$1M donation for RWU creates language center

Robert F. Stoico, founder of The Robert F. Stoico/FirstFed Charitable Foundation and a trustee at Roger Williams University, has pledged to donate $1 million to RWU. Similar donations will be made to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Bristol Community College.
At Roger Williams, the money will help to create the Robert F. Stoico/FirstFed Foundation Language Center, scheduled for completion in the fall of 2009.
Stoico was a longtime CEO of the former FirstFed American Bancorp Inc.
The donation comes at a time in which Roger Williams has seen unprecedented growth in its foreign-languages program — more than a 60-percent increase in the last five years among students studying Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese and Spanish, according to RWU.
The center will serve as an immersion classroom in which students can interact with students in the countries they are studying. Video conferencing, for example, will allow RWU students in a Mandarin-language class to communicate with peers in China.