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Congratulations to the 2026 Cook Society Award recipients! Two members of the Duke Sanford community and a larger Duke cohort will be honored at the annual awards ceremony of the Samuel DuBois Cook Society next month. Samuel DuBois Cook Society Staff Award: Whitney N. McCoy Hudson Whitney is a research scientist at Duke’s Center for Child & Family Policy, where she focuses on community-engaged STEM education and educational equity. Her leadership is most powerfully exemplified through the InventSTEM Institute, a multigenerational STEM learning community that brings together Duke undergraduate students, Durham caregivers, and their children in joyful, purposeful engineering exploration. Through deep listening, asset mapping, and ongoing dialogue with families, McCoy designed a program that dismantles participation barriers, cultivates belonging, and repositions community members as co-creators rather than recipients of university outreach. Samuel DuBois Cook Society Undergraduate Student Award: Michael Ramos Mike is a proud fronterizo, originally from the San Diego-Tijuana borderlands in Southern California. As the son of Mexican immigrants, he has leaned into his identity while living in Durham and attending Duke, where he studies public policy and international comparative studies with a focus on Latin America. As co-president of the student immigrant advocacy group Beyond Borders, Mike helped rebrand the organization, taking the initiative to connect with grassroots Durham-based immigrant organizations while striving toward coalition amongst immigrant and diaspora students. He is constantly discovering and redefining what community means to him, and sees Durham as a second home where his activism has been nurtured. The annual Cook Society Awards were named to honor the scholarship and activism of Samuel DuBois Cook, the university’s first Black faculty member. Cook served as president of Dillard University from 1975 to 1997 and as a member of Duke’s Board of Trustees.
Bruce Jentleson, the William Preston Few Professor of Public Policy, literally wrote the book on leadership. His book is called “The Peacemakers: Leadership Lessons from Twentieth-Century Statesmanship” (@w.w.norton). All this week, as a part of Duke Sanford’s focus on public policy in democracy, he’s sharing insights, starting with a single key question: Do leaders make history or does history make leaders?
New Policy 360 podcast episode highlights the hidden everyday successes of government and why recognizing what works matters for strengthening democracy. Featuring former IRS commissioner Danny Werfel.
Through the Sanford Board Leadership Initiative (SBLI), Paige Allen MPP ’26 served as a non-voting board member for the @nonprofitsnc, refining her policy research skills while building relationships with nonprofit leaders across the state. “I am grateful to have been part of a nonprofit that intentionally serves and collaborates with other nonprofits throughout North Carolina,” Paige shares. “Over the past year, my own roots in North Carolina grew immensely, and I was constantly reminded that passion and purpose work hand-in-hand.” Her biggest takeaway: “A willingness to be challenged, build relationships, and go the extra mile will always increase the impact you can make in the policy sphere.” Paige was among 18 Duke Master of Public Policy students who served on leadership boards of nonprofit organizations across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough through the SBLI in 2025.
Through the Sanford Board Leadership Initiative (SBLI), Jesse Davis MPP’26 served as a non-voting board member for @stepupdurham. “The experience allowed me to bridge my technology policy concentration with real-world community needs in Durham,” Jesse shares. “By collecting original data and mapping it to concrete workforce pathways, I was able to operationalize concepts from my courses, digital equity, reentry policy, human-centered design, stakeholder engagement, and program evaluation. SBLI also gave me hands-on board experience, strengthened my ability to communicate findings to organizational leadership, and reinforced my commitment to public-sector/nonprofit partnerships that support marginalized populations.” His biggest takeaway: “Public Policy is first and foremost about people. What do the people need? What are some challenges they encounter in everyday life? Getting to speak to StepUp Durham participants who are using the program to find work and turn their lives around, and include their voices in my work, is a powerful reminder that policy decisions are not abstract; they shape real lives. Hearing their stories grounded my work in empathy and reaffirmed why equitable, accessible workforce development matters so deeply.”
A cohort of Duke students is spending this semester in Washington, D.C., through Sanford’s Duke-in-DC program. The students will be diving into the complexities of federal policymaking and learning about our democracy’s politics and policy while interning with government offices, advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and other institutions shaping public policy. We look forward to following their experiences this spring!
Students in our hybrid Master of Public Affairs program spent a long weekend on campus recently. (The Duke MPA program includes state-of-the-art online instruction and periodic residencies.) In addition to classroom learning, they took a tour of our beloved Bull City. From Black Wall Street to vibrant historical murals to little known back-alley shortcuts, the students got to know each other and our city just a little bit better. #Durm #BullCity
Durham Mayor Leonardo “Leo” Williams joined Duke MPA students during the hybrid Master of Public Affairs spring residency, focused on leadership in local government. He shared his path to public service leadership and engaged students in thoughtful discussion on the policy challenges and opportunities facing today’s mayors. Thank you, Mayor Williams, for welcoming our executive MPA cohort to Durham!
Beginning in fall 2026, Duke Sanford will offer a minor in Tech Policy. This program will be open to all undergraduate students, regardless of major. The minor is intended for students seeking a deeper understanding of how technology influences society and how policy decisions shape the development and use of technological systems. #duketechpolicy
A standing-room-only crowd of students joined Ambassador Patrick Duddy for a conversation on current events in Venezuela. From 2007 to 2010, Amb. Duddy served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Bolivarian Republic Venezuela for both President Bush and President Obama. After three decades with the U.S. Foreign Service, he retired as one of the Department of State’s most senior Latin American specialists. The conversation was hosted by the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy and moderated by Professor Peter Feaver.
What’s on your 2026 reading list?  As Duke Sanford highlights the role of institutions and public policy in democracy, read (or re-read!) Dr. Deondra Rose’s 2024 book, “The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy” — a powerful and revealing history of institutions which have been essential for empowering Black citizens and for the ongoing fight for democracy in the U.S. This is public policy.
Duke Sanford students worked with NCPublicSchools on a visionary mission: to make North Carolina’s public schools the nation’s best by 2030.  Professor Jenni Owen’s public policy students worked with NC Superintendent of Public Instruction Maurice “Mo” Green, his team, and other partners throughout the fall semester to advance the NC Department of Public Instruction’s Achieving Educational Excellence strategic plan.      Not just an academic group project, this was a collaborative opportunity to solicit input, conduct policy analysis, and generate recommendations for a state government agency that is striving to improve the lives of children across N.C. One Sanford student reflected that “this course showed me that thoughtful teamwork is not just an academic requirement but a core professional skill.”   “It was an honor to work with Duke University Master of Public Policy students on their research projects to support Achieving Educational Excellence, the strategic plan for North Carolina’s public schools to be the best in the nation by 2030. The learning went both ways—the students identified valuable potential policies and initiatives and peer-reviewed research to support the action items in the plan, while they learned how their efforts can directly inform our state’s education agency decision-making,” said Maurice “Mo” Green.   Thanks to Superintendent Green and the NCDPI team for their mentoring and guidance and to the Sanford Master of Public Policy students for their hard work and real-world policy insights. 📷NCDPI student presentations and dinner event