The Wilson School has received a gift from Beth Heller '78, a graduate of the school, and her husband William Heller, intended to fund task forces and policy conferences concerned with natural resources and international relations.
These subjects are of particular interest for Heller who, along with her husband, works in renewable energy and has spent much of her life traveling and living abroad. The income from one of the wind farms partially owned by her family will provide the money for this donation.
"I'm aware that many students at the Woodrow Wilson School currently do study abroad, and I think it's critically important that Princeton [continues] to provide this kind of global exposure," Heller said in an interview.
"Especially now," she said, "when current international policy faces many challenges in the forms of energy and natural resources, we want to see Princeton students learn about these problems, think about them and attempt to come up with their own solutions."
Heller said policy conferences, which were discontinued in 1997, were a "highlight" of her undergraduate experience, and she is excited to be supporting their return.
Last year, Wilson School faculty voted to reinstate policy conferences on an experimental basis. The Heller donation makes the conferences a permanent part of the school's undergraduate curriculum.
Policy conferences will contain more students — about 15 to 20 per conference — than traditional undergraduate task forces and may be team-taught, by both a faculty member and a practitioner from the relevant field, undergraduate program chair Stan Katz said.
Since students who have participated in undergraduate task forces have experience working in small groups, Katz said, the faculty hopes that the conferences will provide a slightly different educational opportunity, whereby students can explore "broader subjects in larger groups."
"The dynamics are very different in the larger setting," Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 wrote in an email. "Students have to learn to negotiate with one another in smaller groups and then to come together to agree on a set of policy recommendations."
"This gift strengthens our current task force program, which is one of the center-pieces of the [Wilson School]," she added.
The idea for this donation emerged last year, when Heller was invited by the University to help organize the Wilson School's 75th anniversary event in London, where she currently resides. Subsequent conversations with Slaughter on the current direction of the school left her convinced that it was a fitting time to make a contribution.
"We wanted to support Anne-Marie's efforts to rebuild projects and the curriculum at [The Wilson School], by going back to the basics of what the school did well and improving on those foundations," Heller explained.
"My husband and I sometimes jokingly say we'll show up to one of the conferences and demand that the students present their findings to us," she added. "I've found that giving back to Princeton is one more exciting way to stay connected with the school."
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