I don't think it has changed much...if you couldn't get into URI, there was always Keene State. :)
One now deceased faculty member was the 30s/40s actress Kate Linaker. She did a live interview on a drive time show a couple of years before she died.
She'd be in big trouble now for appearing in four "Charlie Chan" films with white actors playing Charlie Chan, and as a screen writer on the original "The Blob" that came up with freezing the blob with CO2 fire extinguishers, adding all the CO2 to cause AGW.