Arts & Sciences Council heard a presentation on the experiences of Duke Kunshan University study abroad students at Duke and a proposal for a new carceral studies certificate during its first meeting of the spring semester Thursday.
DKU students in Durham
Valerie Hausman, associate vice provost for DKU and Duke University programming and strategy, and Liguo Zhang, academic dean for DKU undergraduate students at Duke, presented a report on DKU student engagement during their time in Durham.
Of DKU’s 106 study abroad students, 48 completed the survey.
The report — which showcased the results of an end-of-semester survey conducted in spring 2024 by the Duke Office of DKU Relations — found that 90% of DKU students at Duke are “very satisfied” or “generally satisfied” with their Duke experience and that 96% of them are “very satisfied” or “generally satisfied” with their Duke courses.
The exchange students also identified the main factors that contributed to having either a positive or negative experience on the Durham campus. The top three factors positively shaping DKU students’ experiences were Duke’s courses, having friends on campus and the campus environment. The top three challenges they reported facing were the short-term nature of a semester abroad program, residential life on East Campus and the costs of studying in Durham.
In an April 29 Chronicle article, DKU exchange students voiced concerns about living on East Campus and acclimating to the campus community and social scene. In particular, they emphasized that housing DKU students on West Campus could help facilitate more meaningful interactions with their Durham peers.
Looking over five years of enrollment data of DKU students at Duke, Hausman noted that fall 2023 marked the first semester where the only DKU students studying in Durham were members of the junior class.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions, many international DKU students in the Classes of 2024 and 2025 were previously unable to travel to Kunshan, prompting the University to allow DKU students across class years to study in Durham. Of those students, Hausman noted that 37 DKU students spent over two years at Duke.
“Every semester, we thought, ‘Surely they will open up, surely they will open up.’ And it just kept going,” she said of China’s travel policies. “[As a result], we had students who spent many semesters here, and that had really interesting implications in terms of identity.”
Hausman added that this led many students to ask why they could not “just [be] automatically admit[ted] to Duke” or receive financial aid.
For many of those DKU students who found an intellectual and social community in Durham and had never stepped foot on Kunshan’s campus, transferring to Duke provided a more viable alternative.
In terms of academic performance, Zhang highlighted that DKU students are “on par” with their Duke peers, noting that the “academic foundation built by the DKU prepares them very well for the rigor of Duke classes.” However, he added that some students have reported struggling with adjusting from a seven-week to an extended 14-week schedule and from small seminar-style classes to larger lectures.
Although DKU students typically spend just one semester in Durham, Zhang noted that there are a variety of opportunities and programs designed to foster DKU student engagement with Duke faculty and students, including the first-week orientation, Kunshan Student Ambassador Council and summer and semester research opportunities.
Hausman further noted that although DKU is an approved study abroad location for Duke students, Kunshan hosted its first and only Duke student during the spring 2024 semester.
Carceral studies certificate proposal
James Chappel, Gilhuly Family associate professor of history, and Professor of Sociology Christopher Wildeman presented a proposal for a new carceral studies certificate, which has already been approved by the Curriculum Committee.
Currently, students who want to study criminal law can do so by pursuing the Sociology of Crime, Law and Justice concentration within the sociology major. However, Wildeman distinguished the optional concentration with the proposed certificate by emphasizing that the former exclusively applies a sociological lens, while the latter would offer interdisciplinary perspectives that are “more accessible to a much broader range of students.”
Wildeman also highlighted student interest in an independent carceral studies certificate.
“The students that we have now — by virtue of how the incarceration rate has changed in the U.S. over the last 60 years — have been tremendously more affected in terms of their daily existence by mass incarceration than many of those of us in older cohorts,” he said. “… There is this deep desire for [some] sort of interdisciplinary engagement in this space.”
According to Chappel, various faculty discussion groups have been working on the development of a carceral studies curriculum throughout the past few years. The proposed structure of the certificate consists of a gateway course Sociology 228: Incarceration Nation, four electives from four departments and a capstone for seniors in their final semester.
While the gateway course is designed to introduce students to the history of prisons as well as the causes and consequences of confinement, the four electives will invite students to study incarceration from an interdisciplinary angle — including psychology, neuroscience and gender, sexuality and feminist studies.
“It's really important to us [that students] not basically take all sociology classes and be a sociology major and just tack this on,” Chappel said. “We want students to be thinking across [the] arts and sciences about this.”
In the current stage of planning, the certificate would be housed in the Kenan Institute for Ethics, which offers an Ethics & Society certificate and hosts the Prison Engagement Initiative. According to Chappel the institute has agreed to fund and staff the proposed certificate through a five-year pilot phase if it is approved.
Wildeman said that he and Chappel have agreed to serve as co-directors of the certificate program and that its placement and staffing will be re-evaluated if the cohort expands to a larger number of students.
The certificate would also be incorporated as part of the recently-approved Constellations program, which will require first-year students to take a set of three interconnected courses centered around a single theme beginning in the fall.
Some council members expressed support for the certificate.
Adam Rosenblatt, professor of the practice in international comparative studies and cultural anthropology, discussed how many students in his honors thesis class have focused on issues of incarceration and criminal and legal justice. He added that many of his students would have benefited from such a certificate.
“I see a lot of the evidence from my little corner of the world that y'all are right about the level of student interest,” he said.
The council will vote on the full proposal for the certificate at its Feb. 6 meeting.
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Lucas Lin is a Trinity sophomore and a university news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.