Records of the President, Carl R. Woodward (Rec. Gr. 1.8)

Biographical note

Carl Raymond Woodward, the fifth president of the then Rhode Island State College, was born on a farm in rural New Jersey in 1890. An educational career that culminated in the presidency of Rhode Island's land grant college began in a one-room schoolhouse near his home. After graduation from Rutgers University in 1914, Woodward joined the staff of his alma mater a year later, serving in a variety of capacities over the next twenty-six years. In the interim, he earned a Ph.D. in rural education from Cornell University.

After a year of negotiations, Woodward assumed the presidency of Rhode Island State College in November, 1941. His tenure began at a trying time for both the College and the nation. The nation was on the brink of a war that would begin five weeks after Woodward assumed office, and the College had just endured an often bitter confrontation between the Board of Trustees and former President Bressler that ended only with Bressler's loss of a court suit to regain his job. Woodward led the College through the difficult war and post-war years of the forties when enrollment bottomed out at 363 in early 1944 and peaked at 3200 in early 1946. Under his direction the academic program expanded and the physical plant grew to accommodate the new offerings. In 1951, Rhode Island State College achieved university status as it became the University of Rhode Island by legislative enactment.

Woodward retired from the presidency in June, 1958 after nearly seventeen years at the helm, the second longest tenure of any Rhode Island president. He built a home in Kingston and remained active in community and University affairs until his death from a heart attack in 1974 at the age of eighty-four.