Placed on opposite sides of West Campus, the Allen Building and the Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center act as the headquarters for the two sides of Duke's coin-academics and athletics.
President Richard Brodhead, however, has taken steps to mend the divide by initiating the development of a strategic plan for athletics to be presented to the Board of Trustees in February.
Along with the announcement of the strategic plan, Brodhead unveiled a revamped mission statement and a revised structure for the Athletic Council at an Academic Council meeting in September.
Brodhead said the larger themes of the mission statement will be echoed in the athletics strategic plan, which the Athletic Council said it expects to have completed by February's Board of Trustees meeting.
"We're not waiting for the strategic plan to be done to bridge the gap [between athletics and academics]," Brodhead said in an interview with The Chronicle. "I don't feel that chasm on campus these days.... Athletics is not something separate at Duke."
Michael Gillespie, Athletic Council chair and professor of political science, said he is working with other members of the Athletic Council to complete the strategic plan by February, but added that he would be willing to delay its release until he is confident it will be effective.
"The hope is that it will be presented to the Board of Trustees in February," he said. "People are working very hard to do that, but we want to make sure it gets a thorough venting from students, faculty and alumni so there is some consensus on carrying through with it."
Brodhead oversaw the process of redistributing power within the Athletic Council, expanding on the post of Faculty Athletic Representative to create the position of the Athletic Council chair.
The revised mission statement stresses that the goals that drive Duke athletics are essentially the same as the academic goals of the University.
"The guiding principle behind Duke's participation in Division I athletics is our belief in its educational value for our students," the mission statement reads. "Intercollegiate athletics promotes character traits of high value to personal development. These include the drive to take one's talents to the highest level of performance; embracing the discipline needed to reach high standards; learning to work with others as a team; and adherence to codes of fairness and respect."
Director of Athletics Joe Alleva wrote in an e-mail that administrators within athletics are looking to the mission statement to determine how the department should operate.
"Certainly, the mission statement will guide us in our decision-making moving forward," he said. "Since it outlines our set of beliefs, it should guide us in everything we do and how we conduct day-to-day affairs in the Department of Athletics."
Martha Putallaz, faculty athletics representative and professor of psychology, said the revamped Athletic Council will begin to forge connections among academic faculty and coaches, a goal that will be elaborated on in the strategic plan.
"The striking thing is how many faculty had no idea how athletics work," she said. "It's a very important part of our strategic plan. If 10 percent of our students are athletes, that's an important thing for our faculty to be involved in."
Gillespie said the council had discussed drafting a new mission statement and strategic plan prior to the lacrosse incident, but the scandal was an additional catalyst to their development.
"It is a result of lacrosse in that [afterward] it became clear that we needed to revisit the role of athletics," he said.
Alleva, however, said the decision to introduce the new draft had little to do with the lacrosse case.
"It was simply time to revisit the mission statement since we had not done so in nearly 10 years," he said. "As much as things have changed in the past decade, we thought it was important to have a mission statement that was more representative of the current landscape in college athletics in place prior to embarking in the strategic planning process."
Putallaz added that the strategic plan will also address the inconsistent performance of the football team.
"Of the teams where they keep records, football is a real outlier to be 0-12," she said. "Part of the mission statement is to bring football in line with the rest of athletics."
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