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Wednesday February 3, 2016 vol. cxxxx no. 3
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U. strategic planning framework includes expansion, transfer program reinstitution
By Zaynab Zaman staff writer
IMAGE COURTESY OF PRINCETON. EDU
Judy Jarvis, the new Director of LGBT Center, started work in January.
Jarvis takes new role as U. LGBT Center Director By Hannah Waxman staff writer
Judy Jarvis, former director of Vassar College’s LGBTQ and Women’s Centers, began her work as the Director of the University’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center on Jan. 18. During her tenure at Vassar, Jarvis was responsible for organizing an LGBTQ oral history project and also worked with members of Vassar’s Bias Incident Response Team to design and implement a campaign to educate students, faculty and staff on issues of identity, power and privilege. Jarvis said that she is eager to create multiple points of entry for students within the Center through social events, lectures, academic engagements and collaborations with the different residential colleges. “My goal is to work very collaboratively [with the Women’s Center and Fields Center] and really creatively to figure out all the ways to serve the Princeton LGBT community but also the straight Princeton community who certainly needs to learn
more around issues of LGBTQ campus culture [and] campus life experiences,” she explained. Jarvis noted that another part of her role includes making sure that transgender students feel comfortable on campus. She explained that there’s still a lot of work to be done across the country and at the University in examining the campus experience of transgender and gender non-conforming students. “At Princeton I’m learning that while there are gender-neutral bathrooms and ways to put a preferred name in the systems, there are still some glitches,” Jarvis said. She added that she is confident about moving forward on work to better support transgender students on campus to help them feel fully affirmed and a part of the University community. “I think there are still opportunities for growth to enhance the campus climate for transgender students, faculty and staff,” LGBT Center Program See JARVIS page 2
The University announced its strategic planning framework, recently adopted by its Board of Trustees, on Tuesday. The framework will focus on the University’s commitment to research and the liberal arts, with an emphasis on diversity and inclusivity, affordability and service, and includes plans to accept transfer students, expand student body and create a seventh residential college. “The vision that is expressed in the strategic framework document is one that I own wholeheartedly and am delighted to have the Trustees putting forward,” University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 Eisgruber said. The framework identifies the University’s strategic priorities, such as expanding the student body and developing new facilities to better support engineering and environmental studies. In light of the University’s mission as a residential liberal arts research university, priorities such as expanding the Graduate School are also being considered.
Among other plans, the report states that the University will institute a small transfer admissions program for the first time since 1990, in order to attract students of diverse backgrounds, including military veterans and low-income students who may have begun their post-secondary careers in community colleges. The first set of transfer applications will be considered as early as September 2018. Specifically, it states that the Board has authorized the administration to begin planning for the addition of 500 more undergraduates, 125 students per class. To accommodate these students, a seventh residential college will be constructed. The plan also provides for the establishment of an interdisciplinary initiative centered on environmental studies to combat climate change and other global-scale phenomena, the continued expansion of its faculty in computer science, statistics and machine learning and increased support for student entrepreneurship. To provide resources for the initiatives, the Board authorized the administration to pro-
pose an increase to the spend rate, currently at 4.12 percent of the endowment, that would take place over fiscal years 2017 and 2018. Eisgruber noted that different sections of the framework will be implemented on different time frames over the next few months and years, but did not provide a specific range of time, citing the complexity of the decision-making process. “Where we can do things immediately, we will try to do them immediately; other things will happen on whatever time frame is needed in order to get them done right, because it’s very important that we do that,” Eisgruber said. Noting that he last strategic plan was issued over 15 years ago, Eisgruber explained that many layers of planning went into the framework and that both the University’s Board of Trustees and various task forces across campus, such as the Residential College Task Force and the General Education Task Force, have taken part in the planning process. He said the Board suggested that it will look at and potenSee PLANS page 3
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ANNA BERGHUIS :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
Butler College’s iSpace offers space for students to think freely and experiement with new projects.
Pace Center inaugurates Butler’s iSpace encourages the Month of Service innovative, entrepreneurial ideas staff writer
Students and faculty participated in various service projects including decorating lunch bags, tutoring students and initiating food drives during the inaugural Month of Service spearheaded by the Pace Center for Civic Engagement this January. Gwen McNamara, Communications Coordinator of the Pace Center, said that the Center chose to hold the event in January as it is the month when the University honors Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy with a formal commemorative event. “January is a great time for reflection,” Kimberly de los Santos, Executive Director of the Pace Center, said. “We’ve all had a busy fall and we’ll all be having a busy spring, so January is a great time to set
aside to provide a lens for the upcoming year.” During the Month of Service, Pace Center’s Community House organized multiple service projects for University students. These projects included helping students from low-income families close the academic achievement gap, initiating food drives to help fight hunger in the community, and hosting civic dialogues where students could come together and discuss the importance and meaning of service. The Pace Center also released a Field Guide to Service online each week of the month, which offered students a way of learning about service opportunities and comprehending the meaning of service, de los Santos said. She added that Assistant Director of the Pace Center Charlotte Collins compiled these guides. See PACE page 4
By Samvida Venkatesh staff writer
The new Butler College Innovation Space, or iSpace, aims to be a hub for budding entrepreneurs, Butler College Director of Studies Matthew Lazen said. The iSpace is located in the basement of Wu Hall and was officially inaugurated last November. The walls of the space are covered with whiteboards, and the movable tables can also be written on with dry-erase markers so that spontaneous ideas can be jotted down, according to John Danner, a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering who was involved during construction process. In addition, the space is equipped with an Apple-TV, and work is in progress to secure forthcoming technology that will allow
multiple users to project their screens onto the TV at the same time, he noted. Danner added that the space was stocked with supplies like paper, blue tape, Lego bricks and marking pins to foster innovative thinking. “It’s a place that encourages unpredictable creative collision,” he said, comparing the space to larger ones at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford. According to Danner, some universities like Berkeley and Stanford have multiple buildings and faculty members dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship. To date, the iSpace is the only room on campus that houses the entrepreneurial community. Lazen said that much of the inspiration for the iSpace came
In Opinion
Today on Campus
Columnist Beni Snow argues that free speech protects even unflattering thoughts, and columnist Will Rivitz recommends talking to, rather than past, our intellectual critiques. PAGE 6
4 p.m.: The School of Engineering and Applied Science presents a lecture titled “You have to be brilliant to do that! Cultures of Brilliance and Academic Gender Gaps” by Professor SarahJane Leslie. Maeder Hall Auditorium, Andlinger Center.
from the book “Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration” by Scott Doorley from the Stanford d.school. He added that the iSpace was not nearly as elaborate as spaces at schools like Stanford and that the idea was to allow students to make the space their own and to accommodate their needs as they cropped up. Lazen noted the initial idea for the space was to build a community at Butler similar to Mathey College’s Edwards Collectives. “The group of people that came to mind was entrepreneurs, especially social entrepreneurs,” Lazen said. The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club reached out to the Butler College Office requesting the space at the same time as the See ISPACE page 7
WEATHER
By Betty Liu
HIGH
63˚
LOW
47˚
Cloudy with showers. chance of rain:
80 percent