About the commencement speaker

He has advised students who have won more than $1 million in national and international scholarship competitions in fields of study spanning the arts and sciences. Students under the guidance of Duban and his network of faculty nominating committees have been awarded Harry S. Truman Scholarships, Morris K. Udall Scholarships, Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, Gates Millennium Scholarships, Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships, P.E.O. International Peace Scholarships and James Madison Fellowships, as well as many other national and international distinctions.

Duban also works closely with directors, staff and students of the University Honors Program, the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program. He is a charter board member of the National Association of Fellowships Advisors, an organization that urges universities to identify their finest students and to advise them about the expectations and intricacies of national scholarship competition.

In 2002, Duban received the UNT President's Award for his outstanding mentorship and the national scholarship recognition he has brought to the university. Other past achievements include special recognition awards from the Ronald E. McNair Program, the Hispanic Friends of UNT and the Rotary Club of Denton South. His work with national scholarship students has also been recognized in the Truman Foundation booklet Using the Truman Scholarship Competition to Support Student Development: Stories of Success from Eleven Institutions.

Prior to his appointments at UNT, Duban served as a professor of English and the director of the honors program in English at the University of Texas at Austin. He was also a teaching assistant and instructor of English and American literature at Cornell.

Duban began his involvement in higher education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he received his bachelor's degree in English literature in 1972. He then earned his master of arts degree from Cornell University in 1975. He completed his formal education at Cornell in 1976 when he earned his doctorate in American intellectual and literary history.

In addition to his work at various universities, Duban has written two books, Melville's Major Fiction: Politics, Theology and Imagination and The Nature of True Virtue: Theology, Psychology and Politics in the Writings of Henry James Sr., Henry James Jr., and William James. His articles on American intellectual and literary history have appeared in such leading journals as The Harvard Theological Review, the Harvard Library Bulletin, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, American Literature and The New England Quarterly.

BY JAMIE EDINGER kreese@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue

• UNT Board of Regents approves design, construction of UNT Sorority Row
• Almost 2,000 expected to graduate during UNT commencement ceremonies Aug. 9
• TAMS receives 2003-04 funds
• UNT, Texas Instruments to use $2.2 million for NSF-funded nanotechnology project
• UNT to award scholarship for 12 credit hours with Family Weekend drawing
• Howdy Week events planned Aug. 24-30
• UNT's Summer II enrollment down slightly from last year's total enrollment numbers
• Changes made to state employee benefits, leave, compensation policies
• UNT historian debunks Revolutionary myths

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