Winter 2018 Issue

Oris Stuart M.B.A. ’89 knows how to find common ground with people. “I firmly believe through a series of questions you can find a significant amount of commonality with most people you come in contact with,” he says. “When you look at hobbies, religious beliefs, and values, there are so many more similarities between us than there are differences.”

Keisha Cutright grew up in a Southern Baptist family in Cincinnati. “I didn’t realize how religious the household was until I went to college. I didn’t think we were different than the masses,” she says. Eventually, her family’s system of beliefs would lay the foundation for the associate professor of marketing’s groundbreaking research.

Swithin George M.B.A. ’19 already knew a lot about leadership when he came to Fuqua. As the lead manager for the Enterprise Architecture team at Caesars Entertainment, he’d been tasked with architecting and executing technology integration solutions for one of the largest IT transformation initiatives under way in the gaming industry. But it became clear to him that his technical abilities were only a part of what he needed to move forward. As he thought through next steps, he considered what he didn’t know.

Fuqua’s new certificate in Management Science and Technology Management (MSTeM) will equip students with skills in analytics and management technology, says Russ Morgan, senior associate dean for full-time programs.

Wesley M. Cohen, professor of economics and management and the Snow Family Professor of business administration at Fuqua, was recognized as one of 17 Citation Laureates for 2018 by Clarivate Analytics for his work on innovative labor. The honor recognized Cohen’s contribution to advancing understanding of the innovative performance of firms, industries, and nations. Cohen studies innovation and the conditions, corporate structures, and relationships that nourish innovative performance. His work helps managers and policymakers understand how best to foster innovation.

More working parents and West Coast residents are applying to the Weekend Executive M.B.A. program since the in-person residency requirement has been reduced to one weekend per month, says Mohan Venkatachalam, senior associate dean for executive programs. Previously, students were required to report to Fuqua every two weeks for Friday and Saturday classes. Now, the residency is once a month on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then on Hybrid Saturday, students have the option of attending in person or virtually.

This past July, as I was preparing to make my first visit to the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, Director Andy Read warned me that our island campus there is a little “saltier” than Durham. A few weeks later, rounding the harbor like a buccaneer on Duke’s sixty-five-foot research catamaran, I understood what he meant. We weren’t on West Campus anymore.

Today, the libraries at Duke University are a hive of activity: As a space for reading, research, data analysis, the digital humanities, and socializing, the library is the heart of campus to many in the Duke community. When the institution was first formed, however, this central feature of today’s campus was absent. In fact, it would take decades for the library to occupy a place of prominence.

Down to her bunned hair and the Perrier bottle at her fingertips, Sarah Riazati is an artist, and so she speaks with an artist’s precision: She doesn’t “shoot” so much as “film”; she prefers to “make” a picture rather than “take” one. Which means that, this past August, weeks after winning the Princess Grace Foundation Award to help fund her film thesis, when she demurs to painstakingly discuss her project, her hesitation speaks volumes of the project’s status: Right now, it could turn into almost anything.

Busy” and its close cousins (“intense,” “crazy”) are how Leslie Marx ’89 likes to describe her schedule, yet it soon becomes apparent that her “busy” starts at a higher baseline than non-academics’. Her first e-mail notes that she’s in Shanghai teaching in the Global Executive M.B.A. program at the Fuqua School of Business, where Marx is the Robert A. Bandeen Professor of economics. Days later, she’s back in Durham, teaching that same course remotely and preparing to audit a course at the law school (on antitrust economics) that she might lead in the future.

Chionophobia is a real thing?

Take a peacock feather out of a tall glass vase. Balance the feather, by the point of its shaft, on your finger— one finger. You can move, but try to stay steady, just keeping the long, curving feather vertical. Good luck.

What with gut feelings and gut instincts, you have heard of the stomach being cast as a second brain. Diego Bohórquez, assistant professor of medicine at the Duke School of Medicine, thinks that may have the order backward. “Very simple organisms do not have a brain,” he says, smiling. “But they have a gut.”