Princeton Names Provost Eisgruber as President Mel Evans/Associated Press Christopher L. Eisgruber will replace Shirley M. Tilghman, left. Princeton University announced on Sunday that Christopher L. Eisgruber, a constitutional scholar who has been the university's provost for nine years, would be its next president. Mr. Eisgruber, 51, is replacing Shirley M. Tilghman, who became the second woman to lead an Ivy League university when she rose to the Princeton presidency in 2001. She announced her retirement last September. The announcement followed a six-month search. Mr. Eisgruber - who graduated from the university in 1983 and returned as a professor in 2001 before becoming its No. 2 officer - will start on July 1, becoming the university's 20th president. "Chris Eisgruber has all of the qualities we were looking for in Princeton's next president," Kathryn A. Hall, the chairwoman of the board of trustees, said in a statement. He has played a central role in many of the key initiatives of recent years, some of which he now will be responsible for bringing to fruition. Among those initiatives were a $1.88 billion fund-raising campaign, several large construction projects and an expansion of the university's financial aid program. But Mr. Eisgruber also helped oversee contraction after the 2008 financial crisis, which shrank Princeton's endowment by 22.7 percent, prompting painful cutbacks and layoffs. In an interview, Mr. Eisgruber defined Princeton's core values as "our commitment to be simultaneously a great research university and the world's best liberal arts college," as well as to achieve greater inclusiveness. He has championed giving students more opportunities to study abroad and has helped forge research partnerships with universities in Asia and Europe. He has also pushed to expand Princeton's online education offerings, a challenge facing many universities. "The important thing will be to ask, how can we and other universities participate in that in a way that improves, rather than diminishes, the quality of higher education in this country?" he said. Good education is always going to involve intense engagement and interaction between students and faculty, and it would be a mistake to think new media would make that less important. A native of Corvallis, Ore., Mr. Eisgruber majored in physics at Princeton and spent two years as a Rhodes scholar before studying law at the University of Chicago. He was a clerk at the Supreme Court for Justice John Paul Stevens and taught at New York University Law School before returning to Princeton in 2001 as a professor of public affairs and director of its program in law and public affairs. His elevation after years as provost follows that of Peter Salovey, the provost of Yale University, who was named Yale's president in November. Mr. Eisgruber's wife, Lori A. Martin, is a partner in the New York office of the law firm Wilmer Hale. Their son, Danny, is a freshman at Princeton High School. Mr. Eisgruber, who continued to teach and write about legal issues after becoming provost in 2004, said he expected to continue teaching as president, as Dr. Tilghman did. "Interacting with Princeton students is just such a high and a way of keeping in touch with the enterprise," he said.