In Brief

• Mike Krzyzewski, head men's basketball coach, has signed a new contract that will keep him at Duke for the rest of his career. The contract extends to at least 2011, and includes a new status for Krzyzewski as special assistant to the president. Recently installed in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, he has led the Blue Devils to three national championships, and has been active in Duke-Durham community efforts through such projects as the Burch Avenue Community Center and the establishment of the Duke All-Star Charity Basketball Game. For more than a decade, he has worked with the Duke Children's Classic and the Duke Children's Miracle Network Telethon, and with his wife, Mickie, co-chaired the successful $32-million campaign for the McGovern-Davison Children's Health Center. Earlier this year, they created an endowed scholarship fund to raise scholarships for Duke undergraduates from North and South Carolina. In 1997, the university recognized his leadership by awarding him Duke's highest honor, the University Medal.
• Michael D. McCormick '70 of Zionsville, Indiana, has given more than $2 million to support Duke basketball, football, and golf programs. McCormick has donated slightly more than $1 million to the basketball Legacy Fund, $940,000 for Duke's new football training facility, and more than $100,000 to the Michael McCormick Golf Scholarship Endowment.Duke's Legacy Fund, whose honorary chair is NBA star Grant Hill '94, meets a variety of needs for the Duke men's basketball program, including financial aid for student athletes. The football contribution will be applied toward the construction cost of the Yoh Football Center, a $20-million training facility scheduled to open next year.McCormick, a graduate of Indiana University law school, recently retired as executive vice president and general counsel of the Bindley Western Industries of Indianapolis, a wholesale distributor of pharmaceuticals.
• Charles Payne, a scholar of urban education and the civil-rights movement, has been appointed director of the Program in African and African American Studies. Payne, a professor of history, will serve a two-year term. He is the author of the prize-winning 1995 book I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. He succeeds Barry Gaspar, who stepped down to assume the editorship of the new journal Contours and to devote more time to a book he is writing.
• Julius L. Chambers, past chancellor of North Carolina Central University and noted civil-rights attorney, has resigned from Duke's board of trustees because of a potential conflict of interest resulting from work at his law firm in Charlotte. "I have tried any number of scenarios to resolve this matter but the North Carolina Bar Association advises that I have a conflict in each of the scenarios I proposed," Chambers wrote in a letter to President Keohane. He was to have begun his term on July 1.Visit the Gazette section of the magazine's website, www.dukemagazine.duke.edu, for links to more information about these stories.