PAGE 4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 2003
Admin continued from page 1 member advisory group will be examining the current organization of the administration. The committee will interview critical administrators, and other administrators have been encouraged to volunteer for interviews. Blumstein said she supported the current administration review. “In my 30 years at the University, every few years they’re reviewing academic departments,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with looking at non-academic departments and seeing where we might be more efficient and where we might expand, in fact. That’s an important and healthy exercise.” Despite the hiring freeze, some departments, such as Career Services, may be receiving budget increases, Dean of the College Paul Armstrong said last month. A possible budget increase for a non-academic department might have come as a surprise to former Director of Career Services Sheila Curran, who left Brown for Duke University last year after 20 years with the University. Last summer, Curran told The Herald she “got the impression that at Brown, in areas that are not part of the academic initiative, it will be status quo for many years to come.” Last week, in an e-mail from Duke, where she is executive director of the Career Center, Curran wrote that, although “in the short term life is often more difficult for staff during a hiring freeze,” she understands how administrative reorganization could help Brown. “If important decisions can be made about what isn’t going to be done anymore, and staff can be organized around what is really important for the University to thrive, a hiring freeze can have a long-term positive effect,” Curran wrote. Curran urged students and staff to take an active role in the administrative reorganization by voicing “their views about services that are critical to them. “The more staff can be involved in helping to plan for the future, the better,” she wrote. “In my experience, change is always easier if you are a part of making the change. Many staff, particularly those who have been at Brown for a long time, have ideas about how to make things run more effectively.” Curran and Blumstein both said a key way to encourage nonacademic morale during the reorganization and hiring freeze was to let non-academic departments know how much their work was appreciated by the University community. “(Non-academic staff) need to be recognized for their efforts — even in non-monetary ways — by their supervisors,” Curran wrote. “They need to feel that they are making a difference.” Blumstein advised the University to “give (non-academic staff) the proper praise they’re due, as well as financial support. We are a whole community. It’s wonderful that the focus is on expanding faculty, but at the same token, we have a lot of talented administrators and staff and we don’t want them to leave either.” Spatial Expansion In order to support a larger facul-
Curran urged students and staff to take an active role in the administration reorganization by voicing “their views about services that are critical to them.” ty, Simmons has outlined a physical expansion of the University. “If we remain the same size we are, we die,” she said at a Feb. 4 faculty meeting. Blumstein said she supported the expansion. “We have to increase the physical space and also the infrastructure to support that faculty,” she said. But Blumstein also cautioned against letting “our aspirations get out of proportion with our means.” Over the past six months, R.M. Kliment and Frances Halsband Architects has been researching ways for Brown to both expand and use its current space more efficiently. Expansion plans include obtaining new space through underground in-fills and the construction of a new life sciences building, a project that has attracted opposition from College Hill residents. The need for spatial expansion has been an issue throughout Brown’s history. Once every five years, Brown submits a master plan to the city with an outline of new construction and renovations, often seeking extensive community input in the process. During Blumstein’s presidency, construction of the Watson Institute for International studies and projected work on the life sciences building increased town-gown tensions. Simmons has said that the greatest obstacle to current construction projects is not the poor economy, but getting approval from the City of Providence. Blumstein said one way the University might deal with the finite amount of space available on College Hill would be to move some non-academic departments into the downtown area. “I’m not saying that individuals who aren’t involved directly with the teaching mission aren’t involved with the academic mission; they obviously are,” she said. “But they might be able to do their jobs off of College Hill.” The Graduate School The Graduate School is another part of Brown targeted by Simmons as crucial to the University’s future. Professor of Chemistry and former Dean of the Graduate School Peder Estrup said, “As part of the initiatives, there was a major commitment to the Graduate School which I was very much working for and with which I was very pleased. As far as I know, those initiatives and those plans are very much a part of what the University is working towards now.” Estrup, who resigned as Dean of the Graduate School last April, said he has not “been a participant in the discussions that have gone on since October,” and thus is unaware of how the Graduate School is being affected by current budget problems. Following Estrup’s resignation, his position was split into dean of the Graduate School and vice president of research. Karen Newman and Adries van Dam filled those openings in October. In November, Newman requested that ACUP grant the Graduate
School additional funds to cover the health care and insurance costs of its students. This year, Brown began covering full health care expenses for its graduate students and also experienced an increase in admission yield. These changes, along with the poor economy, have added pressures to the Graduate School budget. Simmons’ initiatives, however, continue to provide extra funds for the Graduate School. Newman plans to use the $2 million received from the initiatives this year to increase first-year fellowships, increase summer support and provide additional teaching assistantships and dissertation completion fellowships to students. Additionally, van Dam has said he hopes investments into research will eventually bring revenue to Brown. Newman and van Dam are also in the midst of reviewing the organization and budgets of the Graduate School. “A strong Graduate School is an essential part of Brown University,” Estrup said. “What President Simmons has done as of a year ago were some of the best things we’ve seen for the Graduate School in a very long time.” Herald staff writer Dana Goldstein ’06 can be reached at dgoldstein@browndailyherald.com.
Eyes continued from page 3 The generally accepted view of language processing has been that there is a shallower level that occurs first, followed by deeper processing. Sedivy said she does not believe this is the case. “It’s a very subconscious cognitive processing mechanism influenced by subtle expectations,” she said. Cognitive scientists often believe “we can’t be that sophisticated that quickly,” she said. Tracking eye movements, in addition to giving a better understanding of language processing, can also have practical applications, Sedivy said. Applications range from human/computer interface systems to military applications to developing educational software to helping people with language problems. There are also “deeper, broader reasons why studying how the mind works is important,” she said. “Understanding how we respond to our environment allows us to gain a perspective on us and on the world that’s critical and important,” she said. Sedivy said she plans to discuss her results next week at a conference in Boston. Herald staff writer Stephanie Harris ’04 edits the academic watch section. She can be reached at sharris@browndailyherald.com.