Walter E. Campbell, III, PhD, has been selected by Duke University Medical Center to fill the position of historian.

Campbell will carry the institution's history forward from where the late James F. Gifford, Jr., PhD, DUMC's first archivist, left off in his book, The Evolution of a Medical Center: A History of Medicine at Duke University to 1941. Campbell expects to complete the new book in time for the 75th anniversary of the Medical Center in 2005.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campbell received his doctorate in 1991 in American history with a focus on business, science, and race relations.

Author of the award-winning book, Across Fortune's Tracks: A Biography of William Rand Kenan, Jr., Campbell has extensive academic experience. It includes working in various capacities with the Southern Oral History program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and participating as a scholar with Duke's Center for Documentary Studies on "Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South."

Campbell has conducted more than 200 interviews, both oral and video. He has researched, written, and produced a number of documentaries for television as well as educational films and instructional videos. Campbell was the writer/researcher for a series of one-minute vignettes broadcast on North Carolina Public Television as part of America's 400th anniversary celebration. He is currently involved as producer in several film projects including, "Color Lines: Race, Media and College Basketball."

Campbell serves on the board of the Educational Media Foundation, Inc., based in Savannah, GA, and Research Triangle Park, and is the president of Memory Lane Productions, Inc. He, his wife Mary Lee, who is a 17-year veteran of the Medical Center's Transfusion Service, and son, Elijah, live in Durham.