CLACS Certificate Program

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies is proud to announce a doctoral specialization certificate program open to enrolled PhD students.

Brown University currently offers several such programs, which are designed to extend expertise into interdisciplinary areas and to certify training beyond the home Ph.D. discipline. They promise to advance student careers as well as promote intellectual exchange and community in these academic areas.  

The CLACS Certificate Program requirements are listed below:

1)      Pre-requisite certification of language ability if applicable. Students whose native language is English and who are researching in English do not require a language certificate.

2)      Students will be required to pass four graduate courses focusing on the region, including Latinx populations and the Caribbean diaspora.. The courses must be in at least three different departments (one of these courses may be taken in the student’s home department) and must be approved by the CLACS Director; approval after the fact is possible. Only one may be a language course. A minimum grade of either Satisfactory or C in a 1000 or 2000 level course carries credit toward all advanced degrees. There are no restrictions on whether the courses are graded or S/NC.

3)      Students will be required to write a short (3-5 pages double spaced) narrative rationale of how those classes cohere into an advanced interdisciplinary course of study. Please submit the rationale to clacs@brown.edu.

4)      Students will be required to formally present their Latin American/Caribbean related research to CLACS at some point during their affiliation.

5)      Students should submit a PDF of their transcript to clacs@brown.edu

Successful completion of the requirements of the certificate program will be recognized on the Brown University transcript with a notation indicating the field of advanced specialization. Although approved programs may be informally described as “certificates,” no separate document will be awarded by the Registrar.

Students may apply to the certificate program at any point, including after the requirements have been met.

For more information, or to apply to this program, please contact clacs@brown.edu.