Duke University

Duke Chapel

Duke University is a private university located in Durham, North Carolina in the United States. Although it is a young university, founded in 1924, it traces its roots back to 1838.

Due in part to its young age, the University fancies itself less restricted by tradition and more open to innovation than its more ancient peers. Duke values reevaluation and reimagination, as evidenced by the recent building phase that has seen a dozen new construction projects, of all scales and affecting all aspects of the student experience, within the past couple years. The University also puts a high priority on interdisciplinary endeavors.

Some consider Duke to be a friendlier, more energetic, warmer-weather alternative to the Ivy League. Admission to Duke is extremely competitive.

According to the 2005 U.S. News & World Report guide, Duke tied for fifth-best university in the nation with MIT and Stanford.

Duke represents one corner of the Research Triangle, the other corners of which are the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.

History

Duke traces its origins to Union Institute in Randolph County, North Carolina. The legislature granted a rechartering of the academy as Normal College in 1851, and the privilege of granting degrees in 1853. To keep the school operating, the trustees agreed to provide free education for Methodist preachers in return for financial support by the church, and in 1859 the transformation was formalized with a name change to Trinity College.

James Buchanan Duke

In 1887, the Yale-educated John F. Crowell became president of Trinity College. Committed to the German university model which emphasized research over recitation, Crowell directed a major revision in the curriculum and convinced the trustees to move to a more urban location. In 1892, Trinity opened in Durham, largely because of the generosity of Washington Duke, his son Benjamin Newton Duke, and Julian S. Carr, influential and respected Methodists who had grown prosperous through the tobacco industry.

John C. Kilgo became president in 1894 and he greatly increased the interest of the Duke family, which made its fortune in the tobacco and energy businesses (see American Tobacco Company and Duke Power) in Trinity. Washington Duke offered three gifts of $100,000 each for endowment, one of which was contingent upon the college admitting women "on equal footing with men." By World War I, Trinity College had developed into one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the South.

In December 1924, James B. Duke established The Duke Endowment, a forty million dollar trust fund, the annual income of which was to be distributed in the Carolinas among hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, three colleges, and a university built around Trinity College. The president at the time, William P. Few, insisted that the university be named Duke University, and James B. Duke agreed on the condition that it be a memorial to his father and family.

The university grew up quickly. The School of Religion and Graduate School opened in 1926, the Medical School and hospital in 1930, the School of Nursing in 1931, and the School of Forestry in 1938. The Law School, founded in 1904, was reorganized in 1930, and engineering, which had been taught since 1903, became a separate school in 1939. In 1930, the original Durham site became the coordinate Woman's College which was merged back into Trinity as the liberal arts college for both men and women in 1972. In 1938 Duke University became the thirty-fourth member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The Fuqua School of Business was founded in 1969.

Academics

The university has two schools for undergraduates: Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Pratt School of Engineering.

Duke University also has several graduate and professional schools: 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, the Divinity School, and the Graduate School.

Some applicants to Duke are selected for the Robertson Scholarship program, which offers a tuition-free education at Duke as well as one semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Another scholarship that the University offers to exceptionally talented students is the Angier B. Duke Scholarship, which is given in honor of James B. Duke's son Angier, who was killed in a boating accident, and also includes free tuition and a summer session at Oxford in England. The B. N. Duke Scholars program is a scholarship program geared towards top high school students in North and South Carolina. The University Scholars program, endowed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, provides full scholarships to exceptionally talented undergraduates, graduate, and professional students. The program is characterized by its interdisplinary nature. A new program, Baldwin Scholars, aims to promote the development of female leaders.

Duke University's Talent Identification Program, or TIP, is for seventh- through tenth-graders who have scored well on the SAT or ACT. Participants can take a variety of summer classes while living on Duke's East or West campuses, or on the campuses at other participating schools. The TIP program also enables rising seniors to attend classes at Duke's "Pre-college" summer session.

Duke's special academic facilities: art museum, language labs, Duke Forest, primate center, phytotron, electron laser, nuclear magnetic resonance machine, nuclear lab, marine lab, and center for engineering, medicine, and applied sciences. Duke also is a leading participant in the National Lambda Rail Network.

Undergraduate

Duke offers 36 arts and sciences majors in addition to 5 engineering majors, and 46 additional majors have been approved under Program II. Program II allows students to design their own interdisciplinary major. Sixteen certificate programs are also available. Students may pursue a combination of a total of three majors/minors/certificates, with at least one but not more than two majors (e.g. one major, two certificates; two majors, one minor; just a major; one major, one minor, and one certificate) .

Trinity College of Arts and Sciences operates under the recently revised Curriculum 2000. It ensures that students are exposed to a variety of "areas of knowledge" and "modes of inquiry." The curriculum aims to have students develop critical faculties and judgment; learn how to access, synthesize, and communicate knowledge effectively; acquire perspective on current and historical events; conduct research and solve problems; and develop tenacity and capacity for hard and sustained work.

Freshmen can elect to participate in the FOCUS Program, which involves the interdisciplinary exploration of a specific topic, such as Arts in Contemporary Society, Athens in the Golden Age, and Changing Faces of Russia: Redefining Boundaries.

Social Life

Duke's undergraduate students are a very active social group. The nearby bars on Durham's Ninth Street are a popular outlet for students. However, the primary social scene at Duke occurs within the "Duke Bubble" in the form of a strong Greek life. About 1 in 3 males, and 1 out of 2 females, are members of a Greek organization. Although the on campus "Animal House-style keggers" have been ended by the administration, Greeks have found other, usually off-campus alternatives to provide students their necessary dose of "college life".

There are 400 student clubs and organizations. These include numerous student government, special interest, and service organizations. The Chronicle is Duke's independent undergraduate daily newspaper. It has been continuously published since 1905 and its editors are responsible for coining the term "Blue Devil" as the school's mascot. The term originally comes from a group of famed and fearless French mountain fighters in World War I.

The Campus

Duke owns 212 buildings on 9,432 acres (38 km²) of land. That includes the Duke Forest and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Main Campuses

West Campus

The Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke

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View of West Campus

West campus is the heart of Duke University. All of the sophomores, along with some number of juniors and seniors, live on West, and most of the academic and administrational centers also reside there. West campus includes Science Drive, which is composed of the science and engineering labs and classrooms. Most of the campus eateries are on West.

Main West campus has Duke Chapel at its center. To the left are the main residential quads, while the main academic quad, main library, and medical center are to the right. West campus residential life operates under the "quad model," a model which administrators and students are still working to define.

East Campus

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The Marketplace on East Campus

Baldwin Auditorium on East Campus

East Campus functions as the freshman campus since all the freshmen - and only freshmen - are housed on East in order to build class unity. The campus is about 1.5 miles away from West Campus, with a bus system linking the two. Several academic departments are housed on East Campus, including the Art History, History and Women's Studies departments. The Mary Duke Biddle Music Building can also be found on East.

East Campus is a fully self-sufficient campus, with the freshman dining hall, a library, auditorium, theater, gym, tennis courts, and academic buildings. It's also only about a 5 minute walk from downtown Durham.

Central Campus

Central campus houses juniors and seniors as well as some professional students. Central campus residences are apartment style. Central campus also houses the Nasher Museum of Art and some other departments, such as the Residence Life and Housing Services.

Central campus is now undergoing a massive restructuring that will begin with the replacement of the outdated apartments. A key goal of the Central renovations is to reintegrate the area with the rest of the Duke campus, as it is now connected to the other campuses by a ciruitous, inefficient bus route.

Key Places

Duke Forest Established in 1931, today Duke Forest conisists of 7,600 acres in six divisions. 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, including the Duke University Primate Center.

Primate Center The Duke University Primate Center was founded in 1966 and is the world's largest sanctuary for rare and endangered prosimian primates. The 85 acres of Duke Forest that the Primate Center inhabits contain about 250 animals of 15 different species of lemurs and some lorises as well.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens The Sarah P. Duke Gardens lie between West Campus and the apartments of Central Campus and were established in the early 1930s. The Gardens occupy 55 acres and consists of four major parts: the original Terraces and their immediate surroundings, the H.L. Blomquist Garden of Native Plants (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 of allées, walks, and pathways throughout the Doris Duke Center and surrounding gardens. The Gardens get about

Marine Lab The Duke University Marine Lab is on Pivers Island within the Outer Banks of North Carolina, only 150 yards across the channel from the town of Beaufort, NC. 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).

Medical Center The Duke University Medical Center (DUMC) combines one of the top-rated hospitals and one of the top-ranked medical schools in the United States. Founded in 1930, the Medical Center now occupies 7.5 million square feet in 90 buildings on 210 acres.

Architecture

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The plan for East Campus

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Sketch of Duke Chapel

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A plan for West Campus. The eventual plan was slightly smaller in size.

Duke is sometimes called "the Gothic Wonderland," a nickname referring to the Gothic revival architecture of its main campus (West Campus). Much of the campus was designed by Julian Abele, one of the first 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.

The stone used for the West Campus has seven primary colors and seventeen different shades of color. One construction official wrote the architect that the stone has "an older, more attractive antique effect" and a "warmer and softer coloring than the Princeton stone" and that it was especially good since it could be "laid to give a shadowline underneath the pointing which added tremendously to an artistic look."[1]

The Duke Chapel stands at the heart of West Campus, and is at the center of religion at Duke. Constructed in 1930 through 1935, the Chapel seats about 1,600 people. With its 210-foot (64 m) tower, it is one of the tallest buildings in Durham County, North Carolina.

Libraries and Museums

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Perkins Library

With over 5 million volumes, the Duke library system is one of the top 10 largest private university library systems in the United States. The library also contains 17.7 million manuscripts, 1.2 million public documents, and tens of thousands of films and videos. Besides the main library, Perkins Library, the university also contains the separately administered Business (Ford), Divinity, Law, and Medicine Libraries.[2]

Perkins Library Perkins Library is the main Duke library system and has seven branches on campus. They are: Biological & Environmental Science Library, Chemistry Library, Lilly Library (which houses materials on Fine Arts, Philosophy, Film & Video, and Performing Arts), Music Library, Pearse Memorial Library (which is located at the Duke University Marine Lab and contains related materials), and Vesic Library (which contains materials related to Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics). The University Archives and Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections are also considered part of the Perkins Library system.

Nasher Museum of Art The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is a new art museum to open in the fall of 2005 which replaced the undersized Duke University Museum of Art (DUMA). The museum was designed by Rafael Viñoly and will house the University's art collections as well as some classrooms and an auditorium.

Athletics

Cameron Indoor Stadium

The school's 26 varsity sports teams are called the Blue Devils. They compete in the NCAA's Division I-A Atlantic Coast Conference. Duke's major historic rival, especially in basketball, has been the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In recent years, the Terrapins of the University of Maryland, College Park have also proven themselves against Duke, winning 6 of the 12 most recent men's basketball meetings between the two and winning twice at Duke, the only team to do so.

Duke men's basketball is one of the most well-known college athletics programs in the country. ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi has called the Blue Devils from the early 1980s to today a dynasty. The team's achievements under coach Mike Krzyzewski include making the Final Four five years in a row from 1988 to 1992; winning the ACC Tournament an unprecedented five years in a row from 1999 to 2003; having six players named Naismith College Player of the Year in under 20 years; and becoming the only team to win three national championships since the NCAA Tournament field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Former Duke stars such as Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, and Shane Battier have gone on to achieve a measure of success in the NBA. Duke basketball has also provided the country with some of its best coaches including former Blue Devils Johnny Dawkins, Steve Wojciechowski, Tommy Amaker, Quin Snyder, Chris Collins and Jeff Capel.

As of May 22, 2005, Duke has a total of seven national championships; three in men's basketball (1991, 1992, 2001), three in women's golf (1999, 2002, 2005), and one in men's soccer (1986).

Duke University People

See Main Article: List of Duke University People

Among the more notable of Duke's alumni are Richard Nixon, J.D '37, 37th President of the United States; Elizabeth Dole, B.A. '58, former presidential candidate and current senior United States Senator of North Carolina; and Melinda Gates, B.A '86, M.B.A '87, co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Duke's rich basketball tradition has produced several successful NBA stars, such as Grant Hill.

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Richard Nixon

Elizabeth Dole

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Melinda Gates

Grant Hill

References

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External links

• Duke University
• Duke University Medical Center
• Duke University School of Medicine
• Duke University School of Law
• The Fuqua School of Business
• Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
• Duke Divinity School
• Trinity College of Arts and Sciences
• Pratt School of Engineering
• Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
• Duke University Primate Center
• Duke University Marine Lab
• The Chronicle (Student Newspaper)
• Duke Magazine (Alumni Magazine)
• Duke iPod First Year Experience Website
• Undergraduate Admissions
• Duke Athletics
• Julian Abele (Duke University Architect)