Mellon Foundation Renews Support for Open Graduate Education at Brown
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Brown University Graduate School a $1.675 million, five-year grant to support the University’s Open Graduate Education program.
Launched in 2011 with prior support from the Mellon Foundation, the program enables doctoral students to simultaneously complete a master’s degree in a different field of study.
“The Open Graduate Education program is inspired by the Open Curriculum for undergraduate students at Brown,” said Andrew G. Campbell, dean of the Graduate School. “We are leading the way in one of the most notable movements in graduate education today: seeking to bridge fields of knowledge and types of inquiry from multiple academic disciplines.”
The program currently comprises 72 doctoral students. More than half of those students are pursuing master’s degrees in academic divisions distinct from those that house their Ph.D. programs — enabling them to graduate with distinctive degree combinations rooted in the humanities, social sciences, life sciences or physical sciences.
The majority of the grant funds will support fellowships that replace teaching assistantships for Open Graduate Education students, freeing valuable time to pursue their research and allowing them to complete both degree programs in the same time it would typically take to complete a traditional Ph.D...