The Department of Microbiology, long plagued by internal division and a dwindling doctoral program, is set to join with the Department of Genetics this week. Joseph Nevins, James B. Duke professor of genetics and current chair of the genetics department, will likely serve as chair of the merged department.
Jack Keene, James B. Duke professor and chair of microbiology, said the move will strengthen the new division and allow for more collaboration.
"We will have additional faculty," Keene said. "The whole idea is to combine and grow [and] foster ideas to have a critical mass in microbial pathogenesis."
The department was formed in 1993 after splitting from the Department of Immunology and for a long time under the leadership of virologist Wolfgang Joklik was a top-10 department with over 70 graduate students. Currently, there are about 20 graduate students.
"It's a great development because microbiology is an area that was very strong and has been in some substantial decline," said Provost Peter Lange, adding that it is likely that Nevins will become chair. Nevins said no decisions have been made about the details of the merger.
Due to a lack of administrative support, a small faculty and difficulty recruiting graduate students, the department began to falter, according to a 1999 external review. The review highlighted expressed concerns about the viability of a doctoral program without significant faculty recruitment.
"When I first went to the microbiology department, there was a very powerful and very good chairman," said Stephen White, a former faculty member and now chair of structural biology at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. "It was probably the best department at Duke."
Lewis Siegel, dean of the Graduate School, said genetics was the most compatible fit because the leadership in the Department of Genetics emerged from the microbiology department in 1994.
Patrick Lager, a graduate student in microbiology and a medical student, works with Keene in functional genomics. He said it is difficult to know how the merger will affect him, but that he has noticed a change in the number of faculty members in the five years he has studied microbiology at Duke.
"There's been some shift of faculty around, either leaving the institution altogether, or some leaving the department, who either don't fit in as well with what's going to be the combined department, or their fit will be better with certain other departments on campus," he said.
Although half the department's faculty have joint appointments, a number of primary faculty have left in the past two years. Sharyn Endow transferred to the Department of Cell Biology, and Ken Kreuzer transferred to biochemistry, although he still teaches a graduate course in microbial pathogenesis. After 22 years at Duke, Deepak Bastia, an expert in plasmid DNA replication, left last summer to work at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he holds an endowed chair. In addition to White's departure in 1999, Phillip Hanna, an expert in infectious disease, left to go to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Hanna said he left the department on good terms, but that the University would not give the department the resources to become an expert in microbial pathogenesis. He said the administration would not allow Keene to hire more faculty because they did not have a market interest in the field.
The field, which dawned in the mid-19th century with Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, has struggled for relevance in the wake of the genetics revolution. But Keene said bioterrorism and emerging diseases have become areas of growing interest and that more grants have become available for their study.
"We didn't have a microbial pathogenesis critical mass," Keene said. "We made a good decision to combine for recruitment. We were concerned, worried we weren't growing to the extent we'd hoped."
White, who said he came to the University because of Joklik and the department's quality, said he thought the main problem was the 1993 split. "They never really managed to recruit a world class scientist into that department [as chair]," he said. "No one of that stature is going to take over half the department. I think that was the first thing."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.