Summer 2017

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DUKE MAGAZINE • SUMMER 2017

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SUMMER 2017

BEHINDTHESCENES Our cover story shoot came at the end of a long day for Vince Price, and yet, accompanied by associate university secretary Maggie Epps, right, he came in game for all Duke Photography director Chris Hildreth and Duke Magazine art director Lacey Chylack, left, asked of him. He agreed to a wardrobe change without a blink, and even jokingly offered a few theatrical poses. Photo by Bill Snead

Vince Price

A New President Takes Center Stage

M AG A Z I N E

humanities as a channel for better understanding the life experiences of other people,” Ron Temple ’90 said. To provide similar opportunities for students, Temple endowed a fellowship at The Duke Graduate School. Temple and his husband, Derick Brown, also made a bequest in their wills to support the fellowship and additional planned gifts to benefit the Duke Financial Economics Center. “An institution like Duke doesn’t just happen,” Temple said. “It is the result of countless hours and dollars contributed by a community of people who want to improve the world for future generations.”

YOUR INSPIRATION IS JUST THE STARTING POINT. No matter what inspires you to give back, our expert team can help you honor the memories, people, and places that matter to you. Smart charitable planning— at any giving level—may enable you to do more than you thought possible while propelling Duke forward. Contact us today to unleash your inner philanthropist.

OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING (919) 681-0464 | giftplanning@duke.edu dukeforward.duke.edu/inspiration

Deliver a ative m r o f s n a r t ate u d a r G e k Du education

HOMECOMING

“My time at Duke increased my appreciation for the

SEPTEMBER 15-17, 2017 Autumn is a great time for alumni of all ages to engage, connect, and celebrate on campus. This year’s Homecoming weekend includes the Duke vs. Baylor football game, the Class of 2017’s first reunion, affinity gatherings, and more!

Visit www.alumni.duke.edu/homecoming for more information.

inside

SUMMER 2017 | VOL. 103 | NO. 2

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FORUM

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THE QUAD

Brodhead’s last commencement, new curriculum delayed, students find the humor

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SPORTS

Having a player who can do it all gets complicated.

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ForeverDuke

After leaving the CIA, Tara Chapman ’03 finds a sweet new adventure.

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DEVILIST

The guys from Mental Floss offer summer tips.

COVER: Photo by Chris Hildreth

Alex Boerner

F E AT U R E S :

Alex Boerner

26 Blissfully blue By Robert J. Bliwise

Noted for his nimbleness, consensus-building, and adventurous intellectualism, Vince Price is more than ready to be Duke’s tenth president.

34 Art with their besties By Scott Huler

Hoof ‘n’ Horn celebrates eighty years of putting on shows and creating lasting friendships by tackling an ambitious new work.

40 Even in the face of challenge By Drew Adamek Duke TeachHouse offers nascent educators the support and mentorship they need to create strong learning environments, despite the many trials they encounter.

46 A passport to paperwork By Lucas Hubbard

For international students, the Duke experience is shaped by visa rules and expiration dates.

FULLFRAME WELCOME SIGN: Workers install a new hard-carved limestone tablet at the campus’ entry gates at Duke University Road and Chapel Drive. The slab of Indiana limestone weighs 1,050 pounds.

It’s only the second time since the early 1930s that the gates have been modified.

Photo by Chris Hildreth

Forum

UNDERTHEGARGOYLES

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learning something from each other. In his Nasher presentation, then, Baucom painted a picture of the president as educator.

When he looked at that collection of speeches, Baucom also saw ethically anchored convictions.

The university presidency, he said, is one of those jobs that doesn’t often allow for the luxury of a reflective pause around ethical decisions. Baucom asked the audience to consider Brodhead’s remarks that followed a noose-hanging incident. This was not a message manufactured “for the moment,” Baucom said, but, rather, deeply held beliefs expressed “in the moment.”

Panelist William C. Kirby, a scholar of modern China and former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard, offered a global perspective. An adviser on the nascent Duke-Kunshan University, Kirby focused on DKU as a grand experiment from the Brodhead years—and particularly on what it might mean to see a humanities education flourish in China. Such a vision, given expression in the Brodhead book, “will be a special gift to Duke, and above all, to China,” he said.

Chris Hildreth “Modern Chinese history has lessons for (more or less) outsiders presented a sort of farewell us,” Kirby added. “It shows what dislocation can ensue when a civilization loses its cultural foundations, for Duke’s president these past thirteen years, Richard H. Brodhead. Inspired by Speaking of Duke: its moral compass, on a relentless quest for wealth Leading the 21st Century University, a book of his and power. In that quest, China imported all sorts speeches published by Duke University Press, the of Western ‘isms’: scientism, militarism, Leninism, gathering celebrated the Brodhead presidency. More chief among them; and it denigrated nearly every than that, it commented on the university presidenaspect of a civilization that, just two centuries earcy in general. So it provided a perfect transition-time lier, was the most sophisticated and accomplished conversation. on Earth.”

Among the panelists was Ian Baucom, now dean He told the audience that Duke under Brodhead of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia. He contributed to a humanizing impulse in China, was a Duke English professor for seventeen years with DKU emerging as “an altogether new university, and in the world’s oldest and newest system of and also headed Duke’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. higher education.”

The reader of the book discovers the “joy, delight, There you have two perspectives on a departing exuberance, play” that Brodhead brought to the university president, and on the modern university presidency, Baucom said. All of that came with a presidency. It’s a position from which every gesture “teacherly insistence” that Brodhead’s beloved Dukand every decision—from admissions to athletics— ies should not just join but collectively “author” a should be rooted in a passion for education informed community, that they should continue in the unfinby an ethical understanding. It’s a position, too, that ished making of Duke. What’s involved in that difdemands the risk-taking, the boldness of vision, that ficult work? For students it’s “arguing the passion of can imagine a university that isn’t bound by physical their convictions”—learning about each other and borders. —Robert J. Bliwise, editor f you’ve been through a few presidential transitions—say, four of them—you know they feel like an approaching New Year: It’s the season for taking stock of the past and looking ahead with anticipation.

One evening late in the semester, the Nasher Museum opened itself for a discussion about, well, the art of leading a university. A panel of insiders and

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nd robots, are people still necessary? r cover story. Here, graduate student ed-wing drone while fellow student ason, Julian Dale, and Nick Alcaraz look watch senior writer Scott Huler’s short Beaufort, N.C. Photo by Chris Hildreth

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DUKE MAGAZINE • SPRING 2017

TORY

LETTERS & COMMENTS

M AG A Z I N E

SPRING 2017

+ At the Marine Lab, and other labs across campus,

DRONES and ROBOTS are taking research to new heights.

What’s going on up there?

Diplomatic momentum Duke Magazine and its predecessor publication have been part of my reading since I graduated, but never before have I been so grateful for an article as I am now with “The Diplomat” by Robert J. Bliwise in the Spring 2017 issue. How wonderful that Jack Matlock, the diplomat, is teaching at Duke. I would rush to his class. The closest I got at Duke was “Russian Literature,” taught by an obviously biased professor whose bias I shared at the time. How enlightening it would have been for me and my fellow students to have had a teacher with the wisdom of Jack Matlock.

Matlock is a forthright analyst, focusing on the primary danger we face: nuclear annihilation. He comprehends the corollary of that danger—the necessity of working with Russia rather than against Russia. He explains the provocation of ”the expansion of NATO” and the hubris of American exceptionalism. At a time when many people who are old enough and have experienced enough to know better are taking us back toward demonization of all things Russian, “The Diplomat” is trying to take us forward.

Jane Morgan Franklin ’55 El Cerrito, California

A worthy name I read in the recent issue of Duke Magazine about plans for a new alumni center [“A Home on Campus”].

Since the practice is naming campus buildings for persons significant to Duke, may I suggest that the new alumni complex, or at least a part of it, be named in memory of Ann Garret, longtime staff person in the alumni office.

Until she retired, “Miss Ann” was in many ways the face of welcome for generations of returning alumni. Few people could match her for recognizing alumni, calling them by name, and making them feel truly welcome.

R. Bruce Pate ’51, B.Div. ’54 Lake Junaluska, North Carolina Put to good use As a former Air Force officer, I am glad to see that drones are also being used as a tool of research and not just a tool of warfare [“With or Without You”]. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is always on the cutting edge of technological research to help the fighting men and women. It is good to see that cutting-edge technology also being used for peace.

George Ferguson ’76 Upper Marlboro, Maryland Check your facts I am greatly disappointed in the fact-checking in “An Alumni Connection.”

It claims that North Carolina Central University (1909) is the oldest public liberal-arts institution for African Amer-

icans. It required only a slight amount of searching on my part to locate twenty-one serious contenders for that designation. Perhaps there is some nuance by which it excluded Spelman College (1881), Howard University (1867), Hampton University (1868), Morehouse College (1867), Florida A&M University (1887), North Carolina A&T University (1891), Tougaloo College (1869), Jackson State University (1877), Clark College (1869), Atlanta University (1865), Elizabeth City State University (1891), Lincoln University (1854), Morgan State University (1867), University of Maryland Eastern Shore (1886), Alcorn State University (1871), Alabama A&M University (1875), Bowie State University (1865), Fayetteville State University (1867), University of Arkansas Pine Bluff (1873), Kentucky State University (1886), Prairie View A&M University (1876), and possibly many others. But I don’t see what the rationalization is, so it seems like pure hucksterism.

We live in a world that is too rife with self-serving distortions of facts. I am greatly disappointed to conclude that Duke seems to have joined that fad.

Ronald A. Stanley Ph.D. ’70 Clearville, Pennsylvania Editor’s note: Some of the institutions on the list are private institutions; others are state-supported but were started for different purposes, such as teaching, agriculture, engineering, or mechanical arts. NCCU is the only school that can make the claim to be the first state-supported liberal-arts institution for African Americans.

SEND LETTERS TO: Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 or e-mail dukemag@duke.edu.

Please limit letters to 300 words and include your full name, address, and class year or Duke affiliation. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Owing to space constraints, we are unable to print all letters received. Published letters represent the range of responses received. For additional letters: www.dukemagazine. duke.edu.

DUKE MAGAZINE Summer 2017 | Vol. 103 | No. 2 | www.DUKEMAGAZINE.duke.edu EDITOR: Robert J. Bliwise A.M. ’88 MANAGING EDITOR: Adrienne Johnson Martin SENIOR WRITER: Scott Huler CLAY FELKER STAFF WRITER: Lucas Hubbard ’14 CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Michael Penn and Christina Holder M.Div. ’13 STAFF ASSISTANT: Delecia Hatcher PUBLISHER: Sterly L. Wilder ’83, associate vice president, Alumni Affairs SPECIAL SECTIONS EDITOR: Bridgette Lacy ART DIRECTOR: Lacey Chylack, phase5creative, inc. PRINTER: Progress Printing OFFICERS, DUKE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: Jack Boyd ’85, president, Sterly L. Wilder ’83, secretary-treasurer DUKE MAGAZINE Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 PHONE: (919) 684-5114 FAX: (919) 681-1659 E-MAIL: dukemag@duke.edu ADDRESS CHANGES: Alumni Records, Box 90581, Durham, N.C. 27708 or bluedevil@duke.edu • © 2017 Duke University, Published five times a year by the Duke Alumni Association.

DUKE MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2017

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n a self-deprecating address at a sunny May 14 commencement that awarded more than 5,400 degrees, retiring trustee chair David Rubenstein ’70 entertained graduates with an acrostic. He used the letters of the phrase “Go Duke!” to start six words he encouraged graduates to associate with Duke.

G stood for “gratitude,” O for “originality,” and the spelling went on until it reached E for “enjoyment.”

The philanthropist and financier said the primary duty of a chair of the board is to take credit for good things that happen during his or her tenure. Rubenstein cited retiring university president Richard H. Brodhead, who can take credit for Duke making great gains during his term. To commemorate Brodhead’s contributions, the board of trustees voted before commencement to rename the renovated West Union the Richard H. Brodhead Center for Campus Life. His name on a transformed building represents Brodhead’s “transformative legacy,” according to a statement by Michael Schoenfeld ’84, vice president for public affairs and government relations.

And the Duke president was not the only Brodhead who came home from commencement with a building. His wife, Cindy Brodhead, will be similarly honored in Duke Gardens: Her name will go on the

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iconic pergola at the top of the Terrace Garden.

Honorary degrees went to George Church ’74 for his pioneering work in personal genomics and to Luis von Ahn ’00, who won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006 and helped design the ubiquitous CAPTCHA system, which tells humans from bots on the Internet; Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson, another MacArthur Fellow, significantly for his films about the civil rights era; Marilynne Robinson, whose acclaimed novel Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize and Lila received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; Clayton Christensen, whose The Innovator’s Dilemma has been called one of the most important business books ever written, and has sent two children to Duke, one of whom, Matt ’02, played on the men’s basketball team; Deborah Lee James ’79, Secretary of the Air Force from 2013 to 2017; and Loretta Lynch, who grew up in Durham and served as United States attorney general from 2015 to 2017.

Photos by Duke Photography

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THE

NOTEWORTHY FROM AROUND CAMPUS

LEADERSHIP: President Richard H. Brodhead heads off the stage, after commencement, followed by David Rubenstein ’70.

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SPEAKERS & STAGE Charles Murray, whose thwarted appearance at Middlebury College in early March sparked voluminous debate about free speech on college campuses, spoke just a few weeks later at the Doris Duke Center.

Murray had spoken previously at the university, in 2013— an appearance that prompted a student walkout because of his controversial claims linking intelligence, race, and genetics. This year’s talk engendered little controversy.

“You are living a life that is in a bubble,” Murray said to the audience. “And I go through all of this not to indict you—there’s nothing wrong with being around people who share your taste and preference. It’s important in many ways to want those common bonds. But the problem is it leads to condescension and disdain, and sometimes it leads to contempt.”

With the public’s trust in journalism eroded more than ever before, Ted Koppel, the longtime anchor of ABC’s Nightline, spoke at the behest of the Sanford School and DeWitt Wallace Center about what the

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future of the industry looks like.

“We need objective reality,” he told the audience. “We need objective reporting.”

The Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy had a productive semester of speakers. Among them were Keith Alexander, former commander of U.S. Cyber Command and former director of the National Security Agency; Rosa Brooks, columnist for Foreign Policy and senior fellow at New America; Jared Cohen, former adviser to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton and current president of technology incubator Jigsaw; Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and deputy assistant to President Barack Obama; Christopher Kirchhoff, former director for strategic planning at the National Security Council; Joseph S. Nye Jr., former chair of the National Intelligence Council; and Kurt Tidd, current commander of U.S. Southern Command, in conversation with Martin Dempsey A.M. ’84, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Time to regroup

The vote on the new Trinity curriculum was postponed.

The new Trinity curriculum, on which faculty members have been working since 2014, will need, it turns out, a little more work.

The current Trinity curriculum was instituted in 2000, and since then Duke has offered many new programs and approaches—DukeEngage and Bass Connections, for example, have significantly changed what Duke undergraduates can do. So in 2014, the Arts & Sciences Council asked the Imagining the Duke Curriculum Committee to think about ways the curriculum could be simplified while still challenging students.

Everybody got busy. In 2016, after more than 200 meetings with faculty groups large “A narrow passing and small, the committee presented the doesn’t feel great structure of a new curriculum, with main to me as a start points including a two-semester course for first-year students called “The Duke for a successful which would give all Duke implementation.” Experience,” students a common beginning. “How can students have a common scholarly experience, and how do they get exposure to all aspects of a Duke education?” asked Suzanne Shanahan, codirector of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and chair of the curriculum review committee.

Further discussion led to further iterations. The “Duke Experience” changed its name to “Frameworks” and shifted to three courses (one each in social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities) taken by the end of students’ first year, and the “signature core,” in which students had to take one course in each of five foundational areas of study, changed to “Foundation,” which required courses in three areas, one of which was a second language. The new approach leaned generally toward increasing freedom of student choice, seen by some as too limited in the curriculum in place since 2000.

But as the curriculum plan changed, not only did it not gain cohesive faculty support, the debate grew rather than diminishing in intensity. If faculty voted on it as currently conceived, even if the curriculum passed, it would not pass by much. “A narrow passing doesn’t feel great to me as a start for a successful implementation,” said dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences Valerie Ashby. So in April, the Arts & Sciences Council decided to postpone the vote for more consideration.

No date has been set for the next iteration. n Chris Hildreth

ROOMMATES

KEOHANE4B

Seniors Guilbert Francois, left, and Justin Elliott seem on their way to great things. Guilbert, an economics major with a psychology minor, was president of Duke’s NAACP chapter and will work for Microsoft post-graduation.

Justin majored in economics with a markets and management studies certificate and will be a trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; he was president of Alpha Phi Alpha (Guilbert was the fraternity’s step master), co-chair of Duke Children’s Hospital Committee, an executive-board member of the Duke Marketing Club, and point guard for the club basketball team.

However, they are not all business. Their pastimes include persuading classmates the 6’5” Guilbert was a high-school recruit considering Duke basketball, trash-

ing the other in NBA2K, creating Snapchat channels to broadcast their comedic takes on current events, and throwing their phones blindly across the room, top bunk to top bunk, to share the best of latenight Twitter.

The roommates of nearly three years—they first met when they were in the same hall in Blackwell freshman year—are preparing for life apart. On graduation weekend, Justin proposed successfully to his longtime girlfriend. Still, the two men, notorious for their car chats after any long excursion and their leisurely approach to waking up in the morning, are planning tactics to maintain their student lifestyle.

“I tell him all the time that once he gets me a job at Microsoft, I’ll move there…and I’ll quit and just live off of his income,” jokes Justin.

“I tell him all the time that once he gets me a job at Microsoft, I’ll move there… and I’ll quit and just live off of his income.”

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From one 1G student to many others David Rubenstein ’70 lends his name and a gift to a scholarship program.

“I know that I certainly could have benefited from such help.”

The gift comes from a place of familiarity: Rubenstein, who was also the 2017 commencement speaker, experienced Duke as a first-generation student himself.

“First-generation students provide valued diversity and talents to universities like Duke, but some of these students may need some help in transitioning to environments [that] can be far different than what they have known,” he said in a statement. “I know that I certainly could have benefited from such help.”

The program, which now will be called the David M. Rubenstein Scholars Program, will add approximately sixty students each year and eventually will support 240 scholars. n 10

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BOOKBAG

NEUROSCI 267/PSY 278/PHIL 353/ETHICS 269: Neuroethics THE CATALYST: At the turn of the decade, Scott Huettel, professor of psychology and neuroscience, was pitching a course on neuroethics, the new field that merges neuroscience and ethics so that, in the wake of substantial advances in understanding how the brain works, we know what we should do with this information. When Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, now a philosophy professor at the university, joined Duke in 2010, it was an obvious opportunity. “We argued from the outset that you couldn’t really do this material justice unless you had two people coming from different areas, and each was willing to converse and learn the other person’s area,” says Huettel. Duke, already in the midst of a team-teaching initiative at the time, agreed, and the class was born.”

THE GIST: The course begins by introducing the concept of neuroethics and background on its subcomponents, but it soon delves into specific inquiries: Are psychopaths responsible for their actions? Should neuroscience be fair game in marketing strategies? Huettel and Sinnott-Armstrong typically alternate lectures, but the non-lecturer will still join the class, sitting somewhere in the Link classroom in Perkins Library. The non-lecturer is able to be more inquisitive—and provide a more critical view of the other’s side—than in a one-professor course. “I might interrupt ten times in the course of seventy-five minutes,” says Sinnott-Armstrong: During a Huettel lecture, he might want to expound on the ethical background of an issue, or chime in when he finds the science “creepy and mysterious.” The goal is

to make sure more of the lesson gets retained, which the professors check by sprinkling ungraded quizzes throughout each class. X. ASSIGNMENT LIST: The field’s recent rapid development makes for interesting reading. Almost all of the papers consumed and discussed in the course are within the last decade. Classes can include lectures, games, and discussions, with the debate going beyond the professors—tables frequently get shuffled around to break the forty-person class into small groups for further conversation. The course has no prerequisites. However, the professors note that for students lacking the full background needed for a particular lecture, they’ll recommend relevant Coursera lectures—from Duke’s catalogue of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)—as a starting point. (Based on how confident students feel, they can watch “[at] double-time, single-time, or twice.”) X THE TWIST: This past spring semester, in line with the collaborative, interdisciplinary nature of the subject matter, Huettel and Sinnott-Armstrong allowed the students to cowrite their final papers. The aim of having multiple viewpoints is to ensure that students realize they’re merely scratching the surface.

“There’s only one thing worse than a neuroscientist who thinks they know philosophy, and that’s a philosopher who thinks they know neuroscience,” says Sinnott-Armstrong, laughing. “You don’t want these students to leave thinking they’ve mastered all the topics.”

—Lucas Hubbard

BlackJack3D

In 2016, Duke initiated the Washington Duke Scholars Program for thirty first-generation, low-income students. It includes a full four-year tuition for recipients and a summer session prior to first-year orientation that aids in the adjustment to college. And now it will be endowed for many years to come: In late April, David Rubenstein ’70, whose term as chair of the board of trustees ends on July 1, gave $20 million to endow the program.

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Defusing the situation

Students develop a robot aimed at curbing deadly traffic stop interactions.

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wo events that happened within two days of each other got the attention of chemistry major Vaibhav Tadepalli ’17 and chemistry Ph.D. student Chris Reyes. But they had nothing to do with chemistry.

On July 6, 2016, during a routine traffic stop, a Minnesota police officer shot and killed Philando Castile; on July 8, Missouri police officer Michael Flamion was shot and paralyzed as he walked toward his car during another traffic stop.

“That got us thinking,” Tadepalli recalls. “There’s got to be a better way to do this. There’s got to be a way to put some sort of separation to keep nerves and bad situations like this from happening.” The problem was that fraught first moment: A police officer had to look into a stopped car, which might contain a weapon; the person in the stopped car had to wonder whether a nervous police officer might misperceive a situation or react according to fear, prejudice, or poor training. “This initial first contact,” Tadepalli says, “is the most dangerous.” There needed to be a way for the officer and the motorist to have their first interaction, after which everybody

could calm down. “And I just said, ‘What if we could build a robot?’ ” A few weeks of 3D printing wheels and body parts later, the two had a proof-of-concept chassis: the Sentinel, a little fourwheel robot, about the size of a microwave, with an accordion-style extension lift. It drives to the driver’s door and raises a computer tablet up to seven feet, high enough to reach the biggest SUV window. Tadepalli and Reyes (and their fledgling company, Trapezium Technologies) are clear: not a military robot; no weapons. Ever. But using the Sentinel, a police officer can remain in a car and use the public-address system to tell a driver to expect a visit from the robot. The robot trundles over and raises the tablet. The driver sees the police officer’s face; the police officer sees the driver and the car and can use simple programs to get a good look at license and registration. No sudden moves; no accidental gunfire.

Having participated in the university-wide Duke Start-up Challenge and the Pratt School’s DUhatch student start-up incubator, Tadepalli says “both programs have been wildly beneficial to us,” connecting them with mentors and encouragement.

Working directly with police departments, the pair learned they needed to reassure police officers that their idea was a tool, not a replacement for law-enforcement officers. From community groups they learned that a robot might seem even more intimidating than an officer, so they have been reassuring about the robot’s lack of weaponry and its simple job.

And they’re asking questions.

“That’s an interesting side of it that we’re trying to be a part of,” Tadepalli says. The cheapest robots available to law enforcement now run in the $12,000 range and can’t do the job; they’re hoping the Sentinel can be cheaper, sturdier, and more useful, so that even small agencies can afford it. And the point isn’t to win grants or make products. The point, Tadepalli says, is simple: “Can this really make the HELP ON WHEELS: The Sentinel allows police officers to remain in their cars difference we want?” n Vaibhav Tadepalli

No sudden moves; no accidental gunfire.

during traffic stops.

DUKE MAGAZINE

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Q&A POLICY AGENDAS. The Sanford School has two prominent retirements this summer: Helen F. Ladd, a faculty member since 1986, is Susan B. King Professor of public policy and professor of economics; Philip J. Cook, who came to Duke in 1973, is ITT/Sanford Professor of public policy and professor of economics and sociology.

Both of you have switched research areas over your careers. What prompted the switching?

Ladd: I wasn’t sure I had anything new to say around state and local finance. The same issues were coming up over and over again. Also, in the early 1990s, state and local governments were flush with revenue while education was moving to the front burner; with the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, an increasing amount of data were becoming available. I had known a lot about school finance, because that’s a big part of state and local finance. Economists had something to say about promoting more effective use of resources in schools and about choice and competition.

Cook: I had studied labor economics, and I had also been interested in how people make decisions, which led at one point to why people play the lottery and how they understand that choice. Just because a big box of data fell into my lap, I had the opportunity to study parolee recidivism and how that relates to their job opportunities—that was my dissertation. I had an opportunity to work with crime data in Washington, which was how I got involved in researching gun control.

And the National Academy of Sciences appointed me to the expert panel on alcohol control; they thought expertise on guns might transfer into alcohol.

Ladd: When you’re doing research on policy-related issues, one issue opens up others. At one point I wrote a book on fiscal problems of U.S. cities.

There was a need for more federal aid for cities, but it wasn’t going to come.

Then you start thinking about other ways to help cities. So I wrote about how to attract businesses into cities.

Then you realize when those businesses come in, a lot of people don’t have the skills needed for those jobs. That leads to the question, how can you

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improve their skills? And that leads to issues related to education.

Choice, in some form, is a recurring theme for the two of you, right?

Cook: In the area of alcohol and drug abuse, there’s this concept of the addict who has no control over his behavior and so would not be influenced by the normal incentives. Another example is around the huge increase in youth violence that occurred in the late 1980s; the most prominent explanation featured “super-predators,” young men of violent character who were thought to have been programmed to behave in a certain way. In both cases the perception did not allow for the possibility of adaptability or responsiveness to changes in the environment. But if you can change the environment of opportunity, then you can change the behavior.

Ladd: Choice is high on the policy agenda right now. The first charter schools were developed in Minnesota in the early 1990s.

Along with choice of school comes the argument for more autonomy for schools, because choice doesn’t matter if all the schools are uniform. I’m not opposed to choice. But there are a lot of things about the K-through-12 education sector that make it important to people’s life chances. We make it compulsory, and we’re willing to fund it publicly. Parents and children are going to look out for their own interests, but the public sector has a clear role in making sure that all children in a community receive a high-quality education.

Chris Hildreth

You’re both experts on vexing policy issues, but policy hasn’t always gone where your research would have led it. How frustrating is that?

Cook: The questions that a policy researcher wants to answer are often defined by a public debate. That was evident with the work I did on the cost of the death penalty. The chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court thought we needed to know whether the death penalty saves money or costs money to taxpayers. Then the president of the Joyce Foundation thought we needed to know the cost of gun violence, as part of the debate over combat-

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ing gun violence. But I also take pride in the methodological advances, the theoretical advances I’ve made. If I had to evaluate my career based on my influence on policy, I would be clinically depressed; the policy drift has been in what I consider the wrong direction.

Ladd: I view myself as having had big impacts on policy, but not directly.

What I’m trying to do is to change the way people—especially my students— think about issues. And policy is a process. Ideally it’s a process in a positive direction, but sometimes there’s backsliding.

Cook: Milton Friedman is an interesting case in point. Friedman had ideas that seemed completely out of touch with the times—a negative income tax, drug legalization, school vouchers. But over the course of generations, those ideas filtered down, and economists who studied those ideas eventually were in a position to influence policies.

So it’s fundamentally about putting ideas out there. If they’re good enough or compelling enough, perhaps over time they can begin to have great power and influence.

What’s the biggest misperception in your areas of research that you’d like to see corrected?

Ladd: The idea of test-based accountability for schools, and certainly for individual teachers, is terrible. We need some sort of accountability. But other countries, for example, use a system of trained inspectors who go into the schools, and that provides information to the schools to help them improve.

No Child Left Behind focuses on test scores. But it’s debatable whether it even raised test scores.

Cook: I always find myself arguing with the idea that incentives don’t matter. If I were asked, “What is the ideal way of financing the government?” it would be pretty much to tax bad and harmful behavior, whether it’s the use of alcohol and tobacco or carbon emissions.

—Robert J. Bliwise

IN BRIEF

Anne-Maria Makhulu, associate professor of cultural anthropology and African and African American studies, received an NEH grant for her project “The New Financial Elite: Race, Mobility, and Ressentiment After Apartheid.” Kristin Huffman Lanzoni, instructor of art, art history and visual studies, was funded for “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice (ca. 1500): A Digital Exhibition Catalog.”

Missy Cummings, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, was named to the new Federal Committee on Automation of the U.S. Department of Transportation. And Inderdeep Chatrath, assistant vice president for affirmative action and equal opportunity, was selected for the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations.

Philip Napoli, James R. Sheply Professor of public policy, and Christopher Bail, Douglas and Ellen Lowey Associate Professor of sociology and public policy, were both named 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellows by the Carnegie Corporation

of New York. They were two of the thirty-five scholars to receive the award. Napoli’s work investigates algorithmically driven social-media platforms and what they mean for the future of media. Bail is exploring how Google search data can predict violent extremism as well as how networks and news sources affect polarization.

Bryce Cracknell is one of sixty students to receive the Morris K. Udall Scholarship, a program for students committed to careers in the environment or Native American tribal public policy or health care. Cracknell, a rising senior, is studying public policy with a concentration in race and poverty and a minor in environmental science and policy.

Rising senior Ashlyn Nuckols is one of twenty students in the 2017 class of Beinecke Scholars. The scholarship is for promising students who plan to attend graduate school; Nuckols, a cultural anthropology major and political science minor, hopes to pursue a degree at Oxford University in comparative social policy and

eventually a Ph.D. Rising senior Maya Durvasula is one of sixty-two students to be selected as a 2017 Truman Scholar. The program supports graduate study for high-achieving students likely going into public service. Durvasula is an economics major, minoring in math and undertaking a certificate in politics, philosophy, and economics.

She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in economics.

Emily Derbyshire, assistant professor of chemistry, received one of five 2017 Marion Milligan Mason Awards for Women in the Chemical Sciences.

Maiken Mikkelsen, Nortel Networks Assistant Professor of electrical and computer engineering and assistant professor of physics, won both the Young Investigator Program Award from the Army Research Office and the $2 million Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation Award from the National Science Foundation.

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Playing at home

The Blue Devils and the Durham Bulls host their first-ever exhibition game.

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ince 2010, the Durham Bulls and Duke have been engaged in a sort of timeshare. During February and March, when the Bulls, the triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, are in spring training, they cede their state-of-the-art facility to the Blue Devils. And every April, once the Bulls again need it, Duke baseball retreats to the on-campus Jack Coombs Field.

This year, however, the changing of the guard was more explicit: On April 4, the two teams played in “The Battle of the Bull City,” the first-ever exhibition game between the clubs.

To the untrained observer, it may have seemed like the Blue Devils were fighting for their squatters’ rights, but the affair was, in fact, quite friendly.

“The Bulls have been fantastic for us to work with,” says Brad Berndt, senior associate director of athletics, who coordinated the game with Bulls general manager Mike Birling. “It’s been first-class all the way.”

Those on the field echoed his sentiments. “This [atmosphere] was terrific,” said coach Chris Pollard, speaking wistfully after the game played on a pristine, eighty-degree evening. “It’s a beautiful ballpark, the surface is incredibly well-maintained…. It just feels like home to us.”

The exhibition, discussed for a couple of years, was logistically complicated—due to both teams’ schedules, no rain makeup date was available—but it held significant appeal for both sides.

For the Bulls’ players, the game allowed them to hone strategy before starting the season two days later. In terms of game op14

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erations, their mascot, Wool-E Bull, could shake the rust off: His ceremonial first pitch, thrown to the Blue Devil crouched behind home plate, erred far from the strike zone.

Duke players, conversely, could see how they measured up against players at the next level—which they did quite well, with the Blue Devils actually outhitting the Bulls. (The game was played by professional standards: Players used wooden bats, not aluminum.) Berndt noted that should the event become an annual one, the opportunity to compete against professionals could be a nice “recruiting coup” for prospective players.

Perhaps the biggest winners, though, were the fans. Executive vice president Tallman Trask III, who helped coordinate a number of the previous partnerships between Duke and the Bulls, secured free tickets for the entire Duke community. For a town and gown whose relationship has been occasionally fraught, the symbolism of showcasing ballplayers from both wasn’t accidental.

Eventually, the Bulls won, 2-1, fending off a charge by Duke’s only locally sourced ballplayer, rising junior Aaron Therien. The Durham Academy graduate led off the top of the ninth with a double, only to be barely thrown out at the plate following rising junior Kennie Taylor’s single to right field. But despite the ultimate disappointment, the final result seemed apt: The school and the city were as close as could be. n

THEQuad

They can’t see straight

A Duke researcher explains the mystery of the cockeyed squid.

Ph.D. researcher Katie Thomas is a visual ecologist—she stud- current, deep in the ocean, head down. The big yellow freaky ies animal eyes and how they develop and work—so you can eye tilts up, toward the dim light filtering through to the depths. easily understand her interest in Histioteuthis heteropsis. For the Against that sunlight, the squid tries to pick out the outline of rest of us, though, and even for Thomsomething that might be good to eat; as, the “cockeyed squid” exerts a pull think of the easily discerned shadow that requires no Latin nomenclature of a bird against the sky. “From an eye to explain. “They do look really crazy,” looking up,” Thomas says, “increasing Thomas says. “And there’s just a fundathe size of the eye a little bit makes a mentally interesting question in why really, really big difference.” A bigger they look the way they do.” eye means better eating, which means Really crazy is no exaggeration. The the squid selects for bigger and bigger squids have two eyes, but the two eyes eyes—facing up, that is. One strategy the prey (like the cockeyed squid are totally different. One eye is a bulging hemisphere, slightly tilted along itself ) use to outwit hungry creatures one direction of the squid’s axis and below is bioluminescence, which they seemingly emitting a mysterious green hope makes their outline more likely glow. The eye isn’t actually glowing— to sort of vanish into the dim, shimmering light patterns. The yellow cast it’s just got a yellowish pigment that of the cockeyed squid’s bulbous dome makes it look like a child’s glow-in-theof an eye helps filter out that biolumidark toy. (The squid, like many cephalopods, has bioluminescent shapes on nescence so the squid can focus on the its belly, so it does glow from there, but sunlight and outlines against it. more about that in a moment.) Its othMeanwhile, the eye looking down is er eye is far smaller, flatter, and slightly mostly scanning for that bioluminesLOOKING UP: Cockeyed squid cence, and its job is to see broadly rathtilted in the opposite direction from er than sharply. Size doesn’t really help the first. So, yes, really crazy-looking. that enterprise, so the squid doesn’t imInterested in bioluminescence and vision, Thomas did an internship at the Monterey Bay Aquarium prove its living much by making that eye larger. “For an eye Research Institute in California, where she had access to a trea- looking down, the returns were much lower” on the energy sure trove of videos of the squids, and their cousins, Stigmato- investment of growing bigger, Thomas says. “So that eye just teuthis dofleini. She also used remote-operated vehicles to spy stayed average-sized over time.” on—and even examine—the squids. After a lot of watching As much as Thomas enjoys the science of squid eyes, one and a lot of modeling, here’s what Thomas, and her coauthors of the great satisfactions of this project was the ordinary wow of the article in Philosophical Transactions B that shared the re- factor. “It’s one of those animals that you don’t have to explain sults, figure is going on. The eyes represent the arms race be- why you’re interested in it,” she says. “You want to explain why tween eating, and being, food. The squid likes to hang in the that crazy animal exists.” n

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Annals of passive-aggressiveness Coke or Pepsi? The answer may depend on how you feel about your spouse. Fuqua marketing and psychology professor Gavan Fitzsimons coauthored a series of studies analyzing how consumers choose brands, after they were primed to think either positively or negatively about their spouse. The studies showed that individuals who are frustrated with their partner and, importantly, perceive themselves as having less power in the relationship are more likely to choose a brand that is antagonistic to the partner’s preference. Moreover, these trends held even when the emotional priming was more subliminal.

DEVIL KNOWS DUKE MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2017

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PLANETDUKE

MADAGASCAR 4th

A kind of awakening

largest island in the world Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo are bigger, if you’re wondering; England is smaller, as are both islands of New Zealand, combined

Researchers go off the grid to getTitle insight into sleep patterns.

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ll night long people are up and down, the noise complicating sleep. Parties. Barking dogs. Motorcycles and cars driving by. Kids crying. People talking, laughing, using the bathroom. Sleep becomes a thing of fragments. We all know the story, right?

Downtown Manhattan? Krzyzewskiville?

Try Mandena, a town in Madagascar chosen specifically because it’s so far off the grid that with no electricity—and so no electric lights or glowing screens to wreck people’s sleep patterns—it provided a perfect location for a study of natural sleep. Evolutionary biologist David Samson is a postdoc in the lab of Charles Nunn, which investigates health from ecological and evolutionary perspectives. With support from Bass

Fast-forward to modern life, with electric lights and television screens, and you start wondering about that sleep, though. “Ninety-nine million years ago percent of everyone that lives in a developed econowhen the island severed my lives in what is called a connections with Africa and light-polluted area,” Samgenteelly set sail on its own son says, which means the th way people naturally sleep continent is almost impossible to find the name the island is anymore. Which is how an sometimes given for its evolutionary biologist finds unusual ecosystem himself in Mandena. Samson put wristbands with light and motion detectors on twenty-one people aged nineteen earliest estimated date to fifty-nine (adding EKGof human settlement on style electrodes to measure the island sleep architecture to nine of them). And he discovered that the villagers went to bed people living on the a couple of hours after sunset island now and got up an hour or so before sunrise, but of the ten or so hours in between, they spent only about six and a percent of population half actually sleeping. younger than age 25 Which it turns out jibes with traditional descriptions of sleep. “In preindustrial species of lemur on Europe there was a lot of Madagascar references to first sleep and second sleep,” Samson says: People would sleep a few hours, then be awake and acof those are threatened tive a while, then sleep some more. The people in Mandena actually slept less overnight than average people in the developed world, though they made up for that with naps.

Samson hopes to continue investigating. Because light and temperature are key environmental cues that guide sleep patterns, Samson says, “the next goal is to be able to get a similarly traditional population, but in high latitudes. That’s where we’re going to see human plasticity come into play and answer questions.”

At high latitudes both temperature and light-dark cycles vary widely through the year. Studying people who live with those changes will help Samson toward one of his ultimate goals, a global data set on traditional sleep. —Scott Huler

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350 A.D.

24 million

Bass Connections

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DARK NIGHTS: No electric lights and TV screens, but the people in Madena still sleep less.

Connections and the Duke Global Health Institute, the Nunn lab was undertaking a multiyear series of studies on health in Madagascar. Samson was part of the team, “and my sliver of it was on sleep.”

Mandena, a village of between 2,000 and 4,000 people, sits in the rainforest in the shadow of the Marojejy mountain chain and provides a home for several Duke research projects. The Nunn lab is investigating how the transition from a traditional, agricultural economy to a more modern one affects health, and every year Duke groups return. “We’re immersed in this village,” Nunn has said. “Ultimately, our goal is really to improve the health of this village.”

Samson first studied sleep through climbing trees in Africa to quantify chimp sleep platforms, then expanded his interest to “sleep architecture”—REM versus non-REM sleep—when studying orangutans in the Indianapolis Zoo. Primate sleep became a focus for him, and in 2015 he and Nunn wrote a paper sharing the finding that humans sleep less, yet more deeply, than any other primate. Coming down from the trees and developing things like fire meant that we learned to sleep comfortably and deeply, which meant we could sleep better and sleep less.

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THEQuad

Caption this

A Duke professor answers The New Yorker’s call and wins.

Vincent Conitzer doesn’t remember when he first entered the famed New Yorker Caption Contest, in which readers submit an accompanying caption for a wordless cartoon. Nor does Conitzer, the Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professor of new technologies and professor of computer science and economics, enter each week like many obsessives. “Sometimes I have nothing, and I don’t bother submitting anything,” he says, “but sometimes I have an idea.”

For the contest’s 555th installment, though, he had such an idea—one he submitted after “maybe five minutes” of tinkering. His caption passed through to the final round, a weeklong vote-off against two others, and after posting about the contest on Facebook and being featured in a Chronicle article, Conitzer was announced as the winner on February 28.

The cartoon can’t be reprinted here, but it’s pretty simple: two sharks are in the water, and one has a mannequin in his teeth. Conitzer’s caption? “The doctor said it might help me quit.”

It’s unclear whether a Duke professor has won previously. However, it’s unlikely: A November 2015 analysis of past winners (conducted by The New Yorker) showed just twelve that hailed from North Carolina. Even without that distinction, it’s an impressive feat to beat out the more than 5,000 other weekly submissions.

A feat that hasn’t gone unnoticed, especially among those appreciative of the quirky English language. After the victory, Conitzer got a note from President Brodhead. n

Rawpixel Ltd

Unionization bid fails

Graduate students had some concerns about representation and the petition process.

Last August, a National Labor Relations Board ruling cleared the path for graduate students at private universities to unionize. In the months that followed, a campaign was launched at Duke to do just that, setting up a potential conflict between graduate students and the administration, which questioned the appropriateness of unions in a collegiate setting. But by early March, the dust had settled: At least for now, there will be no union.

The February vote wasn’t without a modest controversy. The anti-union position received nearly 300 additional votes, but 502 additional votes were disputed—by both the university and the Service Employees International Union, the students’ representative— While the on grounds of voter ineligibility. After administration’s a brief deliberation, however, the criticisms SEIU withdrew the petition, claiming in an e-mail to the graduate student were perhaps body that they could not “meaningunsurprising, fully challenge the Duke administraconcerns tion within a legal structure that plays to the interests of money, power, and abounded influence.” from graduate While the administration’s critstudents as well. icisms were perhaps unsurprising, concerns abounded from graduate students as well. Some questioned whether unified representation for individuals in departments with different intellectual missions, and with different approaches to engaging graduate students, made sense. The hurried petition process also drew criticism; some pointed out, for example, that the impact of unions on universities—let alone private universities—is unclear.

The path to future unionization, now, is temporarily but not permanently obstructed: Any Duke graduate student petition through SEIU won’t be considered for at least six months from the union turndown. n

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Make ’em laugh

The students behind humor site Department Of just want to be funny.

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hen the Duke Department Of V-DAY Zine came out, the single sheet of paper that origami turned into a sixteen-page publication, while impressive, was the least clever thing about it.

“I would ask you to ‘be mine,’ ” reads one Valentine’s card panel, “but I recognize the problematic language of ownership that has been normalized in gendered power dynamics over time that leads to internalization of monogamy as natural and that relationships should be modeled after markets not private properties.” Another used words to disrupt a picture of the president. “Are you a right-wing, white nationalist government?” it asks. “Because I want to smash you all night long.”

A student effort, Duke Department Of has been writing humor, much of it online, since its launch by three women in 2015. “It was founded by femme folk,” says rising junior Syd Roberts, of the group’s generally feminist and leftist tilt. And though Department Of welcomes contributions from whoever emerges, its evident approach makes it less likely that the cliché of a Duke student—“salmon-shorts-boat-shoesdad’s-an-investment-banker-mom’s-a-corporate-litigator-and-here-to-get-an-econ-degree” spills out of her mouth as almost a single word—would feel so motivated.

“It’s not like we’re chasing away the male voices,” says rising senior Jenny Chagnon, who works with Roberts and a collective of others (all female-identified but one) to get something up on the website at least once per month (and something with a little physical reality around events like holidays). “But why I was interested in the first

place was this felt like not Duke—a safe space to take a risk.”

The group functions as a pretty free-floating collective.

Pieces don’t even have bylines, though that itself is a light jab at the perception of Duke students’ constant résumé building. Chagnon’s mother graduated from Duke, during the days of Jabberwocky, a humor magazine that functioned in the 1980s and early 1990s (before charges of racism turned things sour) but never contributed. Chagnon vowed not to miss the same opportunity, and “now it feels like we are part of tradition.” The tradition of Duke humor magazines usually means the magazine lasts a few years and then vanishes.

Roberts notes that if satire can sometimes be mean (though never cruel), the nebulous authority structure of Department Of makes sure it’s always punching up—at, say, misogyny or racism— rather than down. Though the ultimate consideration, of course, is whether a piece is funny. “A piece on Trump versus a piece on dining halls,” Roberts says. “One isn’t more important than the other.” Recent pieces have rated campus bathrooms and eateries, asked Young Trustee candidates whether they liked pineapple on pizza, made fake Duke-based Tinder profiles: the Bro, the Grad Student, and yes, the “social justice warrior.” “We aren’t here to impose our will on anybody,” Roberts says; they want to be funny. The two joke about graduates as products to be consumed by businesses and professional schools.

“I ❤ late-stage capitalism,” Chagnon jokes, and the two agree it could be a bumper sticker. “Yeah,” says Roberts. “We could sell it.” n

The group functions as a pretty free-floating collective.

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WHO’S COUNTING: Class of 2021

7.3% 24.5% Acceptance rate for Class of 2021 Regular Decision applicants, a record low

Acceptance rate for Early Decision applicants, yielding a 9% overall admission rate, another record low

34,480 The unprecedented total of freshman applicants for the Class of 2021, 14,199 of whom interviewed with Duke alumni

52% Percentage of the Class of 2021 identifying as students of color*, a record high

*Students who are Asian, Asian-American, Pacific Islander, Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, American Indian, Native Alaskan, or Native Hawaiian 18

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PAGETURNERS A community of the defiant

Susannah Meadows ’95 is an accomplished journalist and a mother. Her new book, The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up (Random House), stems from a personal experience when her three-year-old son was in so much pain he was unable to get out of bed—but then, somehow, got better.

When my son, Shepherd, unexpectedly recovered from juvenile idiopathic arthritis, my husband and I couldn’t be sure of what exactly it was that had helped him. We had tried a range of interventions—medication and complementary therapies. But based on the timing of key events, we thought there was a good chance that it was the experimental interventions that had lent Shepherd a hand, and, therefore, a chance that someone else could be helped doing what we had done. I was uncomfortable writing about myself but felt I didn’t have a choice not to share what I knew.

It was while I was reporting that story for The New York Times Magazine, reaching out to doctors and researchers to see whether there was any science that could explain how diet changes or fish oil or probiotics could have had an impact on Shepherd’s autoimmune condition, that I started hearing about what other people facing incurable diseases had done. A National Institutes of Health researcher I interviewed told me about her sister-in-law, a farmer in Washington state who’d attempted everything to try to help alleviate her daughter’s intractable epilepsy. When I talked to her, she asked me whether I’d heard of this woman in Iowa who had multiple sclerosis and had gone from using a wheelchair to riding her bike again. A San Francisco pediatrician who explained hyperpermeable gut linings to me happened to mention a patient of his, a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, whose symptoms improved dramatically after taking certain foods out of his diet.

I realized that there was a whole community of the defiant—people who were determined to solve the unsolvable. I reverted from being a shy mom with an obligation to my journalist self. I recognized that there was a much bigger story. One that I had to tell.

R E C E N T LY P U B L I S H E D

Given the era of deregulation we’re heading toward, the timing of Edward J. Balleisen’s new book, Fraud: An American History From Barnum To Madoff (Princeton Press), could hardly be better. In the book, Balleisen, Duke’s vice provost for interdisciplinary studies and associate professor of history and public policy, explores how America always has struggled to strike a balance between enabling entrepreneurship and deterring foul play.

In the second edition of Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound (UNC Press), coeditor John Biewen, the audio program director at the Center for Documentary Studies, expands the collection of essays from preemi-

nent audio storytellers.

The six new pieces feature “This American Life” (TAL) contributor Alix Spiegel, as well as an interview with TAL alumnae and the creators and executive producers of “Serial,” Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder.

In A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland (Harvard University Press), Sydney Nathans, professor emeritus of history, shares the story of the African Americans who in 1870— when millions of their compatriots were fleeing the South—purchased the Alabama plantation where they had been enslaved and transformed it into a refuge for their heirs.

What’s Your Nightstand Reading, Dan Riley?

As a senior editor at GQ, Dan Riley ’05 spends his time learning about the luminaries of today. His hobby, though, is imagining yesterday: His debut novel, Fly Me, reconstructs Los Angeles in the ’70s—the culture of music and skating and beaches—and the moods of a flight attendant living among the skyjacking epidemic. Here, he details a few of the books and authors that influenced his sketch of that era.

The Hunters James Salter (1956) This book predates the world of Fly Me, but Salter’s writing about flight—he is considered by some to be the best pilot-writer ever— is timeless, as light and evocative in the 1950s as in the ’70s or the current decade. Salter wrote at least three other books that influenced mine, but this one’s the only one characters in the novel read aloud to one another.

The Flamethrowers Rachel Kushner (2013) More speed, more ’70s—and a narrative hung on this singularly sculpted heroine who’s testing motorcycle land records at one edge of the book and getting whipped up in the grit and grime of the New York art scene at the other. There’s so much to aspire to here: the woman the book’s built around, the sights and sounds populating the scenery, and the luminous prose doing the telling.

The Skies Belong to Us Brendan I. Koerner (2013) Fly Me takes place during the height of the American skyjacking epidemic—when planes were being hijacked as often as once a week— and Koerner’s is the book to read if that incidence rate just blew your mind. Koerner twins a narrative of the “golden age” of skyjackings with the specific narrative of two lovers who commandeered a plane from California to Algeria and nearly got away with it.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), The White Album (1979) Joan Didion Joan Didion is the godmother of Fly Me. The book begins with an epigraph from her “Notes From a Native Daughter” and is infused with the stuff of her world, her writing, and her way of seeing California.

No topic energizes me more than California exceptionalism, and throughout the ’60s and ’70s, no topic was more fixed in Didion’s crosshairs.

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CHATTER “People like [Bork and Scalia] have really succeeded in persuading everyone from the right to the left that we ought to do more historical research in constitutional interpretation than maybe we did under the Warren court.

Everyone is pretty much persuaded that history counts, [but] very few people think that only history matters.”

ERNEST YOUNG, Alston & Bird Professor of law, on the rise in the idea of originalist interpretations of the U.S. Constitution among Supreme Court justices

“If you don’t have a diverse work force programming artificial intelligence and thinking about the data sets to feed in, and how to look at a particular program, you’re going to have so much bias in the system you’re going to have a hard time rolling it back later or taking it out.”

MELINDA GATES ’86, cofounder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on the dangers of having a lack of diversity among programmers and throughout technology

“The compromise takes basic rights from LGBTQ citizens and gives them access to accommodations that never should have been denied in the first place. So it’s a give and take just like when a bully steals your wallet but lets you keep bus fare home.”

GABRIEL ROSENBERG, assistant professor of gender, sexuality & feminist studies, on the North Carolina General Assembly’s repeal of House Bill 2 (the so-called “bathroom bill”)

“Digital dating is contributing to a divided America, where news, information, and even partners are gleaned from homogeneous sources that reinforce and reproduce specific world views that are becoming increasingly polarized. In the digital dating world, rarely do people say, ‘I am looking for someone really, really different than myself.’ ” LEE BAKER, professor of cultural anthropology, sociology, and African and African American studies, on one of the potential perils of dating apps

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Off the hook

istock

Study shows regulating fisheries can improve things all around.

In a rare but unsurprising piece of good news for the environment, market-based regulation can prevent the problem known as the tragedy of the commons. A study by Duke economists published in the journal Nature shows that regulating fisheries so that fishers don’t need to rush to get their quota of fish can improve ecological conditions, reduce waste, improve outcomes for fishers, and protect the fisheries themselves.

In traditional quota fishery management, fishers worry about getting their fish before other fishers reThe results duce the stock, much like the tragedy of the commons solidly showed the catch-share model, in which farmers making sure their cattle are fed overgraze common land. Economists call this fisheries “slow model “the race to fish.” It leads to ecological damthe destructive age, as fishers accidentally catch fish they can’t sell and race to fish force the fishery to absorb a sudden and extreme blow and lead to to its population; economic waste, by creating market improved gluts; and danger to fishers who work in storms and fishing unsafe conditions to hurry to their quota. The catchconditions." share model, in which each fisher is allotted a certain share of the ultimate catch and thus no longer needs to race, has been shown to improve conditions in some fisheries. But without global data, regulators resist it.

Duke economists Anna M. Birkenbach, David J. Kaczan, and Martin D. Smith addressed that resistance by systematically comparing thirty-nine fisheries practicing catch-share management with thirty-nine similar ones not using that model. The results solidly showed the catch-share fisheries “slow the destructive race to fish and lead to improved fishing conditions,” says Birkenbach, a doctoral candidate in Duke’s University Program in Environmental Policy.

“These results across thirty-nine different fisheries underscore the broad applicability of catch shares and can inform the debate about expanding the use of market-based regulation in fisheries worldwide,” says Smith, George M. Woodwell Distinguished Professor of environmental economics at the Nicholas School. n

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Songs in the key of fun

Each semester, the Duke University Music Instrument Collection opens its doors and lets visitors tickle its ivories.

In the basement of Biddle Hall, off a quiet midcentury-mod- set of Clementi [pieces] by his piano,” Love said. ern lobby where a fountain cheerfully splashes, hundreds of “Wait, that really came out of Clementi’s factory?” a visitor years’ worth of classic musical instruments sit, illuminated asked. “When Clementi was there? Cool!” Yes, said Roman and displayed behind glass walls. The Duke University Mu- Testroet, visiting instructor of music, historical musicologist, sical Instrument Collection came to Duke in 2000 as the and the guy who will “open these doors when people need to Eddy Collection, though new instruments and acquisitions use the facility. It’s really fun when they get touched. It’s fun to enlarge the collection all the see when the undergrads get a time. There are replica instruchance.” The old keyboards ments, too, and paintings of have nothing like the response instruments, and if the doors of modern pianos, so he likes are locked—the collection to see the students, “raised on has no regular open hours— Rachmaninov,” perplexed by you can always gaze through the old-style actions of the antique instruments. the window at clarinets and The day was well timed.

French horns, pianos and cellos, old instruments like the Among the visitors were local musicians who had driven serpent and surprising ones in from as far away as Winlike player pianos, concertinas, and the occasional tabla. ston-Salem and some prospective Duke students who But every now and then (at had come to try the music least once a semester or so), department on for size. “I was the music department props playing the first movement open the doors and gives of the Hammerklavier, by some of these old instruments Beethoven,” said prospective a chance to get their strings student Theodora Serbanesvibrating. That’s what happened in March, when Norcu-Martin. “And then I ran wegian pianist and researcher out of keys and I had to stop.” of historic instruments ChrisOne of the challenges of playtina Kobb came to town for ing on a keyboard from 1810, a weeklong residency and a concert. before everybody had agreed that an Randall Love, associate professor instrument needs the current standard of eighty-eight. of the practice in the music department, and some helpers set up taSpeaking of keyboards, the whitebles with wine and finger food, then on-black one in the lobby belonged dragged into the lobby a piano with to a modern reproduction of a Viennese fortepiano from1815, in front a keyboard with black major keys of which Love and Kobb settled on and white sharps and flats, and it was a bench and played “Sonatas for open season on seemingly every keyboard in the little museum. Visitors Piano four hands” by Jan Ladislav cranked the portative organ (basicalDussek. The small crowd was deIN TUNE: Visitors got to play keyboards ly a portable calliope), tunes from lighted. Kobb came fresh from her and blow woodwinds. a half-dozen instruments strove for debut at Carnegie Hall—which she dominance in the tiny space, and seemingly everybody had said had been a delight, with one small problem. “It was a a try at the Clementi fortepiano, an immediate forerunner of great piano, although it was a modern Steinway,” she said of the modern piano. The DUMIC Clementi is from 1810, di- what Carnegie Hall was able to scrape up. “I wanted it to be rectly from the London facility of Muzio Clementi, composer a mid-nineteenth-century grand piano. But it turned out that and piano manufacturer during the years the piano made a was impossible to find in New York.” leap forward toward its current state. “Beethoven often had a Fortunately, Duke was up to the challenge. n

Photos by Scott Huler

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THEQuad

Four legacies remembered Farewell to three professors and an administrator.

In March and April, the university lost four longtime members of the community.

After Albert F. Eldridge received a doctorate in 1970 from the University of Kentucky at Lexington, he quickly transitioned into a teaching role at Duke, lecturing on international relations and, specifically, the Middle East and terrorism—contriving and acting out scenarios with students in the Bryan Center.

Eldridge, associate professor of political science and director of undergraduate studies, taught well—he won, in 1993, the Howard D. Johnson Award for distinguished teaching within Trinity and, in 1984, the Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award. “He engaged students in a hands-on way, in an active way so that students really identified with the subject,” said Lee Willard, senior associate dean for academic planning and associate vice provost for undergraduate education.

Outside the classroom, Eldridge was the first director of Duke’s Center for Teaching and Learning, an establishment focused on enabling a balance between teaching and research for faculty, rather than a tradeoff between the two. For a decade, he acted as associate dean of Trinity College. And, a Southerner through and through, he was the founding director of the Benjamin N. Duke Scholarship Program—for North Carolina and South Carolina natives.

Mostly, though, his exuberance defined him. “He was that person you instantly liked,” said Willard. “You just immediately had this sense of I want to work with this person. I want to learn from him.”

Eldridge died on March 16 at the age of seventy-three.

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Ronald G. Witt came to Duke in 1971, teaching as Distinguished Professor of me-

dieval and Renaissance history until his retirement in 2004. By then, he was serving as president of the Renaissance Society of America; in 2013, he’d receive the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

His work repeatedly brought him to Paris and Rome. There, his tireless research— Witt, fluent in five languages, required twenty years to complete his award-winning final book, In the Footsteps of the Ancients—would eventually “single-handedly change the origin of the Renaissance,” said Valeria Finucci, professor of Romance studies. In short, Witt’s findings suggest Petrarch, rather than being the “father of humanism,” emerged from a line of previous humanist thinkers. “That is incredibly important for researchers,” Finucci said. “It’s important because it brings into conversation when the Renaissance was born—it brings in French artists.”

A mentor to many students, Witt earned the Duke Alumni Association Teaching Award in 1981. “He was a goofy person, with a way to entice the students, and they would love him for it,” said Finucci.

Witt died March 15 at the age of eighty-four.

Anyone who has ever printed a syllabus at Duke, or done laundry, or entered a locked building owes thanks to Joe Pietrantoni. “Joe Piet” started working at the university in 1970, and during his thirty-three-year tenure he revolutionized operations throughout the university—from bolstering Duke parking to cultivating Duke Stores to adding local vendors to Duke Food Services to, perhaps most notably, inventing the DukeCard.

The associate vice president for auxiliary services was a forward thinker who improved life for everyone under the Duke umbrella.

“He was a true entrepreneur who ended up on a college campus,” said Wes Newman B.S.E. ’78, who worked for Pietrantoni first as a student and then for nineteen years more after graduating. Newman recalls his boss “winging down the hallway” whenever he came up with an innovation like the DukeCard, bounding with the energy of doing something unprecedented.

Pietrantoni, who received the University Medal in 2003 before his retirement the following year, died March 28 at the age of seventy-eight. “Nobody else who had a job like Joe’s ever [had received] that medal,” said Tallman Trask III, executive vice president. “It was just a statement about how much he cared about the place, how much people cared about him, and what an influence he had had over so much of it for such a long period of time.”

THEQuad

Craufurd Goodwin Ph.D. ’58 was

a leader both in the field of economics and at Duke.

On campus, he was a faculty member from 1962 onward, working for five decades in the economics faculty and shepherding the growth of the graduate school. During his tenure as dean, he fostered support for graduate students and eventually helped write the book— literally—for graduate students on how to pursue a career in academia. He contributed to the launch of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program (now Graduate Liberal Studies), allowing for advanced degrees in interdisciplinary studies. Also a gifted economics teacher,

in 2001 he won the Howard D. Johnson Award for distinguished teaching from Trinity College.

His field of study was indebted to him as well. “Craufurd was one of a small group of people who started the field of the history of economic thought,” said Paul Dudenhefer, assistant director of the Duke EcoTeach writing program, who worked with Goodwin for more than fifteen years. Goodwin was interested in how economics can play a role in public life. A past president of the History of Economics Society, he was also a robust writer and editor, publishing works about art and culture, John Maynard Keynes, and Walter Lippman, among others. He was married to Nancy Goodwin ’58.

Goodwin died April 20 at the age of eighty-two. n

DrAfter123

Cooling-off period

Criticism of a planned natural-gas-burning power plant slows down the project.

After a year of criticism of a proposed 21-megawatt natural-gas-burning power plant the university had planned to build on campus in partnership with Duke Energy, Duke has postponed action on the $55 million project.

“Given the complexity of these issues, we will not be bringing a proposal forward for approval by the board of trustees in May,” said Duke executive vice president Tallman Trask III. Some members were The plant is designed to burn natural gas to create energy and to use waste heat from genconvinced the plant was a responsible way eration to create steam for needs like university heating. As part of its Climate Action Plan, to provide needed Duke in 2009 set a university goal of achieving power; others quescomplete carbon neutrality by 2024, and plantioned the need to build the plant imme- ners felt the plant supported that goal. Student groups and various other critics did not agree, diately and worried urging Duke to pursue cleaner energy sources. about climate issues.

The Campus Sustainability Committee created a special subcommittee, chaired by Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions director Tim Profeta, to consider the project, and the group released a report in April. The report noted that it could not reach consensus on whether the university should move ahead with the plant. Some members were convinced the plant was a responsible way to provide needed power; others questioned the need to build the plant immediately and worried about climate issues.

The report recommended that ensuring that the plant has access to enough biogas—gas from non-fossil sources like hog waste—to render it immediately carbon-neutral “would constitute true climate change leadership.” It also urged the university to ensure that in any agreements it enters with Duke Energy, “specific contractual terms must be secured to ensure that the university is providing leadership on climate mitigation.” After some campus and community groups complained of feeling left out of the process, it further urged “more comprehensive stakeholder engagement.”

With the vote postponed, any eventual action on the plant thus will move from the desk of President Brodhead to that of President Price. n

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SPORTS

Jack of All Trades

Having a player who can do it all is great—and complicated. | By Lucas Hubbard

T

he time during each baseball game that should be most leisurely—the half-inning break— is often the most stressful for Jack Labosky.

“Sometimes it’s kind of a mad scramble during the game [when] I’m probably going to pitch,” says Labosky, a third-baseman and rising senior who doubles as Duke’s closer. “I’m coming off the field and Coach points at me and says, ‘Get hot, you’re going in,’ and I have to run to the bullpen.”

In Little League, and even through high school, a team’s best hitter is often a team’s best pitcher. Once in college, though, players find their niches. It’s surprising, then, for a Division I college

sized diamond in the side yard of their two-and-a-half-acre lot.

In high school, his hitting caught the eye of Duke assistant Josh Jordan during a California trip, and the staff got a closer look when Labosky traveled to nearby Cary, North Carolina, for an All-Star tournament in 2013. The appeal of Duke was both familial—his mother, Kim, was a heptathlete for Kansas, and both she and Vince had competed at Wallace Wade Stadium during college—and visionary: Pollard believed that Labosky could be part of a transformative class for Duke baseball. (He was right: Last year’s squad broke Duke’s fifty-five-year NCAA tournament drought, and Labosky was a second-team All-ACC player.)

“You’re constantly trying to tweak little things to make yourself better.” team’s cleanup hitter to be its go-to relief pitcher also. But that’s what Labosky is for the Blue Devils: In the 2017 regular season, he was second on the team in home runs and runs batted in, and he notched all but two of Duke’s saves.

“It’s hard to expect that one guy is going to have that much of an impact on your program in so many different ways,” says head coach Chris Pollard, who originally recruited Labosky to Duke as a corner infielder.

The middle of three brothers, Labosky grew up playing ball in the heart of Clovis, California. His first experience on the diamond came from hanging out during his older brother’s practice: Once it was apparent the not-quite-five-year-old Labosky didn’t need a tee—he could hit live pitching—he was a hot commodity.

Soon, the Labosky boys and father Vince, a national-champion javelin thrower at Kansas, had carved out a Little League24

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But Labosky has surpassed expectations. With the development of a nasty changeup—Pollard compares Labosky’s two-pitch repertoire to that of former San Diego Padre closer Trevor Hoffman—he’s now a multidimensional threat. Juggling multiple roles during practice, Labosky occasionally sacrifices fielding to ensure he can have both batting practice and a bullpen session, and he sometimes skips throws to prevent arm soreness.

Honing the two crafts, pitching and hitting, requires different mindsets. Labosky describes pitching as a procession of large, relatively slow muscle movements, allowing it to be meticulously analyzed on film. Hitting is quicker, more reliant on instincts and feel. And while “you’re constantly trying to tweak little things to make yourself better,” he says, the difficulty of hitting requires an acknowledgment it’s not always going to work out. “You’ll kind of figure out that failure is kind of an

2017 Regular Season 6 home runs 41 RBI 6 saves Started

54

of Duke's 55 games at 3rd base; pitched in relief in

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games

MULTITALENTED: option,” Labosky Jack Labosky domsays. “Some days inates the mound [the baseball’s] a against Army. beach ball coming to the plate, and some days it’s an aspirin tablet.”

In games, though, Pollard manages a delicate balance to harvest Labosky’s varied skills. NCAA rules allow both a pitcher and a designated hitter to bat, but it’s not always guaranteed. If Labosky started at pitcher and then moved out to the field

Duke Sports Information

during the game, Duke would have a few choices: deploy its only other two-way players (junior Ryan Day and first-year Matt Mervis) on the mound to ensure no weak spots in the batting order, or substitute a “one-way” pitcher and either have him bat (uncomfortably) or tap into a deep supply of pinch-hitters, an unsustainable situation. If Labosky were to come in from third base during the middle of the game and then depart, the same problems would arise.

The easiest remedy is for Labosky to be

the closer, which leads to no breaks for the ultimate utility player—and an elaborate one-man puppet show for Pollard to orchestrate.

“When we’re in the field, I’m looking at where he’s coming up in the lineup that next inning to see, okay, do we have time to get him loose in the [bullpen]; can he go straight to the pen, or does he have to come over to hit?” says Pollard, who previously did this logistical dance with Kenny Koplove, a shortstop-closer who the Philadelphia Phillies drafted in

2015. “There are times when you’d say, ‘Boy, we’d really want to get him in the game, but he’s playing in the field and then due up [to hit] second in the inning,’ and it’s hard.”

What is Labosky’s preference, then?

With the game on the line, would he rather be the hitter or the pitcher? He demurs, refusing to play favorites. “But if it’s a really close game, and your name is called up,” he says, “you’re trying to help your team win, and it’s gonna be fun.” n DUKE MAGAZINE

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Blissfully Blue

Noted for his nimbleness, consensus-building, and adventurous intellectualism, Vince Price is more than ready to be Duke’s tenth president.

By Robert J. Bliwise

I

n college, Vince Price’s first stage performance was as a character called The Little Man in The Madwoman of Chaillot, a French farce. And it was a near-disaster. The Little Man, as the name implies, represents all the little people, Price says. “It was a scene of Parisian capitalists dining at an outdoor café, and The Little Man runs onstage, with great excitement, throws a bag of money at them, shouts, ‘Here, take it, take all of it,’ and then runs offstage.”

The director instructed him “to put a lot of energy into this,” he recalls. It was opening night, and the floor was covered in fake wine. Price dutifully bounded on stage, stepped into a puddle, slipped, and slammed into the table. “I took out every actor on the stage; they were sprawling on their backs. I looked up. I saw the set rocking to and fro, and so I just threw my bag of money at them. I said, ‘Here, take it, take all of it,’ and no one in the audience was the wiser.”

Price, though, acquired some wisdom from that spectacle on the stage. He discovered a capacity to read a situation and to improvise effectively, as he puts it, “even when the moment seems to be going very badly.”

Photo by Chris Hildreth

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Les Todd

EARLY ENCOUNTERS: Price at some of his introductory Duke meetings, including (this page, center) with members of the 50th Reunion class; and (opposite page) with new trustee chair Jack Bovender ’67, M.H.A. ’69, center, formerly chair of the presidential search committee, and Eugene Washington, chancellor for health affairs

Les Todd

Over the past eight years, as provost of the University of Pennsylvania, Price has had to be nimble: Essentially, he’s been in charge of the whole academic enterprise. Now he’ll be stepping into the role as Duke’s tenth president. A bigger role, a different place, but in some ways a familiar context. Penn is often described in Duke-like terms. In the words of its vice president for alumni relations, Hoopes Wampler, Penn thinks of itself as having “emerged over the past few decades from a good regional institution to an internationally prominent institution.” Its ethos 28 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

embraces “trying new things and not resting on its laurels.”

“There was a time when Penn might have thought we were chasing other institutions,” Price says. “Now there’s a sense that we’re charting our own path. One of the great attractions of Duke is that it very much feels that way to me.”

On the cusp of a slow-to-blossom spring, Penn has various echoes of Duke. There are familiar fragments of conversation on a walkway, like, “How is your job search going?” The “entrepreneurship” and “innovation” buzzwords that find their way into the headlines of the student newspaper. The tour guide proclaiming, for the benefit of potential future students, that Penn may be “the most social” among its peer universities. The director of athletics who tells a visitor, “I’ve had a couple of Ivy stops in my life, and I would definitely say that sports is in the fabric of Penn unlike any other Ivy I’ve been associated with.” And the cluster of current students camped out in the administration building—a protest, advocating campus divestment in fossil-fuel companies, underneath a big, bold banner declaring, “Don’t be a fossil fuel.”

In his office in College Hall, Chris Hildreth a vaguely Gothic building and the very first structure on Penn’s campus, Price makes his own visual statements. There’s a portrait of the inescapable Benjamin Franklin. A large, luminous painting from 1871 by William Stanley Haseltine, a Penn graduate, called The Greek Theater at Taormina. A shovel from a ceremonial groundbreaking of a new building for neuroscience and behavioral sciences. A Penn football pin from the early twentieth century, when the sport was in its heyday and Franklin Field— which, Price notes, was the site of the first televised broadcast of a collegiate sporting event—routinely was drawing crowds of 60,000.

Price has an obvious passion for history, along with an equally obvious sense of humor; his colleagues describe him as secure enough to laugh at himself. One good-humored history lesson he offers: The original provost for what was then the College of Philadelphia was recruited by Benjamin Franklin. During the Revolution, though, the college was somewhat of a Tory bastion.

“The provost—William Smith was his name—was briefly jailed before the war by the provincial assembly, and he actually taught courses from the jail on Third Street. And so if I can avoid jail, and it appears that I will before I leave, I will have bested the first provost of the University of Pennsylvania.”

Early in his time as provost, Price met with the faculties of the university’s twelve schools, all of which report to him. He set out to explore the multiple layers of a complicated campus.

“When I was touring the medical school, they wanted to show me a particularly old auditorium in need of renovation,” he recalls. “We opened the doors and there, on the stage, was this fabulous a cappella group of medical students. These are students who, like their counterparts at Duke, are at one of the best medical schools in the country, and they find the time to get together, on their own, and produce beautiful music. Those kinds of experiences—they happened to me every day. These places are a mixture of history and tradition. But they are also forward-looking, youthful, and competitive in the most exuberant way. I just love that.”

One of his initiatives at Penn was the “Campaign for Community,” meant to deploy a particular history and tradition—open conversation—on a modern campus. As the initiative was rolled out in the fall of 2015, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper, editorialized that “[a]t a time when universities are increasingly under fire for disregarding and oppressing open expression, we’re glad to see Penn maintaining its firm commitment to freedom of thought, freedom of inquiry, and freedom of speech— in the form of a university-wide campaign, no less.”

Price describes that campaign not just in terms of promoting open expression, but also as part of the work of defining a community. “We have an obligation as educators to encourage students to seek out challenging viewpoints, to actively seek out disagreement, because that’s how we learn,” he says. “I like to tell students that you cannot go from a state of not knowing something to knowing it without going through a state of confusion. So you should embrace confusion. That’s a very distinctive view of what it means to be a thoughtful community. And it takes practice. We have to remind ourselves that the way we talk, the way we engage, the way we debate has to be practiced.”

The Campaign for Community “formalizes what universities should be doing day in and day out,” he says. Not just the big, structured programs, on themes like Asians in the media and science and race, but also small, free-flowing, student-initiated discussions in the college houses. “This can be difficult to do when the tendencies in society are moving in a very different direction.

But it’s also when the idea becomes all the more important, and when universities consequently become all the more important.”

Technology on campus, for Price, is similarly values-laden: It promises not just to make learning more efficient, but also to spread learning to underserved populations. Penn was one of the four partner institutions helping to launch Coursera, an online education platform—particularly for massive open online courses, or MOOCs—that also includes Duke. The Coursera part-

nership “gave us an opportunity to deliver knowledge outside the university, to the rest of the world,” he says. “And for those adventurous faculty members who wanted to jump on board, we made it easy for them to do so. We made a lot of investments in course development for them.”

Price also led a different kind of curricular outreach, with Penn’s establishing a base in Beijing. Technology applied to teaching. A footprint in China. He likes to trace all of it to the same impulse and to describe it in similar language: building on the mission of a research university and building a community in the process.

(Bringing Penn to the world and the world to Penn, according to the university’s latest vision statement.) At Penn, as at Duke, the China initiative began with the business school, expanded into something university-wide, and appealed to faculty who, as Price puts it, “would be adventurous enough to say, ‘I’ll give that a try. I’ll go out there. I’ll teach a course.

I’ll run this program.’ ” For Price, adventurousness hasn’t been exclusively intellectual. His father was active in the Boy Scouts, and hiking and camping—“large and involved productions”—were constants in his childhood and college years. Later, he, along with his wife, Annette (whom he met in college), and their friends devoted summers to such advenChris Hildreth tures in the outdoors as weeklong whitewater rafting trips on the Snake and Salmon rivers.

Now he and Annette look to their two dogs—Scout, a golden doodle, and Cricket, a labradoodle—as their most avid hiking partners. But some fifteen years ago, his brother-in-law invited him to join a group that would climb Mount Rainier in Washington state. “I had done a lot of hiking in the Sierras, routinely in the 10,000- to 11,000-foot range, and I thought, ‘Mount Rainier, it’s 14,400 feet, it’s like Mount Whitney. That’s manageable.’ ” He didn’t at first grasp that it’s one of the most glaciated mountains in North America, with one of the most dramatic vertical gains in elevation. The climb involved crampons and ice axes. “But I had a great experience.”

Price spent his childhood in a much warmer and more mellow setting, Torrance, California, just outside Los Angeles; today it calls itself “the city with a hometown feel.” He was the sixth of eight siblings—two sisters and five brothers, all of whom still live in California. One brother is ten years older than Price, another is ten years younger. He grew up not just in a large family but in “quite a chronological continuum,” in his words, and with “an ability to get along, a sense of belonging, a willingness to pitch in and work as part of a team.”

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formation into a creative powerhouse. His mother started at Berkeley but left to marry his father. His father joined the Navy after high school and served through World War II; from there he was a grip on movie sets, went to UCLA on the GI Bill, and eventually worked in aerospace. His maternal grandfather was a set designer for movie productions who worked on more than fifty films and was nominated for three Academy Awards in the category of Best Art Direction.

Price says he was always a good student.

He attended parochial Catholic schools, where he promised a fifth-grade teacher that he would go to college and study history.

He persists with that promise through his reading habits—biographies by authors such as David McCullough, Ron Chernow, and

Courtesy University of Pennsylvania

Open conversation “can be difficult to do when the tendencies in society are moving in a very different direction,” Price says. “But it’s also when the idea becomes all the more important.”

Edmund Morris, along with historical fiction, including Hilary Mantel’s evocative take on Cromwell’s England.

In high school, even as he soared to valedictorian status, he leapt into pole-vaulting—not very fast, but with pretty good form. (He had to hold out for the departure of a coach who felt that Price, like his older brothers, should train for middle-distance running.) He recalls that “as a kid, I did engage in a lot of creative play activities around the house. Some of them caused my father great anxiety, because I did a fair amount of damage to the house. I remember, as a young boy, practicing throwing discus. It was not actually a discus; it was a heavy wheel off a wagon. I was rotating in the front yard, and on one of my throws, I threw it through the garage window. I also found some bamboo poles in the garage, set up a little pole-vault pit, and vaulted in the front yard.”

At the University of Santa Clara (“the Jesuit university in Silicon Valley,” as it now calls itself ), he was one of two dozen or so students invited into the honors program. One of his honors peers was Janet Napolitano, who went on to serve as governor of Arizona and Secretary of Homeland Security and is currently president of the University of California system. Napolitano remembers Price as a student who came to class well-prepared, avidly engaged in class discussions, showed “a natural curiosity about how things actually work,” and identified strongly with the program’s emphasis on “social justice and ethical behavior.”

Price had won high-school awards in science and math and competed on the math team. In college he started in the sciences.

Eventually, he followed his heart and took courses in American and European history, along with art history and music history, and majored in English.

30 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Price’s mentor at Santa Clara, Thomas Shanks, founded the university’s communication department; today he’s a consultant for companies and institutions on ethics. Shanks says that what he aimed to model in the classroom was authenticity, the notion that speaking with authority comes from a life of commitment—an echo of a Jesuit credo that exploring deeply who you are brings you closer to God: “When you teach, what you’re teaching is yourself.” That’s one big lesson, he says, that stuck with Price.

Shanks says the university saw itself as promoting “rigorous inquiry, creative imagination, reflective engagement with society, and a commitment to fashioning a more humane and just world.” He recalls two very different works that he read with Price and that resonated deeply for his then-student: The Manner Is Ordinary, the 1953 autobiography of John LaFarge Jr., a Jesuit priest who worked to embed a concern for racial justice in the Catholic commitment to human rights; and a poem by e.e. cummings that reads, in part, “May my mind stroll about hungry/and fearless and thirsty and supple.” In those two works, Shanks suggests, one can find Price’s essence: the generous spirit, the committed educator.

At the time Shanks was running the campus TV studio, housed in what had been a small Jesuit library. Price spent a lot of time there and with the campus theater. It wasn’t just the near-disaster of the French farce; it was also, to cite a favorite memory, playing a fastidious waiter in Between Mouthfuls, one of the single-act, PORTRAITS FROM PENN: With Ezekiel Emanuel, Penn’s vice provost for global initiatives, at the opening of the Penn Wharton China Center in 2015 (above), and leading a seminar in communication at the Annenberg School (opposite page)

interconnected plays in Alan Ayckbourn’s mid-1970s Confusions.

“The conceit of the play is that the audience only heard what the waiter could hear,” Price says. “So as the waiter moved from one table to the next, you would pick up snippets of conversation throughout.”

Shanks says the TV studio and theater work contributed to Price’s self-confidence. It helped impress on Price the complexities of working on a team that, for example, had to concern itself with lighting and sound as well as with the action on the stage. And it gave him an avenue into what Santa Clara saw as the ultimate gift of education—“the mind to make a difference in the world and the heart to want to do so.”

For several years after graduation, even as he performed in summer-stock theater, Price worked as an admissions counselor for Santa Clara. He helped conceive much of the printed material for admissions, along with a video for admitted students. That work was informed by surveys conducted by the office.

“We were interested in individual views and opinion, what people knew or didn’t know, but also in gaining a sense of our reputation, which is not as easily grasped or described. That was a matter, I came to learn, of public opinion.”

While the admissions role led him in a scholarly direction, it also informed his ethical thinking. One encounter stands out for him. It was a conversation with a prospective student on a reservation outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. “This young man, who was intense and motivated, who had already accomplished so much with so little, and who so desperately wanted to attend school in California, was—I learned from his caretaker uncle—very unlikely to leave the nearby area for college if he did attend college.”

The student, in a sense, could not escape history: Those who went far afield for education had a record of not returning, so individual ambitions were, in cases like this, often stymied. Price says he was “impressed by the yawning disparities of opportunity,” and by “the inspiring accomplishments of those who managed to find and take the narrowest of pathways available to them.” It was the sort of encounter that underscored the Jesuit understanding of social justice—the need to confront the structures that perpetuate poverty and injustice.

At the end of his admissions stint, Price was offered the position of production manager of the San Jose Repertory Theater.

“I briefly thought of how fun that would be,” he recalls. “But I

decided I would head to graduate school instead.”

Thoughts of graduate school brought him to Stanford and a Ph.D. in communication. (Shanks had followed the same path.)

“I became fascinated with the idea of public opinion and the idea that it’s something like mass cognition,” he says. “It is rooted in psychology, but it’s part and parcel of collective behavior.

So it’s a fundamentally social-psychological phenomenon.”

That public-opinion interest, and particularly the underlying role of group identity, led to a series of journal articles and, in 1992, the book Public Opinion. In one article, he discussed a scenario that, to this day, plays out with numbing frequency:

Stuart A. Watson Photography

Price’s undergraduate college wanted to equip its students with “the mind to make a difference in the world and the heart to want to do so.”

The media detect, simplify, and report disagreements among groups; such reporting inspires members of the public to retreat into their group identities; and that behavior heightens what might have started as a vague polarization of opinion—essentially feeding the phenomenon of group identity.

Elsewhere, he charted the group-identity effects from an invented change in a college curriculum: Liberal-arts and science-minded students were made to feel that they were being treated either gently or dismissively in the new curriculum. As a result, they bonded more tightly within their cohorts.

One of Price’s closest collaborators on public-opinion research has been Joe Cappella, a communication professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication. In 1987, Cappella, then chair of the communication department at the University of Wisconsin, had tried to hire Price, fresh from his Ph.D. work at Stanford. Price instead went to the University of Michigan.

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At Michigan, Price’s work in public opinion flourished. He and Annette started their family—their daughter, Sarah, now twenty-seven, lives in Arizona, and their son, Alexander, now twenty-five, in Oregon. After some years he became chair of Michigan’s communication studies department.

As soon as Cappella moved to Penn, in the late 1990s, he says, he was determined that “[w]e’ve got to get Vince, because we wanted somebody in public opinion, and I thought he was at the top of his game. So we went and got him.”

On several joint projects, they put together and then surveyed over time what Cappella calls “deliberating groups”—groups that would include “ordinary citizens,” along with “elites” possessing specialized knowledge. The groups would have online chats about a specific issue, like reforming health care in the U.S. How did they conceptualize the issue? How did they exchange information about it? How did they become informed, or misinformed, about it?

One finding, Cappella says, was that deliberating made a difference: A more deliberative process produced better-reasoned opinions. “Vince is really committed to the idea that the study of public opinion is dynamic, that it covers how public opinion is formed and how it’s changed, and that it’s formed by all kinds of information to which you’re exposed, from interpersonal communication to the mass media.”

Price’s scholarly interest in what it takes to inspire collective behavior has worked itself into his role as provost, notably in the Campaign for Community. It carries over to his working style and how he frames issues, according to colleagues, including Penn president Amy Gutmann. Gutmann, on a trajectory to become Penn’s longest-serving president, came to the position from serving as provost at Princeton.

“I’m a moral and political philosopher, as well as a political scientist,” Gutmann says. “While I’m very data-driven, in leading an institution, you have to be driven in the right direction. And I’ve never had the slightest doubt that in Vince we have someone with the utmost integrity and with the ability to stand up for what’s best about not only Penn, but about higher education broadly.”

When Price was new in the role, says Anita Allen, vice provost for faculty and a law and philosophy professor, “people might have assumed that a white male didn’t instantly project the message, ‘I’m a diversity advocate.’ But he has been a diversity advocate. He’s been great.”

In 2011, Price set in motion a five-year “Action Plan for Faculty Diversity and Excellence.” This spring, a report pointed to increases in minority faculty and female faculty, along with more diverse academic leadership. Allen sees Price’s efforts as proving that “diversity, inclusiveness, excellence, and eminence are not at odds with one another. They are consistent and compatible.”

In the policies he put in place—for example, around promotion and tenure for faculty—Price pushed for clarity and consistency, even as he held to the values of “fairness and justice,”

Allen says. “I’m by nature a little anti-authority. I guess a lot of people of my generation—who came of age in the late 1960s, early ’70s—are. We don’t trust the Man. So with bosses, I tend to be a little on the sassy side. Vince disarmed my sassiness. You can trust him. You know that he’s on your side. That’s been a great thing about this job: I feel I’ve grown as a leader, not just by virtue of the responsibilities that I’ve been given, but also through the mentorship and the role model that I’ve had in Vince.”

She adds, “I would like to become more like Vince.”

A similar perspective on Price, as a consensus-builder around common values, comes from Beth Winkelstein Ph.D. ’99, Penn’s vice provost for education. Ruminating on her work as an administrator, she observes: “I took this job to work with this man.” (She’s a bioengineering professor who combines a Penn undergraduate degree and a doctorate from Duke in biomedical engineering.) She says Price has a knack for looking at issues from all angles. “That consultation process—with students, faculty, and staff—is part of why he is so well-liked. People know he hears them, and when their viewpoint isn’t addressed by a final outcome, he always explains the ‘why.’ ” Even around such seemingly ordinary issues as negotiating stu-

In the policies he put in place as Penn’s provost, Price pushed for clarity and consistency, even as he held to the values of “fairness and justice,” according to a colleague.

32 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

dent space requests—whether for practice, performance, prayers, or meetings—Price will educate himself about the full set of implications, she says. “He’s always thinking three steps ahead of the conversation at the moment. I don’t even know if he plays chess.

But he’s not someone I’d want to play chess with.”

Grace Calhoun, who began at Penn three years ago as director of athletics, trains her sights on other playing arenas. “In thinking about Vince as a leader, I often draw the parallel to what an athletics director looks for in hiring a great coach,” she says.

“You obviously need someone who’s a good identifier of talent and also a good recruiter. And as I look at my time working with Vince, I don’t think there is another leader whom I’ve learned more from over time.”

He doesn’t just listen politely, she says; he listens to learn. One example: Shortly after she arrived, Price, along with Calhoun, spent hours meeting with every head coach in Penn’s thirty-three sports. “It just spoke volumes to me about his leadership, that he not only committed the time, but that he truly wanted to understand the issues and to build a personal relationship with our coaches as well.”

More recently Calhoun worked closely with Price in shaping a five-year strategic plan for Penn athletics. “It was a constant dialogue, where Vince was challenging me to think through things I hadn’t necessarily thought through. So there was this depth of conversation, and with each stage, I felt things got better and better.”

Working behind the scenes to make things better and better—

Chris Hildreth

that’s a Price proclivity. His college mentor, Thomas Shanks, recalls the joy that his then-student took in such mundane tasks as stringing together lights for a theater set. Since that time Price has become something of a handyman. After he and Annette purchased their first house in the 1980s, “a true fixer-upper,” as he describes it, he took on a range of remodeling projects. Over the years he has acquired a tool kit that he has since applied to do-it-yourself activities, large and small, in that house and two houses since: designing and installing walkways and sprinkler systems, interior and exterior wiring, kitchen and bathroom plumbing, tiling, masonry, rough and finish carpentry.

“The projects that give me the most satisfaction are those that are interesting in design and problem-solving, such as built-in shelves or cabinets, or trim work in irregular rooms,” he says.

“One of my favorite challenges was designing and building a freestanding cabinet some years back to accommodate a very large and very unattractive fifty-five-inch rear-projection TV. The world of consumer electronics has since moved on. But my cabinet remains in use.”

A hard worker and a dedicated builder he may be, but “chance has definitely played a large role in my success,” Price says. “I was so lucky to have been raised in a family that valued education, to have been nurtured by so many supportive and engaging teach-

ers over the years, and to have been able to work with incredibly talented students and faculty colleagues. At so many times in my life, I have experienced that ‘pinch-me-I-can’t-believethis-is-true’ reaction to my extraordinarily good fortune.”

Being named president of Duke “stands out as the most intensely felt, but by no means the first of those times,” he says.

Right now Price is leading a dual existence, completing his stint as Penn’s provost and making recurring visits to Duke.

There are lots of strategic plans to absorb, lots of people to meet—the board of trustees and Duke health system board, senior administrators, deans, faculty leaders from the various schools, student leaders across the university, coaches, and more.

After one of those visits, he talks about the work of reading a new situation, figuring out new complexities, connecting with a new audience. As he looks ahead, the same unalloyed joy comes through that he shows when he reflects back on the time, decades ago, of discovering his nimbleness on the stage. “I would not want to be president at all that many places,” he says. “Duke is absolutely the place. I feel with every trip there, I’m falling in love with Duke that much more.” n PATHS TRAVELED AND YET TO BE TRAVELED: From left, Annette Price, President Richard H. Brodhead, Price, and Cynthia Brodhead

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ART WITH THEIR BESTIES

I

Hoof ‘n’ Horn celebrates eighty years of putting on shows and creating lasting

friendships by tackling an ambitious new work. | By Scott Huler, Photos by Les Todd

N THE DARKENED BLACK BOX of the tiny Brody Theater in Branson Hall, a cone of light shines down from a single spot, illuminating an empty circle on the dusty black floor. Surrounding it sit a dozen or so students holding scripts, their faces illuminated, their backs melting into the darkness.

“I’m entrusting you with what is most important to me in this world,” reads one. “I know that you won’t betray me.” Says another, “Aeneas, it is time.”

“Good,” the first responds. “I am ready.”

A few more words, and then silence. And then Kay Matschullat, the director—a professional director, in from New York—speaks.

“You guys have a terrible habit,” she says. “Do you know what it is?”

Almost as one, they answer. “Breaking the moment?”

She nods. “Just when it gets tough,” she says. “If I could convince you not to do that.”

There’s a beat of silence. And they get back to it. A circle of students, together in the darkness, trying to draw from a script on paper a living piece of theater they will perform. Trying to bring a story to life.

THEY’VE BEEN DOING that for eighty years. Hoof ‘n’ Horn, Duke’s student-run, student-led musical-theater produc34 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

tion group, puts on three shows a year in the Bryan Center and runs a cabaret troupe that performs in dorms and the community. The name combines the horns of the Blue Devil with the hooves of the sylvan god Pan, that “mythical character of wit and song,” according to a history in the playbill for the group’s 1950 production of Flap ’er Sails. That production was entirely student-written, though as productions increased in number and quality—and as free time diminished—Hoof ‘n’ Horn eventually turned to Broadway standards like Anything Goes and Cabaret.

Hoof ‘n’ Horn bills itself as “the South’s oldest student-run musical group,” though previous expressions of this or that “-est” have been “one of the oldest student musical drama organizations in the United States,” a 1978 claim, and “Bringing the first full-length musicals to a Southern college campus,” from an envelope once used for leaving tickets at will call. Whatever their “-est,” they know who they are.

They’re a musical theater group on a campus more widely known for harboring future doctors and lawyers, for athletics and research. They’re students who among their overcommitments in academics and service find, impossibly, twenty or more hours a week to dedicate to producing song and dance for their classmates, to managing a group that exists only through their efforts.

An occasional Hoof ‘n’ Hornie (their term) might make it big on

Broadway, but this is Duke. They’re political science majors and neuroscience majors, physics and sociology and biomedical engineering majors—and the occasional music major. They pursue theater for love—and for each other. Year after year they have put on shows and then, as the echoes in the auditorium died, moved along.

And in their eightieth year, for an anniversary present, almost from nowhere they got the opportunity to be the first company ever to mount a full production of The Aeneid, a recent somewhat musical play with, like the group itself, rather a long history. The Aeneid, of course, is Virgil’s epic poem, a sort of second-generation epic in which the Roman poet of the first century BCE distills the best parts of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad and presses them into service in glorification of the founding of Rome by Aeneas, the Trojan warrior who escaped from burning Troy. In Virgil’s telling Aeneas carries his father on his back and leads his son by the hand as they exit their homeland.

They spend years searching for a place to found a new country. When they get there, they have to fight for their place.

Standard epic stuff.

THE THEATER STUDIES CLASS focused on the production has been meeting twice weekly for some time, and they’ve had a single read-through. But in the Bryan Center rehearsal space, a black box with dozens of productions’ worth of multicolored taped lines on the floor, the eighteen or so students begin dragging music stands and folding chairs into an arc to prepare for a full read-through, and the opportunity to perform the songs, which they’ve started practicing, for composer Sheik, who’s flown in for the rehearsal. As they set up the room, director Matschullat speaks.

“Actually the first read-through is a pretty sacred thing,” she says. “It’s where we develop some ideas” about the text and the music. “So really use this as a chance to explore the text, to really hear it and enjoy that.” Matschullat has been working on this play in one way or another for six years. “The beauty of a reading, and why people love to attend them, is the actors see the images in their minds, and dwell in that place. People get to see the actors’ minds at work.” She glances at Jon Aisenberg ’17, keyboardist and one of the two student music directors. “It’s all yours, baby,” she says, and Aisenberg leads the cast through the mmms and aaahs and eeees of choral warmup, and while they’re warming up, in walks Brad Rogers, associate professor of theater studies, with Sheik. He’s introduced and sits at a table with Matschullat and a couple of others.

And they’re off. The play starts with dancers in a disco; rising

“The beauty of a reading, and why people love to attend them, is the actors see the images in their minds, and dwell in that place.”

So in this premiere production the students will perform, in essence, a musical of a translation of a play based on a translation of an epic poem based on earlier epic poems.

The music is far from complete—the play still feels more like a play with occasional music than like musical theater.

But it came from Duncan Sheik, who’s won Tony and Grammy awards for his music on the play Spring Awakening. It’s a coup for Hoof ‘n’ Horn—and a stretch.

As exciting as it is to be working on a still-developing piece of theater with people whose work is currently playing on Broadway, it’s a Hoof ‘n’ Horn production, and it’ll be different from the usual Broadway song and dance their classmates have come to expect. “So not only is there a lot of experimentation but a lot of minimization,” says rising senior Julia Medine, a public policy major singing the role of Creusa, Aeneas’ wife, and working as assistant choreographer. “What does that make our final production look like?” That is, Hoof ‘n’ Horn prides itself on a level of quality, and of musicality, that in its uncertain form The Aeneid might not deliver. They worry about that.

SHOWTIME: Above, Aeneas, cast as a refugee, cradles his infant son. Left, Cassandra warns revelers that catastrophe approaches. As her fate decrees, they do not listen.

They never do, do they?

junior Elizabeth Ratliff as Cassandra urges them to flee; they ignore her, and the action begins. The students sit in an arc, standing to recite lines or sing. The opening song, “Do Not Fall,” a benediction to Aeneas from his fallen wife, feels complete, and the energy in the room lifts; other songs wander. Sheik has musicalized various portions of the action, but not all, and not all the musicalized parts feel like songs. The work has been workshopped, but this will be its first-ever full production, and that shows. On the other hand, so does the work Hoof ‘n’ Horn has been doing on the songs—their voices fill the room, and Sheik watches with focus, taking notes. “This is actually the first time I’ve heard it in like five years,” he laughs later. “It was good to hear it all the way through, cold.”

And Matschullat felt the show needed a closing number, so as Sheik put it, “I’ve got some homework assignments.”

THE PLAY came to Hoof ‘n’ Horn because in about 2007 French-Canadian playwright Olivier Kemeid rethought the epic, casting Aeneas as far more refugee than hero, in flight rather than quest. Instead of pursuing a heroic destiny, for Kemeid Aeneas simply goes where he must to protect his child (his wife dies early; his father dies along the way), consciously forgoing revenge. “I left hatred at the barbed-wire fence,” he says in the current production.

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Over ten years, the play has been translated into English, and the plight of refugees has become only more powerful in the wake of the promise and horror of the Arab Spring, the rise of ISIS, and varying policies in Europe and North America toward the displaced. Kemeid, recasting an epic for modern times, seems to have foreseen half the events of the subsequent decade.

Matschullat encountered the piece in 2011, when she directed it at New York’s Hot Ink Festival. “I immediately thought its epic nature required song,” she says. “People finding their destiny through the land of the dead. And I thought the dead should sing.” After that first interaction, she’s bit by bit developed an artistic team to bring the play forward as a musical, workshopping it here and there and taking steps each time. In 2016, she workshopped a version at the Drama League in New York, already working with Sheik and with music director Kris Kukul, who came down for the Hoof ‘n’ Horn production, and movement specialist Tracy Bersley, who has since moved to Chapel Hill and worked on the production. For that production, she invited Duke theater studies professor of the practice Neal Bell.

He couldn’t make it, but he sent Brad Rogers. “And he managed an incredible feat and got us here this spring,” she says. Rogers, developing a musical-theater minor for the department, made

dent-run group and is used to total control. “It’s obviously very cool that it’s Duncan Sheik, and everyone knows Spring Awakening,” says Aisenberg, a music major. “But this show process is totally different because we’re working with professionals.”

That has affected his final show among people he considers his closest friends. Instead of savoring the cycle of playmaking he’s been through a dozen times, “it’s hard to be nostalgic when it’s a curveball.”

Rising junior Bekah Wellons, a political science major who plays a couple of minor roles and, occasionally, the violin onstage, agrees that pros make matters less collegial. Matschullat is teaching them a lot, but when they’re having a discussion with her about the production, “it’s not someone we got lunch with on Tuesday.” Hoof ‘n’ Horn is a consensus organization; professional theater directors tend to be top-down people. Wellons says the rehearsals sometimes felt as if “ ‘you are the marionette in my process.’ We really pushed back on that.”

IN THE REHEARSAL SPACE Matschullat has the ensemble moving throughout the room in silence. “Today we are dedicated to connection,” she tells them as they glide past one another. “Keep an eye out for your story.” They move into one another’s orbits; face one another; turn away; part.

“What happened there?” she asks a pair. “We had a conversation!” She nods. “We don’t come to a scene with language,” she says when the exercise is done. “We come to a scene with expectations. That’s all that connection.

We don’t have a story without connection.

“Now—why don’t we do the transition out of the boat?” And she sits at a table as the ensemble members who play refugees sit inside the lines that have become the boat on which they have fled. They glance backward as the boat is meant to leave their land—“figure out what you want to see on the shore,” Matschullat says, urging them to find that story. During a moment when the refugees are running off stage, she asks them to think about why they are running. “I’m going to run because I want to get off stage,” says rising senior Wesley Caretto, majoring in theater studies and sociology. “It’s metacommentary on the theater.”

For a while the room is useless with laughter.

“People finding their destiny through the land of the dead. And I thought the dead should sing.” the connection with Hoof ‘n’ Horn and has taught the class.

“Originally it was a leap for them to enter this material,” Matschullat says of Hoof ‘n’ Horn’s break from tradition. “But now that we’ve opened the door together, they’ve started to really investigate this new house that they’re in. My role is to help them examine and explore their own practice of theater. In the eightieth anniversary of this hallowed institution, it’s so kind of brave of them to take on this new form.”

Musical theater doesn’t usually have the kind of complex drama this show has, she says, “It relies on situation and story and quick resolution.” The Aeneid—the epic and the play—is far more complex, a cycle of destruction, survival, and resilience that constantly repeats. In the life of Aeneas and of everyone, of course, which is why the story has stuck around for millennia.

And as a longtime teacher, it’s one of the things she hopes to bring to the production. “An artist’s job is to shine a light on this cycle,” she says. “So maybe the cycle can stop.”

THAT’S AN AWESOME PERSPECTIVE—but it’s also very unusual to Hoof ‘n’ Horn. Not the perspective so much as having someone in charge to give it. Hoof ‘n’ Horn is a stu36 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

DURING THE SECOND HALF of spring break, the group stays together all day, in the rehearsal space or loitering outside, checking phones or doing homework.

Caretto and Kirby Wilson ’17 during one break watch Princeton and Notre Dame play in the NCAA Basketball Tournament on a laptop while eating pungent Chinese food from Ginger & Soy. They don’t feel bad about giving up their break. “I like to be doing something on spring break,” Wilson says. “And honestly, being able to focus on this while nothing else is going on is nice.”

As for Caretto, “I come from a beach town anyhow, so I’ve been allergic to spring break since long before this,” he says. Besides: “We need the practice.”

IN THE REHEARSAL SPACE Kayla Morton ’17, the production manager, has demanded the ensemble’s attention: “Raise

your hand if you want to have a great time for the next hour and a half.” It turns out she’s talking about building sets. “We haven’t given you mandatory shop hours,” she says, “but….”

So a group heads downstairs to the shop, where rising junior Dottie Kostopoulos, a neuroscience major from New York, is

the technical director and needs help. The play remains minimalist, but movable blocks need to be built, as do set columns that will be made of cylindrical Sakrete forms. “We need to cut jagged edges here,” she says, “and we need to build a few frames, just using a drill.” Rising junior Tori Trimm, who plays Dido, holds a drill with two fingers, a little out from her, as though it’s a snake. “That doesn’t sound like a me job, does it?” she asks. “If we’re being honest.”

Kostopoulos gets her helpers drilling, using a table saw, and gluing. “Usually when I set-design there are multiple incarnations of a show to go off, and we try not to be over-influenced,” she says. In this case there’s nothing to go off of, “and there’s an immigration office, an old-age home, a fancy hotel lobby, and three boats throughout the show.” A lot of work for blocks and frames to do. “So I had the idea of the columns—I wanted some nod to the ancient, and I wanted to have some feel of ruins.”

The real problem is access—with its dangerous equipment, the shop is open and supervised only during work hours, so Kostopoulos has to run around between classes doing and planning the work so that everyone who takes part can use their time wisely. She tried this year to form more of a set-building team, so that she and her assistant had more support. “I’ve found a few people willing,” she says. “But.…” With her head she gestures upstairs toward the practice space. That’s where everybody likes to be.

THINGS UP THERE ARE GETTING BUSY. Julia Medine as Creusa stands on a plywood cube as though watching from above—she dies in the play’s first scenes, and her presence informs the action throughout the play. “I am watching over you,” she sings, “from the realm of the dead.” She functions as a kind of Greek chorus, explicating and dramatizing—and her clear, steady alto hovers above the proceedings.

Though at this point the proceedings are kind of scattered.

“You guys, we have to restore one line, okay?” Matschullat says after a movement. “Because the notion that the fire is all around them has been lost.”

Lines come in, lines come out, at the suggestion of Matschullat, of the actors, of dramaturge Norman Frisch (another New York City import). Actors stand on this side, over on that side, and Matschullat narrows her eyes and makes a decision. The music comes in a beat earlier or later, and they try it each way a few times. Actors cross the stage or they emerge from the wings.

This is the work—this is the thing being born. On what line should Aeneas hand his infant son—played by a bunSAIL AWAY: Some rope, dle wrapped in flannel—to his a student-built platform, friend? Will an exaggerated step and broken columns tell the audience that we’ve enfashioned from concrete tered a raft, or do we need a rope molds become, onstage, a as a visible boundary? If we’re boat on which Aeneas and swaying, can we indicate the raft other refugees flee their has reached shore by all jerking shattered city. to one side, or do we all need to look the same direction, and must we do that suddenly? Do we get off the raft by standing and stepping, or do we need to indicate climbing? Each step, each tiny decision, brings The Aeneid closer to its expression.

And leaves the mark of Hoof ‘n’ Horn on it, probably forever.

“It’s just so exciting watching them,” says Wellons. “They change keys, they change songs,” she says of Matschullat and Kukul, “based on us. They change the text, based on things we’re doing.

That’s thrilling."

And, oh, yeah: “Duncan did do, as promised, a final anthem,” Matschullat says. It’s a major-key number that should put something of a positive final note on the production. They’ve got two weeks to learn it.

DRESS REHEARSAL. Actors enter and exit the stage, musicians play, adjustments occur. “Could we turn down the monitors?” asks Ilhan Gokhan ’17, one of the music directors, and as DUKE MAGAZINE

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tomorrow and a public policy problem set due,” she says. Which is she working on at the table in the green room, covered with backpacks and takeout clamshells and water bottles and phones and notepads and articles of clothing?

“Both,” she says. And keeping an eye on a black-and-white video screen hanging on the green room wall, showing a feed of the action onstage. “Duke people like to be busy—it’s almost an addiction,” she says. Groups where the people hang out as well as create together do better, she says. “Successful college clubs are the ones that double up.”

Hoof ‘n’ Horn is decidedly that.

“In this cast alone we have four couples,” says Trimm. such sitting in one of the two music pits, low enough that the stage is at head level. “Because that’s going right in our ears.”

Dido sings a song: “Why didn’t she have a mic on?” Morton asks. A train toots, and there is discussion on when Dido is to fall and die. A scrim goes up, and a backdrop of twinkling stars comes down. A lot happening only days before opening.

In the hallway between the wings and the green room, rising junior Elizabeth Ratliff, who starts as Cassandra and comes back on as a graffiti artist and then a farmer, sits on the floor and cheerfully does homework between scenes. “Currently I’m working on

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, performances have started. Before each performance the ensemble and the production staff gather in the green room. They hold hands in a circle for a moment, arms crossed.

Then comes a chanted poem called “Shacking Up,” which cannot be reported here, and is repeated faster and faster until it’s mostly a garbled scream. It does raise energy. Cast members also exchange gifts—secret presents, one per performance—and quarters, which are keepsakes based on coins that travel from one owner to the next in bags that develop their own histories. There’s a president’s quarter and a choreographer’s quarter, quarters for things like first production; sometimes people graduate with a quarter and return years later to pass it along.

Chanting, hugging, ritual exchanging of gifts. The stuff of being in a group, of creating something with what Max Duncan ’17, who plays Aeneas, calls “the people I’m going to the beach with after graduation.” Making art with your besties.

HAUNTED: Creusa, wife of Aeneas, dies early in The Aeneid; her singing from the land of the dead guides both Aeneas and the drama.

“We like to watch Dido die.” figuring out how to figure out a maximum likelihood of distribution,” she says. Of doing homework while acting, she shrugs. “We have no choice at Duke.” She’s been doing musical theater of one sort or another since she was seven. “I firmly believe that my studies would deteriorate if I didn’t do something I loved.”

Not that she doesn’t love her statistics problem sets, but “finishing a problem set feels like it takes the very last bit of energy.

Whereas finishing a show, the adrenaline—it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I also think the community found here is unlike any other. We need to do this because we care about each other.”

To study, to get where she needs to get as a student, she takes her energy and feeds her work. Hoof ‘n’ Horn, despite its long hours, feeds her.

In the green room sits Diana Dai ’17, public policy major, international comparative studies minor, Lavinia in the production (she marries Aeneas at the end; in Virgil’s play she’s daughter of a king, but here she’s a doctor at a refugee camp). She’s also behind on her homework. “Right now I have a bio midterm 38 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

DURING PERFORMANCES little changes. In the green room, Bekah covers someone’s face with makeup for the realm of the dead. “I love this new eye makeup,” she says, which causes rising junior Chandler Richards, a neuroscience major, to explain that they ran out of the usual makeup after the previous performance, but the supply store was closed, then her car died.

“I had to get an Uber to Walgreens.” The glittery eye makeup she chose as replacement is getting raves.

Julia Medine is covered in it—as Creusa, she’s dead all show— and agrees but draws everyone’s attention to the screen. “We like to watch Dido die,” she explains. Trimm, as Dido, sings a minor-key torch song when Aeneas leaves her and then kills

herself by throwing herself in front of a train. The first few times That connection remains everywhere—especially among those the death scene is affecting, but at this point everyone just enjoys who actually enter the entertainment world. Morgan Hoit ’16, her athletic leap and collapse. This one is good but not her best, an English major, says her life in New York is defined by Hoof all agree. Richards gets back to makeup. “What I’m studying is ‘n’ Horn—she lives with two Hoof ‘n’ Horn women, “across the very, very scientifically based and street from three Hoof ‘n’ Horn very empirical,” she says. “But beguys.” So her life is like the Hoof ‘n’ ing able to do hair and makeup Horn version of Friends. Plus, she and turn people into characters notes, another alum reached out to and make them look pretty” feeds her to help her get her current job. that other side. Her companions “I saw this and thought of you,” urge her to start a YouTube chanthe ’09 grad said in a note. The job? nel about makeup. “Yes, in all my Assisting Jill Furman, the producer free time,” she says. “I can have who brought to Broadway a show another segment on the neural called Hamilton. underpinnings of mental illness.”

Betsy Rowland Goodwin ’63 was Medine says she ought to do one a history major and president of on the neural underpinnings of Hoof ‘n’ Horn. She has lived all over makeup, and Chandler brightens: the world and spent much of her “Do you want to know my favorlife as a librarian, but she also has ite study about that?” stayed involved in theater. Never an Everyone does. She explains it. actor, “I did props and built sets The same spirit inhabits the and did all the things people who wings. Caretto leaves the stage love theater and don’t have any talent are allowed to do.” She remains after being killed—as the head of in touch with Hoof ‘n’ Horn peoa clan defending its territory, he ple from her own years and others. takes on Aeneas, and it doesn’t Like Dick Blair ’51, another past end well. “So I get stabbed to president, who notes, “I followed death twice, by the same guy, with the first woman president, Tina the same knife,” he murmurs, referring to his fate as a scavenger Bell Midgett [’51].” His group had earlier in the play. Then he turns. so many members that they shifted to two productions per year— “Hey,” he says. “You take the roles and began producing Broadway you can get.”

Ratliff, sailing by while pre- CONSEQUENCES: The Sybil is willing to send Aeneas to shows, not writing their own. paring to go back on stage in her the land of the dead, where he can consult the shade of He remembers working with third role, points out that like his father. She drives a hard bargain, though.

Barbara George, who played a many an epic hero destined to henun in the original production of roically survive tribulations and arrive triumphant on a beach The Sound of Music, but he’s just name-dropping. He spent years somewhere, Aeneas doesn’t bring much luck to his companions. in marketing for airlines, but he’s never stopped doing theater.

“He is literally the worst,” she says. “You cannot have a worse “I was in The Music Man at my local church, in Connecticut, in friend than Aeneas.”

1985,” he says, and a group in his home of Old Greenwich puts on two shows a year. “I’m going to try out for their spring show.”

BEFORE THE SECOND-TO-LAST PERFORMANCE “It meant everything,” he says of his time at Hoof ‘n’ Horn. of The Aeneid, Hoof ‘n’ Horn throws an alumni party in an as- “It was the best time I ever had at Duke. It was the most fun.” sembly room in the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Li- When asked about his major at Duke, he is willing to admit to brary. With tables full of posters from past productions, props economics. “But my father said I majored in musical comedy,” like old telephones and cameras, and a little bit of food to nibble, he says, still laughing six decades later.

Hoof ‘n’ Hornies come together again, fling their arms around each other, and experience that energy. “I live with two Hoof ‘n’ IN THE GREEN ROOM before that second-to-last perforHorn alumni now,” says Erica Zeno ’15, who works in medical- mance, after the chanted unprintable poem, Caretto performs a device research at the FDA in Washington, D.C. She always rap that gives a history of the production, with many jokes about loved theater, but when she came for Blue Devil Weekend after its ad hoc nature and, as ever, many jokes that cannot be repeated. her acceptance, she saw the Hoof ‘n’ Horn production of Aida. It ends with a reference to The Aeneid opening on Broadway in “I made up my mind right then,” she says. “A, I’m coming to 2051, and the cast explodes into cheers. But speaking of opening, Duke; B, I’m coming to Hoof ‘n’ Horn.” As for that intense there are a hundred or so people in the Reynolds Theater seats connection? “All of my D.C. friends that I spend 90 percent of waiting for them to do that.

And so they do. n my time with are Hoof ‘n’ Horn.”

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E V E N I N T H E FAC E O F C H A L L E N G E Duke TeachHouse offers nascent educators the support and mentorship they need to create strong learning environments, despite the many trials they face.

By Andrew Adamek • Photography by Alex Boerner

B

enton Wise ’13 doesn’t look much like a high-school teacher.

Standing in front of a small group of students in a lightyet-not-Carolina-blue Duke sweatshirt, eating pizza off a paper plate, with a gentle cowlick sprouting at the crown of his head, the fresh-faced, spirited twenty-five-year-old could be mistaken for a high-school student.

But even as he laughs with and needles students, it’s clear he has a deep and authoritative connection with them, based on a mutual respect.

The normally rambunctious students, some perched on top of desks, listen intently to him and to each other.

Wise is leading an afterschool meeting of Spartans of Vision, a student-led screen-printing business at the Southern School of Energy and Sustainability in East Durham that he helped found earlier this year. There’s a lot of work to be done: Students are responsible for everything in the business from product design to marketing to accounting, and they look to Wise to lead the way.

Wise listens closely to the students and offers gentle advice and firm problem-solving guidance. He doesn’t overreact

when a student offers a zany idea or loses his or her train of thought. And that happens a lot with this project.

This patient rapport with students doesn’t come easily, especially for new teachers like Wise, many of whom struggle to simply survive the stresses of early-career teaching. Few young teachers have access to the resources that learning to innovate, listen, and mentor requires. Fortunately for Wise, and his students, he found the supportive community he needed to thrive in his first years as a teacher as a resident fellow at Duke TeachHouse.

Founded in 2015, Duke TeachHouse is a three-year program that includes a twoyear residency in the program’s Holloway Street home.

It’s open to alumni of Duke’s teacher-prep programs and offers fellows mentorship, support, and resources the fellows wouldn’t normally have access to as beginning teachers. In return, they commit to teach in the Durham public-school system for the duration of their fellowship. TeachHouse hosts seven resident fellows and two nonresident fellows each year, and the plan is to introduce three new fellows in every cohort. For the fellows who enter TeachHouse, it can be a career-defining moment.

SUPPORTING ROLE: Benton Wise, a nonresident TeachHouse Fellow, looks over a potential space from which students could sell some of the products from the screen-printing business he’s helping them develop. Above, Erin McInerney heads into the house after a day at school.

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“TeachHouse aims to cultivate early-career teachers who foster respectful, engaged, and productive communities of learning for their students while building confidence, competence, and resiliency as emerging leaders and innovators in K-12 schools, even in the face of challenges,” says TeachHouse director and cofounder Jan Riggsbee.

The program was created to tackle the painful realities of twenty-first-century teaching. Beginning schoolteachers face a long list of taxing challenges, especially in North Carolina: isolation, low pay, expanding class sizes, lack of institutional support and resources, as well as a shifting of responsibility of social issues like poverty, bullying, and unemployment onto schools. These challenges are taking a toll on teachers and schools alike. Nearly 50 percent of teachers with fewer than five years of experience leave teaching for good, creating a cycle of attrition that leaves teachers adrift and deprives school systems of experienced instructors and leaders.

TeachHouse isn’t just about offering support to the fellows; the fellows give back. In the third year of their fellowship, the fellows leave TeachHouse and develop an innovation project to help solve problems in their schools.

That emphasis on innovation is now moving into classrooms. Spartans of Vision is Wise’s capstone innovation effort. He started it to address the students’ need for positive male role models by providing “mentors and a work-oriented creative group to foster positive self-identity,” he says.

Still, like many new business ventures, the five-monthold project is off to a fitful start. One meeting might have twenty students, but only three show up at the next. One student wants to produce high-fashion prints on expensive fabrics, and another wants to do simple T-shirts with a class logo for graduation. Decisions made at one meeting might not get written down; they’re forgotten or overruled by the next. A student who wanted to be a designer two weeks

ago now wants to work on the business side.

The kids have lots of grandiose ideas; since the project has been under way, they’ve changed the name of the project twice, but still haven’t applied ink to anything yet. While the kids are enthusiastic, their ambitions wildly outpace their abilities, a lesson many new entrepreneurs learn the hard way, and Wise steers them back to more realistic goals.

To help launch the project, Wise reached out to artist and professional printmaker Bill Fick, director of Supergraphics, a Durham fine-art print production studio, to provide the artistic and practical skills the students would need. It was a fortuitous call. Fick ’86, a visiting assistant professor of art, art history, and visual studies at Duke, has long been engaged in community outreach and wanted to “get printmaking out in the community, especially communities that don’t have access to this sort of thing,” he says.

Fick also has to regularly, and gently, remind students that, while they want to do high fashion, “they are a lot more rudimentary than that.”

But the practical realities of starting a business don’t dampen their enthusiasm. They keep spitballing ideas, realistic or not, and they keep engaging with the process.

And that’s the point. Underneath the light mood and easy banter, Spartans of Vision has a serious mission that has nothing to do with business success: offering students the opportunity to experience and learn from positive male role models, while simultaneously gaining vital life skills they’ll need beyond high school.

For Wise, the project, while ostensibly about T-shirts and posters, is really a chance for him to confront head-on the inequalities and injustices he sees in the public education system. “We’re failing to meet students from all backgrounds and give them an equal chance at realizing their full potential,” Wise says. He hopes Spartans of Vision can change that, even just a little, for his students.

He has long viewed education as a social-justice issue.

Wise was born in Marion, South Carolina, a small, dying,

“TeachHouse aims to cultivate early-career teachers who foster respectful, engaged, and productive communities of learning for their students...”

42 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

LIVE AND LEARN: Opposite page, TeachHouse mentor Scott Ellis, left, and director Jan Rigsbee work during a late evening at the house. Above, clockwise; Ellis and fellows McInerney and Ashley Pollard work on lesson plans; Erin McInerney uses the donated copier to prepare students’ work; fellows Emily Stout, Pollard, and Ellis do yoga before dinner; knickknacks reveal the shared kitchen; fellow Mary Margaret Mills prepares meals for the week; books and a donated shelf provide resources.

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GUIDANCE: Clockwise; Benton Wise, center, talks with students at Durham’s Southern School of Energy and Sustainability about ways to organize their efforts; a student takes notes; Wise and freshman Ramon Alvarez examine a space; Wise walks the school’s halls. Opposite page: Wise and his students discuss more details.

postindustrial town in the northeastern part of the state with a poor school system. His father farmed for a living, and his mother is an accountant. His parents deeply valued community and education, and they put their beliefs into action for Wise by paying extra to send him to a distant, but much better, school district.

The imbalances between the two school districts struck him even as a young child. It wasn’t until high school that he started to take action. He became an activist in the move44 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

ment to amend South Carolina’s constitution by changing language that said students were entitled to a “minimally adequate” education to language that said students were entitled to a high-quality education.

That led him to Duke. “That activism helped me on my college applications. I spoke about what I knew best, which was advocating for schools,” Wise says.

He earned a Benjamin N. Duke Scholarship and studied public policy. He returned to South Carolina to teach

in public schools there. A lack of institutional leadership and resources made his first year incredibly difficult, and he nearly gave up. Then he heard about Duke TeachHouse and came back to Durham.

The students at Southern High School in Durham face a daunting array of challenges; it was tough for Wise to pick just one. The North Carolina Department of Education has designated Southern a “low-performing school.”

More than 70 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, many students come from single-parent homes, and the graduation rate is below state averages, according to Southern principal Jerome Leathers.

“We have kids coming in with low skills. That’s why it’s so important for Mr. Wise and other teachers to offer mentorship for young men,” says Leathers.

It took Wise a while to get the concept right. His original plan was to buy pizza to entice students in and invite role models and speakers to address them. But they “didn’t respond to just being told what to do and how to do it.” To really reach students, he needed them to take ownership of whatever project he created.

“What I learned was not to meet the kids where they’re at, but to build something that they want to be a part of,” says Wise. “That’s where we’ve started to see a lot of success, when the kids don’t just talk about school but get to discuss something that’s bigger than themselves.”

That shift in thinking already is producing results for students. They are developing a craft with the help of older, wiser mentors like Fick, learning to work together in a collaborative environment, and seeing tangible rewards for their work, even in these early stages of the business. And even though they haven’t produced any products yet, they are making progress. The students are close to choosing a graphic design for their first T-shirt and hope to settle on a final image soon.

For Wise, that’s progress enough for now. “You learn on

the fly, and the energy has been steady. It may not be from every student every week. But every week there is a student who asks, what are we doing this week?”

The hope is that Spartans of Vision becomes a self-sustaining feedback loop of positive reinforcement fueled by student energy. Fick is committed to the idea long term, Leathers has given the project his vigorous support, and the students are on board.

Spartans of Vision is the kind of autonomous, repeatable success within schools that TeachHouse aims to replicate with every innovation project. Yet the program also encourages personal success for the fellows. Two firstyear fellows at TeachHouse, Ashley Pollard and Shannon Potter, won Beginning Teacher of the Year honors at their respective schools this year.

Both were nominated as one of three finalists district-wide in Durham Public Schools for the same title, Pollard as an elementary-school teacher and Potter as a high-school teacher. Ultimately, Potter won.

“You learn on the fly, and the energy has been steady. It may not be from every student every week. But every week there is a student who asks, what are we doing this week?”

I

n the next school year, Wise will continue with the Spartans project but he will not continue as a public educator. The financial realities of being a teacher in North Carolina made it increasingly difficult for him. He is leaving Southern in July to become an instructional designer for online learning.

“This is the story of teachers, especially in North Carolina,” says Riggsbee. “They’re passionate, committed, but faced with tough decisions.”

Riggsbee says she’s encouraged that Wise’s passion for the work he’s done hasn’t waned. He will work with Southern as a volunteer and will stay engaged with TeachHouse as an alumnus in a mentoring role.

In the end, Wise has planted seeds of change at Southern. “I’ve been really impressed with what Benton is trying to do,” says Fick. “It’s challenging, but it will continue to grow.”

Adamek is a writer and a new arrival to Durham.

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a PASSPORT to

paperwork

EXCLUDED: Sophia Jamal says there’s no obvious structure for international students to network for jobs.

For international students, the Duke experience is shaped by visa rules and expiration dates.

By Lucas Hubbard Photography by Alex Boerner

T

hamina Stoll ’17 is sharing the sort of story that has sentences like, “In the end, I know that everything will be okay,” right alongside, “You can’t fight the higher system.” It’s a complicated story with an uncertain ending.

It begins in Munich, where Stoll grew up and started her university study. Soon, she explored her study-abroad options. She heard about Duke through the WB series One Tree Hill, and her stepmother, a Harvard alumna, encouraged her to explore the “true American college experience” that only the Ivy of the South could offer. She enrolled at Duke in the fall of 2014 for a year (through the university's Visiting International Student Program). Once here, though, she realized she had no interest in returning to Europe so abruptly. She

took the SAT “on, like, four days” of preparation, filed her transfer application, and crashed at a friend’s house in Durham. “At May 14, at ten in the morning, I got accepted, and it was one of the best days of my life,” she says.

The relief was short-lived. Like 14 percent of the undergraduate population at Duke, Stoll is an international student, and by staying a few more semesters, she had merely managed to delay her time of departure. She dreams, now, of working in America long term. But she discovered quickly that a political science student with an Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I+E) certificate, even one with a “badass résumé,” can easily get WAITING GAME: passed over in the domestic job Thamina Stoll, below, hunt. When she snagged interhas struggled to find views, she would receive phone work; Henry Yuen calls just before the interview suggests filing clarifying that, despite what paperwork before it said online, those positions securing a job. wouldn’t sponsor a noncitizen applicant.

“There’s this one thing on the job application that you’re always forced to fill out,” says Stoll. “It says, ‘Are you authorized to work in the United States?’ And that one question has come to haunt me for the past half a year.”

Stoll, speaking in Café of West Union, carries an air of both exasperation and nerves; in her waning months at Duke she has a schedule of last-gasp interviews, phone calls, and networking attempts. Graduation day is not even three months away. Since her attempts to earn sponsorship (and a work visa) failed, to remain in America she needs to find, within ninety days of graduating, a job that is both relevant to her studies and with a company that is okay hiring her for just a single year, as her student visa accommodates only that much work post-graduation. Most employers have no interest in such a short-lived hire.

“What frustrates me at this point is that I’m defined by my nationality,” Stoll says. “I don’t own the right passport. And that’s why I probably won’t get a good job, or at least not out of undergrad.”

“What frustrates me at this point is that I’m defined by my nationality.”

48 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

“At the end of the day, something that we sign up for by coming to this institution or coming to this country is to play by the rules.�

“I think it just undermines the idea of the liberal-arts education and pursuing our dreams.�

Many share her story. For noncitizen students, the problem of figuring out post-college plans bleeds into many other calculations while at school. (A quarter of Duke international undergraduates are U.S. citizens; this story details scenarios that are mostly specific to noncitizens.)

A fall 2015 survey of international undergraduates—conducted by Duke’s International Association, a student group that addresses the needs of this community—identified career planning as the biggest issue for this pool of students. Their situation builds pressure early, the students grappling with how to tactically choose a major and network (often in a foreign language) to position themselves for a job or internship, let alone a longer-term visa. They encounter, at the end of everything, a Kafka-esque authorization process, all while the signs out of Washington, D.C., indicate that their visa options in the future could be diminished.

They manage this with the dreadful knowledge that if they don’t succeed, they’ll simply run out of time.

schools get portrayed in movies or, in Stoll’s case, on television; they are known quantities, easy to explain to friends and family. (Duke basketball really helps in this regard.)

Top-tier schools often wield big endowments and can offer more financial aid—a huge bonus for less-wealthy students or anyone deciding whether such a geographical shift is “worth it.” (Duke doesn’t guarantee funding for international undergrads; however, funding through the Karsh International Scholarship Program earns a handful of these students full tuition each year.)

Another benefit is American higher education in general: It’s more robust than their local offerings. “I applied to Duke and American universities because of the liberal-arts degree,” says Isabella Kwai ’16, an English major from Australia. “And I think a lot of international students do that because in Australia, it’s a very specialized education degree.” Her Australian peers “are going straight into business school or law school or medical school, but not a lot are going into the arts.” For students who don’t have a set path in mind, a school like Duke, with many divergent academic offerings, can be a place for discovery.

When these students arrive on campus, they have an additional orientation hosted by the International House (IHouse). They can learn from senior internationals—who lead a “what I wish I knew coming to Duke” panel—but it’s not especially career-focused, says IHouse director Lisa Giragosian, and understandably so. After just getting into college, who wants to start thinking about what happens at the end?

Realistically, these students have to. “There are variables we can’t change about the marketplace. And so, time is one of our most valuable allies,” says Bill MAJOR CHOICE: Gwen Wright-Swadel, director of Geng, opposite, says inthe Career Center. “Because ternational students feel it does allow the student to funneled to consulting, do the networking, to refinance, and tech; Kevin ally understand what the Fraser, above, wasted chances are to get the kind two months of residency of things they need, that infor an unpaid internship. crease their chances of staying in the United States.”

Networking, although necessary, brings its own complications. First, all college students must achieve an equilibrium between who they are and who they want to be. But

“I checked every day, and it was pending, pending, pending.”

“Everything I have has an expiration date,” says Zimbabwe native Talent Chaunzwa ’17. “You’re racing against time, time that has been created for you. Other students might feel they’re racing against time, but...it’s time they’re creating in their own heads.”

M

otivations for attending Duke abound, but a few stand out for international undergraduates. Notably, those traveling halfway around the world for school want to attend a namebrand institution like Harvard, Yale, or Duke. These

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for internationals, it’s a trickier question of how to both assimilate in America and maintain a cultural identity. Second, these students typically are excluded from the most fertile grounds for sprouting a career. International students are underrepresented in Greek life and selective living groups, “which is where a lot of students make connections for jobs,” says Sophia Jamal ’17, the outgoing president of the International Association. “There’s a lack of ecosystem for international students to network.” (Transferring students like Stoll, of course, have even less time and less of an ecosystem.)

Social cues and nuances complicate the ritual of networking. Americans glide through small talk filled with sports references and innocuous fluff, but when the rhythm is lost, it quickly devolves into stilted conversation: What does someone from Colorado say to someone from

mediately. Add in the biases that some students encounter because of their accents and, for students who come from poverty-stricken or dangerous areas, the desperation of needing to get out of their home country permanently, and the most cursory elements of job hunting can provoke unease. That doesn’t help.

“Their anxiety makes the search harder,” says WrightSwadel. “If you’re confident, you present differently than if you’re anxious.”

A

fter acceptance into Duke, international students typically come to America on an F-1 student visa, which permits residency here until the student graduates. The residency can extend after graduation—in certain circumstances.

Within the F-1 visa comes something called Optional Practical Training, or OPT, a pass for twelve months of additional residency in America. It’s for the individuals who have employment relevant to their major field of study. Notably, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors can apply for a two-year extension to their OPT, boosting their total possible time working in the U.S. to thirty-six months. After that, the now-graduated student would need a new visa, likely achieved via grad school or an H1-B visa for highly specialized work.

These stipulations put a thumb on the scale for another college milestone: declaring a major. After students consider both the kinds of companies that tend to recruit at Duke (spread across the consulting, finance, and tech fields) and those with the deep pockets to maybe sponsor a visa down the line (the same), the destination becomes somewhat clear. The most direct way there is a major in economics or a STEM field.

From 2012 through 2016, 33 percent of graduating noncitizen stumainland China, and HIGH ANXIETY: Isabella Kwai, above, came to Duke dents from Duke had an economics vice versa? The differ- for humanities rather than a STEM major; Talent ence shone through Chaunzwa feels like he’s always racing against time. major. For U.S. citizens, the average when Jamal went to a was just under 11 percent. Noncitizens also major disproportionately in computer science: In company’s networking event for students from her native 2015-16, 10 percent of all graduating seniors had a first or Malaysia. “I forgot how easy it is to just talk to people who second major in the field, while 23 percent of noncitizen come from the same background,” she says. “Not that I prefer doing that, per se. I love meeting people from different students did. In each of the past five years, math is one of places, but culturally it’s just easier.” the eight most-common majors for noncitizen students; It’s a lot to ask first- and second-years to dive into imit never is in the top ten for the entire class of graduates.

Danuta Otfinowski

“I applied to Duke and American universities because of the liberal-arts degree.”

52 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

After graduating, international students can’t, as Talent Chaunzwa says, simply “go home and figure stuff out.”

“I really want to use the next three years to figure out if I like engineering or not, and what kind of grad school I want to go to.�

(The engineering trend is similar but less pronounced and harder to track, given that it’s spread across four majors.)

It’s logically sound: OPT usage must relate to the area of study, and given that right now these fields seem to have all the jobs, choosing another major merely sets one up for a quick departure from the country. “You can’t possibly be, like, an arts major and try to get into finance and apply for OPT,” says Gwen Geng, a rising senior from Singapore who's studying economics. “You could apply directly for a visa [with another major], but honestly which firm is going to do that? You’re someone who’s never worked for this firm, they don’t know how good you are, and now you’re asking for visa sponsorship?”

With that realization, one notion of the American university experience quickly evaporates: The American university isn’t overtly specialized, but for these students, it can easily become so. “I think it just undermines the idea of the liberal-arts education and pursuing our dreams,” says Geng.

“The reality hits you that you’re funneled through to these three specific industries,” the triumvirate of consulting, finance, and tech.

The pressures even seep to the level of individual classes. These students need to be employable immediately after graduating; taking a few hard courses can sink a GPA and signal companies to stay away. “I don’t think Duke is about doing what you like but knowing what you can do,” says Chaunzwa, who, with English as his second language, described laboring for an hour per page through his introductory writing course.

(His story provides a secondary explanation for the many international students in quantitative majors: Numbers translate easier than words.) Class selection becomes tactical: Chaunzwa retook a chemistry course he had taken in Zimbabwe, rather than claiming the credit and moving into a harder course.

DISCOVERY: Ting “You have to question yourself Chen, opposite, all the time: ‘Why am I here? Why became enamored am I so far from my family?’ ” Kwai with ethno-musisays. “And I think you feel these cology at Duke but pressures about making it worthwonders whether while for yourself.” it’s practical.

In some way, dispositions and

“You can make us the second choice.

But don’t make it painful for us to be the second choice.”

preferences must play a role. “If I were to pursue a career in economics or finance, I wouldn’t have been happy,” says Kwai, near the end of a one-year fellowship at Atlantic Media in Washington, D.C. But for an individual with myriad interests, a STEM major can still help to postpone those inevitably agonizing decisions. “I really want to use the next three years to figure out if I like engineering or not, and what kind of grad school I want to go to,” says Ting Chen ’17, a double-major in music and environmental engineering. She became enamored with ethno-musicology at Duke, but she doesn’t yet know whether the creative ends justify the pragmatic means.

It’s tricky, navigating these shifting interests during the volatile eighteen-to-twenty-two age. And interests do shift. Duke chooses students “for whom that process is entirely likely to happen,” says Wright-Swadel. “There’s a hundred ways for a student to discover new things, and yet there’s an enormous pressure on the [noncitizen] student to not change that, and that creates conflict.”

For a noncitizen student, switching a major in response to turbulent interests tangibly alters the student’s job opportunities. “Some people realize throughout their time at Duke that they don’t want a career in their direct field of study, so then they’re kinda stuck,” said Kevin Fraser ’17, who selected his engineering major in part because he could “mold” its problem-solving capacity to make almost any job relevant.

Stoll is a prime example: She had planned to go to journalism school before she discovered, among other things, Duke’s I+E program. “Duke kind of changed everything.

I don’t want to become a journalist anymore,” she says.

“Obviously, if I could go back in time, I would not have majored in political science,” she says, acknowledging that a major in economics or computer science would be nice.

Changing her major upon transferring, however, would have required a slew of courses outside of her interests with almost no scheduling flexibility; she eventually chose not to switch. “But I still have a lot to offer, you know?”

A

t any given time, Duke has roughly 1,000 international undergraduates. In 2016, the university had 918 students (or alumni) using OPT, which students need to apply for to gain authorization to work. Each application costs $410, a nontrivial sum for any college kid, let alone the students who seek out Duke for its generous financial aid. And the fee is for each application: In addition to post-graduation employment, any paid internships require burning a few months of OPT. Quickly, two disparate incentives emerge—again. So many employers have a de facto requirement of previous work experience that summer internships seem like a must. But snagging an internship or two cuts into the time left to work after graduation, making it harder for companies to justify the hire. “Few employers are going to hire you if you have one year of authorization, which DUKE MAGAZINE

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you might have used for an internship,” says rising senior Henry Yuen, an engineering student from New Zealand.

“So you might only have six or nine months left—no one’s going to hire you for that long.”

For some (notably STEM majors with those extra two years of OPT), an internship makes sense. But that plan still contains a hurdle: the paperwork.

Because all OPT applications must be filed within ninety days of the end of the school year, and every student’s

“There’s a lack of ecosystem for international students to network.”

all the training. We just can’t take you now, it won’t work with HR.’ ” Fraser took a separate unpaid internship, but since he had already completed the OPT application, he forfeited two of his twelve months.

One solution, again, is simply forgoing internships: OPT allows a ninety-day grace period during which an unemployed recent graduate can hunt for employment. (If the graduate doesn’t find work, the OPT and the visa expire.)

Another approach requires a certain boldness.

“Start early, and don’t wait until you get the offer,” says Yuen, who recommends filing for work authorization before knowing, for sure, the internship is secure. “Because the day you get the offer might be too late.” It comes down to preference: Would you rather risk losing your job offer for not having authorization, or being authorized for a job you don’t have?

For these students, every step of the job hunt features a question with no easy answers. And while these struggles seem universal, the nuances mean that there’s no magic bullet. What works for one candidate—who matches with one employer in one marketplace—will be imitable but not replicable.

“That’s the dilemma of the career center,” says Career Center director WrightSwadel, on the lack of a broad solution.

“Every search is an ‘n’ of one.”

I

application—not just from Duke but from schools across the southeast and east coast—goes to the same U.S. Center for Immigration Services facility in Texas for processing, getting approved takes months. Waiting until late in the spring, after an internship has been secured, to apply for authorization can lead to stressful timing and a photo finish: the authorization arriving in the mail days before the start date. Or after, as it did for Kevin Fraser during his sophomore summer.

“I checked every day, and it was pending, pending, pending. There’s an online tracker, but you get no information from when the card is received ’til when it’s approved. It was finally approved July 2,” he says. “But two days prior my summer employer had called me to say, ‘You missed 56 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

t’s getting harder. America has changed in recent months, and options like the H1-B visa may undergo substantial changes that render them more inaccessible for these students. Other threats remain unquantifiable: Based on his discussions with recruiting managers, Wright-Swadel is skeptical that major corporations will handle applications from international students like they have previously.

Not that this was ever simple. “There’s definitely a bias that domestic students are going to be easier to work for you,” says Kwai. When international students require sponsorship, the company incurs an actual cost for hiring them. And those merely looking to use OPT get ushered into a few industries where the competition ramps up, and students with even slight blemishes can get passed by their stellar peers.

It’s a frustrating system, but these students realize they can’t really complain. “At the end of the day, something that we sign up for by coming to this institution or coming to this country is to play by the rules,” says Henry Yuen. “People are aware that this is a very difficult game to

play from the get-go, from applying here when they were seventeen.”

They also know that companies won’t voluntarily complicate their hiring practices. Mostly, the students hope for palliative changes, little things that might eventually make a difference.

“In America, Americans come first, and I understand the idea that you want to hire American talents before you consider internationals. But you shouldn't be blatently rude or punish us for being international,” says Geng, who also had two internship interviews canceled—via e-mail— once the companies found out she was international. “You can make us the second choice. But don’t make it painful for us to be the second choice.”

They also find the silver linings to their disadvantage.

It forces them to grapple with what’s important, what’s fulfilling. After graduating, international students can’t, as Talent Chaunzwa says, simply “go home and figure stuff out.” They must be focused, immediately planning with the Career Center to understand and maximize their employment options in America, their home country, even a third country.

In summary, the students have learned how the system works, and they’ve adapted. But they wonder: Why can some—but not all—of these bright minds help America?

“You allowed me to come to your country, and allowed me to get really good at political science, or become a really amazing writer, or become an amazing academic. And then, now there’s no pipeline for me to stay here and use my skills. So now I have to leave?” says Yuen. “There’s that whole idea which doesn’t make sense—you train people, and now you’re just sending them away. Instead, they could be working here and be a huge positive force for [the] community.”

Or, as Stoll puts it: “It’s not as if I’d want to live off social welfare here.” If she wanted to do that, she says, “I’d go straight back to Germany and live a fairly comfortable life.

I want to contribute to this country and have an impact.”

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complicated story necessitates a complicated ending. A few endings, actually.

In mid-March, Stoll secured a digital communications fellowship at the Sanford School of Public Policy. (In 2016, more Duke students on OPT worked for the university than for any other employer.)

She’ll have at least another year in America; after that, she’ll aim for an H1-B visa.

Things are good now, even though her mere twelve remaining months of OPT dictates that she’s “basically already looking for a new job.”

For Bill Wright-Swadel and the Career Center, uncertainty rules the day. “The landscape is changing,” he says.

“And as fast as the landscape changes, we have to get ahead of it.” He outlines a goal for Duke to be “the quintessential place from which international students thrive.” But, he says, “I don’t think we’re there yet.”

His team is meeting with counselors at various Duke schools—graduate students are certainly not immune from this situation, he notes—to figure out new and innovative ways to help these students. More support, maybe, or greater connectivity, through something like the burgeoning online Duke Alumni Network. But the career business is cyclical, he says, and hard to predict, even in times of greater stability. “Law is hot, and law is not. People hate banks because of the crash; people like banks again.

There is an ebb and flow, and the constant is change.” In a business where every student has an inherently singular combination of skills and circumstances, finding a scalable solution won’t be easy.

And for some, like Isabella Kwai, the scenery has changed. In late April, with her OPT almost drained, she moved back to Sydney to work for a new bureau of The New York Times. (“A one-way ticket,” she says, “which is something I’ve never had before.”) It’s a job that seems tailor-made for her, she says, given her familiarity with both the city and U.S. media companies.

Kwai wants to be a writer, and with the election’s outcome suggesting potentially tighter visa restrictions, she says she felt less compelled to remain in America. To advance her career, she needed opportunities; she had to decide to “either stay in the U.S. longer or jump to something I wanted to pursue.”

The two goals were exclusive.

Returning home wasn’t a decision made lightly, given that she’d be leaving behind her life in D.C. and all her friends in America. She took a trip to Duke over Reunions Weekend—to meet with mentors, to revel in the “rush of memories” that the campus provided. “It was very sweet to be back in a place that I had considered would always be there,” she says, noting that she’s not sure when she’ll see it again. And yet, she says, “while I drove, I realized that it was okay to leave, and it was just another part of my life.”

Now, her new job provides something that’s almost impossible to attain while on a student visa: calmness. “It’s at least security for a few more years, and I think after going through the fellowship—you knew there was an end date and you’d have to go back and really apply for visas,” she says. “It’s really nice to have just a bit of room to breathe.” n

“That’s the dilemma of the Career Center.

Every search is an ‘n’ of one.”

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An adventure in living

She left the CIA and became a beekeeper. For this alumna, it’s just another fearsome step forward.

Text and photos by Christina Holder

A

t first, the bees terrified Tara Chapman ’03.

For an entire year, she wore a full bee suit, wrapping the cuffs of her sleeves and pants with duct tape before checking on two hives she had set up in her Austin backyard.

Later, turning a hobby into a do-or-die job as a seasonal bee worker, she got stung in the double-digits every day. For four, sweaty spring-to-summer months, as the Texas heat swelled into the nineties and the sky spewed rain, Chapman worked twelve-hour days amid 12 million aggressive bees.

Added to the grueling physical labor was the mental defeat that came with not knowing what she was doing.

When on one especially punishing day a bee popped Chapman just above her left eyebrow, it might as well have been a heavyweight champ taking her down for the count.

Her eye swelled like a chewing-gum bubble and shut. Her entire body hurt. “I don’t want to say she looked like a zombie,” says Laura Weaver, the co-owner of Bee Weaver apiary, which employed Chapman that season, “but she just needed to go fall in bed.”

And Chapman did. At night, she went home to a barebones farmhouse provided by Bee Weaver, the only place where she could let go, and cried at the walls.

“I felt stupid and un-useful for the first time in my life,” she says. Chapman wanted to quit, but something inside of her said, “No.” She stuck it out to the last day. “I came back to Austin a crumpled, little heap,” she says.

HONEY “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Harder than leaving her tiny West Texas DO: Tara hometown to go to Duke. Harder than be- Chapman, coming the first in her family to earn a uni- left, and a versity degree. Harder than a decade spent client begin working for the CIA in conflict-ridden areas a private across Afghanistan and Pakistan. Harder than beekeeping quitting her dream job and coming back lesson.

FDCONNECTIONS 58 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Duke Campus Farm, working with the Durham County Beekeepers, maintains

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beehives.

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ForeverDuke home because she was unhappy. Harder—but ultimately more rewarding, say those closest to her.

“It’s taken her to a good place, and it’s paying off,” says Chapman’s mother, Sherry Henson.

At the end of those four taxing months, Chapman returned to Austin ready to launch the comb-honey business she now calls Two Hives Honey. There could have been endless things to fear at the beginning—especially when building a business out of something as unpredictable as honey. Bees, however, were no longer one of them.

Getting to that point—where Chapman could leave the duct tape at home or open a hive without gear— can’t be attributed only to courage. It also isn’t just about experience. Chapman has a tenacity, and a sense of adventure, that has carried the thirty-something alumna around the world.

And into the bee yard.

Growing up, she didn’t have a lot of money around for adventure. Chapman lived in a small town called Smyer—population 480—located on the plains of the Llano Estacado in northwestern Texas. Her mother worked in sales at a funeral home. Her late stepfather worked for Greyhound as a mechanic and garage manager.

Before Duke, Chapman had been out of Texas twice—New Mexico and Walt Disney World in Florida. She traveled more often through books.

“She read,” Henson stresses. “She read a lot of adventurous books.”

Among them were the popular 1950s Western novels by Louis L’Amour. Through the books, Chapman crisscrossed the prairies of the West, scaled the Canadian Rockies, sailed the South China Sea, and trekked through the jungles of Borneo with the characters who WORKER: Chapman often were in some perilous situation—left with a horse She would joke that she got in because admisprepares to use her sions counselors were throwing darts at a map. and a knife to fight the wild unknown, staring down the smoker; the smoke “Today, we accept the girl from Smyer, Texas!” odds, risking everything to overcome. is used to calm the she says.

Quiet as a child, she thought the best thing was to bees so she can Four years later, with a bachelor of arts degree be sent to her room. “I’d get so excited because I would enter the hive. after having studied political science, Chapman just go read,” she says. became the first in her family to graduate from a Duke was the first real adventure of her life, Chapman says. A school counselor had recruited her for the uni- university. She also had secured her first full-time job. versity’s Talent Identification Program (TIP), which finds acaMonths before graduation, Chapman had gone to a career demically gifted students in under-resourced areas. Her family fair and spotted a table for the Central Intelligence Agency. She couldn’t afford Duke TIP, but Chapman’s grandfather paid for a stood back to observe them—something she does today with similar program at nearby Texas Tech University. her bees, watching them come and go into their hives to better By the time Chapman was a high-school senior, the only understand their patterns. She noticed that as the recruiters talked to students, they divided résumés into two piles. school she wanted to apply to was Duke.

The line was long, and Chapman didn’t have time to wait. So But when she got to Durham, she was overwhelmed. Her classmates had applied to dozens of schools and gone through she slipped her résumé into the pile of “yeses” when the recruitexpensive SAT-prep courses. They had “safety schools,” a term ers had their backs turned.

“Then, that was it,” Chapman says. “They called me.” they had to explain to her.

t The Class of 2021 has 60 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

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incoming Texans.

Finally, she was about to travel beyond the pages of the frontier stories of her youth. And, she had something she hadn’t had ever—money to spare via a starting salary of $43,500. “That was more money than I thought was possible to make,” she says.

On an April morning this past spring, Chapman is standing in the kitchen of her no-frills apartment in pinstripe overalls, Chuck Taylors, and a Durham Bulls baseball cap. She’s checking off her mental to-do list for the day, while her mom waits nearby.

Henson is in town for a few days to tag along for some bee work. Her husband passed away unexpectedly a few weeks earlier. Chapman thought the bees would make her feel better—and, Henson says, she always enjoys the opportunity to see her daughter in action.

The day’s schedule calls for a private lesson with a lawyer-turned-beekeeper about twenty-five miles away in Dripping Springs, Texas—and the delivery of 100,000 bees to neighborhood hives across Austin.

Early on in the development of Two Hives Honey, Chapman says, diversifying her company was a priority. “I swore that when I started this company I was never going to put myself in a position where I have to choose between the health and well-being of the animal and my ability to make a living. It’s why we don’t just sell honey.”

To maximize honey harvests, some beekeepers take too much from the hives—leaving the bees without enough SWEET SPOT: food in the winter season. So to make up Chapman and for harvesting less, Chapman added priher client inspect vate lessons for budding beekeepers and a the hives to see beekeeping apprenticeship program that whether the bees takes her all over central Texas. are laying eggs.

She created a neighborhood bee homeowner program, which invites Austin residents to host hives in their backyards and learn about beekeeping with the promise of turning over their honey to Chapman for eighteen months.

Last summer, she harvested 400 pounds of all-natural comb honey—roughly the equivalent of 500 grocery store honey-bear bot-

tles—from thirty-five hives across Austin.

She sold out of it on her website and at an Austin cheese shop, branding the batches by neighborhood—with an “East Side” or a “North Loop” version reflecting the flavor profile of the flowers native to the neighborhood from which they came.

Chapman sold the hyper-local honey to an Austin restaurant owned by a James Beard award-nominated chef. He topped his signature butternut cake with a slice of comb, telling his customers that bees literally in their backyard had made it. Those successes, however, don't come easy or without risk. Honey, like most agriculture, is seasonal and vulnerable. Hives must be installed in the spring. Honey—if there is any (because it can take two years for a new hive to produce)—is harvested in the summer. You let the bees be in the winter. And then it starts again. If you don’t act at the right time, you miss out—and you have to wait until next year. And that means there’s always a lot of work to do.

Hopping into her sticky, beat-up, white Toyota Tacoma—lovingly called the “bee truck”—that April morning, Chapman is on a mission to deliver bees to new hives.

Inside, there’s a mountain of protective bee clothing stuffed behind the seats. The gearshift is sticky. Honey pools on the shift’s console, having leaked from a small container that rests on top.

“I always like to have some in here just in case someone says, ‘I’ve never had comb honey.’ ” Chapman says. “I like to give them a little.”

That’s the rewarding part of being a professional beekeeper—when she can introduce people who have never interacted with bees, or are scared of them, to the magic bees produce. As the day goes on, she’ll throw out cool bee facts to get that point across: “Don’t get alarmed if you see yellow or purple or gray or pink in your hive. Pollen can come in all sorts of crazy colors.”

“One bee makes 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey its whole life.”

“All of the worker bees are female. The males don’t work. Their only function is to mate, and once they mate, they die.”

“It’s so important to me that people understand that we should pay more attention to where our food comes from— and the wonders around us,” she says. “The bees have been so amazing for me because they make me stop and appreciate these

t

In Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, Michael Ruhlman ’85 explores the evolution of supermarkets.

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wonderful things we have around us all the time. I just try to share that with people.”

That difference Chapman feels like she is making now has become motivation for continuing to keep at bee work. Inspiration had waned over a decade of working overseas—first as a contracting officer at Langley, writing contracts for weapons and vehicles, then as a desk officer in Pakistan, and later as a program analyst for the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The promise of adventure—and a stable salary—had attracted Chapman as a new graduate at first. And for a while, it didn’t disappoint.

She traveled the world (even convincing Henson to get her first passport at forty-two). She was doing the work that Duke had prepared her to do—studying how policy affects the way contractors operated in war zones, discovering that nearly $13 million in Department of Defense equipment wasn’t being used, finding out that USAID was paying contractors for work that was never done. Her salary hit six figures.

But at some point, working in a red zone began to feel con-

fusing. “After ten years, it started to feel like—‘What are we doing? What is happening here?’ ” she says. Giving up the security of her salary was difficult she says, because “I know what it’s like to have so very little.” But she also was unhappy. She knew she could do better. She decided to go back to Texas for good.

On a whim, Chapman bought a beekeeping-class voucher on Groupon. She began reading books about bees. Bees were all she talked about to her then-boyfriend, whom she convinced to loan his minivan to cart around her bees. A pair of hives appeared in her backyard, inspiration for the naming of her honey business a year later.

“I looked around and thought, Well, I love the bees more than anything else,” she says. “Why don’t I just do something with that?”

Chapman heard about Bee Weaver, the apiary owned by Laura Weaver and her husband, Danny. The business had been sustained by generations of beekeepers in Danny’s family since

SWARM: Chapman gets some help unloading packages of bees, containing 10,000 per box.

“I told them I can squat 225.”

t

Christy Choi '07 and Alex Shum '07 founded Passport Magazine, a campus publication with an international theme, in 2005.

62 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

1888. Chapman wondered if they might be hiring.

Back on that April day, Chapman and her mother are visiting When she couldn’t find their contact information online, bee homeowners throughout Austin to transfer bees into their Chapman put her CIA skills to work. “I thought, well surely I new hives. Henson starts the day armored in a bee jacket-veil can figure out their e-mail. I know their names,” she says. combo, standing ten feet back from the hives as she watches her She pounded out an introductory e-mail and asked about daughter inspect buzzing frames of bees. But as the day goes on, openings. Then, in the BCC field, she typed a dozen e-mail Henson gets bolder. Eventually she sheds all her bee gear and aliases for Laura Weaver. volunteers to install a hive on her own.

The Weavers hadn’t always had As Henson shakes 10,000 bees luck with seasonal bee workers. barehanded from a metal can into the Sometimes they quit before the hive, Chapman broadcasts the scene season was up, and that put them on Facebook Live. in a bind. But there was something “What badass-ery!” Chapman says, interesting about Chapman, Laura cheering on her mom.

Weaver says. “She didn’t have to do Minutes later, as Henson prepares this,” Weaver says. “But she was reto put the top on the hive, Chapally badly wanting to do it.” man comes close to help. Chapman Chapman answered any doubts sweeps a crowd of stragglers resting and convinced the Weavers she could on the frame into the hive. Henson do the job. follows her daughter’s lead. If Chapman can do it, so can she.

Boxes full of honey can weigh “Look at you, Mom, putting your eighty pounds. “I told them I can hands in those bees!” Chapman squat 225,” Chapman says. shouts. “Mom, I’m so impressed!

There would be long days in the You’re so fearless.” bee fields. She had worked in war Henson gently places the top on zones. She was no shrinking violet. the hive—a metal lid that doubles as “Not at all,” says Weaver. a makeshift mirror. As she bends low “We have had men—a little bit to the hive, a thousand bees hovering younger and a little bit older than she like tiny helicopters all around her, is—try to do the same job that she the lid reflects her smiling face. did, and they weren’t able to do it.

BEE HAPPY: Chapman, out of protective gear “Thank you,” Henson says to the They weren’t able to finish the season.”

Facebook audience with a curtsy. “I’ll Chapman launched Two Hives Honey from the savings she had accrued while working for the be here all day.”

The best workdays, Chapman says, are the days when she sees government.

She puts in sixteen-hour days because she knows how much people turn the corner with the bees. They overcome their fears. is at risk. She hustles when things don’t go her way. When she They realize they like the bees—and that most of the time, the sold bees to a local flower farm recently, its owners threatened to bees don’t mind them either.

Where the bees will take Chapman—or she them—she’s not burn the hives because their calendula blooms began falling off en masse during the natural bee pollinating process. Chapman sure. She does know that she’ll always have a pair of hives in her drove two hours to pick up the hives and promptly sold them to backyard. She’ll always be able to tell you one cool bee fact too many. She’ll always be “that girl at the bar that’s saving the bees someone else.

This bee season Chapman has added more hives, bringing the from the margaritas.”

And she’ll probably always be that woman egging on the people total to ninety—and she’s hoping to triple her honey supply in the 2017 season. She’s developing related products—lip balm, lo- around her to take that next fearsome step into a new experience. tion bars, and beeswax candles.

Yet, being a professional beekeeper may not be her last job.

Last September, Two Hives Honey began to pay her bills for She’s always thought of beekeeping as an adventure. “I’m not the first time since she opened in 2015. She had enough money quite done having adventures. I definitely have one more in to expand the business and began looking to hire. Two of the me,” she says. “But I might have even maybe two—or three.” finalists for her bee-assistant positions didn’t have a ton of experience, but they were eager to learn. Chapman knew that feeling, Holder M.Div. ’13 is the DAA’s assistant director of communications. and she hired them both.

t Duke's LaBar lab has an ongoing project that uses virtual-reality tools to explore the neurophysiological bases of fear learning.

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sion. After the couple preached about love overcoming fear, the Calvary congregation voted unanimously in favor of them.

It was an event Swearingen says felt like it belonged in a “dream journal.” Growing up as the daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor in Woodville, Texas, she didn’t envision the possibilities of pastoring herself because her denomination did not ordain women. Add the possibility of co-pastoring with her wife as a same-sex couple, and it just didn’t feel realistic, Swearingen says.

Yet she knew she wanted to work in the church. During her undergraduate years at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, she studied psychology and religion—interning at a church led by a woman who turned out to be one of the state’s only two senior female pastors at the time. After graduating from Duke’s divinity school, she became the campus chaplain at Furman University in Greenville.

In the years following Duke, Swearingen came out, but it was difficult to reconcile to detractors her identity and her faith. Swearingen met Sarratt at a church in Greenville. They fell in love and got married. They wanted to pursue a life together in ministry. But Swearingen often feared they might have to choose—their faith or their love.

“There’s this long, sometimes complicated journey by which we find our fears being reimagined and reshaped into the very work we are called to do,” she says.

In the pursuit of that work, there still is difficulty and fear.

Swearingen’s homecoming at Calvary wasn’t without struggle: There are those outside of the Calvary community who don’t believe she should be in the pulpit, some even coming into the church to protest. In a recent podcast, Albert Mohler, the president of conservative Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, called on the District of Columbia Baptist Convention to expel Calvary for appointing the couple.

In some sense, it’s difficult to prepare for what is ahead. But the questions Swearingen and the church pose together are a start, she says.

“What is compelling about ministry is that you never know what to even be ready for,” she says, “and that is holy.”

Adelle M. Banks

F

ollowing the Orlando gay nightclub shooting last summer, MARIA SWEARINGEN M.Div. ’10 was on edge. She had helped to lead two community vigils in her city of Greenville, South Carolina, mourning the loss of forty-nine people (not counting the shooter) and the wounding of fifty-three more, and had provided support for members of the LGBTQ community who questioned their safety.

Swearingen says she was afraid for her own safety, too. As a lesbian pastor who also has a regular public presence speaking out for those who are marginalized, she felt she could just as easily become a target.

As she arrived at the home she shared with her wife—also a pastor, Sally Sarratt—later that day, she spotted a curious brown bag on the front porch and felt an “eruption of this visceral fear,” she says.

But when Swearingen reached into the bag, she found a glazed chalice and paten set for communion services, crafted by a fellow church member—a “There’s this belated gift in honor of long, sometimes both Swearingen’s and Sarcomplicated journey ratt’s ordinations just a few by which we find months earlier. our fears being What began as a fearful homecoming became a reimagined and “profound symbol of the reshaped into the way in which we find our very work we are fear truly transformed” in called to do.” the church, she says. It was a reminder that LGBTQ and other marginalized people are loved “in the face of counter-narratives about our belovedness.”

That lesson stayed with Swearingen and eventually made its way into a special sermon she and Sarratt co-preached this past January—this time at historic Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where they were being considered as the newest co-pastors at the church, which has an active social-justice mis-

—Christina Holder

W

Courtesy Will Smith

When you meet WILL A. SMITH M.B.A. ’86, you should expect a greeting both energetic and upbeat.

“My personality is to see the glass half full,” he says. “I think: I can fill that with more. I can fill it with something tasty and refreshing.”

It’s the right attitude for Smith’s latest role: In January, he was named chief marketing officer for Abercrombie & Fitch, the apparel and accessories retailer, and its Hollister and abercrombie kids brands. It’s a challenging assignment in a difficult time. Online shopping has created so-called “zombie malls” nationally, shells abandoned by shuttered retailers including Macy’s and JC Penney.

Abercrombie itself has closed more than 150 of its stores and has struggled with rebranding for the twenty-something consumer.

Still, Smith says, he sees nothing but opportunity in the 125-year-old brand. He will break some things, he will build some things, and he will shine some things. “I get exhausted,” he says, thinking about what he could do.

That confidence is earned. Smith started his college career at Cornell, believing he’d be an obstetrician. After exploring the sciences, he fell hard for psychology. Then, he got a job working part time at Montgomery Ward, selling televisions and stereos on commission. He found that he really liked his interaction with customers. By junior year, psychology was his major. By senior year, he knew he was going to business school.

Besides a full fellowship, the Fuqua School offered its acclaimed emphasis on team building. “It was about carrying your own weight and having a leadership voice within a team,” he says. “At Fuqua, everyone is smart. The power in the experience was working with others.”

Smith says those skills he honed at Fuqua dovetail nicely with his mission at Abercrombie. (In fact, in the last four years, Abercrombie has hired four to six Duke graduates each year.)

It won’t be easy, but perhaps the fact that Smith shares his name with a certain beloved movie star known for saving the world more than once bodes well. Yes, Smith gets the comments “more often than you can imagine.” But he doesn’t mind.

“He’s a pretty upstanding actor and musician. He’s done a lot of good,” he says. “I’ve gotten a few room upgrades and a better table because of it.”

And with the jokey swagger of a man in black, he adds, “I like to think that he shares the name with me.” n

ith a lockable neoprene pouch, Yondr founder GRAHAM DUGONI ’09 has changed the way audiences enjoy performances. Smartphones (and sometimes Apple watches) slip into the pouches, creating a tech-free experience at events, thus forcing viewers to watch the show and record it…in their minds.

It’s a remarkably analog feat in a digital world. Dugoni thinks face-to-face interaction is vital, and Yondr is part of a burgeoning social movement. “As the digital world progresses, we’re facing unprecedented issues, and we don’t know how to balance them. One piece of that puzzle is device-free spaces.”

The Portland, Oregon, native played soccer at Duke, and in Norway. When Dugoni returned to the States, he grew increasingly annoyed with the way people were glued to their phones. In 2013, after he saw festivalgoers in San Francisco record video of a drunk guy dancing and then post the video on YouTube without the man’s knowledge, he thought about privacy concerns. He began developing Yondr, which distributes pouches and wireless technology to venues. People can keep their phones, but the phones are locked into the pouches in the performance area—meaning that performers can regain control of the performance. The company turned a profit six months after its first paid show.

Dugoni is particularly passionate about schools using his pouch, and so far, Yondr has worked with roughly 300.

It’s not just about the distraction of social media and Pokemon. In the effects of the online world, he sees something larger at work. “It’s about the original concept of education,” he says. “Children used to learn how to learn. Now it’s about the call and response of retrieval.”

Screens can have “incredible utility,” but he says the idea that a classroom itself is a learning environment is being lost when the allure of phones stops students from talking and interacting with one another.

“It’s what we need as humans,” Dugoni says. “It’s what our brains need.” n

t Professor Truls Ostbye, through Duke's Global Health Institute, has two research projects based in Norway.

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ForeverDuke Newsmakers

Marnie Oursler M.B.A. ’13, a contractor and a fifth-generation builder, stars in Big Beach Builds on the DIY Network. The show chronicles her renovations in the coastal communities near Bethany Beach, Delaware.

Sarah Tishler J.D. ’15, LL.M. ’15 and Yoni Grossman-Boder J.D. ’15 were featured in The New York Times for their immigration-aid efforts at JFK airport.

Kari Severson M.B.A. ’13, founder of “treadmill desk” company Walkway, set up free desks in Minneapolis airports, hospitals, and coworking spaces.

Walkway

HBO

Laura Tierney ’09, president and founder of The Social Institute, helps coach teens to become savvy on social media.

Duke Sports Information

A group of Duke alumni led by Carlos Rodriguez M.B.A. ’85, Carlos Rodriguez Jr. ’09, and Dev Motwani ’02 have purchased the Hilton Durham hotel and are planning a $5 million renovation.

Four-time All-American Elizabeth Williams ’15 is the third player in Duke women’s basketball history to have a jersey retired in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Jasmine Chigbu ’15 launched the Minorities to Majorities app to put educational opportunities—such as scholarships—into the hands of students from underrepresented groups.

66 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Kristi Jacobson ’93 directed a new HBO documentary, Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison, which provides unparalleled access to the world of super-maximumsecurity prisons.

Brent Bishop ’88, who has reached the summit of Mount Everest three times, is featured in Capturing Everest, the first docuseries of a complete climb of Mount Everest presented in virtual reality.

The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and is available on Time Inc.’s new LIFE VR platform and the Sports Illustrated website.

An eleven-piece series of charcoal paintings by Brian Washington ’02 was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution and placed in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian-affiliated National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Ohio.

1.2.3.

QUESTIONS FOR...

Chris Hildreth

Jack Bovender ’67, M.H.A. ’69

Derek Rhodes ’15 wrote Jimmy for the City, a children’s book that aims to inspire young readers to pursue careers in public service.

Johnathan Miller ’75, former Peace Corps director in Botswana, has founded Airborne Lifeline Foundation to provide critical flight services for medical personnel trying to get to underserved populations across Botswana.

Veteran skateboarder Bill Robertson ’85— known as “Dr. Skateboard”—creates unconventional, innovative lessons to get students excited about learning math and science in his role as a community leader and associate professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

7

Have news to share about your achievements and milestones? Submit a class note and read your classmates’ latest news by logging into alumni.duke.edu.

Sterly Wilder ’83, associate vice president for alumni affairs, talks with Bovender, the new chair of Duke’s board of trustees and the former chair of Duke’s presidential search committee that brought the university’s tenth president, Vincent Price, to Duke.

Now retired, Bovender is a forty-year veteran of the health-care administration industry—most recently as the chairman and CEO of Hospital Corporation of America, a leading provider of health-care services.

Bovender and his wife, Barbara, who worked as a nurse at Duke University Hospital, have donated millions of dollars to diverse initiatives at Duke—including support for Trinity College, the School of Nursing, a professorship at Duke Divinity School, and the Fuqua School of Business, where their son, Richard, received an M.B.A. in 2008.

As of July 1, you are the chair of the Duke board of trustees. What’s been rewarding about being on the board?

One rewarding project that comes to mind: We did a study of the relationship of the Duke health system to the university as a whole. We did a lot of work on the financial side and the governance structures.

That was right down my alley.

Anything I’ve been asked to do at Duke, I’ve done—it’s that rewarding.

At Hospital Corporation of America, you led the effort to evacuate patients and staff during Hurricane Katrina. What was it like to be at the head of an operation during a national emergency?

It wasn’t me. It was a team of people and a culture that has been built over the years—that this is what we do. Hospital Corporation of America owns Tulane Medical Center in downtown New Orleans. We had to work on the fly. We cobbled together helicopters from nearby hospitals that brought in supplies. We found private contractors who were willing to evacuate patients. We flew our employees and many patients to Atlanta and Houston with vouchers to get tickets wherever they needed to go—to relatives in cities of their choice. And we did this without any concern for what it was going to cost to do it.

It was a great honor to lead during this time. There is something very special about taking care of people at the most

vulnerable times in their lives.

That’s a sacred trust.

You and Barbara established a $1 million scholarship to support Duke’s commitment to diversity in honor of the first five African-American students to integrate Duke in 1963. Why was it important to you to fund this specific scholarship?

It began with Barbara and me sitting at the kitchen table one morning. I started talking about the “First Five.” I didn’t know them very well at the time. I would see them on campus and say hello. But at the time I didn’t appreciate the significance of them and their bravery—for them to integrate an all-white institution in 1963. They were putting themselves in an uncomfortable and unknowable situation.

Barbara and I decided to establish a scholarship in their names, and over time, I’ve gotten to know the remaining three of the “First Five.” I’m closest to Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke ’67, who I began to get to know at one of our class reunions.

Duke taught me what it meant to be human. I came out of a small, rural, all-white high school in the 1960s. At Duke, I was living in community with a lot of different people. It made my life much richer. You either get it right or you get it wrong. Duke helped me get it right. You can’t pay that back.

So you have to figure out a way to make it better for the people who will come after you.

—Edited by Christina Holder

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ForeverDuke

GO!

Reunions Recap

More than 4,000 alumni with class years ending in “2” and “7” returned to Duke April 7-9, 2017, for Duke Reunions Weekend.

Classmates met up at informal social gatherings across campus as well as educational events and class parties. Spotted back on campus for their 50th reunion: Nathaniel “Nat” B. White Jr. ’67 and Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke ’67—two of Duke’s first five African-American undergraduate students to integrate the university in 1963. “I think we all come in with a purpose and a calling,” Reuben-Cooke said of her role integrating Duke nearly fifty-four years ago. See more highlights from the weekend at www.

DukeReunions.com.

A Little Help From Blue Devil Friends

In cities all over the world this summer, Duke alumni will be gathering at Send-Off parties to meet incoming Duke freshmen and to welcome them to the Duke family. Through casual conversations, students hear about alumni experiences and get advice from the Blue Devils who have gone before. The parties also provide a great opportunity for alumni interviewers to congratulate their admitted interviewees. Find a Send-Off Party in your city by visiting alumni.duke.edu.

New to Your City?

Have you recently moved? There’s probably a Blue Devil nearby. Log onto alumni.duke.edu to search for alumni in your city and industry and to find out about events near you. Update your profile so that other Duke alumni can find you, too.

68 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

A Night at the Museum

The record-setting event had multiple Duke and Durham connections.

O

n a spring evening in late March, Bryant Harris ’05 arrived at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., to claim his all-access pass for a night at the museum.

The Duke Alumni Association was hosting Harris and nearly 1,400 other alumni for a private, after-hours tour of the museum—setting a record for the largest Duke alumni event beyond campus.

Harris, who lives in D.C., had visited the museum in September when it opened, thanks to a friend with connections. But he says his visit via Duke’s event was different.

Everywhere attendees looked, there was a Duke or Durham connection that had made the museum a possibility in the first place.

“It made me proud knowing that the people from the institution that I hold so dearly is making an impact,” Harris says. “It made me proud that I’m part of that framework.”

The museum’s lead architect was Durham’s own Phil Freelon, who designed the building with 230 tons of bronze-colored aluminum panels and glass that make the façade change from light to dark hues as the natural lighting environment around it shifts.

And, as attendee Mark Hecker ’03 of Washington, D.C., said, as he paused on the museum’s second-floor galleries that night, it’s unbelievable to walk through the museum and see hisPRIDE: Alum- tory galleries named after ni, above and Duke trustee chair David left, enjoy the Rubenstein ’70, followed exhibits. by a contemplative court

alumni.duke.edu

JOIN DAA ONLINE

named in honor of the late Duke professor and historian John Hope Franklin.

At the event, alumni were invited to a strolling supper as the sun began to set across the National Mall, followed by getting the museum all to themselves over the next four hours.

Duke faculty were stationed throughout to offer their expertise as alumni explored the vast exhibits filled with more than 33,000 artifacts.

Malkia Lydia ’92, a documentary filmmaker from Hyattsville, Maryland, had two aims in attending.

First, she volunteered to be a liaison for Duke faculty stationed throughout the museum to answer attendees’ questions—like Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black popular culture, who was stationed near a display of Chuck Berry’s Cadillac.

But Lydia also wanted to see her own work on display. The company she works for, Kuyamba Media, was chosen to produce several short documentaries for the museum. Winding through the illuminated hallways on the fourth floor, she spotted one of her short films—a documentary about the legacy of African Americans in sports.

As the museum drew closer to closing for the night, attendees made their way back to the first floor for dessert, drinks, and a message from President Richard H. Brodhead, who expanded on a theme throughout the museum: acknowledging the wrongs of the past as a step in moving forward not only as a country, but also as a Duke community.

“We all know that Duke did not at its first have black alums…so Duke is part of the history for ill and for good that we see chronicled in this museum,” Brodhead said to the crowd. “And everyone at Duke who has profited from being a Duke alumnus—meaning to be part of a world that includes all the contributions of black alumni—has been part of a great accomplishment and a historical moment forward in the life of a great university.” —Christina Holder

Pakistan

NUMBER OF ALUMNI:

53

Ahsaan Rizvi M.E.M. ’14, right, and Magnus Dorsch M.E.M. ’15 met at Duke when they entered the Pratt School of Engineering on Fulbright scholarships for their master’s programs in 2014. After Duke, Rizvi returned to his home country of Pakistan and created Design for Pakistan, an organization that encourages college students to use design to make social impact. These two friends reunited recently for a trip to the Takht-i-Bahi Buddhist Monastery in Mardan, Pakistan—Dorsch traveling from where he lives in Hamburg, Germany, to see his former classmate. Rizvi called their reunion “a worthy example of Duke friendships that transcend beyond borders.”

What are you up to in your city? Share a photo on social media using

#Dukeiseverywhere

TRUEBLUE

I

was a thirty-five-year-old established executive working for Wachovia when I started the Weekend Executive M.B.A. program at the Fuqua School of Business. At Wachovia, I was used to working in teams and leading teams that had a common Mike Wade M.B.A. perspective. At Duke, I quickly learned what it means to be "Team ’03 has recruited Fuqua" and how enriching it is when you have people from all more Duke gradu- walks of life come together to accomplish a common goal. ates of the Master My first team consisted of a scientist, an engineer, and a sales of Management executive, each with a distinct perspective that was so different Studies program from mine that I had to learn how to actively listen to them and at Fuqua to figure out a way to incorporate our collective insights into our Deloitte than any projects. other recruiter Those skills continue to serve me well in my current role co-leadin the program’s ing the Securities Capital Markets Practice of Deloitte & Touche history.

LLP. The foundation I received at Fuqua gives me confidence in the Fuqua graduates who are coming into the business world after me—and is why I actively recruit at Fuqua.

I’m on campus regularly—talking with students, hosting education sessions, meeting with professors and administrators, guest-lecturing in class, participating in the alumni council, and interviewing. I try to leverage those active listening skills I learned at Fuqua to determine whether our recruits are truly passionate about capital markets, New York, and a career as a consultant. We make every effort to find the right fit for each hire.

The talent at Fuqua is not a result of chance. I’ve gotten to know Dean Bill Boulding and his leadership team over the years and could not be more complimentary of the culture they have cultivated in both the faculty and the students. That’s why I’ll continue to come back to Duke to recruit. n Are you interested in recruiting at Duke for your company? Contact Angela Eberts, senior director of the Duke Futures program, at angela.eberts@duke.edu for more information on opportunities.

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ForeverDuke

#TheDoersProfile

A Day in the Park From superintendents to park rangers—these Blue Devils are working daily to protect and preserve the country’s national treasures while conducting important conservation and cultural research that strengthens communities.

Will you be visiting a national park this summer? Let us know by tagging a photo of your visit on social media using #DukeIsEverywhere.

Cristina Martinez ’16 David Szymanski M.E.M. ’94

, superintendent of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California (2012-Present) While earning a master's in environmental management at Duke's Nicholas School, Szymanski began his career journey toward the National Park System. At Duke, Szymanski met international students and colleagues who had returned from the Peace Corps who inspired him. That led to a two-year stint working in Madagascar's National Park System. Before becoming the superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the largest U.S. urban national park, with more than 150,000 acres across southern California, Szymanski was the superintendent of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park in Astoria, Oregon, for five years and served at Everglades National Park in Florida and Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. Today, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, where Szymanski has worked since 2012, remains one of five Mediterranean ecosystems in the world, with nearly 500 plant and animal species combined.

, park ranger, Sequoia National Park in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains (2017-Present) A recent graduate, Martinez got her start with the National Park Service via a summer internship after graduating. She worked as a community-outreach intern at Sequoia National Park in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains, where she was on hand to communicate information and programming to the park’s many annual Spanish-speakers and recruited bilingual volunteers for the Park's River Rovers, a volunteer corps that promotes river safety and reports emergenices. Now as a park ranger at Sequoia, Martinez is based at the park’s visitor’s center, where she leads bilingual programming, or can be found at one of Sequoia’s campgrounds giving safety tips to overnight guests.

Churnice

The Park Institute of America, which works to preserve national parks and protected areas, is located at Duke.

70 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Erin Fulton M.F. ’12, M.E.M. ’12, park ranger at Sitka National Historical Park in Sitka, Alaska (May 2016-Present)

Cameron Sholly M.E.M. ’10, regional director of the National Park Service, Midwestern Region (2015-Present)

Kish Roy Zipp M.E.M. ’97, superintendent of Ebey’s

Meghan Hagerty M.E.M. ’05, superintendent of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in New Bedford, Massachusetts (2014-Present)

Landing National Historical Reserve on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound off the coast of Washington state (2015-Present)

Barbara Marshall Rice M.E.M. ’82, program manager; Rivers, Trails & Conservation Assistance Program for National Park Service in California, Nevada, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho (1996-Present)

Catherine Hawkins Hoffman ’78, chief of the climate change response program based in Fort Collins, Colorado

Cynthia MacLeod ’75,

superintendent of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia (2008-Present)

Lelia Randolph Mellen M.E.M. ’92, national water trail leader and director of New Hampshire projects at National Park Service in Woodstock, Vermont (1993-Present) MacLeod began working as an architectural historian for the National Park Service in Michigan in 1980 after majoring in comparative literature and zoology and earning a master’s degree in architectural history from the University of Virginia. Since 2008, MacLeod has worked as the superintendent of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, where she oversees the reservation and visitor use of national treasures such as Independence Hall.

istock

istock

The nonpartisan group is a collaboration between the

Nicholas School and the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

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ForeverDuke CATCHING UP WITH THE CLASS OF

’02

Porangui McGrew

A licensed massage therapist and musician, he runs an organization in Sedona, Arizona, whose goal is to empower others through sacred healing, movement, and sound.

Alexander Saphir

He’s a writer, director, and producer in London; most recently, he co-produced the documentary Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? which he also codirected.

Sara Josephs

She’s the director of people at Socure, a digital identity-verification firm in New York.

1974 72 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Bouleware became a trustee; Brenda Becton '70, J.D. '74, Karen Bethea-Shields J.D. '74,

Duke University Archives

Retro Taking to the street

In 1961, Duke students and faculty picketed and protested Durham’s Jim Crow laws. | BY VALERIE GILLISPIE

A

s 1961 began, most Duke students and faculty discrimination happening so close to home, and other stumembers were not engaged with the burgeoning dents found this troubling. Barbara Underwood ’61 wrote civil rights movement. The campus was segregat- in a Chronicle opinion piece: “Most of us continue to attend ed, and Duke did not admit African-American our classes and our meeting and our parties, unharmed and students; nor did it hire any black faculty members. A num- unruffled by the great conflict raging about us. We are here ber of students and professors had urged the university to to discover ourselves and the world, but when confronted change its discriminatory policies in admissions, beginning with making a difficult decision on the equality of man, we in 1948, but their petitions and letters had been largely ig- decide that we prefer our movies to decisions.” nored.

On the same day as Underwood’s piece was published, In January 1961, a protest In January 1961, a protest March 8, 1961, the board of trustagainst two Durham theaters, against two Durham theaters, ees voted to admit black graduate the Carolina and the Center, and professional students—a hisoffered students a chance to bethe Carolina and the Center, come more deeply engaged. The toric first for Duke and the beginoffered students a chance to ning of desegregation. managers of the theaters refused to seat black ticket holders in become more deeply engaged. The pickets did not change the policies in 1961, but further ac“white” sections, a long tradition tivism in 1962 and in 1963, folof segregation in the Jim Crow South, and a small number of Durham citizens began to lowed by a decision from the mayor’s Interim Committee of protest this policy. By joining picket lines in front of the the- Race Relations to slowly integrate the theaters over twenty aters, black North Carolina College, or NCC (now North days, led to a true desegregation of the Carolina and CenCarolina Central University), students and white Duke stu- ter theaters. The 1961 theater protests also brought home dents came together. They also held meetings and discussions the issues of the civil rights movement to many white stuabout the issue and planned further actions, as reported by dents. For some students, this was an awakening of a new The Chronicle. One tactic they discussed was a “stand in,” in consciousness, and for a small number, including Joan which they would repeatedly try to buy tickets, and when Trumpauer Mulholland, it was the beginning of a lifetime of activism. denied, rejoin the ticket line to try again.

Mulholland, in fact, dropped out of Duke in the fall of Faculty members also became inRESOLUTION: A volved: At an AAUP meeting, a small 1960 after the dean of women tried to pressure her to stop 1961 issue of The number of professors from both her activism. She became a Freedom Rider and is considered Chronicle covNCC and Duke agreed to join the a hero of the civil rights movement. A documentary, An Orers the student picket lines. They also signed a pe- dinary Hero, has been made about her life, and a denim vest government stand tition, organized by faculty member she wore during protests is among the items on view at the on desegregating C.E. Bouleware of NCC, later the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American HistoDuke’s undergradry & Culture in Washington, D.C. first black trustee at Duke. uate and graduate Despite these activities, many stuschools. dents remained untouched by the Gillispie is the university archivist. t

and Evelyn Omega Cannon J.D. '74, LL.M '76 became the first black women to graduate from the law school.

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ForeverDuke In Memoriam

1930s

Jeanette Sidenberg Lipman ’35 of Richmond, Va., on Jan. 10, 2017.

Arthur Dewey Nichols ’39 of Boston, on Jan. 31, 2017.

Elgar Clyde Soper ’36, B.D. ’39 of Frederick, Md., on Dec. 20, 2016.

Helen N. Saleeby ’39, M.A.T. ’68 of Monroe, N.C., on Jan. 3, 2017.

1940s

More Duke memories online Find links to full obituaries for Duke alumni at

New from DUKE

Chris Hildreth

alumni.duke.edu

UNIVERSITY PRESS Speaking of Duke

Leading the Twenty-FirstCentury University RICHARD H. BRODHEAD hardcover, $27.95

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“President Brodhead’s passion, commitment, and leadership have helped make Duke University a great place to learn and grow. The wisdom he shares in this book is valuable to all those dedicated to education, service, and leadership. It was an honor to be on his team!” — Coach Mike Krzyzewski

dukeupress.edu | 888-651-0122 |

74 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

@DukePress

Mary Catherine Fern Coble Culbreth ’40 of Charlotte, on Dec. 20, 2016.

Frances Benson Head ’42 of Gainesville, Fla., on Jan. 6, 2017.

C. Leland Rodgers A.M. ’42 of Travelers Rest, S.C., on Oct. 26, 2001.

Gladden L. Brilhart B.S.M.E. ’43 of Springfield, Va., on Jan. 9, 2017.

Thomas Patrick O’Callaghan ’44 of Las Vegas, on Dec. 1, 2016.

Glenn James Haninger ’45 of Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 10, 2017.

Ralph W. Jacobs ’45 of Novato, Calif., on Nov. 12, 2016.

Natalie Kristina Johnson Tarzon ’45, A.M. ’47 of Orangeburg, S.C., on Nov. 27, 2016.

Sophia Powell Wolfe ’45 of Odenton, Md., on Dec. 18, 2016.

Grace Councill Atkinson ‘46 of Durham, on Dec. 20, 2016.

C. Wyatt Dickerson Jr. ’46 of Washington, D.C., on Nov. 29, 2016.

Ronald Lee Hutchinson B.S.C.E. ’46 of Milford, Ohio, on Jan. 6, 2017.

Winn Lowell Taplin ’46 of Sarasota, Fla., on Dec. 3, 2016.

Aubrey Granville Tolley ’46 of Chapel Hill, on Jan. 25, 2017.

Thaddeus Bryan Wester ’46, M.D. ’51, H ’54 of Southport, N.C., on Feb. 12, 2017.

Phyllis Dickie Barber ’47 of Pierre, S.D., on Jan. 14, 2017.

Joseph P. Felton B.S.M.E. ’47 of Carthage, N.C., on Jan. 13, 2017.

Marion Willoughby Ingalls ’47 of Decatur, Ga., on Dec. 12, 2016.

Stuart Cameron Smith B.S. ’47, M.D. ’47 of Tallahassee, Fla., on Nov. 23, 2013.

Sara Frances Dunn Funk ’48 of Woodstown, N.J., on Dec. 16, 2016.

Hilda Nash Matheson ’48 of Durham, on Jan. 15, 2017.

R. Marion Worthy ’48 of Washington, N.C., on Dec. 2, 2016.

Jean Ann Daly Cruise ’49 of West Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 26, 2016.

Fred Folger Jr. ’49, LL.B. ’52 of Mount Airy, N.C., on Dec. 13, 2016.

Vivian Strickler Graham B.S.N. ’49, R.N. ’49 of Round Rock, Texas, on Jan. 28, 2017.

Ann Franke Gurley ’49 of Louisville, Ky., on Jan. 29, 2017.

Monique W. Harrison A.M. ’49 of Spartanburg, S.C., on Nov. 22, 2016.

Marion Copeland Michalove ’49 of Forest City, N.C., on Dec. 13, 2016.

Charles William Smith ’49 of Durham, on Jan. 8, 2017.

1950s

Wilma Jeanne Canada Diner M.D. ’50 of Little Rock, Ark., on Jan. 5, 2017.

W. John Newhouse Jr. ’50 of Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10, 2016.

William Dudley Smith ’50 of Martinsville, Va., on Dec. 15, 2016.

Robert Ruppe Unterberger Ph.D. ’50 of College Station, Texas, on Feb. 14, 2016.

Corinna Thomas Walker B.S.N. ’50, R.N. ’50 of Montrose, Ala., on Dec. 7, 2016.

Charles Hilmon Castle M.D. ’51, H ’52 of Salt Lake City, on Dec. 26, 2016.

Eugene D. Pearson B.S.C.E. ’51 of Charles Town, W.V., on Feb. 11, 2017.

James Toombs Thomasson Jr. LL.B. ’51 of LaGrange, Ga., on Nov. 6, 2013.

Ann Goode Cochran ’52 of Atlanta, on Dec. 9, 2016.

Richard Joseph Crowder Sr. ’52, B.D. ’55 of Asheville, N.C., on Jan. 19, 2017.

Marshall Carr Ferrell Jr. ’52 of Tampa, Fla., on Jan. 23, 2017.

Benjamin Carr Ivey ’52 of Wilmington, N.C., on Dec. 11, 2016.

John Pemberton III B.Div. ’52, Ph.D. ’58 of Amherst, Mass., on Nov. 30, 2016.

Bruce L. Snyder Sr. ’52 of Zephyrhills, Fla., on Jan. 22, 2017.

An insatiable curiosity and a brilliant mind

W

hen it came to investing, Harry Weller ’92 was something special. He was a premier venture capitalist, known for shepherding some of the East Coast’s top tech companies, including Groupon, Vonage, Cvent, SolidFire, and Merlin Securities. He was named to the Forbes Midas List—a respected annual ranking of the best dealmakers in high tech—every year since 2007, and he served on the boards of more than a dozen companies.

And when it came to embracing life, Weller was no slouch either. He loved fly fishing and music of all genres, especially in live concerts, a passion that once took him from seeing Perry Ferrell to Paul Simon in the same month. He was the guy who brought his Phi Kappa Psi brothers together for Duke basketball games at Madison Square Garden. He was the one on a group trip to the Mississippi Delta who was so struck by a style of bluegrass, he helped some musicians trying to preserve it by underwriting a documentary.

“He was an amazing, unique person with an insatiable curiosity,” says Scott Frederick ’91, Weller’s best friend and Phi Psi brother. “He was a wonderful person to sit on a fraternity bench with and hang out to have these deep conversations on an array of topics. At the end, you’d see the world a bit differently.”

That enduring interest in seemingly everything and everyone was key in Weller’s too-short life. It makes sense, for instance, that on the evening of November 19, 2016, hours before he died in his sleep at forty-six, Weller was talking to friends about his latest bet for the future: quantum computing and entanglement theory.

By then, he had experienced a life rife with variety. On an ROTC scholarship at Duke, he studied physics. After graduating, he served in the Navy, piloting F-18s until his squadron was decommissioned. “When that happened, I was looking around going, ‘Okay, now what?’ ” he told GrowthCap in his 2016 Investor of the Year profile. He used his software background to get into technology consulting, and he was put on a project with Oracle. Owner Larry Ellison told him he should go to business school. He earned his M.B.A. at Harvard Business School, graduating with its highest distinction.

It was at Harvard that he discovered the world of venture capital. “I didn’t choose to go into venture capital; it was a very nose-to-the-ground process about what I like to do,” he told GrowthCap. “I felt like this industry had the right mix of high tolerance for risk, and a requirement to keep up with what’s new.” He moved to Washington to join a friend’s firm; in 2002, Weller joined New Enterprise Associates, an investment firm in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

He flourished because of an uncanny ability to spot promising companies and help them grow to their full potential. “He did two things well,” says Frederick. “He always asked what could go right. He was an optimist. Most investors are asking what could go wrong. And he was the best at bringing the best out of people.”

Colleagues credit him with having a big role in putting D.C. tech on the map, so much so, Frederick says, that since his death the community has been having monthly meetings to ensure the region doesn’t lose the momentum Weller started.

Weller wasn’t all business, though. Although he traveled a lot, his wife, Rachel, says he made her and their sons, Luke and Cash, a priority. A friend of Weller’s younger sister, Vanessa, Rachel met him on Halloween night, 1999. “He was so smart and so funny. He was really good at making me feel like the only person in the world. I didn’t know then that he made everyone feel that way.”

He taught their sons to play poker, and he played Dungeons & Dragons with them in his wine cellar. When Rachel was out of town, the three guys would have “inappropriate” family movie nights.

Weller also is survived by his parents and another sister, Samantha. “We miss him terribly,” Rachel says. “But he loved us fiercely, and that will go a long way.” n DUKE MAGAZINE

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Wheeler is able to attend Duke because of gifts to the Duke Forward campaign. Nearly half of Duke students receive financial aid. Your support to raise more than $3.25 billion by June 30, 2017, ensures we always recruit the best and brightest students to Duke regardless of ability to pay.

Duke / Impact FINANCIAL AID Lacey Wheeler ’17 is one of the students at Duke who can dream, dare, and discover like never before—thanks to financial aid.

Because of her financial aid package, she discovered a new career passion ignited by a class at Duke. Wheeler is majoring in psychology, and minoring in cultural anthropology and education.

She is earning a North Carolina educator certification to teach kindergarten through 6th grade.

She is at Duke thanks to you. Watch Wheeler’s story and many more in the latest Campaign Impact Report.

VIEW THE STORIES impact.dukeforward.duke.edu

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ForeverDuke They called him the “Mayor of Ninth Street.”

F

or years David McKnight ’74 was a fixture there. Scruffy and bespectacled, he played his fiddle or mandolin on a sidewalk bench and filled the air with the strains of bluegrass and Mozart. People responded.

Three days before he died of a brain tumor in January at the age of sixty-nine, a standing-room-only crowd of friends and fellow musicians filled Durham’s Blue Note Grill for a three-hour musical tribute.

Living as a homeless street musician wasn’t the way McKnight expected life to unfold.

Decades earlier, he studied history at Duke. Like his father, C.A. “Pete” McKnight—who was editor of the Charlotte News at thirty-two and later The Charlotte Observer and one of the South’s most prominent voices for civil rights— David McKnight was himself a prodigy.

He spoke several languages, including Russian. He was a finalist for a prestigious Morehead Scholarship at Charlotte’s Garinger High, where he was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by his “He was a free senior classmates. spirit and never He went on to work at newspapers in wanted to be Charlotte, Greensboro, Durham, and Fayetteville. He was writing editorials at confined by Fayetteville Observer in 1977 when he somebody else’s the quit to run for the U.S. Senate. Fiddle rules about how in hand, he walked 1,654 miles from Manteo to Murphy that year in a bid to he should live.” challenge Republican U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. He wore out six pairs of shoes before finishing fifth of eight candidates in the 1978 Democratic primary.

By then McKnight had begun grappling with mental illness.

Though it would prevent him from holding a steady job, it didn’t stymie his creativity or interest in music, politics, history, or sports.

He began composing songs, including waltzes that he hoped to write for each of North Carolina’s 100 counties. He sent out e-mails and essays on current events. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid inspired an essay that segued seamlessly to former Vice President Alben Barkley, President John Quincy Adams, U.S. Senator Henry Clay, and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

“He just meant so much to so many that went beyond the fact that he was homeless or struggled with mental illness,” said his sister, Carson McKnight Sarvis. “He was a free spirit and never wanted to be confined by somebody else’s rules about how he should live.”

An article McKnight wrote in 1984 about the retirement of a former music teacher could serve as his own epitaph. “And that joy in his playing…will jump off the end of his bow and touch every kid in the place, including you and me.” —Jim Morrill 78 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

C. Clyde Tucker Jr. M.Div. ’52 of Zebulon, N.C., on Dec. 14, 2016.

Charles H. Warlick ’52 of Nacogdoches, Texas, on Jan. 6, 2017.

Ann Gunderson Conroy ’53 of New Orleans, on Dec. 24, 2016.

George Richard Denny ’53 of Indianapolis, on Dec. 29, 2016.

Joseph Tate Hart A.M. ’53 of Rocky Mount, Va., on Dec. 9, 2016.

William Alvis Stokes B.S.C.E. ’53 of Durham, on Nov. 20, 2016.

Barbara Harter Zanner ’53 of Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2016.

Dorothy W. Bowman Crawford ’54 of Easton, Md., on Nov. 16, 2016.

Nancy Lee Lane Diethelm ’54 of Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 16, 2016.

William Edward Max ’54 of Remsenburg, N.Y., on Dec. 21, 2016.

Alfred John Weinheimer Ph.D. ’54 of Houston, on Jan. 18, 2012.

Louise Blackard Wexler ’54 of Savannah, Ga., on Jan. 5, 2017.

Paul Frederick Zweifel Ph.D. ’54 of Blacksburg, Va., on Feb. 12, 2017.

Lloyd Aaron Owens H ’55 of Yukon, Okla., on Feb. 12, 2017.

Carolyn Cather Swan ’55 of San Antonio, on Jan. 1, 2017.

Joan Brown Weinstein ’55 of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., on Dec. 31, 2016.

Wilhelmina Ann Forbes B.S.N. ’56 of Asheville, N.C., on Nov. 26, 2016.

Joseph Hoyt Jackson Jr. M.D. ’56 of Durham, on Nov. 29, 2016.

Herbert Rubin Karp H ’56 of Atlanta, on March 11, 2016.

Unni Kjosnes Norbom P.T. Cert. ’56 of Crystal River, Fla., on July 8, 2016.

Martha Anna Kuhn Smith ’56 of Greensboro, N.C., on Nov. 16, 2016.

David A. Drachman H ’57 of Concord, Mass., on Dec. 5, 2016.

Lewis Richard Matthews Jr. ’57 of Towson, Md., on Oct. 16, 2016.

William McKinley Smiley Jr. ’57 of West Palm Beach, Fla., on Dec. 5, 2016.

Albert Alcide Barber Ph.D. ’58 of Upperville, Va., on July 30, 2016.

Marjorie Ann Bowen McNeer ’58 of Wolfeboro, N.H., on Feb. 7, 2017.

Donald Purgold Davis B.Div. ’59 of Gloucester, Va., on Dec. 12, 2016.

1960s

Richard E. Cooley J.D. ’60 of Grand Blanc, Mich., on Dec. 14, 2016.

John David Imsande Ph.D. ’60 of Ames, Iowa, on Jan. 3, 2017.

William Robert Mitchell Jr. ’60 of Atlanta, on Dec. 6, 2016.

James Sinclair Barr H ’61 of Greenville, S.C., on Dec. 13, 2016.

Anita Marion Swenson McLeod B.S.N. ’61 of Durham, on Jan. 9, 2017.

Elender Gray Dennis Meinecke ’62 of Akron, Ohio, on Dec. 17, 2016.

Kathleen Haberle MacKenzie ’63 of Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 10, 2016.

Benjamin Moseley Waite Ph.D. ’63 of Asheville, N.C., on Feb. 3, 2017.

Lois Ann Gaige Kirkwood B.S.N. ’64 of Winchester, Va., on Nov. 25, 2016.

Ingram Cannon Parmley B.Div. ’64 of Asheville, N.C., on June 22, 2016.

Richard Appleton Sherwood A.M. ’64 of Augusta, Maine, on Nov. 27, 2016.

James H. Ware Jr. Ph.D. ’64 of Pensacola, Fla., on May 25, 2015.

Barbara Lee Wilburn M.Ed. ’64 of Union, S.C., on Nov. 24, 2016.

Elizabeth Greig Dye ’65 of Herndon, Va., on Nov. 30, 2016.

Glen Earl Garrison H ’65 of North Augusta, S.C., on Feb. 5, 2017.

Elizabeth Pugh Sauer Ph.D. ’65 of Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 12, 2017.

Lorene Hebble Yates ’66 of Hollister, Calif., on Jan. 19, 2017.

Edward Blackshear Brown Jr. B.S.E.E. ’67 of Clarkesville, Ga., on Jan. 12, 2017.

John Ruffin Manley T.H.M. ’67 of Chapel Hill, on Dec. 11, 2016.

R. Paul Walters M.Div. ’67 of Two Harbors, Minn., on Jan. 26, 2017.

Hewlette Collier Connell H ’68 of Williamsburg, Va., on Jan. 7, 2017.

Byron A. Milgram H ’69 of Leawood, Kan., on Jan. 11, 2017.

The Medici’s Painter

CARLO

DOLCI and 17th-Century Florence

Discounted tickets for Duke Alumni available at the door.

ForeverDuke 1970s Richard A. Beauchamp Ph.D. ’70 of Norfolk, Va., on Dec. 23, 2016.

Gregory R. Dell M.Div. ’70 of Raleigh, on Oct. 30, 2016.

Ardaman Singh Madan M.S. ’70 of Winston-Salem, on Feb. 11, 2017.

Thomson Whitin Rockwood B.S.E. ’70 of Tallahassee, Fla., on Nov. 26, 2016.

Roy Wilks Hammock ’72 of Fairhope, Ala., on Jan. 13, 2017.

L. Robert McDaniel Ed.D. ’72 of Fredericksburg, Va., on Dec. 9, 2016.

Gary Alvin Clark Ed.D. ’73 of Lynchburg, Va., on Dec. 24, 2016.

David Proctor McKnight ’74 of Durham, on Jan. 17, 2017.

Joe Walton Frazer III ’75, M.D. ’79 of Greensboro, N.C., on Dec. 16, 2016.

William Thomas Maxwell Jr. ’76 of Memphis, Tenn., on Jan. 5, 2017.

Armah Jamale Cooper ’77 of Columbia, Md., on May 12, 2016.

Edward G. Rahall ’78 of Beckley, W.V., on Nov. 28, 2016.

Gary Charles Rooth M.B.A. ’78 of Raleigh, on Aug. 5, 2016.

William Read Gibson Jr. M.H.A. ’79 of Lincoln, Neb., on Aug. 13, 2016.

Susan Frances Hutchinson ’79 of Seattle, on Dec. 15, 2016.

THE THE BRANNAN BRANNAN

DESIGNER CONDOMINIUMS

1980s

Cheryl Jones Smith Cumbee M.Div. ’80 of Scottsdale, Ariz., on Dec. 10, 2016.

Etta Lou Simpkins Kimbrell A.H.C. ’81 of Raleigh, on Jan. 27, 2017.

James Pantazi B.H.S. ’82 of Vancouver, Wash., on Aug. 23, 2016.

Patrice Travers Billings J.D. ’83 of Faribault, Minn., on Jan. 23, 2017.

Brian Guyer Davies ’83 of Sarasota, Fla., on Nov. 18, 2016.

Peter R.H. Clarke H ’84, H ’88 of Burlington, N.C., on Jan. 9, 2017.

C. Richard Elam ’84 of Milton, Mass., on Jan. 11, 2017.

Pablo Sergio Beloff M.S. ’86 of Miami, on Feb. 26, 2012.

Robert Bruce Greenwell M.B.A. ’86 of Louisville, Ky., on Jan. 1, 2017.

Thomas Jose Dirr M.B.A. ’87 of Kochel, Germany, on Jan. 20, 2017.

Austin Alexis Herr III ’88 of Alexandria, Va., on Dec. 26, 2016.

1990s

Paula Marie Koenigs Ph.D. ’92 of Cincinnati, on Nov. 28, 2016.

David Duff Kennedy ’94 of Everett, Wash., on Dec. 17, 2016.

Michael John Sheridan A.M. ’94 of Helena, Mont., on Jan. 6, 2017.

Roger Keith Smith A.M. ’94 of Hillsborough, N.C., on Feb. 11, 2017.

Zella Sparkes Carpenter M.Div. ’95 of Asheville, N.C., on Nov. 25, 2010.

Charles A. Stewart Sr. M.L.S. ’98 of Newburgh, N.Y., on Nov. 14, 2016.

Lesa Belle Morrison A.M. ’99, Ph.D. ’04 of Pittsburgh, on Dec. 1, 2016.

2000s

Nancy Jane Carroll Butler ’00 of Glastonbury, Conn., on Dec. 7, 2016.

Tommy Van Hoang ’03 of Denver, on Jan. 17, 2017.

Heather Sheree Morgan Balven M.S. ’06 of Hartford, Ill., on March 12, 2009.

2010s

Sharon Jeanette Overcast-Hawks D.N.P. ’10 of Durham, on Jan. 10, 2017.

Savannah Mackenzie Goodwin ’18 of Jacksonville, Fla., on Dec. 19, 2016.

Chen Sheng L ’18 of Reisterstown, Md., on Feb. 13, 2017.

80 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

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Visit our sales center at 400 Hunt Street, Durham, NC 27701 Developed by

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This year, when you make your gift to Duke, make it

When you designate part or all of your annual fund gift to support the Duke University Libraries, you’re really supporting every school, academic department, faculty member, and student on campus.

We appreciate your support.

You can see it all over our faces.

Are you one for the books?

library.duke.edu/annualfund

Travel with Duke

Your friends. Your faculty. Your dream destinations.

Where do you want to go in 2018? #DukeIsEverywhere

www.dukealumnitravels.com

Expedition to Antarctica, January 11-24, 2018 Family Peru, August 1-10, 2018

Photos courtesy of iStock

Journey through Vietnam, February 5-20, 2018

Waterways of Holland & Belgium, May 1-9, 2018

ForeverDuke

Let your passion for Duke live on.

You can make a lasting impact on the people and places you love at Duke.

Including Duke in your estate plan is one of the simplest and most common ways to make a gift beyond writing a check. And, you can still access your assets in case you need them.

Explore your options.

Duke University Office of Gift Planning

“Duke gave me a head start in life by helping me get my first job and by leading me to where I am today.

I hope that our family scholarship will help others grow, develop, and lead a successful and enjoyable life.”

LARRY HAMELSKY ’92 Bequest to support a family scholarship for students at the Sanford School of Public Policy

giftplanning@duke.edu WEB: dukeforward.duke.edu/liveon BLOG: dukeforward.duke.edu/blueprints-blog PHONE: (919) 681-0464 EMAIL:

Celebrating a Duke reunion this year?

Your estate gift also counts in your class’s reunion totals.

GP-2017 Half Page Ad-Summer_F.indd 1

2/1/17 3:12 PM

NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR SOLVING BIG PROBLEMS The alumni, faculty and students participating in our programs are exploring new and unique ways to apply innovation and entrepreneurship.

Together, we are leading the way to smarter solutions for today’s greatest challenges.

Learn how Duke I&E is encouraging innovation and inspiring entrepreneurship. conservationxlabs.com entrepreneurship.duke.edu

Alex Dehgan Class of 1991 Chanler Innovator in Residence at Duke University and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, Alex focuses on harnessing exponential technologies, open innovation, and entrepreneurship for conservation.

DUKE MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2017

83

DEVILIST

things to do on a lazy summer day (based on real research from Duke!)

By Will Pearson ’01 and Mangesh Hattikudur ’01 Screen a Pixar film, then get judge-y about it! Duke sociologists showed that not only is poverty under-indexed in animated movies, but working-class characters often are made to seem jolly and content, lacking the ambition of their successful, upper-class peers.

(Note: This study pairs nicely with a paper on how pigs and mice have the lowliest jobs in Richard Scarry’s Busytown, while predatory animals get plush executive positions. Yes, you can be outraged about that, too.)

Make a monkey feel special. When scientists helped female Rhesus monkeys become more popular in their social spheres, it boosted their confidence—and their immune systems!

Wite-Out your sheet music. F. Mendelssohn’s “Easter Sonata” is praised for its ambition and

masculinity. It’s curious whether the same words would have been used if people knew that the Sonata was actually written not by Felix, but by his precocious sister, Fanny. The incredible sleuthing was done

by Duke’s Angela Mace Christian A.M. ’08, Ph.D. ’13, who matched Fanny’s handwriting in her diaries to the original composition.

Enjoy the scent of popcorn, without the popcorn. Two words: bearcat urine. A Duke study revealed that the territorial markings of the bushy bearcat share flavor molecules with everyone’s favorite movie-theater snack, making exactly zero people hungry.

Spot Lady Gaga in the wild. There are nineteen species of the Lady Gaga fern, named at Duke for the singer. Like Gaga herself, all of them exhibit some gender fluidity— though they’re mostly just less musical.

Improve your navel gazing. 100 years of records show that athletes with higher-placed belly buttons tend to be faster sprinters—giving us all something new to be selfconscious about.

Pearson and Hattikudur cofounded Mental Floss magazine from their dorm on West Campus.

In May they launched a brand-new podcast, “Part-Time Genius,” for the How Stuff Works network.

Photo credits: left to right, Pixar Studios, istock (frame, runner, monkey, popcorn, bearcat), Duke Today

humanities as a channel for better understanding the life experiences of other people,” Ron Temple ’90 said. To provide similar opportunities for students, Temple endowed a fellowship at The Duke Graduate School. Temple and his husband, Derick Brown, also made a bequest in their wills to support the fellowship and additional planned gifts to benefit the Duke Financial Economics Center. “An institution like Duke doesn’t just happen,” Temple said. “It is the result of countless hours and dollars contributed by a community of people who want to improve the world for future generations.”

YOUR INSPIRATION IS JUST THE STARTING POINT. No matter what inspires you to give back, our expert team can help you honor the memories, people, and places that matter to you. Smart charitable planning— at any giving level—may enable you to do more than you thought possible while propelling Duke forward. Contact us today to unleash your inner philanthropist.

OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING (919) 681-0464 | giftplanning@duke.edu dukeforward.duke.edu/inspiration

Deliver a ative m r o f s n a r t ate u d a r G e k Du education

HOMECOMING

“My time at Duke increased my appreciation for the

SEPTEMBER 15-17, 2017 Autumn is a great time for alumni of all ages to engage, connect, and celebrate on campus. This year’s Homecoming weekend includes the Duke vs. Baylor football game, the Class of 2017’s first reunion, affinity gatherings, and more!

Visit www.alumni.duke.edu/homecoming for more information.

MAGAZINE

DUKE UNIVERSITY, BOX 90572 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA 27708-0572

DUKE MAGAZINE • SUMMER 2017

DUKE

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SUMMER 2017

BEHINDTHESCENES Our cover story shoot came at the end of a long day for Vince Price, and yet, accompanied by associate university secretary Maggie Epps, right, he came in game for all Duke Photography director Chris Hildreth and Duke Magazine art director Lacey Chylack, left, asked of him. He agreed to a wardrobe change without a blink, and even jokingly offered a few theatrical poses. Photo by Bill Snead

Vince Price

A New President Takes Center Stage

M AG A Z I N E