"Fuqua Fridays" may be prime time for students and faculty in the Fuqua School of Business to mingle and network, but representatives of other graduate and professional schools are not bitter about the lack of "Sanford Saturdays" or "Engineering Evenings."
Fuqua boasts a social budget of more than $100,000, which comes from the student fees of Fuqua's more-than-1,200 students and supports events like Fuqua Fridays, said Ben Kennedy, Trinity '00, second-year Fuqua student and outgoing president of Duke MBA Association.
"Fuqua students are willing to pay for it," Kennedy said, adding that the social events are elemental to the goals of business students and for the name of the school and that the social culture attracts many students.
Students in other graduate and professional schools at the University said they were aware of Fuqua's sizeable social budget but were satisfied with their own schools' programming.
Kim Lake, second-year joint-degree student in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, said the Sanford social committee has improved social planning this year.
"We don't have something every week like Fuqua does," said Lake, who chairs the social committee, adding that the organization has recently increased the number of social events for Sanford students.
She said the Masters in Public Policy program and Program for International Development Policy combined their social budgets of $2,300 each to establish the Sanford social committee to fund their events this year. The committee is funded by the Sanford Institute.
Sanford graduate students were invited to welcome-back parties, barbecues, a graduation ceremony and festivities for parents in the program, and Lake said the events are often tailored to the groups most likely to attend.
"Because our program is so intense, I don't know if having a bigger budget would make people come out," she said, adding that a social budget of $4,600 funds events for approximately 800 public policy students. "I feel like our budget is satisfactory for the size of our program."
Kelly Moore, president of Duke Student Nursing Association and a student in the Advanced Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, said the intensity of the "fast-track" ABSN program and schedules of students can limit social planning.
Moore said the 54 full-time students in the program share $1,000 for the year's events. In recent years, the program has operated with a $500 social budget, but Moore said an additional $500 was allotted to the program this year.
Moore said the nursing school differs from Fuqua because students must hold fundraisers to host social events.
"We operate well within the limits that we have. Being able to have a social event every Friday where we could invite people would be fantastic, but not realistic at this point," she said.
Heather Wake, president of the Engineering Graduate Student Council, said the majority of the council's budget is spent on social affairs. This year, $10,000 was provided by the Pratt School of Engineering's social and discretionary funds, and Wake estimated the budget to include another $2,000 from the graduate student association and $1,000 from the Graduate and Professional Student Council.
Though Pratt cannot administer student activity fees on graduate students, EGSC can request funding from GPSC's student fees.
Matthew Levy, treasurer of the student body of the School of Law, estimated the law school's social budget to be approximately $25,000 per year for just less than 700 students. The school sponsors a cocktail party and a Halloween party in the fall and the Barrister's Ball in the spring, but the majority of the social funds do not go to these festivities.
"Most is spent on programming, community service projects, mentor-mentee programs," Levy said.
Lana BenDavid, program coordinator of Graduate Student Affairs, said all graduate schools and any officially recognized graduate student groups can apply for funding from her organization or from GPSC.
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