Graduation with Distinction Prepares Students for What’s Next

Over her nearly three decades at Duke, Linda Franzoni has become a widely and fondly regarded figure in the mechanical engineering & materials science (MEMS) department. The professor of the practice and former associate dean has worn many hats during her time at the university — one of which was her 20-year tenure as the faculty committee chair of MEMS’s Graduation with Departmental Distinction (GWDD), a program that offers students the space, credibility and confidence to prepare for their next career step. 

GWDD is an optional undergraduate honor within the Duke Pratt School of Engineering. Until spring 2025, students with a GPA of 3.5 or higher could earn the MEMS departmental distinction by completing at least one semester of senior-year research, culminating in a written thesis and oral presentation to a faculty committee. While requirements have since changed slightly — now including a higher GPA (3.75) and a poster presentation instead of an oral defense — the program’s purpose remains the same: helping students build technical rigor, tackle long-term problems and take a deep dive into the research world. 

“My hope is that GWDD is a confidence booster,” Franzoni said. “That it helps students feel they can hold their own in competitive institutions or wherever they go next.” 

For many alumni, GWDD was their first exposure to open-ended research and its uncertainty. Megan Leftwich, a MEMS alum who graduated in 2005, described the experience as very different from typical coursework. “A lot of the benefit was going through that ‘What do I do next?’ moment — a kind of self-directed learning,” she said. 

Working in the Hudson Hall basement in the lab of Josiah Knight, associate professor of MEMS, Leftwich designed equipment to measure load-bearing lubrication. The long, quiet, self-directed hours helped her realize she enjoyed academic research. She continued down that path and is now a professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department at George Washington University. 

Lisa Burton, a 2007 alum, similarly recalled learning how to navigate ambiguity. Reflecting on her acoustics research with MEMS associate professor emeritus Donald Bliss on sound-attenuating ducts, she said, “GWDD taught me how to take something that felt amorphous and break it into smaller, solvable pieces.” 

That approach has remained central to her career. After earning a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Burton worked as a data scientist, founded a startup and now serves as vice president of HearstLab, a venture fund investing in women-led startups. “Whether in research or entrepreneurship, you’re often pursuing ideas no one’s tried before,” she said. “Learning to tackle a big, messy problem by breaking it down — that’s a way of thinking I still use today.” 

For Shomik Verma, a 2019 MEMS graduate, GWDD reshaped how he thought about communication. Because of his interest in energy, Verma had been conducting research since his sophomore year with Nico Hotz, associate professor of the practice of MEMS, designing a reactor to convert methane to hydrogen without carbon dioxide emissions. Producing the GWDD thesis and presentation made him rethink how he framed his work. 

“I realized doing the research wasn’t enough — you have to explain it clearly to contribute to the field,” Verma said. He added that the finished thesis was especially helpful when applying to graduate school. “It made conversations with potential advisors much more concrete,” said Verma, who did his master’s at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College of London as a Marshall Scholar before returning to the U.S. as an MIT mechanical engineering PhD student. 

Franzoni also recognized the importance of the GWDD communication requirements. Her seminar — a credit-free, no-grade weekly meeting — gave students space to share progress, practice explaining their research to non-specialists and develop their thesis over time. 

2023 alum Tanner Zachem participated in the seminar, which students affectionately called “Lunch with Linda,” because it met at noon and Franzoni provided food. “It was fun seeing what everyone else was working on,” he said. “And since there was no grade, it never felt competitive — it was just about improving each week.” 

He also valued the flexibility in how students approached writing. “You needed the usual sections — intro, methods, results,” Zachem said. “But beyond that, people could tailor their writing for engineering journals, medicine or industry, depending on where they were headed.” 

That flexibility also extended to the research itself. As an undergrad, Zachem worked in the lab of Patrick Codd — an associate professor of neurosurgery and a secondary faculty member in MEMS — on a laser-based system for brain tumor identification. The experience helped him fully realize his interest in combining engineering and medicine and paved the way for him to continue his research in the Codd lab as he pursues an MD-PhD at Duke. 

“GWDD — and the supportive faculty behind it — gave me a natural phase where it was okay to be blended: to operate within both engineering and medicine and to smoothly transition between undergrad and grad student, “he said. “It gave me what I needed to feel confident about my next step.”  

Looking back, Franzoni said her favorite part of GWDD was getting to know students beyond the constraints of coursework. “It was just conversation like, ‘How are you doing? What have you been working on?’” she said. And now, knowing how far those students have gone is the true payoff of the distinction program. “Seeing our alumni build careers across fields like academia, industry, entrepreneurship and medicine — that’s the real success.”