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Good afternoon to the great Class of 2030!

On behalf of the administration, faculty, and staff, I’m delighted to welcome you to Duke University.

You have traveled from many different places to arrive at this moment: this Convocation ceremony, marking the opening of the academic year for our new undergraduates.

With this gathering, we are continuing a cherished tradition that dates back more than a century.  Indeed, one hundred years ago, Duke welcomed what was then its largest freshman class ever—approximately 650 students. Like you, they assembled to prepare for the beginning of the fall semester.

Among them were two young men from Ohio, Vernon Crozier and Charles Lake. For reasons unknown, they were in San Francisco when they decided to enroll at Duke. According to the Duke Chronicle, Vernon and Charles hiked all the way to Durham, arriving with a few days to spare.

Now, Google Maps estimates that journey would take about 43 days by foot—and that’s with the assistance of a ferry. While I admire that level of dedication, I’ll say I’m more than a little skeptical that this actually happened.

Nevertheless, I hope your own journey to Duke was considerably smoother and simpler. However you arrived here, and wherever you called home before today, we’re thrilled that you are here now, together, at Duke and in Durham.

My personal journey to Durham also originated in California.  I grew up in the LA area, did my undergraduate and graduate studies in the Bay Area, and spent much of my adult life in Michigan and Pennsylvania before coming to Duke—you see, I saved the best for last.

But I assure you that I did not walk to Durham when I moved here.

I did quickly come to appreciate that North Carolina has four truly distinct seasons. And that is what I’d like to talk with you about this afternoon: the many seasons and changes of weather that you’ll encounter in your journey through Duke.

You’re already experiencing perhaps the most unmistakable season: a hot and humid Southern summer.  I won’t speak for all your orientation leaders and other volunteers, but I think I’m still recovering from move-in this year.  Even with some comforting cloud cover, it was as much an exercise in hot yoga and weight lifting as it was a welcome party.

But before long, I assure you, this sweltering summer weather will give way to autumn. And in many ways, that season best symbolizes the beginning of your time at Duke.

That’s because autumn is a season of transition.

As the temperatures cool and the dew points drop, the air becomes crisp and inviting. The leaves turn brilliant shades of orange, red and yellow before eventually falling away. It’s a truly beautiful season, one that quietly reminds us that growth often begins with change.

Fittingly, fall is one of the best times to plant seeds—the soil is still warm from the summer, and the cooler air provides the ideal conditions for seeds to germinate and take root.

Your early days at Duke are much the same.

This is a season for planting the seeds of the version of yourself who will graduate from Duke—when you will almost certainly be a different person from the one sitting in this stadium today. Not because you abandoned who you are or where you came from, but because you discovered more about yourself—your capabilities, your interests, and your purpose.  

As you look around, you see new faces. You are already learning new routines and embracing newfound freedoms. You are also perhaps feeling uncertain. Change often brings uncertainty. 

I urge you to embrace all that this season offers, including that uncertainty. Nurture it. Invest in your new community. Try things that are unfamiliar. Be open to connecting with new people, considering new perspectives, and challenging your assumptions about the world. Take full advantage of this new opportunity for learning and growth.

Now as fall transitions to winter, the daylight hours will shorten, and the temperatures will turn colder here.  You will encounter an occasional wintry mix—maybe even enough snow for building a small snowman or making snow angels in one of the quads.  And those of you from the upper Midwest will marvel at how folks around here go bananas at the prospect of even a flake of snow. You will see bread and milk fly off the grocery shelves.

By winter, Duke will feel more familiar to you. And most of the season, it’s a time to retreat into the warmth of the indoors.

The freshness of your transition from high school…it will eventually wear off. The novelty will begin to fade. New routines will quickly become habits. Your exciting new beginning will give way to the quieter work of becoming.

But winter is not the absence of growth. In nature, a seed’s most important work happens beneath the surface, before anyone can see it.

Winter is the season that teaches us the true value of commitment and perseverance, of making steady, quiet progress toward a larger goal.

There will be times this year when your progress will feel difficult to measure. You may feel overwhelmed by your coursework or disappointed to fall short of your own expectations. It’s very likely that at some point you will have doubts about your direction, or change your mind about your destination, or run into roadblocks that lead to unexpected course changes or detours.

That’s OK. In fact, it is all part of the process of learning, growing, and evolving. But even as you endure these challenging moments, much of your transformative growth will happen in a winter season—quietly and beneath the surface. And you will soon discover that the seeds you planted in the fall are maturing and growing stronger through the knowledge and experiences you are gaining.

When you have moments of doubt, just remember that spring will soon be upon us.  And, of course, there’s basketball.

Spring will arrive. And more than any other season, it symbolizes growth. It’s when the seeds planted in the fall begin emerging from the barren ground.

The spring temperatures are pleasant, and after the relative dormancy of winter, it’s a time to celebrate the outdoors again. You’ll discover that Duke Gardens has the most spectacular displays of cherry blossoms, a particular point of pride.

Spring is a fitting metaphor for that time when you begin to understand and recognize the version of yourself you are becoming, like a plant emerging from the ground and beginning to bud. What was once growing beneath the surface now becomes visible. And it’s a different campus, because you are different. Your friends are different. Things look different in the new light.

It’s an exciting time—and not just because of spring break.

Your confidence will grow, which is good. That’s what we want. But be aware that it may also tempt you to look ahead. So don’t rush yourself. Be patient. Stay focused on the present.

In a world where distractions are all around us, patience and focus are becoming harder to maintain. But I assure you, they are traits that will serve you well. So before getting too far ahead of yourself, just remember that even in the delightful days of spring there are inconveniences, and new challenges we must overcome.

For example, you’ll soon discover that in spring the entire state of North Carolina turns a bright shade of yellowish green, as pollen from our state’s pine and hardwood trees blankets everything in sight—cars, park benches, and anything else you leave outside, believe me, even for two minutes.

Pollen is an essential part of our ecosystem. It enables plant reproduction and helps sustain agricultural crops that produce fruits and nuts. Yet, many people—myself included— are allergic to it. That’s another reminder that growth is not always comfortable.

But before you know it, spring showers will wash away the pollen. Summer will arrive. And as the heat and humidity return, summer will offer a chance to pause and reflect on how much you have grown and changed since you were sitting here today, hopefully listening to my speech.

No one can say for certain what your world will look like by next summer, much less by the time you graduate from Duke.  And notwithstanding advances in meteorology, nobody can say for certain what weather we will enjoy, or battle through, on any given day.

Every season of life is full of surprises. There are gorgeous sunny days in the middle of winter.  And here in North Carolina, as you will discover, we can sometimes experience all four seasons in one day.

Your Duke experience will be like that…not always predictable or proceeding according to a set timeline. But remember that those truly glorious rays of sunshine streaking through a cloud break can only happen in cloudy skies.  And what I do know is this: if you embrace the changes in the weather, if you persevere and stay focused, if you take full advantage of the Duke experience, you will be as ready as you can be for whatever comes next.

One last thing I want to leave you with today: nobody likes feeling under the weather. And so, I’ll offer you the same advice I give every incoming class, something all of us need to remember: the surest way to be our best is to get some rest. Step away from those screens, make sure to get a good night’s sleep, and allow your body and mind to recharge.

Class of 2030, welcome.

As we might say around here, y’all are about to have a heck of a journey.  Enjoy the walk, in every season.

Thank you, Mark. Let me begin by thanking you for your leadership. And I’m grateful to all of the members of this Council for your service. Your ongoing work sustains the strong traditions of shared governance at Duke, built over generations by many, including George Christie, whose passing we’ve mourned this year.

At this time last year, I spoke with you about the many challenges we face: dwindling public support of higher education and academic research; a precipitous decline in our primary sources of external funding; rapid introduction of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, that disrupt established practice; and a social, political, and cultural milieu characterized by instability and heightened conflict.

I talked then of our need to be prepared, not only to seek cost-reductions across the university, but also to re-imagine our work and consider how we might strategically realign around our highest priorities.  

In the time since, we have continued to face challenges, and we’ll discuss some of those in our upcoming executive session. But even as colleagues across the university continue adjusting to new ways of operating, I believe we have made important strides.

Indeed, as the name of our current fundraising and alumni engagement campaign signals, Duke is Made for This.  Made for this moment of change and uncertainty. Made for a world that will need, now more than ever, a liberal arts institution with our particular culture, sensibilities and expertise.  

My confidence is reinforced by the many different people I encounter every week, both here on campus and in my travels.  

I consistently hear from them that Duke is recognized for our remarkable forward momentum, and for making value-driven decisions that are positioning us for a brighter future.

My confidence is also grounded in the tangible progress we continue to make toward the five overarching priorities I articulated to this Council in my first annual address in 2018: Empowering our people; transforming teaching and learning; strengthening community; partnering with purpose in Durham and the region; and engaging our global network of alumni and friends.

Let me take each area in turn.

First, we are empowering our people. Times like these remind us that Duke is an extraordinary university because of the students, faculty and staff who bring our missions to life. And even though circumstances have forced us to become smaller, we undertook our strategic realignment precisely to ensure we could continue to invest in our people.

Our students are the embodiment of our future. Notwithstanding constrained financial resources, we’re expanding our commitment to making a Duke education accessible and affordable. Our annual expenditures on undergraduate student financial aid exceeded a record $200 million this year. I’m especially proud that our initiative for students from the Carolinas and additional strategic measures have resulted in quite substantial increases in socio-economic diversity among our student body. And beyond financial aid, we’re prioritizing support for first-generation students and those from lower-income backgrounds, to ensure that they can take full advantage of all Duke offers. 

We’re also investing in you, the faculty who propel our teaching and research missions and inspire us with pathbreaking scholarship—impactful work like that I witnessed recently in the lab of Professor Nanthia Suthana. There I met a military veteran who suffers from severe and formerly untreatable PTSD. Now he’s finding life-changing relief from a novel, tiny implant capable of monitoring his brain activity, predicting when PTSD symptoms will occur, and proactively delivering interventions to short-circuit those debilitating symptoms. 

Empowering this type of work requires continuous investment in faculty excellence, and our ongoing campaign has already raised over $300 million for endowed chairs, with a goal of raising $2.5 billion for faculty support, including chairs, discretionary funds, and research support.  

Another way we’re investing in faculty is by supporting research translation and commercialization, moving discoveries from the lab into the market. Since 2020, this work has led to more than 1,600 invention disclosures and generated nearly $500 million in licensing revenue—revenue distributed back to you, and your labs, departments, and schools to support further research and innovation.  

And the world is taking note of your extraordinary achievements. Duke has been recognized among the top six institutions in the world in each of the first two years that the Times Higher Ed has published its Interdisciplinary Science Rankings. Over the past five years, 32 Duke faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. These new members represent fully 21 percent of Duke’s living members of those distinguished honorary societies.

Our clinical faculty, too, are a critical part of Duke’s mission. Duke University Health System is returning to a position of financial strength, thanks to our integrated physician practice, which has unlocked capacity for growth and expansion of our world-renowned academic medical center. Forward-looking projects—like a proton therapy center for advanced cancer care and our partnership with UNC to build the state’s first stand-alone children’s hospital—will ensure that patients here in Durham and throughout North Carolina will have even greater access to world-class care. 

We’re also making tangible progress on the second part of our strategic vision, transforming teaching and learning. 

Our progress includes several recent, faculty-driven curriculum enhancements: the new Trinity College curriculum; the Pratt School’s first-year design curriculum and Character-Forward initiative; the School of Medicine’s new Patient-FIRST curriculum; and our new Center for Community-Engaged Scholarship. All of these ground our teaching in experiential learning opportunities and in professional decision-making contexts.  

Duke continues to be distinguished by our interdisciplinary and experiential education programs such as Bass Connections and DukeEngage. The Data+ program has supported 140 projects over the past five years, ranging from advanced mathematical sciences to art restoration, with nearly a third of its projects in the computational humanities. And we’re poised to implement recommendations of the 2030 Teaching Excellence & Innovation Committee, which will improve the ways we define, evaluate and support effective teaching and mentoring practices.  

And as we confront both the opportunities and potential downsides of artificial intelligence, we’re building on more than a century of excellence in liberal arts education, committed to asking the most fundamental questions, such as:

• How can we ensure that a generation of students who have always had instant access to information will also experience the power of deep scholarly immersion and reflection?
• How can we responsibly deploy AI and other tools to augment and deepen, not erode, our human capacities for rigorous inquiry and creative exploration?
• How can we preserve the thrill of intellectual discovery in a digital age? 

As I recently shared with colleagues at the Franklin Humanities Institute, these are some of the questions we, as faculty colleagues, need to wrestle with as we look to the future of teaching and learning. 

I’m also heartened by the progress we’ve made toward the third element of our strategic vision, which is nurturing a campus community where everyone feels supported in reaching their fullest potential.

We have now fully implemented the QuadEx undergraduate living and learning model, and it is succeeding in enhancing faculty engagement with undergraduates and fostering belonging and well-being from our students’ earliest days on campus.

As we strive to be a community of people who embrace our differences and learn from our disagreements, we’re providing structured opportunities for developing and practicing habits of constructive engagement. We’re investing in new programs to help faculty advance constructive dialogue and integrate core values of pluralism, free inquiry, and belonging in the classroom. 

Five years ago, we introduced a campus-wide culture survey that marked the first time all internal constituents—faculty, students and staff—were asked to share their experiences and perspectives on life at Duke, and it has motivated us to seek new pathways for staff career advancement. Data from our second campus culture survey, administered in 2024, indicate we’re making positive progress in the lived experience at Duke. But there is more to be done. This January marked the fourth year that began with more than 300 university leaders coming together for a day-long meeting focused on achieving inclusive excellence as a university, and at the department and unit levels.

The arts are also a vital aspect of building community, and with the leadership of Vice Provost Deborah Rutter, former Director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, we’re extremely well positioned to expand the role of the arts on campus, in the Durham community and beyond. We’ve implemented recommendations of the 2019 Arts Planning Group and invested in key campus assets such as the Nasher Museum; the Sarah P. Duke Gardens; and our newly restructured Center for Documentary Studies. 

Duke Athletics is another fundamental contributor to community.  As the landscape of intercollegiate athletics continues to change at a bewildering pace, we are committed to ensuring that Duke provides a world-class student-athlete experience and that athletics continues to serve as a positive influence on the university’s national and global reputation.

Our investments in excellence are yielding clear results in this domain as well. We are now the first school in ACC history to win conference championships in football, and men’s and women’s basketball, all in the same year. And we should all be proud that Duke holds one of the nation’s leading Graduation Success Rates, and that our student-athletes have led the Atlantic Coast Conference in ACC Honor Roll selections for 36 of the past 37 years. 

The fourth element of our strategic vision is partnering with purpose to advance health and well-being in Durham and the region.

As our hometown and region experience tremendous growth, we’re taking new steps that are in direct alignment with our core missions and that seek to ensure that all residents benefit from regional advancement.

One is the Durham Early College of Health Sciences, which welcomed its first class of ninth graders last August. This pioneering high school is a collaboration among Duke, Durham Technical Community College, and Durham Public Schools, with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The school provides pathways directly to healthcare careers at Duke while also building our region’s healthcare workforce.

We are living up to our Climate Commitment. We’ve now expanded our goals for reducing our operational impact to include not only carbon, but also waste, water, transportation, and food, and our Health System is being incorporated in climate and sustainability goal planning for the first time.

And this week, we’ve formally launched HomeGrown, a transformative initiative that represents a $200 million commitment to our community over the next three years.

Through HomeGrown, we’re aligning Duke’s core business operations with the economic health of our region, with measurable goals across several priority impact areas:

• Through employment at Duke;
• Through purchasing from local businesses;
• Through our construction projects;
• And through investment, by partnering to increase housing supply and by expanding homeownership pathways.

We are making specific commitments in each of these areas, with public reporting and with measurable goals.

The fifth element of our vision for the future is activating our global network of alumni and friends, through programs to support their lifelong growth and by engaging them as partners in advancing our educational, research, and service missions.

Our campaign, Made for This, is the first in Duke’s history to have explicit objectives for both fundraising and alumni engagement. 

Last month, I spent time with some of the 500 alumni and friends who visited campus as part of Women’s Weekend. This summer dozens of alumni will return to Duke for the third installment of the Forever Learning Summer Academy. There, they will indulge their love of learning in week-long courses on topics including Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” and Lincoln and the Civil War.

Last year alone, over 25,000 Duke alumni attended events and programs like these around the world, and more than 14,000 volunteered their time to support our students or their local communities. Over 33,000 alumni made a gift or pledge last year to support our work as a university. This is why our campaign has been so incredibly successful from a philanthropic perspective. Just one year into its public phase, it has already become, by a wide margin, the most successful fundraising effort in Duke’s history.

Empowering people; transforming teaching and learning; strengthening community; partnering with purpose; and engaging our global network. Owing to extraordinary efforts across all five of these priorities, we are today well positioned to lead even—perhaps especially—in tumultuous times.

Indeed, this moment of profound ferment offers, at least to an enterprising and ambitious institution like Duke, an opportunity to ascend in the next century even more so than in our remarkable first 100 years. 

I’m grateful to have had this opportunity to serve as president as we crossed our centennial threshold; and guided by our strategic vision, I look forward to working with you to secure our trajectory for an even brighter future.

Thank you.

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to you—our students, faculty, and staff. 

Together, you make Duke an extraordinary community.

We all know that this has been a challenging year. We’ve faced difficult choices and changes as we’ve navigated a shifting landscape in higher education. Yet even in times of uncertainty, I continue to be inspired by the 
creativity, compassion, and resilience that define Duke.

Across our classrooms, hospitals, clinics, and labs—and in communities near and far—you have shown what it means to live our mission with purpose. And you have shown up to support one another, in moments of challenge, 
and in moments of celebration.

While many of us will take time this week to rest and reconnect with loved ones, I want to extend my special thanks to those who will be working through the holiday: caring for patients, maintaining our facilities, and supporting essential operations.  

Your dedication sustains us all.

I hope during this Thanksgiving week, you can take some time to reflect, recharge, and feel pride in the difference you make here at Duke.

Thank you, and best wishes for a peaceful and restorative holiday.

Good afternoon to the great Class of 2029! On behalf of the administration, faculty, and staff, I’m delighted to welcome you to Duke University.

It’s been just over a week since we gathered right here in Cameron for the Family Farewell. 

I hope you’ve now begun to settle in on East Campus, including getting to know the wonderful staff of the Marketplace over in the Wall Center. 

I also hope that you’ve made some new friends; explored interesting topics and activities during Experiential Orientation; and are now excited to formally begin your academic careers at Duke.  

We’re certainly excited for you. A lot of people—staff, faculty, and your fellow students—have been hard at work helping you get oriented.  

But I’m guessing that, notwithstanding their best efforts, and your best efforts at ExO, you may still be feeling a little disoriented.

That’s completely understandable. This is still a new place, with new people, and new routines.  

Nothing is quite where it used to be in your life. It’s a lot easier to get lost, and to lose things. 

You have this strange new person sharing your room. Strange in the “don’t-really-know-them-yet” way, I hope, rather than in the “just-plain-strange” way.   

Making things even more disorienting, you’re getting to know two campuses, east and west, and the bus lines connecting them. 

And to double down on the disorientation, we’ve turned a fair amount of both campuses into construction zones, just for you.

I’m guessing you are probably hoping to be thoroughly oriented as quickly as possible, maybe craving that sense of deep familiarity with your surroundings, that confidence in knowing your way around all these people and places and routines like they were second-nature. 

But my message to you today is that you should instead treasure this profound disorientation.  

And you should try very hard to hold onto it.

I say this for three reasons.

First, unfamiliarity makes us unusually alert to our surroundings. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind works a little harder, your eye detects things that might otherwise escape notice. In your struggles to make things out, you really see.  

On the other hand, once you understand what you’re looking at, you don’t have to look at it very hard, because you recognize it. And thereafter, you see what you recognize—not necessarily all that is actually there to be seen. 

This process is natural. It’s efficient. It helps us minimize the work that goes into our daily lives. But it comes at a cost. In a very real way, it dulls the senses.

When you’re disoriented—feeling like a stranger in a strange land—life can be uncomfortable and confusing at times. But that state of being confused also gives you a kind of observational super-power.  

And if you can relax enough to embrace your confusion, if you can translate it into curiosity—then your mind is ready to learn. You are ready to grow. 

Scientists refer to this as neuroplasticity, the ability of our brains to build novel connections—to re-wire ourselves, as it were. Neuroplasticity is at its peak in early childhood, in part because of physical brain development, but also because in childhood our lack of experience forces us to make sense of a whirl of completely novel situations. Everything is new. The rules of sensemaking are not yet developed.  

As every parent has experienced, life with a child is an unending conversation about why. And unbridled, childlike human curiosity, while at times truly exhausting for everybody involved, is one of the great wonders of life.

Well, in your disoriented state as a new Duke student, you have an opportunity to reclaim that unbridled curiosity, but now with a much keener intellect and a larger, if not yet fully expansive, fund of personal experience.  

This new place, these new friends, these new courses and projects, and new explorations in art and science alike: they are ready for your sensemaking, and, I hope, another series of conversations, profound conversations, about why.  

In your disoriented state, you should take a break from making personal statements—you already gave us those, in your application. Now is the time for personal questions.

The second reason you should treasure disorientation is that it makes you less confident. I know that sounds bad, but let me explain.

When you’re a stranger in a strange land, you’re less likely to take things for granted. Because you can’t confidently trust that you know your surroundings, you tend to be more reflective, checking and double-checking what you’re thinking and doing. And that lack of certainty about your new surroundings generates, at least if you will let it, an openness. A willingness to listen. A posture of humility.

Intellectual humility and willingness to listen are, sadly, becoming lost arts in our society. People today feel far too confident that they know best—not only what’s best for them, but best for everybody else as well.  

The world today suffers from a problematic excess of self-confidence and its close relative, judgmentalism.  

This judgmental attitude could stem from myriad sources. 

Maybe it’s in reaction to the insecurities fostered by such rapid social, economic, and technological changes. 

Perhaps it’s related to our over-reliance on social media, which seem to have extended the kind of social ostracism once confined to middle school well into adulthood. 

Or maybe it’s part of a cultural tendency to politicize most every aspect of everyday life—something the academy has probably had a hand in propagating. 

For whatever reasons, we are so sure of the righteousness of our ways that we reflexively condemn rather than engage those who disagree with us, or even those we imagine to be disagreeable. 

Well, this disorienting moment, if it helps you to lower your guard, is a real gift to you. It’s an opportunity to check your own knowledge enough to get to know and understand people whose life experiences, perspectives, opinions and beliefs are different from yours.  

Please accept that gift, with sincere humility.

Now, I’m not suggesting that in your state of disorientation, you should lose your confidence; but I am suggesting that you redirect it: away from being so confident that you’re right, and toward being confident that, if you see past yourself, if you pay close attention to others and give them a chance to speak, and if you listen and engage respectfully with what they say, you will move closer to the truth. 

You may not agree with what others have to say, but in granting that they might just be right, and that you just might be wrong, you’ll see things you missed; your own views will become better grounded, more fulsome, less prone to over-simplification and error.

In today’s world of pathological over-confidence and judgmental certainty, we’d all do well to bring it down a notch or two, or three. Please allow yourself to wander around a bit in your confusion. Try new ideas on for size.  Dive into those classes and people and activities that seem most strange to you—because that’s how you will maximize your potential for learning.

The third reason to embrace disorientation is that it tends to make us a bit more careful. 

Being a stranger in a strange land can at times feel isolating and turn our attention inward as we try to figure out our place in this new world. And in a world that gives us less and less room for peace and quiet, being a bit more contemplative is actually not a bad thing.

Our contemporary society valorizes engagement and activism. The time elapsed between having an idea to firing off a petition has probably never been shorter in human history. There’s a lot to be said for engagement and action. As you know, one of Duke’s signature programs is DukeEngage.  

But action should not come at the expense of contemplation—especially skeptical contemplation.  

There is a “care-as-caution” angle to being disoriented in a new place, and it shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s for good reason that, when children are being taught to cross the road, they’re encouraged to “stop; look; and listen.”  

That remains good advice in a world that has nearly mastered the art of attracting, keeping, and selling your attention—usually by inciting strong emotional responses—and then channeling those responses into a behavior of some kind: buying this product, joining that cause. Our world seems to be implicitly suggesting you should “leap before you look.”  

And there is another angle as well: slowing down enough to take care of yourself, and each other. My advice to you is: Slow down, please.

Don’t give all your time to everyone else; instead, take some time—make some time—for yourself. This is the “care-as-well-being” angle.

This new place is exciting, as it should be. And I’ve no doubt you will be engaged in many new activities and pursuits, as you should. But I also want you to savor those quiet moments of reflection in Duke Chapel or the Duke Gardens, those moments in the library lost in a new book—if not actually lost in the stacks somewhere. Get out for a run or a walk. In the morning, notice the birdsong—it’s beautiful here in North Carolina.

And perhaps most importantly, please be sure to get some sleep. 

As I’ve said to every entering class, the surest way to be our best is to get some rest. So, turn off those phones. We all need enough sleep to keep our minds alert and our hearts open.

I’m confident you will make the most of your time here. We—the staff and faculty, and your fellow students—are here to help in any ways we can. So don’t hesitate to ask.  

Soon, you’ll know this Duke campus like the back of your hand, and you inevitably will settle into routines and patterns that make your days more comfortable and efficient. You’ll be ready to help next year’s new class get oriented by showing them the ropes.

But I hope you’ll find ways to hold onto a little disorientation. It will keep you at your sharpest and most primed for growth and learning. 

Class of 2029, I am thrilled you are here, and I can’t wait to see the many ways you will embrace the opportunities ahead.

Welcome to Duke!