Jan - Feb 2003 Issue

 Some news headlines provided a "dramatic distortion" of any future faculty reductions at Duke, Arts and Sciences Dean William Chafe told reporters at a press briefing in November. Chafe said "categorically" that any faculty reductions will be limited and occur only through attrition.

After more than twenty years reporting for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Zoë Ingalls joined the magazine in January as its new features editor. Ingalls is quickly showing herself to be wise and relentless at getting the best out of writers. Her predecessor, Kim Koster, has taken her creative energy to Tulane, where she is director of communications for arts and sciences.

Alumni Endowed Undergraduate Scholarships, awarded annually since 1979 by the Duke Alumni Association, were presented in August to two children of Duke alumni. Robert Edward Hedrick III and Jadrian J. Miles, members of the Class of 2007, each received a $10,000 stipend, based on merit and financial need. While at Duke, scholars are invited to attend a monthly program of educational, cultural, and social activities.

Pop QuizThe conflict with Iraq is the topic of the day, but grades are students' perennial concern. We asked: War or grades? Which weighs heavier on your mind? Grace Kwon, a senior economics major, says she's "more worried about the war, because I think it's going to have a huge effect on the economy, especially since I'm about to graduate. I'm going to need a job pretty soon."

 

The hihe branch of chemistry dealing with substances found in living things may reveal that in the living things taking Chemistry 151, one substance rarely found is a passion for organic chemistry. If you're pre-med, you can't forego orgo.

On January 11, the Campaign for Duke, which began in January 1996, reached $2,006,684,498, meeting its goal almost a year before its December 31, 2003, deadline.

Boumpani: striking up the Pep Band. Photo: John Gardiner

Provost Peter Lange told the Academic Council in December that the university's Black Faculty Strategic Initiative (BFSI) will meet its goal of doubling the number of black faculty members at Duke a year ahead of schedule. The BFSI was implemented in 1993 with the main goal of doubling the number of black faculty members by 2003. It is the successor to Duke's original black faculty hiring plan, which was passed in 1988.

She is a poet and a

 

 

I must numerous times I have been called on as Duke's president to speak out--or been criticized for not speaking out--on some issue of public mo

A long-running dispute between Duke and a former professor has unexpectedly emerged as a legal test case that could affect the practice of scientific research at universities nationwide.

One entered the gleaming new headquarters of Cogent Neuroscience by climbing a broad, burnished stainless-steel spiral staircase, ascending each step as a scientist might trace the individual units of a gene along the spiraling DNA double helix. Cogent's metaphorical staircase was apt. The company's ambitious aim was to understand the genetics underlying malfunctioning neural machinery and to develop drugs for a stunning array of neurological disorders, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, and Huntington's, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's diseases.

It's after nine o'clock on Election Night 2002, and Robin Hayes '67 is holed up in a small conference room on the seventh floor of the Lowe's Motor Speedway clubhouse in Concord, North Carolina. A few close aides are with him. His campaign manager is putting up county-by-county election returns on a white board as they come in over a radio and cell phone. Chris Kouri M.P.P. '00 is driving along dangerously rainy and foggy Highway 74 from Fayetteville to Charlotte in his well-traveled black Saturn, a caravan of cars behind him carrying campaign workers, friends, and his mom.

As a Duke professor, accomplished playwright, and now screenwriter, Erin Cressida Wilson is the proverbial wearer of many hats. The thing is, she can only wear one at a time. "Some people are very lucky to write in the morning and interact in the afternoon," says Wilson, who, since the release of her feature film Secretary, has seen her calendar fill up with the phone calls and meetings typical of a Hollywood player.

July 18, 2002 I spent an hour on the phone today with a newspaper reporter. He asked me if Constance, because of the numerous literary references, was my "valentine to the literary world." I said yes--"a resounding yes"--it is my valentine to the writers who have meant so much to me in my life.

Duke's Medical Alumni Association honored seven alumni and faculty in October during Medical Alumni Weekend, which was attended by more than 500 medical alumni and friends. Men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski added another accolade to his rèsumè by being named an honorary medical alumnus.

Photos: Jon Gardiner

As it charts its course for the next decade and beyond, the athletics department should avoid greatly expanding or reducing its varsity program, according to a report to the trustees in December. Developed principally by senior associate director Chris Kennedy Ph.D.

Keir Pyx,Copper enamel,13th century, Limoges

Prized speaker: UN secretary-general Annan

 

 

 Aim game: archers, circa 1950. Photo: Duke University Archives

 Duke officials are overhauling the top pages of the university's website to create cleaner navigation and more effective online communication.

The school day is over at Intermediate School 90 in Washington Heights, and Nick Blatchford watches as seventy adolescent boys and girls gather to play basketball.

 

Attesting attitudes: Pimm, left, and Van Houtan

Sheela AgrawalRecord-holding runner (cross-country, indoor and outdoor track), biology and environmental science double major, chemistry minor, music lover 

Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet By Ariel Dorfman. Seven Stories Press, 2002. 222 pages. $11.95. In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages By Ariel Dorfman. Duke University Press, 2002. 176 pages. $15.95

Foster: his second time at Oxford. Photo: Jim Wallace

 

Photovoice, as explained by Caroline Wang--one of its co-developers--"blends a grassroots approach to photography and social action." It provides cameras not to health specialists, policymakers, or professionals, but to people without easy access to those who make decisio

 Attending a women's college was crucially formative in my life, in much the same way that your Woman's College experience is important to you.