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DUKE UNIVERSITY Ninety-Ninth Year, issue 142
DURHAM, N.C.
MONDAY, APRIL 26,2004
WWW.CHRONICLE.DUKE.EDU
Funderburk retires after
University
22 years
impact fees
by
Meg
to contest Kelly Rohrs THE CHRONICLE
by
Bourddllon
THE CHRONICLE
Laney Funderburk, associate vice president for alumni affairs and development and director of the office ofalumni affairs, will step down from his post —which he held for 22 years—at the end of 2004. His career in alumni affairs, interrupted only by a decade spent working in politics and for the Duke Endowment, began as a part-time job during his undergraduate years in the 19505. His dedication to the University has gone far beyond that of the average alumnus—he’s the one who plans the reunion weekends. “I have worked for six of Duke’s eight presidents,” Funderburk said. He noted that there are now four times as many alumni as there were when he was a student. They live all over the country and the world, and some have connections to the University that span multiple generations. In addition to organizing alumni events, keeping in touch with all these alumni is an important aspect ofFunderburk’s job, and his creative initiatives have helped him to build a strong network. The award-winning alumni magazine he established continues to reach out to graduates, and the new technologies he has embraced foster better communication with alumni. An electronic newsletter, which took on a new format about a year ago, e-mails and an online directory have all made contact with alumni faster. The Office of Alumni Affairs has taken great lengths to ensure
The University is engaged in a disagreement with the city of Durham concerning
President Nan Keohane was the public face of the University for 11 years.
Alums recall Keohane legacy by
Alex
Garinger
and Sophia Peters THE CHRONICLE
How will you remember President Nan Keohane? For nearly a generation of students, the question calls back many fond—and a few not-so-fond—memories of life under the University’s eighth president. Members from the Class of 1999 descended on campus last weekend for their five-year reunion, and although most of their reminiscing was about favorite professors and late-night escapades with friends, at least a portion of their collective memories was devoted to that question and the mark Keohane has left on Duke during her presidency. A sampling of those memories reveals that the Class of 1999, like those classes before it and since, appreciated
Keohane’s determination to bring Duke into the highest echelon of national research universities from both an academic and infrastructure perspective, albeit at the expense of what was once Duke’s unique brand of undergraduate social life. “Nan did an excellent job focusing on what she wanted Duke’s identity to be while keeping Duke distinct from our peers,” said Justin Klein, who served as president of the Class of 1999 when he was at the University. Many of Klein’s peers took note of the shift in balance at Duke to place greater emphasis on academics, at the expense of social life. “She definitely took the school to another level in academic status, but in
more than $1 million the city says Duke owes in fees affiliated with construction. Discussions over the course of the last few months have resulted in the disputed amount being lowered to about $600,000, but Duke officials said they still are not satisfied with the bill and how it was computed. “We’re not, in principle, opposed to the concept of impact fees,” said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, noting that it is the manner in which the fees were levied that the University was protesting. The disagreement is rooted in a change in the application of impact fees that Durham instituted in September 2001. The revised fee—designed, in part, to offset the cost ofrepairs to the infrastructure that comes with new development—applied to any new construction, according to the revised Durham City Code. The changes, which at first appeared to be standard adjustments to city fees, went under the radar of University officials until several months ago when administrators realized the University had accumulated more than $1 million in bills to Durham due to an unusually large volume of alreadyplanned construction on Duke’s properties. Burness said the University ’s construction should be mostly exempt from steep impact fees because the new r buildings on
SEE KEOHANE ON PAGE 5 SEE FEES ON PAGE
SEE FUNDERBURK ON PAGE 6
5
Council hears master plan update by
lan Crouch
THE CHRONICLE
s
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SEEMA KAKAD/THE
CHRONICLE
Executive Vice PresidentTaliman Trask updated the University's master plan to the Academic Council Thursday.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask updated the Academic Council on the University’s master plan, highlighting the more than 20 construction projects completed over the past eight years, at the Council’s meeting last Thursday. President Nan Keohane also gave her final remarks to the Academic Council before a reception held in her honor. Trask identified the historic importance of the University’s original master plan, which he said dates back to the 1920s and is “widely regarded to be one of the great university master plans ofAmerican higher education.” Trask said Duke’s rapid rise in national prominence is widely believed to be a result of the fact that “Duke already looked like an elite university from the start.” Duke’s current master plan, which outlines the general principles of University development, centers on preserving the historical integrity of the campus. Trask said the plan focuses on the University’s architectural history and highlights the need to identify historic buildings and to maintain important areas of open space across campus.
He noted, as an example, the Divinity School addition which he called a “gutsy” project due to its proximity to the Chapel—includes a wall that “must look exactly as if it had been built in 1920” to ensure continuity. “The reason to have a master plan is that things happen very slowly at universities, and you would like in the end for somebody to look at what was done and think ‘somebody thought about this, somebody paid attention to it—there clearly was a set of principles involved in the development here,”’ Trask said. Trask gave a presentation about construction completed under the master plan, as well as projects currently underway or in the design phase. He highlighted the Wilson Recreational Center, finished in 1999; the Richard White Lecture Hall, finished in 2000; the recently-renamed Keohane Quadrangle and the parking garage behind the Bryan Center as examples of construction that conformed to die greater master plan. In discussing projects currently underway, Trask noted —
SEE ACADEMIC COUNCIL ON PAGE 6