SAS Frontiers
Dean Sam Preston Prepares the Next Chapter of His Academic Life

By Tracey Quinlan Dougherty

The late Scottish demographer William Brass once compared demographers—those who study the causes and consequences of population change —to people who fight fires in offshore oil wells. You don’t need many of them, but they’re extra-ordinarily valuable. Demographer-turned-dean Sam Preston, who will step down in December, has proven him right, making invaluable contributions to population studies, to Penn’s sociology department, and to the School of Arts and Sciences.

During his nearly seven-year term, the School recruited 204 new faculty members, reversed a structural deficit, more than doubled annual fundraising, grew its endowment by nearly 50 percent, launched several academic programs and research centers, dramatically improved financial packages for graduate students, announced the construction of two new buildings, and began refurbishing several others. Research funding from government and industry increased by almost half, and undergraduate applications rose 15 percent.

To some, that might seem like a lot, but Preston has never been one to waste time. He married his high school sweetheart at age 21, became a parent at 23, finished his doctorate and became an assistant professor at 24, received tenure and became a center director at 28, and became a full professor at 31. By the time he came to Penn at 35, he was already considered one of the world’s top demographers. Still, he found time to write country music, play sports, cheer on the Chicago Cubs, and raise four children with his wife, Winnie.

Which raises the question: Can Sam Preston slow down?

“ I don’t know,” he says. “I’m 60 now, and I’ve always been at a kind of frenzied pace. But we have a daughter and two grandchildren in Florida, and I’m planning to spend much of next winter in Florida with them and 20 boxes of books. I don’t know whether that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re on sabbatical, but that’s what I’m doing.”

Those boxes may contain a novel or two, but for the most part they’ll hold demography and social science tomes because Preston wants to brush up on recent happenings in his discipline.

“ I basically have stayed out of the field since becoming dean,” says Preston, the Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography. With days, nights, and weekends filled with facilities plans, budget questions, personnel issues, and fundraising projects, demography has been relegated to winter and spring breaks. He’s looking forward to returning to the classroom with a new undergraduate course in the health and societies major next fall. In the course, called the Health of Populations, he’ll introduce students to the ways in which health is measured and teach them to use those indicators to understand the factors affecting health levels of past and contemporary populations.

He’s already considering his next research project. Possibilities include a study of the past, present, and future of ethnicity in the U.S.; a history of the health of the American population in the twentieth century; or a study of the demography of mental health in the U.S. “It is gratifying,” he says, “to feel that your research makes a difference and helps clarify something that is relevant to public policy or even to our understanding of ourselves. That’s why I’m returning to the field, although it may be late.”

Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology Frank Furstenberg feels it’s not late at all. “It’s typical of Sam to be modest,” he says. “He’s not going to have a hard time catching up. He’ll be as active as anyone in the department in producing new knowledge.”

In 1979, Furstenberg was among the faculty trying to lure Preston to Penn. He had never met the young sociologist, whom he considered a wunderkind, but he was familiar with Preston’s work. Twenty-five years later, Furstenberg still recalls having dinner with him. Through-out the meal, they had a lively debate not just on demography but on topics across the arts and sciences. Everyone at the table was struck by Preston’s sharp intellect and ability to thoughtfully consider topics outside his field. Furstenberg remembers thinking, “My God, what he could bring to the depart-ment!” “Even then,” he says, “I underestimated him.”

Fortunately for SAS, Preston was ready for a change. He was on a two-year leave from the University of Washington to conduct a study of world urbanization for the United Nations. While he enjoyed the research, he wanted to return to the open inquiry of scholarly work. For Preston, who began
his academic career at Berkeley, moving to Penn was a homecoming of sorts. He had grown up outside Philadelphia and had used Penn’s medical library when completing his dissertation at Princeton. And he was intrigued by the opportunity to help build the university’s effort in population studies.

In fact, he helped turn it into the nation’s biggest and most successful graduate program in demography. He’s supervised 47 dissertations at Penn, six of them while dean. Cassio Turra, G’01, Gr’04, who received his doctorate last summer, said of his mentor, “He has a brilliant mind and knows very well how to motivate you and help you develop ideas. He never imposes a subject on you, but gives you the freedom to explore.” Turra was thrilled to receive a research assist-antship with Preston, whose papers he read during his undergraduate and graduate studies in his native Brazil. “It was the best time I had at Penn,” he says.

It was in the sociology depart-ment that Preston began to shine as an administrator, serving twice as department chair, three times as chair of the graduate group in demography, and twice as director of the Population Studies Center. He recruited top scholars to the department and created an environment where faculty felt they were part of a team, regardless of specialty. As a result, both morale and the department’s rankings improved. Associate dean for the social sciences Herbert Smith, also a demographer, calls Preston an “amazingly successful adminis-trator,” crediting the success to his sense of fairness, his ability to learn from all people and all situations, and his “immense powers of concentration.”

In early 1998, Preston brought these strengths to the dean’s office, where he soon developed a reputa-tion as a quick learner, a good listener, and a fair-minded leader. He was immediately tested by a budget deficit, $100 million in deferred maintenance, and a faculty size that had been reduced to cut costs. Morale was down; anxiety was up. A deer in headlights is how Preston describes himself during this period.

Others saw him differently. Andrew Binns, the Carolyn Hoff Lynch Term Professor in Biology, says, “It was clear from day one that he was trying to get the budget under control. He made sure he knew what the budgetary implica-tions would be for various programmatic proposals. That’s a sign of a really strong administrative person.” Binns, who chaired the biology department then, was most impressed with how intently Preston listened to those around him and how quickly he could grasp a situation and be able to explain it to others. “He’s not a biologist, but he would work hard to understand what we were talking about. The faculty, students, and staff in this department developed a profound respect for him.”

But Sam Preston isn’t all business. Around the dean’s office, he’s known for his high fives and one-liners. His door is always open, and he’s never too busy to answer a question, tell a story, or rehash a baseball game. Those who work with him like that he doesn’t stand on ceremony.

Vice dean for external affairs Jean-Marie Kneeley remembers their first interaction. A few weeks before he became dean, he called to set up a meeting and insisted on coming to her office, which was across campus. She recalls, “He told me, ‘I want to see where you work,’ and I remember thinking what a wonderful gesture this was. I had the feeling from the very beginning that he would be a very special partner.” He hasn’t disap-pointed her. “Over the seven years we’ve worked together, Sam has been a boss, a teacher, a student, and a friend. We’ve done good work together, and he’s made it fun.”

As much as Preston has enjoyed his administrative roles, he is a scholar first. Demographers usually fall into one of two groups: those who develop the mathematical and statistical tools used to study populations and those who apply those techniques to examine population change. Preston excels at both. He has made important contributions to technical demography and is perhaps best known for developing “variable-r” methods for the analysis of population change. Before this innovation, basic population models featured unchanging birth and death rates. But modern populations are rarely that stable. Preston’s breakthrough use of variable-r, in which “r” represents a population’s age-specific growth rates, finally provided a way for demographers to use the forumulas of basic stable population theory to examine nonstable populations.

His impact hasn’t been limited to math. He’s used demographer’s tools to examine public policy issues, and some of his findings have been controversial. In the 1980s, he demonstrated that the well-being of America’s older population was improving and that of children was deteriorating. AARP loudly contested his findings, branding him as the country’s leading crusader against senior citizens. Others, such as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan cited his research when proposing to increase social services for children.

Preston doesn’t consider himself an activist though. “I start to work on a problem because I think it’s interesting and important,” he says. “I don’t typically have a position, although one may develop early on, based on the data and analysis.” Furstenberg says the controversial findings are evidence of integrity. “He never adopts the standard line,” he says. “He’s very open-minded. Ideology doesn’t play a part in his research.”

Preston’s other work has been no less provocative. He led a National Academy of Science committee that challenged the widely held but now debunked belief that rapid population growth was the reason why poor countries were poor. Another landmark study was an influential and somewhat prescient 1970s book on cigarette smoking and national mortality patterns. All told, he has written or edited 16 books and more than 140 articles on topics ranging from mortality, health, and aging to urbanization, race and ethnicity, female labor force participation, fertility, occupational mobility, marriage and divorce, and population and the environment. By the time he became dean in 1998, the International Union for Scientific Study of Population was calling him “the preeminent American demographer.” Many considered him the best in he world.

In January, he’ll unpack those cartons of books and pick up where he left off seven years ago. Most in the School of Arts and Sciences hate to see Dean Preston stepping down. But, remarks Frank Furstenberg, “demography needs Sam back.”

Regular Guy

By Christopher H. Browne

One of things that most impresses me about Sam Preston is that despite his enormous accomplishments, he comes across as a regular guy who happens to be a university professor. He loves sports. He loves music. I’ve found that a lot of academics are only comfortable around other academics, but Sam’s many interests help him connect with a diverse group of people. This makes him open to all kinds of ideas. He listens to everybody, takes in the information, but then he’s not afraid to make a decision. His choices don’t always please everybody—no decision could do that—but I think people appreciate his reasoning and respect his process, even if they disagree with the outcome.

This approach has contributed to his fundraising success. Sam is not the kind of guy who walks into a room and bowls people over with great statements and glad-handing. He’s a quiet, unassuming individual. I learned this when he asked me to make a $10 million gift. I was happy to support the School, but I wanted to be sure the gift would make a long-term difference. Sam listened to my concerns and understood what I wanted to do. He suggested creating a group of professorships to help recruit and retain top faculty, something that was, and still is, a key issue for the School. The idea was enormously appealing to me. We established what I considered excellent criteria for chair holders. First, they had to be distinguished scholars as evidenced by their writings. Second, they had to have a demonstrated commitment to undergraduate teaching. And third, they had to be committed to open discussion in the classroom. I don’t think anyone had ever combined those three things, but Sam was willing to do it.

In addition to getting SAS on firm financial footing, he’s brought a sense of cohesion, direction, and purpose to the School. He’s also made SAS proud of being SAS. That’s important. It’s been deeply gratifying for me to serve as chair of the SAS Board of Overseers during his deanship. n

Christopher Browne, C’69, the managing director of the brokerage firm Tweedy, Browne Company, LLC, is a Penn trustee and chair of the SAS Board of Overseers.