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Overview
Other articles in the book embrace a wide range of topics: histories of academic departments, programs, and research units; descriptions of the honor system, the preceptorial method, the four-course plan, and coeducation; a historical survey of the University's acquisition of land and the development of its campus, together with articles on its principal buildings; pieces on student activities; accounts of alumni activities; articles on athletics; portraits of notable personalities; and commentaries on a host of lighter topics such as the cane spree, beer jackets, the Faculty Song, the proctors, and Veterans of Future Wars.
Among the most important articles are one summarizing Woodrow Wilson's Sesquicentennial address, "Princeton in the Nation's Service," and a dozen others recording faculty and alumni achievements toward the goal encompassed by that phrase.
Originally published in 1978.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691630021 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1507 |
| Pages: | 572 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d) |
Read an Excerpt
A Princeton Companion
By Alexander Leitch
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1978 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-04654-9
CHAPTER 1
Admission to Princeton in the early years was based entirely on a knowledge of Latin and Greek, but by 1760 entering freshmen were required also to understand the principal rules of "vulgar arithmetic." The president of the College personally examined each applicant and determined whether or not he should be admitted. Early one morning in the 1790s, Titus Hutchinson, who had come down from Vermont, called at Tusculum to apply for admission, and after morning prayers and breakfast with President Witherspoon, was grilled by him in Latin and Greek and admitted, with the understanding that he was to occupy the coming vacation with the studies in which he was behind. (Hutchinson graduated with honors in 1794 and later became chief justice of Vermont.)
Population was thinner then, and so was the proportion seeking a college education. Writing to a trustee in 1803, Chemistry Professor John Maclean, Sr., ended his letter: "We got another student today." Thirty years later his son, Vice-president John Maclean, Jr., received a visit from James Moffat, a twenty-two-year-old immigrant printer from Scotland sent to see him by a mutual friend, and after an hour's conversation about Latin and Greek, informed the young man, who had been unaware of what was transpiring, that he had been admitted to the junior class. (Moffat gave the valedictory at graduation in 1835 and was later professor of classics in the College and the father of five Princeton-educated sons.)
Oral entrance examinations continued until well past the middle of the nineteenth century, when they began to be superseded by written examinations, first given only in Princeton, and after 1888 also at strategic points across the country. With the founding of the College Entrance Examination Board in 1900, Princeton honored the board's examinations as well as its own, and after 1915 required them of all applicants.
The great increase in the number of applicants for admission to American colleges following the First World War led the trustees in 1922 to adopt a policy of limited enrollment and selective admission in order to preserve the essential features of Princeton's residential life and to maintain its standards of individual instruction. At the same time they created the office of director of admission, subsequently occupied by Radcliffe Heermance, 1922-1950; C. William Edwards '36, 1950-1962; E. Alden Dunham HI '53, 1962-1966; John T. Osander '57, 1966-1971; Timothy C. Callard '63, 1971-1978; and James W. Wickenden, Jr. '61, 1978-.
During his twenty-eight years as first admission director, Radcliffe Heermance pioneered in the development of selective admission procedures, established close relationships with secondary schools in all parts of the country, and helped guide and develop the College Entrance Examination Board, of which he was chairman from 1933 to 1936. Another pioneer during the formative years of selective admission was Psychology Professor Carl C. Brigham, who did innovative work in aptitude testing and was later chiefly responsible for the development of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test, first given in 1926.
In the 1930s Princeton adopted a special plan of admission without examination for students of exceptional achievement and promise in the Far West and South, where school programs did not fit them specifically for College Board examinations. Thanks to this program and the missionary efforts of nation-wide Alumni Schools Committees, the geographical distribution of members of freshman classes was substantially broadened.
This temporary Princeton solution anticipated a more general and permanent one which came in 1940 when the College Board replaced examinations based on a set curriculum with objective tests that endeavored to cover the common elements of what was taught in schools throughout the country. This change brought marked increases both in the number of applicants for admission to Princeton and the number of schools from which they came.
A significant development, more recently, concerned blacks and other minority groups. Although a few blacks studied privately with President Witherspoon as early as 1774, and although, beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, black students occasionally earned University degrees, the first appreciable influx did not begin until the 1960s when the University adopted an active recruitment policy for minority students. By 1976, the freshman class of 1980 included ninety-two black students and eighty-nine members of other minority groups — Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, native Americans, and Asian Americans.
The admission process was further broadened in 1969 when Princeton began undergraduate coeducation, with separate admission quotas for men and women. That year, 171 women matriculated, 69 as transferring sophomores, juniors, or seniors, 102 as members, along with 819 men, of the freshman class of 1973. The trustees adopted a policy of equal access for men and women in 1974 and at the same time determined that the undergraduate body should remain at approximately its existing size for the forseeable future. In 1976, the freshman class of 1980 numbered 736 men and 380 women, drawn from a record number of applicants — 10,305.
In meeting the responsibilities involved in a necessarily comprehensive and painstaking process of selection, the admission director and his staff rely on help from alumni and undergraduates. More than 130 Alumni Schools Committees across the country act as liaison between the University and secondary school students in their communities, helping the applicants get a clearer picture of what Princeton can offer them and making certain that the Admission Office has a full knowledge of each candidate's capabilities.
On campus, an Undergraduate Schools Committee helps prospective students obtain a first-hand acquaintance with Princeton by arranging meals, overnight accommodations in dormitories, attendance at classes and lectures, and meetings with faculty.
In 1976 the University's admission objectives were summed up by Admission Director Callard in these words: Princeton seeks to enroll a student body that will be characterized by both excellence and diversity. While the University is interested in many kinds of excellence, superior past academic performance and significant promise for future academic growth must clearly be the fundamental considerations in evaluating candidates.
But Princeton is no less interested in the personal credentials of its applicants and is particularly concerned to find evidence of such qualities of personal character as honesty and trustworthiness, which are so crucial to the health of a residential university community like Princeton's. Beyond personal integrity, the University is continually looking for evidence of such important qualities as curiosity, initiative, energy, imagination, sensitivity, concern for others, commitment, persistence, creativity, leadership, and a sense of responsibility — qualities which clearly relate to academic as well as nonacademic aspects of an applicant's potential performance at Princeton, yet which are sometimes more easily perceived in the record of an applicant's nonacademic pursuits.
The director of admission and his staff are responsible only for undergraduate admissions. Graduate admissions are made by the dean of the Graduate School after reviewing the recommendations of the departments concerned.
Advisory Councils for the academic departments were established in 1941.
Each council consists of from three to fifteen members appointed by the trustees for three-year terms; nominations are made by the departments in consultation with the Alumni Council. Membership is not restricted to alumni, but at least one member of each council must be an alumnus. Meetings for consultation and conference are held at such times as are mutually agreed upon by the advisory council and the department concerned. Close to 500 persons serve on some forty advisory councils.
Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences, The Department of, which was formed in 1963 by a merger of the departments of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, traces its roots back to the early 1920s when Arthur M. Greene, Jr. (q.v.), came to Princeton to establish a Department of Mechanical Engineering and to serve as dean of the newly created School of Engineering (q.v.).
Classes were held in the old School of Science, with a makeshift laboratory in a boiler house across Washington Road, until the John C. Green Engineering Building was constructed in 1928. Starting with only two young assistants in mechanical engineering, Dean Greene taught over half the courses in the department in addition to performing his administrative duties. Louis F. Rahm and Alfred E. Sorenson joined the slowly expanding department in 1926; Lewis F. Moody as professor of fluid mechanics and machine design arrived in 1930.
During the Depression, graduating seniors, unable to obtain employment, returned for graduate study, spurring the development of both the engine and hydraulics laboratories. By 1941, when Dean Greene retired and was succeeded as dean and chairman by Kenneth H. Condit, the Department of Mechanical Engineering was both well staffed and equipped, permitting it to acquit itself well during the hectic war years when year-round teaching of military and civilian students was the order of the day.
In the summer of 1941, when the United States was developing the technological and industrial base that would give it world leadership in the design and manufacture of aircraft, Dean Condit invited Daniel C. Sayre (q.v.) to conduct a three-month study of the "possibility and desirability" of introducing courses relating to aeronautical engineering into the curriculum of the Mechanical Engineering Department.
Although recognizing the limited nature of this original intent, the energetic and irrepressible Sayre made such a strong case for the creation of a separate Department of Aeronautical Engineering that his suggestions were adopted, and in early 1942 he found himself both Princeton's first professor of aeronautical engineering and the new department's entire faculty.
With keen competition for available talent in the rapidly expanding aeronautical field, building a departmental staff was not easy, but Sayre succeeded in enlisting Alexander A. Nikolsky, who had helped Sikorsky develop the helicopter, and Harry Ashworth, a skilled machinist and instrument expert. These three, aided by a few graduate assistants, and equipped with a small wind tunnel on a balcony of what is now Aaron Burr Hall, were the entire department until the end of the war. Then began a steady increase in faculty and a meteoric rise in achievement that culminated in the department's recognition as a leader in the field by the mid-1950s.
The first of the new faculty to arrive was Courtland D. Perkins, fresh from Wright Field. Later, between various leaves of absence to serve as chief scientist to the Air Force and as assistant secretary of the air force for research and development, Perkins pioneered in-flight test analysis of aircraft stability and control. His research interests led to the creation of the Flight Dynamics Laboratory, a unique facility for an academic institution, in which theory is tested in actual flight.
Rapidly outgrowing its balcony, the department moved to a series of buildings near Lake Carnegie and to installations behind Palmer Stadium that had housed wartime research in physics. The plan of development aimed at maintaining a strong undergraduate program, but concentrated on graduate training and research. A Master's program was begun with the inception of the department in 1942, a doctoral program in 1949.
Experimental as well as analytical research supported these graduate programs. The strange constructions with which Nikolsky's students probed the idiosyncrasies of helicopters caused interested comment. The racket of supersonic wind tunnels and rocket firings brought outraged protests. It was clear that new quarters were needed.
Already contending with the cancer that would take his life five years later, Sayre spearheaded the effort that led to the acquisition in 1951 of the property formerly occupied by the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and to its development as the James Forrestal Campus (q.v.). The University at last had a place to house research that, in Sayre's words, "makes loud noises or bad smells," and the department moved to these new quarters with alacrity. It was here that Charles Conrad, third man to walk the moon, completed his undergraduate studies in 1953.
Recognition of the stature the department had achieved came with Harry F. Guggenheim's selection of Princeton as the site for one of two jet propulsion research centers. (The other was at the California Institute of Technology.) In 1954 Luigi Crocco of the University of Rome was appointed first Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion. His work in combustion theory along with Martin Summerfield's studies of solid propellants had a profound effect upon rocket engine development during the next decade.
In 1951 Sayre relinquished the chairmanship to Perkins in order to give full time to the direction of the Forrestal Campus. Under Perkins, research activities expanded until there were active programs in the entire aerospace field, ranging from low speed flight to hypersonic reentry.
In 1963, in recognition of overlapping interests, coupled with declining enrollments in mechanical engineering, the two departments merged to form the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences under Perkins's leadership. Activities of the new department reached an all-time high in 1967 with a research budget of almost $3.25 million and with an enrollment of 140 graduate and 125 undergraduate students.
The late 1960s and early 1970s were difficult years. With increasing national anguish over war in Vietnam came campus unrest and a wave of revulsion at the ills produced by the misuse of technology. Since the department was deeply involved in a technology closely linked in the public mind with weaponry, it inevitably suffered decreasing enrollments and had to face critical investigations to determine the appropriateness of its research on a campus greatly concerned with the needs of humanity.
That the research was demonstrated to be of high calibre and in no way unsuited to the University was not sufficient for the departmental faculty. With characteristic vigor they turned their talents toward solutions of societal problems. Research narrowly aimed at aircraft systems broadened its focus to include all modes of transportation.
Combustion investigations moved from studies of rocket motors to problems of noise, of air pollution, and even of the dangers of smoking. Gas dynamicists turned to problems of energy conversion and control, while the aerodynamicists, not to be outdone, started work on high efficiency windmills for power generation.
By 1974, as Perkins retired as chairman, the changes had had effect. Enrollments were recovering, research budgets were expanding, and the department, under the new leadership of Seymour M. Bogdonoff, was facing the future with confidence.
David C. Hazen
Afro-American Studies Program, The, was organized in 1969 to concern itself, the faculty committee said, "with the history, the culture and the current situation of twenty-five million Americans of African origins." Earlier in the 1960s, interdepartmental interest in this field had been focused in two research conferences on scholarly approaches to Afro-American Studies held under the auspices of the Straus Council on Human Relations. In the program's first year, twenty-six undergraduates — half of them white — concentrated in Afro-American Studies, and more than 500 took one or more of its elective courses.
In the belief that "the black experience is a special case of American experience," the program was designed to provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary and comparative study "of the position and experience of people of African ancestry in the United States, seen in relation to the experience of black people in other parts of the world."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Princeton Companion by Alexander Leitch. Copyright © 1978 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Preface, pg. vii
- A, pg. 1
- B, pg. 36
- C, pg. 70
- D, pg. 125
- E, pg. 144
- F, pg. 171
- G, pg. 204
- H, pg. 235
- I, pg. 268
- K, pg. 279
- L, pg. 281
- M, pg. 293
- N, pg. 328
- O, pg. 345
- P, pg. 350
- R, pg. 401
- S, pg. 428
- T, pg. 460
- U, pg. 484
- V, pg. 485
- W, pg. 497
- Y, pg. 535
- Bibliography, pg. 537
- Index, pg. 543