Candidate focuses on research mission, future of URI students during open forum

04/29/09 - David Dooley, the last of three finalists in the University of Rhode Island presidential search, answered questions for students and faculty during an open forum yesterday."We need to educate students for careers that do not exist, based on knowledge that has not been discovered, and technologies that have not been developed," Dooley said to a crowd of roughly 100 in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Dooley is the provost and chief academic officer at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont., and former chemistry department chairman at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Dooley was introduced as being known for his ability to fundraise effectively for university research missions. At Montana State, he was able to turn a research budget of almost nothing to roughly $100 million over the last nine years, according to an article in the Providence Journal.

"A research mission is so critical because it is on the creative cutting edge of the modern land grant university," Dooley said.

Dooley said the ability to "push the discovery of knowledge" could be attained through working together as a community and by creating research opportunities for the students.

"The community is like a body," Dooley said. "We don't all have the same function, we don't all do the same things and we have to respect all of the roles. We have to think of ourselves as a body of parts of one whole."

Many of the questions directed toward Dooley involved economic issues. Whether it was the affordability of the tuition at URI, appropriations for research money, grant writing and fundraisers, or the lack of state funding, Dooley approached each question similarly.

Dooley said URI needs to enlist students as allies to show the state the difference their investment is making.

To better the economic state of the university, Dooley said more partnerships with the private sector are necessary in addition to strengthening alumni ties and continuing to write grants to keep fundraising progressing.

Dooley mentioned during the open forum that since the Great Depression, there has been roughly 30 recessions, "and they all had one thing in common: they ended."

This type of optimism received a few smiles from the crowd of mostly faculty.

"Usually my wife has the role as the incurable optimist and as a scientist I follow data and sometimes in her mind it makes me a little too pessimistic," Dooley said. "But I don't think we need to accept the extrapolation that in a few years time, URI will have essentially no support from the state of Rhode Island."

Director of Budget and Financial Planning Linda Barrett asked Dooley what motivated him.

"I love what I do, I love science, I love teaching and I love the whole academic enterprise," he said. "It is about coming to a place and making a difference in the lives of students."

On the ever-pressing URI dry campus policy, Dooley said that he is a man of data, and that any policy can warrant a re-examination.

In reference to the past, he said current URI President Robert L. Carothers took a necessary step at the time he implemented the dry campus policy.

Dooley is a California native who received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of California at San Diego in 1974 and a doctorate in chemistry from California Institute of Technology in 1979.