The University may add as many as 70 new faculty positions over the next decade to maintain the student-faculty ratios while increasing the size of the student body, Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin P’12 said.
If President Christina Paxson’s strategic plan — released Sept. 18 — is approved by the Corporation, the undergraduate student body will grow by about 1 percent per year over the next decade, Paxson said at a public forum Sept. 24.
Junior level tenure-track faculty members will fill most of the new positions, McLaughlin said, adding that such a policy is an extension of the University’s ambition to make the faculty population younger and more diverse.
“There are some things we want to do that require” larger numbers of students and faculty members, such as collaborative research projects among University educators, McLaughlin said, adding that “growth is a side effect of other goals.”
Areas that would benefit from an increase in the student and faculty populace include the School of Engineering, Watson Institute for International Studies and the seven areas of integrated scholarship — including environmental studies, population health and creative expression — outlined in Paxson’s strategic plan, McLaughlin said.
“I don’t think it will change the quality of life,” Professor of Physics Chung-I Tan said of growing the faculty and student bodies, though he added that, physically, “Brown is too small even for the current student body.”
Tan, who chaired one of the two committees that helped select Paxson, said he hopes a larger University population will encourage students to become more global and think diversely.
In the coming years, the University will encourage more students to study abroad and take internships during the academic year, said Provost Mark Schlissel P’15. Similarly, Brown will encourage more faculty members to take hands-on research sabbaticals, both ideas that will enhance Brown’s goal of a multifaceted liberal education, he said. The growth of faculty “cannot go on indefinitely,” Tan said, citing fiscal constraints. “Ten percent is enough.”
Since salaries comprise most of the University’s budget, Schlissel said the administration will have to moderate hiring to address financial constraints.
“Every year we turn away twice as many students as we accept with the same quality of credentials,” Schlissel said. “We want to ask, ‘How many students can we accept without altering the current educational standards?’”
Schlissel added that though it is easy to accept more qualified student applicants, Brown has become stronger in recent years by adding increasingly accomplished candidates for faculty positions.
Such a goal will “improve not just the breadth of teaching we offer” but also the culture of the University as a whole, Schlissel said.
Though many of the new hires will be on the tenure track, University tenure policies — which were recently revised — will not change, McLaughlin said.
“Each member of the faculty gets judged on their own merits,” Schlissel said, adding that the most important factor is “if they make Brown better.”
Former President Ruth Simmons’ Plan for Academic Enrichment, the cornerstone of her presidential tenure, sought to expand faculty-student ratios by adding more than 100 new faculty positions, an endeavor that increased the number of faculty members by around 20 percent. Paxson’s plan, by contrast, seeks to implement more gradual growth, increasing the size of the faculty by a smaller proportion.
“One has to view this from the perspective of a continuation of the PAE,” Tan said. “Brown has to continue to grow to maintain the excellence that a leading University has to offer its students.”
Schlissel said the intended population growth — both of students and of the faculty — will be small enough that “it would not have been noticed” had he and Paxson not explicitly addressed it.
ADVERTISEMENT
