“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)
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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.
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University tenures are al about the clouts and croonies. Kick the Tilghman out to purify Princeton!!
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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!
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Furthermore, Abby Doyle was offered a faculty position without postdoctoral experience and before even defending her dissertation at Harvard.
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@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.
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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--
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Who are the other faculty leaving and what about this nepotism.
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@ 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.
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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.
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I'd also like to add that I agree entirely with the substance of Fed-Up Gs' post. I think it's kind of silly to second-guess the reasoning behind confidential tenure proceedings. Most of this article and these comments have only proffered some anecdotal evidence for why these profs deserved tenure. And that's really all that can be offered here: since a thorough review is far beyond the scope of this board and most of its readership. For all I know, there may have been more than ample justification for denying these folks tenure. It's more than a little ridiculous to assume, on the basis on a few denials and in spite of explicit plans for a new facility that the university has it out for the Chemistry department. Can any actually propose a cogent, non-insane *justification* for such a hidden agenda? It's not as though the university needs to skimp on some departments to provide for others (the Arts complex, after all, is paid for at least in substantial part by a record donation).
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@Pro-Tenure: First, academics have passion for their particular fields. This often drives them to persist in their passions even when new, superior methodologies have arisen. Princeton got a bunch of brilliant logical positivists around the beginning of the twentieth centuries because Oxford and Cambridge were filled with stubborn Idealists (who espoused a metaphysics most of us would consider laughable today). What's more, *many* individuals may have been granted tenure who are committed to these obsolete fields. You can disband the department but you'll still be stuck with all the tenured members. Second, while it's true that some marginal incentives for good research exist, in no other sector are things like "committee appointments" ever considered sufficient motivators for productive output. Third, if we assume professors enter academia at around 30 years of age, my accelerated proposal would have them retiring around 47 (your math, not mine). In the status quo, professors could easily work 10, 20, 30, even 40 years longer - and what's more, the current tenure system pays the highest salaries to the professors who work the longest, thus devoting the most resources to those who are most likely to be obsolete. Lastly, in re: academic freedom - first, I doubt anyone thinks some great harm was visited on the marketplace of ideas by Ward Churchill's firing (it should also be noted that the real reason for his firing was research misconduct - and he was, after all, making completely unfounded allegations about 9/11 culpability). People espousing views *that* controversial usually don't have anything worth hearing. And if it's not that controversial, he'll likely be hired someplace else, because universities like the prestige controversy brings - see, e.g., Columbia having Ahmadinejad (*not* a tenured professor) speak. I think you've confused the causation on this issue; tenure was implemented to protect academic freedom, it didn't produce it.
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The lack of focus on Chemistry is a shame. It's ok though, we're going to have a ROCKIN arts department! WAHOO.
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Princeton's chem dept was struggling even back when I graduated almost 10 years ago. There were battles then between the organic, inorganic, and physical chemistry professors. It was hoped that when George McLendon came he would be able to broker a peace, but he got so fed up with the mess he got that he left very quickly. There are a number of very good faculty int he chem department now, still. Though the retirements and firings were serious. You missed on your list of people who didn't get tenure fellow Sonny Lee (denied tenure in 2000), not to be confused with Chulbom Lee, who was denied tenure in 2007. Sonny Lee was an excellent teacher of the inorganic chemistry class and also did not get tenure at Princeton. Marcel Nooijen, also pre-tenure judgement, left Princeton for a Canadian University in 2001 or 2002. Nooijen was a poor teacher initially who improved greatly in his first few years and cared tremendously about teaching well. (Some great researchers can become great and caring teachers.) He was also awarded a prestigious European prize for his research quite soon after he left Princeton. Woe to Princeton. Wolfgang Richter, Stefan Bernhard, and Chulbom Lee were supposed to be a new crowd who would be mentored more. Apparently, they weren't, which is sad and disappointing. The stranglehold of the administration on the chemistry department is also terrifying. It's as if Tighlman hated chemistry... which I would sincerely doubt, but to be honest the chemistry departments at other schools are booming, growing larger, bringing in great money, and doing wonderful innovative research. Why Princeton isn't trying to grow the same sort of program is befuddling. MacMillan is known to be self-aggrandizing and people with big egos ... well, they can make life unpleasant for themselves as well as everyone else. I would be willing to bet probably that the older professors are trying to "stay out" of the battles. You missed another faculty member who is joint that was also brought in as a 1/2. Emily Carter. Carter has affiliated herself primarily with the MAE dept though at UCLA her prior institution she was solely listed in the chemistry department. Carter built an exceptional research program prior to coming to Princeton and may have moved for family reasons since her husband scientist Bruce Koel got a very nice job at Lehigh University. Sadly, the word on the academic market is --even if you are a woman-- not to go to Princeton as junior faculty. You might note how many women are on the roster of chemistry faculty as something significant and if you don't -take a look at Rice University's ADVANCE program research about women faculty retention and tenure. Princeton definitely makes mistakes with tenure. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd made another mistake with Bernhard. I'm sincerely sorry for it and extend my apologies to Stefan Bernhard for how awful a disruption to his life and research program this news and the need to find a new position are. Thankfully, the market abounds with knowledge of how hard it is to get tenure at Princeton, so no one is likely to hold not getting tenure at Princeton against you. I wish you great luck in finding a new position where your contribution to teaching the next generation of chemists is more valued. -a Princeton chemistry alumna who was very intrigued by talk of Stefan's chocolate chemistry freshman seminar and had hoped it would become a staple of university course offerings
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Dave - I strongly disagree with your assessment that professors lack incentives to do good work and stay relevant. Obviously, there are some pieces of dead wood. But this is the exception rather than the rule. Most academics have strong intrinsic motivation to do good research - the topics they study are the topics that they love to study. Plus, while dead wood may not lose a job, they won't get good raises, get lousy committee assignments, bad offices, etc. In terms of fields that disappear, tenure only protects individuals, the university can get rid of a department if it no longer fits with their mission. Your proposals (long term contracts with front loaded salaries) are interesting and worth exploring. So, the first 7 years are what would be pre-tenure anyway, and the next 10 are your long term contract. That's 17 years of front loaded pay... at which point the person could probably retire. In other words, you pay them as much as you would during a tenured career, you just shorten that career. I'm not sure that would assuage the concerns of tenure critics. The only reason its unrealistic to think that schools would fire controversial professors is because of academic freedom engendered by tenure. Look to the Ward Churchill case for an example (he was fired _despite_ tenure).
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I'd also add, for those concerned with the *teaching* aspects of academia, it's basically impossible to make tenured professors into good teachers. Without some sort of regular review process, professors simply aren't accountable to their students. I once had a math teacher tell us he hated teaching us and was glad this was the last year tenure required him to do so.
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@Why Tenure: The problems with tenure are greater than you make them out to be. It's not just that professors have terrible incentives to continue to do good work. They also lack incentives to stay relevant. Science in particular can develop and an exceedingly rapid pace, and there are high fixed-costs to learning new material. Moreover, sometimes entire fields will become more or less obsolete, like Cold-War Political Science after the fall of the USSR, or structural chemistry after the invention of NMR. Maybe some historical perspectives are useful, but universities shouldn't be stuck with departments filled with professors unwilling to do the work needed to keep up-to-date. @Pro-Tenure First, nothing in your comments suggests why *tenure* is necessary to achieve the ends you seek. If risk-taking is necessary, why not offer long-term contracts (five or ten years) as in the private sector? That will provide sufficient job security for professors to engage in risky projects without precluding the university from firing those who turn out to be deadweight. Similarly, if salary is the problem, why not front-load academic salaries like they do in sports? Most professors do their best work in their early years, so offer the hot-shots shorter contracts with more money upfront to compensate for the years of un-productivity to come. Third, it's entirely unrealistic to assume that universities would ever fire a professor for espousing controversial views. Most universities are prestige hounds who would seek out controversy. See Princeton's very own acquisition of Peter Singer in the face of Steve Forbes' threat to withdraw all future funding (which he followed through on). Moreover, university admins hail from the ranks of professors, and so likely share their values of open and unfettered discourse. It can also set a dangerous precedent for admins. After destroying Harvard's Afican-American and Queer Studies programs, Larry Summers wasn't given much benefit of the doubt when he voiced his controversial views on gender.
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Amazing how a blatantly biased article receives such high praise. I guess this corroborates the poor reading skills that were alluded to by another GS in the op-ed section. I'm no fan of Prof. MacMillan, but to print such an attack is pretty unprofessional. Combine that with an argument based on passion and feelings ("I majored in chemistry because of him!") and you've got an 'article' which would have been better placed in the op-ed section! True, no chemistry professor has received tenure in recent years, but how many have actually gone up for tenure in that time? How do these statistics compare to other Ivy League institutions (all of which are notorious for denying tenure while gobbling up big-name senior faculty who bring the notoriety and clout that the Ivies throw around)? We're poised on the doorstep of a new era in Princeton Chemistry: a new building which Nassau Hall is constructing to a faculty wish-list, new faculty to grow the research program here (and attract strong grad students), the goal of making Chemistry a "Top 5" program. I'm sad to see Stefan go, but this was not an atrocity. This is all part of the game in a life in academia. Don't like it? Then it's not the career path for you.
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With this recent travesty, one wonders what's in store for the most recently hired assistant professor in the department. Somehow I doubt she'll have any problems with the tenure process. Gotta love nepotism.
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I'm interested in hearing more about the problems afflicting the Chemistry Department. I feel like this is a facet of Princeton I never hear about. Can anyone tell us more about the recent problems, solutions, intrigue, etc?
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@ Pro Tenure: Fair enough. Apologies for the misquote. Denying excellent teachers tenure could not be a new phenomenon. Despite the trappings, I don't see any REAL emphasis though. I am not a faculty member or administrator, so I do not have practical experience with Princeton's process. Winning an award for teaching shouldn't automatically grant you tenure, but I would hope it would be considered at least as strongly as one excellent piece of scholarship. Since I'm "crusty" I favor the known over the unknown. I like the concept of keeping the best home grown talent and poaching a truly exceptional professor or two from another school who has a proven track record of trend-setting research and teaching awards. The current model of the school seems to prefer high-priced poaching while not compensating home-grown professors on the same pay scale. That is NOT something I know, it is just something that seems apparent from the comments and prince articles (neither entirely trustworthy sources). I do want to repeat that this is absolutely the best Prince article I have read in some time (if ever).
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Having a center and giving an award for good teaching, and then turning around and giving tenure to another person who can't teach doesn't mean the university emphasizes teaching. It just compartmentalizes it. Awards are little more than cheap resume padding distributed to good teachers, apparently so that they can go find jobs somewhere else.
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"if PU is more "teaching friendly" now than in years past, how do you account for the three examples mentioned throughout the comments?". I said MORE teacher friendly. That doesn't mean that teaching is the only criterion being used. So, yes, excellent teachers will get denied tenure. But this is hardly a new phenomenon. Excellent teachers have been denied tenure for 100 years - the difference is, these days Princeton has the center for teaching and learning, and a variety of teaching awards, and otherwise actually has support structures set up to improve and reward teaching. That hasn't always been the case.
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I must admit to inherently distrusting people who use "zeitgeist" in their postings. That flaw aside, if PU is more "teaching friendly" now than in years past, how do you account for the three examples mentioned throughout the comments? All three were EXCELLENT teachers, and at worst, very very good publishers. If the scale were equal, they would have been granted tenure. From the comments it seems beyond argument that a professor with opposite qualifications would have been offered tenure.
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Why tenure, you ask? Several reasons. First, it allows for risk taking in research. Groundbreaking ideas often require several years to test. And sometimes, those tests disconfirm the theories. Without tenure, working on a project for five years without any payoff would mean you were fired. Which means that rather doing those high risk/high reward projects, people would do predictable projects that don't challenge prevailing paradigms so as not to risk their jobs. That's bad for the university, and bad for society. A second reason is that universities don't pay all that well - lets face it, any faculty member at Princeton could skip to industry for 3 to 4 times the salary they're currently making. And they would probably have to work fewer hours in the bargain. Job security is a huge selling point for academics, and allows schools to keep leaders in the field without tripling tuition. Think about it, if Princeton were to drop tenure, how long before every one of the faculty has left for schools where they could get job security? And of course, there's academic freedom. Academics are one of the few groups that can speak out against the prevailing zeitgeist with no fear of repercussion in their jobs. And that's a good thing for society. Sure, tenure has drawbacks, but overall it helps Princeton to have it. Should tenure be awarded on the basis of teaching? Possibly. My understanding is that at Princeton, you need to be a leader in BOTH research and teaching to get tenure. And for those of you who think that Princeton has shifted its emphasis towards research away from teaching, you've got it backwards. Princeton is more teaching friendly than ever before. Its just that in the past, people didn't know what the priorities were.
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First off -- GREAT article. Congratulations, you rule. Second off -- @ "Crusty Alum" -- I have cornered this monicker and post too much to share, please find a different handle (I suggest "Curmudgeony"). Third off -- I hate this process. I hate how it punishes great teachers. A truly great researcher may be hard to find, but the same thing can be said about a GREAT teacher. They are special. Great teaching cannot be taught, it cannot be learned. Some have it and others don't. The University is worse for having lost Doran and many others. My favorite thing about the article is the exposed duplicity of Tilghman's comment, "[w]e work very hard and very diligently to keep the mistakes to a bare minimum." In fact, they work SO hard that they can't be bothered to initiate a review. The same administration that has "dialogue" concerning just about every absurd buzz-word in academia. Not that a review would be listened to, but it'd be nice to see the administration actually "work diligently" on this issue. As I've moaned about in other posts, I hate the recent emphasis on "a large research institution with a liberal arts feel" over the old model that focused on teaching undergraduates first. The old model took excellent research as an unstated given that everyone in the country and the world knew without being beaten about the head with it. I look forward to Tilghman's retirement.
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Is it wrong to question tenure in general? Is there any other profession that guarantees lifetime employment? People like to talk about the fact that tenure protects professors who do controversial research but there is no proof of that. I think it is quite the opposite. If someone knows they don't need to break new ground in order to continue employment they become complacent and lazy. Tenure also allows for little or no turnover in a department; the Chemistry department being a case in point. Professors who are not innovative and/or are poor teachers have no incentive to improve. Unfortunately, it is tenured professors who would need to stand up for a change against tenure. And who is going to deny themselves a position with lifetime employment with little or no accountability?
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Tenure battles tend to be inquisitions of the politically incorrect by closeted leftists like Dean Dobkin. Example: Michael Doran. But that this happens in science goes to show that, more generally, it's the professor who actually influences and gives a damn about students and maybe even public life, and doesn't just write articles and jargon-filled books that are read by five people, who gets picked on. Such a professor threatens the David Dobkins and Jeremy Adelmans and David MacMillans of the Princeton world, who will be forgotten in twenty years. This must account for the terrible treatment received by Andrew Isenberg (HIS), Olga Litvak (also HIS), Michael Doran (NES), and now Stefan. Look at how many thesis advisees Doran had here, and it's no surprise how much an impact he is making in Washington. And Stan Katz lauding "research"--he has never published a real book except for his dissertation through Harvard UP back forty years ago, the Newcastle's New York book!
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Sorensen came before McLendon left (he was the first to go). The half is Rabinowitz.
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sorensen should at least count as a full person!
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Who's the 1/2 person?
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Look, most of you are really missing the point. Warren or Taylor could have told the full story, without any repercussions. They were probably just being polite. Since 2004, the chemistry department has lost six full professors to other institutions (Kahne, Lehmann, McLendon, Walker and Warren, with Pascal leaving shortly). They have had three retirements (Jones, Scoles and Spiro) and one death (Stieffel). They have turned down two assistant professors (Bernhart and Lee), and had one well-funded assistant professor get so frustrated that he quit early to teach at a prep school (Richter-have you ever heard of that happening before?). In that time, chemistry has hired 1.5 people, including MacMillan, who came from Caltech because he married a woman who can’t leave NJ because of child custody. In that time, at least thirteen senior and junior recruits have turned down offers to come to Princeton in chemistry. Most of the faculty who are left are over age sixty-they can’t easily move. Everyone in the chem community knows how bad the situation is. Princeton will have to spend several hundred million dollars to fix it. Eventually. It will cost that much because we will need to offer reasonably good people obscene amounts of money to walk into this mess. Still, this is nothing to Princeton-it is even nothing compared to what chemistry earned for Princeton! Taylor, who was quoted in the article, developed a drug (Alimta) that is FDA approved, and Princeton is going to get more than half a billion dollars from it. Watch and see if the administration names the new building after him, or if they sell the name to someone else as a way to suck up more money. The situation got this bad largely because of real leadership problems, at many levels. The fact that the chair wouldn’t even comment is typical.
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If Bernhard was a woman, he would have been tenured the moment he walked through the door. As a scientist herself, Tilghman should have been fully aware of the fantastic quality and quantity of Stefan's research. Perhaps her crusade to install female scientists clouded her judgement? His incredible teaching should have sealed the deal. Perhaps this is all for the better, though, as the University seems determined to destroy the chemistry department anyway.
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Princeton has been a major research institution for decades, long before Tilghman et al arrived. It is difficult for a major research university to provide an undergraduate experience equal to Swarthmore or Williams, but my education here has been superb. It is perfectly legitimate for a university like Princeton to strive to be among the best in research. One could even argue that with its enormous endowment it has a moral responsibility to produce the research that will change lives beyond those of the lucky elite who get to spend 4 years here. Finally, don't you see that misogynistic gibes like "female junta" utterly undermine your argument?
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The Univ doesn't care about it's students, so why should it give them good teachers? It seems that the administration doesn't listen to input from either the students or faculty when making any significant decisions. The only people who think that it's more likely that an average teacher will improve than that an average researcher will improve are researchers who can't teach! If (s)he can't teach after 5-6 years (s)he'll never be able to teach! The reason the Univ cares more about research than teaching is clear: Research brings grant money but teaching doesn't.
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We used to be Princeton in the Nation's service. Great undergraduate education...best in the world...student/faculty interaction in and out of the classroom. We have now become Princesston - in the service of all nations: with a female junta at the top, (Shirley Tilghman, first non Princetonian President {since before Princeton had actually graduated some alums to serve as President); Nancy Malkiel, another non-Princetonian; Janet Rapelye, completing the leadership tri-fecta of non-Princetonians - almost single handedly destroying the cohesiveness of the undergraduate (and future alumni) body. As the emphasis changes from education of undergraduates to a "big-buck" research institute, will the last of the teaching faculty turn out the lights in the classroom as you are dismissed.
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Achieving stature in research and teaching is not mutually exclusive. It is quite possible however, that the few that are capable can intimidate their voting peers. This leads to the high brow equivalent of ‘voting them off the island’. Stefan's teaching ability and connection to his students is clear from the article and the postings. As for his research, his high Citation Index indicates that his volume of work had little "froth".
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"Every young person who feels called to scholarship has to realize clearly that the task before him has a double aspect. He must qualify not only as a scholar but also as a teacher. And the two do not at all coincide. One can be a preeminent scholar and at the same time an abominably poor teacher." - Max Weber. Not much changes with time in this profession.
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I think the issue here is not so much about teaching vs. research. Princeton is obviously a very prestigious research institution, and it obviously wants to stay that way. I generally think (as stated in the article) that teaching DOES improve over time. I also happen to think that better scholars usually, though not always, know the material well enough to be (or eventually become) great teachers of their subjects. Although the article raises some issues for all departments, I think the REAL problem, briefly touched on, is the CHEMISTRY department itself. I am not a chem major, but having talked with friends who know the department well enough, it seems that the CHEMISTRY department has been languishing for quite some time. Whereas the physics department is able to offer tenure track positions to the faculty, chemistry department professors have been repeatedly denied positions. Moreover, any desire by the chem department to try and expand has been repeatedly rebuffed by the administration. Why, I ask, does Princeton care so little about this department? I understand that the physics department here is one of the best (if not the best) in the world, but that doesn't mean that you should limit the growth of the other science departments at Princeton. I don't know whether the decisions have been intentionally driven by the administration or the department (I have personally heard that MacMillan wants to bring in his OWN people), but whoever is responsible for this needs to seriously rethink what they're doing.
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That's how teaching is at EVERY college. It's student, professor, and department specific. Maybe you're a bad student and are too sleepy in class to get anything out from a good teacher anyways?
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A technically competent and imaginative professor with, very importantly, a human touch. All the best to you, Professor Bernhard!
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This is an excellent piece- hard-hitting and well-researched. This part was particularly illuminating: "Even if a review did happen, Katz said he doubts that the administration would seek faculty input. 'It’s not [the University’s] style to ask the faculty to think hard about serious questions of process,' Katz said. 'I think we’ll never be asked about tenure.'" It's a shame the administration has the arrogance to consider neither student nor faculty input in its decision-making, instead opting to run this place like a soulless, tax-exempt hedge fund.
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To everybody: thank you all for your support. To the responsible party: my gratitude for delivering us from NJ, the armpit of the US. To my boss: please don't take a job at Rutgers.
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Hey, a good Prince article, finally. There are so many ways to take this discussion. Should faculty be more involved in discussion about the tenure process, or is the policy the administration uses toward students (ignoring the people who are most affected by a decision) scalable to faculty too? How important should teaching be at a university that sells itself as undergraduate-focused? What on earth is going on with the Chemistry department here (I've heard of the problems too), and what needs to be done to fix it?
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wow. excellent article.
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I think it probably depends on department. I'm an '08 as well, and I've had generally superb teaching in my humanities department. On another note, the article was terrific. I would be interested to see the tenure rates at HYP compared. My sense--could be wrong--is that Princeton does a slightly better job than its top peers at tenuring junior faculty, although it's clear from this article that there are plenty of problems in Princeton's process.
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A well-written piece proving what I've thought for awhile - the University does not care in the least bit about the learning experiences of its undergrad students. Princeton is not a teaching institution. In my four years here, I have only had one good teacher who was a tenured professor. If you want to learn here as an undergrad, you have to be good at teaching yourself. It's a sad state of affairs, and something that would have swayed my initial college decision had I known the truth and not the white-washed college tour version of it. A suggestion to those upset about tenure decisions: petition. It has half-worked in the past (professors not necessarily receiving tenure, but being allowed to stay on longer than they're supposed to be able to without tenure) and it doesn't hurt to try.
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Great article, Mr. Westmoreland.
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This is the first time in my four-year memory of the Daily Prince that a good, even possibly great, story has come out. It's investigative and it's a topic of interest to the entire community. Kudos to Westmoreland.
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For once, an article that does the journalistic profession some good has appeared in the Prince. Kudos.
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Whether he did or not, MacMillan remains a D-bag. Good luck chem department as everybody leaves. Have fun in the empty new building. 50 MacMillan grad students (and cryoprobes) does not a department make... Bernhard is going to end up somewhere where the university, not just his department, gives him the respect he deserves.
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wow an actual well-researched investigative piece. well done. westmoreland should be editor.
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first legitimately good article in several months!
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fix the typos, but otherwise really good article
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