![](https://paw.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/styles/feature_image/public/images/content/OTC-Russellnew-clipping.jpg?itok=TdBTWIVG)
Office of Communications
![](https://paw.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/styles/feature_image/public/images/content/OTC-Russellnew-clipping.jpg?itok=TdBTWIVG)
Office of Communications
William B. Russel, dean of the graduate school since 2002, will step down from the position at the end of the academic year. During his tenure, enrollment has grown from about 1,975 to about 2,600 graduate students. President Eisgruber ’83 said that Russel “has sustained academic excellence, improved our stipend and support system for graduate students, integrated those students more fully into the University community, and strengthened the ties that bind the University to its graduate alumni.” Princeton’s first graduate-alumni conference, Many Minds, Many Stripes, will be held Oct. 17–19. Russel, a chemical engineering professor who has been on the faculty since 1974, will take a year’s sabbatical and then transfer to emeritus status.