In fall 2024, 16,916 people made up the Brown community, from undergraduate students to maintenance staff. The Herald’s data desk investigated data across 20 years, from 2004 to 2024, to begin answering one question: Who is Brown?

Brown’s 11,205 degree-seeking undergraduate, graduate and medical students form the majority of the Brown community. But Brown also employs 1,740 faculty members — both research and instructional staff — and 3,971 staff, which includes librarians, lawyers and dining staff.

Brown has long been known for its focus on undergraduate education. Former Brown President Henry Wriston called Brown a “university-college” to describe its liberal-arts perspective towards education and research. That focus has shifted in recent decades as Brown has worked to position itself as a leading research institution. Graduate student enrollment has more than doubled since 2004, and medical student enrollment increased by over 80%. Undergraduate enrollment increased more slowly, rising just over 25% from 2004 to 2024.

In 2024, Brown had 880 “regular faculty,” which includes professors and lecturers whose “primary appointment is not a staff member,” according to the Office of Institutional Research. In 2015, 66% of “regular faculty” were men and 34% were women, a gap that has narrowed slightly in recent years: In 2024, 60% of “regular faculty” were men and 40% were women.

Faculty includes all employees who are in instructional or research positions. Brown’s Office of Institutional Research categorizes those who both teach and perform research as instructional. Matching the growth in the student body, the total faculty count has grown by 58% since 2004. That increase was especially concentrated among the number of research-only faculty, which has nearly doubled since 2004. In December 2024, Brown announced plans to hold faculty headcount growth to 1% amid financial struggles.

But the University is also supported by its 3,971 staff employees — dining staff run the Blue Room through hectic mornings, archivists conserve and catalog historical documents at the John Hay Library and career advisors help students determine their path after graduation. Brown’s Office of Institutional Research divides staff into 13 broad categories, and in 2024, the largest of the categories were “Computer, Engineering, Science,” “Business and Financial Operations” and “Service.”

Together, these thousands of students, faculty and staff make Brown what it is.