Speaking to the Employees

Staff turns out for Primetime with the Provost

By Geoffrey Mock

Friday, November 17, 2006

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Durham, NC -- Speaking before a crowd estimated at 350 to 400 Duke employees Thursday, Provost Peter Lange said that "Making a Difference," Duke’s new strategic plan, while focusing on academics, would be successful only to the degree that faculty, students and staff could work together to implement it.

Lange told staff that parts of the plan, such as the goal of improving arts and cultural offerings on campus and creating a vibrant Central Campus, will directly affect their lives. However, he said he also believes the plan is important to employees because it will help Duke continue to be a university they can be proud of.

Questions for the Provost

lange

Peter Lange discusses Duke initiatives on global climate change.

Lange on what the plan says about the work climate at Duke.

An employee asks about opportunities for professional development.

Lange discusses decision-making on the new educational benefit for Duke employees.

An employee asks about what the plan means for cultural diversity at Duke. 

“Our new strategic plan is called ‘Making a Difference’ and that title wasn’t chosen haphazardly,” Lange said. “All of us want to work at a place of which we can be proud, which is distinctively excellent, which is a leader. The new plan is intended to ensure Duke is a place of which we can be proud in all of these ways.”

Lange spoke at “Primetime with the Provost,” the first in what is expected to be a quarterly series of employee town halls co-sponsored by Duke Today and Working@Duke. The town halls are part of an ongoing effort to improve internal communications at the university. A second employee town hall is scheduled for February 2007.

The strategic plan includes six “enduring themes:”

  • Interdisciplinarity
  • Knowledge in the service of society
  • Centrality of the humanities and interpretative social sciences
  • Internationalization
  • Diversity
  • Affordability and Access

In addition, it sets six academic goals:

  • Create a new Faculty Enhancement Initiative (FEI) that commits $100 million over the next five to eight years to hire, retain and support outstanding faculty at all levels.
  • Strengthen Duke’s engagement in real-world issues through interdisciplinary programs that build upon the university’s strengths.
  • Nurture a passion among undergraduates for learning and making a difference in the world.
  • Attract the best graduate and professional students through increased financial support and stronger graduate programs, and by integrating graduate students more fully into the academic community.
  • Transform the arts at Duke through enhanced programming, curricular opportunities and cross-disciplinary research.
  • Lead and innovate in creating, managing and delivering scholarly resources for teaching and research.

 
The past strategic plan, “Building on Excellence,” significantly changed the university campus, and many employees’ jobs. Lange said he expects the current plan to bring many changes as well. 

One of the plan’s guiding themes is that the old model of higher education, which is largely unchanged since the late 18th century, has to adapt, particularly in breaking down barriers between universities and local and international communities. Such engagement in the community is necessary for universities to regain some of the public trust they have lost over the past decades. Lange said the strategic plan will lead Duke more in the direction of scholarship that brings real change to people’s lives both locally and abroad.

“The old model of universities with a focus on specialization and with a certain ivy character is not what the world demands of its universities today and in the future,” Lange said. “A degree of re-integration, of working together [across disciplines] on bigger questions, is where some of the greatest gains in knowledge can be found.”

During the question-and-answer period, employees asked both about details in the plan and about working conditions at Duke (see excerpts in accompanying story).

Employees and other members of the Duke community will hear more about the strategic plan over the coming months. In December, a special website will be launched and a brochure will be mailed out; both will focus on discussing how the plan’s goals will translate into real action.