(Editor’s note: This is the first installment in an occasional series of interviews with the state’s new wave of higher education leaders.)
The Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard stepped into the role of president at Providence College last summer, following 15 years as executive vice president. A native of Fall River and the son of a mill worker and a secretary, Sicard was the first in his family to attend college.
“Education was always important to them since they didn’t have the opportunity,” Sicard said. “My dad worked very hard to put me through Providence College. It was a real blessing.”
Sicard went on to earn an accounting degree and an MBA from Providence College and joined the Dominican priests when he entered the clergy. Now 64, Sicard says he’s proud of the way PC came through the pandemic and looks forward to broadening its national reputation.
You once worked for Fleet Financial Group. What led you to the decision to join the priesthood and become a college administrator? Being a priest was something I always thought about, even when I was young. When I came to Providence College as a student and I met the Dominican friars, I knew I would eventually be a Dominican priest. But when I graduated from college, 21 years old, I was not ready to make that kind of commitment. I wanted to work for a few years. The week after I graduated, I started working at Fleet. I applied for the MBA program while I was working at Fleet. I thought I had to give this a shot. There was never any clear-cut sign from God that this was the right thing for me to do but a feeling I had inside myself for so many, many years. I worked six years at Fleet. It prepared me well for a lot of the work I’ve done for the Dominicans. It’s served me so well over the years. My life as a priest, I can’t imagine anything bringing me more joy than that. We have 40 Dominicans here at Providence College.
What are the Dominican priests known for? The official name is the Order of Preachers. We’re best known for preaching. What I like especially about the Dominicans is we’ve been in higher education for 800 years. St. Dominic founded the order, and he sent his friars to the best universities in Europe. I was so impressed with the Dominicans I knew here as a student, that I was drawn to their community.
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FULL-FLEDGED FRIAR: The Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from Providence College several years before becoming a Dominican friar, eventually returning to PC as an administrator. / PBN PHOTO/
MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
You were appointed president last summer, succeeding the Rev. Brian J. Shanley. What did you learn in your first year? When I took over from Father Shanley, it was a fairly easy transition. I felt I was well-prepared for the challenges that last year brought. The best thing we could have possibly done last year to address the pandemic was to be here, in person. For a place like Providence College, that teacher-student interaction is so important. And it became clear to us in 2020, when we had to send the class home after spring break, it was really disappointing to the students. It was a huge adjustment for them to study remotely. It became very clear to us early on that the students wanted to be on campus, and they preferred an in-person classroom experience.
The best thing we did was open in person. What I learned as a result of that … was the commitment of our faculty and staff to making this work. For that spring semester in 2020, everything was remote. And for the fall, maybe half of our classes were remote. All of the faculty was in agreement. It was a lot more difficult to teach remotely than it is to teach in person. We had staff pitching in to do contact tracing and wellness checks on our students. I never saw the community pitch in as strongly as they did last year.
How has Providence College weathered the pandemic financially? Our direct costs for [COVID-19] were $13 million. Capital expenses were almost another $800,000 [which was reimbursed by the federal government]. That was an enormous help to us. But you have to look at the revenue we lost, too. We sent our students home in the spring, and we lost $11 million in room and board. We’ve had a positive operating margin every year. We were really careful. We cut back on a lot of expenses. We were financially managed very, very well. One of the things I’m most proud of is we did not lay anyone off.
What goals do you have for the upcoming year? We’re moving on past COVID. We mandated vaccines for all of our students. We feel we are keeping them safe, and it was the right thing to do. … We envision a pretty normal academic year [starting next fall]. One of the things I worked on in the year before I became president was a new strategic plan. It’s called PC200. We are in full swing. We are reintroducing a lot of the initiatives that were in PC200, especially the academic initiatives.
[PC200 is the 10-year strategic plan for the college that calls for an emphasis on the school’s value proposition, careful fiscal management and an evolving recruitment strategy that accounts for expected demographic shifts.]
Are you looking to hold hybrid classes next year or having all in-person classes? We are looking at all in-person for our regular day school. We learned how to use technology better, but we also learned that most of our students want an in-person experience, and most of our faculty too. We are not allowing remote classes in the year. Continuing ed classes, some of those will be remote or hybrid.
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WORK TO DO: While the number of students of color at Providence College has climbed since 2005, statistics indicate that the number has leveled off in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic
hasn’t helped, according to PC President the Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard. “We’ve been trying,” he says. / SOURCE: Providence College[/caption]
Providence College ranks consistently among the best regional colleges in the Northeast. Are you trying to broaden your appeal beyond New England or increase the size of the college? We don’t want to get much bigger. I want to stay at about 4,000 students. But even to do that, we are expanding. We want to be nationally recognized as the premier liberal arts, Catholic college. That’s a big part of our brand. Providence College is the only college in North America that was founded by and administered by the Dominican friars. That’s an important part of our brand. We want more national recognition. With that strong, Catholic liberal arts identity but with some really good professional schools, we are going to be appealing to a larger market. We’ve hired some additional admissions counselors – one in Chicago, one in San Diego – and we are trying to expand our reach. We’re a liberal arts college, we don’t want to change that identity. Our athletics program has put us on the map in many ways. But more important than that, we want our academic reputation to make us nationally recognized.
The statistics indicate the college has an 18% enrollment of students of color. Have you increased that over the past few years and what strategies are you using? We’ve been trying. We had been going up. The pandemic put us back. Next year, the diversity number is about 17%. We want to create programs that are going to be interesting for students who are diverse, and right now there is a growing Catholic population of Hispanic students. We want to create programs that are going to draw them to us. As a Catholic, Dominican, liberal arts college, we will be attractive to that demographic. That’s important to us. We also, in addition to creating programs … are interested in providing as much financial aid as we can. We’ve had a couple of very generous donations this year. A $1 million scholarship is going to be directed toward diverse students, helping them to meet that gap.
Do you make use of your current student body in the recruitment effort? A lot of our students come here because they know someone who came here and loved it. There is a lot of legacy families, who send their kids to PC. There is a lot of word of mouth. When people visit our campus, that’s when they fall in love. That’s why the pandemic was such a challenge because we couldn’t have on-campus tours. But even with that, our applications were up by about 2% from the previous year.
How are you trying to ease the cost of financing higher education for parents and students? Tuition was $53,400 this year. We’re trying to increase the number of Pell Grants we can give. We’re trying to increase the amount of institutional aid that we can give. When we set tuition, we went up 3% this year for tuition, room and board. We have a list of overlap colleges – we all tend to compete against each other, and we are usually right in the middle of that list. We don’t want to fall too far below. We did that a while back. We were advised … that if you get too low, you are perceived as an inferior product. We did a huge tuition bump 10 to 15 years ago, and we’ve tried to stay consistent with our competitors.
Looking at national demographics, Generation Z is one of the smallest generations in U.S. history. How is this going to make maintaining enrollment a challenge? We’ve been looking at demographic changes for a long time. We haven’t been as quick in expanding our outreach as I’d like to be, but we are getting there. That being said, I still think even if the demographics decline in the Middle Atlantic and the New England states, I think a place like PC is still going to be very attractive to a lot of students in this area. That doesn’t mean we don’t find it important to expand our national outreach.
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CAMPUS MAKEOVER: The Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard, Providence College president, stands outside Harkins Hall on the college grounds. Sicard says PC is in the midst of a five-year project to improve all campus buildings. / PBN PHOTO/ELIZABETH GRAHAM[/caption]
During the pandemic, you had to put some construction projects on hold. Have they resumed? We are in full force this summer. We’re completely redoing Raymond [Hall]. That’s a two-year project. We’ll do about half of it this year and then finish next summer. We’re doing work on our science complex. We added a new building about three years ago. We are in the third year of a five-year project to redo all of the existing buildings. We are going to break ground next summer on the Friar Development Center II, which will include a new career education center. And in the spring, we’re breaking ground on a new residence hall, a suite-style facility. We just issued new bonds as well.
You are known for business specialties, including finance, marketing and management. What other majors are students interested in at PC? Our biggest major for the incoming class is finance. The second is biology. Biology is always a big major for us. That’s one of our most popular programs. Third is marketing and fourth, interestingly, is psychology. That’s one where we’re seeing a steady growth every year. People became more cognizant of mental health this year, especially during the pandemic.
How are you promoting the academic reputation of the college? Return on investment is obviously very important to us, to students and their families. We have a high graduate rate. We have an excellent retention rate. We’re well above 90% for a retention rate, for all four years. Our reputation is really good.
For several years, Providence College has had a large number of Fulbright Scholars. How does the college encourage this? Do you identify students who have that kind of promise and are they being cultivated? One of our faculty, a history professor named Darra Mulderry, has taken on the role of advising students with regard to the Fulbright program. She’s worked hard to raise students’ interest in the program and then she mentors them.
Students at Providence College have often been criticized for off-campus behavior, such as large parties. How do you see the college’s relationship with the city? And can you exert control over off-campus behavior? To a certain extent. We do everything we can. We’re a lot better than we were five or six years ago, when there were real tensions with the neighbors. I remember going to a neighborhood meeting … and we just got slammed. It has gotten better. We had a couple of big parties last year during the pandemic, and it couldn’t have made us look worse. I was really embarrassed by that. I certainly don’t want to make any excuses, but I think the kids were just so fed up with being inside. We require first-year, second-year and third-year students to live on campus. So, it’s only the seniors who are allowed to live off campus.
