Jan - Feb 2007 Issue

The board of trustees has approved elevating Duke's African and African American Studies (AAAS) program to departmental status, and, as part of the university's strategic plan to enhance the arts at Duke, the Arts and Sciences Council unanimously approved the creation of an undergraduate dance major, beginning this spring.

In 2001, William T. Cavanaugh Ph.D. '96 took part in Duke Magazine's inaugural Campus Forum, talking with his former professor Stanley Hauerwas about fame, the modern church, and September 11.

Duke University Archives

It's not every day that you meet a corporate attorney who sidelines as a salsa purveyor. But Nick Lampros, a Virginia lawyer who co-owns Gunther's Gourmet, a line of marinades and salsas, wears the dual hats well.

Deborah Gold

Levi: from chief judge to Duke dean. Jon Gardiner

Patet Hince

Between 4.3 million and 6.5 million Americans are likely to know someone who has been killed or injured in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to new estimates by a Duke sociologist.

Antar Dyal

The Duke Alumni Association and Duke's history department presented a special on-campus educational conference, "Still Fighting the Civil War?" in February.

Ideological ConcernsRobert Bliwise ends his excellent article on "leftward leanings" in academe [September-October 2006] with a comforting

Description de L'Egypte. 

Kay Singer

Megan MorrFor more than three decades, a former mechanical-engineering lab on East Campus served as the drama department's primary venue. Originally named for trustee William H.

The popular television counterterrorism adventure series 24 stretches things, according to Dave Tittle, an intelligence community insider. "It's really unrealistic," he says. "But it's my favorite show."

 When young Democratic pollster Peter Hart came to speak on the Duke campus more than three decades ago, junior Neil Newhouse '74 was so impressed he decided to go into the business himself. Today, as a partner in Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public-affairs survey research firm that he helped found, he's a leading pollster for Republican candidates.

 From the ceiling of Paul Berliner's office hangs what, at first glance, appears to be the prehistoric skeleton of a pterodactyl. The imposing artifact seems out of place, given that Berliner is an ethnomusicologist, not an archaeologist. He is quick to explain.

One day early in the semester, around three o'clock in the morning, Mike Schneider, a sophomore, found himself in desperate straits. He was violently ill, his stomach rebelling against him in constant spasms, apparently from eating some bad fish the previous day. He didn't feel at all like moving. But six of his fellow students, gathered in his dorm room, prevailed on Schneider to allow them to seek medical help.

In the fall of 1972, Jeff Howard and his father drove the family's blue Chevrolet Impala to the Minneapolis airport where the younger Howard boarded a plane bound for the Raleigh-Durham Airport. Upon landing, he caught a ride to Durham with Steve Evans, one of his freshman roommates, and moved into a first-floor triple in Kilgo Quad. Four years later, Howard's parents set foot on the Duke campus for the first time—for Jeff's graduation.

Patients with severe coronary-artery disease live longer if they receive coronary artery bypass surgery as their initial treatment instead of artery-opening angioplasty or heart medications, according to a study by Duke Medical Center researchers.

Many students are well educated in reading and writing but are not visually "literate," says Hans van Miegroet, chair of the department of art, art history, and visual studies. To help address the problem, Duke has received a $2.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a Visual Studies Initiative, a broad-based effort to improve how visual images are understood, and to foster research and teaching in this area.

Disc with Bees c. 700-600 B.C.E. Gold, diameter 1 5/8 inches, depth, 3/4 inches. Anonymous gift

Duke has received almost 18,500 applications for the 1,665 places in the class that will enter Duke this fall—the second-largest applicant pool in the school's history.

To mark Duke Medicine's 75th Anniversary Science Symposium in September, the Duke Health System established a $280 million academic fund to support research and education programs at Duke's medical and nursing schools over the next decade.

Megan Morr

 Michael Tackett

Scholarship

The Duke Management Company (DUMAC), which manages Duke's $7.5 billion in investments, including the endowment and the employees' retirement plan, has a new head. In January, Neil Triplett '93, M.B.A. '99, an investment manager who headed the management operation's Hedged Strategies group for the past six years, succeeded Thruston Morton as president and chief executive officer.

The Duke Alumni Association is requesting recommendations and nominations for membership on its board of directors. The DAA board comprises current students and alumni from each of the university's undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, as well as many of its other interest groups and constituencies. The board meets on campus three times a year.

Questioning the war on terror: national-security pa

Field work: first day of practice for men's lacrosse.

Gentle touch:

A three-dimensional ultrasound scanner developed by Duke engineers, which could find application in various medical settings, might eventually enable surgery to be performed by robots without actual surgeons present, a capability that could prove valuable in space stations or other remote locations.

Higher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern UniversityBy Nannerl O. Keohane. Duke University Press, 2006. 284 pages. $24.95.

Duke's department of economics has revived its ranks with a hiring coup that administrators see as a model for boosting other departments.

Tom Clark '69, president of the Duke Alumni Association, will serve as a voting member of Duke's board of trustees from 2007 to 2009. As DAA president-elect, he has been a non-voting member since 2005.

Duke University Archives

After ten years in business, I've acquired a reputation as a highly competent, workaholic leader. But now that I'm about to have my first child, I see the world differently. I want to take three years off before coming back in a role that better balances work and family. I have an open offer to return to my company. Should I accept?

Katharine T. Bartlett, dean of Duke Law School, received Equal Justice Works' Dean John R. Kramer Award for 2006. The award honors Bartlett's dedication to nurturing an outstanding spirit of public service at the school.Curtis Bradley, Richard and Marcy Horvitz Professor of law, and Madeline Morris, professor of law, have been appointed to the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law. Donald Horowitz, James B.

It's an inescapable sign of our age of instant communications: students walking to their next class or waiting for an East-West bus or checking out eating options and reaching—eagerly, reflexively—for their cell phones.