At its February meeting, the Corporation set undergraduate fees above $40,000 for the first time in Brown's history, increased funding for financial aid - introducing long-awaited transfer aid - and accepted some $35 million in gifts, including donations to establish a 24-hour study space in the Sciences Library, support the Center for Computational Molecular Biology and fund the Humanities Center.
A Brown education, including tuition and room and board fees, will cost undergraduate students $41,700 next year, according to a University news release. The Corporation increased tuition for undergraduate and graduate students by 5.2 percent, with a 4-percent increase for medical students, the statement said.
The Corporation endorsed a budget of $608.4 million for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, an increase of 8.2 percent over this year's budget. University officials say the budget increase will help support initiatives in the Plan for Academic Enrichment, including increased student financial aid, faculty expansion and improvements to facilities, infrastructure and academic and campus life.
The budget includes provisions for financial aid for incoming transfer and Resumed Undergraduate Education students, earmarking $400,000 in financial support. Undergraduate financial aid will grow by $3.77 million, an increase of 9 percent.
Tuition support for graduate students increases by $1.2 million under the new budget, in addition to an increase of nearly $1 million for stipends and health insurance. The funding allows base stipends for graduate students to grow from $16,000 to $17,000. Dean of the Graduate School Karen Newman told the faculty at a Dec. 7 meeting that the new stipend was necessary for Brown to remain competitive with its peers.
The new budget also provides $3.7 million for faculty compensation raises and increases funding for library acquisition and computing services.
The University's budget is first proposed by the University Resources Committee and approved by President Ruth Simmons before official action by the Corporation.
All gifts to the University of $1 million or greater must be formally accepted by the Corporation. This weekend, the Corporation accepted donations to renovate the Sciences Library, support the new Center for Computational Molecular Biology and establish the Cogut Humanities Center.
The SciLi will be renovated to offer a 24-hour study space, thanks to a $5 million gift from Susan Friedman '77 and Richard Friedman '79, a University news release said. The Susan and Richard A. Friedman Study Center, funded by $4 million of the donation, is expected to offer some 14,000 square feet of study space on the first three floors of the building.
Mark Nickel, director of the News Service, declined to speculate on a timeline for the project, though he said that it was "not a matter of years" because the infrastructure is already in place.
Russell Carey '91, vice president and secretary of the University, told The Herald that Simmons and Provost Robert Zimmer have made the creation of more 24-hour study spaces a priority.
The Department of Facilities Management solicited student feedback about possible SciLi renovations in October 2004. Michael McCormick, director of planning for Facilities Management, told The Herald in October that SciLi improvements became possible after the University transferred rarely-used materials from the library to an offsite storage facility. A University news release said some volumes currently located in the SciLi will move to the Library Collections Annex, which opens March 1 about four miles from campus. Some administrative areas will also be relocated, the statement said.
The largest gift accepted by the Corporation Saturday was a $20 million donation from an unnamed trustee to support the multidisciplinary Center for Computational Molecular Biology.
Five professorships in fields related to the CCMB will be endowed using $16 million of the gift. The remaining $4 million will be used to fund research and teaching programs, according to a University statement.
"The gift is a significant commitment to the work and research of the faculty involved in the Center who are engaged in applying the data-processing tools of mathematics, statistics and computer science to key questions about human development, aging and evolution," Simmons wrote in a campus-wide e-mail Saturday.
The Humanities Center will become the Cogut Humanities Center and move to a renovated and expanded Pembroke Hall. The Corporation officially accepted the lead gift from Deborah Cogut and Craig Cogut '75, a Brown trustee, approved the appointment of historian Michael Steinberg as its director and agreed to a renovation and expansion of Pembroke Hall to house it.
Nickel said the amount of the Coguts' gift was not being released, but Simmons said at a Dec. 7 faculty meeting that the lead donation for the Humanities Center was expected to be $5 million.
Steinberg, currently a professor of modern European history at Cornell University, will become a professor of history and music at Brown in addition to directing the Cogut Humanities Center.
The $10 million renovation to Pembroke Hall will refresh its exterior and interior and add a multistory addition on the north side. The new Pembroke Hall will also house the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, now based in Alumnae Hall. Pembroke Hall currently houses several classrooms and the Career Development Center.
"The Cogut Humanities Center will support faculty members in the various humanities departments and multidisciplinary programs at Brown by generating new resources for their research and creating forums for the dissemination of their work," Simmons wrote in her e-mail.
In other business, the Corporation selected the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to design Sidney E. Frank Hall.
Frank last year donated $20 million for the approximately $30 million building, which will house the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, the Brain Science Program's administrative offices, a 350-seat auditorium and classrooms. Frank's donation was the largest gift for a building in the University's history.
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill regularly tops news headlines with its landmark projects - including the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Tower in Chicago, the Bank of America World Headquarters in San Francisco and AOL Time Warner Center in New York. The firm is currently designing Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site in New York. The firm has also done work on college campuses around the country - it recently designed the master plan for Harvard University's north campus.
Frank Hall is a part of the $155 million the University plans to spend on construction over the next two years - including $86 million for existing projects and $69 million for new works. The other facilities incorporated in this sum include the Life Sciences Building, the Nelson Fitness Center, the Friedman Study Center and the Cogut Humanities Center.
Additional physical expansion may be in Brown's future, as the Corporation endorsed plans to solicit $30 million for a creative arts building to provide new performance and exhibition spaces, multimedia labs and production studios.
This weekend the Corporation also approved two new professorships in pediatrics and computer science, and it accepted a gift of $2.5 million from a former Corporation member and his wife to endow an environmental studies professorship, increase the library endowment and sponsor undergraduate teaching and research assistantships. A separate gift of $2.3 million from an unnamed Corporation member will establish an endowment for the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning.
Michael Chapman, vice president for public affairs and University relations, told The Herald that the Corporation did not reject any proposals this weekend.
