Former GPSC President, Larson comments on the alumni community's respect for President Nan Keohane.
As a local alumnus, Richard Larsen has been in touch with his Duke friends and together they appreciate the changes that have occurred in the past decade.
Many of the changes that have taken place during Keohane's administration reflect her respect for the students themselves.
"Nan came in and was very concerned with gathering student input on initiatives," Larsen recalled. He highlighted that an increased interest in what students wanted was reflected in the first year of Nan's presidency, which he witnessed as Graduate and Professional Student Council President. "[Keohane] was a huge change," Larsen noted.
Larsen remembers President Keohane's initial focus to have been on residential life issues. Under her new leadership, plans to house all freshmen on East Campus took shape and came to fruition within two years of her tenure. A proposal to provide on-campus housing to graduate students encountered students' lack of interest and space constraints that precluded its implementation.
Larsen stressed the more departmentalized nature of the graduate population at Duke in contrast to undergraduates; students' concentration on specialized research allows for less interaction among students across different disciplines. And because they have other responsibilities, interests and at times families outside their studies, graduate students are sometimes less likely to organize and socialize with other types of grad students. "I joined GPSC to meet people from other areas," Larsen said.
Creating a common area for graduate students to gather and hold events was one of Larsen's primary goals as GPSC president. Despite a shortage of available campus space, GPSC worked with Keohane and the administration to secure a graduate student location and office space for GPSC itself, which until then was lacking.
Larsen received his M.B.A. from Duke in 1996. He lives in the Triangle and serves as Director of Information Technology at UNC's Kenan-Flagler School of Business. In the past decade, he has maintained contact with the University and has noticed the changes that have occurred during Nan's tenure. "She has certainly done a lot to move Duke forward in the years that she has been here. Alumni speak highly of her."
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