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September 13, 2000 Notebook Faculty File: C.K. Williams, poet DuBois
Scholars come to
Princeton: In Memoriam: John Martin *47 and John W. Tukey *39 Anniversary
campaign ends with $1.14 billion: Faculty
file
for the first time - to prose. He describes his most recent book, Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), as "an autobiographical meditation on my parents and me," written in "a very unusual kind of prose, very intense." Misgivings was something of a surprise to its author, who has been lecturer in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing for five years. "I began writing sections," he recalls, "small sections that were apparently unconnected. They somehow ended up making a formal whole." This "astonishing sense that something happened you are not controlling, but is working for you" is one Williams hopes the students in his poetry workshops will experience, but only after "much emphasis on the practice of writing poems - generating and revising them." What he tries to do, he says, is simply to "encourage the students to write, and to appreciate that self-consciousness and revision are essential parts of the creative process." Currently in Paris, where he lives for half of each year, Williams is busy with "several things: individual poems, of course; a play; and what is either going to be a short prose book or a longish series of poems; also various essays. "Except for the
poems, which remain a constant, my writing life is often rather
scattered; so long as I'm going well, I like it that way."
By Caroline Moseley On August 1, Princeton Alumni Publications, the corporation that has published the Princeton Alumni Weekly since 1991, was dissolved. The dissolution came after a special review committee, made up of 15 alumni - some associated with the magazine, others with the Alumni Council - decided to move paw under the administrative oversight of the Alumni Council. The 100-year-old magazine is now considered an agency of the university, akin to the relationship several organizations have with Princeton, such as Princo and Blairstown. Paw staff members, who previously were considered university employees for purposes of human resources, now will be in a traditional chain of command with respect to university hierarchy. The committee, convened last year, was chaired by university trustee and former chair of the Alumni Council Brent Henry '69. A major concern was the way paw derives its funding. Previously the classes paid about 60 percent of the magazine's $1.3 million budget, the university about 10 percent. The remaining income was derived from advertising revenues. In recent years many classes found it difficult to pay their paw bills, which often came to nearly 100 percent of their budgets. Because all alumni receive the magazine, class members who pay their dues carry members who don't. Under the new arrangement, the university will pay one-third, the classes one-third, and advertising the final third. Along with changing the financing, the committee rewrote paw's charter. The magazine will now be overseen by an 11-member board, comprising three alumni with professional experience in journalism, two alumni with professional experience in publishing, one graduate alumnus with professional experience in journalism or publishing, one member of the faculty, and four ex-officio members: the vice chair of the Alumni Council, the chair of the Alumni Council Committee on Class Affairs, the vice president for public affairs, and the director of the Alumni Council. Paw's editor, who retains sole responsibility for the editorial content of the magazine, reports to a committee of three: the chair and vice chair of the paw board, who must be alumni with professional experience in the editorial side of journalism, and the director of the Alumni Council. Todd Purdum '82, the Los Angeles bureau chief of The New York Times, is the chair of the new board; Jan Trembley *81, editor of Bryn Mawr's alumni magazine, is the vice chair. Kathy Taylor '74 is the director of the Alumni Council. The balance of power of this committee falls with the alumni members, who together have two votes; the Alumni Council has one. In drafting the new charter, the review committee was mindful of the relationship paw has with its readers. Brent Henry '69, the chair of the committee, noted that paw "is the principal means of communication among alumni, and between alumni and the university. We care deeply about preserving its editorial independence . . . and about its effectiveness in conveying to its readers as complete, accurate, and perceptive an understanding as possible of the university and the alumni." PAW's former editorial board, chaired by Peter Brown '70, saw the move as beneficial to all. "We were keen to give financial relief to the classes, and to call on a number of key university administrative services. The new PAW charter neatly achieves both those goals. It's a good deal for everyone," said Brown. Several alumni, since learning of the new structure (February 23 issue), were alarmed about the future of paw's editorial independence and wrote to the magazine. Paw printed all of the letters. One, published in the July 5 issue, from Alvin Kracht '49, a former longtime class secretary, asked that a $5-million endowment be established for the purpose of funding the magazine without university contributions. By the end of August, Kracht reported he had heard from a dozen alumni, but the money donated or pledged was less than $50,000. The new charter is posted
in our Web Exclusives More...
Column By L.O. The University Store, which closed shortly after Reunions to undergo a $2-million renovation, reopened last week, and shoppers could see that nothing was the same. And that's what Warren Thaler '84, chair of the store's board of trustees, his fellow board members, and Jim Sykes, the store's president, wanted: a new look, a new layout, and new merchandise. "We felt that we needed to give the U-Store the opportunity to celebrate the unique needs of faculty and students," Thaler said. To find out what those were, Thaler and Sykes turned to various board members, including politics professor James Doig and art professor John Wilmerding, and the students. They asked questions and they went on field trips. "We learned students want a cozy environment and a place that gives them a sense of community," said Sykes. "They want the lowest possible prices for books, and they want a place to sit and look at books." Further research, visiting students in their dorm rooms, revealed much about the lifestyle of today's student. "We learned that everyone uses a refrigerator; most everyone has a TV and a VCR; everyone plays music; everyone uses shelf systems, and many use personal digital assistants (PDAs)," Sykes said. The U-Store, whose in-store sales have been flat for the last three years (its Internet sales have tripled each of the last two years), has changed the merchandise mix to better reflect the tastes of the new kids in the quads. It now offers small housewares and appliances, from small refrigerators to hand-held digital equipment. "Basically, students want as much stuff in as little amount of space as possible," said Sykes. In the store, shoppers
will find on the lowest floor (which previously housed the pharmacy
and office supplies) a convenience store (open until 2 a.m.), a
copy shop, and housewares. The next level up (which used to offer
trade books) features clothing and Princeton University logo apparel.
The top level will house all books, and it is this level that the
U-Store board and employees are the most excited about. Armchairs
and reading nooks abound, and big windows overlook Blair Arch -
which should go a long way to creating the cozy atmosphere students
said they were seeking.
By L.O. Seven alumni will join the university's board of trustees this month. They are charter trustee Dennis Keller '63, term trustee Henry Kennedy '70, alumni trustees Ruth Berkelman '73 and T.R. Reid '66, and young alumni trustee Spencer Merriweather '00. eBay CEO Margaret Whitman '77 (not pictured) agreed after PAW went to press to serve as a term trustee. Term trustee William Crowe *65 resigned for personal reasons, and Barry Munitz *68 is slated to replace him. Charter trustees serve 10 years, term and alumni trustees four. Charter and term trustees are nominated through a committee of the Board of Trustees and elected by the whole board. Alumni trustees are nominated and elected by alumni. Young alumni trustees are elected by the junior and senior classes and the two most recent alumni classes. Dennis Keller '63, who served as a four-year trustee beginning in 1994, is chair and CEO of DeVry Inc., one of the largest publicly held higher-education companies in North America, and founder of the Keller Graduate School of Management. He was cochair of the university's 250th Anniversary Campaign, which ended June 30. Henry Kennedy '70 is U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia. A 1973 graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a member of the Defender Services Committee of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Ruth Berkelman '73 is assistant surgeon general and senior adviser to the director at the Centers for Disease Control. She also serves as visiting professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. T. R. Reid '66, a journalist and foreign correspondent, joined the staff of the Washington Post in 1977, where he gained recognition for his coverage of Asia. He is the author of books in both Japanese and English and cocreator of the syndicated column Computer Report. Spencer Merriweather '00 graduated with a degree in politics. President of the Undergraduate Student Government his senior year, he was selected by classmates as the senior who had done the most for Princeton and the senior who had done the most for his class. Barry Munitz *68, president
and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, has a Ph.D. in comparative literature.
He earned a B.A. at Brooklyn College. He previously was academic
vice president of the University of Illinois system, chancellor
of the University of Houston, president of Maxxam, and chancellor
of the California State University system.
DuBois
Scholars come to
Princeton
"If there is no hell, is there no heaven?" "What does the buffoon mean when he says, 'You are blocking the way of someone better than yourself?' " At 8:15 a.m. on a July morning, eight teenagers are discussing Nietzsche in a dingy classroom in the basement of East Pyne. This is just the first part of their lesson; during the second half of the class, they'll be working their way through Bertrand Russell's explication of the proof that 3+2=5. They are W. E. B. DuBois Scholars, eight of 66 gifted African- and Latino-American high school students who have come to Princeton to study leadership, business, science, computer science, and mathematics and philosophy. For five weeks this summer these students - about 90 percent from New Jersey -lived in Joline, ate in Wilcox Hall, played basketball in Dillon Gym, and, in their college-level courses, learned some of the skills that, DuBois officials hope, will enable them to lead their communities and help their neighbors out of poverty. "The assumption has become that poverty will always be with us, that it is a problem to be managed," said DuBois Scholars Institute executive director Sherle Boone, a psychology professor at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. "But we say, wait. Our goal is to have the cities' brightest minds working together to solve the problem." Learning to work together is also a goal of the Touchstones Discussion Project, a teaching method developed in 1984 by Howard Zeiderman *74 and two colleagues from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. A component of the DuBois Scholars Institute for the first time this year, Touchstones classes are conducted in a circle and begin with a specially selected passage read aloud. An open-ended discussion follows, fostered, not directed, by the leader, who allows students to think about the text in terms of their own experiences. Jonathan Beere, a Rhodes Scholar and a graduate student in philosophy at Princeton, taught the DuBois course using Investigating Mathematics, a textbook devised by Zeiderman. "I found it inspiring to be involved with these students," said Beere, who was teaching a Touchstones course for the first time. "Dealing with texts this way is extremely powerful for them. And the way the text is presented - without much coatext -allows them to feel that they can pick up anything and use it." Not only was 2000 the
first year that the DuBois Scholars worked with Touchstones, it
was also the first year the program was partially held at Princeton.
Since its founding in 1988, classes have been conducted at William
Paterson. This year, in an effort to attract students from beyond
New Jersey, the Institute decided to place two-thirds of its students
on Princeton's campus. "Of all the places in the area,"
Boone said, "we could not think of another institution that
better reflects on our mission. Princeton's tradition of developing
leaders on a national level meshes very well with our goals."
By J.C.M. ON THE WEB: DuBois: www.wpunj.edu/cohss/psychology/dubois.htm Touchstones: www.touchstones.org John Martin *47 John Rupert Martin *47, professor, emeritus, of art and archaeology, died July 26 in Princeton of Alzheimer's disease. He was 83. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and received his B.A. from McMaster University in Hamilton. Martin joined the faculty as an assistant professor after earning his Ph.D. in 1947 at Princeton. In 1955 he was promoted to associate professor and to full professor in 1961. A dynamic speaker, Martin saw as many as 300 students enroll in his survey course of Baroque art. Martin was an authority on the painter Peter Paul Rubens and wrote numerous books about art, including a general study of 17th-century art called Baroque (1977), which has become a textbook standard. "Jack [Martin] was a much beloved undergraduate teacher whose course enrollments in Baroque art have not been equalled since he retired," said art and archaeology professor Patricia Fortini Brown. Martin's career at Princeton included appointments as senior fellow of the Council of Humanities in 1961, McCosh faculty fellow in 1964, Frederick Marquand professor of art and archaeology in 1970, and chair of the art and archaeology department from 1973 to 1979. He retired in 1987. A memorial service at
Princeton is planned for later this month. John W. Tukey *39 John W. Tukey *39, professor, emeritus, of statistics, died July 25 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, of a heart attack. He was 85. He was born in Bedford, Massachusetts, and earned a B.A. and an M.A. in chemistry from Brown and a Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton in 1939. He became a full professor in 1950. Tukey is considered one of the most important contributors to modern statistics, especially of concepts that were central to the creation of telecommunications technology. Along with his research achievements, he is credited with coining the terms "bit" (binary digit) and "software." He was a staff researcher for Bell Labs, served as a consultant to several companies, and contributed to such varied areas as military operations during World War II, U.S. census-taking strategies, and projecting election-day results for presidential contests for national television. Tukey chaired the statistics department, which split from the math department in 1966, until 1970. The department later became the Committee for Statistical Studies. It is said that Tukey used his extraordinary calculating abilities to work out the seemingly intractable complexities of arranging times for classes and exams. Tukey received the National Medal of Science in 1973 and an honorary doctorate from Princeton in 1998. A memorial service will
be held in Princeton later this month.
Anniversary
campaign ends with $1.14 billion The university ended its 250th anniversary campaign, begun in July 1995, with $1.14 billion, well beyond both the original goal of $750 million and a revised goal of $900 million, which was reached last November. "With this extraordinary outpouring of generosity, today's Princetonians expressed their gratitude to those who came before them and ensured that our campus will become an even brighter beacon of teaching and learning to future generations," said President Shapiro in a statement.
Annual Giving, considered central to the success of the campaign, set a new record each of the past five years, raising a total of $154 million of unrestricted funds. Capital gifts, totaling $992 million, are being split three ways: 60 percent for new endowment, 21 percent for new construction, and 19 percent for term support, which goes into the operating budget. Among the many areas helped are financial aid, undergraduate teaching, campus life, academic and research programs, and computer technology. Financial aid - $170 million allowed the university to significantly broaden its undergraduate financial-aid policies, extend its need-blind admission policy to include international students, and keep tuition increases to their lowest rates in more than 30 years. Undergraduate teaching - Funding allowed for several initiatives: the creation of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning; a program to explore teaching innovations and to bring in distinguished teachers; the expansion of the freshman seminar and senior thesis funds; and new classroom space, including McDonnell Hall for physics, the Friend Center for engineering, Wallace Hall for social sciences, and an expanded Woolworth Center for music. Campus life - $137 million was allocated for the construction of dormitories Scully Hall, Wright Hall, and Buyers Hall; for the new stadium, the Weaver track and field oval, the Class of 1952 Stadium, the Shea Rowing Center, Cotsen Children's Library, and Frist Campus Center; and for renovations to the Graduate College, the University Chapel, and Patton, Blair, and Little halls. Academic and research - $451 million was raised for new initiatives in genomics, religion, finance, environmental studies, and public policy. New and renovated facilities include the Icahn Laboratory for Integrative Genomics, Bendheim Center for Finance, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and Berlind Theater at McCarter Theatre. Twenty-five new endowed chairs were established, and the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts was formed. Computer technology - Funding allowed for equipping and rewiring a number of areas on campus for power and data transmission to expand electronic research capability. Three new libraries were funded in the social sciences, engineering, and music. Some targeted areas of the campaign fell short, notably new construction and renovation, where the shortfall was approximately $100 million. In order to fully fund some of the building projects approved by the Board of Trustees, said Williams, the university would first borrow from the outside, then use unrestricted bequests, then borrow from the endowment. Repayment would then come from further unrestricted bequests, direct gifts, or from the operating budget. Though the campaign was extremely successful, the development office will not kick back and relax. According to Williams, there is a huge amount of work still to be done. "We need to clean up the records and thank everyone. We're planning an event in Jadwin Gym on October 20. We're also going on the road with Harold [Shapiro] to 10 or 12 cities to meet with alumni associations to describe the accomplishments of the campaign and to outline Princeton's plans for the future." And the fundraising doesn't
stop. "There's still a lot of money to be raised," Williams
said. "The Wythes Report has given us a new set of goals."
Williams cited the gradual expansion of the student body, which
will require raising the money to build a sixth residential college;
the graduate centennial fund; and a public affairs program the Woodrow
Wilson School hopes to have funded. "Also we need to turn our
attention to our younger alumni, and especially the entrepreneurial
types who've done well." Williams referred to California as
one area that he believes is an important place to focus on. "We
also need to do a better job of stewardship, reporting to alumni
where the money is going; and there is the challenge of technology,
how we get and give information."
By L.O. Joe Tsien, an assistant professor of molecular biology who became a media sensation last fall for creating a "smart mouse," received a Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research Award. The award, given by the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, provides about $1 million in funding over five years. Tsien, who along with his collaborators published a study showing how the addition of a single gene boosted learning and memory in mice, has developed a research program to identify a much broader range of genes involved in learning and memory. For his work on strategies for sustainable energy that can help developing countries move directly to clean, safe technologies, Robert Williams, a senior research scientist at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies (located in the Engineering Quad), has been named a cowinner of the 2000 Volvo Environment Prize. Williams shares the prize, worth about $170,000, with José Goldemberg of Brazil, Thomas Johansson of Sweden, and Amulya Reddy of India, all of whom he has worked with for nearly 20 years. Williams came to Princeton in 1975; in 1993 he received a MacArthur Foundation Prize. Princeton University's Index of Christian Art and the Morgan Library in New York received a $1 million grant from the Homeland Foundation to create a catalog of the Morgan's collection of medieval art, including more than 300,000 illustrations from 500 manuscripts. The university's index (www.princeton.edu/~ica/images.html), which is the largest and most important archive of medieval art in the world, currently holds descriptive records of more than 200,000 works of art and can be searched via the Internet. On view at Firestone Library through November 5 are numerous treasures culled from the university's collections. Among the 100 items on display are a ceramic cylinder bearing an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II (604--561 b.c.), illuminated Byzantine and medieval manuscripts, a 12th-century Arabic manuscript of the Greek physician Galen, the Gutenberg Bible, the manuscript for F. Scott Fitzgerald '17's The Great Gatsby, and letters from J. S. Bach, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison 1771, and George Washington at Valley Forge. Fred Hargadon, dean of admission, is on leave until January. Steve Le Menager, the associate dean of admission, will head up the admission office this fall and oversee the early-decision process. According to Robert Durkee '69, vice president for public affairs, the leave will allow Hargadon to "rest, travel, read, and generally rejuvenate." Hargadon has been at Princeton since 1988; Le Menager has been at Princeton since 1983. In June the university announced it would give Princeton Borough $300,000 to help with the reconstruction of Monument Drive, located across from Palmer House at the end of Nassau Street. President Shapiro, in a statement, said, "The area around Monument Drive is an important gateway to Princeton. This project will substantially improve the way the site looks and the way it works...The university is delighted to be able to complete the funding for the project so that it can be fully implemented." The total project will cost just over $1 million. Another renovation the university is funding is that of the Garden Theater, which it owns and leases to Theater Management Corporation. Repairs to the roof and electrical system and installation of new seats, bathrooms, and projection equipment began in August, forcing the theater to close for four months. The university expects to spend "in excess of $600,000," said Robert Durkee '69, vice president for public affairs.
Images: Treasures on
view at Firestone Library through November 5 include: top, a 1589
manuscript, Shah-na-mah, by Firdawski; left, the earliest American
wood engraving, a portrait of Richard Mather; right, a James Madison
Indian peace medal owned by Keokuk, chief of the Sauk.
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After
C. K. Williams published Repair, his 16th volume of poetry, and
one that earned him this year's Pulitzer Prize, he turned -though
not 
"Why
does Zarathustra say the soul dies before the body?"
More
than 50,000 individuals contributed to the campaign, which was largely
run as a volunteer enterprise. The national cochairs of the campaign,
John J. F. Sherrerd '52, Dennis J. Keller '63, and Janet Morrison
Clarke '75, worked with the development office, headed by Van Zandt
Williams '65, and volunteers from more than 80 classes all over
the world. 
Akshay
Mahajan '03, through skill, luck, wit, or possibly Princeton savvy,
was the last man on the bus in a five-day Survivor-like contest
held in August in a school bus in a West Virginia mall. Twelve people
started on the bus ride that went nowhere, and participants were
voted off periodically, until the last day, when Mahajan and another
contestant remained. Then the voting went Web. People logged on
to the sponsor's Web site to choose the winner, and Mahajan won
by 491 votes. Maybe the plea put out over Princeton's listserve
for alumni to log on and vote for Mahajan made the difference. Along
with a $15,000 automobile, prizes included a computer, inline skates,
and an aquarium. 