What are professors at Brown like? Are they accessible, friendly? Do you get to know them, and vice versa?
I am trying to decide between larger universities and liberal arts colleges, and I am interested to know the dynamics between professors and students. Brown is high on my list of schools but I want to get to know it more before I possibly ED there.
Thank you!
I was personally never that close with any of my professors (although they were certainly very accessible in the sense that I never had an issues getting in touch with them/speaking with them about courses) but the number of people hugging professors at commencement was astounding to me.
It’s hard to make a generalization about all professors given that there are so many of them. Some of them develop personal relationships with students, and some don’t. I do know that Brown makes a huge effort to hire professors who want to teach (as opposed to just want to do research) and to have relationships with students.
In my experience, professors are generally open to building bonds with students (the only exception may be in really really big classes, like with 300+ students). I am not super close with any of my professors, but that’s probably my own fault for not going to office hours, lol. My professors in STEM advertise their office hours really often and seem to want to be engaged with students. My impression of humanities classes is similar, especially since those classes can get really small (a lot of STEM classes are, too). I’ve also had a handful of interactions with professors through this program in which I am here at Brown, and they have all been very approachable.
I think that there are a lot of personal resources here, you just have to choose to take advantage of them. Ex. The Dean of the college has made herself accessible to me before, which is an opportunity that students can take advantage of.
My current history professor is highly encouraging of meeting with him to talk and even mentioned in a comment on my paper that I should come to him to discuss a certain point I made because it was interesting to him. And by the first month of class he had jokes about every person in the class. My professors for the giant Intro to Neuro course are also very promoting of visiting during office hours and every professor I have had has mentioned that if their time slots do not work that you can just email them and ask for a time that works for you. This has worked for me.