Robert L. Carothers
Press Conference Remarks September 15, 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today in order that I might make a formal announcement that my tenure as the president of the University of Rhode Island will end after eighteen years on June 30, 2009. It has been a great honor to serve a great university, a feisty and creative institution which, as William Faulkner put it, has not only survived but has prevailed. The results are written in the biographies of those who once walked across that green Quad on a sunny, spring afternoon, shook the president's hand, and went out to do great things in the life beyond Kingston. The next generation of those leaders moved in two weeks ago. The results are also written in scientific and literary journals and in the lives and communities touched throughout the nation and the world. Despite being underfunded since 1892, the University of Rhode Island is always thinking big and the results show.

I want to make it crystal clear that this is my decision, one I communicated to our board chair, Judge Caprio, when I signed my last three year contract in 2006. It is time, in my view, to bring new energy and a new perspective to the very significant challenges ahead. The additions to our senior staff last year give me great comfort in turning this institution over to a terrific senior leadership team. I hope to take a few months in the summer and fall of 2009 to recharge my batteries, catch up on my reading, and then step up to the faculty for a couple of years. I hope also to be able to continue my work with Central Falls High School, a really inspiring group of administrators, teachers and students.

There will be lots of opportunities to review what has been accomplished here over the last two decades, but here's what I think are the highlights:

• We have restored the reputation of the University as a serious institution, committed to the growth of each student. We have done that while growing URI by over 2000 students in the last five years. It is a much more diverse campus, with this year's freshman class including about 15% minority students, and a much higher percentage among the Rhode Islanders in that class.
• We have created an academic orientation that promotes active learning and experiential learning for every student and which values collaborative and interdisciplinary work from our students, faculty and staff.
• We have had fifteen years of labor peace at URI, a time when both management and labor have worked together with respect for each other. We have had a system of shared governance where administrators, faculty, staff and students have joined forces to learn together and get things done, and where people traditionally underrepresented in higher education have found a home and a voice at URI.
• We have rebuilt the four campuses of the University, improving the infrastructure within which teaching, learning and research can thrive. A total of 48 buildings have been constructed or undergone major rehabilitation in my tenure, including five new buildings on the Bay Campus, the rehabilitation of the Sheppard's Building for the Providence Campus, the new Sycamore Lodge at the Alton Jones Campus, many academic buildings on the Kingston campus (including this one), ten major renovations of residence halls and three new ones, the new Hope Commons dining hall, the Ryan Center and the Boss Arena, the Multicultural Center and more. My favorite, I have to admit, is our own little urban renewal project on Upper College Road, which included gutting and rebuilding four old buildings -- the Women's Center, Newman Hall, and the two buildings in the Heidi Kirk Duffy Center for International Engineer -- a brand new URI Foundation Building, a long awaited Alumni Center, and Swan Hall, named for my long time collaborator and very good friend, M. Beverly Swan. There are few more buildings in need of a facelift on that street, but we have made great progress in creating a wonderful entrance to the campus. All together, we have invested something like $700M in capital assets since 1991.
• And we have built a new culture for entrepreneurism and for fundraising, beginning in1992 with our first ever capital campaign, a second for several major capital projects like Green Hall, Ballentine Hall, Ranger Hall, the Ryan Center and the Boss Arena, and the third capital campaign now underway, a $100M campaign which everyone promises me will go over the top by June 30^th.
• And we have created our research foundation, brought in a new vice president to enhance our transfer of technology and create economic development here in Rhode Island and just last week hired the new executive director of the URI Research Foundation. And the vice president promises both new research opportunities and a new and healthy revenue stream for the future.

So it's been a ride, and there's still eight months and another legislative session to go. I want to thank the spirits of my predecessors, especially Fran Horn, Frank Newman and Ted Eddy, all of whom have left us over the term of my tenure. Each of us stands on the shoulders of those who came before, and I honor their work and the work of an extraordinary collection of faculty, staff and administrators. And I am grateful to all those who have served on our Board of Governors -- or at least most of them -- and of course our commissioner for higher education, Jack Warner, and the chair of the Board of Governors, Frank Caprio, who now have the challenge of keeping the momentum going and of searching for, courting and eventually securing the next leader of this University. I urge them to Think Big, and I know they will do that. Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for the honor of serving as the president of a feisty and creative, and just plain wonderful University of Rhode Island.

It is now my great pleasure to introduce Judge Frank Caprio to tell you what happens next!

Robert L. Carothers, President
University of Rhode Island