The Brown Corporation, the University's top governing body, formally accepted $24 million in new gifts, approved a new intellectual property policy and elected nine new members to its ranks when it convened on campus May 27.
The University's 12 fellows and 42 trustees travel to College Hill for three Corporation meetings each academic year - in October, February, and May. Among other responsibilities, the Corporation appoints senior University officials and tenured faculty and oversees major projects.
At each meeting, the Corporation formally accepts all gifts of more than $1 million. This May, it accepted two major gifts - one for $23 million from the estate of former IBM chief Thomas J. Watson Jr. '37 to support the Watson Institute for International Relations and another of $1 million from the estate of Bertha Goodwin, a 1907 graduate, to endow a scholarship for female students.
In other business, the Corporation enacted a new policy concerning patents, inventions and copyrights, replacing a policy dating from 1981.
The new policy initially received criticism from some professors at faculty meetings and forums. At issue was whether the University should be able to claim rights to inventions and discoveries made by professors while away from Brown and without University funding, such as during summers, breaks, sabbaticals and in independent consulting projects.
The controversy was settled with a series of amendments offered by faculty members at a May 3 faculty meeting and accepted by Vice President for Research Andries van Dam, who proposed the policy. The amendments altered clauses specifying the policy's applicability - detailing what entails work done in the course of "University duties," for instance. The faculty unanimously endorsed the revised policy at its May meeting.
The Corporation also elected nine new trustees, created a Center for the Study of Children at Risk, authorized the selection of architects for the Nelson Fitness Center, Cogut Humanities Center and Friedman Study Center, established three endowed positions and approved appointments to endowed professorships.
Corporation members will next convene on campus Oct. 20. The Corporation will officially launch the public phase of the University's capital campaign at its October meeting.
