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The search for Rhode Island College’s next president is heating up, with interviews underway this week. The Rhode Island Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner confirmed that three candidates are in the running, with interviews set to wrap on Friday.
Who are the applicants, and what might they bring to the table? Here’s a primer.
Jack Warner was appointed interim president at RIC in July 2022, having previously served in various education roles. That list includes teaching higher education at Johnson and Wales University, advising for a consulting firm called the Education Strategy Group, leading the South Dakota Board of Regents and heading up the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education.
The April 2022 vote to make Warner the interim president was unanimous. Since then, Warner has had to keep the school on solid financial footing amid a decline in enrollment – as The Providence Journal reported last year – and he has also weighed cutting staff.
But Warner has presented a vision for RIC’s future as an economic engine for the Ocean State, looking to attract applicants that may already have some college under their belt. (In Rhode Island, that’s more than 100,000 people.)
Warner will be interviewed on Friday.
More: A familiar face chosen as interim president of Rhode Island College
Dean Libutti, who joined the University of Rhode Island in 1999, was named associate vice president for enrollment management and student success in 2021. According to the university, that entails “leadership in enrollment planning, recruitment, and retention through collaboration and partnership with faculty and staff.”
In 2023, Libutti led a “re-enrollment” initiative at the university for students who paused their education during the pandemic, and hadn’t yet returned.
In an announcement of the program, URI said Libutti launched the effort after seeing how many K-12 students in the state stopped going to school.
Libutti also earned himself coverage from The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2019 when URI’s first-year retention rate crept past 85%, a record at the time. (Since then it has fallen again slightly. As of 2022, URI reported the rate at around 84%.)
Libutti was interviewed on Wednesday.
Jeffrey Osborn was The College of New Jersey’s provost and vice president for academic affairs for four years, leaving his role this year. Before that, he was the longtime dean of the college’s School of Science where he taught biology.
When Osborn decided to step down, The Signal, the college’s newspaper, reported that he would take a yearlong sabbatical then return to the college as a tenured biology professor.
According to the paper, Osborn “worked extensively on community college partnerships, including reviewing 3,500 community college courses and updating credit equivalency,” drastically increasing the number of transferrable credits for students.
Similarly, RIC has articulation agreements with Bristol Community College, the Community College of Rhode Island and Quinebaug Valley Community College, emphasizing on its website that it can help students avoid retaking courses.
Osborn was interviewed on Monday.
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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