired the United Methodist Church’s Commission on Holy Communion from 2000 to 2004. Finally, through the support of the Foundation for Evangelism, we were able to secure support for a second position in evangelism, and we attracted Paul Chilcote, a senior practitioner/scholar who is well recognized in the church to join us for at least the next two years in a visiting professor position. Professor Chilcote is working with Professor Laceye Warner to implement a post-doctoral fellows program in evangelism, and the first two fellows (Roger Owens and Esther Chung Kim) are serving during 2005-06.

In addition, we have made two appointments that will enhance the divinity school’s focus on racial reconciliation. Tammy Williams, who had been with us in a post-doc position, joins the faculty in a tenure-track position as assistant professor of theology and black church studies. She recently completed her dissertation under the supervision of Professor Miroslav Volf. In addition, we are delighted that Professor Timothy Tyson, author of Blood Done Sign My Name, has accepted an invitation to serve as visiting professor of American Christianity and Southern culture. We hope this is the beginning of a longer association between Professor Tyson and Duke Divinity School.

We are pleased that Lauren Winner is joining our faculty as visiting assistant professor of spirituality and writing while also enrolling as a student in our M.Div. program. Ms. Winner, who is completing a doctorate in American religious history, is a gifted writer whose books include Girl Meets God and, most recently, Real Sex.

We regret that Professor Michael Battle departed our faculty during 2004-05. He accepted a position as associate dean at Virginia Theological Seminary. We wish him well in his new position.

Notable books by our faculty during 2004-05 include: Cross Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words and Disrupting Time: Sermons, Prayers and Sundries, by Stanley Hauerwas; Fragments of Real Presence: Liturgical Traditions in the Hands of Women, by Teresa Berger; Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil, by James Crenshaw; and God, Truth, and Witness, edited by L. Gregory Jones, Reinhard Huetter, and Rosalee Velloso-Ewell.

In addition, Laceye and Gaston Warner taught for two weeks at John Wesley College in South Africa. Richard Heitzenrater spent the spring semester teaching Wesleyan studies at a variety of seminaries around the world; he also continued his leadership of the Summer Wesley Institute, in which a dozen scholars gathered for a month of intensive study and discussion about the significance of the Wesleys. David Steinmetz published more than 20 op-eds in various large newspapers over the course of the past year.

Divinity school faculty continue to exhibit extraordinary commitment in lecturing and speaking at colleges, conferences, and in local churches around the country. Their commitment to the church, the academy, and to the community is outstanding.

Staff

We were pleased to welcome the Reverend Cheryl Brown as director of admissions and the Reverends Connie and Joey Shelton as co-directors of field education and church relations, as noted above.

We are delighted that Ms. Jeanne Twohig has joined the divinity school as deputy director of the Institute on Care at the End of Life. She has extensive experience in end-of-life care, both as a practitioner and as a coordinator of a major program supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr. David Toole (D’90, G’96) joined the divinity school as administrative coordinator of academic programs, and is providing excellent leadership in Senior Associate Dean Willie Jennings’ office. Sarah Sherfey also joined this area as staff assistant in the Registry.

We are pleased that the Reverend Nathan Kirkpatrick (D’03) has joined us as program coordinator in the Office of Continuing Education. He will direct the Course of Study School and provide leadership for other initiatives in our growing area of Continuing Education.

We are pleased to recognize several other people who have joined us in the past year: Diane Decker was named staff assistant for faculty services/academic programs; Marissa Lane is the school’s new human resources department manager; Dana Auton is a staff assistant in the Department of General Administration and Finance; Cherie Benjamin is working as a staff assistant to Greg Duncan; and Lissa Smith is a staff assistant working with the offices of the chaplain, admissions and student services. Two new employees have joined the Theology & Medicine Citizen Soldier Project: Mindy Strouse is staff assistant and Michael Worsham is education and training coordinator.

Chris Rice (D’04) has been named special assistant to the dean for the Center for Reconciliation; and Chip Edmonds (D’06) has been named director of the school’s annual fund.

Programs

The Divinity School continues to build strength through our programmatic initiatives. Major news from 2004-05 included a four-year, $6.7 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., to continue Pulpit & Pew. This new four-year program will focus on Advancing Pastoral Excellence by developing strategies to address critical issues identified during the initial research phase of Pulpit & Pew, such as the economics of pastoral leadership, nurturing healthy pastoral lives and evaluating pastors. In addition, we also received a commitment for a major gift from Cal Turner, Jr. to sponsor an Episcopal Leadership Forum for United Methodist bishops. This year’s program is working with 14 active United Methodist bishops to enhance their effectiveness in their areas and in the broader church.

We also have been in the process of developing a new Center for Reconciliation that will be launched formally as a part of the 2005 Convocation & Pastors’ School. The center will be co-directed by Chris Rice and Associate Research Professor of Theology and World Christianity Emmanuel Katongole. It will build on our work in racial reconciliation and explore new relationships with communities locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

As we engage in formal strategic planning during the fall of 2005, we will be exploring the best ways to enhance and deepen the strategic directions of major programmatic initiatives across the divinity school. As I reported last year, this will include our work in such major areas as end-of-l ife care/theology and medicine; pastoral leadership; the Wesleyan tradition; and sustained, lifelong learning.

One possibility for our strategic planning will be to test the possibility of an overarching focus on “transformative leadership.” This has implications for our masters students, for the proposed Th.D. program, for our work with a variety of leadership efforts (e.g., the Reynolds Program, Courage to Serve, Teaching Congregations, the United Methodist Bishops’ Leadership Forum, and our new grant on Advancing Pastoral Excellence), and for the kind of leadership that is needed in end-of-life care, in situations of reconciliation, and for leaders of religious institutions as well as religious leaders of other institutions. We will be working on this idea through our planning process during the fall of 2005.

Self-Study, Curriculum, and the Development of a Th.D. Proposal

In the spring of 2005, Duke Divinity School hosted a re-accreditation visit by the Association of Theological Schools. Senior Associate Dean Willie Jennings has done an outstanding job in leading the school’s work on our self-study, and we were well prepared for the visit. In June we received formal notice of re-accreditation without any notations, and with significant appreciation from the review committee.

The divinity school also approved a new certificate program for M.Div. students: a program on “Gender, Theology, and Ministry.” We are grateful for the leadership of faculty members Thea Portier-Young, Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Teresa Berger in developing this program, which will enable students to develop a focus on gender as it relates to the theological task and Christian ministry.

During 2004-05, I appointed a committee to study the possibility of developing a new doctoral program, a Doctor of Theology degree, which would be based in the divinity school and focused on the church and its ministry. The committee worked hard during the spring and early summer, and developed an excellent proposal. The proposal was endorsed strongly by the faculty at its August retreat, and it has been forwarded to the Association of Theological Schools as well as Duke University’s provost for consideration by each of the respective processes that would need to be approved to begin such a degree. If both the Association of Theological Schools and Duke University grant approval, we might be in a position to begin admitting students to the Th.D. as soon as the fall of 2006. This is an exciting and potentially important development for the divinity school’s mission.

Building

We are delighted to report that our new addition has been completed, is open, and has exceeded our expectations both in beauty and functionality. In December of 2004 the Duke University Trustees approved naming New Divinity in memory of Thomas A. Langford in recognition of his long service as faculty member, dean and provost of Duke University. The Trustees also approved naming the addition in honor of Hugh Westbrook (D’70), an emeritus member of our Board of Visitors and pioneering hospice leader whose generous gifts to the building and to establish the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life have been pivotal to our success in recent years. The divinity school now is housed in three buildings: the Gray Building (which also houses the Department of Religion); the Langford Building; and the Westbrook Building.

We celebrated our Closing Convocation on April 20 th as the first service of worship in Goodson Chapel, beginning with a leave-taking from York Chapel and processing to Goodson. We were able to use the new building for our summer Course of Study as well as the Youth Academy, and it is fully in use this fall. The Westbrook Building, Goodson Chapel, and the Langford Building were dedicated in a special service on Tuesday, October 11 th, as a part of the 2005 Convocation & Pastors’ School.

I am also thrilled to report that, thanks to a capstone gift of $1.7 million from The Duke Endowment in December 2004, and an $800,000 pledge from Aubrey and Katie McClendon in the summer of 2005 for the new organ in Goodson Chapel, we now have gifts and pledges to cover the cost of construction of the Westbrook Building. There are still giving opportunities and naming opportunities to participate in this wonderful new facility.

We are also delighted with the works of art already in the Westbrook Building as well as those pieces that are being installed during this academic year. Susan Pendleton Jones and Laceye Warner have coordinated an exciting program of sermons on “Art as Evangelism” for the fall of 2005. Faculty and staff will preach on various pieces of art throughout the fall, and we will then compile the sermons along with images of the art in a book to commemorate our first fall of worship in Goodson Chapel.

Finance and Development

I am pleased to report that the divinity school finished the last fiscal year in the black, as we have every year. We still face some significant budget issues due to relatively flat income from the Ministerial Education Fund of the United Methodist Church, as well as increases in the allocated costs that are a part of our being one of the schools of Duke University. This latter issue presses us because our tuition is significantly lower than that of any of the other schools of the university.

We had an excellent year in fund-raising, especially in completing our goals for the building and in adding new endowments for financial aid. In addition, we received funding for a new chair in Catholic Theology from the William K. Warren Foundation in Tulsa, Okla. We hope to fill that chair during this current academic year.

We anticipate that Duke University will undertake a “Financial Aid Initiative” during 2006-08. The formal announcement will be in December 2005, and the divinity school will seek to raise significant endowment resources to support student financial aid.

Volunteer Leadership

The school is blessed to have faithful networks of people who are generous donors of time, energy, resources and ideas. We are grateful for their leadership and support, which includes such important groups as the Board of Visitors, the National Alumni Council, the Baptist House Board of Directors, the Class Agents for the Annual Fund, ANSR (the Alumni Network for Student Recruitment), the Convocation Board of Managers, the Parish Ministry Fund Board, and many others. We also include the churches and pastors who participate in our field education program. Their contributions are vital to the success of our mission.

I began by indicating that this is an exciting time. 2004-05 was a busy and eventful year: the completion of the Westbrook Building and Goodson Chapel, an outstanding year in recruiting faculty and students, major new programmatic initiatives and the enrichment of our already established ones, and a successful re-accreditation review by the Association of Theological Schools. As we move into our next strategic planning process, we want to continue to be bold and creative as we seek to be faithful to Jesus Christ in providing strong intellectual and programmatic leadership. I hope we will continue to join together Duke University’s commitment to “outrageous ambition” with the divinity school’s emphasis on “extravagant faithfulness.”