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Speaking With the President

At forum, Brodhead shares thoughts from campus culture to job development

President Brodhead talks with employees prior to the Primetime event

Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead told employees Tuesday that they are an important reason behind Duke's prestigious reputation among diverse audiences from Durham to Singapore.

"You work at one of the world's great universities," Brodhead said to more than 200 employees gathered in Griffith Theater. "This is a place famous for teaching, famous for research, famous for patient care. This is a famous place, but it only has the reputation it has because every single person who works here in every capacity tries to live up to that high standard."

The 60-minute conversation during Primetime, the third in a series of quarterly employee forums with Duke senior administrators, also included a question-and-answer session that touched on campus culture, smoking policies, the employee tuition benefit, transportation services and safety.

Asking the President

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Brodhead discussed Duke's plans, such as the construction of Central Campus and expansion of Duke Hospital, and how these will enhance Duke's value to the community. He noted that Duke is the third largest private employer in the state behind Food Lion and Walmart. But unlike with those two organizations, people may drive by Duke University and know little about what happens inside, he said. Duke's complexity makes it difficult to understand and tell the entirety of its story.

"It's hard to have a sense of the whole of Duke," Brodhead said. "Duke is very big. There is a lot of Duke [on the map]. Over 29,000 people work at Duke, and when you drive by Duke you know what is happening in your own office, but elsewhere so many different things are happening. If someone were to ask me what kind of jobs available, I would say everything under the sun. -- To have somebody who's cataloging periodicals and have somebody who's working in pediatric intensive care, that's just daily life at Duke."

Brodhead's remarks came a day after Duke leaders announced a settlement with lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, who were declared innocent in April of all criminal charges. Brodhead did not discuss the lacrosse case in detail but noted that he spent months last year answering media questions and confronting inaccurate portrayals of Duke and Durham, such as those depicting all Duke students as wealthy.and all of Durham as impoverished.

"You're scratching your head and you're saying, ‘this describes the student body that is almost 40 percent minority and 45 percent on financial aid?' " he said. "This describes the city that has all the social complexity and vivacity that I experience every day around here?"

Brodhead singled out departing N.C. Central University Chancellor James Ammons for helping the community cope, but he said many Duke employees and community members worked together out of the media spotlight to help heal community wounds.

"I am grateful to everyone who at that time recognized the danger to this community of being pulled apart in a bitter way and understood that's not the nature of this community and we would have all have had so much to lose, if that had been so."

Brodhead also made a point of connecting Duke and Durham more generally, noting that more than half of Duke's 29,000 employees live in Durham County. He said he is proud of the "air of service" that extends beyond Duke and into Durham with volunteerism that boosts the quality of life for Durham residents and at-risk students. He praised the recently-announced DukeEngage program, designed to promote community service among students, and noted Duke's work with affordable housing, local teacher retention programs and efforts by Duke employees such as those in Facilities Management who helped build a neighborhood soccer field.

After his opening remarks, Brodhead answered questions submitted previously by employees via a postcard solicitation, and fielded impromptu queries from the audience.

One question came from Kip Kelly, an administrative coordinator with Executive Education who attended Primetime. He asked Brodhead why Duke changed its Employee Tuition Assistance Program to require supervisor approval for courses specific to job development.

Brodhead said he welcomed the change, which also makes it possible for employees to receive tuition assistance at other local institutions. "Duke used to have an employee tuition benefit that you could only get if you took classes at Duke," he said. "I tell you a system where you have many, many, many people taking classes at Durham Tech, at North Carolina Central, at UNC, wherever you can use this benefit [is] a better way. An educational institution has some obligation to help the people who work there learn, to get an education that will enable them to move forward from rank to rank in their career."

Campus work culture was on the mind of Melanie Mitchell, assistant director for the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She submitted a question before the event, asking, "If you could change one thing at Duke to improve the campus climate for staff that wouldn't cost a cent, what would it be?"

Brodhead said things that cost a lot of money don't always work best. He offered an example of something that makes a difference to him, which is simply acknowledging the good work of others. He said that if he comes across someone such as a landscaper planting flowers, he's inclined to stop and say, "I love those, thanks."

"The best thing that could happen at the university is to just make the habit of realizing that work is done by actual people and that you can actually find that person and express some appreciation for it," he said, adding that another cost-free change is for long-term employees to share their wisdom and knowledge with newcomers.

After the forum, employees said they appreciated the opportunity to hear from Brodhead and enjoyed his sense of humor and friendly style.

"I like the idea of having these forums where administrators are available to answer questions from run-of-the-mill employees," said Susan Brooks, an administrative coordinator at the Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy. "I think he did a good job of addressing the employees' concerns."