Duke University

Duke University

Shield of Duke University
Motto	Eruditio et Religio (Latin: Knowledge and Religion)
Type	Private
Established	as Brown School 1838 as Union Institute 1841 as Normal College 1851 as Trinity College 1859 as Duke University 1924
Endowment	$4.5 billion (FY 2006)
President	Richard H. Brodhead
Academic staff	2,518
Undergraduates	6,244
Postgraduates	5,993
Location	Durham , NC , USA
Campus	Urban area 8,709 acres (35 km²)
Athletics	26 varsity teams 35 sports clubs 29 intramural teams
Colors	Dark blue and white
Nickname	Blue Devils File:Duke logo.PNG
Website	www.duke.edu

Duke University is a private coeducational research university located in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The school, which officially became Duke University in 1924, traces its institutional roots to 1838. Beginning in the 1970s, Duke administrators began a long-term effort to strengthen Duke's reputation both nationally and internationally. Interdisciplinary work was emphasized, as was recruiting minority faculty and students.

In its 2007 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked the undergraduate division eighth in the nation (down from fifth in 2006), while ranking the medical, law, and business schools among the top eleven in the United States. Duke’s research expenditures are among the largest in the U.S. and the athletic program is one of the nation’s elite.

Besides academics, research, and athletics, Duke is also well known for its sizable campus and Gothic architecture, especially Duke Chapel. The forested environs surrounding parts of campus belie the university's proximity to downtown Durham. Duke's 8,709 acres (35 km²) contain three main campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort, North Carolina. Construction projects have updated both the freshmen-housed Georgian style East Campus and the main Gothic style West Campus as well as the adjacent Medical Center over the past five years. Other projects are underway on on all three campuses, including a 20- to 50-year overhaul of Central Campus, the first phase of which is expected to be completed in Fall 2008 at an estimated cost of $240 million.

History

Main article: History of Duke University

Beginnings

One of the first buildings on the original Durham campus (East Campus), the Washington Duke Building ("Old Main") was later destroyed when the campus was rebuilt.

Duke University started as Brown's Schoolhouse, a private subscription school founded in 1838 in Randolph County in the present-day town of Trinity. The school was organized by the Union Institute Society, a group of Methodists and Quakers, and in 1841, North Carolina issued a charter for Union Institute Academy. The academy was renamed Normal College in 1851 and then Trinity College in 1859 because of support from the Methodist Church. In 1892, Trinity moved to Durham, largely due to generosity from Washington Duke and Julian S. Carr, powerful and respected Methodists who had grown wealthy through the tobacco industry.

James B. Duke established the Duke Endowment, which provides funds to numerous institutions including Duke University.

In 1924, Washington Duke's son, James B. Duke, established The Duke Endowment with a $40 million ($434 million in 2005 dollars) trust fund. The annual income of the fund was to be distributed to hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, three colleges, and Trinity College. President William Preston Few insisted that the university be named Duke University, and James B. Duke agreed that it would be a memorial to his father and family. Money from the endowment allowed the university to grow quickly. Duke's original campus (East Campus) was rebuilt from 1925 to 1927 with Georgian-style buildings. By 1930, the majority of the Gothic style buildings on the campus one mile west were completed, and construction on West Campus culminated with the completion of Duke Chapel in 1935.

Expansion and growth

Engineering, which had been taught since 1903, became a separate school in 1939. In athletics, Duke hosted and competed in the only Rose Bowl ever played outside of California in Wallace Wade Stadium in 1942. Increased activism on campus during the 1960s prompted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak at the university on the civil rights movement's progress on November 14, 1964. The former governor of North Carolina, Terry Sanford, was elected president in 1969, propelling the Fuqua School of Business's opening, the William R. Perkins library completion, and the founding of the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs. The separate Woman's College merged back with Trinity as the liberal arts college for both men and women in 1972. Duke University Hospital was finished in 1980 and the student union was fully constructed two years later. In 1986, the men's soccer team captured Duke's first NCAA championship, and the men's basketball team followed with championships in 1991, 1992 and 2001.

Recent history

The Levine Science Research Center is the largest single-site interdisciplinary research facility of any American university.

Duke University's growth and academic focus have contributed to the university's reputation as an academic and research institution. The school has regularly sent three-member teams to the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, earning the title of the best collegiate undergraduate math team in the United States and Canada in 1993, 1996 and 2000. In nine out of the past ten years, Duke's team has finished in the top three, the only school besides Harvard to do so.

Construction continued on campus, with the 314,000 square foot Levine Science Research Center (LSRC) opening in 1984 to house interdisciplinary research, and construction has continued. In 1998, Duke President Nan Keohane initiated a five-year $1.5 billion Campaign for Duke fundraising effort. Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. ('47) endowed the Pratt School of Engineering with a $35 million gift in 1999. The Campaign for Duke ended in 2003 with $2.36 billion raised, making it the fifth largest campaign in the history of American higher education.

In the 2004 fiscal year, research expenditures surpassed $490 million, leading to a myriad of important breakthroughs. The first working demonstration of an invisibility cloak was unveiled by Duke researchers in October 2006. In 2005, three students were named Rhodes Scholars, a number only surpassed by one university. Overall, Duke is fifth among private universities in the number of Rhodes Scholars it has produced, behind Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. Since 1990, 19 students have been honored with this scholarship.

Academics

Profile

Duke Chapel, a frequent icon for the university, can seat nearly 1,600 people and contains a 5,200-pipe organ.

Duke's student body consists of 6,244 undergraduates and 5,993 graduate and professional students. The undergraduate student body, containing nearly 40% ethnic minorities, come from all 50 U.S. States and 85 countries. For the undergraduate class of 2010, the acceptance rate of 21% set a record for the lowest in university history. Fifty-eight percent of high school valedictorians were rejected, while 96% of admitted students ranked in the top 10% of their high school class. The average SAT score was 1480 (old scale) or 2210 (new scale), and the ACT average was 32.

Duke University has two schools for undergraduates: Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and Pratt School of Engineering. The university's graduate and professional schools include the Graduate School, the Pratt School of Engineering, the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, the Fuqua School of Business, the School of Law, and the Divinity School.

Duke students have been honored in recent years as Rhodes, Fulbright (22 students in 2005), Marshall, Goldwater, and Truman Scholars. The university meets 100% of admitted students' demonstrated need and gave financial aid to 42% of students in 2005-06. The average award was approximately $27,000, with $21,500 as grants. Several merit based scholarships are also offered (see undergraduate scholarships). Duke's endowment was valued at $3.8 billion at the end of the 2005 fiscal year, making it the sixteenth-largest endowment in the U.S. The university's special academic facilities include an art museum, several language labs, the Duke Forest, a lemur center, a phytotron, a free electron laser, a nuclear magnetic resonance machine, a nuclear lab, and a marine lab. Duke also is a leading participant in the National Lambda Rail Network and runs a program for gifted children known as the Talent Identification Program, or TIP.

Entrance to Duke's Bostock Library, which opened in the fall of 2005.

Undergraduate

See also: Degree programs at Duke University

Duke offers 36 arts and sciences majors, five engineering majors, and 46 additional majors that have been approved under Program II, which allows students to design their own interdisciplinary major. Sixteen certificate programs are also available. Students may pursue a combination of a total of up to three majors/minors/certificates. Eighty percent of undergraduates enroll in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, while the rest are in the Pratt School of Engineering.

Trinity's curriculum operates under the revised version of "Curriculum 2000". It ensures that students are exposed to a variety of "areas of knowledge" and "modes of inquiry". The curriculum aims to help students develop critical faculties and judgment by learning how to access, synthesize, and communicate knowledge effectively, acquiring perspective on current and historical events, conducting research and solving problems, and developing tenacity and a capacity for hard and sustained work. Additionally, freshmen can elect to participate in the FOCUS Program, which allows students to engage in an interdisciplinary exploration of a specific topic in a small group setting.

Pratt's curriculum, on the other hand, is narrower in scope, but still accommodates double majors in a variety of disciplines. The school emphasizes undergraduate research—opportunities for hands-on experiences arise through internships, fellowship programs, and the structured curriculum. Furthermore, for the class of 2005, 24% of Pratt undergraduates studied abroad, small compared to the percentage for Trinity undergradutes (46%), but much larger than the national average for engineering students (1.5%).

The Allen Building, opened in 1954, is home to many of the university's top-level administrative offices.

Research

Duke University’s research expenditures topped $490 million in 2004. In the 2005 fiscal year, Duke University Medical Center received the fifth-largest amount of funding from the National Institute of Health, netting $349.8 million. Duke's funding increased 14.8% from 2004, representing the largest growth of any top-20 recipient. Throughout history, Duke researchers have made several important breakthroughs, including the biomedical engineering department's development of the world's first real-time, three-dimensional ultrasound diagnostic system and the first engineered blood vessels. In the mechanical engineering department, Adrian Bejan developed the constructal theory, which explains the shapes that arise in nature. Duke has pioneered studies involving nonlinear dynamics, chaos, and complex systems in physics. In May 2006, Duke researchers mapped the final human chromosome, which made world news as the Human Genome Project was finally complete. Reports of Duke researchers' involvement in new AIDS vaccine research surfaced in June 2006.

Built in 1932, Old Chemistry has carved scientific symbols above the main doorway.

Rankings

In the 2007 U.S. News & World Report's ranking of American national universities, Duke ranked 8th. In the past decade, U.S. News has placed Duke as high as third and as low as eighth. Duke was ranked the 13th-best university in the world in 2006 by The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). In the "Faculty/Student" category (a measure of the amount of attention students can hope to receive from faculty), THES ranked Duke first in the world. Duke was ranked 32nd globally and 24th nationally by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2005 in terms of quality of scientific research and number of Nobel Prizes. The Wall Street Journal ranked Duke sixth in its "feeder" rankings in 2006, analyzing the percentage of undergraduates that enroll in what it considers the top five medical, law, and business schools. Carnegie Communications ranked Duke fifth among U.S. universities in regard to students' perceptions of quality and third for popularity in 2004. A survey by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in 2002 ranked Duke as the best university in the country in regards to the integration of African American students and faculty.

In U.S. News & World Report's "America’s Best Graduate Schools 2007", Duke's medical school ranked 6th for research and tied for 6th for primary care, while the law school ranked 11th. Among business schools in the United States, the Fuqua School of Business was ranked 11th by U.S. News and 9th by BusinessWeek in 2006. The graduate program for the Pratt School of Engineering was ranked 30th by U.S. News and 2nd by The Princeton Review in 2006 among national engineering schools. In the rankings of doctoral programs by U.S. News & World Report, Duke ranked 1st in literary criticism and theory, 5th in ecology and evolutionary biology, 5th in biomedical engineering, tied for 12th for doctoral programs in the sciences, tied for 21st in mathematics, tied for 25th in computer science, tied for 29th in physics, and ranked 38th in chemistry.

Campus

See also: Construction projects at Duke University

Duke University owns 217 buildings on 8,709 acres (35 km²) of land, which includes the 7,200 acre (29 km²) Duke Forest. The campus is divided into four main areas: West, East, and Central campuses, and the Medical Center. All the campuses are connected via a free bus service that runs frequently throughout the week. On the Atlantic coast in Beaufort, Duke owns 15 acres as part of its Marine Lab. One of the major public attractions on the Duke Campus is the 55 acre Sarah P. Duke Gardens, established in the 1930s.

File:Eastcampussketch.jpg The plan for East Campus

File:Westcampussketch.jpg A plan for West Campus. The eventual plan was slightly smaller in size.

File:Dukechapelside.jpg Sketch of Duke Chapel

Duke students often refer to the campus as "the Gothic Wonderland", a nickname referring to the Gothic revival architecture of West Campus. Much of the campus was designed by Julian Abele, one of the first prominent African-American architects. The residential quadrangles are of an early and somewhat unadorned design, while the buildings in the academic quadrangles show influences of the more elaborate late French and Italian styles. Its freshman campus (East Campus) is composed of buildings in the Georgian architecture style.

Part of the Divinity School addition, Goodson Chapel

The stone used for the West Campus has seven primary colors and seventeen different shades of color. The university supervisor of planning and construction wrote that the stone has "an older, more attractive antique effect" and a "warmer and softer coloring than the Princeton stone" that gave the university an "artistic look". James B. Duke initially suggested the use of stone from a quarry in Princeton, New Jersey, but later amended the plans to use stone from a local quarry in Hillsborough to reduce costs. Duke Chapel stands at the heart of West Campus. Constructed from 1930 to 1935, the chapel seats 1,600 people and at 210-feet (64 m) tall is one of the tallest buildings in Durham County.

As of November 1, 2005, Duke had spent $835 million dollars on 34 major construction projects initiated since February 2001. At that time, Duke initiated a five year strategic plan, "Building on Excellence". Completed projects since 2002 include major additions to the business, law, nursing, and divinity schools, a new library, an art museum, a football training facility, two residential buildings, an engineering complex, a public policy building, an eye institute, two genetic research buildings, and a student plaza. The French Science Center is scheduled for completion in mid-December of 2006 and two new medical-research buildings will open in late 2006.

The oldest section of Perkins Library, Duke's main library

Libraries and museums

With more than 5.5 million volumes, the Duke University Library System is one of the ten largest private university library systems in the U.S. It contains 17.7 million manuscripts, 1.2 million public documents, and tens of thousands of films and videos. Besides the main William R. Perkins Library, the university also contains the separately administered Ford (business), Divinity School, Duke Law, and Medical Center Libraries.

The William R. Perkins Library system has 11 branches on campus. In addition to Perkins Library, the system contains the Biological & Environmental Science Library, Bostock Library, the Chemistry Library, the Library Service Center, Lilly Library (which houses materials on fine arts, philosophy, film & video, and performing arts), the Music Library, Pearse Memorial Library (located at the Marine Lab), and Vesic Library (collection focuses on engineering, mathematics, and physics). The University Archives and Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections are also considered part of the Perkins Library system. The main Perkins library is currently undergoing renovations, with the first floor being completed in August 2006.

Nasher Museum of Art cost $23 million to build

Bostock Library, named for Board of Trustee member Roy J. Bostock, opened in the fall of 2005 as part of the University's Strategic Plan to supplement Duke's libraries. It contains over 80 study carrels, 500 seats, and nearly 100 computer stations, as well as over 70,000 linear feet of shelving for overflow books from Perkins Library as well as for new collections.

Nasher Museum of Art opened in the fall of 2005, replacing the undersized Duke University Museum of Art (DUMA). The museum, designed by Rafael Viñoly and named for Duke alumnus and art collector Raymond Nasher, contains over 13,000 pieces of art, including works by Andy Warhol, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso.

West, East, and Central Campuses

West Campus, the heart of Duke University, houses all the sophomores, along with some juniors and seniors. Additionally, most of the academic and administrative centers reside there. "Main" West Campus, with Duke Chapel at its center, contains the majority of residential quads to the south, while the main academic quad, library, and Medical Center are to the north. The campus, spanning 720 acres, includes Science Drive, which consists of science and engineering buildings. Finally, most of the campus eateries and sports facilities including the historic basketball stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium, are on West.

The main West Campus is dominated by Gothic architecture. Shown here are typical residence halls.

East Campus, the original location of Duke University, functions as a freshman campus as well as the home several academic departments. All freshmen—and only freshmen except for upperclassmen serving as Resident Assistants—live on East in order to build class unity. The campus encompasses 97 acres and is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) away from West Campus. The Art History, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, and Women's Studies Departments are housed on East. Programs such as dance, drama, education, film, and the University Writing Program also reside on East. East Campus, a fully self-sufficient campus, contains the freshman dormitories, a dining hall, Lilly Library, Baldwin Auditorium, a theater, Brodie Gym, tennis courts, and several academic buildings. Separated from downtown by a short walk, the area was the site of the Women's College from 1930 to 1972.

East Campus, home to all Duke freshmen, features Georgian architecture. Baldwin Auditorium can be seen on the right hand side.

Central Campus, consisting of 122 acres between East and West campuses, houses around 850 juniors and seniors and about 200 professional students in apartments. It is home to the Nasher Museum of Art, the Freeman Center for Jewish Life, the Duke Police Department, the Duke School for Children, a Ronald McDonald House, and some administrative departments such as Duke Residence Life and Housing Services. Central has several recreation and social facilities such as basketball courts, tennis courts, a sand volleyball court, a swimming pool, barbecue and picnic shelter as well as BBQ grills, a general gathering building called Devil's Den, and a convenience store.

Currently, there is a 20 to 50-year plan to completely restructure Central Campus. The idea is to develop an "academic village", serving as a mecca for the Duke community. The first phase, costing $240 million, involves replacing the outdated apartments. Other additions in the first phase include dining, academic, recreational, and service facilities. A key goal of the Central renovations is to reintegrate the area with the rest of the Duke campus, as it is connected to the other campuses by a circuitous, inefficient bus route.

Key places

The Sarah P. Duke Gardens attract more than 300,000 visitors each year.

Established in 1931, the Duke Forest today consists of 7,200 acres (29 km²) in six divisions located just west of Duke University's West Campus. Duke Forest is one of the largest continually-managed forests in the United States and demonstrates many different forest stand types and silvicultural treatments. The forest is used extensively for research and includes the Aquatic Research Facility, Forest Carbon Transfer and Storage (FACTS-I) research facility, two permanent towers suitable for micrometerological studies, and other areas designated for animal behavior and ecosystem study. More than 30 miles (48 km) of trails are open to the public for hiking, cycling, and horseback riding.

Located inside the Duke Forest, the Duke Lemur Center (DLC) is the world's largest sanctuary for rare and endangered prosimian primates. Founded in 1966, the Duke Lemur Center spans 85 acres (3.44 km²) and contains nearly 300 animals of 25 different species of lemurs, galagos and lorises.

Entrance to the Medical Center from West Campus.

Situated between West Campus and the apartments of Central Campus, the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, established in the early 1930s, occupy 55 acres (2.2 km²) and are divided into three major sections: the original Terraces and their immediate surroundings, the H.L. Blomquist Garden of Native Plants (containing a representation of the flora of the Southeastern United States), and the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum (devoted to plants of Eastern Asia). There are five miles (8 km) of allées, walks, and pathways throughout the Doris Duke Visitor’s Center and the surrounding gardens.

Directly north of West Campus, Duke University Medical Center (DUMC) combines one of the top-rated hospitals and one of the top-ranked medical schools in the U.S. Founded in 1930, the Medical Center occupies 7.5 million square feet (700,000 m²) in 90 buildings on 210 acres (8.5 km²).

Although located in the town of Beaufort, NC, Duke University Marine Lab on Pivers Island is part of Duke's campus. The marine lab is situated on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, only 150 yards across the channel from Beaufort. Duke's interest in the area began in the early 1930s and the first buildings were erected in 1938. The resident faculty represent the disciplines of oceanography, marine biology, marine biomedicine, marine biotechnology, and coastal marine policy and management. The Marine Laboratory is a member of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML).

Athletics

Main article: Duke Blue Devils

See also: UNC-Duke rivalry

See also: 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal

File:Duke logo.PNG

Duke Blue Devils logo

Duke's 26 varsity sports teams, known as the Blue Devils, compete in the NCAA's Division I Atlantic Coast Conference. Duke's teams have won eight NCAA team national championships—the women's golf team has won four (1999, 2002, 2005 and 2006), the men's basketball team has won three (1991, 1992, and 2001), and the men's soccer team has won one (1986). Historically, Duke's major rival has been the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, especially in basketball. The rivalry has led people to identify the two differing shades of blue in relation to their respective university—calling the lighter powder blue "Carolina blue" and the darker blue "Duke blue".

In the past ten years, Duke has finished in the top 30 every year in the NACDA Director's Cup, an overall measure of an institution's athletic success. In the past two years, Duke has finished eighth (2006) and fifth (2005). Duke teams that have been ranked in the top ten nationally in the 2000s include men's and women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross country, men's and women's lacrosse, women's field hockey, and men's and women's golf. Eight of these teams were ranked either first or second in the country during 2004-5. Women's golf has been particularly dominating, compiling a record of 796-45-3 (.945) in the 2000-2005 seasons. According to a 2006 evaluation conducted by the NCAA, Duke's student-athletes have the highest graduation rate of any institution in the nation.

Cameron Indoor Stadium, constructed in 1940, was the largest gym south of the Palestra at Penn.

Men's basketball

Duke men's basketball, one of the best-known teams in college sports, is the fourth most victorious college basketball program of all-time. The program's home facility is Cameron Indoor Stadium. The team's success has been particularly outstanding over the past 25 years under coach Mike Krzyzewski (often simply called "Coach K"). Their successes include becoming the only team to win three national championships since the NCAA Tournament field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, ten Final Fours in the last 21 years, and five straight ACC tournament championships from 1999 to 2003. Coach Krzyzewski also was selected in October of 2005 to coach the U.S. Olympic Basketball team.

Wallace Wade Stadium, home to Duke football and site of the 1942 Rose Bowl.

Football

The most famous Duke football season came in 1938, when Wallace Wade coached the "Iron Dukes" and shutout all their regular season opponents. Duke reached the national championship game, their first Rose Bowl appearance, where they lost 7-3 when USC scored a touchdown in the final minute of the game. Wade's Blue Devils lost another Rose Bowl to Oregon State in 1942, this one held at Duke's home stadium due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The graduation rate of Duke's football players is consistently among the highest among Division I-A schools. Duke's high graduation rates have earned it more American Football Coaches Association’s Academic Achievement Awards than any other institution.

Student life

Residential life

Built as a dorm and still standing on East Campus today, Epworth is only about one-third its original size after a fire.

Duke requires its students to live on campus for the first three years of undergraduate life, except for a small percentage of second semester juniors who are exempted by a lottery system. This requirement is justified by the administration as an effort to help students connect more closely with one another and sustain a sense of belonging within the Duke community. Thus, 85% of all undergradutes live on campus. All freshmen are housed in one of fourteen dormitories on East Campus. These buildings range in occupancy size from only 50 residents (Epworth—the oldest dorm, built in 1892 as "the Inn") to 190 residents (Gilbert-Addoms). Most of these are in the Georgian style typical of the East Campus architecture, although a few newer ones differ in style. Two learning communities, incorporating the residential component of the Duke experience with students of similar academic and social interests, reside on East.

Sophomores are required to reside on West Campus, again to build class unity. Juniors and seniors can elect to live on West Campus, space permitting. West Campus contains six quadrangles—the four along "Main" West were built in 1930, while two newer ones have since been added. West Campus is home to four learning communities including Campus Wellness and the Leadership and Civic Engagement communities. These groups are allocated "sections" of the quadrangles, thereby living close to one another, but still within the context of a larger living community. Additionally, 25 "selective living groups" are housed within sections on West, including 15 fraternities. Lastly, Central Campus provides housing for approximately 1,050 students (of which about 850 are undergraduate juniors or seniors) in 45 apartment buildings. The majority of seniors, however, choose to live off campus. Students living on campus are represented by the elected officials of Campus Council whose mission is to enhance campus life by implementing policies, provide quality programming, and ensure a safe, educational, and enjoyable experience for residents.

Greek and social life

Cameron Crazies gathering in K-ville

Fraternities and sororities are prominent on campus, but not overwhelming, as 29% of men and 42% of women pledge a Greek group. While 15 of the 16 Interfraternity Council (IFC) recognized fraternity chapters live in sections within West Campus quads, the ten Panhellenic Association Sorority Chapters have no such living arrangement. Seven National Pan-Hellenic Council (historically African American) fraternities and sororities hold chapters at Duke. Other fraternities not recognized by IFC typically have apartments or houses off-campus, which are usually owned by seniors.

The nearby bars and clubs on Durham's Ninth Street and the surrounding areas are a popular outlet for Greek and "independent" students alike. Students sometimes refer to their social life as occurring within the "Duke Bubble"—emphasizing the isolation of the Duke campus from the surrounding community and the relatively low levels of interaction between Durham residents and Duke students. Fraternity chapters frequently host parties in their sections, which typically are more open to non-members than similar functions at other institutions due to the fact that independents live in the same building as the fraternity members.

East Campus' Union building, home to the freshman dining hall

In the mid 1990s, the administration significantly reduced the number of on-campus kegs by requiring students not only to purchase kegs directly from the university, but also to hire expensive university bartenders. According to administrators, the rule change was intended as a way to increase on-campus safety, but many students see the administration's increasingly strict policies as an attempt to undermine social life at Duke. As a result, off-campus parties have become more frequent in the past few years as they are not under the umbrella of Duke's policies. However, these off campus parties have come under fire as they have escalated in debauchery. In 2005, one of the off-campus fraternities hosted a heavily attended baby oil wrestling party, which garnered national media attention. The widely reported lacrosse scandal broke in 2006. Many of these houses are situated in the midst of family homes prompting neighbors to complain about excessive noise and other violations. Police have responded by invading several houses hosting parties, breaking them up, handing out citations, and arresting others. The administration, in an attempt to increase the number of on-campus social events, reduced the price of kegs by 59% in August 2006.

Athletics, particularly men's basketball, is a significant component of Duke's social life. Duke's students have been recognized as some of the most creative, original, and abrasive fans in all of collegiate athletics. Students, often referred to as Cameron Crazies, show their support of the men's basketball team by "tenting" for home games against key ACC rivals, especially UNC. Because tickets to all varsity sports are free to students, setting up a line of tents weeks in advance of big games has evolved as the only sure way of being admitted. The total number of participating tents is capped at 100 (each tent can have up to 12 occupants), though interest is such that it could exceed that number if space permitted. Tenting involves setting up and inhabiting a tent on the grass by Cameron Indoor Stadium, an area known as Krzyzewskiville, or K-ville for short. There are different categories of tenting based on the length of time and number of people that must be in the tent. At night, K-ville often turns into the scene of a party or occasional concert. The men's basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, is known to buy pizza occasionally for the inhabitants of the tent village.

Activities

Duke's West Campus Union building has restaurants, offices, and some administrative departments. The Chronicle office, the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, and the Center for LGBT Life are all located in the Union.

Approximately 400 student clubs and organizations run on Duke's campus. These include numerous student government, special interest, and service organizations. Duke Student Government (DSG) charters and provides most of the funding for these organizations, and represents students' interests when dealing with the administration. One of the most popular activities on campus is competing in sports. Duke has 35 sports clubs and 29 intramural teams that are officially recognized.

The von der Heyden Pavilion is a popular place among students for gathering and studying.

According to The Princeton Review, Duke is one of 81 institutions in the country with outstanding community service programs. Duke's Community Service Center (CSC) oversees 31 student-run service organizations that run in Durham and the surrounding area. Examples of such programs include a weeklong camp for children of cancer patients (Camp Kesem) and a group that promotes awareness about sexual health, rape prevention, alcohol and drug use, and eating disorders (Healthy Devils). The Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, started by the Office of Community Affairs, attempts to address major concerns of local residents and schools by using university resources. Another community project, "Scholarship with a Civic Mission", is a joint program between the Hart Leadership Program and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Other programs include: Project CHILD, a tutoring program involving 80 first-year volunteers; Project HOPE, an after-school program for at-risk students in Durham which was awarded a $2.25 million grant from the Kellogg Foundation in 2002; and Project BUILD, a freshman volunteering group that dedicates 3300 hours of service to a variety of projects such as schools, Habitat for Humanity, food banks, substance rehabilitation centers, and homeless shelters. Some courses at Duke incorporate service as part of the curriculum in order to augment material learned in class such as in psychology or education courses (known as service learning classes).

The Chronicle, Duke's independent undergraduate daily newspaper, has been continuously published since 1905 and has a print readership of about 30,000. Its editors are responsible for coining the term "Blue Devil". The newspaper won Best in Show in the tabloid division at the 2005 Associated Collegiate Press National College Media Convention. Cable 13, established in 1976, is Duke's all student-run television station. It stands as a popular activity for students interested in film production and media.

Several cultural groups exist on campus such as the Asian Student Association, AQUADuke (Alliance of Queer Undergraduates), Black Student Alliance, Dance Black, Diya (South Asian Association), Jewish Life at Duke, Mi Gente (Latino Student Association), International Association/International Council, Muslim Student Association, Native American Student Coalition, Newman Catholic Student Center, and Students of the Caribbean.

Alumni

Main article: List of Duke University people

File:Nixon 30-0316a.gif

Richard Nixon

Duke alumni are active through organizations and events such as the annual Reunion Weekend and Homecoming. There are 75 Duke clubs in the U.S. and 38 international clubs. For the 2004-2005 fiscal year, Duke ranked fourth in alumni giving rate among U.S. colleges and universities. A number of Duke alumni have made significant contributions in the fields of government, law, academia, business, arts, journalism, and athletics, among others.

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, Elizabeth Dole, senior United States Senator of North Carolina and former President of the American Red Cross, and Ricardo Lagos, President of Chile from 2000 to 2006, are the most notable alumni with involvement in politics. In the research realm, Duke graduates who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics include Hans Dehmelt for his development of the ion trap technique, Robert Richardson for his discovery of superfluidity in helium-3, and Charles Townes for his for work quantum electronics.

Elizabeth Dole

Several alumni hold top positions at large companies. The current or former Chairman, President, Vice president, or CEO of the following Fortune 500 companies is a Duke alumnus: BB&T Corporation (John A. Allison IV), Bear Stearns (Alan Schwartz), Boston Scientific Corporation (Peter Nicholas), Cisco Systems (John Chambers), ExxonMobil (Rex Adams), General Motors Corporation (Rick Wagoner), Morgan Stanley (John J. Mack), Norfolk Southern (David R. Goode), Northwest Airlines (Gary L. Wilson), PepsiCo, Inc. (Karl von der Heyden), and Pfizer (Edmund T. Pratt, Jr.). Kevin Martin is Chairman of the FCC, and Rex Adams serves as the Chairman of PBS. Another alumna, Melinda Gates, is the co-founder of the $31.9 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation's wealthiest charitable foundation.

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Charles Townes

John Feinstein is a notable sportswriter for The Washington Post, while Charlie Rose is a former contributor for 60 Minutes II and currently hosts his own talk show. Judy Woodruff was NBC's White House correspondent and an anchor for CNN. Jay Bilas is a basketball analyst for ESPN who co-hosts College GameNight and College GameDay, and also joins CBS as a game analyst for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. Sean McManus is president of both CBS Sports and CBS News, while Dan Abrams serves as the General Manager of MSNBC.

William C. Styron won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968 for his novel The Confessions of Nat Turner and also is well-known for his 1979 novel Sophie's Choice. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was also awarded to Anne Tyler for her 1988 novel Breathing Lessons. Rik Kirkland serves as a Managing Editor for the magazine Fortune, while Clay Felker is a founding editor of New York. John Harwood is the Chief Washington Correspondent for CNBC, a Senior Contributing Writer for The Wall Street Journal, and frequent panelist on Washington Week. In the arts realm, Annabeth Gish (actress in the X-Files and The West Wing) and Randall Wallace (screenwriter, producer, and director, Braveheart, Pearl Harbor, We Were Soldiers) headline the list. Finally, several athletes have become stars at the professional level, especially in basketball’s NBA. Shane Battier, Elton Brand, and Grant Hill are among the most famous.

External links

Duke University - Official website Duke Libraries Undergraduate Admissions Financial Aid The Chronicle - Student Newspaper Duke Athletics - Official website