Impact and Influence

Cultivating inter-institutional opportunities with Tougaloo professor Santanu Banerjee

The brilliant professionals who initially collaborated to form the relationship between Brown University and Tougaloo College were strongly motivated to correct the ills of American history that denied opportunities for the intellectual and academic growth of Black students and faculty. The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership has enriched me personally and professionally, and I am grateful to be a part of this legacy.

My first exposure to the Partnership came soon after I joined the faculty at Tougaloo College as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Physics. In 2003, Ruth J. Simmons, then President of Brown University, visited Tougaloo as the commencement speaker and shared inspiring words about the long-standing Partnership. The following year, as the Partnership celebrated its fortieth anniversary, Richard McGinnis, then Dean of Natural Sciences at Tougaloo, explained to me the value of the Early Identification Program (EIP), a pathway for Tougaloo pre-med students to apply for early admission to Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. Countless science students have benefited from the contributions of McGinnis as well as dozens of dedicated STEM faculty at both institutions.

A few years later, Chung-I Tan, then chair of Brown’s Department of Physics, reached out to me as chair of the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Tougaloo to share a personal letter written by former Brown faculty member Robert Beyer to his daughter during a trip to Tougaloo in 1965. The letter’s contents conveyed the beginnings of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership and vividly described the societal conditions in Mississippi at that time. Beyer recounted that the sole faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Physics, who lived on campus, had built a “bullet proof” stroller for his baby daughter to protect her from random shootings towards Tougaloo from outside the College, perpetrated by people opposed to Civil Rights. He also described a safety meeting he had attended with Civil Rights activists, including Tougaloo faculty, students, and the Chaplain from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, a liberal, predominantly white institution. Tan sought to contact the individuals mentioned in the letter to learn more about those early days of the Partnership. My involvement in that research eventually led me to teach a course at Brown.

I embraced this opportunity, which provided a pathway for me to teach undergraduate summer courses in STEM for sixteen years and pre-college courses for the past fourteen years. This collaboration also made it possible for me to retain a role as visiting scientist in the Department of Physics at Brown. Having greatly benefitted from this experience professionally, I strongly encouraged fellow Tougaloo faculty to teach pre-college courses at Brown and about a dozen faculty did so each year. The Partnership additionally provided me with an opportunity to build collaborative research projects such as the Brown-led $7.5 million NASA LunaSCOPE project, for which I am a co-principal investigator. The Partnership also allowed me to be an integral part of The Leadership Alliance, a consortium of forty-one partner institutions that provides research, networking, and mentoring opportunities for underrepresented students, founded at Brown University.

As I reflect on the ways in which the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership enabled me to develop as a scholar and mentor over the last fifteen years, I have come to imagine Brown as a second home. The Department of Physics has truly embraced me as an integral member. I’ve worked with five different department chairs as well as numerous faculty and generous support staff. I look forward to visiting with the Tougaloo delegation of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership at Brown each fall, and the reciprocal visit from Brown to Tougaloo in the spring. It has been one of the great joys of my career to participate in the Partnership and to have interacted with students at both institutions. Being a part of their professional development and working with multiple generations of STEM scholars has been extremely satisfying for me. The enduring relationships, successes, and growth of this program demonstrates that interinstitutional commitment to change and opportunity is the true strength of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership.

A few individuals who were central to leading the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership during my years of involvement have been lost. I mention a few here: George Wallerstein (Brown ‘51), Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington and a summer research colleague at Brown, and Susan Kaplan, associate chair of the Advisory Council on Brown Relations with Tougaloo College, were staple leaders of the Partnership. The untimely loss of Galen Henderson, physician, educator, and twenty-plus-year member of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Department of Neurology, as well as a true role model for every Tougaloo student and Brown Medical school graduate, was felt across and beyond the two institutions. A graduate of both Tougaloo and Brown’s Alpert Medical School, he was a driving presence for expanding interinstitutional and community engagement. I deeply felt the loss of Meenakshi Narain, faculty member in the Department of Physics at Brown, who created a collaborative Brown-Tougaloo Partnership-led effort in High Energy Physics. After years of planning spearheaded by Narain, and in collaboration with Fermilab, we created a national internship program for twenty undergraduate researchers every year with a focus on creating opportunities for underrepresented minorities. Narain’s impact on the communities involved in this collaboration is boundless, and I strive to maintain her legacy through the Partnership.

Throughout its history, the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership has been an exceptional model for demonstrating how an unlikely partnership can develop into an important force for change, mentorship, and collaboration that should be emulated at other institutions. Leading the nation in such a long-standing, timeless, and continuous effort is a testament to the strengths and commitments of both institutions. My wish is to ensure that this legacy continues far into the future, pioneering further innovative achievements that serve these institutions, this nation, and the world, without barriers.

Peering into the archival record with librarian Kenvi Phillips

At the heart of every academic institution is its library, which supports faculty research and student education, and chronicles the history of the institution. For decades, the libraries at Brown University and Tougaloo College have been collecting documentation of the Partnership, and have been working together to improve preservation and access to the record of this remarkable collaboration. Both libraries are also looking to the future, serving as learning hubs for present and future library professionals.

The Brown-Tougaloo Exchange records contain correspondence, reports, financial data, grant proposals, teaching materials, tape recordings and press clippings produced by or about Tougaloo College and its exchange program with Brown University. The collection also includes financial and documentary material about the US Higher Education Act of 1965, especially relating to Title III, Institutional Aid. The records are organized into four series: Overview, Administration, Students and Curricula, and Finances and Development.

The first series, Overview, includes general information about Tougaloo College in the form of official catalogs and brochures as well as a Self Study undertaken by the College from 1967 to1968. The history and administration of the Brown-Tougaloo Exchange Program is represented by the directors’ reports and promotional literature. The series also contains a collection of both Tougaloo and Brown student publications and numerous newspaper and magazine clippings about the Exchange Program and Black education in general, along with a small collection of photographs. The second series, Administration, includes most of the correspondence of program directors Harold Pfautz (1964–1966), William Benford (1966–1967) and Charles Baldwin (1967–1987), along with their reports to the Brown-Tougaloo Executive Committee, as well as records of the faculty, staff, and tutors who participated in the Exchange. There are also related correspondence files for the presidents and upper administration of both institutions, including Tougaloo’s Board of Trustees and various Brown-Tougaloo liaison committees.

Most prominent in the third series, Students and Curricula, are the papers and recordings produced by the controversial Brown-Tougaloo English Language Project. Included are results of surveys, Tougaloo student essays and recordings, teaching and conference materials, and several copies of the Project’s final report by director W. Nelson Francis. In addition to the Language Project, the series includes student rosters and records of the Pre-Freshman and Pre-Med Programs at Tougaloo and the Post-Baccalaureate Program for Tougaloo graduates at Brown. There are also planning documents for Tougaloo’s Master Plan, which addressed both curricular and physical improvement. Some fundraising and publicity material for the Tougaloo Choir is also included.

The last series, Finances and Development, is a substantial collection of correspondence, grant materials, development literature, and budgetary documents produced by the Brown and Tougaloo Development Offices and the Friends of Tougaloo. Included are grant applications to the Rockefeller and Huber Foundations as well as to the United Negro College Fund, the Fund for the Advancement of Education (Ford Foundation), and numerous others. A large portion of the series is occupied by materials (correspondence, legislation, and applications) relating to Title III (Aid to Institutions) of the US Higher Education Act of 1965. The Brown-Tougaloo Exchange Program was a model for Title III of the Act, which created a means to fund mentoring relationships between more established educational institutions and so-called “underdeveloped” schools.

The ever-evolving Partnership has recently included a substantial exchange of resources and expertise between the libraries. As the inaugural Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Brown University Library, I had the opportunity to travel to Jackson to meet with Tougaloo library staff, administrators, faculty, and students, as well as with city officials and community leaders. These meetings gave insight into the work of the Partnership over time. While many are apt to point out the distinctions between the two institutions, I was struck by their similarities. The dedication and commitment of the faculty and staff, the engaged advising committee made up of alumni, and the ever-expanding list of departments and centers eager to participate in the Partnership spans both institutions. Biannual in-person meetings without distraction allowed the library staff from Brown and Tougaloo to work together to find new ways to support faculty and students at both institutions.

This shared support model also extended to library professionals. In 2021, then Dean of Tougaloo College Libraries Stefanie Taylor, along with Andrew Majcher and Patrick Rashleigh from Brown University Library, participated in a groundbreaking joint leadership program funded by the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant program administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Stronger Together, Excellence in Library Leadership Program was created as part of the formal partnership that the HBCU Library Alliance has established with Brown University Library, welcoming Brown into its community of practice as its first invited, non-HBCU affiliate member. It was the first leadership program to intentionally unite emerging library leaders from two distinct communities of practice. The curriculum and immersive exchanges of this intensive, nurturing program developed core leadership competencies. The cohort completed the two-year training program with stronger skills to support the core mission of the HBCU Library Alliance to strengthen HBCU libraries, which serve a unique and indispensable role as cultural stewards of the African American experience.

Joined together by a common concern for community and educational advancement, Brown University and Tougaloo College have reaped the benefits of the Partnership, which serves as an example of all that is possible through collaboration. The Partnership has shown the power of reaching across regions, demographics, and expectations. The fruit of this labor can be seen not only in the hundreds of administrators, faculty, staff, and students who have participated in the Partnership but also in the archival record of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, which collects and preserves the indelible marks the Partnership has left and will continue to leave on academia and society.

Bridging past and future with equity and diversity administrator Shontay Delalue

One of the highlights of my career has been working in service of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership. From 2017 to 2021, I served as the vice president of the then Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity at Brown University (now the Office of Diversity and Inclusion). In that role, I served as the Director of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership on behalf of Brown. It was through this lens that I had the honor of experiencing firsthand the power of individuals coming together from seemingly different institutions to collectively ensure a better future for us all.

Following a trip in summer 2025 to Ghana as part of my current work at Dartmouth College, I reconnected with Tougaloo colleagues in the Mississippi Delta. 1 1 My work has been rooted in the concept of self-actualization within a Black psychology framework. Several of the main tenets of this framework are directly connected to the core of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership and include the following: collective identity and social justice, resilience and coping mechanisms, unique experiences and perspectives, historical figures as guiding examples, community and support systems, overcoming obstacles, and embracing a humanistic perspective. See for example Christopher Zishiri and Simba Mugadza, “Conceptualising Maslow’s Self-Actualisation Concept for Application in Higher Education: An African Ubuntu Perspective,” International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (2024), https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.803206S. Upon landing and immersing myself in discussions about regional, national, and racial disparities, the deep connection between West Africa, Tougaloo, and Brown became clear to me: Brown has and continues to reckon with its historical ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and Tougaloo was founded on the Boddie plantation—a site that previously enslaved Africans. That the slave dungeons on the coast in Ghana I had just visited hold the literal blood and tears of Africans who were trafficked to the United States held particular meaning for me on this visit. 2 2 “Tougaloo College Joins Universities Studying Slavery,” University of Virginia President’s Commission on Slavery and the University, 2013, Accessed July 30, 2025, https://slavery.virginia.edu/tougaloo-college-joins-universities-studying-slavery/; See also the “John W. Boddie House Historic Resources Inventory Fact Sheet,” Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.apps.mdah.ms.gov/public/prop.aspx?id=21409&view=facts&y=1176. It is easy to sit with the atrocities and brutality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and wallow in despair. What this Partnership offers, through connection and education, is an opportunity to acknowledge this painful past and dare to build a better future. The future we hope to build, free from the vestiges of slavery such as persistent health disparities and wealth inequality, can be achieved when we do not operate in fear but rather tackle our nation’s most pressing problems together.

The significance of the Partnership has continued to resonate for me in different ways. In July 2025, on another visit to Tougaloo, I had the honor of dining at the home of the renowned physician Robert Smith, founder of the Medical Committee for Human Rights and known as the “Doctor to the Civil Rights Movement.” 3 3 Sharon Tregaskis, “Reap What You Sow: A Doctor, Mentor and Activist Nurtures Young Minds Destined for Medicine,” Brown Medicine 12, no. 1 (2007): 26–31; See also, “At the Fork of the Stream: The Life of Dr. Robert Smith,” National Association of Community Health Centers, October 19, 2022, https://www.nachc.org/at-the-fork-of-the-stream-the-life-of-dr-robert-smith/. We spoke at length about the legacy and impact of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership. I learned that he was central to the medical student exchange beginning in the early 1970s, in addition to his leadership of the Mississippi Family Health Center (Central Mississippi Health Services), which was the state’s first multispecialty clinic providing care regardless of patients ability to pay and likely the first rural clinic of its kind in the United States.

My work is inextricably connected to the work of Smith and other physicians inspired by his legacy, as demonstrated by the recent launch of the Black Health & Wealth Equity Lab. Through research and advocacy, the virtual lab will unearth the systemic barriers that perpetuate disparities and impact the health and wealth of Black communities in the United States while exploring the cultural elements that enable the Black community to thrive. Over dinner, I shared with the group the first project of the lab, Medical Misogynoir: A Medical Comic Series, which takes readers through three centuries of medical mistreatment of Black women. When I referenced the work of Moya Bailey, the person who coined the term “misogynoir,” a colleague from Tougaloo shared that she knew Bailey personally. I was hardly surprised. Indeed, I do not count this as a coincidence, but rather an outcome of two institutions having made a commitment to be on the right side of history and to continue nurturing this connection. To physically be on one campus that was built by enslaved Africans and another campus where enslaved Africans labored and lived is an experience that can only be understood by those who have climbed College Hill in Providence or walked into the Woodworth Chapel at Tougaloo.

I came to know the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership through my work as vice president for institutional equity and diversity at Brown. As a Black woman and as a scholar-practitioner of the African Atlantic Diaspora, the Partnership has truly shaped me both personally and professionally. The beauty of a college experience, whether a student or a scholar, is that you get to chart your path. The Partnership serves as a compass—a lens into the past and the possibilities for the future. The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership teaches us that history is not something we inherit—it is something we remake, every day. It shows us how institutions can act with moral clarity and strategic foresight. It reminds us that while geography may separate us, our futures are intertwined. In an era where diversity and inclusion is under attack, and educational equity is still contested terrain, we must lift up models like this—not just in celebration, but in replication. We must build more bridges between North and South, between predominantly white institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, between past harm and future healing. Because if we are serious about the health of our nation, we must be serious about educational justice. And justice—real, sustained, transformative justice—requires partnership.