THE
BROWN DAILY HERALD vol. cxlix, no. 105
since 1891
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2014
URC opens discussion on budget deficit Despite growing operating budget, $10 million deficit raises calls for innovative cost-cutting solutions By JOSEPH ZAPPA SENIOR STAFF WRITER
COURTESY OF SYLVIA ANN SOARES
TOM SULLIVAN / HERALD
Living in Providence since 1981, Sylvia Ann Soares ’95 maintains her own piece of Cape Verdean culture in her Cypress Street home, left. Decked out in red, right, Soares played Lady Capulet for the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival in the 1970s during her acting career.
A neighborhood unmoored Harboring Cape Verde in Providence
By GABRIELLE DEE SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Sylvia Ann Soares ’95 flits about her living room, adjusting piles of documents and dusty plaques as she weaves her way through to her study. “I’m grateful to have this place, but it makes me move muscles that
I wouldn’t be moving otherwise,” she laughs. Soares motions to an altar, adorned with flowers and a picture of her mother, that she lights on Sundays. Looking at the pieces of history strewn among her hanging plants and prints of African goddesses, she finally settles behind a desk covered in yellowing
pictures and postcards. “This room is very karma-dharma,” she said. “Karma is what connects between the last life and this life, and dharma really means duty.” Soares’ study was once a bedroom, where her father died in 1988 and where she tended to her mother, who battled Alzheimer’s up until her death in 2002.
Today, Soares conducts extensive research about her family’s story. And in this narrow house down Cypress Street, Cape Verdean history collides with modern-day Providence. Looking out the window with nostalgia, Soares reminisces about her childhood, discussing the » See CAPE VERDE, page 2
The University plans to balance its $10 million structural operating budget deficit over the next three to five years, Provost Vicki Colvin announced to a crowd of about 100 at a University Resources Committee open forum Thursday in the Petteruti Lounge. The forum, as opposed to regular URC meetings, was open to the public in order to solicit opinions and suggestions in forming next year’s budget. The University’s operating budget has skyrocketed over the last decade, growing from $480 million to just over $900 million, Colvin said. The “enormous amount of growth in the institution” over the last decade may be attributed to former President Ruth Simmons’ 2002 Plan for Academic Enrichment, which set lofty goals for the University’s expansion, she added. » See URC, page 4
Cohort tenure rate drops Students deconstruct circuits, redefine music ‘Circuit Bending and 20 percentage points
By EMMA HARRIS SENIOR STAFF WRITER
inside
The University’s cohort tenure rate — the percentage of tenure-track junior faculty members hired in the same academic year who are granted tenure eight years later — has declined 20 percentage points, from 81 percent for those hired in 19992000 to 61 percent for those hired in 2005-06, the year for which the most recent numbers are available, according to data provided by Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin P’12. Eight years is the University’s standard probationary period for granting tenure. The cohort tenure rate differs from the overall tenure rate in that the former includes all faculty members hired in a certain class, as opposed to only those who apply for promotion. According to University data for average peer tenure ratios between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, Brown maintained an average 75 percent rate, sitting near the middle of its peer group. Universities
that report lower percentages — such as Yale, Columbia and Harvard — are outliers, McLaughlin said, adding that those institutions have three-year associate professorships without tenure, which make their tenure rates lower than those of universities like Brown that do not have such positions. Members of the Corporation’s Committee on Academic Affairs were pleased with the reduced cohort tenure rate when administrators raised the topic at the Corporation’s October meeting, McLaughlin said. When cohort tenure rates exceeded 80 percent in the mid2000s, Corporation members expressed concern that there was not enough “regeneration of the faculty,” he said. McLaughlin said the decrease in the cohort tenure rate reflects the University’s long-term goals, which include an aim to hire new scholars in emerging fields, diversify and decrease the average age of the faculty — objectives that Provost Vicki Colvin announced during Tuesday’s faculty meeting. When the New England Association of Schools and Colleges reviewed the University for accreditation in fall 2009, the external reviewers criticized its high tenure rate, McLaughlin said. » See TENURE, page 4
Hardware Hacking’ course allows students to create, present original music By EMILY PASSARELLI SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Loud fleeting beeps and soft humming whirs, pulses of static, autotuned voices, knocks, ticks and pitch-bent tones make up the describable sector of the myriad sounds emanating from the Grant Recital Hall on Thursday night. At this one-of-a-kind concert, student performers showcased the instruments they created during the first half of their semester in MUSC 1240F: “Circuit Bending and Hardware Hacking.” The class, which meets twice weekly in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, explores musical expression through manipulating circuitry and applying these simple circuits to new objects. This is the second year that this course has been taught. Once a week, 12 students and one professor gather in the Granoff Center to take apart technology that produces sound, tinker with the noise-making
ARTS & CULTURE
Arts & Culture
SADIE HOPE-GUND / HERALD
During the “Circuit Bending and Hardwire Jacking” class recital Thursday night, a student fiddles with a circuit board to produce musical sounds. parts and then “perform” on the material product of their creativity. “It changes your idea of what is music,” said Benjamin Shack Sackler ’16, one of the students, about the course material. “I’d call (what we produce) more organized noise that could be pleasant to the ear,” he added. Pleasant or not, the class stresses
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weather
New levels match those of peer institutions, reflect U.’s long-term goals for tenure rate
creative exploration of sound through rewiring of basic sound technology and experimenting with ways to alter these pre-existing sound producers, said John Ferguson, visiting assistant professor of music, who designed and teaches the class. The class cycles through different » See MUSIC, page 6 t o d ay
tomorrow
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