Roy J. Nirschel, Ph.D.
President

When Dr. Nirschel became President of Roger Williams University in August 2001, the Rhode Island liberal arts institution had been poised for growth. Since then, President Nirschel has profoundly transformed the University. He introduced the first participatory planning process in Roger Williams history, and he became the first University president to formulate and articulate the institution's core values and clarify its mission.

In the past five years, Roger Williams has:

• Increased enrollment by 50 percent.
• Doubled the number of applicants. 
• Lowered acceptance rate by 23 percent. 
• Improved graduation rate by 50 percent. 
• Grown the endowment from $37 million to nearly $100 million. 
• Hired 80 full-time faculty members, almost a third of the total faculty.

Citing the extraordinary growth of Roger Williams under his command, University Business magazine named President Nirschel one of five “Rising Stars” in higher education in November 2006. The magazine—a respected publication targeted to university presidents and higher education administrators across North America—recognized President Nirschel for his vision and leadership during the University’s remarkable transformation since he arrived in 2001.

President Nirschel is the first person in his family to attend college. Prior to joining Roger Williams, he served three years as president of Newbury College in Brookline, Mass. From 1991 to 1998, he was vice president for university advancement at the University of Miami. There he was instrumental in increasing private philanthropy to $84 million and created an international advisory board that included the chief executives of Bacardi and Goya Foods and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, among others.

President Nirschel also led the "branding" and institutional repositioning effort at Miami. He previously served as an assistant vice president and director of development and alumni affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and director of development and alumni relations at the University of Hartford. President Nirschel earned a Ph.D. in higher education and a master’s of public administration from the University of Miami and a bachelor’s degree from Southern Connecticut State University.