Category: Archive Page 7 of 9

It’s Entrepreneurship Week at Duke, and calendars on campus are filled with events like “How to be a Rockstar Startup Employee,” “Building Entrepreneurial Women,” and “Innovation Co-Lab Studio Night.”

And while the idea of entrepreneurship at Duke as the purview of eager, tech-savvy students is an accurate one, there is another version of entrepreneurship at the university that is just as important: faculty research that leads to new technologies, companies, and, of course, jobs,
So what does this mean in the federal context?

Federal officials readily point to the importance of spending federal dollars wisely.  And you would be hard-pressed to hear a speech this campaign season that doesn’t refer to jobs and the economy.  And what lies right in this sweet spot, the intersection of federal dollars and jobs creation?  Faculty who have translated federally-funded research into successful startups.

For Duke researcher Richard Fair, professor of engineering and a former corporate executive, the process started with a DARPA grant from the Defense Department. Fair and a couple of post-docs thought it might be possible to guide tiny droplets of fluid around a tiny device, much the same way electrons move on an integrated circuit chip, basically using droplets like “bits of information.”

After many years of work, additional federal grants, a Duke Start-Up Challenge win, and the hiring of 80 employees, Fair’s technology was bought by a California company in a deal that was publicly reported as being worth “up to $96 million.”

And Fair is not alone. One can find examples throughout Duke of faculty spinning federally-funded research into startups that are successful at not only creating jobs and boosting the economy, but transforming lives and benefiting society.

To learn more about faculty entrepreneurship at Duke (and in the spirit of Entrepreneurship Week!), check out:

• This article highlighting examples of faculty research that has led to jobs and companies, written by our colleagues at Duke Today.
• Success stories of startups and spinouts at the Pratt School of Engineering.
• Duke Entrepreneurship and Innovation website – resources and stories from across the university.

And don’t forget to check out this fantastic feature on the entrepreneurial spirit at Duke as a whole – faculty, students, staff, and alumni: Duke’s Entrepreneurial Spirit.

With November’s midterm elections quickly approaching, the campaign ads, media coverage, and candidate back-and-forth can seem — well, overwhelming. The day-to-day conversations of who’s up, who’s down, and where the candidates are campaigning blend with political ads and campaign flyers, leaving citizen’s long on information, but often short on substance.

What are the issues influencing the midterm elections? How will policies such as Obamacare and Common Core standards impact YOU – the voter, the citizen? How are we – the campaigns, the news, society – talking about those policies?

Join Duke University’s Office of Public Affairs and Government Relations and Duke in Washington, along with the Forum for Scholars and Publics, for a discussion series that will take an in-depth look at the issues central to the midterm elections. Each session will feature conversations between Duke University professors and experts in Washington, D.C., along with the participation of audiences on campus and in nation’s capital.

Register now for the first session, “Setting the Stage: Mid-Term Overview,” an election scene-setter that will provide a look at the current election landscape. Leading the discussion on campus will be Duke University professors David Rohde and Tommy Sowers; and in Washington, D.C., Brent McGoldrick, a veteran of two presidential campaigns with experience in Get Out the Vote and microtargeting campaign tactics. The discussion will take place Thursday, September 18, from 4:00pm-5:00pm.

In Washington, participants will gather in the Duke in Washington Conference Room at 1201 New York Ave, NW, Suite 1110. On campus, participants will gather at the Forum for Scholars and Publics, located in 011 Old Chem.

These conversations are open to the public and video footage of the discussions will be available online here following the events. Come for one or come for them all, these conversations promise to be engaging and enlightening.

See the full schedule here.

Sunday marked the 70th anniversary of the enactment of the GI Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that allowed countless veterans the opportunity to pursue a college education.

Our very own Chris Simmons, associate vice president of federal relations at Duke, penned the below piece for Durham’s Herald-Sun to celebrate the occasion, the program, and the act of thinking BIG.

The original piece can be found here.

A big idea — the GI Bill — turns 70

My family benefited from a “big idea.” After dropping out of high school to enlist in the Navy, my grandfather, Leonard “Mac” McLean, returned from the Pacific and enrolled in college.

As one of 10 children from tiny Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado, attending (and paying for) college was a far-off dream for my grandfather.  The big idea that made a college education possible for him and millions of others was the GI Bill — enacted 70 years ago Sunday — which provided the support and investment that veterans needed to move forward after service to the country.

Since 1944, the GI Bill — and its subsequent iterations following other wars and conflicts — has offered a wide range of benefits for veterans with a variety of education goals.  Since 2009, more than $40 billion in Post-9/11 GI Bill payments has funded the education of more than 1 million beneficiaries.  It is a classic example of putting tax dollars to work, partnering with other entities (in this case colleges and universities) to do what is right and what is needed.

At Duke, an institution with a proud and long history with the military, veteran students and their dependents are the fastest growing group at the university.  Over the past five years the number of these students has grown more than 400 percent. They’re studying biology and political science; they’re getting MBAs and law degrees; they’re enrolled in our divinity school and our school of nursing.

In addition to government funding, Duke provides special scholarships to veterans through the Yellow Ribbon program.  We do this to say thank you for their service to our nation, and also because we believe having veterans in our classrooms and laboratories improves the education and teaching environment for our entire campus.  Imagine classroom discussions about foreign policy, weapon technology or third-world poverty if the student next to you has served several tours in Iraq or Afghanistan?  That is now a common occurrence not only at Duke, but also at other schools across the country, and our campuses are better because of it.

While it is easy to see the individual benefit of these programs, the societal benefit has been enormous.  College graduates are less likely to depend on public assistance programs as adults, more likely to be home owners, more civically engaged and less likely to be incarcerated.  The GI Bill has given our veterans and their families a path to a world with more options after service, and most would agree that the investment in this human infrastructure is well worth it.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill) passed both the House and Senate unanimously in the spring of 1944 and was signed into law by President Roosevelt just days after D-Day.  While it is hard to imagine a simple resolution celebrating apple pie passing unanimously in today’s political environment, a bill recently passed the Senate with more than 90 votes that gives veterans access to in-state tuition at public colleges and universities, no matter where they reside.  Perhaps this Big Idea isn’t dead, which is good for all Americans.

All four of my grandfather’s children and his six grandchildren attended college – – I’m not sure that would have happened if the government hadn’t made that investment in him and transformed his life.  We should use this week’s anniversary as a reminder of what is good and right with our government and encourage policy makers to continue to think BIG.  The GI Bill is BIG and its payoff has been, and will continue to be, monumental.

Christopher Simmons is the associate vice president for federal relations at Duke University.

William Brown (L), chief conservator of the North Carolina Museum of Art, and Ingrid Daubechies, professor of mathematics at Duke, show their recreation of a portion of an altarpiece by Giotto to Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) – the only Member of Congress with a PhD in mathematics.When the average person thinks of “big data,” the first things that come to mind may be government agencies gathering intelligence, political campaigns tracking voters, or even big retailers trying to learn shopping habits.  But a new initiative at Duke is helping to change the way people see big data – and all of the things you can do with it.

The Information Initiative at Duke (iiD) is a place where multidisciplinary teams come together to make sense of “big data” – sources of information characterized by massive size, tremendous variety and rapid change – and make that data matter. Duke faculty and students are working to harness and find patterns within massive data sets to address challenges ranging from the precise detection of explosives, to early diagnosis of autism, to the identification of counterfeit art.

Faculty members from the iiD traveled to Washington, DC on June 9 to share what impact the mathematical sciences can have on this last field, the fine arts.

Guillermo Sapiro, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Ingrid Daubechies, professor of mathematics, highlighted their work in the intersection of mathematics, data, and the arts in “Big Data to Big Insights: Mathematics Revealing Art,” a panel discussion hosted by Duke in Washington at the Capitol Visitors Center. William Brown, the chief conservator at the North Carolina Museum of Art with whom Daubechies has collaborated on several projects, rounded out the presenters.

“By collaborating with artists, art historians, and museum conservators, scientists at iiD are learning to ask questions of big data that provide a new way of illuminating the research frontier in the mathematical sciences,” said Robert Calderbank, director of the iiD and moderator of the panel.

“In turn, the answers to these questions reveal new processes and techniques and can increase our understanding of the fine arts in unexpected ways,” Calderbank said.

The briefing attracted a diverse cross section of the Washington community, including Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) – the only Member of Congress who holds a PhD in mathematics – and staff members from the Library of Congress, art institutions, and North Carolina Congressional offices.  A reporter from Time also attended and posted a nice writeup here.

Sapiro, a leader in image and signal analysis (Sapiro’s image processing algorithms are used in a little thing called Adobe Photoshop), discussed his work utilizing emerging technologies like 3D printing to create an interactive exhibit that traces the history of works of medieval art in the Brummer Collection at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art.  Students in one of Sapiro’s classes, co-taught by art and art history professor Caroline Bruzelius, are highly involved in creating these interactive exhibits for the Nasher as part of the course requirements.

Daubechies and Brown shared several projects on which they have collaborated, including a study of the Peruzzi altarpiece by Giotto and replication and rejuvenation of another 14th century altarpiece, in preparation for an exhibition in Fall 2016 that will reunite panels now spread over four different museums in the US.

As she described at the panel, Daubechies can use mathematical tools to analyze crack patterns and other aging processes on older paintings, imagine digitally how they might have looked when new, and how a new painting will look when it ages. She is even able to combine data from different imaging methods to determine new information about a painting, like the style of drawings that lie beneath a finished work.

Daubechies (whose work is responsible for the JPEG 2000) and Brown are also developing software that will be able to digitally remove protective cradling that is commonly used to protect works of art  but that obscures details in “x-ray” images of the panels.

During Monday’s briefing, Calderbank said the projects represent “the center of gravity of the initiative’s work,” projects where “the data sets are complex or have holes.”

In some cases, these “holes” aren’t even known to exist until two experts from different disciplines work together to discover them.  Daubechies believes that it is this interdisciplinary nature of the work that will will move each field forward in ways that might not happen in the absence of such collaboration.

Recalling some initial reactions to her desire to combine her math skills with the expertise of conservators, Daubechies said, “Someone at the beginning of this said, ‘what can you teach us that we don’t already know? We have two eyes.’ ”

Her response?

“‘Yes, but we want to give you a third eye.’ And that makes it possible to work together. It’s not competitive, it’s enriching.”

Ingrid Daubechies, Jame B. Duke Professor of Mathematics, explains her work in using math to replicate and rejuvenate works of art.

See a few more photos on our FB page here!

During last week’s consideration of the FY 15 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, an amendment was offered targeting the Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) Sciences directorate at the National Science Foundation.  The amendment was yet another attempt to question the value of federally-funded social science research.  Rep. David Price (NC), who remains a member of the faculty at Duke, took to the floor of the House to offer a powerful defense for these programs.

The full statement is below, but one particularly strong fact from Mr. Price’s speech is this: nearly a quarter of NSF-funded Nobel Prize winners in science since 1951 have been recipients of SBE program grants.

Thank you Rep. Price for your support and defense of social science research.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong opposition to these efforts to target the funding for the National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate (SBE).

The world is changing rapidly, and we need quality research to help us understand how imminent and unforeseen changes in areas such as technology, climate, immigration, and the economy will affect our society and our future. And these things do have policy implications.

We shouldn’t be wasting hard-earned taxpayer money, in fact, on policy solutions that are not rooted in sound research, precisely the type of research that some of these efforts here today seek to curtail.

As a result of research funded by the SBE directorate, for example, we are learning how to better respond to natural and economic disasters, how to improve the educational methods practiced in our Nation’s classrooms, how to expand outreach to children regarding STEM education.

We have learned how to increase the safety of our troops in combat, how to better reduce violence among our young people, and we have expanded our knowledge of how the human mind works through the BRAIN Initiative, led by Ranking Member Fattah and Chairman Wolf.

In this era of Tea Party preeminence and so-called fiscal discipline at the expense of rational policy decisions, taking cheap shots at Federal programs and research projects has become a favorite indoor sport.

I wish my conservative colleagues would spend as much time learning the facts about the programs they deride as they do in preparing the flurry of floor amendments and floor speeches to target them.

Helping policymakers make informed decisions is what NSF’s Political Science Program (PSP), in particular, is all about. Let me just say a word about the SBE’s Political Science Program, which is close to my heart by virtue of my previous life.

The PSP has consistently produced valuable, practical research that informs policymakers and government agencies on issues as vital as natural disaster response, environmental regulation, and foreign policy. Here are a few examples.

NSF’s Political Science Program helps us gain a better understanding of public reactions to natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, which was researched at Rice University, as well as to the BP oil spill, which was researched at Louisiana State University. It has helped Federal, State, and local authorities develop more effective evacuation and recovery plans.

It has supported research on the causes and consequences of terrorist attacks, at Pennsylvania State University and at UNC-Chapel Hill; on competition for natural resources as a driving force in international conflict, research at the University of Georgia and at the University of Colorado; on third-party peacemaking, research at the University of Notre Dame; and on dispute resolution mechanisms that lead to lasting peace, at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa.

But this isn’t just about political science research; it’s about the entire SBE. NSF’s rigorous peer-review process assures that only meritorious proposals are funded.

In an era when a quick Internet search can generate a statistic or an opinion to support any argument, it is more important than ever that we have clear, dependable, peer-reviewed research into the most pressing social, behavioral, and economic questions of the day.

Should you question the quality of such research, I simply note that nearly a quarter–that is 50 of 212–of the Nobel Prize winners in science funded by NSF since 1951 were recipients of funding from the SBE program. Every winner of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences since 1998 has been an NSF grantee.

In short, SBE taps the best minds in the country to help us better understand and address some of the most vexing policy dilemmas we face. The body of work it has produced informs the decisions of America’s first responders, military leaders, regulators, diplomats, and policymakers.

I urge my colleagues to reject misguided attempts to target the work of NSF and, in particular, of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, which is and will be uniquely valuable in informing our country’s policy decisions as we face the future.

When Michael Gehm, associate professor for electrical and computer engineering, starts listing his ongoing research projects, one can be forgiven for thinking they just tuned in to an episode of Star Trek: gigapixel cameras, spectrometers, millimeter waves scanning projects — it can all sound a little out-of-this-world.

Gehm focuses on what he calls computational sensing, which is looking at the physics and math of measurement systems, like cameras and airport security scanners, and how you design such a system to have the best performance. He recently stopped by the Duke in Washington office, and we took the opportunity to find out more about this expanding field of engineering.

DiW: How does your work as a computer engineer relate to policymakers in Washington right now?

Gehm: So the majority of my research are Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense based projects. This area of research is motivated by applications, in the sense that as engineers we are trying to find solutions to actual real-world problems or even problems that will be emerging in the future. And right now, the people who have the problems are in Washington because many of the pressing measurement challenges in the next decades will involve security-related issues.

DiW: We’ve seen you in and out of Duke in Washington a couple of times recently. What’s on your schedule during a typical visit to Washington?

Gehm: [Federal government] grant-recipients are summoned to Washington fairly frequently  to do various reviews. So many times it’s hard to schedule meetings with collaborators or potential collaborators — industrial partners, other universities — but we’re often always in Washington at the same time. And while we’re here, it’s a very natural time for us to start thinking about what’s the next problem, about what the next big challenges that we want to solve are going to be.

DiW: Why are industrial partners interested in working with academic faculty and researchers on solving these challenges and problems?

Gehm: There has been a recognition in the Homeland Security community that academia is leading the way in thinking about next generation approaches to sensing technology. Where industry has been more focused on where is the next product that we need to make and maybe more evolutionary rather than revolutionary steps that we need in certain types of sensing applications. So the Department of Homeland Security has been pushing these big academic ideas as things they want in their next generation of tools and instruments, so there has been an encouragement for industry to work with academics as they develop this new generation of products.

DiW: Is there anything that Duke does as an institution that makes these collaborations possible?

Gehm: There’s been a real strategic choice by the Dean of Engineering to hire both people who are good on the theory side [of computational sensing] and people that are more on the experimental side. Another thing that is really great is the strong collaborative nature  at Duke. For example, we have a strong partnership with statistics, which informs a lot of the math in our work — we also have partnerships with applied math faculty, and faculty across the university in a way you don’t necessarily see at other universities.

The below story initially appeared in Duke Today on March 30, 2014.
http://today.duke.edu/2014/03/dcembassy#slideshow

Sometimes referred to as the university’s “embassy” in the nation’s capitol, the Duke in Washington (DIW) office has lived up to the billing as it approaches its second anniversary of operations.

During a recent four-week span, professors, athletic teams, administration officials, and medical center faculty came to Washington, D.C., for congressional testimonies, White House ceremonies and other purposes.

Members of the Duke community have long connected with alumni and policymakers in Washington, but these recent events highlight a trend of the Duke in Washington facility and staff to extending the university’s engagement.

“Since the opening of Duke in Washington, we’ve been able to support and promote a wide range of university activities in ways that we couldn’t before,” said Landy Elliott, director of Duke in Washington. “Providing a home-base for faculty, staff, and students can be as simple as making them feel at home when they’re away from campus. But it can also serve as a launch pad for highlighting Duke’s efforts and scholarship to the greater Washington community.”

Sometimes, it’s space for meetings.

Take, for example, a Tuesday in early March. In the afternoon, the Department of Community and Family Medicine used the DIW conference room to hold media interviews and government relations briefings with their collaborators in the Practical Playbook initiative.

The same day, President Richard Brodhead, who was in town for meetings with a number of elected and appointed government officials, hosted alumni and students from Duke Law’s and the Sanford School’s Duke in DC academic programs for an evening reception in the DIW space. Brodhead also claimed one of Duke in Washington’s spare offices to take care of university business in between meetings.

On other occasions, Duke in Washington staff promote university activities throughout the nation’s capitol. When two faculty members testified before Congressional committees on the same day, Alyssa Dack, Duke in Washington’s public relations specialist, took photographs and promoted the testimonies via social media.

In addition, Dack delivered physical copies of the professors’ written testimonies to the committee staff and escorted one of the professors, who was making her first trip to Capitol Hill, to the hearing room.

“The experience of testifying was made much less stressful by the help and support of the Duke in Washington and Duke Federal Relations offices,” said Jane Costello, associate director for research at the Center for Child and Family Policy, who testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Just a week later, when the men’s lacrosse team attended a White House ceremony honoring NCAA Champions, Duke in Washington staff offered logistical support, including providingpress assistance and arranging team meals before and after the ceremony.

“For Duke in Washington to be a resource to the entire university community, we have to be creative and hands-on,” Dack said. “But it’s rewarding to see the many ways that the Duke and Washington communities complement and overlap with one another.”

For more information on DiW’s location, amenities, and policies, visit the Duke in Washington website.

It’s difficult to have a discussion about education these days without someone jumping to point out how critical STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills are to the future of our nation. STEM, the line goes, is the key to unlocking innovation, being competitive in a global economy, and winning the future. STEM is of course essential, but we can’t ignore the important place that the arts and humanities hold in our ability to think creatively and devise solutions to humanity’s great challenges.

The humanities enjoy strong support at Duke, and examples of compelling humanist-based interdisciplinary scholarship on campus aren’t hard to come by.  However, one group’s work in framing the arts and humanities as integral and complementary to STEM disciplines warrants extra notice.

We asked Cathy Davidson*, co-founder of HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance Collaboratory), to write a guest post highlighting just a few of the initiatives that are bridging the gap between the humanities and STEM education and thinking.

***

In his brilliant book Love and Math:  The Heart of Hidden Reality, the renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel argues that,  if you focus only on right answers and achievement scores in STEM, you kill the curiosity that lies at the heart of science.  Kids are often natural scientists–curious, inventive, problem solvers. If you drill them in the product or facts rather than inspire them with the process, you drill any inquisitiveness right out of them.

What we really need is to rethink how we teach science, and especially how and why, for the last 150 years, we’ve thought it important to rope it off from the rest of learning.  Leonardo and Galileo, even Einstein, for that matter, would have found it puzzling that we think that science and technology have no relationship to creativity, inspiration, ethics, culture, society, and even the kind of aesthetic passions that artist bring to work.  Steve Jobs famously said, “Technology alone is not enough.”

We agree.  In 2002, a number of us across many fields came together to create HASTAC, an alliance of humanists, artists, scientists, and technology developers that is administered by staff at Duke University and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. We created an open online collaboratory for working on interdisciplinary projects together. One of our mottos is “Difference is not our deficit; it’s our operating system.”  Now over 12,500 network members strong, HASTAC is one of the most innovative learning networks in the world. Notably, HASTAC administers the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions.

In 2010, HASTAC was proud to be part of Educate to Innovate, the White House initiative that encouraged innovative STEAM learning (which combines the STEM fields with the Arts and Humanities) — and this year, we’ve continued our commitment to STEAM inquiry with our administration of Duke University’s STEAM Challenge. The Duke STEAM Challenge is an undergraduate, graduate and professional student challenge designed to explore new ways that Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics–along with the humanities and social sciences–might contribute to one another for the greater good. The Challenge ran August 2013-January 2014.

On January 18, eight interdisciplinary teams of Duke University students presented their plans to use STEM, humanities, arts, and social sciences concepts and strategies to solve some of the world’s greatest problems. After their exciting and inspiring pitches and much deliberation by the panel of judges, the Ambassadors for Change: ORS project won the $10,000 grand prize with their proposal to use artistic tools like cartoons and puppetry to teach adolescent Indian girls about oral rehydration therapy, a sugar and salt-water solution to treat dehydration caused by diarrhea.

All the teams proposed amazing ideas, which you can learn about at dukesteamchallenge.org. Their projects show what can happen when people of different backgrounds and methodologies come together to solve the world’s problems.

HASTAC is taking this idea a step further this spring with our global FutureEd movement. FutureEd is designed to bring together professors, students, university administrators, business and political leaders, advocates, and the interested public to discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by innovations in the education sector and far beyond. After assessing the educational legacies we’ve inherited, we’ll design new ways of learning for present needs and future aspirations.

 An ever-growing list of people and institutions (currently 75 and counting!) are fueling this movement with experimental courses, workshops, seminars, research projects, and reading groups, offered from Berkeley to Lima, from Ireland to Rwanda. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the conversation. The more varied the participation, the more we will learn. They’re coming together on Twitter, Facebook, and in blogs on hastac.org to share ideas about how to change education for the better. They’re addressing questions like:

• What if we could start all over again and design higher education from scratch?

• What kinds of institutions of learning might we come up with?

• Or maybe we don’t need any institutions at all?

In big ways and small, many of us are already experimenting with alternative ways of thinking, teaching, learning, and researching. FutureEd members are sharing their ideas, resources, pedagogical strategies and experiments, curricular overhauls, and more, to serve as a model and a starting point for others.

In addition to social media and HASTAC, people are also exchanging ideas on Coursera, via the MOOC I’m teaching: The History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education. This MOOC unites more than 13,000 students from around the world to discuss the greatest challenges and opportunities that higher education currently faces. Our meta-MOOC is offering all kinds of experiments in peer-to-peer learning and assessment, in online discussion groups, and in interactive global forums on the subject of educational innovation.

Graduate students in my Duke ISIS 640/691 class serve as Designated Teaching Assistants and Community Leaders, transforming the static MOOC videos into interesting and thoughtful conversations. They also report on the MOOC twice a week for the Chronicle of Higher Education at chronicle.com/blogs/future/.

One of these students, William Osborn, described FutureEd as “1 class, 14,000 teachers.” It can be overwhelming at times, but in the most inspiring and thought-provoking way.

All of these connected projects and ideas are what HASTAC is all about:  Changing the Way We Teach and Learn.

*Cathy Davidson will be leaving Duke University for the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, but she will maintain an affiliation with Duke.  HASTAC will continue to have an administrative hub at Duke as well.

President Obama will deliver his sixth State of the Union address tonight, kicking-off yet another round of policy debates sure to dominate the political conversation for the coming year. In preparation for the President’s address, the Office of Federal Relations offers a review of Congressional and Administration actions from 2013 that impacted the university community, along with a quick look ahead to what could be on the horizon in 2014.

(For real-time conversation surrounding “SOTU,” join in the live Twitter chat hosted by Duke faculty)

• Mid-Session Update
• FISCAL MATTERS: The Government Shutdown, Budget Deal, and FY14 Appropriations 
• IMMIGRATION REFORM: House Leadership Continues to Express Hope
• PATENT LITIGATION: Senate Considers Competing Proposals
• COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY: Higher Education Associations Express Concerns over Proposed Rating System
• HIGHER EDUCATION ACT REAUTHORIZATION: Senate Continues Forward with Hearing Schedule 
• Duke in Washington Fall Events
• Federal Officials Visit Campus

MID-SESSION UPDATE

From January to August, Congress took action on a number of issues affecting the higher education community from restructuring the interest rates on federally-funded student loans to allowing the budget cuts known as sequestration to take effect. For further details on Congressional activity prior to the August recess, read the OFR summary here.

FISCAL MATTERS: THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, BUDGET DEAL AND FY2014 APPROPRIATIONS

On October 1, with the House and Senate unable to reach an agreement on government funding, many federal agencies opened a new fiscal year by closing their doors. The federal government remained closed for 16 days, leading to delays in grant application deadlines, research funding, and all non-essential government activities. Lawmakers eventually agreed to a three-month funding measure that would re-open the government through Jan. 15. Full coverage of the impact on Duke University activities may be found here.

The agreement that re-opened the government also created a conference committee, chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WS), tasked with reaching a compromise on the FY14 budget resolution. On Dec. 10, the two legislators announced a budget deal that would set annual spending levels at just over $1 trillion for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 and would provide $63 billion in relief from sequestration over that same time frame.

Working within the parameters of the budget agreement, negotiators the House and Senate Appropriations Committees compiled a $1.12 trillion omnibus bill, which the House and Senate passed earlier this month. The bill will keep the government funded through September. Federal programs that support university-based research and education received considerable relief from the FY13 sequester, with significant variation among agencies and programs.

While some agencies—such as the Department of Energy Office of Science and NASA Science—received more FY14 funding then their pre-sequester FY13 levels, some other agencies—such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—were funded below their FY13 pre-sequester levels. For a review of the key provisions of the omnibus affecting the higher education committee, read the OFR summary here.

The administration is now assembling their budget proposal for fiscal year 2015, which will be sent to Congress on Wednesday, March 4.

Read More:
Duke Officials Monitoring Federal Budget Negotiations (Duke Today)

IMMIGRATION REFORM: HOUSE LEADERSHIP CONTINUES TO EXPRESS HOPE

The state of immigration reform remains in limbo, as the House has yet to take any further action since the Senate passage of a comprehensive reform measure in late June. Republican leadership has announced an intention to address the situation in the new year.

Adding to the hope for possible action on immigration reform, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced in December a new director of immigration policy – and one with considerable experience writing immigration overhaul measures.

Read More:
Boehner, Cantor: Immigration Reform a Priority for 2014 (Newsmax)
Boehner’s New Immigration Policy Director Has Deep Experience on Overhaul Efforts (Roll Call)

PATENT LITIGATION REFORM: SENATE CONSIDERS COMPETING PROPOSALS

On Dec. 5, the House of Representatives passed the Innovation Act (H.R. 3309), a measure which aims to address abusive patent litigation. Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on November 18 introduced the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act of 2013 (S. 1720).  The Senate bill is less expansive than H.R. 3309 and omits several provisions of concern for universities.

Among the concerns the higher education community would like addressed are the impacts of proposals on differing sectors of the patent community, the impacts to innovation capacity, and the role of legislation versus the courts.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on legislation relating to patent litigation on Dec. 17, which included review of the Leahy-introduced bill, the House-passed Innovation Act and several other proposals. Several higher education associations have sent a letter to Chairman Leahy asking for further hearings during which university stakeholders may express their views on the proposals.

Read More:
Patent Reform bill passes the house 325 to 91. Here’s what you need to know. (Washington Post)
Letter from higher education community (pdf)

COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY: HIGHER EDUCATION EXPRESSES CONCERNS OVER PROPOSED RATING SYSTEM

On Aug. 22, the President released the “Plan to Make College More Affordable: A Better Bargain for the Middle Class,” which in part proposed a new college ratings system that would be tied to the awarding of federal student aid by 2018. On Dec. 2, a higher education association, of which Duke is a member, expressed their views on such a proposal in a letter to the Department of Education.

HIGHER EDUCATION ACT REAUTHORIZATION: Senate Continues forward with Hearing Schedule

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on September 16 announced their intention to hold a series of hearings on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) addressing topics such as:

• The roles of the state, the federal government, and accreditors in higher education;
• Keeping college affordable;
• Ways to increase quality in higher education;
• Student access;
• Innovative approaches to improving student success;
• Student financial aid; and
• Teacher preparation programs.

As of the end of 2013, the Committee had held hearings on issues relating to access, affordability, accreditation and improving student success.

Duke officials continue to monitor the reauthorization process and expect the hearings to continue throughout the winter and spring of 2014.

SPOTLIGHT ON: DUKE IN WASHINGTON FALL EVENTS

Duke in Washington capped an outstanding year with a fall full of exciting events for the entire Duke community.  Throughout the fall, DIW was happy to host recruiting receptions for Fuqua and the Nicholas School, a policy workshop for the Doctor of Nursing Program, and a dialogue for the Nicholas Institute.  We were especially excited to host our first live Skype conversation, featuring Jon Jackson, associate director of Duke athletics, with members of the Duke Policy and Politics Network. For more information on the Duke in Washington offices, please visit our website.

Read More:
Duke, UNC Keep Sharp Eye on Washington (newsobserver.com)

FEDERAL OFFICIALS VISIT CAMPUS

A number of Washington figures visited campus over the fall semester, delivering key note addresses, meeting with current students and administrators, and touring federally-funded research facilities. These visits, from individuals such as David Petreaus, USAID Admistrator Rajiv Shah, and three members of the North Carolina Congressional Delegation, afforded opportunities for increased communication between the Duke and Washington community, as well as a chance for Duke to demonstrate its ongoing activities to support the local, state, and national communities.

Read More:
Making Federal Officials’ Visits Work for the Classroom (Duke Today)
Event Recap: Congressional State and District Staff Day (governmentrelations.duke.edu)
Event Recap: Three NC Reps Demo Federally-Funded Airport Security Research at Duke(governmentrelations.duke.edu)