Former White House Chief of Staff Bolten '76 will continue to teach at U.

A few weeks ago, however, Wilson School Dean Christina Paxson invited Bolten to return next year to teach WWS 481: Charting the Nation’s Fiscal Future for the second time. Bolten served as White House chief of staff under President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009 and as director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2003 to 2006.

Bolten said the invitation caught him by surprise. “I decided on the spot that I’d like to come back,” said Bolten, who also taught two graduate-level policy courses in the Wilson School this semester. “Candidly, I hadn’t expected it, because last year we were clear on both sides that this would be a one-year experience — but it’s a gift to be able to continue it into the next school year.”

Of the teaching experience, Bolten said, “It has been slightly harder, substantially more time-consuming and much more enjoyable than I expected.”

Being able to meet and talk with current government officials was a prime benefit of taking a course with someone with experience in public service, many of his former students said.

Bolten took his WWS 481 students on a field trip to Washington, D.C., to visit Capitol Hill and the OMB, where they met Rep. Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, Sen. Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, and OMB Director Peter Orszag ’91, all of whom are deeply involved with the federal budget.

David Christie ’10 said that the most impressive part of the trip was hearing politicians and government officials remark on Bolten’s budgetary acumen.

“Every room we walked into, the first word that people said to us was, ‘I wish I were taking this class with Josh Bolten, because he knows more about this than any of us,’ ” Christie said. “That was universal from Democrats and Republicans.”

Christie is also a member of The Daily Princetonian editorial board.

From Bolten’s perspective, watching his students engage with those currently working to resolve relevant national issues was one of the most rewarding parts of teaching.

“They were operating at a level of such sophistication and alertness that it made me proud to be with them,” he said.

Bolten said that this year was also a learning experience for him. “It let me get some perspective [and] absorb current wisdom,” he explained. “That’s as good a way of transitioning out of government service as you can expect.”

Bolten’s undergraduate students raved about his course. Of his 13 students, 10 submitted course evaluations on SCORE. All 10 said the overall quality of the course was “excellent.”

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“Josh Bolten is a dynamite teacher and a class act,” David Fort ’10 said in an e-mail. “Whatever your politics, he is accessible, attentive and eminently reasonable. Those can be rare attributes for professors.”

“It was one of the best classes I’ve taken at Princeton,” Will Wagner ’10 said, explaining that the course was enriched by personal experiences Bolten shared with the class, including stories of attending Cabinet meetings with Bush.

Bolten also took on a mentor role for Wagner and other students by frequently meeting with them to discuss working in public service as well as course material, Wagner said.

Christie echoed Wagner, saying, “It was certainly one of the best classes I’ve taken at Princeton, and it was a really, really special experience to be in his class.”

He added that Bolten’s engagement with students was particularly impressive. During the trip to Washington, which overlapped with the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, Bolten invited his students to join him at his sister’s house for a celebration.

“You hear people say that he’s really open,” Christie said. “It’s to a degree that I haven’t experienced with another professor during my four years here.”

Nolan McCarty, associate dean of the Wilson School, said that Bolten quickly made the transition from a government career to teaching because he has been so engaged with his students.

“He’s fit in really well here, partly because he’s a very amiable, open-minded person,” McCarty said. “He clearly has his own point of view, but he’s been very constructive in his engagement with students and people who disagree with him. I would say he’s one of the more professorial out of the many distinguished people we’ve brought in.”

But Bolten said the transition “didn’t come naturally” and that it was “still challenging.”

“I’m used to having one job where you get up really early every morning,” he explained. “I’m used to that kind of schedule.”

McCarty added that he once ran into Bolten as he was on his way to an undergraduate dormitory to play ping-pong. “It talks to his commitment,” he said. Bolten has engaged with the larger student body as well, participating in dinner discussions at eating clubs and delivering talks on campus.

The 15 students who have signed up for WWS 481 all did so within the first few minutes after juniors could begin course selection for the fall semester on Monday, Kara McKee ’11 said.

McKee said she was surprised when she found out that she had enrolled in the class because by 7:34 a.m. — four minutes after SCORE opened — all of the spots were taken.

She said that she hopes to write her senior thesis on the national debt and looks forward to getting a practical and realistic perspective on the issue.

“One thing that’s been really surprising to me as I have studied more economics [is that] you don’t get taught that debt is a problem,” she said. “There’s kind of an accepted view that debt is good, that the government can spend beyond its means, and that’s something that I’m really beginning to question.”

Mohit Agrawal ’11, a mathematics major pursuing certificates in applied and computational mathematics and applications of computing, said he signed up for WWS 481 to take advantage of the University’s resources and better prepare himself to pursue a Ph.D. in economics.

“Once you’re in the Orange Bubble, it’s like a black box,” he said. “You go in and four years later, you come out. If I have to explain myself — why I chose Princeton — I want to be able to say that I’ve taken courses with people who either have experience in the field or are at the top of their field.”

Agrawal said he took a graduate-level course on education policy in the past with professor Gordon MacInnes GS ’65, who is a former state legislator and former assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education.

“If Josh Bolten’s course is anything like that, I would be extremely excited,” Agrawal said. “His war stories are actually about wars.”

Though he has not yet decided on plans after teaching, Bolten said that he is considering full-time work in consulting or another field, or a “portfolio job” that includes responsibilities like corporate or advisory board memberships.

Bolten is a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and is on the board of directors of the ONE campaign to combat AIDS and global poverty. In March, he was appointed to the board of directors of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

But, Bolten said, he does not anticipate returning to a position in government.

“It would be hard to imagine that I could have any comparable experience in government,” he said. “I’ve had my time.”