Each year, Duke University awards Benenson Awards in the Arts, which provide funding for arts-centered projects proposed by undergraduates, including graduating seniors. This year, the Student Arts Award Committee awarded prizes to fifteen students for creative projects spanning film, theater, creative writing, music, dance, and visual art. read more » about Announcing the 2025 Benenson Award Winners
Sharing your writing is hard. There’s a vulnerability that comes with letting others see your words in print, and establishing trust is the cornerstone of any successful writing class.Faculty in the Thompson Writing Program (TWP) have been building that trust — and community — since 2000, when the program was established to amplify the importance of writing in the undergraduate curriculum.With the launch of the Arts & Sciences new curriculum for students entering in Fall 2025, the Thompson Writing Program will… read more » about Thompson Writing Program Builds Spaces of Trust in the First-Year Experience
NCCU students Ronni Butts (left) and Zaria Hanchell, along with Gladys Mitchell-Walthour and her daughter, Truth. (Photo Rhiannon Jenkins) John D. French was exhausted but happy enjoying a hip hop show by rappers from the Brazilian NGO Instituto Enraizados (The Rooted). The March 3 performance concluded a daylong conference on “Hip Hop, Faith, and Citizenship,” the closing chapter of a week of activities organized as part of the Bass Connections Project “Activism, Culture… read more » about Brazilian Activism, Culture, Education and Religion, with a Hip Hop Soundtrack
Minor league baseball draws an unusually broad array of spectators. A retired social scientist helped fans find their seats, took their photos, and chatted them up during one championship season. Harris Cooper is an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. In 2022, he ushered at Durham Bulls Athletic Park and wrote a book about it, Finding America in a Minor League Ballpark: A Season Hosting for the Durham Bulls, which we are excerpting below. This is published with permission from… read more » about Harris Cooper: Finding America at Durham Bulls Athletic Park
When Associate Professor of the Practice Yan Liu reached out to Durham Academy's Mandarin teacher Bonnie Wang in 2014, she was exploring new connections in the community for her new service-learning course in Chinese. Neither educator could have predicted that this initial connection would blossom into a decade-long partnership that would transform hundreds of students' lives and their own teaching practices.This year, Bonnie Wang was named the 2025 Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Community Partner Award… read more » about A Decade of Connection: Learning, Language, and Community
In the short term, President Trump’s tariffs could mean more-expensive iPhones. The longer-term goal is to reshore high-tech manufacturing to the U.S., including Apple’s cash cow.“The army of millions and millions of human beings, screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend. “It’s going to be automated,” he added.Except iPhones contain a patchwork of sophisticated parts, sourced from many countries… read more » about An American-Made iPhone: Just Expensive or Completely Impossible? Duke Emeritus Professor Explains.
DURHAM, N.C. – In miniature test tubes in biologist Ryan Baugh’s lab at Duke, thousands of tiny wriggling worms – each one a fraction the size of an eyelash – munch on their dinner of bacteria broth.The worms’ soupy meal is laced with a hidden ingredient, invisible so-called “forever chemicals” found in America’s drinking water, our food and farmlands, even lurking in our bodies.It’s a chemical safety test, said Duke postdoctoral fellow Tess Leuthner. The garden- and compost-dwelling worm is helping researchers such as… read more » about ‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Everywhere. Most of Their Health Effects Are Unknown
Blue Devils fans are still making sense of Duke’s stunning late-game loss to Houston in what was a wild Final Four game.But for some fans of men’s college hoops, predicting this season’s nail-biters, closest contests — and even the biggest blowouts — was a worthwhile competition in itself.In the first-ever Triangle Sports Analytics competition, 15 teams of undergraduates and master’s students from Duke, UNC and NC State competed to make predictions about the 2024/25 ACC basketball season, and in a way most armchair fans don… read more » about College Basketball Can Be Hard to Predict. That Didn’t Stop These Student Data Whizzes From Trying
Learning a new language is an opportunity to discover more about ourselves and our world. It’s a fresh lens through which we view the people and cultures around us in exciting, and sometimes startling, ways.Trinity College of Arts & Sciences recognized the value of language study in crafting its new curriculum for students entering in Fall 2025 and beyond, which emphasizes not only mastery of a second language, but encourages exploring a completely new one.Whether it’s to reconnect with family traditions, further their… read more » about Trinity Language Students in Their Own Words
In this series of four stories, we are highlighting students whose “Why I Learn Languages” essays have been selected as winners of the Trinity Language Council’s 2024 Best Essay competition. Grace Kurtz-Nelson is a senior majoring in Public Policy and French. Through her time at Duke, she deepened her knowledge of French and started Italian. Read and let Kurtz-Nelson tell you, in her own words, how learning languages helped her make life-long friends while she laid the tracks of her future career.… read more » about In Their Own Words: Discovering the Francophone World, From Pen Pals to Policy
DURHAM, NC — April 8th, 2025 – Duke University web series Left of Black, now in its 15th season, has been nominated for Best Video Series in the category of Science & Education inthe 29th Annual Webby Awards. This nomination comes on the heels of winning Gold at the 20th Annual Davey Awards in the latter part of 2024.Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), is… read more » about Award-Winning Left of Black Web Series Nominated for the 29th Annual Webby Awards
On April 2, President Donald Trump held his long-promised “Liberation Day,” during which he took to the Rose Garden of the White House and announced a vast swath of tariffs that he will be implementing. Trump’s “Liberation Day” moves saw the introduction of a 10% tariff on all imported goods, and additional import taxes—of varying degrees—placed on 60 other countries.The U.S. and global markets have already started to feel the impact of Trump’s tariffs, with theU.S. stock market taking the worst hit thus far. At the… read more » about Is the U.S. Heading Into a Recession Amid Trump’s Tariffs? Duke Economist Discusses
Sayan Mukherjee, a Professor of Statistical Science, Mathematics, and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, passed away unexpectedly on Monday, March 31. He was 54 years old.Since 2022, Mukherjee was in Germany as the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Artificial Intelligence, a prestigious position shared between Leipzig University and the Max Plank Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences. He retained his affiliation with Duke, where he had been a professor since 2004. Prior to Duke, Mukherjee… read more » about Duke Mourns the Death of Statistician and Mathematician Sayan Mukherjee
Over the past decade, two very different ways of calculating the rate at which the universe is expanding have come to be at odds, a disagreement dubbed the Hubble tension, after 20th-century astronomer Edwin Hubble. Experts have speculated that this dispute might be temporary, stemming from subtle shortcomings in observations or analyses that will eventually be corrected rather than from some flawed understanding of the physics of the cosmos. Now, however, a new study that relies on an independent measure of the properties… read more » about The Hubble Tension Is Becoming a Hubble Crisis for Physicists
Alejandra Gonzalez-Acosta is one of 29 students to receive the 2025 Forever Duke Student Leadership Award.Presented annually by Duke Alumni Engagement and Development, the award recognizes graduating students within Duke’s undergraduate, graduate and professional schools for their outstanding leadership and dedication to fostering a strong sense of community at Duke.Gonzalez-Acosta, a Psychology major with minors in Visual Arts and Computational Biology, was nominated by faculty and peers for her leadership in the… read more » about Psychology Senior Awarded for Outstanding Leadership
The John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute has named Adam Rosenblatt, Professor of the Practice of the International Comparative Studies Program, as the new director of the Duke Human Rights Center (DHRC) at FHI. Rosenblatt, a prominent scholar in the fields of anthropology and death studies, will help expand the interdisciplinary perspective of DHRC’s mission of advancing human rights scholarship and practice.“I started reading Adam’s scholarship when he was a candidate for his position in International Comparative… read more » about Adam Rosenblatt Appointed Director of the Duke Human Rights Center
Master’s student Dhaval Potdar needed something to work on over the summer. He came across Data+, an interdisciplinary program for small teams of students to tackle challenges for clients who are often external to Duke. A project to improve operations at Durham Public Schools appealed to him because of the potential societal impact: “I got to do a project which would, if implemented correctly, have an impact on the lives of 30,000 children,” he said. “That’s pretty significant to me.”Potdar shared his experience at a… read more » about Community Engagement Tips From Faculty, Students and Local Partners
We recently caught up with Duke alum Charlie McSpadden T’10, producer of the 2024 romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy. The film, produced with Levantine Films and starring Karan Soni (Deadpool) and Jonathan Groff (Frozen, Hamilton), is set for a nationwide theatrical release on April 4 and will be screening at Durham’s AMC Southpoint starting April 10.The film follows Naveen (Soni) as he brings his fiancé Jay (Groff) home to meet his traditional… read more » about Q&A with Charlie McSpadden ‘10, Producer of the 2024 Film “A Nice Indian Boy”
Duke University has offered admission to 1,953 students for the Class of 2029.Those accepted through Duke’s Regular Decision process were notified starting at 7 p.m. ET Monday.Duke received about 4,500 more applications than last year for a total of 58,698 applicants.In December, Duke admitted 849 students to the Class of 2029 through its Early Decision application cycle, from 6,714 early applicants, the highest number in the university’s history. Another 220 students were admitted this week under the Early Deferral process… read more » about Duke Welcomes The Newest Members of the Class of 2029
How can we learn to heal from systemic violence in ways that are not suppressive, but expressive? This is the fundamental question that Lenora Lee posed in her talk titled Stories in Motion: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Dance Making on February 28 in the Pink Parlor in the East Duke building. Professor Jingqui Guan, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance invited Lee, the Artistic Director of Lenora Lee Dance, to discuss how she combines dance, history, and community as an artist.In her talk, Lee… read more » about Stories in Motion: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Dance Making
Jonathan C. Mattingly, Kimberly J. Jenkins Distinguished University Professor of New Technologies in the department of Mathematics, has been selected as a 2025 SIAM Fellow, one of the highest honors of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). His nomination and selection recognize his fundamental contributions to stochastic analysis and for applying stochastic tools to scientific and societal problems.The SIAM Fellows are nominated in recognition of their outstanding research and service to the community.… read more » about Jonathan C. Mattingly Selected as a 2025 SIAM Fellow
In this series of four stories, we are highlighting students whose “Why I Learn Languages” essays have been selected as winners of the Trinity Language Council’s 2024 Best Essay competition. Sarah Gorbatov is a junior majoring in Biology and Russian, with a minor in Computer Science, who reconnected with her native Russian through her time at Duke. Read and let Gorbatov tell you, in her own words, how learning languages gave her the tools to reconcile a language of hurt with a language of love. … read more » about In Their Own Words: From Hurt to Love, with Nothing Lost in Translation
In this series of four stories, we are highlighting students whose “Why I Learn Languages” essays have been selected as winners of the Trinity Language Council’s 2024 Best Essay competition. Damilola Bankole is a junior majoring in Global Health and Spanish. Read and let Bankole tell you, in her own words, how learning languages allows her to translates not only words, but emotions, prayers and hopes. Language has always been more than a tool… read more » about In Their Own Words: Languages as a Lifeline
In this series of four stories, we are highlighting students whose “Why I Learn Languages” essays have been selected as winners of the Trinity Language Council’s 2024 Best Essay competition. Charlotte Yew Huixin is a sophomore majoring in Sociology and Public Policy, with a minor in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) focused on Korean. Read and let Yew tell you, in her own words, how learning languages helped unveil layers of affection in her… read more » about In Their Own Words: Languages Unveil Layers of Affection
When is a lie acceptable, perhaps even a catalyst for creativity?This is a central question in Pierre Corneille’s “The Liar,” and it remains as thought-provoking today as it was at the play’s premiere in 1644.Directed by Darren Gobert, Duke Theater Studies’ Mainstage production of David Ives’ adaptation of the comedic masterpiece is impish, full of physical humor and surprisingly relevant. It follows the romantic misadventures of Dorante, a young man with a penchant for creative invention, and his servant, Cliton, who is… read more » about "The Liar” Showcases the Joy of Theatrical Make-Believe
The Graduate School is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2025 Dean's Awards, recognizing excellence in mentoring, teaching, and inclusive initiatives.View the recipients' profiles below, including their thoughts on mentoring and teaching, and accolades shared by their faculty. student, and staff colleagues. read more » about Graduate School Grants 9 Dean's Awards for 2025
Six Duke faculty have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).Fellowship in AAAS is considered one of the most distinct honors in the scientific community.The 2024 fellows class consists of 471 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 AAAS disciplinary sections who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements. “This year’s class of fellows are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities,” said Sudip… read more » about Five Trinity Faculty Named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Students in the Class of 2027 participated in the Halfway There Celebration on Abele Quad after declaring their majors. Sponsored by Sophomore Spark, a signature program through QuadEx, Halfway There is an annual event to recognize the accomplishments of the current sophomore class and celebrate the halfway point of their Duke undergraduate experience. Trinity College of Arts & Sciences is home to 35 departments and programs across arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Approximately 80% of Duke’s… read more » about Trinity Sophomores Declare They Are Halfway There
Senior Faculty at the Duke Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and Professor of the Practice in Education at Duke UniversityDavid Malone, PhD, joined the Cook Center in 2014, when it first originated as the Duke Consortium on Social Equity. He is currently the Co-Director of the Working Group on Educational Equity & Policy at the Cook Center and a Professor of the Practice in Education. With almost 40 years of experience in leadership, teaching, and research at Duke, Dr… read more » about A Q&A with Senior Faculty David M. Malone