The quality of advising has a direct hand in determining the success of fellowship applications. As numerous former fellowship winners and applicants have attested to the ‘Prince,’ Ordiway was a skilled adviser who played a key role in preparing them for the rigors of the process. Given his experience and reported dedication, there are likely only a handful of individuals in higher education equally qualified to fill his position. And with no plan in place, Princeton is even more unlikely to recruit someone of that level to replace him. Consequently, Ordiway’s departure will almost certainly diminish the chances of Princeton students at winning fellowships.
We might ask why the University should even care about winning fellowships — and maybe, by this decision, West College is signaling that it doesn’t. But that’s a mistake. There are significant reasons to care about wining fellowships and, equally, having good advising: Fellowships are a source of significant prestige for the University, they provide graduate funding to many who would be otherwise unable to continue important academic work, and they allow some of Princeton’s best students — the “future stars” — to gain valuable graduate school experience.
In a matter of months, members of the Class of 2011 will begin the fellowship application process with no plans in place for their advising. Princeton will be worse off for this. We strongly urge the University to limit the damage this decision will cause by maintaining a high-level, administrative position dedicated primarily to fellowship advising rather than farming out the duties of Ordiway’s position to administrators or faculty with other responsibilities. Advising fellowship applicants is difficult, demanding a substantial commitment of time and effort that an administrator with numerous other duties would simply be unable to provide. However the administration intends to proceed, we hope it will remember that individual expertise in this area is truly important.
Despite our concern about the negative impact of Ordiway’s departure, we believe that Princeton’s fellowship advising system could, in fact, use review. The system, though strong, is not perfect. Our primary concern is that Princeton devotes fewer resources to fellowship advising than our peer schools. Employing more advisers would enable Princeton to better match potential applicants with fellowships suited to their interests and to increase the likelihood that those applicants would succeed. While Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel has promised to devote “equal resources” to fellowship advising in the wake of Ordiway’s departure, we’re troubled by a deeper fact: that this may not be enough. Equal resources do not mean equal quality.
Ideally, Ordiway would have been at the center of this expansion: We see no reason, based on performance and a thorough knowledge of the system, that Ordiway should have been fired. Unfortunately, West College took its first step backwards by firing Ordiway and followed it by remaining mum on any plans it may have. We hope that the remaining stages of this reorganization will not follow this trend.
— Jessica Lanney ’10 and Daniel Rauch ’10 recused themselves from this editorial.
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