Enhancing the first-year experience is one motive behind financial aid changes

The Initiatives for Academic Enrichment include a provision to eliminate the academic-year work-study requirements for all first-year students who receive financial aid. Those earnings - usually about $2,000 - will be replaced with additional University grants-in-aid beginning with the Class of 2006.

by Kate Bramson

Cate Oswald '04 considers herself lucky that scholarships from sources outside Brown replaced the work-study component of her freshman year financial aid package.

The vast majority of financial aid packages for freshmen include work-study expectations, according to Michael Bartini, director of financial aid. Although freshmen who have earned outside scholarships have been able to use that money to waive the work component in the past as Oswald did, the University wants more students to have the first-year experience Oswald had at Brown.

Administrators want all freshmen - whether they receive financial aid or not - to have more time to spend in the library, talk to professors, make friends and otherwise adjust to the pace of life on campus.

For those reasons, President Simmons' Initiatives for Academic Enrichment - approved in February by the Corporation - include a provision to eliminate the academic-year work requirements for all first-year students who receive financial aid. Those earnings - usually about $2,000 - will be replaced with additional University grants-in-aid beginning with the Class of 2006.

The University has estimated that the financial aid changes will cost about $1.3 million for each of the next three years. This new policy does not affect students on the federal work-study program.

"This is an extraordinary gesture to the freshman class to allow all students - regardless of financial need - to take advantage of all that Brown has to offer," said Armando Bengochea, dean of freshman studies and associate dean of the College.

For the students Bengochea advises, a common topic is their efforts to strike a balance between those things they must do that aren't necessarily relevant to their academic experience and those things they really want to do that enhance their academic experience, he said.

Oswald has a unique opportunity this year to observe how work affects freshmen at Brown. Now a sophomore, her work-study job is as a resident counselor in the dormitories.

"I have a lot of students in my unit who are work-study, and I can see how it's definitely challenging - just having to balance the newness of the curriculum with the hours that are required with jobs," she said.

About 38 percent of this year's freshman class receives some form of financial aid, and the majority of their financial aid packages include a work-study component, Bartini said.

Because she did not have to work during her freshman year, Oswald took advantage of opportunities to get involved at Brown that she wouldn't have otherwise had.

"I wouldn't have had free time to do anything else," she said. "I would have had to use all my free time for studying."

Administrators hope this new approach to financial aid for freshmen will help all first-year students become thoroughly involved in University life during their first year.

"As soon as President Simmons arrived in the summer, she started talking to a number of us about how we might make the financial aid program reflect better our academic goals and values. This is one of the ideas that came out of those discussions," said Paul Armstrong, dean of the College.

The way nonacademic work interferes with or distracts students from academic obligations is an increasingly serious problem - and not one that is limited to the freshman year, Armstrong said. He hopes the new financial aid initiative will be the first step in a wider review of the concerns associated with work throughout a student's undergraduate years. But there are good reasons, he says, for the policy to begin with the freshman year.

"The freshman year is especially crucial given our unique curriculum," he said. "It's the time when students have the greatest challenge, freedom and responsibility to design their own course of study. The decisions they make their first year will shape the rest of their careers at Brown, and it's wise, I think, to give them the best chance at a good start."

Administrators acknowledge that some students will still work their freshman year - out of need, a sincere interest in working, or for other reasons.

"But we're not insisting that they take a job if they're on financial aid," Armstrong said. "And we are hoping that sends a strong signal to the students and to their parents that we believe the freshman year is a crucial year to focus on their academics and we don't want to distract them from that focus by having them work.