The Brown Education

Having the freedom and responsibility to direct your education at Brown will be exhilarating. But even the most motivated student will need advice and counsel.

This is why Brown assumes an active role in your decision-making process. Through a variety of programs and resources, we can help you pursue your goals in a coherent and comprehensive fashion. Our job is to advise and support. The final say is yours.

Advising

Your Advising Partnership
When you arrive at Brown, you will be assigned both an Academic Advisor, a member of the faculty or administration; and a Meiklejohn Advisor, an upperclass student who works with your Academic Advisor. If your Academic Advisor is a member of the Curricular Advising Program, he or she will also be the professor of one of your first-semester courses.

The advantage of this team approach to advising is that you are able to take advantage of both the perspective of a professor and of a student peer. Your Academic Advisor can assist both with long-term and immediate issues that come up. Your Meiklejohn Advisor will be especially helpful when you first arrive on campus. They are often familiar with the ins and outs of the registration process, course reputations, prerequisites, and the like.

For more information about advising partnerships, visit the Dean of the College Web site.

The University-Community Academic Advising Program (UCAAP)
Providing the same general support as the standard academic advising program, the UCAAP is designed for those first-year students “specifically interested in public service or in connecting academic study with pressing social and political issues.” This program is particularly helpful for those students who were involved in community service during high school, but there are no prerequisites. The program is open to all students looking to become more involved in the community around them.

Programs and Facilities

Writing and Rhetoric Fellows
Writing Fellows are undergraduates carefully selected and trained to help other students improve their writing skills. The Writing Fellow program serves 40-50 courses a year, reaching more than half of the student population. In a “fellowed” course, students submit a first draft of their paper to the fellow two weeks before it is due. This process allows for collaboration with a knowledgeable peer and helps to clean up ambiguities that often obscure the more salient points of a paper. Over 90 percent of students using the program consider Writing Fellows' comments helpful and valid, and 60 percent report improvements in their writing skills.

The Rhetoric Fellows are veteran Writing Fellows who receive additional training in coaching public speaking. These fellows complete a training seminar in speaking and go on to help students with oral presentations of all kinds. They fellow courses that have an assigned oral presentation in addition to regular written assignments.

Women in Science and Engineering (W.i.S.E.)
The Women in Science and Engineering Program was established to help address the opportunities and obstacles faced by women in the sciences. Consisting of more than 700 students and faculty, W.i.S.E. helps to encourage and assist those looking to pursue their academic and professional goals in the world of science.

Writing Center
The Writing Center is an academic support service for the entire Brown community. Staffed by graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines, the center is able to provide well-informed and detailed analyses on all types of writing. From papers for academic courses; personal essays; creative writing; collaborative writing; thesis proposals; course syllabi; and even commencement speeches, the staff at the Writing Center can help.

Academic Support Center
The Academic Support Center is available for a wide variety of student needs. The center provides space where students may hold tutorials or group discussions, access to computers, printers, and audiovisual equipment, and can also be used as a general meeting space.

The center sponsors the Peer Tutoring Program, which provides individualized attention for specific courses, and the Study Skills Corps, a group of trained upperclass students who provide workshops and seminars on effective learning techniques.

Math Resource Center
Staffed by graduate students in mathematics, the center assists students enrolled in introductory mathematics courses. The staff of the Math Resource Center are well-trained to help students solve immediate problems and to understand more general mathematical concepts.