Nancy Carriuolo – RI Future

February 7, 2016February 6, 2016

The RIC/AFT Assembly of Departmental Representatives writes letter over Innovation Officer

The RIC/AFT Assembly of Departmental Representatives write to express our concern over, and objection to, the use of Rhode Island College Foundation funds to hire the State of Rhode Island’s Chief Innovation Officer (CInO). While the Foundation is an independent entity over which faculty members have no direct control, we feel compelled to speak out on this matter in an effort to protect the interests and integrity of the College.

The Providence Journal (1/18/16) reported that RIC’s associate vice president for development and external relations, Edwin Pacheco, indicated that “excitement, not concern, has been the overwhelming campus reaction to the creation of the innovation office.” The basis for such a statement is unclear to us. The faculty was not consulted on this appointment, and it was presented to neither the Council of Rhode Island College nor the RIC-AFT. Most faculty members learned about it after the fact from the newspaper.

Our first concern is the inconsistency of the appointment with the stated mission of the RIC Foundation. The Foundation’s Vision Statement asserts that its “mission is to offer accessible higher education of the finest quality to traditional and non-traditional students from around the state, the region, and beyond.” The Mission Statement asserts that the Foundation is “devoted to raising funds solely for Rhode Island College” (emphasis added). While the presence of the CInO on campus might benefit RIC in some ways, the funds expended for this position can in no way be said to be “solely for Rhode Island College.”

Second, the appointment diverts resources that could have been used to advance the College directly. The CInO’s reported $210,000 salary plus benefits could have been used to hire at least four full-time, tenure-track faculty members. For many years, the FTE cap at RIC has been frozen; the College therefore is forced to rely heavily on contingent employees (adjunct faculty). While the adjuncts are typically excellent instructors, they often teach heavy loads at multiple institutions, do not have formal advising and mentoring roles, and do not participate fully in college governance. They are also poorly paid and do not receive benefits. If the Foundation wants to strengthen
teaching and mentoring at the College, supporting new full-time faculty lines would be far more useful and provide more direct benefits.

Alternatively, this money could have been used to provide scholarships for low-income students. Many RIC students struggle to make ends meet and are forced to work full-time, which makes it difficult for them to carry a full academic load. Such students take longer to complete degrees and they drop out more often. The money used to pay the CInO would have provided full-tuition scholarship for least two-dozen Rhode Island students.

Third, the appointment has unnecessarily placed Rhode Island College in the center of unwanted political controversy. Common Cause Rhode Island has pointed out the serious issues of government transparency that are raised by this appointment. State senators and
representatives have stated their opposition to appointing a member of the governor’s cabinet in this way, and legislation is being prepared to prevent such appointments in the future. The faculty understands well that the college depends on the good will of both the legislature and the governor for our funding. The Foundation Board showed poor judgment by placing the college in the center a conflict between government leaders.

Finally, the use of Foundation funds for purposes other than supporting the College has the potential to harm the College by reducing future contributions to the Foundation. Contributors to the Foundation, a group that includes many faculty members, have a right to see their contributions used in ways consistent with the Foundation’s mission. The misuse of these funds, and the very public controversy over the issue, is likely to dissuade parents, alumni, and faculty members from making contributions in the future. We have seen evidence that this is already occurring.

In sum, we do not believe that the appointment of the RI Chief Innovation Officer through the RIC Foundation is in the best interests of the students or the faculty of Rhode Island College.

January 27, 2016January 27, 2016

Widen Jabour’s RIC Foundation probe to include Carriuolo’s ouster

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The announcement that Sen. Paul Jabour will ask Attorney General Kilmartin to investigate the appointment to the Rhode Island College Foundation of Richard Culatta, who hails from the neoliberal Obama Department of Education, as an innovation officer to serve as a cabinet official is just the latest eyebrow raised in this matter. The idea of having a public official sequestered away at a charitable foundation with a hefty allowance and almost no oversight has struck many as odd.

But one question that has not been asked, and which should be, is whether this issue was the real cause of the public ouster of RIC President Nancy Carriuolo several months ago. The President, who was subjected to a negative publicity blitz following the publication of a letter signed by several current and former members of the College community with ties to the administration of President Emeritus John Nazarian, announced she would step down after May 2016 this past December.

Yet there is something here that, for those who understood the situation intimately, seems amiss. Sources indicate that the President knew early on that she was facing an uphill battle with key players on Smith Hill and that, try as she might, she was unable to sway these background personages. Indeed, the public behavior of people like Dr. Mark Motte and Jane Fusco was considered an augury of a larger party whose identities were never revealed but could be guessed due to the sound of silence.

For instance, President Emeritus Nazarian, who spent the better part of his life in the College community and who always worked to boost its reputation, was strangely mum during the entire Carriuolo ouster, a news story that reached international headlines and certainly impacted its reputation. Another voice not heard during the entire affair was Governor Raimondo, who might have provided a lifesaving boost to the female executive of the College as the first woman to sit in the executive office on Smith Hill. And just as Dr. Carriuolo is neutralized, an out-of-the-ordinary state official with problematic financing appears from nowhere?

Sources have indicated that there were issues arising with Dr. Carriuolo being involved with affairs on campus that some would call domineering. But if the individual whose major task is to fund raise for the College and its affiliated charities has to be dealing with something like this recent move, why not be on guard? One thing that can be said with some certainty is that, as someone who is connected to Rhode Island by marriage rather than upbringing and hails from New York, she is not by nature attenuated to the crony culture of Smith Hill and the type of back room deals that someone like Dr. Nazarian came to naturally.

This is all speculation at this point; Dr. Carriuolo has for the entirety of the affair surrounding her ouster given no comment to the press and it is doubtful other parties might come forward from the other side of this discussion. But Sen. Jabour and Attorney General Kilmartin might be able to loosen some tongues.

December 19, 2015December 19, 2015

Sad ending for RIC President Carriuolo, will her legacy survive?

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News broke this week that embattled Rhode Island College President Nancy Carriuolo will step down from her post in spring 2016 under terms in her contract designating her departure as “termination without cause.” This is a truly saddening moment for many in the college community and leaves some discouraged but others, including students, claiming victory.

In an email sent to the entire Community by the Office of the President, she wrote:

As we are all aware, recently the campus community has voiced a very public mixture of support and criticism of my time at RIC. I cannot ignore the fact that the college community is divided. Consequently, for the sake of the college, the Postsecondary Council and I have agreed that I will step down as president after spring graduation. Next year will be a critical time for higher education in Rhode Island and securing the next leader for RIC as soon as possible will be important to ensuring a smooth and productive transition. I look forward to remaining in my role as president through graduation, and I look forward to us all working together for the good of the college.

Some members of the student community said things on Facebook like “about bloody time” while others wrote on her personal page “It’s my last week of grad school … also the RIC president Nancy Carriuolo resigned…. I had the pleasure of meeting her a few times and as student at RIC… politics aside… I think she did great things for the campus and I loved how much she interacted with the students there.” It is obvious that, while this is not social networking analysis of a professional, the student community was not fully behind this President and she would have been put in a situation where, between disgruntled staffers and the student body, the well-being of the College could have been put at risk.

Geography Prof. Mark Motte, one of the original public signatories of the letter that brought about this state of affairs, was to be found on WPRO radio crowing victory while failing to present any actual evidence for his claims. In this regard, perhaps it is appropriate to bring to the forefront why people in the College community found his name dubious in relation to voicing the complaints of a labor union, the AFT-affliated Professional Staff Association. Dr. Motte was, until the appointment of Dr. Carriuolo, a member of the administration, perhaps with his own aspirations for higher office, who had a personal stake in seeing faculty contracts negotiated in a fair and timely manner. But on a regular basis, now-President Emeritus John Nazarian would delay negotiations and contracts would be signed long after the expiration of the previous one, a matter that was given coverage in the student-run Anchor newspaper. Yet Dr. Motte never resigned in protest over the treatment of his colleagues in a labor dispute, so why is he positioning himself suddenly in the press as the Samuel Gompers of the staff labor union? Sources indicate there were problematic issues involving the president’s office and staff, including frequent turnovers of various officials that caused friction as well as a problem with how Dr. Carriuolo personally interacted with employees. But asking Dr. Motte or Michael Smith, another former administration member, to champion a labor dispute is an extraordinarily dubious public relations move. It invites only scrutiny and rebuttal, especially considering that the Rhode Island AFT local is on Smith Street, just adjacent to the campus.

Dr. Carriuolo was only the second woman, after Dr. Carol Guardo, to serve as president of the college and both women left the office under dubious circumstances. When Dr. Guardo left, Dr. Nazarian returned to the presidency after serving in what had been intended to be only an interim fashion and ran the College so that its reputation and prestige were diminished, becoming the second choice for those who could not get into the University of Rhode Island and serving as an over-glorified vocational school as opposed to a genuine college. His silence during this entire affair has been quite suspect and raised a few eyebrows. It is also worth noting that, though Dr. Motte claims to value “speaking truth to power” he would never have dared pull such a stunt on Dr. Nazarian despite the way he managed things.

This episode does not conclude with Dr. Carriuolo, in fact it only begins a much more troublesome set of affairs. Now a replacement will be needed, requiring a search committee that will spend tax monies that could be spent elsewhere. Will the search be nationwide or will it be in-house? Will Mr. Smith, Dr. Motte, or Peg Brown, another public signatory, try to parlay this into submitting their names for consideration for the job? Did Governor Raimondo, the state’s first female to hold the office, refuse to comment on the matter so to shore up support from the AFT, a constituency with which she has shaky standing? Did the Providence Journal, who acted quite shamefully here, refuse to do the proper investigation regarding the claimants and their motivations despite the fact that faculty tried to repudiate the charges because of an agreement regarding motives or because they were too embarrassed to admit they were played for fools quite successfully by the PR-savvy Jane Fusco, another public signatory? Will some of the great things Carriuolo accomplished during her tenure be reversed now that her exit will be tarnished, including the planned nursing building in downtown Providence? If someone who was involved in these complaints about Dr. Carriuolo returns to positions of power under the new president, will those who defended Dr. Carriuolo face repercussions, especially considering the combination of academia’s sectarian tendencies on top of Rhode Island’s political crony culture? Now that their mission is accomplished, will the other signatories of the original letter come forward and give a through explanation as to what exactly happened here? Will the State of Rhode Island provide an unredacted copy of the letter to the press if a public records request is filed? All these questions and more will be answered as we continue to investigate this matter.

Editorial Note: A previous version of this misidentified Dr. Motte as an anthropologist as opposed to geographer. At one point in history Geography and Anthropology were part of the same department at RIC.

December 12, 2015December 18, 2015

RIC faculty on College Council votes confidence for President Carriuolo

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The Rhode Island College shared governance body, the College Council, composed of faculty representatives from each department, adjuncts, professional staff, and the President, held a vote of confidence in the leadership of President Nancy Carriuolo on December 11.

While this body is not representative of the entirety of the college community, it does serve as a forum for representatives of the community to participate in operations of the college and voice issues raised by each constituency. With a vote of 18 yea, 2 nay, and 3 abstentions, they voiced their support for the president and her vision for the college. Though the President does sit on the body and was present at the opening of the meeting, she exited following some brief preliminary remarks and did not ask for the vote to be held, it was totally voluntary and began as a motion suggested by the membership.

Prior to the vote and after the president had exited, there was an open and frank discussion before the body regarding the entire matter. Professional staff representatives did voice a level of dissatisfaction and unhappiness within their constituency and the faculty members of the body voiced their support for these concerns and expressed hope that a mechanism could be devised that would allow for grievances to be heard without repercussion. Another issue raised was the fact that the negative publicity has added a time-sensitive aspect to the proceedings that was impacting both the college’s reputation and faculty contract negotiations potentially. It also was brought forward that it appeared on campus that elements of discontent were now being sown within the faculty towards the administration that would further negatively impact the president even though these issues could be caused by any number of administration members subordinate to the president’s office.

The president, in her brief remarks, spoke to a variety of issues, including her efforts to be transparent, her standing as a fundraiser, and also a breach of her personal email that was involved in this affair. She emphasized that she was open to any scrutiny or oversight but also had chosen to consistently offer no comment publicly. This has indeed been the case for this reporter, the president, leadership of the Professional Staff Association, and individual members of the on-campus community have offered no comment when queried for insights. Off the record, one community member did explain there had been a lot of firings on campus and that there was anger because newly hired staff were unable to gain full benefits of state employment, an arrangement previously set out by a past administration, but that seems unlikely to be the direct fault of the President and instead seems to be symptomatic of systemic governance issues in Rhode Island.

On December 8, 2015, the Providence Journal ran an opinion piece by Rob Bower regarding the controversy that included mention of a survey of staff at the College originally cited in the letter sent to the Council on Postsecondary Education that began this whole affair. This poll has created a good deal of consternation and also curiosity amongst the College community.

One of these community members is Professor Emeritus Richard Lobban of the Anthropology department, whose previous work in social networking analysis and research methods included administration and analysis of surveys, polls, and other data collection methods. He sat down for an interview and discussed his findings, which he shared with the College Council on December 11. It is worthwhile to note that, since Bower’s piece included mention of Affirmative Action department issues, Dr. Lobban was involved during his career at the College in the Africana department as well and previously served as Vice President for Education at the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. After attending the meeting, he expressed a level of enthusiasm for the Council’s vote, modifying earlier points expressed in the audio interview below.

Some key points to keep in mind when discussing this survey:

Taken June-July 2015 (the response deadline was extended beyond June 24)

Type of survey: paper; each survey document was embossed with the PSA seal to ensure that each returned survey was genuine. No reproductions were allowed.

Total distributed: 160, by mail to home addresses of members

Total responses: 87, by return mail to home address of PSA President

Response rate: 54.4%

Total number of statements: 44

Instead of helping settle questions, this survey only creates more that have yet to be answered.

In the first place, if this staff survey, issued under the imprimatur of the American Federation of Teachers, were a true measure of labor malfeasance, why would the union have chosen to introduce this story via personages such as Jane Fusco, Mark Motte, Michael Smith, and Peg Brown? Without getting into a personal attack akin to the verbiage of the news story that began this whole episode, these individuals carry with them a certain reputation in the College community that makes these complaints seem dubious. At a time when college campuses are actively alight with discussions among students about labor rights, thanks in small part to the reintroduction of the word ‘socialism’ in the mainstream political discourse, and adjunct professors and instructors across the country are holding union drives, why not take care to introduce these issues in a fashion that would take advantage of Rhode Island’s historic unionized labor force and culture? Why do it in a fashion that only impugns the reputation of the College, thereby possibly risking the jobs of the surveyed laborers?

Furthermore, since when has the Providence Journal been sympathetic to state workers and their complaints? It is becoming abundantly clear as the days go by and members of the community come forward to defend the President and dispute the validity of these claims that the entire news media, starting with the Journal, has perhaps been taken for a ride. Sources familiar with this issue have indicated that, if there are indeed issues to be discussed regarding the President and her administration of the College and/or treatment of staffers, let them be heard but in an open, honest, and transparent fashion that gives voice to the actual staffers in totality rather than in a fashion that invites skepticism and suspicion of ulterior motives. Sources further indicate that there perhaps were questions to be raised about financial issues at the College. If that be the case, again, why have the revelations come from those who invite only rebuttal, scrutiny, and claims of ulterior motives?

But there are still more questions. For example, where in all of this is the voice of President Emeritus John Nazarian? This story has generated a high level of negative press for the College not just in the state but in fact the world after it was picked up on the international wire services. For someone who spent five decades building the College and promoting its name, his silence is noticed and deafening for some, especially when one recalls that President Carriuolo was originally selected from within the state government body that deals with higher education, meaning that Dr. Nazarian would have known her rather well. Considering that the original public signatories of the letter, Motte, Fusco, Smith, and Brown, were all close to Nazarian, it would be quite interesting to hear him come to the defense of his successor. Sources have indicated that he was last seen on campus at the dedication of the Alex and Ani arts building in fall 2014, which raised some eyebrows at the time considering his absence otherwise since retirement.

The final question of course is about the political agenda. It could be anything from a grand neoliberal effort to privatize public education to a long-standing scheme on Smith Hill to reduce the number of public four year institutes on the state budget to grandstanding in an effort to regain former prestige and positions on the campus, particularly since some of the signatories were angling for the Presidency before Carriuolo was appointed, with Peg Brown in fact submitting her name for formal consideration. Nevertheless, this entire affair has unnecessarily damaged the reputations of the President, the College, and indeed the AFT-affiliated union of staffers that were originally surveyed. And it is far from over.

December 3, 2015December 18, 2015

Faculty show support for RIC President Carriuolo

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Rhode Island College professors attended an Open Forum at the Council on Postsecondary Education at the Community College of Rhode Island Warwick campus to express their support for Rhode Island College President Nancy Carriuolo and repudiate the charges made by several RIC employees several weeks ago in a letter that was shared with the Providence Journal and others. The speakers were, in order of appearance:

Richard Lobban- Professor Emeritus, Anthropology
Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban- Professor Emeritus, Anthropology
Andrew Stewart- Treasurer, Class of 2009
David Espinosa- History
Daniel Scott- English
Vincent Bohlinger- Film Studies
Bethany Lewis- Psychology

Speaking enthusiastically of Dr. Carriuolo, they also emphasized that they found the original complaint of diminished faculty morale to be inaccurate. Dr. Bohlinger also emphasized that this instance had been an attack on not just a single person but on the entire institution and that it presented a poor image for the public. It is worthwhile to note that not a single complainant, even those whose names were publicized, made an appearance to defend their claims. Also in attendance was Dr. Joseph Zoronado of the English Department, who previously stated his rebuttal to claims of statistical anomalies in enrollment in a letter to the Journal. The audio is approximately twenty minutes.

November 22, 2015December 18, 2015

The attempted coup at RIC

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News broke on Friday that “[a] group of current and former Rhode Island College employees is asking the state Council on Postsecondary Education to replace college President Nancy Carriuolo, who they accuse of destabilizing the institution.” Yet those who have a rudimentary understanding of how the internal dynamics of Rhode Island College work grasp very well that this is a cunning, mean-spirited, and ultimately transparent ploy by a group of disgruntled former administrators who are trying to derail the work Dr. Carriuolo has done since taking office.

I feel I have several qualifications that allow me to speak here, I am the treasurer of the Rhode Island College Class of 2009, a former editor of the Rhode Island College Anchor Newspaper, and a former member of 90.7 WXIN Rhode Island College Radio, media platforms that covered the selection of Dr. Carriuolo. Since graduation, I have been keeping lightly abreast of events at my alma mater and have had several very pleasant interactions with the campus Dr. Carriuolo has modernized and the president herself, who has been absolutely wondrous. I also understand that Mark Motte, Peg Brown, and Jane Fusco are being quite disingenuous in their complaints, framing a basic procedural element of the transition between former College President Dr. John Nazarian and Dr. Carriuolo as some sort of totalitarian putsch.

Without getting into the personality-based mire that is quite ugly when discussing the length of Dr. Nazarian’s tenure, the fact is that the man was in office for eighteen years, 20 if you add the two years he served as interim president following the death of Dr. David Sweet, and had a total of five decades of involvement as a student, faculty member, and administrator when he left the campus. In that time, he created a culture based around his managerial and fiscal philosophy that made the college what it was from 1990 to 2008. When Dr. Carriuolo, a long-time member of the Rhode Island College community, took over, she brought with her a wholly different set of ideas and philosophies that have fundamentally redirected the trajectory of the college. I am not able to judge at this juncture what the long-term outcomes are because of the length of time she has been in office. But that change in leadership dictated Dr. Carriuolo also change the administrators and staff around her to affect her wishes for the college. The individuals lodging this complaint were part of the Nazarian nomenklatura who simply became far too comfortable in their roles. If the West Wing staff at the White House were to kick up such a fuss when a new president was inaugurated, people would laugh at such behavior.

I personally think that the things Dr. Carriuolo has spearheaded has been fantastic. Let me begin with the film department that I graduated from. Several years ago, I was invited back to campus to screen a film. When I entered the hall that I had taken multiple courses over my four years of matriculation, the large screening room in the Horace-Mann building, I thought I was at the wrong campus. When I used to watch films in that room, the sound was awful, the screen was problematic, and the tables with connected rotating chairs were, putting it politely, not the seating arrangement that works best for film students. Now the room has theatrical-styled seats with desktop side-bars, the sound is equivalent to the Showcase Cinema, and the screen is a marked improvement.

The department has been given the funding to expand and balance the curriculum in a way so that students get a fair dose of both film literacy and practical studio work, whereas when I was a student funding was so short one would be lucky to get four practical classes. If one did so, it was often the case they would take a few through the Communications Department, which has an orientation and logic sometimes completely opposed to the Film Department. Another time, I had a class on documentary film through the Anthropology Department where the professor included in the first class a condescending and mocking digression on those pesky ‘filmies’ that talked about all those weird notions that he had no use for. I respect and understand that, Film Studies and Anthropology are two different fields, but nonetheless it obviates a case where the Film Department was being given pittances rather than being allowed to flourish. Dr. Carriuolo has reversed that trend.

There are other places that Dr. Carriuolo has improved matters greatly. She has allowed Drs. Richard and Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban to install bee hives at the college as part of a project that has multiple applications for various departments and curriculums as well as the Sustainability Program and garnering praise from environmental groups. She has expanded the Non-Western Worlds curriculum in ways that are directly benefitting the greater community. For example, even though he was descended from West Asian parentage that spoke the language, Dr. Nazarian was unwilling to allow for Arabic language classes, something the new President has allowed for. In a period of time when our international affairs continue to interact with Arabic-language states, one does not have to be John Dewey to understand why one might like the ability to take low-cost Arabic language instruction courses.

The President’s Illuminated Walkway, installed to commemorate her selection, is a wonderful project that creates a safe pathway students can take to get across campus at night. When one in four female college students experiences some form of sexual violence during studies, this project becomes obviously a massive treasure for the community that will help decrease a terrible trend for years to come. Her streamlining and implementation of policies that guarantee students do not get lost in the shuffle of classes and end up wasting time and money over multiple years with no advancement, including things like the elimination of the undeclared major and greater emphasis on mandatory academic advising, is creating high-quality and better-educated students.

One of the projects that could very well be a major element of her lasting legacy is the collaboration with the University of Rhode Island in a nursing center at the South Street Landing. Despite the claims of Michael Smith, who has called it “a house of cards built on a foundation of ego, profit, and a profound lack of understanding of public policy”, this is actually a brilliant idea on multiple fronts. First, it helps better solidify the inter-institutional collaboration between the University and the College while simultaneously maintaining fealty to the unique character of each institute. The College has a fantastic nursing program while the University has a great pharmacy school, ergo creating an environment where both faculties can come together in one facility to collaborate without dragging both institutions through the disaster of merging them into a utopian Ocean State University is a very smart idea. Second, the presence of a major educational complex run but not one but two public universities is a powerful and long-lasting thrust back against the ethnically cleansing gentrification project in Providence that is fostered in no small part by Brown and Johnson and Wales Universities. This building will bring into the city working class and first generation students that do not have the scholarships, trust funds, and bad attitudes of the private school students. It seems obvious that Mr. Smith has misspoken about ego in this instance.

One cannot offer purely celebratory verbiage without critique and I will not do so. For example, I think it was unnecessary and inappropriate to even allow for a community dialogue about arming the campus police several years ago. I am not in love with the fact that the renovated arts building is named for the Alex and Ani jewelry company. Adjunct professors still are given low wages and can get caught in the academic quagmire caused by a lack of tenure-track positions in various departments. Yet on the same token, the individuals lodging this complaint are not active in ameliorating these issues, they are part of a leadership generation that helped create these problems. For example, when the gun debate was held during the Nazarian era, these voices were not in rousing opposition. If these are valid complaints, which they very well could be, these issues have been hijacked and utilized by individuals who have very little room to speak.

This issue is far more than just a personality conflict between a few disgruntled employees and a president. At the core of this move is a fundamental difference in philosophy regarding the role of the state in higher education. One school of thought would hope to see public education wither and die so to make a space for more privatized education and more difficulty for low-income and minority students. The other would like to reinvigorate the public education sector and create a culture in Rhode Island where everyone has the opportunity to learn and think critically. The former school also has a tendency to personally profit from cuts to education, putting themselves ahead of the students. It seems abundantly clear that faculty, staff, students, and alumni should stand in solidarity with Dr. Carriuolo here so to protect the integrity and sustainability of the Rhode Island College project.

March 10, 2015March 10, 2015

Senate Economic Summit focuses on education, workforce development

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The state Senate’s annual Economic Summit this year focuses on “connecting workforce and higher education,” and is being held Wednsday, 5 to 7:30pm, at Rhode Island College, says a State House press release.

“Business leaders have spoken of the difficulty finding workers with the skills needed to fill job vacancies,” the press release says, “and the Senate has made improving the education and workforce development systems to address the skills gap a priority.”

Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed and Rhode Island College President Nancy Carriulo will open the forum with remarks. “The forum will include a panel discussion among business leaders, including John Muggeridge, vice president of public affairs for Fidelity Investments, Michal Ryan, vice president of government affairs for National Grid, and William McCourt, executive director of the Rhode Island Manufacturers Association,” says the press release.

There will also be two keynote addresses from “nationally renowned leaders in higher education” Joshua Wyner, of the Aspen Institute, and Cheryl Orr Dixon, former senior vice president and chief of staff for Complete College America.

Wyner, according to a bio provided by the State House, has worked on the “Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, which strives to reward and shine a spotlight on community colleges that deliver exceptional student results and stimulate replication of successful campus practices, and the New College Leadership Project, which works to strengthen efforts to recruit and professionally develop college presidents who are driven by – and capable of – substantially improving student success.”

Dixon’s bio says she “has more than 25 years of experience in public policy, advocacy and leading initiatives to improve college preparation, access and success.” She has a singular mission, according to her bio: “to work with states to significantly increase the number of Americans with college degrees and to close attainment gaps for underrepresented populations.”

The Summit is open to the public, in room 110 of Alger Hall at RIC, 5:00-7:30pm, Wednesday, March 11.