Convocation surprise: $20 million for new fitness center

Hundreds of Brown's newest students took their first walk through the Van Wickle Gate and onto The College Green for a convocation that explored Brown's dynamic classroom experiences and featured a surprise announcement.

The latest additions to the Brown family - which include 1,434 members of the class of 2008, 415 graduate students, 76 medical students, 108 transfer students, and 7 Resumed Undergraduate Education students - applauded heartily when President Simmons (left) announced that the University had received $20 million in gifts for a new fitness center on campus.

Simmons said that the gifts come from two alumni members of the Corporation, Jonathan Nelson '77 and Rick Garonzik '64, and an anonymous alumnus and their families.

Cultural anthropologist Kay Warren followed Simmons' encouragement to "fight for the idealist within you" by sharing a few insights gleaned over the past year - Warren's first as a Brown faculty member.

In her convocation address titled "Creative Minds," Warren, professor of anthropology and international studies, described Brown as a university that offers "a rich educational environment," interdisciplinary programs "that crosscut our excellent academic departments," a diverse student body and strong leadership.

Brown students, she said, "stand out by virtue of their striking independence and creativity. Over the last 30 years, I've taught at Mount Holyoke, Princeton, Harvard, and now here. Brown is where I have experienced the most dynamic undergraduate students and the most energetic engagement inside and outside the classroom. ...

"Brown is unique in its highly participatory classrooms," she continued. "As undergraduates here, you can feel free to bring your interests and questions into the classroom with the goal of continually influencing the lines of inquiry in your courses."

As an example, Warren described the direct input students had in the creative teaching of "Violence and the Media," which Warren will teach again this coming spring. One group of students "decided to illustrate the impact of the 24-hour news cycle on American viewers by setting up a TV studio in the classroom."

The presentation "was riveting because these students found such an effective way to integrate the course's readings on news production and reporting with their own experiences working in radio, interning at a TV station, and pursuing public interest anthropology," Warren said. "The presenters had special meetings with me and with our marvelous graduate assistant for the course, they wrote the script, they rehearsed. .... So much for old-fashioned book reports."

Such experiences are "magical," Warren said. "The intellectual initiative of Brown students is a force of nature, a central aspect of undergraduate culture. Critical engagement, intellectual initiative, and risk taking - so common at Brown - are not as easy to find at other schools. Learning flows in a variety of directions, though all sorts of unconventional dialogues and flows of knowledge, rather than unilaterally from faculty to students."

Warren closed with advise about the Brown tradition of "shopping" for courses. Shopping, she said "is the time to treat your intellectual life to a banquet feast: be omnivorous, flex your brain, see what classes match your goals and challenge your ideas. Are you satisfying yourself as a person? Uncover new talents you have by trying fields of study that weren't offered in your high school or topics that are dealt with in a multi-disciplinary way. Why not take some risks: explore diversities that are new to you; collaborate with different sorts of creative minds. If you've been U.S. based, then pursue important global issues and confront the human cost of international upheaval. If you have been internationally based, then see who is offering interesting courses on the United States and its ties to the world. Find faculty who value your individual talents and contributions, and courses where you are excited about the prospects of being highly engaged in your own education. Good luck in your shopping, and enjoy the uniqueness that makes Brown a great place to be."