Edward Liston (1999)

Edward Liston’s experience in community colleges stretches over 40 years from coast to coast.  Before being appointed as CCRI’s second president in 1978, he served as president of Los Angeles Pierce College, a community college in Woodland Hills, Calif., for five years, he was founding president of Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Conn. and has served on the faculty at Jefferson Community College in Watertown, N.Y. as well as Rockland Community College in Suffern, N.Y.  In the beginning of his tenure, he officially changed the college’s name from Rhode Island Junior College (RIJC) to Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI).  Liston oversaw the construction and planning for the urban Providence campus, which opened in 1990. At the end of his presidency, he was laying the groundwork for the future, including a major expansion of the Knight Campus, an addition to the Providence campus and the development of a fourth campus on Aquidneck Island.  It was Liston’s support that paralleled the growth and success of CCRI’s athletic program and of the Community College itself in the eighties and nineties.  He had an incredible ability to develop close relationships with the business community and the local high schools helped in effort to create programs at CCRI that are now national models.  Liston served as a member of the Board of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and the Chairman of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges; he was elected to 2 terms on the NJCAA Executive Board and was appointed as the liaison to the Athletic Council of the AACC.  In 2000, Liston retired from CCRI and published a book, “Recollections of a Pioneer President” to document the milestones of the college’s history. To honor him for his positive impact on CCRI and its graduates, the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education voted to name the Providence campus the Edward J. Liston Campus. He was inducted in the college’s Hall of Fame in 2002.