TOWERVIEW JULY 2014 | VOL. 16 | ISSUE I
FOOTBALL FEVER
BLUE DEVILS’ RISE FROM WORST TO FIRST 22
CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION GROWING LIST OF PROJECTS AFFECTING STUDENT LIFE 08
DEVELOPING DURHAM
DUKE’S ROLE IN THE BULL CITY’S 20-YEAR TRANSFORMATION 16
Welcome to Duke! You will soon discover the award-winning gourmet food and gift store, Southern Season. We have been a favorite for students and their parents for over 40 years, and people come from long distances to experience what will become your destination for all gourmet food and drink. Our restaurant is rated as the best Sunday Brunch spot in the area. Weathervane Restaurant and Patio is a great place to bring your parents, and you are sure to find it is an affordable and romantic place to take a date. We are here to help make you feel at home in the Triangle, so stop in to stock your dorm with favorite hard to find foods and snacks. Our Gift Department is also a great choice for parents sending care packages when you’re battling homesickness or exams. Bring them here and we will share with them how to send you a monthly care package, and you can tell us what to include. We look forward to having you as part of the Triangle family.
Award-winning Food Lover’s Paradise 201 S. Estes Drive, University Mall, Chapel Hill, NC 919-929-7133 • southernseason.com
TOWERVIEW
CONTENTS
JULY 2014 - VOL. 16 - ISSUE 1
CONTENTS YIYUN ZHU
DANIELLE MUOIO
SID GOPINATH
BECKY RICHARDS
ELIZA STRONG/ELYSIA SU
DANIEL CARP
VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS
HAILEY CUNNINGHAM
05 08 12 16 20 22 28 30
MY TRIP TO KUNSHAN A visit to Duke’s first foray into the Far East.
THE CONSTRUCTION OBSTRUCTION Students of today forced to make sacrifices as Duke prepares for its future.
MOONLIGHTING THE ARTS Duke professors balance academic life and professional passions.
BUILDING BULL CITY Urban revitalization has put Duke at the center of one of America’s hottest small cities.
EXPLORE DURHAM A journey through photos into our favorite spots in downtown Durham.
DUKE FOOTBALL’S EXTREME MAKEOVER What it took to turn America’s loveable losers into ACC contenders.
WATCHLIST Meet the 10 people who are set to leave their mark on Duke this year.
DUKE DICTIONARY Confused by all the shorthand Duke students use? Let us translate for you.
ON THE COVER PHOTO BY DARBI GRIFFITH Cover ideas? Step 1: Looks at past Towerview covers. Step 2: Chapel? Out. Bull statue? Out. Downtown Durham? Too far away. Step 3: “Is there anything on West campus that’s not under construction right now?” Step 4: “I guess we can do East. We can pretend we’re welcoming the freshmen.” TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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EDITOR’S NOTE
letter
Dear readers,
TOWERVIEW ’
It’s summertime, the living is easy, and Towerview has two new co-editors. A little bit about ourselves: when we’re not eating buffalo wings or arguing about, well, really anything, you can find us being anti-social in the back of the Chronicle office listening to one of our three preferred Pandora radio stations. As the former sports editor (Dan) and editor-in-chief (Danielle), we may be new to this magazine game but certainly not to the art of writing a kick-ass story and making it look good too. And if there is one thing we can agree upon, it’s that we should always strive to write ambitious stories.
THE CHRONICLE S NEWS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF DANIEL CARP AND DANIELLE MUOIO
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR
from the editors
ELYSIA SU ELIZA STRONG HAILEY CUNNINGHAM BECKY RICHARDS CARLEIGH STEIHM
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS DANIEL CARP, RAISA CHOWDHURY, HAILEY CUNNINGHAM, SID GOPINATH, DANIELLE MUOIO, BEKCY RICHARDS, CARLEIGH STEIHM,
We see Towerview as the intersection between news, sports and culture at Duke, ranging from the utterly whimsical to deeply investigative and everywhere in between. When you open this magazine, you’ll see our first attempt at capturing this. We by no means see it as a finished product, but rather the first step on a rewarding journey.
TOM VOSBURGH, YIYUN ZHU
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS DANIEL CARP , IZZI CLARK , SOPHIA DURAND , SHANEN GANAPATHEE , DARBI GRIFFITH , JESUS HIDALGO , YUYI LI , ERIC LIN , SU , JACK WHITE , VICTOR YE , YIYUN ZHU
ELYSIA
In case you haven’t noticed by the abundance of scaffolding, national championships and impending opening of Duke’s first campus in China, there is a lot going on at our school right now. It’s our job to try and go places you can’t in the daily pages of The Chronicle, and don’t worry—we’ll have some fun along the way.
CONTRIBUTING STAFF EMMA BACCELLIERI, NICK MARTIN, GEORGIA PARKE, CARLEIGH STEIHM
GENERAL MANAGER ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR OPERATIONS MANAGER DIGITAL SALES MANAGER
CHRISSY BECK REBECCA DICKENSON BARBARA STARBUCK MARY WEAVER MEGAN MCGINITY
@TowerviewMag
dukechronicle.com/ towerview
Towerview Magazine
towerviewletters@ gmail.com
Lots of our fellow classmates have checked out for a victory lap, a decision that we sometimes envy. But for two admitted control freaks, stepping down from a nightly commitment to a monthly one was about as far as we could get. A few extra all-nighters is well worth the feeling of holding a finished product in our hands. For those of you opening up this magazine for the very first time, welcome to Towerview. For those who have opened this magazine for years and are noticing some significant changes, welcome to the new Towerview. We probably won’t do this close to perfectly, but we’ll sure as hell try. Enjoy reading.
Towerview is a subsidiary of The Chronicle and is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff, administration or trustees. Columns, letters and cartoons represent the views of the authors. To reach The Chronicle’s editorial office at 301 Flowers Building, call (919) 684-2663 or fax (919) 684-4696. To reach The Chronicle’s business office at 103 West Union Building, call (919) 684-3811. To reach The Chronicle’s advertising office at 2022 Campus Drive, call (919) 684-3811 or fax (919) 684-8295. Contact the advertising office for information on subscriptions. Visit The Chronicle and Towerview online at dukechronicle.com ©2014 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior, written permission of the business office. Each individual is entitled to one free copy.
4
DANIEL CARP TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
DANIELLE MUOIO
NEWS
MY TRIP TO
KUNSHAN
STORY AND PHOTOS BY YIYUN ZHU
The campus is not Gothic, but it is certainly very Chinese.
K
UNSHAN, China—“What are you going to Kunshan for?” My dad asked incredulously. Having lived in Shanghai for 19 years—just an hour’s drive away from Kunshan—I never once thought of visiting the tiny city known to me for its Aozao noodle, which literally means “foul noodle,” and nothing else. But since Duke will (finally) be opening a campus there, I drove to Kunshan to find out why this seemingly unattractive city attracted Duke administrators. As high-rises gradually faded out of sight,
the hope of witnessing another version of the Gothic wonderland kept my drive out of the metropolis thrilling. The promised wonderland, however, was still enclosed in temporary walls and covered with sand. In spite of the ongoing construction, the all-glass buildings and soonto-be-filled “water quads” of DKU blend with the tranquility of Kunshan perfectly. The campus is not Gothic, but it is certainly very Chinese. Creating DKU has not been a graceful process. Poor management and insufficient funding caused five significant delays since President Richard Brodhead signed an agreement with the municipal government of Kunshan to break ground on the new campus in 2010. Having slowed to almost a complete stop in 2012, Duke administrators were hopeful that two of DKU’s six buildings would be complete
by Spring 2014. DKU will open Aug. 25, however, with only one building finished. As a partnership between Duke and Wuhan University in China, Duke Kunshan University will officially open with three graduate programs in medical physics, management studies and global health and an undergraduate global learning semester program. Although DKU has been characterized by its delayed construction, I set out to learn about the city of Kunshan itself. Located in the Kunshan Science and Technology Education Park in close proximity to both Shanghai and Suzhou, DKU’s site has initially raised many doubts. “When DKU first started there were questions about, ‘What is Kunshan?’ and people say that there is nothing to do here,” said DKU Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Bullock. “In
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a conference call while I stayed at a hotel in downtown Kunshan, I had to interrupt them and say, ‘Well, I am looking at a Starbucks from my window, and there is a huge group of people dancing, a KFC underneath me, a Carrefour and Durham does not have that.’” In the eyes of local Chinese, Kunshan as a county-level city is known as the origin of Kunqu, one of China’s oldest extant theater arts. It is also known for its food culture and its surrounding water towns that attract thousands of tourists. Economically, Kunshan is also regarded as one of the most successful county-level cities in China. “It is in China’s most prosperous region with all the networks,” Bullock said, adding that it is only 15 minutes away from Shanghai by train. “In another couple of years people are going to start realizing that it is as easy to go from DKU to a meeting in Shanghai as it is to go there from some other places within Shanghai itself.” The campus is neighbored only by a Canadian International School still under construction and green areas. Bullock noted that that Kunshan has started building a small shopping center behind the campus, hiring a renowned developer that developed Shanghai Xintiandi, an affluent car-free shopping and entertainment district. The city has also made a commitment to increase bus routes into Kunshan, she added. As of now, there is no place within walking distance of the campus where students can
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have fun, and downtown Kunshan is about a 10-minute drive away. Although a high-speed train ride to Shanghai sounds convenient and tempting, transportation from DKU to the train station is currently non-existent without a car, as buses scarcely run through the area. “The huge advantage is that the Kunshan city believes in us. We are their big project and we really have the backing of a wealthy and progressive city,” Bullock said. “Some people asked whether Kunshan is going to do what it says it is going to do, and so far we are seeing yes.”
CONSTRUCTING A UNIQUELY DUKE CAMPUS The master plan of the DKU campus includes five buildings—a conference building, a service building, an academic building, a student dormitory and a faculty residence hall. An innovation building that will house teaching labs and research spaces will be added to the campus in late 2014 or early 2015. The campus will open with students and faculty using the conference center and other buildings will be phased in gradually when they are completed in September and October, Bullock said. Construction has been a slow process because the Duke oversight team did not find Kunshan’s construction standards to their liking. Duke Project Manager Dudley Willis is on site to monitor safety issues during construction and noted that Duke insists on high con-
struction quality that Chinese workers might not be familiar with. Blending with the geographical location of Kunshan amidst traditional Chinese water towns, one distinctive feature of the new campus is the presence of lakes and a water pavilion with three gathering rooms all made of glass, heated and cooled by the water. “As you go around here [in Kunshan] you see a lot of lakes and canals, and we bring that here into the campus.” Bullock said. “Instead of grass quads we have lakes.”
ENROLLING THE FIRST CLASS AT DKU DKU’s is still accepting applications for its graduate programs and the undergraduate semester program after extending deadlines from their original March date. Bullock did not disclose the exact number of students enrolled at DKU because students may decide to go elsewhere even though they put down a deposit at DKU. “We are still receiving applications,” Bullock said. “We are going to announce the number of students enrolled the day we open.” Bullock estimated that so far approximately 100 students have enrolled, with a large number of students admitted for the undergraduate semester program. The student body consists of Chinese students from 12 to 15 universities as well as students from the United States and other countries.
“There will be more Chinese students than international students but there is a good mix,” Bullock said. “The basic thing is that we are only admitting highly selective students, so that is the determining factor.” The Graduate School oversees two of the master’s degrees offered at DKU—a master’s in global health and a master’s in medical physics. The Fuqua School of Business oversees the master’s program in management studies, said Dean of the Graduate School Paula McClain. Administrators expect to have 15 to 20 students per graduate program in the first semester and said they were pleased with the results of the first cycle of recruiting. “We want programs that not only represent Duke’s interests but also make sense in China,” Bullock said, adding that the program in medical physics, which initially surprised many because it is a highly specialized field, is needed in China due to the increasing demand for scholars who understand high-end medical equipment. As to future expansion of the graduate programs, Bullock noted that DKU is looking particularly at the environmental field and is currently hosting an environmental group at Duke to hear recommendations for a future master’s program in environment and energy. For the undergraduate semester program, DKU has so far established partnerships with 17 universities in China for its undergraduate
semester program, said Wyatt Bruton, international undergraduate recruiting coordinator for DKU. “That was one of the greatest accomplishments of this year,” Bullock said. “One of our big efforts was to visit China’s major universities to introduce all DKU programs so that they are recognized and students will be nominated to come.” DKU is committed to the undergraduate semester program as a way to learn about how to implement a liberal arts curriculum in China and get faculty experienced in teaching an international student body. Bullock added that there are many things to consider at the start of a new university— what is the type of relevant curriculum, what kind of students one wants to have in the program and what would be distinctive about the program because China has a lot of universities. With these concerns in mind, Duke envisions DKU to be both experimental and incremental in its growth.
THE FUTURE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN CHINA In 2013, Chinese leadership announced seven banned topics from university classrooms. These topics include freedom of press, failures of the Communist Party, judicial independence and wealth of government leaders. Additionally, three Chinese professors got into trouble with the government because of their
outspoken views. Duke administrators denied being informed of the ban. When asked whether there might be changes made to the Duke curriculum due to pressure from a controlled academic environment in China, Bullock said, “Not on my watch.” Other administrators are confident about the prospect of academic freedom at DKU. “We have been assured by our partners and the ministries that our faculty can teach what they want and our students can learn what they want,” said Bill Boulding, dean of the Fuqua School of Business. McClain declined to comment on the topic of academic freedom. The academic standards and expectations to which DKU will be held are made clear in the university’s governing documents, said Nora Bynum, vice provost for DKU. Bullock also noted that Duke has been very clear for years with the Chinese government that it would not begin an academic program unless there is academic freedom. Each curriculum is chosen by Duke faculty, not by the Ministry of Education in China. “China is an interesting place,” she said. “It is the right moment to be here because there is a lot of experimentation going on in China’s own higher education. They are looking for reform and they are looking for models. They treat DKU as a new model, so it is a great way for us to demonstrate academic freedom.” TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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THE CONSTRUCTION
N O I T C U TR
S B O N O I T
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TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
T C U R T S OB
N O I T C U R ST
NEWS
B O TION
T C U R T S OB
STORY BY DANIELLE MUOIO PHOTOS BY DARBI GRIFFITH & SOPHIA DURAND Improving Duke’s future, but what about today’s students?
E
very morning, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask hears the beeping of trucks reversing and sounds of drilling from his cushy office in the Allen Building. Laying out three sheets of paper detailing 48 Duke construction projects that are currently in the works or planned to start soon on his round wooden table, it’s clear that even Duke administrators cannot escape the signs of the University’s numerous construction projects. For students on the ground, however, construction is an everyday nuisance disrupting the flow of a normal campus life. When I visited Durham recently, I realized construction had become more prominent than I thought possible when I moved out of my West Campus dorm a month before. Cars and buses struggled to get around the $1 million Chapel Circle improvements project on their way up to the Chapel. The parking lot in front of the Chapel was completely shut off by tall silver fences. The shortcut through the Flowers Building to the Bryan Center plaza no longer exists. A gaping hole stands in its place, as part of the $95 million West Union project. And let’s not forget the scaffolding in front of the libraries, the closed main entrance to Perkins Library, the closed main entrance to the plaza and the imminent closing of the Chapel—Duke’s primary landmark will be repaired for the entire 2015-16 academic year. I could not help but chuckle when I saw the latest Chronicle issue detailing yet another construction project—adding a parking garage on Science Drive. Having three major projects in the heart of West Campus has particularly irked upperclassmen. Emily Hadley, a rising senior, noted
that having so many projects occurring at once without any forum to discuss the issue has been her biggest frustration. Additionally, having so many projects transpire at once has disrupted a sense of a Duke community that used to exist. “I underestimated how important it was to have things like the plaza be accessible or the entryway to Perkins or the Great Hall,” she said. “We used to study in the Great Hall. You could walk through and see people you know. It meant you didn’t have to do much planning ahead of meeting with people—you could count on seeing people out and about in certain gathering areas.” Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said he hears this kind of complaint “all of the time.” He noted that the issue arises from having two things intersect—thoughtfully planned projects and those the administrators did not expect.
In his office, Trask showed me a piece of limestone about the size of my forearm. This, he said, is what fell from the Chapel roof one afternoon, starting a long and unexpected restoration process. The Chapel ceiling roof is 85 years old. When the limestone fell, it was taken to the Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. structural engineering lab in Chicago. The engineers discovered that when the Chapel was built the construction workers miscalculated how much water the limestone absorbed, causing parts of the ceiling built between 1932-47 to collapse. When asked how much the Chapel renovation project would cost, Trask replied, “that’s a very interesting question.” He estimated it would be approximately $10 million, but they cannot be sure just yet. This kind of bad luck has stretched across campus as well. It was just an average Wednesday in February when the ceiling TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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collapsed in the West Duke building on East Campus, forcing the building to close for the remainder of the year. Again, faulty construction was to blame—construction workers had built “false ceilings” to cover up the building’s air conditioning units. Fixing this problem turned into a $5 million project, as workers discovered the building is composed of wood frames but lacked a sprinkler system to protect it from fire (oops). Not all construction projects came out of the woodwork, though. The West Union project, which arguably serves as the greatest hinderance to West Campus life, is one component of a three-part construction project funded by the Charlotte-based Duke endowment. The endowment set aside $80 million to renovate Baldwin Auditorium, West Union and Page Auditorium. Baldwin was completed last summer at $15 million. The major renovations planned for Page Auditorium were forced to take a backseat due to the growing expense of West Union, which turned into a $95 million project by itself. To cover the extra costs, Duke administrators have relied on philanthropy, and a gift of $10 million for West Union construction was announced this past year. The Page Auditorium renovations are, therefore, largely cosmetic—rolling in at a modest $5 million. Collectively, the three-part project has turned into a $115 million expense. When completed, the West Union will host several meeting spaces, a pub and coffee bar. Students will also be able to eat Indian, Asian and Italian food, among other venues. It is set to be completed Spring 2016. “In many ways the West Union project and all the work with Duke houses go handin-hand,” Moneta said, referring to the housing model installed three years ago. “The last three years [spent] to create a house model and create communities that are adequately resourced— where independent students aren’t second class to selective [student groups]—is complimented by a creation like West Union where communities can gather.” But as Hadley notes, “The rising seniors and rising juniors are the classes getting screwed.” “We are the classes getting the most construction and we are never going to see it. The university is also not offering any alternatives,” she added. Vice President of Facilities and Management John Noonan said that since he started working at Duke in 2005, there are 175-300 projects going on at any given time. What is unusual this year is the physical proximity of
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these projects, he added. And there are more to come. Workers will begin building a Health and Wellness Center March 2015 at the corner of Towerview Road and Union Drive next to Penn Pavilion. The Center was approved by the Board of Trustees and is expected to cost approximately $30 million. Administrators are also in the works designing an Arts Building that will be built across from the Nasher Museum of Art. Estimated at $35 million, the building will host studio space for painting, sculpture and dance as well as classrooms. It is set to begin May 2015. Almost all the projects are funded via philanthropy, Trask said. The Chapel renovations will be funded by central and school revenue streams, the parking garage on Science Drive will be funded by Duke Parking and Transportation; West Duke will be funded via emergency repairs and Edens Quad renovations set to begin May 2015 will come from
Housing, Dining and Residence Life. The Charlotte-based Duke endowment funded most of the West Union, Page Auditorium and Baldwin Auditorium projects. Construction at Duke is hardly contained to academic and residence life. Thanks to funding from the Duke Forward campaign, the University has been steeped in a number of athletics-based facilities projects during the past two years. The largest of these projects is renovations to Wallace Wade Stadium, which will take place following each of the next two football seasons. The first phase of renovations, which is due to begin directly after the last home game of the 2014 season, will involve removing the track surrounding the field, lowering the field and demolishing walls surrounding the track to add four rows of seat. This phase of construction will cost $6 million and will be completed by August 2015, Trask said. The more costly phase of Wallace Wade’s renovation will begin in April 2015, which
will involve the construction of a new media tower in place of the current Finch-Yeager Building. Trask said that he and Athletic Director Kevin White have yet to finalize a design for the project—original designs were appraised at $50 million, and the group’s goal is to spend $40 million on the project. Trask noted that the 50-foot frontal addition to Cameron Indoor Stadium, which is due to begin construction in May 2016, is priced at $15 million and is projected for an August
2017 completion. Other athletics facilities projects include the construction of brand new grass and turf practice fields, which opened in December 2013, the new Williams Track and Field Complex, which will open in February 2015 and Scott Pavilion, which will house a new ticket office, team store and office space for the athletic department. As it stands now, construction will only continue to progress for the next two aca-
demic years. For future generations of Duke students, the campus will become a hub of activity. But for now, students can only hope to find more shortcuts to get to class. “There are very few students for whom this is a positive part of their Duke experience,” Hadley said. “We recognize that Duke needs to expand and grow, but I feel this isn’t the first time the University has neglected the students’ opinions on something that affects students’ lives.”
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CULTURE
MOONLIGHTING the arts
STORY BY SID GOPINATH PHOTOS BY DARBI GRIFFITH
I
t’s often hard for us to picture our professors outside of the classroom setting. Students chuckle together at photos and videos of their professors from years ago. Stories of past adventures and stupidity are told as a stress-reliever by professors and as a way to remind students that they, too, have lives students don’t know about. In the arts world, though, professors often teach at the same time they are tackling massive personal projects. While other professors complement their teaching by researching in labs, professors in the arts fields complement their teaching with their own kind of research. Some professors have their own dance companies, while others perform regularly in the professional music world. Others
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professors by day, performers by night continue to make sculptures and practice photography, even as they teach students to master theirs. “For performing artists, the performance itself is the research,” explained Keval Kaur Khalsa, associate professor of the practice of dance. “Sometimes we have a very narrow view on research, and it’s easier to think of it in the sciences.” Khalsa is focusing in on three primary projects in the near future. She is training teachers to teach Kundalini Yoga. Additionally, Khalsa is developing a satellite branch of Y.O.G.A. for Youth in Durham, which is, as Khalsa describes it, is an “international non-profit that brings the tools of yoga and meditation to underserved youth in detention
facilities, schools and community centers.” She is also doing yoga-based research with children through Duke’s Bass Connections program. This relatively unknown Duke arts world is often hidden in plain view of students. The administrator we bump into on our way to class could be an Emmy-award nominated producer. The professor we smile at in Au Bon Pain very well might be working on a highly-anticipated composition. And as with any person who tries to balance two distinct jobs utilizing two very different, yet complementary, skill sets, a unique set of challenges and benefits can arise. First, art professors have to get to the stage where they are both teaching and prac-
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ticing art in the professional world. The rising trend, said Thomas DeFrantz, professor of African and African American studies and professor of dance, seems to be artists who eventually fall into teaching. “That’s 99 percent of us,” DeFrantz said. “We’re all starting to understand how important the arts are and that the arts stand next to other humanities like history and romance literature.” This understanding is leading to more and more professors teaching as well as practicing art in the professional world. In fact, in the same way that a tenured position at a worldclass university is prestigious for those in academia and research, a job at a university is becoming much more valued by artists. “This is what I tell students,” said William Noland, professor of the practice of visual arts and Faculty of Arts of the Moving Image. “There’s no better job for an artist. If you’re an artist and you get a teaching job at a wonderful university where the students are incredibly bright and motivated, there is no better job.” For artists like Noland, teaching usually comes into the plan only when they realize the opportunities that could arise from such a job. For other art professors at Duke, though, teaching was always in the plan. One such example is Khalsa. “I was actually teaching dance even at the end of my undergraduate years,” she said. “I love sharing the things I am most passionate about. For me, it is one of the most rewarding things in life to watch someone grow and develop. As a teacher, you are a witness to that.” Eric Pritchard, first violinist in the Ciompi Quartet, had a slightly different perspective. In the quartet world, a residency at a top-tier university is extremely sought-after and oftentimes the end goal of many quartet musicians. “It was a model that I was familiar with,” he said of teaching and being in a performing ensemble simultaneously. He went on to describe what he saw as three types of quartets: those that have residencies, those that would like residencies and the few that are too busy touring to be able to also teach. No matter how artists end up as professors, the challenges that they face and the benefits they gain vary throughout the Duke academic community. The most obvious challenge that arts professors face is finding a way to balance the immense time required to properly teach students and the equally large amount of time
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required to produce an artistic work of which they can truly be proud. “Sometimes when a project is at the end of its realization, my energy is really focused on the project,” DeFrantz said. “At those times, the teaching definitely has to be alongside those creative projects, and that’s a challenge.” With artists often working on an open timeline depending on the project, they also can be very limited by the academic year schedule. “For me, it’s been extraordinarily frustrating because I build momentum over the summer, and the momentum is slowed quite a bit once the academic year begins,” Noland said. “I deal with it by always working, but it takes longer periods of time. You need time measured in years, not in months.” Even the time constraints of a 24-hour day can be one of an artist’s primary challenges. Most of them were able to look at the problem in a positive light, though. “You always wish there were more hours in the day, and that’s the exciting and challenging thing about being at Duke,” Khalsa said. “There are so many new initiatives and new opportunities. Knowing when to say when is sometimes challenging.” Noland echoed a similar sentiment. “You learn from teaching,” he said. “It’s a different process to simply be engaged and making things than it is to communicate to receptive people and to figure out how to enact a creative process for different personalities.” This learning experience is what draws artists to teach in the first place. By being in a situation where they have to explain their creative process and inspire a similar process in others, art professors’ work benefits greatly. “I’ll be working on a project, and a student will have an idea and help me reimagine something,” said DeFrantz. “Our students remind us always that there are a hundred other ways to approach the idea.” In the arts at Duke, teaching does truly seem to be a “two-way street,” as Pritchard called it. But there are more benefits to being an artist in residence or a professor of the practice at a university such as Duke. “It’s very nice to have a secure and steady source of income from when you have a job as opposed to being a performer on a touring circuit,” Pritchard said. “Also, a lot of our most interesting collaborations take place in the university setting when we work with composers in the music department.”
William Noland
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
Eric Pritchard
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
Thomas DeFrantz
“
IF YOU’RE AN ARTIST AND YOU GET A TEACHING JOB AT A WONDERFUL UNIVERSITY WHERE THE STUDENTS ARE INCREDIBLY BRIGHT AND MOTIVATED, THERE IS NO BETTER JOB.” -WILLIAM NOLAND What Pritchard alluded to is what draws so many students, academics, researchers, athletes, and administrators to places like Duke. The environment of a world-class research university is one that promotes intense cooperation and mental stimulation. “One of the things teaching at a college reminds us of is that pressure to succeed and achieve,” said DeFrantz. “That pressure is really the thing that makes great art or really strong scholarship or elegant engineering design or creative problem solving in public policy. That pressure cooker we are all under at the university is useful.” Unlike the bands that are trying to “make it” or actors bouncing around New York or
Los Angeles looking for work, the artists that teach at Duke feel far more confident in what their future holds. Noland’s plan, for example, is to eventually pursue a career in art away from Duke. “I will retire, and, at least in my case, retirement just means working full time,” he said. “That’s been my goal all along, and I’m getting closer to the point where I will be able to do it.” DeFrantz’s dance company, Slippage, is still actively involved in the professional dance world and continues to make about two productions a year which tour nationally. Pritchard’s Ciompi Quartet continues to actively perform music in the United States
and internationally. As the arts fields become more recognized and appreciated by research universities and students at those universities, the trend of artists who also teach will only continue to rise. In fact, in Duke’s 2006 strategic plan entitled “Making a Difference,” one of the goals is to “transform the arts at Duke.” In the plan, it states that the “arts are vital to reaching the fullness of human experience and achieving a well-rounded education….The arts are, therefore, fundamental to Duke’s teaching and research mission.” With the recent construction of Duke’s Arts Annex and plans to build a $35 million arts center next to the Nasher Museum of Art, the University continues its hope that the arts presence expands on campus and that faculty continue to promote themselves in the professional world. While they are providing a richer educational experience, these professors are also showing students the numerous professional possibilities that exist in the many fields of arts. By taking on two roles at the same time, they are able to teach and inspire their students, as well as continue to contribute to our rich and diverse American culture.
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STORY BY BECKY RICHARDS PHOTOS BY ELYSIA SU & DARBI GRIFFITH
Duke’s role in the r
BUILDING BU
A
lingering scent of tobacco and menthol. That’s what Duke alumnus Brian Vosburgh remembers of 1980s Durham. The nearby cigarette factories allowed this familiar scent to persist in a city composed primarily of empty storefronts. Aside from buying books at the Book Exchange or visiting two local eateries—Parker’s Barbeque Joint or Anna Maria’s Pizza—Vosburgh was not compelled to explore Durham. “It was more about local character— older things that had been around for a while,” said Vosburgh, Trinity ‘85. “Going off campus was the exception.” In fact, students were encouraged by administrators to stay on campus in order to minimize safety risks, he said. Now, students are encouraged to voyage into the 95 sq.-mi. city. With a bustling bar and restaurant scene and vibrant arts culture, Durham has transformed radically in the three decades
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since Vosburgh attended college. But such a change would take time, and Duke would play a role in it. Vosburgh moved back to Durham in 1991, the same year that the Capitol Broadcasting Company of Raleigh bought the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team that has played in Durham since 1902. Capitol Brodcasting President Jim Goodman decided to relocate the team to a more central location in the Triangle. In order to avoid relocation of the Bulls and to keep the team in its historic downtown park, Durham city leaders proposed a renovation of the historic Durham Athletic Park—which despite its role in the 1988 baseball classic Bull Durham, Vosburgh described as “small and beat up.” The solution seemed clear—build a new stadium for the Bulls to ensure the team would stay in Durham. But a citywide referendum to build a bigger stadium was struck down by Durham voters,
throwing a wrench into the process. Two years later, Bill Kalkhof, the inaugural president of Downtown Durham Inc., found a way to kill two birds with one stone by championing the effort to build the new Durham Bulls Athletic Park as a way to begin a full-scale urban development plan for the city. “In 1993, there were fewer than 3,000 employees and fewer than 1 million sq.ft. of space in the area,” Kalkhof said. “There were very few entertainment options, and it was incredibly difficult to navigate. At the time, the broader Durham community—including Duke—had given up on downtown Durham.” Kalkhof financed the construction of the new $18.5-million stadium with bonds issued by the city council that did not require the approval of voters. Ground broke on the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in 1993, and despite a $4 million overbudgeting that delayed the park’s completion by a year, the first
CULTURE
revitalization of downtown Durham
ULL CITY
major domino in Durham’s revitalization had fallen. “The new stadium has been wildly successful. It’s really lucky that DBAP did so well,” said Vosburgh, remembering the risk that surrounded the endeavor. “It required a long-term attitude.” With his first major victory under his belt, Kalkhof embraced the belief that the revival of downtown Durham was possible. The Durham Bulls Athletic Park was just the beginning. “A small group of us kept the hope alive, and the success of the stadium got the community to believe in downtown Durham,” Kalkhof said. Among Kalkhof ’s key supporters were Duke administrators, including Nan Keohane, who served as the University’s president from 1993-2004. “President Nan Keohane wanted to refocus the University’s commitments to Durham in a new and vibrant way,” said Sam Miglarese, director of the
Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. “The University’s commitment formerly existed but was diffuse and not very visible.” Duke got involved in Downtown Durham Inc.’s second major project— the renovation of the American Tobacco District, a difficult project that resulted in a number of new restaurants and desirable commercial real estate. “Three tenants were needed to commit to the space—they were GlaxoSmithKline, CopyWare and Duke,” Kalkhof said. “Duke saw the need to be the corporate entity that could help downtown.” Although Duke’s presence downtown was crucial to Durham’s transformation, it was vital that the University did not own these properties—clearly defining the line between Duke and the city that envelops it. “We wanted Duke to be a ‘creditworthy client’ and did not want downtown Durham to be downtown Duke,” Kalkhof said. “By Duke not owning the property, the property stayed on the tax forms for Durham. Duke stepped up to the plate in a very big way at a critical time.” A sizable donation from Duke also helped to fund the construction of the nearby Durham Performing Arts Center, which was ranked fourth in Pollstar magazine’s ranking of the nation’s 50 best theaters in 2011. Moreover, the DPAC’s success gives back to Durham residents. Kalkhof said that 40 percent of the theater’s income— which totaled $3.3 million in 2012-13— goes back to the city thanks to a revenuesharing agreement. “We really have to give credit to Duke and in particular [Executive Vice President] Tallman Trask for seeing the vision and importance of Durham having a state-of-the-art performing arts center,” DPAC General Manager Bob Klaus wrote in an email. “DPAC is a place where the entire community—Duke students, Durham residents and visitors from throughout the region—can come together for world-class performances.” Urban development did not confine itself to the birth of new buildings. In 2000, Durham bought a five-acre plot
downtown and turned it into Durham Central Park—an idea that had been in the works for 20 years. In a space that was once a vacant lot now resides a community gathering spot that serves as the home of the Durham Farmer’s Market, food truck rodeos, outdoor film screenings, the annual Independence Day parade and a series of Friday night jazz and blues concerts known as Warehouse Blues Series. “The vitality of Durham needed an open, green space that would provide opportunities for the community to come together,” said Ann Alexander, executive director of Durham Central Park, Inc., the nonprofit organization that oversees the park. “Durham’s been ready to take off for years, and now with all the development going on, it’s all finally coming to fruition.” A flow of private investment followed the string of larger, publiclyfunded projects—Kalkhof said that since 1993 there has been $1.3 billion of investment in downtown Durham. Most notably, these investments have helped turn the Bull City into a culinary mecca. The explosion of bars and restaurants downtown helped Durham earn the title of “Foodiest Small Town in America” by Bon Appetit in 2008 and “The South’s Tastiest Town” by Southern Living in 2013. In 2004, Duke leased 70,000 sq.-ft. of commercial real estate downtown with 150 employees. Today, the University leases more than 1 million sq.-ft. and will have 2,750 employees working in downtown locations. The symbiotic relationship between Duke and Durham have helped turn the city from a fledgling college town into an urban destination. In turn, the growth of the city has made Duke a more desirable choice for the nation’s top students, receiving a record number of applications in each of the last seven years. “Duke is more attractive as an institution because of Durham,” said Scott Selig, associate vice president of capital assets and real estate. “Downtown changes have provided culturally enriched activities for Duke students, faculty and staff, and Duke has been a major driver in that downtown renaissance.”
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The benefits of Durham’s expansion and renewed vitality transcends the four years that a student spends at Duke. Not only do Durham’s attractions help lure students to the area, but discoveries of the city’s eclectic personality and business potential are what convinces them to stay. “Ten years ago, we made the decision to build a community that would aim to keep the talent and creative class in Durham,” Kalkhof said. “And we’ve been rather successful at keeping the talent in the area.” The combination of highly-achieving students graduating from both Duke and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with the increasing number of professional opportunities available in the area seems to be a formula for the continued development of this mutually beneficial relationship.
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“We no longer manufacture tobacco or textiles—today knowledgeable and innovative people are Durham’s main products,” said Geoff Durham, president and CEO of Downtown Durham Inc., in an email. In May 2014, Business Insider ranked the Durham-Chapel Hill area the seventh best city for brand new college graduates. The website considered the number of young adults, the median earnings, affordability of living expenses and the level of education among the population of the area. Resting at the core of Durham’s metamorphosis and its growing success are a number of partnerships between public and private enterprises. Many of these relationships, like Durham Central Park, which is overseen by a locally-run nonprofit, have become models for cities across the country.
“There will always be a need for the public and private sectors to work together to invest in smart ways,” Kalkhof said. “If that doesn’t continue, the renaissance ends.” More than two decades after Durham made a concentrated efforts to invest in its inhabitants, citizens of Durham are investing back in their city. “In the past when I asked people to move downtown, it was a death sentence. Now people are eager to be downtown in the midst of the action. The growth of downtown Durham is just beginning and Duke’s involvement is also just beginning,” said Selig, who manages all of Duke’s purchasing and leasing of property. “Duke is intimately tied to downtown Durham and vice versa.” Beyond the economic development and investment that Duke has contributed to Durham, Duke focuses efforts on community development, which includes initiatives to improve housing, health care, crime rates, safety and education—services that are vital for a city with 19.4 percent of its citizens living below the poverty line from 2008-2012, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Sharing this urban renaissance with downtown Durham’s neighbors has been a primary effort for Duke throughout the city’s revitalization. In 1994, Duke began a review process
and decided to focus on the University’s 12 surrounding neighborhoods, four of which it classified as modest- to lowincome, Miglarese said. Since then, the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership—one of the units under the jurisdiction of the Office of Durham and Regional Affairs—has been an impetus for a range of changes in the neighborhoods surrounding Duke. “Most of our energy and time are concerned with community development issues that affect quality of life and support urban issues, such as affordable health care and housing opportunities. Duke has initiated health care clinics serviced by Duke providers and has contributed to housing initiatives through organizations such as Habitat for Humanity,” Miglarese said. “Duke has been the catalyst in so many ways. Duke is not only a community developer but a vital partner that helps defines community development.” So what does the future hold for Durham? All signs point toward a bigger set of projects in the years to come as the Bull City attempts to establish itself as one of the South’s premiere destinations
while sticking to its roots. “It is downtown’s local establishments which have come to define this place,” Durham said. “The next wave of development will be skyline-changing new-build construction as opposed to the adaptive reuse which has largely defined downtown’s renaissance to this point. When adding these newer structures it is important not to lose Down-
town’s unique identity.” A project that began more than 20 years ago is far from over. “One of the challenges is maintaining the renaissance. A key will be understanding and embracing the fact that the job is never done,” said Kalkhof. “I think downtown Durham will continue to grow and become even more of an asset to the Duke and Durham communities.”
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Publication: Chronicle Towerview Size: 7” x 4.75” Job Number: 864-3030 Run Date: October 30, 2013 Dana Communications 609.466.9187
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Try: Where Salt : The ed b Par utte lour r ca ram el Check out an expanded guide online at www.dukechronicle.com/towerview.
Where: Pompieri Pizza Try: their signature Pompie ri pizza
PHOTO ESSAY things to see & do in durham BY ELIZA STRONG & ELYSIA SU
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»ROSE’S MEAT MARKET AND SWEET
SHOP Rose’s, located just off East Campus, was opened by a chef/butcher and a pastry chef. It represents the intersection of two trades – a meat market and sweet shop.
[ ]
«INTREPID COFFEE AND SPIRITS Intrepid Life Coffee & Spirits is a coffee
shop by day, bar by night. Located just off CCB Plaza downtown, Intrepid’s huge open space not only makes it great for studying, but also for events like dance parties and trivia.
»FULLSTEAM BREWERY Fullsteam is located just across the street from Motorco and is a product of the growing craft brewing industry in North Carolina.
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h ratcss pie c S : e Wheer mon che Try: L Where: Dame’s Ch Try: Frizzled Fowl w/ m icken & Waffles aple pecan schmear
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COCOA CINNAMON Cocoa Cinnamon is a coffee shop located in a converted garage, with a cozy mish-mash of sofas and tables inside which opens onto the outdoor picnic table-filled patio.
»DURHAM HISTORY HUB The History
Hub is the Museum of Durham History, offering various permanent and rotating exhibits that provide look at the diversity of Durham.
»FARMERS’
MARKET The Durham Farmers’ Market offers a wide selection of local produce, baked goods, crafts and more, and runs year round out of the Pavilion at Durham Central Park.
«MOTORCO Motorco Music Hall, located just
across the street from Fullsteam, is a great venue for concerts. Its outdoor patio is perfectly suited for hanging out and grabbing some food or drinks. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE 21
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B
uilding a college football program makes flipping a house look easy. In the mid-2000s, there was no bigger fixer-upper than Duke football. From 2000-07, the Blue Devils went a combined 10-82, winning more than two games in a season just once. Turning Duke into a competitive FBS program was no easier than renovating a one-room shack into a Malibu mansion. Athletic Director Kevin White, who came to Duke in 2008, refused to call the plan to revitalize the Blue Devil football program a rebuilding project. He would only refer to it as a “resuscitation project.” In the six years that followed, Duke has done much more than bring its football program back from the dead. The program has left the days of winless seasons behind and gone places many thought to be impossible—an ACC Coastal Division title, back-to-back bowl trips and showdowns with Heisman Trophy winners on national stages. The first domino to fall in the Blue Devils’ rise to respectability on the gridiron was the 2007 firing of head coach Ted Roof following a 1-11 season. In his four full years at the helm, Roof had managed a record of just 4-42, including a winless season in 2006. Duke football had been circling the drain since a surprise run to the All-American Bowl in 1994, and it appeared that the program had finally hit rock bottom. The University’s administration finally decided that enough was enough. At a school where basketball was king, Duke had attempted to operate a small-budget football program for years. The Blue Devils did a lot more than just lose a lot of games for their school—according to the 2006 Equity in Athletics Data Analysis report, Duke managed just $8.9 million in football revenue that season and lost the University nearly $1 million. “You have to spend money to make money, and I think Duke finally realized it was time to spend some money on football,” said Joe Alleva, who served as Duke’s athletic director from 1998-2008. Before the Blue Devils could worry about building a program, they had to find a capable leader to replace Roof. After years of trying to bring in former college assistant coaches with Duke ties, the University went after an established head coach and a big name to energize the team’s dwindling fan base.
“
SPORTS
WE WERE CLOSER TO HALF A CENTURY BEHIND THAN A DECADE BEHIND.” -KEVIN WHITE Enter David Cutcliffe.
THE MAN AND THE PLAN
His football resume spoke for itself. Cutcliffe was famed as the mentor of NFL stars Peyton and Eli Manning and had spent his entire coaching career in the high-powered SEC, working as an assistant for nearly two decades and winning a national championship at Tennessee before guiding Ole Miss to four bowl appearances in six years. Duke put its money where its mouth was and announced Cutcliffe’s signing Dec. 14, 2007, less than a month after Roof was fired. The University agreed to pay Cutcliffe $1.5 million per year, more than triple the salary of his predecessor. “Duke finally got so frustrated with losing. It was one of the only things that Duke wasn’t good at,” Alleva said. “If you look across the board at the hospital, the medical school, the law school, everything, the academics, all the other sports, Duke was pretty darn good but then football was the one thing it wasn’t. So I think they finally decided that we needed to make an investment to compete.” Cutcliffe was the first of two major parting gifts Alleva left Duke when he resigned from his position to take the athletic director job at LSU in April 2008. Less than three weeks after he resigned, Duke athletics published a strategic plan entitled “Unrivaled Ambition.” The plan’s centerpiece was for financial investment in the football program, with the hopes that creating a winning mentality off the field would lead to success on the gridiron. “While the plan to produce a consistently winning football program involves a certain level of financial investment, what is needed has nothing to do with bricks and mortar or with increasing staff size and salaries but with attitude and focus, with a daily commitment to excellence on the part of players, coaches and staff,” the plan read. The plan’s primary objectives for football were as follows:
• Change the culture of the entire program. • Address personnel needs both on the staff and among the players. • Schedule strategically, giving the program the maximum chance to win nonconference games. • Build field house with an indoor practice facility. • Renovate Wallace Wade Stadium. Rest assured, this was no short task. “Unrivaled Ambition” was more than a 38-page office memo—it was published on the internet for all to see. Duke was making a statement to the rest of the country that it was prepared to invest in football. White remembers reading the plan from his office in South Bend, Ind., where he was serving as athletic director at Notre Dame. At the time, he did not know that it would be him, not Alleva, that was primarily responsible for the bold plan’s implementation.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
A month after the plan was published, White became Alleva’s successor as Duke’s Athletic Director. His pre-existing relationship with Cutcliffe—along with head men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and head women’s basketball coach Joanne P. McCallie—was one of White’s main draws to Durham. Cutcliffe and White became acquainted through the Manning family in the 1990s and White’s son played basketball at Ole Miss during Cutcliffe’s head coaching tenure there. Ranked by Sports Illustrated in 2003 as the third most powerful man in college football, White understood the massive project he was undertaking in the Blue Devil football program. White already had a prominent coach, but he knew that to recruit equally talented players Duke had to make the major facilities upgrades outlined in “Unrivaled Ambition.” When Cutcliffe arrived, the Blue Devils already had access to the $22 million Yoh
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Football Center, which opened in 2000. But the team’s practice facility was in disarray—Duke had no indoor practice facility and its outdoor practice field was just 75 yards long. “We were not a decade behind,” White said. “We were closer to half a century behind than a decade behind.” Looking back on the humble beginnings of the program’s facilities, Cutcliffe joked during the 2014 season that his first team couldn’t succeed in the red zone because their practice field didn’t have one. “I’ve seen pictures of it before Coach Cut got here and it was bad. It was awful,” said redshirt senior linebacker Kelby Brown on the state of Duke’s practice facilities. “What we have now to work with is big for us and makes a huge difference.” Duke lengthened its outdoor practice field to full size and added the Brooks Football Building. In 2011, the Blue Devils added the Pascal Field House, a spacious indoor practice facility.
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team in the country,” Rwabakumba said. “As a whole, we had to buy in right away or else we weren’t going to make it. We ran a lot of sprints The Blue Devils’ product off the field was on a lot of hot summer days.” Duke’s first test of the 2008 season was catching up to the rest of the ACC. On the against FCS opponent James Madison, where field, Duke still had a lot of work to do. “I remember his first conversation with us,” the Blue Devils kicked off the Cutcliffe era on said Chris Rwabakumba, who played cornerback for Cuctliffe from 2008-10 and captained Duke’s 2010 squad. “We were running and he stopped us right away. We were doing some drills and he said, ‘Good job. Look at you guys,’ and we’re thinking, ‘He likes us. The new guy likes us.’ Then he said, ‘You guys are the fattest, softest football team I’ve ever seen in my life. But that’s good because we’re going to get you guys ready for Fall.’” During Cutcliffe’s first practice with his new team in the spring of 2008, he challenged the Blue Devils to lose 1,000 pounds as a team. What the team lacked in talent it would make up for in speed. “Our two pillars were discipline and conditioning. Right off the bat he said that we had to be the most disciplined and best conditioned
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS ON THE GRIDIRON
the right foot with a 31-7 win. “We came out—we kicked James Madison’s ass,” Rwabakumba said. “Coach Cut believed in us and we believed in ourselves. He made us believe in ourselves.” The Blue Devils managed to go 4-8 in Cutcliffe’s first season, matching the program’s win total from the previous four seasons combined. But perhaps the most important game of the 2008 season was a game that Duke lost. Heading up to Blacksburg to face eventual ACC champion Virginia Tech, the Blue Devils were in the midst of a November slump. After jumping out to a 3-1 start, Duke had lost five of its last six games and were slated to play in one of the conference’s most hostile environments without starting quarterback Thad Lewis. Dominating the Hokies at the line of scrimmage, the Blue Devils forced five turnovers in the first half and trailed just 7-3 at halftime. Although Duke ultimately succumbed to its anemic offense and lost 14-3, the game proved to the Blue Devils that the talent gap in the ACC was closing fast. “We all knew that the gap between us and the elite teams in the ACC had gotten that much smaller,” Rwabakumba said. “We manhandled them. We took it to them. That’s when we knew for sure that Duke football was coming.” Duke finished 5-7 in 2009 as the team fell one win short of its first trip to a bowl game since 1994. With the team on the precipice of the postseason for the first time in recent memory, many thought it was a matter of time before bowl games were an annual occurrence for the Blue Devils. White described his first few teams as a “widget factory.” As Cutcliffe continued to re-
“My parents and I sat down with Coach cruit and develop better young talent, the head coach mixed and matched players that were Cut in his office. He looked me right in the often undersized and under-recruited in hopes eye and he said, ‘Kelby, we’re going to win the ACC,’” said Brown, whose younger brother they would bring the team success. Kyler committed to Duke the year after he did. RAISING THE STAKES ON “When he says something, he’s so confident and it’s really obvious. Somehow he sold me on AND OFF THE FIELD it, and I believed every word he told me. And During his first two seasons, Cutcliffe made the great thing is that he’s fulfilled all the things some of the program’s greatest strides on the he told me when he was recruiting me, and I’ve recruiting trail, bringing in players like quarter- never doubted for a second that we were on back Sean Renfree, wide receiver Conner Ver- our way to winning an ACC championship.” Cutcliffe’s recruiting philosophy centered non, guard Dave Harding and cornerback Ross Cockrell, all of whom would play key roles in around finding players who were not just fit to succeed in the program, but fit to succeed the program’s rise. The Blue Devil head coach continued to sell at one of America’s premiere universities. He players on his vision for the program, using its sought high-character athletes who placed a newfound resources as a way to draw in higher- high importance on academics—people Rwacaliber athletes. With Duke’s product on the bakumba pegged as “Duke guys.” “You don’t pick Duke. Duke picks you,” he field still very much a work in progress, there was an extent to which blind faith in Cutcliffe’s said. “You have to be a special type of person to go to a school like Duke, to compete acavision allowed the Blue Devils to grow. demically against some of the smartest kids in the nation as well as play in the ACC.” When Duke released “Unrivaled Ambition” in 2008, Richard Hain, a professor in Duke’s math department, published a series of questions about the strategic plan in hopes of stimulating discussion among the University’s academic sphere. One of the questions he raised was, “Is it reasonable to expect that the football program can attract enough recruits who combined strong potential in football with an academic foundation strong enough to enable them to succeed in Duke’s academic programs?” When Cutcliffe arrived at Duke, he raised the football team’s academic standards, requiring that the team maintain a cumulative 3.0 GPA. In 2014, the Blue Devils accomplished
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that feat for the 11th consecutive semester and posted an Academic Progress Rate score of 992, second highest in the FBS. As its on-field product continued to grow, Duke continued to emphasize its off-field resources in hopes of attracting better young players. The team revamped its jerseys, added a black uniform in 2011 and followed that up by debuting blue and black helmets in 2012. “This day and age, as far as high school football goes, when you’re sitting there on Saturdays you’re looking at who has the best jerseys,” said sophomore cornerback Bryon Fields. “I can’t tell you how many guys I talked to said they would love to go to Oregon because they’ve seen all the jersey combinations they had.” In 2011, Cutcliffe signed his first four-star prospect during his tenure at Duke with punter Will Monday. The Blue Devils’ current incoming freshman class has four four-star prospects, including Cutcliffe’s first signee ranked in the ESPN300.
BURSTING ONTO THE NATIONAL SCENE Duke’s young nucleus developed through a trial by fire, resulting in back-to-back 3-9 seasons in 2010 and 2011. After nearly tasting bowl eligibility in 2009, Cutcliffe’s vision of turning the Blue Devils into ACC champions had taken a serious hit. “There were two bad seasons where it was just tough to battle through it and believe in what we were trying to do,” Brown said. “When you go 3-9 two seasons in a row it really makes you start to wonder whether you’re going to get there. Coach Cut never stopped believing and that just rubbed off on all of us.” The 2012 Blue Devils played with renewed confidence, jumping out to a 5-1 start in early October. After blowing a 20-point lead on the road in Blacksburg, Duke had a chance to reach bowl eligibility for the first time in 18 years against arch rival North Carolina. Despite squandering a nine-point fourth-quarter lead, the Blue Devils completed their Cinderella story when wide receiver Jamison Crowder reeled in a 5-yard touchdown pass from Renfree with 13 seconds remaining to send fans spilling out of the stands at Wallace Wade Stadium. Duke lost its last five games of the 2012 season and allowed a win in the Belk Bowl to slip through its grasp against Cincinnati. A taste of success allowed the Blue Devils to reassess their goals—six wins was good enough
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to reach a bowl game, but a 6-7 finish still left a sour taste in their mouth. “We had to change our perception to know that we could beat anyone at anytime,” Brown said. “A few years ago if we got down, made a big mistake and the other team had a chance to turn the game around we didn’t know how to respond to that. Now we don’t let momentum take over our game. We control momentum.” Off to a slow 2-2 start in 2013, the Blue Devils faced a virtual must-win when they went on the road to face Virginia. Falling behind 22-0 early, Duke put its confidence on full display and seized control of the momentum, scoring 35 unanswered points to keep its season alive. But of course, the season’s defining moment came the next week in Blacksburg. Six years after dominating the Hokies and letting one slip away, the Blue Devils toppled thenNo. 16 Virginia Tech 14-10, recording its first road win against a ranked team since 1971 and becoming bowl eligible in consecutive years for the first time in program history. “That was the program-changer,” Brown said. “We beat a team that we were never supposed to beat in a hostile environment. Against all odds, we stood up and won the game, and that’s when we realized that we can beat every team that we play and there’s never a reason to think otherwise.” The Blue Devils finished the 2014 regular season on an eight-game winning streak, recording the program’s first-ever 10-win season. Ranked in the top 25 for the first time in 19 years, Duke won the ACC’s Coastal Division and made its first appearance in the ACC championship game, falling to eventual national champion Florida State. Duke’s ultimate prize that season was a trip to the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta, taking on No. 20 Texas A&M on New Years Eve in front of a sold out Georgia Dome—a game televised nationally by ESPN in an unopposed time slot. The Blue Devils pushed 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel to his limit before ultimately falling 52-48. Cutcliffe earned five different National Coach of the Year awards for his efforts in 2013, and though the bowl loss left the Blue Devils with yet another bitter ending, the nation was finally forced to admit that Duke football had arrived.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
You don’t have to like football to understand what a successful football program has
done for Duke. The effects of the program’s rise transcend division titles, bowl appearances and a re-energized student body. Five years after the Blue Devil football program turned nearly a $1 million loss in 2006, Duke profited $4.9 million from football in 2011, according to that year’s edition of the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis. The program generated $21.9 million in revenue that season, more than twice its earnings in 2006. The Blue Devils spent $17 million on football during that season, which ranked 11th out of the ACC’s 15 schools. “Basketball at Duke is as good as it gets, but at the preponderance of athletic departments in the country, football is the golden goose that generates the money,” Alleva said. “It was a huge opportunity cost lost by not having a good football program.” The Blue Devils now have two golden eggs in their nest. Duke earned a $1.7 million payout from its participation in the 2012 Belk Bowl and a $3.975 million payout from the 2013 Chick-filA Bowl, and future bowl trips could serve to pad the Blue Devil football program’s revenuegenerating potential. Profits from football programs across the country often serve to fund their respective institution’s Olympic sports, which are often costly and almost never profitable. Duke’s football success comes at a time when the University is making a number of facilities improvements for several Olympic sports through the Duke Forward campaign. In 2014, the University announced its plan to add softball as a 27th varsity program in 2018 and add a slew of scholarships to a number of women’s athletic programs. White said that although those financial decisions come from a variety of revenue
sources—which are primarily television contracts—football’s success does both directly and indirectly serve to assist Duke’s Olympic sports. White noted that football’s financial uptick is only in its beginning stages. Following the team’s success in 2013, season ticket sales for the 2014 season are already up 40 percent. “Maybe we move from a negligible investment, to a moderate investment, to a mean investment within the ACC,” he said. “If we’re a mean investment and we’ve won the Coastal Division championship, which we did, and we’re projected to be a pretty strong contender this year, we’re getting what they would call at Fuqua a pretty good return on investment.” Duke football’s success has also served to re-energize the program’s alumni giving base. When the Yoh Football Center was financed in the late 1990s, Duke fielded more than 750 private donations in addition to Spike and Mary Yoh’s principle $5.5 million gift. More than half of the 750 donations came from former Duke football players. Following the team’s successful run, alumni from all walks of life are lining up to support the Blue Devils as they look to defend their first division title. “We’re seeing a fairly dramatic and important shift of people beginning to believe that Duke can be very competitive in football,” said Tom Coffmann, executive director of the Iron Dukes. “That’s a mental thing that we have great hopes will continue to translate in people investing financially.”
SUSTAINING SUCCESS Getting there was hard enough. Staying there will be even harder. Duke won’t be surprising the rest of the ACC when it takes the field for the 2014 season. Instead, the Blue Devils will need to get
used to having a target on their backs. Rwabakumba said that one of the keys for Duke to stay competitive in the ACC is for the team to not forget its humble beginnings. Following back-to-back bowl trips, the players who suffered through 3-9 seasons are graduating and being replaced by players who wear division championship rings. A culture of losing is being replaced by a culture of winning—which is a good thing, unless it breeds complacency. It is on Blue Devils’ young talent, which played a key role in the team’s 2014 Cinderella run, to maintain that hunger and intensity. “They don’t know about when Duke football was bad,” Rwabakumba said. “All they know is winning. They think Duke goes to bowl games every year. They don’t know the days of 0-12 and 1-11 and having 75-yard fields and having 10,000 people at a home game. They know bowl games and ESPN games and beating Carolina every year.” Fields didn’t think that would be difficult for his team to keep its competitive fire lit. The cornerback still sees Duke as the perpetual underdog until the Blue Devils prove they have staying power atop the ACC. “We’re still Duke football. It’s been decades of not having any respect,” he said. “We’re not necessarily a joke anymore like people used to think we were, but we’re still going to come out and people aren’t going to expect much from us. We still need to continue to go out and earn it.” In some ways, the national perception of Duke football has changed significantly since last year’s trip to the Chick-fil-A Bowl. USA TODAY ranked the Blue Devils 17th in the country heading into the 2014 campaign, which was higher than they were ranked all of last season. Still, a number of media outlets’ early projections are picking Duke to finish as low as fifth in the ACC’s Coastal Division. Six years removed from a resuscitation project, there is still major work to be done. More facility upgrades to finish. An elusive ACC championship to chase. Solidifying the national perception that the days of Duke football as a national laughing stock are long gone. Which is why Fields doesn’t mind having his team enter 2014 with an axe to grind. The only thing more dangerous than an underdog playing with a chip on its shoulder is a good team playing with a chip on its shoulder. “To this day we still don’t get the respect that I think we deserve,” Fields said. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing—that’s just more motivation for us. We have the pieces to really do some damage.” TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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Read expanded profiles online at www.dukechronicle.com/towerview.
watchlist people at Duke you should keep an eye out for freshman center, duke basketball
jahlil okafor SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
You won’t have to do much watching for Okafor. This 7-footer has a knack for standing out. As one of the most polished big men ever to enter the college game, Okafor has the chance to be one of the nation’s premiere players as a freshman and lead the Blue Devils to a national title.
east campus dean
lb bergene
Hers is the one weekly email blast from which freshmen can’t unsubscribe. Entering her 11th year as Associate Dean for East Campus Housing, Dining and Residence Life, Bergene’s pride and joy is the first-year experience. Her biggest piece of advice for incoming students? “Choose your own Duke.”
YUYI LI
nasher curator
trevor schoonmaker
The new chief curator at the Nasher Museum of Art, Schoonmaker is tasked with bringing both local and globally-renowned art to the corner of Campus and Alexander. With experience in both classic and contemporary art and an emphasis on diversity, Schoonmaker is set to bring the Nasher a new sense of flair.
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
owner of shooters
IZZI CLARK
kim cates
One of the first things freshmen learn during Orientation week— the fastest route to get to Shooters II Saloon, the popular bar and dance club run by Cates. Although the bar has a love-hate relationship with Duke students, one thing is for certain—it is run by one of Durham’s most vivacious and notorious characters. Omlette aficionado. Fashion guru. Sage of wisdom. All of these things have been said to describe Burrows, who is one of the East Campus Marketplace’s most memorable employees. If you don’t know him by the end of your first month as a freshman, you don’t really go to Duke.
DARBI GRIFFITH
marketplace employee
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wallace burrows, jr. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
provost
sally kornbluth
JESÚS HIDALGO
At a time where Duke is undergoing several administrative changes and opening its first campus abroad, Kornbluth may just have the most important job on campus. The former vice dean of basic science will begin her first year as Duke’s provost responsible for overseeing the opening of Duke Kunshan University and promoting the University’s well-publicized initiative of “interdisciplinarity.”
dean of undergraduate studies
steve nowicki
ABBY FARLEY
The bridge to all things academic, extracurricular and social, Nowicki is not your average Duke administrator. Aside from his responsibilities, you can find one of Duke’s most colorful personalities teaching freshman biology, surfing the Blue Devil with the pep band and hanging out at the Marketplace. His next task: revamping Duke’s advising system.
lavanya sunder SHANEN GANAPATHEE
dsg president
From bikes to food trucks, it is hard to find someone who cares about the experience of Duke students more than Sunder. The junior and creator of Duke’s popular “Fix My Campus” platform is taking on a new role as Duke Student Government president this Fall.
editor of the chronicle
carleigh stiehm
The incoming editor-in-chief of The Chronicle’s 110th volume, Stiehm has the difficult task of running one of Duke’s largest student organizations and managing the 24-hour news cycle all at the same time. Despite these responsibilities, she still finds time to monogram everything in the newspaper’s office. VICTOR YE
women’s center director
stephanie helms pickett The new face of Few Tower, Helms Pickett was named the director of the Women’s Center at Duke last April. A professor, published author and scholar of feminism and religion, she says that the most impactful functions of the 25-year-old women’s center are advocacy and social justice.
FILE PHOTO
TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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duke dictionary • (n.) :
from FDOC to LDOC, your guide to Duke’s confusing lingo.
by Hailey Cunningham
K-ville \krzyzewskiville\ ABP \au bon pain\ • (n.) : • (n.) :
Au Bon Pain. A staple in any coed’s diet with sandwiches and soups galore.
PUMP • (n.) :
fall break \oct. 10-14\ • (n.) :
The coldest and dirtiest place on campus where you create the most beautiful memories. Grab Time off during the worst part of your tent, your face paint, your your semester, and your new best closet friends, and tell your parfriend (see Unexpected Snow ents to watch for you on TV. Days).
FDOC \first day of classes\ • (n.) :
your own, first visit to Shooters and first chance to snag photos with the new class of basketball players.
LDOC \last day of classes\ • (n.) :
First Day of Classes, where ev- Last Day of Classes. The only ery freshman is “nervous, but ex- time it’s ever acceptable to wander around campus with one shoe cited.” food points \food\ • (n.) : on and a suspicious liquid in your Sigg water bottle. The magical online account that pays for your meals (see Not Real mad hatter • (n.) : Money). Not just a character from Alice in Wonderland, but a café with good flex points \flex\ • (n.) : food, good study space and meMoney for laundry, Solo cups and diocre WiFi. other things that you still want to charge to MP \the marketplace\ • your Bursar account. (n.) :
The place under Marketplace. Your one-stop shop for cereal, junk food and energy drinks when you have that unfinished midterm paper due tomorrow morning.
SLG \selective living group\ • (n.) : Think of all of the people who would show up to your family reunion (your hipster cousin, your brainy sister, your drunk uncle, etc.) and you might begin to get a glimpse into all of the different SLG personalities.
vondy \vdh\ • (n.) : Von der Heyden Pavilion attached to Perkins Library. The place to see and be seen when you want to (pretend to) study.
Marketplace, the freshmen watering hole. It’s not the worst food waduke \washington you’ve ever had (see Marketplace duke inn\ • (n.) : Halfway Through Second Semes- Where to have your parents (and/ A system that will take you all of ter), but it’s far from the best. or upperclassmen friends with an O-Week to master, but that you’ll overabundance of food points) have to explain to your parents netid \du2018\ • (n.) : take you so you can remember every semester for the next four The entryway to everything you what real food tastes like. years. hate: printing, checking your full duke \full-duke\ • grades and paying tuition.
flex v. food points \¿food or flex?\ • (n.) :
(adj.) :
o-week \orientation\ • (n.) :
wns \wednesday night shooters\ • (n.) :
The freshman that shows up on campus the first day bedecked in Wednesday Night Shooters. Begear (even his socks are covered Orientation Week for all freshmen. cause we are typically too ashamed in little blue Devils). It’s full of firsts: first time living on to say the whole thing on a Thursday.
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