Nancy Carriuolo takes over as the new president of RIC today. “For me, the power of education is that it allows you to go anywhere,” says the upstate New York native. The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — Nancy Carriuolo, who today becomes the ninth president of Rhode Island College, understands the college she will lead and the students it attracts. Roughly 40 years ago, she was one of them.

Back then, she was Nancy Munzert and a student at the State University of New York’s Brockport campus, not far from the upstate farm where she grew up.

The daughter of William, a machinist-farmer who left school after sixth grade, and Monica, a graduate of ninth grade who went on to work in a cannery, Nancy was the first in her family to finish high school and attend college.

Her background mirrors that of many RIC students.

“I went to a college not unlike Rhode Island College,” said Carriuolo, 59, in an interview last week. “I came from a low-income family and was a first-generation college student. My grandparents were immigrants. So for me to go to college and later on to get a Ph.D. was a huge leap.

“For me, the power of education is that it allows you to go anywhere, really, in terms of your career and in terms of traveling the world.”

Today, without much fanfare, Carriuolo becomes the ninth president of Rhode Island College. She succeeds John Nazarian, who served as RIC’s president since 1990 and worked at the college for 50 years.

Apart from a morning news conference, Carriuolo’s day will be routine — a series of meetings, including one on the tight budget facing the college for the coming academic year. A formal inauguration will be held in the fall or next spring.

But, it is not an ordinary day, not for Carriuolo, nor the state’s oldest public institution of higher education. Carriuolo, an early riser who usually gets just five hours of sleep and checks her BlackBerry the instant she wakes up, says she is both excited and nervous about her new position.

“I’ve had experience being in charge and having people depending on me and making decisions,” she says. “But before, I’ve been in charge of pieces of the patchwork quilt. I’ve never had the whole quilt. That’s what’s exciting to me.”

Carriuolo, only the second female president in the college’s 154 years, is aware that she is entering a level of leadership few women in Rhode Island have reached. Neither the University of Rhode Island nor the Community College of Rhode Island, the state’s two other public colleges, have had a woman as president.“I’ve had women come up to me in the supermarket to wish me well,” Carriuolo says. “It’s another reason why I have to be successful. I tell them, ‘I will do my best.’ ”

The fact that Carriuolo’s background melds so nicely with RIC’s mission — serving first-generation students and training thousands of the state’s teachers, nurses and social workers — appealed to the presidential search committee.

“A lot of the other finalists we interviewed were applying all over the place and they just wanted to be a college president,” said Nazarian. “Nancy was different because she wanted to be president of Rhode Island College. She believes in what Rhode Island College stands for and she wants to be the president here, not just anywhere.”

Carriuolo faces a challenging budget year, as lawmakers cut more than $17 million from higher education, and RIC students must bear a 9.8-percent tuition-and-fee increase to help cover the shortfall. In addition, more than 50 faculty and staff retired or left this spring, many taking advantage of a one-time early-retirement bonus. Carriuolo and her staff will need to figure how many people they can afford to replace this fall.

She says she intends to be as accessible to students and faculty as Nazarian was. She has already met with union officials, student leaders and faculty.

Carriuolo also plans to establish the state’s STEM Center, which will train classroom teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by January, increase fundraising at the Rhode Island College Foundation and expand RIC’s continuing education courses.

Carriuolo came to work in Rhode Island in 2000 from the University of New Haven, where she held several positions, including dean, assistant provost and tenured English professor, from 1980-1990 and again from 1994-2000. She was a director with the accrediting organization, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, from 1990-1994.

For the past year, Carriuolo juggled two jobs, working alongside RIC’s faculty and administration as interim vice president for academic affairs, as well as her regular job as deputy commissioner and chief academic officer at the Rhode Island Office of Higher Education — a position she’s held since 2000.

People who have worked closely with Carriuolo say her experience as an administrator, dean and academic affairs officer give her a broad understanding of higher education and budget issues.

“She makes sound judgments and good decisions and she understands how to consult with people to make those decisions,” said Jack Warner, Rhode Island’s commissioner of higher education. “One of her strongest skills is strategic planning, particularly with budget decisions. She has the ability to say what’s important and what’s not and to decide where to invest scarce resources.”

While a relative newcomer to Rhode Island, Carriuolo’s ties to the state go back to her courtship with her husband, Ralf E. Carriuolo, a retired music professor who grew up on Federal Hill. For 26 years, the couple owned a summer home on Harbor Island in Narragansett where they vacationed with their son, Matthew.

They have since sold the summer house and now live on Providence’s East Side. Matthew, a Brown University graduate, is a physics teacher in Connecticut.

“What you see is what you get,” Ralf Carriuolo says of his wife’s straightforward style. “Nancy is a very unusual woman. She’s a blend of a down-home farm girl and a sophisticated, technology-smart manager.”

Ivy Locke, RIC’s vice president of administration and finance, has worked closely with Carriuolo over the past year.

“We’ve found her to be approachable and decisive and very attentive,” Locke said. “But I think the most significant thing about her is she loves Rhode Island and Rhode Island College.”

jjordan@projo.com