Alumni Day - March 24, 1999
Gomory and Bogle honored
Technologist, investor discuss electronic education and mutual funds
Some 1,300 Princetonians gathered on campus on February 20 for the 84th
Alumni Day. They attended receptions, workshops, and lectures on a variety
of topics, including community-based learning, computing with DNA, lying,
attention and consciousness, and privacy in an age of expanding information
technology. Princetonians also commemorated deceased alumni at the Service
of Remembrance in the University Chapel, where Stephen E. Hollaway '74 delivered
the memorial address.
The day's chief honorees, Ralph E. Gomory *54, who was awarded the James Madison Medal as a distinguished alumnus of the Graduate School, and John C. Bogle '51, the winner of the Woodrow Wilson Award for undergraduate alumni exemplifying Princeton in the nation's service, gave lectures in Alexander Hall.
Gomory, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which awards grants for programs in science and technology, discussed education over the Internet and what it means for higher education. A Higgins Lecturer in Mathematics at Princeton before joining IBM in 1959, Gomory became president of the Sloan Foundation in 1989, when he retired from IBM.
Through the Internet, said Gomory, "education and training, like light, will be easily available to anyone, anytime, anywhere." New technologies that have made online courses possible are changing the nature of the classroom. Virtual classrooms, he said, "enable learning to leap over the limitations that have always bound the professor and class to be in the same place at the same time."
Courses and degree programs offered over the Internet, said Gomory, make higher education and advanced training available to people who otherwise might not be able to pursue higher education -- those who work, who are raising families, and who don't live close to a college or university. People can learn at any stage of life if they don't need to be on a campus, he said.
The Sloan Foundation is advancing this new wave of education by funding Asynchronist Learning Networks (ALNs) at institutions across the country. By the end of this academic year, Gomory estimated, 40,000 students will be taking courses and 35 degree programs will be offered through institutions receiving grants from the Sloan Foundation.
Learning outcomes for those taking courses over the Internet are comparable to their in-class counterparts, he said. "Students are actually learning." Nonetheless, designers of ALNs still have important questions to address, including how people learn in this virtual environment; how professors and students should interact; what the right class size is; and whether students need to get together occasionally in an actual classroom.
Two drawbacks to learning through ALNs, said Gomory, are that students do not get immediate feedback from their professors, and that laboratories cannot be completely reproduced online. (A student can't dissect a mouse online, for example.) Among the advantages of ALNs is the ability to have homework corrected instantly.
ALNs, said Gomory, will increase the market for higher education and advanced training. The institutions able to reach out to this growing market are subsidized schools that survive mainly on tuition or whose state support grows proportionately with enrollment, he said. Elite institutions, however, will not find it feasible to add more students, since tuition covers only a fraction of what it costs to educate a student. Nevertheless, Gomory hopes that elite private institutions will find ways to reach out to this new market and will not leave electronic education only to for-profit or government-sponsored schools.
Hedgehogs and foxes
Bogle, who has been involved in finance since 1951 and founded the mutual-fund firm the Vanguard Group in 1974, spoke about Vanguard's unusual mission and investment strategy in "Changing the Rules of Investing: The Hedgehog and the Fox."
Bogle said his career started by accident during his senior year, when he was searching for a topic for his thesis in economics. While studying in Firestone Library in December 1949, he read an article in Fortune about the then-emerging mutual-fund industry. He went on to write a thesis that predicted what future directions the industry might take.
Fifty years later, Bogle has been responsible for many changes in his business. His mission from the beginning, he said, has been to ensure that investors get a "fair shake." He characterized the Vanguard Group, one of the two largest mutual-fund organizations in the world, as a "hedgehog," that is, a financial institution that knows one great thing -- "long-term investment success is based on simplicity." Many of the other mutual-fund institutions, he said, are "foxes," surviving by knowing many things about complex markets.
Hedgehogs invest for the long term. They buy shares of businesses and hold them, ignoring the mercurial nature of the stock market. "This hedgehog strategy is the rock upon which Vanguard's investment strategy rests," said Bogle.
According to Bogle, Vanguard's strategy is defined by "holding the interests of the shareholders paramount," treating investors as "human beings," increasing investors' returns by vastly reducing management fees, and focusing on prudent management instead of aggressive marketing. "We are, in a word, cheap," he said.
By contrast, said Bogle, the foxes of the mutual-fund industry make investing complicated. They employ professional money managers that hover over their portfolios by the hour, constantly monitoring and changing holdings, which drives up management costs. In the end, fund shareholders earn returns 15 to 20 percent below the returns of the stock market itself. According to Bogle, the financial success of fund managers depends not on earning a market return on their investors' capital but on earning a "staggering return on their own capital." There's so much money to be made in managing money if you charge high fees, he said, that other mutual-fund managers don't want to follow Vanguard's lead.
Upon receiving the Woodrow Wilson Award later that day in Jadwin Gymnasium, Bogle, who underwent a heart transplant three years ago, held back tears as he thanked his mentor, the late Walter L. Morgan '20. It was Morgan, said Bogle, who gave him his first job at his own Wellington Fund after reading Bogle's senior thesis: "I can't imagine my life without him."
-- Kathryn Federici Greenwood
Alumni, students, and friends gathered in Jadwin Gymnasium for the annual Alumni Day luncheon and awards ceremony. Richard O. Scribner '58, the chairman of the national Annual Giving committee, reported on the progress of this year's AG effort and the five-year Anniversary Campaign. To date, AG has raised $15.6 million from 29 percent of alumni toward its June 30 goal of $33 million from 63 percent. "In participation, we're behind where we need to be to reach our goal," he said. With a year and a half to go, the Anniversary Campaign has raised $714 million toward its new goal of $900 million in capital gifts and AG funds by June 30, 2000. "We have many dollars yet to raise," said Scribner.
Brent L. Henry '69, the chairman of the Alumni Council, President Shapiro, and Scribner presented the following awards to alumni and students:
The M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the university's
highest general award for undergraduates, was shared by seniors Renee Hsia
and Alexander Sierk. The two will split an amount equal to this year's tuition
($23,820). They were selected as the seniors who most clearly manifested
"excellence in scholarship, character, and effective support of the
best interests of Princeton."
A public-policy major at the Woodrow Wilson School, Hsia plans to attend medical school and earn a master's in public health before embarking on a career in public health in developing countries. Hsia, who speaks Mandarin and Cantonese, is writing her senior thesis on the activities of nongovernmental organizations in China, which she visited in the summer of 1998. She is also pursuing a certificate in East Asian studies and in Chinese language, and she has a straight-A average.
As a junior, Hsia studied in the South African township of Guguletu as part of a Wilson School policy task force on education, focusing on children with special needs.
Hsia has been involved with the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, the Symphony Orchestra, the Woodrow Wilson School Advisory Council, and the Student Volunteers Council, having served as project director for the Conversational English Program. The program pairs Princeton students with spouses of graduate students or visiting scholars from foreign countries who wish to improve their English skills.
Hsia has won several awards and scholarships during her tenure at Princeton, including the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which will fund half the tuition costs for two years of graduate study at the school of her choice and give her a $20,000 stipend for living expenses each year. In accepting the Pyne Prize, Hsia, who called herself a "Chinese-American girl from Texas," said, "Princeton has exposed me to the world and made the world my classroom."
A molecular biology major from Bettendorf, Iowa, Sierk was also a record-setting
place-kicker on the football team for four years. Like Hsia, he plans to
attend medical school after graduation. Sierk's senior thesis is on the
p53 gene, the most important known tumor suppressor. His research has focused
on analyzing samples of human colon cancer.
Sierk scored the first six points in the new Princeton University Stadium. His freshman year he kicked a field goal in the final play in that season, winning for Princeton its first outright Ivy League championship in 31 years. Sierk received All-Ivy honors in 1997 and 1998 and received a graduate fellowship from the National Football Foundation and the College Hall of Fame, along with other awards.
In addition to his work in the classroom, in the lab, and on the field, Sierk volunteered as a Big Brother and participated in a mentoring program at the Newgrange School, in Trenton, which serves learning-disabled students.
In accepting the award, Sierk thanked his parents, who "came to all 10 football games this fall -- from Iowa."
The Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship was awarded to Stanislav Boldyrev, a graduate student in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences' Program in Plasma Physics. The university gives the prize to the graduate student "who displays the highest scholarly excellence," in the judgment of the faculty. The fellowship funds the final year of graduate study.
Born in Moscow, Boldyrev is a theoretical physicist working on the theory of intermittent fluid turbulence. In particular, his research concentrates on the application of methods of quantum field theory to describe fundamental properties of stochastical fluid motion. In an unusual achievement, he passed his general exams after only one year at Princeton.
The S. Barksdale Penick, Jr. '25 Award went to the alumni schools committee of the Princeton Alumni Association of Eastern Fairfield County, Connecticut, chaired by Henry Von Kohorn '66. The prize recognizes the regional group that has "most effectively realized the primary goals of Alumni Schools Committee work" in recruiting students and representing Princeton to its local community.
The Alumni Council Award for Community Service honored the Class of 1939 for the Fred Fox '39 Fund, which offers financial assistance to undergraduates for special projects or work experience related to their course of study or otherwise contributing to their personal development through social services. The fund awards as many as 40 grants of up to $400 annually. As a 250th Anniversary project, the Class of 1939 undertook to raise a $250,000 endowment to perpetuate the fund. Contributions toward the endowment to date exceed that goal. This year the Class of 1939 will turn over the operation of the fund to the university, with the class's support being replaced by endowment income. The Alumni Council established the community service award six years ago to "recognize outstanding contributions by groups of Princetonians in their efforts to address critical social, economic, and environmental needs."
The Harold H. Helm '20 Award for "exemplary and sustained service" to AG was given to Elise P. Wright '83. She has served as regional chairwoman for Eastern Connecticut and recently completed a five-year term as class agent. Under her leadership, the Class of 1983 last year set a 15th-reunion record by raising $872,000 from 70.5 percent of the class.
The Class of 1926 Trophy, which goes to the class that raises the largest amount for AG, was awarded to the Class of 1963, led by Class Agent Malcolm MacKay. The class set a 35th-reunion record with a total of $4,000,036. This is the third time that the Class of 1963 has won this award. It is also the all-time leading class for AG contribution, with a lifetime total of $13.3 million.
The Jerry Horton '42 Award for an outstanding regional committee that has "expanded the knowledge and awareness of Annual Giving" was presented to the AG committee of Canada, chaired by J. Paul Mills '64. Last year its participation reached 56 percent.
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