Tilghman: Capital campaign to begin in fall

The University will launch a capital campaign this fall, President Tilghman said yesterday at the monthly meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC).

"There are days when it gives the provost a headache thinking about what to do," Tilghman said, referring to projects in the pipeline such as the four-year residential colleges and the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. "It is a big agenda for us. It will require new resources."

"We are still in the planning stages [of the capital campaign]," Tilghman said. "We will need to be out there finding new resources." The capital campaign will augment the University's $13 billion endowment.

Though Tilghman did not specify plans for the campaign, if it follows the trend of recent campaigns by major research universities, it will aim to raise billions of dollars. Stanford, Columbia and Cornell are all in the midst of campaigns intended to raise at least $4 billion each.

The Daily Princetonian first reported on the University's plans for a capital campaign in November 2005, when University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee '69 confirmed that the University was in the planning stages of the campaign. "We have been looking at all these things for some time now," he said, noting that conversations began shortly after Tilghman took office in 2001.

Tilghman addressed the CPUC in a meeting billed as a "town hall" discussion about the future of the University. She discussed what the University does well and where she thinks it needs improvement.

Education and scholarship "[have] been the hallmark of what Princeton is," she said. "The notion that we engage in scholarly pursuits — this is something we must preserve at all costs. We are a community of people devoted to the mind."

As she has in previous discussions about Princeton's future, Tilghman stressed the importance of avoiding stagnation and actively pursuing progress. "Universities that stand still fall behind," she said.

Tilghman also emphasized the need to enrich student life in the residential colleges and mentioned progress made in the buildup of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.

"[The Center] is making the arts central to the mission of Princeton University," Tilghman said. "It will strengthen the quality of the student body and have an impact on how Princeton thinks about itself."

"The Wawa is not going away. It is eternal," she added, to quell concerns that the store will be shut down when the arts center is constructed in that area.

In the academic sector, the Institute for Neuroscience will soon have a new facility south of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics as part of the science "neighborhood" envisioned by Tilghman. Professors David Tank and Jonathan Cohen lead the institute, which was created a year and a half ago.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"If I could start my academic career again today, I'd go into neuroscience," Tilghman said.

The administration has also upgraded the African-American Studies program to the status of a center and expanded its mission to include research by professors. The center will move into a renovated Stanhope Hall in the fall.

"Understanding race in America is as essential to being cosmopolitan as understanding the culture in Nanking or Shanghai," she said.

Tilghman also noted that the University hopes to expand its global presence. "The Board of Trustees in its January meeting [pondered] how to place Princeton in this new global community. What is the role we want to play in this world where living and traveling to cultures different from our own is becoming the norm?" she said.

"Are there partnerships that the University should be forging with other parts of the world? And if so, what sort of partnerships should these be?" she added, noting that history professor Jeremy Adelman and Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 have already begun visiting foreign universities.

After laying out her vision for the University, Tilghman opened the floor to questions from the few dozen audience members.

One attendee asked about the evolution of the concept of academic neighborhoods.

Tilghman said these neighborhoods have developed naturally on campus without specific planning. She explained that the dormitories have created an academic "wedge" on campus, from Rockefeller and Mathey Colleges by Nassau Street down to Bloomberg Hall.

"There are many great advantages [to neighborhoods], but the downside is that engineering wants to increasingly have connections to the natural sciences and to the social sciences, particularly the Woodrow Wilson School," Tilghman said.