The historic partnership between Brown University and Tougaloo College dates back to the early 1960s. This partnership marked its 60th anniversary in 2024 and is still going strong today.
In 1976, the partnership led to the creation of the Early Identification Program (EIP) at Brown’s Program in Medicine, which had graduated its first class in 1975. The pathway made possible the fledgling medical school’s commitment to increasing the number of people from underrepresented backgrounds with medical degrees; its students at that time were mostly Brown undergraduate alumni, mostly Northerners, and mostly white.
“We were not exactly overwhelming people with our representation of black students,” Levi Adams, MS, said in 2015. Yet, the founders recognized early on the importance of having physicians from all backgrounds in medicine, as well as in the classroom. Adams, who was associate vice president of biology and medicine at Brown in the 1970s, worked with Stanley Aronson, MD, the medical school’s founding dean, to develop the EIP. Through this program, one or two Tougaloo sophomores are accepted each year and are granted admission to medical school at Brown upon successful completion of their Tougaloo degree. These students engage in professional development activities during their junior and senior years and spend one semester at Brown.
Tougaloo chemistry professor Richard McGinnis was instrumental in identifying potential students for the program and encouraging their pre-med studies. In the summer of 1975, three Tougaloo pre-meds arrived in Providence to complete research fellowships; building on their success, Brown committed to the EIP.
Since that time, dozens of Tougaloo alumni have completed medical school at Brown and gone on to successful careers in medicine. They have spread out across the United States, representing all specialties and serving in varied settings from rural towns to major academic medical centers. They are leaders in medicine and in civic life, and they represent the best and brightest of both institutions.
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