Princeton University

Rosen named first master of Whitman College

By Eric Quiñones

Princeton NJ—Economics professor Harvey Rosen has been named the first master of Whitman College, which will open as Princeton’s sixth residential college in fall 2007.

Rosen, the John Weinberg Professor of Economics and Business Policy, has been a Princeton faculty member since 1974. He recently returned to the University after taking leave in 2003 to serve on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, first as a member and later as chair.

Rosen officially begins his position as Whitman master on July 1, 2007, but his appointment was made at this time to allow him to participate in residential college planning and policy discussions and to begin assembling the Whitman staff. A faculty member serves as the head of each of Princeton’s residential colleges, working closely with the college staffs to build supportive communities and to devise programs and activities to extend education beyond the classroom.

The construction of Whitman is part of a major reorganization of Princeton’s residential college system and will enable an increase in the undergraduate student body from roughly 4,700 to 5,200 under a plan approved by the University’s trustees in 2000.

Princeton currently has a system of five two-year residential colleges. With the new system, three of the six colleges (Whitman, Mathey and Butler) will house students from all four classes, increasing opportunities for interaction across all the classes and allowing juniors and seniors to take fuller advantage of the colleges’ academic, social and cultural offerings. Each of the other three colleges (Forbes, Rockefeller and Wilson) will be paired with a four-year college, and all the colleges will include graduate students in residence.

Rosen was a member of the Four-Year College Program Planning Committee, helping to develop the blueprint for the new system. His appointment as Whitman master was announced by Nancy Malkiel, dean of the college, and Kathleen Deignan, dean of undergraduate students.

“Professor Rosen clearly combines qualities that make for outstanding success in residential college masterships: excellence in undergraduate teaching; experience and skill in administration; an ample measure of level-headedness and sound judgment; imagination and enthusiasm about the possibilities for education in a residential setting; and obvious enjoyment of students,” the announcement said.

Rosen’s research and teaching focuses on public finance, covering topics such as federal taxation, state and local governmental finance, housing policy and labor study. He served as chair of the Department of Economics from 1993 to 1996 and has been co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Studies since 1993.

Rosen received a President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching from the University in 2003. He also won the economics department’s Richard Quandt Teaching Prize in 1999 and held the Cotsen Faculty Fellowship, an honor accorded to faculty recognized as outstanding teachers of undergraduates, from 2001 to 2004.

Whitman College is being designed in a collegiate gothic style by Demetri Porphyrios, a Princeton graduate alumnus, and will provide dormitory, dining, social, cultural, educational and recreational space for 500 undergraduates and 10 graduate students.