Funding Futures

As they look to expand, Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and Sanford Institute of Public Policy will be helped by major gifts in their teaching, research, and public service.

From Clarence Chandran and his late wife, Beverley, the Pratt School is receiving $1 million in separate gifts for the new Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine, and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS), and for a research program. Chandran is the former chief operating officer of Nortel Networks and is now chairman of the board of InfoClarus, a business-services company that focuses on wireless communications. Beverley Chandran died in March of cancer.

In supporting CIEMAS and its programs, the Chandran Family Foundation gift will endow a distinguished lecture series and research focused on advances in brain-tumor imaging. The gift includes a contribution to the Pratt School through the Annual Fund.

CIEMAS is a planned 322,000-square-foot, four-story facility promoting Pratt initiatives in bioengineering, photonics, communications, and materials-science engineering. It also will house collaborative research facilities with the Duke School of Medicine. It is scheduled to open in August 2004.

The Sanford Institute of Public Policy is receiving $1 million from the Coca-Cola Foundation to fund the Multimedia and Instructional Technology Center at the Sanford Institute's new building. The gift honors former Duke trustee and Coca-Cola board member Susan Bennett King '62, who also serves on the institute's board of visitors.

King has worked as executive director of the Center for Public Financing of Elections, Washington director of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, commissioner and later chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and director of Corning Glass Works' corporate communications and consumer affairs. In 1987, she was named president of Steuben Glass, a position she held for five years. She returned to Duke in 1994 as leader-in-residence for the Hart Leadership program. She also serves as president of the Leadership Initiative, which supports universities interested in undergraduate leadership education.

Among the benefits of the center will be on-site broadcast facilities with access to a satellite uplink; new classroom technology, including laptop interfaces, wireless networking, and specialized projection equipment; and the capacity for streaming video and two-way distance learning.

Design work is under way on the new building, to be located across the lawn from the existing facility, which was built in 1994. The building will double the institute's usable square footage. In addition to the multimedia center, which will be named for King, the building will include classrooms, lecture halls, and space for faculty and staff in several of the institute's centers and programs.