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T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2019 DUKECHRONICLE.COM
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 19
TRASK TO RETIRE By Jake Satisky Editor-in-Chief
After more than 20 years with the University, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask will retire in Fall 2020. The University announced the departure in a news release Friday morning. Trask has served as Duke’s EVP since 1995, working for three different presidents—Nannerl Keohane, Richard Brodhead and current President Vincent Price. During his time as EVP, he has overseen dozens of construction projects, including renovations to the Bryan Center Plaza, Brodhead Center and Wallace Wade, and has helped the endowment grow from $790 million to $8.6 billion. He directs the University’s construction, campus planning, finances, administration and other services like Duke parking and stores. He is on the Board of Directors for the Duke University Management Company—which manages the University’s endowment—and the Health System. As chief fiscal officer, he helped guide the University through the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008. Trask also expanded Duke’s off campus presence into Durham, as the city has seen tremendous growth in the past two decades. His tenure has not come without controversy, however. The Chronicle reported in 2016 that he hit a parking attendant with his car two years prior. He was also accused of calling her a racial slur, which he denied. Trask was also Duke’s lead negotiator for the light rail project that it pulled out of earlier this year.
By Jake Satisky Editor-in-Chief
Taking in his whole body of work throughout the past quarter-century, Trask said he is pleased with his work at the University. “I’m quite happy with it,” Trask said in his heavily decorated office, with his signature T3 moniker stitched onto his shirt cuffs. “I mean, look, in 25 years, there’s been hundreds of little things you’d do differently. But in general, I’m not troubled by it.” Trask led the recent overhaul of the BC Plaza area—now
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask has been at Duke since 1995. Acting as the leading administrative and financial officer, Trask’s responsibilities have been wide-ranging, from managing the university budget to overseeing architecture and construction. As the University now announces Trask’s decision to retire, The Chronicle sat down with him to discuss his journey to a place he didn’t envision working at and the highs and lows of his nearly 25 years at the University. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The Chronicle: I’m curious how you ended up here. I imagine when you were growing up, you weren’t saying, ‘I want to be a university vice president,’ so how did you end up in university administration right out of school? Tallman Trask: Well, I was an undergraduate history major, and I had decided to get a Ph.D. in American history. And then I thought about the consequences of that, which was like, six or seven years, and there’s no end strategy necessarily. Even in those days there weren’t lots of jobs. And so I decided I didn’t want to do that. All my friends were going to law school. And I thought about that, and I decided, I don’t want to go to law school. I don’t want to be a lawyer. And so at the time I had this bizarre idea: I’ll go to business school, which not many people did. Well, a lot of people did, but not my left wing friends. So, I just applied to business school, and I ended up going to Northwestern. And then coming out of business school, since I didn’t know why I had gone, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I got out. There were a couple of jobs that looked sort of intriguing, but I wasn’t really enamored
See TRASK on Page 12
See REFLECTIONS on Page 4
His time on campus
Mary Helen Wood | Photography Editor Tallman Trask, Duke’s executive vice president for over twenty years, will be retiring in the fall of 2020.
Q&A: Trask reflects on his past 24 years at Duke
Selena Qian | Graphics Editor
Other buildings of note*
Renovated: Washington Duke Inn, Fuqua and Law School Built: JB Duke Hotel, Doris Duke Center, Scott Center
*Not a definitive list of every building constructed or renovated in the past 25 years
A vision for Central Campus
Five observations from Countdown
Duke football trounced by Virginia
Duke will use Central for parking in the short term, but could it one day be a premier research park? PAGE 2
Duke still needs to work on its outside shooting, and its freshmen are the real deal. PAGE 6
5 turnovers and a mistake-filled afternoon marked the Blue Devil’s worst loss to the Cavaliers since 2006. PAGE 7
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