PROVIDENCE – Brown University announced Tuesday that a new center for students who are the first in their families to attend college will open this summer in the university’s Science Library.
The First Generation College Student Center will serve approximately 16 percent of the student body at Brown by providing community building, recognition and support, said O’rya Hyde-Keller, a Brown spokesperson. Students themselves proposed such a place last May, Hyde-Keller said. As of last fall, the total student body at Brown topped just over 9,000, she said in an email.
The center itself will provide office and meeting space, a community lounge and a shared classroom/event space, all centrally located near key academic support centers.
The Corporation at Brown University recently approved a budget of $30,000 a year in annual operating and programming costs for the center, she added. Renovations already are underway, but a cost for that was not immediately available.
Juniors Emily Doglio and Viet Nguyen, co-founders and co-presidents of the student group First-Generation College Students at Brown, said that being a first-generation student can be isolating at times. For them, the center will also be evidence of the university’s commitment to them and their peers, they said.
“Before coming to Brown, I had never spoken to anyone about what the experience of going to and living at college was like,” Doglio said. “There was a lot of vocabulary and social capital that I didn’t have, and I had to catch up in a lot of ways. This shows that FirstGen students matter at Brown. And that we are not alone.”
Co-directors Ricky Gresh, director for campus life projects, and Yolanda Rome, assistant dean of the college for first-year and sophomore studies, will help oversee the center. Positions for a graduate coordinator and six undergraduate coordinators will also be funded from the $30,000.
As part of a project in which a number of floors in the Sciences Library are being repurposed, the center will share the building’s fifth floor with the Writing Center and Tutoring Services. Nearby floors will include the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, the Language Resource Center, the Instructional Technology Group and the Science Center.
The center’s opening is one of the steps noted in “Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion,” an action plan released in February.
