Articles filed under “Faculty”
Name: Janet Dickerson
Occupation on Campus: Vice President for Campus Life
Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?
Princeton President Bob Goheen…he steered the University through the tumultuous and monumental changes of the sixties and early seventies, enhanced the minority presence, introduced coeducation, created the modern Princeton
What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
HGTV
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton?
Holiday dinners at my house, prepared with my daughters, husband and other family members
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day?
I think, plan, problem-solve, mediate disputes, help people make connections…and go to meetings!
Best place(s) on campus?
The nice little ‘pocket’ parks next to Chancellor Green and the Andlinger Center for the Humanities
Worst place on campus?
(I don’t have an answer for this!)
What is your favorite way to relax?
‘Flopping and shopping’ — in my husband’s words! Also, browsing the internet
What’s the last student performance you saw?
Does a football game count??
Another month, another list-icle from GQ. But this time, it’s not about how douchey we are. The Condé Nast publication’s latest magazine-selling gimmick names the “50 Most Powerful People” in our nation’s capital, so we clicked through the annoying ad-prone slide show on GQ’s site and looked for everyone Princeton-related:
#3 Ben Bernanke: Coming in at an impressive number three is Federal Reserve Chairman (and former Princeton economics professor) Ben Bernanke. GQ writes:
…there’s one man, undeniably, who controls the country’s financial future more than anyone else…
#5 Peter Orszag ‘91: The nerd-in-chief (and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget) is ranked above other Washington notables such as David Axelrod, Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and even Nancy Pelosi. But we guess that’s how important you get when you “made nerdy sexy.” We swoon!
#24 Edward Yingling ‘70: Yingling (you mean like Yuengling?!) is the CEO of the American Bankers Association, which represents Wall Street’s biggest and most powerful firms and lobbies Congress to be really nice to them.
#27 Jane Mayer: Mayer is a staff writer from the New Yorker who helped expose the CIA’s secret torture and assassination programs, which according to GQ, forced the Obama administration to release the torture memos. Did we mention that she’s teaching here this semester? She and her husband, Politico’s Bill Hamilton, are team-teaching a journalism course on the Obama presidency.
Did we miss anyone else on the list? Let us know!
(image source: http://www.usmc.mil)
Sigman, showing off his most ingenious Rube Goldberg machine ever
Today in people who are way smarter than any of us could ever imagine being: Princeton geoscience professor Daniel Sigman was named a MacArthur Fellow for 2009 for his work as a biogeochemist. This means he’s going to receive a “genius grant” and a huge wad of cash worth $500,000 – with “no strings attached,” the devil.
I know what you’re thinking: Biogeochemist? Is that even a thing?
You bet your ass it is – and Sigman’s the best one this side of Jurassic Park.
If a tree falls in Princeton during the summer, and no students are there to hear it, yes, still, nothing ever happens in Princeton. In this week’s edition: Sotomayor yada yada yada, Jeff Peek won’t be attending reunions anytime soon, moving walkways are a moving farce, the Wall Street Journal backs us up on the Kindle thing(!), a lax coach cries, and Stan Katz would love to have you for dinner tonight.
- First things first. Oh, right, that Sotomayor person we’ve been hearing about: Well she was better at Princeton than we are, and her first couple of nights at the U. she thought that a cricket was in her room (But it was actually outside! How funny is that!). And she’s on her way to becoming the second Princeton grad on the Supreme Court. No big deal. But seriously, can we just confirm her and move on? This is taking longer than Michael Jackson’s autopsy.
Peek-a-boo-hoo
- Meanwhile, theStreet.com updates us on another alum who’s not doing as hot as ol’ Sonia. Jeff Peek ‘69 is CEO of CIT, a company providing small and midsized commercial loans. CIT’s not doing too hot these days, and on Thursday, federal regulators denied CIT a bail out. The company’s stock crashed nearly 75%. The article suggests some fingers are pointing at Peek. And a little digging found that Peek’s wife penned an anonymous article in Portfolio recently, in which she complained about how because of the recession she couldn’t throw moneybags around, or something. Princeton alums: Win some, lose some.
- This week in “studies that contribute little to our understanding of the world”: The Telegraph reports that “Researchers have found that using [moving walkways] at airports, especially at busy times, can actually slow you down because people reduce their walking pace on the human conveyor belts and cause blockages.” Travelers everywhere slowly are realizing they have been living a lie. Princeton locomotion researcher Manoj Srinivasan contributed mathematical models to the study to show “that people slow down on walkways to reduce energy consumption.” Well, yeah, I’m sure tons of lazy people would ride around in motorized scooters to “reduce energy consumption.”
- This week in “I told you so”: The Wall Street Journal writes on the latest trend of using “e-books” instead of hard copy texts in higher education. They report that in a “Student PIRG study, 75% of college students said they would prefer print to digital texts.” The organization running the study “slammed existing e-textbook efforts such as CourseSmart for “being on the wrong track.” The article states also that students in pilot courses testing the Kindle have been bailing out of using the thing, preferring hard copies to e-books. They don’t see the use, it seems. Wait, that sounds familiar… Oh, yes, right, we said that.
Since summer’s in full swing and you’ve got better things to do than catch up on Princeton news, we round it up here for you on The Ink. In this week’s edition: Some people talk about Sonia Sotomayor ‘76, and some Princeton climate researchers serve up some obvious. Our financial troubles aren’t as bad as we tho — oh wait they might be. But at least they’re not as bad as Harvard’s. Campus gets some Dubya flavor, and holy crap a Princeton professor is actually dubbed “the infomercial king.”
First of all OMG SONIA SOTOMAYOR HEARINGS THIS WEEK. Now that that’s out of the way,
- In the Post, Peter Winn, who taught Sotomayor five courses and advised her senior thesis and calls himself her mentor, wished he could “have taken detailed notes on [their] conversations and filed them away in anticipation.” In anticipation of what? Probably turning it into a screenplay, by the way the rest of the op-ed reads.
Don't cha wish your student was wise like me?
- More Post-Princeton antics: University Provost Christopher Eisgruber says that Sonia Sotomayor is boring because she “will be the ninth federal appellate judge on the nine-member Supreme Court” making the body pretty homogeneous in terms of prior experience. Or maybe he’s just jealous.
- A recent study by some Princeton-led researchers finds that wealthy individuals pollute more. Apparently this was gathered by looking at “lifestyles including frequent airplane flights, automobile use, and heating and cooling of large homes.” File this one under “things we could’ve guessed.” Also under “things I’d look stupid for saying in precept but which professionals get paid to say.”
- Hey guys, good news! We only lost 25%, not the full 30% we expected! The endowment situation isn’t as disastrous as we thought it was! But… oh, great, Annual Giving’s in the crapper, $11.4 million below expectations. Really doin’ your share, alums.
The rest of the rundown after the jump…
Kavya Shivashankar, she ain’t.
Christina Paxson, the somewhat recently crowned Queen of the Tools, is off to a rough start, spelling wise.
Granted, as Dean of Woody Woo, you’re probably called upon to spell and pronounce some tricky words: obscure central Asian nations, the names of Russian diplomats, etc. So normally we’d be willing to give her a pass – Word, to our knowledge, is not currently packing a foreign affairs spell check suite.
But she spelled her own name wrong. Her first day on the job. In a letter to the WWS alumni, probably not the world’s most laid-back listserv.
To quote:
“Sincerely,
Christian Paxson
Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs”
Important? Not really.
Embarrasing Embarrassing? Yup.
Are we being petty? Probably. But c’mon! What else are we going to do? It’s summer!
Who wouldn't appreciate their "Understandable Vanity Award"?
Stephen Colbert loves Princeton. Let us explain.
This past week, the Colbert Report host had two Princetonian guests back-to-back on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
First up was Joshua Micah Marshall ‘91, founder and editor of the political blog Talking Points Memo, discussing the mechanics of his “hybrid” news site.
Poetry professor (and all-around academic rockstar) Paul Muldoon considered the relevance of poetry in our modern life. He even read his poem “Tea” with Colbert, which, we must say, was pretty cute.
Taken with Colbert’s speech at Class Day 2008, can we conclude Stephen has a soft spot for all things orange and black? We’d like to think so. Either that or his producers are alumni.
Actually, current Colbert Report writer Jay Katsir ‘04 was hired after his student address at 2004’s Class Day, a Colbert fansite says. And when the host came to speak at 2008’s Class Day,
Colbert was accompanied to campus by Jay Katsir, a member of the class of 2004 and a writer for “The Colbert Report.” When Katsir spoke at the Class Day ceremony four years ago, one of those in the audience was Colbert’s agent, who later suggested that Katsir be hired as a writer for Colbert’s show.
So Colbert’s agent knows someone at Princeton, apparently, and was at Princeton’s 2004 Class Day when Katsir, a graduating Princetonian, spoke to his class, which later helped land him a job on Colbert’s show, which (now here’s a long shot) might explain Colbert’s affinity for us. Or at least seeming affinity.
Oh, the tangled web we weave.
Last week’s interviews (with the adorable Colbert/Muldoon poetry reading!) after the jump.
Students of ATL498: Bodies in Evidence, a class co-taught by novelist Toni Morrison and installation artist Christian Tomaszewski, took over the Lucas Gallery this week to produce a maze-like exhibit called Middle End Beginning. Poet Paul Muldoon was spotted at the opening reception yesterday, taking a walk through the rooms and talking to the students about their pieces.
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- virgin mary by Katie Zaeh
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- Pleats by Arthur Wang
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- Jessie Dicovitsky
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- Becca Foresman
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- Alyssa Loh
Have diversity initiatives helped Princeton shed its image as an elite bastion of exclusivity for white, upper-class Americans? Jon Stewart thinks so. Watch Princeton Professor of Sociology Angel Harris talk to Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore about how times are a-changing:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| White in America – The Children | ||||
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We already know that Professor Robert George–social conservative extraordinaire and archbishop of POL 315 & 316–loves fetuses at all stages of cellular development and isn’t very fond of the homosexuals. But a recent Youtube excursion uncovered another Robbie George factoid: he likes the banjo! No, seriously, watch: