Office of Undergraduate Education

It’s an unusual claim to fame. Swathi Padmanabhan, a public policy major from Columbus, Ohio, has read every one of Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times columns since she was in the 10th grade. No wonder she was so excited to attend the fall lecture and booksigning at Duke of the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who often writes on global health, poverty, and gender issues in the Third World — and to attend a reception for him hosted by the Baldwin Scholars and WISER programs. Padmanabhan, a Baldwin Scholar herself, has dedicated her Duke research experience to getting a less expensive cervical cancer vaccine to Indian women.

Kristof didn’t disappoint. Here’s Padmanabhan’s take: (more…)

Duke’s international students come from many locales, some as remote as Tibet and others as nearby as Canada.  No matter where they hail from, almost every one of them is bound to find some American quirk or Duke tradition, whether large or insignificant, absolutely mind boggling. Over the years, these strange American and Duke ways become normal to all students alike.  I thought that Duke student Harsimarbir Singh captured this process perfectly in a recent NY Times column. Sure he’s a grad student, but his impressions sound a lot like what I’ve heard from my undergrad friends:

I was this young, turbaned Sikh guy heading to the U.S.A. with much enthusiasm for a top American university.

I got here in December. There was a lull on campus and no students except the spectacles-clad and tired-looking Ph.D.’s. As I stepped into the library, I saw a young couple in a liplock. Back home, intimacy in public is still taboo and is limited to Bollywood stars. I had seen white people kissing only on the silver screen, and now it was right in front of me. I knew I had entered a land of broadmindedness, kick-starting my evolution toward the Western way of life.

There were other alterations waiting in the wings. (more…)

Ever wonder how to get out of a speeding ticket?  Or fix a leaky faucet?  Or start your own online business after graduating from Duke?  Recently in a front-page article in the business section, the New York Times explained how Duke grad, Jason Liebman, T ‘97, is helping people answer these questions and more via his internet start-up, Howcast.com, a site where you can find tutorial videos.  After graduating with a degree in Political Science, Liebman followed the path of many Duke alums from Durham to Wall Street, where he spent time as an investment banker.  As the 90’s internet boom progressed, Liebman’s entrepreneurial spirit sent him seeking dot.com prospects in California. He went on to land at Google.    While there, he and several co-workers noticed the high traffic of “how-to” videos on Youtube as well as their lack of quality and consistency.  From that, they hatched the idea for “Howcast.com,” a website that provided professionally made videos answering online queries.  With support from web moguls at the likes of MySpace and AOL, and not to mention press kudos from the New York Times and Time Magazine, Howcast seems poised to become an internet sensation.

Someone once sneered at my description of Duke as a place of “nonchalant excellence.”  It wasn’t the excellence part that spurred their disbelief, but rather, the idea that Duke is nonchalant—rankings and towering spires aside, I still contend such is the case.  This weekend the New York Times featured a story on the selection of two new chess grandmasters by the World Chess Federation.  One of them, Lev Milman is an ’09 Duke graduate and my fraternity brother.  Lev earned the classification of grandmaster, the highest level of player, by his high ranking at the recent New York International chess tournament, but his selection has been long in the making.  While many students were in the library or out with friends, Lev was sneaking away to chess tournaments across the country—all the while still graduating with a BS in Economics and being a member of AEPi fraternity, the Chess Club, and the Duke Entrepreneur.  Even more amazing to me, Lev, like so many students here who have achieved much, does not boast about being a  chess champion.  I had to read about his triumph in the newspaper.  Lev begins this fall with a position in sales and trading at Deutsche Bank in New York.