Inauguration of Donald Farish: New RWU President

Last week there were many events tied to the inauguration of Dr. Donald Farish - the new RWU President. (We are actually getting a'two fer' with his wife Maia who is very active on campus as well as in the community!) One of the things that interest me about Dr. Farish's approach to RWU and the community is his desire to ramp up 'continuing education' and online learning in all its aspects. "Given the unemployment crisis facing America, the university must find new ways to prepare “adult learners” — those other than the typical 18- to 22-year-old undergraduate served at Roger Williams University — to find new niches in the workforce and to continue their education." Right now RWU offers online degrees in Criminal Justice and Public Administration. As Dr. Farish puts it, "Getting a BA Degree is no longer a vaccine against ignorance. Booster shots are needed to stay up to date." Because RWU has niche majors in construction management, criminal justice, architecture, law, business and engineering - the CE certification programs, if they ever happen, might be in these related fields - but not exclusively. If you think continuing education is a good idea for RWU, I suggest you email or call the president's office and let them know. Dr. Farish will need your support in persuading the administration and faculty of same. I don't have his email but try dfarish@rwu.edu
Here is a link to a short interview with Dr. Farish by Elizabeth Harrison from WRNI radio on October 13, 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/3pmgy4g
PS: This from a recent article in Providence Business News:
"In BRISTOL, he is working with town officials on several projects, including conversion of the former Wally School into an arts center and preservation of an historic building at Colt State Park."
And this excerpt from PBN on the BUSINESS School.
"I just met [recently] with the dean of the School of Business, Jerry Dauterive, and said, “I really would like you to take a run at developing a program on entrepreneurship.”

We have someone that I’ve met who may be a prospective donor for such a program, to help get it off the ground. That’s something I helped oversee [at Rowan] that was very successful and it would be here as well.

I’ve asked the dean also to take a long, hard look at an MBA program because the idea of combining a law school degree with an MBA is a very attractive educational package and I think we could pull that off quite nicely. … It is very likely we could have an MBA program probably two years from now. … We are doing a needs assessment.