The Community College of Rhode Island is a public community college in Rhode Island. It is the only community college in the state and the largest community college in New England. The college's primary facility is located in Warwick, with additional college buildings throughout the state.
History
It was founded as Rhode Island Junior College, "RIJC", in 1964 with 325 students studying at the Henry Barnard School in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1965, a portion of the nearby former Brown & Sharpe manufacturing facility was converted into classroom space and served as the college's primary facility until 1972. The Knight campus in Warwick, RI built on the donated Knight Estate, opened in 1972 as the school's first permanent building and flagship campus. It was followed by three additional campus and 2 satellite locations. The Margaret M. Jacoby Observatory, located on the Knight Campus grounds, was opened in 1978. The school was renamed the Community College of Rhode Island in June 1980.
Campuses
The college's primary facility is located in Warwick, with additional college buildings throughout the state.
Knight Campus
Flanagan Campus
Liston Campus
Newport County Campus
Downcity Campus-Shephard Building
Satellite Campus-Westerly Education Center
Architecture
The college's flagship Knight building in Warwick was designed by the New York architecture firm of Perkins and Will, in conjunction with local firms Harkness and Geddes and Robinson Green Beretta. The campus was designed to house all academic, social, and recreational functions in a single building. The building itself is an enormous concrete structure which terminates in a semicircle, and ranges in height from four to six stories. The design is a notable example of Brutalist architecture, and was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Le Corbusier. The building was hailed by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission as "one of the most striking and innovative contemporary structures in the state" when it opened in 1972. Over time, the Brutalist style generally lost its appeal and became seen as "drab," "hulking," and "bureaucratic," associated with large-scale mass-planning. In 2019, the Knight campus building made local news after being named "eighth ugliest college campus in the United States" by a lifestyle blog.
The school's student newspaper is The Unfiltered Lens, which began publication in 2007. It replaced the Knightly News, which had been active in the 1980s, but had become defunct several years prior to the Lens' founding.
