Duke - Ryan Hoerger https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/writers/ryan-hoerger text en Bookbag: Learning to Fail https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bookbag-learning-fail <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 CATALYST: Aaron Dinin ’05 graduated from Duke with an English major and a published novel to his name but had trouble turning that skill set into a career. To adapt, he taught himself coding and learned the back end of the Internet through Web development jobs, eventually moving back to Durham as the founder of a start-up called RocketBolt. Armed with a Ph.D. in English, a decade of experience, and the realization that conventional classroom learning does not adequately prepare students to recover from inevitable failures, he stepped back on campus to fill that void.</p><p>THE GIST: Dinin views strong writing as a key to success and a critical component of avoiding communication failures. He challenged students in the freshman seminar to create blogs and fill them with content that would connect with an audience, working with them to understand and adjust the errors in their plans of attack. “You learn what you did wrong, and then you iterate, and you try to get back toward that success,” says Dinin. “Don’t worry about it not working out—worry about it taking you two months to figure out that it didn’t work out.”</p><p>ASSIGNMENT LIST: The class split into two six-student teams to choose blog topics and divide the work. Functioning like a start-up, the teams assigned roles, developed social-media and public-relations strategies, and posted regular blog content to develop a brand and drive traffic to the website in pursuit of 1 million views. The most popular blog reached a few thousand people, but Dinin does not equate popularity with success. “The topic [the other group] chose was not as easy to drive and build an audience around, so they had this whole learning process about, ‘Oh my gosh, what you think people would be interested in reading every day is totally not the case at all.’ It’s much harder to find that.”</p><p>THE TWIST: 1 million visitors in four months. That was the target Dinin set for the blogs at the first class meeting, a goal he knew his students would fail to achieve. “I even tried to convince them in the course description on ACES when they signed up that this is impossible,” he says. “I don’t think they started grasping the impossibility until maybe three weeks in.” There were a few tense weeks as students coped with the reality that they would fall well short, but true to Dinin’s philosophy of experiential learning, surpassing the readership threshold was never a factor in students’ grades.</p><p>WHAT YOU MISSED: Dinin had to devise a lesson plan for 10:05 a.m. on April 7, the day after students celebrated Duke basketball’s national championship victory in Indianapolis well into the morning. To illustrate rejection therapy—in which participants immunize themselves to being turned down and overcome the fear of failure—he sent his class to Ninth Street eateries and told them to ask for a menu item for free. To his surprise, the majority of the class did not return empty-handed; some students walked back with free bagels, others with free coffee. “It was this great lesson that not only did it not hurt you if they said no, but a lot of times those people said yes,” Dinin says. “It was from asking and recognizing that, again, the worst possible outcome wasn’t failing, it was that they had never done it.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-07-27T00:00:00-04:00">Monday, July 27, 2015</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/failure-main.png" width="620" height="265" 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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/special-2015" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Special 2015</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/failure-portrait_0.png" width="250" height="300" /></figure></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Mon, 27 Jul 2015 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498567 at https://alumni.duke.edu Five Views of a Fifth Championship https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/five-views-fifth-championship <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><strong>THE VIEW FROM CAMERON</strong></p> <p>In the future, we’ll see a merging between the virtual and the actual. Are we players in the real world? Or are we players who just act as if we’re in the real world?</p> <p>In Cameron Indoor Stadium for the Duke-Wisconsin game, the future arrived. The game was up there, on the giant scoreboard. But the game might as well have been down there, on the floor of Cameron, just below the concession stands with their (real-world) $8 box pizzas.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 480px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><strong><img alt="" class="media-image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Bballcrowd.png?itok=LgQ7VnW4" style="height:305px; vertical-align:middle; width:480px" /></strong>And the crowd goes wild. (Photo by Megan Mendenhall) <p>And the crowd goes wild. (Photo by Megan Mendenhall)</p> </div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>For the occasion, Cameron was a students-only zone. With a show of coordinated chaos, they indulged in their heart-pumping, stadium-shaking, noise-making up-and-down bounce. They wore blue wigs, devil horns that glowed, and T-shirts that carried supportive statements: “Blue Devil Basketball Never Stops,” “You Can’t Handle The D,” and (in a reaching back to past glory) “Laettner 32.” In a sea of blue, one spectator sported an orange- and-yellow costume. “I’m a giraffe,” she explained.</p> <p>Pregame, as the Channel 3 (“On Your Side”) camera surveyed the crowd, student responses were appropriate to the stimulus: They waved, they made faces, they recited the virtues of the team. With the playing of the national anthem, they sang along, badly but exuberantly.</p> <p>During the game, as players approached the free-throw line, the students sometimes traced the path to the basket with their extended arms. And sometimes they gestured with wild abandon—depending, of course, on the team attempting the free throw. As the score veered in and out of Duke’s favor, they sounded the familiar chant: “Let’s go, Duke!!!” You just can’t record that without an arsenal of exclamation points.</p> <p>A high-schooler, visiting Duke as a prospective student (an even more committed prospect by evening’s end), was in synch with one crowd ritual: adamantly exercising his iPhone to unleash “tons of pictures” for his friends. Phones fired away around the final score, 68-63. There was more bouncing, a lot of hugging, shouts of “This is insane” (“this” referring either to the game or the celebratory aftermath), the rushing of the Cameron floor, and the grabbing of instantly printed newspapers with a “National Champions” headline.</p> <p>The action shifted to the bonfire and the sacrifice of dorm benches—maybe a sign of spontaneous joy, or maybe the carrying out of a familiar ritual. A news helicopter hovered high above. One student called out, “Hello, helicopter!” What was that goofy greeting all about? It didn’t matter. It was just a night for feeling good.&nbsp;</p> <p><em>- Robert Bliwise</em></p> <p><strong>INSIDE A PLAYER'S MIND</strong></p> <p>On the morning of Monday, April 6, Grayson Allen woke up thinking about bubonic plague.</p> <p>This was twelve hours before he became that Grayson Allen, before he came off the bench to resuscitate a Blue Devil team suddenly gone lifeless and lead Duke to its fifth national championship in basketball. This was when he was just Grayson, a nineteen-year-old freshman, the eighth man on an eight-man team, and, on the biggest day of his Duke life, a kid with homework.</p> <p>“I had a paper due for my Medieval Christianity class,” Allen recalled later. “I wanted to get it done by Sunday, but it was kind of hard to carve out the time.”</p> <p>Hard because the Final Four, an event built around 120 minutes of college basketball, is as heavily orchestrated as a diplomatic summit. Since arriving in Indianapolis five days earlier, Allen and his teammates had been shuttled between press conferences, team meetings, meals, and photo opportunities. The agenda relented only at night, when many of the players gathered in a hotel suite to play video games. Allen had cut out early on Sunday evening to work on his paper, a review of a novel set in England during the time of the Black Death, but at midnight he put it aside to get some sleep. Or at least try to.</p> <p>“I lay awake for probably an hour,” he says. “I was remembering watching Duke play in the 2010 national championship game,” which was also held in Indianapolis. “I was in eighth grade, and I knew I wanted to play for Duke. To be in the same place, playing for the championship, I just couldn’t believe it.”</p> <p>Until then, Allen’s first year at Duke hadn’t been much of a fairy tale. Though he arrived with less fanfare than teammates Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones, and Justise Winslow, Allen was a McDonald’s All-American coming out of high school in Jacksonville, Florida. His ambitions rose as high as his thirty-seven- inch vertical jump could carry him. Yet in the Blue Devils’ first twenty regular-season games, Allen played more than ten minutes only three times. When Duke faced its eventual championship-game foe Wisconsin in December, he never got off the bench.</p> <p>That made Allen’s heroic role in the final even more astounding. The freshman scored sixteen points—including eight during a one-minute, nine-second flurry in the second half that erased most of a nine-point Wisconsin lead. Within two days, Allen would have 50,000 new Instagram followers. A few snide columnists pegged him as “the next great Duke villain.”</p> <p><img alt="" class="media-image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Basketballextra_0.png?itok=bDXUgL2u" style="height:355px; width:480px" /></p> <p>But on Monday morning, all that was a fantasy as remote as fourteenth-century England. Reality was a hotel room, an open laptop, and the quiet click of keys as Allen completed his paper. After filing the assignment, he e-mailed his professor, Katharine Dubois ’89, to say he hoped the class would be able to watch the game. Dubois assured him they would, “with probably more exclamation points than I would usually use in e-mails to students or colleagues,” she says. “But I am a Duke grad, after all.”</p> <p>Dubois’ class meets on Monday evenings, from 6:30 to 9. That night, she let the students out early so they could get to their game-watching destinations, none of them imagining that their absent classmate was about to become a legend. Not even Grayson Allen.</p> <p><em>-Michael Penn</em></p> <p><strong>ON THE BEAT IN INDIANA</strong></p> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 400px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><strong><img alt="" class="media-image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Bballcoach_0.png?itok=Yurbx6MG" style="height:350px; width:400px" /></strong>A Coach K embrace (Photo by Jon Gardiner) <p>A Coach K embrace (Photo by Jon Gardiner)</p> </div> </div> </div> <p>The cardinal rule of press row is very simple: No cheering. So as a student journalist seated in the south end zone of Lucas Oil Stadium, I was likely one of few Duke students who watched the final seconds of Duke’s 68-63 win against Wisconsin tick away with a straight face. When the final buzzer sounded, I finished my work on my laptop, closed the lid, and walked to the edge of the raised court for the trophy presentation, passing the quickly emptying Badger student section and trying to imagine the delirium raging inside Cameron Indoor Stadium 600 miles from Indianapolis.</p> <p>During the ceremony and ensuing press conferences, I kept my thoughts from showing. But internally, the heart-thumping from the tense final minutes was starting to die down, and the realization that Duke had won was starting to sink in.</p> <p>For Quinn Cook, the win was vindication. The senior captain finally captured the banner he had been chasing for four years. For Final Four Most Outstanding Player Tyus Jones, whose nineteen second- half points brought the Blue Devils back from a nine-point deficit, it was just one of many shining moments in a dynamite freshman season.</p> <p>Head coach Mike Krzyzewski always has preached doing things “together,” and this year’s team completely embraced that message. In watching the players’ season-long evolution from press row, I was struck by their focus and willingness to deflect praise to their teammates, even on a team loaded with freshman stars destined for the pros. Outside pressures did not affect the way they talked and did not affect the way they played all season long. None of that changed when Duke got to the biggest stage of all: the Final Four, where we in the media fully exhausted our list of questions during four days of endless pregame and postgame availability. As Justise Winslow said in the days leading up to the South Regional in Houston, Duke treated its weekends in March like “a business trip,” and the Blue Devils returned to Durham having sealed the deal.</p> <p>I left the media room around 3:30 the next morning—at which point the on-campus festivities had probably moved on from the Main Quad bonfire—to get a few hours of rest before driving back to Durham. I’ll continue to strive for objective reporting, but it sure would be nice to be back next year.</p> <p><em>-Ryan Hoerger</em></p> <p><strong>ALUMS TUNE IN AROUND THE WORLD</strong></p> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 480px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><strong><img alt="" class="media-image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Bballmap.png?itok=99iotraM" style="height:305px; width:480px" /></strong>More than 200 alumni pinned their game watch locations to a "Global Cameron" Google map. <p>More than 200 alumni pinned their game watch locations to a "Global Cameron" Google map.</p> </div> </div> </div> <p><em><strong>Jessica Gaither Vandett</strong></em> M.S. ’07 was in Banner Elk, North Carolina, cheering on the Blue Devils with her dad and five-year-old daughter, Zoë. During the last Duke championship win in 2010, Vandett was in the neonatal intensive- care unit at CHI St. Vincent’s Infirmary in Little Rock, Arkansas, with Zoë, who was delivered at thirty-three weeks. That night, as Vandett watched over her sleeping daughter, she cheered on the Blue Devils to victory with one of Zoë’s neonatologists. “We felt she was a good-luck charm,” Vandett says. And on game night this year, a healthy, strong Zoë worked her magic again. “She cheered her heart out,” Vandett says.</p> <p><em><strong>Michael Pelehach</strong></em> ’10, a Fulbright scholar who teaches English in Silistra, Bulgaria, was in Bucharest for one night, catching a plane to Greece the next morning. The Blue Devils were playing in about four hours, so he ordered two cups of coffee to go from a bar close to his hostel—for later when he woke up for the game—and tried to get a little sleep. “I set three alarms to make sure I was wide awake in time for tip-off at 4 a.m.,” Pelehach says. And he was. The next morning, a groggy and happy Pelehach chatted with another hostel guest. He had stayed up all night before rushing to the airport. “Oh, that was you!” the guest said. “I heard a bunch of clapping and yelling at ungodly hours last night!”</p> <p><em><strong>Liz Clarke Glynn</strong></em> ’07 and her husband, Declan, were preparing to board a plane home to Washington after a whirlwind trip that included a family wedding. The plane did not have in-flight Wi-Fi, so Glynn, in her Duke shirt, was hoping the flight got delayed. Throughout her time in Australia, Glynn had streamed the NCAA tournament games successfully from her smart phone—including the Final Four from atop the Blue Mountain range in Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia. She commiserated with a fellow Duke fan on board. She appealed to the flight attendant, asking for help nudging the captain for the score. But it was radio silence until Glynn landed in the U.S. “As we started our descent, I got my phone out and had it prepped and ready to go to find out the score,” Glynn says. “Once I knew, I couldn’t stop smiling and was so excited! It got me through the long customs process in a great mood!”</p> <p><em>-Christina Holder</em></p> <p><strong>MERCH MADNESS</strong></p> <p>Jim Wilkerson spent the night of the championship at home watching the game with family and friends. Right at the buzzer, amid shouting friends and a howling beagle, the director of trademark licensing and store operations for Duke University Stores texted one of the apparel suppliers: “Print ’em!” His message was the green light to start printing championship shirts.</p> <p><strong>By the Numbers</strong></p> <p><strong>130</strong> employees worked at the Duke Store the day after the game (40 more than usual)</p> <p><strong>10,000</strong> customers bought gear the day after the game</p> <p><strong>$1,000,000+</strong> in revenue from championship gear sales</p> <p><strong>15,000</strong> T-shirts purchased in the first 24 hours after the game</p> <p><em>-Elizabeth Van Brocklin</em></p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-05-01T00:00:00-04:00">Friday, May 1, 2015</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/Basketballmain.png" width="1900" height="900" 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/robert-j-bliwise" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert J. Bliwise</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/author/michael-penn" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michael Penn</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/writers/christina-holder" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Christina Holder</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/elizabeth-van-brocklin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Elizabeth Van Brocklin</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/summer-2015" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Summer 2015</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> Yes <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">Looking at one great acheivement</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Fri, 01 May 2015 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498578 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/five-views-fifth-championship#comments Duke's Latest Multisport Star https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/dukes-latest-multisport-star <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><span class="dc">D</span>uke wrestling coach Glen Lanham had a question for his newest wrestler: “Fowler, what do you have in that shoebox?” The shoebox contained all of Brendan Fowler’s wrestling gear. A former Blue Devil lacrosse star, he’d been using it for two weeks during summer training, not wanting to ruffle any of his new teammates’ feathers by taking anybody’s locker.</p><p>“That was huge to me,” Lanham says. “It wasn’t about, ‘Hey Coach, when am I going to get a locker?’ It was about, ‘I’m going to come in here, I don’t want to offend anybody, I’m going to work hard.’”</p><p>In an era where kids begin to specialize in a single sport at a young age, Fowler has harked back to the days of former multisport Duke stars Ace Parker ’38 and Dick Groat ’53, following competition wherever it takes him—to the football field, the lacrosse field, and now, the wrestling mat.</p><p>As a high-school student in Wantagh, New York, Fowler excelled in all three sports and came to Duke as a recruited walk-on with the football team. His high-school lacrosse coach knew Duke lacrosse coach John Danowski and alerted him that his star face-off man would be on campus in the fall.</p><p>“I said, ‘You’re crazy, there’s no way I can do both of those. I’m worried about trying to step on the field in football,’ ” Fowler says, of his reaction after speaking with Danowski. Eventually he agreed to join both teams; head football coach David Cutcliffe and Danowski “were both cool with me playing the other sport.”</p><p>After sitting out the football season as a redshirt, Fowler got some playing time early in the year for Danowski’s Blue Devils as a freshman. As a sophomore, he played on special teams for Cutcliffe, recovering an onside kick against Florida State. He started to see more action on the lacrosse field, but a broken collarbone in the opening round of the NCAA tournament derailed the rest of his season and cost him the majority of the next year’s football campaign, which ended with a trip to the Belk Bowl.</p><p>Healthy by the spring of his junior year, Fowler stepped in to fill a void in the lacrosse face-off X for the Blue Devils, replacing the departed C.J. Costabile ’12 with historic success. By year’s end, Fowler had racked up 339 face-off victories, the most in a single season in NCAA history. Thirteen of those wins came consecutively on the sport’s biggest stage, as the former football walk-on won twenty of twenty-eight face-offs to give the Blue Devils possession after possession, ultimately claiming the 2013 NCAA national championship.</p><p>“I’d say it was just a good-timing day. You can ask any athlete, there are just days where you’re feeling it and you’re in the zone,” Fowler says. “It was a pretty good day to be in the zone for me. I was lucky that it landed on national championship day.”</p><p>What happened next was a product of his hard work. Danowski awarded Fowler a scholarship for his senior season, and the face-off specialist was named a team captain.</p><p>By accepting the scholarship, Fowler, following NCAA rules, became ineligible for his final season with Cutcliffe and the football program, meaning he could only watch as the Blue Devils captured the ACC Coastal Division title and suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.</p><p>With one season of lacrosse remaining, Fowler again set the tone for the Blue Devils in the face-off X, winning 59 percent of his face-offs and helping Duke reach the Final Four for the eighth straight season. When Notre Dame tried to mount a comeback in the national title game, Fowler won a crucial face-off late in the fourth quarter to preserve an 11-9 win and graduate as a back-to-back national champion.</p><p>After graduating, Fowler spent half a season with the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse. But he still wanted something to do in the offseason. He found his answer at the Fuqua School of Business, an answer that allowed him to pursue higher education and continue his athletic involvement.</p><p>He had learned about the Master of Management Studies program from other former lacrosse players. “Once I got in, I got some scholarship from the business school, which meant I couldn’t play football again [under NCAA rules], which I was hoping to.”</p><p>Instead, Fowler soon found his way onto the wrestling mat for a final season of NCAA eligibility. (The detailed eligibility rules allowed him to wrestle, even though they kept him off the football team.)</p><p>Lanham first crossed paths with Fowler during Fowler’s sophomore year, in a place frequented by wrestlers and lacrosse players alike—the weight room —where the face-off man expressed interest in wrestling later. Initially skeptical, Lanham invited him to join the team after he and Fowler reconnected when Fowler returned to campus for his studies at Fuqua.</p><p>Fowler spent time training with the wrestlers in the summer and has been working with the team all season. Slowed by a knee injury, he made his debut as a college wrestler in January, posting a win in his first match.</p><p>“Football and lacrosse, you can translate the running and stuff over, but wrestling is very different,” Fowler says. “In high school [wrestling] you can get away with just being a really good athlete and having a little bit of technique and be really successful. In college everyone has really good technique, and everyone in Division I is a pretty awesome athlete.”</p><p>The learning curve has been steep at times, but Lanham says Fowler is working hard to shake off five years’ worth of rust. Beyond that, he’s brought veteran experience to a program looking to turn the corner.</p><p>“He can show up and talk about experiences, highs, lows, what it means to be in games,” Lanham says. “A winner’s a winner, no matter what they do.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-02-24T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, February 24, 2015</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/Sports-main.png" width="620" height="265" 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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/spring-2015" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Spring 2015</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/Sports_portrait_0.jpeg" width="250" height="300" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/jon-gardiner" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jon Gardiner</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">Brendan Fowler ’14 has competed in football, lacrosse, and wrestling— but don’t expect him to brag about it.</div></div></section> Tue, 24 Feb 2015 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498596 at https://alumni.duke.edu A Lineman and a Scholar https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lineman-and-scholar <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><span class="dc">L</span>aken Tomlinson was angry when he learned his grandfather had died.</p><p>Years earlier, when he was a kid, Tomlinson had called 9-1-1 to help his grandfather, Ivan Wilson, who had collapsed in the bathroom at his Chicago home. He recovered in a week. A few years later, while visiting family relatives in his native Jamaica, Wilson collapsed again; this time, he died.</p><p>In Jamaica, where Tomlinson spent his childhood racing around playing cricket and soccer, he and his relatives went to the funeral and agreed on what they saw as a harsh reality: This wouldn’t have happened in the U.S. Tomlinson, now Duke’s starting right guard, is convinced inadequate medical resources turned his grandfather’s treatable condition (Wilson died from complications from stomach ulcers) into a fatal one. The loss has become a source of motivation.</p><p>“I actually wrote a paper about the Jamaican healthcare system and how bad it was compared to the United States and Europe. That’s just something I was really passionate about,” Tomlinson says. “When I came [to Duke], I decided I wanted to be pre-medicine because I wanted to do something about the health-care system in Jamaica.”</p><p>Tomlinson’s mother, Audrey Wilson, stressed the importance of education, and a scholarship to a college like Duke seemed too good to pass up. They had come to the U.S. from Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, Jamaica, when Tomlinson was ten, joining his grandparents in Chicago’s Rogers Park area. After overcoming the culture shock— and adjusting to the frigid temperatures—he stayed active, playing soccer with his brother and uncle. But Tomlinson began to grow, and his weight gain made playing soccer challenging. He spent more and more time inside, consuming food at a rate that frustrated his mother.</p><p>“One day I was inside, eating something, and my mom’s like, ‘You eat so much, you keep eating everything in the house,’” Tomlinson says. “My uncle was like, ‘Let him eat, let him have whatever he wants. He’ll get big, and he can play football.’ He’s the one who personally brought me out to my first football practice and pretty much got me playing.”</p><p>At nearly six feet tall and around 200 pounds, the preteen Tomlinson towered over the other kids at his first junior-league practice. Defense came easily to him, but playing offense was a struggle at first; with no prior football experience, Tomlinson had to learn the technique and physicality needed to protect the quarterback.</p><p>He played on both sides of the ball at Lane Tech College Prep in Chicago and eventually was sucked into the inescapable recruiting whirlwind for someone of his size and potential. Scholarship offers slowly began trickling in, and soon the three-star recruit had an enticing offer from Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State.</p><p>Tomlinson, now 330 pounds of strength packed into a 6-foot-3 frame, was thinking that a school like Ohio State might provide the preamble to an NFL career. When Duke head coach David Cutcliffe met with him, Tomlinson said, “He was a really honest guy when he was here, and after he left, I decided I had to see what this guy was about. I went home, did some more research on Duke, and was like, ‘Wow—this is a really prestigious school for academics.’”</p><p>After consulting with his family, his high-school coach, and his youth mentor, Tomlinson committed to the Blue Devils. Since then, his performance on the gridiron has been impressive—the redshirt senior was named a captain for the 2014 season and has made forty-seven consecutive starts as of November 1—and his off-field accomplishments are equally notable. He will graduate in December with a double-major in psychology and evolutionary anthropology, and he was named to the Allstate AFCA Good Works team for his service in the Durham community.</p><p>Last summer, Tomlinson also invested time in his potential post-football career: He shadowed Carlos Bagley ’96, M.D. ’00 at Duke Hospital, learning the ins and outs of life as a neurosurgeon, a specialty Tomlinson could see himself pursuing one day. Bagley played inside linebacker for the Blue Devils before switching out his helmet and shoulder pads for scrubs and a stethoscope.</p><p>Bagley and Claude Moorman III ’83 of Duke Sports Medicine—another former Blue Devil football player— have become role models for Tomlinson as he balances his football commitments with his premed requirements.</p><p>“It shows that even though you play football you can still be a doctor,” Tomlinson says. “They’re kind of living proof of my ultimate dream. Just having those people around me has been a motivator.”</p><p>Unlike Moorman and Bagley, though, Tomlinson will have a more immediate calling—professional football. He’s considered a top-10 offensive guard prospect for the 2015 NFL draft by CBS Sports and could be Duke’s highest-drafted selection in years. He wants to enjoy playing football as long as he can, while he’s young and healthy, and then pursue other options. He always has medical school as a fallback.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-12-08T00:00:00-05:00">Monday, December 8, 2014</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/LakenMain.png" width="620" height="265" 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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/winter-2014" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Winter 2014</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/Lakenportrait_0.png" width="250" height="300" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/jon-gardiner" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jon Gardiner</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">After a career in the NFL, Laken Tomlinson wants a medical degree</div></div></section> Mon, 08 Dec 2014 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18499417 at https://alumni.duke.edu A New Kind of Kenyan Girl https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/new-kind-kenyan-girl <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>Last March, in Muhuru Bay, Kenya, twenty-eight young women from the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER) were honored as part of the school’s first graduating class. It was an emotional event, a long time in the making.</p> <p>Founded in 2006 by Sherryl Broverman, associate professor of the practice of biology and global health, and Andy Cunningham ’08, WISER provides a solid secondary education to girls, as well as critical health information. Muhuru Bay, on the shores of Lake Victoria in southwestern Kenya, struggles with high rates of HIV, infant mortality, and poverty.</p> <p>Educated girls were rare when Broverman first came to the village. “I had some moments of moral outrage of seeing girls sold to their teachers to pay off school fees when they just wanted to study,” Broverman says. “I wanted to do something that could help more than one girl. Right then the girls had several options: They could have sex to stay in school, or they could get married and drop out, or they could run away from their marriage. It seemed to me that there had to be another option.”</p> <p>Besides educating thirty new girls each year (two girls in this year’s class will graduate next year), WISER has extended its reach to the community by strengthening primary education, building kiosks for clean drinking water, and supporting nutrition through community gardens. The school served as a pilot project for DukeEngage, and Duke students still go there each summer. Broverman has been taking students to Muhuru Bay since 2002 to volunteer in the classroom and the community.</p> <p>Graduation, which attracted more than 1,000 residents and a handful of Kenyan dignitaries, was a community-wide celebration, and for good reason. In the past thirty years, only one girl in the community had advanced to higher education. In the WISER school, no girls have dropped out. Seventeen members of WISER’s graduating class will be attending college this year—many of them on full scholarships—which means that Muhuru Bay will be sending more girls than boys to college for the first time. Many of them want to pursue careers in medicine and nursing.</p> <p>“When I first went to Kenya and went to Muhuru Bay, I remember asking girls how many educated women they knew, and they said one,” Broverman says. “Now they can say thirty, and the year after that they can say sixty, and the year after that, ninety. There’s just a whole new idea of what a girl can be in Muhuru Bay.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-09-25T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, September 25, 2014</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/WISERfourgirls.png" width="620" height="265" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/african-african-american-studies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">African &amp; African American Studies</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/diversity-equity-inclusion" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Diversity, Equity &amp; Inclusion</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/public-health" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Public Health</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/travel/africa-and-the-middle-east" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Africa &amp; the Middle East</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/women-s-forum" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Women’s Forum</a></li></ul></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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/fall-2014" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2014</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/WISERgirlstwo_0.png" width="250" height="300" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/liz-moran" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Liz Moran</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">Celebrating the first class of graduates from an educational and health program</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18499455 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/new-kind-kenyan-girl#comments Some Things New, Some Improved https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/some-things-new-some-improved <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>Big changes are coming to Wallace Wade Stadium: luxury seating, a new press box, and maybe a sellout crowd are things to look for when you plan a visit for a fall Saturday in 2016 or beyond. One thing you won’t see? A track.</p> <p>The stadium, home to Blue Devil football since 1929, will receive a major facelift as part of a campus-wide upgrade, courtesy of the Duke Forward campaign. As part of that campaign, the athletics department has a goal of raising $250 million, which will be split into three pots: $100 million for operating and scholarship support, $50 million for the department’s endowment, and the remaining $100 million for construction and renovation of facilities that will benefit all twenty-six of Duke’s varsity teams.</p> <p>Planning for facility modernization began in 2008, shortly after the arrival of vice president and director of athletics Kevin White. A master plan for all levels of athletics, from intramurals to Division I, was devised in consultation with multiple architectural firms, leading to formation of the Bostock Group, chaired by former Duke trustee and varsity football player Roy Bostock ’62. The group, which included such well-known alumni as Grant Hill ’94 and current NBA commissioner Adam Silver ’84, focused on West Campus and revenue-generating facilities. The first phase of facility construction, new turf and grass practice fields for the men’s and women’s lacrosse and soccer teams, was completed in January.</p> <p>“The practice fields were really one of the first steps—actually it has turned out to be our first step—as far as a domino effect going into the football stadium,” says Mike Cragg, Duke’s deputy athletics director for operations.</p> <p>At Wallace Wade Stadium, the track will be removed from the horseshoe and the field lowered five feet, creating eight more rows of bleacher seating. The existing press box will be torn down and reconstructed to include some luxury suites; more seat-backs will be added, and a new scoreboard and concourse improvements will make the aging stadium feel younger. The stadium’s new capacity will be right around 40,000, up from not quite 34,000. Most renovations will take place following the upcoming season.</p> <p>“We’re never going to miss a game,” says Cragg. “The clock is now ticking— we’re moving.”</p> <p>Some architectural renderings of the remodeled stadium had called for completion of the horseshoe, but that proposal was put on hold. Cragg says that if Wallace Wade begins to sell out consistently, the next step could be to build a familyfriendly hill at the open end of the stadium, where families and groups can take in a game away from the bleachers.</p> <p>To accommodate the athletes displaced from Wallace Wade, construction on a new track stadium is well under way, as are modifications to Koskinen Stadium. Part of the track venue will be a separately financed building, Kennedy Tower, named for longtime associate athletics director Chris Kennedy Ph.D. ’79 and his late wife, Ana. The facility, which will be open to host Duke events year-round and will house a press box for soccer and lacrosse, should be ready for lacrosse season in the spring of 2015. Koskinen will also get a new scoreboard and bleachers.</p> <p>Duke’s most-revered athletic venue, Cameron Indoor Stadium, will be upgraded as well, likely beginning in 2015. The space between Cameron and Wallace Wade will be refurbished as “Blue Devil Plaza,” a pedestrian access space that will require taking out the current traffic circle. Plans for updating the seventy-fouryear- old facility include a new lobby entrance on the plaza side and a club space for hospitality on the second floor, outside the existing building, to accommodate an estimated 400 people. The current structure doubles as a home for many divisions of athletics administration, but construction of the Scott Family Pavilion for Olympic sports will relocate those offices and open up additional space in Cameron for future renovations. That pavilion, named for donors Steven Scott H.S. ’78 and his wife, Rebecca Jensen Scott A.H.A. ’79, also will feature a new ticket office and a Nike team store.</p> <p>“What we’ve tried to do is really incorporate the new with the old, and try to fix up the old as much as possible, like paint the seats upstairs, put in new fixtures, and upgrade the scoreboard a few years back,” Cragg says. “[We’re] always trying to preserve the history, the charm, and keeping it the place it is, and we’ll try to do the same with this. We will not touch the bowl of Cameron at all.”</p> <p>An expenditure of $100 million for athletic facilities might look like a hefty price tag, but seems modest in comparison to what other schools are doing, Duke officials say. The University of Alabama recently spent an equal sum on a football locker room, while crosstown rival UNC spent $75 million building end zone seating and club space at its football stadium. Tom Coffman, deputy athletics director for development, points out the practicality of Duke’s plan, spreading the $100 million across its entire athletics landscape rather than concentrating it on one sport, generating “a lot of bang for our buck.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-04-28T00:00:00-04:00">Monday, April 28, 2014</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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/summer-2014" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Summer 2014</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">Upgrades to facilities will give athletic teams a refreshed field of play</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Mon, 28 Apr 2014 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18499539 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/some-things-new-some-improved#comments Team Must Overcome a Familiar Challenge https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/team-must-overcome-familiar-challenge <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"> <blockquote><p class="p1">Photo by Jon Gardiner</p></blockquote><p class="p1">In mid-January, Duke women’s basketball senior point guard Chelsea Gray played sixteen minutes against Boston College, tallying 11 points, two assists, two rebounds, and four steals. But something didn’t feel right. Tests after the game revealed a fractured right kneecap, sidelining the two-time All-America selection for the season and ending her Duke career.</p><p class="p1">For Blue Devil fans, the news was like hitting the rewind button.</p><p class="p1">A season ago, Duke was rolling through its schedule, undefeated in the ACC and with a loss at No. 1 Connecticut as its only blemish on the season. But against Wake Forest on February 17, 2013, the season hit a major speed bump when Gray dislocated her right kneecap after chasing a loose ball and landing awkwardly. The injury relegated the junior point guard to a player-coach role from the Duke bench for the rest of the season.</p><p class="p1">“You’re always sad to lose a personality, a person who can offer so much,” says head coach Joanne P. McCallie. “You just evolve—there’s no replacement strategy.”</p><p class="p1">Without their leader, last year’s Blue Devils won three of their last four games to clinch the regular season ACC championship, as McCallie handed the reins to freshman point guard Alexis Jones, who had no choice but to mature quickly. Many questioned whether the Blue Devils could make it to the Final Four without Gray. They came up one win short. Duke’s season came to an end in the Elite Eight against top-seeded Notre Dame,<span class="s1"> </span>led by its own prolific point guard in Skylar Diggins.</p><p class="p1">After working hard all summer to rehab her knee, Gray was ready for the 2013-14 season opener at No. 9 California, a little more than an hour away from her hometown of Manteca. She put on a show for friends and family, scoring 22 points to lead the Blue Devils to a 70-58 victory. Over the next few games, she twice came within a rebound or two of a triple-double. Gray was back and playing at a high level, making Duke a contender for a national championship.</p><p class="p1">Yet now that Gray is out again, some of the same questions are circulating about Duke’s ability to get to Nashville and the Final Four. But this year’s team is well-equipped to survive the loss of its leader.</p><p class="p1">Besides Gray, the Blue Devils feature a lineup that includes three other 1,000-point scorers in seniors Tricia Liston and Haley Peters and junior Elizabeth Williams. Jones continued to mature as a player while sharing the backcourt with Gray, and senior Richa Jackson—who scored 17 points off the bench in Gray’s last game before her injury—has fit in nicely in the starting lineup. They’re also a stingy defensive squad, forcing opponents into frequent turnovers with high-pressure defense. Williams, a two-time All-America selection in her own right, has recorded at least one blocked shot in her first ninety-one games in a Duke uniform, giving the Blue Devils a threatening rim protector.</p><p class="p1">“We’re a different team this year than we were last year,” McCallie says. “What helps is that we have talented players, people that are confident about what they can do. When everybody plays to their best and tries to compete in a highlevel way, that’s the answer.”</p><p class="p1">McCallie also challenged her team in a way she didn’t last year by scheduling a grueling non-conference gauntlet. In addition to the season-opener at California, Duke went on the road to play highly-ranked teams in Kentucky and Oklahoma, winning all three games. The Blue Devils’ lone non-conference defeat came at home to No. 1 Connecticut. The ACC also got tougher this year with the addition of national powerhouse Notre Dame, joining Duke, Maryland, and North Carolina as conference heavy-weights. The benefits of being road-tested against top-notch competition will factor into tournament play this year, as schools will host the regional finals instead of traveling to play the games at neutral sites. Since Duke is hosting during the tournament’s opening weekend, the road to the Final Four likely will require a road victory over a top-tier team.</p><p class="p1">“Since we don’t have the ability to host, meaning the regionals, I think it’s very important to play away and play in a hostile environment and get comfortable with that,” McCallie says. “I think we are<span class="s1"> </span>pretty comfortable with that,<span class="s1"> </span>but the more you play away, the better.” Although Gray’s playing days are over, she will continue to be an asset this post-season by using her greatest skill, her vision, from the bench.</p><p class="p1">“She’s like another coach,” says Peters. “It’s easier for her to tell you what’s going on in the game in some ways more than a coach because she’s played the game so<span class="s1"> </span>much recently, and she’s<span class="s1"> </span>been on the floor with each of us and knows how each of us plays as well as anybody does.”</p><p class="p1">This year’s team is also hungry, determined to break through the barrier of four consecutive Elite Eight exits and reach the Final Four. For the team’s five seniors, the end of the road is near.</p><p class="p1">“We’re not satisfied with what’s happened in the past three years. Obviously, we want more than that,” says Liston,<span class="s1"> </span>who came to Duke primarily as a 3-point shooter but has grown into an all-around scorer. “It’s our last year, and we don’t have another chance, so there’s definitely a sense of urgency because this is our last go-around. It’s definitely a constant reminder.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-02-20T00:00:00-05:00">Thursday, February 20, 2014</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/201513_connecticut035.jpg" width="1200" height="700" 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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/spring-2014" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Spring 2014</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">Last year’s lessons may help the Blue Devils go further this year.</div></div></section> Thu, 20 Feb 2014 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18499572 at https://alumni.duke.edu Bookbag: Espionage, Cryptology, and Psychological Operations https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bookbag-espionage-cryptology-and-psychological-operations <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><strong>The catalyst: </strong>“Wkh dwwdfn zloo frpphqfh dw gdzq.” You might see this as a bunch of gibberish, but a student in Nicholas Gessler’s class would advise you to change each letter into the letter three places before it in the alphabet. The “gibberish” is now a warning: “The attack will commence at dawn.” Gessler, an anthropologist and espionage enthusiast, is helping students examine how an intelligence agency communicates information.</p> <p><strong>The gist: </strong>“Anthropology is an academic pursuit, and most academics would like to study a culture and provide information to members of that culture on how to better provide sanitation or health,” Gessler says. “For the intelligence community, their purpose is to understand a culture and obtain actionable information—they want to understand those parts of it which they can use to activate certain results in that community.” Those divergent goals are often achieved using the same tactics.</p> <p><strong>The twist: </strong>The class meets Wednesdays for nearly three hours, so Gessler tries to keep his students actively involved. In a recent class, students decrypted coded messages using pieces of his collection of World War II-era devices: Jefferson wheels (lettered disks that can be rotated and arranged to spell out a message) and a Swiss neu machine (an improvement on the German Enigma machine).</p> <p><strong>Assignment list: </strong>Students examine decades-old postcards, when people wrote encrypted messages in their letters. Successful decryption, Gessler says, requires an ability to understand the literacy and motives of the people of the time. Students also learn about theories and dissemination of propaganda materials by analyzing the effectiveness of international military propaganda leaflets throughout the twentieth century and by comparing <em>Triumph of the Will</em>, a pro-Nazi film, and <em>Why We Fight</em>, a seven-part series produced by Frank Capra for the U.S. government during World War II.</p> <p><strong>What you missed: </strong>Students went to Washington to tour the National Security Agency’s National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade and the International Spy Museum. Gessler says he’s wary of his cyber security. “I’ve always figured that anything you put into a computer is accessible by anybody else with the know-how, the time, and the computational power behind them to extract it.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-11-12T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 12, 2013</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/stamp-4299143_640.jpg" width="640" height="445" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/campus-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Campus News</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/faculty" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Faculty</a></li></ul></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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/winter-2013" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Winter 2013</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498616 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/bookbag-espionage-cryptology-and-psychological-operations#comments The Grass Is Bluer https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/grass-bluer <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 class="p1">The eight miles to UNC-Chapel Hill just got shorter. In a corner of the Bryan Center’s upper level is a four-by-four-by-eight feet white box fitted with Bose speakers, a webcam, and a 60-inch LED TV screen, offering students a view into UNC’s student union building. An identical box gives UNC students a reciprocated glance into the BC.</p><p class="p1">The video connection between the universities was created by Zac Elder ’15 and Chris Batchelder, a sophomore at UNC. The project’s inspiration stems from a video game called <em>Portal</em>, in which players communicate and move by jumping through oval-shaped “portals.”</p><p class="p1">As friends often too busy to visit the opposite campus, the students sought an easier way to catch up. They applied for a Kenan-Biddle Partnership Grant, a program through Duke Student Affairs that awards $5,000 grants to student-led initiatives to enhance intellectual life at both Duke and UNC. Though initially rejected (because it was “too unique,” says Elder), Batchelder pitched the idea to UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp. Thorp liked it and contacted President Richard H. Brodhead, catalyzing the project.</p><blockquote><strong>“Maybe there are a hundred kids [at</strong><span class="s1"> </span><strong>UNC] who want to hear Condoleezza Rice speak [at Duke], and they can see it through the portal.”</strong></blockquote><p class="p1">Batchelder and Elder received $5,000 to assemble the portals, which debuted in early February. The funding was split between the two universities.</p><p class="p1">The portals have received mixed reactions, Elder admits. “Most people who talk to me say ‘Oh, great job, the portal’s really cool.’ But a lot of people want to know why.” While Elder acknowledges that the original idea for the portal was conversation, he sees other, practical uses for his creation. “We’ve talked about doing live streaming of events,” he says. “Maybe there are a hundred kids [at UNC] who want to hear Condoleezza Rice speak [at Duke], and they can see it through the portal.”</p><p class="p1">Inevitably, the portal also has become an outlet for trash-talk. A cartoon in <em>The Daily Tar Heel </em>showed a UNC student gazing into the portal at Darth Vader, clad in Duke blue, saying, “Come to the Dark Side.” And before the<span class="s1"> </span>Duke-UNC basketball game in February, UNC students were treated to a blown-up photograph of Austin Rivers’ game-winning shot from 2012, propped on an easel.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-05-14T00:00:00-04:00">Tuesday, May 14, 2013</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/bluer-620x265.jpg" width="620" height="265" alt="Peer portal: Duke and UNC students now can keep an eye on each other. Credit: Duke Photography." /></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/writers/ryan-hoerger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ryan Hoerger</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/summer-2013" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Summer 2013</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">Students build portals to bring rival campuses together.</div></div></section> Tue, 14 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18498745 at https://alumni.duke.edu