Executive Vice President Tallman Trask updated the Academic Council on the University's master plan, highlighting the more than 20 construction projects completed over the past eight years, at the Council's meeting last Thursday. President Nan Keohane also gave her final remarks to the Academic Council before a reception held in her honor.
Trask identified the historic importance of the University's original master plan, which he said dates back to the 1920s and is "widely regarded to be one of the great university master plans of American higher education." Trask said Duke's rapid rise in national prominence is widely believed to be a result of the fact that "Duke already looked like an elite university from the start."
Duke's current master plan, which outlines the general principles of University development, centers on preserving the historical integrity of the campus. Trask said the plan focuses on the University's architectural history and highlights the need to identify historic buildings and to maintain important areas of open space across campus. He noted, as an example, the Divinity School addition--which he called a "gutsy" project due to its proximity to the Chapel--includes a wall that "must look exactly as if it had been built in 1920" to ensure continuity.
"The reason to have a master plan is that things happen very slowly at universities, and you would like in the end for somebody to look at what was done and think 'somebody thought about this, somebody paid attention to it--there clearly was a set of principles involved in the development here,'" Trask said.
Trask gave a presentation about construction completed under the master plan, as well as projects currently underway or in the design phase. He highlighted the Wilson Recreational Center, finished in 1999; the Richard White Lecture Hall, finished in 2000; the recently-renamed Keohane Quadrangle and the parking garage behind the Bryan Center as examples of construction that conformed to the greater master plan.
In discussing projects currently underway, Trask noted the nearly-complete Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences building, the Nasher Museum of Art, the refurbishing of the Hart House for President-elect Richard Brodhead and the renovation to Perkins Library. Trask said he was particularly pleased with the changes to the library, especially a new tower that will block a portion of the library added in 1969 that does not match the original character of the academic quadrangle.
With a few exceptions, campus construction has been organized around a set of working principles, Trask said. "I am pleased to say that in this case, we have paid more attention to the plan than any university I know of," he said.
Although he touted the original master plan--which guided development until World War II--Trask identified subsequent construction, notably from 1960 to 1995, as lacking a set of coherent principles.
"As you walk around campus you will see many [buildings]; some were successful and others less so," Trask said. "But clearly, we went from a well ordered, well planned campus to a series of one-off events that sometimes [looked] arranged to others and sometimes didn't."
Trask said that following the conclusion of the original master plan in the mid-1940s, the University's development pattern also expanded outward into the vast available land. "We managed to spread the campus out in a very large way--to cut down lots of trees so that we have ended up occupying more acreage per student than any university in America," he added.
Although Duke's campus utilizes only 8 percent of its available land, Trask said the updated master plan for 2004--which will go before the Board of Trustees in two weeks--will include a new basic principle focusing on "sustainability and environmentally appropriate construction."
Following Trask's presentation, Keohane bid the Council farewell. She praised the strength of faculty governance at the University, both in faculty leaders and the committee structure. Above all, Keohane expressed thanks for the strong working relationship she enjoyed with the Council.
"The partnership between the faculty and the administration, and between those two groups and the Board [of Trustees], is one of the most important keys to all the things that Duke has done over the last 11 years," Keohane said. "You've seen some of the physical fruits of it, but there are many, many more as you all know. In the strategic plan, in the capital campaign, all of those things have rested on that partnership."
IN OTHER BUSINESS:
The council elected four new members to its executive committee. James B. Duke Professor of Biology John Staddon was elected Faculty Secretary. Laurie Shannon, associate professor of English, Julie Edell Britton, associate professor in the Fuqua School of Business, and Linda Franzoni, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials sciences, were elected to the committee.
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