Duke University will create a new $30-million center for civic engagement, the institution’s president, Richard H. Brodhead, announced today. The Duke Center for Civic Engagement will be home to DukeEngage, a new program to encourage and finance undergraduates’ service-learning projects. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Duke Endowment contributed funds to establish the program, which will open in the summer of 2008.
Duke officials estimate that over the next five years, a quarter of the university’s 6,250 undergraduates will participate in the program, collaborating with nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and abroad to work on poverty, housing, education, public-health, and other issues. The university will finance summer-long or semester-long projects, providing extra support to students on financial aid.
“Our goal is to empower students to emerge from Duke as creative thinkers, problem solvers, and innovators,” Mr. Brodhead said in a written statement.
