2009 Winners
Group Winner
Dean of Students Office (16 group members)
The staff of the Dean of Students Office does exactly what its name indicates: We work with students. Although we are all passionate about our work, we find that we approach our responsibilities each day in different ways and through diverse lenses.
Our ages span four decades; we are single, married divorced and partnered; some of us have children, while others focus our love and attention on our pets and elderly parents; we worship different gods or no god at all; some of us spend time playing and watching sports, while others of us prefer to listen to music; some of us exercise and some of us don't; some of us have survived cancer while others live with heart conditions, high blood pressure, arthritis and other ailments. Frankly, we mirror the overall Duke community in many ways.
Front Row Left to Right: Sarah Lewis, Clarybel Peguero, Krystal Clark, Gayla Winstead
Second Row Left to Right: Clay Adams, Christine Pesetski, Todd Adams, Valerie Kolko (red shirt), Amy Powell
Third Row Left to Right: Sue Wasiolek, Stephen Bryan, Dan Scheirer II, Linda Moiseenko, Tom Szigethy
Not pictured: Sarah Starkey, Allison Burzio
The one thing we have in common, other than our passion for working with Duke students, is our love of food. Our staff meetings are generally centered around food — maybe that's why they are so well-attended and productive. And even though we have diverse tastes in food, everyone always seems to find something that they like to eat, especially items filled with fat, sugar or salt.
The fact is that we do interact with students on a daily basis and many of our students see us as role models. They look to us for guidance and advice, sharing the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of their lives with us. Our students expect us to have the answers and have high expectations of what we are going to be able to do to help them. Sometimes, what we may fail to realize is that our students are watching us fairly closely, to see what we eat, how we cope with stress and how we handle life's ups and downs. As a result, we need to be fully prepared to respond, so that we can be positive role models for them.
It is for this reason that the staff of the Dean of Students Office needs and deserves a "Lifestyle Makeover." Although we are all interested in leading healthy lives, we, at times, fall prey to the many demands of our jobs and our lives. We don't eat right and we overlook the benefits of exercise. Here we are, in the Dean of Students Office, in a position to influence many young people on a daily basis, and we just don't know what to do or we forget to do the right thing.
A "Lifestyle Makeover" would give us a chance to discover and be reminded of the need to "Eat Wise and Exercise" so that we can all maximize the opportunity to be healthy and to role model a healthy lifestyle to our students. We will benefit as individuals and as a staff, while we share our newly found health and fitness with thousands of Duke students each day.
Isn't this what a great University is all about?