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On Becoming a Member of the True and Multi-dimensional Duke University

Paula McClain speaks to new graduate and professional students

Paula McClain

President Brodhead, Dean Wright, distinguished guests and, of course, the new graduate and professional students of Duke University, I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk with you again, albeit briefly, this afternoon. This is a wonderful way to welcome you to Duke University as you embark on this very important new intellectual and professional venture.

Given the quality of this incoming group, I am sure that most of you had offers to attend other graduate schools, but you chose Duke and we are pleased that you did. One of the major factors, I am sure, in your decision to attend Duke was the quality of the faculty in your respective disciplines. At the graduate level, it is important that you have faculty with whom you can work and who will take an interest in you and your development. Duke University has a faculty committed not only to graduate education, but to its undergraduate students, as well. Some of you will work with faculty in large lab settings with post doctoral fellows and other graduate students. Others of you in the social sciences will work with one or more professors, sometimes in research teams, fielding surveys, conducting experiments, or writing case studies. My own research team consists of ten graduate and former graduate students (three of whom are from the University of North Carolina and two that were former undergraduates of mine who remained for graduate school). Still others in the humanities and professional schools will work one-on-one with professors. Whatever arrangement is appropriate for your discipline, you will be working with faculty who have your intellectual development at heart.

convocation

President Richard H. Brodhead spoke at the convocation for new undergraduate students, encouraging them to engage all of Duke's opportunities. To read his speech, click here.

One of the things you will learn very quickly is that graduate school is in many ways a far cry from your undergraduate experience. The level and intensity of work you will encounter will at times seem overwhelming and you will wonder why the faculty are making you do all the things they will inevitably require you to do. I am currently reading a biography of Ralph Johnson Bunche, the first black American to receive a Ph.D. in political science and the winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize, who once said of his graduate school experience at Harvard in the late 1920s: "They pile it on and pile it on to see how much we can stand." While Bunche's words were clearly laced with irritation, he would probably not be far off the mark of what happens today.

Although my graduate school days are far behind me, I remember the stress associated with doing everything one has to do to successfully complete the degree. One particular exchange with my graduate and dissertation advisor over my dissertation prospectus remains particularly vivid. I had not sufficiently developed and fleshed out the concepts that were going to be central to my arguments and Bill (William Ellis) essentially told me to go back, start over and bring him another draft. He was right of course, but sensing my frustration with him and the entire process, he told me something that I have never forgotten. He said, "It is my responsibility to train you to be the best scholar you can be and if I succeed, you will be a better scholar than I. If I do not, then I have failed you as an advisor." You will find the same care and attention from your professors as I had from mine.

To succeed in graduate school it is important to develop a community with your cohort and senior graduate students that will enable you to be comfortable and grow. Developing a support mechanism to share your experiences and to provide you with the foundation you will need when the going gets tough is important. [As an aside, if you do not already have a hobby, get one! You will need something that pulls your mind away from your academic studies.]

Most of you are in a new situation -- a new academic institution, a new city, a new community -- all things that can be disconcerting. But do not feel sorry for yourself. Remember that as challenging as these changes might be for most of you, what are your international colleagues experiencing? Think about how they must feel when the day-to-day things most of you take for granted become major hurdles for them. Make sure you bring these colleagues into your disciplinary community, as support becomes even more essential for them.

While developing a community in your disciplinary area is imperative, it is also important to move beyond your own field of study and your disciplinary cohort. It is important for your own personal and intellectual development that you venture beyond the floor in the building where you will live most of your life and to develop a network across disciplines. It will not only benefit you because you will be taking a break from the tunnel vision that can develop in graduate school, but will broaden your educational experience and make you a much more amiable and enjoyable dinner party guest. Nothing is more boring than a person who cannot talk about anything other than the research she is doing at the time. [While I would not say that any of my political science colleagues are like this, I have heard rumors of their existence in other disciplines.]

Make sure that as you expand your network that you learn something about Duke University in the process. Do not make your Duke experience a superficial one so that the picture you have of Duke is one-dimensional and devoid of the complexity and nuance that is Duke University. You need to become knowledgeable about the University so you understand the foundation upon which you will stand as a Duke alum and the events that built this institution into the great one that it is.

As an example of what I mean, look at this beautiful chapel, which is the centerpiece of the West campus and the place where everyone brings their visitors and where alums and faculty camp out to reserve a space in order marry in the Chapel. My daughter, Kristina, was married here in August 2004. It takes your breath away! Beyond the magnificence that one sees in this incredible space, what do you know about the person who designed the chapel and all of the Gothic-style West campus and the Georgian structures that were integrated into the existing campus of Trinity College?

Duke's Architect

 

This incredible space was designed by Julian Francis Abele. Abele, born in 1881 in Philadelphia, was not the first black American architect, but was the most renowned in the early Twentieth Century. He was the chief designer of Horace Trumbauer's Philadelphia architectural firm. Among Abele's designs are the Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia's Free Library, Widener Library at Harvard University, and Duke University.

William King, the University Archivist (1992), states that Abele was the premier architect in the country at the time in designing palaces in the French style, and his designs and talent created one of the most singularly beautiful university campuses in the country. The Allen Building was the last building that he designed before he died in 1950. So, visit the lobby of the Allen Building, our administration building, and see the portrait of Julian Abele. When you bring visitors to this space, acknowledge Abele as a part of your description of the chapel. Moreover, when you are cheering for Duke men's and women's basketball teams in Cameron Indoor Stadium, remember that Abele designed that building as well in 1940. While we do not have a School of Architecture, the Pratt School of Engineering has an endowed chair in his name.

You will also, no doubt, take visitors to and spend lots of time yourself in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. The gardens we have now were designed and constructed by Ellen Biddle Shipman, who was born in 1869. Warren Manning, a protégé of the great landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, said of Shipman that she was "one of the best, if not the very best, flower garden maker in America." Duke Gardens is considered to be among the greatest of her works. Reflect on the creativity of Shipman as you enjoy the beauty of the gardens she created.

Academic Freedom

 

We are all familiar with the term and notion of academic freedom, and its centrality and importance to the life of a scholar. You have no doubt, at this point in your career, benefited from the exercise of academic freedom. Yet, it was not always a concept in the academy but events at Duke in 1903 and 1951 put the university at the foundation of the development of the concept and an advocate of its importance. John Spencer Bassett was a popular and distinguished professor of history at Trinity College. Among his accomplishments was the founding of the South Atlantic Quarterly (that is still published today) and The Society of the 9019, Trinity's first honor society. In an article published in the journal in 1903, Bassett, ". . .inserted a sentence praising the life of Booker T. Washington and ranking him second in comparison to Robert E. Lee of Southerners born in a hundred years." That sentence created an uproar in the state and resulted in calls by the editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, state legislators, and numerous others for Duke to fire Bassett. Bassett offered to resign, but backed by President Kilgo, the Board of Trustees refused to accept it. As former President Nan Keohane said on the 100th anniversary of what has become known as the Bassett Affair.

With the enthusiastic support of the faculty and the students, the trustees and senior administration resoundingly defeated the call for Professor Bassett's resignation by those who disliked his comparatively open-minded stance on the racial issue that was then festering so deeply in out region. They did so not because they all agreed with him -- they made clear that they did not; or because they were buckling in to anybody's demands off campus -- most people off campus were calling for Bassett to be fired. They stood up for Bassett because they wanted to make it very clear that the freedoms to speak, teach and publish are essential parts of a college or university.

 

Bassett Residence Hall on East Campus is named in his honor.

 

In 1952, Professor Hornell N. Hart wrote a paper (produced as a pamphlet) critical of Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy called on the university to take steps to have Hart retract his research. President Arthur Hollis Edens, in defending academic freedom, said in a statement that "it is axiomatic in University circles that a Professor has the right to pursue research investigations of his choice. So far as Professor Hart's work is concerned, it will have to stand on its own merits and be measured by the rigid standards of truth, accuracy, sound scholarship and good taste, to which the works of all scholars are subjected." These are not the only times the foundations of academic freedom and free speech have been challenged at Duke, but in every instance the University has been true to its original moorings of the importance of academic freedom as a foundational principle for an academic institution.

Alice Mary Baldwin came to Trinity College in 1923 as Dean of Women and the first woman to have full faculty status as a professor of history. When Trinity College became Duke University, Baldwin became Dean of the new undergraduate college for women in 1926. A University of Chicago Ph. D. in history, Baldwin pushed for the hiring of female faculty and to provide opportunities and access for the women in the Women's College on the same footing as the men. "My chief aims," she wrote in her memoir, "were to have full opportunities for the women to share in all academic life; to have the advantages of the university libraries, laboratories, faculty, while at the same time giving them the opportunity to develop leadership and college spirit through their own organizations while learning to work with men through membership in some common student organizations and enterprises." Baldwin Auditorium on East Campus is named in her honor and The Alice M. Baldwin Scholars Program was created to inspire and support undergraduate women in the classroom and in campus leadership roles.

The list of personalities, past and present, that have made and make Duke University the world-class institution that it is today, is lengthy. But you get the thrust of my entreaty to you to learn something about the institution.

Most of you will live off campus and many of you have families, will purchase homes and will live in Durham for many years. Get to know Durham; become a part of this community. Register to vote; explore what Durham has to offer -- Durham Farmer's Market, Durham Bulls, and the Carolina Theatre, among many other activities and venues. Make this your home.

As our current President Richard Brodhead has said: "The purpose of a university is to expose its students to the wide range of human experience to train their minds in creativity and flexibility." Become involved in as many ways as possible so that when you leave here, you will truly be an individual who will be representative of the true and multi-dimensional picture that is Duke University -- a person who knows not only the statistics of the various sports teams, but knows the history, commitment and vibrant spirit of the university.

Again, welcome to Duke and good luck in the coming year. Thank you.