Web Exclusives: May 23, 2002
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Princeton has some super faculty members, but they are all not superb in the same way. Some are renowned scholars, some are superb teachers, and a few are even both!

Courses should not be selected based on the catalog descriptions, they should be selected based on who is doing the teaching. If possible, before you enroll in a course, check out the teacher. How? Talk to classmates who have had a teaching experience with the
teacher. Check the student course guide. Learn to read between the lines of the course guide. Most important, consider each course for which you register a tentative decision to be changed as soon as you think you may have made a mistake.

WHAT MISTAKE?
The instructor doesn't seem to be excited about the subject. A good teacher is eager to share his or her understanding. The lectures are dull. You can't understand him or her. You are afraid that this course may dampen your interest in a subject that you feel is important, etc.

Note that a major portion of the good things that happen in a place like Princeton happen because of your interactions with your fellow students. This high concentration of bright, energetic students in a small town in central New Jersey makes unbelievable things happen! To the credit of the faculty, they often manage not to get in the way.

Start learning how to learn, learning how to think critically, and enjoying. You are lucky to be here.

I attach my advice list on some of the good faculty who are here that I can vouch for personally. There surely are others.

If you have wisdom to add, please share it with me.

Professor Enoch J. Durbin
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineersing
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J. 08544
(609) 921-8143 (home)
(609) 258-5154 (office)
enoch@princeton.edu
enoch246@juno.com (home)
"Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible" — Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher

Don't leave Princeton without experiencing these people!

This list is not exhaustive. There are obviously other inspiring people. I have not had the pleasure of getting to know them. It really doesn't matter what they are teaching. The crucial element is that each of these people are, in the words of Joseph Campbell, "Following their own bliss." If you have suggestions from personal experience to add, please let me know. This list is revised regularly as new wisdom emerges from you the reader, as folks retire, and as new faculty join our university.

Maurizio Viroli – Politics — Understanding what Machiavelli was all about.
Robert George — Politics — Civil Liberties — The U.S. constitution. He was recently appointed to Pres. Bush’s bioethics advisory group
Michael Cook — Near Eastern Studies — Understanding the Present Middle East by Looking at the Past.
Michael Doran — Near Eastern Studies — Understanding what makes the mind of Islam what it is today.
John Murrin — History — Our Founding Fathers and how they put their personal integrity and intelligence in our nation.
Sean Wilentz — History — Understanding what is really happening in America today – Moby Dick, And the Great White Whale.
Tony Grafton — History
Peter Brown — History
Mary J. Henninger-Voss — History—The Scientific Revolution.
Ted Rabb — History — How to understand the Renaissance Period.
William Jordan — History — The Crusades what was that all about? — English History
Andrew Isenberg — History — The American West, How it shaped our character — The American Bison what happened to them.
Philip Darnton — History—France.
Sheldon Garon — History — Helping us to Understand Japan, and why the Japanese People are what they are.
Jim McPherson — History — The Civil War and its importance in making America happen. Author of the Pulitzer prizewinning book The Battle Cry of Freedom.
John McPhee — Writing Program — He writes about factual matters so that everyone can understand.
Ellen Chances — Slavic Literature — How to enjoy the richness of the Russian literature.
Caryl Emerson — Slavic Literature — Russian literature — Understanding the Russians.
Maria DiBattista — English — How the cinema changed our view of the role of women in our society.
Will Howarth — English — The Environment — Henry David Thoreau.
John Fleming — English — Chaucer — St. Francis of Assisi — The first English writers.
Michael Cadden — English — Drama — Theatre.
Jeff Nunokawa — English — Victorian English Literature.
Larry Danson — English — Shakespeare.
Andrew Ford — Classics — The Literature of Greece.
Ed Champlin — Classics — All about Rome.
Josiah Ober — Classics — Ancient Greece — The Roots of Democracy in Ancient Greece.
Daniel Mendelsohn — Classics — Greek Drama Greek Tragedy — as a tool to help understand yourself.
Michael Sugrue — Humanistic Studies — The Bible.
Maitland Jones, Jr. — Chemistry — (Would you believe organic chemistry?!).
Jim Gould — E.E.B. — Animal Behavior — Birds and how they choose their mates?
Dan Rubenstein — E.E.B. — Zebras, Wild Asses — The social behavior of four-footed animals.
Henry Horn — E.E.B. — The plants and how they interrelate with the environment.
Lee Silver — Molecular Biology also W.W. School — Human genetics and public policy.
Ron Comer — Psychology — Abnormal Psychology, one of the most popular classes at the university.
Eldar Shaffir — Psychology — How we choose what to do (often irrationally).
Barry Jacobs — Psychology — Users' Guide to the Brain.
Howard Taylor — Sociology — Understanding the Social Basis for Human Behavior.
Bob Hollander — Romance Languages — Dante Alighieri the Italian National poet.
John Gager — Religion — Jews, Gentiles, Christians, in the early church. Widely known by students as the "faith buster."
Uwe Reinhardt — Economics — Understanding the financing of health care.
Michael Pratt — Music — Remarkable Conductor of The Princeton University Student orchestra.
John Wilmerding — American Art.
Robert Bagley — Chinese Art.
James Boon — Anthropology — The Crossing of Cultures.
Gideon Rosen — Philosophy — Causation and Free Will.
Julian Wolpert — Woodrow Wilson — How national policy is really made.