Joint RISD/Brown degree program ready for 2008 launch
Franklin Kanin
Issue date: 2/22/07 Section: Campus News
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The idea of a dual degree program is not new, said Roger Mayer, professor emeritus of visual art at Brown and a member of the working group responsible for the new program. "It is also something that has been pointed out by visitors who come here, who note that the two schools are immediately adjacent to one another, but there's really nothing ... that (brings) students together in a more formal way," he said.
The proposal has been approved by Brown's Academic Priorities Committee and the College Curriculum Council, as well as by those committees' counterparts at RISD, but it still needs approval by both the Brown and RISD faculty. Administrators and professors in the program's working group told The Herald they expect the program to launch in 2008.
The program will initially be capped at 20 students per year. Students would have to apply and be admitted to both Brown and RISD separately before being able to apply for the dual degree program. The program will not accept transfer students and will not have an early admission program.
The main challenge in academic collaboration between the two institutions, Mayer added, was that the schools operate on different academic calendars, making it difficult for students to take classes at both at the same time.
The program started to come together after the committee devised a solution for the differing schedules - students will take all their classes in a given semester at either RISD or Brown, rather than taking classes at both schools in a single semester, said Shelley Stephenson, assistant provost at Brown and a member of the degree program's working group.
"Depending on at which point they are in the five-year program, they would live at the school where they are currently attending classes," Mayer said. "So if it's a semester or a year that is devoted entirely to being at RISD, they would live at the RISD dorms, and when they come to Brown for a semester, they would live at Brown."
"The breakthrough of this program was when the committee that came up with it began to think about students claiming primary residency in one institution or the other," Stephenson said. "At that point it opened up the opportunities of different schedules."