Jul - Aug 2003 Issue

 ACC AsidesEditors:I’m a Duke alumna and parent and was an ACC fan long before I went to Duke. I am very much opposed to the proposed expansion of the ACC, and I appreciate President Nan Keohane’s efforts at least to slow it down. I hope it can be stopped.

 Where do you find your story ideas?” That’s probably the most frequent question we are asked, with the possible exception of, “When’s my class note going to appear?”

    What occurred in the museum lootings in Iraq and how significant is this on a historical scale?  

  Nine years ago, Luke Dollar ’95 was chasing lemurs with a dart gun and a burlap bag. Then a rising senior, he was a fledgling member of a Duke Primate Center project in Madagascar’s Ranomafana rain forest, where he caught and “processed” the creatures, taking anatomical measurements and teeth casts.

 State and church: Ogle greeted by South Korea’s President Kim Dae-Jung.

 

 The past success of Uganda and Brazil in fighting AIDS suggests that government openness and widespread education campaigns may help prevent the spread of the disease, according to a Duke professor who has studied AIDS issues around the world.

 

 

 Beneath the veneer of sorcery, scary effects, and fancifully named characters, the Harry Potter series is appealing because the stories are tales about morality and choosing between “good” and “evil,” says Thomas Robisheaux, an associate professor of history who teaches a course on magic and witchcraft.

 

  Chadwick: seeing about seniors.

 

 

 

 The Boy Scouts is a way for many boys to learn how to tie knots and build pinewood derby racecars. Yet, for Daron Gunn of Sioux City, Iowa, it was a way to begin clay-pigeon shooting—a sport in which he would later become a state champion and All-American.

Nature rules this place, and with a mahogany fist. She has decreed this forest to be no gentle glade, but a biological battleground, where each species fights for her favor. All the creatures great and small employ their own offensive tactics. Strangler figs wrap their roots around the mammoth trees, thrusting branches upward toward the light.

  Fire Island (New York), 1995, 107 by 55 inches.  

In Beijing they didn’t say SARS at first.

In late August, there is still a feeling of anticipation for fans of Duke football. When the season is young, they come to Wallace Wade Stadium holding on to a hope that this season will be different. Unlikely heroes will emerge. The sum of the team will be greater than the whole. The magic of 1989 and 1994 will be recaptured.

Nasiriya, Iraq

 Growing up in Birmingham, Michigan, Caroline Watnick found plenty of opportunities to fall in love with ice-skating. She started when she was four-years-old, practicing on the backyard ice rink her father built or on the frozen neighborhood lake, and soon began taking lessons. After she had been skating solo for eight years, she decided to join a synchronized skating team newly organized at the ice rink where she practiced.

 

 Duke has been named the winner of the American Football Coaches Association’s 2003 Academic Achievement Award in recognition of the 100-percent graduation rate of its football squad. The award is presented annually by the Touchdown Club of Memphis.

 If Andrew Thaler’s accomplishments as a Duke student are anything like what he’s already done, they will be nothing short of wet, wild, and maybe even a little Scottish. The list includes playing the bagpipes, scuba diving, and helping breed endangered species of sea horses.

 

 

 

 

 Eyes on the surprise: Sweeney with HeliconiusJim Wallace.

 In an international effort to share education strategies, research, and health care know-how, Duke Medical Center and the National University of Singapore have formalized a partnership to establish that country’s first graduate medical school.

  Reading List We asked professors of foreign languages and literature: What is your favorite book by a foreign author and which English translation is best in capturing the true spirit of the original?

 With an ever-changing economy, employment is a big concern to Duke students—and Duke alumni. When your job is to help find them jobs, you’ve got your work cut out for you. As the director of Duke’s Career Center since January, Sheila Curran has tried to keep an innovative outlook, particularly in forging new partnerships on and off campus.

 Matthew Dean.

 

    Mike Hatch

  When Eric Overton comes to Duke this fall, he will leave behind his mother, father, and younger brother and the dairy farm in Speedwell, Tennessee, that members of his family have worked for seven generations.

 

 Six new trustees began serving July 1 on Duke’s thirty-seven-member board of trustees. They are: Anne T. Bass of Fort Worth, Texas; Paula Hannaway Crown ’80 of Chicago and Aspen, Colorado; J. Lawrence McCleskey ’62, B.D. ’66 of Columbia, South Carolina; Susan M. Stalnecker ’73 of Wilmington, Delaware; Michele M. Sales ’78, J.D. ’81 of Issaquah, Washington; and Andrew C. Nurkin ’03 of Atlanta.