Roger Williams University (RWU) is a private university in Bristol, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1956, it was named for theologian and Rhode Island cofounder Roger Williams. The school enrolled approximately 4,400 undergraduate and graduate students and employs over 480 academic staff as of 2022.
The university’s operations date to 1919, when Northeastern University in Boston opened a branch campus in the YMCA building in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1940, the YMCA board of directors began directing the school, and the YMCA Institute granted its first associate's degrees in 1948. In 1956, the institute received a state charter to become a two-year, degree-granting institution under the name of Roger Williams Junior College.[citation needed]
During the 1960s, the school began granting bachelor's degrees, and in 1967 subsequently adopted the name Roger Williams College. Needing a larger campus, the college purchased 80 acres (32 ha) of waterfront land and moved its main campus to Bristol in 1969. In 1989 new president Dr. Natale A. Sicuro initiated the Roger Williams Plan for the 1990s, and became concurrently the president of the newly established Roger Williams University School of Law and, in 1992, led the change to Roger Williams University. RWU celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006.[3]
Ioannis Miaoulis was appointed the eleventh president of Roger Williams University in 2019.[4] Miaoulis previously served as both the president and director of the Boston Museum of Science since 2003.
In 2012, Roger Williams University initiated a tuition freeze in which all entering freshmen would have a guarantee that their tuition would not increase for the next four years.[5] In 2019, the university terminated this policy.[6]
On September 21, 2017, music icons The Beach Boys were honored by Roger Williams University and music historians Al Gomes and Connie Watrous of Big Noise. Plaques were unveiled at the university's Baypoint Inn & Conference Center in Portsmouth, Rhode Island to commemorate the band's concert there on September 22, 1971. The 1971 concert was the first-ever appearance of South African Ricky Fataar as an official member of the band and Filipino Billy Hinsche as a touring member, essentially changing The Beach Boys' live and recording act's line-up into a multi-cultural group. Diversity is a credo of Roger Williams University, which is why the school chose to celebrate this moment in the band's history.[7][8]
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_University
- https://www.rwu.edu/
