As she prepares to leave Duke to become president of Middlebury, Trinity College Dean Laurie Patton says she'll take away a number of what she calls "Duke Moments."
Some have to do with what a student said to her; others are memories of discussions with faculty and administrative colleagues. All are about getting important work done.
"My Duke Moments were when everyone comes together to make something happen," said Patton, interviewed earlier this month in her Allen Building office. "I'll remember how we started developing the idea for the University Course and one month later everything was ready to go."
Patton can count on more Duke Moments than she might have expected when she arrived as dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences four years ago.
- From a partnership with the University of Virginia to teach rarely taught foreign languages to a new global health co-major, Patton encouraged multiple curriculum initiatives.
- A faculty committee she formed will offer recommendations this coming year to significantly revise Duke’s curriculum. The goal is to promote student ownership of their education and support interdisciplinary study while strengthening traditional disciplines.
- Through cutting administrative costs and raising revenues, the arts & sciences budget has stabilized, turning a projected $11 million deficit for the coming fiscal year into a more manageable $1.1 million deficit.
- The college has added 17 new professorships. New faculty hiring is keeping pace, improving faculty diversity and strengthening several strategic priorities.
Most of these issues involve thorny challenges that in the past have led to conflicts. But faculty members have praised Patton for her listening skills and for involving them early in policy discussions. For her part, Patton said she's been "blown away by how faculty have taken the lead on these initiatives. I feel very good about the strength of faculty governance at Duke."
"Many of the people I found myself on a different side on one issue, I find myself on the same side on a different issue," she said. "People told me that the test of a dean is whether you can walk into a faculty commons and be with friends. And I think the answer for me is yes. I've always sensed a great camaraderie and trust with the faculty, when you know their disagreements are only issue-based. That's what collaboration does."
Her capacity for constant collaboration and getting things done was a running theme in speeches delivered two weeks ago at a reception for her. Many made fond references to Patton’s frequent "walking meetings." Provost Sally Kornbluth mentioned Patton's ever-present smartphone, regularly in use and often in need of recharging.
"Laurie combines a commitment to moving agendas forward quickly and decisively, while maintaining a commitment to process and consensus," said Lee Baker, Trinity College dean for academic affairs. "Adapting her leadership style to Duke's distinctive set of flat hierarchies, she creatively integrated dynamic leadership with consensual leadership."
A scholar of South Asian history, culture and religion, as well as a published poet, Patton came to Duke from Emory University in 2011 and immediately started building ties outside of Trinity College. The University Course initiative, which created a course open to students from across the university, was an early sign of how she hoped to cultivate new relationships with Duke’s graduate and professional schools.
"I'm proud to say I've been involved with an initiative with every single other dean," she said. "And in each case, whether it's been a joint center, course or joint appointment, it's been added value for both schools.
"I think that's one of the things that makes Duke distinctive and one of the reasons why I came here. The stereotype of deans is they are territorial, but at Duke deans go on retreats together in common cause. They act on behalf of their school but they get it that this is the kind of collaboration that's necessary to make Duke work. They can't let their intra-school politics take over."
Professor Srinivas Aravamudan, the former dean of humanities, honors Laurie Patton at a reception for the Trinity College dean. Photos by Geoffrey Mock
Patton has also encouraged “public scholarship,” helping faculty find places to apply their research "to generate greater exchange between the university and the broader world." The Forum for Scholars and Publics, led by Professor Laurent Dubois, has been the most visible sign of this effort.
Patton connects her interest in public scholarship to an aggressive defense of a liberal arts education, which she said remains "the most effective way to train someone to think, to write and to argue."
"Liberal arts are the best way to reflect on the forms of citizenship. With its clash of different cultures and different ways of thinking, a liberal arts education provides this. It's the No. 1 reason why the liberal arts will always be essential."
Patton said she leaves her successor, UNC-Chapel Hill chemistry professor Valerie Ashby, with several large challenges. Although undergraduate advising has benefited from greater training for advisers and a better transition from pre-major to major advising, Patton said it needs more attention, particularly as curricular changes provide more flexibility for students. She said some students may prefer to move to a four-year advising model to promote more continuity in the advising they receive while at Duke.
Patton also said Duke would benefit from "broader conversations about pedagogy," And she worries that the growth of interdisciplinary study, despite strong efforts to mesh it with the disciplines, could end up creating additional silos.
She added that Duke will continue to be challenged by issues of diversity, and these challenges may even become greater as the university strengthens its global reach.
"Diversity is a huge issue that isn't going away. It's partially a generational issue, in that students experience diversity in a different way than people of our generation do. Sometimes what is seen by my generation as a gesture of inclusion, students see as singling out people or a group. There are terms we use that aren't comfortable for this generation. And questions of gender identification are being pushed by this generation in ways that ours didn't.
"Students have grown up experiencing a multiplicity of diversities. It's not just whites and African-Americans. It's Asian and Hispanic and gender, and the intersection of all these identities is a huge challenge. Students face the question of are you going to be one thing or five things at once, and how do the rest of us honor that? I think our generation has to listen to the students in handling this, and honestly I have a lot of faith in the students to find answers."
Patton will face similar challenges at Middlebury, but she leaves knowing that Duke and Trinity College are riding a "wave of innovation" that bodes well for both.
"Everything at Duke right now is really, really good. We can do better in certain areas, and people here strive to turn what is really good into something that is eminent.
"In particular, we are good at curricular innovation. In fact we are so good, we are challenged to sufficiently support all of the good innovations that occur. But people at Duke will always find a way. I've seen it with innovation and entrepreneurship and with global health. We set priorities, raise new revenues and make tough sun-setting decisions for some programs, but in the end we find a way to make it go."