Dean of the Graduate School Rodney D. Priestley hosted a special TigerSide Chat on Tuesday to celebrate the school’s 125th anniversary. During the event, Priestley emphasized the Graduate School’s commitment to protecting its students as well as the generosity of its stipends.
Priestley noted that the University has unveiled four new Ph.D programs just within the past three years: biophysics, bioengineering, quantum science, and material science engineering. “From the year 2000 to the year 2022 we’ve only created one graduate program, so to create four in the past three years is really astonishing,” Priestley said.
Despite recent challenges from federal funding changes and immigration policies, Priestly said that Princeton has maintained its commitment to ensuring support for international students and protecting research enterprises. “We’re proud that about 44 percent of our graduate students are international. We recruit the best talent wherever we can find it,” Priestley said.
“The rhetoric around immigration creates tremendous anxiety for our students, and we show up for them — we want them to know we are there,” he added.
Priestley also touted the Faculty Mentoring Champion initiative, launched this academic year to strengthen student support and enhance student-faculty relationships. One faculty member is placed in each department to serve as a mentoring “champion” for that chosen department.
“One of the things we strongly believe in is that the magic of graduate education really stems from that relationship between the student and faculty, and that’s something that we really want to nourish here in the Graduate School,” Priestley said.
Priestley also mentioned efforts to embed career development into graduate education, experimental learning programs, and cohort-based learning programs. In the experimental learning programs, graduate students are paired with partners in order to gain hands-on experience and acquire transferable skills.
“We don’t want our students, whether or not they’re in a one-year program or five-year program, to be at the end of their program thinking about what they’re going to do at the end of their graduate education. We want to be thinking about this at the beginning,” he said.
Priestley then emphasized the amount of graduate student stipends at Princeton, claiming that the Graduate School provides “some of the highest stipends in the nation and some of the best benefits, so our students can focus on why they came — to succeed as scholars.” Notably, some graduate stipends were raised by $5,000. A push by graduate students to unionize failed in May 2024.
The Graduate School has also recently included graduate students on key oversight committees, which Priestley touted as helping improve shared governance.
“Graduate students now have a seat, a voice, and a vote on all committees that govern the Graduate School,” he said.
Priestley also discussed the Nobel accomplishments of Princeton Graduate School alumni, noting that 18 graduate alumni have won Nobel prizes, with one — physicist John Bardeen — winning it twice.
For Priestley, the Graduate School alumni “tells you how special our programs are, and the type of education that we deliver here, and the type of student.”
Ambre Van de Velde is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Boston and can be reached at av8447[at]princeton.edu.
Haeon Lee contributed reporting.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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