2019 Comprehensive Brown University
A leading research university founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764, Brown University is known for its open curriculum that allows students to become the architects of their own education. Through its strategic planning, myriad study abroad opportunities, and wide spectrum of international student support services, Brown continues to drive its internationalization agenda forward.
Brown University graduate Nothando Adu-Guyamfi was not the typical education abroad student. “I’m from South Africa, so I always joked that I’m already on study abroad,” she says.
Adu-Guyamfi and 10 classmates from Brown traveled to Ghana in January 2019 as part of a social sciences course, “The African Atlantic Diaspora: Race, Memory, Identity, and Belonging,” taught by professor Shontay Delalue. The course looked at the long-lasting ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade and how they impact questions of race and identity in the United States and abroad. The students visited sites such as the slave castles at Elmina and Cape Coast and tied them back to their own lived experiences. All travel expenses were covered through Brown’s Global Experiential Learning and Teaching (GELT) grant program.
Adu-Guyamfi hadn’t planned on studying abroad when she enrolled at Brown, but she couldn’t pass up the chance to take the course with Delalue, who serves as vice president for institutional equity and diversity. “What drew me to that class was my experience in coming to America as a black person and not necessarily initially understanding the social dynamics of that,” Adu-Guyamfi says.
As a member of Brown’s International Student Advisory Board, Adu-Guyamfi has had conversations with many other students about how their identities, “both those that they acknowledge and recognize and those that are put upon them when they come here,” shape their experience in the United States.
“Understanding my positionality was something that was eye-opening for me,” Adu-Guyamfi says. “The discussions we had and the framework that we were looking at definitely helped me grapple with my time here at Brown and understand what it means to be a black international student.” Adu-Guyamfi’s time abroad and participation in Delalue’s class added additional dimensions to those conversations.
Prior to her current position as chief diversity officer, Delalue served as dean and director of international student experience. Her own experience working in international education and diversity services has helped to elevate the discussion of identity and student experience both in her classroom and across the institution. “I am proud that we are really thinking about internationalization and its intersections with domestic diversity,” Delalue says.
Fostering Internationalization Through Strategic Planning
A focus on identity, inclusion, and the student experience has become a cornerstone of Brown’s global engagement. Internationalization at Brown took on new momentum in 2016 with the launch of Global Brown, a plan that guides the university’s international partnerships, research and curriculum, education abroad programming, and support for international students and scholars.
After becoming provost in 2015, Richard Locke tasked Deputy Provost for Global Engagement and Strategic Initiatives Shankar Prasad with developing an operational blueprint to help integrate a global perspective into the university’s 10-year strategic plan, Building on Distinction. The idea was that internationalization, much like diversity and inclusion, should be integrated into the institution’s strategic priorities.
To accomplish this task, Prasad first wanted to take stock of how the university might better support “Brown in the World” and “The World at Brown,” looking at outbound mobility and engagement abroad as well as the international community that exists on campus in Providence, respectively.
Prasad began by talking to stakeholders across campus to identify areas where there were gaps of support. Those conversations led to both organizational and structural changes. To streamline Brown’s global engagement, various international initiatives were centralized under the Office of Global Engagement (OGE), which reports directly to the provost. The OGE helps to coordinate activities between units such as the Office of International Programs, which oversees education abroad, and the Office of International Student & Scholar Services, which offers immigration support.
The OGE also created a new position focused on international travel safety and security that serves the entire institution. In this role, director Christine Sprovieri has developed a number of policies and procedures to help mitigate risk for student, staff, and faculty travel, and she created an emergency response plan.
In addition to providing resources and hiring more staff to support international students, Brown opened up a dedicated center for the international population. “Students don’t care who reports to whom in this university; they just want to know where to go,” Prasad explains. “So we created a one-stop shop.”
“Most of us still continue to report to different parts of the university, but we make up Global Brown,” he continues. “The idea is that the 40 people who support internationalization, whether that’s going abroad or coming here, are united by this common mission.”
Tying Partnerships to Strategic Priorities
During the development of the internationalization blueprint, Provost Locke wanted to make sure that Brown’s approach to global partnerships supported the university’s strategic plan. “Brown’s approach to global engagement had been similar to many universities’, and focused on entering a number of MOUs with organizations all over the world,” he says. “We decided to rethink this, undertake a careful review, and continue with the ones that align with Brown’s academic strengths and priorities and have substantive activity taking place.”
Shaira Kochubaeva, associate director for global engagement, oversees all aspects of Brown’s international partnerships to advance its international efforts in the areas of research, teaching, and service. The OGE team has adopted a “less is more” approach by focusing on approximately 75 robust partnerships, the majority of which are concentrated in Brazil, China, France, India, Japan, South Korea, and Spain. Brown also aims to establish more institutional partnerships that encourage a multidisciplinary approach and involve different departments around campus.
One example is Brown’s long-standing relationship with Charles University in the Czech Republic. Starting with a faculty collaboration in Slavic linguistics, the partnership now extends to American studies, applied mathematics, classics, East Asian studies, Egyptology and Assyriology, history, Italian studies, and Slavic studies.
Brown is in the process of planning a new pan-university center for global health that will support research, education, and service in four focus areas: global health and migration/displacement, global health and gender/gender equity, current and emerging epidemics, and global aging. The key values will be to promote health and well-being for all people of all ages around the world; advance social justice, emphasizing equity, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability; and ensure transparency and accountability in all partnerships, local to global, according to Susan Cu-Uvin, director of the current Global Health Initiative. The working committee is led by Susan Short, director of the Population Studies and Training Center.
Leveraging Networks to Expand Study Abroad
One of the outcomes of Brown’s emphasis on productive partnerships is that more than 500 Brown students study outside of the United States each year, facilitated by the Office of International Programs (OIP). Brown-sponsored programs currently operate in 13 countries. The majority of participants spend at least a semester abroad, though Brown also offers short-term programs to Ireland, Italy, Russia, and Spain.
Since 2014, Brown has led the Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA). The group is made up of 12 comprehensive research institutions, including the University of Melbourne in Australia and Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. Prior to the creation of CASA, a number of the consortium members were running separate programs in the same cities. By working together, they can better attain a “critical mass of students,” says Kendall Brostuen, OIP director.
Another benefit is being able to leverage the partnerships that CASA members have with local universities. At many of CASA’s locations, the strength of the consortium opens doors to learning opportunities beyond the classroom, including internships, community engagement, and undergraduate research.
“We’re able to take advantage of the vast network that our universities have in those locations,” Brostuen explains. “If we are able to pool our resources, it can be much more beneficial for our students, and we can think strategically when it comes to investing in these programs.”
Recent graduate Nicole Comella, who studied public health, took part in the CASA program in Havana, Cuba. “The program is run out of Casa de las Américas, which is essentially one of the most renowned cultural institutions in the city,” she says. “We have classes within the consortium with Cuban professors, and they’re pretty well-known Cuban academics. And then you also have the choice to take classes with the University of Havana.”
Every 5 years, CASA identifies a theme that transcends national boundaries to promote undergraduate research and faculty engagement. “We want to use these institutional relationships on the ground with key partner universities as a catalyst for faculty engagement,” Brostuen says. “To this end, we have opportunities, for example, for faculty and researchers from the partner university to actually carry out research that is funded by the consortium.”
Cultivating Research and Experiential Learning Abroad
During her time abroad, Comella also completed a photojournalism project on the Cuban health care system through Brown’s Global Independent Study Project (GLISP). Students work with a Brown professor to pursue an independent research project, and they receive funding for any local travel that might be required. More than 225 students have undertaken research abroad through GLISP over the last 10 years.
“GLISP encourages students who are going abroad to actually carry out research on a particular theme that they could never explore here in the United States,” Brostuen says. “The purpose of this is really to tie the international experience back to Brown.”
Makedah Hughes participated in a Brown-sponsored program to Paris where she studied comparative literature and French studies at the Sorbonne. Her GLISP project was a comparative analysis of how black identity is expressed in French literature and music. “Personally, I have always been really interested in black identity or Afro-descendants in French spaces,” Hughes says. “It was so hard to do that kind of work here at Brown because there’s just not a large population of francophone black folks here. It was great to be in that community and to make connections like that.” Hughes’s connections from the program also helped her to successfully apply for an English Teaching Assistant Fulbright to France in fall 2019.
In addition to GLISP, Brown has supported faculty and graduate student research abroad through the Global Mobility Grant since 2015. The program provides funding to faculty who seek to conduct short-term research abroad and graduate students who wish to devote a summer or semester conducting pre-dissertation research at an international institution.
A fifth-year PhD student in comparative literature, Edvidge Crucifix used the grant to travel to North Africa and her native France to do archival research. “The grant really was the turning point in my research. It completely changed what I was doing,” she says.
Global studies and reflective cultural awareness are also elements woven into Brown’s executive master’s programs (EMBA) for mid-career adult students. EMBA students study in South Africa and explore the challenge of entrepreneurship in Cape Town’s townships, while students in other programs study comparative international health care systems and learn about corporate science and technology practices in South Korea, according to Karen Sibley, dean of the School of Professional Studies.
Brown also sends students abroad through the GELT program, which embeds a travel component into a longer course. Faculty can apply for a course development grant with the possibility of securing an additional $35,000 to cover travel costs for up to 12 students. GELT course topics have included Delalue’s course on the African Atlantic diaspora and another on the geology of volcanoes in Greece. Since 2014, between three and five faculty have received funding each year.
“When faculty apply to teach GELT courses, we’re looking at how explicit they’re making the learning goals for the course and how the travel component of the course can actually help students achieve those learning goals,” explains Sarah Mullen, chief of staff and assistant director of curricular programs in the College. Brown is distinctively known as a University-College, with undergraduate education based in the College.
In addition to the many ways in which Brown undergraduates are inspired to study abroad, Brown’s pre-college program offers multiple study abroad opportunities each summer, demonstrating the value placed on global experience to prospective Brown undergraduates.
Supporting International Students Through the Global Brown Center
Global Brown also focuses heavily on the international community on campus. Seventeen percent of the university’s 7,000 undergraduates are international. At the graduate level, 42 percent of master’s students and more than half of doctoral students come from abroad. The top sending countries are China, India, Canada, South Korea, and Turkey.
Supporting international students and scholars at Brown is part of President Christina Paxson’s vision for comprehensive internationalization. “One of Brown’s greatest strengths is our diverse, global community. We value the more than 2,000 international students and scholars who are essential to our university. And the ideas, experiences, and perspectives they bring are critical to our capacity to engage in teaching, research, and service with excellence and distinction,” Paxson says. “We are committed to attracting the most talented and promising students and scholars from all countries of origin, cultures, races, religions, identities, and experiences, and to cultivating an environment that ensures the free exchange of ideas and advancement of knowledge.”
That commitment begins with open, ongoing dialogue with international students about their goals and needs. In her former position as dean of international student experience, Delalue spent much of her time talking to international students about what they really needed from the university. “A big part of my responsibility was to assess the landscape and really help the senior-level administration understand what would be needed to best support international students,” Delalue says.
She created the International Student Advisory Board as a forum for international students to share their experiences and concerns. One of their recommendations was to reserve a dedicated space on campus for the international population. Students also expressed a clear need for more academic and extracurricular support.
In response, the Global Brown Center for International Students (GBC) was established under campus life in May 2017. Several months later, Brown opened the Global Brown Lounge, known as “the Globe,” which provides a physical space for international students. The GBC has the same status as other affinity centers on campus such as the Brown Center for Students of Color, the LGBTQ Center, and the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender. Any student who identifies as international— including students with immigrant backgrounds and U.S. citizens who grew up abroad—is welcome.
Former GBC program director Christina Bonnell, along with a staff of 12 students, ran a mentoring program and planned orientation and other programming for international students. The GBC currently works with 40 internationally focused student organizations.
Ramisa Fariha, a biomedical engineering master’s student from Bangladesh, works in the GBC as a community fellow responsible for organizing events for international graduate students. She is also a member of the International Student Advisory Board. “Being a part of the advisory board is really cool because you’re actually involved with identifying problems pertaining to international students,” she says.
Fariha has coordinated events such as a healthy meal prep night led by a former international student who now runs her own start-up company. “We’re always cooped up in our labs or doing research, so we need a few social events,” Fariha says.
Designing Programming for International Student Success
In support of the international community, Brown created academic dean positions to serve as advisers to both international undergraduate and graduate students. Part of the rationale for the new positions was that “no student should come here and feel like they have no idea how to navigate the college experience,” Prasad says.
Some international undergraduates, for example, might need help in understanding Brown’s open curriculum, which means that there are no core curriculum or distribution requirements that students must complete in order to graduate. Students are able to choose the classes that most interest them and, in some cases, design their own major, known as a “concentration” at Brown.
As the associate dean for international undergraduate students, Asabe Poloma has focused on identifying some of the academic barriers and challenges preventing international students from thriving. She has started conversations with faculty and advising deans about culturally relevant pedagogy and inclusive advising practices and worked with the campus career center, CareerLAB, to bring attention to professional development for international students.
“We try to approach all of our programming with the intention of thinking about the international student identity and experience as an asset,” Poloma says.
Divya Mehta, a former international student and Brown graduate, was hired as the first international student career coordinator. Working with Poloma, she co-organized an annual undergraduate career conference and helped connect international students with Brown alumni. “This year, we had alumni from several different fields and industries come in to create a first step to mentorship, but also have the opportunity for students to understand what their career trajectory could look like,” says Mehta, who recently left her position to attend graduate school at London School of Economics.
Creating Spaces for International Graduate Students
The international graduate student population at Brown has grown rapidly over the last decade in tandem with the expansion of its master’s programs. Because Brown as an institution is largely focused on undergraduate teaching, international graduate students advocated for a dedicated support person for their particular needs.
Coming out of the Global Brown strategic planning process, “we knew we needed someone to be the point person for international grad students,” says Shayna Kessel, the associate dean of master’s education and interim associate dean for international graduate students.
The international graduate students “were using these undergraduate resources to try to resolve housing issues, tax issues, social issues, and nobody really knew what to do for them,” she adds.
As the associate dean of master’s education, Kessel was already serving as the primary adviser for many of Brown’s international graduate students. So it made sense to appoint her as the point person for international graduate students. “What we’ve taken away from me being in this position for a year is that there has to be a physical connection between the Graduate School and Global Brown,” she says.
Third-year PhD student Sophie Brunau-Zaragoza has been the chair of international advocacy on the Graduate Student Council for the last 2 years. She says the biggest part of her job has been asking how new policies and programs might impact international graduate students. “There’s usually a very easy solution to include international grad students. It’s just that no one else had thought about it,” she says.
Brunau-Zaragoza worked closely with Bonnell at the Global Brown Center to revamp the international graduate student orientation. “We got rid of as much of possible of the academic structure,” she says.
A concrete example of the changes that Kessel has been able to make is allowing graduate students to have their degrees conferred at multiple points during the year. Students were staying in Providence longer than they needed to because they were unable to get jobs at home without a physical diploma. Brown turned out to be the only Ivy League institution that only conferred degrees once a year.
“Just knowing international graduate student needs and being able to do something about it, and having really receptive administrators, has been really important,” Kessel says.
