Princeton University Athletics
Robert Tignor
April 10, 2001 | General
After 40 years on the University staff, one would think they would have run out of new endeavors for Robert Tignor. That is hardly the case, however, as athletic director Gary Walters' new Academic Athletic Fellows program has provided the perfect marriage for the Tigers football team and one of its most ardent supporters. Tignor, along with Daniel Notterman, are in his first year as a fellow for the Princeton gridders.
In his new role, Tignor serves as an advisor for the players who are in need of a helping hand, either academically or in some other facet of collegiate life. He is not a tutor, per se, but more like a confidant who's well schooled in the intricacies of campus living.
"I'm a person to lend an ear," Tignor says. "I'm very mindful of the fact that trying to blend academics and athletics is very difficult. My daughter [Sandra] is a recruited [track and field] athlete at Virginia, and she found the demands of sports and academics were very, very heavy. They basically didn't give her much time for a social life. I just think having somebody around who's familiar with those kinds of pressures student-athletes have can be useful."
As a member of the History Department, where he served as departmental chair for 11 years, Tignor has rooted for a plethora of student-athletes over the years. After graduating from Wooster in 1955 and receiving a Ph.D. from Yale in 1960, Tignor arrived on campus a few months before John F. Kennedy arrived in the White House.
Since then, he and Marian, his wife of 45 years, have enjoyed three children and two grandchildren, who have all seen their share of Princeton sports. Teaching courses primarily in African and world history, Tignor has taken his family (sometimes against the children's wishes) to Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and London for a year at a time to conduct research for his teachings.
Those sabbaticals have always recharged Tignor and made him eager to return to Princeton. It is how he has remained fresh while working at one place for four decades.
One of the things Tignor missed while abroad, however, was Tiger athletics. He has seen Cosmo Iacavazzi go undefeated, Keith Elias and Jason Garrett go to the NFL and Dean Cain go to Krypton. He worked with Bill Bradley, who was a history major, on one of his papers and recalls that "he had a very exalted position on the campus, and he was a very decent person. He kept it well in balance."
With his avid interest in sports, Tignor became a natural candidate in the search for Academic Athletic Fellows. "He's phenomenal," says football coach Roger Hughes. "He's as enthusiastic as anybody. He can talk about life as a professor interacting with students, and he can also educate the faculty about the time demands on athletes. Robert has a great knowledge of how Princeton works."
Tignor's new position is still in the developmental stage, but his mind is already churning with ideas.
"The first thing I'd like to do is sit down and have lunch with the new captain, and let him know I'm interested in being of some help to people," Tignor says. "You have to gradually get to know a few key people and enable them to have a sense you are approachable and accessible to them. The support we have now is good, but we can make it better."
And Tignor wants to make it better, not because it's a job, but because it's a passion.