Expect good things: People to Watch 2003-2004

The end of every academic year is the beginning of a new one, and so it's only fitting that TowerView should take the opportunity with our last issue this year to take a look at the rising stars who will shine brightest in the firmament of Duke University next year.

With that aspiration in mind, we decided to put together a list of people worth watching at Duke next year. We found out quickly, though, that the task wasn't going to be easy. For one thing, there are so many exciting people on campus that it wouldn't be practical to try to watch them all-much less discover them all by ourselves.

	Related: • See the People to Watch in 2003-2004

But on a deeper level, we found it wasn't obvious what would make someone worth watching. It wasn't simply a question of news-making value-otherwise our list would have looked pretty formulaic, with the same mixture of high-level administrators and student leaders worth watching by virtue of their offices. Nor did we want to select only people who had consistently found themselves in the spotlight in the past. Admittedly, some of the people we ended up with fit one of these descriptions, but that's not why we chose them.

Instead, we tried to pick people from a variety of disciplines and areas, all of whom have one thing in common: the potential to do something next year to shape Duke in a unique, worthwhile way, whether that means increasing its public prominence or cultivating the independent spirit of its community members away from the spotlight. It means everything from picking a new University president to singing opera, from making campus more environmentally sound to leading a sports team toward national acclaim.

After we sent off a few mass e-mails, ran a Chronicle ad soliciting nominations, and watched the results in, we decided we still had a problem: There were still too many people worth watching. But we had to pick 10, and so-after a two-hour meeting of intense debate-we narrowed the list down. The result spans the next eight pages.

So, we congratulate the 10 winners, wish them luck over the next year and encourage everyone to keep an eye out for them-as well as for the dozens of others worth watching on this campus.

-Matt Atwood, editor

Knight first began to take interest in costuming in high school by sewing costumes for local Renaissance festivals and high school theater productions. At first it was only a hobby, but recently she realized that with Program II she could combine her Duke classes with her natural talent.

Knight isn't just building her own major. She now has a work-study job with Kay Webb, the Duke costume shop designer and supervisor. Webb gave Knight the opportunity to work with her on Cloud 9, a University-run theater production.

"Amy has great promise, and her motivation is of the stature it takes to compete in her chosen theater arts area," Webb writes in an e-mail. "Little is broadcast about the time commitment in the costume shop required of the designer and production team."

But being an art student at Duke isn't always easy.

"Sometimes I ask myself why I didn't go to a university targeted towards the arts," Knight says. "I came to Duke because there were so many opportunities for me here. It's a challenge for me to get the education I want.... But I know I can get a lot of personal attention," Knight pauses. "Realizing that Program II was available was... enticing."

In the future, Knight hopes to continue her work in the costume shop, then go to graduate school or get an internship in the field. She's also studying in Florence in the fall to gain artistic experience and cultural inspiration for her costuming career.

"In design, you need to understand the culture of the different people you are costuming. The different time periods, their psychology and sociology," Knight explains.

When Knight returns to Duke in the spring, she'll continue to design costumes, probably for both student- and University-run productions.

As for her position as one of TowerView's 10 people to watch next year, Knight seems a little baffled. Her role as one of a few art students amid a sea of public policy and economics majors doesn't seem to faze her, and she encourages others to blaze their own trail.

"A lot of people at Duke seem to be in awe of the arts-it's funny to me how people shy away from it," Knight muses. "If you know what you want out of life, and it isn't laid out already in a major, if you are really passionate, then go for it."

She pauses to reflect for a moment. "You should do what you feel good about, not what you think you have to do."

-By Emily Vernon

Anthony Vitarelli: Going Green

Considering all the big plans Anthony Vitarelli has for improving residence life next year, you wouldn't think he'd be worried about the environmental effects of housekeeping products. But Vitarelli, incoming Campus Council president and co-president of the Duke University Greening Initiative, has the rare ability to devote time and enthusiasm to two diverse campus organizations.

"He is one of the most motivated and energetic people I know," says Andrew Nurkin, the outgoing Campus Council president. "He has his hands on tons of projects, and he is equally committed to all of them."

Vitarelli, a sophomore, takes over Campus Council at a crucial point in the development of residence life. His class is the first for which the three-year on-campus residence rule will be strictly enforced, and with all sophomores now living on West Campus, he sees next year as the right time to determine the best housing policy in the future. Among other projects, he will help evaluate the success of linked housing and suggest improvements to the housing assignment process.

Vitarelli's Campus Council involvement will be largely separate from his work with the Greening Initiative, an organization he co-founded in an effort to promote environmentally sound construction on campus and long-term environmental consciousness. But he does see his position with Campus Council, which ultimately provides the funding for quad council programming, as a useful starting point for educating students about environmental sustainability.

"He's very committed to doing what he can do to make this as good a university as it can be," says sophomore Justin Segall, the other DUGI co-founder and co-president. "He has two facets: student life, as well as a holistic outlook."

Vitarelli's residential vision is a campus where all students really want to live for four years. But making campus livable is also linked to the goal of the Greening Initiative, which is to make Duke the national leader in environmental responsibility-everything from examining the efficiency of dorm operations to implementing environmental sustainability into the academic curriculum.

DUGI, conceived by Segall in a public policy class last fall, has already brought about a guarantee from the administration that all new campus construction-including the new engineering building and the Divinity School expansion-will meet the "green" standards of the national Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

"We want to make it so that the environmental impact is always present in decisions," Vitarelli says. "We also want graduate students who know how to be environmental stewards."

With the involvement of different sides of the community, DUGI has been an example of Duke acting as a true University, says Professor of Divinity Ellen Davis: Specialists in many academic disciplines are collaborating on something important to everyone's lives. The cooperation within the group is due, in large part, to the enthusiasm and creativity of Vitarelli.

"All the little things that are necessary to get people to do stuff-comments, e-mails, motivational things-he's really good at that," Segall says.

-By Katherine Porter

Huntington Willard: Eruditio et genomica

Huntington Willard has a story to tell.

As the first director of Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Willard seeks to expose the significance of genomics to every individual who passes through the halls of Duke University, regardless of status or discipline.

"Everyone needs to know [about genomics]. My job is to sell the story," Willard says. "If people see it as 'Oh, that's just Medical Center stuff,' then we'll have sold short."

A highly-touted hire from the Research Institute of the University Hospitals of Cleveland, Willard moved to North Carolina in January with one briefcase in hand, no permanent office and an incomplete staff-so far only two of the IGSP's five centers have chairs in place. With a $200 million responsibility resting primarily in his hands for now, Willard has spent his first four months meeting with experts of all disciplines to identify the greatest opportunities for IGSP contribution.

Rejecting the "Johnny Appleseed" model of scattering funding to numerous unrelated projects, Willard instead prefers to invest the institute's considerable resources in a select few projects that have the potential to "do something to make everyone in the country sit up and take notice."

And Willard believes the key component making Duke's initiative unparalleled across the nation is the institute's interdisciplinary emphasis. He points to its Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy as the critical piece on the board, the piece that will take genomics research out of the laboratory and into society at large.

"We're going to do great science-and so will other [schools]," he says, stressing that what makes Duke unique is the marriage of science and policy.

Two major projects identified so far involve creating individualized cancer risk assessment for patients and determining how genomic variance affects the risk of heart disease. Both are part of a larger goal to promote "personalized health planning," which Willard says is also a top priority for Medical School dean Dr. Sandy Williams and outgoing Duke Health System chief executive Dr. Ralph Snyderman.

"Right now, health care in this country is mostly 'sick care,'" says Willard, a firm believer in genomics' potential to help people identify their risks and take preventive measures.

This gospel of genomics is something Willard has experienced personally: With a family history of colon cancer, Willard undergoes routine surveillance and two years ago had surgery to remove a significant part of his colon. He calls himself a "cancer avoider," and is anxious to see more of his kind take the proactive approach.

"People really can do something about [preventing diseases like cancer]," he says. "It's a story that can be played over and over again, and we need to tell it repeatedly."

Although Willard admits it will be a challenge to define intermediate points-such as recruiting more faculty, teaching and researching, identifying genes for personalized health planning and presenting demonstrations-for each of the IGSP's long-term projects, he is confident that Duke will be known as a front-runner in the field of genomics in the near future.

"Whoever you are, if you want training for genomics, people should think 'Duke' in the next few years," he says. "This is where we're doing it, in a sufficiently comprehensive and broad manner."

-By Rebecca Sun

Chris Henry: Passion for preaching

At 5'8", with spiky blond hair, a Dave Matthews T-shirt and a passion for basketball, Chris Henry looks like a typical college student. But then again, how many 20-year-olds do you know who intend to go into the ministry and already preach at a local church?

"This past year, Chris has served as a co-pastor of a Presbyterian church with Orval Wintermute, a retired professor of religion at Duke," senior Michael Browder says. "Professor Wintermute told me in person that Chris is... a better preacher than he is."

In addition to his biweekly sermons in Wintermute's church, Henry has been invited to preach at a number of other churches in North Carolina over the next year.

"It's a rush every time I preach. My heart starts to race. I have trouble sleeping every Saturday night before I preach on Sunday," Henry says. "If preaching ever gets to the point where I'm standing behind the pulpit and I'm bored with it, I wouldn't do it anymore. But I don't think it ever will. There's always a challenge, always a new group of people. It never ceases to excite me."

Henry was destined to excel even before arriving on campus freshman year, winning the J. Welch Harris Scholarship for his record of debate and speech in high school. Neither Duke nor Henry, however, expected his interest to suddenly swing toward the seminary.

"All throughout high school... I was dead set on political science," Henry says. "In 10th grade... you were supposed to draw what you thought your life would look like, and I drew myself in the White House. I was the president."

Henry lunged toward that ambition with a freshman FOCUS program, Modern America. Little did he know that an ethics class offered through the program would lead him directly away from a career in politics.

"The question of ethics really got me interested in religion and ethics and how the two things are related," Henry says. "I was never going to be a minister or anything like that because that's what my dad did. So, it was the last thing that I wanted to do. But this was a totally new look at what the Bible was about."

From that moment on, there has been no stopping Chris Henry.

"You don't meet many people who know exactly what they want to do," says Dean of the Chapel Will Willimon. "I've been here a long time, and he's among a handful of students that I have known who have a clear sense of direction and conviction."

Professor of Religion E.P. Sanders, who is among the world's most prominent New Testament historians, has agreed to supervise Henry's research project-an offer never given to undergraduates before.

"Chris is highly intelligent, very enthusiastic and strongly committed. He has a zealous enthusiasm and the mental capacity to do whatever it takes to always see things through," Sanders says. "I don't know of any faults or weaknesses."

While Henry's academic interests in religion evolved, he also became heavily involved in the Westminster Fellowship, the Presbyterian religious group on campus. Now, as the president of the religion majors union, moderator of the Westminster Fellowship, recently named Lilly Scholar for vocational discernment and likely contender for next year's prestigious Student Preacher in the Chapel, Henry will be playing a substantial role on campus for religious life.

-By Liana Wyler

Tom Nechyba: The New Economics

When Thomas Nechyba-incoming chair of the economics department-came to the University in 1999, it was, ironically, a simple problem of supply and demand that crippled economics departments here and throughout the nation.

The number of undergraduates majoring in economics at Duke had skyrocketed to nearly 1,000, Nechyba says, and maintaining excellence with limited faculty resources was a Smithian dilemma.

It was time to shake things up.

"We agreed on a core curriculum," Nechyba, the current director of undergraduate studies, says modestly. "Then... we came up with the instructional support, T.A. training and commitment to teaching to that curriculum."

Suddenly, the path to the economics major looked very different. With Nechyba spearheading the project, the department reduced the number of principles classes from two to one; increased intermediate economics courses from two to three; and left heavy math emphasis for the latter two intermediate courses.

Along the way, Nechyba helped launch the EcoTeach Center for undergraduate economics majors, and institute a mandatory entrance exam for Economics 105-a system unique to Duke.

"We really wrestled with how to teach the intermediate level of economics," Nechyba says. "With a heavy math component, it was just becoming a math exercise. But without it, [students would] lose the ability to understand the models. Now we're... making sure they're prepared for the test."

And the result?

"I think we have one of the best undergraduate economics cores anywhere in the country."

Some people would leave it at that, but Nechyba sees the success with the undergraduate curriculum as an invitation to do the same for the graduate program-one of his major focuses next year. At the same time, he's planning to expand the department's faculty and physical space.

"[Nechyba]'s a guy that had an idea about how to make things work better and has pursued that with integrity, and it works," says Lori Leachman, associate professor of the practice of economics. "He's made my job a lot easier."

When he isn't reorganizing departments, Nechyba loves to teach-an activity he approaches with the same unique outlook. Finding PowerPoint presentations too constraining and notes too static, he opts instead to "bring in examples from my own life, and with a twist of humor."

Meanwhile, Nechyba has done extensive research on school choice and segregation.

"I have tried very explicitly to model the fact that households make choices about education," he says. "But we've introduced a policy of school access based on where people live.... For low-income households, often minorities, there's less choice in the public system.... Once we grasp that link, we can try to see a root cause."

Nechyba and his wife, Stacy, have adopted a daughter from China, Eleanor, and they have plans to adopt more children. For administrative assistant Jennifer Socey, that says something even more important about Nechyba than his academic successes. "Someone who was kind enough to open their home to an adopted child [is] probably a pretty good person all around."

-By Andrew Gerst

Pascal Goldschmidt: Pascal's Wager

For Dr. Pascal Goldschmidt's parents, the most important day in their lives came when American tanks liberated their hometown of Brussels at the end of World War II.

"Perhaps as a consequence of that my parents were very pro-United States," Goldschmidt recalls, sitting under a small American flag that hangs on his office wall. "When we were growing up, there was always reference to 'If you're serious about it, you should go to the United States, to learn it, to do it.'"

That dream finally brought the young Belgian to Duke, where he has recently become the chair of a nationally renowned department of medicine.

Goldschmidt began his medical career at the University of Brussels, then did research at the University of South Carolina and at the Johns Hopkins University before moving to Ohio State University-where Dr. Barton Haynes, then chair of Duke's Department of Medicine, lured Goldschmidt south to head the cardiology program.

"I had absolutely no interest at that time at changing jobs, and Bart completely flipped me over. I must say that there was tremendous attraction for me to work at Duke, which, like Hopkins, is one of the top schools in the country, and I missed the density of brain power that you find in the top universities," Goldschmidt says.

Under Goldschmidt, the cardiology program at Duke developed two nationally renowned magnetic resonance imaging labs and received grants from the National Institutes of Health to study the influences of exercise and genomics on heart disease.

Despite those feats, Goldschmidt modestly refuses to take credit.

"What I do well is to build teams and galvanize folks and empower individuals who are clearly leaders and essentially help them do what they were born to do. And of course they do it well," he says. "People give me credit, but in reality they are actually doing the job."

Having begun his reign as head of the Department of Medicine, Goldschmidt says he aims for the department to become the best in the country in patient care, training and research.

Patient care should be preeminent, he says, but stresses the need for a complementary balance with research.

"The safest thing for any doctor to do today is to do the same thing they did yesterday," Goldschmidt says. "But then we'd be curing heart attack patients with a little morphine and a little tender love and care."

Goldschmidt also wants to reach out to other departments, such as the Duke Clinical Research Institute and the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, and to partner with surgeons, anesthesiologists, geneticists and immunologists.

"I don't think there's any other place that I would have wanted to be the chair of medicine, but in this place, yes. [That's] mainly because of the quality of the faculty.... There's a spirit of camaraderie and support for your peers," he says. "I'm feeling very humble in front of the greatness of those folks who have taken the job before me."

-By Molly Nicholson

Robert Steel: Picking the president

To describe Robert Steel, Trinity '73, as "successful" would be an understatement. Besides chairing the board of directors of Duke University Management Company and vice-chairing the Duke University Board of Trustees, the Duke graduate has also made a name for himself outside the University, as the vice chair of Goldman Sachs. If Steel's name still doesn't ring a bell, though, his newest title should: The hunt for Duke's ninth president has begun, and Steel is head of the search committee.

Born and reared in Durham by parents who were Duke graduates, Steel says he always planned to go away to school. When the deadline came around, though, his affinity for Duke outweighed his wish to travel. "I grew up as a Duke kid in our neighborhood," Steel says. "We always had Duke professors and Duke physicians who lived near us. The attraction pulled me there, and I'll never look back."

After receiving his MBA degree from the University of Chicago, Steel joined Goldman Sachs in 1976. Still, he stayed close to his alma mater, first joining DUMAC and then the Board of Trustees in 1996.

Despite his other commitments, Steel says he plans to make his role in searching for the new president his first priority.

"I think it's really an important responsibility and to be involved, whether as chair or as a search committee member, is an opportunity to help Duke learn and organize the prospects," he says.

Having selected about 15 committee members-Trustees, faculty, students and alumni-to be confirmed by the executive committee of the Board of Trustees, Steel says he'll act as more of a committee member than as the chair.

"When you work with really smart and talented people like this, there will be so many good ideas and thoughts that my job is to push forward in collaboration, keep everyone talking and working together," Steel says. "I'm optimistic that it will be a really consensual group."

Next, Steel says, the committee will identify attributes to look for in a presidential candidate, then make a list of candidates, based both on suggestions and also proactive brainstorming. After interviewing the candidates, the committee will narrow the list. "My hunch is that... we'll have a very small number of candidates that we will prioritize or rank," Steel says. "It's imaginable that there will be one horse that's above the race."

Finally-perhaps by February 2004-the group will present a list to the Board of Trustees, who will make a final decision. "I would hope that it would be a unanimous acclamation," Steel says. "And then," he adds, "I'll put my feet up."

Although Steel has nothing but praise for President Nan Keohane and her accomplishments, he is also not in the market for a mini-Nan. "Nan... has engaged on all kinds of challenging issues with enthusiasm that it would have been easy to duck, whether it's living arrangements on West Campus, whether it's the idea of freshmen only living on East [in 1995]," Steel says. "But the next president will bring their own character and style to the position.... Let's not talk about the search in terms of Nan's replacement. Let's talk about the search in terms of selecting the ninth president of the University."

-By Molly Nicholson

Beth Bozman: Boz knows field hockey

The calls came in from across the country. The former players of Beth Bozman, a wildly successful field hockey coach at Princeton, all wanted to wish her well in her new endeavor at the helm of Duke's field hockey program.

After being vigorously pursued by the Duke Athletics Department, Bozman had had to make a tough choice. Should she leave the program she had spent 14 years single-handedly building into a national powerhouse, or take the reins at a school that had yet to make the Final Four but was dedicating itself to reaching the upper echelon of college field hockey?

In the end, Bozman picked the Blue Devils, simultaneously confirming that Duke's field hockey program is indeed moving toward the top-if Duke's strong recruiting classes over the past four years and last year's Elite Eight appearance were not already enough to demonstrate that.

"Our expectations are very high this coming year," says Bozman, who accumulated a stellar 188-73-6 mark at Princeton, while leading her team to four Final Fours and two national championship game appearances. "I wouldn't say there's a superstar on this team, but the overall level of this team is much higher across the board."

But if the Blue Devils lack a superstar player, they certainly have found a superstar coach in Bozman.

"Coach Bozman is one of the top coaches in the country in field hockey, on the same level as Gail Goestenkors in women's basketball," Athletics Director Joe Alleva says. "To accomplish what she did at Princeton is remarkable with no scholarships and tough admission standards."

Bozman is widely acknowledged as a superior motivator and teacher, two traits that should prove advantageous on a squad overflowing with talent, young and old. And in fact, the Blue Devils have already recorded victories that have set out a warning to the rest of the country: Duke is going to be extremely good in 2003.

The evidence of Duke's improvement comes with the fact that the Blue Devils have defeated every ACC team and national power Old Dominion in off-season play. Such wins are no small feat, particularly considering the ACC is the nation's premier field hockey conference.

"She is a great coach that is challenging us to get to the next level," says rising senior Kim Gogola, who first met Bozman when she was 12 years old at a Princeton field hockey camp. "Already, our team has learned a lot from her and has improved. It seems like she cares a lot about our team and has confidence in us."

Bozman undoubtedly cares a great deal for her Blue Devils already, but she still holds a place in her heart for Princeton, which she was accustomed to refer to as "her home." In February, Bozman told the Princeton Alumni Weekly she would not be scheduling a game between Duke and Princeton for a very long time.

So long as Princeton fails to advance far into the NCAA tournament for the next several years, Bozman should not have to worry about squaring off against the Tigers anytime soon. And as rising senior Kim Van Kirk attests, Duke now has the tools, the attitude and, perhaps most importantly, the guidance to venture deep into the Final Four for many years to come.

"Our goal has always been to make it to the Final Four, but [Bozman] has given us the confidence and coaching to set us in the right direction."

-By Mike Corey

Click here for rest of the story and the final two profiles.