President Ruth Simmons - sans academic regalia - provided an update on the Plan for Academic Enrichment Tuesday at the first faculty meeting of the year.
Simmons also commented briefly on a $20-million, multi-donor gift for a new campus fitness center. The University has little control over donors' wishes and is often forced to change physical construction timetables based on incoming contributions, Simmons said.
"In our actual plan, we hadn't structured it so that we would be building a fitness center at this moment," she said.
She announced the gift at Convocation earlier Tuesday.
Regarding another $20 million gift, for Sidney Frank Hall, Simmons said, "We are now searching for an architect to lead this project, and that will be underway soon."
The University achieved a 16.3 percent return on its endowment for the fiscal year ending June 30, Simmons said. "Wow," she said to laughing faculty members, "I know you'd love to have that." The total value of the endowment now stands at $1.683 billion after a five-year return of 9.2 percent, Simmons added.
"I'm now finding that for the larger gifts, donors want to know about our endowment return," Simmons said. "Our fundraising has been impressive," she added. "I have to say that last year was the best year."
Simmons listed a number of statistics demonstrating the success of her Plan for Academic Enrichment. Her final PowerPoint slide displayed Brown's improved 13th-place ranking in U.S. News and World Report's 2005 America's Best Colleges rankings. "And finally - I know it doesn't matter one bit," she quipped as the faculty laughed and cheered.
The No. 13 spot is Brown's highest since 1998, Simmons said.
Simmons discussed a proposed group, the Brown University Community Council. "We find there is just not a venue where the community can come together at important moments - not just faculty, not just students," she said. "So we are proposing such a venue, and you will hear about that soon."
For example, Simmons said, the community council could have convened last year to discuss transgender housing issues or a string of bias-related incidents.
Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Economics Rajiv Vohra P'07 gave an update on faculty hires under the Plan for Academic Enrichment.
"Many of you who were here in the '90s will remember that not much used to happen - it was very dull," Vohra said. But the University has brought in a net gain of 51 new faculty members over the last three years, an increase of 8.8 percent, he said. Thirty-five of those were thanks to the enrichment initiatives or target-of-opportunity hiring.
Vohra said the faculty now number 628, an all-time high. Fifty percent of those hired under the Plan for Academic Enrichment are either women or members of minority groups, while only 41 percent of the existing faculty falls into either of those categories.
Life sciences hires account for 35 percent of new faculty members brought in under the plan, but only 19 percent of existing faculty work in those fields. And though 27 percent of existing faculty members teach the physical sciences, only 15 percent of those hired under the plan are based in those fields, Vohra said. Faculty hiring in the humanities and social sciences remained relatively unchanged.
"Any university that wants to be a great research institution has to make a serious investment in life sciences," said Provost Robert Zimmer. In fact, many professors in engineering, chemistry and physics "are becoming interested with the interface of their disciplines with the life sciences," Zimmer added.
"This can't be like a Lake Wobegon where everyone increases above the average," Zimmer said, explaining the lower number of new faculty in the physical sciences.
An ongoing restructuring and streamlining process has reduced the number of faculty committees to 28 from 30, said Michel-André Bossy, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee and professor of comparative literature and French studies. "Of course, the community council would make it 29," he quipped.
The Humanities Center has narrowed its search for a permanent director to seven candidates, all of whom will give talks on campus in the coming weeks, said Mary Ann Doane, professor of modern culture and media and English and the center's interim director. Well-known feminist theorist and University of California-Los Angeles professor Judith Butler did not accept the position, which was offered to her last year.
Herald staff writer Jonathan Ellis '06 edits the Metro section. He can be reached at herald@browndailyherald.com.
