In a future where multidisciplinary research rules, Graduate School's size could be a boon

Among the activities planned to mark the Graduate School centennial is an Oct. 10 lecture by Gary S. Becker, Nobel laureate in economics, whose talk will consider the significance of graduate education to the university and job market.

by Kristen Cole

Brown's graduate department got its start a century ago in a small office in Wilson Hall in the form of a stack of paperwork with slots for the insertion of names, courses and dates, processed by a half-time secretary.

Though the department expanded and in 1927 became the Graduate School, it has remained small - the smallest in the Ivy League. That characteristic now proves beneficial in fostering interdisciplinary work and independent thinking across departmental lines that is critical to the future of both the academy and the job market, according to Karen Newman, dean of the Graduate School.

"In the past our small size has often been a challenge with regard to critical mass and national rankings," said Newman, University Professor and professor of comparative literature and English. "In the future we foresee possibilities - it means the barriers between departments are low.

"Knowledge increasingly in the next century is going to be multidisciplinary - problems are murky and require many different perspectives for their solution. Brown is a leader in an environment in which multidisciplinary perspectives are needed to solve important social, intellectual and scientific problems."

As it celebrates its centennial, the Graduate School will move from the Graduate Center on the southern edge of campus to Horace Mann, overlooking The College Green. At the same time, the Graduate School has experienced a sharp increase in applications.

Graduate School applications rose 40 percent since 2001 - the only one of its peers to experience such a dramatic boost, according to Newman. This year, the Graduate School received more than 6,000 bids for its slots and accepted 18 percent. Currently there are 1,399 active full-time graduate students at Brown, according to the Registrar's Office.

In the near future, administrators are focusing on spreading the word about graduate student opportunities in multidisciplinary programs and new initiatives such as the partnership with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the establishment of a Center for Environmental Change, and the Brown-Wheaton Teaching Laboratory in the Liberal Arts. The latter is a program established with Wheaton College to give advanced graduate students training in teaching in a small college environment.

Graduate students are also taking advantage of the opportunity to be architects of their own programs with the Special Studies doctorate established most recently in environmental studies and the digital arts, said Newman.

Students are not the only ones registering interest in the multidisciplinary work fostered at Brown - funding agencies are, too. The National Academy of Science has been funded by the Keck Foundation to study cross-disciplinary research, said Newman. "We're already poised for this in an environment in which cross-disciplinary work is so important."

Further, administrators and faculty are exploring the idea of adding master's programs in selected areas at the University. Often master's degrees at Brown are awarded now in the course of a student completing the requirements toward a doctorate, said Newman, yet increasingly students who do not want a doctorate are finding that four years of college are not enough, said Newman.

Another immediate goal of the Graduate School is to lower the time it takes to earn a degree. At Brown, since 1990, the time to degree is more than seven years for students in the humanities and social sciences, and more than five for students in the physical and life sciences.

One way of decreasing time to degree is increasing support to graduate students during the year or more they are writing their dissertations when they are not enrolled in courses or working as teaching assistants - a time that can be isolating if they do not have an intellectual cohort and support to work, according to Newman.

Among the activities planned to mark the Graduate School centennial are an Oct. 10 lecture by Gary S. Becker, Nobel laureate in economics, who will speak about education, human capital and the modern economy. The talk will consider the significance of graduate education to the university and job market.

On Oct. 25, graduate students are invited to attend a Career Options Conference during which alumni will return to campus to discuss and network about careers outside the academy.

Capping the year, the Graduate School will award its first Horace Mann Medal in December to a distinguished alumnus of the Graduate School.