The Brown Daily Herald Monday, September 12, 2011
Campus News 5
Med Ed spurs growth continued from page 1 Ship streets. This serves to connect the Brown community to the wider community in the neighborhood, said Ed Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences, “to have something that’s not just for the Medical School or for Brown.” “Ground floor uses should be things that anybody on the ground floor can share,” said Frances Halsband, a long-time University planner and designer of the Walk. A parking lot diagonal from the cafe will soon be transformed into a public plaza. Construction is scheduled to start today and conclude Dec. 8. Halsband says the plaza — informally known by planners as Ship Street square — represents Brown’s intention to create public spaces open to all. “Once this little park is finished, we hope that people will buy coffee in the cafe then go across the street and sit in the park,” she said. The University is looking into bringing food trucks and live entertainment to help activate the space. “Ship Street itself, I think, is extraordinarily important,” Halsband said, being “one of the most historic streets on that entire side of the river.” She said she hopes the street, which connects to the waterfront, will sometimes be closed to traffic to serve as a pedestrian gathering place. The Medical Education Building will bring life to the area by bringing in several hundred employees and students, in addition to those already working in other Brown buildings in the district. The Office
of Continuing Education will soon move to the area as well. Perhaps the showcase of the building is its central sky-lit atrium. Featuring “monumental stairways” connecting its floors, it unifies the building’s two sides, three floors and two entrances and provides a lounge and meeting space for students, Wing said. “It’s almost like a street.” The lobby is also home to an art installation which will “provide a centralizing theme for the building,” he said. The mural, designed by artist Larry Kirkland, symbolizes the doctor-patient relationship and is part of a University program that dedicates 1 percent of construction costs to public art. Above the entrances are vertical glass panels bearing the school’s name. Lit at night, the panels lend the building a palpable presence even when closed. The Alpert Medical School also aims to fully embrace the digital era. The building features a “library of the future” — “unlike the Rock, this has no books,” Wing said. This year, the University required all incoming medical students to purchase iPads, which can hold lecture notes and electronic textbooks. Still, the building pays homage to its industrial past. The original
Granada program hopes to expand continued from page 3 Office of International Affairs all collaborated on the formation of the program in Granada, he said. In its first year, Brown in Granada will be a one-semester program open only to Brown students, but Brostuen said the program could change as it matures. He said he hopes the program will be a catalyst for a wider stream of communications between the two universities that some day may even lead to faculty exchanges. Josh Prenner ’14, who is considering studying in Madrid next year, said he had not heard of the Brown in Granada program. But
he said he would be interested in the program. Julio Ortega, professor of Hispanic Studies, said the University should continue to emphasize Spanish-language study abroad options in the future, but should next look to Latin America. “More American students are going to Peru, Argentina and Chile,” Ortega wrote. “The best students should go to Spain to see the fabulous museums and old cities and have a great time. But they should also go to Latin America and be engaged by the local dilemmas. A true learning experience should make you a better human being.”
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Greg Jordan-Detamore / Herald
The renovated building, formerly a jewelry factory, will include a Bagel Gourmet Cafe at the street corner. It will have state-of-the-art classrooms, anatomy labs, clinical skills rooms and a digital library.
waffle-style ceilings are exposed in some places and the historic exterior has been restored. “It’s a great facility,” said Arthur Salisbury, a neighborhood resident and president of the Jewelry District Association, a group of residents, businesses, universities and hospitals. “We’re very happy it’s here.”