Related Issue
Summer 2026
University News
Partners in Discovery
A letter from the President
By Christina Paxson / Summer 2026
June 23rd, 2026
As Brown continues to raise its profile as one of America’s leading research universities, one question I often get from alumni is whether this means that Brown is diminishing its focus on undergraduate education. The answer to this is an emphatic “no.”
Brown’s growth as a research powerhouse complements our longstanding commitment to excellence in undergraduate education and expands the incredible experiential learning opportunities available to undergraduates. From laboratories to local neighborhoods, from archives to creative studios, Brown’s faculty weave their scholarship directly into the fabric of the undergraduate experience. The result is a community that brings together the best and brightest students and scholars as partners in discovery.
This commitment is reflected in the extraordinary caliber of Brown’s faculty. Our professors are national leaders, global thinkers, and catalysts for new ideas. In the past year alone, Professor Emeritus Peter Howitt was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. (I hope you’ll read the Q&A with him on p.14.) Professor Ieva Jusionyte, who directs the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs, was named a MacArthur Fellow. And two faculty members, professors Yannis Hamilakis and Tracy Steffes, were selected as Guggenheim Fellows. These and other accolades rightly place our faculty among the most influential scholars and highlight the depth of intellectual excellence on College Hill.
But what makes Brown distinctive is not just the prestige our faculty bring home—it’s also how they bring their scholarship into the classroom and the lives of undergraduates. Brown’s world-class faculty are the best in their fields—from classics to engineering and physics—and they are at the center of the University’s commitment to student-centered learning. Our faculty simultaneously teach the next generation of scholars, leaders, and problem-solvers and fuel discovery with students at their side as active partners in research. This happens every day across campus. To highlight just a few examples:
Brown students not only learn from scholarship—they also produce it.
For many years, Françoise Hamlin, the Royce Family Associate Professor of Teaching Excellence in Africana Studies & History, has brought the students in her civil rights course on a spring break trip to Tougaloo College, Brown’s historic partner institution in Jackson, Mississippi. Brown students stay on campus, engage with Tougaloo students and faculty, conduct archival research, and travel across the Mississippi Delta to sites that shaped the Civil Rights Movement. As a historian of the Civil Rights Movement whose work frequently incorporates the oral histories of local people who have endured struggle, Professor Hamlin recognizes that this trip offers a vital opportunity to confront the landscapes, communities, and tensions that give history meaning.
Or consider Professor of Neuroscience Gilad Barnea’s lab, where undergraduate students work shoulder to shoulder with researchers studying how the brain interprets the world and drives behavior. Professor Barnea has pioneered new genetic tools that allow scientists to map and manipulate neural circuits with unprecedented precision. Over the past 18 years, nearly 40 undergraduate students have been essential contributors in all aspects of the research, immersing themselves in experiments, data analysis, and tool development. Many have produced honors theses in the lab, and their names appear regularly as
coauthors on scientific publications.
Examples like these exist across Brown. In engineering labs, students help prototype biomedical devices. In public health, they engage with community partners to address real-world challenges. In the humanities, they join faculty in uncovering archival histories or producing original creative work. Brown’s programs reinforce this ethos by ensuring that students not only learn from scholarship—they also produce it.
This is what it means to be a leading research university with a steadfast commitment to undergraduate education. Our faculty pursue knowledge at the highest levels, and they teach in ways that invite students into that pursuit. The result is an academic community where scholarship and education are not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing strengths—and where students are empowered to become thinkers, makers, and leaders in their own right.
