As new dean, former bulldog learns to roar

Princeton's new assistant dean of the college may have come from a deanship at Yale, but Peter Quimby is not interested in making enemies. Who will he root for at the Princeton-Yale football game? "We'll have to wait and see, won't we?" he said. "I have to get used to all this orange and black."

Quimby, who joined the Princeton faculty Aug. 1, has more to acclimate to than the school colors. "I'll have to go through an entire academic year before I know what to expect," he said. "Right now, my main priority is to establish ties with the faculty."

Quimby served as the dean of one of Yale's residential colleges from 2001 through 2005, where he worked closely with students. But at Princeton he will work primarily with the faculty to coordinate the undergraduate curriculum.

"I was really drawn to the opportunity to have an impact on the undergraduate education more broadly than I can have as the dean of a residential college," Quimby said. "It's like moving from microeconomics to macroeconomics."

He reflected with some regret on losing his formerly frequent interactions with students.

"I loved the intensity of the interaction that I had with undergraduates at Yale," he said. "It was the right move, one that I'm glad I made, but there are parts of that experience that I will miss."

At Yale, Quimby was influential in establishing the University's Freshman Seminar Program, now in its second year. Here, he will work with English professor John Fleming to coordinate Princeton's Freshman Seminar Program.

"Running an established program of 70 courses is very different," Quimby said. "My goal here, once I've gotten a handle on the process, is to see if this established program can be run more efficiently to offer enough seminars to meet student demands."

For now, Quimby is focusing on making a smooth transition with the help of former Assistant Dean of the College Hank Dobin.

"There is a steep learning curve. The Dean of the College Office is a complicated one and involves working closely with a lot of other departments," Quimby said. "[Dobin] has been very helpful in working to make sure we have continuity in the midst of this change."

Dobin, who had been associate dean since 1996, left Princeton earlier this year to become Dean of the College at Washington and Lee University.

As associate dean of the college, Quimby will serve as the secretary of the Faculty Committee on the Course of Study, coordinate the Freshman Seminar Program, academically advise independent concentrators, direct the continuing education program and work with the Pace Center for Community Service on the Community-Based Learning Initiative.

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In addition to serving as the Dean of Davenport College at Yale, Quimby was secretary of the Yale College Committee on Teaching and Learning. He earned a B.A. in government and Russian from Bowdoin College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a teacher and administrator from 1998 to 2001.