Office of Undergraduate Education

One day early in my Duke career, I was speaking to a family friend, Dr. Bret Fisher, T ‘82, Med ‘87. He asked me if I had taken a course with one of his favorite professors, Dr. Bonk. I smiled and let him know that I was enrolled in Dr. Bonk’s chemistry course for the following fall. There are many experiences that two Dukies, separated by some 25 years, would normally share: Convocation in the Chapel, studying in the Gardens, games in Cameron. But as I sat in Chemistry 83 and watched as Dr. Bonk perfectly fit Dr. Fisher’s description, I realized that sometimes even personalities can transcend decades. Now in his 50th year at Duke, Dr. Bonk is still shaping the lives of students. You can read more about Dr. Bonk’s impressive life at Duke and his great chemistry with students here in this Duke News feature:

http://news.duke.edu/2009/09/bonk.html

Just under two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join a small group of my classmates on what Duke calls a “Faculty Outing” to the historic (and small) town of Pittsboro, N.C. Pittsboro, which is the county seat of Chatham County, was established in 1785 and looks and feels like a quintessential small, southern town. There’s a main street lined with small, locally owned shops and a statue of a confederate solider in front of a historic courthouse.

Dr. Michael Munger, who is a professor of economics, public policy, and political science at Duke, chair of the Political Science Department, and the former Libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina, led our tour around Pittsboro. He explained some of the town’s Civil War-era cultural and economic history in the context of what was happening in the area at the time. We then explored a few of the local shops and went to the classic S&T’s Soda Shoppe for lunch.

Each Faculty Outing had a different theme and set of activities. Some were designed to be fun, others had the intention of providing some quality exercise, and some were designed to introduce first-year students to their new homes. Regardless of the particular outing’s agenda, each student who participated in a Faculty Outing got to meet and spend time with a professor or administrator who they might not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.

Originally in the Newsweek article, “In Search of Great Professors” by Dina Fine Maron:

Students are often surprised the first time they get an assignment back from Prof. Emma Rasiel—there may be a lot of red. Tough love is a tool for Rasiel, 44, a professor of economics at Duke University. “Students have been told for 15 or 16 years that they can get partial credit, but in the real world people don’t get partial credit,” she says of her grading practices. If you don’t have the right answer, you will get a zero. Though she’s strict in her grading, students flock to her class. “Anyone you talk to will recommend Professor Rasiel,” says Helin Gai, ‘09. “Her classes are a great mixture of theory and practice.” When it comes to the world of economics, Rasiel knows what she’s talking about: before getting her Ph.D. from Duke’s business school she was executive director of the London office of Goldman Sachs. In her classroom she merges the two worlds, often inviting eight to 10 guest lecturers to her Global Capital Markets class to highlight how economic theory shakes out in practice. She brings more Wall Streeters to campus to judge economic competitions she sets up for Dukies. Though she’s left Wall Street, Rasiel still keeps its long hours—mentoring students, running Sunday review sessions, and offering formal career advice through the school’s career center—sometimes totaling 90 hours a week. In 2001, when she was still a Ph.D. student, her Asset Pricing class boasted 30 students—now it has 130. While she attributes some of the uptick to an increased interest in the subject matter, her students say that she really makes the class. She’s involved with her students’ success right down to the little details; she even reminded James Melnick, ‘09, to tie his shoes as he was going into an interview. Later, he says, “I signed up for an independent study with her without even reading the course description.”

Trinity A&S Dean George McLendon started off thinking he’d major in political science but ended up with chemistry, thanks to a combination of luck, passion and dedication.  See his advice on deciding the major that’s right for you…

I entered the University of Texas, El Paso, intending to major in political science. My parents had moved to Munich, Germany, so I spent my freshman year studying abroad. I spent considerable time at Technische Hochschule in Schwabing, the artists’ district. I didn’t learn much, but the environment was wonderful. The only item of intellectual note I recall from that time is from physics, of all subjects: “rotational velocity,” which translates as Winkelgeschwindigkeit. (more…)

There is nothing atypical about a Duke professor sending her students to the library, but when cultural historian Trudi Abel gives her troops marching orders, she has a mission.  This mission is the Digital Durham project.  Begun in 1999, Abel’s initiative to map Durham’s history  has become central to her courses such as “Digital Durham and the New South.”   Supported by Trinity College and Duke’s Center for Instructional  Technology her website, which is open to the public, contains public and private records, photographs and maps–and nearly all of this was found by her and her students in Duke’s special collections library.  In her class, students not only have their own part of the historical project, but they also serve as mentors to middle-school students at Durham School of the Arts. Abel’s work with undergraduates has led her to a new research interest in the study of how technology can be used in the classroom.

For more on Abel and her students, check out this DukeToday story on the Digital Durham project.

What are you doing this summer? This question is usually a conversation pleasantry. But when Caroline Bruzelius, the Anne. M. Cogan Professor of Medieval Art, asks you “What are you doing this summer?” she means it–I know first hand. A few months after she asked me, I was boarding a plane for Venice. This year a few more lucky undergraduates received that query and a university-sponsored trip to Italy. Whereas I was sketching churches around Venezia, this motley crew of Classicists and Art Historians are plotting digitally the urban layout of Naples, from ancient Neapolis to modern Napoli.

You can follow their adventures from pizza to Franciscan Monks, on their blog:

http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/olson/courses/wired/

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Noorfest sounds like a concert, one of those drive-to-the-desert-and-rock-out-in-nature concerts. It does not sound like a series of symposia honoring a biology professor, but as I’ve learned biologists have a strange sense of humor. Yesterday, I attended Noorfest 2009, Duke’s shindig to honor Mohamed Noor’s winning of the Linnean Society’s prestigious Darwin-Wallace award-it is only given out every fifty years. And the Biology Department threw a party as if this only happened once a century! (more…)

Teaching awards are a strange phenomenon–unlike most awards, (let’s say the Oscars), rarely does one get the chance to observe the behavior or product that merits the award. Anyone can watch an Oscar film nominee or listen to a Grammy-nominated song, but only a select few are lucky enough to have sat in an award-winning professor’s class and can say, “Man, she truly deserves that.” With the Society of Biblical Literature’s mentoring award choice of Carol Meyers, I can say that…Man, Carol Meyers truly deserves that. (more…)

I admit it. I didn’t even know who Dean McLendon was when it was suggested I check out his new blog “The Dean’s List.” But after reading a few of the posts he’s written so far on topics ranging from African art to the current financial crisis, I feel like I should get to know him. Dean McLendon is an award winning chemist and  dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and dean of Trinity College. Read his blog-it’s informative, a little quirky at times (see picture), and really interesting.

Duke luminary, 93-year old Dr. John Hope Franklin, a pioneer in the field of African American history and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, provides his insight following Tuesday’s election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States and the nation’s first African American president.