If the recession has you hunting for work, Duke is probably not the place to send your resume.
The University is on track to receive 125,000 applications for non-faculty jobs this year, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said.
“And of course, we have no jobs,” he added.
Ken Rogerson, professor of public policy and director of undergraduate studies at the Sanford School of Public Policy, participated in the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog, “Obama on All Channels,” Sept. 23.
Rogerson was one of several professors, presidential speechwriters and authors to comment on President Barack Obama’s frequent media appearances. Posts addressed whether the president is in danger of being overexposed.
In his post, Rogerson noted that Obama is “doing his job.”
“He is out among the citizens—both virtually and physically—promoting his policy agenda, showing support for existing programs and asking us to think hard about political decisions that are being made,” Rogerson wrote.
Rogerson added that still, Obama may be overexposing himself, leading citizens to prioritize consuming other information available to them in the “maze of modern technology.”
He contrasted the surplus of information about Obama and his doings with the author J.D. Salinger’s media shyness, noting it is “interesting” that Salinger’s reclusive behavior has made him more compelling to the public.
“The next time Salinger decides to say something in public, I suspect people will stop to listen,” Rogerson wrote.
Blogger Kevin Davis had speculated earlier that Bill Gates and his wife Melinda French Gates, Trinity ’86 and Fuqua ’87, would be visiting the Durham Public Schools’ Performance Learning Center on West Club Boulevard today.
Turns out he was right.
The couple made a surprise visit to the Center this afternoon. The Gates Foundation also supports similar educational facilities across the country, according to NBC 17.
The appearance marks Trustee Emerita Melinda French Gates’ first public stop in Durham since the dedication of the French Family Science Center at Duke in 2007, but today’s visit is unrelated to this weekend’s Homecoming festivities.
“There won’t be any surprise presentation on the football field,” said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. “It’s up to them if they want to show up.”
Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology, is opening the Duke Canine Cognition Center within the next two weeks. Hare and his team will test hundreds of dogs brought in by eager owners. Time magazine featured the team this week. The Chronicle’s Emily Stern sat down with him to discuss his inspiration for the project.
The Chronicle: How did you get involved studying dogs?
Brian Hare: The short version is that I had dogs as a kid. When I was growing up, my dog’s name was Oreo, and Oreo used to love to play fetch – and he could get three balls in his mouth, and so what that meant was that he would put all his balls on the ground – his slobbery balls on the ground, he would want you to throw all the balls, but sometimes you would throw them in different directions and they would get lost. I had seen that when his balls got lost when you were playing fetch with him that you could tell him where they were and he could go find them.
Later, when I was studying as an undergraduate, I realized together with my adviser that studying dogs would be really interesting because it ends up that they were doing some stuff that primates aren’t doing in terms of using human’s social cues, for instance, paying attention to pointing gestures that I’d seen my dog as a kid doing.
TC: What can canine behavior tell us about human behavior and evolution?
BH: What’s neat about dogs is that they’re all the same species and they’re very closely related genetically, but then they’re very, very different – each breed is very, very different. And so, that’s really fun and interesting because you can compare different breeds and try to understand why they’re different and why they’re similar than other breeds. And if by doing breed comparisons you can try and get an idea of why it is that some dogs can solve problems that other dogs can’t.
Ultimately, what I’m trying to study, as an evolutionary anthropologist, is human evolution, but there are not that many good models, there’s not that many good ways to study animals and understand how evolution changes cognition. So you can study an animal – I studied Chimpanzees and I studied Bonobos, and we study Great Apes, and Great Apes are really interesting and good because they can teach you how were similar and different from them and you can figure out how we changed, meaning what changed. But dogs are really useful because they can tell you how cognition changed, like what’s the process because you can compare lots of different breeds and figure out why it is that they became the way they were because there are so many of them but they’re all so closely related. So, it’s a really nice model for studying behavioral evolution, cognitive evolution, and they’re very unique that way. So it’s very useful, actually.
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The Duke University Police Department has released campus crime numbers for the 2008 calendar year in its annual Clery Security Report, as required by the federal Clery Act.
Duke University 2009 Clery Security Report
The number of robberies reported decreased from seven in 2007 to two in 2008, while the number of reported aggravated assaults increased from three to six. The number of reported burglaries decreased from 65 to 51 and the number of reported motor vehicle thefts decreased from 19 to seven. The number of forcible sex offenses was five, the same as in 2007.
DUPD officials were not available to comment on the report Tuesday.
Reports of crimes committed on and immediately adjacent to Duke’s campus by or against any individual (not just students and staff) are included in the Clery Report, which institutions of higher education are required by federal law to publish each year by Oct. 1. The report excludes incidents that happen away from campus, such as the January 2008 murder of graduate student Abhijit Mahato.
Also included in the report are the number of arrests and referrals made to campus disciplinary authorities for three categories of offenses: liquor law violations, drug law violations and illegal weapon offenses. Referrals included in the report do not come only from Duke Police, but may also be made by residential staff and others.
Ten people were arrested for illegal weapons possession, down from 12 in 2007, and one person was referred to the Office of Student Conduct.
For violating alcohol laws, 320 students were referred to the Office of Student Conduct in 2008, up from 301 in 2007. Ten students were arrested, up from seven in 2007.
Sue Wasiolek, dean of students and assistant vice president for student affairs, said she was unaware of any policy changes by Duke Police or Residence Life and Housing Services that may have contributed to the increase in alcohol violations.
“My hope is that what these numbers reflect is also a wider and longer safety net, either with students calling in things or with community members making us aware of their concerns about students drinking too much or using drugs,” she said. “I don’t think you can assume that these numbers are going up because there is a different level of enforcement.”
Violations of drug laws led to 32 referrals and 20 arrests, up from seven and 17 respectively in 2007.
Those increase might have been the result of Residence Life and Housing Services standardizing some of its procedures for dealing with suspected illegal drug use, said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residential life.
At the start of the 2007-2008 academic year, RLHS put more emphasis on instructing residence assistants to call Duke Police if they suspected illegal drug use. Additionally, RAs were told to write and submit incident reports on all illegal drug use discovered to the Office of Judicial Affairs.
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