In 1900, after two years of teaching at Wesleyan University,
Woodrow Wilson and family packed their bags and moved to New Jersey, where
he accepted a professorship at his alma mater, Princeton University.
Although Wilson had been happy in Connecticut, he still felt that
he was not achieving his full academic and professional potential,
and reasoned that Princeton would provide more opportunities to
do so. While at Princeton he wrote and published Division
and Reunion in 1893, a work that charted the course of
American history from the 1830s to Reconstruction after the Civil War.
He also published a biography of George Washington in 1897 and
published a large five-volume History of the American People in
1902. In addition to his books, Wilson also authored dozens of magazine
articles, editorials, pamphlets, and essays. He intended to write
a crowning work that he planned to call The Philosophy
of Politics, but was called to other duties before he
even began to research the subject.
Just as at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan, Wilson was
received at Princeton with much enthusiasm; he was lauded as an
excellent professor of political economy and jurisprudence who
could make his lectures both interesting and informative. He also
taught public administration, English law, international law, and
constitutional law. Hundreds of students attended his lectures;
his popularity was unequaled. His fame as an orator and teacher
spread throughout the American academic world. While a professor
at Princeton, Wilson was offered the chairmanship of the history
departments at the University of Chicago and at Johns Hopkins University
(to replace his former professor Dr. Herbert Adams), and he was
offered the presidency of numerous other schools, including the
University of Illinois and the University of Virginia. Yet he declined
to accept any of the offers, preferring to remain at the school
he loved. His twelve years as a Princeton professor were among
his most challenging and stimulating.
Ever a religious man, Wilson and his wife Ellen joined
the Second Presbyterian Church in 1897. That same year, Woodrow
also became a governing elder of the church. In 1905, after trying
to unite the First and Second Presbyterian Churches into one body,
he withdrew his membership from the Second congregation and entered
the First as an elder. Throughout this period Wilson retained every
ounce of the strict sense of morality that his father and the church
had instilled in him during his youth.
Wilson also became a leader among the Princeton faculty
members. During his teaching years at Princeton, many both inside
and outside the university believed the quality of education had
been waning and that Princeton was losing its place among the nation's top
schools. Many of the teachers, led by Wilson, cried for higher standards
and better leadership to guide the university into the new century.
When the university's president, Dr. Francis L. Patton, caved into
popular demand and resigned his position, the faculty and trustees
of the school looked to Wilson to lead them, unanimously electing
him president of the university in 1902. He was the first Princeton
president who had not previously been a clergyman.
President Wilson stepped up to the task of strengthening
and reorganizing Princeton with vigor, and was blessed for the
first five or six years with almost complete support from the faculty,
trustees, and even students. Furthermore, for the first time in
his career, he was in a position to write policy and to make changes.
Wilson began a series of reforms designed to convert the school
from a "place where there are youngsters doing tasks to a place
where there are men thinking." The reformist attitude and tendencies
he developed during these years would stick with him throughout
the remainder of his political career.
The first task Wilson set out to accomplish was reorganizing
the university budget to fund his visionary reforms. With a check
for six million dollars from the trustees, he set about allocating
money to various departments, including the undergraduate college,
a new school for science, a fund for new teachers and facilities,
a new graduate school, a school of jurisprudence, a natural history
museum, and a school for electrical engineering. He then set about redesigning
the methods of teaching undergraduates, transforming the system
to a style modeled after a program used at Oxford University. Entitled
the preceptorial system, this method of teaching brought small
groups of students together under the tutelage of a professor trained
in their chosen field rather than in large impersonal lecture halls.
The system was devised to stimulate thinking, student-teacher interaction,
and discussion rather than requiring students to memorize information.
Nothing like the preceptorial system existed anywhere else in the
United States at the time, and it quickly helped push Princeton
back up into the ranks of elite American universities. Many modern
universities and colleges throughout the country now have similar
programs based on Wilson's revolutionary method.
President Wilson also reorganized the undergraduate program's degree
requirements. At the time, many colleges and universities, including
Princeton, used the free elective system to allow students to select
a course of study during their four years without having to meet
any standard requirements. This system let many students graduate
from the university with specialized knowledge in a single field
and little knowledge of anything else. Struck by the lack of well-roundedness
in the school's graduates, Wilson and the faculty altered the program,
requiring all undergraduates to pass certain courses from a variety
of fields during their four years in order to graduate. Furthermore,
to increase the quality of students at the university, Wilson drastically
increased the entrance requirements. This raised a row among wealthy
individuals accustomed to buying their sons' education, but Wilson
and the trustees held their ground.
While attempting to improve the quality of education via requirement
changes and teaching methods, Wilson also initiated reform to raise
standards by attacking the university's social circles that fostered
elitism and snobbery. Although the university had always banned
Greek organizations, other cliques evolved over time in the form
of "eating clubs." During his undergraduate years, Wilson himself
had been a member of the Alligators, and other organizations like
it lined both sides of Prospect Avenue near the college. Again
with the support of the trustees, and even with the support of
many of the students and members of the eating clubs, Wilson attempted
to revise the system and initiate his quadrangle plan. Also similar
to the Oxford system, the quadrangle plan called for housing undergraduates
in separate semi-autonomous buildings or colleges throughout the
campus. Each college would surround a central courtyard and serve
as a dormitory, dining facility, and place where students could
receive individual tutoring and instruction in their fields. Each
college was also intended to house a variety of students with different
plans of study to increase diversity.
This plan was revolutionary at the time, and met much
more opposition than the preceptorial system. Many of the university's alumni
fought against the idea, claiming that the quadrangle plan would
destroy all the camaraderie and spirit that the eating clubs fostered.
A battle over the subject ensued for several years until the trustees
finally withdrew their support of the quadrangle plan. Without
any support, Wilson was forced to abandon the idea, and the eating
clubs remained. However, years later, systems similar to the quadrangle
plan were initiated at schools around the country, including Princeton's
rivals Harvard and Yale.
Near the end of his presidency at Princeton, Wilson fought
additional battles, the most destructive of which occurred over
his plans for a new graduate school building. Wilson wanted the
new building to be constructed in the center of the undergraduate
campus to promote the exchange of ideas between undergraduate and
graduate students. Dean Andrew Fleming West opposed the idea. He
envisioned a graduate school that was separate from the college
to promote higher learning that was beyond undergraduate studies. The
two men tenaciously held onto their ideals and fought each other
for several years. The controversy divided the trustees and faculty
into two distinct factions. Wilson succeeded in building a coalition
of trustees and alumni powerful enough to support his plan, but
when a former alumnus unexpectedly died and willed several million
dollars to the University on the condition that the new graduate
school be built according to West's plan, Wilson conceded. Ironically,
it was later determined that the willed estate did not amount to
the several million dollars as originally believed, but only $600,000.
The eight years Wilson served as president of Princeton
were particularly tiring years for him. While he made sweeping
reforms through the school and education system, he continued to
teach and lecture as he had done before. He did most of this himself
with only the assistance of a part-time secretary. The work took
a heavy toll on him: throughout his service he had several borderline
nervous breakdowns, and in May of 1906 fell from a stroke caused
by arteriosclerosis that left him temporarily blind in his left
eye. His physicians urged him to quit, but he refused and instead
chose to vacation with his family in Great Britain that summer.
