In a joint meeting Tuesday night, Provost Peter Lange and Executive Vice President Tallman Trask addressed the Graduate and Professional Student Council and the Duke Student Government on a variety of University issues.
Speaking about the future prestige and popularity of the University, Lange noted the importance of the addition of Dr. Peter Agre, vice chancellor for science and technology and winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to the University faculty three weeks ago.
“This brings standing prestige to the University including the fields of science and technology and science policy,” Lange said. “Bringing a Nobel laureate says something to the world... It says something about your aspirations when you do something like this.”
Lange also noted the possibility of having Agre teach undergraduate chemistry. He said this was only the beginning of attracting other prestigious faculty. Lange explained that this could be done by creating opportunities for collaboration and an exciting atmosphere, including new and unique University developments.
“It is hard being at the bottom of the top,” Lange said. “Every time we get someone good, somebody at the top tries to take them away. We work like crazy to retain them.”
One example Lange applauded was the biomedical engineering department, which is one of the top in the world because Duke’s program was one of the first of its kind, he explained. “We did this when the field was small and burgeoning,” he said. “We should take BME as a model and do it across the University.”
Lange and Trask also spoke on the developments of Central Campus. Trask said that after spending three years creating a master plan, an outline for the basic pattern of development has been created.
He also said the only structural requirement in the plan is the need for 1,200 beds, a demand now satisfied by the outdated complexes. “The Central Campus now is not an efficient use of land, so we began with the notion to begin to replace housing in a more concentrated way,” he said.
Trask re-enforced the need for developing an urban-like campus with many lively activities to attract students day and night.
Lange and Trask also spoke about current developments in the arts at Duke, such as the nearing completion of the Nasher Museum of Art and the goal of making the field more visible.
Though the bi-annual meeting with Lange and Trask has been mandatory for DSG members in the past, DSG President Pasha Majdi, who did not attend the event, said that because of this week’s basketball schedule, “We didn’t want to have two mandatory meetings during the day in the same week.”
DSG Executive Vice President Andrew Wisnewski said he did not know why the meeting was so poorly attended.
“The meeting was important,” Wisnewski said. “The people who deem it as important came.”
Only three of seven executive members attended.
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