February 7, 2001: Notebook

Faculty file: Vouchers or not?

Faculty approves new writing requirement: Dean of the college strengthens program

Splendor in the snow

In brief

In memoriam

A new old look: University hires firm to revamp campus landscape

Faculty file: Vouchers or not?

One of the hot topics in education these days is the use of school vouchers, programs in which government gives specific students money to pay for tuition at a private school or in some cases at a different public school. The working premise behind vouchers is that the children who use them will get a better education, and the schools that lose students, and therefore funding, will shape up in response.

Associate professor of economics Cecilia Rouse studies voucher programs and hopes to be able to shed light on the issue at some point in this decade.
“I’ve just started, along with three other colleagues from different institutions, a study of the new school voucher system in Florida,” she said. The Florida legislature passed in 1999 a sweeping reform in which students at failing public schools will get an average of $4,000 to use at another school.

“There are four basic questions we are trying to answer,” Rouse said. “Which families choose to use the voucher system and why; what is the effect on the education of students who use vouchers and what is the effect on students who do not; and how do schools respond to the voucher program.” The study will run about six years.

A previous study of Rouse’s involved Milwaukee’s voucher program. She says there was no clear-cut outcome, except that small classes seemed to have some benefit. Another area of interest for Rouse is music. One of her studies found that when orchestras held blind auditions, where screens shield the identity of the musicians, more women were hired than when screens were not used. Rouse’s many papers can be found at www.irs.princeton.edu:80/bios/rouse/working_papers.html

Rouse earned her Ph.D. at Harvard and came to Princeton in 1992; she earned tenure in 1998. She teaches Advanced Quantitative Analysis, a graduate-level course in statistics.

By L.O.

Return to Notebook Main Menu
HOME   TABLE OF CONTENTS

Faculty approves new writing requirement
Dean of the college strengthens program

Last December, after a two-year period of evaluation, a faculty committee voted unanimously to overhaul the teaching of writing at Princeton. Writing will now be taught in required freshman seminars of no more than 12 students beginning in fall 2001. The addition of this seminar raises the number of credits that students must fulfill to earn an A.B. degree from 30 to 31.

Previously, the writing requirement at Princeton was usually fulfilled in the freshman year by taking a course with a “w” attached to it. The “w” indicated that significant writing took place in the course.

However, in evaluating the effectiveness of these “w” courses, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel and the faculty committee decided that this method was inadequately preparing students.

“Clear writing goes hand in hand with – indeed, enables – critical thinking. The writing requirement is not a box to check off or a hurdle to be transcended; rather, it should play a central role in the intellectual growth and maturation of Princeton undergraduates,” said Malkiel in a four-page memo to the faculty.

The memo also said, “Although Princeton students are obliged to do a great deal of writing – course papers, junior papers, design projects, the senior thesis – they too often begin work in their fields of concentration unprepared for the level of writing that is required of them.”

In addition, Malkiel suggests that departments will establish second-level writing courses that students could take after finishing the freshman requirement. These courses would “provide rigorous training in the conventions of exposition, argument, and analysis in the respective disciplines.”

The new emphasis on writing will involve writing, revision, peer reviews, and one-on-one discussions between students and instructors. A new, more rigorous set of standards will be set for the seminars, including the frequency of writing assignments, variety of genres, opportunities for revision, progression of short papers to longer, more complex papers, and the minimum number of pages of required writing.

Adding this degree requirement will force the university to hire writing professionals, including a program director and numerous writing instructors. The director of the program will be someone “deeply versed in the pedagogy of writing and who has a distinguished record of publications, teaching, and administrative experience,” said Malkiel. At press time the university was still searching for a director of the program. Once that person is found, additional instructors will be hired. It is possible that some of the writing instructors will be members of the current faculty, postdocs, post-enrolled graduate students, or administrators who have appropriate academic credentials.

In evaluating the program, the committee took comments from a number of areas, including faculty who have taught “w” courses, department chairs, residential college masters, undergraduate academic deans, directors of studies, and students. An external committee comprising writing experts from other universities also reviewed Princeton’s program.

The new program will be reviewed internally after three years and by an external committee after five.

By L.O.

Return to Notebook Main Menu
HOME   TABLE OF CONTENTS

Splendor in the snow

The new year came to Princeton as a blizzard dropped a foot of snow on the area. An anonymous snow Tiger took time to tramp out the new date in the courtyard below Blair. Most of the snow had melted by the middle of January. A slight snowfall dusted campus on the 18th, but sophomores were quiet, choosing not to risk
expulsion by running the Nude Olympics.

Return to Notebook Main Menu
HOME   TABLE OF CONTENTS

In brief

In an effort to create industry-related partnerships to develop scientific findings that have potential commercial applications, the university held a workshop on January 5 to introduce members of the private investment community to the latest advances in the field of photonics, nano-technology, and biotechnology.

Seventeen professors, from molecular biology, chemistry, chemical engineering, physics, electrical engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering, talked about their work to more than 250 people who attended the workshop, which was organized by the Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials (POEM). The attendees included venture capitalists and entrepreneurs interested in collaborations.
At least two Princetonians are serving President George W. Bush in the new administration. Donald Rumsfeld ’54 (pictured at right) was confirmed last month as secretary of defense, and Mitch Daniels ’71 is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Over the years, Rumsfeld has held a number of government posts, including that of secretary of defense for 18 months under President Ford. For the past two years he has chaired the U.S. Ballistic Missile Threat Commission. Daniels, who worked for Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) immediately after Princeton, has most recently been a vice president at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

Andrew Emilio Mallozzi ’02 was arrested by Princeton Borough Police on January 10, two days into reading period, for driving while intoxicated and possession of alcohol in a motor vehicle by a minor. Mallozzi was stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. In his possession were a bottle of whiskey and 24 beers.

The university last December gave $300,000 to the public library of Princeton for a new building that is scheduled to begin construction later this year. The university’s donation represents 1.7 percent of the projected $17.5 million budget. More than 2,350 Princeton students, faculty, and staff members have public library cards, borrowing more than 40,000 items during a year, said library officials.

Return to Notebook Main Menu
HOME   TABLE OF CONTENTS

In memoriam

Marius Berthus Jansen ’44, professor, emeritus, of history and East Asian studies, died of severe internal bleeding as a result of a ruptured aorta on December 10 at his home in Princeton. He was 78. Born in the Netherlands in 1922, Jansen grew up in Massachusetts and, after earning his degree in 1943, spent three years in the military counter-intelligence corps. He earned his doctorate at Harvard in 1950.

Jansen began his teaching career at the University of Washington in 1950 and moved to Princeton in 1959 as professor in the departments of history and Oriental studies. He was one of a small group of specialists in the study of Japan who deepened the American understanding of Japanese history and helped introduce Japan into college and university curricula.

At Princeton, Jansen was a member of the history department, director of the Program in East Asian Studies (1962-68), and the first chair of the Department of East Asian Studies (1969-72). He retired in 1992.

Among his many accomplishments and achievements, Jansen was recognized for his contributions to Japanese studies and Japanese-American relations by the Japan Foundation, the city of Osaka, the Japan Society of New York, and the Emperor of Japan, who conferred on him the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1985.

Melvin B. Gottlieb, former professor of astrophysics and director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1961-80, died December 1 in Haverford, Pennsylvania. He was 83.
Under Gottlieb’s leadership, the laboratory took the international lead in extending experimental results from the Soviet Union about fusion energy through three generations of what have been regarded as highly successful “tokamak” experiments. The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, whose construction started under Gottlieb, created plasmas at nearly a billion degrees Fahrenheit and made more than 10 million watts of fusion power.

Gottlieb devoted considerable time to working toward better understanding and cooperation with other nations in the development of fusion power. He was a member of several commissions on fusion power and was active in many organizations whose purposes included finding alternative sources of energy. After he retired in 1980, he was a consultant until 1992.

Return to Notebook Main Menu
HOME   TABLE OF CONTENTS

A new old look:
University hires firm to revamp campus landscape

In the midst of Princeton’s multimillion-dollar construction campaign to change the face of the university, an architecture firm has been hired to give campus landscaping a retro twist. Quennell Rothschild & Partners, a New York-based landscape architecture firm, is coordinating a series of exterior renovation projects that will take place during the next several years. The firm is designing and renovating building exteriors and landscaping several areas of campus, using photos and information from the University Archives as guides.

According to Peter Rothschild, one of the architects working on the project, the renovations include Hamilton Courtyard, the grounds surrounding Whig, Clio and Murray Dodge, the landscaping near Alexander Hall, and Cannon Green. Walkways will be repaved, overgrown trees and other plants removed, and new vegetation planted, keeping historical consistency in mind.

James Consolloy, grounds manager for the grounds and buildings maintenance department, said he approved of the plans to create new landscaping based on older designs.
Consolloy said much of the new landscaping will be modeled after the work of Beatrix Farrand, who designed landscaping for the university from 1912 until 1942.

“She did a lot with Gothic campus landscaping designs,” Consolloy said, adding that Farrand sought to provide “a view from every window.” Consolloy said Farrand’s designs were aesthetically pleasing, but as trees and other plant life on campus grew, some buildings and other areas became obscured. “The original landscaping designs were very strong. It’s something we wanted to go back to.”

By Rich Tucker ’01

This story was adapted with permission from the Daily Princetonian.

Return to Notebook Main Menu
HOME   TABLE OF CONTENTS