An etching of the Brown campus circa 1848. From left: Hope College, Manning Chapel, and University Hall, viewed from the front campus.
Brown’s climate of openness and cooperation can be traced back to its founding over two centuries ago.
As the third oldest college in New England and the seventh oldest in America, Brown was the Baptist answer to Congregationalist Yale and Harvard; Presbyterian Princeton; and Episcopalian Penn and Columbia. At the time, it was the only one that welcomed students of all religious persuasions (following the example of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island in 1636 on the same principle). Brown has long since shed its Baptist affiliation, but it remains dedicated to diversity and intellectual freedom.
The history of Brown tells of a university undergoing constant change. Founded in 1764 as the College of Rhode Island in Warren, Rhode Island, the school registered its first students in 1765. It moved in 1770 to its present location on College Hill, overlooking the capital city of Providence. In 1804, in recognition of a gift from Nicholas Brown, the College of Rhode Island was renamed Brown University. The first women were admitted in 1891 with the establishment of the Women’s College in Brown University. This marked the beginning of eighty years of a coordinate structure for educating women within the University. Later known as Pembroke College, the women’s college was merged with Brown in 1971.
Graduate study at Brown University began in 1850, when provision was made for the awarding of the master’s degree upon successful completion of one year of academic work beyond the bachelor’s degree. This system was discontinued in 1857. The more modern tradition of graduate study at Brown began in 1887, when the faculty and Fellows agreed to publish in the following year’s catalog rules for the awarding of both the master’s and the Ph.D. in regular programs of advanced work. The first master’s degrees under the new plan were granted in 1888 and the first Ph.D.s in 1889.
Brown first organized a medical program in 1811. The school was suspended by President Wayland in 1827. In 1975, the first M.D. degrees of the modern era were awarded to a graduating class of 58 students
In 1984–85, the Brown Corporation approved an eight-year medical continuum called the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME). The majority of openings for the first-year medical class are reserved for students who receive their undergraduate degrees through the PLME. Today Brown awards approximately 80 M.D. degrees each year.
Brown’s distinctive undergraduate curriculum dates to 1969–70. Conceived by undergraduate students participating in a Group Independent Study Program and ratified by the faculty after much University-wide discussion, the curriculum harks back to a philosophy shaped by Brown President Francis Wayland in the mid-19th century. In 1850, he wrote: “The various courses should be so arranged that, insofar as practicable, every student might study what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing but what he chose.”