Bats invade Central Campus

15 Sep 2011, Posted by Patton Callaway in News, 0 Comments

Melissa Dalis/The Chronicle

Unwelcome roommates flocked to Central Campus this summer.

Bats invaded apartments and dorms, forcing students to evacuate temporarily to prevent the transmission of rabies. No strangers to Duke’s campus, these bats proved to be a problem last summer as well. The ominous creatures that usually make an appearance for Halloween celebrations migrate from the Duke Gardens and Durham area from late April through the middle of August. Last summer, they created such a disturbance that Housing, Dining and Residential Life had to evacuate 1914 Lewis during the second summer session.

“We did a lot of preventative maintenance work on the roof and exterior after last summer,” said Assistant Dean for Central Campus Terry Lynch. “The frequency of incidences has definitely gone down.”

Along with the additions to housing, HDRL created a standard protocol for any student who encounters a bat in their dorm. They immediately contact either the office or the RA-on-call and vacate the space. Instead of using Durham Animal Control, Duke now pays a private pest control company to capture the bats.

“We couldn’t predict the timeliness of [Durham Animal Control],” said Lynch. “Sometimes it was one hour, and sometimes it could take them six to eight hours to respond.”

They send the bats to Durham County for rabies testing, and if the results are positive, the student is contacted immediately. However, a student has yet to catch rabies from one of these instances.

Despite these preventative measures, the bats did return again this summer to Central Campus. Late one night, sophomore Peggy Li, who lived on Pace, was surprised to find a bat on top of her suitcase. With help from a neighbor, they captured the bat and released it outside.

“Even after thoroughly searching the rest of room and apartment, I was very jumpy that night and for a few weeks afterward,” Li wrote in an email.

This was the first of three (maybe four) incidences in Li’s apartment alone, and finally HDRL sent a maintenance worker to fix the problem, sealing all gaps where a bat could slip through.

So to all those who plan on staying at Duke for the summer—beware of the bats.

Sophomore Commencement

15 Sep 2011, Posted by Sophia Palenberg in News, 0 Comments

Duke’s first-ever Sophomore Commencement focused on welcoming the class of ’14 back to school and giving them advice on how to optimize their college experience. Loyo was involved.

Duke takes a bite of the apple

14 Sep 2011, Posted by Gloria Lloyd in News, 0 Comments

Tyler Seuc/The Chronicle

Dukies now occupy nearly a third of the top 10 positions in Apple Inc. hierarchy—heralded by the New York Times as the world’s most valuable technology company.

On Sep. 1, new Apple CEO Tim Cook, Fuqua ’88, appointed fellow Duke graduate and former head of iTunes Eddy Cue, Trinity ’86, to the Apple executive board as senior vice president of Internet software and services.  Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams, Fuqua ’91, completes the Blue Devil trifecta among Apple leadership.

Jon Goldstein, executive director of communications and marketing at the Duke Alumni Association, said it makes sense that Apple would look to Duke graduates for its top leadership positions.

“It’s great for Duke, and I think it’ll be great for Apple,” he said. “Apple is a company where innovation is prized, where entrepreneurship is rewarded. You see these characteristics come through in lots of Duke graduates.”

Cook, then chief operating officer, took over as CEO from Steve Jobs in August, when the Fuqua School of Business released a statement that emphasized the “strong relationship” between Duke and Apple and noted that Apple hires a number of Fuqua graduates every year.

When Cook was first appointed as interim CEO during Jobs’s first official medical leave in 2009, Blair Sheppard—dean at the time—told the Chronicle the appointment was “a real coup” for Fuqua, which is a newer business school than many of its peer institutions. When Cook’s generation was attending business school, Fuqua was smaller and less well known.

Goldstein said the qualities Duke graduates gain while on campus set them up for diverse careers and launch them into the professional world.

“[These careers] are all over the map. Finance, certainly government, media, athletics [and] the arts—all of these areas that require an ability to innovate and see the big picture,” she said. “Duke is terrific at cultivating these leadership qualities in students.”

In addition to the Duke leadership cluster in Cupertino, Goldstein noted several other companies that have found particular success hiring Duke graduates.

Although Duke has no journalism department, NBC has hired a notable number of journalists with a Duke education over the past few decades, including former chief legal correspondent Dan Abrams, Trinity ’88, former weekend anchor John Siegenthaler, Trinity ’78, and former White House correspondent and later CNN anchor Judy Woodruff, Trinity ’68.

Duke had the second-most active players in the National Basketball Association in the 2010-11 season. But, what is not as well-known, is that Dukies who have never put on a basketball uniform populate the NBA behind the scenes.

Adam Silver, Trinity ’84, is the second most powerful man in the NBA as deputy commissioner and chief operating officer.

“Duke students have a great reputation in this league,” Silver said to The Chronicle in April.“The number of Duke students who now work in the league is impressive…. It makes me feel great as a Duke alum that we can make such an enormous contribution to the NBA and are so well respected not just on the floor, but in executive positions as well.”

Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, said Duke students have found success in a number of companies and fields.

“The list goes on and on,” Nowicki said. “One of the great pleasures of my current administration position is that I get to go out and meet Duke graduates all throughout the country. I’m always astounded at what interesting and productive lives they lead.”

#Duketrendingup

13 Sep 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, 1 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

If the number of Facebook fans were the criteria for university rankings, Duke would rank 3rd.

Although Duke may have fallen to the 10th spot in the U.S. News rankings, Duke is now more digitally connected than many of the other schools in the top 10, according to data released by Mashable.

Duke has 4,333 Twitter followers, 88,191 Facebook fans and 1,386 YouTube subscribers as of Tuesday. In these three categories, Duke ranks 6th, 3rd and 7th, respectively, among the top 10 universities in U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings.

In the Twitter category, Harvard University has the most followers (66,737), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has the least (781). Duke has more followers than the University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology and MIT.

Harvard also has the most Facebook fans (698,933), followed by Stanford and Duke, respectively—Caltech has the least (7,713).

MIT and Stanford have the most YouTube subscribers—112,216 and 89,041, respectively—which is probably because of their open education software. Duke has more subscribers than Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and Caltech, which only has 302.

Duke falls to 10th in U.S. News and World Report rankings

13 Sep 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Duke is the 10th best university in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings released Tuesday at midnight.

The University dropped one spot from last year when they were ranked 9th and were tied with Dartmouth College and the University of Chicago.

Harvard University and Princeton University tied for the first spot this year, followed by Yale University at 3rd, Columbia University at 4th and California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania all tying for 5th.

According to the data, Duke had the 11th lowest acceptance rate, 13th highest freshman retention rate and 10th highest six-year graduate rate among the ranked universities.

Since 1988, Duke has fluctuated between 3rd and 12th. Duke has remained in the top 10 throughout that entire period, with the exception of 1989 when it placed 12th. Behind that year, Duke’s 2010 and 2012 rankings of 10th are the lowest that the University has seen within the past 25 years.

Pick up Wednesday’s Chronicle for the full story.