The committee of staff, students and faculty, led by Provost Richard M. Locke, was given a two-pronged charge:
- explore options for Brown to leverage the University’s assets in technology, teaching and research to generate additional revenue; and
- develop strategies for slowing the growth of Brown’s expenses through the adoption of new operational practices.
President Paxson emphasized the importance of identifying opportunities to eliminate the University’s relatively small but persistent structural deficit so that the University would have the resources and flexibility to make strategic investments in academic excellence. At the outset, she emphasized that the intent of the committee was not budget cutting in response to COVID-19. Rather, she wrote “… the committee will engage in the kind of long-range planning that is necessary if we are to reduce Brown’s reliance on tuition and fees and ensure continued growth in the quality of our academic programs.”
Accordingly, and with the COVID-19 pandemic prompting the need to rethink and reimagine the role of research universities in service to society, the committee undertook its work thinking expansively about actions that would position Brown to achieve ever greater levels of academic and operational excellence in a fiscally sustainable way.