2006 State of the School

The State of Duke Divinity School
By Dean L. Gregory Jones

September 28, 2006

The academic year 2005-06 was marked by significant transitions: the dedication of our remarkable new space, Goodson Chapel and the Westbrook Building; planning, approving and implementing an exciting new Doctor of Theology program; developing a strategic plan for the next five years; assisting brothers and sisters in Mississippi and Louisiana with their recovery from Hurricane Katrina; the development of a promising initiative to strengthen rural communities in North Carolina; and restructuring the area of academic programs. Each of these transitions has presented challenges and opportunities, and we believe that we have enhanced the strength of Duke Divinity School as a leader for the church, the academy and the world.

Students

We welcomed a superb group of new students to Duke Divinity School this fall. Thanks especially to the work of Cheryl Brown, director of admissions, and her staff, we again had a great number of applications, matching our record-setting performance of last year. In addition, we have significantly increased our selectivity in offering students admission (this year it was 51 percent), and our yield of students accepted remains excellent. The median age of the entering Master of Divinity class continues to be low – this year it was approximately 24. The overall entering class has an ethnic minority enrollment of 21.8 percent, a slight increase over the previous year. The median undergraduate G.P.A. of the entering class is 3.55.

We also welcomed our first class of Doctor of Theology students. Even though approval of the program came sufficiently late in the year that we did not have time to advertise it widely, we received 43 applications. We accepted 10 students, of whom eight enrolled and one deferred admission until next year. Only one student declined our offer of admission. This gifted initial class enabled us to launch the program in highly effective ways.

In 2005-06 we launched a new Anglican-Episcopal House of Studies, under the leadership of Jo Bailey Wells. This exciting initiative will enhance our mentoring of students in the Anglican and Episcopal traditions, and it will provide stronger links to churches, parishioners, and the theological grounding of this important tradition. The Anglican-Episcopal House will work with our already strong Office of Black Church Studies, led by Tiffney Marley, and Baptist House of Studies, directed by Curtis Freeman.

Our field education program remains vibrant under the leadership of Connie and Joey Shelton. More than 200 of our students experienced summer field education placements, including many in rural United Methodist congregations (whose stipends were supported by The Duke Endowment), 16 in our Teaching Congregations program, five in the Center for Reconciliation’s Teaching Communities program, and international placements in South Africa (7), Guatemala and El Salvador (4), Uganda (2), Sri Lanka (2) and Peru (1).

We continue to strengthen the linkages in our worship and spiritual formation, led by Chaplain Sally Bates, our programs in field education, and the curriculum. We anticipate that the appointment of Laceye Warner as associate dean for academic formation will enhance our work in this area.

Faculty

We strengthened the faculty with the addition of two colleagues: Kavin Rowe joins us as assistant professor of New Testament, and Esther Acolatse joins us as assistant professor of pastoral theology.

We were sorry to say farewell to Peter Storey, Williams professor of the practice of Christian ministry, as he indicated that he would retire at the end of the spring 2006 semester. Peter and Elisabeth, who have contributed to our community in so many ways, concluded that it was now time for them to live full time in South Africa. We will miss them, even as we are grateful that they will continue to mentor our field education students in South Africa and to sponsor our Pilgrimages of Pain and Hope to South Africa.

Notable books published by our faculty in 2005-06 include the following: God’s Potters, by emeritus professor Jackson Carroll; Wondrous Depth, by Ellen Davis; Left Behind? by James Efird; The Conversion of the Imagination, by Richard Hays; Resurrecting Excellence, by L. Gregory Jones and Kevin Armstrong; A Future for Africa, by Emmanuel Katongole; The End of Words, by Richard Lischer; The Oxford History of Christian Worship, co-edited by Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen Westerfield Tucker; Isaiah, by Jo Bailey Wells; and God’s Companions, by Sam Wells.

David Steinmetz was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the only Duke faculty member selected last year. He joins Stanley Hauerwas as Duke Divinity faculty who have been so honored.

In addition, Willie and Joanne Jennings taught for two weeks at John Wesley College in South Africa. Richard Heitzenrater and Randy Maddox continued their leadership of the Summer Wesley Institute, which gathers a dozen scholars from around the world for a month of intensive study and discussion about the significance of the Wesleys. David Steinmetz again published more than 20 op-eds in various newspapers during the past year.

Staff and the Restructuring of Academic Programs

After nine years of extraordinary leadership, Senior Associate Dean Willie Jennings chose to step down from his administrative position and return full time to the faculty of the Divinity School. He will spend 2006-07 on a richly-deserved sabbatical. While we celebrated his many accomplishments as well as the importance of his scholarly and teaching vocation, we also faced a challenge: how to find a person or people who could assume the wide range of leadership responsibilities Dean Jennings held in the Divinity School.

After careful analysis, we decided to restructure the office of academic programs. David Toole assumed the position of associate dean for academic administration. He is responsible for the overall administrative oversight of the area. Laceye Warner is now associate dean for academic formation, while continuing to teach in the areas of evangelism and Methodist studies. She is responsible for overseeing all areas related to student formation and education, and she also serves as our primary link to the Association of Theological Schools and to various judicatories, including the United Methodist Church. Randy Maddox is now associate dean for faculty development, while continuing his faculty position in theology and Wesleyan studies. He is responsible for working with faculty, especially junior faculty, on their growth and development, as well as cultivating the overall ecology of the faculty. In addition, Jacquelyn Norris has been promoted to a position as program coordinator for the work of Academic Programs.

Overall, Duke Divinity School is blessed with an extraordinary administrative staff. As a result of staff leadership, we not only are effective in our core day-to-day work, we also are able to broaden and deepen our programmatic leadership and our outreach to our diverse constituencies. During 2005-06 we experienced a number of transitions, especially in our staff support, and we are grateful that the new folks who have joined us have stepped in so smoothly and effectively.

One notable staff addition is that Chris Brady (D’06) has joined my office to serve as special assistant to the dean. Chris brings remarkable gifts to this position, and will be working with me on such areas as leadership development, church relations, and diversity and inclusiveness.

Programs

The Divinity School further developed its strength in programs of leadership formation, under the oversight of Janice Virtue. This includes our Reynolds Program in Church Leadership (now in its eighth year), our Courage to Serve program for rural United Methodist pastors (now in its third year), and our Episcopal Leaders Forum for United Methodist Bishops (now in its second year). In addition, we continue our major work on grants from Lilly Endowment, Inc., including coordinating the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program and our Advancing Pastoral Excellence initiative. In May of 2005, we hosted a major “Forum on Excellence in Ministry” in Indianapolis, which brought together 250 leaders from a variety of churches and church-related settings.

This spring we launched a six-year program, “Thriving Rural Communities,” in collaboration with the North Carolina and Western North Carolina Annual Conferences of the United Methodist Church and The Duke Endowment. This multi-pronged initiative, with generous support from The Duke Endowment, is designed to help strengthen rural communities, especially by working with the churches and the leadership in those communities. The program will identify six thriving churches and provide grants to support initiatives in those churches; create six full-tuition scholarships for Duke Divinity students who plan to go into rural ministry; support leadership development for rural clergy; and develop programs focused on strengthening the capacity of congregations to cultivate relationships that enable them to become stronger “caring communities.”

Major Events and Activities

On Oct. 11, 2005, Duke Divinity School marked a milestone with the dedication of Goodson Chapel and the Westbrook Building. These events were central to the 2005 Convocation and Pastors’ School, which focused on “Building a Ministry of Reconciliation.” Throughout the fall of 2005, Laceye Warner and Susan Pendleton Jones coordinated a series, “Art as Evangelism,” in which faculty members preached sermons in Goodson Chapel that related to various pieces of Scripture-inspired art in the new building. Our refectory in the new building is the first “green” dining facility on Duke’s campus. At the conclusion of its first year of operation, it was voted by students across the university as the best place to eat at Duke.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in Mississippi and Louisiana, we wanted to support our brothers and sisters there in meaningful ways. We have a number of alumni serving churches in both states, and the United Methodist bishops in both states are Duke Divinity School graduates: Hope Morgan Ward (T ’73; D ’78) in Mississippi, and Bill Hutchinson (D ’66) in Louisiana. We focused a period in the fall as “Autumn’s Lent,” a time when we had prayer, worship and fund-raising to support the recovery. In addition, we sent a group of faculty and staff, led by Ken Carder, to conduct a Sabbath-renewal continuing education event for Mississippi Annual Conference pastors in February. We also invited pastors from both United Methodist conferences to come to Duke, at our expense, for one- to two-week study leaves for rest and renewal.

Last spring, Duke University found itself embroiled in a major controversy that came to be known as “the lacrosse case.” The Divinity School was involved in a variety of ways: the Reverend William Barber (D ’89), state president of the NAACP, provided significant leadership on and off campus. He further addressed the situation in his sermon as a part of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Lectures in the Divinity School. We sponsored a prayer service as well as a panel discussion on issues raised by the case. Divinity students who serve as graduate assistants in the dorms, and faculty who serve as “Faculty-in-Residence,” led conversations with students and participated in other ways. Other faculty joined worship services and panel discussions in the community. In addition, I participated in several senior administrative leadership groups that addressed the situation. It was a difficult time for the entire Duke community, but I am proud of the ways in which the Divinity School participated in deliberations and also sought to provide spiritual and intellectual leadership on campus.

During the summer months the Divinity School sponsored “Pilgrimages of Pain and Hope” to Brazil and South Africa. Under the leadership of Tiffney Marley, these pilgrimages involve groups of students, staff, faculty, alumni and friends on two-week engagements with the church’s witness around the world. In the summer of 2007, the school will again lead a pilgrimage to Uganda and Rwanda.

Strategic Plan and the Th.D.

During 2005-06 the Divinity School developed a strategic plan for the next five years. Entitled “Transformative Leadership,” it seeks to sustain and strengthen the momentum we have developed over the past five years. At the heart of our planning is the conviction that Duke Divinity School aims to be an agent of transformation for the church, the academy and the world. Part of this aim is embodied in our aspiration to be consistently evaluated as one of the premier institutions of theological education in the world. However, achievement in attaining educational excellence in our formal degree programs is only one part of our aspiration. More broadly, our aim toward excellence can be defined by four complementary measures: (1) our academic research and teaching; (2) our preparation of men and women for leadership in the church and other institutions, both through our degree programs and through lifelong learning; (3) our engagement with major issues in church and society; and (4) our role in strengthening the broader academy, especially in theological education.

Central to our goals for the next five years is the effective implementation of the new Doctor of Theology program. The program is designed to have the rigor of the Ph.D. program and is explicitly focused on the ministries and practices of Christian communities. Following university approval in late 2005, the Association of Theological Schools gave preliminary approval to the program in January of 2006. We received applications for our first class in February. Amy Laura Hall has been appointed to serve as director of the Th.D. program. This program will enhance our education and formation of men and women for Christian ministry and leadership.

Finance and Development

As we have every year, the Divinity School finished the last fiscal year in the black. We continue to face financial challenges, especially resulting from relatively flat income from the Ministerial Education Fund of the United Methodist Church and increases in allocated costs from Duke University. We must absorb these increases even as we charge a significantly lower tuition than any of the other schools of the university. We made a decision to move to a “per semester” charge for tuition rather than a “per course” charge, effective in the fall of 2007. This will bring the Divinity School into conformity with other professional schools at Duke and enable us to plan and budget more effectively.

During 2005-06 we participated in the formal launch of Duke University’s “Financial Aid Initiative.” The Divinity School has set an ambitious goal of $10 million in endowment gifts for this three-year initiative (2006-08).

We urgently need to raise this endowment support in order to strengthen our financial aid offerings to students. In addition, we need to significantly increase giving to the annual fund, which goes in its entirety to supporting student aid. Support for student financial aid is a crucial witness to our confidence in the future of Christ’s church and the ministry. It is critically important that people preparing for ministry not face overwhelming debt as they begin their ministry. In addition, we need to be able to offer significantly more financial aid to assist in our recruitment of students. While our yield on offers of admission is good, we still lose many excellent prospective students because of financial considerations. In a survey of those students who turned down our offer of admission in the spring of 2006, 80 percent of the respondents indicated that financial aid was a primary factor in their decision not to come to Duke. The challenge is very much before us, and we must strengthen our financial aid offerings if we are to sustain our momentum.

I noted that 2005-06 was a time of significant transitions, even as it was also an excellent year of accomplishments. We are now poised to implement our strategic plan in significant ways, focusing on “transformative leadership” for the church, institutions of higher learning and ministries around the world. As I stated to students, faculty and staff in my Opening Convocation sermon at the start of the semester, we can face any challenges that come our way if we are centered in Christ.