Carothers, passionate about gardening, landscaping and carpentry, does some work Friday outside his Saunderstown home.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

SOUTH KINGSTOWN

During the last 18 years, the University of Rhode Island has made giant leaps. The state’s only public university is bigger and academically better and has millions of dollars more in its endowment.

Accomplishing such massive change during a period of sharply declining state support “really speaks to the grit of URI, its creativity, its feisty nature,” says Robert L. Carothers, the university’s president since 1991.

It also speaks to Carothers’ leadership.

Carothers, one of the country’s longest-serving university presidents and, arguably, the most effective in URI’s 117-year history, steps down as its 10th president June 30.

His tenure hasn’t always been smooth.

A decade ago, he faced what he calls “the battle for my life.”

Despite eight successful years at the helm, he landed in hot water in 1999 after he spoke with characteristic candor about the state’s waning financial commitment to its flagship research institution. The comments were perceived as critical of his bosses, the Board of Governors for Higher Education, and, more significantly, of one of URI’s best-known alumni, then-Gov. Lincoln C. Almond.

At the time, Carothers’ contract was coming up for renewal, and the leadership of the board told the president privately that he would not be reappointed.

After conferring with trusted advisers, Carothers made the strategic decision to fight.

A three-month political drama unfolded.

The university’s constituents — faculty, students and alumni and plenty of outsiders including business leaders, the minority community, state legislators and even a congressman –– rallied, lobbied and fought to keep him. Against the odds, Carothers survived, his presidency strengthened by the ordeal.

“In this world, you’ve got to fight,” Carothers, 66, said recently of URI. He could have been talking about himself.

THE INSTITUTION he turns over to a successor July 1 is a much different place from the one he inherited in 1991.

The makeup and the quality of the student body has changed. The number of students from minority groups has more than doubled. The $13-million, merit-based Centennial Scholarship program has brought hundreds of students who were accepted to the country’s most selective colleges to the Kingston campus instead, boosting the university’s SAT score and academic culture. Undergraduate enrollment is up 2,400, to 13,000 students, roughly half of them from out of state.

Physically, the campus has been transformed. Dormitories once so shabby they deterred students from attending have been upgraded and renovated. The dilapidated frat houses that used to line Lower College Road are mostly gone, replaced by spruced up academic buildings. Dozens of new structures dot the campus, including millions of dollars’ worth of residence halls and academic buildings.

Fundraising has increased exponentially. Donations have flowed to the university, now in the midst of a $100-million capital campaign. The endowment has grown from $12 million to $89 million. URI’s reputation has evolved from that of a party school to a dry campus and into one recognized for its community involvement and volunteerism.

Carothers’ more profound legacy, however, lies beyond the tangible.

“What Bob Carothers has done is given pride back to the institution,” said Robert A. Weygand, URI’s vice president of administration. “Alums have told me they have gone into their closet and dusted off that diploma and put it on the wall because they were proud they went here.”

CAROTHERS WAS 48 and the chancellor of Minnesota’s state university system when he was hired to lead URI.

He grew up in western Pennsylvania and, by his own description, was a mediocre student. He ended up at a small college near Erie, Pa., now called Edinboro University, where he fell in love with literature and the academic life.

After teaching English at Edinboro, Carothers moved into the administrative ranks. He married, had two children, and received a law degree at night. He served as president of Southwest State University in Minnesota from 1983 to 1986 before taking over as chancellor of the system.

Moving to Rhode Island, he quickly learned that public life was all about politics, not policy. Shortly after he arrived, influential politicians made not-so-subtle overtures to get their friends jobs at the university. When Carothers failed to comply, the requests dwindled.

He made a strong impression on the faculty, recalled Judith Swift, a professor who has served as vice provost of academic affairs and as a special assistant to Carothers.

“I remember it vividly,” she said. “He said in one of his first addresses to the faculty that we were a research institution and how it was absolutely vital that we bring in undergraduates and show them the value of research and how it related to their learning. He talked about service learning, experiential learning, things that at the time were very cutting-edge.”

“He understood the connection between student life and academics, and how what happens outside of the classroom needs to be treated as a learning experience as much as what happens in the classroom.”

This connection prompted Carothers to crack down on underage and binge drinking. URI landed on top of the Princeton Review’s list of party schools three years in a row in the early 1990s. After toughening penalties for alcohol possession and banning alcohol from all campus events, he received several national leadership awards.

“In a period of 10 years, he completely changed the place,” said former state Rep. John Patrick Shanley, of South Kingstown.

IN AN INTERVIEW in his office at Green Hall a few weeks ago, Carothers leaned back in a rocking chair he bought for $4 in 1966 and talked about one moment early in his presidency that he called “the most important thing I did here.”

In 1992, 300 minority students occupied Taft Hall and refused to leave until administrators addressed their list of demands to hire more minority faculty, offer more African-American history courses and renovate the campus multicultural center.

Carothers, who was at a conference in New Orleans, flew home to try to defuse the crisis. But his flight was diverted and his trip ended up taking nine hours.

“When I started, the question was how to get the students out of the building,” Carothers said. “By the time I arrived in Rhode Island, the question was, ‘How do I harness the moral energy in that building to transform the university?’ It was important to make heroes out of those kids. They were passionate and they believed in the power of people to change things.”

More minority faculty were hired. The university actively recruited diverse students. A new multicultural center was built, and renowned civil rights leader Bernard LaFayette Jr. was hired to direct the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies.

Carothers also understood the critical importance of fundraising and building a donor network, said Bob Beagle, URI’s vice president for advancement. “Bob himself has been very active within the state, active in selling the university,” Beagle said.

Carothers’ biggest regret is failing to win more state support for public higher education. This year, the state is contributing just 11 percent of URI’s operating budget. When he arrived in Kingston, the state contributed 28.8 percent.

“We haven’t been able to change the trend away from losing state money,” Carothers said. “You think, if we just explain it to [legislators], they’ll understand how important we are and they’ll just give us the money. But it just doesn’t work that way.”

Students normally don’t have much contact with their president, but Carothers turned out for award ceremonies and even smaller events where students were being honored.

“Whenever a student won an award, he would want to announce it to fanfare and a cake,” said Cheryl Foster, professor and former associate director of the honors program.

Carothers’ creation, in 1995, of the Centennial Scholarship “changed the face of the student body,” Foster said.

“What was cool was he didn’t just try to remake URI in the image of Brown or Swarthmore,” she said. “He combined the best of the land grant tradition that serves the public good with a commitment to academic excellence and the liberal arts. For a community like ours, with a lot of working-class and first-generation students, that’s the kind of leader we needed. Someone who was down-to-earth but who set aspirational goals.”

CAROTHERS INSISTS HE IS not retiring. He will continue to live at his house in Saunderstown with his wife, Jayne Richmond, a dean at URI. They married in 2002 and together helped raise her son, Sam Pittle, 21, and Carothers’ youngest son, Matthew, 22, whom he and his former wife adopted from Korea.

Carothers is an avid gardener and landscaper and a woodworker, building Adirondack chairs, picnic tables and the deck off the back of his house.

“This fall I will take a sabbatical leave,” he said. “I haven’t had a semester off in 33 years.” He says he wants to give the new president, who will be announced May 11, room to settle in. Carothers plans to read, write poetry and begin writing books. He hopes to remain involved in URI’s role to improve Central Falls High School, a project he championed.

For the past couple of summers, he and his older son, Robb, have been building a house in the woods of Minnesota that is made of straw and will run on solar energy. He plans to visit his daughter, Shelly, who lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and eight children, six of whom are adopted and have special needs.

He will also brush up on recent research for a graduate course he will teach in the spring at the university’s leadership studies department.

“It’s hard for me to imagine not being here in the fall, for the rhythm of September,” he said. “This is a great job. Where else do you get all these people working hard to think better? Where else do you get your own football team?”

URI Web site on Carothers: www.uri.edu/president_carothers_tribute/

Carothers highlights

1991 Carothers named URI’s 10th president

1992 Black students take over Taft Hall

1993 $13.5-million library expansion

1994 URI named a top party school by Princeton Review (again in 1995, 1996); URI launches first $50-million capital campaign; $67 million raised by 1997

1995 Carothers institutes tougher alcohol policy; creates merit-based Centennial Scholarships

1996 Carothers forfeits football game after team assaults fraternity brothers. Providence campus moves to Shepard Building

1999 Carothers nearly loses his job after a public falling out with his bosses over state financial support for URI; creates Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies

2000 $64-million renovation of dormitories begins

2001 Alcohol banned from all campus events

2002 $54-million Ryan Convocation Center; $12-million Boss Ice Arena; and URI Foundation Building

2003 $11-million Ballentine Hall and $6.25 million Green Hall renovations

2005 URI named a “college with a conscience” by Princeton Review, for its community involvement

2006 Swan (Independence) Hall and Meade Stadium renovated; $74 million to build three dormitories

2007 URI launches public phase of $100-million capital campaign; establishes partnership to improve Central Falls High School; $23 million Hope Commons dining center opens

2008 Carothers announces he will step down June 30, 2009

2009 Carothers presides over last commencement having awarded degrees to about 43,000 students during his tenure; capital campaign reaches $89 million; $60-million biotechnology center opens; construction starts on $65-million pharmacy building; library renamed the Robert L. Carothers Library and Learning Commons

jjordan@projo.com