Inaugural Speech of 10th RIC President Frank D. Sánchez - archived during 11th president inauguration period

Thank you, Chairman Foulkes, Chairperson Cottam and all of our guests who have come to Providence and Rhode Island College for this incredibly special occasion.

This is an extraordinary day for me and my family, and I am moved by the friends, colleagues and the broader Rhode Island community who have joined us for today’s celebration.

I hope our guests have had the chance to enjoy the wonderful State of Rhode Island and meet some of our most talented and dedicated members of our college community.

Before I recognize our dignitaries and share some prepared remarks, I’d like to acknowledge the outstanding team of students, faculty, staff and alumni who planned all of the events leading up to this day. Their tireless and creative work has captured the college’s distinctive identity and character. Please join me in thanking them.

I would like to now acknowledge many of the visiting dignitaries and honored guests that are here today. Let me first recognize our Governor Gina Raimondo, U.S. Congressman and Rhode Island College alum James Langevin, and U.S. Congressman David Cicilline

We also have with us Rhode Island state general officers: Lt. Gov. Dan McKee, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea and General Treasurer Seth Magaziner.

I’d also like to welcome State Representative and Chair of House Finance Marvin Abney, members of the R.I. House of Representatives, State Sen. Hannah Gallo and members of the R.I. State Senate.

Thank you Secretary of Commerce Stefan Pryor for joining us as well as three distinguished city and town leaders: Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza; Cranston Mayor Alan Fung, also a RIC alum; and North Providence Mayor Charles Lombardi.

I want to acknowledge our Chair of the Board of Education Barbara Cottam and a special appreciation to our Chair of the Postsecondary Council William Foulkes and to the members of both the R.I. Board of Education and Council on Postsecondary Education, including Commissioner James Purcell and Commissioner Ken Wagner.

Thank you President Dooley from the University of Rhode Island, President Hughes from the Community College of Rhode Island, all the visiting college presidents and higher education delegates. I’m honored you have joined me for this celebration.

I’m delighted that our President of Student Community Government Jose Rosario and RIC Faculty Council President and Master of Ceremonies Jeff Blais are able to join us for this afternoon’s ceremony.

And I am grateful to you Bishop Williams for your heartfelt invocation.

And a special thank you to Dr. Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA, for your insightful and very kind remarks. If my mom weren’t in the audience, she would not have believed anything you said about me. Thank you.

I am always amazed by our student talent. Many thanks to the Rhode Island College Concert Chorus, led by Professor Theresa Kauffman; and the Rhode Island College Chamber Winds Ensemble, led by Professor Robert Franzblau.

Finally, I’m so grateful for our gifted artists here this afternoon: Cesar Sanchez, Mexico’s ambassador of the arts; and RIC Artist-in-Residence Judith Stillman. What a breathtaking performance. In fact, there are few words that more beautifully or adequately convey how I am feeling at this moment.

I love the phrase: Si cada una de mis palabras fuera una gota de agua, verias a traves de ellas y vislumbrarias lo que siento. Gratitud. Reconocimiento. Honor. If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: Gratitude. Acknowledgement. Honor.

As I look into the audience, I see a particularly special community of friends and colleagues – individuals I’ve known since my earliest days of education – from literally elementary school, junior high and high school, my undergraduate and graduate years and colleagues across my two-and-a-half decades serving students and advancing higher education institutions. You are the individuals that have given me encouragement, counsel, perspective and friendship when I needed it most. More importantly, you continue to be a tremendous source of inspiration and motivation for me today.

This day would simply not be possible, nor complete, without those closest to me – my family. My sister Susan, brothers Gil and Jim, and sister-in-law AnnMarie are all here today. As the baby of the family, my brothers and sister carried me, held my hand and allowed me to tag along. You protected me. Now, even more than years past, I look up to each of you. 

Mom and Dad, words cannot express what you’ve given me; a way of living, filled with faith, love and possibilities. Your faith inspired a love for your children that allowed all of us to reach higher. I so admire your resilience to overcome the adversity of an earlier era, clearing a path for us and altering the lives of generations to come. I can only hope, and now aspire, to do the same.

My children Lawrence, Dante and Mariana, I could not have anticipated the insight, understanding and patience you have brought to my life. Everyday I become a better dad because of each of you.

My partner in life’s journey, Lori. Thank you, sweet, for filling our shared life with love, wisdom, balance, learning and celebration. You often believed in me more than I believed in myself and for that I am forever grateful.

To my entire family . . . this day is yours as much as it is mine.

The family of RIC President Frank D. Sánchez, from left: Lawrence (son), Mariana (daughter), Dante (son), Jim (brother), Alice (mother), Lori (wife), Gil Jr. (brother), Susan (sister), Gil Sr. (father) and AnnMarie (sister-in-law)

LEGACY, INSPIRATION AND FUTURE

Since joining Rhode Island College this past July, I have met a truly remarkable community. Indeed, a family, of students, faculty, staff and alumni.

In fact, I have uncovered a community spirit that holds close the potential of our students as a cornerstone of its mission and existence.

I have experienced first-hand a college ethos that is uniquely committed to building students’ lives through their strengths, talents and passions. I have heard from hundreds of alumni who have shared inspiring stories of achievement, crediting the RIC experience for altering the trajectory of their lives.

Over the last seven months, I have begun to get a glimpse of what makes Rhode Island College an uncommon force in propelling students’ lives, families, communities and this state forward.

RIC has a rich and distinctive identity with a compelling legacy, focused inspiration and a future with unlimited possibilities. Please allow me a few moments to expand on these defining and enduring college attributes.

OUR LEGACY

As a newcomer, I am incredibly proud to be associated with an institution that has among the most distinctive histories in American higher education. RIC’s 163-year history boasts a pioneering legacy that is unmatched in the state. To be a pioneer is to be one who is first or among the earliest in any field of inquiry, enterprise or progress.

 Established in 1854 as the country’s first fully funded state normal school and the state’s first public college, the birth of Rhode Island College took place alongside a budding nation.

To provide some context: Our founding in 1854 was the same year the territories of Nebraska and Kansas were created, the Republican Party was formally organized in that year – 62 years after the Democratic party – and the nation’s first black college was founded.

In 1854 this college led the state’s charge to provide education for a growing immigrant population and to prepare exceptional teachers. What emerged was an institution intentionally designed to advance the social mobility for generations of Rhode Islanders, many blue collar and immigrant working class families . . . a foresight that continues to be realized today.

For well over 16 decades, RIC has embraced a powerful institutional saga of a deliberate and vibrant college of opportunity.

Critical to the future of Rhode Island state and, frankly, this nation, RIC has fully embraced its original value proposition as a beacon of hope, inviting talented, motivated and determined students, regardless of income, background or station in life, to receive a high-quality, high-value college degree. 

I recently spent time with a brilliant RIC alum. This gentleman, based on his academic talent, could have been accepted to any college in the nation. He shared with me that the universities were too expensive and, financially, he had to help his parents and eleven brothers and sisters.

RIC opened its doors to this young man and he took full advantage. That RIC alum, and now good friend of mine, became the eighth president of Rhode Island College – President Emeritus John Nazarian.

I’m certain President Nazarian is watching our celebration via live stream and in a much, much warmer location in Florida.

Today, more than 70 percent of RIC graduates live, work and raise their families in Rhode Island. For generations, the college has prepared servants of the state and powered the state’s economy by investing in the talents, dreams and aspirations of its students. 

This legacy reminds me of Eleanor Almeada Thomson West, who in 1930 enrolled at RIC as a freshman elementary education major. Her daughter, Paula, saw her mother’s example and, in 1962, also enrolled at RIC as an elementary education major. Both spent time teaching in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

Now, 87 years later, Eleanor’s great granddaughter, Emily West, joined our community this past fall as a freshmen and, you got it, she is an elementary education major.  I’m honored to have Emily, her mother Mary and her grandmother Paula in our audience today. Please wave and be recognized.

Rhode Island College has a long and proud legacy of effectively expanding the social and intellectual capital of Rhode Islanders and attracting driven individuals who are leaders in their families, communities and our broader society. 

Whether it was Eleanor, who was the first in her family to attend college, or RIC alum superstar Viola Davis, who, last month, became the first African-American woman actress to win five Screen Actors Guild Awards and score three Oscar nominations. (pause)

Rhode Island College has always been an educational frontrunner, a producer of talent, advocate of hope and champion of the state’s human potential and it will continue to honor this vital legacy for many years to come.

OUR INSPIRATION 

Students are the life-blood and inspiration of this college. Today, RIC educates and serves students who represent the wonderful and vibrant diversity of this state and region.

Our students come to us with a voracious, focused and hope-filled determination for a better quality of life.

Like the generation before, our students have embraced the college’s pioneering spirit with nearly half being the first in their family to attend college and with most balancing other significant responsibilities to stay in school.

Many have and are serving our country, raising children and working long hours to make college possible.

All of them are offering their best in the classroom; in the lab; in campus organizations; and on the mat, court and field.

Rhode Islanders have come to understand that this institution is not for the faint of heart but for those that are driven, inspired and proactively determining their place in the world.

Our inspiration also gathers strength from an exceptional teaching faculty.

In my 25 years as a higher education administrator, working at large, small, urban and rural, public and private institutions across the country, I’ve never seen a core strength as long-standing or intentionally designed around faculty-student interactions than here at RIC.

Infused in the philosophical and physical fabric of the college are faculty who have placed a premium on guided participation in the form of mentoring, coaching, advising and counseling students as a key strategy to effective teaching.

RIC’s faculty-student interactions, supported with an unwavering ethic of care, are second to none. 

In fact, my first mentor as a graduate student, Keith Miser, is watching via live stream today. Keith, every single day I see your guidance, kindness, counsel and investment in me over 20 years ago in our faculty and staff as they work with our students. I hope you get to feeling better soon.

From the early work of Dr. Dana Colbert, the first executive of the college in 1854 and a pioneer in early active teaching strategies, to today’s faculty, we have embraced a proven philosophy where innovative and forward-thinking, hands-on-learning experiences thrive.

Today, RIC has become a higher education leader with 90 percent of our students participating in some form of experiential learning, internship, practicum, senior capstone project, undergraduate research or study abroad.

Similarly, the college draws inspiration from its legacy of serving diverse student populations.

In this state, even before the Civil Rights Movement, RIC was leading and fostering an inclusive campus experience.

In the 1940s, when issues of equity and affirmative inclusion were not popular, RIC’s second president, President Lucius Albert Whipple, urged students to “break down barriers caused by the distinctions of class, race, creed and nationality.”

He told the class of 1940 not to let preconceived ideas impact their studies: “Your thinking cannot be confused by your prejudices, because prejudice steals our common sense and causes instability of thought.”

I could not be more proud of the relentless inspiration shown by our students, faculty and staff as they strive to understand the challenging nuances of diversity in our daily lives and, more recently, in our national discourse.

I will be the first to say we are not perfect, but it is clear that RIC’s identity and character, often led by our students, is not defined by others’ background, income, race, ethnicity or gender.

At Rhode Island College, our students understand that a strong sense of community is less about who you vote for, how you worship or who you love.

Instead, our students recognize and value a universal language that embraces common communal values of compassion, empathy and respect.

Our inspiration at Rhode Island College is fueled by an unwavering value of the human condition. An enthused and pioneering campus that places students at the center of our work; invests in an extraordinary teaching experience led by exceptional faculty; and actively clarifies our sense of a unified, diverse and inclusive community.

OUR FUTURE

So, let me ask: “How do we build on this storied institution’s rich legacy and a one-of-a-kind inspiration? How will we pioneer our future?

Rhode Island College has a legacy and inspiration that has positioned us with unlimited potential and an extraordinary opportunity. Looking forward, we must prepare the Ocean State’s first public college for a brilliant, and perhaps unimagined, future.

Earlier, Dr. Kruger offered some of the complexities and challenges of a rapidly changing higher education environment – challenges that present this college with an important and necessary decision in order for us to prosper.

The unyielding and dynamic educational milieu has brought us to an inflection point and now it calls on us to take action. 

It is clear to me, we do not need to reinvent ourselves by grasping for the latest educational fad. Instead, our strategy for becoming the regional leader among public colleges will be to direct resources in the pioneering philosophies that have shaped our legacy. Now, they will be a catalyst for our evolution.

This June we will conclude our 2017-2020 strategic plan which will provide us a platform for leveraging our strengths and charting our work ahead.

Five broad strategic pillars have emerged through this process and will guide investments going forward:

• Learning Innovation
• Student Success
• Community Partnerships
• Inclusive Excellence
• Institutional Effectiveness.

By nature, as an administrator, I like to under promise and over deliver. Here are my promises:

RIC will aggressively advance a core value of Learning Innovation and advance a 21st-century skills initiative. A taskforce will be charged with providing 100 percent of RIC graduates with a robust experiential learning opportunity, as a strategy to better prepare graduates for a rapidly changing global workforce.

RIC will reimage a bold new design and delivery of student services, programs and resources, leveraging the digital-mindset of today’s and tomorrow’s students. This coming fall, RIC will launch a new Division of Student Success to lead this effort. 

The college will embrace a collective impact approach to forging new and entrepreneurial community partnerships, advancing the state in the areas of education, healthcare, technology and the arts. 

RIC will capitalize on our existing strengths in the area of inclusion by striving to ensure all students have the cultural competency and emotional agility to be effective in today’s diverse society while reinforcing the fabric of our nation’s democracy.

This week we announced a President’s Commission on Inclusive Excellence. An advisory commission made up of Rhode Island scholars, artists, community leaders and educators to help our college become a national leader in building stronger, more inclusive campus communities.

Rhode Island College will preserve our pioneering legacy by honoring the thousands of Rhode Islanders who were the first in their family to attend college. I am announcing today the creation of a First-in-Family Fund. This past fall, 43 percent of our freshmen were first-generation college students and we will fortify our support of our own young, aspiring pioneers.

Finally, while embracing technology is not a new concept, I believe it is a necessary and essential element of RIC’s future.

The digital landscape continues to barrel forward and we must be ready to meet new educational demands while not compromising RIC’s high-quality instruction and student interactions in the classroom.

In this spirit, I am introducing to the college today, A Decade of Technology.

This signature initiative will require us to marshal resources toward enhancing our exceptional faculty-student interactions while advancing high-tech, high-touch classroom instruction and student services in a traditional college setting.

Many of our students were born in this new era of mobile devices, social media communities and access to information around the world. Tomorrow’s RIC experience must be designed with these new realities.

In my closing remarks, I want to convey that the future of Rhode Island College is not just bright. It’s brilliant.

RIC has always been a pioneer. We are the brave ones, the ones willing to step forward when others shy away, “the ones who are first.” 

For 163 years we have enthusiastically and unapologetically embraced this element of our legacy.

I have been asked to join a community with a long and proud history of pouring its heart, intellect and collective talent into the stewardship of Rhode Island’s first public college.

I have been entrusted to preserve our distinctive institutional saga by embracing our historical role as a leader and a pioneer among higher education institutions.

As president, I will embrace our core values of the academy by reinforcing our historic ethos of forward-thinking and innovative instruction inside and beyond the classroom. 

I am compelled to invest in the strength of our collegiate family as a strategy to enhance the learning environment in a welcoming and inclusive manner. 

As president, I am called on to place students at the center of a teaching and learning enterprise, providing them with unparalleled opportunities to show their talents on the local, state, national and international stage and to uphold an unwavering educational belief that every interaction with a student is a Rhode Island College moment of truth and that in every student interaction there is a life in the balance for this great state.

It is because of our unmatched legacy, a student-focused inspiration and the unbound possibilities of a brilliant future that I proudly, and with great optimism, accept the 10th presidency of Rhode Island College.