In the first year of her 24-year tenure as the university's dean of the college, a position from which she stepped down last year, Malkiel implemented a new seminar program for first-year students intended to enhance interaction between undergraduates and faculty. Princeton now offers over 80 seminars per year, across the humanities, natural sciences and engineering disciplines.
This development and the creation of four-year residential colleges constitute Malkiel's proudest accomplishments, she said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
In 2007, Princeton transformed two of its two-year residential colleges, which were established in 1982, into four-year programs and then constructed a third in collegiate Gothic architecture style following an increase in the number of admitted students. The colleges are staffed with academic advisors and offer an array of intellectual and social activities, and upperclassmen affiliated with the college but residing elsewhere are invited weekly to talk to residents, according to Malkiel. Students can approach any of these advisors with academic concerns such as selecting a major, she said.
"If you're deliberating between psychology and government majors and decide a term later that you chose the wrong one, you can just go to the person you talked to in your residential college to switch," Malkiel said. "We do a better job of supporting students in deciding."
Malkiel, who arrived at Princeton in 1969 as a history professor, observed the lack of seminars and writing programs when she first assumed the deanship in 1987.
Princeton, which she described as a "research university with the heart and soul of a liberal arts curriculum," also possessed long-standing values that needed to be upheld.
"Continuities are important, and they include faculty's deep engagement in undergraduate education, close interaction between students and faculty and the conviction that the undergraduate program of study works best when it is structured from general education requirements and the disciplinary major," Malkiel said.
A commitment to independent work, a diverse and close-knit residential community and education beyond the classroom about developing undergraduate leadership, personal maturity and moral development all mark significant commitments of the university, she said.
In 2004, Malkiel garnered sharp criticism for championing a grade deflation policy, which established a quota for the number of As given to students in each department, according to The Daily Princetonian. The policy aimed to streamline grading across academic departments and to inform students about "the difference between their most outstanding work and their ordinarily good work," Malkiel said.
Princeton students also expressed concern regarding Malkiel's lack of communication with students, arguing that many were unaware of the new grading policy. Malkiel defended the policy and said that the administration had undertaken large efforts to communicate the change to students, faculty graduate schools and employers, according to The Princetonian.
As dean, Malkiel also oversaw the expansion of international opportunities by increasing study abroad programs and offering internship resources and global seminars, she said. She launched the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, which aids faculty in improving teaching and supports students who seek to become experts in their fields, and created the Community-Based Learning Initiative, a partnership between students and local non-profit organizations that addresses community concerns.
Malkiel said that her experiences teaching have helped her develop ways to strengthen undergraduate education and that all of her initiatives were grounded in conversations with faculty and students.
"I had professors and students over for dinner, and it was easy to ask them, What should we be doing and how can we improve?'" Malkiel said. "That's how I got a lot of my ideas."
Listening to faculty, students, colleagues and trustees, as well as looking to other schools for inspiration on administrative initiatives, are key to effecting change in higher education, according to Malkiel.
"Copy shamelessly," she said. "Know what your peer institutions are doing and adopt, steal and borrow any good idea that's out there."
Malkiel said she has aimed to promote communication and visibility by chairing numerous committees and increasing interaction with student government and The Daily Princetonian.
"I taught freshman seminars and advised senior theses," she said. "Any one of them could be in my office to talk about their work and their lives."
As institutions move forward, they can look to increased internationalization, small classroom environments and intimate residential settings as springboards to bettering undergraduate education. Malkiel said schools must focus on extending intellectual conversation between students and faculty and maintaining a balance between actualizing new initiatives and remaining loyal to traditions.
"As we look to the future, we need to, on one hand, preserve traditions and historic commitments, but on the other hand take ambitious initiatives and be responsive to various needs," she said.
In her opening remarks, Provost Carol Folt highlighted Malkiel's achievements as both an educator and an administrator and her dedication to the liberal arts and graduate curriculum. Malkiel's initiatives to improve student learning and faculty pedagogy align with several projects at Dartmouth, Folt said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"Many of them share goals with programs at Dartmouth such as [the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning], the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, our experimental [College Courses], but have differences that were very interesting to our faculty," Folt said.
Malkiel also met with the Committee of Chairs and the Committee on Instruction to discuss Princeton's approach to slowing grade inflation. Many faculty were interested in the bridge program she helped develop in 2009 that provides a year of service learning overseas for students before matriculation, and the senior thesis requirement which she said had been in effect for more than 60 years, according to Folt.
"She's a wonderfully gifted administrator," history professor Richard Kremer said. "She knows how to work in a complicated system and make changes happen. It's hard to see people like that with this track record."
Computer science professor and Princeton alumnus Thomas Cormen said he was impressed with Malkiel's success in steering administrative initiatives and garnering faculty support, noting that the university has improved since his time as an undergraduate.
"What makes it even more difficult is that Malkiel is dean of the college, not of the faculty," Cormen said. "So she had to get faculty buy-in on ideas, but she had no power over them."
