URI growing into role of education leader

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT: Dooley says that URI has worked hard to develop relationships with companies such as Amgen Inc., Hasbro Inc. and IGT.
SCHOOL OF THOUGHT: Dooley says that URI has worked hard to develop relationships with companies such as Amgen Inc., Hasbro Inc. and IGT.

The University of Rhode Island’s 11th president, David M. Dooley, recently told the graduating class of Rocky Hill School in East Greenwich that a love of research propelled him into college as a student and into a career in education that today has him leading the state’s largest university.

Six years after assuming the presidency at URI, in a time of decreased federal funding for education and research, Dooley finds the land-grant research university faces stiff competition nationally in climbing to the top tier of research institutions.

Besides funding challenges, Dooley recently told Providence Business News that hiring more faculty and expanding facilities will help URI better pursue not only academic excellence but expand efforts to work with local businesses and promote economic development.

URI educates some 16,795 students in eight distinct colleges and a Graduate School of Oceanography. It is also rebuilding its engineering school, a project scheduled for completion in 2019, and participating in the development of South Street Landing, where its nursing school and Rhode Island College’s will be co-located, along with Brown University offices.

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Managing robust growth not only at the South Kingstown campus but, potentially, in new spaces in Providence is part of his vision for the university’s future.

During your tenure at Montana State University you grew the research budget to $100 million, and the school is now a top-ranked research university – your goal for URI. Where does URI’s research budget stand?

We actually made it past the $100 million dollar mark a few years ago: it topped out at about $105 million in research expenditures at the height of the stimulus period when federal funding was good. Given the very negative federal funding climate, we and every other university in America have fallen off those high points.

Our research expenditures are a little less than $80 million, so to make it to our goal we … are going to need the federal funding climate to improve. … Our goal is to get back over the $100 million mark … and position the University of Rhode Island as a much more research-intensive institution than it’s been in the past.

How close are you to that goal of URI becoming a top-tier research institution?

I think we’re quite close. If you look across many areas, the University of Rhode Island has a very strong national and international reputation. The [Graduate School of Oceanography] is one of the top oceanic institutes in the entire world.

We’re already there in some areas. To get there more broadly it takes more faculty, more graduate students in areas where there’s good career paths for them, greater levels of investment in research and facilities.

We will make a case to the state that they should invest directly in research for the University of Rhode Island. The state hasn’t really done that. The funds that come into URI, which are very strongly appreciated, have made a big difference.

But one of the things we want to [ask] the state is: “How about working with us to create some funds specifically to support research in critically important areas in the state?” They don’t do that now. Many states have … found it’s a very successful strategy, because you just need to have multiple funding streams … to be competitive.

What is the role of a land-grant research university such as URI in promoting economic development?

Economic development is integral to the vision of what a land-grant university should be: the notion that you should actively take the position of moving research out where it benefits people.

If you just look at the work of the Graduate School of Oceanography, for instance: How to expect [and] prepare for where hurricanes are going to make landfall is a critically important piece of research that has come out of the University of Rhode Island. We have been involved across the entire university in successfully translating the results of research of students and faculty here out into the public arena.

Can URI be more effective in this way?

Absolutely. One of the things that will make us more effective is to generate more resources to support research, so we’re able to launch innovative ideas in difficult federal funding climates, and we’re actively working on that.

And over the next few years we’re going to hire 55 new [full-time] faculty. A great many of those are going to be the kind of faculty who are going to have significant research and scholarly activities. That enables us to make hires in critical areas of importance, and it enables us to expand the intellectual capital of the institution.

And, with the creation of the Business Engagement Center … we’re building portals to the external community for us to move the results of research into the private and public sectors. [This allows] us to engage companies more effectively by solving their problems and doing research on their behalf, and letting them use our research facilities to solve their problems.

A year and a half in, what are the biggest achievements at the Business Engagement Center?

It’s been more successful than we imagined in terms of the number of companies we have developed much stronger relationships with. We have more than 100 companies with memorandums of understanding or agreement about how to work together.

In fact, the demand has been so great the university has made the decision in the next budget year we’re going to hire more staff just to keep up. And that will be critically important because one of the hallmarks of the BEC is to make sure we work at a pace and time frame [geared to] the companies’ success, and not really tied into the academic calendars.

The governor has created some new incentives in the economic-development package: there’s a program in there for small companies to pay to get expertise. … We anticipate this will actually increase activity in the BEC.

What are you doing to try and keep students here after they graduate?

We really work hard to develop relationships with companies in the state – companies ranging from Toray to Amgen to Hasbro to Raytheon to [International Game Technology PLC]. Part of that is giving them the right talent and we’re really devoted to doing that; and part of that is continuing to work with them once our students are placed there. We’re doing that in the health sector, to see how we can collaborate now with major health institutions: Lifespan and Care New England and a host of others.

How will the South Street Landing project expand the scope of URI’s nursing and health programming?

The most important thing about the nursing center is it will give us state-of-the-art facilities for 21st-century nursing education, which we lack, and Rhode Island College lacks. We knew we needed facilities that would enable us to do advanced simulation, because that is such a powerful learning tool in health-related fields. Those facilities will be constructed and shared in Providence. … By coming together, we actually enable two excellent nursing programs to thrive well into the future at an enormous savings to the state.

[And] it meant we had to move a lot of our activities from the Kingston campus to Providence. We’re willing to do that. It [also] puts us right next to Brown University’s [Warren Alpert] Medical School. And in the future we believe strongly, as does the medical school at Brown, in co-education of the medical professionals as a critical part of how you work in the medical profession. Nurses and doctors need to learn while they’re still in school how they’re going to work together for the benefit of the patient.

The third thing is, many of our students are already in Providence in their junior and senior years doing clinical rotations. So now we’ll have a hub there, we’ll have housing there.

College enrollment across the country is down, yet URI is expanding physically. Why do these expansions make sense now?

Yes, it’s true that in a lot of places enrollment is trending downward, but it’s not trending down at URI. Our problem is managing growth. We have more applications, more students coming to URI each year.

We’ve already expanded the pharmacy school and we don’t lack for high-quality applicants, even with a much larger class. We expect the same thing to be true for nursing [and] engineering. We’ve admitted a couple hundred more freshmen into engineering and business [programs] this year, but we’re just at capacity, so expanding is strategic. We know the demand is there.

We’re actually very confident that the quality of the programming and the facilities in pharmacy, nursing and engineering and in the sciences represented by the new biotechnology and chemical and forensic sciences building will appeal to students. They know they’ll come in and have the best possible facilities in which to learn, dedicated faculty, and they’ll be at a university that’s really connected to the communities around it regionally and nationally, where it gives them a leg up in finding employment when they graduate.

One of the reasons we’re hiring new faculty is to make sure we maintain the quality of our educational programs even while we expand.

Do you have a point at which you consider yourself to be at capacity?

We’re actively looking at that right now. We’re looking at growth of domestic students, the numbers are up, and growth of international students. So, the question I’ve posed to our leadership team is: What should be our target? We’re at roughly 17,000 now. How big should we be?

Since you’re expanding to Providence, is there a possibility of co-locating the university in South Kingstown and Providence?

Well, one of the reasons we’re involved in the early round of conversations with [Developer Richard] Galvin of [CV Properties LLC of Boston and Wexford Science & Technology of Baltimore] for the next big project in Providence to build biomedical [life sciences] research space is precisely around that. We have research operations up there now. We have other research operations which will be very well-suited to that in close proximity to Brown researchers and the Lifespan researchers based in the hospitals [like URI’s George and Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience]. So, that would be a potential place for graduate students to be located.

Does this mean you would have a campus in Providence?

We will have space. We’ll be in close conversations with Brown about … how … we build the spaces to ensure collaboration across institutional boundaries. We’ll have those conversations as the project moves forward, we hope.

You’ve said retaining faculty can be a challenge. What is URI doing to incentivize faculty across disciplines to stay here in Rhode Island?

Improving facilities is critical. That’s why we’re improving facilities for biomedical, engineering, chemistry and nursing. With the completion of engineering we’ll be in very good shape. But we have more to do. The Graduate School of Oceanography campus needs some serious investment. That’s on our agenda.

Second, we think an important [step] is, we just need to be competitive with what we pay [faculty]. We’ve made this case to the board [of trustees]. Places have tried to poach away from us. That happens. We’ve lost faculty to some very distinguished universities, primarily because of the facilities.

Finally, I think [keeping faculty involves] bringing in the right kinds of colleagues and students. Faculty like to work in an environment with other faculty and researchers that they know enhances their own work.

Does performance-based funding for state schools have a place in education today?

It has a place in education if it’s done right. The key attributes of what performance-based funding looks like if it’s going to be successful [are]: One, it’s incentive money, it’s not … punitive. … And another key piece which Rhode Island has never had is a formula funding model [based on enrollment and also outcomes]. … One of the attributes of this bill [which passed the Senate but not the House] is that it says you need to come back with a formula for how higher education should be funded. And that would be a huge advance for higher education in Rhode Island.

Would that impede the growth you’re anticipating?

No, because one of the things [lawmakers] say is, “We’re interested in increasing the number of graduates in areas that are critically important to the economic growth of the state.” Well, that’s OK, that’s where we’re going.

We’ve very interested in creating programs that will get students through the university more quickly. We’re interested in exploring degree programs in critically important areas that would provide a pathway for a [four-year] degree in 2½ years. … We’ll begin conversations with key faculty probably beginning this summer to talk about if this could work and how.

Over the next decade, what is URI’s biggest challenge?

URI’s biggest challenge over the next decade will be public education’s challenge broadly, and that is this: America has got to recognize the fact that it is critically underinvesting in higher education. We will articulate in the state of Rhode Island the economic and social arguments for funding higher education. •

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