RWU unveils new initiative: ‘Roger’s Revolution’

ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY President Donald J. Farish announced a new initiative Thursday afternoon:
ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY President Donald J. Farish announced a new initiative Thursday afternoon: "Roger's Revolution." / COURTESY ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE – Roger Williams University will reorient its mission as “Roger’s Revolution” to “strengthen society through engaged teaching and learning,” RWU President Donald J. Farish announced Thursday afternoon.
Farish gathered with Gov. Gina M. Raimondo and Mayor Jorge O. Elorza under a tent at Roger Williams Park amidst students decked out in “Roger’s Revolution” T-shirts, as well as administrators, faculty and other supporters.
Provost Andy Workman called the initiative “redoubling our engagement” between the community, employers and students.
Over the next three years, Farish said, the seven-word phrase referencing engaged experiential education will replace a paragraphs-long mission statement as the university strives to connect more of its graduates to jobs and training and alternative certifications before, as well as after, they graduate.
Roger Williams, Farish said, will provide 100 percent of its graduates with marketplace experience and generate 2,100 skilled, job-ready workers through its School of Continuing Studies, nearly tripling the current number of 800. He also referenced the university’s opening of its new $10 million downtown campus in May for third-year law and continuing education students.
The goal of the new focus is also to disrupt “brain drain” and keep more of the university’s students living and working in Rhode Island after graduation, Farish, Elorza and Raimondo said.

“We can be more assured when our students graduate it’s not a matter of training and praying; it’s a matter of training and placing them [in jobs],” Elorza said.
Raimondo noted that Farish was one of the first voices to connect with her when she put out the call for a “Rhode Island comeback.”
“I think you’re on exactly the right path,” she said, “and you have my total support.”
Training both the arts and humanities students and those in the more readily employable finance and engineering disciplines through experiential and community projects and programs will better prepare them for the workforce, Farish said.
“We’re looking at this not as an ‘add-on’ but as a reorienting of our purpose,” he said.

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