Campus Events

Family Weekend
October 18–20

The O.P. Jindal Distinguished Lecture Series
November 5, 6 and 8
India’s leading public intellectual Ram Guha will give three lectures entitled “Arguments with Gandhi” at the Joukowsky Forum in the Watson Institute for International Studies. Contact: indiainitiative@brown.edu

International Brown Club EVENTS

October 10 – Rome
Senior Lecturer in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Barbara Tannenbaum P’10 will speak about “Persuasive Communication.”
Contact: Jeffrey Greenbaum ’81

Richard Trainor ’70 AM’72 will step down as principal and president of King’s College London in September 2014 to become rector of Exeter College, Oxford University the following month. He will replace the current rector Frances Cairncross AM’67, a former editor of The Economist.

Subir Lall AM’90 PHD’95 has been named mission chief for Portugal by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is assistant director in the IMF European Department.

Rufus Gifford ’96 was sworn in on August 15 as the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark.

Jessica Meir ’99, an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, was one of eight individuals selected to be members of NASA's 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class. She will receive training for some of NASA's most anticipated new missions, including travel to Mars.

Julie Falconer ’04, a London-based travel writer and consultant, runs her blog “A Lady in London.” Her travel writing and recommendations have been featured on leading travel and lifestyle publications such as the National Geographic Intelligent Travel blog, Lonely Planet, and Time Out.

During the 2012–2013 year, 31 of the 106 Brown Club speaking programs took place outside the United States. The programs featured Brown faculty, senior administrators, and distinguished alumni/ae.

Benjamin Bowen Carter, a member of the Class of 1786 and a maritime physician, was likely the first Brown alumnus to take a serious scholarly interest in China. Carter studied Chinese and acted as an interpreter in Canton when foreigners were prohibited from learning Chinese. He also brought to Providence America’s first Chinese dictionary, Dictionarium Sinicum, which was created in 1726 and maintained at the Jesuit College in Beijing. The thousand-page volume holds a translation of Chinese words into their Latin equivalents and serves as a material artifact from the China trade and evidence of early diplomacy in China.

In 1844, John Carter Brown, Class of 1816, presented the Dictionarium to the John Hay Library at Brown as a memorial to his maternal uncle.

Brown Alumni Association

Friends of the Watson Institute

Giving to Brown

Brown in London
In June, Christina Paxson made her first visit to London as president of Brown. During the visit, she met with alumni/ae, parents, and friends to talk to them about her first year at Brown and present them with an update on the University’s strategic planning process. Vice President for International Advancement Ron Margolin and Assistant Vice President for International Advancement Josh Taub ’93 accompanied the president as did Senior Vice President for University Advancement Patricia Watson.

Photo: President Paxson at an event hosted by Jeffrey Greenbaum ’81 for nearly 150 alumni/ae, students, parents, and friends.
Credit: Jessica Chaney ’07

Facilities Projects across Campus
Over the summer, 100 projects took place to enhance classrooms, research, teaching, and campus life. An extensive renovation of the John Hay Library, restoring the grand reading room to a space dedicated for quiet study, is now underway. The Building for Environmental Research and Teaching, formerly known as Hunter Laboratory, home to psychology, is being renovated to create new space for research and teaching on the environment. Other major projects include the renovation of Keeney Quad and the transformation of Andrews Commons for student space.

Photo: The Andrews Dining Hall will become a student commons with a dining hall, study rooms, and a seminar room.
Credit: Schwartz Silver Architects

Brown Selected for Project Site for AAU STEM Effort
Brown is one of eight research universities chosen by the Association of American Universities (AAU) as a project site to improve undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). More than 30 universities submitted concept papers that were assessed on a number of criteria, including the degree of faculty engagement and institutional commitment.

Brown Launches Free Online Courses
Brown joined with Coursera, a company that provides a platform for free online non-credit courses, to offer three open courses during summer 2013. With total enrollment of 87,000, these courses—one in comparative literature, one in archaeology, and one in matrix algebra—allowed people from around the world to learn from three of Brown’s exceptional faculty members.

Photo: Virtual fieldwork
Credit: Laurel Bestock ’99/Brown University Abydos Project

BIARI Opens Its Fifth Session
In June, more than 150 scholars from around the world participated in the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI), an initiative that brings promising young scholars from the Global South together with leading researchers in their fields for two-week institutes at Brown each summer. BIARI has built a scholarly network of 500 alumni/ae in 80 countries, providing them with ongoing support for collaborative research and professional development. BIARI is co-sponsored by Brown and Sovereign|Santander.

International Orientation at Brown
From August 28 through 31, international first-year and transfer students participated in an orientation focused on academic expectations, campus life, immigration and visa policies, and transition to life in the United States. During that time, students also engaged with peer mentors from Brown’s International Mentoring Program, who continue to offer peer advising and programming throughout the year.

Kim Koo Library at the Watson Institute for International Studies
Jung Hwa Kim ’08 and her family donated the Pictorial History of Baikbum Kim Koo—published on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Founding of the Kim Koo Museum & Library in Korea—to the Kim Koo Library collection at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The library was dedicated in 2009 in memory of Kim Koo (1876–1949), premier of the Korean Provisional Government, and in honor of his great-granddaughter Jung Hwa Kim ’08. The Kim Koo Foundation made gifts to Brown to name the library and to establish the Kim Koo Endowment to support lectures, visitors, library acquisitions, and programming in international studies related to Korea and East Asia.

Photo: Jung Hwa Kim ’08 (right) presenting the book to Sarah Baldwin-Beneich, communications director of the Watson Institute, at the Kim Koo Library.

Mustard Chairs Mars 2020 Science Definition Team
Professor of Geological Sciences Jack Mustard chairs the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team determining the mission for NASA’s next Mars rover, which could start the process for sending soil and rock samples back to Earth for scientists to study.

Neumann and Schestag Receive Berlin Prize
Dietrich Neumann, professor of history of art and architecture, and Thomas Schestag, who will join the Department of German Studies in January 2014, have been named recipients of the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. The Berlin Prize affords fellows the time and resources to pursue independent study and engage with their German counterparts and with Berlin’s vibrant academic, cultural, and political life.

Photo: Professor Neumann

Bogues Speaks at University of Cape Town
In August, B. Anthony Bogues, Lyn Crost Professor of Social Sciences and Critical Theory and director of the Center for Slavery and Justice, took part in a conversation on postcolonialism as part of the University of Cape Town’s “Africa, Reading, Humanities” series. Bogues is an honorary professor in the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Steinfeld Joins the Brown Faculty
Edward Steinfeld, Dean’s Professor of China Studies and professor of political science, joins the Brown faculty in July. He delivered his inaugural Brown lecture “China: Hot House for Global High-Tech Innovation” to new students and families from China on August 31 at the Joukowsky Forum in the Watson Institute for International Studies.

William Rhodes Addresses Fudan University
William Rhodes ’57 LHD’05, professor-at-large at the Watson Institute, recently gave a talk titled “Challenges to the Global Economy – Restoring Sustained Growth” at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. His book Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons from the Front Lines of Global Finance has now been translated into Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Portuguese.

Brown Students Participate in International Summer Internships
Brown collaborates with alumni/ae, parents, and partner universities to provide international summer internship opportunities for undergraduate students. This summer, eight students participated in internships in China, India, and Spain through Brown’s C.V. Starr Program in Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations. Elizabeth Weber ’14 speaks about her internship experience in Hong Kong in summer 2012.

Brown Students Win Medals in World Rowing Championships
Hunter Leeming ’15 and Anders Weiss ’15 helped the United States win a silver medal at the World Rowing Under 23 Championships in July in Linz, Austria. Morgan Gerlak ’14 also earned a bronze medal in the straight four at the event.

ICCR to Establish Chair on Indian Studies at Brown
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) will establish a chair on Indian studies to promote scholarship and research on various aspects of India.

Brown, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Archive of Brazil Forge Partnership
A student-supported project, led by Professor of History James Green, is the foundation for a partnership among Brown, the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the National Archive of Brazil, and the State University of Maringá. “Opening the Archives” is designed to provide online public access to the NARA-held State Department of Political Affairs and Relations declassified documents pertaining to U.S.-Brazilian relations from the turbulent 1960s, 70s and 80s. Brown undergraduate students are now working alongside students from Brazil’s State University of Maringá to organize and provide indexing terms for these distinctive documents.

Photo: The group meets at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Brown-Kobe Joint Simulation School 2013
In March, Chair and Professor of Applied Mathematics Bjorn Sandstede visited Kobe University in Japan to meet with President Hideki Fukuda to discuss a new educational program for graduate students in computer simulation. In August, twelve graduate students from the two universities participated in a two-week program. During the first week, students took lectures and training courses at Brown, including computer simulation training using the FX-10, a supercomputer. For the second week, they moved to Kobe University to continue their training.

Photo: from left, Kobe’s Dean of the Graduate School of System Informatics Nobuyuki Kaya, Professor Sandstede, Kobe University President Fukuda, and Yukari Mitsuhashi, deputy director of the Office for the Promotion of International Exchange at Kobe University.
Credit: Kobe University