PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University has set a date for students to return to the Barus and Holley classrooms on its Providence campus. The rooms, shut since the deadly December 2025 shooting in the building, will reopen in summer 2027 after a top-to-bottom redesign.
The university announced the timeline Tuesday. The classrooms will come back into use after commencement in May 2027, in time for Summer Session and Pre-College courses, and they will host regular classes in the 2027-28 academic year.
The lecture hall where the gunman opened fire, along with nine classrooms, has been off limits to students since the shooting, which killed two students. Brown had first hoped to have the rooms ready by the middle of the current academic year, but chose not to book any classes there in case the work ran long.
Russell Carey, Brown’s executive vice president for planning and policy, said the later schedule allows for a full renovation of the space. The university pointed to the age and size of the rooms, inside an active teaching and research building, as the reason the work is taking longer, and Carey said the school also had to keep the construction budget in check.
The redesign aims to give the rooms a new look and feel. Plans call for small nooks of social space where people can stop and talk, more natural light in the interior and new furniture and technology. Additional security cameras were announced earlier for sensitive areas of the building.
Carey said support resources will be on hand for students when the rooms reopen, much as they were when other parts of the engineering and physics complex reopened in January. Planning also drew on talks with the committee working on a memorial to the shooting.
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