<p>Shuttle service? Food? Housing?</p>
<p>1) Establish a business major
2) Eliminate curriculum requirements or allow APs to count
3) More inexpensive social options
4) Completely revamp housing (exploding toilets, flooding showers, collapsing ceilings, and dangerous levels of mold are unacceptable)
5) Require study abroad
6) Overhaul the biology program
7) Establish a Duke-NCSU(-UNC) bus
8) Establish a BS/MD program
9) Move football to I-AA
10) Eliminate the Cultural Anthropology, Women’s Studies, AAAS, and Literature departments
11) Renovate the Bryan Center…preferably after demolishing it
12) Improve roommate-matching for freshmen
13) Provide more research support for those not majoring in science
14) Establish cardboard recycling
15) Establish more communication in admissions- blogs, discussion boards, etc.
16) Eliminate scholarships</p>
<p>I think that they do need to improve off campus shuttle services. The new C-5 which runs from campus around popular dining/nightlife areas is a step in the right direction, but it’s only at night, and only three nights a week. It’d be nice to have shuttle services (maybe even one an hour!) to places like Target or Walmart. And it’d also be nice to have a campus bus (even if students have to pay for it) from the apartment complexes nearby.</p>
<p>As for Warblersrules list, I personally disagree with more than half of it. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but in my three years at Duke, I have NEVER had any problems with bathrooms, and have actually been pleased with great bathroom facilities in my dorms and some of the best water pressure in the showers I’ve ever had! I wouldn’t like to see a business major, per se, after having gone through some i-banking recruiting seasons I don’t feel like THAT would necessarily help – but it would be nice to see the Markets & Management certificate evolve into a major. Eliminating majors that some deem as fluff and that are smaller departments at Duke just blows my mind, especially considering some of these departments have some of the more fun, interesting, and culturally relevant courses (as a matter of fact- I take the adverse opinion – I think all students should be required to take something that is very culturally relevant at least once in their Duke careers; I know some engineers non lib arts majors who really have no concept of this and it’s pretty sad which means I in turn do agree with a restructuring of curriculum requirements, which I am mostly happy with, but have some questions…) I want a more state of the art student center.</p>
<p>As for food, I am not a huge critic of Duke’s food, but here is where you’ll see my NYer shining through: I want a place where I can get a slice of pizza during the day, or a real Kosher deli (NY style) and legitimately good bagels. I miss our nasty 24 hr diner, because it wasn’t that bad, and being there late night was loads of fun, and more importantly, they had some of the best on campus breakfast and brunch options for lazy weekend mornings. Those eggs were delicious.</p>
<p>“3) More inexpensive social options”
Can anybody please speak to that and #6?</p>
<p>And umm… why #10 and #16? Do you mean sports scholarships?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Lol right.</p>
<p>
Our bathroom has ONE functioning shower out of five. They won’t fix the others. Few has also had electrical problems (how the hell does a water fountain catch on fire???) and structural problems (the collapsing ceiling cited above as one example). Our common room consists of a small table and two chairs. Craven has had numerous bathroom problems- believe me, there was a reason so many Craven singles were left in Roompix last night. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
With so many pre-business students majoring in econ, why not add a business program (with Fuqua, it’d be a good one) to compete with Penn, NYU, MIT, and UNC? The same for the BS/MD program. Most pre-meds major in biology and go to Duke med anyway.</p>
<p>
My brain and fingers were going at different speeds. :o I meant to add that they should be merged into a respectable anthropology department, which I think would be more useful for interdisciplinary studies. </p>
<p>
That was one thing I hesitated to add to the list, because I haven’t quite sorted out my thoughts on that. Duke spends quite a bit of effort and resources on the selected few, but that has been changing. Last year two of the three Rhodes Scholars weren’t AB Dukes, which is practically unheard of. In any case, Duke students can find connections and resources if they try. </p>
<p>
I should add while this needs improvement, it <em>is</em> improving. Duke is trying various things to improve the social scene (the plaza, the Nasher, etc.).</p>
<p>warblers- you forget that room pix was a disaster last night:p</p>
<p>thats what duke needs to improve. because i wasted an hour of my life.</p>
<p>ranting. sorry.</p>
<p>Ugh…don’t go there. My window was at 9:10, and I was still battling with the darned thing two hours later. I never did get a room. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Thats what park benches are for! Mmm. If I go to duke it’ll most likely be paying full price. I hope that I could get workstudy or research opportunities (dont’ want an offcampus job) early on so I can help the folks pay off for undergrad.</p>
<p>“If they try” - are they very far and few or is it just that you cant sit on your rear and wait for the bigwigs to give you money?</p>
<p>There are more opportunities on campus than get filled, I think. Many department websites list job opportunities, and it’s not hard to find a research opportunity. It’s just takes initiative. When I mentioned that Duke is making more effort to make opportunities open to students, I was referring to extremely ambitious projects (i.e. starting a school in Africa like a Robertson did). </p>
<p>One AWESOME thing Duke has recently approved is the DukeEngage program:
<a href=“http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/02/DukeEngage.html[/url]”>http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/02/DukeEngage.html</a></p>
<p>My modifications to W’s list:</p>
<p>1.) Establish more concentrations within majors. Just as you could have an Economics major concentrate in “Finance” or “Marketing”, they could also concentrate in “Econometrics” or “Policy” or something like that.
2.) Reduce curricular requirements. They’re slanted against science majors at this point.
4.) Well, redo some of housing. I liked Keohane and the newer buildings in Edens just fine, thankyoumuch.
5.) Require a field project of some kind, possibly in Durham or abroad. (Requiring an entire semester abroad would make it harder to major in a science.)
6.) Differentiate the tracks within the biology program. A couple of the more annoying classes have no relevance to what most students are there for.
7.) Establish buses to shopping centers and grocery stores. Nothing too crazy – say, two round trips per Saturday or something.
9.) Can we do that? Don’t all our teams have to be in the same division?
13.) Provide more research support in general. I have yet to hear of a single school which does a halfway reasonable job matching students into research labs. How hard could a campus-wide Monster.com be to set up? (Use facebook?)
16.) Expand scholarships. Heck, set up a trust fund to make tuition free. Goodness knows USN’s top ten could all afford to do this if only they cared.</p>
<p>My own list:
A.) Standardize Writing 20.
B.) Equalize grades across departments. Most schools have problems with inflation in the humanities compared to the sciences. Force them to meet in the middle. (After all, campus-wide grade deflation wouldn’t be the best idea for grad school admissions and such.)
C.) Find a way to have students make the substance-free decision in the absence of parental pressure. I can’t think of how to make this work, though.
D.) Build a new library, science building, engineering center, BC walkway, and divinity school chapel. (Oh, wait.)
E.) Reduce admissions distortions – including (but not limited to) legacies and non-revenue athletes.
F.) Use more undergraduate TA’s rather than graduate ones. I found that communication was usually better with the undergrad TA’s.
G.) Keep consistency with professors in teaching assignments.
H.) Establish Chem and Econ courses analogous to Physics 41/42: “Intro for Majors”.</p>
<p>Also, if nothing else, they need to change the course number for Bio26. It currently implies that it’s the sequel for Bio25, when in reality it’s … well, it’s not.</p>
<p>Mmm…
2.) Reduce curricular requirements. They’re slanted against science majors at this point. </p>
<p>Howso? Lots of nonsci required courses?</p>
<p>And also could you explain #6? Also, is Neuroscience a track under the bio major or is it its own major at duke? I find that some schools advertise it as a major when it isn’t, and haven’t found a straight answer yet.</p>
<p>And thanks for answering all my questions guys!</p>
<p>Right, a science major has to take more “extra” requirements than non-science majors because more of the requirements are in “Cross Cultural Inquiries” and such than in the sciences. Also, the sciences often put together lightweight classes for people just trying to fill their requirements. The humanities don’t. (Waits for someone to point out the obvious joke…)</p>
<p>It’s already much better than it was. They changed it late in my college career.</p>
<p>At least at Duke, neuroscience is not a major. Whether it’s even a track within the biology major, I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Many of Duke premeds are biology majors, and diversity/evolution/ecology classes are really useless to them. They also happen to be among the department’s most annoying and tedious. If you had some kind of “human physiology” track or something like that that avoided those courses, I know that many bio majors would be very grateful.</p>
<p>The basics of evolution are covered in Introduction. The details of phylogenetic trees are best left to those who want PhD’s in such things.</p>
<p>Ahh. Thanks for the info!</p>
<p>We DEFINITELY need a kosher NY style deli. It needs to have decent matzo ball soup too!</p>
<p>fengshuibundi, neuroscience is very popular at Duke. You actually have three options of studying it! It can be a concentration within the biology major, a concentration within the psychology major, or a certificate.</p>
<p><a href=“http://unp.aas.duke.edu/program/requirements.php[/url]”>http://unp.aas.duke.edu/program/requirements.php</a></p>
<p>
That’s the main reason I suggested the B/MD program. With an acceptance in hand, hopefully some of them would move out of the sciences. I was in the very first class of the new Bio 116 course last year. On the first day of class, Bernhardt asked the class, “So who’s interested in ecology???” Not a hand went up. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Of the ones listed I definitely agree about improving some of the lower-end admissions standards, a few more food options (at least Italian), and new facility instead of the Bryan Center. I disagree about the one with more undergraduate T/A’s - I think they are far less professional and qualified than the graduate ones, but maybe it’s just the departments I have taken classes in. </p>
<p>Other ideas: Although I find the academics and professors here excellent, a few things could improve. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Cap classes at 100 students (psych does this but some departments don’t). I think they can afford a few more professors/sections for major classes like intro economics and the sciences. My two classes over 100 were definitely two of my worst and the professors tend to be much better when there can at least be some interaction with the students. </p></li>
<li><p>Require all classes to be taught by PhD’s. Some of the graduate/master’s degree instructors I have had are fine but for what we pay we should have a doctorate as a professor for each class. It’s fine to have graduate T/A’s teaching sections or even giving a lecture or two if they want to get some experience, but all classes should have a PhD. </p></li>
<li><p>More of a focus on current political national/international issues, and I’m not talking about the lacrosse case and the DA. Possibly some discussion of current events in classes even if they’re not political science, or more applications of class material to current issues. Also they should do more to publicize speakers on campus and to recruit famous speakers as major events and not just something small/unpublicized and specific.</p></li>
<li><p>Lottery system for basketball admissions - they can keep 1-2 games tenting if they want but the others should not be based on how long you want to wait in line. </p></li>
<li><p>Improve social options on campus - this is hard but there should be more alternatives to Greek-sponsored events.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>1.)
Well, but you dilute the quality of your professors a little bit if you do this. Besides, is the difference between 300 and 100 really that big? I’d think the far greater gap would be from twelve to thirty, or thirty to fifty. Once you get past about 80 it really stops mattering.</p>
<p>2.) With the occasional exception for professors of the practice.</p>
<p>Why don’t people like the Bryan Center? (just something I kind of sensed when I visited.)</p>