“Professor Bernhard was the reason I majored in chemistry.”
When Jackie Latina ’08 came to Princeton, her struggle in departmental courses freshman year made her think twice about majoring in chemistry. Stefan Bernhard, who taught Latina in CHM 407: Inorganic ...(back to the article)
The opinions expressed here are those of the individual commenters and do not necessarily represent the views of The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc. We do not take responsibility for the opinions, facts, or claims presented by individual commenters, and reserve the right to moderate or delete inappropriate comments.
In 2002, my husband was denied tenure at Harvard. In his case, the decision to deny him tenure was entirely political. In his field, he was considered a star and in 2002, he published four major publications, two of which have essentially proved to be ground breakking papers in two different areas of his field. Tenure is essentially a political process, if you are not in with the major players in the department, you could be Einstein and still not get tenure at Harvard.
If teaching is not given due importance how will bright young scholars be attracted to the discipline? Unfortunately we think teaching is easy as what is being taught is 'already out there'. And that results in very few students with great conceptual clarity. Most 'good' students also often have mere procedural knowledge.
University tenures are al about the clouts and croonies. Kick the Tilghman out to purify Princeton!!
I guess this is about money. University needs money to operate. That is why during the past 10 years, the tuition increased year by year. That is why the University likes research-oriented professor than teaching-oriented. Remember, one responsibility of the president's job is to bring 'money' to unversity!
Furthermore, Abby Doyle was offered a faculty position without postdoctoral experience and before even defending her dissertation at Harvard.
@wigwag
the nepotism reference is to the dept's new hire, Prof. Doyle. Both her parents have close ties to PU admin. It will be interesting to see if she receives tenure, or whether she'll be the first in a while to make it. Considering that she was hired for a position that was not widely posted and had only one interviewee (her), my bet is that she will receive tenure, but that is just a guess.
The Princeton classroom experience can be life-changing, perfectly decent, perfunctory, or appalling. The undergrads know where the best teaching is (and, often, isn't.) Let's ask them--and then act on it--
Who are the other faculty leaving and what about this nepotism.
@ Dave: I'm not suggesting there's an agenda. I highly doubt they would "want" to let the department founder, but regardless of want, it appears that the department _is_ foundering. The new arts stuff was mainly financed by the HUGE donation, and will be sustained with significant funds from the Aspire initiative. Good on us. I find the drive to increase our arts rather silly, but that's my own admittedly petty opinion. I feel the same way about turning "studies" into majors. I prefer the classical academic approach of majors as disciplines and allowing certificates in other fads. We have tons of money and I guess we can do everything at the "best" level -- but if that's the official policy, then I'd like everything to be the "best" instead of selected pet projects.
Interesting comments.
Emily Carter was in Chemistry at UCLA, but she is not in Chemistry
at Princeton, except as a secondary appointment (go to the Chem Dept
web site to verify). And you are correct-the administration does not
trust the advice of the Chemistry faculty at all, and has bluntly told
the Department exactly that.
Why isn't Chemistry trying to expand? It is. There is a very long
list of people who have turned down even fairly generous offers
in the last few years. But when you go after good people, they
usually have multiple options-and who wants to go to a place where
everyone is unhappy? Eventually, Princeton will buy its way out
of the problem, using revenue from Taylor's drug and alumni donations.