• Tigers helping tigers: Students journey to Indonesia to assist conservation
• Cotsen Children's Library unveiled
• What's up with the euro?
• Experiential learning grows on campus

Tigers helping tigers
Students journey to Indonesia to assist conservation

WHEN THE FIVE students who spent last summer studying the habitat of Indonesia's Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park talk about that experience, you can hear the excitement in their voices. They saw siamangs, pigtailed macaques, dark-tailed gibbons, and squirrels the size of large cats. They heard elephants crashing through the brush and spotted a tiger's track in a sandbar.
Shallin Busch '98, Andy Goodman '99, Hans Hull '97, Sarah Henry '99, and Sadie Ryan '98 spent four weeks in the park last July with Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Andrew P. Dobson, under the auspices of the Princeton chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology. The third largest protected area on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park had never been systematically surveyed for flora and fauna.
The group's mission was to help halt extinction of the endangered Sumatran tiger, and by extension, tigers worldwide. (Habitat loss and heavy poaching have reduced the number of Sumatran tigers in the wild to an estimated 400 to 500 individuals.) The team had two goals: to help initiate research at the new field station and to map a study grid of the area as a first step in determining what habitat is necessary to support tigers.
The students spent seven or eight hours in the forest each day, walking approximately 10 kilometers along narrow trails that divide the park into a grid of six-kilometer squares. At each intersection in the grid, the students estimated canopy and understory density, took measurements of the trees, and observed the vegetation and wildlife.
They analyzed the vegetation, said Dobson, by "looking at what was there, how it was distributed, and the interaction between species." This kind of analysis, he explained, is the foundation of park management. It identifies which habitats are important to the wildlife in the park.
"The best we can realistically do to protect tigers," said Dobson, "is increase people's awareness of the problem, try to maintain the habitat, and, by setting up research stations, make the area less attractive to poachers."
The Princeton chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology was formed five years ago to give students hands-on experience of conservation biology. Initially its efforts focused on Sterling Forest in northern New Jersey. But growing student interest in the tropics and growing alumni interest in tiger preservation led Dobson to consider a project in Indonesia.
Dobson, who joined the Princeton faculty in 1990, studies conservation of elephants and primates, and infectious diseases in birds and mammals. Increasingly, his work brings him to Indonesia.
A "run for the tiger" in Princeton in November 1996 helped raise money for the trip. Other support came from the classes of '76 and '81's Princeton Save the Tiger fund; Walter E. Berger III '60; Edmund A. Stanley, Jr. '49; and the President's Fund. Tim O'Brien and Margaret Kinnaird of the Wildlife Conservation Society, both former Princeton postdoctoral fellows, provided logistical support in Indonesia.
Though there are no plans for another trip to Bukit Barisan, everyone involved hopes that there will be future Princeton involvement.
--Tamsin M. Todd '92

ON OCTOBER 31, Princeton opened the Cotsen Children's Library, which comprises one of the world's finest historical collections of children's books, as well as an interactive exhibit designed to inspire children to read. The library is the result of a December 1994 gift from Lloyd E. Cotsen '50, a charter trustee of the university and head of Cotsen Management Corporation, in Los Angeles. His gift included a pledge of $8 million to create new facilities within Firestone Library and support scholarship and conferences that explore the history of children's literature and education.
Holdings in the Children's Library include more than 22,000 items, which Cotsen will continue to own, and two gifts to the university: the Tillson Music Collection, which includes nursery rhymes, sheet music, musical toys, and song books; and the 130-item Charles Perrault collection, among whose treasures are early editions of Perrault's fairy tales, known in English as "Mother Goose."
The highlight of the Cotsen Children's Library is a permanent interactive exhibit near the main entrance of Firestone Library. Planners of the exhibit aimed for children to discover that books are passports to other places, other times, and other people.

GO ANYWHERE, BE ANYONE
A "giant book" that serves as the centerpiece of the display is designed to illustrate how books allow the reader to go anywhere, anytime. Its 14-foot covers fan out across the exhibit floor, and doorways in the covers transport children into three "worlds." One door--in the shape of a wardrobe from C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--leads to scenes from Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, introducing children to the world of fantasy and its connections to mythology and folklore. Another door, shaped like a keyhole, takes visitors into the world of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, where they can play word games that incorporate puns and riddles from that story and other children's literature. The third door brings visitors into a diorama of the seasons based on Garth Williams's illustrations in Charlotte's Web, with a synopsis of the E. B. White story on audio read by the author.
A "Screen Test" gives children a chance to play well known characters in different situations. In the "Voices" exhibit, they can "become" characters through the use of special telephones that alter their voices. In the "Be Anyone" playroom, the children can pick a script of a fairy tale, myth, or fable; cast parts; act out the story; and record it in front of a Chromakey wall, similar to the "blue screen" used by movie actors before special effects are added. When the children see the final product minutes later, they are surrounded by an animated background.
The exhibition's goal is to convey the idea that knowledge of, and experiences with, books are sources of personal empowerment which broaden horizons. The exhibition also aims to teach children about the art of the written word and illustration. The prime audience is fourth to sixth grades. The exhibition team includes Children's Library curator Andrea Immel, Rare Books curator Stephen Ferguson, and gallery designer Lynne Breslin, who has done installations for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Whitney Museum. Architects for the project are Henry Smith-Miller and Laurie Hawkinson of New York City.
--Mary Caffrey

As the January 1, 1999 deadline looms, the push for a unified European currency, the euro, has been influencing economies and politics across the continent. To find out more about the euro's chances and potential problems, PAW spoke with Kenneth S. Rogoff, the Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. He is helping to organize the European Monetary Union Sawyer Seminar series at Princeton this year. For a list of topics and dates, see the seminar's homepage, which is located at http://www.princeton.edu/~euro/.

Q: How is this currency union going to work?
A: Next spring the Council of Ministers, which comprises the economic ministers from the countries of the European Union, will meet to announce which countries are in and which are out. This will depend partly on who can meet the Maastricht criteria, which specify that a country's ratio of total debt to its Gross National Product can't be greater than 60 percent, and its annual budget deficit can't be more than 3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. Each country must also have a very low inflation rate and can't have violated any of its exchange-rate agreements for a two-year period. Meeting the budget deficit criteria is going to be really hard for some countries. Even Germany is struggling to meet the criteria. But right now Europe's economic recovery seems strong enough that they will all squeak through.
On January 1, 1999, the exchange rates among the "in" countries will be irrevocably fixed in relation to each other, and their central banks will effectively go out of existence. From that point on, one central bank in Frankfurt will be in charge of all the member countries' currencies. But there still will be physical deutsche marks and francs floating around; the countries plan to wait three more years before beginning wholesale substitutions of the euro.

Q: What do you think will happen at the meeting next spring?
A: I'm a euroskeptic. I put the odds at only 50-50 that the Council of Ministers will actually go ahead with the merger. If the euro does happen, I think it would have to include France and Germany or it would be meaningless. There's also the outside chance of a merger between only Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Austria. This might actually improve the chances of bringing in other countries later, because it would give everyone a chance to see what the problems are.

Q: Do you think the euro is a good idea?
A: On balance, I'd say yes. Imagine if New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all had different currencies; it would be an incredible pain in the neck! First of all, you'd constantly be exchanging currency. Secondly, if you had a company that operated in all three states, you'd have to keep books in all three currencies, which are fluctuating in value all the time. Economists estimate that up to a half percent of Europe's Gross Domestic Product (in the range of $50-60 billion dollars a year) is now wasted on these various costs. Of course, there are costs to a unified currency, too: If a recession is going on in England, the British might really want to use expansionary monetary policy to temporarily relieve their problems. When you give up control of your country's currency, you give up your ability to do that. So you have to ask yourself, Is it worth giving up this control?

Q: What kinds of risks do the countries face in merging their currencies?
A: Until the moment these countries actually fix their exchange rates, their currencies are vulnerable to attacks led by groups of speculative investors like George Soros. Europe thought it was on track for a single currency back in the early '90s, until severe speculative attacks wrecked the European monetary system. The risky period is between now and January 1, 1999. Speculators could find a soft spot in one of the currencies and start to sell it off, forcing that country to choose either to allow really high interest rates or to let its exchange rate slide, which would threaten its chance to join the European Monetary Union.
Take France, for instance. The French recently elected a new Socialist government that says it's committed to the euro, but it's also committed to raising workers' pay and establishing a 35-hour work week. Sometime over the next year and a half speculators might say, "Hmm, that sounds inconsistent with trying to fix your exchange rate against the mark," and sell off francs.

Q: How can countries minimize the chance of these kinds of speculative attacks?
A: The best thing they could do is make an announcement at the upcoming Council of Ministers meeting: "We've just merged our currencies. We know we said we'd do it in 1999, but we changed our minds. It's done, as of two minutes ago." That way, they wouldn't leave any room for speculative attacks.

Q: Finances aside, isn't the euro also a political statement?
A: Most economists would say that unemployment is overwhelmingly the big problem in Europe. Trying to find a more efficient way to protect people who have suffered economic adversity, without giving them huge incentives not to work for long periods, and figuring out how to protect workers, without making it impossible to fire them--these are the big macroeconomic problems in Europe. But the euro has taken on a dimension far greater than its economic substance. My colleagues in Europe are simply passionate about it.

Q: What makes the euro so important?
A: What's really important are all the things being done in the name of the euro. I compare it to "nail soup." Remember the old fable? A beggar knocks on the door of a house and says, "If you let me come in, I can make an incredible broth using just this nail." The beggar starts heating the nail in some water and then he says, "By the way, if I could just add a leek, it would be even better." He ends up adding a whole chicken and lots of other delicious things. The euro is like that magical nail. In order to qualify for inclusion in the euro, European nations are getting their deficits down, lowering trade barriers, and coordinating regulations. For example, it used to be hard to drive a truck across Europe--the bridges weren't all built to the same standard, among other problems. Today, that's changing. All the things European countries are doing to become more integrated--to become more like the United States--are greatly strengthening Europe.
--Royce Flippin '80

MOTIVATIONAL
Students in Chemistry 112, From Ozone to Oil Spills: A Chemical Perspective on the Environment, toured Trenton, focusing on how environmental issues affect the community. The students worked in groups to develop Web pages about the environment for middle-school children. According to Professor Thomas G. Spiro, the students found the project motivational.
One of the final paper topics for students in Sociology 221, Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender, taught by Assistant Professor Bruce Western, is to write about the patterns of inequality they observe in a nonprofit organization. Sociology, said Western, "is a natural" for the experiential-learning model.
Among other courses that have developed experiential-learning components are Bioethics and the Law (WWS 311) and Science, Technology, and Public Policy (WWS 304), said Johnson.
The student committee's goal is to encourage more faculty members to incorporate experiential learning into appropriate courses, said Johnson. Some faculty members are coming up with their own ideas, and others are responding to student interest in incorporating an experiential component into their courses.
Princeton Project 55 has also been instrumental in this effort. One of its recent projects is the Experiential Education Initiative, which, is "trying to overcome the disconnect between universities and the world outside" and increase opportunities for experiential learning at Princeton in a way that doesn't compromise academic standards, said Project 55 President John H. Fish '55.
The Center for Community Service and the Center for Teaching and Learning, both of which are in the early stages of development, will probably provide support and resources for experiential-learning initiatives.