How BrownTogether elevated Brown’s teaching, research, and innovative scholarship

The campaign delivered historic levels of support to a thriving academic community that is dedicated to advancing knowledge and discovery and making a positive impact on our world.

BrownTogether—the most ambitious fundraising campaign in Brown’s history—celebrated its public launch in 2015. Now, almost ten years later, BrownTogether has come to an extraordinary close. Thanks to the generosity of more than 76,800 donors, we exceeded the original goal of $3 billion in 2021—more than a year ahead of schedule—and went on to achieve a final total of $4.44 billion.

As we look back on the progress made and the aspirations still on the horizon, we reflect on the many ways that this support has made a transformative impact for our students; in our scholarship, research and teaching; and on our growing campus.

Research growth for impact and the future

The impact of the BrownTogether campaign can be seen in virtually every academic department, initiative, institute, center, and school at the University. This includes improved teaching and research facilities that are sparking innovation, discovery and new modes of education across fields of study, with new and renovated spaces encompassing many fields and disciplines

“Campaign support has brought greater depth and scale to Brown’s teaching, scholarship, and research,” says Provost Francis J. Doyle III. “Philanthropy supports Brown’s leading edge in a multitude of areas, including areas like public health, integrated life sciences, engineering, environmental studies, international and public affairs, and data science, as well as the arts and humanities.”

Provost Francis J. Doyle III
Provost Francis J. Doyle III

BrownTogether’s decade of investment in faculty and academic excellence has positioned the University to pursue future initiatives that enrich the learning experience and propel research across all fields of study to new levels of excellence. For example, the Office of the Provost established increased funding opportunities in the humanities over three years via awards from the Humanities Research Fund and the Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Fund. Brown is also working to advance the campus’ responsible engagement with Artificial Intelligence across its academic missions.

“A great example of the power of philanthropy is the recent appointment of our first Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence,” says Doyle. “This transformational new position in my office would not be possible without a timely and generous campaign gift. Brown is quite fortunate to be able to ensure that AI education, research, and responsible practices remain central to University-wide initiatives.”

$ 1.58B

raised for expanded research, educational innovation, and integrative scholarship

143

new endowed professorships raised

$ 506.8M

raised for endowed professorships

Great faculty are the lifeblood of a great university

Retaining and rewarding stellar professors already on campus and recruiting top scholars and auspicious young talent to College Hill were key drivers of the BrownTogether campaign.  

Donors raised 143 endowed professorships during the campaign, surpassing the initial goal of 110 new endowed positions and the increased goal of 123, set in 2022 when the campaign was extended. 

“Endowed professorships are advancing Brown’s excellence across all disciplines, rooted in the creativity and collaboration that stem from the Open Curriculum, and make the experience of teaching and pursuing scholarship at Brown unique,” says Leah VanWey, dean of the faculty and professor of environment and society and sociology. 

Leela Gandhi teaching during a lecture.
Leela Gandhi, director of Humanities in the World in the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. (Photo by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.)

Leela Gandhi joined the Brown faculty as the inaugural John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English, a positioned endowed during the campaign. She currently serves as director of Humanities in the World in the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. Her work on political and critical theory, ethics, colonialism, and transnational history has appeared in journals around the world and has been translated into Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Chinese.

“An endowment of this sort takes seriously the work that academics do, especially at a time when everyone is questioning the relevance of the humanities,” says Gandhi. “This endowment is an acknowledgement of the meaningful impact of thinking humanistically about the world, to which we are heir.”

With new endowed chairs at all levels and in a variety of departments—including economics, engineering, public health, computer science, data science, and more—Brown has been able to hire early-career researchers who are building portfolios in emerging fields.

“ Elevated support during the campaign years for endowed faculty positions will pay dividends for generations to come. It is our faculty who, first and foremost, foster an environment of collaborative, interdisciplinary scholarship and pioneering research at Brown. ”

Ralph Rosenberg ’86, P’17 Campaign Co-chair & Trustee Emeritus, Corporation of Brown University

Through BrownTogether, investments are also promoting scholarship, research, and learning in centers and institutes across campus.

Driving curricular innovation

When the 50th anniversary of the Open Curriculum was celebrated in 2019, the milestone prompted reflection on how its timeless values have become intrinsic to Brown’s institutional identity and continue to inspire academic innovation. 

Campaign gifts are supporting new funds for teaching and learning, advising, international study, and engaged scholarship. The Engaged Scholars Program at the Swearer Center for Public Service, combines hands-on experiences such as internships, public service, humanitarian and development work with academic learning to develop a deeper understanding of and appreciation for social engagement.

The Open Curriculum is also often credited with the creation of an entrepreneurial mindset at Brown that promotes thinking and problem solving outside of traditional academic fields of study. The curriculum's focus on self-direction and innovation equips students to be more adaptable and resourceful in their post-graduation careers.

Established with a leading campaign gift in 2016, the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship moved into its home on Thayer Street in May 2019. The space fosters community among students, faculty, staff, and an impressive slate of entrepreneurs-in-residence. A host of student-run programs have emerged from the center, including Van Wickle Ventures—a venture fund that invests in Brown-affiliated companies—and the Innovation Dojo—a semester-long workshop series that challenges first- and second-year students at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design to think differently about innovation and entrepreneurship through weekly classes and design workshops.

Campaign investment in the Nelson Center totaled more than $53 million, which included $15 million in innovation funds that support curriculum development and student ventures.

Julia Stepanenko
Julia Stepanenko ’26, Co-president of Brown EP. (Photo by Ashley Daubenmire)

“At the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, you never know when you might be sitting next to a future business partner or someone who could have the solution to a problem that you’re working on,” says Julia Stepanenko ’26, co-president of Brown EP, the largest student-run entrepreneurship organization on campus and a head teaching assistant for Engineering 90. 

While concentrating in computer science and economics, Stepanenko is also pursuing the Certificate in Entrepreneurship offered at the Nelson Center. “It’s a really unique, five-course curriculum—mostly case studies from real companies,” she says. “The professors are amazing, and they all have real-word experience building businesses. Since I’m from Ukraine, I am particularly interested in social entrepreneurship. Hopefully, I will create something of my own one day. Maybe even next semester.”

Accelerating knowledge and innovation in the life sciences

In the past decade, Brown has increased the scale, speed, and impact of its life sciences and medical education and research. 

Campaign giving, including $25 million to establish the Legorreta Cancer Center, has helped to drive an environment where innovations can move seamlessly from research and discovery to solutions that translate into direct, real-life impact for patients and communities. The Brown RNA Center realized substantial growth and has brought together scientists from complementary disciplines to develop new treatments for a variety of rare and complex diseases. 

Across many areas in the life sciences and in the Warren Alpert Medical School, donor support has enabled Brown to recruit leading-edge faculty and world-renowned scientists who come to Brown because the culture of interdisciplinary collaboration provides them with boundless opportunities to advance their work.

Diane Lipscombe
Diane Lipscombe, Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Director at the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science.

The Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science, named in 2018 in recognition of the largest gift to the BrownTogether campaign, has grown to 200 affiliated faculty members across 20 academic and clinical units. They are conducting projects that have real-life, human applications in five designated research areas of excellence: Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration, computational brain science, neurobiology of cells and circuits, cognition and behavior, and neuro-engineering and neurotechnology.

“Thanks to philanthropic support, our brain science researchers and clinicians are generating new knowledge about how the brain works and developing ways to decode and correct brain functions,” says Diane Lipscombe, the Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Science, Professor of Neuroscience, and the Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Director at the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science. “This knowledge and the tools created at Carney—from novel brain sensors to brain-inspired AI—improves people’s lives, including those with brain and spinal cord injuries, autism, ALS, epilepsy, neurodegeneration, addiction, depression and schizophrenia.”

By 2029, the Carney Institute aims to be among the top three brain science institutes worldwide, with a global reputation for understanding human brain function in health and disease.

A joint initiative of the Carney Institute and Brown’s Division of Biology and Medicine, the Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research is honing in on methods for early detection and treatment of the disease, including discovering new Alzheimer’s biomarkers within the body that can indicate the disease’s presence in a patient through a blood sample.

Three researchers sit at a computer with a 3D an analysis on the screen.

Across the life sciences, Brown researchers are integrating new technologies in their work, including advanced imaging, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence (AI). Leading faculty with expertise spanning computer science, psychology, and brain science are collaborating on AI projects that involve natural language processing—a technology that makes chatbots possible.

Development of the new William A. and Ami Kuan Danoff Life Sciences Laboratories—a seven-story research facility that is expected to open in 2027 near Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School–will help scientists and engineers engaged in groundbreaking work collaborate on therapies and treatments to some of the world’s biggest health issues.

Leading in the humanities, policy, and social sciences

Integrative scholarship has long been a hallmark of the Brown experience, and was a central theme in Building on Distinction, the strategic plan that informed campaign funding priorities. The scope of the University’s investment in scholarship and public discourse is evidenced in the growth during the campaign of key centers and institutes of excellence including the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and the creation of the Orlando Bravo Center for Economic Research.

Students around a horseshoe shaped table during a class discussion.

At the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, campaign gifts supported faculty and postdoctoral students, and more than a dozen funds were created to support the undergraduate dimensions of the institute’s mission, including interdisciplinary team-taught courses and seminars, research assistantships, internships, guest lectures, conferences, and workshops.

Campaign support also fueled action-based, solutions-driven research at the Institute at Brown University for Environment and Society (IBES). IBES received a number of notable campaign gifts, including the directorship, eight endowed professorships and one endowed University professorship, as well as funds for graduate and postdoctoral research, teaching, and public programming.

Tony Bogues speaking at a CSSJ event.
Anthony Bogues, Director of the Simmons Center. (Photo by Imagine Photography DC / Heaven Brown)

The public humanities mission of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice is fueled by research clusters led by faculty fellows from Africana studies, The Warren Alpert Medical School, American studies and ethnic studies, anthropology, history, and sociology. 

“We are always trying to find new methodologies to bring our research to the public,” says Anthony Bogues, Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Critical Theory, professor of Africana studies, professor of history of art and architecture, and director of the Simmons Center. ”Brown’s  interdisciplinary paradigm gives institutes and centers the capacity to be innovative and creative. Frankly, I am not sure that this center could have happened at any other place.”

In 2023, the University re-named the center in honor of Brown President Emerita Ruth J. Simmons. Donor support established a $10 million endowment for the Simmons Center. “The campaign has helped us a great deal,” says Bogues.  

The center’s years-long collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has produced “In Slavery’s Wake” an exhibit that explores the histories and legacies of slavery, colonialism and freedom on an international scale. “Brown students did the research for that project,” says Bogues. “More than 140 persons around the world were interviewed—nine different languages in ten countries. Brown students edited, translated, and thematized the transcripts.” That oral biography is featured in a documentary called Unfinished Conversations that’s part of the exhibit. “The John Hay Library will be the central repository of all those interviews,” says Bogues.

Cultivating creative expression

Campaign donors generously supported the arts at Brown, from galleries to new funds for public art, musical residencies, and international travel opportunities.

Thanks to the insight, dedication, and perseverance of students, professors, and alumni—and to the individuals who gave generously through the BrownTogether campaign—our campus now boasts The Perelman Arts District, encompassing 16 venues where scholars and students make creative work, conduct arts research, and engage with artists across disciplines and The Lindemann Performing Arts Center, a state-of-the-art performance venue and research laboratory designed to stimulate collaboration and inspire new modes of art making. At the same time, the renovation of Churchill House transformed the Rites and Reason Theatre, one of the oldest continuously operating Black theater companies in the United States, supporting its flourishing theater company.

Performers dance on stage at The Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown.

The Brown Arts Institute (BAI) is a campus-wide effort to support the arts, rooted in the University’s vision of a liberal education that prizes innovation, creativity, and collaboration. At the forefront of efforts to raise Brown’s profile as a university uniquely equipped to address the complex challenges of the 21st century, the arts offer a learning laboratory for students who are both intellectuals and artists who want their education to inform and enhance conservatory-level instruction and performance opportunities.

Sydney Skybetter
Sydney Skybetter, BAI Faculty Director. Photo courtesy of Liza Voll Photography

 

“The arts are both a means of expanding research in other disciplines and a research endeavor of themselves,” says Sydney Skybetter, faculty director of the BAI and an associate professor of theatre arts and performance studies. “The strength of Brown’s academic life is scaffolded by our Open Curriculum and brightened by the presence of our exceptional artistic communities of practice. Our goal is to ensure that every student gets meaningful exposure to the arts and has the opportunity to actively engage in arts research.”

Skybetter previously served as deputy dean of the college for curriculum and co-curriculum. In that role, he says he “came to deeply appreciate how Brown empowers our students’ agency when it comes to pursuing their curiosities, passions, and especially inter-departmental, interdisciplinary research. Innumerable studies demonstrate how students' engagement in the arts supports the long arc of their professional careers while deepening the meaningfulness of their personal lives.”

Building on Brown’s distinctive approach to arts education and research, campaign giving has brought the University increased resources for faculty, while spurring transformative growth in areas of strength and potential. BrownTogether has helped to further the University’s stature as a leader in liberal arts education and a premier research institution. 

The collective impact of more than 76,800 donors has propelled the University to new heights and will have a lasting effect on future generations of Brunonians and the difference they can make in their communities and the world.
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