PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education last night named Nancy Carriuolo, a state education official and Rhode Island College executive, to become RIC’s ninth president.

She will succeed John Nazarian, the college’s eighth and longest-serving president, who in October announced plans to retire at the end of the current academic year. Nazarian has been the college’s president since 1990, but his association with the school dates back to 1950, when he enrolled as a student of what then was called the Rhode Island College of Education. (READ MORE)

“I am so pleased and proud to have an opportunity to carry on John Nazarian’s legacy and to have the opportunity to lead the college in some new directions,” Carriuolo told Providence Business News in an e-mail interview. “I love Rhode Island College and Rhode Island – and like John Nazarian, feel a responsibility to both.”

Carriulo’s selection follows a five-month search led by Michael Ryan, president of Rhode Island distribution for National Grid and chairman of the RIBGHE finance and management committee. Ryan chaired a search panel that also included RIBGHE board members Kenneth Aurecchia, business manager for Pipefitters and Plumbers Local 51; Brenda Dann-Messier, president of the Dorcas Place Adult and Family Learning Center; and Pierre LaPerriere, vice president and corporate director of human resources at Gilbane Building Co.; William Hurry, president of both the RIC Foundation and the R.I. Higher Education Assistance Authority; and eight other members from the college and the community.

The announcement – by Frank Caprio, the chairman of the Board of Governors for Higher Education and an ex officio member of the board’s presidential search committee, as well as chief judge of the Providence Municipal Court and a senior partner in Caprio and Caprio Law Offices – was made immediately after the board voted to approve her selection during a 6:30 p.m. meeting last night at Community College of Rhode Island’s Warwick campus, RIC said.

Carriuolo, 59, is currently the interim vice president for academic affairs at Rhode Island College and the deputy commissioner and chief academic officer for the R.I. Office of Higher Education.

She will be RIC’s second female president. The first was Nazarian’s predecessor, former Hartford University provost Carol Guardo, who resigned in 1990.

Rhode Island College, founded in 1854 as the R.I. State Normal School, was renamed the R.I. College of Education in 1920 and took its current name in 1960, when it broadened its curriculum beyond education. RIC now enrolls about 9,000 students. To learn more, visit www.ric.edu.