Miles GS '99 to leave HIS 380

Each semester, students eagerly search for courses that will make them want to open their minds, not their cell phones. Paul Miles GS ’99, a history professor who will be offering the popular course HIS 380: The United States and World Affairs for the last time this semester, succeeds where many fail.

“[E]very single person I asked about what to take — history major or not — recommended HIS 380,” Lindsay Levinson ’10 said in an e-mail. “I’m not a history person, but if that many people said it was that good, I figured I couldn’t go wrong,” she explained.

Undergraduates have flocked to the last Miles-led HIS 380, resulting in the near impossibility of enrolling in the course this semester. HIS 380 will be offered again during the 2009-10 school year, Miles said, and will be taught by Bradley Simpson, an assistant professor of history from the University of Maryland.

“[T]he class filled up within the first 5 [minutes] that SCORE opened,” Veronica Demtchouk ’10 said in an e-mail. “[I]t was the first class I added to my schedule,” she added.

The history department capped the course at 220 students this semester due to a shortage of preceptors, Miles said. Forty-five students who were not admitted into the course have decided to remain on the waitlist.

As a testament to his popularity, Miles received Princeton’s 2004 Phi Beta Kappa award for excellence in teaching.

Many students cite Miles’ great energy and offbeat sense of humor as some of the main attractions of the course.

In one lecture about the Spanish-American War, Miles brought out a daiquiri, toasted the class and then proceeded to give a history of the alcoholic beverage, history major and senior class president Tom Haine ’08 said.

Miles’ teaching style is a mix of “formal and collegial,” said Alec Dun, a current lecturer and a former HIS 380 preceptor. Miles uses quirky gestures, such as eyebrow raising and winking, to reinforce his points, he explained, calling Miles a “Southern gentleman.”

Miles brings a combination of rigorous academic study and military experience to his teaching career. He was in the U.S. Army for 30 years and served two tours of duty in Vietnam, where he was an aide de camp to then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. William Westmoreland.

Miles then received his bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy and earned his master’s degree in modern history at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. From 1979 to 1990, he taught at West Point, and he retired in 1990 as a colonel in the Army.

Miles then returned to Princeton, where he had begun pursuing a doctorate in history in 1977. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1999, Miles was appointed as a history lecturer.

Miles’ life experiences have been advantageous in the classroom, said Jacob Gutwillig ’09, one of the professor’s junior paper advisees.

“The breadth and depth of Professor Miles’ knowledge of history is incredible — in some cases, like Vietnam, he was there,” Gutwillig said. “He always seems to have some anecdote or piece of information that makes a topic infinitely more interesting,” he explained.

“What makes him such a great teacher and so popular among the students isn’t just that he knows so much, but that he is better than anyone at presenting the material in an interesting and meaningful way,” Gutwillig said.

Miles stays in touch with alumni of HIS 380, he said, adding that several of these Princeton graduates often e-mail him articles about things that they learned in his class.

Though Miles appreciates the positive student response to HIS 380, he is looking forward to diversifying his course offerings before his retirement, he said.

In the meantime, Miles plans to return to courses that he has taught in the past, he said. These courses include a Freshman Seminar on World War II, HIS 411: War and Society, HIS 478: The United States and the Vietnam Wars, and a Junior Seminar on the Cold War.