Earlier this month, the university announced The board approved seven new faculty appointments, including the return of prominent African-American studies scholar Kianga Yamatta-Taylor. announced. The Daily Princetonian looked back at faculty appointments over the past few years to examine trends across disciplines.
In the past two years, the university has hired 52 new professors. The most professors were hired in the computer science and history departments. Despite differences between sectors, the data do not indicate a long-term shift towards a single research area.
The four new professors follow a recent increase in undergraduate enrollment in the computer science department.Department of Computer Science Wins just In 2011, 36 bachelor’s degrees, but 212 members of the 2024 class declared computer science. It’s only grown in the last few years. Computer Science (BSE) became the most popular major, rising from 9.9% of the 2020 class who declared the major to 11.9% of the 2024 class. From the 2020 class to 4.4 percent of the 2024 class.
Two out of four professors hired in computer science work in areas of research related to the impact of technology on humans. Parastoo Abtahi’s research focus is on human-computer interaction, while former University of Southern California Aleksandra Korolova focuses on the social impact of algorithms and AI. Her two other hired professors are Alex Lombardi, who studies the theoretical foundations of cryptography, and Ellen Zhong, whose research areas are computational biology and machine learning.
Another department that has hired four professors in the last two years, the Department of History, has actually fallen in popularity as one of the most popular majors over the past five years. In the 2020 class, 5.8% of the class declared history, and in the 2024 class, 4.2% of the class declared history as their major.
The four professors employed in the history department focus on a variety of topics. Former Columbia University Matthew Jones studies the history of science and technology. Yonatan Glazer-Eytan focuses on early modern Spain and explores inter-religious and inter-ethnic relations in the Iberian Peninsula. Elizabeth Ellis specializes in early American and Native American history. Corinna Zeltsman studies contemporary Latin America, especially her nineteenth-century and her twentieth-century Mexico.
There were also more departmental jobs in schools of public and international affairs. SPIA has hired her three new professors in the last three years, probably corresponding to the last five years of growth.
Over the past year, Rector Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has made a commitment to expanding STEM on campus, stating that the university “cannot be a great liberal arts college of the 21st century without a great engineering department.” I’m here.
and interview Writing in The Daily Princetonian, Eisgruber said that if he had to name one top priority for the next five years, it would be “rebuilding and strengthening schools of engineering and applied sciences.”
Despite Eisgruber’s commitment, the university has not shown a noticeable increase in the number of professors hired by engineering departments over the past five years. Across five engineering faculties, he employs 13 professors, matching the hiring rate of humanities faculties. The small disparity may be due in part to differences in the rates at which professors leave various departments.
In addition, many of the professors hired come from other institutions. Of these, 7 are from national and public universities, 6 are from international universities, and 14 are from private universities.
Isabel Yip is the Head News Editor at Prince.
Annie Rupertus, Julian Hartman-Sigall, and Marc Lessler contributed to the report.
Submit corrections to corrections[at]Dailyprincetonian.com.
