Notebook - October 6, 1999

Princeton greets Class of 2003

Freshmen begin their academic journey

After a summer of brown lawns and oppressive heat, September brought a deluge of new students who awakened the sleepy Princeton campus. Members of the Class of 2003 participated in a host of activities during Orientation, September 12-17, including receptions, library tours, faculty talks, and departmental open houses. More than half of the members of the freshman class got an early start on their Princeton experience by taking part in outdoor adventures and community-service projects through Outdoor Action and Urban Action.

At Opening Exercises in the Chapel on Wednesday, September 15, President Shapiro took a multimedia approach when he addressed the new students. After they listened to an excerpt from American composer Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," Shapiro compared Copland's ideas on the role of the music listener to the role of the Princeton student. For Copland, said Shapiro, a successful listener takes an active role, listening intently and putting a particular musical moment in context. Similarly, a successful student must be an engaged and creative participant in the exploration of new ideas.

This year's entering class has 1,150 students. More than half the class, 51.7 percent, are men, and 48.3 percent are women. Overall, women make up 47.2 percent of the 4,552 undergraduates.

Asian Americans comprise 11.1 percent of the new class, African Americans 7.6 percent, and Latinos 6.2 percent. Native Americans make up 0.9 percent. Foreign students from 34 countries form 6.2 percent of the Class of 2003. Sons and daughters of alumni make up 12.4 percent of the entering class.

New Jersey sent the most first-years to Princeton. It is home to 149 students, New York to 143, and California to 125. (The Registrar's office provided figures for undergraduate enrollment.)

Yield Levels off

The percentage of students who accepted Princeton's offer of admission (the yield) declined slightly from 69 percent last year to 68 percent this year, said Provost Jeremiah P. Ostriker. Forty-one percent of the Class of 2003 will receive financial aid, compared with 42 percent of the Class of 2002.

The yield and the percentage of students on financial aid declined this year because some of Princeton's peers followed its lead in changing their own financial-aid packages. (In January 1998, the university changed its financial-aid policy, lowering the cost of a Princeton education for low- and middle-income families.) This has created more competition for the same students, said Ostriker, who views this as "good news for the students of America."

The Graduate School welcomed 499 new students, 38.5 percent of whom are women. Foreign students make up 43.7 percent of the new graduate students. Among U.S. citizens, minorities make up 21.0 percent of new graduate students. Five percent of the new students are Latinos; 10.3 percent, Asian Americans; 5.3 percent, African Americans; and 0.4 percent, Native Americans. The new students include 127 in engineering, 112 in the natural sciences, 89 in public and international affairs, 75 in humanities, 69 in social sciences, and 27 in architecture. In all, the Graduate School has 1,819 students. (The Registrar's office provided figures for graduate student enrollment.) Classes started Thursday, September 16.

-Kathryn Federici Greenwood

 

Composition of the Class of 2003

Men 51.7%

Women 48.3%

Alumni children 12.4%

Asian Americans 11.1%

African Americans 7.6%

Latinos 6.2%

Foreign students 6.2%

Native Americans 0.9%

Professor, alumni win "genius" grants

An associate professor of architecture and four alumni of the Graduate School have won John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, sometimes referred to as "genius" grants. Fellows receive a stipend over five years, ranging from $200,000 to $375,000, depending on the age of the recipient. The winners were announced in June.

Elizabeth Diller, an associate professor of architecture, will share a $375,000 grant with her longtime collaborator, Ricardo Scofidio. The two have created an alternative form of architectural practice that unites design, performance, and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory and criticism.

Leslie V. Kurke *88, an associate professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, won a $290,000 grant. Kurke, an interdisciplinary scholar of ancient Greece, studies cultural poetics, a relatively new subdiscipline of classical studies that combines the methods of philology, new historicism, and cultural anthropology.

Juan Martin Maldacena *96, an associate professor of physics at Harvard, received $245,000. Maldacena is redefining the boundaries of mathematical physics. He has become known for breakthroughs in the field of string theory, which postulates the existence of fundamental constituents of matter too small to detect with current experimental apparatus.

Eva M. Silverstein *96, an assistant professor of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, was awarded $235,000. Silverstein, a theoretical physicist, and her collaborator Shamit Kachru, an assistant professor of physics at Berkeley, are exploring the links between recent theories of particle physics and cosmology. These studies provide insights into the age, structure, dynamics, and eventual fate of the universe.

Jeffrey R. Weeks *85, an independent scholar who received $305,000, is a researcher, writer, software developer, and mathematics educator. He has made fundamental contributions to the analysis of knots, and collaborates with cosmologists to interpret the shape of the universe.

Charting a new course of study

Every september brings not just new students but new courses to Princeton. The most recent additions to the catalog include:

The Myth and Reality of Espionage: The Spy Novel, Frederick P. Hitz '61, lecturer on public and international affairs, freshman seminar: Hitz, the former inspector general of the CIA, will explore the spy novel as literature and the moral issues raised by espionage: "the manipulation of other humans, [espionage's] attempted justification in protecting the national interests of one's country, the long-term corrosive effects of deceit and clandestinity on the soul of the spymaster, and the attraction of the game of espionage for its own sake." Students will read nonfiction along with such novels as John Le Carré's A Perfect Spy and Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October.

"Shall We Dance?" Social Dance and Social Life in Twentieth-Century America, Aleta M. Hayes, lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Theater and Dance, freshman seminar: Students in this course will explore the relationship between social dances and the culture around them. The course will examine gesture and body attitudes, fashion, social etiquette, sexual mores and gender relationships, and the accompanying musical styles: "Of central concern will be the question of how movement and dance not only reproduce existing social dynamics but also actively shape and change them."

Imagining the Body in the 20th Century, Carol M. Armstrong *86, professor of art and archaeology, Program in the Study of Women and Gender 418/Art and Archaeology 418: This seminar will investigate aspects and parts of the body-the phallic body, the female body, the body in pieces, and the face-that have been represented by various artists in 20th-century painting, collage, sculpture, and photography. The course will consider artists such as Pablo Picasso, Mary Kelly, and Cindy Sherman.

Energy research spending

Researchers at Princeton have found that the United States and many other industrialized nations have dramatically reduced their research into energy technology, jeopardizing the world's ability to cope with environmental problems and the growing demand for energy. Over the past 20 years, while dollars invested in other types of research have soared, money spent on improving the use of energy resources has dropped to 20-year lows, the researchers reported in the July 30 issue of Science. Robert M. Margolis, a Ph.D. candidate, and Daniel M. Kammen, who was an assistant professor of public and international affairs at the time the research was done and is now at the Energy and Resources Group of the University of California, Berkeley, warn that the cutbacks in energy research and development (R&D) funding "should sound an alarm: The wholesale dismantling of large portions of the industrial world's energy R&D infrastructure could seriously impair our ability to envision and develop new technologies to meet emerging challenges."

Weather and Happiness

A Princeton professor has come up with research that pours cold water on the idea that sunshine makes you smile. Daniel Kahneman, a professor of psychology and public affairs, and David Schkade, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, surveyed 2,000 undergraduates at colleges in the Midwest and California asking them to rate their "life satisfaction." The results: no difference between the two regions, even though both groups of students incorrectly figured Californians would be happier. The students correctly assumed that Californians would be more satisfied with the climate than Midwesterners, but failed to realize that the weather does "not loom large in people's overall evaluations of their lives." The researchers suggested that some people move to California in the "mistaken" belief that that would make them happier. "Our research suggests a moral and a warning," Kahneman and Schkade write. "Nothing that you focus on will make as much difference as you think."

Learning grows brain cells

Research by Assistant Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Gould has found that the process of learning can actually stimulate the brain to grow new brain cells. Gould and colleagues from Rutgers University looked at cell development in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which some studies show is involved in the process of memory. In experiments with rats, they had the animals learn behavioral tasks and discovered that the number of neurons in the area more than doubled. "Types of learning that depend on the hippocampus, including trace eye-blink conditioning and spatial water-maze training, increased the number of newly generated neurons" in the hippocampal region, the researchers wrote in their paper. The direct relationship between learning and the survival of the hippocampal neurons, Gould's team concluded, "suggests a function for these new neurons in certain types of learning."

Hearing and perceiving

Princeton scientists have identified a portion of the brain that controls our finely tuned ability to judge the distance of sounds that are very close to our heads. The research offers insight into the complex processes that connect seeing, hearing, and touching with doing; for example, how a person hears a sound and then ducks his head to avoid a nearby obstacle. The work could eventually have applications in designing better prosthetic devices, helping to diagnose stroke victims, or even in designing the computer programs that control robots.

The researchers focused on an area of the brain called the premotor cortex, which plays a role in perception as well as in preparing the commands that result in physical movement. They discovered that some cells, or neurons, in this area are involved with three functions at once: seeing, touching, and hearing. Michael S. Graziano '89 *96, a research staff member in the laboratory of Professor of Psychology Charles G. Gross and the lead author of the work published in the February 4 issue of Nature, studied how we perceive the distance of sounds by studying neurons in the premotor cortex of macaque monkeys.

 

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