Nearly forty years ago, seeking to make higher education accessible to all of our citizens, Rhode Island put together a master plan for the Community College of Rhode Island. Accessibility has remained a critical part of CCRI’s mission over the decades. Approval of Question 4 on the November ballot will give CCRI the opportunity to expand significantly its capacity to bring affordable higher education, career training and business community support services to the East Bay area. The funds made available through this bond initiative will make it possible for the Community College to build a 65,000 square-foot campus in Newport County on land donated by the U.S. Navy. This new facility will replace three leased and overcrowded “satellite campuses” on Aquidneck Island and, for the first time, provide a full-service, comprehensive East Bay campus. Enrollment is anticipated to grow from the current 750 to 2,000 students within two years of its opening.
The new Newport campus completes a plan approved 40 years ago to build a fourth Community College campus. In the last decade, CCRI’s mission has expanded into the critical areas of workforce development and job training and retraining. Today nearly 30,000 Rhode Islanders, young people and adults, pursue not just an associate degree but a host of certificate programs ranging from technology to welfare-to-work programs. CCRI’s cooperative programs and relationships with business and industry feed our state’s economy. The Newport campus is expected to play a key role in supporting the need for skilled workers in the hospitality, health services, and technology related businesses on Aquidneck Island and beyond.
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Some may wonder why it is necessary to build or improve a physical campus in the 21st century asking whether distance learning will replace “bricks and mortar” institutions of higher education. I think not.
Certainly, technology is enhancing the way we teach and learn. In our world, job skills cannot be static, and life-long learning has become a necessity for us all; technology is the driving force behind this transformation and, distance education, as it exists today, works very well for students in a variety of situations. It can be an excellent vehicle for providing updated job skills to busy adults in their workplaces. “Just-in-time” education serves people seeking to change careers by allowing them to “go to school” at home, at night and on weekends. Distance programs also allow colleges and universities to supplement the programs they offer by adding exceptional, and otherwise unavailable, courses from other institutions.
But is it time for distance education to replace the traditional undergraduate program that is offered on a physical campus? The answer may lie in asking the following questions: How do we prepare individuals for a lifetime of learning? Where do the best learning experiences occur? Do they only happen when we are alone studying a textbook or reading a novel? What is the importance of the classroom setting in providing the opportunity to be challenged by a teacher or by other students? Learning experiences take place over time through face-to-face interaction while living in dormitories and working in a diverse community of learners. Learning experiences take place in the real world, through the development of mentoring relationships and critical thinking abilities, not in a virtual environment or merely through the gathering of information and the mastering of skills. Technology has its place and we value and support it. But technology has no human touch. For example, technology cannot teach the personal skills vital to the health services and hospitality industries to be served by CCRI’s Newport campus.
Therefore, it is prudent to maintain safe and learner friendly facilities for our state’s most precious resource — its students. In addition to CCRI’s Newport campus, approval of Question 4 will provide needed improvements to the dormitories at Rhode Island College and the University. These improvements will ensure the safety of our students and provide an atmosphere conducive to learning.
By expanding and improving the infrastructure of the public colleges and university in Rhode Island, we increase access to quality higher education in our state for people of all income levels. That’s the mission of the Board of Governors for Higher Education.
Please support that mission by voting YES on Question 4!
(Sally Dowling chairs the Board of Governors for Higher Education)
