For members of the Resumed Undergraduate Education program, the undergraduate experience is a "gift" to oneself, in the words of Jeff Edwards '02.
Edwards, who was a professional ballet dancer for 15 years at the New York City Ballet and ballet companies in Zurich, Switzerland, and Lyons, France, is now the associate artistic director of the Washington Ballet in Washington, D.C.
Having been a performing artist, Edwards said, "it was exciting to go to Brown and learn how to articulate my history as a performer." Edwards, who was a Modern Culture and Media concentrator and graduated when he was 37, said that during his time at Brown he noticed an "intensity amongst the RUE students" and an especially engaging attitude toward their studies. "I really milked the experience," he said.
"Dancers use their bodies to communicate," Edwards said, but Brown enabled him to expand his "knowledge base" and return to the world of dance "in another capacity," having learned how to read, write and speak about his art form.
While some RUE students like Edwards have a clear idea of how their time at Brown will fit into their careers after graduation, others are less certain about what to do next.
Erica Dillon '99, an MCM concentrator who graduated when she was 28, said, "There wasn't a specific thing I wanted to do as (I found) was the case with other RUE students, who I felt had very specific plans."
After graduation, Dillon stayed at Brown for a year compiling online databases as part of the Modernist Journal Project with Professor Emeritus of Modern Culture and Media Robert Scholes.
Dillon said she felt "an impetus to continue my education. ... There were things about the work force that I wasn't ready to experience again." Dillon went on to Stanford University to pursue a Ph.D. in English. She expects to finish her dissertation by the end of this summer.
"Going to graduate school allowed me to see what more I could do. I wasn't ready to finish my education," Dillon said. "I partially figured that even if I wasn't going to pursue an academic career, I would still have a Ph.D."
Now, she is sure that she does not want to become a professor, but is unsure of her eventual profession. She thinks that academic administration might be a good fit, but plans to coordinate her job search with her husband, Armando Manalo '99, who will be finishing his own dissertation around the same time at the University of California at Berkeley.
Other RUE students have strayed far away from their pre-college lines of work. Before coming to Brown, Jill Moniz '04 worked as a waitress and in a secretarial position at an Internet startup incubator. Moniz said being at Brown enables students to realize that "you have so many more options."
Moniz said her experiences in the work force provided her with "perspective in classes" and an ability to apply experiences to her academic subjects. "You learn so much more when you're there for yourself, not because you're supposed to."
"The idea of going back to what I was doing before seemed scandalous. ... Getting an 80-hour-a-week job at 30 was unpalatable to me," she said.
After graduating at age 29, Moniz started her own nonprofit organization, Hope Housing Corporation, which provides affordable housing in Providence for first-time homebuyers.
Moniz, an art history concentrator, said classes she took in the Urban Studies Program have helped get her to where she is now.
Hope Housing Corporation began shortly after Moniz's graduation in May 2004. She has some experience in real estate, but said she is "still formulating her business plan. We have a few projects in the works, including a seven-unit condo conversion."
One of the members of the Board of Directors of Hope Housing Corporation is another RUE alum, Geoff Gladstone '05 - an entrepreneur who has started his own company, No Pity Mobility Corporation. No Pity seeks to design disability equipment with "style."
"It amazed me that basically no one was producing disability equipment with any style," Gladstone said, adding that most wheelchairs appear to come from nursing homes.
Gladstone said it took him "a while to know what I wanted to learn about." Gladstone developed a business plan for No Pity as a part of his final project for EN 90: "Managerial Decision Making."
"I had no idea what I was doing at 18," Gladstone said. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: College is wasted on the young. I appreciated school so much more (when I was older)."
