Photo, Arwen Long

Duke Endowment Gives $50 Million For Medical Education Facility, Pediatric Care: Largest Gift Ever To Duke University Medical Center
On Monday, April 7, 2008, Duke President Richard H. Brodhead and Chancellor for Health Affairs Victor J. Dzau announced a $50 million gift to Duke University Medical Center from the Duke Endowment of Charlotte. The $50 million gift, the largest single gift ever received by the medical center, will be used for construction of a medical education building and development of a state-of-the-art inpatient pediatric facility.

Plans mark $35 million of the gift for construction of a School of Medicine Education Center. The building will include classrooms, lecture halls, gathering areas with moveable walls and seating to accommodate groups of up to 500 people, administrative offices, study and lounge areas for students, a café and bookstore, and possibly a fitness center.

"It is ... increasingly important to have a facility that can house initiatives such as simulation labs and provide space for the team-based learning programs that are rapidly replacing traditional lecture-based learning," said Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, dean of the Duke University School of Medicine.

New School of Medicine dean, Nancy C. Andrews, 1999 to 2003 director of the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD Program and 2003 to 2007 Harvard Medical School dean for Basic Sciences and Graduate Studies, brings to Duke a deep commitment to MD/PhD education. Dean Andrews, the first woman to lead one of the nation's top ten medical schools, assumed her Duke position in October 2007. She is meeting periodically with the faculty executive committee of the Duke MSTP steering committee and is pumping new energy, fresh ideas, and expanded resources into the Duke program. Duke—particularly Duke MSTP—is fortunate in its new leadship and enthusiastically welcomes Dean Andrews.

Dr. Andrews, also a professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacology & Cancer Biology, received her BS and MS degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, her PhD in Biology from MIT and her MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed an internship and residency in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, and a Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Dean Andrews, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1993 to 2006, maintains an active NIH-funded research laboratory studying mouse models of human diseases. She was the George Richards Minot Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard, Senior Associate in Medicine at the Children’s Hospital Boston, a Distinguished Physician of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an attending physician in hematology and oncology at Children’s Hospital until 2003. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles and 16 book chapters, has received many awards and honors for her research—including membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences—and is president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.