Lette r f ro m t h e Pre s i d e nt
RUTH J. SIMMONS
18TH PRESIDENT
December 2004 BROWN UNIVERSITY
Dear Brown Alumni and Parents,
With the end of the fall semester upon us here at Brown, I wanted to inform you of the news and events of
the past few months and suggest the University’s prospects for the New Year.
■ Appointment of New Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences
After an extensive national search, we announced in December the appointment of Eli Y. Adashi, currently
the John A. Dixon Professor and Presidential Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Utah
Health Sciences Center, as Brown’s new dean of medicine and biological sciences. Dr. Adashi, who will begin
his duties at Brown on January 18, joins us at a time of growth and momentum at Brown Medical School and
in the University’s broader programs of research and instruction in the life sciences. His extensive experience
in academic and clinical settings will help Brown and its affiliated hospitals achieve our goal of being in a leader-
ship position in the area of biology and medicine. I invite you to read more about Dr. Adashi on the Univer-
sity’s Web site at www.brown.edu.
■ Plan for Academic Enrichment: New Scholars Arrive at Brown
We have made progress in expanding the Brown faculty, opening the academic year with 628 faculty members,
the largest number in Brown’s history. We welcomed 52 new members for the 2004–2005 academic year, 22 of
whom were appointed to newly created positions. These new faculty members will allow us to offer more
courses, launch new academic programs, and expand the breadth and depth of our departments. Of the new
faculty hired into positions made possible by the Plan for Academic Enrichment, 34 percent are female and 27
percent are people of color.
For more information about the Plan for Academic Enrichment, please visit our Web site at www.brown.
edu/pae. You can also read biographical information about new faculty at www.brown.edu/news/2004-05/04-
016.html.
■ Faculty Accomplishments
The importance of excellent faculty cannot be overemphasized. Throughout this semester, the results of our
faculty’s collective hard work and achievements have been evident.
This month we announced a $7.2 million grant that the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded to
Brown Medical School Professor of Orthopaedics Roy Aaron and his research team based at the Providence VA
Medical Center. Dr. Aaron and his colleagues are working to give amputees – particularly war veterans – better
mobility and control of their limbs and to reduce the discomfort and infections common with current pros-
thetics. Dr. Aaron’s team has expertise in orthopaedic surgery, physical rehabilitation, community health, tissue
engineering, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, and materials science.
In September the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced that renowned poet and
Brown Professor of English C.D. Wright was named a MacArthur Fellow for 2004. Professor Wright is one of just
23 fellows selected this year for the prestigious “genius” award, which includes a generous five-year grant. She
joins seven current or former Brown faculty members who have been named MacArthur Fellows to date.
Eighteen faculty members were appointed to named professorships, including Professor of Africana Studies
Barrymore Bogues, Professor of History of Art and Architecture Sheila Bonde, and Professor of Geological
Sciences Karen Fischer, inaugural holders of the Royce Family Professorships of Teaching Excellence. The
Royce professorships were established by Brown Trustee Charles M. Royce ’61, P’92 ’94 ’08 to honor Brown’s
exceptional teaching tradition.
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Susan Bernstein and Professor of Political Science P. Terrance
Hopmann were among approximately 800 faculty and professionals from the United States who were awarded
Fulbright Scholar grants to conduct research abroad this year. Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies
Johanna Schmitt won a $5 million National Science Foundation award for an international research project
that may help predict how crops and wild plants will respond to ongoing climate change.
Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience John Donoghue received Discover magazine’s
Innovations Award for Neuroscience for creating the BrainGate Neural Interface System. This extraordinary
system allows physicians to implant into a person’s brain a sensor that detects neural signals and translates the
signals into actions via computer. Based on Professor Donoghue’s work, this fall a 25-year-old quadriplegic
is turning on lights, changing television channels, and reading e-mail on a specially designed computer screen
using only his brain waves and this neuroprosthetic device. This pioneering research may one day enable
paralyzed patients to complete everyday actions such as operating household devices. This particular research
project, in the true spirit of the Brown curriculum, has involved many undergraduate and graduate students,
as well as Professor Donoghue’s faculty colleagues from various disciplines, including Professor of Engineering
Arto Nurmikko and Professor of Computer Science Michael Black, among others.
■ Student Achievements
I continue to marvel at the outstanding quality of our student body. We are fortunate to have students from
many different backgrounds who are making distinctive contributions through their academic and scholarly
work, as well as through their commitment to campus and civic activities.
In November we were especially proud that seniors Kingston Reif and Ryan Roark were among the 43 young
Americans to receive Marshall Scholarships. These highly competitive awards will enable them to study at a
university in Britain next year. Kingston Reif, an international relations concentrator from Kingston, Wisconsin,
will continue his studies at the London School of Economics. Ryan Roark, from Austin, Texas, is concentrating in
biology, math, and comparative literature, and plans to earn a Ph.D. in oncology at the University of Cambridge.
Junior Nick Hartigan, an outstanding running back on our football team, was named a first-team Academic
All-American. Nick, a political science concentrator, earned first-team All-Ivy and All-New England honors for
the second straight season and established new Brown records for points (102) and touchdowns (17) in a season.
We salute our sailing team, which finished the 2004 fall collegiate season as the number one-ranked coed
team in North America. From the third weekend in October, these students went undefeated in all of their
major fleet events, winning the Wood Trophy at Dartmouth, the Hoyt Trophy at home, the Schell Trophy at
MIT (the New England Fall Championship) by an outstanding 54 points, and finally the Atlantic Coast Cham-
pionship at MIT.
Many other athletes have excelled in their sports this year, enhancing our pride in the continuing ideal of
the scholar athlete. Further, a record number of student-initiated publications, student government projects,
concerts, courses, and community efforts again greatly enriched our offerings.
■ New Research Facilities
Providing faculty and students with the modern facilities, space, and equipment to advance knowledge is an
essential aspect of the Plan for Academic Enrichment. We reached a critical milestone this past August when we
opened what is now known as the Laboratories for Molecular Medicine in Providence’s Jewelry District. This
newly renovated building contains 105,000 square feet of state-of-the-art lab space for our scientists to conduct
transformational research in genetics, genomics, and proteomics. In addition, we made further progress on
construction of the new Life Sciences Building on our campus. This building will add another 169,000 square
feet of lab space for faculty and students; we expect it to be completed in spring 2006.
■ New Academic Programs
Several new degree programs are adding to the richness of Brown’s curricular and research offerings. Our new
initiative in commerce, organizations, and entrepreneurship (COE) emerged from strong and increasing faculty
and student interest in the study of commerce, commercial behavior, organization and management, and
technology and entrepreneurship. The centerpiece of this program will be a multidisciplinary undergraduate
concentration overseen by the departments of economics and sociology and the division of engineering. Stu-
dent concentrators will learn different scholarly approaches for studying profit and nonprofit enterprises in the
national and global economic context.
We have also approved a new master’s program in urban education policy, to be located in the education
department, which builds on our offerings in the realm of elementary and secondary education policy. The
program will also involve the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the Education Alliance, and the Taubman
Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. Graduates of this program will positively affect elementary
and secondary education policy and practice at the local, regional, and national levels.
The new Ph.D. program in computer music and multimedia focuses on the creative use of emerging tech-
nology. Students pursuing this degree will create multidisciplinary works of art while examining the theoretical,
historical, cultural, and aesthetic issues surrounding music and multimedia production. The program brings
together digital initiatives in various arts and science departments at Brown and at the Rhode Island School of
Design.
A new multidisciplinary Ph.D. program in ancient history, established jointly by the departments of classics
and history, emphasizes the intellectual challenge and excitement of moving among various fields and under-
taking the study of comparative history. Brown graduate students who are trained as both historians and
classicists in the new program will be well prepared to make important contributions to scholarship, and their
versatility will expand their eventual academic career choices.
■ Philanthropy
The semester was also marked by a number of significant gifts to Brown. In September we announced that
Brown had received $100 million from Sidney E. Frank ’42 to establish the Sidney E. Frank Endowed Scholar-
ship Fund. The largest single gift in the history of the University, it will provide scholarships for approximately
130 of our financially neediest undergraduate students. The endowed fund will allow awardees to pursue their
academic interests regardless of financial circumstances and without the burden of student loans.
Mr. Frank’s gift of $100 million came on the heels of another gift that he had recently made to Brown. In
June, Mr. Frank donated $20 million to the University to provide for the construction on campus of a new
academic building, to be called Sidney E. Frank Hall. We are enormously grateful to Mr. Frank for his generos-
ity to the University.
In October an extraordinary gathering of Corporation and faculty members assembled for a festive evening
in Sayles Hall to honor two leading citizens of Brown: Artemis A.W. Joukowsky ’55, LLD’85, P’87, chancellor
emeritus of the University, and Martha Sharp Joukowsky ’58, LHD’85, P’87, professor emerita of Old World
archaeology and art. We announced that the University will establish a new Institute for Archaeology and
the Ancient World, endowed by a leadership gift from the Joukowskys, which will allow Brown to build on its
long-standing excellence in the study of the ancient world. An additional gift from Art and Martha will also
help support the renovation and expansion of Rhode Island Hall as a permanent home for the institute on the
College Green. Their generous gift, and the institute that it establishes, will guarantee that archaeological field-
work, inquiry, analysis, and education will continue to flourish at Brown. We are truly indebted to Art, Martha,
and their children, Nina Joukowsky Köprülü, Artemis Joukowsky III, and Misha Joukowsky ’87, for their
incomparable commitment to Brown.
Three gifts totaling $20 million from Brown alumni who are current or former University trustees will enable
us to build a fitness center. Jonathan M. Nelson ’77, P’07, provided the lead gift for the center. Fredric B.
Garonzik ’64 and an anonymous alumnus each provided additional gifts in support of the center’s construction.
Planning for the construction of the Nelson Fitness Center, which will be located within the Wendell R. Erick-
son ’19 Athletic Complex, is underway.
In December the Corporation accepted a gift of $5 million from an alumnus, who wishes to remain anony-
mous, in support of the new Humanities Center. The Humanities Center, which will be housed in Pembroke Hall
following a $10 million renovation of that building, will draw on and strengthen significant scholarly resources
already in place at Brown. The center will support faculty members in the various humanities departments
and multidisciplinary programs by generating new resources for their research and creating forums for the dis-
semination and discussion of their work. The center will welcome both emerging and established scholars
and provide occasions for intellectual exchange and public engagement, including colloquia, lectures, readings,
screenings, exhibits, and conferences. A national search for a distinguished scholar to direct the Humanities
Center is underway.
These and many other generous gifts to the University bode well for the success of our forthcoming cam-
paign and for the Plan for Academic Enrichment overall. We thank all of you who have supported Brown
through the Annual Fund and other philanthropy. The quality of the educational experience that we provide
for our students could not be achieved without your commitment to Brown.
■ Campus Climate
In spite of the good news we can report, this semester has not been without its share of troubling moments.
As you may know, there were a number of assaults and robberies on and around campus this fall, some of which
occurred in broad daylight. I want to make you aware of some of the steps we have taken to address this situ-
ation and improve the safety of the campus. Brown has worked closely and cooperatively with the Providence
Police Department to deploy significant new resources – in addition to those already committed – to the neighbor-
hoods around campus. The increased police and security presence is part of a larger strategy to ensure that
our campus and the streets surrounding it are unwelcome environments for criminal behavior. We have also
provided more services to members of the Brown community to ensure their safety and security, such as the
expanded safeRIDE shuttle system.
In the wake of the recent announcement that Brown’s Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety Paul
Verrecchia has accepted a position with the College of Charleston, we are conducting a nationwide search for a
new chief of police and director of public safety. We will begin interviewing top candidates next month and
hope to have a new chief of police identified later this winter.
■ The Semester and Year Ahead
As I look to the coming semester and the year ahead, I am buoyed by our progress, momentum, and enthusiasm
for Brown’s future. We have an outstanding community of scholars, and, like the generations of Brown men
and women who came before them, our faculty, students, and staff are fulfilling well the University’s mission.
Thanks to the efforts of those who carried on this work decades before, the many people at the University
today, and the strong guidance and support of the Brown Corporation and our many advisory groups, we
have a robust plan in place that will continue to guide our decisions as we build and expand upon Brown’s
historic strengths.
I wish you and your family all the best in the New Year.
Sincerely,