Since 2004, West College has inundated freshmen and sophomores with materials encouraging them to join smaller departments.
With information sessions at Career Services and the residential colleges, increased attention to course design and the distribution of pamphlets describing successful alumni from small departments, administrators have enlarged some departments by as much as 60 percent.
The University, though, has also put its money where its mouth is. In a move that's garnered some criticism, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel has implemented an initiative to fund innovative courses — but only in small departments.
The Redistribution Initiative, part of the 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, is now in its third year. Meant to further develop courses in smaller departments, it allows any department except the four largest — economics, the Wilson School, politics and history — to submit proposals for new curricula.
"As attractive and compelling as the largest departments may be, concentrating a very large number of students in a very small group of departments is not a sensible use of institutional resources, and it will become more problematic as the student body grows," Malkiel and Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin wrote in a memo to the faculty last month.
At least one large department chair, however, has argued that the extra funding puts students in the top four departments at a disadvantage.
Three-phase plan
The funds for the initiative come from the University's 250th Anniversary Campaign, which raised $1.14 billion for academics and campus life 10 years ago.
The money was used in three phases. In the first, the administration bolstered courses that fulfilled distribution requirements and integrated technology into teaching.
The second phase, which began in 2000-01, concentrated on creating or improving foundation courses for sophomores and juniors, such as EEB's semester in Panama and the German department's intensive summer session in Munich. The money also helped create several 200-level English courses and MOL 101.
The third phase — the Redistribution Initiative — started in the 2004-05 academic year.
Focusing on smaller departments
Last month, Malkiel and Dobkin wrote a memo urging faculty members to submit ideas for programs and courses that would encourage students to enter their departments.
"Proposals to draw additional concentrators into less-heavily-enrolled departments will be the sole focus of the 250th Anniversary Fund for the foreseeable future," the memo states.
"We know already that this program works!" the memo continues in bold font. "Departments that have secured funding in the last two competitions are attracting more concentrators than they have in previous years, and the curricular initiatives they have undertaken have undoubtedly contributed to their success."
Malkiel and Dobkin encouraged faculty to be creative in their plans. Funding is available to improve basic courses, create new foundation courses, generate ways for students to start majors late and develop summer programs and freshman seminars.
Another bolded statement in the memo informed the faculty that the four largest departments were not eligible to apply, since the goal of the funding is to expand the smaller departments.
The concentration of students in a few large departments "runs counter to the value we place on intellectual community, to the access we seek to provide for students to professorial faculty as independent work advisers, and to the encouragement of healthy diversity in the intellectual interests and educational experiences of Princeton undergraduates," the memo said.
"We want to enable more students to follow their intellectual passions — to study what they love, not what they see other students studying, not what they think will be the safest, most practical choice to further their future pursuits."
Last year, the Spanish and Portuguese department used some of the funds to create a series of 200-level courses. The courses, which will be introduced next semester, are meant to bolster the cultural portion of the curriculum and link introductory language courses with 300-level courses.
"Obviously, we cannot assess their impact yet, but we are extremely confident that it will increase the number of our concentrators," Angel Loureiro, chair of the Spanish and Portuguese department, said in an email.
A 'disadvantage for larger departments
At least one large department chair, however, questioned the funding exclusion. "I suspect that as a general statement, the larger departments have the bigger class sizes and bigger precept sizes," economics department chair Bo Honore said in an email. "If that is true, then the students in the larger departments are put at a disadvantage relative to students in the smaller departments. As a general statement it therefore seems that we should apply additional teaching resources to the larger departments."
"Whether those resources come from the 250th [fund] or from other sources does not matter," he added.
The chairs of the other three largest departments could not be reached for comment.
Chairs of smaller departments, on the other hand, argued that it is important to encourage students to explore new topics.
"I don't think there is anything unfair about excluding the big departments from those funds," David Howell, chair of the East Asian Studies department, said in an email. "There are a number of other sources of support for curricular development, so colleagues in the big departments can look elsewhere for funding."
Philosophy department chair Daniel Garber said the redistribution could benefit the large departments as well. "From talking with friends in the larger departments, they feel overwhelmed with the number of junior papers and senior theses that they have to supervise, and I think that they would greatly appreciate efforts to even things out a bit. I also think that it benefits undergraduates," he said in an email.
"I suspect that many [students] simply fall into a rut, and choose the concentration of least resistance," Garber added. "This program may help make them aware of the wide range of intellectual riches available to them at Princeton."
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