Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta announced this week that he had found the right man to lead a reenergized residential life system, the last vacancy to be filled under the newly-restructured Division of Student Affairs.
Edward Hull, assistant vice president for Student Affairs and director of residence life and student housing at Southern Methodist University, will become Duke's first director of residential life and housing services.
Moneta said that Hull, with 25 years of residential experience, understands residential life, students, housing, private institutions and the quad system and should be ready to take over Nov. 1.
"This is his calling," Moneta said. "He's fabulous--he understands exactly the kind of system we're looking for."
Although Hull said he did not have any immediate plans, one of his first tasks will be to further implement the residential life plan that Moneta initiated last year--including the development and integration of more technical, academic and outreach programs for students at the quad level.
The new unit, housed on Central Campus, is comprised of the former housing management department that switched from Auxiliary Services in summer 2001, and the residential life components of the former student development office, such as housing assignments and residential adviser training.
Hull's interest in student affairs came when he was graduating from the University of Arizona in 1975, as he listened to the graduation commencement address from his senior class president.
"He was talking about his college experience and it dawned on me that he was talking about something I had had little experience with," Hull said. "And I thought to myself, 'That's too bad.'"
He decided to dedicate himself to student affairs so other students would relate more closely with the college experience than he had.
After earning his bachelor's degree in history at Arizona, Hull earned a masters degree in counseling and guidance there in 1980. He also began his residence life career there in 1978 as a graduate hall director, where he moved up to assistant director of residential life before he left for SMU in 1996.
At SMU, Hull made many major changes to the residential life plan including a decision to end the requirement for first-year students to live together. He said, however, he does not have similar plans for dismantling Duke's all-freshman East Campus.
"What you have at Duke with East Campus is unique," Hull said. "It's neither necessarily good or bad to have freshmen live by themselves or with upperclassmen--it's just a matter of what you do with the experience."
He is also an advocate of selective or "theme housing," which SMU adopted during his six-year tenure.
Campus Council President Andrew Nurkin said Hull, who attended a Campus Council retreat in September when interviewing for the job, immediately impressed him and that he looked forward to working closely with him this year. "I was impressed he came to the retreat at all because he completely didn't have to," said Nurkin, a senior. "He was very insightful and very constructive."
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