‘Like a college brochure’: Families reunite, explore campus as Brown’s Family Weekend kicks off 

As Pat and Leigh Topp waited for their son, Kalen Browne, a junior concentrating in mechanical engineering, to finish classes on Friday afternoon, they were among hundreds of family members arriving for the start of the University’s annual Family Weekend. 

Alongside Kalen’s sister Riley and grandmother Janet Mooney, all of whom traveled to Providence from Dayton, Ohio, the couple soaked in the quintessential New England fall atmosphere on Brown’s College Green. They enjoyed warm sunshine, crisp autumn air, trees bursting with golden and orange leaves and the sweet aroma of apple cider doughnuts and other treats served by the Brown Bakeshop and local food vendors lining the walkways.

The family stopped in Sayles Hall to admire its historic pipe organ before reuniting with Kalen, who was eager to show them his favorite spots on and off campus, from the Brown Design Workshop and Sciences Library, known as the “SciLi,” to Providence’s Prospect Terrace Park with sweeping views of the city. 

The weekend itinerary also included Saturday’s football game against Cornell, WaterFire Providence and a group dinner with Kalen’s friends and their families.

For Mooney, a former commuter student at Wright State University in Dayton, the visit offered a chance to explore aspects of college life she had never experienced firsthand, including a college football game. She was immediately struck by the lively atmosphere across campus. 

“Here, with the cornhole and Frisbee-throwing and all of that, it just looks like a college brochure,” Mooney said. “It helps now to picture where he is. If he says, ‘I did this or I did that,’ then I can picture it better.”

Brown Center for Students of Color welcomes students, families during 50th anniversary open house 

Brown University Class of 1990 graduate Elizabeth Wang remembers stopping by Partridge Hall, home of the Brown Center for Students of Color, as a student to meet with a professor. 

More than three decades later and now a Brown parent, Wang returned to the center for an open house during Family Weekend and marveled at the thriving community space that has emerged, including comfortable lounge areas, study spaces and a kitchen. 

“It’s so nice that it’s right here in the heart of campus,” said Wang, who lives in Pittsburgh and whose child, Rho Bloom-Wang, is an undergraduate at Brown. “It seems like a lot of thought has been put into this space.” 

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the Brown Center for Students of Color welcomed students and their families on Friday to take tours, eat cupcakes and peruse an archive room brimming with decades of meaningful history. 

Open to all University community members, the center provides a welcoming physical space, as well as events and programs, including a long-running pre-orientation program, that center the experiences of people of color on campus. 

The archival exhibition, created in partnership with the Brown University Library, features letters, videos, promotional materials and other items documenting the five-decade history of the center, which traces its roots to student activism in the 1960s and 1970s and began in the basement of the University’s Churchill House.   

“We want alums, parents and students to see what our history is,” said Vincent Harris, director of the center. “We’re standing on the shoulders of student leaders who fought for this space and continued to build it over the years.”