A Conversation with Laurie Patton

After a lengthy selection process, Duke chose former Emory religion professor Laurie Patton as its new dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences in February 2011. Since her appointment a little over a year ago, Patton has been hotly pursuing innovation in all areas under her purview. In the dean’s spacious Allen building office overlooking the main quad, The Chronicle’s Toni Wei spoke with Patton about food, fundraising and the future.

After your appointment last February, you said you wanted to focus on four major areas: interdisciplinarity between departments, international partnerships, civic engagement and digital initiatives. What has influenced your belief in the importance of these goals? I think what we have developed in conversation with colleagues here is the idea of moving beyond interdisciplinarity. Some people think that the term interdisciplinarity is a bit of a cliché and everyone is using it, and even though Duke was a leader in it, it doesn’t put Duke in very fun rhetorical position to say you know, ‘We were first’—that doesn’t really help. So what I mean by beyond interdisciplinarity is, we have to assume that there has to be some collaboration for effective engagement and practical engagement—both. We have to assume that the other person’s expertise is necessary for us, instead of just different than us. It’s no longer a matter of tolerating intellectual diversity; it’s a matter of needing intellectual diversity in order to move forward. In terms of civic engagement, I think we need to reduce the ivory tower, and create an ivory fence, over which neighbors can shake hands. I actually think Duke is better than most at both civic engagement, as well as what I call public scholarship, which is translating our scholarship almost as soon as we produce it and understanding that scholarship both for the public and engaged with the public is not inimical to specialization. I think people have been writing about transitioning to a digital culture, but in fact we are in a digital culture, we’re there. Which means that we have to think seriously about all the rules and forms for best practice digitally. So, for example, how can we create forms of digital learning that actually encourage and facilitate face-to-face learning, because that’s what you pay for, when you pay for an elite education, is that small group face-to-face experience?

What about any challenges you’ve encountered in this role? I think that we continue to be in a financially constrained environment, which means that I need to continue to build in a time when I can’t do everything that we all want to do, and every day I have a difficult financial conversation with someone. The big challenge going forward will be the [upcoming capital] campaign, which will be very much around deepening our partnerships and making sure that the fund for financial aid is as robust as it could be.... I think we also need to create more places for revenue generation, so that we can support what we’ve already committed to. That includes undergraduate research and making sure that faculty are supported in all the ways they need to be to do their research. And that’s a big challenge.

You’re piloting an interdisciplinary “University Course” focused on food this semester. How did this come about? What went into planning it, in terms of both considerations and resources? It was a great story actually. We only did one pilot of it at [Emory University], and it was a small seminar, and as we were talking about what we might do in the next couple of years at Duke, [Dean of Academic Affairs for Trinity College] Lee Baker said, ‘Why not do it this Spring?’ so I said, ‘OK, let’s try it.’ I’ve been really amazed by the response because I think people have genuinely sensed that this was a way forward for the University, and we’re thinking of not only continuing this but developing perhaps a suite of courses that could be offered like this.

Your official title is dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences—how have you balanced all your responsibilities with the departments against interacting with students? I’ve always loved working with students, that’s the reason why I’m in this. I feel I’ve been able to connect with students partly through the food course—not as much as I’d like. I think the only way that I could be the best dean I know how to be is to remain in constant touch with students and to find as many venues to do that as I can. It is a balancing act, but… ultimately policy decisions about students are things that I need to approve, so in effect even though [in Arts and Sciences] we have discrete job titles, we actually overlap and interact with all of the different constituencies all the time.

Knowing the history of gender issues at Duke, and now being here for almost a year, what are your thoughts on being the second woman to hold this position at Duke? I think that there are a number of wonderful legacies around women that Duke has, partly through the Woman’s College, partly through the leadership of people like Ernie Friedl, Nan Keohane, Nancy Andrews, Kathy Gillis and Jo Rae Wright—they are inspirations to me. I’ve commissioned with [Vice Provost for Library Affairs] Deborah Jakubs an illustrated history of women at Duke, which I’m very excited about doing as well. But I think that the way to carry legacies forward in a university is to continually tell all the little stories that make up the big story, and that’s what I’m really excited to continue to do [not only for] women at Duke, but for everyone too.