President Robert L. Carothers, who completes 15 years of service as the 10th president of the University of Rhode Island, shares some thoughts with us as he marks this milestone.
1. What’s the state of the University today?
I think most people would say URI today is a much better institution than it was in 1991. We are a rapidly growing enterprise, with a current annual budget in excess of $450 million, with some $200 million worth of new construction underway or in architectural design. I believe there’s more pride in and passion for Rhode Island’s state university. We now employ a Joint Strategic Planning process, a strategy to affirm shared governance with wide campus representation and to plan the future of the University. A President’s Commission on the Status of Women has been active and articulate in bringing forward ideas, including policies around the concept of workers as family members. We have a new Commission on the Status of Students, Faculty, and Staff of Color. We have had 15 years of labor peace at URI. We have listened to student and parent demand for better housing, more attractive dining options, more recreation space, and more parking. We have a better prepared, more diverse, more concerned student body. We have an engaged alumni, respect in government, and a growing endowment. Most important, we have an excellent faculty, both senior and junior. I take credit only for motivating good people to do the good things they have always wanted to do.
2. What are you most proud of in the last 15 years?
I am most proud of the fact that we have gone a long way towards developing our “new culture for learning.” We certainly changed the overall environment on the campus. And we have gone from being America’s number 1 party school to one of the nation’s top “colleges with a conscience.” And that’s a significant change. When I came here 15 years ago, I was confronting a culture and trying to make a lot of changes. Now I am spending more time nurturing the changes that are being made. My own leadership style today is far less confrontational and more nurturing.
3. One of your main initiatives has been to address the problem of alcohol and drug abuse among students. You have become a national leader on the issue, serving on national commissions and committees. Where are we with that initiative?
URI has become the lead institution in the nation for research and evaluation of student drinking behavior for the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the National Institutes for Health. This has brought many grants to URI, totaling more than $8 million. This past fall we rolled out the most comprehensive program yet, the “RhodeMap to Safety,” supported by more than $4.3 million in federal grants over four years. A big piece of that work is targeted on relationships between the University and its surrounding communities, with emphasis on reducing abusive drinking and consequent bad behavior in those communities.
4. What can we expect to see happening in the next few years?
In the next three years we are going to be building a lot of new facilities starting with the biotechnology and life sciences building on the Kingston Campus and the new Pell Library and Center for Ocean Exploration on the Bay Campus. Those projects will be followed by pharmacy, nursing, and chemistry facilities, assuming that we get approval from the voters in Rhode Island on the fall referendum. One of the things we have achieved—and are continuing to achieve—is bringing high quality facilities to a campus that had been allowed to deteriorate for more than 30 years. We will be an institution with much greater capacity to do research and teach students in the new science and technologies of the future. We will also be launching our next comprehensive fundraising campaign, focused on building our endowment. The University will be raising private dollars for student scholarships, graduate fellowships, faculty chairs and professorships, and funds for academic excellence.
5. How do you see your role with the next capital campaign?
I think of myself as a match-maker. I’ve already begun spending more time with our alumni and friends telling our story. I say to most of them: ‘I want to bring together the things that are important to the future of the University with your desire to give back to the place that prepared you for the future and that built a better community in Rhode Island.’ I find more and more of these folks, regardless of their capacity to give, are signing on with large gifts and small, each of them very important to the University.
Photo by Joe Giblin
