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TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2005
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THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
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ONE HUNDREDTH YEAR, ISSUE 130
University GPSC picks new executive board
preps for new
by
THE CHRONICLE
plan
Strategic goals to guide next 5 years by
Karen
Hauptman THE CHRONICLE
For the past five years Duke has been building on excellence. Now, as the University’s officials prepare to write Duke’s next strategic plan, administrators are looking to determine where the institution’s priorities should lie for the next five years. The strategic plan, the document that guides the University’s overall priorities, could cover anything and everything from academic programs to student life and facilities to diversity and technology. Building on Excellence, the current strategic plan, took effect in 2001 and expires this year. The process of developing the next plan will enter an open phase in the fall, but administrators already have a list of “lessons learned” from Building on Excellence, and they are beginning to highlight priorities for the new one. The Office of the Provost is leading the planning, which will encompass all of the University’s departments, schools and centers. John Simon, vice provost for academic affairs, is coordinating the planning, which has already begun with self-evaluations from various departments and deans. Administrators said they aim to present a draft of the plan at the May 2006 meeting of the Board of Trustees. Some of the plan’s likely priorities include President Richard Brodhead’s well known foci of the undergraduate experience and financial aid, as well as the Central Campus project, which is already well into its planning process. Other objectives include “pushing up the quality of faculty hiring, creating a number of peaks of excellence among various schools and departments” and “making a theme putting our knowledge at the surface of society,” Provost Peter Lange said in February. Jim Roberts, executive vice provost for finance and administration, said there was not yet a ballpark estimate for how much money will be earmarked for the next plan. Funds committed to Building on Excellence totaled $727.1 million over five years. Whereas a significant portion of the last plan’s capital went to building new facilities, Roberts said the next plan SEE PLAN ON PAGE 5
Collin Anderson
PETER GEBHARD/THE CHRONICLE
William LeFew, a third-year Ph.D. student in mathematics, will serve as GPSC president for the next year.
The Graduate and Professional Student Council held its annual executive board and Board of Trustee committee elections during its meeting Monday night. The candidates for each executive position were allotted time for a speech, followed by several minutes of questioning and open discussion by the General Assembly, which was then given the option to motion for a closed discussion open only to GPSC voting members. William LeFew, a third-year applied mathematics doctoral student, won the position of GPSC president over incumbent candidate Heather Dean, a sixth-year student in neurobiology. “GPSC is just beginning to explore its potential,” LeFew said in his statement. “GPSC needs a robust internal structure for external interaction.” LeFew, who has spent the past year as the student life co-chair for GPSC, mentioned that the job has brought him valuable connections with the administration as well as the graduate and professional schools. He also said this is an ideal time to work as GPSC president because, during his fourth year as a doctoral student, he will be focusing mainly on individual research and will have flexibility and more time to put into GPSC matters. “My main question is, how are we going to move forward? We need a face for the organization and to get our foot in the door,” LeFew said about GPSC’s visibility. He also said he aims to bridge the gap between the organization and SEE GPSC ON PAGE 7
Author tells of cross-cultural research by
McGowan Jasten CHRONICLE THE
Author, scholar and journalist Anne Fadiman spoke at Griffith Film Theater Monday night about the difficulties she faced while researching cross-cultural conflicts in a Southeastern Asian refugee camp in California. .After her experiences, she wrote a book titled The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, HerAmerican Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, winner of the National Book Critics Award. The book revolves around the life of Lia Lee —a child of recent immigrants from Asia —who was taken from her parents because they refused to give her medication she needed based on their cultural beliefs. Fadiman—former editor of the American Scholar and a Francis Writer in Residence at Yale University—began working on the eight-year project as an extension of a series of articles intended for The New Yorker. But she said the
magazine’s “celebrity-focused” editor decided not to publish the cultural piece.
She decided to return to the refugee camp and transform her articles into a 300-page book. Back in California, the task turned out to be more difficult than she had imagined. From interpreting the emotions of the Hmong refugees to understanding her English-speaking interpreter, Fadiman’s research was full of unanticipated obstacles. “I often questioned whether it was possible for an upper-class, halfjewish, halfMormon New Yorker to write about the Hmong,” Fadiman said. “I think it’s essential for people to portray others.” Upon arriving in the village, Fadiman hired a male interpreter according to Hmong culture in order to gain better access to interviewees. But when the male interpreter provided only short explanations, she hired a woman whose SEE FADIMAN ON PAGE 6
TOM
MENDEL/THE CHRONICLE
Author Anne Fadiman spoke on her award-winning book in Griffith Film Theater Monday night.