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Koskinen, Piva Presented with University Medals

Nicholases, Reiter, Nechyba honored for teaching and service

Thomas J. Nechyba University Scholar/Teacher of the Year

The University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award was established in 1981 by the Division of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church based on its conviction that colleges and universities draw their strength and vitality from their faculties. This award annually recognizes an outstanding faculty member for contributing to the learning arts, the institution, and the community through teaching, research, and service. Thomas J. Nechyba, Professor of Economics and Public Policy Studies and Chair of the Department of Economics, is the 2007 award recipient.

Professor Nechyba is one of those exceptional individuals in the academy who is simultaneously an outstanding administrator, a nationally recognized scholar, and an excellent, enthusiastic teacher.

Professor Nechyba received his B.A. degree in 1989 from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Rochester. His areas of expertise include public finance, the economics of education, and fiscal federalism. His research credentials are impressive: he has written nineteen journal articles, two books, sixteen book chapters, and six book reviews. He plays leadership roles in the field of economics, including serving as associate editor for four journals and co-editor of another, and he is generally recognized as a top public economist.

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Thomas Nechyba

Professor Nechyba has transformed economics education at Duke, impacting the nearly one-quarter of Trinity College students who major in economics. Soon after his arrival at Duke (1999), he served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and then Department Chair (2002-current), galvanizing the Department of Economics to enhance undergraduate education. He established a new unit within the department focused on the undergraduate program: EcoTeach. He then worked to appoint a talented new corps of dedicated faculty, promoted the intellectual rationale for a new core curriculum, and designed the pedagogical means to achieve it.

A knowledgeable, charismatic, and devoted professor, Professor Nechyba continues to teach Introductory Microeconomics, a large enrollment course required for the major. Students describe him as "awesome," "engaging and interesting," and "creative and effective." He is well-known for supporting students outside of the classroom with weekly review sessions, and over the past few years, he has led numerous undergraduate independent studies. At the graduate level, he teaches courses on Microeconomics as well as Public Economics. Since 1995, he supervised more than twenty-five dissertations.

Professor Nechyba epitomizes what the Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award represents, and it is with great pride that Duke University recognizes his accomplishments and merits. On behalf of the Division of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church, Duke is proud to honor Professor Thomas J. Nechyba as Duke University's 2007 recipient of the University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award.

Jerome P. Reiter Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award

In Jerry Reiter's introductory statistics classes, his students say, it doesn't matter whether you are on the Ph.D. track as a committed mathematician or a liberal-arts major fulfilling a curriculum requirement-you will be stimulated and learn how the discipline can be used to solve real-world problems.

Professor Reiter, an assistant professor of statistics and decision sciences and a 1992 graduate of Duke, wants students to see how statistics are applicable to their daily lives, using tangible examples drawn from economics, medicine, public policy, sports, and the natural and social sciences. As he has said, "My philosophy on teaching has always been to try to make it interesting. You have to let that passion come through."

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Jerry Reiter

In nominating Professor Reiter for the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, his students made prominent note of that passion. One student remarked that "Classes on statistics don't usually have the reputation for being great experiences." Professor Reiter, the student added, defies the stereotype by making the teaching of statistics interesting and relevant. One of the ways he does that is by creating an engaging classroom atmosphere.

According to another student nominator, "I enjoyed this professor's eager and enthusiastic teaching style so much that I convinced another senior, an English major, to take the class with me not as a requirement... but to benefit in our last semester from the passion of a gifted instructor."

After graduating from Duke with a major in mathematics, Professor Reiter earned both his master's and Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University. Before taking a post at Duke in 2002, he worked as an actuarial consultant and then taught at Williams College and the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has contributed articles to numerous professional journals, ranging from Statistical Science to the Baseball Research Journal.

In addition to his academic appointments, he is a senior fellow at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and an associate editor of Survey Methodology, the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He also serves on the National Academy of Sciences' Panel on Dynamics of Economic Well-Being Systems and the National Center for Education Statistics' Confidentiality Task Force.

Ginny Lilly Nicholas and Peter M. Nicholas Distinguished Alumni Award

Pete and Ginny Nicholas, both Class of ‘64, have been familiar to generations of those with strong Duke ties. And they've left a mark that is certain to endure for generations.

Ruth Virginia "Ginny" Lilly Nicholas was an English major at Duke and participated in a range of activities, from the campus service organization White Duchy to the YWCA. Since graduation, she has volunteered as an admissions adviser, chair of the executive committee of the Duke Annual Fund, and reunion class chair. In addition to serving many Boston-area charitable organizations, she is the founder and president of Open Market of Concord, Massachusetts. Open Market is affiliated with Aid to Artisans, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting craftspeople around the world.

As a Duke undergraduate, Peter M. Nicholas majored in economics and was business manager of the Chanticleer. He built on that business interest and went on to earn an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In 1979 he co-founded Boston Scientific Corp; he remains the company's chair. With some 29,000 employees, Boston Scientific is a leader in the less-invasive medical device industry. Its products help physicians and other medical professionals improve their patients' quality of life by providing alternatives to surgery. The company operates manufacturing, distributing, and technology centers worldwide; delivers more than 15,000 products in more than forty-five countries; and has grown in revenues from $2 million in 1979 to more than $7.8 billion in 2006.

Pete Nicholas has served Duke in a variety of capacities, including as trustee from 1993 to 2005; he was chair of the board during his last two years as trustee. He has also been a charter member and chair of the Board of Visitors for the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, a reunion class chair, and a member of the board of the Duke University Health System.

Pete and Ginny Nicholas were co-chairs of the Campaign for Duke, which ran from 1996 through 2003. The campaign provided support for the faculty, student financial aid, academic programs, research, improvements to campus and community life, and a variety of other areas. It raised $2.36 billion-at the time, one of the five largest fundraising efforts in the history of higher education.

Early in the campaign, the couple gave $20 million to Duke for what would become the

Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, helping to lay the foundation for the school to play a more prominent role in environmental research and policymaking. They followed that with a number of other gifts, including the Nicholas Faculty Leadership Initiative in 2002. "The center of our Duke experience was in the classroom-where great teachers literally changed our lives," Ginny Nicholas said in announcing the initiative.

The last gift counted in the Campaign for Duke was a record-breaking $72 million from the Nicholases-$2 million for Perkins Library and $70 million earmarked for the Nicholas School. At the time, Pete Nicholas said the gift was intended to enable the school to "greatly expand its reach and influence in undertaking critical research, training future leaders, and informing the debate about issues that range from global warming to the quality of our air and water." The gift also launched the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, aimed at engaging with decision-makers in government, the private sector, and the nonprofit community to develop innovative proposals that address critical environmental challenges. It remains the single-largest gift from an individual or couple in Duke's history.

During the campaign, the couple also supported programs at the Fuqua School of Business, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke Divinity School, and Duke Medical Center, as well as intercollegiate athletics.

John A. Koskinen University Medalist

Even as he has shown enduring generosity in devoting time, energy, and resources to advancing Duke, John Koskinen ‘61 has spearheaded successful and high-profile business and federal projects. A magna cum laude graduate in physics, Mr. Koskinen was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated cum laude in 1964 from Yale's law school, where he was editor of the Yale Law Review. He then studied international law at the University of Cambridge.

After working in the private sector in Washington, D.C., he was special assistant to the deputy executive director of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. He was director of the Washington, D.C., office of New York Mayor John Lindsay, and he served four years as chief of staff to U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. In 1973, he joined the Palmieri Company, which specializes in restructuring large companies facing severe management challenges; he was named president in 1977. During his twenty-one-year tenure, he oversaw the reorganization of the Teamsters Pension Fund; the restructuring of the Penn Central Railroad; and the rehabilitation of Mutual Benefit Life.

In 1994, Mr. Koskinen was nominated by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate as deputy director for management, Office of Management and Budget, where he chaired the President's Management Council. In 1998, he was appointed assistant to the president and chair of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, which spearheaded efforts to protect computer systems from the so-called "millennium bug." His efforts in that role brought him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. For three years he served as deputy mayor and city administrator of the District of Columbia. He has been president of the United States Soccer Foundation, the major charitable arm of soccer in the U.S., since 2004.

Mr. Koskinen was named a Duke trustee in 1985, became chair of the board's business and finance committee in 1988, and was elected board chair in 1994. Upon stepping down in 1998, he was named a trustee emeritus.

In addition to serving as president of the Duke Alumni Association's board of directors in 1980-81, he has served on the steering committee for the Capital Campaign for the Arts & Sciences and Engineering, chaired the Board of Visitors of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and been a director of the university's investment arm, the Duke Management Company. More recently, he chaired the search committee for a new university counsel. He has received the Distinguished Alumni Award and the Charles A. Dukes Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service to the university.

John and his wife, Patricia, established the Koskinen Scholarship Endowment Fund to support female student-athletes at Duke. In honor of their generosity, the refurbished soccer facility was named Koskinen Stadium.

Among Mr. Koskinen's many honors is the Distinguished Service Award in Trusteeship, given by the Association of Governing Boards. In nominating him for the award, then-President Nannerl O. Keohane called him "selfless, totally dedicated to the best interests of the university, and without peer in his consistent ability to anticipate issues and analyze complex problems and then provide the sensitive, humorous, but steady leadership that brings his colleagues to consensus around a good solution."

John J. Piva, Jr University Medalist

A graduate of Georgetown University, John Piva began his career at the Johns Hopkins University, where he coordinated fundraising for the School of Public Health. From there he went to the University of Chicago, eventually becoming vice president for institutional development. He came to Duke in January 1983 as vice president for alumni affairs and development; he was later promoted to senior vice president. He retired from that position in June of 2004.

Shortly after arriving at Duke, Mr. Piva set to work helping to organize an endowment-driven campaign for the arts and sciences and engineering. The campaign netted $565 million, surpassing its $400-million goal. A second, more comprehensive "Campaign for Duke" got under way in the mid-1990s. After the dramatic success of its "quiet phase"-$684 million raised before any official announcement-the university went public with a $1.5-billion goal. The campaign would be an effort touching every sector of the campus. It would also be an exercise in discipline, compelling all of those sectors to put themselves through a rigorous planning process, and compelling university officials to make tough choices among competing priorities.

The priorities chosen turned out to be attractive to Duke's many constituencies. Duke supporters showed a generosity that was unprecedented for the university-thanks in no small part to Mr. Piva's skills at motivating and inspiring. Eventually the trustees raised the Campaign for Duke goal to $2 billion. When the campaign concluded, even that revised and ambitious goal was exceeded: The final total was $2.36 billion.

Mr. Piva, observes former trustee chair Harold "Spike" Yoh B.S.M.E. ‘58, is "direct when he needs to be direct; he's subtle when he needs to be subtle. But while he's a master at what he does, he's genuinely fun to be with. He's just a nice guy." In the words of another former trustee chair and a key volunteer leader of the campaign, Pete Nicholas ‘64-one of this year's Distinguished Alumni Award recipients-Mr. Piva "knows Duke, loves Duke, and exudes Duke values. He connects wonderfully to the Duke community, wherever it is in the world, and it's his ease in forging connections that has made him extraordinarily successful."

Beyond his generous spirit and his ease at making connections, he proved himself to be an impressive organizer. He brought together development officers from the university's disparate schools and units. They would share information, decide jointly on strategies for attracting gifts, and strengthen collegial ties. At those gatherings, Mr. Piva would award the "Big D," in the form of a Duke sweatshirt, to those who benefited a Duke program other than their own.

In remarks to trustees following the campaign, former President Nannerl O. Keohane praised Mr. Piva for his "sensitive, diligent, and highly productive service." She said, "Had young Mr. Piva gone elsewhere, rather than accepting the call to Duke in 1983, this campaign would not have been nearly the success it has been, nor would this university's future look so bright."