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Over the past year, Princeton University has instituted a range of measures designed to decrease COVID-19 risk and allow students, faculty, and staff to safely return to campus. And, as the semester began, Princeton University President Chris Eisgruber welcomed students with excitement. In his blog, Welcome Back to Campus, President Chris Eisgruber said “The beginning of a new academic year always brings fresh energy, and I feel especially excited to welcome you back to Princeton this month. In-person teaching, research, and scholarship are the heart of Princeton’s educational mission. Our people and our community are, first and foremost, what makes this University a special place.”
Back to School
At Opening Exercises on Sunday, Aug. 29, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber welcomed the Class of 2025 and shared with them personal lessons of resilience, lessons drawn from his health struggles for facing moments of difficulty. He said "don’t be afraid to open up and lean on one another as you face challenges.” Read more.
Princeton University welcomed the Class of 2025 to campus on Sunday, Aug. 29. Coming from all 50 states — plus Washington, D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands — and 58 different countries, the 1,345 members of the first-year class includes more than 200 students who deferred enrollment from the Classes of 2023 and 2024. Eighteen percent are first-generation college students, 22% are lower-income students eligible for federal Pell grants and 62% qualify for University financial aid. Forty-eight percent of the incoming students are U.S. citizens or permanent residents who self-identify as people of color, including biracial and multiracial students. Learn more.
The Freshman Scholars Institute (FSI), the Princeton University Preparatory Program (PUPP), and the Princeton Summer Journalism Program (PSJP) are separate programs that share similar missions: to empower and support first-generation, lower-income and underrepresented students. The pre-matriculation programs are among Princeton’s nation-leading initiatives in college access and opportunity under the umbrella of the Emma Bloomberg Center. Learn more.
Princeton University welcomed 713 graduate students from 54 countries for the 2021-22 academic year during orientation activities held Aug. 25-26. The Graduate School again admitted and yielded its most diverse cohort of students, with 24% of incoming domestic students (including terminal master’s and Ph.D. students) from underrepresented groups. Incoming underrepresented domestic Ph.D. students will comprise 23% of the domestic Ph.D. population — a historic high. Learn more.
ICYMI
The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Northeast Hub is one of five new hubs announced in a nationwide NSF-funded network of universities formed to accelerate the economic impact of federally funded research — delivering benefits in health care, energy and the environment, computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced materials and other areas — while building skills and opportunities among researchers from all backgrounds, including those historically underrepresented in entrepreneurship. Princeton will be the principal institution in the new hub, with the University of Delaware and Rutgers University as partner institutions. The hub will include five initial affiliates: New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Rowan University in New Jersey; Lehigh University and Temple University in Pennsylvania; and Delaware State University, a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). The hub will expand by adding new affiliates each year. Learn more.
Microsoft has awarded $250,000 in funding to professor Jonathan Mummolo and a team of fellow social scientists to fund the development of a novel system to computationally analyze police body-worn camera (BWC) footage. Mummolo, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, is creating a system that will automate the process of summarizing body-worn camera content. Learn more.
The allocation of COVID-19 vaccine between countries has thus far tended toward vaccine nationalism, wherein countries stockpile vaccines to prioritize access for their citizenry over equitable vaccine sharing. The extent of vaccine nationalism, however, may strongly impact global trajectories of COVID-19 case numbers and increase the potential emergence of novel variants, according to a Princeton University and McGill University study published in the journal Science. Learn more.
Black, Latino, and Native American frontline workers are more likely to work in occupations with a higher risk of COVID-19 exposure with less workplace protection against COVID-19 than other workers, according to a study led by researchers at Princeton University and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Journalists and researchers have argued that work-related factors are partially responsible for the unequal impact COVID-19 has had on socioeconomically vulnerable groups. Black, Latino, and Native American workers, for instance, are more likely to have jobs which cannot be done remotely. Learn more.