Welcome to Brown University

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Welcome

Tour stop audio transcript

Welcome to Brown University, located in the heart of Providence, Rhode Island. Brown's College Hill campus offers a classic New England experience among brick quadrangles, scenic greens, modern architecture and fully renovated, centuries-old structures. With its talented and motivated student body and accomplished faculty, Brown is a leading research university with a commitment to exceptional undergraduate instruction. Before we begin, let me explain the many ways you can explore our beautiful campus. You can click on the continue button to start walking around. You can jump to the next stop by clicking on the "Next" button. If you already know where you want to go, you can select any location by using the list, or by clicking directly on the map. Finally, remember that you can explore any particular location in more detail by clicking the interactive elements of a stop.

Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center

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If you wander through the Stephen Robert 62 Campus Center, you'll hear the hum of dozens of student groups meeting, planning and performing. It's home to the Curricular Resource Center (CRC), student publications and Brown’s student government, which is the oldest in the nation. You'll also find the Student Activities Office, which supports more than 450 student groups. Brown is a diverse, international university — the most recent class hails from 49 states and 82 nations. Our campus is a place where individual differences are valued and celebrated, where vigorous and respectful debate is encouraged and where a multiplicity of perspectives is actively cultivated.

Page-Robinson Hall

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Page-Robinson Hall houses Brown's student services offices, which help students balance their academic and co-curricular experiences. Here you'll find Counseling and Psychological Services, the Office of Financial Aid, the Office of Chaplains and Religious Life, international student services, the student employment office and more. You can also see one of many locations of our Blue Light system, a preventative campus safety measure. Pressing the red button at the bottom of the lamppost will alert a member of Brown’s Department of Safety to arrive in under 60 seconds. This is also a stop of the Brown University Shuttle (B.U.S.), which makes 15 minute loops around campus and down College Hill into downtown.

Brown Center for Students of Color

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Founded on a rich history of student activism that is honored in its mission to this day, the Brown Center for Students of Color, or the BCSC, serves as a gathering space for communities of color on campus and hosts events and programs throughout the year. Critical dialogue and self-reflection alongside an understanding of the structural causes of particular individual and communal experiences help students explore tangible ways to create change while also building and affirming community. At Brown, we challenge traditional thinking, and we embrace the value of listening and understanding the experiences of others as part of the learning experience. Within the BCSC and more broadly at Brown, a diversity of perspectives fuels creativity, discovery and innovation.

College Green (Main Green)

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Welcome to the College Green, considered by many to be the heart of the campus. Students gather here to sit and relax, study, or socialize, and come together here throughout the year for larger events including concerts and dances. In warm weather, you might find a professor meeting with a small class under the trees. Brown's Open Curriculum allows students to design their own course of study, often synthesizing different disciplines. For example, a recent Brown undergraduate combined his love of the outdoors with ecology and research to uncover surprising historical evidence about the erosion of Cape Cod's salt marshes. A pre-med student with a concentration in Latin American studies published original research on Costa Rica's successful approach to primary care.

Front Green (Quiet Green)

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Aptly named, the Quiet Green is a space where on nice days you will often see students sitting with textbooks and laptops, a sort of outdoor library. Across the street, you will see two of the seven actual libraries on campus, the John Hay and the Rockefeller. At the bottom of the Quiet Green you will find the iconic Van Wickle Gates, which open only twice each year: once to welcome incoming students during Convocation and once during Commencement to usher out the graduating class. Looking beyond the gates, you will see that the Brown experience extends beyond our historic campus down the hill, where the city offers a dazzling array of arts opportunities, public events and culinary experiences.

Keeney Quadrangle

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Keeney Quadrangle is the largest residential unit on campus and one of over fifty Brown residence halls. Most of the doubles are filled with first-year students, and the singles are occupied by counselors or more senior students. Every first-year student lives in a close-knit "neighborhood," a community that includes 40 to 60 first-year students and several community coordinators, who share direct-from-the-source information about everything from classes to campus resources to local bike paths. Students in upper years choose whether to live in a single or perhaps a suite with friends. Many seniors live together near campus in either Brown-owned or non-University apartments and houses.

Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs

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The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs comprises three buildings on campus that include classrooms, event spaces, and offices, but the Watson Institute community is even more expansive. The globally-oriented programs and initiatives housed here tend to attract the many Brown students seeking to make an impact through informed policy, as well as a range of speakers with real-world experience crafting or contemplating such policy. The Watson Institute seeks to promote a just and peaceful world through research, teaching, and public engagement through scholarship that works to understand and address the complex challenges of our world.

Sharpe Refectory

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The Sharpe Refectory, affectionately known as "the Ratty," is one of Brown's two major dining halls. There are vegetarian options and Kosher and Halal meals, as well as smaller cafes and convenient snack carts across campus. In the fall and spring you'll also find a farmers market here on Wriston Quad featuring locally grown food. The Ratty is one of the major social centers on campus. You might meet friends for dinner at the Ratty before improv rehearsal, followed by a night of studying at the library for a macroeconomics exam.

Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle

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Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle was renamed to honor Brown's 18th president, the first African American president of an Ivy League institution. Surrounding the quadrangle are buildings that house each of the four main academic disciplines. Simmons Quad is used for social events and recreational activities and is home to an annual acoustic music festival. Lyman Hall houses the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, or TAPS, including acting studios and the Ashamu Dance Studio. TAPS has relationships with local community arts organizations and encourages students to create performances that tackle complex social issues. Leeds Theater is one of four University theaters.

Sciences Park

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MacMillan Hall holds the departments of chemistry and geological sciences. The Sciences Library is next to the Thomas J. Watson Sr. Center for Information Technology. Are you interested in collaborating with a professor on teaching or research? Students can apply for an undergraduate teaching and research award, or UTRA, which provides stipends in support of innovative work, on campus or anywhere in the world. Are you the first in your family to attend college? The Undocumented, First-Generation college, and Low-Income Student center, or the U-FLi Center, located in the Science Library, provides first-generation students with coordinated access to resources and serves as a home for student-led initiatives.

School of Engineering

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Brown has the oldest Engineering program in the Ivy League, but the new, state-of-the-art building in which it is housed is fully equipped for a new era of complexity, including the Brown Design Workshop, where students have access to 3D printers, laser and wood cutting technology, and more. The School of Engineering does not require a separate application, and Brown's eight engineering tracks combine rigor and depth, preparing students to practice engineering in an age of rapidly changing technology. Brown stresses an interdisciplinary approach and broad understanding of underlying global issues. By collaborating with faculty and students in research and design projects, students learn how to put theory into practice.

Wellness Center and Residence Hall

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Health and Wellness at Brown holistically engages students in collaborative and compassionate care to support their self-discovery, intellectual growth and lifelong well-being. The recently completed Brown University Health and Wellness Center unites its departments to more easily provide interdisciplinary care and coordinate team efforts. Brown Emergency Medical Services, BWell Health Promotion, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Health Services are located in the Center, and Student Accessibility Services (SAS) is located nearby in Page-Robinson Hall. Its attached residential hall, Sternlicht Commons, functions as a wellness community where students cultivate an environment committed to developing and sustaining healthy lifestyles and are able to share their practices and programming throughout the greater Brown community.

Athletics

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With 34 varsity Division I teams, a wide variety of club and intramural sports and physical education programs, Brown students have many ways to play, stay fit and show team spirit. The Nelson Fitness Center features a gymnasium and three fitness and dance studios, including a 10,000 square foot multipurpose fitness loft. The Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center includes a larger than Olympic-sized swimming pool, and Meehan Auditorium houses an ice rink with over 3,000 seats. The Olney-Margolis Athletic Center, or the OMAC, includes a 200-meter indoor track, plus volleyball and basketball courts; and the Pizzitola Varsity Training Complex hosts a basketball arena, tennis courts and varsity training rooms.

Pembroke Campus

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Pembroke Campus is another residential area at Brown that houses many first-year students. Pembroke is home to the buffet-style Verney-Woolley Dining Hall (affectionately known as the V-Dub) and Andrews Commons dining hall and communal space. Pembroke also includes some academic buildings and beautiful green areas: Alumnae Hall hosts a number of impressive performances throughout the year, from ballroom dance to aerial arts, and MoChamp arch is one of several arches around campus where you can hear Brown’s wide range of a cappella groups perform.

Andrews Commons

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Andrews Commons is the communal heart of first-year residential life on Brown’s Pembroke campus. This area’s popular dining hall is led by an innovative culinary staff, and features a dual concept of traditional college fare including pizzas, custom salads, and sandwiches as well as dishes inspired by Southeast Asian cuisines. Students can regularly find chef crafted specials, prepared from seasonal and local ingredients. The upper level includes a 24-hour study center facing an outdoor terrace with seating around a large fire-pit as well as additional lounge and gathering spaces.

Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences

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Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences is home to the Division of Biology and Medicine. The building was designed to encourage collaboration among faculty, staff, and students by uniting complementary research under one roof. The glass bridge connecting the two wings of the building was designed as a visual collage of shapes and words that constructs a metaphorical link between science and the arts. In addition to these elements, the bridge features scanned handprints of members of the Brown community that symbolize the human presence in all research endeavors.

Granoff Center

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Brown's commitment to multidisciplinary collaboration and creative thinking expresses itself in many ways across campus, but perhaps nowhere more visibly than at the Granoff Center. Its mission is to encourage collaboration across diverse areas of study. And what collaborations: Neuroscientists and artists have teamed up to convey scientific concepts through animations. Artists have worked together with biologists and experts in computational modeling to visualize the flight mechanics of bats. Dance students, working with peers in health and human biology and cognitive neuroscience, have used ethnographic principles to adapt dances for individuals with Parkinson's disease and autism-spectrum disorders. The Granoff Center is a home not just for creative artists, but also creative thinkers.

Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship

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The Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship teaches entrepreneurship as a method of inquiry and problem-solving across campus and beyond. Through opportunities such as Synapse Trips and Entrepreneurship Internship Programs, students are able to explore startup cultures and broaden their perspectives on concepts such as ideation and leadership. In addition to dispensing funding such as Venture Prizes, the Center focuses on collaboration and provides mentorship and peer support that includes student organizations, workshops, speakers, and programs. Events have featured more than 300 alumni entrepreneurs and continue to strengthen the multi-generational fabric of a growing community of scholars focused on the realm of entrepreneurship.

Thayer Street and Brown Bookstore

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Thayer Street is the main thoroughfare running through Brown’s campus. Full of local shops and perennially popular restaurants, following Thayer south will lead you past libraries, green spaces, academic buildings and dorms to reach the other end of Brown’s campus and connect with the broader city of Providence. Across from Brown’s CareerLAB and next to the Granoff Center, the Brown Bookstore is located at the intersection of Thayer and Angell Streets and includes a technology shop, college dorm essentials, and an array of Brown apparel and other items to showcase your Brunonian pride.

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