Working@Duke June/July, 2011 Issue

WORKING@DUKE n NEWS YOU CAN USE n Volume 6, Issue 5 n June-July 2011

INSIDE

Parking Permits Save on Fitness Clubs Create a Website

Hot Off the Shelf Reinventing Employee Communications at Duke

Editor’s Note

Contents

LEANORA MINAI Leanora.Minai@duke.edu

Parking Permit Renewal

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ith this issue of Working@Duke, the publication evolves to take a news magazine format, the first redesign since the award-winning publication launched in 2006.

The new format is part of Duke’s ongoing efforts to continually adjust and align internal communications to meet the needs of faculty and staff. Significant enhancements have been made in employee communications with the new version of the Duke Today website, which now includes a “Working@Duke” section. [Read about the new Duke Today on Page 6.]

The new Working@Duke section enables us to provide more frequent news and information you’ve come to enjoy in the print publication – in real-time. With more daily workforce news online, the printed Working@Duke will be published six times a year instead of 10. If you are a regular reader of Duke Today and only get your news online, there’s a new way for you to stop or re-start delivery of the print publication.

[Visit hr.duke.edu/optout].

Despite a growing online audience, the print publication continues to have high readership.

According to an April readership survey, 77 percent of respondents said they read the print publication each month. In a separate communications survey in March, only 31 percent said they visit the Duke Today website more than once a week. Because of that gap, we can’t only rely on the website for reaching you.

“There’s a huge gap there of people who wouldn’t be exposed to information we want them to know about if we pushed all of our information to only online,” said Paul Grantham, assistant vice president for Communication Services.

From time to time, we get inquiries about the print publication’s cost. Recent changes have cut the cost by 55 percent, reducing the annual expense from $66,000 last year to $29,500 today.

Whether you visit Working@Duke online or flip through it in print, you will always find news you can use in your work and life at Duke.

If you have feedback or ideas for the Working@Duke website or print publication, 2 䡲 Working@ Duke please share them with us.

On June 13, permit renewal begins for faculty and staff. Costs will remain unchanged for most this year but expect increases in 2012.

Cover: Reinventing Employee Communications at Duke The new version of the Duke Today website has launched with News and Working@Duke sections, and the printed Working@Duke will be published every other month.

Duke Fitness Club Offers Discounts More than 2,800 individuals have taken advantage of discount memberships to fitness facilities, including Tim Dotson who lost 50 pounds.

12 13 14 15

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Bella Bean delivers fresh produce to employees

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Create a Website with Duke WordPress

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Duke employee discount leads to magical moment

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Learning to lead sustainability efforts at work

2009, 2008, 2007 Gold Medal, Internal Periodical Staff Writing 2009, 2007 Bronze Medal, Print Internal Audience Tabloids/Newsletters

PRINT FSC IN C50, M30, Y90, K45

Briefly

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Self-service postal kiosk comes to Duke Clinic By late summer, faculty and staff will be able to take care of many postal needs at any hour at a selfservice kiosk in Duke Clinic.

The kiosk will replace the post office retail station in the Duke Clinic Green Zone lower level near Medical Records. The kiosk will allow customers to buy postage, price mailing options and mail parcels. Only credit and debit cards are accepted.

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Music in the Gardens Music will fill the air each Wednesday in June and July at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Duke Performances is sponsoring seven outdoor rock and folk concerts and two indoor chamber music programs at the Gardens. Performances include Fight the Big Bull, Holy Ghost Tent Revival, The Parkington Sisters and the Ciompi Quartet. Duke faculty and staff can purchase discount tickets ($5 instead of $10) for each performance.

Children 12 and under are admitted at no charge.

“It’s really enjoyable to sit on a blanket on a warm evening, have a glass of wine, and listen to great local music,” said Emily Dings, managing editor at Duke University Press. “It’s a treat to have this concert series be so affordable.”

Purchase tickets from the University Box Office in the Bryan Center, online at tickets.duke.edu, or by calling (919) 684-4444.

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Be prepared for severe weather The North Atlantic 2011 hurricane season begins June 1 and lasts through Nov. 30. Duke emergency officials urge faculty and staff to review Duke’s severe weather policy as well as individual service category to ensure employees understand their roles and responsibilities if Duke declares severe weather or an emergency condition.

Service categories include essential, reserve and delayed. Essential service employees are required to report to or remain at work; reserve service will be assigned at the time of the event; and delayed service employees do not report to or remain at work.

More information about the policy is available at emergency.duke.edu. In the event of severe weather, employees should monitor the website or call (919) 684-INFO for updates.

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University pay increases take effect in July

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University faculty and staff eligible for performancebased pay increases will see pay increases beginning with July paychecks.

The university has balanced budgetary challenges from the economic downturn by only providing $1,000 lump-sum payments to staff making $50,000 or less in 2009, and $80,000 or less in 2010.

“Over the past few years, as we’ve tried to reduce the university budget by $100 million, we faced the challenge of investing in salaries or in benefits, and we chose to maintain our investment in our benefits,” said Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president for Human Resources. “We are pleased that this year, we can once again offer the option for performance-based merit increases, but this is a balancing act that we will continue to face in future years.”

In compliance with the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), Duke has updated its Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action statement.

The revised statement adds “genetic information” to the categories for which Duke specifically prohibits discrimination or harassment. Other categories include race, religion, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex and age.

GINA protects against discrimination based on genetic information when no symptoms of a disease are present. For example, employers cannot deny employment or charge a higher health premium if someone discovers they are genetically at high risk of breast cancer but is symptom free.

“GINA is a big step forward in non-discrimination law,” said Lauren A. Dame, associate director for Duke’s Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy. “It means people can take advantage of the advances in genomic science without worrying that the information will be used against them.”

Employees with questions or concerns about GINA should contact the Office for Institutional Equity at (919) 684-8222.

Non-discrimination categories updated

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Parking permit renewal begins

Most fees unchanged but costs to rise next summer

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hile nearly all Duke parking permit rates won’t increase this year, permit prices will rise beginning next summer as costs for providing and maintaining parking facilities on a growing campus continue

to increase.

Duke officials ask students, faculty and staff to consider alternative transportation options to save money on commuting and parking and also to help Duke move toward becoming carbon neutral as part of its Climate Action Plan.

As of Jan. 1, figures show that Duke students, faculty and staff own about 27,000 permits for parking at Duke, while only 1,300 community members are registered to travel to Duke using an alternative option. That means less than 5 percent of registered commuters are using alternative transportation such as biking, carpooling or riding the bus to Duke.

“Most of our students, faculty and staff are traveling to Duke by themselves, and we should focus on how to reduce that group to ease congestion on and around campus,” said Sam Veraldi, director of Parking and Transportation Services. “Duke has subsidized parking and transportation for a long time, and the upward pressure of costs and reduction of subsidies will force Duke to have a new business model for Parking and Transportation Services.”

Veraldi said his department has been developing transit strategies and examining Duke’s permit rates and structures to ensure they are equitable and address increasing parking and transit costs next year. For example, he said, one of the cheapest campus parking permits costs customers $6.80 per month but costs Duke nearly an additional $50 per space each month to lease. Parking and Transportation also cover the cost of Duke’s own transportation systems, like Duke buses.

Changing the way people commute to Duke is a big part of the university’s Climate Action Plan, which calls to reduce the number

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of single occupancy vehicles on campus by about 1,400 vehicles by 2012. With parking permit renewal taking place through July, Duke community members have a chance to try other commuting options to save time and money.

Duke offers incentives like up to 24 free individual daily parking passes and emergency rides home through Triangle Transit for community members who bike, carpool or join a vanpool. Duke also offers bus passes up to 60 percent off, and there’s the fare-free Bull City Connector.

“When we announce an increase to permit prices next July, we want to make sure we have options available for those who can’t absorb an increase and would prefer alternative transportation,” Veraldi said. “It’s a continued effort to lower Duke’s carbon footprint and ease traffic congestion on and around campus.” 䡲

BY BRYAN ROTH

How to Renew Permit renewal begins for employees June 13. Because nearly all permits expire on Aug. 15, there is no action required by faculty and staff who pay by payroll deduction and don’t plan to change their permit. A permit’s expiration date is printed on the bottom of the placard.

New permits are mailed to an employee’s listed address with Parking and Transportation, which is most commonly their home address. For more information, to update account information and to learn how to change a permit, visit parking.duke.edu/parking/permits.

go online

For alternative transit options, visit parking.duke.edu

Employee Athletic Pass sales maxed out for the 2010 football season, which featured a home game against the University of Alabama. This year, Pac-10 and Orange Bowl champion Stanford University will play at Wallace Wade Stadium.

Get in the Game Faculty and staff can purchase the Employee Athletic Pass at goduke.com or by calling the ticket office at (919) 681-2583.

Schedules Here’s the home schedule for Duke football. (The 2011-12 regular season schedule for the women’s basketball team has not been announced, but it starts in November).

Sept. 3: University of Richmond

Cheer on Duke with the Employee Athletic Pass

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or Bill LeFevre, the deal was too good to pass up.

After learning about the Duke Employee Athletic Pass two years ago, LeFevre used the faculty and staff discount program to buy steeply discounted football tickets, as well as tickets to women’s basketball games. As a fan of the back-to-back ACC champion women’s basketball team, LeFevre and his wife, Polly, never miss a chance to watch the Blue Devils play at home in Cameron Indoor Stadium with friends.

“It’s a great team, and we like the way Joanne McCallie has developed the program,” said LeFevre, executive director of Sarah P. Duke Gardens. “We just really like the crowd at games, and you can’t beat the price.”

Duke faculty and staff can now purchase the 2011-12 Employee Athletic Pass to all home football and women’s basketball games.

The football season kicks off Sept. 3 when Duke hosts the University of Richmond; the

go online

women’s basketball team starts its 2011-12 regular season in November.

As part of the annual Employee Athletic Pass, presented by the Duke Credit Union, employees can save $560 on a family season ticket plan for football that includes four tickets to each home game for $280. A single season ticket is $140, a savings of $70 from the regular price. Each extra seat added to either plan costs $70 each. All employee pass seats are in sections 7 to 10 of Wallace Wade Stadium, which span from the 35 to 50-yard lines. The employee pass for all home women’s basketball games is $50; tickets are general admission.

By August of last year, Duke Athletics sold out of the Employee Athletic Pass at 4,000.

“We believe that the Employee Athletic Pass is one of the best deals in all of college athletics and certainly in the ACC,” said Mike Forman, assistant director of marketing and promotions for Duke

For more athletics information, visit goduke.com

(Save the date for the Duke Employee Kick-Off Celebration)

Sept. 10: Stanford University Sept. 24: Tulane University Oct. 15: Florida State University Oct. 22: Wake Forest University Oct. 29: Virginia Tech Nov. 19: Georgia Tech

Athletics. “For only $10 per ticket per game with our family pass, Duke employees can enjoy the game-day football atmosphere – the Blue Devil team walk, inflatable games, live music and face painting in Blue Devil Alley which all culminates with great games in Wallace Wade Stadium. Fans also get the chance to watch one of the best women’s basketball teams in the country on the cheap too.”

In addition to 2011 games against ACC foes like Florida State and Virginia Tech, Duke football will also host Stanford University, which features 2010 Heisman Trophy runner-up Andrew Luck, a secondteam All-American quarterback in 2010.

As an Employee Athletic Pass ticket holder, fans also have exclusive opportunities to buy tickets to men’s basketball games. Athletic Pass holders also receive one free gift item per ticket, like a hat or T-shirt. 䡲

BY BRYAN ROTH

today.duke.edu/working 䡲

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Cover Story

Reinventing Employee Communications at Duke

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homasena Johnson turns to the Working@Duke publication for employee news and information.

“I like holding it and flipping through it and looking at all the pictures,” said Johnson, a financial analyst in Facilities Management. “It’s easier for me to read a whole article rather than having to scroll down on a computer.”

Helena Knox, on the other hand, goes online for updates.

“I have a lot of papers on my desk, and I’m an anti-hoarder, so more paper makes me feel like I’m overwhelmed – even if it’s Working@Duke, which is beneficial to me,” said Knox, a Duke University Press marketing specialist.

Johnson and Knox – with their contrasting preferences – represent the diverse audiences at Duke who take advantage 6

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of various tools for staying informed about benefits, services, policy decisions and more.

Duke faculty and staff now have even better ways for finding and sharing news. In April, the new version of the Duke Today website launched with News and Working@Duke sections, both with social networking tools, topic customization and a larger selection of real-time news from across the university. With this month’s issue, the Working@Duke print publication evolves to take a news magazine format published every other month. The changes are part of Duke’s ongoing efforts to continually adjust and align internal communications to meet the needs of faculty and staff.

Both the Duke Today website and the printed Working@Duke were launched in 2006 after a Duke-wide committee assessed internal

communications across the university. In its 2004 report, the committee wrote that “many members of the Duke community now feel overloaded with email messages, newsletters, and other information while, at the same time, feeling uninformed about developments that affect their lives.”

“When Duke Today and Working@Duke were introduced in 2006, they set a new standard for internal communications in higher education,” said Michael Schoenfeld, Duke's vice president for public affairs and government relations. "This approach allowed us to better represent the breadth of intellectual endeavor across the university, as well as the benefits and resources of interest to faculty and staff.

“But five years is an eternity in communications, and the landscape has transformed significantly with the emergence of social media, internet-connected devices and mobile applications.”

A March 2011 communications survey conducted with 1,200 faculty and staff illustrates the changing communications landscape at Duke. A majority of faculty and staff report using the social networking site Facebook, and most said they now carry a mobile device that can access the internet.

“

The print publication brings information together for people and is more suited for longer contextual stories with background about what’s going on at Duke and why .”

— Paul Grantham, assistant vice president for the Office of Communication Services

“We are no longer just pushing information to people,” said Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president for Human Resources. “We are interacting with them through social networking tools and using communication to build and foster community at Duke.”

Launched on April 20, the new Duke Today website includes the News section that focuses on academic and research news and activities, and the Working@Duke section that focuses on daily information faculty and staff can use in their work and lives at Duke – updates on benefits, services, programs, policies, as well as stories about the people who work here.

The Working@Duke section serves as a community commons, where employees can start a conversation or join one through Facebook or Twitter, or by posting a comment on a story. There are opportunities to engage by submitting story ideas, professional news and photos or by participating in polls. There are also useful selfservice links to complete transactions, or search the Duke directory – all through the “My Accounts & Services” tab, as well as areas for dining, classifieds and highlights from the campus calendar.

One of the most popular features of the new Duke Today site is the ability for readers to better track the news that most interests them. Readers can customize the topics they want to follow from

go online

Visit Duke Today Working@Duke at today.duke.edu/working

40 categories, ranging from “natural sciences” to “discounts,” and they can follow these stories in “My Headlines” or send them to an RSS reader, such as iGoogle.

“This is reflective of the sheer volume of content being produced across Duke,” said Paul Grantham, assistant vice president for Communication Services. “It is really a comprehensive look, by topic, of what is happening at Duke and where Duke is being featured in the external news as well.”

Duke Today also features access to more than 4,000 videos from Duke on Demand, the university's video site, and a “Gallery” section with polls and others multimedia features such as slideshows and videos.

Changes At A Glance Working@Duke Publication 䡲 Magazine format 䡲 Delivered every other month to campus mailboxes 䡲 In-depth, context 䡲 “One-stop shop” 䡲 Integrated with “Working@Duke” section on Duke Today

Duke Today “Working@Duke” 䡲 䡲 䡲 䡲 䡲 䡲

Online Daily news, information Social networking tools Customizable topics, headlines Multimedia Submit ideas, photos, professional news

“I think the new Duke Today is great,” Rosemarie Schuler, a nuclear medicine technologist whose office is on North Duke Street, wrote to the Duke Today editorial team. “I work offsite, so I do not have access to all the information that flows around Duke and the campus. There is so much information – it’s like reading the Sunday paper with all its different sections. What a wonderful, new innovative idea.”

Grantham and David Jarmul, associate vice president for news and communications, led the team that created the new site. Geoffrey Mock is editor of the News section, and Leanora Minai is editor of the Working@Duke section. Duke Web Services, part of Duke’s Office of Information Technology, designed and built the site.

Simultaneously, along with the creation of the Working@Duke section of Duke Today, the award-winning print publication has undergone its first redesign since its 2006 launch. It is now a magazine format, providing faculty and staff with news in “one stop” with compelling visuals, information graphics and context around decisions and issues that affect their work and life.

“The print publication brings information together for people and is more suited for longer contextual stories with background >> continued on page 8

today.duke.edu/working 䡲

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How We Stay Con

NEWSPAPER

Print

By The N

Working@Duke: publication for university faculty and staff distributed every other month

77% of employees read

Working@Duke

Web

Duke Today Working@Duke: daily online news site (today.duke.edu/working)

25,682 unique visits

to the Duke Today Working@Duke section during its first week

Mobile

Duke Mobile: a suite of applications for iPhones, Android and Blackberry phones to browse campus events calendar, campus map, sports scores and top videos

60,778 downloads of

Duke Mobile app since launch

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Nearly 1,200 faculty and staff comp internal communications at Du

92% 61% 61% 84%

Use internet daily at work Have a mobile device that can access the internet Use Facebook Visit Duke Today each week

Continued from page 7

about what’s going on at Duke and why,” Grantham said.

“Our online tools allow us to communicate in a timelier and more direct manner with people, but the stream of content moves quickly and not everyone is seeing it.”

Though the format has changed, the editorial guideline of the print publication remains the same: useful content that connects faculty and staff with information they need to make decisions. With more daily workforce news online, the printed Working@Duke will be published six times a year instead of 10.

There’s also a new way for faculty and staff who only get their news online to stop or re-start delivery of the print publication.

[Visit www.hr.duke.edu/optout for more information].

Grantham said that although trends point to growing online communications, the print publication continues to have higher readership among faculty and staff. Without it, he said, “important messages wouldn’t get to many people. We would miss a large percentage of the population.”

According to the April 2011 readership survey of the Working@Duke print publication, 77 percent of respondents said they read the publication each month; in the March communications survey, only 31 percent said they visited Duke Today online more than once a week.

nnected at Duke Social Networks

Numbers

pleted a survey in March 2011 about uke. Here are some highlights:

81%

Cite benefits news as the top topic of interest

63%

Cite services as the second top topic of interest

63%

Use the Working@Duke print publication as a primary source of news, updates

Facebook (facebook.com/workingatduke) Twitter (twitter.com/workingatduke) YouTube (youtube.com/workingatduke) Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/workingatduke) RSS (today.duke.edu/rss-feeds)

61% of employees use Facebook

Email “There’s a huge gap there of people who wouldn’t be exposed to information we want them to know about if we pushed all of our information to only online,” Grantham said.

He said that cost is often mentioned when talking about print publications, but recent changes have helped cut the cost of the publication by 55 percent, reducing the annual cost from $66,000 in 2010 to $29,500 today.

“The print publication only costs about 25 cents a copy,” Grantham said. “About the only thing you can buy for a quarter anymore is a gumball. Based on the high readership for the publication, we’re getting a pretty good return on our investment.”

He pointed to a recent data point: most employees – 82 percent of readers in 2010 – said they find the print publication beneficial. Among those readers is Thomasena Johnson, the financial analyst in Facilities Management.

She values benefits, sustainability and wellness news.

“It helps me feel connected to Duke, which is a very large institution with various areas and departments,” she said.

“It is very informative and readable.” 䡲 BY

go online

LEANORA MINAI

Visit Duke Today Working@Duke at today.duke.edu/working

The Week at Duke: weekly email newsletter featuring news from around Duke

86% of employees read or skim

The Week at Duke each week

In Person

Primetime: employee quarterly forum to hear directly from senior administrators and ask questions about important issues

4,500 people watched the April

forum online or on-site

LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE COMMUNICATION CHANNELS AT TODAY.DUKE.EDU/SUBSCRIBE today.duke.edu/working 䡲

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Duke Fitness Club Locations

Duke Fitness Club helps fitness center skeptic lose 50 pounds

Duke University 䡲 Duke Health and Fitness Center 䡲 Wilson and Brodie Recreation Centers

Oxford 䡲 Bodyworx Aerobics and Fitness Center

Raleigh 䡲 Gold's Gym 䡲 Duke Raleigh Hospital Wellness Center 䡲 HealthTrax Fitness

Durham Tim Dotson exercises regularly at Fitness World.

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im Dotson had never set foot in a fitness club.

That changed last year after he took Duke’s online health risk assessment and learned his weight, blood pressure and body mass index were too high.

“I figured it was time to stop making excuses,” said Dotson, 54, a clinical pharmacist at Duke. “It just wasn’t logical to throw out the numbers because I didn’t like what I saw.”

Recalling that Duke offered gym discounts, he put aside his skepticism about the exercise industry and looked into the Duke Fitness Club offered through Duke’s employee wellness program, LIVE FOR LIFE. He liked that Duke screens all gyms and that he could stop membership anytime after the first three months.

That flexibility is a hallmark of the Duke Fitness Club, which offers discounts at more than a dozen facilities in nine cities, said Liz Grabosky, fitness program manager for LIVE FOR LIFE. “We want to break down barriers that keep people from exercising and make it easy for them to try something long enough to make it a healthy habit,” she said. “The fitness club is a tangible way that Duke partners with its employees to improve their health.”

Dotson is among nearly 2,800 Duke staff and faculty and family members

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enrolled in the Duke Fitness Club program, which is open to Duke University and Health System faculty and staff and their spouses, same-sex partners and dependents.

After Dotson decided he wanted a regular exercise regimen to lose 70 pounds, he joined a gym near campus so he could exercise after work. He soon found it wasn’t a good fit. “I didn’t like those long, sweaty drives home,” he said. Last summer, he switched to Fitness World near his home in Durham.

Dotson and his wife, Barbara, pay $53 a month for membership, a savings from the regular $66 monthly fee. He exercises three weekdays after work and on weekends. His routine includes 30 to 45 minutes on a treadmill and a series of squats, curls, presses and crunches on weight machines. He pays extra for a weekly session with a personal trainer.

Dotson said he has more strength and stamina, resulting in more confidence when he climbs stairs or carries heavy items. He has run two 5K races in the past year, improving his time from 38 minutes to just over 31.

And, he has lost more than 50 pounds.

“It’s a moral victory every time I throw out another pair of fat pants,” he said.

“I haven’t worn such small clothes since my freshman year of high school.” 䡲

䡲 Gold's Gym 䡲 Fitness World 䡲 Southwind Health and Wellness Center 䡲 Millennium Sports Club 䡲 ZX Fitness (formerly Peak Fitness) 䡲 New Millennium Fitness

Cary 䡲 Gold's Gym

Hillsborough 䡲 New Millennium Fitness 䡲 Orange County SportsPlex

Chapel Hill/Carrboro 䡲 Chapel Hill/Carrboro YMCA

Pittsboro 䡲 Chatham YMCA

Mebane 䡲 New Millennium Fitness

Roxboro 䡲 Total Fitness Center

BY MARSHA A. GREEN

go online

Find out more about the Duke Fitness Club at hr.duke.edu/fitness

New equipment installed at Wilson Recreation Center Renovations to Wilson Recreation Center include about 30 new weight machines, new flooring and a paint job.

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early every weekday for the last 10 years, Pat Marson has spent early mornings before heading into work on treadmills and weight machines at the Wilson Recreation Center.

Beginning in June, Marson and other Duke community members will be using new equipment as Wilson’s 10,000-squarefoot weight room gets a makeover with brand new equipment, flooring and paint job.

“I’m excited to see the end result of the renovations because I’m always using machines and floor mats in the weight room,” said Marson, executive assistant for the vice president of Human Resources. “There is such a variety of things to do, so I’m sure making changes will make the space look better and offer more options for exercise.”

The highlight of the $450,000 renovation, which began in mid-May, includes about 30 new weight machines from Life Fitness. The equipment replaces 10 to 12 year old machines.

New flooring that is easier to mop and clean will be installed, and walls will receive a new coat of Duke blue and grey paint. Cardio equipment – like treadmills, ellipticals and stationary bikes – are leased, so they are not affected by renovations.

Lee Tucker, director of recreation facilities, said replacing the equipment has been a long time coming. It became a priority after discussing the renovations with gym staff and Duke community

go online

Learn more about the Wilson Recreation Center at duke.edu/web/intramural

members who use the gym on a regular basis. Tucker said the new machines – including bench, shoulder and leg presses, among others – will offer a range of lifts and will be split into groupings for beginner, intermediate and expert lifters.

“We didn’t want to leave out anyone who hasn’t worked out before,” Tucker said. “We want to make sure that if someone walked into our gym for the first time, they can feel good about sitting down on a machine and trying something new.”

Following the renovations, faculty and staff have a perfect opportunity to set new fitness goals, said Mary Ann Dobbins, coordinator of personal fitness for both the Brodie and Wilson recreation centers. Benefits-eligible employees receive two free fitness consults each year through LIVE FOR LIFE, Duke’s employee wellness program, to better understand how to exercise safely and create an exercise plan to use new equipment at the center.

Faculty and staff can sign up for discounted membership to Wilson Recreation Center through the Duke Fitness Club.

Individual memberships are $17.33 per month through LIVE FOR LIFE. [See page 10 for related story].

“It’ll be great to have more options for people to try,” Dobbins said. “Any time you can change your exercise routine with new equipment, you will stress your muscles in a different way, which can help improve your overall fitness.” 䡲

BY BRYAN ROTH today.duke.edu/working 䡲

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From local farm to office door

Duke Clinical Research Institute employees joined together to get a discount on the delivery of fresh, local vegetables and products to their office each Tuesday. From left are Chris Meade, Lisa Laws, Elizabeth Wing and Ashley Kelly.

Bella Bean delivers fresh produce to employees

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isa Laws lifted the lid and dug through the box containing leafy vegetables and honey-flavored yogurt.

“Yum,” she said. “This all smells so fresh.”

Ashley Kelly pulled purple sweet potatoes from her box. “Oh, you’ll love those,” Laws told her. “I got them last week, cooked them up with butter and even my teenager loved them.”

Laws and Kelly are among nearly two dozen Duke Clinical Research Institute employees who participate in an office delivery service of produce and other fresh foods through Bella Bean Organics. The company, which participates in Duke’s Mobile Farmers Market, purchases local and organic vegetables, baked goods, meats and dairy products from local farmers and vendors and delivers them to homes or Duke offices each Tuesday.

Bella Bean customers sign up for the service online and can select from two options: the standard box of seasonal items ($25.49 plus delivery fee), or a box customized to fit tastes and preferences. Bella Bean offers a sweet deal to groups that coordinate delivery. If four or more

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boxes are delivered to one location, each person in the group pays 99 cents instead of the $3.99 delivery fee.

The DCRI Clinical Operations group members signed-up after Gina Streaty, Human Resources manager for the DCRI, sent an email to employees at the North Pavilion location letting them know administrators designated a delivery location at the building, enabling employees to easily take advantage of the deal.

Laws, who helps launch clinical research studies around the world, was attracted to the program because she likes supporting local business and eating organic and chemical-free food. “But the ability to save $3 a week on the delivery really sealed the deal,” she said.

For Kelly, who also launches clinical research studies, the delivery at work was key.

“Last summer I really wanted to eat healthy, but I simply didn’t have a single moment to go to the farmers market,” she said. “Now, it just takes a few moments to order, and I can get something different each week. It is fantastic.” 䡲

BY MARSHA A. GREEN

At a Glance Bella Bean Organics delivers an insulated box of produce to homes or workplaces each Tuesday. To sign up, go online at bellabeanorganics.com or visit hr.duke.edu/farmersmarket.

Cost: $25.49 for a box of seasonal items; customers can customize a box with individual items with a minimum order of $20. A credit card is charged each week for the order, plus a $3.99 delivery fee (99 cents with four or more deliveries to one location).

What’s in the box? Fruits and vegetables, pasture raised meats, cage-free eggs, cheese, fresh baked bread and cookies, prepared soups and salads, preserves and honey from 17 farmers and vendors.

Watch a video at j.mp/bellabean

Free web-publishing service now available to faculty and staff

M

arc Sperber wanted to build more than a website for Duke’s Winter Forum, Pandemic 2011.

He needed an “active learning space,” where about 100 undergraduate students and faculty could interact online using video, photos and real-time blogging, and share their experience with the wider world.

Keeping websites up The space he built – to date improves the using Duke WordPress, a free web-publishing service now availability of information and available to all faculty, staff should lead to a larger awareness and students – drew more than 12,000 pageviews and a and more collaboration.” thousand unique visitors from — Anton Zuiker, communications director 27 different countries. for the Department of Medicine “We received feedback from students and faculty that they enjoyed the real-time and departments, who are able to work blogging and that they found the various within standard Duke WordPress service perspectives on each session valuable and parameters. engaging,” said Sperber, educational Charlotte Clark, a visiting assistant technologies consultant with the Duke professor in the Nicholas School of the Global Health Institute, which sponsored Environment, is looking forward to building the forum. “One thing that is so great about sites for two interdisciplinary faculty groups – WordPress is that you don’t have to be a web one interested in discussing tools and designer or computer programmer to be able methods for qualitative research and another to develop a great-looking site.” focused on food studies.

A Duke-hosted version of the popular “We want to have a more formal web-publishing platform WordPress, Duke presence, to take the next step and produce a WordPress grew out of a pilot last year site both for our own benefit and to recruit through the Duke Digital Initiative for others who might not even know we’re academic course use. there,” Clark said.

“We’re hoping a Now available for non-course uses, the WordPress site will enable us to have a service has about 900 sites and more than broader reach on campus.”

4,000 users. A standard toolkit of themes, She got excited about Duke WordPress plug-ins and configuration options is after teams of Nicholas master’s students available, including Duke-branded themes used it to produce sites based on their designed for use by schools, institutes, centers

“

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Learn more at sites.duke.edu

capstone projects, working with real-world clients to solve a problem such as cookstove implementation in developing countries. “Students can show the site to potential employers, and we can show our students’ work to prospective students,” she said.

For researchers who want to create a web presence to showcase their lab’s work or to share insights from conferences they attend, Duke WordPress offers a good solution, said Anton Zuiker, communications director for the Department of Medicine.

“A frequently updated lab website for posting news and publications can be useful in recruiting postdocs and lab managers, as well as helping departments share the latest information about their faculty,” Zuiker said. “Keeping websites up to date improves the availability of information and should lead to a larger awareness and more collaboration.” 䡲

BY CARA BONNETT

today.duke.edu/working 䡲

13

Duke employee discount leads to

magical moment

J

Jonathan Gallo, compensation analyst in Human Resources, secretly carried an engagement ring to the top of the Empire State Building to surprise his girlfriend, Sarah Mayorga, with a marriage proposal.

PERQS employee discounts

Jewelsmith, Inc. 2200 West Main St. Suite A170 Durham, NC (919) 286-2990

www.jewelsmith.com

14

䡲 Working@Duke

onathan Gallo’s heart raced as he stood arm-in-arm with his girlfriend, gazing at the city lights from the top of the Empire State Building on Christmas Eve. He took a deep breath and sank down on one knee.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

As Sarah Mayorga said yes, Gallo reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a small box containing a diamondencrusted ring.

It was the perfect end to a nervewracking few weeks last December for Gallo, a compensation analyst in Duke Human Resources. “I didn’t want her to know what I was planning,” he said, “so everything had to be kept secret, including the ring.”

Gallo started surreptitiously visiting jewelry shops last November in search of a ring similar to one Mayorga admired on a friend’s finger. “I must have gone to eight or 10 shops and none of them had what I wanted,” he said.

Then he visited Jewelsmith at Erwin Square on Main Street in Durham. The display case didn’t have what he wanted, but the salesperson assured him they could design anything he wanted.

Gallo described the ring of his dreams – a white gold band with inset diamonds holding a larger, circular

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diamond. When he mentioned that he worked at Duke, the salesperson offered a 10 percent discount through PERQS, the Duke employee discount program.

“I was stunned,” Gallo said. “Not only was I getting the perfect ring, but now they were offering a discount that allowed me to get a higher quality diamond without breaking my budget.”

Two weeks before Christmas, the ring was finished, and Gallo faced another challenge: what to do with the jewel until Christmas Eve? “I was terrified of losing it,” he said.

Gallo asked Jewelsmith to hold the ring until the day before he left for New York. The store packaged it in a box small enough to hide in his coat pocket.

“I was nervous that I’d have to show it going through security at the airport and at the Empire State Building,” Gallo said, “but everything worked out perfectly.”

For Mayorga, a doctoral student in sociology at Duke, the evening was magical.

“I was completely surprised, and very touched about how he had been so thoughtful in making all the arrangements,” she said.

Now it’s her turn: she’s arranging the gathering of families for the wedding next June in Durham. 䡲

BY MARSHA A. GREEN

Visit the Duke PERQS at hr.duke.edu/discounts for more savings

Sustainable uke YOUR SOURCE FOR

GREEN

N E W S AT D U K E

Learning to lead sustainability efforts at work

S

oon after attending the “Leading for Environmental Sustainability” workshop, Courtney Stanion led a brainstorming session during a staff meeting to take action on what she had learned.

Within minutes, colleagues agreed to replace an energyguzzling coffee pot, request weather-stripping on office doors and investigate a programmable office thermostat.

“Once we started thinking about this topic, we had lots of ideas to reduce our office energy use,” said Stanion, a safety and health specialist for the Occupational and Environmental Safety Office.

That groundswell of department action is exactly what Casey Roe, outreach coordinator for Sustainable Duke, envisioned when she created the workshop at Duke for faculty and staff.

“We are trying to make it easy for people interested in sustainability to think about how they can influence others,” she said.

Sustainable Duke offers the three-hour class at no charge every three months. The class covers institutional commitments Duke has made to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2024. But it also gives employees the opportunity to share about motivating coworkers to become more environmentally friendly. “Employees are a large part of Duke’s carbon footprint,” Roe said. “Their actions can make a huge difference.”

After completing the class, department representatives are invited to guide their offices through Duke’s new Green Workplace Certification process. This process involves reviewing a checklist of 57 items related to sustainability. Actions include energy conservation efforts, purchasing practices, transportation choices, waste reduction, hosting “green” special events and participating in the monthly Green Devil Challenges. The Sustainable Duke Office recognizes units that report routinely following at least 40 of the 57 actions as a “Green Workplace.”

Participants in the first two “Leading for Sustainability” workshops helped fine-tune the Green Workplace Certification process, and the Sustainability Office plans to foster a competition at the start of the academic year to encourage more staff to participate.

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Visit sustainability.duke.edu

Courtney Stanion, right, safety and health specialist for the Occupational and Environmental Safety Office, writes ideas for energy savings generated by fellow participants during the Leading for Environmental Sustainability class.

Kathy Peterson, administrative assistant in the Office of Divisional Deans, Arts & Sciences, participated in the Jan. 28 workshop and left with a goal of completing the certification this summer. She thinks the hardest part may be getting everyone to take responsibility for turning off computers and peripheral devices when they leave the office.

“A lot of people here work late, so we can’t just go in and turn things off at the end of the day,” she said.

Roe hopes that the class and certification process will help employees like Stanion and Peterson create a network of staff committed to sustainability in the workplace and willing to share ideas, challenges and solutions.

“It helps to know you aren’t doing this on your own,” Roe said. 䡲

BY MARSHA A. GREEN

Get Involved 䡲 Register for the next “Leading for Environmental Sustainability” class on July 27 through hr.duke.edu/training.

Find the class under “Work Skills Development.”

䡲 Join the “sustainable staff” email list at https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/info/sustainablestaff

䡲 Learn more about the Green Workplace Certification and other actions you can take at sustainability.duke.edu/action

today.duke.edu/working 䡲

15

WORKING@DUKE HOW TO REACH US Editor: Leanora Minai (919) 681-4533 leanora.minai@duke.edu Assistant Vice President: Paul S. Grantham (919) 681-4534 paul.grantham@duke.edu Graphic Design & Layout: Paul Figuerado (919) 684-2107 paul.figuerado@duke.edu Senior Writer: Marsha A. Green (919) 684-4639 marsha.green@duke.edu Writer/Videographer: Bryan Roth (919) 681-9965 bryan.roth@duke.edu Photography: Duke University Photography, Office of Communication Services

Working@Duke is published every other month by Duke’s Office of Communication Services. We invite your feedback and story ideas.

Send email to working@duke.edu or call (919) 684-4345.

Don’t forget to visit the “Working@Duke” section daily on Duke Today: today.duke.edu/working

dialogue@Duke “As a Duke employee, what kind of Duke-related news topics do you enjoy reading about?”

“

I like to read news about Duke Athletics, especially the men’s basketball team. I like to keep up with scores and what’s going on with the coaches and players. I’ll usually go to GoDuke.com to read about it. I also like to read medical news on various Duke sites.”

Dalit Halfon Remedy developer, Office of Information Technology 7 months at Duke

“

I graduated from Duke last May, and I’ve done a lot of reflection about college. I like reading pieces about life in general in the student paper, The Chronicle, such as reflections about life that showcase more than what you’d think a student would write about. I appreciate people sharing personal stories about their time at Duke, especially on something they’ve learned that another reader can apply, whether they’re a student, faculty or staff.”

Jesse Huddleston Duke Chapel PathWays Fellow, Office of Durham and Regional Affairs 1 year at Duke

“

One of the things I do for my job is to compile religious news for our website, so I’m very interested in knowing what kind of religious services or activities are going on around campus. I’ll usually look at the Duke.edu homepage. I’m often trying to see what’s going on in advance, so I also like to use the events calendar.”

Melissa Spas Educational resources coordinator, Leadership Education at Duke Divinity 3 years at Duke

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