Shirley Tilghman (born September 17, 1946) (photo) succeeded Harold Shapiro as President of Princeton University in 2001. Before her appointment, she held the Howard Prior Professorship of the Life Sciences in Princeton's molecular biology department.

Born in Canada, Tilghman earned her bachelor's degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and her Ph.D. from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Under Tilghman's administration, the University released the plans for Whitman College, the sixth of Princeton's residential colleges, designed to hold some of the 500 new undergraduates who will be admitted when the Wythes Plan takes effect.

President Tilghman has occasionally been criticized for her hiring practices. Prior to her appointment as President, she had publicly lamented the dearth of women in high-level higher education positions; after her appointment, she appointed several to high-level positions at Princeton. Amy Gutmann (who was chosen as the President of the University of Pennsylvania in early 2004) became the Provost, the second-most-powerful administrative position in the University, Anne-Marie Slaughter became Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Maria Klawe became Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Janet Smith Rapleye became the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions. Critics claim that Tilghman has demonstrated favoritism towards women in her hiring practices. Defenders of Tilghman's hiring point out that she also appointed Charles Kalmbach as the Vice President for Finance and Administration, the highest non-academic administrative post, and David Dobkin as Dean of the Faculty, both of whom are men (as is Gutmann's replacement, Woodrow Wilson School professor Christopher L. Eisgruber .

President Tilghman also came under fire by athletes for signing on to the Ivy League-wide Seven-week athletic moratorium , in which intercollegiate athletes were enjoined from practicing 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 Bowen, whose book The Game of Life described the widespread academic underperformance of college athletes. Detractors claimed that it represented an encroachment on students' freedom to use their time as they saw fit.

External links

• [1], A Tilghman timeline
• [2], The announcement of Tilghman's appointment as the 17th president of Princeton
• [3], Tilghman's lab group's home page