Transitions are sometimes rocky, but according to officials at Princeton University, the replacement of Amy Gutmann in the provost's office has been anything but.
Chris Eisgruber, a professor in Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values, took the office of the provost in July 2004. A Rhodes scholar and Chicago Law School graduate, he also directs the Program in Law and Public Affairs.
As at Penn, the provost at Princeton has wide-ranging responsibilities -- including serving as the chief academic and chief budgetary officer for the university.
By all accounts, Eisgruber and Penn's new president are not the same type of administrator.
"The transition has gone extremely well," Princeton Engineering and Applied Science Dean Maria Klawe said. "Chris comes from a law background and Amy from a politics background, so they interact [with the administration] somewhat differently."
Klawe did not elaborate on the specific differences between the two, choosing instead to highlight their leadership qualities and ability to grasp a variety of subjects.
Eisgruber himself was quick to point out that Gutmann helped his transition, but added that he operates independently.
In an e-mail, he said that working with the other administrators has been rewarding.
"I've thoroughly enjoyed my own 'freshman year' as the University provost," wrote the Princeton alumnus, who graduated magna cum laude in physics in 1983. "The administration has a collaborative spirit and an enthusiasm that makes it a joy to come into the office."
Eisgruber said that Gutmann was very helpful in sharing her knowledge of the position with him before she left.
"Amy was very generous with her time during the transitional period here in the spring of 2004," he wrote. "We miss her greatly, of course, as you must appreciate."
But while Gutmann said she still keeps in touch with friends and acquaintances at Princeton, she added that her responsibility to help the provost's office make the transition to new leadership ended when she left the university.
"When I left, I left," she said.
While Gutmann has outlined her strategic plan in her time at Penn, Eisgruber has spearheaded his own initiatives.
These plans include incrementally expanding the undergraduate population, constructing and renovating residential facilities and improving Princeton's base in neuroscience, the creative and performing arts, chemistry, engineering and African-American studies.
Some plans, such as the expansion of the student body, were conceived before Eisgruber's appointment but were not implemented until he became provost.
Princeton currently boasts 4,500 undergraduates -- a number that Vice Provost for University Space Planning Robert Barnett says will increase by about 11 percent.
"That has effects throughout campus in terms of faculty, curriculum and certain facilities," he said.
Barnett said that Eisgruber has made great strides in fostering a close relationship with the administration, which has fewer deans than most of its peer institutions -- including Penn.
"He is part of the inner circle of the president's most trusted advisers on campus, and he is certainly moving things along according to the president's vision," Barnett said.
A number of Princeton students said that Eisgruber has formed strong ties with students as a professor and now as provost.
"He is very accessible," said Princeton senior Camilo Acosta, who had Eisgruber for a freshman seminar on constitutional law. "The seminar was for three hours and there were only 12 people in the class, so on the surface it sounded like it would be hell. It turned out to be fascinating, and at the end of the class he took us all out for pizza."
Acosta added, though, that most Princeton students have much more interaction with administrators such as the dean of undergraduate students than with the provost, who must oversee the operations of the entire university.
Princeton junior Jesse Creed worked on a budget-recommendations committee that Eisgruber chaired last year. He said Eisgruber's intelligence is highly evident.
"He speaks in sort of an Italian opera," Creed said. "His sentences are long, but you follow and nod and at the end say, 'Wow, that's how it really is.'"
