Notebook: October 25, 1995

Graduate Departments Rank High

National study of doctoral programs confirms Princeton's faculty and teaching excellence
PRINCETON RECEIVED high marks in the nation's most comprehensive study of university doctoral programs. Conducted by the National Research Council, an independent organization chartered by Congress, the study surveyed 3,634 doctoral programs in 41 fields at 274 universities (105 private and 169 public). Nearly 8,000 professors took part in the survey, which was conducted in the academic year 1992-93. For each program, the survey provides information on effectiveness in training scholars and research scientists, the scholarly quality of faculty, and the change in program quality over the previous five years.
Of 29 Princeton programs evaluated, 16 ranked in the top five and 24 in the top 10. The mathematics and philosophy programs ranked first in both scholarly quality of faculty and teaching effectiveness. German ranked first in teaching effectiveness and second in scholarly quality. French and physics ranked second and history ranked third in both categories, while astrophysics ranked second in scholarly quality of faculty and third in teaching effectiveness.
Other programs with at least one ranking of second or third included classics, comparative literature, economics, music, and religion.
In addition to the reputational rankings, which were derived by asking participating faculty members to rate programs in their fields, the 740-page report includes information on the size and composition of doctoral programs, graduation rates, student / faculty ratios, availability of research funding, the percentages of women and minorities enrolled in each field, the percentage of PhDs who have research and teaching assistantships, and the time it took students to earn their degrees.

Princeton's Troubleshooter Promotes Civility

WILBUR HICKS, Princeton's first university ombudsman, is devoting the month of October to civility. If he's successful, he just might put himself out of work. Much of his job entails conflict management. But the more civility there is, the fewer conflicts there will be. Maybe he should rethink his civility campaign.
Or maybe not. Because even if civility rises to unprecedented levels, and conflicts sink to new lows, there's still plenty of work for the ombuds office to do. In addition to conflict management, Hicks is a weatherman of sorts, charged with monitoring the university's racial and ethnic climate and recommending ways to improve it. And he has developed programs to educate members of the university community about racial and ethnic issues.
Hicks describes the role of ombudsman as "a neutral problem solver." The ombuds office is confidential, and it serves the entire university community-faculty, staff, and students. To emphasize the neutral and confidential nature of his position, Hicks set his office apart from the campus, at 179 Nassau Street.
What sorts of problems arise when people are less than civil? "There's student-faculty conflicts, staff-supervisor conflict, bureaucratic entanglements, where-to-go questions, assisting people with grievances, even roommate conflicts, and whistle-blowing cases," says Hicks.
The ombuds office was created in response to the March 1993 campus race-relations report by then Vice-Provost Ruth Simmons. The report, undertaken at President Shapiro's request, stated that "minority students have stressed that they face discrimination and harassment on a daily basis at Princeton." The report made several recommendations, including the creation of an ombuds office to respond to racial harassment and bias.
The university responded quickly to the recommendation for an ombuds office and by September 1993 Hicks went to work. In the two years that Hicks has been at Princeton, there have been some surprises. Incidents directly involving race have been fewer than he anticipated-12 each year, out of a total annual case load of some 120. Although the number of specifically racial and ethnic cases is proportionally small, there are often underlying racial and ethnic issues in other problems he deals with.
Hicks hopes to expand the focus of the ombuds office from race and ethnicity to the campus climate as a whole. "My philosophy has always been that we can't deal with the issues of race and ethnicity in isolation," he says. The civility campaign is part of that expansion. "If there is a theme to the problems I encounter in this office," says Hicks, "it is how we treat people."
-Andrea Gollin '88
 Andrea Gollin is a freelance writer living in South Orange, New Jersey.

Requirements for AB and BSE Revised


STARTING in the fall of 1996 with the Class of 2000, undergraduates will have to fulfill new general-education requirements. Last spring, the faculty approved a revised set of distribution requirements for AB students and new distribution requirements in the humanities and social sciences for BSE students.
The requirements categorize courses by content and approach instead of by broad departments. Currently, AB students are required to take two one-term courses in each of four general areas: science (laboratory courses); social science; arts and letters; and history, philosophy, and religion. Next fall they will have to take one course in each of the following four categories: epistemology and cognition, ethical thought and moral values, historical analysis, and quantitative reasoning; and two courses in each of the following three categories: literature and the arts, science and technology (with lab), and social analysis.
BSE students have been required to complete seven courses in the humanities and social sciences. After the change goes into effect, they will have to distribute those courses by taking one course in four of the following six areas: epistemology and cognition, ethical thought and moral values, foreign language, historical analysis, literature and the arts, and social analysis.
The current requirements are out of date and don't reflect the evolution of Princeton's curriculum, said Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel, the chairwoman of the Committee on the Course of Study, which submitted proposals for changes to the faculty. "In the half-century since they were put into place, new fields have been developed and many fields have become more interdisciplinary," she said.
The faculty ran out of time at its spring meeting to vote on a recommendation to increase the number of courses required for an AB degree, from 30 to 32. Malkiel says she isn't sure whether the committee will bring the recommendation to the faculty for a vote.

Theatre Intime Celebrates 75 Years


THEATRE INTIME, Princeton's student-run theatre company, will celebrate its 75th anniversary on November 11. Current and former members of Intime will gather in Murray-Dodge Hall to share stage stories, peruse an exhibit of Intime memorabilia, watch a production of The Great Gatsby, and attend a cast party.
The exhibit will document the history of the theater from 1920 to the present and will include programs, playbills, posters, and snapshots of scenes exhumed from the archives in Mudd Library and from Intime alumni, said Bronwyn Low '96, managing director of Theatre Intime.
Alumni and friends who are interested in attending the anniversary should call Charrier at 301-299-9697 or send a check for $25, payable to Friends of Theatre Intime, to William Charrier, 10726 Normandie Farm Drive, Potomac, Maryland, 20854.

Princeton Ties Yale for Second in Poll


PRINCETON TIED with Yale for second place in the annual college rankings published by U.S. News & World Report. This is the fourth year in a row Princeton ranked second. Harvard took top honors, ranking first for the sixth year in a row. The three Ivies were followed in the ranking by Stanford, MIT, Duke, California Institute of Technology, Dartmouth, Brown, and Johns Hopkins. Last year, Princeton was second and Yale was third.
U.S. News ranked 1,419 accredited four-year colleges and universities. The rankings are based on the schools' aggregate performances in six categories. Princeton finished first in alumni satisfaction, second in graduation rate, third in student selectivity, fourth in academic reputation, fifth in faculty resources, and fourteenth in financial resources. Critics have complained that the rankings imply a precision that is misleading.

paw@princeton.edu