University News

Higher Ed Roundup: Oct. 12, 2012

Q&A: Kristof wants readers to 'spill their coffee'

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Nicholas Kristof sat down with The Herald after speaking in Salomon 101 Thursday night. The New York Times columnist discussed his bestselling book "Half the Sky," what issues are most important and what can constitute "leverage for change."

Civil engineering track to be discontinued

The civil engineering track will no longer be offered for students in the class of 2017 and beyond. Prior to this decision, Brown was one of four Ivy League schools to still offer a civil engineering program.

Programs seek to boost campus entrepreneurship

The University was named a Changemaker Campus last month by Ashoka U, an accelerator for social entrepreneurship at institutions of higher education. Nineteen colleges and universities were selected this year through a process that included interviews, a site visit and a selection panel that evaluated ...

Colloquium honors Carlos Fuentes

Renowned Mexican writer and former professor-at-large Carlos Fuentes was remembered by former students and colleagues for uniting literary and political concerns in the public sphere at a bilingual colloquium earlier this week. Fuentes, an internationally celebrated novelist, died in May after an internal ...

DPS acquires two portable defibrillators

Admins discuss diversity at UCS meeting

Writing Fellows program narrows scope

The structure of the Writing Fellows program has changed this semester so that only students in writing fellows-designated courses are paired with fellows. Students not enrolled in these courses can still access writing help through the Writing Center. In previous semesters, any student seeking help ...

Grants to support interdisciplinary work

A competitive seed grant program, which will fund faculty research through a grant of up to $10,000, was announced at the beginning of this month by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. The grants are intended to encourage research centered on gender, sexuality, race and class, though ...

2012 caps decade of international enrollment growth

The class of 2016 includes 221 international students from 57 countries. Though this distribution does not mark any dramatic shift from last year, the gradual shift in international student demographics over the past decade has been drastic - 10 years ago, the freshman class only included 127 international ...

U. ups social media presence

Affirmative action case draws nearly 100 amicus briefs

Number of GISPs drops to eight this semester

Each semester, anywhere between eight and 30 groups of ambitious students get together with a professor to choose a topic, write a syllabus and create their own credit-bearing course known as a Group Independent Study Project, or GISP. There are eight GISPs open to Brown students this fall.

Students dig up Spanish past while abroad

Rafael Gonzalez '11 MD'15 spent his summer after junior year uncovering mass graves filled with the remains of victims from the Spanish Civil War. Alongside a team of forensic scientists, archeologists, anthropologists, medical doctors and dentists, Gonzalez said he spent a week working at a grave site ...

Computers added to SunLab lobby

The computer science department began installing 10 new computers in the lobby outside of the SunLab at the end of last week. The computer increase is in response to rising student enrollment in the department's courses, said Tom Doeppner, vice chair and associate professor of computer science.   It ...

Nelson '77 pledges to donate half of wealth

Corporation board member Jonathan Nelson '77 P'07 P'09 recently joined CNN founder Ted Turner, former member of the class of 1960, and 89 other American billionaires in a pledge to donate over half of his wealth to a charitable cause. Nelson, the chief executive officer and founder of the private equity ...

Lead levels rise in aging Providence buildings

Providence has seen an elevation in lead levels in the water of some old buildings in recent years, including those on and around the University's campus. Many houses on College Hill are more than 100 years old. This means that some properties have pipes that are either made entirely of lead, or, more ...

'Sons of Providence' author speaks on U.'s past

Biographer Charles Rappleye proposed looking at the past as a continuum rather than a series of isolated events in a lecture inspired by his novel "Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade and the American Revolution," the assigned summer reading for the class of 2016. Reflecting upon ...

For third year, U. hosts Latino scholars

Forty college students from Latin America and Puerto Rico arrived at Brown Oct. 1 to kick off the two-month Botin Scholars program, which brings students to the University for a week before they head to Spain for the duration of the program. This is the third consecutive year that the Watson Institute ...

Patricia Watson named VP for advancement

Patricia Watson, Cornell's senior associate vice president for alumni affairs and development, will serve as the University's senior vice president for advancement beginning Dec. 1, President Christina Paxson announced in an email yesterday morning. Watson will replace Steven King '91, who resigned ...