The primary goal of the new Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation Institute at Duke will be to develop innovative and less invasive clinical treatments for children with brain tumors.

"This award from the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation will allow our researchers to aggressively pursue their studies to establish better treatment and care of children with brain tumors," said Ralph Snyderman, M.D., chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System. "The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation has had a long and extraordinarily supportive relationship with Duke, and we are extremely grateful for their confidence in us and for their outstanding work to fight pediatric brain tumors."

Srinivas Aravamudan, associate professor of English and co-convener of the 2002-03 Franklin Humanities Institute Seminar on "Race, Justice, and the Politics of Memory," has been named the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute's new director. He will replace Cathy N. Davidson, one of the Humanities Institute's founding directors, who will continue in her position as vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke.

Aravamudan, who received his Ph.D. from Cornell and came to Duke in 2000, specializes in 18th-century British and French literature and in postcolonial literature and theory. His study, Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 (1999, Duke University Press) won the first book prize of the Modern Language Association in 2000. A second book, Guru English: South Asian Religion in Cosmopolitan Contexts will be published by Princeton University Press in 2004.

Aravamudan's appointment coincides with the naming of a new group of Fellows for the 2003-04 Seminar on "Monument, Document: From Archive to Performance," which will focus on questions of how human experience is preserved, remembered, recast, represented, and communicated.

Co-conveners for the new Seminar are Elizabeth Fenn of history and Richard Powell of art and art history. Other arts and sciences faculty fellows will include Stanley Abe, art and art history, who will work on a survey of Chinese art; Valeria Finucci, Romance studies, who will study women stage performers in early modern Italy; Richard Jaffe, religion, who will explore transformations in Japanese Buddhism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Anthony Kelley, music, who will examine ways of capturing the "feel" of spontaneous forms of music through written notation; and Grant Parker, classical studies, who will look at the use and reuse of Egyptian obelisks as they were moved about in the Roman world.

Other fellows will include Steven Hensen, director of planning and project development from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library; Douglas Reichert Powell, a Mellon Lecturing Fellow in the University Writing Program; and two graduate students, Simon Hay from English and Gonzalo Lamana from cultural anthropology.

Smith to lead endowment trustees

Greensboro business and civic leader Lanty L. Smith was elected a trustee of The Duke Endowment at the foundation's June 3 meeting in Charlotte.

"Lanty Smith has built an impressive record of business and corporate leadership, along with an extensive history of dedicated service to leading nonprofit organizations in the Carolinas," said Russell M. Robinson II, chairman of the board of The Duke Endowment. "This remarkable combination of experience will be a marvelous asset to the Endowment, and we are excited to have him join us on the board.'

Smith is chairman of the Board of Directors of Soles Brower Smith & Co., an investment and merchant banking firm with headquarters in Greensboro. He is also chairman of the Board of Directors of Precision Fabrics Group, also with headquarters in Greensboro. Smith organized Precision Fabrics in 1988 to purchase the businesses of the Precision Fabrics Division of Burlington Industries.

He and his wife, the former Margaret Hays Chandler, have three daughters and three grandchildren, and reside in Greensboro.

Founded in 1924 by North Carolina industrialist James Buchanan Duke, The Duke Endowment is one of the nation's largest private foundations. Its mission is to serve the people of North Carolina and South Carolina by supporting selected programs of higher education, health care, children's welfare, and spiritual life.

Training pastoral excellence

Duke Divinity School will coordinate a $57 million Lilly Endowment Inc. program on pastoral excellence that involves 47 organizations, Divinity Dean L. Gregory Jones announced Tuesday.

Lilly Endowment's Sustaining Pastoral Excellence (SPE) program funds a wide variety of organizations in projects designed to improve support for clergy engaged in pastoral ministry. Grantees include church-related colleges and universities, seminaries, religious retreat and conference centers, regional and national offices of church denominations, and a variety of independent associations that serve pastors and local congregations.

These institutions are located in 26 states and represent nearly every major Christian faith tradition, Jones said.

Pulpit & Pew, a research project in the Divinity School, has been granted an additional $3.1 million from Lilly Endowment to manage this program for four years and to conclude key projects of its own, Jones said. The Rev. Kevin Armstrong, a 1985 Duke Divinity graduate and United Methodist pastor in Indianapolis, will serve as the primary coordinator of this program.

"Duke Divinity School and its Pulpit & Pew Project are in a wonderful position to lead the coordination effort for Lilly Endowment's Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program," said Craig Dykstra, vice president for religion at Lilly Endowment Inc. "The Pulpit & Pew Project has already fostered a great deal of new and much-needed research on the current state of ministry across a broad spectrum of denominational and congregational contexts.

"At the same time, Duke has ably hosted a number of gatherings for pastors, scholars, researchers, seminary and church leaders to reflect upon how to improve the quality of ministry, as well as how to sustain excellent ministry where it is already taking place."

Blood pressure study

People age 21 years and older with high blood pressure are needed to participate in a study looking at the effects of age and high blood pressure on people's ability to recognize and remember different types of items including letters, words and shapes.

The study involves four separate testing sessions with a $25 compensation for each visit. Subjects should not be taking any medication for high blood pressure.

For more information, call Casey McMorran at 684-5277.

Studying the Bends

Volunteers are needed for a study of the procedures astronauts use when preparing for Extravehicular Activity (EVA). These procedures are intended to minimize the likelihood of the bends (decompression sickness) when an astronaut is decompressed in a space suit.

Subjects must be 25-60 years of age, physically fit (exercise twice a week), and have no physical impairment that would prevent them from altitude exposure.

The study involves a three-hour physical exam and an experimental day of at least eight hours, during which subjects participate in an oxygen "prebreathe" followed by exposure to space suit pressure in an altitude chamber or a simulation at ground level. Volunteers will be paid $30 for the initial visit and $120 for the chamber experiment.

For more information, call Eric Schinazi at 668-0010.

Smoking study

Regular cigarette smokers with no known health problems who are between the ages of 21 and 60 are needed for a Duke study evaluating the effects of nicotine in the blood. Participants can earn $300 for six lab visits. Minorities are encouraged to participate.

For more information, call 681-2157.

Correction

In the May 30 Dialogue, an incorrect caption for the photograph of the Merel Harmel Lecture misidentified the chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology. The chairman is Mark Newman, M.D., Merel H. Harmel Professor of Anesthesiology.