Q&A with RIC President Jack Warner

After two years at the helm as interim president of Rhode Island College, Jack Warner will be shedding the interim title to become RIC’s 11th president on Nov. 15. In this Q&A, he discusses the advances he’s made over the last two years and the course he has set for the future.

After two years as interim president, what have you learned in those years?

It’s a combination of what I found and what I learned. I certainly learned that we have an incredibly dedicated faculty, who are wonderfully accomplished in their fields and who are deeply committed to the success of our students. At the same time, I found that our operational systems don’t always function as well as they should. We had serious budget problems and our enrollment was dropping rapidly. We took action right away. When I came to office at the end of fiscal year 2022, the budget was in a deficit. By the next fiscal year and in the most recent fiscal year 2024, we’ve ended with a balanced budget.

We also turned a corner on enrollment. We’re now up more than 330 students in our freshman class over last year. We needed an incentive for students to choose Rhode Island College and we got that in the form of the Hope Scholarship. This scholarship provides free tuition and fees for eligible students in their junior and senior years. A lot of the enrollment growth that we can claim this year is due to the impact of the Hope Scholarship. (See article: “Hope Changed Everything for Over 200 RIC Students.”)

What are our opportunities and how do we capitalize on them?

The Hope Scholarship is our single greatest opportunity. It is a state-funded pilot program that ends in 2030, and people are going to be looking at our performance before making it a permanent feature of the college. We must be able to graduate students in four years. That’s something we haven’t been good at in the past. To that end, we’ve streamlined our General Education requirements and we’ve brought all degree programs down to 120 credit hours, which will get students through here in four years. If an in-state student maintains a 2.5 grade point average and takes 15 credits a semester, they will qualify for the Hope Scholarship and graduate in four years.

What other opportunities do you see for Rhode Island College?

Another big opportunity for us is the renovation of Whipple Hall into a dedicated home for the Institute for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technologies. This will include state-of-the-art training facilities for cyberattacks. The center will not only help train our students who are majoring or taking courses in cybersecurity, it will fill a need for local businesses, hospitals and city governments who want cybersecurity training. It will also be a magnet for new students. This semester we have 100 students majoring in cybersecurity and 26 minoring in the program. The demand for graduates in this major are high. Nationwide, there are about 700,000 jobs in cybersecurity that aren’t being filled. For graduates of this program, jobs that will pay six figures are virtually guaranteed.

What is one of the greatest challenges for Rhode Island College?

It’s been projected that in the next few years, the country will see not only smaller high school graduating classes but a decline in the percentage of high school seniors going on to college. Those declines will be particularly steep in the northeast and Midwest. This is a challenge for all higher ed institutions. Over the last few years, quite a few colleges have closed and many are projected to close. Each week about one-and-a-half colleges are closing or merging around the country. To address that challenge, our job will be to get more than our fair share of high school graduates who do want to go on to college and to convince those who don’t that a college degree is a good way to improve their life. The Hope Scholarship will allow us to gain a higher percentage of high school graduates in Rhode Island.

What role do you see RIC playing in the state?

The new Rhode Island College is responsive, it’s innovative and it’s collaborative. Our fundamental mission is to serve the people of Rhode Island. I meet monthly with the governor to learn about the needs of the state. For instance, our new biotechnology degree program was a major initiative to support the state’s commitment to become a leader in the biomedical sciences. I also spend a lot of time in the state legislature during sessions to listen to public policymakers and their interests. That is essential. They appropriate our budget. They need to know that their public investment is worth it, that we’re leading this institution in ways that they can be proud of so that they’ll keep investing in us. And it’s essential to continuously educate public policymakers about what we do. We maintain a presence in the building throughout the session. We also meet with them outside of sessions. We go to their events and fundraisers, because that’s a way of staying connected. 

What do people not know about Rhode Island College that they should know.

When I came here, there was an expression people used about Rhode Island College. They called it the best kept secret. It will be an ongoing challenge and opportunity for us to keep the name of this institution in front of the public. We are on billboards, we have put up signs in many places, we have paid advertising in magazines and newspapers. We want people to know that we are here to serve them in a wide variety of ways. We do not want to be a secret, whether it’s best kept or not.

What is your long-range vision for Rhode Island College?

To be the most student-centric institution in Rhode Island, if not the northeast. 

What are some of the things we can do to achieve that?

Many of our students come to us needing deeper academic preparation due to COVID learning loss. I’d like to see a more comprehensive approach to student success, where we look at how we can meet students’ needs at each step in their journey. That means designing a better student support system. Advisement is a component of that. Many of our schools here at Rhode Island College are incorporating professional advisors for students in the first two years and then turning the students over to faculty advisors when they know what they want to major in. We also want to invest more in our career services operation. I’d like Rhode Island College to be known as a school where you can link your academic studies with a career right from day one. We need more professional advisors and we could use more career counselors.

Being the most student-centric institution in the state is the vision. It sets our compass. What does a compass do? It points to the North Star. That’s our North Star, to be a high-performing institution in helping students succeed.

The North Star was the compass Harriet Tubman used to lead slaves to freedom. 

That’s a wonderful metaphor for Rhode Island College. Our college is the North Star that leads to a better life. Of course, the way to a better life is to be free. At RIC, it’s to be free to seize the opportunities that freedom gives you.