Long before coming to Princeton, Dickerson began her career as a middle school English teacher. “I hated it,” she said. “The students weren’t ready to learn.”
So Dickerson returned to the classroom as a student, obtaining her master’s degree in counseling and psychology, which would set her on a path toward university administration.
“I just felt like it was my calling, not only to help students through individual counseling, but also to serve as an institutional change agent,” she explained.
Over the last decade, Dickerson has played a role in dozens of issues affecting students, with what President Shirley Tilghman described as “one of the most diverse portfolios of all the administrators in the University.”
In addition to overseeing the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, the Department of Athletics, University Health Services, the Office of Religious Life and the Pace Center, Dickerson also serves as the University’s liaison to the ROTC program and has co-chaired both the Diversity Working Group and the Task Force on Health and Well-Being. Her vision helped form the four-year residential college system and the LGBT Center, and the openings of Frist Campus Center, Campus Club and the Fields Center fell under her purview.
While juggling these and countless other responsibilities, Dickerson has focused on ensuring that all students could enjoy the social experience on campus, whether that meant offering financial aid policies for eating club membership and pre-orientation trips or building social spaces that all students could share. Students and colleagues praised Dickerson for a capacity to judge without bias, her genuine investment in student interest and the ability to address issues with openness and compassion.
Dickerson arrived on campus as the University’s first vice president for campus life, after nine years as Duke’s vice president for student affairs. Before working at Duke, Dickerson served for 15 years as dean of the college at Swarthmore. She hoped to draw on her previous experience while informing her approach with a better understanding of what makes Princeton unique. “I wanted to learn about the Princeton culture,” she explained. “I took some time to discover what the issues were.”
In these discussions with students and alumni, Dickerson was often told that they had wonderful academic experiences but that “there were real questions about how included they felt on the social side of campus life.”
Along with improving equitable access, Dickerson has concentrated on supporting students’ health and well-being, directing financial resources to a variety of student activities and efforts to foster diversity on campus.
Dickerson credited many of the University’s improvements to the efforts of others.
“We were fortunate,” Dickerson said of the era in which she worked. “We had a number of wonderful gifts from alumni that have given us discretionary funds that can be used to support student programs and activities.” She cited spaces such as Campus Club, the LGBT Center, the Pace Center and Stephens Fitness Center as examples of spaces that have been created or renovated since her arrival on campus.
In recent years, however, less funding has been available for major projects. “We are in a time of a bit of challenge as far as funding is concerned,” Dickerson said. But, she added, “Students taught me long ago: The best things in life don’t all cost money.”
“It’s just a matter of generating energy and interest and activity on the part of students to create more vibrant social activities,” she said.
But many of her colleagues attributed the success of student-life initiatives to Dickerson’s personal leadership, lauding her vision, approachability and unbiased perspective.
In 2007, Dickerson proposed the combination of Community House, the Student Volunteers Council and the Pace Center “to work as a unified organization that would serve as a national model that empowers students and others to be active, informed and committed leaders,” Kiki Jamieson, director of the Pace Center, said in an e-mail.
“The far-sightedness of that vision is obvious today, with staff and students working together as a team in a center that is demonstrably stronger than the sum of its parts,” she added.
Other administrators working under Dickerson praised a variety of other accomplishments, from the creation of the LGBT Center to the expansion of mental health services.
As much as they noted Dickerson’s instrumental leadership, however, those who worked with her emphasized her down-to-earth nature and approachability.
“When you’re with her, you know that you’re conversing with a recognized national leader in the field of student affairs,” John Kolligian, director of University Health Services, said in an e-mail. “Yet ... you’ll have her full attention, and before you know it, it’s just a little easier to believe that a challenge or a pressing problem will be overcome.”
“You always know if you’re a student that if you go to Janet’s office, there will be somebody there with a caring heart and with a capacity to listen,” Director of Athletics Gary Walters ’67 noted.
John Stark, director of ROTC, described Dickerson in an e-mail as a “great mentor” and an “advocate for civility and fairness with a knack for listening.”
The praise for Dickerson doesn’t mean, however, that there has never been dissatisfaction.
“In the course of her time it is almost inevitable that there will be times when she and groups of students will have disagreements,” Tilghman said. “But I think that the key issue is how she went about resolving those differences, and everything I have seen suggests that she always approached the differences with a lot of respect, a lot of willingness to listen to what students had to say, and a very clear way of talking about her own perspective.”
For some, Dickerson’s retirement has been difficult to come to terms with.
“I’ve been in a bit of denial about her leaving,” said Executive Vice President Mark Burstein, Dickerson’s immediate superior.
“When the USG Executive Committee was informed of [Dickerson’s] inevitable retirement, you might have thought someone had just died,” former USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 said in an e-mail.
“Among students, she is known for being down-to-earth, practical, honest and compassionate — the cool aunt that you always wish you had,” he explained. “You leave her office feeling like you were heard and, more importantly, that what you said — no matter how seemingly inconsequential to some — mattered.”
An area that has always been important to Dickerson has been addressing the issues that confront minority students.
“One’s minority status is a core part of our individual identity, but at the same time, we take on a Princeton identity, which puts us in a rather elite category,” she said. “What I hope students feel is that they are not limited in their abilities to participate in activities ... because of their status as minorities.”
Dickerson noted that the issues facing minorities are part of a larger University culture that emphasizes selectivity.
“It’s kind of ironic that Princeton as a whole is a very exclusive environment, but we define ourselves by our small and exclusive sub-communities,” Dickerson said. “It is the nature of Princeton to celebrate exclusivity.”
While noting that challenges for minorities remain, Dickerson said that she hopes students “can feel comfortable talking about what those challenges are and confronting any barriers that still exist and helping to take those walls down.”
Many of the issues on Dickerson’s mind will confront her successor, Cynthia Cherrey, currently the vice president for student affairs at Tulane Univeristy.
“I have great confidence in her ability to do the same thing I did, which is to come in, listen and take initial impressions, and to work with students of this generation as well as those that follow you,” Dickerson said. She added that she expects Cherrey will address issues pertaining to alcohol, minority students and representing student interests, as well as new questions that continue to arise.
Issues related to alcohol use were also a top concern at the beginning of Dickerson’s term. “The president and others were very clear that they wanted us to address issues of alcohol and high-risk drinking,” Dickerson explained. “It took us a while to get the right model for an on-going committee, but now the Alcohol Coalition Committee has become an embedded part of our vice president for campus life.”
Another issue for Cherrey to confront will be the role of Greek organizations on campus. “While I am part of the University administrative voice that says they’re not for our campus, I think that’s an issue that the new vice president will have a chance to consider,” Dickerson said.
Dickerson will continue living in Princeton and plans to attend activities such as afternoon lectures, but she said she will miss her daily interactions with students.
“I graduated from high school almost 50 years ago, so I’ve been around a long time,” she said. “But you, and your generation, and each of the generations before you have kept me attuned to what students are thinking about and interested in.”
Both sides will feel the loss.
“For lack of better words,” Diemand-Yauman said, “she is one of the most badass administrators in Nassau Hall. She will be sorely missed.”
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