2022 in Review: The Student Experience

Student life at Duke changed significantly in 2022 with the full implementation of QuadEx, a new living and learning initiative. It leans into a student experience that has long been vast and varied, overflowing with opportunities for personal and intellectual growth.

Duke told many of these stories in 2022, spotlighting what students do, where they go, and how they learn.

Here is just a sampling:

• Incoming first-year students took part in a new version of orientation in 2022. This ‘experiential education’ was an immersive program that gave new students an intellectual jump-start immediately upon arriving on campus.  The class of 2026 is Duke’s first to be fully immersed in the university’s new QuadEx living/learning initiative aimed at integrating students’ academic, social and residential experiences. Read more here.
• Undergraduate research is an intellectual staple at Duke. Here’s a good primer on how students set out on the research path.
• Cate Schick, unmasked on the Cameron courtFor three years, Cate Schick kept a secret: She was the Blue Devil. In May, just days before graduation, the senior came clean about her experience as Duke’s mascot. Read and watch here.
• Another Blue Devil bid goodbye in 2022; basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski let his team to one last Final Four appearance in his final year at the helm. Read how students gave the team a big sendoff.
• StudioDuke is a program of Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship, DEMAN and Duke Arts. It provides students the opportunity to take their on-going artistic projects to the next level. Read and watch what students say about the dive deep into their artistic passions.
• If you ever applied for a nationally competitive scholarship at Duke, you probably know Babs Wise. The longtime director of the nationally competitive scholarship unit of Duke’s Office of University Scholars and Fellows r(OUSF) etired in 2022. Read about all the work she did on behalf of Duke students.
• Qi Xuan Khoo and Shreyas Hallur, two Duke students, won prestigious Rhodes Scholarships in 2022, one of the many Duke students who won nationally competitive scholarships with advice and guidance from OUSF staff. Read about Qi Xuan Khoo and Shreyas Hallur here.
• As a student at Duke, Caralena Peterson ’15 felt the overwhelming demand to be perfect. And it wasn’t just her. In 2022, she published ‘The Effortless Perfection Myth,’ which she hopes will help teach young women at Duke that their best is, in fact, enough. Read more here.
• Duke students often have broad and seemingly unrelated interests, often choosing two majors from opposite ends of the academic spectrum. Meet Annika Allado, a mechanical engineering student in the Pratt School of Engineering who is also majoring in visual arts within Trinity College’s department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. She hopes to work in product design engineering.
• .Each summer, Maurizio Forte brings a student team to Italy to use high-tech digital tools at an archaeological excavation. The students exhibit their work at a local Italian museum.  Read more here.
• To navigate the undergraduate experience at Duke, students need not just a single mentor but a network of them. Formal and informal, these helpers provide a critical assist to students. Read more here.