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Statement of Purpose - 1965
Rhode Island Junior College
No one can look to the future as RI Junior College begins without a sense of challenge and an awareness of the great opportunity, which this institution holds for the future of higher education in Rhode Island. The opportunities for service to the students of our state and to the economy of our state are borne constantly in mind as we begin our college life.
In no sense of the word do we wish to become merely the first two years of a state institution of higher learning comparable to the first two years at our sister institutions. We do not wish to become merely a trade or technical institute. Neither do we wish to become a vocational institution isolated from the broad academic disciplines that are now almost a requisite for an educated citizenry in the American society of the late twentieth century.
We do wish to become an institution that is broad in purpose, creative in design, and service oriented. This service orientation will be directed first toward the young people who in the psychological aspect of their development fall into the category of the normal. This represents approximately two-thirds of the total population. They are average young people – average young people who in another time, and in another economy, might well have had the opportunity for admission to our higher institutions for whatever period of time their talents and their economic sufficiency would permit.
We see the challenge of our institution to lie both in the transfer program and in the terminal program. In the transfer program we expect to establish an equality of academic instruction and learning comparable to any collegiate level program. In our terminal programs we hope to have both the cultural and the vocational aspects of collegiate life. Within the vocational aspects of our programs we hope to have an opportunity for training in those technical disciplines that will provide our students with a saleable skill which may in turn be transferred by them into instruments of their own economic self-sufficiency as well as contribute to the economy of our state.
We shall have then, programs of general liberal arts education, transferable and terminal; and programs of vocational education, which will include the training of people in the fields of those technologies that are most needed by our economy.
