Duke - Matthew Burns https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/author/matthew-burns en Dr. Yes https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/dr-yes <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>The parking lot at Durham's Lincoln Community Health Center fills quickly on a weekday morning, as cars, taxis, and shuttle buses jockey for space. Boarded-up houses and junked cars pockmark the surrounding neighborhood, where the poverty rate is clearly much higher than the 15 percent countywide. But inside the center, the mood is upbeat, and the lobby and halls teem with activity. Elderly women talk with young mothers, men swap jokes, and children watch videos and play games as they wait to be seen. The physicians and nurses in Lincoln's various clinics appear to feed off the energy, speaking a rapid-fire mix of English and Spanish as they move in seemingly synchronized fashion to address patient needs quickly and efficiently.</p><p>Far from the action, in a cramped basement office filled with medical journals, bulging file folders, and stuffed animals from her days as a pediatrician, center director Evelyn Schmidt '47, M.D. '51 has been working for hours on proposals to keep federal, state, and local funds flowing to Lincoln so the activity upstairs doesn't stall. "When you have a mission, the bottom line is just one of your concerns," she says.</p><p>For almost four decades, the mission shared by Schmidt and Lincoln has been to break through the often grim landscape facing Durham's underclass. The center provides thousands of people with primary medical care that they otherwise couldn't afford—many wouldn't even bother to seek it because of the cost. Of the more than 34,000 people who were treated at the center last year, for example, almost 85 percent lived below the poverty line and three-quarters had no health insurance.</p><p>"The general public doesn't recognize the quality of care Lincoln provides because of who they serve there," says Joyce Nichols, who has used the center for her health-care needs for thirty-five years. "The people there don't care how you're dressed or how you look or smell. They treat you with respect, and they treat you as well as or better than any other medical provider in town."</p><p>Schmidt makes sure of that. Lincoln's chief executive since shortly after it opened in 1970, she possesses a commitment to serving the poor that borders on a passion and has become the center's guiding principle in a continually changing health-care industry. Although she and her staff readily adjust to the times—Schmidt's office door features a picture of a dinosaur with the caption "Adapt or Die"—providing high-quality medical care to patients on the margins of society is the steady foundation of the center.</p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 250px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="330" width="250" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dryes2.jpg" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Premed: Schmidt's <span class="pubtitle">Chanticleer</span> senior-year photo</p></div></div></div></div><p>"Most of our patients have been pretty much left out in the cold by the health-care system," she says. "The only way we're going to succeed as a nation is if we're healthier and better educated—and I mean everybody has to be provided for." Durham, she says, is "a tale of two cities," with Duke Medical Center's world-class facilities and pioneering research taking place a stone's throw from the bleak financial and social conditions faced by Lincoln's clientele.</p><p>Under Schmidt's leadership, Lincoln has become one of the most respected health centers in the country. Amy Simmons Farber, communications director for the National Association of Community Health Centers, says Lincoln is "way ahead of the curve" on setting standards for care and implementing new technology, such as transferring paper medical records to computer and using a robotic dispenser to fill prescriptions. In 2006, Lincoln celebrated Independence Day by becoming the nation's first health center to go tobacco-free, a move that many hospitals—including Duke's—have since copied.</p><p>"They're one of the bright stars of health care," Farber says of Lincoln, adding that Schmidt makes so many trips to Capitol Hill to lobby for more funding for health centers nationwide, including the federal dollars that make up almost a quarter of Lincoln's $18 million annual budget, that she is on a first-name basis with every member of North Carolina's Congressional delegation.</p><p>"Evie is the Mother Teresa of Durham," says Fred Johnson, deputy director of the Division of Community Health at Duke Medical Center, who oversees two neighborhood medical clinics that serve as Lincoln satellites. "Lincoln is her life, and she just lives and breathes caring for the poor."</p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="270" width="580" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dryes3.jpg" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Unfinished business: Budget cuts, increased patient loads, and lack of adequate staffing reinforce Schmidt's resolve.</div><p> </p><div class="media-h-credit">Michael Zirkle</p></div></div></div></div><p>Schmidt came to her calling early in her career, while working in a private pediatric practice near Philadelphia. She made house calls in poor neighborhoods and saw children with chronic medical conditions who weren't being treated because their parents couldn't afford routine care. "I thought, 'This is crazy. All kids deserve better,' " she says.</p><p>In 1962, she earned a master's degree in public health from Columbia University and soon after became chief of pediatrics at the Gouverneur Ambulatory Care Center, a health program for the poor in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Then, she was recruited to come back to Durham to run Lincoln. Although the New Jersey native had been so appalled by the segregation she saw in town during her days at Duke that she refused to ride buses around campus, she readily agreed to return to North Carolina for a chance to interact more directly with the community than her position at Gouverneur allowed. Over the years, she has worked with groups to promote better housing in Durham and to fight the rise in local gang activity. "Health care involves more than medicine," she says simply.</p><p>Lincoln's creation also meant that sanctioned segregation in the South was on the wane, she says, citing another element of the move she found attractive. The center was born during the integration of health-care services in Durham, when Durham Regional Hospital was built to replace the former whites-only Watts Hospital and blacks-only Lincoln Hospital in town. Community leaders felt that maintaining a clinic on the Lincoln Hospital site would keep health care accessible to many black residents, and they wrote Durham Regional's charter in a way that ensured that the local health-care system would always support the center.</p><p>Durham Regional, now part of the Duke University Health System, continues to provide close to $6.2 million in annual support to Lincoln, including services like laboratory tests, X-rays, and building maintenance. The center plugs a hole in the local health-care network, says David McQuaid, former chief executive of Durham Regional, by providing a more efficient option for primary care for uninsured patients than frequent visits to hospital emergency rooms. Such holes often drain away limited health-care resources in other cities, he says—even areas with similar community health centers.</p><p>"In my career, I haven't seen the type of community support and financial commitment to caring for underserved populations that I've seen here," says McQuaid, who worked with the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Health System before coming to Durham and is now chief operating officer at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.</p><p>Schmidt is the driving force behind much of that support. A five-foot-tall dynamo who leaves colleagues half her age struggling to keep up—Mary Baldwin, Lincoln's director of nursing, says she knows her boss is coming to deliver another directive when she hears quick footsteps in the hallway—Schmidt combines her vision for the community and her relentless will with a touch of guilt to remind local officials of their moral obligation to care for the poor. "She doesn't have an iron hand, but she has a voice that can flip a conscience," says Sue Guptill B.S.N. '75, chairwoman of Lincoln's board and director of nursing for the Durham County Health Department.</p><p>Guptill cites the example of Project Access, a proposed program under which specialist physicians in Durham will treat uninsured patients pro bono. Schmidt for months pointed to the need for more access to specialty care among Lincoln's clients, becoming more forceful each time until the message got through, Guptill says. "She's an outspoken advocate for people who don't have a chance to speak for themselves."</p><p>Accessibility is a primary goal for Lincoln, which has created a one-stop shop for medical services in Durham. In addition to providing adult, pediatric, dental, and mental-health care daily, the center offers weekly clinics in orthopedics, ophthalmology, and gynecology; provides prenatal care for the Durham County Health Department; and serves as the local hub for the federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program. The center also works with Duke to provide in-home care at local senior-citizen housing projects and operates a clinic at a homeless shelter near downtown. Schmidt says the shotgun approach helps Lincoln reach as many populations across the community as possible.</p><p>She also has worked with Duke's Division of Community Health for the past few years to expand the center's reach throughout Durham. As part of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, which promotes university involvement in neighborhoods and public schools near campus, the division opened a medical clinic in a renovated community center in the Lyon Park neighborhood in 2003. A year later, a second clinic was opened on Broad Street in the Walltown community, and plans are in place to open a third clinic in a former elementary school in northeast Durham in the next two years. Lincoln pays the clinics a fee for each patient—together, they see more than 200 people a week—and grants from The Duke Endowment help subsidize the operations.</p><p>"We're like a circuit breaker for Lincoln, taking patients when they become overloaded," Duke's Johnson says. At the same time, the clinics provide accessibility in those neighborhoods to low-income families and the elderly without transportation. "Convenience is a major reason people come here," he says.</p><p>High-quality care is the reason many keep coming back. Nichols, the longtime patient, says she had health insurance for many of the years she used Lincoln but chose not to go elsewhere. "They treat you as a human being, not an object," she says. "You have confidence in the people taking care of you."</p><p>People like Oveta McIntosh-Vick, a physician and Lincoln's director of pediatrics. McIntosh-Vick sees a couple of dozen children and their parents every day, but she takes time during each appointment to make certain everything is all right at home for her patients. During one visit, she corralled a squirming baby for a quick examination while counseling a young, single mother intent on pursuing a graduate degree. "These people may not have much, but they're willing to sacrifice whatever they do have to ensure their families get decent health care," she says. "And that's what we're here to provide."</p><p>That mission feeds Schmidt's determination. Those who work with her joke that she seems to have gotten a second wind in recent years. "There's no indication she plans to slow down, and we don't plan to slow her down," Guptill says.</p><p>Schmidt refuses to talk about retirement, instead choosing to focus on the challenges Lincoln continues to face: a lack of bilingual staff to handle the growing Hispanic population, federal and state budget cuts, increased patient loads, and limited space, for starters. At the same time, she seizes on new opportunities whenever they appear. The recent hiring of a chief operating officer at Lincoln, for example, gives her the chance to spend time tweaking systems for better patient service.</p><p>"We've still got a lot of work to do to make sure everybody is getting the care they deserve," she says. She's barely finished the thought when a young Hispanic woman appears at her office door, looking for Lincoln's financial office. Schmidt jumps out of her chair and briskly guides the patient down the hall. When Schmidt returns, she pauses to reflect on the community she has helped to build.</p><p>"If I were starting over, I would be a social organizer," she says. "Health is more than just physical well-being. It's about being able to afford nutritious food and having safe housing in walkable neighborhoods, so that you can get outside and not worry about crime. These things are all connected."</p><p>With an economic slowdown affecting all sectors of the population, Schmidt says that clinics like Lincoln will inevitably bear the brunt of worsening conditions. "We've lost the middle class in this country," she says. "Our clients have traditionally been the ones on the bottom of the economic ladder. But we are starting to see people who used to be in the middle, but who are moving down. This isn't just poor Durham's problem. This is everyone's problem."</p><p>Burns is a freelance writer based in Raleigh.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2008-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Friday, August 1, 2008</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/dryes1.jpg" width="620" height="289" alt="Dedicated dynamo: Driven by the imperative of providing high-quality health care, eighty-two-year-old Schmidt shows no signs of slowing down. Michael Zirkle" /></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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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-2008" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2008</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">Evelyn Schmidt has worked for nearly forty years to provide decent, affordable care for low-income patients &quot;left out in the cold&quot; by the traditional health-care system. In the process she&#039;s turned a modest community clinic into a national model.</div></div></section> Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501253 at https://alumni.duke.edu John Hammer '76 and William Hammer B.S.E. '87 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/john-hammer-76-and-william-hammer-bse-87 <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 valign="top"><div class="media-header" style="width: 300px; float: right; margin-top: 10px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030408/images/030408-lg-dsc0005.jpg" alt="John Hammer '76 and William Hammer B.S.E. '87" width="300" height="447" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-credit">Sandra Groover</p></div></div></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">A thick-skinned, half-blind, dimwitted but quick-tempered animal serves as their symbol. They thumb their nose at political correctness and media objectivity. They run their business with the same laissez-faire attitude they espouse in their politics. Yet John and William Hammer have used such unconventional trappings to create successful media operations in two of North Carolina's three largest cities.</p><p><span class="pubtitle">The Rhinoceros Times</span>, the free weekly newspaper the Hammer brothers run, is arguably one of the most popular publications in Greensboro. Independent market surveys place the paper's readership on a par with—if not better than—the area's daily newspapers among affluent adults. A younger sister paper they launched in Charlotte isn't as widely read but is steadily building its circulation. "We provide local coverage the daily newspapers overlook," says John. "People find our style of reporting and writing refreshing."</p><p>A philosophy major who "minored in Frisbee" at Duke, John (pictured above, right) worked as a reporter on and off for several years and put out a newsletter for a Greensboro bar known as The Rhinoceros Club. By late 1991, he says, he had become so fed up the lack of local political coverage by Greensboro media that he started an alternative newspaper to focus on local government. He adopted the rhino name from the bar because he thought it would draw advertisers, but he says the bull-headed nature of the beast also reflected the attitude he wanted in the paper. "This is a mission," he says.</p><div class="media-header" style="width: 300px; float: right; margin-top: 10px;"><img src="/issues/030408/images/030408-lg-01032008rhngba001mm.jpg" alt="The Rhinoceros Times" width="300" height="374" /><div class="media-h-credit"> </div></div><p>That mission includes taking a conservative slant on almost every story. A libertarian who once staged a write-in candidacy to become mayor of Greensboro, John says having reporters state their politics upfront is a more honest stance than mainstream media take. "We don't pretend we don't have a point of view and hide behind a statement that we're unbiased," he says.</p><p>William Hammer, who joined the paper in 1993 as publisher, says readers appreciate that honesty. "It isn't about whether they agree or disagree with our viewpoint," he says. "They come to us because they know we present commonsense truth."</p><p>While they preach common-sense in their reporting, there's often very little of it in the newsroom. "To say we do things by the seat of our pants would be a compliment," says Scott Yost '82, who has covered county government for <span class="pubtitle">The Rhino Times</span> for five years. "We're like <span class="pubtitle">Rolling Stone</span> in the '70s without the drugs." A cat rules the roost in Greensboro most days, the paper prints its answering machine messages verbatim each week, and the Hammers once posted pictures of county commissioners on <span class="pubtitle">AmIHot.com</span> to rate their appearance. "We do everything a lot different than most papers, but it's a business model that would benefit a lot of places," Yost says.</p><p>The Greensboro edition routinely runs about 132 pages, and despite the local focus, the main problem from week to week, William says, is finding enough space to fit the reams of copy the staff produces.</p><p>"We want to explain what's going on, so we give a lot of background in stories," John adds, noting one reporter wrote a forty-two-part series on the local police department.</p><p>Like most brothers, the Hammers say they don't always get along but insist their fraternal bonds only help the newspaper. "We know each other well enough to know what we can and can't do," John says. William adds, "Business partnerships come and go, but family always has to come first."</p><p class="byline"><em>— Burns is a freelance writer based in Raleigh.</em> </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="2008-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Tuesday, April 1, 2008</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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/mar-apr-2008" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2008</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">Defying media expectations </div></div></section> Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18499813 at https://alumni.duke.edu Stephanie Sparks '96 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/stephanie-sparks-96 <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 valign="top"><div class="media-header" style="margin-top: 10px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/091006/images/lg_pg69vincesteph.jpg" alt="Par for the course: Sparks and co-host Cellini, right, discuss the sand traps and setbacks faced by Big Break contestants " width="580" height="315" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="font-size: 10px;">Par for the course: Sparks and co-host Cellini, right, discuss the sand traps and setbacks faced by Big Break contestants. Courtesy of The Golf Channel</span></p></div></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">Stephanie Sparks has golfed professionally, helped produce television shows, hosted two series on cable, and has even "worked with God." Her career has evolved far differently than she envisioned as a sociology major and member of the Duke women's golf team, so she is just taking things as they come. "I feel very fortunate to be where I am," she says.</p><p>An All-American golfer at Duke and the winner of several amateur championships, Sparks turned pro after graduating. But two surgeries for chronic back pain ended her career after only a couple of seasons on the Futures Tour and one on the LPGA Tour. Playing golf was all she had ever wanted to do since her childhood in West Virginia, she says, and giving up her dream was devastating. "I was forced out of it. It wasn't a decision where I was just going to try something else for a change. I really had no other choice because my health wouldn't allow me to compete."</p><p>After a year adjusting to life as an ex-athlete, she landed a job as a production assistant at The Golf Channel in 2002 and began learning the television business on the fly. After just a year behind the camera, she was asked to audition for on-air work, to bolster the channel's female presence. Her knowledge of the game and a hard-charging personality forged by tournament competition outweighed her inexperience and won over producers.</p><p>Sparks hosts <span class="pubtitle">Golf With Style!</span>, which showcases golf resorts worldwide and other leisure activities located nearby, and serves as Vince Cellini's co-host on <span class="pubtitle">Big Break</span>, the channel's <span class="pubtitle">Survivor</span>-like golf reality show, which pits up-and-coming pro golfers against veterans who never made top-tier tours in a series of golf-related skill events. The winner earns a slot in some pro tournaments.</p><p>"No one has to eat any bugs on our show," Sparks says with a laugh. Her own brief pro career makes working on <span class="pubtitle">Big Break</span> especially poignant. "It's really a grind trying to make it as a professional golfer," she says. "Many times, you're just looking for that one shot, and it's difficult when it doesn't come or doesn't work out."</p><p>Sparks' golf knowledge "is extremely insightful," says Cellini. "She's hilarious, and she has a warmth that comes through in the broadcast, which viewers can really relate to."</p><p>Her shot at broadcasting may have come with a bit of "divine" intervention. While still working in production at The Golf Channel, she was asked to evaluate the golf swings of actresses auditioning for parts in <span class="pubtitle">Stroke of Genius</span>, a film about golf legend Bobby Jones. Casting directors then selected her for the role of Alexa Stirling, a women's amateur champion in the early 1900s, opposite actor Jim Caviezel as Jones. Working with Caviezel, who had just wrapped up his portrayal of Jesus in <span class="pubtitle">The Passion of the Christ,</span> was a little daunting for the first-time actress. "I thought, 'I'm working with God!'</p><p>"But he was very supportive," Sparks says, adding that the experience likely prompted Golf Channel producers to audition her.</p><p>Television remains a learning experience for her--like a junior golfer playing against pros, she says. And, although she's improving with practice, "I still feel more comfortable putting in front of hundreds of people than I do standing in front of a camera," she says.</p><p>Still, the possibility of one day announcing tournaments she used to dream of playing intrigues her, especially with the recent growth in women's professional golf. Rising young players are "raising the competition level and the popularity to new levels," she says. "I see nothing but good things ahead for women's golf."</p><p class="byline"><span class="articletitle"><br /><em>— Burns is a freelance writer based in Raleigh.</em></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="2006-10-01T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, October 1, 2006</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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/sep-oct-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sep - Oct 2006</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">Galvanized by golf</div></div></section> Sun, 01 Oct 2006 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501047 at https://alumni.duke.edu Antony John Ph. D. '02 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/antony-john-ph-d-02 <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 valign="top"><br /><table border="0" cellspacing="11" cellpadding="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/111205/images/lg_mini3.jpg" alt="Beyond Wedding March: John, left, and Odom " width="300" height="458" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><p><span class="tenpxtextblk" style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Beyond Wedding March: John, left, and Odom. </span><span class="photocredit" style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Chris Hildreth</span></p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Antony John is not one for bridal registries. Rather than supply a bride and groom with a gravy boat or place setting, he prefers to put pencil to paper and write a wedding song for the new couple.</p><p>After presenting several such gifts to friends, the thirty-two-year-old John last year built a business around his compositions and began accepting commissions for his work. His website, WeddingCompositions.com, now draws interest nationwide and from as far away as New Zealand and was featured in the June-July 2005 issue of Modern Bride magazine. "There's a growing interest in commissioned music as being one aspect of wedding planning that has not been explored previously," he says.</p><p>Royal weddings in his native England traditionally provided a chance for composers to show off new work, John says. But most couples can't afford to hire a musical ensemble to play at their wedding--let alone pay for an original composition--and so a church organist playing Wagner's "Bridal Chorus" (better known as "Here Comes the Bride") has become the staple processional.</p><p>John says he can put together a one-minute wedding march for a string quartet for about $300. Talking with brides to learn their musical tastes--grooms are seldom interested in attending to details of the wedding plan, he says--is the most involved part of the process. After that, he usually scores the processional within a couple of days. To make each composition as personal as possible for a couple, he has incorporated into the final works everything from classical pieces to Norwegian folksongs that were hummed to him over the phone.</p><p>Daniel Sorin '96 says that the processional John composed for his 2003 wedding included the opening bars of a Mozart clarinet concerto that he is fond of and a snippet of the television theme song to Xena: Warrior Princess, which his wife likes. She was so thrilled with the end result that she convinced John to form Wedding Compositions and now helps run the business. "Our composition will never be played at another wedding, which added a special element to our ceremony," says Sorin, an assistant professor in the Pratt School of Engineering. "It was nice that our friend was able to contribute to our wedding through more than a typical gift."</p><p>John has been composing almost since he picked up his first musical instrument--the piccolo--at age ten.</p><p>"I really wanted to know the nuts and bolts of music," he says. "The academic side to it is a nice foil to the creativity involved in a straight performance."</p><p>Although he says he is committed to "producing music that has a social purpose," he doesn't want to be pegged solely as a wedding composer. And so he also scores music for short movies and teaches a film music history course at the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program in Seattle, where he lives with his wife, Audrey Odom '96, M.D./Ph.D. '03, a pediatric resident at Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center, and their infant son.</p><p>Composing a processional for his own wedding in 2001 was probably John's toughest assignment. "I knew very well what her tastes were, and if I strayed even slightly from that, I knew I would hear about it for a long time," he says with a laugh.</p><p class="byline"><span class="articletitle"><br /><em>Burns is a freelance writer based in Raleigh.</em></span></p><span class="articletitle"></span></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="2005-11-30T00:00:00-05:00">Wednesday, November 30, 2005</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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/nov-dec-2005" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nov - Dec 2005</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">Adding an original element</div></div></section> Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500310 at https://alumni.duke.edu Terri Helmlinger M.B.A. '85 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/terri-helmlinger-mba-85 <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 valign="top"><br /><table width="19%" border="0" cellspacing="11" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><img src="/issues/070805/images/lg_miniterri11.jpg" alt="Terri Helmlinger M.B.A. '85" width="260" height="416" border="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">A cheerleader Barbie doll in its original box stands on a table in Terri Helmlinger's office at North Carolina State University, a prominent counterpoint to the hardhats, design schematics, and other engineering trappings nearby.</p><p>Helmlinger adopted Barbie as a role model a few years ago when she was campaigning for the presidency of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). Despite the doll's often vilified anatomical proportions, she says she sees Barbie, in some ways, as representing the epitome of female success.</p><p>"Barbie has done everything women of my age could dream of," the fifty-one-year-old Helmlinger says. "She's been an astronaut, a physician. She's always hip."</p><p>But Barbie has never headed a 60,000-member organization of engineers. Helmlinger achieved that when she was named president of NSPE in 2003, becoming the first female leader in the group's seventy-year history.</p><p>Not content to be the answer to an industry trivia question, the blunt-talking Helmlinger used her year in charge to begin breaking the glass ceiling in engineering, NSPE Executive Director Albert Gray says. Less than 10 percent of licensed professional engineers are women (a similarly small percentage are members of minority groups), and so Helmlinger established a task force to devise ways for the profession to broaden its appeal. She also set up a committee to stem a long, slow slide in the organization's membership.</p><p>"She really sparked some significant changes that will benefit NSPE in the long run," Gray says. "Terri's a very experienced executive, and she inspired people to work with her."</p><p>Helmlinger's own inspiration came from NASA recruiters who visited N.C. State, where she was a disenchanted undergraduate education major, to encourage more female engineers.</p><p>After earning her industrial engineering degree, she started up the career ladder at Carolina Power & Light, now Progress Energy. Her M.B.A. accelerated her climb through the Raleigh-based utility's operations and marketing departments.</p><p>In 1999, she jumped at the chance to lead the Industrial Extension Service (IES) at N.C. State. The program helps manufacturers across the state become more competitive by solving production problems, which, in turn, keeps jobs in North Carolina. "I really wanted to get back out on the factory floor," she says, acknowledging that a female engineer elicited more than a few raised eyebrows among managers in client companies. "Achieving results promotes acceptance pretty quickly."</p><p>To achieve results within IES, she brought a corporate mentality and private-sector emphasis on execution to a sometimes slow-moving bureaucracy. Client surveys have shown the program returning more than $469-million in direct annual gain to the state since 2000, either in jobs saved or company profits. That success has helped IES survive state and federal budget cuts in recent years and earned Helmlinger the additional title of assistant vice chancellor of extension and engagement at N.C. State in 2002.</p><p>Saying she is disappointed that people still view engineering as a man's field, Helmlinger hopes her work can prevent young women looking to enter the profession from being dismissed.</p><p>"I've been the first woman for a lot of things, and that requires, quite frankly, a lot of guts," she says. "Going through all that gives me credibility, but I don't think another young woman should have to go through it."</p><p class="byline"><em> Burns is a freelance writer based in Raleigh.</em></p><span class="articletitle"></span></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="2005-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Monday, August 1, 2005</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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-2005" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2005</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">Engineering Change</div></div></section> Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500586 at https://alumni.duke.edu Amy Hackney Blackwell '91 and Christopher Blackwell Ph.D. '95 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/amy-hackney-blackwell-91-and-christopher-blackwell-phd-95 <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 valign="top"><table width="247" border="0" cellspacing="8" cellpadding="2" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center" width="227"><img src="/issues/070804/images/lg_blackwells.jpg" alt="Amy Hackney Blackwell '91 and Christopher Blackwell Ph.D. '95" width="325" height="343" border="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">With three advanced degrees between them, Amy Hackney Blackwell and Christopher Blackwell are anything but dummies--they just write for them.</p><p>The Greenville, South Carolina, couple two years ago churned out Mythology for Dummies in about four months to provide a basic overview of the role myths have played through the centuries in explaining life. The 384-page book focuses on Greek and Roman gods and heroes but also covers myths of Native Americans and peoples of Scandinavia and Asia. It has sold so well that it has been translated into Spanish and Dutch and will soon be available in German and Russian editions.</p><p>"We didn't want this to be goofy stories about cultures that didn't have meteorology," says Chris Blackwell, an associate professor who chairs the classics department at Furman University. "We wanted stories to teach something about people, to show that myths can exist alongside of rational explanations."</p><p>He was offered the assignment in 2001 after a colleague declined an offer by Hungry Minds Inc. to write a Latin entry in the publisher's "Dummies" series of books. Blackwell says, initially, he wasn't interested because of his hefty teaching load, but his wife was looking for freelance-writing assignments after having given birth to the couple's second child that spring. And so, they took on the assignment as a team.</p><p>"I don't know anyone who knows all mythology, so we did it with an eye toward what we already know," says Amy Blackwell, who had learned about Japanese myths during a two-year stint teaching English there after leaving Duke. She also holds a master's in history from Vanderbilt University and a law degree from the University of Virginia.</p><p>After putting the children to bed each night, the Blackwells would stay up until midnight doing research and putting together one chapter after another. "Amy's job was to rein me in, because I would write so many pages on Homer or some other topic," says Chris Blackwell, whose doctorate is in classical studies. "We tried to keep it close to our research sources while making it easy to read and understand."</p><p>Still, the authors sheepishly admit that a few errors made it through the editing process and into print. "That's to be expected when you write a book in four months, but that doesn't diminish the value of the scholarly research that went into it," Amy Blackwell says.</p><p>The book has made the couple minor celebrities on Australian talk radio, where they are routinely invited to speak on late-night call-in shows; it's midday in South Carolina when they answer questions from curious Aussies about religion and mythology.</p><p>The book has also boosted Amy Blackwell's career by helping her retain an agent and land other writing jobs. She has since published a book on Irish history and now is putting her law degree to work by writing a law dictionary for the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain.</p><p>Chris Blackwell, who earned his bachelor's at Marlboro College, says that being associated with a "Dummies" book hasn't hurt his professional standing, either, noting that he was promoted and granted tenure shortly after the book was published. "The colleagues whose opinions I care about all thought it was a hoot," he says, adding that he asks his faculty critics how many books they have published in five languages.</p><p>"It's the responsibility of scholars not only to advance knowledge but to make it relevant to the general public," he says. "We need to get people interested in our fields, or no one is going to care about what we do anymore."</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="85%" /><p class="byline"><em>Burns is a freelance writer based in Raleigh.</em></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="2004-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">Sunday, August 1, 2004</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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-2004" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jul - Aug 2004</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">No dummies on myths</div></div></section> Sun, 01 Aug 2004 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501122 at https://alumni.duke.edu Ship of Schools https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/ship-schools <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 valign="top"><p class="articletitle">As a gale blows outside and fifteen-foot swells buck Makulu II through the pitch-black night in the southern Caribbean, a frantic voice crackles over the ship's radio, rousing the crew from its slumber. A nearby ship is having trouble steering, and the captain needs assistance.</p><p>Ashley Wells '96 and the rest of the Makulu crew battle the squall as they try to motor toward the ailing vessel. But the sea is too choppy and the ship too far away. When word comes that the other ship has lost its rudder, Makulu gives up the chase. As they resume their westward course, crew members count their blessings that the storm didn't do them in, as well. A tugboat sent by Colombian authorities rescues the crew of the drifting ship, which is abandoned after efforts to tow it to port fail.</p><p>"We made it through okay, but we were lucky," Wells says with a nervous laugh, recalling the January 2002 incident.</p><p>Wells knew she had signed on for adventure when she enlisted for the crew of Makulu two years ago, and flirting with disaster in stormy waters off Aruba was just the beginning. During the first two years of the sailboat's planned three-year circumnavigation of the globe, she has had to elude pirates in the Red Sea, confront the aftermath of a terrorist bombing in Bali, face Islamic restrictions on women in Oman, and visited dozens of spots most people couldn't find on a map--all so inner-city students could expand their horizons.</p><p>Makulu II's voyage is sponsored by Reach the World, a nonprofit organization in New York City that helps teachers make better use of technology in the classroom, while introducing students to different cultures. The organization provides technology and curriculum consulting for twenty-five classrooms in grades three through seven, most of them in impoverished New York neighborhoods. Through Reach the World's website, students and teachers are able to follow the travels and travails of Makulu II, a forty-three-foot Nautor's Swan sailboat, and its crew. In the various ports of call, Wells and her fellow crew members use satellite e-mail and digital and video cameras to document their experiences, serving as the "eyes and ears" for those back home. Photographs are posted on the site; the ship's log, which crew members take turns contributing to, is updated every Friday; and there is a "track Makulu" option, where students can click on world maps to chart the boat's course.</p><p>"A main issue that I faced in motivating my students was a problem I dubbed the 'fifteen-block radius,'" says Wells, who taught language arts and social studies to seventh-graders in the Bronx for two years after graduating from Duke. "Most of my students operated within the confines of a fifteen-block radius that encompassed their apartments, their school, and the stores where they shopped. Seldom did they travel beyond this radius, so they did not see the relevance of learning skills and information that were not directly applicable to their lives."</p><p>That's the wall Reach the World hopes to break down. The six-year-old organization receives financial and technical support from dozens of corporations and foundations and has an advisory board that includes the likes of newsman Walter Cronkite and underwater explorer Robert Ballard. It also joins with Columbia University's Teachers College to provide graduate students direct experience with educational technology.</p><p>"We're trying to open disadvantaged students' minds to possibilities and, at the same time, close the digital divide by having them and their teachers work more with computers and the Internet," says Reach the World's founder, Heather Halstead, who skippered Makulu around the world from 1997 to 1999.</p><p>Wells never felt constrained by a "fifteen-block radius." When she was in the seventh grade, her parents took her and her two brothers from their home in San Anselmo, California, on a yearlong sojourn, spending six months sailing up the East Coast and another six touring Europe in a Volkswagen van. The trip instilled in her a wanderlust, and she studied in Germany for a semester while at Duke, where she majored in English and German. She later taught in Germany for a year through a Fulbright Program teaching assistantship. Her experiences abroad deepened her belief that travel enhances education; as she puts it, they taught her the virtue of "extending learning beyond the four walls of the classroom."</p><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 375px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010204/images/lg_fatuhivamarquesaslandfa.jpg" alt="Makulu II in the Marquesas" width="375" height="499" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Makulu II in the Marquesas. <span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">© 2003 / Noah Berger.</span></p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>A group of fifth-graders in Newark, New Jersey, built scale models of Indonesian houses based on measurements provided over the Internet by Makulu crew members who visited a village in the Asian island nation. Other students have learned how to calculate latitude and longitude on maps, have conducted climate and geological studies, or have been introduced to the real-life settings described by Homer in the Odyssey--all through e-mail correspondence or by checking out the Reach the World website.</p><p>Each September, before setting sail on the next leg of their voyage, Wells and her colleagues have visited the New York classrooms, helping to create a connection between the students and the crew, who, she says, become "characters in an unfolding adventure story" for the kids the rest of the year. "The students' familiarity with the crew acts as a bridge to connect them more personally to the places we visit, and our adventures bring the world alive for them in a way that textbooks cannot," she says. "While they may still call French Polynesia 'French Polyester,' they know that it is located in the Pacific Ocean and that the crew had to sail twenty-three days in open ocean to get there."</p><p>Jennifer Brinkmeier, a technology coordinator for the Newark school last year as part of her graduate studies at Columbia's Teachers College, says, "The learning that occurs with real-life projects is ten times what it would be from a lecture or reading a book."</p><p>As curriculum director aboard Makulu, Wells is the primary contact for teachers and works with them to ensure that the crew's activities in port match up with lessons in the classroom. She researches upcoming destinations, sets up live Internet chats between New York and the ship, answers student e-mail messages, and doles out assignments to her mates to gather information and photos in response to teacher requests. When Makulu stopped in Sri Lanka last January, for example, teachers asked that the crew send back information on Buddhist culture and architecture, growing and harvesting tea, and the legend of King Solomon's mines. They delivered every lesson within four days.</p><p>"We spend only a few days in each port," Wells says. "We have to get gas and supplies and make repairs. We usually have a number of requests from teachers to check on something for their class, so we have to divide and conquer to make sure we get everything done."</p><p>In many ports, she also arranges for the crew to visit a local school and talk to students so that they can send more information back to New York. Some visits are set up in advance through contacts. Others are the result of happenstance. Wells discovered a school in Borneo when she and another crew member were walking down the street in a town called Kumai and noticed a sign with the school's name, English Make Good Fortune, posted outside. "A mob of Indonesian children poured out of the small building and beckoned us inside so they could practice English conversation," she recalls.</p><p>On a typical school visit, Makulu crew members explain the purpose of their voyage to the students, trace the boat's route on a globe they've brought along, and then pop a DVD into a laptop computer to show a movie in which Bronx students give a tour of their school and describe a typical day there. Then it's time for the local students to answer questions from a list put together by their Bronx counterparts: What subjects do you study? What do you eat for lunch? What chores do you do at home? What do you want to be when you grow up?</p><p>While a blast on a conch shell summons students from recess on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, and entire schools in Islamic countries observe daily fasts during Ramadan, most students crew members meet are typical adolescents who like to eat pizza and fries and watch Leonardo DiCaprio movies, says Wells. "It's almost more important for the students in New York to see how similar these students are as how different they are." Still, she says she is fascinated by the differences: Marquesan students in the South Pacific practice traditional carving techniques; in the San Blas Archipelago, a group of tiny islands off the coast of Panama, youngsters perform acrobatic tricks on palm-tree jungle gyms.</p><p>Wells says she is also encouraged by the universally positive outlook of the students she's met. When the crew visited Cairo during the height of the U.S. war with Iraq last spring, they found that students there were more interested in finding out about Makulu's trip and life in New York than in expressing any anti-American sentiment.</p><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010204/images/lg_egyptschoolvisit2.jpg" alt="Wells with class in Egypt" width="580" height="247" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Wells with class in Egypt.<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"> © 2003 Noah Berger.</span></p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Those experiences make up for the occasional intolerance the crew members have had to confront, Wells says, such as a terrorist bombing of a Bali nightclub last fall shortly before Makulu arrived at the Indonesian port. The crew members, who began their three-year journey two months after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, weren't deterred, she says. They felt that it was important to students there and back home that they go.</p><p>Kelly Vaughan, who teaches sixth- and seventh-grade science in the Bronx, says the crew also has built self-esteem among her students by serving as role models. "Kids like to have more adults in their lives. To have the crew take an interest in what they're learning and interact with them--it's different for them than dealing with parents or teachers," Vaughan says. "The girls, especially, like the fact that Makulu is run by Ashley and other women, and they want to be like them."</p><p>"Makulu" is Zulu for a large, imposing woman--three of the four crew members happen to be female--and she's just as demanding a part of the crew's job as teaching. In addition to pulling two, three-hour shifts at the helm each day at sea, crew members are responsible for repairs like welding or sewing torn sails. "When I got on board the boat, common sense was really the only skill I had in terms of repairs and boat maintenance," Wells says. "But I have since learned the finer points of varnishing, how to replace hatches, caulk leaks, fix and maintain the heads, change the oil, rewire twelve-volt fixtures, install gaskets, and service winches."</p><p>Erin Myers, the captain of Makulu II, says that Wells is always forging ahead, noting she usually is the first one up each morning, banging around in the galley to make coffee or grab a soda before plunging into work. "Ashley challenges herself in all realms," Myers says. "On passage, you are just as likely to find her reading up on West African history as marine weather forecasting. In port, she is quick to make new friends and find a school for us to visit, and she will remember everyone's name."</p><p>When the ship sails back into New York Harbor in May 2004 to complete its circumnavigation, Wells will have charted some 30,000 miles across three oceans and six seas, stopping in more than forty-five countries. She will then have to face a challenge not encountered in any of them: re-adapting to a landlubber's life. She had planned to pursue an M.B.A. at Vanderbilt University before joining the crew of Makulu. Now, she says, the corporate life is out of the question. Instead, she may look for a job in journalism, where she can meet different people, or she may help Reach the World expand beyond the occasional circumnavigation.</p><p>"There are so many different types of lifestyle," she says. "I grew up being groomed to find a good job, and everything else would fall into place after that. But I've seen a number of people make a lifestyle choice and fit their career around it. I like the freedom that kind of decision offers."</p><p> </p><p class="byline"><em>Burns is a freelance writer in Raleigh, North Carolina.</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="2004-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Saturday, January 31, 2004</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/lg_SpinnakerPacificPassag.jpg" width="620" height="345" alt="Wells, stateside. © 2003 Noah Berger." /></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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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/jan-feb-2004" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2004</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">Circumnavigation as Education</div></div></section> Sat, 31 Jan 2004 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501672 at https://alumni.duke.edu Partners Across the Pond https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/partners-across-pond <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 valign="top"><p class="articletitle">Multinational corporations have to worry about global politics these days almost as much as sales strategy and production efficiency. To help them face these new challenges, Duke Corporate Education Inc. has entered a joint venture with Enterprise LSE, the commercial arm of the London School of Economics and Political Science, to provide executive-education courses that blend proven management procedures with geopolitical insight.</p><p>" As large corporations contemplate the world, they're looking for a broader set of understanding than what has traditionally been available," says Simon Flemington, chief executive of Enterprise LSE. "Their core duties are absolutely vital, but global players realize there are other fundamentals that one needs to be aware of."</p><p>With access to more than 400 London School of Economics faculty members, who specialize in subjects from political science to anthropology, Enterprise LSE can incorporate views on issues like the economic implications of the World Trade Organization or post-Iraq social and political trends into the customized marketing, finance, and other business-oriented classes that Duke CE now develops for its Fortune 500 courses, says Flemington.</p><p>" The complexity of the world is really ratcheting up, and it's more difficult to manage a large organization," says David Miller, director of business development for Duke CE. "We're trying to stay one step ahead of that complexity by anticipating that corporate customers will seek the information that LSE brings."</p><p>The joint venture--it carries the long, if unremarkable, name Duke Corporate Education and Enterprise LSE--offers LSE access to Duke CE's management-school competencies and its technical-design expertise, which London's Financial Times has recognized as the best in the world, Flemington says. In fact, it was Duke CE's technology that first brought the two for-profit operations together. Officials began discussing a partnership while negotiating terms to allow Enterprise LSE to adopt the D4 software platform Duke CE uses to build online segments of its custom courses.</p><p>Officials declined to discuss the ownership structure of the venture, which is based in London, although Miller says Duke CE will be "the lead partner." A search is on for a managing director, but the lack of a full-time leader hasn't stopped managers on both sides of the Atlantic from pushing ahead on various fronts. LSE faculty members already are working with Duke CE to develop corporate programs on health care, and Enterprise LSE has initiated contact with several organizations in Russia, where LSE and Duke will now work together.</p><p>Miller says none of Duke's multinational customers has sought a political angle to their executive-education classes--yet. But he says that building the structure to offer it to them in the future is "a well-researched risk."</p><p>" It's a little bit of a bet, but Duke Corporate Education is an innovative, risk-taking venture," he says. The courses are designed to help executives "see the world through a different lens."</p><p>" The London School of Economics, in addition to having a global presence that will expand our current reach, offers us the chance to introduce executives to different perspectives and new ways of thinking and conducting business."</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="2003-10-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, October 1, 2003</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501780 at https://alumni.duke.edu Bespoke Business Education https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bespoke-business-education <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>A block behind home plate at the old Durham Athletic Park, close enough to smell the hot dogs on game day but too far back to snag a long foul ball, sits the office of an unusual start-up business. The converted tobacco warehouse is just north of Durham's downtown loop road. But, like the trailblazing company it houses, it's far enough off the beaten path that part of the street leading to the entrance is gravel.</p><p>Inside, the office sports sleek wooden floors, exposed ceiling beams and ductwork, and huge windows through which sunlight pours. While some young employees sit at their cubicles quietly typing away on computers, managers hold meetings in conference rooms that bear the names of innovative thinkers through the ages: Aristotle, Sir Isaac Newton, Marshall McLuhan. This isn't the headquarters of some fledgling biotechnology company working on a breakthrough drug. Nor is it home to a dot-com company that has survived the implosion of the Internet boom. It is the office of Duke Corporate Education Inc., informally known as Duke CE, an operation established three years ago by the Fuqua School of Business to develop and teach executive- and managerial-training courses for Fortune 500 companies. It's a self-styled hybrid: "a cross between a business and a university." The corporate structure is that of a stand-alone, for-profit company, with Duke University as the majority shareholder.</p><table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/091003/images/lg_seo_26.jpg" alt="Illustration by Courtney Granner" width="350" height="457" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"> Illustration by Courtney Granner</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td align="center"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">The venture marks Duke's first major foray into for-profit services, a nascent but, according to experts, growing field for colleges nationwide. Already, the medical school is in the final stages of drawing up plans for a business incubator that would combine university research projects with outside investment, and nursing-school officials have discussed the idea of packaging and selling parts of the school's curriculum to other institutions.</p><p>" More people are looking at scenarios like this," says Michael B. Goldenstein, director of the education practice at the Washington, D.C., law firm Dow, Lohnes & Alberston, which has helped structure several for-profit ventures for universities. "It's a legitimate way to expand the reach of the university and build on the talent and research they've created."</p><p>That's the foundation that the president of Duke CE, Blair Sheppard, wanted to exploit when he came up with the idea for the company. Like many leading business schools, Fuqua had provided executive training to corporate customers for years, letting professors build courses around their specialties, from personnel management to marketing to finance. Fuqua had been so successful at it that corporate education had become a huge profit center for the school, and national rankings of such programs consistently placed Duke among the top providers.</p><p>But in the mid-1990s Sheppard, a Fuqua professor, saw that corporate education was evolving faster than universities could adapt to handle it: Major companies were seeking more customized training programs that could be taught worldwide. Duke's academic culture, as at most universities, is driven by research and focuses on individual disciplines, while custom corporate programs usually focus on solving business problems that cut across several disciplines and must be delivered quickly and in ways that cater to the changing needs of individual clients.</p><p>" Education is more strategic than before, and it's much more large-scale," Sheppard says. "Much more ongoing learning and continuous adaptation is needed today. Companies aren't interested in the old, two-day training of top executives. They want someone who understands their marketing needs or organizational needs, for example, and can work with them to get them where they want to go."</p><p>The shift in focus almost necessitated a change in how Duke handled corporate education. Sheppard saw two options: give the field over to private educational companies like Pearson and management-consulting firms like McKinsey & Company, or create an entirely new structure that could grow and change with the industry. In his mind, the first choice wasn't an option.</p><p>" We had built a really neat thing with our corporate-education program--it was a fairly precious jewel to the business school. It would be an irresponsible act to let that asset wilt and atrophy," he says. "As long as the program was a modest size, it could co-exist with the university culture. But if it grew the way we wanted it to grow, it could put that culture and everything that we have built around it over the years at risk."</p><p>Fuqua faculty members were well aware of the risks posed by the corporate education program, according to Dean Douglas Breeden. Professors feared losing a balance between theoretical research and practical applications if executive training and the money it brought in became a primary focus for the business school, he says. So they were willing to go along with the Duke CE experiment.</p><p>By moving outside the university's walls, the company was able to draw on other resources and try out new teaching methods, Sheppard says. For example, the company built a database of more than 1,200 business-school professors, former executives, and consultants across the globe who can teach courses to thousands of people on several continents--providing flexibility that Harvard University, the Wharton School of Business, and other competitors aren't able to match.</p><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><img src="/issues/091003/images/lg_seo_27.jpg" alt="Blair Sheppard, President, Duke CE" width="325" height="486" border="1" /></td></tr><tr><td align="center"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td class="tenpxtextblk" align="center"><span class="brwntextpullout">"Companies aren't interested in the old, two-day training of top executives. They want someone who understands their needs and can work with them to get them where they want to go."</span><br /><span class="text">—Blair Sheppard, President, Duke CE</span></td></tr><tr><td class="tenpxtextblk" align="right"><span class="pulloutcredit">Photo: Les Todd</span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><p>"Most business schools can't scale up to serve very large corporate audiences," says David Miller, Duke CE's director of business development, noting that other schools are limited by faculty size and and teaching schedules. "We can put together a course in a matter of months that meets a client's needs and teach it to groups in Europe, Asia, and North America at the same time. Companies want that ability, so that all of their managers are working off the same page."</p><p>Jim Gray, Fuqua's associate dean for marketing and communications, says the company purposely chose to set up shop in trendy off-campus digs to help it assume the appearance and mindset of an entrepreneurial business, not an academic venture. And Duke CE officials and employees have been able to view their corporate customers not merely as students, but as partners in research; the classroom as a setting where interaction and innovative instructional techniques can be applied and adapted to achieve a desired result. "We're creating interaction with the firms. We're bringing features of universities, such as creativity, and influencing corporate cultures," Sheppard says. "Universities tend to take a long view. They generate knowledge without knowing whether it has any utility. We're using a blended model of faculty working alongside executives to create something that will have meaning and a practical purpose for people."</p><p>ABB Power T&D Company Inc., a Raleigh-based unit of the giant European producer of industrial-automation technology and electric-power-generation and -transmission equipment, has used Duke CE to create a leadership-development program for hundreds of junior-level managers, a follow-up course for graduates of that program, and a course on pricing tactics. The company reviewed proposals from Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Michigan, but was attracted to the working relationship and the flexibility Duke CE offered, says Cheryl A. Sulborski, a vice president for human resources at ABB.</p><p>" Most schools didn't want our input. They said, 'Here's how we teach executives. Don't tell us how to do it.' Duke was very cooperative and based the course on what we wanted to do," Sulborski says. The courses are taught by a combination of Duke CE instructors and ABB executives. "Duke people provide the academic background, while our executives give a practical view. There's a good match between what both sides say, and people come away with a good idea of how to apply what they have learned." The interactive creative process is what officials say really sets Duke CE apart from competitors--aside from its status as a for-profit company, which they note is inextricably linked to the way it operates. Many of the company's developers have backgrounds in the corporate world instead of academe, and they work with representives of each company to determine the goals of a course and to establish a curriculum and outline the teaching methods needed to achieve those goals.</p><p>" Our competitors believe content is everything, so they take lectures right out of the classroom and configure it for companies," Miller says. "We're trying to connect training to business strategy. We build our content and our distribution. If you want the lesson to be learned and put into practice, how it's taught to people is just as important as what is taught. So we do everything from the ground up, according to what the client is trying to accomplish."</p><p>Distribution could include face-to-face classes taught by some of the hundreds of instructors in the Duke CE database, online learning, or both. The company uses technology owned by Fuqua for online instruction. The D4 platform software was developed in 1995 for Fuqua's Global MBA program, and the school later sold the software to Pensare, a California-based Internet company that wanted to refine it and use it to mass-market online business-education courses. When the Internet bust forced Pensare into bankruptcy two years ago, Fuqua anted up more than $1 million to outbid other business schools to regain the rights to the software.</p><p>John Gallagher, Duke CE's vice president for learning technology and development, is reluctant to reveal what makes D4 such a valuable tool to the company in its development of customized corporate courses, saying only that it goes beyond having people sit in front of their computers reading lessons and typing in responses. "We recognize students have their own experiences to share and are able to create a context for meaningful discussion and to extract insights," he says. "We're not just digitizing a small part of the classroom experience for a download."</p><p>The combination of creative processes, technology, and global reach offered by Duke CE has attracted almost three-dozen major clients, including British Airways, the Ford Motor Company, IBM, Merck & Co., Goldman Sachs, and The New York Times Company. Some, like ABB, use the company repeatedly for different training needs. In May, the Financial Times of London ranked Duke CE first in an assessment of customized corporate-education programs worldwide.</p><p>But the economic recession and the fall-off in business travel after the September 2001 terrorist attacks have cut into the corporate-training market over the last two years, creating problems for the company that would be less pronounced if it were still under Fuqua's wing. With business failing to keep pace with initial growth projections, Duke CE was forced to lay off about 13 percent of its work force in late 2001 and has not filled the positions of some employees who have left. A number of desks in the company's office remain empty months after the cutbacks--devoid even of computers--a sign that Duke is committed to keeping expenses in line with more slowly expanding revenue. Although plans call for eventually bringing in outside investors to help raise more capital and spread the risk of ownership, the university is currently still the primary owner of Duke CE--some employees own minor stakes--and Breeden, the Fuqua dean, says the lack of profits at the company has been a concern.</p><p>The company lost an undisclosed amount in fiscal 2002 after recording about $18 million in revenue. It generated $24 million in revenue in fiscal 2003, which ended in June, allowing the company to begin paying a portion of the annual royalty it owes to Fuqua for using D4 and for borrowing professors to teach some corporate-education classes, Sheppard says. "A lot of this is a matter of timing, and they've had a bad run with everything that has happened in the business world over the past year or so," Breeden says. "We understand that, but we also have had discussions with them about profitability--we are a business-oriented institution, after all. We challenge them on their business plan, and they are responding."</p><div><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 572px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/091003/images/lg_seo_29a.jpg" alt="David Miller, Director of business development, Duke CE" width="572" height="267" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><span class="brwntextpullout">"We can put together a course in a matter of months that meets a client's needs and teach it to groups in Europe, Asia, and North America at the same time."</span><span class="text">— David Miller, Director of business development, Duke CE. </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">Photo: Les Todd</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td align="center"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p>The burden of meeting such challenges, the fear of tarnishing brand names that universities have nurtured for decades, and the difficulty of dealing with potential conflicts with their academic mission are some reasons why so few universities have breached the for-profit services arena, according to experts.</p><p>Officials with Duke Clinical Research Institute, for example, have, over the years, discussed the idea of splitting the operation, which performs clinical studies on experimental drugs and treatment methodologies, from the Duke Medical Center. But Director Robert Califf says those conversations always reached the same conclusion: DCRI's research mission would be compromised if it became a for-profit company, where the bottom line would always vie with academic merit in determining which projects to pursue. "There's a great advantage to being inside Duke, and there's little reason for us to be separate from the university," he says.</p><p>Still, the interest in developing new sources of revenue, especially when college administrators are facing declining investment returns on their endowments and are hard-pressed to continually raise tuition to help pay for escalating costs, is beginning to erode arguments against pursuing for-profit ventures.</p><p>" These are more of a long-term economic investment than a short-term answer to financial problems, but they do represent another revenue stream," says Damon Monetta, director of communications for the National Association of College and University Business Officers, which monitors financial issues and promotes sound fiscal practices at universities across the country.</p><p>NACUBO counted fewer than two-dozen for-profit companies affiliated with universities nationwide in 2000, many of which were set up to run university-owned hotels or conference facilities; Monetta says the number has grown slightly since then. But Goldstein, the Washington lawyer, points to Duke CE's financial situation and notes, "If you go into something like this, it has to be with the notion of expanding research, because nobody is making huge money on this."</p><p>Sheppard and Breeden say Duke CE is experimenting with teaching methods that, if successful, can be taken back to Fuqua and applied there. University officials also recognize the research opportunities offered by Duke CE. John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, says that planning for the company stretched on for several years, as officials examined the business plan to be certain that there was a market worth exploring. Drawing up documents that spelled out Duke CE's relationship with the university was also a protracted process, he says, adding that Duke CE would never have gotten a green light if it were a bad idea. (The same has been true for Duke Translational Medicine Inc., the for-profit venture being planned by the School of Medicine. Likewise, the School of Nursing is a long way off from possibly packaging part of its curriculum for resale to other nursing schools after holding some preliminary discussions on the idea, says Eileen Watts Welch, assoiate dean for development and external affairs.)</p><p>Still, Burness says that he doesn't see a wave of for-profit ventures in Duke's future, even if Duke CE and others thrive and become important partners for the university. "These are unique cases where there's an advantage to creating this type of arrangement, and I don't expect that to happen very often," he says, noting that the university doesn't have any coordinated effort to explore potential for-profits.</p><p>Sheppard says he is "guardedly proud" of Duke CE's first three years of operation, noting that its ability to recover from some early missteps and slowly build a foundation for future growth--all in the midst of a miserable economy--has proved his experiment a success. "It's hard to be a world leader in education if you're not willing to experiment," he says. "You have to attempt to push boundaries."</p><p class="byline"><em>Burns is a freelance writer in Raleigh, North Carolina.</em></p></div><span class="text"></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="2003-10-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, October 1, 2003</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/lg_seo_29a.jpg" width="620" height="289" 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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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/sep-oct-2003" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sep - Oct 2003</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">Duke Corporate Education Inc., a for-profit venture, develops and teaches executive- and managerial-training courses for Fortune 500 companies around the worl </div></div></section> Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501777 at https://alumni.duke.edu Lois Ruppenthal Wethington '46 and Elbert Wethington B.D. '47, Ph.D. '49 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lois-ruppenthal-wethington-46-and-elbert-wethington-bd-47-phd-49 <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><table width="286" border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td align="center" width="327"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/091003/images/lg_seo_29.jpg" alt="Lois Ruppenthal Wethington '46 and Elbert Wethington B.D. '47, Ph.D. '49" width="580" height="248" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"> Photo:Chris Hildreth</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td align="right"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">By all appearances, Lois Ruppenthal Wethington is a genteel Southern lady, filled with courtesy and enough maternal pride for a roomful of grandmothers. But deep within her lies a Chinese soul, one that comes to life each time she picks up a paintbrush, dabs it in watercolor, and strokes it across a sheet of rice paper.</p><p>Over the past fifty years, Wethington has become skilled in the art of Chinese painting, with more than 200 landscapes and images of animals and people to her credit. Her technique is so advanced that some masters of the art, after seeing her watercolors, are amazed to learn that they were painted by a Westerner.</p><p>" I had always been interested in art, and I was just drawn to this, because it was different--simple yet beautiful," says Wethington, who first learned the techniques used in Chinese painting in the mid-1950s from refugees who fled Communist China for the Philippines, where her husband, Elbert Wethington, was a United Methodist Church missionary.</p><p>Although the language barrier between student and teachers presented difficulties, Lois Wethington immersed herself in the culture and gradually picked up enough Chinese to communicate.</p><p>Her lasting affection for Chinese life can be seen in the Wethingtons' home in Durham, where lanterns and other decorative accents fill spaces not already occupied by her paintings.</p><p>Learning the Chinese style of painting involves mastering brush strokes that have been codified and passed down for generations. The brushwork is supposed to reflect both movement and serenity in the subject of the work, she says, and students learn the art by copying existing paintings.</p><p>" There are no still lifes in China," says Elbert Wethington, a former Duke Divinity School professor. "Everything has life and movement. It's part of a whole world view and the spirituality the culture embraces."</p><p>That philosophy is the reason Lois Wethington has continued to paint in the Chinese tradition some forty years after returning to the United States. "There's more behind these paintings than just what appears," she says, pointing to a work in her living room depicting two ducks amid some reeds on a pond--a metaphor for harmony in marriage. "The Chinese way is very disciplined and doesn't allow for much individual expression, but I find ways to add a bit of myself to paintings."</p><p>Those bits are rarely seen by people other than friends and relatives. She doesn't sell or exhibit her work often, and most paintings are stored away or are hanging in the houses of her three children.</p><p>It was only constant prodding by her older son, Olin, that finally persuaded her a few years ago to write a book about her painting.</p><p>He feared that few people would ever become acquainted with her work once his parents died.</p><p>The result is Visual Poetry: My Journey into Chinese Painting, which includes photos of about seventy paintings that she picked to illustrate different subjects and brush strokes. She wrote the book in longhand, while her husband served as typist and editor.</p><p>In her book, she says she took great care to explain the specific emotion and movement that is conveyed each time she moves the brush across the paper. "I felt that I would have learned more early on if I had understood the meaning behind certain strokes."</p><p class="byline"><em>--Burns is a freelance writer in Raleigh, North Carolina.</em></p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="85%" /></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="2003-10-01T00:00:00-04:00">Wednesday, October 1, 2003</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/matthew-burns" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Matthew Burns</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/sep-oct-2003" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sep - Oct 2003</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501754 at https://alumni.duke.edu