In Brief: May-June 2009

  • John H. Dailey, a Durham native who began his law-enforcement career at Duke, returned to the university in April as the new chief of police. Since 2001, he has been assistant police chief at North Carolina State University. Dailey succeeds Robert H. Dean, who retired last year. 
  • Craig Henriquez B.S.E. '81, Ph.D. '88, professor of biomedical engineering and co-director of the Center for Neuroengineering, was elected chair of the Academic Council in February. He will become the first faculty member with a primary appointment in engineering to serve as chair of the university's highest body of faculty governance. He succeeds outgoing chair Paula McClain, professor of political science. 
  • Clay Johnson, a visiting lecturer in public policy, earned two Emmy Awards for a half-hour TV program and a thirty-second public-service announcement about the nationwide digital broadcast conversion. Johnson, a faculty affiliate with the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, teaches television journalism and is a documentary producer at WRAL in Raleigh. 
  • Kristina M. Johnson, dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke from 1999 to 2007, was nominated by the Obama administration to serve as undersecretary of energy. Johnson, now provost at the Johns Hopkins University, was the first female dean of the engineering school. She will be responsible for leading energy-efficiency and alternate-energy initiatives. 
  • Angela M. O'Rand, professor of sociology and departmental chair, will become the Trinity College dean of the social sciences. O'Rand has taught at Duke since 1979 and studies aging, social stratification, and labor markets. She succeeds Sarah Deutsch, professor of history, who has held the position since 2006. 
  • Adrienne Stiff-Roberts won the 2009 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Early Career Award in Nanotechnology. Stiff-Roberts, who joined the Duke faculty in 2004, researches quantum mechanics and has developed practical applications of its principles. She will receive the award during the ninth annual meeting of the IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology this July in Genoa, Italy. 
  • The latest winners of the annual Samuel DuBois Cook awards are Peter Klopfer, professor emeritus of biology; Martha Shumate Absher, an associate dean at the engineering school; William J. Fulkerson, senior vice president of clinical affairs at Duke Health System and professor at the medical school; Mel Williams, senior pastor at the Watts Street Baptist Church and founder of Walltown Neighborhood Ministries Inc.; and two recent graduates, Dinh Phan '09 and Flint Wang '09. Named for the first African-American faculty member at Duke, the Cook Society was founded in 1997 to recognize and celebrate the African-American presence at Duke. 
  • The Fuqua School of Business will offer a new master's program that is intended to provide basic entry-level business skills to recent college graduates with no prior career experience. The Master of Management Studies in Foundations of Business, which consists of twelve business courses taught over four six-week terms, will begin in August. 
  • After receiving a record-breaking 23,750 applications, undergraduate admissions extended offers of admission to 4,065 students—an acceptance rate of 17 percent that includes early-decision acceptances, and is the lowest rate in Duke's history. Administrators plan to enroll 1,705 first-year students this fall.

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