In preparation for presidency, Eisgruber ’83 begins listening tour

While President-elect Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has been preparing for his presidency by organizing a listening tour around campus for the past few weeks, President Shirley Tilghman has been wrapping up her presidency by thanking those who were important during her years was president.

“For the first year, a lot of what I want to do is go on a listening tour and hear from people what the needs are,” Eisgruber said. “I want to spend some time hearing from people before we identify priorities.”

He said that he wants to visit academic departments and residential colleges in addition to connecting directly with undergraduate students, graduate students and alumni.

“We're going to need to make choices among multiple good things that we're going to do, and making the right choices will be very important, as we decide, for example, in which new academic areas should we invest?” Eisgruber said, explaining his motivations for embarking on the listening tour. “One of the reasons why I always say ... I want to hear from people is I think those decisions are ones that need to be made deliberatively and with real input from the community."

Considering the role of a liberal arts institution

While the listening tour will help him to identify and target some of the University’s specific needs, Eisgruber said that he has already identified some of its general needs. He explained that the University would need to respond to the current criticisms and skepticism of liberal arts colleges and research universities as well as the emergence of online courses in higher education.

“One need we face is to understand how the world is changing around us, to respond to that and at the same time to make the case for and help people to understand the importance of liberal arts colleges and research universities,” Eisgruber said.

Tilghman also discussed the current criticism of liberal arts colleges as a challenge that the University must address. “I think we need people who are willing to stand up and articulate one more time, why this peculiar American brand of education, which is the liberal arts, is so essential to the prosperity of the country.” She noted that “it will be wonderful to have a voice as articulate as Chris's talking about this.”

Tilghman added that the greatest challenge the president faces is encouraging members of the University community that there are ways to improve the institution.

“The biggest challenge is forcing Princeton to not believe its own rhetoric about itself, its propaganda. I believe in this place very deeply, but I also see it without rose-colored glasses, and I can see its flaws. The biggest challenge is persuading a university that is very, very, very good that it needs to be even better,” Tilghman explained.

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Determining the role of online education

Eisgruber explained that the University had not yet decided the role it would play in the world of online education.

“It would be a misunderstanding to think right now that we know where we want to be about that, and I think we will see change in what online opportunities are and real questions that we need to ask about where it is that we want to be. And there are a variety of possible answers, from ones that are relatively conservative to ones that are more aggressive about that space,” Eisgruber said.

Tilghman also said the University needs to consider its plans for the use of online education.

“I think the bloom is now off the rose, and now is going to be the time when some really hard-nosed thinking has to be done about the true value of these online courses,” she said.

A “seamless” transition

Eisgruber explained that his other priorities have included searching for a new provost and executive vice president, as well as learning the roles of the president, which Tilghman said that she has discussed with him.

“The kinds of conversations that Chris and I have been having are conversations about things that the president does uniquely, that are really different from what the provost does,” Tilghman said. She explained that these roles include working closely with the Board of Trustees, working with the Office of Development, handling issues related to admissions and managing the major initiatives she has started, including the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Neuroscience Institute.

However, Tilghman said that Eisgruber’s transition to the presidency will be easier than hers was because of his experience serving as the University’s provost.

“For me, there’s been a tremendous relief knowing that it is Provost Eisgruber, because I think he’s just a wonderful choice,” Tilghman said. “It also meant that the transition was going to be seamless.”

Since Eisgruber has already attended many of the meetings that the president attends in his capacity as provost, he has not had to shadow Tilghman at any additional meetings.

“I’m not even sure if I can think of an event right now that we’ve attended together that I wouldn’t have attended where I was simply the provost,” Eisgruber said.

However, Tilghman explained that some of these events have given Eisgruber an opportunity to speak directly to members of the Princeton community.

“There are very few people left on this campus who don’t know Provost Eisgruber, but there are a few, so I think that’s important,” Tilghman said. “They need to hear from him as the President-elect.”

Eisgruber said that he has already felt the additional visibility he feels as the President-Elect.

“As president of the University, you become the public face of the University — and that’s a big change,” Eisgruber said. “That, for me, is a real attraction, and I've enjoyed already, in what's been a very short span, the opportunity to be out there and a bit more visible, and I'm looking forward to that in the years ahead as well.”

The “bittersweet aspect” of retiring

Tilghman explained that she has continued to travel around the country to meet with alumni and celebrate the conclusion of the Aspire Campaign, “saying a very large number of thank you’s to people who were important during the years I was president and were very generous to the campaign.”

When asked what was her favorite of the initiatives she began during her tenure, Tilghman replied, “This is the equivalent of William Styron's Sophie's Choice. You're asking me to choose among my children, and that's very hard to do.”

She added that her leadership of the University during the economic downturn was particularly important.

“On a highly pragmatic note, I think you could say protecting the University through the recession may be actually one of the most important things. It's not a very inspiring or elevating thing, but it was real during the recession, when the endowment dropped 23.4 percent,” Tilghman explained.

Tilghman will be traveling to London next year. She will eventually return to Princeton and resume teaching. She will serve as the president of the American Society for Cell Biology in 2015.

“There is a sort of bittersweet aspect to this. I've loved this job, I've loved working with the people that I've had the opportunity to work with, and I will miss this,” Tilghman said. “But I'm someone who always looks forward, not back, and so I'm also very excited about the idea that I am going to have a little more flexibility in my life than I've had in the past, that I'm going to be able to choose how I spend my time as opposed to having my time occupied.”

"I'm feeling fabulous about the next 10 years,” Tilghman said of the University's future.

She added that she is looking forward to becoming a grandmother in the fall.