Ruth Baker: Keeping Psychology Students on Track

When students stray from the path toward graduation, Ruth Baker herds them back in line.

Probably no one has done more to save students from themselves, says Carl Erickson, associate director of undergraduate studies.

"She knows where [the 400-plus psychology majors] are from, which come from broken homes, which are suffering from illnesses or other handicaps, which are doing well, and which are struggling," he wrote in nominating her for Duke's Presidential Award. "But she does not coddle, and she is firm about rules."

Baker, the staff assistant in the psychological and brain sciences department, rules from her desk under a halo of twinkly lights embedded in a 40-foot philodendron circling past the brightly colored Mayan rug hanging on the wall and around the ceiling. She says she loves working with students, but she's not above pointing out to a student how he strayed and what he could have done to prevent it.

"It's a growing up process, and the students are still working on it," Baker said. "They're very bright. Most of them learn."

Her success in this job has earned her the Presidential Award, the university's highest honor for an employee. She works in a position that acting department chair Amy Needham likened to that of an air-traffic controller and former chair Christina Williams described as more along the lines of "herding cats." But Baker compares her work to solving a jigsaw puzzle.

"You're always seeing if you can get the parts of the puzzle to make a picture that makes sense," said Baker who before joining Duke taught speech and dramatic arts at Meredith College and N.C. State University.

When Baker first came to Duke, she spent a year in temporary services to get to know the people in the places where she might like to work. She opted for work in the development office initially, then transferred to her current position in which, among her other duties, she counsels students as their pre-major adviser and works closely with the director of undergraduates to make sure students have completed what they need to do to graduate.

Baker applies that same tough-love attitude to professors who sometimes approach waving a memo she wrote and demand to know what it means. Baker will ask, "Did you read it?" When the reply is a sheepish, "No," she will offer to explain any parts that don't make sense - after the professor has read it.

"I get a feeling of satisfaction at being able to help people," Baker said. "And maybe I get satisfaction telling people where to go."

Baker's nurturing tendencies extend outside the office. While awaiting official notification that she is a master gardener, she helps Habitat for Humanity homeowners with landscaping. She decorates the stage at graduation with flowers from her garden. Cooking is one of her hobbies, as is exercise, ever since she volunteered to participate in a study at Duke that developed a physical fitness program for her. A Chapel Hill resident, she takes advantage of theater productions and concerts at both Duke and UNC. And she has "ever so many more" interests she would like to develop if so much of her time weren't taken up by work.

"I'm closer to retirement than not," she said. "I have friends who have gone over [to retirement], and they are cutting loose and having a lot of fun. But retirement is a little scary, too. A lot of my life is tied up here with people I'm working with and things I'm doing."

In her job, Baker communicates with the registrar and other university administrators to schedule classes, keeping track of which faculty members are teaching what, when and where. When Duke installed a new computer system, Peoplesoft, Baker instructed others in her department how to make it work for them, gave constructive feedback to administrators about improving the system, and organized support groups for users to share with others what they had learned.

"One of the overall benefits of the job is it forces me to keep changing," she said. "Doing something in your day in a way you've never done before is supposed to create new brain cells. That is built into my job. I try to get set in my ways, and someone comes along and we have to do something different. I must really be upping my brain power, more than I want sometimes."

Written by Nancy Oates