URI recently completed a $300 million fundraising drive ahead of schedule. Parlange says Rhode Island’s flagship public university has turned a corner in attracting more robust state support. And last year, he unveiled an ambitious four-pronged 10-year strategic plan. The goals include making URI a hub for innovation and a more powerful economic catalyst. Are these goals realistic, and what will it take to realize them? How much promise is offered by the blue economy? And what does the university president make of the gripes about academia? This week on Political Roundtable, I’m going in-depth with URI President Marc Parlange.
Donnis: Welcome to the Public’s Radio. Rhode Islanders will vote in November on whether to borrow money to create an 80 million dollar life sciences building at URI. What difference would that initiative make if voters decide to support that?
Parlange: So it’s huge. It’s extremely important for the state of Rhode Island and for the future. We are, as a state, we’re making a big effort in expanding our efforts in healthcare, in the life sciences, and having a biomedical sciences building. $87.5 million general obligation bond is very important. It’s going to allow us to really build on our strengths.
If I can, we have more than 6, 000 students studying some aspect of the life sciences at the University of Rhode Island. And two weekends ago, we graduated more than 1400 who are graduating again from biomedical engineering to pharmaceutical sciences and so forth in this area. We are really leading in the aream through the Ryan Institute at URI, we’re leading in the area of Alzheimer’s research And so this is just one area that’s you know impacting the health of the state. So it’s really going to allow us.
Donnis: Let me stop you there because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. We see how the research triangle area in North Carolina is a growing competitor for the very robust life sciences sector in Boston and Cambridge. Does that show that with Rhode Island now making a push in life sciences, it might be a bit too late to the game?
Parlange: It’s absolutely not. No, it’s not too late. And I should remind that already we are in the game in a serious way. We have a very serious, it’s called, INBRE. It’s more than a hundred million dollar program to build the biotechnology sector in the state. It’s been incredibly successful. It’s pulled together all the universities in the state of Rhode Island. Our collaborations with our colleagues across the state are very important. And it’s also interesting, a lot of the key startups that are coming are really in the life sciences area. Started by, actually, faculty and students from the University of Rhode Island.
Donnis: You were in Middletown for the groundbreaking of a new National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Operations Center last month with our former Governor Gina Raimondo, now the U.S. Commerce Secretary. This is part of efforts to develop the so-called blue economy in Rhode Island. How would you quantify the impact of the blue economy right now? And to what extent can it grow?
Parlange: It’s huge. I’ll just give you a very quick example. In ‘95, we only had three oyster farms. Today, we have more than 85 oyster farms. It’s grown from maybe $50,000 profit 30 years ago to today, more than $50 million profit for the state. And that’s just, we’re just talking about oysters there. If we look more broadly offshore wind, many aspects of undersea vehicle technology. the university of Rhode Island actually had the very first ocean. engineering program in the country, and that program continues to be outstanding and a world leader. And that was actually a big part of what attracted me to join University of Rhode Island. We also know about the importance of the Graduate School of Oceanography and many of the environmental marine sciences, marine biology. So it’s, it is a big deal. The ocean is in many, many ways, key for the future of our planet.
Donnis: Can you put a dollar value on the current impact and to, and to what extent that can grow?
Parlange: So people, right now would talk about five billion dollars for the state of Rhode Island in the blue economy. That has obviously many, many sectors that are associated with that. We see it as a big attactor. I remind all my new undergraduates that are starting and graduate students that you are the new Rhode Islanders. And I’m really pleased to say that we’re really seeing that entrepreneurial spirit of our students and the startup of new companies all the time.
Donnis: Speaking of the entrepreneurial spirit. You have an ambitious strategic plan. One of the goals is to make URI a hub for innovation. Former Governor Raimondo talks a lot about innovation, but by the time she left for Washington in 2021, Rhode Island’s top job sectors had not changed and the state had actually lost jobs in advanced manufacturing. So what is your plan for increasing the amount of innovation associated with URI?
Parlange: So I think it’s important to mention there’s 1,600 manufacturing companies in the state of Rhode Island, a very important part of the economy. It’s obviously many smaller companies, but it is an area that we wish to grow. We are Rhode Island’s university and how we go really will affect the future of the state of Rhode Island. So it’s not only that our graduates are starting companies, but we’re actually playing a key role in attracting companies such as Orsted to the state of Rhode Island to be able to set up here. They want to be able to hire our graduates. I remind also in related fields, for example, Amgen. They’d love to hire our graduates. I was just at the airport running into some of our students who are going to stay in Rhode Island that had come from other states. And Amgen is delighted to be able to hire them and have them start their careers here.
Donnis: This can be a challenging time to be a university president. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that we’ve seen some University presidents called to testify before congressional Republicans, critics like New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and comedian Bill Maher say many universities are in the grip of a progressive ideological framework. Let’s listen to a recent clip from Maher’s show on HBO.
Excerpt from “Real Time with Bill Maher”: There are few if any positive coming out of what happened in Israel, but one of them is opening Americans’ eyes to how higher education has become indoctrination into a stew of bad ideas among them the simplistic notion that the world is a binary place where everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed.
Donnis: So how about that? Maher is no conservative, but he says too many universities are fostering an overly simplistic view of the world. What is your reaction to that?
Parlange: Well, my immediate reaction is that is an overly simplistic assessment of universities. Universities are all about their people. I have to say the best job in the world is to be the University of Rhode Island President. I really am so amazed each and every single day by our faculty, by our students, by our staff. It is really a community of scholars. There’s a lot of generosity. We’ve had, what I would say is an extremely safe and welcoming environment is an inclusive environment. We have had very good discussions where people have different points of view, but we’ve been able to pull together as a community from many, many different groups, you know, student groups. And I will include Hillel, the Middle Eastern student association, the South Asian student club, the young social democratic club. Many students have come together to be able to actually wrestle with some of the thorny and difficult questions of our time. So I would say that, I would disagree with that statement. I think that actually a university is an important place where we really foster serious thinking and research.
Donnis: URI recently completed a $300 million fundraising drive ahead of schedule. How will that money be used?
Parlange: Thank you very much for mentioning that. I was happy, to see that mark, we’re not quite finished with the campaign, so as Lil O’Rourke, the President of the Foundation, would say, we’re going to go charging past the 300 mark. I’m really grateful to the more than 34,000 students, faculty, alumni, staff who have contributed, corporations. Largely, it’s going to go to support student scholarships. We currently spend, in student aid, more than 150 million each year. We support in talent development, $15 million. There’s a real need for support for our students in terms of scholarships. And then the other area is really to support our faculty for the good work that they do and research that informs our teaching.
Donnis: You mentioned student aid. Student debt has become a big burden for a lot of young people. What do you think should be done more broadly to address that?
Parlange: So, if I just talk about the University of Rhode Island, we have done everything in our power to keep tuition rates incredibly competitive. We are the least expensive to come to of the New England publics, both for in state and out of state. We offer, really, truly world class opportunities for our students. I’m so proud of the work that they’re doing in the classroom, but also outside the classroom. I think the greatest thing that America brought to the world, quite frankly, is the research university. I have spent my time also outside the United States. And if you look at Canada, Australia, Europe, Everybody wants to have research universities like the United States, which are really attracting students and really creating new knowledge for the world. So, I would say that we have done everything we can to really support our students, and to make it as affordable as possible.
Donnis: Back in 2022, the National Science Foundation ranked URI 158th among the amount of research and development money spent by American universities. How have things changed since then and what can be done to expand the amount of research at URI?
Parlange: We are growing our research and that’s really so important for the state of Rhode Island. We are attracting new partnerships, not only with the NSF and with NOAA and EPA and the other NASA, but we’re also doing a lot more with companies, research and partnership to really look at leading edge questions. I had mentioned earlier, for example, in the biomedical sciences, the work that’s going on from health sciences, all the way through business, engineering, on to the the blue economy has been really important. We have a Brand new Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Bethany Jenkins, and she’s really leading the charge with our faculty to build this area.
Donnis: URI recently announced a new collaboration with the utility Rhode Island Energy. What is the significance of that?
Parlange: That’s a great partnership. We’re thrilled to be able to have that. It’s really around building what we discussed earlier, topics such as offshore wind, thinking about how we decarbonize our energy system. It includes topics that, and I’ll remind that we have a reactor on campus, on our Bay campus. And so it’s, it’s an important research, looking at how our energy systems of the future are going to evolve.
Donnis: And the endowment at URI has traditionally been quite a bit smaller than some of your counterpart universities. I believe it’s about a third of UConn’s. How’s the outlook for increasing that?
Parlange: So we’re building that. And again, I’m very thankful to all the donors that we’ve had, that have stepped up to contribute to that. We are working hard. It is an area in the long term for the long term sustainability of the university. It’s extremely important. University of Rhode Island is going to be here in 100, 200 years. And what we do now is going to be important going forward.
Donnis: We’ve got to leave it there. Thank you for joining us so much, University of Rhode Island President Marc Parlange.
Parlange: Thank you very much.
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The most recent heyday for Rhode Island Republicans was back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the GOP won a number of state general offices with a mix of fiscal conservatism and social moderation. These days, the party has fully embraced the message of Donald Trump. So will that help or hurt when it comes to building Republican representation in the General Assembly. For now, the GOP holds just 14 of 113 seats. You can read more about that in my TGIF column, posting around 4 this afternoon at ThePublicsRadio.org/TGIF and on what used to be known as Twitter @IanDon.
That’s it for our show. Political Roundtable is a production of The Public’s Radio. Our producer is James Baumgartner. I’m Ian Donnis, and I’ll see you on the radio.
