Sep - Oct 2005 Issue

 

A fall 1969 issue of the Duke Alumni Register, the predecessor to Duke Magazine, asked, "Can Duke University Put Down the Legend?" The headline referred to the opening of a new "Art Center"--later the Duke University Museum of Art--on East Campus. Douglas Knight, Duke's president, told the publication, "What has worried me about the arts at Duke is that for so long, somehow, the legend has been established that no one cared about the arts. I hope the legend is dying....

I'm a mid-level manager who has had five bosses in eight years and an ever-changing set of goals. After seven years of stellar evaluations, I just received a review that convinces me I need to leave. How should I handle references?Life is too short to stay with an unappreciative boss. You're wise to consider moving on.

  "The Green Team," Duke Magazine, May-June 2003

Color concept: West Campus, a watercolor by Hughson Hawley, 1930.

 

 Even as the ethical debate rages over the use of stem cells in research, scientists are continuing to discover how understanding such cells can be medically important. Stem cells are immature cells that have the capability of developing into a wide range of adult cells, thus raising the possibility that they could be used to regenerate organs damaged by disease or trauma.

 

 Nine Divinity School students traveled to Mississippi--historically the site of some of the nation's worst racial segregation, despair, and violence--for a ten-week field-education experience this summer. Their goal: to participate in the work of racial reconciliation growing in churches and communities across the state.

 The animated movie Madagascar will be more than summer fun to Duke scientists. Conservation scientist Luke Dollar '95, M.S. '05, who studies the fossa, the island's top predator, sees the movie as drawing much-needed attention to the plight of Madagascar's endangered species. Cognitive neuroscientist Elizabeth Brannon sees the movie as highlighting the island's extraordinary lemurs, whose intelligence, she says, is far greater than previously believed.

 Move over, Peter and the Wolf. At a Young People's Concert at New York's Avery Fisher Hall in April, the New York Philharmonic debuted The Roaring Mountain, with storyteller Bill Gordh as librettist and narrator.

German LessonIt is always a pleasure to see aspects of German culture featured in your magazine. Your brief appreciation of Winckelmann in the July-August issue [Biblio-file, "Passionate Prose,"], however, is not entirely accurate.

 

 

 James Yang

The "noble experiment" that provided the Class of 2008 with the latest techno tool/toy is considered successful, depending on whom you ask. Whether this will become a continuing trend or a passing fad is still being debated.Jim Wallace.

In August of 1973, Santiago, Chile, was a city on edge. The national economy was in a shambles, the result of a U.S.-engineered blockade that froze aid to the country, led to rampant inflation, and created shortages of essential goods. Despite the covert nature of it all, there had been open speculation in Santiago, in the editorial pages of the major newspapers and on TV news programs, of American involvement in what would soon amount to a coup d'etat: the toppling of Chile's socialist government.

Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for the unilateral withdrawal of all twenty-one Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip by mid-August 2005. These settlements were gradually established and expanded in the years following Israel's occupation of the territory in 1967, eventually becoming home to some 9,000 people.

My inaugural immersion in art history came, as it has for so many, through a darkened auditorium, a well-exercised slide projector, and an enthusiastic instructor. Duke's Kristine Stiles began her art-history survey with a slide of Kazimir Malevich's White on White, a composition completed in 1918. The painting consists of a white square on a white field and nothing more. It's a prime example of art reduced to pure form.

Nissim Sroussi, a specialist in arid land cultivation and a second-generation Israeli farmer, moved to the Gaza Strip twenty-seven years ago. His expertise proved useful for the growth of the settlement he founded, Gan Or, and ultimately for the success of Jewish growers throughout the Gaza Strip, whose produce, today, is shipped all over Israel, Europe, and the U.S.

 

 Coronary bypass surgery is a proven lifesaver for millions of Americans each year, but a nagging problem remains. Some 100,000 of the 1.4 million Americans each year who need such small-vessel grafts to replace clogged or damaged arteries don't have strong enough vessels to use as donors. Also, artificial vessels won't work in many cases because the patient needs smaller implants, and small, artificial vessels become clogged.

 

James Yang. 

 

 Jon Gardiner

  Rudy: remapping the concept of borders Photo:Duke University Photography

 Alex Harris

 

In 1985, fresh out of law school and embarked on a career with a major corporate-law firm, Terri Mascherin began the pro bono work that would lead to the most rewarding, and surprising, moments in her career--challenging Illi

 Seven new members of Duke's board of trustees were announced in July by board chair Robert K. Steel '73. Thomas C. Clark '69, Robin A. Ferracone '75, Kenneth W. Hubbard '65, David M. Rubenstein '70, Robert S. Saunders Jr., Alan D. Schwartz '72, and Anthony Vitarelli '05 began their terms on the thirty-seven-member governing body on July 1.

 Gifts to the university from 100,031 donors, including 44,938 alumni, totaled $275,815,542 for the 2004-05 fiscal year. The total is an increase of approximately $19 million, or 7.4 percent, over the previous year and the third largest cash total in Duke's history.

 

 

  Montrose: Life in a Garden By Nancy Sanders Goodwin '58. Illustrated by Ippy Patterson. Duke University Press, 2005. 312 pages. $34.95.

 Duke Health System officials spent the spring and summer dealing with the consequences of a winter mix-up in which hydraulic fluid was confused for detergent and used in the washing of surgical instruments at two Duke-affiliated community hospitals.

By his own reckoning, Armand Singer's teaching career began at age six, when he tugged at the sleeves of his parents' dinner guests to explain why the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

Unsung sports: lacrosse's Danowski, above; golf's Grzebien, below 

 

 At its May meeting on campus, the Duke Alumni Association's board of directors unanimously approved changes in the bylaws that increase the DAA president's term from one to two years, keeps one instead of two immediate past presidents on the board for a year, and allows flexibility in the number of members, from "eighteen" to "not less than eighteen."