Category: Academics

It Takes a Village: On Students Finding Advice and Help Along the Duke Journey

As a first-year student at Duke, Brooke Harmon didn’t know she would need a mentor – or two, or three – to help guide her through college.

But what she didn’t look for, she found nevertheless. Now a senior, Harmon boasts an important, vast and diverse web of friends, confidants, advisers and mentors who she has leaned on throughout her collegiate journey. This group – a personal, informal board of directors of sorts – has proven valuable to Harmon and is the sort of support system Duke’s career counselors and other student affairs gurus want all students to develop.

It’s a way to make a big university smaller; to make the journey clearer; and to provide sounding boards and advice for all sorts of problems and questions.

“Mentorship comes in a lot of different forms,” Harmon said. “When you’re at some low points — and they happen in your undergraduate career — you have people you can reach out to. You may need advice, or you may need emotional support. Having all these different places and people to draw on is amazing because you’re not relying on just one person.”

The recent Spark Summit, the official kick off the sophomore year, featured a curated conversation with the actress Retta, a Duke graduate, and focused on wellness and interactive sessions to foster peer connection and exploration. The day featured two discussions about mentoring, advising and the importance of what some call ‘helpful humans.’ They are the friends, advisers, faculty, staff or other folks in students’ lives who may not have a formal advising role but still help guide students at times. It is a point of emphasis reflected in Duke’s strategic goals of transforming learning and renewing the campus community. Those themes are also amplified by Duke’s new QuadEx initiative, a new living-and-learning model that seeks to more closely connect the residential and academic lives of undergraduate students.

“Finding helpful humans who can help you think through changing relationships, major declaration, internship, and summer opportunities, are going to make your time at Duke less stressful,” said Greg Victory, executive director of Duke’s career center. “These relationships can be short term — 1 or 2 conversations — or longer term … or for a lifetime. Build a community of folks at Duke who you can bounce ideas off, seek advice from and who can cheer you on through your successes and even through those failures.”

The first helpers Harmon discovered came organically – a group of fellow members of Femmes+, a student group dedicated to promoting the STEM disciplines – science, technology and engineering – to underrepresented groups. Harmon’s group works on STEM activities with fourth, fifth and sixth graders in local public schools.

That student group led to plenty of friendships, which have made life easier for Harmon in myriad small ways, through chats over coffee or during car rides to dinner. She learned about the challenges of Greek life and the stresses related to parties and social life on campus. And suddenly, she had peer women to emulate.

“I wasn’t looking for that. I didn’t even think I needed it,” said Harmon, now the group’s president. “I thought I was pretty sure of myself. So it was a happy byproduct because I got some great friends and mentorship out of it. And now I get to pay it forward.”

On the academic side, Harmon counts Professor Cary Moskovitz as perhaps her most important advisor.

This is odd only because their academic pursuits are far apart — Harmon is studying computer science and statistics while Moskovitz teaches in the Thompson Writing Program. He also leads a research project that examines text recycling – the reuse of their own written materials by scholars in academic writing.

Their connection was serendipitous. As a first-year student, Harmon wanted to do some undergraduate research. Moskovitz needed an assistant. They began working together, and Moskovitz has been a constant presence since.

“He wasn’t assigned to me but he just took on that role. He wrote me a recommendation letter for study abroad and he’s someone I go to talk with about career stuff,” Harmon said. “He’s more of a humanities professor, very different field, but it doesn’t matter.”

It makes sense for students to have more than one mentor, Moskovitz said, since they all have strengths and weaknesses. One size does not fit all.

“The idea that individuals have a single mentor is now pretty much an outdated way of thinking – that one person can do all those mentoring things you need,” he said. “The idea now is to develop mentor networks. I think she’s a really good example of the different ways people of different experiences can be useful.”

Harmon’s helpful humans list rolls on. She also counts her academic adviser as integral to her time at Duke as well as other administrators with the Duke Career Center, where she has worked for several years and is now a Career Ambassador there, helping students with resumes, cover letters, interviewing and other tasks.

The Career Center has a philosophy called Career Everywhere, which Harmon appears to be following whether she knows it or not. It’s the idea that students can receive career – and life – guidance through conversations and experiences with all manner of people they interact with.

“You might have different people for different topics. You might go to one person to talk about class. You might go to another to talk about relationships in general. And you never know when that may turn into a career conversation,” said Catherine Allen, assistant director for the advising team at Duke’s Career Center. “A huge part of the career development process is getting to know yourself. Even in these conversations that aren’t directly about the job you want to have post-Duke, or the internship you want next summer, you’re still developing yourself and your skills and your interests.”

Duke History Professor On A ‘Phoenix-Like’ Political Comeback

The latest twist in the extraordinary career of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian politician known simply as Lula, has seen him enter a runoff to become the country’s president once again.

“The life of Lula is very much a phoenix-like situation,” said John French, a professor of history at Duke and Lula biographer who has studied him for 40 years.

Professor John French Lula, who was president  of Brazil from 2002-2010, led the pack in the first round of voting in Brazil’s presidential election this week. On Oct. 30 he will contest a runoff to lead the world’s fourth-largest democracy against the staunchly conservative incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

This scenario seemed unthinkable less than three years ago, when Lula was in prison after being convicted of corruption and money laundering. French said Lula’s belief the system would reveal the charges to be politically motivated, and his refusal to flee the country to avoid jail, combined to boost his subsequent rebound in popularity.

“He kept saying, ‘I’ve got faith the institutions will work properly, this is just a mistake by some judges, prosecutors and federal police, but in the end, I will be vindicated.’ And that’s pretty much what happened,” French said.

A subsequent political comeback still seemed unlikely. But the cases against Lula were dismissed, the Supreme Court restored his right to run for office and his reputation was not damaged by what came to be seen as a biased prosecution.

“Instead, he was reborn, even more popular than he had been before,” French said. “It’s really a remarkable story.”

The aggressive rhetoric of the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, has deeply divided Brazil. He upset predictions by gaining enough support in the first round of voting to force a runoff.

“He does represent a significant body of people, and they’re not going to disappear overnight,” French said. “On the other hand, the center-right, people that supported Bolsonaro in 2018, have moved away because he’s turned out to be a disaster for the country: politically incompetent on a monumental scale.”

Should Lula win the election, French said he will face very different challenges than in 2002, with a country recovering from a mismanaged pandemic and  the public sector in disarray.

“It would be a tough return to power,” French said. “There’s been an enormous amount of institutional destruction, and there will be a lot of pent-up demand for services. It’s going to be a political challenge.”

French said Lula’s record of building consensus would be invaluable if he is reelected.

“He’s perfectly fine with conflict and with the idea that people should stand up and fight for themselves in an organized fashion,” he said. “At the same time, he’s confident that if we can get people in the same room, and they’re willing to be reasonable, we should all be able to agree on something that would be good for the Brazilian people and for all of the interests at the table.”

Lula’s return to the presidential ballot was but one more sharp turn in a career dotted with surprises.

An automobile worker who didn’t learn to read until he was 10, Lula joined the labor movement as a young man. It was his audacity in leading industrial strikes under a military dictatorship that caught French’s interest as a graduate student in 1980, when the story hit The New York Times.

“This young trade union leader, 33 years of age, is on the front page of The New York Times, leading strikes against giant auto companies under a military dictatorship,” French recalled. “It was unusual. There’s been nothing like that anywhere else in the Americas.”

That first strike was soundly defeated, but Lula was undeterred.

“For every reason, you would imagine this would end his career as a union leader or as an influential figure,” French said. “And yet it did not. Instead he built a radical trade union movement and a political party out of that.”

Lula became president of Brazil at the fourth attempt, in 2002. He served two terms, then helped elect (and re-elect) Dilma Rouseff, his chosen successor, before corruption allegations forced her resignation and sent Lula to prison.

And yet, like so many times before, Lula’s work ethic, passion, his interest in people and his political nous have brought him back. French likens Lula to one of the country’s most beloved figures: The beloved soccer maestro who brought home three of Brazil’s World Cups.

“Without a doubt, he is a phenomenon,” French said. “I like to say he’s the Pelé of world presidenti al electoral politics, because he’s the only one. There’s no one quite like him.”

Trustees Hold Fall Meeting, Look Toward Campaign

At its quarterly meeting, the Duke University Board of Trustees began a year-long program of strategic engagement focused on Duke’s upcoming comprehensive fundraising campaign. The program, which includes participation by students, faculty and administrators, aims to build a shared understanding of the campaign and its goals and priorities.

Friday’s meeting, which marked the first of the program’s four sessions, included a panel discussion with development vice presidents from other universities about lessons learned from their recent and current campaigns.

President Vincent E. Price led a discussion on how the emerging priorities and focus areas of Duke’s upcoming campaign align with the university’s strategic framework. Trustees and other participants also heard a high-level overview of the proposed campaign framing from W. Christopher Clarke, associate vice president, Duke Campaigns, and David L. Kennedy, vice president, Alumni Engagement and Development.

In other business, the board:

  • Welcomed new trustees Karen M. King, James C. Zelter, Kacia A. Anderson, and Edgar Virgüez;
  • Welcomed new leaders including Suzanne Barbour, dean of The Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education, and Jon Scheyer, men’s basketball head coach;
  • Received an update from undergraduate students on their experience with experiential orientation, a signature program of QuadEx;
  • Reviewed the annual report on Duke University’s endowment, which is managed by DUMAC;
  • Reviewed the university’s annual financial report;
  • Received an update on intercollegiate athletics; and
  • Approved recommendations from the board’s standing committees.

Abortion Debate Illustrates How Human Rights Are Not Absolute, But Evolving, Professor Says

At the start of every school year, cultural anthropologist and human rights professor Robin Kirk takes an informal snapshot of her students’ values.

Barring violence, she asks her classes, what is the worst thing a Duke student could do in this classroom?

Over the past couple of years, students have listed these worst-case scenarios: being a racist, using the wrong pronouns, and being disrespectful to a person in the class, said Kirk, co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute.

Twelve years ago, what did students say was the worst thing a Duke student could do in class? “Wear a Carolina T-shirt,” Kirk told an audience of 130 students and faculty on Wednesday, Sept. 7, in a Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series talk on the future of reproductive rights in the U.S. 

This example, which elicited a low chuckle from the audience in Rubenstein Library, illustrates how people’s ideas about human rights, including their beliefs about abortion and reproductive rights, evolve over time, she said. 

“Human rights are not like the Ten Commandments,” Kirk said. “They weren’t handed down carved in some stone. There has always been, in human societies, a discussion about right and wrong … These are not things that we passively receive. These are things that we envision, and then things that we fight for.” 

“The idea of who has rights and how they’re defended changes over time,” Kirk continued. “One of the key things about who gets rights and how that debate shifts, is that the people who themselves are denied rights begin to speak and begin to be heard.”Professors Neil Siegel and Robin Kirk discuss reproductive rights in a lecture series. Photo by Susie Post-Rust.

Kirk was speaking at an event to kick off the final year of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series on “Discrimination in Fragile and Precious Communities.” The completion of the grant-funded program will result in a documentary film and published volume of papers and photos based all of the lectures in the series, said Edna Andrews, Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Distinguished Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and the principal investigator for the grant.

Kirk was joined by Neil Siegel, professor of law and political science at Duke Law School who in 2003 clerked for Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and has since served as special counsel for the confirmations of six Supreme Court justices. He explained the evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court and the political circumstances that created a conservative majority to overturn Roe.

The Roe reversal was influenced by many factors, Siegel argued – and not one of them was constitutional law, he said.

“This decision, I daresay, has no basis in the law,” Siegel said. “This decision is lawless and utterly unprincipled. It’s also the law of the land, and we are bound by it until such time as the court’s decision-making changes.”

Rather than applying the law, Siegel argued, the five justices responsible for the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling appeared to attribute their decision to the idea that “abortion is not deeply rooted in American history or tradition,” he said. The justices cite as evidence a 19th century social movement to ban abortion. Siegel described the movement differently, suggesting it was motivated only in part to protect the life of a fetus, but also “in part to enforce traditional gender roles and to prevent ethnic replacement of our population.”

He summarized the movements of individual states to establish localized laws around abortion access.

“The Supreme Court seemed to think that the federal courts would simply get out of the business of abortion and leave it to the political process,” Siegel said. “That’s not happening at all. There’s plenty of litigation in the state courts… I expect about half the states to either impose total bans with exceptions for the life of the pregnant person, or near-total bans with very limited exceptions.”

Siegel discussed numerous approaches states could use to challenge the constitutionality. He also expects half the states to provide robust access or significant access, he said. 

North Carolina, which has outlawed abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, stands out as permissive compared to the rest of the American South, Siegel said. Mid-term elections in North Carolina this fall could give Republicans the supermajority in the state legislature, which would overrule any veto from the state's Democratic governor and could lead to more restrictions, he said.

Siegel cited several plausible challenges to the constitutionality of state laws, particularly the vagueness of many laws that fail to provide adequate legal definitions of life-threatening medical situations under which abortions could be allowed.

It was only a matter of time before a conservative majority took hold of the Supreme Court, Siegel said.

“When you have highly ideological, polarized parties, and the Constitution makes nomination and confirmation a political process, eventually it's going to spill over to the courts,” he said. Circumstances may change, he added. 

“The Supreme Court is neither infallible, nor final,” he said. “It is not going to have the last word. It can have a very important word, and we are legally bound to comply. But politics, more than law, is to determine the future of abortion rights protections in this country. It is just, in my opinion, a great human tragedy that so many people, especially women, are going to suffer as a result of this decision.”

Prior to the discussion, Andrews opened the evening by introducing Mellon Sawyer post-doctoral fellow Aaron Colston, as well as Provost Sally Kornbluth, who set the stage for a respectful and thoughtful debate about what she acknowledged is an emotionally charged topic. 

The Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series will include a second panel discussion on reproductive rights in November.

Economists Have a Method for Reducing Fake News on Social Media

Controlling the spread of misinformation on social media platforms has spurred important conversations about censorship and freedom of speech.

“A tacit assumption has been that censorship, fact-checking and education are the only tools to fight misinformation,” says Duke University economist David McAdams. In new research published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, McAdams and collaborators explore ways to improve the quality of information being shared on networks without making any entity responsible for policing content and deciding what is true and false.

The model suggests that to cut down on the spread of false information, the network can set limits on how widely certain messages are shared, and do so in a way that is not overly restrictive to users.

David McAdams talking on stage “We show that caps on either how many times messages can be forwarded (network depth) or the number of others to whom messages can be forwarded (network breadth) increase the relative number of true versus false messages circulating in a network, regardless of whether messages are accidentally or deliberately distorted,” McAdams says.

“For example, Twitter could limit the breadth of sharing on its site by limiting how many people see any given retweet in their Twitter feeds,” he says.

Both Facebook and WhatsApp, two apps owned by parent company Meta that allow users to message each other, have used methods similar to the researchers’ model to limit the spread of misinformation.

In 2020, Facebook announced limits on how many people or groups users could forward messages to, capping it at five, in part to combat misinformation about COVID-19 and voting. Earlier that year, WhatsApp introduced similar limits, prohibiting its more than two billion users from forwarding messages to more than five people at once, in part because of more than a dozen deaths that public officials in India have linked to false information that was spreading on the app, the researchers noted.

This approach does not eliminate misinformation, but in the absence of other methods, it can reduce the severity of the issue until other solutions can be developed to address the heart of the problem, McAdams says.

“When misinformation spreads through a social network, it can cause harm,” says McAdams, who has faculty appointments in the economics department and the Fuqua School of Business. “Some people might start believing things that are false and that can harm them or others.”

It can also cause some people to lose trust in the platform, which means they may be less likely to believe or take action on correct information that actually could help them or other people, he says.

“If you limit sharing, you could also be limiting the spread of good information, so you might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and that doesn’t really help you,” McAdams warns. “Our analysis explores how to strike that balance.”

(Stanford University economist Matthew Jackson and Cornell University economist Suraj Malladi co-authored the research with McAdams.)

Class of 2026 Gets Warm Move-In Welcome

East Campus was overcast and mild Saturday morning, but the mood for first-year student move-in was a colorful carnival.

As the 1,740 members of the class of 2026 began to arrive, every vehicle was surrounded by a whooping crowd of sophomores who yelled out room numbers as they quickly dragged out the boxes, crates and bags and hurtled off to deliver them.

A maroon Toyota Sienna that drove 11 hours from Chappaqua, N.Y., was the first vehicle to pull up outside Pegram Residence Hall right around 8 a.m. Saturday.

“I’m excited for him, but it’s bittersweet,” said Lisa Catz as her son Spencer strode into the dorm that will be his home for the next year. “We’re empty-nesters now.”

As is tradition, Duke leaders also pitched in. Over at Aycock Hall, a beaming President Vincent Price could be seen balancing boxes and collapsible laundry bags, followed by Mary Pat McMahon, vice provost and vice president for student affairs, hefting a microwave, and Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education, hauling a huge plastic tote.

“This is not sweat, it’s rain,” Bennett said (it was, to be fair, drizzling at the time).

Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education, assists with a student’s move-in.

In addition to the traditional convocation and class photo elements of orientation, the new students will take on experiential orientation programs across campus and beyond that are designed to educate, establish rapport and engage them with the broader community.

The new orientation approach is part of QuadEx, the university’s new initiative aimed at integrating students’ academic, social and residential experiences. 

One boisterous group of sophomores helping their first-year counterparts move in said they were paying forward the welcome shown to them a year ago.

Demi Wilson of Charlotte moves into Pegram Residence Hall as her mom, Bridget, helps. “I’m just ready to start something new, to explore and get out of my comfort zone,” Wilson said. “This is the best place for me to do that.”

“They did it for us,” said Serafina Carlucci. “It’s such a special time,” added Elizabeth Kim. “Duke does it differently,” said Luca Tjossem.

Follow Duke on Instagram for more sights and sounds from move-in and the back-to-school experience.

As for the first-years themselves, Price had this advice: “Remember to get some sleep. Take care of yourselves. Enjoy your time at Duke.”

Sophomores get excited about greeting the Class of 2026 on East Campus Saturday. Photo by Chris Vilorio

Finance Professor: Economic Shrinkage Driven by Falling Business Investment

Gross domestic product in the U.S. fell 0.2 percent in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, said it’s important to read beyond the headlines about a flatlining economy.

“This is an inflation story,” Harvey said. “The economy grew at an annual rate of 7.6% but the inflation haircut, 8.7%, wiped out all the gain.”

Personal consumption expenditure, which accounts for 71 percent of GDP, actually increased 1%.

“Personal consumption expenditure has been resilient to the poor economic sentiment,” Harvey said. “It is very unusual to have positive consumption growth in the face of negative GDP growth. The last time this happened was in 1969; it also occurred in 1947 and 1949.”

The falling GDP is almost entirely driven by business investment, Harvey said, which plummeted by 13.5% in the second quarter.

“Business investment represents less than 20% of GDP but it is volatile,” he said. “The drop reflects a drawdown of inventories that were accumulated at the end of the year. In the fourth quarter of 2021, business investment rose at a staggering rate of 36.7% as many companies hoarded supplies.

“The slower growth is consistent with the signal from my yield curve model where a flattening yield curve predicts slower economic growth,” Harvey said. “Importantly, the yield curve model focuses on personal consumption expenditures – which are usually highly correlated with GDP."

Economists: Federal Reserve Misstep Could Increase Inflation or Trigger Recession

The Federal Reserve is poised to raise its policy interest rate by 75 basis points on July 27 – the fourth rate increase of 2022.

Economist John Coleman, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, says additional rate changes this year carry high stakes.

“The Fed’s decision on rate increases is significant, as an error could lead either to rising inflation or a deep recession,” Coleman says.

Coleman, who began his career as a senior economist for the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, says the central bank needs to cut abou­t 20 percent of the U.S. money supply to avoid additional strain from inflation, which is already at a 40-year high at 9.06%.

“Removing such a large amount of money will require a large and sustained rise in the federal funds rate, which will surely lead to a significant contraction in gross domestic product (GDP),” Coleman says. The National Bureau of Economic Analysis is scheduled to release the latest GDP data July 28.

Economics research professor Ellen Meade says the Fed’s goal in its decision today is to bring the central bank’s policy rate up to a level it considers to be “neutral,” which it defines as the short-term nominal rate that neither spurs nor restricts economic activity. At future Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings, policymakers will continue to hike rates above neutral.

“Chair Powell is likely to tell us that the FOMC will hike again in September by another 50 or 75 basis points,” Meade says. “As the Fed increases rates into restrictive territory, they will want to slow the pace of increases as they assess effects on an economy that is already showing signs of slowing. But inflation remains very high – higher than anything we’ve seen since the early 1980s – and the Fed’s primary objective is to move inflation back down toward its 2% objective. I could see them continuing to increase the policy rate until it rises above 4%.”

Coleman suggests the difficult path policy makers are facing is somewhat self-inflicted.

“The Fed has a difficult road ahead, but one largely of its own making,” Coleman says, adding that Fed chair Jerome Powell has appeared less concerned than predecessors with inflation and that approach could be costly.

“Ever since Paul Volcker’s tenure as Fed chairman, the Fed has been proactive in trying to get ahead of inflation, which has successfully led to low rates of inflation for the past 40 years,” Coleman says. “[Jerome] Powell seems not to have been concerned with inflation, which encouraged him to err on the side of excessive monetary expansion to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now paying the price of that mistake.”

Barbour Appointed Dean of The Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education

Suzanne Barbour, a biochemist and national leader in graduate education, has been appointed dean of The Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education, Provost Sally Kornbluth announced Monday. Barbour will also hold a faculty appointment in the Duke University School of Medicine.

Barbour will be responsible for ensuring the excellence of Duke’s graduate programs, leading long-term strategic planning for graduate studies, and managing The Graduate School’s work that supports students and faculty throughout the university.

The Graduate School oversees Duke’s 55 Ph.D. programs, 29 of the university’s master’s programs, and a number of graduate certificates and dual and joint degrees. It collaborates with Duke’s other schools, academic departments, and various campus services to support about 3,500 graduate students in areas such as academics, admissions, financial aid, professional development, and wellbeing.

Barbour will join Duke Sept. 15, succeeding Paula D. McClain, who has served as dean and vice provost for graduate education since 2012.

“Suzanne has a tremendous record of advancing graduate education and graduate student success, and I am delighted to welcome her to Duke,” Kornbluth said.

Barbour has been at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2019, serving as dean of The Graduate School and professor of biochemistry and biophysics. At UNC, she has led efforts to increase student access and inclusion, foster experiential professional development opportunities for students pursuing non-academic career paths and improve mentoring for graduate students. Under her leadership, The Graduate School has surpassed its goal of raising $10 million as part of the Campaign for Carolina.

“In addition to serving students, faculty and staff on campus, Duke’s Graduate School has made many important contributions that have impacted graduate education at the national level,” Barbour said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to join the talented, innovative and committed team that has made this possible, and I look forward to collaborating with Duke’s faculty, staff and students to further this important work.”

Prior to her appointment at UNC, Barbour served as dean of the University of Georgia Graduate School for four years, overseeing 250 graduate programs. She has also held appointments as a program director at the National Science Foundation and as a faculty member and graduate program director at Virginia Commonwealth University. Barbour’s research in the field of lipid biochemistry has focused on the role of iPLA2β and lipids generated downstream of the enzyme in cellular signaling, in mammalian cell models.

“Suzanne has distinguished herself through her leadership of the graduate schools at UNC and the University of Georgia, and through her sustained commitment to excellence in all aspects of graduate education, including a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the graduate student population,” Kornbluth noted. “I look forward to working with her to support graduate education and graduate students.”  

Barbour’s appointment follows a national search chaired by Craig Henriquez, professor of biomedical engineering, and conducted by a committee of Duke faculty and representatives of the Graduate School Board of Visitors and graduate student body. 

“I am grateful to the search committee for their work throughout this process, as well as to Craig Henriquez for his service as chair,” Kornbluth said.

Barbour is active nationally as a member of the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools, the National Science Foundation’s Committee for Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering and its Directorate for Biological Sciences Advisory Committee, the governing council of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Graduate Education Advisory Council of the Educational Testing Service. 

In 2021, she was selected in the first class of fellows of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Barbour earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Rutgers University.