Notes on Nunokawa

Reached by phone at his childhood home in Hawaii, Nunokawa — who has been at the University for more than two decades — was filled with excitement as he began to talk about the community he has overseen for the last two years.

“It’s a perfect job,” he said. “It’s like I have 500 kids with whom I get to have a lot of deep fun: We have a great time while learning from each other and helping each other grow socially, intellectually and in just every way possible.”

From the dining hall to the lecture hall, Nunokawa has been characterized by his frenetic enthusiasm.

Watch Nunokawa for even a few minutes in his natural element — the Rocky dining hall — and his parental instincts become apparent. Bouncing from table to table, the master seems to know the name of each and every one of his students. He moves seamlessly between conversations, chatting with a sophomore about her vacation before quickly yelling a lively “Hello!” to a freshman he spots from across the room.

“I try to be as watchful as I can for the best parts of the people I encounter, and I try to bring those things out,” Nunokawa said. “What’s been so fun for me is that those qualities can be just about anything — candor, kindness, humor, generosity. But that’s my job: to coax out those traits.”

Arriving at the University in 1988 as an expert in 19th-century British literature, Nunokawa expected little more than a short stay. “In graduate school, I was trained to think about Princeton in a certain way as a result of its [notoriously difficult] tenure process,” he said. “I honestly didn’t think this would become a permanent position.”

But he did stay, and in early 2007 Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel asked him to replace English professor Maria DiBattista as Rocky Master.

Despite his involvement with the residential college system as a faculty fellow, Nunokawa said he has never desired an administrative position.

“I thought about it as much as I thought about buying a bus or something,” he told The Daily Princetonian in February 2007. “I felt like there are parts of it that I’d be very good at, and there are parts that I’d be very terrible at.”

The Yale graduate said he was hesitant about taking the job because he feared it would take time away from teaching.

“My main purpose is teaching and writing,” he said. “That was the one thing that gave me pause. No matter how you put it, it means less time in the classroom.”

But after some persuasion from Malkiel, Nunokawa said he came to see his role as interim master as “a different way of teaching.”

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In the classroom, Nunokawa’s courses on 19th-century fiction consistently fill up, and he has earned a reputation as an engaging and idiosyncratic lecturer.

Now, 20 years after his arrival, Nunokawa’s warmth, good humor and volume have made him a veritable Princeton institution. “Jeff is full of positive energy, and it’s not in an annoying way,” Rocky resident Stephany Xu ’12 said. “It’s felt so strongly that it’s really just infectious. Every time he’s around, he puts people in a good mood and makes the atmosphere lighter and more fun.”

An educator at heart, Nunokawa said he sees his position as master as a fitting next step in his career. “As a master, just as a professor, my sturdiest and best self is most alive. Social affection and intellectual excitement can come together in a way that is exciting and stimulating in a way that little else is.”