Shirley Marie Tilghman (; née Caldwell; born 17 September 1946) is a Canadian scholar in molecular biology. She is a professor emerita of molecular biology and public policy and president emerita of Princeton University. She served as the 19th president of Princeton University from June 2001 to July 2013.
Tilghman was a member of the faculty of Princeton's Department of Molecular Biology for fifteen years before being named president and returned to the faculty after her service as president. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.
Early life and family Tilghman was born Shirley Marie Caldwell, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As a young child, her father encouraged her interest in math. Together, the two of them would play math games as bedtime, rather than sharing bedtime stories.
She graduated from Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba and received her honours B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. She was a secondary school teacher in Sierra Leone, West Africa, in the Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) Program. Tilghman earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, under Richard W. Hanson. Tilghman was Hanson's first graduate student. Her PhD dissertation was titled, "The Hormonal Regulation of Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxykinase."
Research Tilghman's work in molecular genetics focused on the regulation of genes during development, particularly in the field of genomic imprinting.
During postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, Tilghman made a number of discoveries while a member of the team which cloned the first mammalian gene. She went on to demonstrate that the globin gene was spliced, a finding that helped confirm some of the revolutionary theories then emerging about gene behavior. As an independent investigator at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia from 1980 to 1986 and adjunct associate professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania Tilghman continued to make scientific breakthroughs.
Tilghman went to Princeton University in 1986 as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. Two years later, she also joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator. She was a leader in the use of mice to understand the behavior of genes by researching the effect of gene insertion in embryonic cells.
In 1998, she took on additional responsibilities as the founding director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, while continuing to study how male and female genomes are packaged and the consequences of the differences for regulating embryo growth.
Tilghman's extensive series of published research papers are catalogued on the PubMed government website of the United States National Library of Medicine, the NLM division of the National Institutes of Health.
President of Princeton University
Tilghman succeeded Harold Tafler Shapiro and became the 19th president of Princeton University in 2001. She was elected Princeton's first woman president on May 5, 2001, and assumed office on June 15, 2001. Under her administration, the university built a sixth residential college, named in honor of alumna Meg Whitman, to accommodate an 11 percent expansion of the undergraduate student body (an increase of some 500 students), as recommended by a special committee of the Board of Trustees chaired by Paul M. Wythes. In 2012, Tilghman announced that she would step down from her presidency in June 2013. She was succeeded by the university's then-provost, Christopher L. Eisgruber.
For Tilghman, Princeton has two essential missions. "One is to ensure that our doors are open as wide as possible to every talented student in the world who is capable of doing the hard work we ask of them. And that means maintaining our commitment to financial aid, which is the tool – the critical tool – to get those students to Princeton. And the second thing is that we must address the most critical issues, and push back the frontiers of knowledge, and not just in science and technology, but in social policy, and in public policy, and in understanding the nature of the human condition."Dilshanie Perera, "At the Frontier of Knowledge: Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman," Princeton Magazine, August/September 2010
The establishment of Whitman College, together with the reconstruction of Butler College, accompanied a significant reconfiguration of Princeton's residential college system, which now incorporates upperclassmen as well as freshmen and sophomores, providing new residential options and increasing opportunities for social interaction across the student body. In addition, an effort has been made to strengthen the relationship between the university and Princeton's independent eating clubs, where most upperclassmen take their meals, with the goal of enhancing the undergraduate experience of all students. In 2009, she appointed a committee chaired by Nannerl O. Keohane to review undergraduate women's leadership at Princeton.
Academics Tilghman has presided over a number of academic initiatives at Princeton, including the creation of a Center for African American Studies, the Lewis Center for the Arts (named after alumnus Peter B. Lewis), the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment (after alumnus Gerhard R. Andlinger). Along with the renewal of the Department of Chemistry, these steps have both capitalized on Princeton's existing strengths and broken new ground, ensuring that the university will, in Tilghman's words, continue "to make the world a better place through the power of the mind and the imagination."Shirley M. Tilghman, "Aspire: A Plan for Princeton," Princeton University, 2007.
Diversity More broadly, Tilghman's presidency has placed an emphasis on increasing the diversity of Princeton's faculty and students; widening access to the university through improvements to its generous financial aid program and the elimination of admission through "early decision"; fostering a multidisciplinary approach to teaching and research; and strengthening the university's international perspective through a wide range of initiatives – from the Global Scholars Program, which brings international scholars to campus on a recurring basis, to the Bridge Year Program, which gives incoming freshmen an opportunity to defer their studies for a year in order to devote themselves to public service overseas.
Funding higher education Student loans As her presidency started the university accomplished the long-hoped-for goal of eliminating the need for student loans; Princeton became the first American university to replace student loans with grants from its endowment. In principle, students earning a Princeton degree could graduate debt free.
Tuition The size of the endowment and the success of these programs prompted some to question whether Tilghman would implement a policy of eliminating tuition altogether. In her Wall Street Journal article on this matter, she indicated that Princeton would continue to charge tuition, and that she felt that charging tuition was a morally and economically correct policy to maintain.
Fundraising During her tenure the percentage of students receiving some form of financial aid increased and the size of the average award also increased. These policies were partially facilitated by the growing size of the university's financial endowment, whose income is used to finance the university's mission alongside tuition, and the annual funding of the operating budget through alumni donations from Princeton's Annual Giving campaign.
Controversies Pro-women hirings Although President Tilghman has been accused of favoring women in her hiring practices, in fact, most of her appointees have been men.
The women she has hired to senior positions include Amy Gutmann as provost, the second-most-powerful administrative position in the university, Anne-Marie Slaughter as Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs fka Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as well as her successor Christina Paxson, Maria Klawe as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Janet Lavin Rapelye as the Dean of Admission. Gutman would go on to lead the University of Pennsylvania as their president in early 2004; Klawe was chosen president of Harvey Mudd College in 2006. Slaughter took a leave from the university to serve as Director of Policy and Planning at the U.S. State Department, reporting to the Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton. Paxson became president of Brown University in 2012.
Tilghman has appointed prominent men to leadership positions at Princeton, such as Charles Kalmbach as the senior vice president for administration, the highest non-academic administrative post, David P. Dobkin as dean of the faculty, Gutmann's replacement as provost and Tilghman's successor Christopher L. Eisgruber, and Klawe's replacement Vincent Poor.
She initiated a review of undergraduate women's leadership at Princeton, chaired by Nannerl O. Keohane; the review found that the early prominence for women in leadership positions that accompanied to introduction of women students to the campus had recently not been as frequently repeated.
Ivy League seven-week athletic moratorium Tilghman signed on to the Ivy League-wide seven-week athletic moratorium, since modified, in which intercollegiate athletes were enjoined from taking part in supervised practices and other obligatory athletic activities for seven weeks during the academic year in order to encourage them to participate in other activities. Supporters of the proposal pointed to studies by former Princeton president William G. Bowen, whose controversial book The Game of Life purported to describe widespread academic "underperformance" of college athletes. Detractors claimed that the book was flawed, and the moratorium represented an encroachment on students' freedom to use their time as they saw fit.
University donor complaint During her presidency, Tilghman was embroiled in a court case pitting her against the family of a major donor to the university, the Robertsons. The children of the original donors, who were themselves Princeton alums, alleged that the university failed to apply the funds donated by their parents to the intended purpose, and asked for the funds to be restored to the family for use elsewhere. The donated funds had become joined with the university's general endowment, resulting in efficiencies and benefits in fund management and performance, which were not the subject of the Robertsons' complaints. The case was settled in 2008 with a payment to the family of $40 million in legal fees and another $50 million, plus interest, to a new foundation to support education for government service. Princeton retained the remainder of the money for the Wilson school.
Corporate board matters In August 2012, Tilghman was subpoenaed in her dual capacities as Princeton's president and as a member of Google's board, as part of a suit to block a board approved 2-for-1 Google stock split that the complaining party claimed would represent "an unfair effort to diminish its voting power while reserving voting rights for the company’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin". All members of the Google board received subpoenas. In the case of Tilghman, "records of donations, contribution pledges or promises made by Tilghman or the university to any charities, organizations, foundations or educational institutions that have any affiliation with Page, Brin, Schmidt or Google" were demanded.
Precedents