Fourth President: Francis Wayland

Son of a Baptist minister and a graduate of Union College, Francis Wayland, as president of Brown, would prove to be both a successful fundraiser and an educational reformer. As one of his first orders of business, he dealt decisively with the issue of student unruliness by declaring that instructors must occupy rooms on campus. A strong advocate of broadening the scope of study in higher education, he was the author of Brown’s first “new curriculum” in 1850, which recommended that “every student might study what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing but what he chose.”