 | Side-scan sonar device purchased with a Champlin Foundations grant for the Ocean Engineering Department’s floating lab.
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Champlin Foundations award $405,682The Champlin Foundations awarded four grants totaling $405,682 to the University of Rhode Island to upgrade or create new science laboratories in the nursing, ocean engineering, exercise science, and oceanography departments.
“The generosity of the Champlin Foundations toward URI spans three decades, and thousands of students, faculty and staff across many disciplines at the University have benefited,” said Paul Witham, URI’s associate vice president for development. “This year’s grants are representative of the many technological initiatives at the University that may not have been possible without the Foundations’ support. We are truly grateful.”
Grants funded this year are:
Simulated Critical Care Units: On any given night, the average television viewer can watch medical dramas that feature the latest equipment used in neonatal, pediatric, neurologic, surgical and cardiac intensive care units. Now students who’ve been inspired to become nurses and work with such high-tech equipment will have the opportunity at URI’s College of Nursing.
Through a $105,000 Champlin grant, the college will fully outfit a new adult and neonatal intensive care lab. The nursing skills labs are integral parts of the curriculum of the college, which has approximately 400 students. The grant will allow the college to update these labs, originally designed in the 1970s when the college’s home, White Hall, was built.
Floating Ocean Engineering Lab: Several ocean engineering courses are held almost entirely on the CT-1, the department’s research vessel, but much of the measurement equipment on the vessel is outdated. A $100,000 Champlin grant will allow for the purchase of a side-scan sonar with sub-bottom profiler so students can conduct high resolution mapping of the seabed and its underlying geology. An advanced water quality monitoring system will also be purchased to measure water pressure, salinity, temperature, pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen.
Undergraduate enrollment in URI’s ocean engineering program jumped 30 percent in the two years after its students won the National Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition in 2000. Department chairman Stephan Grilli said the floating lab will “build our capacity to meet the needs of an increasing number of students.”
Clinical Exercise Science Lab: The $98,898 grant for a new exercise science laboratory couldn’t have come at a better time, as increasing scientific evidence points to lack of physical activity as a major risk factor for such conditions as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, lower back pain, and some forms of cancer.
“This grant will allow us to provide clinical experiences with state-of-the-art equipment,” said Deborah Riebe, associate professor of exercise science. “By improving experiential instruction, students will have the opportunity to develop clinical skills to improve their ability to work with healthy individuals as well as those with chronic diseases.” The grant will fund the purchase of a dual chamber plethysmograph, a metabolic stress testing system, lactate analyzers, and resistance training equipment.
Fluid Flow Instrumentation: Students face a tremendous challenge when it comes to understanding even the simplest fluid flows, and yet a basic understanding of fluid dynamics is essential to a broad range of academic disciplines. Graduate School of Oceanography students will now be able to visualize fluid flow through the acquisition of a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system.
Used in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics lab, the $101,640 PIV system uses laser sheet lighting and computer image analysis to capture turbulent fluid motion. This leads to images and movies of fluid motion impossible to identify by sight but of great value in teaching the fundamentals of fluid flow. Included in the system is a laser, digital camera, and software for processing the imagery. The equipment will be used to study waves, the flow of water, and the flow of magma.
By Todd McLeish
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