URI President Dooley meets with CCRI management team

Dec. 16, 2009

On Wednesday, Dec. 16, URI President David Dooley was a special guest of President Di Pasquale at the weekly meeting of the President’s Council. President Di Pasquale introduced President Dooley as a leader with high energy and vision, and an excellent choice to lead the state’s flagship university. Over the course of an hour, President Dooley received a personal introduction from each Council member and answered several questions. Some of the highlights of his remarks are as follows:

He noted that there is a great advantage in coming to Rhode Island now because the state
has a rational and thoughtful strategy for public higher education. In fact, he noted that
Rhode Island is far ahead of many other states where there are great inefficiencies in their
higher education systems.
He said one of the areas that impressed him when he arrived was that URI and CCRI had
developed very strong joint programmatic relationships and that these were a great asset.
While he said that these are difficult times, he knew what he was getting into when he
applied for the position. He said that public higher education is a challenge across the nation
and these difficulties are not unique to Rhode Island.
He said that, while the state’s $200 million deficit appears overwhelming, it is solvable and is
nothing like the deficit problems in states like California. Solving the problems will require
the state to change its mindset. He said that this is a unique opportunity for the state to
reinvent itself and to become a destination point through economic renewal. To do this, he
said, we need to set aside past assumptions and to develop new thinking. He noted that
the state now realizes that higher education can help lead to a recovery.
He also stated that higher education is not the only piece to the puzzle but that it is critical
to putting the pieces together.
In conclusion, he lauded the choice of President Di Pasquale to become the new
commissioner of higher education and said that President Di Pasquale has great experience
and a high level of respect throughout the state.

At the conclusion of President Dooley’s remarks, President Di Pasquale and Council members joined in a warm round of applause.