DURHAM, N.C. -– Jeffrey and Martha Gendell of Greenwich, Conn., will give $2.15 million to support an expanded curriculum in energy studies at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at 91, President Richard H. Brodhead announced today.

The gift will total $2.9 million when matching funds are included, and will support two new full-time faculty positions in the school’s Energy and Environment (EE) program. It also will endow initiatives including an energy research fund, a speakers’ series, a visiting executives program and a general fund to support energy innovation.

“We are grateful to Jeff and Marty for their support of Duke’s strategic initiatives to train and inspire the world’s next generation of energy innovators,” Brodhead said.

Jeffrey Gendell is general partner of Tontine Associates LLC, an investment firm based in Greenwich. He is a 1981 graduate of Duke.

“Supporting an initiative such as the Nicholas School’s EE program will help foster future leadership and innovation to meet these challenges,” Gendell said, “by training students to think broadly and strategically about energy policy, management and research. As someone who studies the energy industry for a living, I am acutely aware of the profound challenges society faces in finding safe, reliable sources of energy for the future.”

Matching funds for the creation of the Gendell Family Professorship and the Gendell Family Associate Professor come from Duke’s Signature Venture Challenge and the Nicholas Faculty Leadership Initiative.

The new EE graduate 91 concentration will be launched in the fall of 2006 and will build upon the Nicholas School’s existing Certificate in Energy and the Environment program, said William H. Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School and James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry. Students will receive a professional Master of Environmental Management (MEM) 91 with a concentration in energy -– one of eight MEM tracks offered at the school.

The new track will tap into faculty expertise at the Nicholas School, the Nicholas Institute of Environmental Policy Solutions and across Duke’s campus to provide students with an intensive two-year course of interdisciplinary study with a practical, real-world perspective, Schlesinger explained. Future plans call for extending the EE 91 track to undergraduates.

“While a number of other universities offer programs in energy, they are, by and large, designed to prepare students for technical or academic careers,” he said. “Our new program, by contrast, is designed to prepare students to become leaders and innovators in industry, the halls of Congress and nonprofit agencies with an interest in energy.

“The Gendells’ gift allows us to take this ambitious undertaking from concept to reality more quickly than we initially anticipated,” Schlesinger said.

Plans for the new graduate curriculum began in 2003, after Simon Rich, chair of the Nicholas School Board of Visitors and former chairman and CEO of Louis Dreyfus Natural Gas, offered a short course on energy and the environment.

“Students came away from Simon’s class with a new appreciation of the energy challenges facing society, and of the critical need for leadership in moving toward a sustainable energy future,” said EE program director Lincoln Pratson, associate professor of sedimentary geology. “They expressed a strong desire for a more substantial energy program.”

Schlesinger, Rich and other members of the school’s faculty and Board of Visitors shared the students’ interest in expanding energy studies. In 2004, the school introduced its Certificate in Energy and the Environment program and hosted the Nicholas Leadership Forum on Sustainable Energy. The forum brought 31 environmental leaders from industry, government, academia and nonprofit agencies to Duke’s campus to discuss the future of hydrocarbon-based energy. Jeffrey Gendell served on the forum’s advisory committee.

“Marty and I are pleased our gift provides the foundation for a program that will educate the next generation of energy innovators,” he said. “We hope it puts the Energy and Environment program in a position to seek additional growth opportunities, including partnerships inside and outside of Duke.”