Brown University Information

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, it is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the U.S. to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation. Its engineering program was established in 1847. It was one of the early doctoral-granting U.S. institutions in the late 19th century, adding masters and doctoral studies in 1887. In 1969, Brown adopted a New Curriculum sometimes referred to as the Brown Curriculum after a period of student lobbying. The New Curriculum eliminated mandatory "general education" distribution requirements, made students "the architects of their own syllabus" and allowed them to take any course for a grade of satisfactory or unrecorded no-credit. In 1971, Browns coordinate womens institution, Pembroke College, was fully merged into the university; Pembroke Campus now includes dormitories and classrooms used by all of Brown.

Undergraduate admissions is highly selective, with an acceptance rate of 6.6 percent for the class of 2023. The university comprises the College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health and the School of Professional Studies (which includes the IE Brown Executive MBA program). Browns international programs are organized through the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and the university is academically affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Rhode Island School of Design. The Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, offered in conjunction with the Rhode Island School of Design, is a five-year course that awards degrees from both institutions.

Browns main campus is located in the College Hill Historic District in the city of Providence, Rhode Island. The Universitys neighborhood is a federally listed architectural district with a dense concentration of Colonial-era buildings. Benefit Street, on the western edge of the campus, contains "one of the finest cohesive collections of restored seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture in the United States".

As of August 2018[update], 8 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with Brown University as alumni, faculty members or researchers. In addition, Browns faculty and alumni include 5 National Humanities Medalists and 10 National Medal of Science laureates. Other notable alumni include 8 billionaire graduates, a U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, 4 U.S. Secretaries of State and other Cabinet officials, 54 members of the United States Congress, 56 Rhodes Scholars, 52 Gates Cambridge Scholars 49 Marshall Scholars, 14 MacArthur Genius Fellows, 23 Pulitzer Prize winners, various royals and nobles, as well as leaders and founders of Fortune 500 companies.

The origin of Brown University can be dated to 1761, when three residents of Newport, Rhode Island drafted a petition to the General Assembly of the colony:

The three petitioners were Ezra Stiles, pastor of Newports Second Congregational Church and future president of Yale; William Ellery, Jr., future signer of the United States Declaration of Independence; and Josias Lyndon, future governor of the colony. Stiles and Ellery were co-authors of the Charter of the College two years later. The editor of Stiless papers observes, "This draft of a petition connects itself with other evidence of Dr. Stiless project for a Collegiate Institution in Rhode Island, before the charter of what became Brown University."

There is further documentary evidence that Stiles was making plans for a college in 1762. On January 20, Chauncey Whittelsey, pastor of the First Church of New Haven, answered a letter from Stiles:

The Philadelphia Association of Baptist Churches also had an eye on Rhode Island, home of the mother church of their denomination: the First Baptist Church in America, founded in Providence in 1638 by Roger Williams. The Baptists were as yet unrepresented among colonial colleges; the Congregationalists had Harvard and Yale, the Presbyterians had the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), and the Episcopalians had the College of William and Mary and Kings College (later Columbia). Isaac Backus was the historian of the New England Baptists and an inaugural Trustee of Brown, writing in 1784. He described the October 1762 resolution taken at Philadelphia:

Manning arrived at Newport in July 1763 and was introduced to Stiles, who agreed to write the Charter for the College. Stiless first draft was read to the General Assembly in August 1763 and rejected by Baptist members who worried that the College Board of Fellows would under-represent the Baptists. A revised Charter written by Stiles and Ellery was adopted by the Assembly on March 3, 1764.

In September 1764, the inaugural meeting of the College Corporation was held at Newport. Governor Stephen Hopkins was chosen chancellor, former and future governor Samuel Ward was vice chancellor, John Tillinghast treasurer, and Thomas Eyres secretary. The Charter stipulated that the Board of Trustees be composed of 22 Baptists, five Quakers, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. Of the 12 Fellows, eight should be Baptists—including the College president—"and the rest indifferently of any or all Denominations."

The Charter was not the grant of King George III, as is sometimes supposed, but rather an Act of the colonial General Assembly. In two particulars, the Charter may be said to be a uniquely progressive document. First, other colleges had curricular strictures against opposing doctrines, while Browns Charter asserted, "Sectarian differences of opinions, shall not make any Part of the Public and Classical Instruction." Second, according to Brown University historian Walter Bronson, "the instrument governing Brown University recognized more broadly and fundamentally than any other the principle of denominational cooperation." The oft-repeated statement is inaccurate that Browns Charter alone prohibited a religious test for College membership; other college charters were also liberal in that particular.

James Manning was sworn in as the Colleges first president in 1765 and served until 1791. In 1770, the College moved from Warren, Rhode Island to the crest of College Hill overlooking Providence. Solomon Drowne, a freshman in the class of 1773, wrote in his diary on March 26, 1770:

Presbyterian Lane is the present College Street. The eight-acre site had been purchased in two parcels by the Corporation for £219, mainly from Moses Brown and John Brown, the parcels having "formed a part of the original home lots of their ancestor, Chad Brown, and of George Rickard, who bought them from the Indians." University Hall was known as "The College Edifice" until 1823; it was modelled on Nassau Hall at the College of New Jersey. Its construction was managed by the firm of Nicholas Brown and Company, which spent £2,844 in the first year building the College Edifice and the adjacent Presidents House.

Nicholas Brown, his son Nicholas Brown, Jr. (class of 1786), John Brown, Joseph Brown, and Moses Brown were all instrumental in moving the College to Providence and securing its endowment. Joseph became a professor of natural philosophy at the College; John served as its treasurer from 1775 to 1796; and Nicholas Junior succeeded his uncle as treasurer from 1796 to 1825.

On September 8, 1803, the Corporation voted, "That the donation of $5000 Dollars, if made to this College within one Year from the late Commencement, shall entitle the donor to name the College." That appeal was answered by College treasurer Nicholas Brown Junior in a letter dated September 6, 1804, and the Corporation honored its promise. "In gratitude to Mr. Brown, the Corporation at the same meeting voted, That this College be called and known in all future time by the Name of Brown University." Over the years, the benefactions of Nicholas Brown, Jr. totaled nearly $160,000, an enormous sum for that period, and included the buildings Hope College (1821–22) and Manning Hall (1834-35).

It is sometimes erroneously supposed that Brown University was named after John Brown, whose commercial activity included the transportation of African slaves. In fact, Brown University was named for Nicholas Brown, Jr.—philanthropist, founder of the Providence Athenaeum, co-founder of Butler Hospital, and an abolitionist. Nicholas Brown, Jr. became a financier of the movement under the guidance of his uncle Moses Brown, one of the leading abolitionists of his day.[unreliable source?]

The College library was moved out of Providence for safekeeping in the fall of 1776, with British vessels patrolling Narragansett Bay. On December 7, 1776, six thousand British and Hessian troops sailed into Newport harbor under the command of Sir Peter Parker. College President Manning said in a letter written after the war:

"In the claim for damages presented by the Corporation to the United States government," says the University historian, "it is stated that the American troops used it for barracks and hospital from December 10, 1776, to April 20, 1780, and that the French troops used it for a hospital from June 26, 1780, to May 27, 1782." The French troops were those of the Comte de Rochambeau.