Academic Opportunities
Duke offers a rich array of academic programs especially tailored to undergraduate interests and needs, including mentored research, hands-on community-based learning, and international study.
Baldwin Scholars
The Alice M. Baldwin Scholars Program was created to inspire and support undergraduate women in the classroom, in leadership, and in their future professions. Eighteen first-year Trinity and Pratt students are accepted each fall for the four-year program.
The Baldwin Scholars participate in two academic seminars, a sophomore residential experience, and an internship. In addition, they network with student mentors, faculty, and Duke alumnae through community service projects, lectures, and informal dinners.
Cardea Fellows Program
The Cardea Fellows Program provides a selective learning community to inspire and support undergraduate students interested in health care careers.
Named after the Roman goddess of health and the deity of doorways and thresholds, the program helps fellows successfully navigate and negotiate Duke’s rigorous science and mathematics curriculum and prepare for competitive admission to graduate or professional school.
Eighteen first-year students are competitively selected to participate in activities throughout their undergraduate years.
Duke Engage
Duke Engage empowers students to address critical human needs through immersive service, in the process transforming students, advancing Duke's educational mission, and providing meaningful assistance to communities in the U.S. and abroad.
The program provides funding for Duke undergraduates who wish to pursue a civic engagement experience of at least eight weeks anywhere in the world. Students apply what they have learned in the classroom to address societal issues at home or abroad. Not only do students tackle real-world problems, but they also develop the valuable skills and self-knowledge.
Any Duke undergraduate who has completed at least two semesters of classes is eligible for participation. Duke will cover travel and living expenses. For students receiving financial aid, Duke will also assume responsibility for the summer earnings requirement.
Duke Institutes and Centers
Undergraduate students can take advantage of a novel and unique opportunity to address a broad range of societal challenges from a multidisciplinary perspective. Duke's seven signature institutes and more than 60 interdisciplinary centers offer innovative certificate programs and other means of engaging in problem-centered, collaborative, and often entrepreneurial knowledge generation and dissemination in the service of society.
First-Year Seminars Program
Trinity's First-Year Seminars are small, discussion-based courses that inspire intellectual curiosity, develop students' academic skills, and integrate new students into Duke's community of scholars.
These seminars are offered in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Many are interdisciplinary; others engage students in topics within a single academic field. Themes include global environmental change, film and visual culture, and urban design and politics.
First-Year Seminars bear the 49S number. Taught by senior faculty, these classes enroll only 15 first-year students per section.
Focus Program
The Focus Program exposes first- and second-year students to ideas from the vantage point of different disciplines across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
The program's Interdisciplinary seminar clusters nurture students' intellectual curiosity and sense of academic adventure.Small group seminars of no more than 18 students interact with some of Duke’s most distinguished professors. This intimate learning experience encourages personal intellectual responsibility while establishing student-professor rapport. Faculty and students engage in a comfortable interaction that continues throughout their academic life and later careers.
First-year Focus students share housing with other Focus students, an environment that facilitates discussion and scholarly exploration while taking part in Duke’s rich East Campus living environment. Students venture beyond Duke’s campus into the community, taking part in field trips, travel, community service, and research that are incorporated into the interdisciplinary Focus learning experience.
Global Education Office for Undergraduates
Nearly half of Duke’s undergraduates spend at least a semester or a summer in another country, taking part in an array of programs offered or approved by the Global Education Office for Undergraduates
Global Education Office for Undergraduates provides students the opportunity to engage more fully in their majors, connect with specific areas of interest, and improve their understanding of other languages and cultures.
All undergraduates, including those interested in science, engineering, and medicine, are encouraged to consider studying abroad. Please consult your academic adviser for more information about fulfilling requirements while participating in Study Abroad.
Hart Leadership
The Hart Leadership Program offers courses on topics such as civic participation, political engagement, social entrepreneurship, ethics and public life, and organizational change and development.
We have three experiential learning programs: Enterprising Leadership Incubator, Service Opportunities in Leadership, and Hart Fellows. Since 1995, interns and fellows have conducted community-based projects with partner organizations in 13 U.S. cities and 35 countries.
Through our courses and experiential learning programs, we have worked with more than 200 community partners, including 45 international organizations.
Marine Lab
The Duke University Marine Laboratory, a unit of the Nicholas School of the Environment, is located in Beaufort, N.C. Its mission is education and research in the basic ocean processes, coastal environmental management, marine biotechnology, and marine biomedicine.
The Marine Laboratory operates year-round to provide educational, training, and research opportunities to about 3,500 persons annually, including undergraduate, graduate, and professional students enrolled in the university’s academic programs; visiting student groups who use the laboratory’s facilities; and scientists who come from North America and abroad to conduct their own research.
Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program provides students from underrepresented minorities who are pursuing careers in higher education with an awareness of the challenges and opportunities of academic life. Five sophomore students are selected each year for fellowships lasting two academic years and two mentored research summers. Fellows who pursue Ph.D. degrees in the core humanities, the social sciences, or the physical sciences may have up to $10,000 of undergraduate student loans repaid by the Mellon Foundation.
Program II (A self-designed program of study)
Program II provides students the opportunity to design a customized individual program of study, allowing them to explore issues, problems, and ideas from a variety of intellectual perspectives.
In recent years, Program II students have explored such topics as war, gender, and religion in the Middle East; molecular biology and research dynamics; film and human experience; medicine, health policy, and spirituality; ethics; children in American society; and cultural expression through the arts.
Service Learning Program
The Service Learning Program supports Duke's mission of promoting knowledge in the service of society by fostering service-learning on campus.
Our goal is to provide instructional support and logistical assistance to departments, programs, and individual faculty members seeking to integrate service-learning into their academic objectives.
Summer session
Summer Session is an opportunity for Duke students to get ahead, to catch up on a difficult subject, or to study special topics they can’t fit into their schedules during the regular academic year. Students in good standing at accredited institutions of higher learning are also eligible to enroll in summer courses at Duke for academic, professional, or personal enrichment. High school graduates accepted for fall matriculation at accredited colleges and universities are also invited to register.
All current Duke undergraduates receiving financial aid during the regular academic year are eligible to receive financial aid for two summer session terms. These two summer terms of financial aid are in addition to the eight regular academic year semesters. Visiting students enrolled only for the summer may be eligible to borrow from an outside lender under the Federal Stafford Loan Program in their home state. College financial aid offices or state departments of higher education have information and applications.
The Thompson Writing Program
The Thompson Writing Program (TWP) develops students' skills in academic writing.
First-year students in Writing 20, Academic Writing, learn to read critically and to make effective use of what they’ve read. Intimate seminars of 12 students are taught by postdoctoral fellows with experience in fields ranging from epidemiology and archeology to history and sociology. The TWP publishes Deliberations, a journal of some of the best student essays from Writing 20.
The Writing in the Disciplines (WID) Program promotes upper-level courses with an emphasis on writing offered by departments across Trinity College, and supports faculty and graduate student instructors in designing assignments and responding to the writing of their students.
The Writing Studio provides free one-on-one tutoring by trained professionals for students working on writing for any course.They help with all aspects of the writing process—from brainstorming to researching, to drafting, revising, and polishing a final draft.
Undergraduate Research
From the outset, Duke undergraduates enjoy opportunities to engage in original research that help them develop essential intellectual skills, mentored by world-class faculty.
The Undergraduate Research Support Office identifies grants and assistantships for undergraduate projects and summer programs. Summer opportunities for first-, second-, and third-year students are offered through the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program, the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, the Pratt School of Engineering, and a variety of departmental programs. Several programs offer travel and research grants, including awards for research abroad.