Brown University
Founding Dean, School of Engineering
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Founding Dean, School of Engineering
Located in historic Providence, Rhode Island and founded in 1764, Brown University is the seventh oldest college in the United States. Brown is an independent, coeducational Ivy League institution comprising undergraduate and graduate programs, the Alpert Medical School, and the School of Engineering.
With its talented and motivated student body and accomplished faculty, Brown is a leading research university that maintains a commitment to exceptional undergraduate instruction. Externally funded research exceeds $130 million annually.
Brown’s vibrant, diverse community consists of 6,000 undergraduates, 2,000 graduate students, 400 medical school students, and nearly 700 faculty members. Brown students come from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. The University’s annual budget is approximately $625 million, and its endowment is valued at more than $2 billion.
Undergraduates pursue bachelor’s degrees in more than 70 concentrations, ranging from Egyptology to cognitive neuroscience. Anything’s possible at Brown — the University’s commitment to undergraduate freedom means students must take responsibility as architects of their courses of study.
Graduate students study in more than 70 programs. The broad scope of options varies from interdisciplinary opportunities in molecular pharmacology and physiology to master’s programs in acting and directing through the Brown/Trinity Repertory Consortium.
Brown students have a lot to smile about. Named by the 2010 Princeton Review as the #1 College in America for Happiest Students, Brown is frequently recognized for its global reach, many cultural events, numerous campus groups and activities, active community service programs, competitive athletics, and beautiful facilities located in a richly historic urban setting.
In May, 2010, the Corporation of Brown University, the University’s highest governing body, approved the establishment of a new School of Engineering,[1] elevating what had been a long-standing Division to a new and substantially enhanced status. This bold step is part of a deliberate plan to transcend the limitations of the past model and break into the top ranks. A central element of the plan is the recruitment of a Founding Dean of the School of Engineering,
Brown University
Founding Dean, School of Engineering
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an entrepreneurial and institution-building leader who recognizes the uniqueness of this highly visible opportunity to remake a distinguished program at a more significant scale.
The Founding Dean is expected to articulate a compelling vision of what the School of Engineering should be, and to inspire people, both within and outside of Brown, to join in pursuit of that vision. The Dean must be able to facilitate the integration of engineering with other programs in the university, and to show the value that engineering brings to them.
Brown University has a proud history in American engineering education. Brown’s engineering program is the third oldest civilian program in the country and the first program founded in the Ivy League. The School today is distinguished by outstanding students and faculty, an integrated administrative structure free from traditional departmental boundaries, a distinctive interdisciplinary curriculum, popular liberal arts electives, competitive levels of external research support per faculty member, and an impressive track record of attracting major, multi-investigator research grants. With no business school at Brown, the School serves as the seat of entrepreneurship, business leadership, and technology management at the University. The School has a strong collaborative and enterprising culture. Within Brown, faculty and students routinely work with colleagues and peers from other disciplines. Nearly half of engineering faculty members, for example, work on life-science–related projects and maintain robust partnerships with the Division of Biology and Medicine. The School of Engineering is also a key link to industry for Brown. Faculty have received research funding from leading companies — including Lockheed Martin, IBM, Microsoft, Textron, BASF, Fuji Films, and Hewlett Packard—and the School is home to the largest corporate partnership on campus—a 10-year, $5 million agreement with General Motors for materials science research.
Engineering education is changing, however, creating opportunities for Brown’s program. First, the societal problems engineers must tackle have become more complex. The historical focus on machines and large-scale structures has dramatically expanded to cover biomedical therapies, microelectronics, alternative energy and environmental technologies, personalized medical devices, and molecular and nanotechnologies. Second, science and engineering education has again become a pressing national priority in response to the major challenges of the 21st century — creating alternative energy sources, reducing environmental degradation, improving health care, and increasing U.S. global competitiveness. To maintain world leadership, the U.S. needs to produce more science and engineering graduates and improve scientific literacy in other professions.
In response to these societal demands, U.S. universities with leading engineering programs are making significant investments in faculty and facilities. Brown is poised to make similar investments. With approximately 40 full-time tenure-track faculty members, the School of Engineering has an agile profile that presents a unique opportunity for a visionary leader to influence substantial growth in a program at a time of critical societal needs. Brown is committed to attracting and retaining top engineering students and faculty and providing both with the best opportunities to learn, teach, discover, design, and build. Brown is also committed to pursuing large-scale teaching and research grants from public and private funders, in order to contribute significantly to today’s global grand challenges, such as ensuring adequate supplies of water, food, and sustainable energy, and preventing and treating disease, which is the hallmark of a leading international research institution.
The faculty members of the former Division of Engineering unanimously proposed that Brown establish a School of Engineering, a move that preserves the distinctive character of Brown’s rich liberal arts tradition, builds on the strengths and successes of Brown’s 160-year-old engineering program, enriches scientific research and teaching at the University, and ensures that Brown retains and strengthens its position as a leading research university on the international stage.
To invest the establishment of the School with the significance to propel Brown to the front ranks of peer engineering programs, this initiative proposes to hire a Founding Dean of Engineering and empower this visionary leader to:
· Lead colleagues in identifying and exploiting key growth areas, such as (i) micro- and nano-technologies, (ii) biomedical engineering, and (iii) energy, environment, and infrastructure; as well as in advancing the entrepreneurship and innovation management program;
· Hire 12 additional faculty members in key growth areas, promoting and cultivating research collaborations that couple closely to applied scientists at Brown in areas such as chemistry, physics, neuroscience, environmental studies, and others;
· Help design 100,000 square feet of new laboratory and office space for new hires as well as critical new research facilities, such as a nano fabrication laboratory, that would be shared with the physical sciences and the Division of Biology and Medicine;
· Aggressively pursue development of a significantly increased sponsored research portfolio;
· Conceive and implement new and enhanced Master’s degree programs with the potential for increased tuition revenues;
· Build a strong and vital corporate associates program to strengthen and deepen ties to engineering and technology related businesses, in Rhode Island and around the world;
· Develop new strategic partnerships with other institutions and organizations and strengthen existing partnerships;
· Hire six additional staff members, including positions to improve student services and contract and grant administration.
To help accomplish these ambitious goals, Brown will put resources at the disposal of the Founding Dean, including faculty lines as described above, discretionary funds to be directed at initiatives the Dean may devise in collaboration with the faculty and administration, and ultimately the construction of new interdisciplinary research labs for engineering and applied sciences.
The benefits of establishing a School of Engineering are considerable to Brown, to Providence and Rhode Island, and to society. The School of Engineering:
· Improves engineering undergraduate and graduate education by providing new faculty mentors, new or revised foundation and elective courses, enhanced research and internship opportunities, and new research and teaching facilities;
· Increases learning opportunities for non-engineering undergraduate concentrators at Brown by creating additional interdisciplinary courses that enhance technological literacy and expose students to issues surrounding technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship;
· Bolsters all science at Brown — particularly departments and divisions with close ties to the School of Engineering, such as Biology and Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Sociology — by providing new partners, new facilities and new funding for collaborative research projects;
· Strengthens external partnerships, particularly with Rhode Island School of Design and Brown’s affiliated hospital partners, and significantly increases the size and scope of industry partnerships;
· Fills a critical need for translational research expertise at Brown and completes the continuum of innovation by connecting with industry in meaningful ways;
· Raises Brown’s profile in engineering internationally and forges new, strategic partnerships among international universities, non-profits, and corporations;
· Contributes to the Rhode Island economy through the creation of intellectual property, technology-based start-up firms, new jobs, and new industries.
The School of Engineering reflects the rigor, collaborative spirit, and creativity of its faculty and the idealism and entrepreneurial ethos of its students. It builds on existing strengths in the areas of biomedical engineering, nanotechonology, and energy, environment, and infrastructure technologies. Teaching and research in the School of Engineering also honors the unique position Brown holds in higher education — an institution that provides the close mentoring relationship characteristic of a liberal arts college, the intellectual excitement of a research-intensive university, and an open curriculum that allows students to be architects of their own education.
The School of Engineering gives strength and focus to today’s engineering program, improves the research enterprise at Brown as a whole, and helps Brown maintain and improve its position as a leading research university. The School of Engineering sends a strong, clear message to prospective students and faculty — and to the world — that Brown acknowledges the essential role that engineers play in today’s technology-driven society and that the University is committed to providing the best education for tomorrow’s engineering leaders. The School of Engineering also creates the administrative and staff structure that enables Engineering to help itself — raise money, recruit more and better students, partner with industry — so that it can be more self-sufficient and sustainable in the future.
The School of Engineering
Brown Engineering is a unique place, which emphasizes the power of interdisciplinary thought and recognizes that engineering is intertwined with every aspect of our lives. Its historical roots are truly interdisciplinary. The School is organized without the traditional departments or boundaries found at most schools; its model is focused on making unique connections between the various engineering disciplines. Its collaborations with the other scholarly disciplines — biology, medicine, physics, chemistry, computer science, the humanities, and the social sciences — bring unique solutions to challenging problems. The School employs innovative clustering of faculty. In terms of research groups, engineers of all types team together with non-engineers to tackle some of the biggest problems facing engineering and science today. Its talents and expertise lie in the interdisciplinary domain where the seemingly diverse disciplines converge.
A number of links to key initiatives and areas of strength within the School have been developed:
· Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations
· International Connections
· Innovations and Entrepreneurship
· Physician Partnerships
· Undergraduate Research Highlights
· Engineering Education and Outreach
Brown Engineering has an array of degree options, offering ABET accredited undergraduate Bachelor of Science degrees in Biomedical, Civil, Chemical, Computer, Mechanical, Electrical, and Materials Engineering. The School also offers additional flexible degree options where students are afforded more electives, which include the Bachelor of Arts degree in Engineering and Commerce, Organization and Entrepreneurship (COE), as well as a Bachelor of Science in Engineering-Physics. The Brown Engineering curriculum is unusual in the sense that all students participate in a common interdisciplinary suite of courses, called the core, for their first two years prior to making a decision on which engineering concentration to pursue in depth.
At the graduate level, the faculty in the School work in all of the preceding traditional disciplines but are organized into five main research thrust areas: Mechanics of Solids and Structures; Materials Science; Fluid, Thermal and Chemical Processes; Electrical Sciences and Computer Engineering; and Biomedical Engineering. The Engineering faculty has been successful in attracting both federal and private sector funding to support their research programs, and they are on the cutting edge of research in their fields. As is evident from its boundary-less engineering model and a porous periphery to the other scholarly disciplines, the School provides students and faculty alike with challenging and multidisciplinary problems. These problems are greater than any one person or group alone can solve and may require underpinning principles from many disciplines — from theory to simulation to complex experimentations — to solve.
Brown currently has approximately 40 full-time, tenure-track members in engineering. Externally supported research reported in fiscal year 2009 included:
§ Fiscal year 2010 awards totaled: $20,455,666
§ Graduate research assistants supported: 101
§ Current externally funded collaborations with biology and medicine: $58,696,820.
Faculty in the School of Engineering account for:
§ 16 fellows of professional societies
§ 10 recent National Science Foundation Career Awards
§ Four members of the national Academy of Engineering
§ One member of the national Academy of Sciences
§ One fellow of the Royal Society
§ Four members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
§ One fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Brown currently enrolls 512 undergraduate students and 178 graduate students in engineering.
Undergraduates:
§ Class of 2010: 89 graduated seniors (34% women).
§ Class of 2011: 103 concentrators (34% women).
§ Class of 2012: 105 concentrators (34% women).
§ Class of 2013: 140 current students (30% women).
§ Class of 2014: 201 current students (36% women).