Rhode Island College is interviewing for its next president. Here are the candidates

A new president is expected to be announced in January 2024. But it could be a familiar face.

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, interim president, Rhode Island College

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, associate vice president for enrollment management and student success, University of Rhode Island

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, former provost and vice president for academic affairs, The College of New Jersey

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.