Hunt Institute Partners with Duke After Cutting Ties with UNC

The Hunt Institute and Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy are joining forces in an effort to advance education policy.

This merger comes just a few months after the Hunt Institute split off from UNC – Chapel Hill.

Duke President, Richard Brodhead, said the merger brings together two former governors of North Carolina – Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt – to help better education policy.

“This partnership between the Sanford School at Duke and the Hunt Institute unites the legacies of two of North Carolina’s most transformative governors and creates new opportunities to connect research and practice in the most vital areas of education policy,” Brodhead said in a release.

The Hunt Institute and the Sanford School will be collaborating on a number of activities that include a national conference on early-childhood education and policy, briefs for state and national policy leaders on important, contemporary education research findings, and connecting both university faculty and students to state and longitudinal data systems in education, according to a release.

The Hunt Institute was established by the UNC Board of Governors in 2001 as a nonpartisan center for educational policy and leadership. Later it became affiliated with UNC – Chapel Hill until the split in March of this year.

UNC Provost Jim Dean said at the time, “I think it’s pretty clear from reading the report that the Institute’s work was never really that closely related to the work of the university.”

With Duke, the Hunt Institute seems to have found a university it could work with. Hunt expressed his excitement as to why he believes the Sanford School is a perfect fit.

“It was Terry Sanford’s advocacy and commitment to improving public education for all that’s always been a driving force for me. It’s the same commitment that the Sanford School brings to education today and why this alliance is a perfect fit.”

Kelly Brownell, the dean of the Sanford School, said she is excited about the future of the affiliation.

“Given the Sanford School’s historic strengths in education policy research and the Hunt Institute’s reach with policymakers, we anticipate our affiliation will open the door to many exciting new collaborations.”

The Hunt Institute is joining UNC System President emeritus Tom Ross in making the move from the public system in the state to the private institution.