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…)

Arun Sharma did not expect that serving as a Howard Hughes Research Fellow in Dr. Gerard Blobe’s cancer research lab would teach him more than how to cultivate cells. Instead, Arun discovered the myriad skills of a biological scientist, from the importance of sterilizing equipment to the ease of befriending his fellow researchers. Since 2006, the Howard Hughes Research Fellows program has given undergraduates the opportunity to engage in mentored and interdisciplinary biology education. Arun’s research seeks to explain how certain proteins help the protein endoglin move into endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. Read more about Arun’s summer here.

Rising-sophomore Molly Grace has come a long way from her freshman move-in… and we’ve got the video to prove it.  Almost a year since her first appearance in the orientation documentary “Molly’s Major Move,” the Durham native has begun blogging for Duke’s Howard Hughes Program, recounting her research and recent fieldwork in the swamps of Pennsylvania.  For the summer, Molly has been working in the Biology Department’s Nowicki lab, where she has been studying the relationship between mate choice and song in the Swamp Sparrow.  The Howard Hughes Program also provided Molly with the funding to join Steve and his lab team on a specimen collection trip in northwestern Pennsylvania.  You can read about her experience, from operant conditioning to swamp-wading, at her Howard Hughes blog.

Duke is a research university, so one doesn’t have to look too hard to find a story about innovative or daring Duke researchers.  However, at Duke, one can just as easily find pieces on undergraduates heading into the lab or going off in the field.  Case in point, I recently caught the latest edition of DukeResearch, and profiled on the main page was a sophomore blogging about her research in Costa Rica.  Tiff Shao, a NYC native and biology major, is studying biodiversity in Costa Rica for Duke’s Organization of Tropical Studies.  Although Tiff is far from Duke, the classroom is not too far away.  She is also taking BIO 134L: Field Tropical Biology abroad.  You can read about her experiences as well as her findings on the OTS’s Pura Vida Blog.

Click here to check out Tiff’s work or to find more DukeResearch stories on undergraduate research.

Oshri Hakak ’09 is a psychology major who loves music and, while at Duke, developed an interest in … bees.

As a psych major, Hakak sought out research opportunities. He worked two years in Professor Warren Meck’s psychology lab, researching time perception and prenatal nutrient supplementation in rats.

Hakak, from Los Angeles, is also an oboist, and studied with a former New York Philharmonic oboist while at Duke. He not only plays oboe in the Duke Symphony Orchestra, he also was the founder of the Duke Chamber Players. That group, comprising only students, likes to play campus venues where they can bring classical music to a wider audience, such as the library’s Perk café. (more…)

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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Duke faculty members are committed to giving students the individual attention that nurtures ideas and pushes them to excel.  As the following story about Aleks Klimas E’09 and Professor and Chair of Physics Daniel Gauthier shows, these relationships are built not only in the classroom, but also through jobs, hands-on research projects, independent studies and lab assistantships. They can change a student’s intellectual and career paths. (more…)