New Faces for Financial Aid, Career Center

Duke's Career Center and financial-aid office are both undergoing changes in leadership.

Administrators recently announced the hiring of Alison Rabil as assistant vice provost and director of financial aid. Rabil, who currently serves as financial-aid director at Barnard College, will assume her new post on November 1. She succeeds Jim Belvin, Duke's director of financial aid for thirty-two years.

She previously served as director of Columbia University's Office of Student Financial Planning and, before that, in administrative positions at the University of Washington and Common Cents New York, a nonprofit organization that manages service-learning programs for young people. She also served on the financial-aid planning committee for the Consortium on Financing Higher Education.

Over the summer, William Wright-Swadel, director of career services at Harvard University, was named Fannie Mitchell Executive Director for Career Services. He fills the post that Sheila Curran left at the end of the 2007-08 school year.

At Harvard, Wright-Swadel led the office that provides comprehensive assistance to students in Harvard College, as well as the university's graduate school of arts and sciences, school of engineering and applied sciences, and division of continuing education.

Wright-Swadel was director of career services at Dartmouth College from 1992 to 1995 and the University of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1992. He has also held career-services positions at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the University of Maine.