The Daily Princetonian
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Eisgruber: Undergraduate years were “transformative, happy” EISGRUBER Continued from page 5
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that gave me friendships that have lasted a lifetime since then that forced me to rethink the ideals that I brought to the University and enabled me to come away with understandings of ideas and of people and of places that I didn’t have before I came. So it is, I can’t think — you know, the psychologists all tell us it’s the first four years that are the most important, but we can’t remember those, so of the years that I remember, these were certainly years that defined me as a person, and they were also very happy years. DP: How has the University changed since 1983? CE: As I said in my remarks, we have become more inclusive in ways that are very important. That is striking to me, and there are aspects of that that I appreciate even more from year to year. I just had a capacity to reconnect with one of my senior-year roommates who was back here for the Every Voice conference that we just had over this weekend, and I was talking to a number of alumni who were back for that conference about what their experiences were like during the time that they were here. That for me is a vivid reminder of how much Princeton has changed with regard to questions about inclusivity. On the other hand, I’ll also tell you that there are places on this campus that didn’t exist when I was here at all, and then I’ll think, “Well, what was this when I was here?” But then there are times when I can walk someplace and I can see a group of students in
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blue jeans and T-shirts and I’ll have this kind of Proustian moment, and it will feel just like it was when I was on campus. So again, it’s the striking thing about Princeton that we are preserving so much of this character that distinguishes us as a University but also reinventing it as we go along. DP: Did you have any frustrations with the University during your time here? CE: I must have had frustrations at the University when I was here. It’s hard for me to recall exactly what those were — at this point, you know, this might be one of the tricks that memory plays on us in retrospect because it’s also a time when, as you know, we’re all growing as people. But I was very grateful for the education that I was getting. DP: Will you plan to continue your role on the advisory council of Coursera during your presidency? CE: I will have to rotate off that, I think. Most of the people who are on it are actually provosts. There are one or two chancellors or presidents, but I think it would be good for whoever my successor is as provost to represent the University in that capacity. As you were saying earlier, there are different roles for different offices here. DP: How do you see Princeton’s role in the maturing field of online education? CE: I think that is one of those questions we really have to think collectively about as a University. What I’ve been very glad about with regard to Coursera is it means, so to speak, we’ve jumped into the pool and we’re learning
how to swim. We have a set of faculty members who instead of saying, “You know, this is very foreign to what we do here at Princeton,” are instead saying, “I’ve been doing this, and it’s helping my teaching in my own classroom here on the Princeton campus, and it’s also a blast to reach students as far away as Kathmandu.” So I think that’s been important. I think we have to think hard about where we are in this space. Right now, although we’ve been very active with Coursera, there are other respects in which we are the most conservative university in the country with regard to these things. So I’m not sure if there’s any other university that offers no online course for credit and no kind of online certificate program, and we have taken that position very deliberately, but I think we do need to ask ourselves, “All right, given how fast things are changing, and given our mission to make a difference in the world, is this the best place for us to be?” DP: What are you most excited about? CE: In addition to no longer having to explain at the beginning of all my speeches exactly what it is a provost is or does, I really say it goes back to a difference you pointed out earlier in the conversation, which is: This is an opportunity for me to spend time really out there, both speaking on behalf of the University and listening on behalf of the University, spending more time with students than I have been able to do, spending more time with alumni than I’ve been able to do and dealing in a different capacity with faculty and staff. I enjoy that and look forward to it.
Monday april 22, 2013
LOCAL NEWS
PILOT, conflicts of interest, tourism among top town-gown priorities By Patience Haggin news editor
colleagues in the years ahead,” he said.
As the administration of University Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 begins to work with the local town government, an item high on its agenda will be renegotiating the University’s monetary contribution to the town. Mayor Liz Lempert, who is acquainted with Eisgruber, said that she was glad to see someone who is already a member of the local community take on the presidency and that her first priority at this time was congratulating Eisgruber and the University on his selection. At the University press conference announcing his selection as president on Sunday, Eisgruber said that at the local level, he hopes to find ways to strengthen the civic partnership between the University and the town, of which he is a longtime resident. “I look forward to working with Mayor Lempert and her
With consolidation, a chance for a better relationship Eisgruber’s administration will have the task of re-establishing the sometimes-rocky relationship that President Tilghman’s administration had with the local government over the University’s development plans. The Arts and Transit Neighborhood, a development project that was the brainchild of President Tilghman’s administration, was at the center of a period of strained negotiations between the University and the local community. The complex, which will include performance and rehearsal spaces as well as a relocated train station, is under construction in the Alexander corridor near Forbes College and is scheduled to open in 2017. Tilghman called the Arts and Transit Neighborhood “the most challenging issue” her administration faced in work-
ing with the community. She was optimistic that Eisgruber’s administration would have an easier relationship with the town government, saying also that she thought the consolidation of the two former municipal governments, which went into effect this year, would ease the relationship. “I think the circumstances are very fertile at the moment for a much better relationship between the University and the community,” Tilghman explained. “I think Presidentelect Eisgruber is going to benefit enormously from the fact that he will be working with a consolidated community as opposed to two separate communities, as we were forced to do.” Now that the Arts and Transit Neighborhood is settled and underway, local officials have shifted their focus to other issues. Princeton Councilwoman Jo Butler, who opposed the University’s plan to move the train station further southward, said See COMMUNITY page 9
Hall declines to name final candidates PROCESS Continued from page 3
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him as the next president or as a potential candidate. Hall declined to provide many details of the search process, such as the number of candidates interviewed. “It’s not because we are trying to be lacking transparency,”
she said. “An important part of the process is the confidentiality. The strength of that permits the committee members to have completely open and candid conversations.” Search committee member Robert Murley ’72, who served on the committees that selected both Tilghman and Eisgruber, explained that both processes were essentially the same. The
main difference, Murley explained, was that Tilghman was originally a member of the search committee. But, in the end, both had to compete with internal and external candidates for the position. Staff writer James Evans, associate news editor Marcelo Rochabrun and senior writer Monica Chon contributed reporting for this article.
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