Home of the Blue Devils, Duke University has about 13,000 undergraduate and graduate students and a world-class faculty helping to expand the frontiers of knowledge. The university has a strong commitment to applying knowledge in service to society, both near its North Carolina campus and around the world.
HISTORY
Duke University was created in 1924 by James Buchanan Duke as a memorial to his father, Washington Duke. The Dukes, a Durham family that built a worldwide financial empire in the manufacture of tobacco products and developed electricity production in the Carolinas, long had been interested in Trinity College. Trinity traced its roots to 1838 in nearby Randolph County when local Methodist and Quaker communities opened Union Institute. The school, then named Trinity College, moved to Durham in 1892. In December 1924, the provisions of James B. Duke’s indenture created the family philanthropic foundation, The Duke Endowment, which provided for the expansion of Trinity College into Duke University.
As a result of the Duke gift, Trinity underwent both physical and academic expansion. The original Durham campus became known as East Campus when it was rebuilt in stately Georgian architecture. West Campus, Gothic in style and dominated by the soaring 210-foot tower of Duke Chapel, opened in 1930. East Campus served as home of the Woman’s College of Duke University until 1972, when the men’s and women’s undergraduate colleges merged. Both men and women undergraduates now enroll in either the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences or the Pratt School of Engineering. In 1995, East Campus became the home for all first-year students.
For more information about Duke’s history, see the Duke University Archives.
“A New Model of Education: Collaboration and Connection.” Read Duke’sStrategic Plan.
ADMINISTRATION
President:
Richard H. Brodhead
Provost:
Peter Lange
Chancellor for Health Affairs:
Victor J. Dzau, M.D.
Executive Vice President:
Tallman Trask III
A more comprehensive listing is available here.
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES
Year Est.
Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1859
School of Law 1904
Divinity School 1926
Graduate School 1926
School of Medicine 1930
School of Nursing 1931
Pratt School of Engineering 1939
Fuqua School of Business 1969
Sanford School of Public Policy 1971
Nicholas School of the Environment 1991
Student/Faculty Ratio (Fall 2009) 8:1
Students Returning After First Year 97%
Students Graduating in Four Years 95%
Graduate and Professional (Fall 2009) 7,262
Undergraduate Admissions – Class of 2013
Applied 22,280
Enrolled 1,723
Women 50%
Degrees Conferred (July 1, 2008 – June 30, 2009)
Undergraduate 1,835
Graduate and Professional 2,522
ALUMNI
Active (includes 2009 graduates) 137,459
Degrees 53% Undergraduate, 31% Professional, 16% Graduate
Median Age 46
FACILITIES AND PROPERTIES
Acreage
East Campus 97
West Campus 720
Central Campus 122
Golf Course (including Washington DukeInn & jogging trail)
Duke Forest 456
More than 7,000
Marine Lab, Beaufort 15
TOTAL 8,610
Buildings – Durham Campus
(Excludes maintenance and support facilities.)
Academic and Research 77
Medical Center 56
Athletics and Recreation13
Residence Halls 29
Central Campus Apt. Bldgs.
TOTAL 45 220
Undergraduate Tuition and Fees (2009-2010 academic year)
Arts & Sciences and Engineering
$39,075
Expenses (2009-2010 academic year)
Room and Board (average)
$11,170
TOTAL (Excluding books, supplies and personal expenses)
$50,245
Financial Aid
Duke University is committed to a need-blind admission policy, which means it admits undergraduates without consideration of their families’ ability to pay tuition and other college costs and meets 100 percent of students’ demonstrated financial need for four years. Four of 10 undergraduates receive need-based financial aid. The average need-based grant for 2009-2010 is estimated to exceed $30,000. For more information, see Duke Financial Aid.
Endowment
The provisions of James B. Duke’s $40 million indenture in 1924 createdDuke University’s initial endowment. Those funds had a market value of $4.4 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009.
Operating Revenues, Operating Expenditures
Patient service revenue generated by Duke University Health System represented 48 percent of the university’s overall $4.0 billion in operating revenues in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009. Other major revenue sources included: governmental agencies, 13 percent; investment income, 10 percent; tuition and fees (less aid), 8 percent; private grants, 8 percent; auxiliary enterprises, 4 percent; contributions, 2 percent; Private Diagnostic Clinic, 1 percent; other, 5 percent.
Health care services accounted for the largest portion, 35 percent, of the university’s overall $4.0 billion operating expenditures in fiscal 2009. Instruction and departmental research accounted for 19 percent and sponsored and budgeted research for another 17 percent. Other significant operating expenditures included: general administration, 16 percent; auxiliary enterprises, 4 percent; libraries, 1 percent; student services, 1 percent; scholarships, fellowships and grants, 1 percent; other, 5 percent.
Duke Fundraising
The university is counted among the most successful fundraisers in American higher education. In 2008 Duke reached the $300 million goal of its Financial Aid Initiative. For more information about giving, see Giving to Duke.
ACCREDITATION
Duke University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate, masters, doctorate, and professional degrees. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097 or call 404-679-4500 for questions about the accreditation of Duke University.
HIGHLIGHTS
Duke Chapel, a symbol of the university, is at the center of the Gothic West Campus. Built in 1932, the chapel is dominated by a 210-foot tower housing a 50-bell carillon. Washington Duke and his sons Benjamin and James are entombed in the Memorial Chapel. Duke Chapel is open to visitors 8 a.m.-10 p.m. during the academic year and 8 a.m.-8 p.m. during the summer. Ecumenical worship services are held every Sunday at 11 a.m. During the academic year, a Tuesday night communion service and Thursday evening Vespers service are held at 5:15 pm.
Duke University Medical Center, established in 1930, comprises clinical, training and research programs. The medical center has one of 40 federally funded comprehensive cancer centers, an eye center, a general clinical research unit and other highly advanced treatment and research facilities.Duke University Hospital is licensed for 943 beds. Life Flight, Duke’s air ambulance service, flies more than 1,100 times a year to transport critically ill patients.
Duke Hospital is also the flagship of the broader Duke University Health System, which includes two community hospitals — Durham Regional Hospital and Duke Raleigh Hospital — and affiliations with other hospitals in the region, community-based primary care physician practices, home care, infusion services and hospice care.
The Duke University Libraries are the shared center of the university’s intellectual life, connecting people and ideas. The William R. Perkins Library and its four branches, together with the University Archives and the separately administered libraries serving the schools of Business, Divinity, Law, andMedicine, comprise one of the nation’s top 10 private research library systems. More than 2 million visits to Perkins Library are projected for 2009. The website at http://library.duke.edu is the online gateway to all of the Libraries’ services and resources, which include almost 6 million volumes, 17.7 million manuscripts, 168,000 electronic resources, more than 100,000 items in digital collections, and tens of thousands of films and videos.
The University Archives, part of the Perkins Library system, is the official repository for printed and written materials and photographs that chronicleDuke’s past.
The John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, named after the acclaimed historian and civil rights advocate, is home to 19 Duke programs in the humanities and social sciences. At the center, scholars, artists and members of the community have the opportunity to engage in public discourse on such issues as race, social equity and globalization. The center is located at Erwin Road and Trent Drive and includes gallery space, state-of-the-art rooms for classes and lectures, and digital and video-editing facilities.
The Blue Devils compete in the 12-member Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and field teams in 26 NCAA Division I varsity sports. Duke’s men’s basketball team consistently is ranked among the nation’s elite and won the national championship in 1991, 1992 and 2001. The football program has participated in all four major bowl games and has won or shared the American Football Coaches Association’s academic achievement award a nation-leading 12 times for the highest graduation rate in the country, most recently in 2005. The men’s soccer team won the national championship in 1986 and reached the NCAA final in 1996; the men’s lacrosse team reached the NCAA championship game in 2005, 2007 and 2009.
The Duke women’s programs are just as exceptional. The women’s basketball team has advanced to the NCAA tournament Sweet 16 every year since 1998 and reached the Final Four in 1999, 2002 and 2006. The women’s golf team won the NCAA national championship in 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007. The women’s tennis team won its first NCAA championship in 2009, has won 16 ACC championships and reached the NCAA Final Four seven times. The women’s field hockey team reached the NCAA final in 2003, 2004 and 2006; the women’s lacrosse team won the ACC championship in 2005 and reached the NCAA Final Four in 1999, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. For more information, visit Duke Athletics.
The 322,000-square-foot, $97 million Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS)opened in June 2004. The four-building complex on Science Drive houses the research and teaching activity of bioengineering, the Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics and Communications Systems and materials science and materials engineering, as well as an emerging initiative in remote sensing and instrumentation.
The Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy is dedicated to scholarly and scientific inquiry involving interdisciplinary research in genome sciences and policy. The IGSP supports campus-wide research and scholarship that explores the impact of genome sciences on all aspects of life, human health, social policy, law and technology.Programmatically, the IGSP brings faculty together from across the campus, with members drawn from or appointed in Arts & Sciences, Medicine, Law, Business, Engineering, and Environment. The IGSP main offices are located in CIEMAS, with lab and office space also in the LSRC, the French Building and the North Building.
The $35 million, 344-bed Bell Tower residence hall opened on East Campus in 2005. The residence halls are part of a broader campus initiative to improve students’ undergraduate experiences. In addition to moving all sophomores onto West Campus, Duke is strengthening its residential life and academic support services for students and renovating existing West Campus dormitories. The changes build upon the success of the university’s 1995-96 initiative to house all first-year students on East Campus and are aimed at building a community across social, civic and academic realms.
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University opened its new building designed by architect Rafael Viñoly in 2005, creating a major center for the arts on campus. The museum serves the university, Research Triangle and surrounding region with an ambitious schedule of traveling exhibitions and educational programs that foster multidisciplinary learning. The Nasher Museum creates leading-edge exhibitions that travel to major venues around the country. Vogue magazine selected a Nasher Museum exhibition as a cultural highlight of 2008, and the museum’s blockbuster show, “El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III,” was one of Time magazine’s top 10 exhibitions that year. Located at Duke University Road and Anderson Street, adjacent to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, the museum features a cafe and a shop and is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (extending to 9 p.m. Thursday), and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free to members and Duke students, faculty and staff. Admission is free to all on Thursdays after 5 p.m.
Duke University Press publishes about 120 new books each year, as well as more than 30 scholarly journals. These publications are mainly in the humanities and social sciences, but some also cover aspects of law, medicine, the sciences and mathematics. While many of the Press’s books are intended primarily for scholarly audiences or use in academic courses, others are published for general interest readers. Duke Press is especially noted for its publications in cultural studies (including popular culture, such as rock, jazz and country music, film, television, art and visual culture), Latin American and Asian studies, history, anthropology, gay and lesbian studies, and studies of globalization.
Sarah P. Duke Gardens, 55 acres of landscaped and woodland gardens in the heart of Duke’s West Campus, is open to the public daily from 8 a.m. to dusk. Each year more than 300,000 visitors enjoy the gardens’ five miles of walkways and more than 8,000 species and varieties of plants. The terraces in the Historic Gardens feature seasonal floral displays, perennials, trees and The Terrace Cafe, which offers light meals, snacks and drinks (closed generally from Halloween through early March). The terrace fish pond also features a summer international water lily contest. The H.L. Blomquist Garden has plants native to the southeastern U.S.; the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum demonstrates the relationship between plants in Eastern Asia and eastern North America. The Doris Duke Center, a 15,066-square-foot educational and visitors center, also houses a gift shop and areas for meetings, receptions and catered events. Gardens admission is free.
The Duke Forest, established in 1931, covers just over 7,000 acres in the north central Piedmont. It serves as a natural outdoor laboratory for Dukeand neighboring universities. The forest is managed for multiple uses, including education, research, protection of wildlife and rare plant species, and demonstration of timber management practices. Selected roads and fire trails are open to visitors for hiking, biking and horseback riding. Two picnic shelters off of N.C. 751 are available for rent. Forest maps showing roads and trails are also available.
The $10 million, 40,000-square-foot West Campus Plaza, which opened in Fall 2006, is an outdoor “living room” and gathering spot for campus. The broad space connects a complex of buildings at the center of West Campus and provides spaces for informal meetings, relaxing, dining and enjoying arts performances. Amenities include a grassy area, full-size trees, benches, a performance stage and a mist fountain.
The $115 million, 280,000-square-foot French Family Science Center, which opened in 2007 provides Arts & Sciences with state-of-the-art research and teaching laboratories for genomics, biological chemistry, nanoscience, physical biology and bioinformatics. The facility also provides several laboratories for related physics research and several research greenhouses with one of the most diverse collections of plants under glass in the Southeast, comprising more than 2,000 different species from many environments.
The Duke University Marine Laboratory at coastal Beaufort, N.C., is a campus of Duke University and a unit within the Nicholas School of the Environment. Its mission is education and research in basic ocean processes, coastal environment management, marine biotechnology and marine biomedicine. The faculty offer courses for undergraduate and graduate students during the regular year and two summer sessions. Modern laboratory, field and shipboard facilities are available for use by visiting researchers.
The arts at Duke encompass a wide spectrum of programs and events. Duke Performances hosts between 60 and 70 professional performing arts events on campus each year, many in Page Auditorium. These include music, theater, dance and talks, as well as artistic residencies integrated with academic programs, and community outreach and education initiatives.Reynolds Industries Theater hosts Theater Previews at Duke, Chamber Arts Society events and major performances and student productions, such as those by Duke Players, Duke Dance and Hoof ‘n’ Horn. Baldwin Auditorium and the Nelson Music Room are sites for most of the musical productions by faculty artists, Duke’s resident Ciompi Quartet, and guest jazz, folk and world music artists. Duke supports the visual arts through the Visual Studies Initiative and Center for Documentary Studies as well as the annual Full Frame Documentary Festival. Duke also hosts the internationally renownedAmerican Dance Festival each summer. In all, the university offers more than 500 events each year. For tickets and information, go to the University Box Office or call (919) 684-4444.
The Duke Lemur Center, the only university-based facility in the world devoted to the study of prosimian primates, is home to the world’s largest colony of endangered primates, including more than 200 lemurs, bush babies and lorises. More than 85 percent of the center’s inhabitants were born on site. The center has led a program to reintroduce black and white ruffed lemurs to Madagascar, the first return of any prosimian primates to the island nation. The Lemur Center is on the edge of Duke Forest along Lemur Lane off Erwin Road. Visits to the center are by appointment; call (919) 489-3364.
The Joseph M. and Kathleen Price Bryan Center is the hub of student activity. The center serves as an expanded student union and home to student organizations and the University Union, which oversees student-run cultural and social activities. It contains theaters, restaurants, a coffeehouse, book and merchandise stores, an information desk, a post office, bank machines and offices.
The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, established in 1983 and located on the second floor of the West Union Building on West Campus, further strengthened Duke’s commitment to foster an appreciation of the heritage of black Americans. The center features an art gallery, performing space, a library and lounge and sponsors speakers and events on race, ethnicity and social difference. The center also plays a central role in planning the university’s annual week-long commemoration and celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
Athletics
Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, the crown jewel of college basketball’s classic venues, was conceived on the back of a matchbook cover in 1935 and renovated in the late 1980s at a cost of $2 million. Cameron underwent a series of improvements over the summer of 2009 to enhance the gameday experience, while also retaining the revered qualities of the facility as it approached its 70th year as the home of the Blue Devils.
Cameron has been the site of 731 Blue Devil men’s victories and 336 Duke women’s victories entering the 2009-10 season.
More than a few of those victories have been influenced by the electric atmosphere within its Gothic halls.
Legend has it that it all began with a book of matches, which for a town and a school founded on local tobacco fortunes, seems a promising way to start.
It was on the cover of a book of matches that Eddie Cameron and Wallace Wade first sketched out the plan for Duke’s Indoor Stadium in 1935. The story may be a myth (the matchbook has never been found), but then the Indoor Stadium that emerged from those first scribblings lends itself to the propagation of myths.
For 66 years, spectators, players and coaches have understood the unique magic of the Indoor Stadium. The building was dedicated to longtime Duke Athletic Director and basketball coach Eddie Cameron, a legend in his own right, on January 22, 1972. An unranked Duke team upset then third-ranked North Carolina, 76-74, after Robby West drove the length of the court to hit a pull-up jumper to win the game.
It’s the intimacy of the arena, the unique seating arrangement that puts the wildest fans right down on the floor with the players. It’s the legends that were made there, the feeling of history being made with every game. And it’s something more than either of these, something indescribable that comes from the building itself. No one who has experienced it will ever forget it.
The Building
Whether or not the matchbook story is true, it is a fact that the official architectural plans for the Stadium were drawn up by the Philadelphia firm of Horace Trumbauer, Architect. Trumbauer was a self-made man, a poor boy who left school at 16 to apprentice himself as a draftsman to a local architect. In 1890, at the age of 22, he opened his own office and quickly rose to prominence in the Northeast. His designs for the mansions and estates of wealthy northeastern magnates brought him to the attention of James Buchanan Duke, North Carolina tobacco baron. Duke commissioned the architect to design his New York town home during the early part of the century.
In 1924, when Duke created the $40 million Duke Endowment that turned Trinity College into Duke University, he called on Trumbauer to design the new University Campus.
In recent years it has come to light that the plans for the campus, as well as designs for later buildings including the stadium, were drawn up not by Trumbauer himself (although his name appeared on all the blueprints) but by his chief designer, Julian Abele, one of the nation’s first black architects. Abele, a brilliant architecture student at the University of Pennsylvania, was brought to Trumbauer’s attention shortly after his graduation in 1902. Trumbauer was so impressed with Abele’s talents that he not only hired him but paid his way through the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Abele stands as the first African-American ever to graduate from the school.
The original design for the Indoor Stadium was significantly less grand than the one from which the building was actually constructed. That first plan called for 5,000 basketball “sittings,” and even that number was considered extravagant, at least by Trumbauer, who originally had proposed 4,000 seats. In a letter to Dr. William P. Few, President of Duke, Trumbauer said: “For your information Yale has in its new gymnasium a basket ball (sic) court with settings for 1,600 … I think the settings for 8,000 people is rather liberal … the Palestra at the University of Pennsylvania seats 9,000.”
The original building was a domed structure with 16-feet steel ceiling spans and a 90-by 45-foot playing court. Obviously, Dr. Few must have insisted on something more spectacular.
As important as the size of the Stadium was its external appearance. It was vital that the building be aesthetically integrated with the original West Campus buildings. For this reason, building stone was taken from the Duke quarry in nearby Hillsborough, N.C., where all the stone for the original campus had been found.
Building on the Stadium proceeded quickly. The stone had to be laid in temperate weather, for in extremely cold temperatures, the mortar would freeze. The building was finished in nine months.
Thus the Stadium was ready to be opened by the first of the new year, 1940. The final cost: $400,000 (which Duke finished paying after the football team won the Sugar Bowl in 1945).
The Dedication
Duke’s new Indoor Stadium was officially opened on January 6, 1940. Touring the building before the evening ceremony and subsequent game, local city officials were “speechless.” Said Chamber of Commerce President Col. Marion B. Fowler, “It is so colossal and so wonderful … This building will not only be an asset to the university but to the entire community as well.” Chamber Secretary Frank Pierson concurred, “There are no superlatives for it.”
But Duke’s Indoor Stadium was a structure of superlatives. The arena measured 262-feet long by 175-feet wide and was the East Coast’s largest indoor stadium south of the Palestra in Philadelphia. Nine fixed steel frames spanned the ceiling at 26-foot intervals, which “provided an exceptionally good sight line.” Seating for 8,800 included 3,500 folding bleacher seats on the floor designated, then as today, for the exclusive use of undergraduates. Maximum capacity was 12,000. A total of 16 ramps in the upper level helped prevent bottlenecks. It was according to the program issued the opening night, “one of the most modern and complete physical education buildings in the country.”
The building was dedicated before a crowd of 8,000, the largest ever in the history of southern basketball. President William P. Few and Dean William H. Wannamaker presented the Stadium to the University. Dean R.B. House of UNC-Chapel Hill, representing the Southern Conference, also spoke. Aware of the tensions his presence as a member of a rival institution might cause, House affirmed, “I am a Methodist. I aspire to religion, I endorse erudition, and I use … tobacco … Hence, I claim to have good personal grounds for being a friend and well-wisher of Duke University.” House continued: “… here will be on parade not only Duke University, but also … youth … education … (and) the values of a great and democratic people. Modern games preserve for us the athletic glory of Greece, the executive efficiency of Rome ….”
To the greater glory of Greece, Rome, and particularly Duke University, the Blue Devils beat the visiting Princeton Tigers that night, 36-27.
Renovations
It was in February, 1986, that NBC Sports commentator Dick Enberg told the world about the latest planned renovations for Cameron. “They’re going to make a real sports antique out of it … complete with brass railings and stained glass windows.”
For Duke athletic officials watching the Sunday afternoon broadcast of the Duke-Georgia Tech game, this was certainly news. Planned renovations did not, as some rumors indicated, include stained glass windows, but there was a major facelift being planned which included new side walls, a new electronic scoreboard and even brass railings.
Renovations began in 1987. The lobbies and concourse were remodeled during the summer of 1987. Then, in 1988, work began on the interior of the arena. A new electronic scoreboard, new sound system and decorative wood paneling gave Cameron an updated look, while maintaining the original elegance. The addition of 750 new student seats, increasing Cameron’s capacity to 9,314, gave the Cameron Crazies, the Duke students who have made a name for themselves as Duke’s exceptional “sixth man,” a little more room to practice the art of supporting their team creatively.
In the early 1990s, Mike Krzyzewski and Butters decided the time was right to give Cameron an addition with new locker rooms, coaches offices, an academic center and a new Sports Hall of Fame. Several years later, ground was broken for the new Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center after the end of the 1997-98 season. That complex now houses the men’s and women’s basketball programs, as well as Duke’s athletic academic center.
The first part of that expansion and improvement project was the installation of a new floor in Cameron Indoor Stadium after the 1996-97 season. The latest advancements in floor technology were utilized to give the Blue Devils one of the finest playing surfaces in the entire country. Prior to the 1999-2000 season, a new press row was added. Air conditioning was added in 2001-02 and for its 100th season in 2004-05, the concourse was enhanced to celebrate Duke’s tradition in men’s and women’s basketball with the addition of poster displays and all the banners were replaced in the rafters.
Cameron underwent a series of improvements over the summer of 2009 to enhance the gameday experience, while also retaining the revered qualities of the facility as it approached its 70th year as the home of the Blue Devils.
In front of the undergrads is a new state-of-the-art press table featuring 90-feet of LED (light emitting diode) technology. The new press row will improve crowding in the first row of the student section and features two aisles that will help fans and media members in and out of their seats at halftime and after the game. One of the most visible enhancements came in the upper bowl of Cameron where all 5,649 seats were painted Duke blue in conjunction with an extensive pressure washing of the seats, concrete, railing and tunnels.
Each of the distinctive brass railings that surround the arena were refurbished prior to the beginning of the 2009-10 basketball season.
Today
Originally the largest indoor arena in the South, Cameron is today one of the smallest in the nation. Nevertheless, its stature grows from year-to-year. Sellout crowds, top 25 rankings and championships of every variety have become the norm. The “creative harassment” of student spectators has given Duke the honor of being known as “one of the toughest road games in the USA,” according to USA Today and any visiting team that has ever played in Cameron. In its June 7, 1999, issue, Sports Illustrated rated Cameron Indoor Stadium fourth on a list of the top 20 sporting venues in the world in the 20th Century, ranking ahead of such notables as Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and Pebble Beach Golf Club.
The Blue Devils have had an amazing amount of success in Cameron, winning over 80 percent of their games all-time. In 1999-2000, Duke established both the Atlantic Coast Conference and school record by extending its home winning streak to 46 games.
Duke’s all-time record in Cameron is 737-150 for an .831 win percentage. The 737 wins is the most in the ACC and the fifth-highest total in the country on a current home court. Under Coach K, the win percentage increases to .873 with a 379-55 record.
Despite the changes that have taken place, Cameron Indoor Stadium has remained very much the same over the last 60 years. New seating, high tech electronics and a fresh coat of paint have not altered, but rather enhanced, Cameron’s most enduring characteristic … its spirit. It is still a building of superlatives.
Excerpted from “Home Court – Fifty Years of Cameron Indoor Stadium” by Hazel Landwehr.
Seating Charts
Michael W. Krzyzewski Center – Dedicated to Academic & Athletic Excellence
DURHAM, N.C. – One of the most rewarding experiences for an architect comes when the client moves into a new building and begins to discover some of the special nuances that might not have been obvious during the planning and construction phases.
“It’s always interesting when you do projects because you are having so much fun visualizing and going through the process of extracting the needs from the owner and trying to overlay your own creativity over the top of that,” says Fred Perpall, the principal architect for Beck, the general contractor for Duke’s newest athletics structure, the Michael W. Krzyzewski Center – Dedicated to Academic & Athletic Excellence.
“But you know as you go through it that maybe you are communicating only 60 or 70 percent of what it’s actually going to be like, and that maybe 20 or 30 percent of the vision is getting lost in translation. So it’s always neat to come when the building’s done and all of those little ah-ha’s that the end user may not have recognized start to show up.
“It’s also kind of bittersweet, though, because it’s kind of like a child. You’ve reared it, you’ve given it a lot of love and attention, but now you’ve got to turn it over and it becomes someone else’s child.”
For the past couple of weeks, Perpall, Beck and all of the various entities that have been involved in developing the Michael W. Krzyzewski Center have been turning their 56,000 square foot child over to its permanent custodians, the Duke athletics department. After several years of planning and fundraising and 18 months of construction, the new facility is now a reality.
The men’s and women’s basketball programs have already started utilizing the training facility. The massive special events hall comes on-line this week when the building is formally dedicated, and the academic center should be occupied before the month is over.
Those are the three main components of the building, which has been referred to as the Center for Excellence throughout most of its long incubation period. Now that the doors are opening, it might as well be referred to as the Center for Exclamation Points, given the rave reviews it has received.
“The facility is awesome. It’s a big-time place,” says Duke basketball captain DeMarcus Nelson.
“The new facility is unbelievable. Everything is first class,” adds point guard Greg Paulus.
“Our guys are like little kids, they just got a toy for Christmas. Everybody’s excited about it,” notes assistant coach Chris Collins.
“It’s a great building. It’s not a good one, it’s a great building,” says the namesake, Mike Krzyzewski. “It’s uplifting. Everybody — the players, the coaching staff, the support staff — when you walk into it, it makes you feel better.”
It has also been a long time coming. The idea of creating a practice facility for the two basketball programs has been around for several years, even before Krzyzewski’s involvement with the Los Angeles Lakers a few summers ago brought it to the forefront. The university approval process was protracted and hinged partially on the athletics department’s ability to raise all of the funding, about $15 million, before construction could begin. The design itself went through numerous revisions even after the 2006 groundbreaking. Krzyzewski admits that initial campus resistance and the many roadblocks the project faced forced its proponents to continually refine the center’s priorities.
But now the multi-purpose structure is set to do what it was intended to do all these many years — service the needs of Duke’s entire student-athlete population.
“A lot of folks look at this as strictly a basketball practice facility and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” says associate athletics director Brad Berndt, who oversees Duke’s academic support operation.
“We’ve got 26 sports at Duke and about 620 athletes, and all of these student-athletes are going to benefit from the new academic support center. It’s just a tremendous facility when you look at the additional space we’ve got — tutorial rooms, dedicated study space, computer lab areas and offices for our professional staff. We’ve gained almost triple the amount of space that we currently have, and it’s going to be outstanding for all of our student-athletes.”
All 26 sports are also represented in the special events portion of the building. The new banquet hall, which can accommodate parties of 300 or more and will be ideal for pregame receptions, features a display that includes photographs and historical data about every Duke program. “We wanted to talk about and show pictures of when all (the sports) started, and show past athletes and present athletes, to show that this facility is a unilateral open facility to all student-athletes on campus,” explains graphic designer Mark Schmitz of ZD Design.
The special events area overlooks, through a pair of one-way windows, the heart of the building, which is the new basketball training space. Duke’s two teams now have at their disposal two full-length basketball courts positioned side-by-side, surrounded by a mammoth weight room, a cardio room for aerobic workouts and a theater for watching game video and scouting reports.
The courts themselves are virtual replicas of Coach K Court in adjacent Cameron Indoor Stadium — an identical support foundation, the same maple wood flooring and the same color trim. There are also four baskets positioned around the sides of each court, giving the facility 12 total baskets. Those are major additions for Krzyzewski and women’s coach Joanne P. McCallie, because now their players have all the hoops they need to use for specialized workouts such as free throw shooting.
“We play with practice guys so we have almost three different squads,” says junior Abby Waner of the women’s team. “With two courts, you can get more games going and get in more drill work in less amount of time.”
“For drills you could put the big men on one side, but if you wanted to do the guards fullcourt, you can’t do that in Cameron, because everything there is halfcourt,” Krzyzewski says. “Your imagination and what you can do with drills, shooting, everything — there’s nothing that can stop you. It’s there. There is tremendous flexibility and anyone would love that.”
There is also the flexibility of being able to practice whenever it is convenient for players and coaches, without worrying about the many other uses of Cameron Indoor Stadium. In the past, the men’s and women’s teams had to juggle practice times to avoid conflicts with each other and other sports. The past two years, the men’s team couldn’t even get its own floor for the start of preseason practice — two years ago they had to open at the Emily Krzyzewski Center in Durham, and this year they had to wait until after 10 p.m. on a Friday night due to a volleyball game in Cameron.
Now, most scheduling difficulties are removed from the mix. “The main thing it does for our team is that any time a youngster needs to work on his game or we need to work with him, there’s never an interruption,” Krzyzewski says. “We’ve never had that, ever, because Cameron is so wide open. It’s public. There are people always walking around, and a lot of times there are events happening in it.
“Now, at any time, on any day, a men’s or women’s basketball player can do what they should be doing — working on their game to get better. That’s a great commitment our athletic department and our university have made to our two programs.”
“We have Card Gym, which has been there forever and that’s cool because it has the historical aspect,” says Waner, “but now to have a state-of-the-art gym where there are no conflicts, where you can work out while the men’s team is practicing in Cameron, with all the baskets so you can get more than one person in here at a time — it just makes for a lot more opportunities and makes it easier to get more workouts in.”
There are also several amenities, such as the fine detail in the video theater, the widescreen televisions in the cardio and weight rooms, an alumni locker room for former players to use when they train at Duke in the offseason, and even iPod connectors in the weight room so players can pump in their own music while they are pumping up.
“I think it’s going to be great for player development and give us another place to work out and train when the women are on the court or there’s something else in Cameron. It’s going to be a great thing for us,” says Nelson.
Construction began in September 2006 when trees were cleared from the wooded lot between Cameron and Jack Coombs Field. But planning had been well underway before that. The Blue Devils have practiced or played at numerous NBA arenas over the past several years, and oftentimes members of the basketball staff would photograph or shoot video of the various facilities they visited to generate ideas for their own training center. Practice facilities from Portland and Golden State on the west coast to Chicago and Detroit in the Midwest to Miami and several others on the east coast had an influence on Duke’s blueprint — plus many of the newer college facilities they visited.
“Obviously we’re biased, but we feel it’s as good a facility as there is, not only in college but the NBA,” says Collins.
Mike Cragg, the associate athletics director for basketball, was the program’s point man for the project. He organized those early developmental efforts, coordinated much of the interaction between Duke and the construction and design firms involved in the building and worked closely with the fund-raising element.
One of the keys in bringing it together was involving all of the potential users with the design team at Beck. “It was a coordinated effort, there were a lot of meetings, we were able to give a lot of input and they personalized the building,” says Krzyzewski.
“We asked Brad Berndt of academic support, what would you like? How many times has someone asked what would you like and how can it fit? So there is a lot of ownership to the building by our athletic department, which is what we wanted. We didn’t want it to be, oh, they’re just putting two basketball courts there. That is not what we wanted to have out there.”
“Without Coach K’s vision and the vision of Joe Alleva and Mike Cragg especially, and the day-to-day work of Pete Romeyn, who is the university architect, none of this would have happened,” Berndt notes. “They came to me early in the process and really asked me to dream big, which I thought was unbelievable, and we got a great facility because of that. It was a collective, group think-tank. We got everything on paper that we thought would be most effective for our students, and the architects and everyone else did a great job and now we’ve got a tremendous facility.”
Perpall said his firm had done several recreation projects in the past but this was its first college basketball practice facility. Their relative naiveté in that area forced them to focus more on Duke’s needs and “dial into more of what Coach wanted. So in that way we became kind of a reflector of his vision rather than an implementer of our vision.
“As architects we always start off thinking about solving the problems,” Perpall adds. “When we got here we were thinking about all the components of the space. We had three very different components — the basketball facilities and their support spaces, the events center and the public nature of that, and the academic spaces which had a different kind of priority. But in our first meeting with Coach K, he was able to reframe that pretty quickly. The main goal of this was to have a facility where relationships could form and people could have casual interaction. Our goal was to have that warmth and the casual interaction reflected in the architecture, so people had spaces that were intimate and (provided) comfort so they could grow relationships, not so much the technical stuff.
“As far as influences, we took a lot of cues from the existing buildings. We wanted our building to fit in well and match the context of the other buildings. We wanted it to honor Cameron. Cameron is kind of like the Holy Grail, so we didn’t want it to be in conflict, we wanted it to have a lot of harmony. And when you look at the building I think it serves well to honor the existing buildings that were here before.”
DeMarcus Nelson has been around since before the trees were cleared and the foundation set, so he has seen the Krzyzewski Center grow up and is glad to have a chance to use it before graduating this year. Other Blue Devils are equally pleased to know the facility is part of their future.
“It’s so cool to be a part of this, especially because it’s so nice,” says Abby Waner. “To be the first team that is a part of this, along with the men’s team — you know we’re really lucky here at Duke because there are so many great opportunities, and this is only one of them
Football Stadium
Wallace Wade Stadium has served as the home of the Duke Blue Devils since 1929. Named for legendary Duke head coach Wallace Wade, the stadium is horseshoe-shaped in structure and nestled among the greenery and towering pines of the surrounding Duke forest.
Originally, known as Duke Stadium, the facility opened on October 5, 1929 with Pittsburgh defeating Duke in front of 25,000 spectators.
In July of 1967, Duke’s Board of Trustees approved the renaming of the stadium to honor Wade, who coached the Blue Devil
s to a 110-36-7 record and two Rose Bowl appearances. The dedication took place September 30, 1967.
A lighting system was added in 1984, opening the way for night football at Duke. Lighting features include four 110-foot-high poles with 64 lights apiece, as well as illumination for parking and walkway areas. Duke became the first football facility in North Carolina to boast a video board, which was added prior to the 1998 season.
In 2002, the Duke football program moved into the Yoh Football Center, a facility complete with locker room, weight room, sports medicine area, indoor workout space, player lounge, computer center and meeting spaces. Later in the decade, the Brooks Practice Facility was completed with a full-length practice field with a FieldTurf surface as well as the Brooks Football Building, which houses a locker room, athletic training area, media room and storage space.
Wallace Wade Stadium’s largest crowd flooded through the gates on November 19, 1949, when 57,500 people witnessed the annual Duke-North Carolina game. The current capacity is 33,941 and, in 2008, Duke drew a single-season record four crowds of 30,000-plus fans.
The stadium also owns a special niche in college football history in that it is the only facility outside Pasadena, Calif., to host the Rose Bowl. The 1942 Rose Bowl came to Durham during World War II when gatherings of large crowds on the West Coast were dangerous. Oregon State defeated Duke 20-16 in the contest. Today, in honor of that occasion, rose bushes from the Tournament of Roses Committee flank the bust of Wallace Wade at the stadium entrance.
A tribute to former longtime assistant football coach and a friend to the athletics department, Carmen Falcone, is also located near the student entrance.
Wallace Wade Stadium also has served as the site for the 1990 and 2000 NCAA Track & Field Championships, 1995 USA Pan Africa and 1996 Gold Rush meets.
Football Center
In August of 2002, the Duke football program moved into a new home – The Yoh Football Center.
Located in the northeast corner of Wallace Wade Stadium, the $22 million, 70,000-square foot facility is named for the Yoh Family on the strength of Trustee Chairman Spike Yoh and Mary Milus Yoh’s lead gift of $5.5 million.
The state-of-the art facility features a speed and agility room, lockerroom, coaches offices, weight room, sports medicine center, position group meeting rooms, a players lounge and a memorabilia floor. The completion of the building was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting dinner on August 30 – the night before Duke opened the 2002 season with a 24-16 victory over East Carolina – and a dedication dinner on October 4 during Homecoming Weekend.
Over 750 gifts were received to fund the project, with over half coming from former Blue Devil football players. The Duke Football Campaign, the fund-raising effort for the facility, was spearheaded by Dr. Frank Bassett and Leo Hart. Bassett, who served as Duke’s team physician from 1966-93, was honored by the National Association of Athletic Development Directors with the organization’s 2002 Volunteer of the Year 
Award. Hart, one of just three three-time first team All-ACC selections in Duke football history, played quarterback for the Blue Devils from 1968-70 and continues to rank among the school’s all-time passing leaders. In addition, tremendous support was given by the Gridiron Society which is chaired by Dr. Bob Deyton.
Baseball Stadium
The home of Duke baseball is picturesque Jack Coombs Field. Named after Duke’s most illustrious baseball coach who compiled a record of 382-171 at Duke from 1929-1951, Jack Coombs Field is located in the heart of Duke’s athletic complex, affording easy access to baseball fans on campus and in Durham.
Dimensions of the spacious park are 330-feet down each foul line, 365 in the power alleys and 405-feet to dead centerfield. Surrounded, sheltered and enclosed by trees and hills, the stadium features a natural grass surface and a tree-lined scenic view beyond the outfield fence. Seating capacity is 2,000 fans.
Since the arrival of head coach Sean McNally in 2006, Jack Coombs Field has undergone numerous upgrades both to the stadium and to the playing field.
The newest addition to the complex is a completely overhauled locker room that includes new lockers, a video room, a mural that features former Duke baseball greats and a player lounge complete with a big screen TV and three leather couches. The Blue Devils also showcase their rich baseball history with an Alumni Hall of Honor in the Team Room area and the Coaches Choice Lounge.
A 120-feet-by-50-feet enclosed, all-weather hitting and pitching facility was added along the third base line in 2001. The facility features six batting cages, Astroturf and a stereo sound system. A pitching machine with a self-feeder, training equipment such as a Medicine Ball Tree and agility ladders are also included in the indoor facility.
Additionally, the field itself has benefited from recent upgrades. A sprinkler system with infield dirt sprinkler heads has been installed to keep the field in excellent condition. Lights were installed prior to the 2001 season to allow for night games while the Blue Devils have also added a centerfield hitter’s screen, screens for batting practice and an infield grass net. Most recently, the first and third base paths were cut out and lined with clay prior to the 2007 season. Heaters have also been installed in the home dugouts.
A flag pole display at the entrance to the stadium greets spectators as they approach the field, and black wrought iron fencing has been added to enclose the stadium. There have also been numerous changes inside the confines of Jack Coombs Field. An outfield wall has been built and flag poles have been added in the outfield to dress up the stadium. Fans can also enjoy Blue Devil baseball in increased comfort, as chair-back seats have been added to the bleachers under the grandstand. Duke baseball fans will also enjoy an improved public address system featuring Bose speakers.
Also added recently were se
veral aesthetic upgrades to the facilities, team locker room and coaches’ offices. Mesh banners featuring former Blue Devil greats outline the outer walls of the indoor batting cages, while numerous plaques honoring Duke’s All-ACC and All-America selections are mounted on the locker room walls. The coaches’ offices received murals of their own featuring past coaches and players who helped in creating the Duke baseball tradition.
Duke’s coaches, who have worked diligently to make these improvements possible, also reap some of the benefits. Head coach Sean McNally’s office at Coombs Field has been remodeled and expanded to include a lounge room and meeting room for recruits and players. Pitching coach Sean Snedeker’s office is also housed in the complex.
Koskinen Stadium
When people speak of the top multi-sport facilities in the South and in the nation, Duke’s Koskinen Stadium comes to mind. In a relatively short period, the cozy stadium has emerged as one of the finest soccer and lacrosse complexes in the country.
Koskinen Stadium, named and dedicated in 1999 through the support of John and Patricia Koskinen, is situated ideally on Duke University’s West Campus. It sits adjacent to the William David Murray Building and near both Wallace Wade Stadium and Cameron Indoor Stadium. This location — in the heart of Duke’s athletic complex — allows easy access for Duke fans both on campus and throughout the local community.
From a spectator’s standpoint, there’s not a bad seat in the house as the aluminum bleachers flank each sideline to allow for 4,500 fans with standing room only areas pushing the capacity to approximately 7,000. The Bermuda grass playing surface is 75 yards by 120 yards with an underground irrigation system that keeps it in top condition year round, while lights, added in 1984, have afforded the Blue Devils scheduling flexibility.
Located on the stadium’s West side, the press box provides ample room in the divided press area for writers, as well as having adequate space for radio and television crews. Home Team Sports, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports Net as well as other television affiliates have reached a nationwide audience with its coverage of ACC Tournament action from Koskinen Stadium’s comfortable vantage.
Renovations continue to improve the facility. Work was completed in 2005 on a field house which features two locker rooms and a viewing deck. In addition, permanent concession stands and restrooms have been added to the comfort of Duke fans. Duke Brick around the bleachers, along with stadium fencing, also now enhance Koskinen Stadium.
The facility continues to be the site of numerous prime events, including the Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Soccer Tournament in 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1995. The 1989 ACC Women’s Soccer Tournament called Koskinen Stadium home as did the 1992 and 2000 tournaments. Duke was also the host of the ACC Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse Tournaments in 2002 and the Men’s Lacrosse Tournament in 2007.
The stadium also serves as the site of one of the South’s premier soccer tournaments in the “Duke/adidas Soccer Classic”, which draws outstanding crowds to watch the nation’s top collegiate teams in early-season action.
In 1987, Duke was the soccer competition site for the United States Olympic 
Festival with the gold medal game playing host to a standing room only crowd of almost 7,000 spectators.
The soccer and lacrosse teams enjoy the use of their own locker rooms and meeting rooms. Each player has a locker with storage areas for extra equipment at each space.
Duke Golf Club
The Duke University golf course was first envisioned in the early 1930’s when Coach Wallace Wade, Coach Eddie Cameron and President William Preston Few inspected portions of the Duke Forest and discussed the desirability of a university course. Later, the idea was supported strongly by President Hollis Edens and, during his administration, the course site was reserved by order of the Board of Trustees. By 1941, actual plans were drawn up by the renowned architect, Perry Maxwell, on a site that is now the location of the Duke Faculty Club. The original golf course construction was planned to begin prior to World War II, but when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the plans were put on hold by Wade, Duke’s Athletic Director at that point.
At the conclusion of the war, the plans resurfaced and the present site of 120 acres was selected. The property was carefully chosen for its unique blend of unusual changes in elevation throughout its mildly rolling terrain. This site would be worthy of major championships and was planned to have its fairways free from the suffocation of surrounding home sites. It typified the Piedmont of North Carolina at its best, sprinkled with meandering streams and blessed with a variety of hardwoods, towering pines and beautiful shrubbery. Duke sought out Robert Trent Jones, whose golf course design work was widely respected.
Even in 1955, Robert Trent Jones, working out of Montclair, N.J., was quickly becoming one of history’s most influential architects. Dumpy Hagler, Duke golf coach (1933-73), put it simply: “He was one of the best designers in the whole world.”
“The routing of a course is the most important element of design,” explained Jones. “Designing a great golf course is like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In almost all cases, it is best to let the land suggest the course. Use the land, don’t abuse it. Fit the holes into the terrain available, moving as little dirt as possible. The great architect should create the illusion that the golf holes were on the ground just lying there, waiting to be grassed over.”
Finally, on September 26, 1957, Duke University Golf Club opened to the public. Records indicated that the opening dedication ceremony was viewed with much interest by the Board of Trustees and was highlighted by President Eden hitting the first ball from the No. 1 tee box. The “new” Duke course was immediately labeled as one of the top university golf facilities in the nation. The attention was great enough to attract the 1962 NCAA Golf Championship. Ironically, there was a soon-to-be-famous golf course architect playing in the NCAA field from Yale University. His name was Rees Jones, eldest son of the Duke golf course designer.
Twenty-six years later, in 1988, Tom Butters, Duke University Vice President and Director of Athletics, recognized that the golf course desperately needed restoration. The passing years had been more than unkind to the once incomparable Duke layout. The compacted greens and fairways were struggling to grow grass, its tees were chewed up and the bunkers were in need of repair. While no one denied the magnificent routing of its holes, the condition of the course had become unacceptable by Duke University standards. The Board of Trustees approved an endowment program that was conceived and developed by Butters for the purpose of funding the restoration of the Duke Golf Club to the position it had once held – “an outstanding golf course in superb condition.” The five-year plan necessary to achieve this goal was put in place with the final major construction to begin in June 1993, and be complete by April 1994.
The final phase of the plan called for an architect to improve and regrass the landing areas along with the complete redesign of the tee and green complexes. Rees Jones, now a master architect in his own right, was the only choice for this redesign. Jones had completed renovations for several U.S. Open venues such as Brookline, Hazeltine, Baltusrol and Congressional. In modern golf course architecture, Jones has set a new standard for clarity and playability in design. He terms it “definition in design” with his holes clearly indicating how a golfer should play them. The natural beauty of the land is integrated in his design work and unified by directional bunkering, visible hazards and accessible target greens. What a perfect fit for the Duke University Golf Club.
It would be difficult to describe the loving care that Rees Jones puts into the design of each and every golf course feature. He is a demanding perfectionist who insists that future playability of his work be held at a premium. Throughout the redesign, Rees Jones scrutinized every shot possibility, observed and considered every angle so as to insure that each nuance of the golf course would be subtle, yet perfectly placed.
During the 2000 summer, the club was shut down for the month of July to put new sand in the bunkers and to install six new tee boxes to prepare for hosting the 2001 NCAA Men’s Golf Championships, which was a huge success.
In the fall of 2005, the Karcher-Ingram Golf Center was completed. Named after Jack, Lois, and John Karcher as well as David and Sarah Lebrun Ingram the $3.0 million, two-story 5,500 square foot building houses coaches’ offices, men’s and women’s team locker rooms, a trophy room, lounge, a club repair room, a student-athlete study area and in indoor training and practice facility. The Duke golf teams also have a new $1.0 million outdoor practice facility which includes putting and chipping greens, a full-swing and short-game area including sand and grass bunkers, a practice fairway bunker and target greens.
Duke Golf Club exists for one to play, enjoy and savor the vision of Jones and Jones. It is a work of art that is a singular masterpiece and one that will leave the distinct impression that “…the golf holes were on the ground just lying there, waiting to be grassed over.”
Karcher-Ingram Golf Center
The Duke University golf team plays at the second-ranked university golf course in the nation. In August of 2005, the already-impressive facilities at the Duke University Golf Club took another step towards becoming the best in the NCAA. Duke recently unveiled the Karcher-Ingram Golf Center, which features coaches’ offices, men’s and women’s locker rooms, a club-repair room, a trophy room, lounge, library/study area and a state-of-the-art indoor training and practice facility, complete with indoor putting surfaces, training aides and video analysis systems.
The Blue Devils also have new practice facilities, which include a short-game area designed exclusively for the Duke golf teams where players can practice any shot inside 110 yards. The short-game area includes sand and grass bunkers, uneven lies, a practice fairway bunker, a target green for wedge shots, a pitching green and an expansive putting green. The chipping and putting zones feature greens with the two most common styles of grass so that the team members can prepare for the playing surface of each approaching tournament.
The facility also includes new grass practice tees for full-swing hitting out to 350 yards and target greens designed exclusively for the Blue Devils. The hitting area was created to give Duke players the ability to hit a full range of golf shots by providing three separate sections and angles to drive from as well as hit approach shots.
In addition a Video Analysis Building, which features three heated indoor hitting stations, was completed in September of 2006. The building is equipped with the latest in technological training aids, including a V1 Video Analysis system and a TrackMan ball flight monitor.
Ambler Tennis Courts
Over the past decade, Duke University has invested more than $25 million to make its athletic facilities among the finest in the nation. This commitment is evident in the changes instituted directly for the Blue Devil tennis teams. Duke Athletic Director Kevin White continues to lead the way in providing Duke with top facilities to help student-athletes stay in peak condition.
Tennis Parking & General Information
Originally completed in the summer of 1987, the Duke Tennis Stadium was renovated into the Ambler Tennis Stadium. The facility was funded by Merrill Ambler and features seat-backs for fan seating, a scoreboard, new court surfaces and restrooms.
In addition to the fine outdoor courts, the Duke athletic department completed the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center in the winter of 2000. Named after Karl and Alice Sheffield, the facility features six courts, offices for the coaches, a hall of fame room and locker rooms. It was awarded the 2000 United States Tennis Association Outstanding Tennis Facility on February 25, 2001. The Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center is only the third tennis center in North Carolina to receive the award since it began in 1981.
The modern training room provides all of the equipment and services necessary to keep the Duke men’s tennis team healthy and in action. The trainer’s office is off the main training area, allowing the players convenient access to this care.
The weight room is another extensive area, directed by strength coordinator Dan Perlmutter. The 3,300 square-foot weight room has over three tons of free weights along with Nautilus, Hydra-Gym and Universal stations.
In 2008 the completion of the Michael W. Krzyzewski Center – Dedicated to Academic & Athletic Excellence – provided all of Duke’s student-athletes with a new Academics Center featuring tutorial rooms, dedicated study space, computer lab areas and offices for academics staff, nearly tripling the size of the previous academics area.
Some more recent additions to the tennis facilities include a new state of the art Daktronics indoor scoring system. This project, which was installed in the fall of 2006, includes seven wireless scoreboards. There are six individual scoreboards (one mounted behind each court) that provides the player’s name as well as the game and set scores. The main scoreboard shows the dual match score and scores of all six courts. Also the six main outdoor courts have been resurfaced in the US Open (Duke) blue color.
Williams Field
For Blue Devil fans, the excitement of Duke field hockey can be found at the newly-renovated Williams Field at Jack Katz Stadium on East Campus.
Completed in 1996 and renovated in 2008, the turf field was primarily built for the Duke field hockey program. Thanks in large part to the contributions of Morris and Ruth Williams, the Duke facility features one of the best watering systems in the country, a state of the art sound system and a new scoreboard. The generosity of Jack Katz made possible the expansion of the stadium’s brand new bleachers, the new press box and the brick entranceway.
The site of the 2008 ACC Field Hockey Championship, Jack Katz Stadium is surrounded by Duke’s East Campus, providing head coach Beth Bozman and the Blue Devils with a private practice facility. In addition, the lighted facility gives Duke the ability to host night games. The field was also the site of the 2002 conference tournament.
Taishoff Aquatic Pavilion
Duke University’s spacious Taishoff Aquatic Center, completed in 1972, serves as the home for the Duke University swimming and diving teams.
In the past, the facility has hosted many major meets, including the AIAW Women’s National Swimming Championships (1978), the National Junior Olympic Swimming Championships (1979), the NCAA Diving Regionals (1979), the Atlantic Coast Conference Championships (1979, 1983, 1984) and the New South Collegiate Invitational (1986), as well as numerous state championships.
The facility boasts a 25-yard, eight-lane racing pool with seven-foot lanes and a depth tapering from 4 ½ feet at each end to a depth of seven feet in the center. Other features include custom built stainless starting blocks and ample spectator seating. An eight-lane Omega electronic timing system with a full eight-lane display board is used for all collegiate meets.
The facility includes one of the few indoor 10-meter towers in the Southeast, as well as five and seven-meter platforms. The facility also has two one-meter and two three-meter springboards, equipped with maxiflex boards. The separate diving well measures 66 feet by 42 feet with a depth of 17 feet.
Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center
The home of Duke basketball is the Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center. The building, which is adjacent to Cameron Indoor Stadium, was dedicated on April 15, 2000. It is named after Alan D. Schwartz, a former Duke baseball player and the current executive vice president of Bear Stearns and Companies, Inc., and Tom Butters, Duke’s long-time athletics director.
The six-story building overlooks the new Blue Devil Plaza, an open grassed area that connects several of Duke’s athletic facilities, including Cameron Indoor Stadium, Card Gym, the Wilson Student Recreation Center and the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center. During basketball season, Blue Devil Plaza transforms into Krzyzewskiville, the tent village of hundreds of Duke students waiting to get into games at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The Schwartz/Butters Athletic Center is the anchor of the vast athletics complex, housing the Duke Sports Hall of Fame in addition to new offices, locker rooms and player lounges for both the men’s and women’s basketball programs. Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have a 5,890 square-foot locker room, equipped with a Jacuzzi and sauna. There are weight/aerobic (1,475 square feet) and training facilities (1,075 square feet) with state-of-the-art equipment for the basketball teams.
Additionally, the new student-athlete academic center, under the direction of Brad Berndt, assistant athletics director for academic services, is housed on the third floor of the building. The academic floor was financed by a gift from Jack H. Campbell.
The Schwartz/Butters Athletic Center, part of a $75 million athletic facilities renovation project at Duke, provides the Blue Devils with one of the finest facilities in all of college basketball. It is tangible evidence of the university’s commitment to providing its student-athletes with top-notch facilities
William David Murray Building
Across from Cameron Indoor Stadium is the William David Murray Building, a 
multipurpose athletic facility located just off the concourse of Wallace Wade Stadium. A 16-year-old, $2.4 million structure, the Murray Building serves as home for the Duke training and weight rooms, lacrosse and soccer coaches offices, and lacrosse and soccer locker and equipment rooms. The modern and spacious training room houses all the modalities and equipment necessary for keeping Duke’s Olympic sports team healthy and in action.
The Murray Building served as the official headquarters for Duke’s Football program from 1988 to 2002, when the Football program moved into the newly constructed Yoh Football Center. The Murray Building then became home to the nationally ranked men’s and women’s lacrosse and soccer programs.
The building served Duke Football and Duke Athletics well, but is in need of renovation and a general face lift as it transitions to the home for four championship teams. The Iron Dukes have set a goal to raise $1 million to update the locker rooms, weight room, meeting rooms and coaches’ offices.
Source: Duke.edu