ยป???emic Council will elect its next chair today, choosing between Professor Nancy Allen of the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology and Frances Hill Fox Professor Janice Radway in the literature program.
The candidates were selected by a five-member nominating committee chaired by Richard Burton, a professor in the Fuqua School of Business and a former chair of the Academic Council.
"Those of us who know both of them think they are very impressive," Burton said. "These two came to the top of our list."
Allen came to Duke in 1978 for an internship after medical school and after completing her residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in rheumatology, joined the faculty.
Allen has served on the Academic Council for 10 years, including two years on the council's Executive Committee. She also helped form the Clinical Sciences Faculty Council in the Medical Center and served as its first president from 1993 to 1995. Since 1999, Allen has also served on the Faculty Compensation Committee.
She said one of her priorities as the new Academic Council chair would be to help select a new University president if President Nan Keohane steps down, as expected, once the capital campaign ends in 2003.
"I think President Keohane has done a wonderful job with the many facets of what she needed to do," Allen said. "[The selection of a new president is] an important time for faculty to be involved."
Her ultimate motivation for accepting the nomination came from "thinking back to the time I served on ECAC in part, and two, the [anticipated] changeover in leadership," she said.
"I wouldn't plan to come in with my own agenda.... There's enough happening," Allen said of the position. "I think the council plays the role of being sure that things are heard at the right time.... I'm excited about the opportunity, and I would hope to do the very best job I could do."
Radway, the other candidate, came to Duke in 1989 from the University of Pennsylvania.
"[Duke] seemed like an interesting place," she said. "At [that] point the English department and literature program were assembling a group of people who were working on new forms of literary theory and studies."
Radway, who works in the area of cultural studies, served on the Academic Council for two years; on the Advisory Committee for Appointments, Promotions and Tenure from 1990 to 1993; and, from 1992 to 1995, on the Duke University Press Faculty Advisory Board, which she currently chairs.
Radway also highlighted her experience chairing the Task Force on the Arts, which looked into building a new art museum, and her work as chair of the American Studies Committee, which is currently exploring the development of an American studies program at Duke.
Radway suggested that now may be the time for the University to make crucial decisions about its direction in the upcoming decades.
She also expressed a need to maintain the University's commitment to the humanities, as the administration focuses its spending on new science initiatives, such as the $200 million genomics institute.
"Duke's humanities departments are well regarded; the question is how to maintain that stature," Radway said. "The challenge is both to maintain and continue to be open to new ideas."
The winner will succeed current chair Peter Burian, professor of classical studies, and will be the first female Academic Council chair since Anne Scott, a history professor, was elected in 1977.
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