By William Hamilton
PBN Staff Writer
SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Thomas M. Ryan, chairman, president and CEO of Woonsocket-based CVS Caremark Corp., has been selected to lead the search for a new University of Rhode Island president after Robert L. Carothers steps down.
Carothers announced today that he will step down at the end of the current school year, after 18 years at the helm of the state’s largest public university.
He said he plans to take a few months off after he steps down in June 2009. After that, he told a news conference this morning, he hopes to return to teaching at URI for a few years, and plans to continue his and the university’s involvement in improving education at Central Falls High School.
“I want to make it crystal clear that this is my decision – one I communicated to our board chair, [Providence Municipal Court Chief Judge Frank] Caprio, when I signed my last three-year contract in 2006,” Carothers said during a news conference on the Kingston campus today. “It is time, in my view, to bring new energy and a new perspective to the very significant challenges ahead.”
He was open about what at least one of those challenges would be: convincing state leaders to provide financial support. To help close a projected $450 million shortfall in fiscal 2009, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri and the General Assembly cut URI’s budget by $15 million this year.
“The state has to make a decision whether it’s going to have a state university, or whether it’s going to be an institution down in South County that they send their kids to,” Carothers said in response to a question at this morning’s news conference. “That relationship has got to be redefined and that’s a big task that lies ahead for the next president.”
Carothers became URI’s 10th president in 1991, arriving in Kingston from the Minnesota State University System, where he had served as chancellor. Before his tenure in Minnesota, he had been president of Southwest Minnesota State University.
During his tenure at URI, the university has increased its enrollment by about 33 percent; gained support to invest millions of dollars in buildings and improvements at all four of its campuses; and grown its endowment from about $12 million to about $95 million, among other accomplishments, URI said.
CVS chief Ryan, a prominent URI donor and alumnus, will serve as chairman of the 13-search committee that will select a new leader for the university, officials said today.
The R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education has issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking an executive search firm to assist the panel, and said it expects to hire a firm next month.
Besides Ryan, the search committee includes R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education members Thomas Rockett, Brenda Dann-Messier and Daniel J. Ryan; Frank Annunziato, executive director of the URI chapter of the American Association of University Professors; Wendy Roworth, art professor; Celest Martin, associate professor in the writing program and chairwoman of the URI Faculty Senate; and Jim Miller, an ocean engineering professor.
Also sitting on the committee are Brandon Brown, a student representative; Winifred Brownell, URI dean of arts and sciences; Thorr Bjorn, athletic director; Domingo Morel, academic adviser for URI’s talent development program; Michael Fascitelli, a URI alumnus; and Saul Kaplan, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation (EDC).
The timeline for appointing a new president calls for an initial list of candidates to be handed to the search committee at the beginning of 2009. The committee will narrow the list to semifinalists, who will be interviewed.
Three to five finalists will be recommended to the Board of Governors, who will interview the candidates; a forum also is planned, where the public will be able to ask questions of the finalists. A final decision is expected from the Board of Governors at its meeting in May or June.
The University of Rhode Island is a member – along with the Community College of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College – of the statewide public university system overseen by the R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education. Additional information about the URI and Robert L. Carothers, its president since 1991, is available at www.uri.edu/president.
The R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education, based in the Hazard Building in Cranston, oversees the state’s public colleges and universities. Additional information is available at www. ribghe.org.
