Princeton University names new president

Professor Shirley M. Tilghman will succeed Harold Shapiro on June 15.

By: Jeff Milgram

   Princeton University broke new ground Saturday when it named Professor Shirley M. Tilghman, the founding director of its Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, as its 19th president.
   Professor Tilghman, who will succeed Harold T. Shapiro on June 15, will be the university’s 19th president and the first woman to hold that office.
   "It is a deep honor and privilege to be able to serve this university I love so well," Professor Tilghman
said at a Nassau Hall press conference.
   Dr. Tilghman, 54, was elected during a special meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees. She was elected upon the "unanimous and more than enthusiastic" recommendation of a search committee made up of trustees, faculty members, students and staff, said Robert H. Rawson Jr., chairman of the trustees’ executive committee, who also headed the search committee.
   Dr. Tilghman was one of five faculty members on the 18-member search committee. She withdrew from the committee when she became a candidate.
   Mr. Rawson said the committee considered more than 200 candidates.
   "The search committee made a very broad and intensive search," Mr. Rawson said.
   Dr. Tilghman moved from committee member to candidate about six weeks ago, Mr. Rawson said.
   "About six weeks ago, Professor Tilghman had to leave a meeting early to teach," Mr. Rawson explained. "In her absence, the rest of the committee agreed that it wanted to ask her to become a candidate.
   "Once she became a candidate she withdrew from the committee. As sorry as we were to lose her good counsel, we were absolutely delighted to be in a position to recommend her, as we have now done, to be elected Princeton’s new president," he said.
   Dr. Tilghman was surprised to be invited to be a candidate.
   "I had two questions on my mind. The first was is this the right job for me? And the second was am I the right person for the job?" she said.
   Professor Mark Johnson, chairman of the university’s philosophy department and a member of the search committee, said Dr. Tilghman got no special treatment because she was on the search committee.
   "Shirley Tilghman is an extraordinary person, and she will be an extraordinary president," Professor Johnson said. "My fellow search committee members and I took special care not to be swayed by her having been on the committee. In effect, we held her to a higher standard. We found her to be a wonderful scholar who is devoted to serving Princeton and the wider academic community."
   Dr. Tilghman joined the Princeton University faculty 15 years ago. Between 1993 and 2000, she was the chairwoman of Princeton’s Council on Science and Technology. In 1996, she received the university’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
   In 1993, she taught one of Princeton’s first science-based freshman seminars. She has taught molecular biology courses for both undergraduates and graduate students.
   Last fall, President Shapiro announced that he would step down at the end of this academic year.
   Like President Shapiro, Dr. Tilghman is
a native of Canada. She was born in Toronto and attended high school
in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She received her bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and her doctorate in biochemistry from Temple University.
   Dr. Tilghman is a single mother who has two children, Rebecca, 20, a Princeton University junior, and a
son, Alex, 18.
   Dr. Tilghman said her first priority will be to find a new director of the genomics institute. After that she will consult with other members of the university community to decide on her other priorities.
   She is believed to be the first president in 150 years not to hold a degree from Princeton. But Mr. Rawson said Dr. Tilghman "vibrates to the strings that are Princeton."
   Political science Professor Sean Wilentz predicted that Dr. Tilghman’s selection will be very popular on campus.
   "My strong feeling is that this is going to be an extraordinary presidency," he said.
   Dr. Tilghman said her one regret is that she will have to "leave behind a life I have loved. I loved being a scientist."