David M. Dooley

Last year, Providence Business News asked University of Rhode Island President David M. Dooley how close the university was to being a top-tier research institution. “We’re already there in some areas,” Dooley said.

Dooley, president since 2009, is a multitasker focused not only on making URI a formidable, competitive flagship institution, but on making the school an economic catalyst for the state.

He designed a priority plan in 2010 to create a 21st-century learning environment; boost URI’s research, scholarship and creative work; globalize the school; and diversify URI’s student base.

By 2014, there were multiple new learning spaces and opportunities, especially in technology; $98 million in research awards for 2012; 45 partnerships with international institutions with a four-fold rise in global enrollment; and the biggest and most diverse freshmen class URI had ever seen in 2014.

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Looking forward, Dooley sees funding challenges to keep URI affordable for future students is a life sciences center on land freed up by the Interstate 195 relocation that will foster collaboration between URI, Brown University and local hospitals and an advanced nursing education center is in the works for that land for URI and Rhode Island College.

In a 2011 interview, Dooley told of an accreditation team’s reaction after representatives came to visit the school a few months before.

“They were frankly astonished by the number of things being worked on simultaneously in URI. … They thought that that was highly unusual for university culture,” he said. •

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