After 15 years of distinguished service at Brown and a successful four-decade career in higher education, Dean of Financial Aid Jim Tilton will retire at the end of the 2022 calendar year. Provost Richard M. Locke shared news of Tilton’s retirement in a Thursday, Aug. 25, message to the campus community. He said the University will miss Tilton’s deep expertise in financial aid and his unwavering commitment to supporting students and their families.
“Since arriving on campus in 2006, Jim has worked with Brown’s senior leaders to transform the way the University delivers financial support,” Locke wrote. “As a result, our financial aid program has grown into one of the most comprehensive and inclusive in the country, and Brown’s Office of Financial Aid has grown into one of the strongest in the country. While Jim’s accomplishments are many, the University’s expanding set of measures to increase student aid and make a Brown education more accessible to students from every income background makes clear the significant progress achieved in the years that he has led the office.”
In 2008, Tilton played an essential role in a Brown initiative to remove the requirement for parents to contribute toward college costs if their incomes are less than $60,000 and assets are less than $100,000. A decade later, he worked closely with colleagues across the administration to launch the Brown Promise, which replaced loans with scholarship funds in the University’s financial aid awards for all aided students.
"From our University leaders, to outstanding colleagues in the Office of Financial Aid and other key units on campus, to the students and families who we help to support — people here truly understand the importance of financial aid on making a Brown education more accessible, and they’re eager to collaborate to make that a reality."
More recently, Tilton helped to shape efforts to increase aid to moderate-income families by reducing expected contributions from their annual income and eliminating home equity from Brown’s financial aid assessments. He played key roles in the development of a student-veterans initiative — which admits military veterans on a need-blind basis and increased aid to meet the full need of student-veterans — and the Book/Course Materials Support program, which allows students receiving University scholarships to access required books and course materials directly with no out-of-pocket cost to them. Earlier this year, he was instrumental in shepherding the University’s support for Ukrainian students affected by the war in that nation.
Tilton said his relationships with Brown colleagues and the many interactions with students and families for whom financial aid enabled them to enroll are memories he’ll long treasure.
“Coming to Brown in 2006 was like finding a home,” Tilton said. “From our University leaders, to outstanding colleagues in the Office of Financial Aid and other key units on campus, to the students and families who we help to support — people here truly understand the importance of financial aid on making a Brown education more accessible, and they’re eager to collaborate to make that a reality. All of them have been partners in allowing us to build one of the most generous financial aid programs in the nation, and that’s what has kept me energized to do this work at Brown for more than 15 years.”
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