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Cast your vote! We hope you will participate in the election of Alumni Association Executive Board committee members. You can review the nominees and cast your ballots online. Deadline is May 30. You may either vote for the nominee or write in the name of the candidate of your choice. To protect your privacy, log in is required. Thank you for taking the time to vote! Please note: Only alumni may participate.

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Alumni Golf Tournament coming up soon Register online today for the Alumni Golf Tournament, which will be held on Monday, June 2, at Valley Country Club in Warwick. Enjoy your favorite game with fellow alumni and friends, and help support student scholarships!

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Family Time This will be the eighth year for our Alumni Family Camp, two days of fun summer activities for adults and kids of all ages. URI Alumni Family Camp will be held July 18-20. All the details and information about registration will be available soon. Save the date!

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RI International Film Festival The Alumni Association invites you to opening night of the Rhode Island International Film Festival at the Providence Performing Arts Center. The group alumni rate is $35 for the premiere and the post-screening gala (a savings of $25). Online registration is available.

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Call for nominations The Alumni Association is seeking nominations for the 2008 Ram Award and the Honorary Alumnus Award. The Ram Award recognizes an individual who has unselfishly dedicated his or her efforts toward the betterment of the Alumni Association and/or the University as a whole, for a minimum of 25 years. The Honorary Alumnus Award recognizes a non-alumnus who has made extraordinary efforts to advance the goals of the University and the Alumni Association. Deadline for nominations is May 30.

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At the chapters On June 1, the Washington D.C. Area Chapter is heading to Oriole Park at Camden Yards to take in the Orioles-Red Sox game and a pre-game Alumni Association barbecue. On June 3, the Theta Chi Alumni Chapter is hosting a golf tournament and clambake to celebrate their 10th anniversary, and on June 15, the Ohio Chapter is planning a picnic and afternoon at the ballpark. Find out more.

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Meet the URI Class of 2008 Senior political science major Gabriel Mancuso has been selected as student speaker at the 2008 Commencement, which will be held on Sunday, May 18. Founding member and the outgoing president of the Pre-Law Society, Mancuso also helped develop a volunteer peer tutoring program in conjunction with URI's Academic Enhancement Center, and organized and helped moderate the first debate between College Democrats and College Republicans. Read more about Gabe and some of the other accomplished members of the the University of Rhode Island Class of 2008. More...

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Engineer develops Thermosuit® for rapid cooling of critically ill patients A University of Rhode Island biomedical engineering professor has launched a company to market a unique system, which he co-invented, that rapidly reduces body temperature in emergency situations to aid in patients' recovery from heart attacks and other serious illnesses. William Ohley, who has taught in the College of Engineering for 28 years, joined with medical colleagues in Louisiana and New Jersey to form Life Recovery Systems after developing what they call the Thermosuit®, a plastic suit that encases unconscious patients to flood their bodies with cold water, inducing hypothermia. More...

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URI analysis of rare textiles from Honduras ruins suggests Mayans produced fine fabrics Very few textiles from the Mayan culture have survived, so the fabrics excavated from a tomb at the Copán ruins in Honduras since the 1990s have generated considerable excitement. Textiles conservator Margaret Ordoñez, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, spent a month at the site in 2004 examining 100 textile samples found in a tomb, and has been analyzing tiny fragments of 49 samples she brought back to her lab to see what she could learn from them. The tomb, one of three excavated by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania, was of a woman of high status who was buried during the fifth century. More...

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English professor named Woman of the Year Professor of English Dorothy F. Donnelly has been named the 2008 Woman of the Year by URI's Association for Professional and Academic Women. Throughout her 25-year teaching career, Donnelly has made a lasting impact. She has served as chair of the English Department and chair of the URI Faculty Senate. She led the effort on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to organize and assist part-time faculty. Recently, Donnelly proposed a Faculty Development Program for the College of Arts and Sciences. More

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Gateway Café opens doors for survivors of Traumatic Brain Injury The University of Rhode Island's Gateway Café, located in the Independence Square Facility, provides a venue for individuals with traumatic brain injury or stroke to interact socially with one another. Billie Connors, director of the URI Speech and Hearing Center, and Dana Kovarsky, URI professor of communicative disorders, are co-directors of the Gateway Café. "Every year about 1.4 million people suffer traumatic brain injury, and this doesn’t even include war veterans," said Kovarsky. Furthermore, "within two years of having a traumatic brain injury, individuals can lose up to 90 percent of their friends." More...

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Oceanographer's novel is climbing the charts Padma Venkatraman is an adjunct professor of oceanography at URI. Her recently released debut novel Climbing the Stairs received a starred review in the April 15 issue of Booklist and was named a Book Sense "notable pick" for May. Climbing the Stairs is about a female adolescent growing up in India at the time of Gandhi's nonviolence movement for Indian independence, and is based loosely on the experiences of Venkatraman's mother during World War II in the final years of British-occupied India. More...

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On the calendar Art appraisal experts will visit URI on May 31 for an arts roadshow-style event, a fund-raiser for the URI Fine Arts Center Galleries. The annual Rhody Charity Yard Sale will be held June 7, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. in Keaney Parking Lot (rain date: June 8). Proceeds benefit the Rhody Scholarship Endowment. To learn more, contribute items, or rent a table to sell your own treasures, contact Gerri Beagle at gbeagle@foundation.uri.edu. Registration is open for the second URI Ocean State Summer Writing Conference, held in Kingston June 19-21. A variety of camps and programs for kids and adults will be offered at URI this summer. More...