A Connection to a Larger Cause
In 1995, in the wake of his wife Sandy’s death from metastatic breast cancer, Kenneth Coates and his teenage son and daughter made a gift in her memory to Duke cancer research. “The care that Sandy received and the effort that the doctors and staff made was outstanding. We couldn’t have asked the doctors and the nurses to do any more than they did,” Coates says. “We knew our gift wasn’t enough that the researchers were going to be able to cure cancer the next day, but our hope was that at least we’d be helping them make more rapid progress.”
In the early 2000s, in response to a challenge grant from another donor, Coates felt he could make a larger gift to endow an associate professorship.
Coates chose an endowed professorship because he wanted to be more than just a donor. “I wanted to feel a connection with a specific research effort, and I wanted to be a part of the process,” he says.
“It’s critically important that individuals give to institutions like Duke.” Coates continues. “There’s never enough federal or other grant money to do the work that needs to be done. The opportunity to save and extend lives is so important that we as a society need to be as generous as we can in helping fund research activities.”
The Sandra Coates Associate Professorship is vacant. The School of Medicine looks forward to filling this professorship in the near future.