Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) president Meghan Hughes, her leadership team, and professional staff moved their Caring Campus efforts from planning to implementation with their IEBC Caring Campus coach Ken Sherwood guiding a joint session recently. The Community College of Rhode Island is the largest community college in New England. The college’s primary facility is in Warwick, with additional college buildings throughout the state.
Funded by a grant from the ECMC Foundation, CCRI began its Caring Campus coaching for professional staff in December 2021, completing its coaching sessions this spring. The recent joint session at the Knight Campus in Warwick brought college leadership together to meet with the professional staff, who had identified their behavioral commitments and developed implementation, monitoring, and communication plans. Staff presented their impressive commitments and plans to college leadership who then identified behaviors they’ll engage in to support implementation, monitoring, and celebration of the work to institutionalize and sustain culture change at the college.
Caring Campus is now being implemented at community colleges from coast to coast in 19 states.