Once upon a time in Virginia, a man named Thomas Jefferson eased his breeched bohonkus into a hand-joined chair and conceived of the modern American university.
"I consider the common plan [for colleges] followed in this country, but not in others, of making one large and expensive building, as unfortunately erroneous. It is infinitely better to erect. an academical village," he wrote. Woven into his philosophy were architectural daydreams-plans for the structure of his utopian learning community. "Much observation and reflection on these institutions have long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals, and order," he wrote.
Jefferson's idle musings and blueprint margin doodles eventually became the University of Virginia, the first true college-cum-mini-community and the prototype of the quintessentially American college.
A lot of Duke's design is structurally and philosophically predicated upon the wisdom of the Sage of Monticello. Is there a better way to describe the mock-ups of a metropolized Central Campus than "academical village?" On West and East, classroom-studded quads neighbor residential ones, allegedly facilitating the seepage of knowledge and higher ideals into daily life.
Yet even as Jefferson's ideal remains the standard for U.S. campuses, the collegiate life enacted on those grounds has dramatically changed. Eighteenth-century mores called for a firm grounding in all subjects, one which could only be transmitted through four uninterrupted years under the elms. Today's top school has students learning just about everywhere but in the library-by building a school in Nigeria, studying literature in Dublin or coaching Little League in north Durham. In the self-touted "most ambitious efforts of its kind in U.S. higher education," the University recently earmarked $30 million for worldwide, student-led community service. Under the aegis of the initiative, called DukeEngage, socially conscious students will be fully funded in their attempts to "tackle real-world problems" in an "immersive service experience," one that can take them anywhere in the world. The program conceptually resembles a more established form of off-campus learning-a semester or academic year abroad. This past Fall, an unprecedented 475 students left Duke's premises, including about 40 percent of the junior class.
These days, the academical village is worldwide.
But it is too stark a judgment to say that having most of your peers silently evacuating Main West is simply socially disconcerting. It is academically frustrating as well. There are few juniors in upper-level Fall seminars. And in the Spring, returning juniors seem more attuned to the lackadaisical, languorous Euro lifestyle and short work weeks than to school-in other words, they've checked out.
DukeEngage, study abroad and community outreach programs hardly claim that they can replace on-campus, classroom education; their mission statements merely purport to supplement and enhance the traditional offerings. Yet a not-insubstantial push for off-campus learning inevitably displaces students-and, arguably, dilutes the richness of campus life and classroom environments.
What makes or breaks that feeling of campus unity has been under the administration's magnifying glass since Duke's inception, but it is a concept particularly relevant since last spring's headlines. In the Campus Culture Initiative, released Feb. 27, a committee charges alcohol consumption, gender relations, curriculum and housing systems as eroding Duke's social and communal health. Yet a diasporic junior class is a piece of that puzzle.
"Of course it's a factor," says Provost Peter Lange, recently tapped to lead CCI-related talks about the composition of Duke's culture. "We're very much in the middle of this [evaluation] process, and we have to think about study abroad, its virtues and its merits, as a part of our Duke education. We have to factor it in fully as to how we think about campus culture-not excessively bemoan or praise it, but say it's a piece of how Duke students go through Duke and take advantage of it."
Drawbacks of study abroad that campus culture critics will likely investigate include the reintegration process as it relates to housing. Juniors returning from Capetown to Brooklyn are often discontiguously scattered, from the suburban edges of Trinity Park to the musty corners of Crowell.
"It kind of foreshadows the senior experience-having this desire to overcome the impending distance," says Hasnain Zaidi, president of the junior class council and planner of junior-specific programming and events. "It's this attitude of, 'Hey, we're all about to get scattered, so let's make the most of it,'" he adds, citing the impromptu barbecues on Central Campus and other small gatherings of those left behind in Durham as "key to driving a sense of community within our class."
Disconnectedness in spatial terms is sometimes emphasized by developmental distance unique to the third year, Zaidi adds.
"A lot of kids come back from abroad, and they experience real culture shock," he says. "They're being forced to think broadly about their Duke experience and what it means to them-they've lived differently, they've thought differently, and now they need to rethink their lives. They go through some pretty rough introspective times."
The push to become international-whether at the expense of campus culture or not-is not a phenomenon unique to Duke. Harvard University, which had only 55 students study abroad during Fall 2002, is pushing to ensure the "global competence" of its graduates by popularizing study abroad, in the words of its own version of the CCI. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology also initially refrained from glamorizing foreign study, citing difficult core course requirements and the uneven academic quality of overseas education as drawbacks to spending even one semester away. In October, however, the school revamped its undergraduate program for the first time in more than 50 years, reversing its stance on study abroad.
"We want to raise [study abroad] from 'It's kind of nice to have' to 'This is something all students need to think about consciously, and if they don't go abroad, it may be a disadvantage to them in life,'" Charles Stewart III, chairman of MIT's department of political science, told The Boston Globe after the announcement.
At Duke, reasons for leaving run the gamut-from wanting to be a part of a service project, to doing field research, to needing an immersive crash course in Tuscan wine appreciation. Others see it as a chance to take classes and complete internships they can't access within Duke's monastic confines. The Duke in New York program, for students of the arts or media, and the Duke in Los Angeles program, for students of film and movie production, aim to fill voids in the University's curriculum.
For whatever reason they leave, University study abroad programs siphon off a portion of the student body-and, demographically speaking, it has tended to be a fairly specific portion. Fall 2006's bumper crop of a study-abroad class included only 27 black students, comprising 6.7 percent of the group. The undergraduate student body is 10.1 percent black.
Meanwhile, just 3 percent of U.S. university students studying overseas between 2003 and 2004 identified themselves as students of engineering.
"OSA works with all facets of the campus to promote study abroad across disciplines and ethnic groups," Margaret Riley, dean of the office of study abroad, wrote in an e-mail. "We are proud that the participation rate of our students of color is more than twice the national average, and the participation of engineers has increased significantly in the past several years."
If the slice of the junior class that chooses to study abroad seems homogenous, consider the people they leave behind. Those who remain in Durham often elect to do so with a distinct purpose in mind-to lead the school as head of a cultural group, campus publication or student government organization, or to pave the way to lead those same organizations during senior year.
But to Riley, a globalized society and the need to study abroad are not going away-they are becoming more relevant and necessary.
"I would say that rather than erode campus culture, study abroad enhances and enriches campus culture," she said. "The University's strategic plans since 1994 have all identified internationalization as a key goal and strength of the university."
Whatever the net effects, it's clear Duke's "enabling opportunity" education model-rather than traditional under-the-elms education-is not fleeting or trendy. Lange says the future will include opportunities for intersection between study abroad and DukeEngage-a partnership he says will beget an entire "new set of educational opportunities."
"I think that most students who study abroad learn a great deal about themselves, and get a good education," Lange says. "You're leaning many things while you're at Duke-how to think and how to think about your thinking. There's no better way of understanding yourself and your society better than spending time in another one."
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