Duke - Jul - Aug 2001 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001 en Gathering Points https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/gathering-points <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>&nbsp;</p> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <p><br /> <br /> <br /> The tradition of bookending your Duke career by gathering in the Chapel as a class says a good deal about this university. In some universities, there is never a time when everybody gets together as a class; in others, there may be ceremonies of some kind at the beginning or the end, but it isn’t particularly cool to attend them. Only at Duke do people scalp tickets for Baccalaureate, and most of the guests must watch the ceremony on TV.</p> <p>When he built this university, James B. Duke—the man with cigar in hand, standing just out front, submitting with dignity to the transformations you impose on him in celebratory moments—specified that at the heart of the university there should be a great towering church, standing on the highest point, in such splendor and majesty that it would prove to be the physical and moral center of the campus. Since a hot August morning four years ago, some of you have perhaps never entered the Chapel again. Most, however, come inside these serene, refreshing spaces at times to worship, to attend a concert or performance, to show visiting family the glories of the historic stained glass and stonework, or just to sit quietly alone and wrestle with some problem that was clogging up your mind.</p> <p>It’s impossible to ignore Duke Chapel, impossible to imagine any description of this campus in which it would not be prominently featured. Every afternoon at five, its bells toll another milestone. You walk past or within sight of the Chapel so often that it sinks deep into your consciousness and becomes part of the landscape of your life. In that sense, the Chapel is not only a religious place. It is the center of the campus in every sense of the word, and that’s one reason that you want to be together in that center one more time before you leave.</p> <p>You come also because you care about each other, despite the different paths you have taken. You may think of this care as focused mainly on classmates you know well, but despite your differences and occasional estrangements, you are bound by membership in this multi-faceted, talented, unique class. Think back: The biggest, most important moments of your college life—the events and relationships that help define who you are as a person—rarely appear on your résumé. They may include a sudden awareness that you had understood something for the first time. They may include becoming aware that you are responsible for what you know, that it’s not just something outside you in<br /> a book. They may include falling in love, making a friend, finding your voice, feeling empowered.</p> <p>At your opening convocation in August 1997, I spoke on the theme of freedom—the kind of freedom you might expect at Duke, and my advice on how to use it wisely. I also told you about some of the things you would need to grapple with, freely and responsibly, during your Duke years. One of those predictions was that race would surely matter in your lives.</p> <p>During your first semester, students hung a black doll in effigy on the quad to protest what they saw as our inhospitable environment for African Americans. The Black Student Alliance held an Allen Building “study-in,” and Race Day in front of the Chapel drew some five hundred people. Now, in your senior year, several hundred students marched silently through the quad to present a petition demanding still more concrete action to address issues of tolerance, openness, and diversity. Race has indeed been relevant. Progress has been made; but there is still work to be done—at Duke and in the world outside—work that you can now begin to tackle with the strength of your degree.</p> <p>Your first year at Duke, three Duke doctors published a book called Buzzed, which received national recognition for educating the public about drugs and alcohol. During the fall of your junior year, one of your classmates died of alcohol-related causes. This year, the lead author of Buzzed, Dr. Cynthia Kuhn, who participated in orientation sessions for resident advisers last summer, found this note on the bottom of a final exam: “Do you remember giving the talk at the R.A. orientation session on the common drugs at Duke? You discussed the dangers of doing twenty-one shots on your twenty-first birthday. Incidentally, that day was my twenty-first birthday…. Dr. Kuhn, you saved my life.” Again, there is still much to be done.</p> <p>As I look back on our time together, I see a balancing act: After four full and fast-paced years, you are about to step out into a new position of almost total freedom—again. And as before, it carries a high price tag in responsibility. Your education has been in large part what you chose to make it; and so will your life be after Duke.</p> <p>As you will remember, Terry Sanford died during your first spring on campus, and thousands gathered here in this Chapel to honor this governor, senator, and president of Duke. Even those who never knew him were deeply moved. And throughout your time here, Duke people continued to push their boundaries. This spring, for instance, author and poet, our own Duke alum and English professor Reynolds Price, curated an art exhibit. He was not acting out of character; he just had what President Sanford would have called outrageous ambitions.</p> <p>Perhaps it seems impertinent to think of yourself in the same breath as Terry Sanford or Reynolds Price. But in this Chapel, all together, you can do that. You are Dukies just like them, made of the same fine stuff. You have spent a lot of time in the last four years rediscovering what great men and women have found, what saints and sages throughout the ages have learned, what science has revealed, and what art speaks that science cannot. I know absolutely that all that learning will serve you well.</p> <p>But in closing I also offer these words of the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Basho: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” That conundrum is your final assignment. Remember that Duke University will always be a home to you when you are ready for it. This Chapel will always be here, as solid as the stone it’s built from, as brilliant as the stained glass on a sunny afternoon; it’s always yours, in your hearts and minds, and here on the campus you have claimed as your own—as the Class of 2001.</p> <hr /><em>This is excerpted from President Keohane’s baccalaureate address. </em></td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <!-- #EndEditable --></div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/nannerl-o-keohane" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nannerl O. Keohane</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501740 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/gathering-points#comments Bridging the Americas https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bridging-americas <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:98%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <p>Touching Lives</p> <p>By Susan Kauffman</p> <p>It seemed a long way to come to dig a ditch. I’d never lifted a pickaxe in my life, much less in a tropical country under a blistering sun. Yet there I was on spring break in Honduras, chipping away at compacted dirt with a group of Duke students half my age. I could only work three minutes at a time before needing shade and bottled water, though I took some comfort in the fact that the students didn’t last any longer than I did. As one experienced Habitat for Humanity volunteer grumbled, this was “hotter than roofing in Memphis in August.” It took us three days to carve out a thirty-six-foot trench that a back hoe could have handled in an hour.</p> <p>Seventeen of us from Duke—including six undergraduate and eight graduate students—spent eight days in March as guests of the Episcopal Church of Honduras. We had gone to help victims of Hurricane Mitch build a community in a little valley outside the city of San Pedro Sula. As a member of Duke’s public affairs office, I thought I had mainly come along for the ride to get a story about Duke Chapel mission trips. Though we’d done some homework and some team-building exercises in Durham, most of us did not know much more about Honduras than we did about each other.</p> <p>In the course of a week, that all changed. Remembering to pop anti-malaria pills, inhaling the odors of garbage and diesel fuel, and adjusting to more primitive toilet facilities were the easy parts. Confronting dire poverty and illness, on the other hand, put our best motives to the test. Amazingly, no one’s spirits flagged, and no one got sick. The sweat produced by hard physical labor washed away the mental stress of work and school. Our spirits were lifted by vistas of cool, inviting palm trees, smiles and hugs from hordes of young Honduran children,<br /> and spicy food lovingly prepared. The spiritual camaraderie helped forge friendships among us.</p> <p>“Most of our friends went to the beach to lie in the sun,” said J.C. Richard, a sophomore from Minneapolis. “That doesn’t even sound fun to me compared to getting to experience another culture.”</p> <p>Our adventure began at 5:30 a.m. on the freezing morning of March 10, when we met at the campus Episcopal Center before driving to the Raleigh-Durham airport. Preparations had begun several months before. You don’t just join a Duke mission trip at the last minute. After a lengthy application process, we had been carefully interviewed and selected by group leaders Will Malambri, a lanky Divinity School student who had traveled in Indonesia and Africa; John Willard, a fifty-six-year-old retiree and volunteer adviser at the Episcopal Center, who led a similar Duke trip to Honduras last year; and Aby Algueseva, our interpreter, an artist married to a graduate student in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.</p> <p>We’d met half a dozen times, usually in the basement of Duke Chapel around nine p.m. to accommodate student schedules. We touched on the history and culture of Honduras, the original “Banana Republic”—a country the size of Tennessee, located south of Mexico and north of Panama, one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere. Unemployment has hovered around 30 percent since Hurricane Mitch, the savage storm of 1998 that killed 13,000 Hondurans, destroyed about 80 percent of the agricultural land, and left more than 35 percent of the population homeless.</p> <p>Our group began to coalesce the moment we got on the plane. The Divinity School students were already friends. Two—Katie Boutwell and Kris Bryant—had announced their engagement before the trip. Still, it seemed the undergraduates weren’t really keen on being with so many older students. Some had never been on a mission trip; Sarah Bagley, a junior from San Diego, had never even been out of the country.</p> <p>By the time we landed in San Pedro Sula, though, our strangeness to each other had started to wear off. Now we faced a more daunting strangeness. The heat hit us like a brick as we boarded an old yellow school bus with no air conditioning, driven by Pedro, a Honduran who became our friend. As the bus made its way to our destination—Nuestras Pequenas Rosas (Our Little Roses), a church home for sixty abused or impoverished girls referred there by Honduran courts—we passed by horse-driven carts of bananas making their way alongside Toyota trucks, and by several “maquilas,” the massive, gated clothing factories known back home as sweatshops.</p> <p>The gated complex of Our Little Roses, located in a middle-class neighborhood of small, gated, stucco houses with carports and an occasional tethered horse, was guarded by an armed security officer. By relief work standards, our accommodations were luxurious. We couldn’t flush toilet paper, but we enjoyed air conditioning, a fridge stocked with soft drinks and exotic juices, hot showers that worked most of the time. Women bunked in one room and the men in another, sharing a common living space with a television (with cable, which allowed us to cheer the Blue Devils on to victory in the ACC tournament).</p> <p>It was already hot by eight o’clock on our first morning. We breakfasted in the orphanage dining room on cereal, fresh pineapple, mangoes, freshly squeezed orange juice, and rich Honduran coffee. After saying a prayer, twelve clean-scrubbed little girls, ages two to eight, waved from the long table next to ours. Then we hopped on the bus to ride about ten miles out of the city to the Episcopal Relief and Development’s Proyecto de Fe, Alegria y Esperanza (Faith, Hope, and Joy Project). A new community of 200 cinderblock houses being built with donations from the United States, the project is home to many families whose shanty dwellings washed away during Hurricane Mitch.</p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 200px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="A friendly face" src="/issues/070801/images/hond3.jpg" style="height:120px; width:200px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>A friendly face.&nbsp;John Willard.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>About 115 houses had been completed, a church building was half-finished, and plans had been drawn up for a medical clinic and school. The two-bedroom, one-bath houses, without telephones, washers, or dryers, cost $3,500. The residents spoke of them as castles, though, because they featured electricity, bathrooms, and potable water—a huge improvement over the “aguas negras,” the river sewage that thousands of Hondurans must use.</p> <p>“We’re not just building houses—we’re building lives,” said Padre Blanco, the robust Episcopal pastor who oversees the Faith, Hope, and Joy project. “We’re not here to push a faith on the people,” he continued in Spanish. “We’re building a church because they asked for one.” Blanco’s red-haired wife serves both as surrogate mother to dozens of young children and as the community’s ex-officio social worker, evaluating which of the 2,000 applicants will get to live here, and helping families brook medical and emotional crises. Deeds to the homes are placed in the names of the women and children as well as the men, encouraging family stability in a male-dominated culture plagued by domestic violence.</p> <p>During our five days at the site, some of us helped residents start six more housing foundations. Matthew Schlimm, a Divinity School student from Michigan, helped a young Honduran electrician wire five houses. My group carted dirt for the floor of the church and dug a trench to support church columns. The work was slow. It quickly became clear that our unskilled labor was not going to be much of a contribution. There weren’t enough shovels, and the ones they had weren’t the best kind for digging. Still, there was no hardware store to run to for supplies, and we gained a newfound appreciation for people who work with their hands.</p> <p>“I never understood before why construction workers would sit on the side of the road,” said Dan Gray, a lawyer who is studying at Duke to become a youth minister, wiping sweat from his brow. Jane Cho, a sophomore whose parents emigrated from South Korea to the United States, said, “I’m grateful to my dad and my relatives who have done manual labor to make a living.”</p> <p>Of course, we didn’t work all the time. In the community center that also served as a school, led by a seminarian who doubled as the construction foreman during the week, we joined joyful church services in Spanish.</p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 250px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="A Honduran Home" src="/issues/070801/images/hond6.jpg" style="height:172px; width:250px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>It makes a village: The Faith, Hope, and Joy project helps Hondurans replace shanties with sturdy homes, and pride.&nbsp;Susan Kauffman.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 200px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="A Honduran Home" src="/issues/070801/images/hond2.jpg" style="height:139px; width:200px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Foundation builders: juniors Katie Gres, left, and Kate Miller, right, digging at a new home site.&nbsp;Aby Algueseva.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Parishioners sat in little wooden desks and young children ran circles around the seminary student. Divinity School student Katie Boutwell, from Alabama, had brought her Polaroid camera along and walked through the unpaved, dusty streets of the community with Erin Stone, a sophomore from Oklahoma, taking pictures of every child in the community to leave as mementos. The children, many barefoot or wearing the white shirts and blue skirts or pants of their school uniforms, flocked around the Duke students as though following the Pied Piper.</p> <p>Our week included a bumpy bus trip to Tela, a beach town on the Carribean frequented by Hondurans. There, we were serenaded at a seafood restaurant that advertised Alka Seltzer on the menu. Three live red, green, and yellow toucans perched on swings and “talked” to us. Several of us paid a young Garifuna girl (an Afro-Carribean Honduran) to transform our hair into “trenzitas,” or corn-row braids.</p> <p>One night, after a lesson from the teenagers at Our Little Roses, we went to a discotheque and attempted an expressive Honduran dance that places emphasis on the hips and pelvis. Perhaps in honor of our group—welcomed by the disc jockey—Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” was on the song list. Even Dean of the Chapel Will Willimon, who joined the group for a few days with his daughter Harriet, danced up a storm, prompting some laughs. “Now, every time I see Dean Willimon in the pulpit, I’ll picture him running in place out on the dance floor,” Sarah Bagley confessed with a giggle.</p> <p>We also learned of the long ties that bind members of the Duke University family when we toured the spectacular Mayan ruins of Copan, a three-hour bus ride on mountain roads northwest of San Pedro Sula. John H. Park, A.M..’70, now the Episcopal Archdeacon of Honduras, joined us and explained how his Duke experience dramatically shaped his life. It was on Duke’s soccer fields that he forged a friendship with Ricardo Agurcia ’74, the son of a former ambassador to the United States. “I found the church while I was at Duke,” Park said. And [Agurcia’s] the reason I’m in Honduras.” Agurcia, now a leading Honduran archaeologist, greeted us in a Duke baseball cap and thanked us for the work we were doing for his people and his country. Touched, we followed him on a private tour of Rosalila, the hidden temple he had discovered.</p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:150px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 146px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="A Honduran Home" src="/issues/070801/images/hond4.jpg" style="height:225px; width:146px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>It makes a village: The Faith, Hope, and Joy project helps Hondurans replace shanties with sturdy homes, and pride.&nbsp;Susan Kauffman.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Despite the stunning natural beauty and the sense of adventure, evenings at the orphanage also ranked among the highlights of the trip. It became a little ritual for the girls to cluster around the Duke students on a covered basketball court before dinner. Some of us gave piggy-back rides; others chatted with the teenagers about their favorite singers—Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera. At nine each night we convened for a half-hour of informal, student-led devotions, reflecting on our day and whatever spiritual insights we might have gleaned. The quiet time allowed us to get to know each other in a way that team-building exercises in Durham had not.</p> <p>Some students said they had expected the country to be more primitive and the people more downtrodden. How people who could afford only one meal each day, or a family of twelve living in a two-room house, could smile and laugh so much proved a powerful lesson that contradicted our all-too-common belief that you’re not supposed to be happy if you’re poor. “Being at Duke, probably being in America, we think we have everything to teach everybody else,” said Katie Gres, a pre-med student from Florida who led a devotions session with me that included shoulder massages. “I’ve seen how much we can learn from others.”</p> <p>Hondurans making $90 a month in a factory showed us such incredible hospitality and appreciation that it was almost embarrassing. “I thought, ‘We haven’t done much—what are they thanking us for?’” said Sadie Walker ’99, LL.B. ’02, whose parents live in Jamaica.</p> <p>“One man who didn’t know English and clearly had barely any means at all brought twelve sodas out to a group of us students,” said Kate Miller, a junior from Virginia Beach who had studied in Spain. “People who have nothing have every reason in the world to hate us and be jealous of us wealthy Americans with our modern luxuries of cameras, watches, work-out clothes, and sunglasses. Yet for some inexplicable reason they were so generous and loved us unconditionally.”</p> <p>We saw many people of all ages looking out for each other—children carrying younger children, women holding hands of kids not their own. “You’d think they were from one family,” Katie Boutwell said one evening at devotions. “There is no racism among them, no differentiation. It’s as if they’re part of one body.”</p> <p>Certainly, the experience put our lives and worries about papers and assignments into a different perspective. “As I read a book for a class here at Duke, where I am paying more than $30,000 a year to attend, I cannot help but picture one nine-year-old little girl telling me that she could not learn how to read because she could not afford to buy a book that cost 10 pesos,” Miller shared with the group.</p> <p>This kind of questioning and soul-searching lies at the heart of mission trips, Will Willimon explained. Though a little-known tradition at Duke, more than a hundred students travel on such trips each year, he said. Another student group, for instance, also spent spring break in a small, rural village in Honduras, building a house for a midwife. They went under the auspices of a Honduras-based organization called Christian Commission for Development, with which Duke has been associated for more than a decade.</p> <p>Eleven years ago, Ollie Jenkins, a former director of the Wesley Fellowship, made a real commitment to mission trips in the Third World. Willimon calls him “a great catalyst.” Groups sponsored by Duke Chapel have an educational and Christian focus, based on Christ’s charge to serve the poor. Our group happened to consist primarily of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists. We all asked family and friends for donations for the group and for the projects, so that any Duke student, regardless of family resources, could afford to go.</p> <p>“We have a saying that you can’t change Honduras in a week, but you might change a Duke student,” says Willimon. “Duke is an elitist, privileged place, but there is an amazing number of people who want to make sacrifices and help others. For some, it becomes their life.”</p> <p>Mission work may not become my life, but it proved to be a whole lot more than ditch-digging. Ostensibly, we went to help Hondurans rebuild their lives. In reality, the trip helped us build Duke community – and to connect with people who live in very different, very difficult circumstances but who possess an inner joy.</p> <p>Kate Miller put it well: “I definitely got out a lot more than I put in. We can hear about, read about, see pictures, and even watch a video about poverty, but until we actually meet someone face-to-face, see the conditions they live in, and listen to their story, we are not truly affected.”</p> <p>A Change of Pace</p> <p>By Shawn Nicholls</p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 225px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Kent Forte '90" src="/issues/070801/images/pace1.jpg" style="height:168px; width:225px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Kent Forte '90</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>When Kent Forte ’90 was preparing to graduate from Duke with a major in biology, he was struggling to solidify his plans. He had considered graduate school, but wasn’t sure about a specific discipline, and felt he needed some time to make that decision. “I wanted to travel a bit and get some practical experience and perspective to help decide which field I should follow,” he says.</p> <p>After attending a Peace Corps recruiter’s meeting on campus, he submitted an application. “Before I knew it I was offered a position in the Philippines in marine fisheries, which was my field of choice, having spent a semester and two summers at the marine lab in Beaufort and later becoming interested in environmental policy,” he says. “I accepted, but the program was canceled due to political instability just weeks before I was scheduled to leave. Eventually, they offered me a position in Honduras, and not having any other plans at the time, I decided it was the kind of intense overseas experience I was looking for.”</p> <p>After arriving in Honduras, Forte received six months of training, which included learning the language, the culture, and the technical skills necessary to be effective at his job. From there, he spent two years in Tocoa, in the province of Colon, where he worked with the government agricultural extension agency as the regional fishculture specialist. The job put him in touch with independent producers, cooperatives, and schools, trying to help interested parties determine if fishculture was appropriate for them. He also taught a couple of courses at a local trade school.</p> <p>As his service with the Peace Corps came to an end, he again faced the decision of what to do and where to go next. He says he was immediately attracted to the mountains, rainforests, and rivers of La Ceiba, on the north coast of Honduras. It was there that he first became involved in eco-tourism.</p> <p>He met a group of U.S. investors from Chicago—Wilderness Gate, Inc.—who were interested in developing small ecologically friendly tourism lodges. His interest in the local ecology and experience in construction led them to hire him to find sites and lead the development effort.</p> <p>From choices including Venezuela, Grenada, Trinidad, Tobago, Panama, and Costa Rica, Forte helped the investors select a location right outside La Ceiba. There were two and a half years of bureaucratic delays. So Forte explored the country, built himself a house in the national park, and paddled the rivers of Honduras in a kayak before they finally started building The Lodge at Pico Bonito, in which he played a major part. “As the only employee of the project, my role included everything from the design, legal aspects, organizing local financial participation and financing, and eventually oversight of the whole construction.”</p> <p>Now, more than ten years since first arriving in Honduras, he is a partner in Wilderness Gate, Inc. and they are looking to expand in Copan. “I am working on a number of design options for a project there. With this next project, I would like to go several steps further toward an ecologically friendly project—entirely off-grid, with more local building methods and materials incorporated.”</p> <p>Forte, who has been married for about a year and has a two-month-old daughter named Maya, finds life in Honduras much different than what he experienced in the United States, especially in terms of concepts of time. “Nothing can be planned with precision and one can never expect things to run as planned,” he says. “While this sounds miserable, in reality I think of it as the double-edged sword of living in Latin America. While it can be very frustrating trying to accomplish things here, I much prefer the texture of life to the predictability of life in the States. While deadlines are one’s bane here, I really appreciate that time is relative and nothing is ever considered set in stone.”</p> <p>For Forte, this makes life exciting. “I used to always say that the emotional ride here is one of extremes—the highs are as high as they get, and the lows are as low as they come. But all and all, I prefer living a life with a rich variety of emotions to one of consistent and constant predictability.</p> <p>“I don’t want to ever have to wear a tie or check a timeclock and I never want to be far from absolute wilderness.”&nbsp;</p> <p>Unearthing Mayan Secrets</p> <p>ByEric Larson</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 197px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="On site reproduction of a Copan artifact" src="/issues/070801/images/copan4.jpg" style="height:275px; width:197px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Facing history:an on-site reproduction of a Copan artifact that's now being conserved in a Copan museum.&nbsp;Aby Algueseva.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Copan, Honduras, is a Mayan city with an Aztec name, but the contradictions don’t end there. If not for the 150,000 foreign tourists who visit each year, the site would be considered a rural backwater. Only 20,000 people live in Copan proper, a number unchanged for 1,200 years. The genes of the area’s earliest inhabitants are noticeable in the faces and customs of today’s citizens. However, the ancient Maya have for centuries been regarded as magical beings to be revered, not blood relations from whom to draw strength.&nbsp;</p> <p>Half the size of Manhattan, Copan was once the epicenter of the Maya Nation, which originated in Central America in 200 C.E. and thrived for seven centuries. This era of artistic, scientific, and cultural achievement is known as the Classic period, and during this time, a complex Mayan society flourished. Governments were centralized, and the people were divided into classes and professions. Copan was just one of several major Mayan cities of the period, along with Tikal in Guatemala, Palenque in Mexico, and Quirigua, also in Honduras.</p> <p>Between 900 and 1500 A.D., following territorial wars and, some researchers believe, overuse of environmental resources, Mayan society began to fall into decline. The major cities became centered in the Yucatan, and the weakened civilization eventually fell prey to the conquistadors. After the Spanish conquered the Maya in the sixteenth century, indigenous pride was devalued and the civilization all but disappeared.&nbsp;</p> <p>Today, Mayan awareness is being re-ignited by discoveries at Copan, discoveries giving flesh to their ancestors and showing the Maya as successful in a way few civilizations have been, before or since. More than 1,500 years later, Copan is the jewel of Mayan archaeology, in no small part because of archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia ’74.</p> <p>“Copan is one of the classic Mayan sites,” says Agurcia, who has spent twenty-three years as a liaison between the lost Maya and the modern world, working with other scientists to uncover and preserve the Mayans’ lost history. The son and great-grandson of ambassadors—his great-grandfather was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras early in the twentieth century, and his father was the Honduran ambassador to the United States in the 1980s—he has worked as a research associate of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. Now he is the executive director of the nonprofit Copan Association, which works to preserve and research the site. A recently televised NOVA documentary on PBS, “The Lost King of the Maya,” featured Agurcia and the secrets he is helping to uncover.</p> <p>If you’ve ever visited Honduras, you’ve probably been to Copan. No less than 86 percent of all tourists to Honduras visit what the locals consider as Disneyland and the Grand Canyon rolled into one.</p> <p>The first gringo visitors to Copan arrived in 1839, nearly 400 years after the scattering of Copan’s Mayan populace. Modern scholars attribute the demise of the Maya to poor management of natural resources exacerbated by drought or other natural disasters. Today it is an archaeological cornucopia, and scholars from around the world have come to this “Athens of the West” to reconstruct its history.</p> <p>Much more would be known about the Maya if the sixteenth-century Spanish bishop Diego de Landa hadn’t burned most of the culture’s codices in a devil-purging exercise. (The clergyman’s boasts about the act survive in his writings.) Only four texts out of hundreds survived, helping researchers to make huge strides in the decoding of the sophisticated Mayan language and system of celestial calendrics. For instance, we know that Mayan buildings were constructed in alignment with the sun and the planet Venus; even the scheduling of human sacrifice was timed according to celestial events. Meanwhile, mathematicians still credit the Maya with originating the concept of zero.</p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 225px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Agurcia uses his " src="/issues/070801/images/copan1.jpg" /> <p>Table tour: Agurcia uses his "treasure" to teach.&nbsp;John Willard.</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>One surviving text is the longest pre-Columbian text of all, a mountain of glyphs written on the 2,200 blocks of stairs leading up Copan’s acropolis. Essentially a series of temples stacked by Copan’s kings, the acropolis is thirty meters high and a full half-mile square. Excavation of this layered cake has been both aided and confounded by the Copan River, which flowed through the acropolis until Harvard and Carnegie Institute researchers diverted it in the 1930s. The river destroyed a portion of the ruins, but also helped to reveal what is inside.</p> <p>The Maya seemed to do little that wasn’t well thought-out, and the acropolis was no exception. Recorded on a stone altar near the acropolis are important clues that have helped Agurcia and other scholars construct Copan’s earliest history. Altar Q, as the stone altar is called, depicts sixteen of Copan’s kings. The altar is most silent of all on the first leader, giving just the date 426 as his arrival date from western lands. Scholars constructed&nbsp;<br /> a name from the headdress of the figure, calling him Yax Kuk Mo, whose right arm sports a warrior’s shield. Was Yax Kuk Mo a paternal figure of history like George Washington, or was he more akin to Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome?&nbsp;</p> <p>As it turned out, details of the myth were confirmed when a male skeleton of a man in his fifties was discovered entombed in one of the acropolis’ earliest temples called Yenal. Burial in the temple alone pointed to royalty. Furthermore, the skeleton’s teeth were studded with jade, and the minerals embedded there were found only north of Copan in modern-day Mexico. Most uncanny of all was a fracture found on the specimen’s right forearm, the shield arm that a left-hander would have used to take the brunt of a blow during battle. In effect, all signs pointed to Copan’s first king as a real person, and his people as geniuses in memorial-making.</p> <p>Momentous as the skeleton’s discovery in 1996 became, it did not overshadow Agurcia’s own treasure-find. In 1989, he was helping to unearth an area at the heart of the acropolis known as Structure 16. Digging slowly, Agurcia came to something solid. He began looking for an edge to dig it out. “I kept pinching myself,” he says, “because every other building I’d found was trashed. I kept wondering when I was going to find the cut.”</p> <p>He named his find Rosalila, the best-preserved temple in all of Mayan archaeology. Rosalila was “perfectly embalmed,” the delightful consequence of early Mayans filling in the temple with dirt to keep it from crumbling, also serving to protect hundreds of statues, pottery, and eccentric flints cached there. Rosalila proved all the more amazing by surviving two calamitous natural disasters, the earthquake of 1934 and Hurricane Mitch in October 1998.&nbsp;</p> <p>According to a hieroglyph on its front stairway, Rosalila was built in 571 by the tenth ruler of Copan, Moon-Jaguar. Artwork on its exterior identified Rosalila as a “house of smoke,” a place where kings would reconnect with ancestors of the underworld. In addition to scepters and other artifacts, scattered in the temple’s four rooms were spines of stingrays that the worshiper would use to bleed himself, soaking a cloth that he would then allow to smolder. The smoke supplied the vision. “If you want to see the temple of Rosalila in action, go to the Church of Santo Tomas in Chichicastenango, Guatamala, where they still cover the floor with flowers and pine needles,” Agurcia attests.</p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 177px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Copan sites draw150,000 visitors a year " src="/issues/070801/images/copan2.jpg" style="height:250px; width:177px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Mayan legacy: Copan sites draw 150,000 visitors each year.&nbsp;Aby Algueseva.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>A goodly portion of Copan’s artistic wealth is scattered in museums around the world. Since 1940, Honduran officials have worked diligently to stem the flow of artifacts out of the country, an effort bolstered when Agurcia helped to write important protective legislation in 1982—legislation now held up as a model for patrimony law in other developing countries. Locals who might have been tempted to loot are now seeing how hands-off pays off through millions of dollars a year in tourism revenue. Today, visitors to Copan can journey into the acropolis to view the original Rosalila behind Plexiglass. An amazing full-scale replica with the original coloration has been included as part of the Museo de Escultura Maya de Copan, found within the national park that borders the site.</p> <p>The legacy that Agurcia has helped to preserve has much to do with his own background. Born and raised in Honduras, then educated in the United States, Agurcia majored in anthropology and psychology at Duke. He traveled to Tulane for a master’s in anthropology, studying the settlement patterns of early American societies. Then in 1978, he found a job working with researchers in Copan, “and I got sucked in.” Four years later he was director of the institute—the youngest ever.&nbsp;</p> <p>When Agurcia started work at the ancient site in 1978, debate was still raging as to whether Copan was a city or merely a burial place. Over the next few years, researchers helped prove Copan’s significance as a vibrant urban center. Agurcia, meanwhile, worked to have the site named a national monument and a United Nations World Heritage site, allowing for more extensive research into how Maya culture might have evolved.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Now you can go to Copan and not just see what the kings did, but how the ordinary people lived as well,” he says. Genetic studies, meanwhile, are attempting to trace the origins and movements of the Copan Maya, who are closely related culturally to the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula, hundreds of miles away.</p> <p>Others have joined Agurcia in treasuring Copan. Enhancing the Copan experience for visitors while protecting landscape and artifact is the purpose behind the Copan Maya Foundation, a nonprofit enterprise started in 1999 by Catherine Docter ’92. Docter’s parents were Mayan history buffs who reared their daughter to appreciate antiquity; she majored in art history with a concentration in Mayan art.&nbsp;</p> <p>Docter was with her family in Copan for the March 21 equinox in 1998 when her father, Stephen Docter, recognized Agurcia from the photograph on Agurcia’s book, Copan and Tikal. As they talked, Catherine realized she’d heard Agurcia speak at Duke in 1991. “Then he proceeds to pull out his key chain and says, ‘I didn’t just visit there to lecture—I went to Duke, too. I am a Blue Devil!’” she recalls. “We hit it off right away. My father got a promise out of Ricardo that if we came back he would take us into the tunnels. Ricardo said he would—never suspecting, I think, that we would take him up on it.”</p> <p>Out of the chance meeting grew the idea of the U.S.-based foundation “to see what we can do as visitors and armchair scholars to help the Copan community,” Docter says. The foundation (www.copanmayafoundation.org) has its headquarters in Santa Barbara, California, where Docter runs an art and design consulting company. Though they have raised and given away just a few thousand dollars in the foundation’s short history, Docter and other foundation board members have already helped facilitate one children’s museum, Casa K’inich, funded by the World Bank, that teaches Honduran children about Copan. The foundation’s boards of directors and advisers include Ricardo Gutierrez Mouat ’74, Wood Turner ’92, and Dorie Reents-Budet, a former&nbsp;</p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 225px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Copan ruins" src="/issues/070801/images/copan3.jpg" style="height:144px; width:225px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>John Willard.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Duke art museum curator, and the group took part in an international symposium at Copan in mid-July.</p> <p>“CMF will not just be fund raising, but people-raising,” Docter says. “We want to help Copan get the best international people for whatever project is needed.” Next on the foundation’s docket: an educational nature trail and onsite learning resource center.&nbsp;</p> <p>Copan’s initial glory died with its seventeenth king, U Cit Tok. Agurcia is working to reconstruct statues and architecture that have broken or deteriorated over the years, a jigsaw puzzle of immense proportions that might well consume the careers of future archaeologists as well. “We’re not talking about a dead culture,” Agurcia says. “The work we do has a lot to do with the people of today. I’d like to see another generation of Central Americans having a sense of the Maya as their ancestors.”&nbsp;</p> <hr /> <p><em>Larson ’93, a frequent contributor to the magazine, lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.</em></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/hond1.jpg" width="620" height="400" alt="Carrying on: Erin Stone, a sophomore, made her spring break a holiday for this Honduran girl. John Willard." /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/susan-koffman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Susan Koffman</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/author/shaun-nichols" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Shaun Nichols</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/eric-larson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Eric Larson</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Adventure, ecology, and archaeology in Honduras: a spring break with a difference, a gate to the wilderness, and a chance to uncover a civilization.</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501742 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bridging-americas#comments Bonk in His Element https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bonk-his-element <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p><span class="text">James F. Bonk stands in front of the long blackboard in the main chemistry auditorium and, for once, the man who never needs lecture notes does not know what to say. He simply stands there, a wiry, bespectacled man with a fringe of gray hair and a shirt pocket stuffed with pens, shaking his head in astonishment. </span></p><p><span class="text">He’s been had, and he knows it.</span></p><p><span class="text">Usually, Bonk is in his element in this room, talking calmly and easily, cracking jokes, filling the board with meticulous cursive writing, explaining the principles of chemistry to an audience of undergraduates as he paces back and forth behind the demonstration table. Ask any former student about Bonk, and he or she will likely offer testimonials about how Bonk “made a complicated subject easy,” how his lectures were “clear” and “seamless,” how he never failed to answer—indeed, to anticipate—questions from students.</span></p><p><span class="text">On this day, however, the hall belongs to the students. Small groups of them have been trickling into the lecture hall for the past half-hour, settling into rows of seats covered in 1970s-era harvest-gold fuzz, waiting for their former professor to enter. They are attending not to hear Bonk, but to honor him. </span></p><p><span class="text">The instant he walks in, they burst into applause—more than a hundred students, plus a dozen professors and a handful of administrators, all standing and cheering the man in the crisp white shirt who stands abashed at the front of the room. The end-of-semester pressures, the early-morning lectures, the occasional “F” on a Friday quiz—all are forgotten in this moment, this hero’s welcome for the professor who has dedicated his career to teaching.</span></p><p><span class="text">When the applause dies down, Bonk finds his voice. “Usually, in this room, I’m not speechless,” he says, grinning amazement and adjusting his trademark red tie. “But today, I am sort of speechless.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Bonk came to Duke in 1959, a twenty-eight-year-old chemist with a passion for teaching, fresh from a graduate-school stint in charge of an entire satellite campus of freshman chemistry students. Now, after forty-two years and more than 30,000 students, he has the teaching of chemistry down to, well, a science. He spends from four to six hours preparing each lecture, choreographing what he will do and say, even planning where he needs to place pieces of chalk in the blackboard tray so he does not waste time searching for them. He says he gets his best ideas while jogging, so on the day before he lectures, he doesn’t wear headphones; they make it harder to concentrate. And although he has taught the same course for decades, he rethinks what he says each year, searching for a better way to help students learn.</span></p><p><span class="text">Nothing in his experience or training, however, could prepare him for the day when he had to leave part of it behind—or for the university’s response when he finally did. This spring, the last day of undergraduate classes marked more than just the end of another semester at Duke. It also heralded the end of “Bonkistry,” the famous introductory chemistry sequence Bonk created in the Sixties and has taught ever since. Starting this fall, general chemistry students will choose between a traditional lecture-based section and one more focused on semi-independent laboratory investigation. For the first time since Eisenhower was president, Jim Bonk will not be their primary teacher.</span></p><p><span class="text">Which isn’t to say the veteran professor won’t be keeping busy. There’s the new course, for one thing. As chemistry’s director of undergraduate studies, he will be monitoring how students respond to different teaching approaches. Then there’s the Duke tennis team. He has served as a volunteer assistant coach for decades, and he has no intention of quitting, despite a shoulder injury that keeps his serve in check. He also plans to teach a new environmental chemistry course for non-majors this coming year—“see if we can teach an old dog new tricks,” he says, chuckling.</span></p><p><span class="text">In a way, Bonk has been learning new tricks throughout his long career as Duke’s point man on general chemistry. In the past forty years, the field of chemistry has undergone a tremendous shift as traditional boundaries between life sciences and physical sciences have become increasingly blurred. Research on living cells, once the near-exclusive domain of biologists, is now a primary interest for several Duke chemists. The American Chemical Society, for its part, is poised to add biochemistry to its list of requirements for chemistry majors. So, although the basic form of Bonkistry—lectures, lab, recitation—has remained constant, many of its details have not.</span></p><p><span class="text">Some changes are purely physical. In the 1960s, chemistry students attended class in the gray Gothic building now known as Old Chem, where the lecture hall “looked like something out of the nineteenth century,” recalls Jim Ray ’68. Ray and his fellow students did their laboratory work on East Campus, in the “depressingly dreary” basement of what is now the Duke University Museum of Art. If students needed help, they could find him in an office numbered “07”—an appropriate location for the man who sometimes introduces himself as “Bonk…James Bonk,” in a nod to his almost-namesake, Agent 007. When the chemistry department moved to the new Paul M. Gross Chemistry Laboratory on Science Drive, Bonk lost the “07” but gained more space for labs, an illuminated periodic table of the elements, and eventually the large plastic “Bonk Is Here” banner that hangs above his office door.</span></p><p><span class="text">The gradual elimination of lecture-demonstrations has been a more subtle change in general chemistry. Although live chemical pyrotechnics are popular with students, they can be dangerous. Bonk cites the experience of one of his colleagues who tried to demonstrate a thermite reaction in class. “Thermite tends to produce large flames and temperatures over 1200 degrees Celsius. On this occasion, whoever prepared it must have put too much in the pan, because when he ignited the thing, it caught his lecture notes on fire. As I recall, the class applauded wildly.”</span></p><p><span class="text">The course’s content has also changed, mostly in response to new directions and emphases in chemical research. Topics once considered too advanced or arcane for general chemistry—such as the hot, diffuse “ideal” gases that inhabit the equations of physical chemistry—have become vital. Some formerly essential topics, such as scrutiny of the periodic table of the elements and the systematic identification of unknown compounds, have disappeared.</span></p><p><span class="text">“The second semester of general chemistry used to be a kind of travelogue of the periodic table,” Bonk says. “We’d go through one family at a time and learn all the reactions and uses for each element.</span></p><p><span class="text">That very detailed kind of information has been totally replaced—mainly with things that trickled down from physical chemistry or with the acid-base chemistry, which is the foundation of so much industrial chemistry and biology,” he says, citing new topics such as equilibrium, the delicate acid-base balance that organisms must maintain for survival.</span></p><p><span class="text">Some chemists bemoan the disappearance from the curriculum of such “descriptive chemistry,” Bonk notes. He cites an article in the Journal of Chemical Education, “Silver Chloride Is a Pale Green Gas,” whose author lamented the loss of what was once common knowledge among beginning students. The inside joke, as a hands-on chemist would know, is that silver chloride is actually a white powder. As the divide between chemistry and biology began to be breached, however, crossover topics like acid-base chemistry took precedence.</span></p><p><span class="text">“In a broad sense, acid-base chemistry is probably the thing that will serve [students] best,” Bonk says. “For biology—well, the ‘A’ in DNA and RNA is ‘acid.’ The techniques of chemistry are being applied to living systems, and that certainly influences what we try to teach.”<br /><br /></span><span class="text">Pelham Wilder, who has taught at Duke since 1949 and is now chemistry professor emeritus, agrees. “Today, chemistry is ostensibly the language of life science. You can’t do biochemistry or biology without chemistry, particularly organic chemistry. Science has changed.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Changes in science have meant changes in the interests of Bonk’s students. Now, general chemistry is a prerequisite not only for pre-medical students and chemistry majors, but also for students of biomedical engineering and environmental sciences. Neither major existed when Bonk came to Duke. The broadening role of chemistry in society, plus Bonk’s fame as a lecturer, drew many non-science majors into the course. Such popularity meant that in a typical year, about a third of the freshman class regularly trekked up the Gross Chem stairs to hear Bonk lecture.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Although enrollment in Bonkistry has remained nearly constant, the number of chemistry majors has fallen, from around eighty to fewer than thirty-five a year. This decline occurred at the same time advanced mathematical techniques became crucial for upper-level chemistry courses, notes Wilder. “When I came along, physical chemistry was concerned with thermodynamics and kinetics,” he says. “Physical chemistry is now looking more at structure and at quantum mechanics, and not a lot of people nationally study physical chemistry. I think the reason for that is that it requires advanced math. Anything that requires a lot of math is not going to be very popular today.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The enduring factor amid all these changes has been Bonk himself, according to Wilder. “There was a consistency in that course.… [Bonk] wrote all the hour tests himself, all the quizzes. He did yeoman’s service for this university.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The disappearance of Bonkistry will be a blow for the chemistry department, admits chair John Simon. However, it also offers an opportunity to rethink how chemistry is taught, he says. Beginning this fall, one section of general chemistry will be taught as a series of topics, with a different professor for each topic. For example, Simon will teach a unit on the ozone hole. As students learn how artificial refrigerants like freon destroy atmospheric ozone, they will also learn about molecular bonding and the properties of halides like chlorine and fluorine—the “C” and “F” in ozone-attacking CFCs. Other professors will teach modules on DNA, Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev’s nineteenth-century development of the periodic table, and other topics.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The challenge for the department is not how to replace Bonk—“How do you replace an institution?” wonders Robert Thompson, dean of Trinity College—but how to create a course that teaches chemistry as well as Bonkistry did. “Jim Bonk has single-handedly taken care of the freshman aspect of our curriculum,” Simon says. “It will be a great challenge for us to put together a course with the same impact that he has had.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">For many students, Bonk’s impact extended far beyond a single chemistry course and a letter grade on a transcript. Several alumni now employed in health and scientific fields point to Bonkistry as a reason they pursued those careers. “I loved science, and Bonk really fed that enjoyment,” says Trisha Schaeffer White ’81, who is now a physician. “He was an excellent lecturer, always very energetic. He was perfect for freshman chemistry.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“When I began teaching in medical school, I tried to emulate Dr. Bonk’s style of presenting the material in well-organized, logical order, and communicating an excitement for the subject matter,” says Ken Touw ’69, a Bonkistry student as a freshman who also became a physician. “Dr. Bonk’s greatest influence on me was to serve as a model of good teaching.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Touw is not alone in his appreciation. Sue Eldon ’86, who now teaches science at Durham’s Northern High School, cites Bonk’s teaching prowess as a source of inspiration. “When I worked on my Master of Arts in Teaching, we were asked to reflect on teachers who had made a difference in our lives,” says Eldon, who switched her major from computer science to chemistry because of Bonk. “For Dr. Bonk, the answer was clear—not only did he know his subject, he knew how to explain it and make it understandable to others.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Other students recall a less “professorial” side. Mike Stoner ’66, who played tennis for Bonk, describes a frustrating afternoon when every ball he hit fell just an inch short of clearing the net. “Bonk took me aside, and said, ‘Son, I’ve looked at your racket, I’ve checked your grip, I’ve watched your serve, and I think I’ve figured out what you need to do: Hit the damn ball two inches higher.’”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Several former students recall the pie incident, which occurred after a campus organization ordered a lemon meringue “hit” on the professor. The hit man’s missive went wide of its mark, clipping Bonk in the shoulder. With his vision unimpaired, Bonk said, “The only thing I could think of to do was to run after the guy.” After a brief chase, he caught up with the prankster in a creek near the chemistry building and handed him over to campus police. Shortly thereafter, the organization was disbanded, “partly due to the jock-ish tendencies of the Duke faculty,” Bonk says with pride.</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Finally, there’s the urban-legendary story of the wayward students and the flat tire, which Bonk says is based on a real incident from the 1960s. Most versions begin with four students who spend a weekend partying at the University of Virginia, then return to Duke unprepared for their chemistry exam. Rather than flunk the test, they ask Bonk for an extension, explaining that they had a flat tire on the way home and were unable to make it back in time. Bonk relents, and when the students come to make up the test, he puts them in separate rooms and wishes them luck. The first question, worth five points, is an easy question about chemistry. The second question, for 95 points: “Which tire?”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Bonk’s final spring at the helm of general chemistry was an exciting one—so gratifying, he jokes, that he may try to retire every year. In April, the tennis team dedicated its trophy room to him. Later that month, he received the David and Janet Vaughn Brooks Distinguished Teaching Award, one of four awards given annually to outstanding teachers in Trinity College. In their letters seconding his nomination, four of his colleagues used the word “legend.” And during a surprise party his department threw on the last day of classes, a flabbergasted and flattered Bonk received Duke’s highest honor. He had his jersey number retired. From now on, two blue-and-white tennis jerseys—marked “Bonk 11” and “Bonk 12” in honor of Bonkistry’s official course numbers—will hang at the front of the lecture hall. They are a permanent tribute to the man who taught general chemistry so long, so well, and to so many.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">It is said that whenever maestro Arturo Toscanini began work on a piece, he approached the music as if he had never heard it before. Each time, the great conductor discovered something about the work that he had never noticed before. Although he was terribly nearsighted, Toscanini refused to wear glasses during performances. Instead, he memorized the score, note by note, instrument by instrument, measure by measure, until it was perfectly solid in his mind.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Bonk is chemistry’s Toscanini—a master teacher, tirelessly dedicated to his students, a man who approached each lecture as if he were a freshman learning chemistry for the first time. The inscription on the cake at his “retirement” party read: “Bonkistry, n. General chemistry instruction unique to Duke University, characterized by a complete absence of lecture notes, unfailing enthusiasm for teaching, backlit periodic table, and copious quantities of cursive writing on the blackboard.”</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text"><br /></span></span></p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="80%" /><p><span class="text"><em><span class="text">Harris is a physics major and rising junior. </span></em> </span></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/bonk1.jpg" width="620" height="408" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/margaret-harris" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Margaret Harris</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/les-todd" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Les Todd</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Four decades of teaching introductory chemistry to some 30,000 students has given one popular professor the profound satisfaction of science well-taught.</div></div></section> Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501745 at https://alumni.duke.edu Lemur Laments https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lemur-laments <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p><span class="text">I</span><span class="text">n a typical sunny day at the Duke Primate Center, a steady stream of visitors find themselves charmed and captivated by the exotic lemurs that live in its cages and range through its forested open enclosures. Led by volunteer guides, tour groups may witness the long-limbed acrobatic sifaka leap soaring from branch to branch. Among these agile animals might be Zoboo, the stage name for Jovian, the wide-eyed Coquerel’s sifaka that is animal host of the popular PBS children’s series Zoboomafoo.</span></p><p><span class="text">A sudden wave of raucous barking might roll across the facility, as the ruffed lemurs launch one of their periodic cacophonous choruses. In the darkened chambers of the nocturnal rooms, visitors might make out the constantly pacing aye-aye—ugly-cute animals with eerie names such as Nosferatu and Poe that look like a cross between raccoon, beaver, and bat. The tours also include skulls and skeletons of lemurs, and lectures about the peril of extinction faced by the animals on their native island of Madagascar. Tours complete, visitors may visit the gift shop to buy stuffed animals, books, and other souvenirs.</span></p><p><span class="text">Such is the alluring public face of the Primate Center, as seen by some 13,000 visitors a year, including school classes, alumni, parents, journalists, and academics. As important as such outreach programs are, public education has never been among the center’s primary missions. Rather, the center’s major objectives—besides conserving endangered animals—are basic research and educating undergraduates and graduate students. Such objectives are potentially invaluable to science and science education because the center constitutes the world’s most extensive collection of endangered primates and primate fossils—more specifically, such “prosimians” as lemurs. But many who are familiar with the Primate Center believe it has become an institution out of balance—its research and teaching achieving neither the quantity or quality expected from a component of a twenty-first-century research university.</span></p><p>Says Provost Peter Lange, “We certainly recognize that the Primate Center is an attractive place where schoolchildren and others can learn, but Duke does not have a zoological mission in and of itself. Rather, our core missions are research and teaching. Our service to society is linked through those missions, and all of our facilities need to make a substantial contribution to teaching and to advanced research.”</p><p>In fact, he points out, the center originally began purely as a research facility. The departure from this historical mission was emphasized by the report last winter of an internal review committee led by biology professor James Siedow, now vice provost for research. According to Siedow, that committee, as well as outside experts, concluded that because research and education were apparently not receiving the priority given conservation, they had lost ground in recent years. After interviewing a range of scientists, the committee concluded that the problem was partly due to a discouraging of research at the center. “Many people who tried to use the facility told us that the atmosphere had become less conducive to research, so some just abandoned their attempts to do studies there,” says Siedow.</p><p>As a result of the report, Lange and the other senior administrators launched an initiative to attempt to strengthen those missions. The initiative—under which the center will report to the provost through Vice Provost for Research Siedow—includes continued funding of the university’s 70 percent share of the Primate Center’s annual $1.2-million budget. To jump-start research, the initiative includes $300,000 in seed money for new research initiatives.</p><p>As current Primate Center Director Kenneth Glander concluded his second five-year term on July1, William Hylander, professor of biological anthropology and anatomy, assumed the directorship and will guide the initiative. Hylander, whose research explores the function and evolution of the jaw in humans and higher primates, has agreed to a three-year term devoting half-time to directing the center. Under the agreement, Hylander is to develop a long-term strategic plan for the center by November 15, 2002, that will “ensure its contributions to the research and teaching missions of the university,” says Lange.</p><p><span class="text">The university will also monitor the center’s progress, using as indicators renewal of the center’s National Science Foundation facility grant, which contributes about $300,000 per year to its budget; formation of an internal advisory committee; and growth in research and undergraduate educational use of the center. Duke will evaluate the center’s progress and decide on the future of the center in the late winter of 2003-2004, says Lange. “I hope the evaluation will be positive,” he says, “but if the evaluation is not positive at that time, we will move toward closure of the Primate Center.”</span></p><p><span class="text">According to Lange, the initiative is necessarily limited in time by the need to decide over the next three years whether to invest the estimated $5 million to $10 million required to modernize buildings and construct new winter barns for the animals. “A central challenge of the initiative will be to obtain enough information relatively soon about the long-term prospects for the center to contribute to the core university mission to enable us to make a coherent decision about a strategic investment.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Lange emphasizes that in making such a long-term investment decision, the Primate Center must be seen in context of the other major efforts to strengthen science and engineering, as described in the university’s strategic plan, “Building on Excellence.” These programs include a $200-million university-wide Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy and a $100-million Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics and Communication—both of which faculty and administrative leaders see as exemplifying programs critical to the Duke’s leadership in key fields of twenty-first-century science and engineering.</span></p><p><span class="text">“Just as we expect faculty in those disciplines to work at the forefront of their fields, we want to ensure that the Primate Center can make special and unique contributions to knowledge in its field,” says Lange. The basic criterion for research facilities, he adds, is intellectual and educational return on investment. The significance of a research field is usually reflected in its ability to attract funding, he says, quoting the strategic plan’s directive that “If we are to make the investments that significantly strengthen science and engineering at Duke, we must increase our presence in areas that are both at the research frontiers and sustainable through external support.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Of the center’s university funding, Lange says, “It is our responsibility to ask whether the approximately $800,000 per year that supports the Primate Center—as well as the considerable infrastructure investment—could support other scientific enterprises that would have a higher return in terms of our teaching and research missions.”</span></p><p><span class="text">The enhancement initiative, besides helping launch new research, includes up to $350,000 for stopgap improvements in winterization of the center. Frostbite injuries and the death of animals during the winter of 1996 led the center to establish a policy that animals will be protected from the cold without having to take refuge in the electrically heated boxes provided them. For the last five years, the center has relied on interim measures, including draping cages with plastic and heating them with propane and kerosene burners—a heating system that has tended to leak propane, created exhaust fumes, presented a fire hazard, and required constant monitoring by staff.</span></p><p><span class="text">The initiative also seeks to increase educational use of the center. While the center currently sees about a hundred students from Duke and other universities each year, who conduct research for primatology courses and independent-study projects, Dean of Arts and Sciences William Chafe says, “We would like to develop a broader-based constituency for courses. The students who are able to take advantage of the Primate Center benefit enormously, but there needs to be greater use of the center to help students understand primate evolution, physiology, and other areas.”<br /></span> <span class="text"> <br /><span class="text"><span class="text"><br /><br /></span></span></span></p><table width="188" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="2" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 200px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/070801/images/lemur2.jpg" alt="Reality show:lemurs' lives watched by both scientists and visitors" width="200" height="131" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Reality show: Lemurs' lives watched by both scientists and visitors. <span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">Chris Hildreth.</span></p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="text"><span class="text">Glander, the outgoing director, agrees that the center has great educational potential, citing the undergraduate Program in Primatology, a curriculum he launched and directs to train students in primatology and independent research. To help forge a closer link between research and teaching, former scientific director Elwyn Simons proposes launching a summer field school to immerse students in research projects on the free-ranging animals in their outdoor enclosures. The educational impact of the center is also exemplified by its outreach program for grade-school students, which also helps the university meet its responsibilities to the Durham community. “These children are the ones who will have to face the issues of diminishing biodiversity and extinction of species,” says Glander. “And the center sought to get them involved and help them understand why they should be concerned with the lemur in Madagascar, which is a long way from North Carolina.”</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">In enhancing both teaching and research, Glander says, the proposed long-term investment in research facilities and winter barns is crucial. “There is no way to do research out here any more than what we are doing. </span><span class="text">Any expansion in research will take a significant amount of money, because there have been no capital improvements out here in thirty-six years.” Such multi-million-dollar renovations would include more space for laboratories, offices, meeting rooms, animal-handling rooms, and veterinary facilities, he says. Also, Glander and his colleagues advocate constructing redesigned cages to aid both animal care and research. Such cages include passageways for easy animal transfer, eliminating the need for technicians to capture animals to move them. The new winter barns, besides offering the animals refuge from the cold, could also allow them to be released into the open enclosures on warm winter days, which Glander says would enable year-round behavioral research. Besides new bricks and mortar, increasing research will require additional staff, say both Glander and Simons, including a research manager who can give researchers personalized attention and service.</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">The Duke administration has not ruled out closing the center, but they emphasize that their preferred objective is to improve it. Says Chafe, “There are people who are concerned that, because we have identified the problem as requiring a decision, and we have said the status quo is not acceptable, that means we’re automatically committed to closing the Primate Center. And that’s not the case. It is rather a question of recognizing that the time has come to make a decision.”</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">Should university officials judge the research and education initiatives and fund raising to have failed, any plan to close the center would likely bring major repercussions, say the Primate Center’s leadership and staff. For one thing, they believe that criticism from the public and scientific community would be substantial, citing as an example a recent letter from University of Miami anthropologist Linda Taylor, who studies the center’s ringtail lemurs. She wrote, “‘Disinvesting’ the Primate Center is akin to paving the Duke Gardens to provide additional parking while saving on groundskeeping costs, or to Yale University ‘disinvesting’ the Peabody Museum. Such facilities are part of what makes few institutions stand out among their peers as great universities. ‘Disinvestment’ diminishes not only research careers of many individuals, but it ultimately diminishes the reputation of Duke University as an academic leader in innovative research programs.”</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">Efforts to close the center would prove prolonged at best, Glander says, and might not even be feasible. “If the decision were made to close the center, it would take two to five years, mainly finding homes for the animals or waiting until they die, which might be even longer than five years.” Many of the animals live for decades in captivity, he says, and zoos would have difficulty accommodating them. “Most zoos are not capable of taking the animals and, in fact, wouldn’t want to risk their dying and generating bad publicity. A typical zoo wants only a couple of lemurs for exhibit, but they don’t have room for more. Zoos don’t do research or sponsor long-term breeding programs. They’re not interested in social behavior or understanding the animals’ ecology.” </span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">Center veterinarian Cathy Williams says that her experience with scientists has convinced her that the center’s closure would mean loss of a unique resource for prosimian tissues, as well as decades of experience in the care and management of lemurs. “There are a lot of people at the center with an <br />incredible amount of knowledge about how to handle these animals and keep them healthy in captivity “ she says. “There is also a huge amount of physiological, medical, and behavioral information in records that is scientifically valuable and might be lost. That information could not be re-created anywhere else, because no other institution in the world matches the center in its numbers and variety of prosimian primates.”</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">Finally, Simons believes that closure of the center would end a valuable international relationship with Madagascar, including efforts to explore its caves for lemur sub-fossils, to capture critically endangered species for captive breeding, and to establish a self-sustaining zoological park at Ivoloina. That cooperative effort also includes participation in a five-year project to introduce captive-born black and white ruffed lemurs to a Madagascar nature research, Betampona, whose population of the animals is threatened because of lack of genetic diversity.</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">A major commitment to raising funds will be critical to meeting the Primate Center’s need for $5 million to $10 million in facilities renovations, not to mention an estimated $20 million needed for a permanent endowment, Glander says. “I believe that the director has to be turned loose, and that there is potential out there for fund raising.” In particular, he says, many potential donors are especially interested in species preservation.</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">David Ingram, a longtime supporter of the center, is one such benefactor. His donations include $1 million to its endowment and support for the first new winter barn for the animals. “It does seem to me that species as interesting as these lemurs deserve more attention than they have been getting,” says Ingram, chairman and president of Tennessee-based Ingram Entertainment. “I have felt that the center is a worthwhile cause, and I’ve wanted the Duke administration to get more excited about what they have in the Primate Center. But there are many worthy causes and needs within any university, so I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to sit in [President Keohane’s] chair and say, ‘Well, here’s how you should divide up your money,’ because I am not qualified to make that type of decision. But I have felt good about the money that I have given to the Primate Center, because I think that it at least has shown the administration that somebody cares about what’s going on and thinks that they’re doing a good job.”</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">To Provost Lange, fund raising will likely become far easier with an enhanced research program. “It’s hard to raise money if you don’t have a clear picture of the mission, and both our internal and external reviews confirmed that the center’s mission is inappropriately unclear,” he says. “As long as there’s been this cloud over the Primate Center about what exactly is its contribution to the university’s broader missions in teaching and research, it’s been difficult to raise money.”</span></span></p><p><span class="text"><span class="text">Deciding the future of the Duke Primate Center is certainly an extremely complex, and even emotional, endeavor. Ambitions must be balanced with resources, and potentials with realities. But as excruciatingly difficult and multidimensional as the decision process is, it represents only one of many such challenges Duke will face as it heightens its profile among research universities. ”</span></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/lemur1.jpg" width="620" height="419" alt="Eyes on the future:Will Duke still be her home?" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/dennis-meredith" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dennis Meredith</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The Duke Primate Center faces critical questions about its mix of research, teaching, and conservation.</div></div></section> Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501744 at https://alumni.duke.edu The Art of the Exhibition https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/art-exhibition <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p><span class="text">I</span><span class="text">n January 1988, Cas Stachelberg ’89 returned to the Duke campus to begin a belated junior year after a seven-month absence spent working at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York’s SoHo district. He came back to school with a considerable amount of new work experience—and with an idea that has evolved into an undergraduate program unlike any other in the country.</span></p><p><span class="text">Stachelberg’s sabbatical job had involved him in all aspects of operating a professional <br /> art gallery, including working with the registrar, assisting the art handlers, and helping to install exhibitions of works by internationally renowned artists. The experience, he says, <br /> had been enjoyable and rewarding for him, and highly useful in augmenting his art-history major.</span></p><p><span class="text">“During that semester off, I said to myself, ‘I’m going back to school in January. How can I join these two worlds—the New York art world and the world of Duke University?’ I had these two ideas that were going on in my head, and I wanted to find a way to put them together. At the time there really wasn’t a venue for contemporary art in Durham, but I had this idea: ‘Why not bring some of this work from the gallery back to Duke?’ ”</span></p><p><span class="text">After receiving a positive response to the idea from Cooper and other members of her staff, Stachelberg arrived at Duke in January and almost immediately contacted Michael Mezzatesta, director of the Duke University Museum of Art. When he sat down with Mezzatesta, Stachelberg proposed an exhibition that would bring works by some of the most widely known artists in Cooper’s stable to DUMA, and offered to serve as the show’s curator.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Recalling that meeting, Mezzatesta says that when he heard Stachelberg’s proposal and recognized that this was an opportunity to bring works by internationally known contemporary artists to the museum, “I jumped on it, because I thought it was a great idea to have a student do an exhibition like that. I’ve always really liked the idea of giving students firsthand experience instead of having them deal with something only in the abstract. So I called Paula Cooper, and it turned out that she was more than willing to work with us.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“I hadn’t thought of it as a continuing program, but he very quickly did,” says Stachelberg. “As we talked about it conceptually, we realized it would be great to have a student curate a show annually.” Now in its fourteenth year, the program has generated a dozen exhibitions of works by well-known, almost exclusively contemporary artists, each exhibition accompanied by a handsome catalogue that includes photographs and scholarly essays by the student curators. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Mezzatesta offered Stachelberg $2,000 in museum funds to help pay the costs of his exhibition. Before it was all over, Stachelberg would raise several thousand dollars more in order to cover expenses that included shipping, insurance, and publication of the exhibition catalogue—all of which, except for catalogue design and printing, were his responsibility rather than the museum’s. Realizing in advance that he was looking at a substantial time commitment, he arranged to receive a semester’s academic credit for his work as an independent-study project—a model that would be followed in subsequent student-curated shows and eventually expanded to a full year’s credit.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">By the end of the spring semester, Stachelberg had formulated the overall plan for his exhibition. His aim was to put together a show that would reflect the sharp contrast between the two styles of art in which the Paula Cooper Gallery had long specialized—minimalism and neo-expressionism—and would include works by six internationally known artists. “Paula had been embracing these two very different types of art since the late 1960s,” he says, “and she was steeped in them, so the selection of artists came out of what I was exposed to at the gallery.” He decided to represent the cool, stripped-down minimalist aesthetic with works by Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, and Joel Shapiro, and to combine their pieces with comparatively “hot” neo-expressionist works by Jonathan Borofsky, Michael Hurson, and Elizabeth Murray. Then he began organizing his thoughts for the essays he would write for the show’s accompanying catalogue. His exhibition was scheduled to open in early November.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">For the summer, Stachelberg returned to New York, where his gallery experience helped him find employment as an assistant to Barbara Haskell, the curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His main job was to help her organize an exhibition of Donald Judd’s minimalist sculpture—a fortuitous development that not only helped him become more familiar with the work of one of the artists to be represented in his DUMA show, but enabled him to spend two months in a museum setting where he could “pick up some pointers on how all this is done.” While there, he selected the works to be included and negotiated loan agreements with their owners, including the artists and a number of private collectors.</span></p><table width="188" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="2" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 155px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/070801/images/art7.jpg" alt="Blue Green Bridge, 2000, Do-Ho Suh, plastic figures, steel structure, polycarbonate sheets, 448 x 51 x 24 in., Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin Gallery" width="173" height="225" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"></p><p>Blue Green Bridge, 2000, Do-Ho Suh, plastic figures, steel structure, polycarbonate sheets, 448 x 51 x 24 in., Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin Gallery; detail below.</p><p><img src="/issues/070801/images/art6.jpg" alt="Blue Green Bridge, 2000, Do-Ho Suh, plastic figures, steel structure, polycarbonate sheets, 448 x 51 x 24 in., Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin Gallery; detail" width="155" height="200" border="1" /></p></div></div></div></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="text">When Stachelberg returned to school in August, as he recalls, “I hit the ground running and started writing the essays. I wrote a kind of general statement about the show and six essays about the artists. I remember spending some very late nights working on the essays.” In keeping with his initial thought about bringing the New York art world and Duke together, he decided to title the exhibition “SoHo at Duke” (a name that was applied to subsequent exhibitions curated under the program, until SoHo lost its central place in the New York art market during the 1990s, and Duke’s student curators began broadening their search territory within and beyond New York). During its seven-week run into late December, Stachelberg says, his exhibition was “very well covered in the local news media and, in the end, very well received. This was a slightly different take on the traditional museum show, and it was a new group of artists for the whole community.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Some thirteen years later, Stachelberg says, “It was a great work experience that involved a lot of different components—developing a concept; approaching artists, gallery directors, and the director of a museum; pitching the idea to everybody; convincing collectors that lending these works for the show was going to be a good thing; working with a museum staff; writing a catalogue and working with the catalogue designer; and dealing with shipping and insurance. At the time I was very much a student, but still, it felt like this is exactly what independent curators would be doing.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Unlike a number of other participants in the program that his idea inspired, Stachelberg doesn’t work for an art gallery or an art museum, and he doesn’t teach in a university art-history program. But he has continued to do work that he sees as directly related to his experience as Duke’s first student curator. </span></p><p><span class="text">After graduating, he went back to the Paula Cooper Gallery and worked there for three years. Then, as he says, “I walked away from contemporary art, because it was a bad time in the market, and I felt that it was time for a change. I started working with an urban archaeologist, doing field work on sites in lower Manhattan, and I got turned on to urban history and found that the historical side of archaeology was wonderful.” Since being awarded his master’s degree in preservation from Columbia University four years ago, he has worked with Higgins & Quasebarth, a historic-preservation and rehabilitation consulting firm based in SoHo. His work has involved him largely with buildings in New York, but it has also taken him on several occasions to Mostar, a city in southern Bosnia that was badly damaged during the Bosnian civil war and is most widely known for the loss of its seventeenth-century stone bridge. “I like to think of myself as still involved in the curatorial process,” he says. “Now I’m caring for buildings in the same way a curator cares for paintings and sculptures.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Over the years since Stachelberg’s exhibition, twenty other Duke students, following in his curatorial footsteps, have worked individually or collaboratively on shows that have brought a wide variety of world-class contemporary art to DUMA and have explored a number of provocative, often controversial themes. Examples have included text-augmented photographic appropriations by the quintessentially postmodern Barbara Kruger, a show focusing on a Duke student’s own contemporary art collection, an exhibitition exploring the theme of self-identity in the work of a dozen artists in the age group pegged as “Generation X,” a landmark display of contemporary Nicaraguan paintings, a show about the influence of technology on artists in the San Francisco Bay area, and, most recently, works by contemporary Asian-born artists who have developed transnational identities and visual languages. One student, Sherri Sauter ’97, bucked the trend of curating only contemporary shows and organized an exhibition drawn from DUMA’s extensive collection of woodblock prints by nineteenth-century American artist Winslow Homer.</span></p><p><span class="text">During preliminary discussions with interested students, Mezzatesta stresses the inherent difficulties in curating an art exhibition. “I try to frighten them,” he says. “I tell them at the beginning that this is going to be the best experience of their lives in many ways, and that in some ways it’s going to be the worst experience of their lives. I tell them they’re going to be working with difficult dealers and difficult artists and difficult collectors. I tell them that it’s going to be frustrating, and that they’re going to have to make compromises. It’s a real-life experience, and that’s why I think that, by far, it’s the best training any student can get in museum studies.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Mezzatesta credits Kristine Stiles, an associate professor in Duke’s department of art and art history, as the faculty mainstay for the program, describing her as a dedicated teacher and mentor to many of the students who’ve worked on these projects. Stiles had just started teaching at Duke for the 1988 fall semester when Cas Stachelberg enrolled in her seminar on popular culture. Because they very quickly developed a good student-teacher relationship, she agreed to serve as the faculty adviser for the independent-study course he had designed for the purpose of curating his exhibition.</span></p><p><span class="text">“In terms of the critical thinking that went into the catalogue essays, working with her was incredibly helpful,” he says. “She really helped me formulate my thoughts and get those essays to the point where we could publish them.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Stiles describes the curatorial program as “a crash course in becoming a young professional,” and says, “These students learn to collaborate. They learn to deal with multiple levels of people involved in the industry of art. They learn to write, to communicate effectively, and they learn to formulate a budget. They learn to meet very, very sophisticated strangers and to entertain ideas that they never would have entertained. They gain self-confidence.” Not only does the program prepare them for professional curatorial work, she says, “I think it prepares them for anything.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">A specialist in global, post-war art, Stiles has overseen the intellectual aspect of the program—the thematic development of the exhibitions and the writing of the catalogue essays—for all but three of the shows it has generated. She commends the program as invaluable for the way it exposes students to “the most contemporary, avant-garde art in whatever city they go to.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“It’s always been my policy to encourage and enable the students to select the work for these shows on their own, to select the best art they can find, and to select a theme that holds the work together,” she says. “They have to organize their aesthetics into an intellectual project—to make their subject cohere, not only visually, but in a text. Then they have to do research on the individual artists and on the subject that they plan to write about. They have to learn to write a coherent essay that is not only on a high intellectual level, but is also readable to the public. Then they have to edit it and rewrite it, and that is very difficult.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">As for the value of the program to the university community and the larger surrounding community, Stiles says, “It’s a confrontation with contemporary art that otherwise doesn’t really occur in the museum on a regular basis. There’s nothing better than really contemporary, avant-garde art to raise the cultural level of a city, because the discourse about it engages one in the most important questions of our period. Confrontation with visual form that is of its time or beyond its time can be a very difficult project—a project of growth—which is why so much art gets censored. It’s really a confrontation with ourselves. The program exposes students and the community to new art, and the shows have sometimes been controversial for that very reason. These students have brought in work that was very advanced.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Even some of her colleagues “didn’t get a lot of the work” in the last show that Stiles advised on, 1999’s “The Perfect Life: Artifice in L.A.,” she says. “There was this bedroom set in that show by Jorge Pardo, and no one seemed to know what to make of it.” Perhaps those who didn’t get it should have read the catalogue essay by Alexandra Winokur ’99, one of that show’s three co-curators, in which she devoted more than two pages to a meticulous critical and scholarly analysis of Pardo’s untitled bedroom installation. Winokur’s essay—which she recalls having rewritten five times—exemplifies the kind of intellectually rigorous, theoretically solid, yet reader-friendly writing that can result from the kind of exactingly critical writer-editor relationship that Stiles describes. After citing an art-historical precedent for the installation in Claes Oldenburg’s 1963 piece titled Bedroom, Winokur went on to write, “Jorge Pardo’s bedroom installations reveal the concurrence of art and life in Los Angeles.... The bedroom set displayed in the context of a museum removes its functional aspect, and the museum-goer is asked to inspect the bedroom as a sculpture, or an object of examination, not an actual space to be inhabited.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“We ran into numerous fire drills,” says Winokur, “probably more than the curators of any of the other student shows. We had artists threatening to pull works from the show at the last minute. I remember talking on the phone at about one or two in the morning to Paul Sietsema, the artist who made the sixteen-millimeter film Untitled (Beautiful Place) that was the thematic centerpiece of the whole show, and he was threatening not to let us show it, because he didn’t like the way it was going to be installed in the museum. We wanted to build a room inside the museum and show it there, so you could hear the sound of the projector reverberating throughout the gallery as you looked at the rest of the work, but he wanted us to show it in a classroom down the hall. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“Finally, Kristine Stiles called him on the phone, and she ultimately was able to persuade him to let us use it. And then, on the day Victoria Vesna’s work was supposed to be shipped to us, she pulled one of her palm-tree video pieces that we had lined up for the show, because she said it wasn’t working properly or something. So we were missing one of the pieces we discussed in our essays.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">In retrospect, though, she says that negotiating the myriad difficulties involved in curating the show was probably the most valuable part of the experience. “The teamwork that it took to overcome obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, and to get the show done in spite of everything—that’s what has helped me more than anything else about the project since I graduated,” she says. “No matter how many crazy things kept happening and how many problems we had, we just knew we had to figure out a solution.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Participating in the program has changed the lives of many of the twenty-one students. “There have been students who were thinking of not going to graduate school, but after participating in this program they’ve changed their minds,” says Mezzatesta. “There have been others who were going to go into banking but instead decided to become art scholars. You see them grow over the course of the year. They start out being insecure and tentative, but by the time their shows open, they’ve struggled and triumphed and developed a strong point of view. We’ve never had a case where the students didn’t get the job done. There’s a lot of blood, sweat, and tears involved, but it’s an immensely rewarding experience.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Noting that Stiles was her faculty adviser beyond their work together on “The Perfect Life,” Winokur says, “She used to always say that modern artists changed the way people looked at and saw the world. I like to say that Kristine Stiles changed the way I looked at and saw the world. She’s brilliant and amazing, and she really changed my life intellectually.”</span></p><table style="width: 1150px;" width="188" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="2" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 250px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/070801/images/art8.jpg" alt="Art attack: a sampling of catalogues from shows at DUMA" width="250" height="165" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"></p><p>Studies in American Art: Three Flags, 2000, Yukinori Yanagi, plexiglass, colored sand, ants, glue, 32 x 48 x 6 in., Courtesy of James Coahn Gallery.</p></div></div></div></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="text">About three months after graduating with a major in art history and French, Winokur learned that she was among four recent college graduates selected to work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York with year-long internships. She’s convinced that her experience in DUMA’s student curatorial program is the reason she was selected. Although she was initially disappointed to be assigned to the museum director’s office, rather than the curatorial department, she says she soon fell in love with the managerial aspects of the museum. When the internship was over, she got a job in banking—as an analyst for Goldman Sachs & Co.—in order to acquire more of the practical experience she’ll need in order to attain her long-term goal of directing an art museum or similar institution.</span></p><p><span class="text">Winokur isn’t the first student curator from Duke to go to work almost immediately after graduation as an intern at MOMA. She was preceded a few years earlier by Jennifer Grausman ’96, who, with classmates Andrew Lohr and Lisa Pasquariello, co-curated the 1996 show “Fractured Fairy Tales: Art in the Age of Categorical Disintegration.” That show brought together works by nine artists and a two-artist team, all of which dealt with a close-to-home theme—the relationship between artists and the institutions that show their work. </span></p><p><span class="text">By the time Grausman entered Duke as a freshman in 1992, the student curatorial program had been in place long enough to establish a reputation among aspirants to careers in art or art history, and it was one of the reasons she applied to and chose to enroll at Duke. “It was the most intensive project and course work that I did in my time at Duke,” she says. “It was the cornerstone of what I learned in art history, and it was also the most professional aspect of art that I was exposed to. It was a good grounding in the practicalities of the art world.” While originally interested in curatorial work, Grausman soon shifted her interests to fund raising—an area she had first been exposed to as a student curator —and after her internship she went to work in MOMA’s development office. She currently serves as the museum’s manager of exhibition funding.</span></p><p><span class="text">When Sofia Lacayo ’95 set out to curate an exhibition of contemporary paintings from her native Nicaragua, to open at DUMA in her senior year at Duke, she didn’t know what she was in for. “I didn’t know anything,” she says, looking back almost seven years. “I just thought it would be fun. I was so naïve. I didn’t know how much work would be involved. And I didn’t know that it would have the impact it has had in my life.” </span></p><p><span class="text">Lacayo moved to this country with her family when she was a young child, but she maintained an interest in her homeland, in the art there, and in the broader field of Latin American art in general. As an art-history major at Duke, she proposed an exhibition of Nicaraguan paintings as a means of pursuing those overlapping interests. Kristine Stiles was on sabbatical leave during the year when Lacayo was organizing the show, so Lacayo was advised on the essay component of the project by Dorie Reents-Budet, then an associate curator at DUMA. Lacayo says the most useful resource she discovered in researching her show was Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art, a New York gallery that specializes in Latin American art. After reading the only two available books on Nicaraguan art and looking at several hundred paintings, Lacayo eventually narrowed down her selection to fifty-five works by nine artists. She titled it “Patria: Contemporary Nicaraguan Painting.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Because there had never been a major museum exhibition of Nicaraguan paintings in the United States, it attracted widespread attention, particularly among native Nicaraguans living in this country, as well as others with a special interest in Latin American art. Many of those people came to see the show, and, Lacayo says, “They were very laudatory. They all said, ‘Thank you for doing this. This is a great thing.’ ” One of the collectors who had loaned works to the exhibit was so impressed that he later paid to have the entire show shipped to Nicaragua, where it was prominently exhibited in the mezzanine of the Teatro Ruben Dario in Managua. The exhibit’s appearance there provided the occasion for Lacayo to return to her native land in dramatically triumphant fashion. Nine hundred people attended the exhibition’s opening reception, and as proud as she was, Lacayo admits, “I was horrified to have to stand in front of that many people and give a talk.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Instead of jumping immediately into a career in the art world after she graduated from Duke, Lacayo took a job as an account executive at J. Walter Thompson, the advertising firm, whose Latin American accounts she handled. She describes the year she spent in that position as “an intentional hiatus from art, because I needed one after working so hard on my show.” When she left advertising, it was to take on the role of director of Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art, the gallery that she had found indispensable while researching her DUMA exhibit. She remains in that capacity today.</span></p><p><span class="text">Valerie Hillings ’93, a co-curator of “SoHo at Duke IV: In Search of Self” in 1993, describes the experience of organizing that show as “the ultimate independent study,” and says, “It was the high point of my undergraduate experience. It was a great culminating point to an art history degree, because it required you to really stretch your intellect and your imagination.” Noting that art-history students usually encounter only photographs of artworks, rather than the actual objects themselves, Hillings points out that curating the exhibition also brought her and co-curator Lisa Constantino into direct contact with professional artists and their studios—an even rarer experience for students. “It was a profound experience going to artists’ studios and interacting with them, and recognizing that you could be treated as an intellectual equal by people with that level of experience,” she says.</span></p><p><span class="text">Hillings and Constantino’s show focused on the theme of self-identity in the work of twelve artists in the twenty-to-thirty-something age group that was then being widely touted, discussed, and theorized as “Generation X”—their own age group—and the artists whose work they selected for the show were only five to ten years older than themselves. Hillings says, “I liked that the art we were dealing with had a direct connection with daily life and society and personal experience, and that we were able to introduce this art to a broader audience. We were able to show that art is not just about things in museums—that it sparks ideas and ways of thinking.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Stiles says she had some difficulty understanding the work in Hillings and Constantino’s exhibition. “I definitely am not Generation X,” she says, adding, “I’m not sure that art’s going to hold up really well over time, but I have continued to think about it ever since they did the show. So I learned to think about something new myself.”<br />Hillings is finishing work on her dissertation for a Ph.D. in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts—a school she chose in part, she says, because it’s where Mezzatesta earned his Ph.D. Her postgraduate experience has also included a year-long fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. </span></p><p><span class="text">Lynn Kellmanson Matheny ’91, co-curator of “SoHo at Duke III: Five Artists from the Charles Cowles Gallery” in 1991, double-majored in art history and comparative-area studies. After graduating, she earned her Ph.D. degree in art history from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1999. She went to Washington on a year-long curatorial fellowship at the National Gallery of Art, where she worked as a research assistant on “Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries.” This June, she began work at her new post as assistant curator of exhibition programs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.</span></p><p><span class="text">Kimberly Smith ’90, who (with Christopher Fehlinger ’91) co-curated the 1990 show, “SoHo at Duke II: Barbara Kruger,” calls the experience “the final lesson I needed to assure myself that art history was going to be enriching and satisfying for a long time and in a way that I was pretty sure nothing else could be.” She says, “It really solidified my passion for art history and made my college experience dramatically more formative. And, more practically speaking, I think it helped me to get into graduate school.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Smith didn’t enter graduate school immediately. Instead, she moved to New York and worked at the Drawing Center, a nonprofit gallery in SoHo, in order to acquire more of the real-life art-world experience that her curatorial project at Duke had allowed her. Then she went to Berlin to learn German, required as a second language by many graduate programs in art history. When she returned, she began her graduate studies at Yale University, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1998. After serving for a year as a visiting professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, she signed on in 1999 as an assistant professor in the art history department at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where she continues to teach.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The latest in the series of student-curated exhibitions—“Made in Asia?”—was organized by Randi Reiner ’01 and Phil Tinari ’01. Stan Abe, an associate professor of art history at Duke whose academic specialty is early Chinese Buddhist art, served as faculty adviser. Made up of fourteen pieces by nine artists, the show was smaller than most of its predecessors in the series, but in some ways was more ambitious than any of them. The artists represented hail from Japan, Korea, or China; and the fact that all but one of them now live and work in this country or Europe is one of the central issues Reiner and Tinari chose to highlight. The title’s concluding question mark refers to the ambiguity of these artists’ national identities in the transnational context in which they operate professionally, and to the student curators’ questioning of the very category of Asian art.</span></p><p><span class="text">With a major in art history and public policy, Reiner plans to move to New York and work as a financial consultant while considering her next career move. Tinari, who double-majored in literature and history, has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship that will take him to China this coming year. Their elaborately designed catalogue is illustrated with thirty-four color photographs of the works in the show and others by the same artists.</span></p><p><span class="text">In his foreword to Reiner and Tinari’s catalogue, Mezzatesta discussed the import of their show and the analytical rigor the pair brought to finding, choosing, and presenting the works included. “Throughout the twentieth century, the history of the United States has been integrally linked with Asia,” he wrote. “Now, at the dawn of a century in which national economies are intertwined and ideological purity is fading, the United States may begin to focus on cultural issues confronting these nations and their relationship to the West.</span></p><p><span class="text">“In an era when the West has exerted a seemingly ineluctable hold on other cultures, and when national differences wane as a global culture waxes pervasive, how do Asian artists see themselves in relation to their indigenous traditions both national and regional? In this exhibition, our student-curators pose this question and propose answers.… Through their eyes, we have been introduced to some of the critical issues surrounding the dialogue on ‘Asian-ness.’ ”</span></p><p><span class="text">“One could ask why these works have been gathered at the Duke University Museum of Art,” says adviser Abe. “Certainly this project is worthwhile for the edification of the student-curators, as well as the university and wider community. Individuals of Asian descent may feel in some way recognized by the exhibition; other supporters of multiculturalism will no doubt feel enriched and validated.</span></p><p><span class="text">“In the end, one can only look to the works themselves for guidance. What do they tell us, not about some abstraction called ‘Asia,’ but about the world we live in—its global predicament—and about the world of contemporary art?” </span></p><p><span class="text">Abe’s question, in one form or another, has been asked by each of the student-curators in the long DUMA series. And as it is asked, that world of contemporary art is brought to Duke, held up to the light of scholarship, and examined through exhibition. The answers have varied from year to year, but the process of asking remains invaluable, for the students and for the community as well</span>.<span class="text"><br /></span></p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="80%" /><em><span class="text">Patterson is a freelance writer, visual-art critic, and art professorand independent curator who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.</span></em></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/art9.jpg" width="637" height="265" alt="Art attack: a sampling of catalogues from shows at DUMA" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/tom-patterson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Tom Patterson</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A student-curator program, now fourteen years old, continues to provide deep engagement with art—and to spark careers devoted to the world of art.</div></div></section> Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501743 at https://alumni.duke.edu Does Testing Make the Grade? https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/does-testing-make-grade <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p><span class="text">In public schools across the country, there’s a new skill being taught as early as the primary grades: how to use a number-two pencil to fill in the “bubble form,” an answer sheet for multiple-choice tests that can be instantly scanned and scored by computer. In North Carolina, some second-graders have been practicing this task and other test-taking strategies in anticipation of the upcoming school year, when all third-graders in the state will take a single, multiple-choice, end-of-grade (EOG) test that will likely determine whether they are promoted to the fourth grade or held back a year. </span></p><p><span class="text">At a time when some top colleges are questioning how much weight to give standardized-test scores in admissions decisions, standardized testing for K-12 students is increasing in nationwide influence. A study conducted by Jay P. Heubert M.A.T. ’74, associate professor of education and adjunct professor of law at Columbia University, finds that a rapidly growing number of states are engaged in “high stakes” testing, requiring students to pass standardized tests as a condition of grade-to-grade promotion. In some states, including North Carolina, test scores are also being used to determine teacher bonuses and school rankings. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, at least twenty-seven states now use standardized tests in promotion and funding decisions, and President Bush has recently proposed to withhold federal funds from schools that repeatedly fail to meet minimum standards.</span></p><p><span class="text">Standardized testing as a diagnostic measure of overall student knowledge and skill is nothing new, but “high stakes” assessment is a relatively recent and highly controversial phenomenon. While national surveys have repeatedly found that a majority of Americans favor raising academic standards and holding schools accountable for student achievement, a serious backlash against high-stakes testing, particularly in the early grades, has begun to emerge.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">In Florida, one group of teachers sent back the end-of-year bonuses they received as a result of their students’ higher test scores, saying that one-time, standardized paper-and-pencil tests are an affront to their daily, professional assessment of individual student achievement. In Michigan, Ohio, and Massachusetts, parents have organized boycotts of state-mandated exams. In Milwaukee, parents, teachers, and others stonewalled a plan to expand standardized testing to kindergarten, first, and second grades. In Durham this May, representatives of at least four different parent groups from across the state spoke out at a hearing designed to alert legislators to their concerns about high-stakes testing. The groups favor fair testing, but reject the use of standardized assessments as the primary indicators of a child’s curriculum mastery. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Across the nation, critics have argued that testing reduces teacher and student creativity, focuses too much on basic skills rather than higher-order thinking, and confines teachers to “teach to the test” rather than to a more broadly-based curriculum. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The roots of the current standards movement go back to 1981, when a study commission convened by the Reagan administration issued A Nation at Risk. The report sounded the alarm that “a rising tide of mediocrity” in the nation’s public education system would eventually lead to erosion of the nation’s workforce competitiveness. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">For its part, North Carolina had been measuring school performance by district as early as 1978, but in the early 1990s the state legislature mandated a more rigorous form of statewide testing designed to measure individual school performance. In response, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction introduced “The New ABC’s of Public Education” in May 1995. The plan requires that all North Carolina public school students take end-of-grade tests that are tied directly to North Carolina’s curriculum or “Standard Course of Study.” (In some states, more general achievement tests not directly linked to curricular objectives and content are administered.) </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">After North Carolina and Texas were designated as the two pacesetter states in the advancement of school accountability at the 1999 National Education Summit, both major party candidates referred repeatedly to North Carolina’s accomplishments during the 2000 presidential debates. George W. Bush in particular hailed high-stakes testing as the most effective means to end social, or unearned, promotion and restore confidence in the nation’s public education system. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Until this year, North Carolina’s ABC’s test scores have been used only to measure overall school performance in reading comprehension and math skills among students in third through eighth grades. Writing test scores administered in the fourth, seventh, and tenth grades are also entered into the complex formula that has been used to measure and reward individual school performance and to determine teacher bonuses. At the high-school level, End of Course (EOC) tests are administered in Algebra I; Algebra II; Biology; Chemistry; Economic, Legal, and Political Systems; English I; English II; Geometry; U.S. History; Physical Science; and Physics.</span></p><p><span class="text">Today, certified teachers in North Carolina can receive an end-of-year bonus of $1,500 if their school meets the “exemplary” or highest-growth standard in their scores (set by the state at 10 percent above the statewide average growth). Teachers in schools that meet a predetermined “expected growth standard” earn a $750 bonus. Below these two designations are “adequate performing” schools where at least 50 percent of students are performing at grade level, and “low performing” schools that do not meet their goals or have less than 50 percent of students performing at grade level. No teacher rewards are associated with the latter two designations, though the fifteen lowest-performing schools statewide are targeted to receive special assistance from advisory teams deployed by the state.</span></p><p><span class="text">Does this business incentive model work for teachers? Brett Jones, who has taught at Duke for the last two years in the education department, is now working on a book that considers the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing, based on his study of twenty-three teachers in Durham County. “There is some evidence that teachers are expecting more of their students and are working harder,” he says. But he suspects that down the road, we may see teachers opting to work in higher-performing schools where the bonuses may be less challenging to come by. The bonus system also may make it more difficult to recruit both new and veteran teachers to work in low-performing schools, a subject yet to be investigated fully, says Jones. </span></p><p><span class="text">North Carolina’s school officials, bolstered by their success with overall school performance measurements, have just raised the stakes another notch. They are now phasing in the use of EOG and EOC scores in individual student promotion decisions.</span></p><p><span class="text">Beginning with the school year just ended, individual students’ EOG test scores in reading, mathematics, and writing are the “gateway” to student promotion for all fifth-graders in North Carolina. Next year, the third- and eighth-grade gateways will take effect.</span></p><p><span class="text">At the high-school level, some EOC exams are also now being weighted as a full 25 percent of a student’s year-long grade for the first time. So a student could go into the state exam with a low “C “ average, perform very poorly on the EOC, and actually flunk the course, earning no credit for a year’s work in that subject area. (In prior years, high-school EOC tests were only marginally weighted in a student’s final grade.) Effective with the graduating class of 2004-05, students will also have to pass an exit exam of essential skills to earn a high-school diploma.</span></p><p><span class="text">Public-instruction officials have repeatedly emphasized that students in grades three, five, and eight who do not pass the EOG the first time may retake the test several days later to determine if the initial score was a fluke or if the student simply had a bad test day. Students who do not pass in the second round, however, must participate in remedial work over the summer and are then retested before the next school year begins. If they do not pass the test on the third attempt, they are held back. </span></p><p><span class="text">Parents or teachers who believe a student has been unfairly judged may then request a portfolio review of the student’s overall work during the year just ended. Under state policy, this evaluation must be conducted by an independent committee of teachers and a principal from another school, who then recommend pass or fail. Ultimately, the final decision about promotion rests with the principal of the school that the child attends. </span></p><p><span class="text">David Malone Ph.D.’84, assistant professor of the practice in Duke’s education department, teaches a number of undergraduates who are working toward their Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.). As part of their training, M.A.T. candidates enter local classrooms to practice teaching. In addition, Malone oversees a grant-funded project involving some 100 Duke undergraduates—many of whom are also students in his educational psychology class. These students tutor fourth- and fifth-grade students from Durham twice a week for an hour helping to prepare them for the EOG exams. <br /></span></p><table width="188" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="2" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><img src="/issues/070801/images/test2.jpg" alt="Young student balancing books on his head" width="217" height="275" border="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="text">“Now that the gateway ABC’s are finally here,” Malone says, “people in North Carolina are asking a lot more questions about each individual school’s resources, the inequities we have in early childhood opportunities for individual students, and what happens when a class loses a teacher during the year and has a disproportionate number of days with substitute teachers who are not familiar with test preparation. With so many of my undergraduates witnessing the system firsthand, it seems like testing is all we ever talk about around here.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Malone had his students take a North Carolina benchmark or practice exam designed to test fifth-grade reading comprehension. “Out of my forty undergraduates in Education 118,” he says, “only half got all the questions right. Their critical-thinking skills were too sophisticated for some of the questions. Taking this test quickly demonstrated to them that it is very difficult, even for a team of experts, to construct a fair assessment of a kid’s reading ability with a multiple-choice test.” Moreover, says Malone, new test questions and multiple versions of the tests must be constantly developed and field-tested. To maintain confidentiality of content and to avoid cheating, parents and teachers alike are not permitted to view the EOG and EOC multiple-choice tests, either before or after their administration.</span></p><p><span class="text">“Not only was the reading comprehension test we took culturally biased, in my opinion, and highly ambiguous in places,” says Malone student Dennis Davis, a Duke senior from Greensboro, North Carolina, “but it was clear to me that on one particular question, I could imagine how the fifth-grade kid I tutored would completely project his own dysfunctional family experience into the answer. There’s no way he would give the ‘correct’ answer. Heck, I didn’t get it right, either!” The question to which Davis refers asked students to judge what might be an absent father’s response to a family disaster that took place in Colonial America.</span></p><p><span class="text">“Non-instructional factors account for a significant amount of the variance among EOG test scores when schools or districts are compared,” says Steven Pfeiffer, adjunct professor of psychology and education and executive director of Duke’s Talent Identification Program for gifted middle- and high-school students. “Factors such as parents’ educational background, type of community, and poverty level account for more than 50 percent of the difference in test scores.” According to Pfeiffer, “an appropriate use for this kind of testing” is “for screening purposes to determine if schools or groups of students may need additional support and in what specific areas.” </span></p><p><span class="text">But what happens when tests become a measure of individual student performance for promotion decisions, as they have now in North Carolina? </span></p><p><span class="text">Early in the school year, the North Carolina School Psychology Association issued a position statement arguing strongly against the use of EOG tests in individual promotion decisions because, they revealed, the test itself has not been statistically validated as an accurate measure of individual student performance. The test has only been validated as a screening tool for students in the aggregate, along the lines that Pfeiffer says are useful.</span></p><p><span class="text">Using tests not validated for the measurement of an individual student’s performance is a common problem nationwide, Pfeiffer explains. “The tests simply lack a level of precision—an acceptable level of scientific or technical rigor—necessary for making decisions on individuals. Norm-referenced EOG tests were not developed and were never intended to measure the quality of learning or instruction. </span> <span class="text">And decisions that affect a student’s life or educational opportunities should never be made on the basis of a single test score, no matter how reliable or valid. To ensure fairness, students should have multiple opportunities to display their skill or competence, particularly on decisions that carry serious consequences such as promotion and graduation.” That North Carolina allows students to take the EOG test multiple times is not the same as multiple measures of performance, Pfeiffer says. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Marvin Pittman is the assistant superintendent of North Carolina Schools with the special charge of helping North Carolina close the much-discussed “achievement gap” between poor and minority students and their more affluent, generally white, counterparts. “My goal is not to make anyone love this [testing] policy,” Pittman says. “We know that a single measure can’t do it, and we’re looking at other ways to measure performance. The State Board of Education understands that you must look at other areas. Portfolio assessment [evaluating a range of examples of students’ work] may be the way to go, but we’re not there yet. As we have looked at the research, we really don’t see anyone doing this very well. In the interim, we are using the EOG. The overriding part of this policy is identifying where we need to do extensive interventions to help create better-performing students and schools.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Joe Johnson ’70, M.A.T. ’71, Ed.D. ’78 is superintendent of the Wilkes County schools, in the foothills of North Carolina. “Right now, we can honestly say that our students are reading, doing math, and writing better than they ever have,” he says. “Because of the tests, the dialogue between teachers, students, and home has increased. We are now obliged to give parents more information. One downside of the process, however, is that administering the test falls to the guidance counselors, which means they have less time to attend to individual needs of students, their academic concerns, and any problems that might be happening at home. At a time when you are increasing the awareness of individual children and the importance of learning, you are, ironically, removing one of the people who should be most involved. Testing takes enormous effort and resources, and we need more state resources for administrative help with the tests.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">In North Carolina, early in the school year the State Department of Public Instruction did ask schools to identify students they expected to have trouble passing the EOG. They obtained an additional $31 million from the state legislature to reduce class sizes and hire more teachers in low-performing schools, and to provide tutoring and special Saturday classes to assist at-risk students. For the upcoming school year, says Pittman, they have requested an additional $39 million for the same purpose.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Still, the North Carolina School Psychology Association argues that while “retention with extensive remediation has been effective with certain groups of children, promotion with similar remediation is more effective and has fewer negative effects.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“The single strongest predictor of whether students will drop out of school is whether they have been retained in grade,” writes Columbia’s Jay Heubert, citing several recent studies. “Those retained in grade even once are much likelier to drop out later than are students not retained, and the effects are even greater for students retained more than once. Moreover, much of the increase in dropout rates show up only years later, and the harm is thus largely invisible at the time the retention occurs.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Joseph DiBona, an associate professor of education at Duke, puts it this way: “Those kids who fail are going to need lots more help to pass the tests on the third try or after repeating a grade, which will be very costly. We’re in a terrible box. We have let people pass through the system for years, but after the testing is completely phased in at the lower grades in North Carolina, we may see these same kids, when they get to high school, simply drop out in frustration.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Fred Jones ’81 is the assistant principal at Jordan High School in Durham. “This is a very costly policy in terms of having to serve any given student for an extra year or more,” he says. “And at the secondary level, we are nervous that we may begin to see students who have been retained two or three times, and may finally be entering high school at age sixteen or seventeen. State law prohibits our serving any student over twenty-one, so we may have students coming into ninth grade who are simply not eligible to graduate unless the law is changed.” </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">According to the North Carolina School Psychology Association, the cost of retaining 60,000 students in grades K-12 each year in North Carolina has previously been in the neighborhood of $360 million. Increasing the education budget much further may be prohibitive. North Carolina is already strapped for funds—in part from the widespread devastation in eastern North Carolina created in 1999 by Hurricane Floyd, the continuing erosion of the state’s tax base due to the decline in tobacco sales, and the wholesale movement offshore of much of the state’s textile and furniture manufacturing. How costly it will be to make good on remediation promises and support the expansion of testing to grades three and eight next year is unclear. At the same time, if the tests do not actually increase intervention, and in some cases, retention, then how can the new system be considered more rigorous? </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The possibility that even more students could be held back a grade appeared to be on the minds of some North Carolina lawmakers when, in April, a month before this year’s testing began, some legislators were calling for an easing of standards. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">As it turned out, when this year’s fifth-grade scores came in, as many as 98 percent of students passed the fifth-grade EOG in math in some schools. Officials then admitted they had probably set the bar too low after an eleventh-hour revision to the math exam, which did not permit sufficient field-testing. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, on last year’s fifth-grade math test, students had to answer 35 to 63 percent of the questions correctly to pass, depending on the version of the test administered. This year, the passing measure ranged from 28 to 34 percent of correct answers. Says Susan Wynn, principal of Durham’s Lakewood Elementary, “I’m not sure how much of a student’s actual knowledge we were measuring if answering only 28 percent of the questions correctly was passing. We know that students can actually get 25 percent of the questions correct by random chance.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Last year, approximately 20 percent of all fifth-graders failed the reading test while some 17 percent failed the math test. “We were anticipating that 15 percent of the students would not be able to meet the standard in math,” said Lou Fabrizio, the state official who oversees North Carolina’s testing.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Steve Schewel ’73, Ph.D. ’82, visiting assistant professor in the Hart Leadership Program, part of Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, chairs the board of a progressive think tank called The Common Sense Foundation, based in Raleigh. Common Sense has been highly critical of the state’s testing system; it has distributed some 10,000 parent handbooks on the consequences of high-stakes testing. With funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, it also convened a commission to collect parent and teacher reaction through a series of hearings across the state. Schewel himself has a fifth-grader at Durham’s E. K. Powe Elementary.</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“When state officials say, ‘Our target was a 15 percent failure rate, and too many fifth-graders passed,’ it suggests to me that the state can too easily manipulate the tests for some political purpose,” Schewel says. “Are we aiming for a certain failure rate so that we can recreate the low-pay workforce we have now, identifying the kids who will eventually work at McDonald’s, and tracking them from the third grade on? Is this test just a tool to replicate our social stratification?”</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">While Schewel is speaking halfway tongue-in-cheek, he is certain that North Carolina’s agenda for testing is primarily business-driven. He points to the fact that the chair of North Carolina’s State Board of Public Instruction, Phil Kirk, also happens to be the president of North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry. The state’s largest business group, it calls itself “the state’s chamber of commerce.”</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> “Kids that fail these tests are having their self-confidence destroyed,” says Schewel. “You only have to walk through a school on test day or the few days leading up to it to witness the anxiety associated with EOG.” The Common Sense Foundation has heard from parents about children crying uncontrollably, throwing up on the tests, and physically abusing themselves with number-two pencils.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“The level of stress is way too high for a third- or fifth-grader,” Schewel says, “way beyond what children of that age should experience.” He concedes that test results have confirmed how parental income is correlated to student achievement. “Testing has now put a number on that,” he says, “and everyone is talking about the achievement gap. We can’t ignore those students anymore. But I’d still rather see more teaching and less testing.”</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p><table style="width: 1150px;" width="188" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="2" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><img src="/issues/070801/images/test3.jpg" alt="Young student balancing books on his head" width="275" height="182" border="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="text">If I could make the tests go away, I would,” says assistant principal Fred Williams. “The whole process denigrates the professionalism of teachers, the majority of whom here at Jordan have an advanced degree; some have Ph.D.s. We have reasonably rigorous licensing procedures. To have a two-hour paper-and-pencil test count more than a teacher’s year-long observation of a student doesn’t seem reasonable.” Nevertheless, Williams says that teachers have teamed up to think more creatively about how to present the curriculum, create mock test questions, develop review formats, and assess student progress in advance of the EOC tests. “Still,” he says, “I know in my field of U.S. history, the coverage of content is much more superficial now. The tests require breadth over depth. There’s no opportunity to take some extended time to explore the New Deal or the civil-rights movement or the beginnings of the women’s movement in the nineteenth century.”</span></p><p><span class="text">On the other hand, says Ike Thomas ’69, M.A.T. ’70, Ph.D. ’83, principal of Northern High School in Durham, “The EOC keeps that U.S. history teacher from spending nine weeks on the Civil War just because that’s the teacher’s favorite period in history. What we’re trying to do with EOC is create consistency and focus and keep teachers from operating as independent contractors. Still, we need to keep asking, ‘Is it a fair test?’”</span></p><p><span class="text">Thomas says he has sometimes witnessed wildly different scores from year to year, suggesting that “some years the test is different, not the kids, so comparisons of groups from one year to the next may not always be useful. But the part we find most burdensome are the field tests.” He says, “Every year we are testing for future tests. Our students tested two of four parts of the new exit exam this year.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Wilkes County superintendent Joe Johnson says he has railed at times against what he sometimes thinks of as “psychometric madness” or an overemphasis on testing. “We have to remember these are children, not numbers, we’re talking about.” Likewise, at the Common Sense Foundation’s hearing on fair testing in Durham in mid-May, parents, teachers, and organizers from at least five counties gave testimony about how much classroom time is given over to practice tests, field tests, and then the actual tests themselves. “As jobs in our society become more automated, so does our school system,” said David Freeman Ph.D. ’01. “Are we treating our kids like machines because that’s the workforce we want?”</span></p><p><span class="text">Larry Holt, a parent of two children in the Durham public schools, testified on behalf of his daughter, who had reported to him that some of her teachers were not spending a lot of time with students who were struggling with the material. “Teachers hurried to get ready for the tests,” said Holt. “But, as my daughter pointed out, different teachers teach at different rates, and students learn at different rates. I believe testing is taking away from the positive motivating experience that education ought to be. She says she doesn’t mind tests to measure performance, but how much is too much?”</span></p><p><span class="text">“Students become the unwitting victims of an over-focus on accountability,” says TIP’s Steven Pfeiffer. “They can lose their enthusiasm and passion for learning. Instruction can quickly over-emphasize memorization of facts to the relative neglect of important and enjoyable higher-level skills, such as the critical examination, synthesis, and evaluation of ideas, group problem-solving, transforming ill-defined problems, imagination, and creative discovery.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Based on his study of twenty-three teachers in Durham County, Duke researcher Brett Jones says teachers are definitely doing things differently in the classroom. “They are focusing on skill and drill and the lower objectives because multiple-choice tests generally do not involve higher-order thinking. We also found that teachers are spending less time in science and social studies in the primary grades since these areas are not tested.”</span></p><p><span class="text">When I was a Duke student and later, when I started teaching, I thought the importance of my profession was based on the abstract principle that learning is valuable, regardless of its usefulness,” says superintendent Joe Johnson. “Now we’ve moved to the point of view that learning is good for making money. That’s how we have changed socially. That economic focus, which may be good, has nevertheless caused us to lose the notion that learning by itself is worthwhile.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Principal Ike Thomas has decided to retire from public education this year. “One of the things that continues to concern me,” he says, “is the perception that public education used to be wonderful, and now it isn’t. If we go back fifty years, a lot of kids didn’t get to school at all. We didn’t worry because of manufacturing and farm jobs that were available to them. But today, we’ve made a commitment to educate all of our children. When you set the bar that high, the shortcomings are more evident. Our schools are doing more for more people than we ever have, and we’re not getting credit for it.”</span></p><p><span class="text">Superintendent Johnson agrees. “One of the most disappointing things in my career has been the decline in the status, the trust, and respect that people have for public educators,” he says. “Sure, some have misbehaved, but in our nation, there has been a general erosion of confidence in government, and public education has been one of the key focuses.”</span></p><p><span class="text">If testing ultimately fails as a remedy to upgrade our schools or becomes too costly to maintain, do we then face the disintegration of public education in favor of a voucher system and the privatization of schools? </span></p><p><span class="text">Howard Machtinger, director of the Teaching Fellows Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, speaking at the Durham hearing on fair testing, said, “Right now, I think the present administration doesn’t really believe in a public sector, only the free market. Meanwhile, we are facing a major crisis in recruiting and retaining teachers. All the talk about testing has obscured this unfolding crisis.” </span></p><p><span class="text">“What I would like to see at the state and federal level,” says Pfeiffer, “is a group of authorities brought together—experts in curriculum, child development, and measurement—to come up with the best way to promote equity and excellence in public schools. We need more dialogue in the public arena about what should be the goals of public education. I think the violence we are seeing in our schools speaks to the shared responsibility we have in helping kids deal with painful conflicts and emotions in this culture. Accountability is secondary to what we hope public education will provide our future citizens, which includes getting along with others, respecting the environment, strategic thinking, and problem solving instead of this emphasis on traditional nineteenth-century academic skill areas. We simply have not had that debate yet.”</span></p><p><span class="text">“Ultimately,” says Brett Jones, “I’d say what we have in North Carolina is a good working draft of a testing system. But for the kids in the system right now, it’s not a draft, it’s a final exam. What we’re doing is a little like building the airplane while you fly it. We are focusing on education more in this country, and on student learning, but good teachers were doing that before high-stakes testing began.”</span> <br /><span class="text"><br /></span></p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="80%" /><span class="text"><em><span class="text">Eubanks ’76 is a frequent contributor to the magazine</span></em></span></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/test1.jpg" width="620" height="436" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/georgann-eubanks" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Georgann Eubanks</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Even with broad public interest in raising academic standards and holding schools accountable, there’s a backlash against high-stakes testing.</div></div></section> Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501741 at https://alumni.duke.edu Forum: July-August 2001 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/forum-july-august-2001 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> </p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td class="text" colspan="2"><p><strong>Gun Reactions</strong><br /><br /> Editors:</p><p>Thank you for the thoughtful and balanced article “The Culture of the Gun [March-April 2001].” As a mother of two boys living in a town that treats two to three persons every week for gunshot wounds and loses at least two persons every month from gun trauma, I found Robert Bliwise’s reporting of the complexity in solving the problem of gun violence especially relevant.</p><p>Professor Philip Cook’s comment that gun violence “is everybody’s problem” is woefully correct. One result of our gun culture and the politics it spawns is that parents remain unable to ensure that one of their children’s most basic needs—safety—is met. There are three guns for every child in the U.S.; ten kids are fatally shot every day. The number of children injured by firearms, largely handgun injuries, is ten times greater than the number of polio victims during the first half of the twentieth century. American children under the age of fifteen are dying form gunfire at a rate almost twelve times higher than in twenty-five other industrialized countries combined. This is a shameful distinction. Our children need protection from the misuse, easy accessibility, and poor design of too many of the approximately 200 million firearms in this country.</p><p>I encourage Duke moms and dads to follow the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics and remove guns from your home as “the most effective measure to prevent firearm-related injuries to children and adolescents.” And before you send your child to someone’s house (playmate, relative, neighbor, sitter), please ask if they have a gun in the home. You have good reason to ask—40 percent of homes with children have a gun and most are stored improperly.</p><p>It is time that our public policies reflect the truth that most civilian gun deaths in the U.S. tend to be the result of family fights, accidents, and suicide. Only one percent (316) of the 30,708 reported firearm deaths in 1998 were justifiable homicides by private citizens.</p><p>On Mothers Day 2000, the Million Mom March attracted to the Washington Mall over 750,000 people calling for the prevention of gun death and injury. Today there are over 200 local and regional chapters across the country that may be contacted through the organization’s website, www.millionmommarch.com. I invite you to join and make your voice heard for sensible gun policy. The Million Mom March has been endorsed by Duke President Nannerl Keohane and scores of others who recognize that this organization offers a unique opportunity to say clearly to our policymakers, “Guns do kill and too many people are dying. We will not be silent to this suffering and loss.”<br /><em>Marcia Owen ’78, Durham, North Carolina<br /></em><br /> Editors:</p><p>I read with interest the article on guns in the last issue of Duke Magazine. I cannot imagine how Mr. Merrill comes to the conclusion that his experience as a police officer in the line of duty with a violent suspect equates to the average citizen’s need to be armed. If there are any lessons from his experience, it is that he should have acted sooner to protect himself, but to conclude that the common citizen would be involved in the same situation is totally bogus.</p><p>I was also amazed at some of the conclusions drawn by Professor Van Alstyne. He seems to think that perhaps Mr. Madison, like a schoolboy having to write a one-hundred-word report, put the extra words about a well-regulated militia into the Second Amendment just to fill up space. The aversion to a standing army was part and parcel of eighteenth-century liberal political thought in which Mr. Madison and other authors of the Constitution were steeped. The early republic also had few dollars to spare on anything so luxurious as a standing army even if they had wanted one. The militia was a force the country could call upon (note, I did not say “rely upon,” as experience showed that they could not be relied upon) with little expense both for national defense and as a police. A uniformed police force came much later and the militia was needed to help calm the fears of many in the South of slave uprisings. It had nothing to do with Bubba keeping an Uzi by his bedside.</p><p>I’m still searching for an example of “an army citizenry” keeping the government from doing what it wants. Shays Rebellion was a catalyst for writing the Constitution and George Washington certainly didn’t let the “armed citizenry” of Western Pennsylvania deter him during the Whiskey Rebellion.</p><p>The bottom line is that the country has evolved, the militia is no more—it was obsolete not long after the ink was dry, and the Second Amendment as worded is no longer applicable. The Constitution had provisions for slavery which are gone; the Second Amendment should go the same way.<br /><em>Robert Roser ’68 , (via e-mail)</em><br /><br /> Editors:</p><p>I appreciate Duke Magazine’s attempt to represent both sides of the gun issue in March-April 2001’s lead article, since political correctness has become an obsession at most academically elite universities.</p><p>The fact is, however, many more lives are saved than tragically lost by firearms possession and use, as first illustrated by your description of Patrick Merrill’s non-lethal brandishing of a handgun to protect his life and further documented by Professor Lott’s University of Chicago study. Even our own President Keohane required the use of force to protect her during last year’s handgun incident in the Allen Building.</p><p>No doubt the United States would be a better and safer nation if, magically, firearms were employed only for legitimate sporting purposes. Unfortunately, however, our society can no more easily revise history than we can “reinsert the toothpaste into the tube.” Guns in the possession of criminals pose a constant and grave danger to the law-abiding public. Furthermore, law enforcement—regardless of its dedication and vigilance—can neither eliminate crime nor guarantee the safety of the innocent. Therefore, individuals must seriously consider how they will provide reasonable self-protection. Under the best circumstances, police response times are measured in minutes, while death and serious injuries resulting from felons take only seconds to permanently and disastrously alter blameless lives.</p><p>I suspect even the more strident anti-firearms advocates would agree that every individual has the inherent right of self-defense. Since the government cannot and will not guarantee an individual’s safety, what reasonable and viable alternatives—other than responsible firearms ownership—do conscientious and prudent citizens have to help ensure their own security?</p><p>Obviously, gun ownership is a serious duty, which mandates firearms safety, security, training, and proficiency. However, self-protection certainly seems wise when the alternative—unpreparedness—places life itself in jeopardy.<br /><em>Roy Kiefer M.B.A. ’78, (via e-mail)</em><br /><br /> Editors:</p><p><span class="text"> </span>I was interested in Robert Bliwise’s story “The Culture of the Gun” but was sorry that he neglected to do much in the way of constitutional law research before he relied entirely on [Duke law professor William] Van Alstyne that the Second Amendment was “missing in action” in case law. That is not true.</p><p>The most relevant case law was before the U.S. Supreme Court. To quote from the Web page of the Legal Community Against Violence (a group of legal scholars and attorneys): “In U.S. v. Miller (1939), the United States Supreme Court stated that the ‘obvious purpose’ of the Second Amendment was ‘to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness’ of the state militia forces and ‘…must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.’</p><p>“Since Miller was decided, federal and state appellate courts have addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment in more than 100 cases. Without exception, these courts have rejected the view that the Second Amendment precludes federal, state, or local regulations of the manufacture, sale, and possession of guns.</p><p>“Although academic views differ regarding the precise intent of the Founding Fathers with respect to the Second Amendment, the leading scholars that have addressed the issue agree that the amendment plainly permits regulations.”</p><p>You will also find, if you dig deeper, that there was a draft second amendment that was not prefaced with the qualifier about “a well-regulated militia.” It was rejected in favor of the prefaced amendment.<br /><em>Melissa McCullough M.E.M. ’83, (via e-mail)</em></p></td></tr><tr><td class="text" colspan="2"><p><strong>Blue Notes</strong><br /><br /> Editors:</p><p>I thought you flat nailed your piece on championship night and the following day [“Civilized Celebration,” Special Insert, March-April 2001]. I haven’t enjoyed anything in weeks as much as I enjoyed reading that. I thought I ought to tell you so. I also told my many dozen old Duke friends on the e-discussion list we have.<br /><em>Steven T. Corneliussen ’70, (via e-mail)</em><br /><br /> Editors:</p><p>Just a great, great story that perfectly captured the context and meaning of Duke basketball. A delightful read. Thanks.<br /><em>Sam George J.D. ’99, (via e-mail) </em></p></td></tr><tr><td class="text" colspan="2"><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /></td></tr><tr><td class="text" colspan="2"> </td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501739 at https://alumni.duke.edu When is a Platypus Not a Kangaroo? https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/when-platypus-not-kangaroo <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> </p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td class="text" width="631"><br /><br /> Classifying kangaroos and platypuses together on the evolutionary family tree is as absurd as adding your neighbors to your own family ancestral line simply because they share your love of the opera, according to Duke scientists.<br /><table width="188" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="2" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 250px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/070801/images/plat.jpg" alt="e platypus unum image" width="250" height="150" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"></p><p>DNA decides: e platypus unum.</p></div></div></div></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p>But the current molecular method of using mitochondrial DNA to classify how mammals evolved is so flawed that it might have erroneously linked very different mammals, the scientists say. The mitochondrial DNA method of analyzing mammals has turned on its head the common-sense approach of linking mammals by similar anatomical traits or “morphology.”</p><p>Using a more comprehensive method to analyze the genetic material of fifteen types of mammals, Duke researchers have shown that the mitochondrial DNA method that links disparate animals (hippo and whale, kangaroo and platypus) is statistically unreliable when it comes to evolutionary genetics, according to Randy Jirtle, professor of radiation oncology at Duke Medical Center. Their own research using nuclear genes (genes from the nucleus or core of cells) has shown a nearly 100 percent statistical likelihood that the Duke results are correct.</p><p>Mitochondria are the cell’s power plants and possess their own genes that are inherited through the maternal line. Scientists use this method because mitochondrial DNA is more accessible and easier to sequence, and all multi-cellular animals have mitochondria, whereas all animals do not share the same nuclear genes.</p><p>Results of the study are published in a July issue of the journal Mammalian Genome.</p><p>Such conclusive results led the researchers to strongly support the Theria hypothesis of classifying the three major groups of mammals. The Theria hypothesis holds that eutherians (humans, rats, pigs, whales, etc.) and marsupials (kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, etc.) have evolved from a common ancestor, and monotremes (platypus, echidna) have evolved from a different ancestor and on a separate land mass. The mitochondrial method of studying evolution, however, supports the Marsupionta hypothesis, which places the platypus and kangaroo together. This controversy has lasted for more than two centuries since the discovery that the platypus lays eggs.</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“Our study is the first to provide statistically unambiguous results in favor of classifying mammals using the Theria hypothesis, as paleontologists have long done through studying fossils,” Jirtle says. “Now we need to retest the results generated by scientists who have used mitochondrial DNA sequences to link mammals such as hippos to whales.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The Duke scientists generated their results by isolating a whole nuclear gene from the genetic material of fifteen different mammals, and then determining the unique genetic code or sequence that distinguishes each gene from the others in the respective mammals. Then, by plugging molecular traits of the gene into a computer software program—similar to entering eye color and earlobe structure into a family tree software program—they identified which animals shared common DNA traits and which did not. The data they derived from studying nuclear genes clearly identified marsupials as having a common evolutionary background </span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">with eutherians and monotremes as having evolved separately.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Aside from its purely academic value, the scientists say that classifying mammals correctly is critical because it helps biologists apply the information learned from one mammal to others in the same class, without having to conduct identical molecular studies on each mammal.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“The family tree is a crucial evolutionary roadmap,” says Keith Killian, a Duke researcher in molecular development and evolution. “If you are trying to trace, for example, the evolutionary steps of fetal heart development </span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">to better understand how fetal defects occur, it helps to know which mammals are related so that you can make accurate inferences about one mammal from another mammal’s development.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">In recent years, scientists have increasingly relied on using mitochondrial DNA to make comparisons among mammals and thereby link those that are related on the evolutionary tree.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">But Killian says mitochondrial DNA provides misleading results for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, it requires more human input to decide which information is fed to the computer, thereby raising the risk of human bias. When the data were given to three different laboratories for analysis, they generated three different family trees, he says.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“This is the first molecular evolutionary study that seriously and powerfully says the paleontologists have been right all along in grouping mammals the way they did,” says Killian. “It turns out that common sense is correct.”</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, Sumitomo Chemical Company Ltd., and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Ltd.</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501738 at https://alumni.duke.edu In Brief: July-August 2001 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/brief-july-august-2001 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> </p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td class="text" width="631"><p>• Brian Cantwell Smith, computer scientist, philosopher, and a former principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California, has been named the first Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professor of New Technologies and Society. He has conducted research into artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, and meta-level architectures, and is increasingly focusing on foundational issues related to the philosophy of computing and human cognition. Smith will have a primary appointment in philosophy and a secondary appointment in computer science, with possible involvement in research programs at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and the law school. He is working on The Age of Significance: An Essay on the Foundations of Computation and Intentionality, a six-volume series meant to reconstruct the foundations of computation, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science, forthcoming from MIT Press. The series will be released on the Web, one chapter per month during the next five years. After studying at Oberlin College, Smith earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</p><p>• Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones M.Div. ’85, Ph.D. ’88 has been appointed to a second five-year term. During his first term as dean, beginning in 1997, twelve members were appointed to the Divinity School faculty, and the university founded the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, an interdisciplinary program based at the Divinity School to improve care for the suffering and dying. The Divinity School has launched the Learned Clergy Initiative to help develop a new generation of strong pastors, and Pulpit & Pew, a research program to strengthen the quality of clergy and lay leaders in churches. The school has formed a partnership with Durham’s Walltown Neighborhood Ministries, a five-church coalition working to strengthen the quality of life in the Walltown community off Duke’s East Campus. Before moving to Duke, Jones was chair of the theology department at Loyola College in Baltimore.</p><p>• Gilbert Merkx, director of the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, has been appointed vice provost for international affairs. Merkx, also professor of the practice of sociology, succeeds Bruce Kuniholm, who will return to the faculty of the Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Merkx joined the University of New Mexico faculty in 1968 and was named to a full professorship in sociology in 1981. He also has held faculty appointments at Yale and Gothenburg University in Sweden. He served as editor of the Latin American Research Review.</p><p>• Alma Blount has been named director of the Hart Leadership Program at Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Blount had been a lecturer in public policy studies and director of the HLP’s Service Opportunities in Leadership Program, a leadership mentoring initiative for undergraduates. She has held leadership positions in international human-rights organizations in the United States and Central America, and is the former photo editor of The Independent newspaper in Durham. She succeeds Robert Korstad, associate professor of public policy studies and history, who will continue to teach in the program. Korstad also directs the B.N. Duke Scholars Program and will oversee a faculty initiative between the history and public policy departments.</p></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501737 at https://alumni.duke.edu Remembering Wannamaker https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/remembering-wannamaker <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> </p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td class="text" width="631"><p><br /><br /> Duke will receive approximately $4.5 million for research from the estate of William Hane Wannamaker Jr. of Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a retired engineer and son of one of Duke’s most prominent leaders. Wannamaker died last January. His bequest, among Duke’s largest, is the residual of his estate, and will benefit equally research efforts at the university’s Pratt School of Engineering and the Duke Eye Center.</p><p>The bequest will establish a memorial endowment in honor of Wannamaker’s parents, Isabel Stringfellow Wannamaker and William Hane Wannamaker, who served Duke for more than fifty years as a professor, dean of the college, vice president in the division of education, dean of the university, and finally vice chancellor.</p><p>Endowment income will be directed to the Pratt School’s department of electrical engineering in its work on solid-state physics and computers, and eye center research, preferably in retinitis pigmentosa, a condition from which Bill Wannamaker and several family members suffered.</p><p>The senior Wannamaker oversaw the recruitment of many of Duke’s leading faculty from 1926 to 1942. The new endowment will help provide significant support for faculty members and their research, an important aspect of what is termed “faculty deepening” in Duke’s recently adopted strategic plan.</p><p>With President William Preston Few and Robert Flowers, who was vice president and treasurer, Wannamaker, as vice president and dean, was a member of the “triumvirate” that guided Duke in its formative years. The university’s Wannamaker Residence Hall and adjacent drive bear the family’s name.</p><p>The senior Wannamaker earned a degree from Wofford College in 1895, having studied there under John C. Kilgo and William Preston Few. Kilgo was named president of Trinity College in Durham in 1894. Few joined the Trinity faculty as professor of English in 1896 and succeeded Kilgo as president in 1910. Wannamaker arrived at Duke in 1900 at Few’s invitation to pursue graduate work and to teach freshman English. He also did graduate work at Harvard as well as the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, Leipzig, and Bonn before accepting a post of professor of Germanic language and literature at Trinity in 1905.</p><p>Starting in 1910, Wannamaker became increasingly involved in the administration of the college, and at various times in the next four decades was responsible for the curriculum, student life, faculty recruitment, and development. He was not only instrumental in the significant expansion of the faculty, but also recruited legendary football coach Wallace Wade in 1931. Wannamaker headed the university’s faculty committee on athletics, and he was largely responsible for the growth and success of Duke’s intercollegiate sports program, even as he stressed the pre-eminence of academics.</p><p>The senior Wannamaker was also active in civic affairs in Durham. He served on both the Durham county and city boards of education, and was chairman of the city board for twenty-two years. He was also a trustee of Durham’s Watts Hospital and an active Rotarian.</p><p>His son, Bill Wannamaker Jr., attended Duke’s School of Engineering before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned an electronics engineering degree. He was employed by several companies, including Brown Instrument division of Honeywell of Philadelphia and Sun Oil. He later entered private practice as an electronics engineering consultant with clients nationwide. He was married to the late Nancy R. Cross; he is survived by a sister, Harriet W. Moorhead ’34 of Durham, who is the last surviving child of William and Isabel Wannamaker, as well as two nephews, four nieces, and three of his late wife’s nephews. William Kennon of Durham is the family executor of his uncle’s estate.</p></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2001-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, August 1, 2001</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/jul-aug-2001" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2001</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Wed, 01 Aug 2001 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501736 at https://alumni.duke.edu