The Wilson School review committee will publish the findings of its formal investigation sometime after April 16, according to committee co-chair, spokesman and Wilson School associate dean Nolan McCarty. A confidential draft of the committee’s findings recently circulated among University administrators and the Wilson School’s elected undergraduate student advisory council, which met with the committee during the process.
Started last semester and completed around March, the review evaluated the school’s curriculum structure, admission policy and relationship with the rest of the University departments, McCarty said. In addition to consulting with administrators and Wilson School professors, the committee conducted a survey among 243 Wilson School alumni from the classes of 2006-10.
“Overall, people were enthusiastic about their Wilson School experience,” McCarty said. “Yet they identified things that the school could do better [that] the faculty felt were areas of concern for several years.”
Although he could not disclose the specific recommendations of the report before its release, McCarty noted that the review committee did reexamine the Wilson School’s current selective admission policy. The Wilson School is the only selective concentration at the University.
“Obviously we spent a lot of time evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of the admissions policy,” McCarty said. “There are strong feelings on both sides of the issue.”
McCarty also said that one of the key concerns was preparedness for the senior thesis.
“We think of the senior thesis as the capstone of the Princeton experience, and it was a little disconcerting that many of the alumni comments talked about being ill-prepared for the senior thesis relative to what students in other departments had done,” McCarty said.
Amanda Tuninetti ’11, who served on the student advisory council, affirmed this concern about the senior thesis.
“The senior thesis is a very different type of project from the junior papers written in conjunction with the junior task forces,” she said. “I, as well as a lot of other members of the committee, didn’t think we were prepared for the depth of research necessary to write a senior thesis.”
To that end, the student council recommended to the review committee changing one of Wilson School students’ two junior-year task forces to concentrate more on academic research, a recommendation that is reflected in the final report, said Tuninetti, who is also a member of The Daily Princetonian Editorial Board.
Currently, “it’s possible to write both fall and spring JPs without substantive academic research, focusing exclusively on policy analysis,” she added. “The recommendations we gave in our meeting were very well-reflected in the final recommendations that the review committee is going to be representing.”
Another key concern was the Wilson School’s core curriculum and how to better structure a student’s course of study, according to McCarty.
“Some [alumni] complained that the program lacked coherence and structure,” McCarty said, noting that there seemed to be a need for “just more overall guidance to students about what constitutes a coherent program of study within the school.”
Several recommendations in the report will focus on creating a “more robust core curriculum” and restructuring of requirements, Tuninetti noted.
Beyond examining the Wilson School alone, the committee also critically examined how well the Wilson School’s program is integrated into other academic departments.
“Our recommendations are quite simple,” McCarty said. “The school ought to think of ways to come up with some courses that will be attractive to students concentrating in fields across the University.”
Suggestions included encouraging Wilson School faculty to teach more freshman seminars, exposing students to the program at an earlier stage and introducing more 200-level courses tailored toward public policy and international relations.
“[The report is] a positive move toward both integrating the undergrad[uate] program more closely with the rest of the University, as well as providing a more coherent and focused education for the concentrators,” Tuninetti explained.
All curriculum-change and policy recommendations will be reviewed and voted on by Wilson School faculty in the coming months.
The committee was co-chaired by former University president and current Wilson School professor Harold Shapiro GS ’64 and McCarty.
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