Brown University's New and Developing Institutional Affiliations

by Provost Robert Zimmer

Brown scholars have long understood that their work takes place in a complex, international network of inquiry and discovery. Routinely, Brown faculty collaborate with colleagues at other universities and research centers through formal as well as informal affiliations.

Through a number of new arrangements and agreements, the University is more directly and consciously building upon these faculty efforts at an institutional level. By virtue of new and developing academic affiliations, Brown is forming partnerships that enhance our capabilities in research, scholarship, and teaching on and beyond College Hill.

The University, of course, has entered into affiliations with peer institutions over the course of its existence. Brown has long associated with numerous institutions to create a rich program of international study for our undergraduate students. What is notable lately, however, has been the more deliberate University-wide effort to affiliate with a variety of institutions that will allow Brown to create academic programs of singular distinction while significantly expanding the scope and possibility of the work of our faculty and students at all levels.

Our academic partnerships now include an important affiliation with the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in Massachusetts, and we are the only American university to have formed an alliance with the National Institutes of Health in neuroscience graduate training. Through its alliance with the Trinity Repertory Company, Brown has created the Theater Consortium, housing an innovative, successful program in the theater arts that builds on the unique strengths of these two complementary institutions. Brown also is developing a pilot program with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in soft materials and nanosciences. We are expanding the myriad connections with our neighbors at the Rhode Island School of Design. We have worked hard with our affiliated hospitals to enhance these longstanding relationships that are essential to the quality of our Medical School.

The University can accomplish much through these and other affiliations. First, such partnerships create new opportunities for students and faculty. Our partnership with the Marine Biological Laboratory, for instance, enables Brown researchers and students to engage in collaborative work across a variety of fields - and at a scale and scope unachievable before - to address complex problems in the environmental and life sciences. The pilot program with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory will afford Brown students and faculty access to research equipment no single university can reasonably provide.

Second, the partnerships allow for the creation of unique combinations of attributes. By uniting Brown's unique strengths with Trinity's, for example, we have created a singular education program in the theater arts.

Several principles will guide the University's existing and developing academic affiliations. The University will only enter into arrangements with those partners whose reputations and commitment to rigorous work are commensurate with Brown's. Further, we will only enter into relationships that promise lasting institutional value for Brown, its faculty, and its students. We are also bound by our capacity to oversee many affiliations - all such arrangements must be constantly monitored for quality.

Over the next several years these existing and nascent academic affiliations - and perhaps a small number of new arrangements yet to develop - will continue to enrich the work of our faculty and students and will allow the University to develop robust new academic programs of singular distinction. I hope you join with me in our excitement over the possibilities these affiliations have brought to Brown University.

Photo by John Abromowski