Looming deadlines, adamantine editors, late-breaking events:

What journalist coping with the pressures of the news does not occasionally wax nostalgic for what is remembered as the relaxed life of academe? By next spring 30 TIME staff members will have briefly sampled college life again under the auspices of the TlME-Duke University Fellowship program. Each year since 1979, six TIME journalists have traveled to Durham, N.C., for a four-week sabbatical, attending classes and undertaking research projects. In return, they are invited to share their knowledge, experience and perspective with students and faculty members in informal meetings. Says Bill Green, Duke's director of university relations: "It is a two-way exchange: the fellows' programs are as varied as the fellows, and the students and faculty get the stimulation of journalism, with all its urgencies and importunities, within the classroom."

One TlME-Duke fellow, former Senior Editor James D. Atwater, found academic life so rewarding that he has now made it his full-time occupation. Atwater, 55, joined TIME in 1950, served as a correspondent and writer, then went to the Saturday Evening Post in 1962. In 1969 he worked on drug-education programs for the U.S. Government, and later roved Europe as a writer for Reader's Digest. Rejoining TIME in 1973, he eventually edited the Nation, World and Education sections. Then last fall Atwater assumed a different kind of editorial post: dean of the University of Missouri's 75-year-old school of journalism, the oldest and one of the most prestigious of such institutions.

Atwater sees his school as a training ground for a new generation of journalists, preparing for an increasingly challenging profession. Missouri combines a strong academic program with practical training, including work on a university TV station and on the Columbia Missourian, a small-city newspaper (circ. 6,500) put out by the journalism school. "The Missourian is a competitive commercial daily," says Atwater, "and we do all the local news programming for the station." More important, he says, "we give students a sense of how journalists should perform in a world where morally and technically complex stories have become contentious community issues and the press is often regarded with skepticism." Atwater does not look upon his new post as a refuge from the real world. Says he: "I'm not meeting deadlines now, but the pressures are no less--just different."