Integrating the Wilson School

Paxson’s office is spotless. Papers are stacked neatly on an organized desk next to a handful of fliers promoting a host of public policy programs and initiatives. Many of these programs were started by Paxson’s predecessor, Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, who left the University in January to become director of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff.

From behind her desk, Paxson — a former economics department chair and the founding director of the University’s Center for Health and Wellbeing — speaks cautiously about her vision for the Wilson School, a vision that involves examining the school’s admission policy for undergraduate majors, building a tighter community in one of the University’s largest departments and restructuring its finances.

In an interview last week with The Daily Princetonian, Paxson said she could “imagine moving the school to a structure in which we could rely on self-selection.” Still, she expressed some hesitation about pursuing the change.

“I think the self-selection might land you with a lot of students who think they know what they’re getting into, but when they actually get in, they find out it’s not really right for them,” she explained. “Given the current structure of the Woodrow Wilson School’s undergraduate program, the selectivity is necessary.”

Paxson declined to discuss what the elimination of the application process for the Wilson School would entail. “[It’s] not because I don’t want to, but just because it’s something that would require a lot of very careful thought with a lot of people,” she said. “Anything I say would just be pure speculation.”

She added, “When you have a major that uses self-selection, there are usually enough prerequisites so that students get a good sense of what they’re getting into before they decide to become a major. And that isn’t the case for the Woodrow Wilson School: There are no prerequisites.”

Though Paxson said she did not see the school becoming non-selective in the immediate future, she stressed the possibility for non-majors to take advantage of Wilson School resources. “There are some things we have been doing to engage students who are not majors,” she said, noting the Program in Global Health and Health Policy and the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative.

Paxson explained that she would like to “make the school’s resources accessible to students from other majors.” At the same time, though, one of Paxson’s primary goals during her tenure is to build a stronger sense of cohesion in a department with nearly 200 undergraduates.

The real challenge will be “taking the school, which has grown so much in the last 10 years … and really working to shape this into a very integrated community,” Paxson said.

To this end, she has already implemented a change in the Wilson School’s administration. The new faculty council serves as an executive committee, advising Paxson and representing the many diverse constituents of the Wilson School.

“Most departments, when they get to [the size of the Wilson School], would split into sub-departments,” Paxson said. She added that she thinks the faculty council will help to maintain the school’s community, which would be broken if the school split. “Recently there’s been an upsurge in interest in public service,” she said, noting that she thought it would be possible “to have a school that has more students than we currently have … but not too many more.”

The council will also allow members of the faculty to play a greater role in some key decisions within the school, associate Wilson School dean Nolan McCarty said, adding that in the past, “many of the important decisions were relegated to the dean, and the faculty played a lesser role.”

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Wilson School professor Marta Tienda noted that the council “will allow the school to be more efficient,” and that, with the broad range of disciplines now represented in the school, it is important to make sure that all are represented.

Slaughter was known for improving the international policy side of the Wilson School as well as for expanding the range of subjects represented by Wilson School studies.

“My predecessor spent a lot of time building our group in international relations and international security,” Paxson said, adding that she thought there was currently a good balance of domestic and international policy experts in the school.

Paxson is expected to focus much of her efforts on reorganizing finances within the Wilson School. Financial problems brought on by the Robertson litigation were “exacerbated by the University budget crisis,” Wilson School professor Stan Katz said. “[Paxson] has to deal with a new financial reality, which is not easy at all.”

McCarty echoed that sentiment, noting that Paxson’s greatest challenge will be dealing with the “fallout of the financial crisis, both in terms of endowment losses as well as the cost of settling the lawsuit with the Robertson family.”

In December 2008, the University and members of the Robertson family agreed to settle the largest donor-intent lawsuit in U.S. history. Under the terms of the agreement, the Robertson Foundation was dissolved and its assets transferred to the University to create an endowed fund to support the Wilson School’s graduate program.

But Paxson said she doesn’t think the outcome of the Robertson case or the economic downturn will harm the school in the long term. “I’m not overly concerned [about the school’s finances],” she said. “It’s pretty clear what we have to do … but it’s going to take some work.”

She added that she wants to work on expanding certain new areas of the school, including health initiatives and environmental programs, and improving interdisciplinary and interdepartmental initiatives.

“I would like to be remembered as someone who paid a lot of attention to the quality of our educational programs, who was supportive of innovative research on policy issues and who helped build a school where faculty, staff and students feel like they have a sense of ownership and are engaged in the school itself,” Paxson said. “In 10 years … I would like to see a school that is much more integrated with the rest of the University.”