When he leaves his post in December and returns to teaching and research, School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston will have many achievements to reflect upon.
Since taking office in 1998, Preston has balanced the school's budget and finances, improved SAS facilities across campus and appointed 181 new standing faculty.
However, according to Preston, there is still something the University lacks, despite the improvements he has made -- a better school anthem.
And while the dean may seem an unlikely candidate, the amateur songwriter has recently taken it upon himself to create a new alma mater for Penn.
The current alma mater, Hail Pennsylvania, "is played once a year at Homecoming," explains Preston, who has been writing songs in his free time for about 15 years. "It's to the tune of the Tsarist national anthem, and the words are very archaic."
Preston's new anthem, which is set to the tune of an old Irish folk ballad, is entitled The Mighty Voice of Pennsylvania.
Recently, at the Dean's Forum, the Penn Glee Club performed Preston's song, which he presented as a gift to departing University President Judith Rodin -- as well as to an enthusiastic audience.
"I was very fond of the lyrics that he wrote," Glee Club Director Erik Nordgren says. "The audience as a whole reacted very enthusiastically in terms of their applause afterwards."
But the dean's talents are certainly not limited to songwriting.
"He is a world-famous demographer who has garnered a tremendous amount of respect in his field," College of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell says. "I can still see that from the way that people speak about him who are in his field."
Preston's interest in demography surfaced when he was working on his doctorate at Princeton.
"I decided to take [demography] and within two weeks, it was clear to me that I wanted to be a demographer," Preston recalls. "It seemed to me fascinating subject matter, and I liked the formal structure that the field had."
At age 24, Preston became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was "younger than every single graduate student."
But despite his youth, Preston proved his value in the field of demography, securing a position at age 28 as director of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington, where he also became a tenured member of the Sociology Department.
However, Preston then took up work for the United Nations, and that led him back to the East Coast. In 1979, he and his wife decided to settle down in the east when Preston was hired by Penn. He has played a central role at the University ever since, serving over the course of his career at Penn as director of the Population Studies Center and chairman of the Faculty Senate and Sociology Department.
During the 1990-91 search for SAS dean, Preston was offered the job but turned it down because "it didn't seem like the right time of my career."
"I was fortunate enough to be offered it again by [President] Judy Rodin, and by that time, it began to be more intriguing simply because I'd done really one thing all of my life, and I wanted to see what it was like to do something else," Preston explains.
But when Preston accepted the role of dean seven years ago, he lost much of the free time he once had.
"It's sometimes difficult to catch your breath," he says. "It's very taxing at this time of year."
But despite his busy schedule, Preston says he still finds his position to be a very rewarding one.
"I love the general manager aspect of my job," he says. "When I was in college, I wrote to the general manager of the Chicago Cubs saying I wanted his job; it was the only job in the world I would consider taking. I said I'd even go to Harvard Business School if that's what it took."
"I got a nice letter back from him saying it was much harder than you think to get a job like his -- so this is as close as I'm ever going to come," Preston says. "I'm sort of the general manager of the School of Arts and Sciences."
But while he has found his job to be rewarding, Preston says that he is still looking forward to returning to the classroom next year.
"I am going to teach and do research again," he says. "It's sort of the core of my identity and what I've done most of my adult life. It's what I was designed to do. I am very much looking forward to getting back to it."
Stepping down from his current position will also give Preston more time for some of his other passions -- namely, songwriting and golf.
"I honestly feel like [songwriting] is something that I could have really enjoyed doing and making a career of it. I would probably starve to death, though, so I'm not sorry I chose the career I did."
