(1) The Big Thinker

To many, Peter Lange is Duke’s resident man of mystery.

Speaking over the whir of an electric fan plugged in to cool his Allen Building office, Lange admits he is largely an elusive figure on campus. While some students may know his title, few know what he does.

“Most undergraduates don’t know the provost from a hole in the wall,” Lange says with a laugh, glancing over the Blue Devil bobblehead doll, BMW model car and other knick-knacks arranged on his windowsill. “It’s a standard sort of joke I use at the beginning of speeches…. ‘Some of you are wondering what the heck I do: Who is this provost guy?’”

So, just who is this “provost guy?”

For starters, he’s a golfer with a 15 handicap, a car lover who dreams of owning a Porsche 911 and a jazz fanatic who can’t get enough of Coltrane.

But officially, he’s Duke’s chief thinker.

Lange serves as the University’s head academic officer, a post he accepted in 1999 after serving as chair of the political science department and vice provost for academic and international affairs. He oversees everything from the offices of admissions and financial aid to the various undergraduate and professional schools.

Now, as the University prepares to launch its next major phase of development, Lange is fulfilling another role.

Over the next few months, he’ll spend countless hours meeting with administrators, faculty and students—all vying for attention as Duke sets its goals for the future.

After culling ideas and putting the pieces together, Lange expects the final document to total a hefty 100 pages. In addition to developing global health initiatives and enhancing faculty quality, the plan will encourage faculty and students to “put knowledge into the service of society”—a priority of President Richard Brodhead.

“The ivory tower is gone,” Lange says, gesturing as though wiping the proverbial slate clean. “The notion that we are removed from society or that we can remove ourselves from society hasn’t been true for a long time…. Not only are we going to recognize that, we’re going to engage that.”

Lange is the first to acknowledge he can’t make the plan alone. For much of the “heavy lifting,” he calls on his “team of all-stars”: various deans, vice provosts and faculty members.

“The provost is just the leader of the exercise,” Lange explains.

He’s learned that involving people from all levels of the University is the only way to avoid major pitfalls.

“The biggest danger in strategic planning is central hubris,” Lange says, with a knowing glint in his eye. “There’s a process of top-down, setting some broad directions, but there is also a big process of bottom-up. I always try to get people to understand that a lot of strategic planning is the management of controlled chaos over an extended period of time.”

One of Lange’s most important working relationships is with Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, the University’s chief administrative and financial officer. The two friends met when Trask came to Duke in 1995.

“I thought he was smart, if short,” Trask says of his colleague, referring to Lange’s petite height.

Trask and Lange are working closely on the revitalization of Central Campus—a project Lange believes will drastically alter Duke’s landscape and culture.

In the short term, the University will raze the retro-style apartments on Central and replace them with new living facilities that include classroom spaces. In the long term, Lange says the nearly six-million square feet of ground available on Central will be a bridge between East and West campuses. The vast area could be used to house anything from performance venues to a media center to new academic schools, if they are created.

The massive undertaking won’t be completed for decades—but even the fledgling concept of the project gets Lange’s mental wheels turning.

“If you are a visionary planner over a 70-year period, you’re creating a new West Campus. That’s pretty important,” he says, his eyes widening in emphasis. “You’re changing the fundamental configuration of Duke University. It was a one-campus place, then it was a two-campus place, now it’s going to be sort of three but actually a more integrated one-campus place.”

Lange was selected to direct the Central Campus project because, as he says with a smile, he has built “a reputation that I know how to do strategic planning.”

A tough but inevitable part of his job is having to disappoint some people who lobby for priorities in the University’s future plans. Honesty, Lange says, is the key to saying “no.”

“When I think somebody is wrong, I’m pretty good at saying, ‘I just don’t agree,’” he says. “I think it’s important to be straight with people. You succeed more in managing disappointment.”

With two University-wide projects and other daily responsibilities piled on his plate, it would seem that Lange has to be all business, all the time.

But his colleagues don’t see him that way.

“Peter and I engage more in informal conversations than formal meetings. We probably ‘talk’ four or five times on an average day, but the ‘talk’ might be a joke or a quick catch-up as well as a longer discussion,” says Judith Ruderman, vice provost for academic and administrative services. “He administers in great part by ‘walking around’ rather than by staying in his office…. He takes time for people.”

Wearing a yellow golf shirt and sipping a bottle of water in his office, Lange appears the epitome of relaxation. He admits with a laugh that he likes to socialize; his wife would say he would go out seven nights a week if he could.

Nonetheless, Lange says the stresses of his job can be taxing. Figuring out how to balance professional time with family time can be particularly difficult.

“Some years I do better than others,” he says, moments after jumping up to toss car keys to his 14-year-old stepson.

Lange is married to econ professor Lori Leachman and has two children and two stepchildren. In addition to reading “crummy mystery novels” and watching movies at home to unwind, Lange enjoys traveling with his family—particularly to their house in Sedona, Arizona.

“You get on the plane and then you’re there, and it’s so totally different that I can just feel all the work and stress flow out of me,” Lange says. “You can feel like you’ve moved into another world.”

But nothing can damper Lange’s love for his job. He doesn’t mind being Duke’s behind-the-scenes man; in fact, he relishes it, so long as he’s making plans or solving a problem.

“My job is a job of continual learning,” Lange says. “Being a provost gives you the best opportunity… to figure out what is a great intellectual process, how to do it, how to get it done—because it requires coordinating a lot of people—and then actually getting it done.

“It’s conceptualization, strategy and realization.”

Applying this simple three-pronged mantra to projects like Central and the strategic plan, Lange is poised to fundamentally change Duke.