When Brendan Whittet recalls his time as a student-athlete at Brown, the four-year letter winning defenseman and 1994 alum mentions success on the ice, loyalty, friendships, and campus and community excitement. Those are the types of things he hopes to rekindle at Brown as the program’s new head coach. Whittet was announced as Brown’s head coach Thursday.

Whittet was a part of winning Brown teams as a player in the early 1990s. He wants to bring that back to his alma mater as its new head coach.

“Brown has always been a dream job for me ever since I entered the coaching profession. I have very fond memories from my time as a student-athlete there,” Whittet said. “My memories are of on-ice success and it has always been a dream and goal of mine to go back to Brown and I have a vision of success and excellence for the program.”

Whittet joins the Brown program after serving as an assistant coach at Dartmouth for the last 11 years. He worked under Big Green head coach Bob Gaudet, who was the head coach at Brown when Whittet played for the Bears. Prior to joining the Dartmouth staff Whittet was an assistant coach at Brown and Colby.

As a four-year player at Brown, Whittet was a part of teams that played in the 1993 NCAA Tournament, made two trips to Lake Placid for the ECAC Hockey Championship weekend and won the Ivy League title in 1992. Now, as a head coach, Whittet hopes to instill many of the same principles that have made Dartmouth (and many other ECAC Hockey programs) successful.

“I want to get back to what leads to success. I want a team that is based on competitiveness, that wants to fight and play with aggressiveness,” he said. “We want to recruit competitive kids and when you do that you can have success. We want to be known as one of the hardest working teams in the country and when teams play against us they know that they have been in a battle.”

Whittet, an East Providence, R.I. native as well as a Brown alum, was able to monitor the Bears while he was employed at Ivy League and ECAC Hockey foe Dartmouth. He saw some of the things that made his playing career so memorable erode from the Brown program in recent years.

“I’ve seen some of the energy sapped, the excitement and positive vibes aren’t there. But judging by the amount of text messages, e-mails and calls that I’ve already received from former teammates, older alums and Rhode Island residents it can be there. They want a winner and they will support this program,” Whittet said.

Whittet is the 15th coach in the program’s 111-year history and just the third hockey alum to be named as head coach of the Bears. He said he will begin building a new coaching staff in the coming weeks, meaning former assistant coaches Steve Stirling and Mark Workman will likely not be retained.