In Short: Richardson ’93 Named Dean of Admission

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Alonso Nichols/Tufts University

KAREN RICHARDSON ’93, dean of admissions and enrollment management at Tufts University, has been named Princeton’s dean of admission, effective July 1.

Richardson was assistant dean for undergraduate admission at Princeton in 2002–04, focusing on diversity-recruitment efforts. She served in a number of admission roles at Tufts over the past decade before becoming dean in 2016. From 2005 to 2008, she served as deputy superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. 

A first-generation college student, as an undergraduate Richardson was a Big Sister and worked in the Office of Admission as a federal work-study student and at the Princeton-Blairstown Center. She succeeds Janet Lavin Rapelye, who became president of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education in November 2018.

In the wake of the COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SCANDAL that became public in March, Princeton began a review “to make sure we are doing everything we should be doing and admitting students for the right reasons,” Dean of the College Jill Dolan said. 

The University is conducting the review — which includes the offices of athletics and admissions — “to make sure that our policies are ethical and intact, and so far everything seems appropriate,” Dolan said. The University had not been contacted by any outside agency in relation to the federal investigation, she said.

Princeton researchers will be able to dive deeper into the field of data science following the creation of the Schmidt DataX Fund, which will support DATA-SCIENCE INITIATIVES led by the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning. The fund will help to develop graduate-level courses in data science and machine learning; train researchers in the latest software tools, cloud platforms, and public data sets; and provide funding for new research projects.

The Schmidt DataX Fund was made possible through a gift by Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative spearheaded by former CEO of Google and Alphabet Eric Schmidt ’76 and his wife, Wendy. 

It will support six data scientists who will create data-analysis software and will work with research teams of faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. They will focus on three areas: catalysis (the acceleration of a chemical reaction by a catalyst), biomedical data science, and information-technology policy. 

Bundle of Paws Photography/Tom Myers (Olson); Dan Sullivan ’19 (Salama)

Seniors Camden Olson, above left, and Jordan Salama, above right, have received REACHOUT FELLOWSHIPS sponsored by the classes of 1956, 1981, and 2006 for yearlong public-service projects.

Olson, an EEB major who is pursuing certificates in cognitive science and applications of computing, will work for the nonprofit Dogs4Diabetics. She will write standards for medical-alert dog training and performance and work to implement them. 

Olson has trained dogs and conducted research for organizations including Guiding Eyes for the Blind and Canine Companions for Independence. For her senior-thesis project, she trained a diabetic-alert dog to monitor the blood sugar of someone with diabetes.

Salama, a Spanish and Portuguese major with certificates in journalism, creative writing, Latin American studies, and environmental studies, will work with Sesame Workshop to create “Lulus America,” a bilingual online-video series. It will be a companion channel to “The Lulus TV” and “Los Lulus en Español,” two children’s YouTube channels that Salama created with his brothers and that have more than 450,000 subscribers. 

Salama has worked for Sesame Workshop and 60 Minutes. On campus, he co-created Princeton Tonight, a student-run broadcast TV show.