Hughes named CCRI president

MEGHAN HUGHES has been chosen as the new Community College of Rhode Island president. / COURTESY R.I. OFFICE OF THE POSTSECONDARY COMMISSIONER
MEGHAN HUGHES has been chosen as the new Community College of Rhode Island president. / COURTESY R.I. OFFICE OF THE POSTSECONDARY COMMISSIONER

WARWICK – Meghan Hughes, a former executive director of Year Up Providence, has been named president of the Community College of Rhode Island.
The R.I. Council on Postsecondary Education selected Hughes Wednesday night from a pool of 41 applicants in a national search that yielded three finalists.
The others included Jean Wihbey, who is provost of the Palm Beach State College’s Palm Beach Gardens campus, and Brenda Dann-Messier, a faculty member and trustee at Johnson & Wales University who had worked at the U.S. Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education.
“We had a choice among three talented and remarkable candidates as finalists,” said Bill Foulkes, chairman of council and its presidential search committee, in a press release. “Considering the valuable input from the CCRI community, the council felt that [Meghan] Hughes’s transformational leadership and student-centered approach will be tremendous assets for CCRI.”
Jim Purcell, commissioner of postsecondary education, added: “I look forward to working with [Meghan] Hughes at this important moment in the institution’s history, as they plan their strategic vision for the next five years.”
Hughes had served as executive director of Year Up Providence from 2009 through May 2015 and recently received the Rhode Island Foundation’s 2015 Community Leader award. She is credited with doubling the size of the Providence program and developing key workforce partnerships with Rhode Island employers.
Prior to this role, Hughes was a faculty member at Tufts University in Boston. She earned a bachelor of arts in history, magna cum laude, from Yale University and a doctorate in art history from New York University.
Hughes, who will be CCRI’s fifth president, replaces Ray Di Pasquale, who has been president since 2006, and is not seeking the renewal of his contract. She is expected to start during the spring semester.

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