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A Special Thank You on Thanksgiving and, more than ever, my commitment to our state university.Friends, in this season of giving thanks for life's blessings, I want to take a quiet moment to thank you for the wonderful support you have given me and our state university during this long autumn season. At the University of Rhode Island, we have been blessed by your friendship and by your passion for doing the right thing. That commitment by the people of Rhode Island has inspired and enabled me to renew my own commitment to our State and to the University's mission. For the opportunity to serve you for the past nine years, and for the years yet ahead, I thank you. An Outpouring of Support for URI I thank especially the Board of Governors, the Governor, and the Commissioner for Higher Education, who resolved their concerns and gave me and the University itself a unanimous vote of confidence for the next three years. I am grateful to the legislators who brought wisdom to a complex challenge. I cannot find the words to say how proud I am of our students, whose sense of idealism and hope was rewarded, and of our faculty and staff who took difficult stands. We are particularly grateful to our alumni and friends of the University, who led this tremendous outpouring of support in the past few months. All of this wonderful support for URI flows from a growing sense of "Rhody Pride." Over the last decade, the preparation level of URI students has grown dramatically. Our teaching now emphasizes experiential learning and reflection, as well as traditional instruction. At the same time, we have become a much more diverse community. Our Recent Past Protects Our Future Each year, I tell our freshmen that if there is any one thing I want from them as they walk across the Quad on Commencement day, it is that they will then have a clear sense of what they stand for and what they won't stand for. Our decisions here at URI in recent years have made it more clear what we stand for. We expect our students to be prepared for active participation in a rigorous curriculum, to address the learning process with minds unclouded by alcohol or drugs, to learn leadership for a global economy and a diverse nation, and to serve their communities with dedication and creativity. They have risen to these higher expectations. We have also made great progress in restoring our campuses. URI has some of the finest new facilities in America, and we have done much to rebuild an infrastructure long neglected. Next month we will begin the long-awaited renewal of our residence halls, and work is progressing on schedule on Ballentine and Green Halls, our new Convocation Center, and a modern ice skating rink to serve all of Rhode Island. All of this and more has been possible because of a new entrepreneurial spirit at URI and the support we have received from government, our alumni, and those who seek to invest in quality. Our alumni and friends have committed substantially more in monetary gifts to the University. Our endowment is at an all-time high, and the State of Rhode Island has made a major commitment to funding the building projects at the University. Together, this support has made a profound difference at our state university. A Good University Becoming A Great University I have often said that my mission here in Rhode Island has been to build the quality of everything we do at URI and to increase the understanding of that quality both here and around the world. Today, I can report that the University of Rhode Island is a very good university, an institution of which all Rhode Islanders can be very proud. But my goal is to make URI one of America's finest public universities. I understand very well the limited resources of our state and the challenges of moving up to the next level. That is why we must make the maximum use of our tax dollars, of the tuition we receive from our students and their parents, and of the grants and gifts we receive from our various investors. That is why we must be the most creative university in America, the most willing to innovate, the most committed to serving our state and nation with imagination and spirit. We must care most about a strong community, strong families, strong schools, a strong economy, and about social justice. We will be leaders in the struggle to eradicate hunger, to teach nonviolence, and to preserve our fragile environment. We will do these things and more because we are made strong by your commitment to the University of Rhode Island. This is the time of harvest in America and the time to give thanks for the fruits of that harvest. Your gift of love and support for the University of Rhode Island has been a bountiful return for our community and is another important reason for all of us at URI to give thanks. Together, we will move our state university to greatness. I thank you for your support of our efforts.
Robert L. Carothers, President University of Rhode Island |
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