The Office of the Vice President for Research and the University Library co-sponsored Brown’s Love Data Week, which was hosted online this year in the form of webinars and workshops during the week of Valentine’s Day.

The Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative is currently in the process of developing a new concentration, which it hopes to launch in Fall 2021 or Fall 2022, according to D. Rae Gould, associate director of the NAISI.

The University collaborated with the Rhode Island School of Design to launch a new joint master of arts in design engineering program, which will begin in the summer of 2021.

Although first-years will not arrive on College Hill until at least the spring semester due to the coronavirus pandemic, the University’s Meiklejohn Program is currently working remotely to prepare and mentor the class of 2024 for life at Brown.

Professor Stephen Porder received the Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair Award to conduct research and teach at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris next year.

Twelve hundred students pre-registered for Brown’s Big Virtual Fall Career Fair, which was hosted by the CareerLab on  Handshake Wednesday afternoon.

In April, Brown created the Healthy Fall 2020 Task Force: a 14-person committee charged with giving high-level administrators recommendations for developing a public health plan for reopening in the fall. 

Earlier this year, Ryan Silverman ’23 had planned to spend his summer conducting research supported by his Undergraduate and Teaching Research Award. But due to restrictions posed by COVID-19, his research project in a bioelectronic lab quickly became infeasible.

After asking students to vacate campus to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the University committed to issuing credits or refunds for 50 percent of students’ room and board fees for the semester. 

Reflecting on notions of equity, choice and transparency in the context of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, students expressed mixed reactions to the temporary academic policy implemented by the University that will allow students to change their grade options from April 13 to May 1.