Focus on the Colleges

Arts & Sciences

Marine Affairs graduate student Tiffany Smythe, a Coast Guard-licensed ship’s captain and former competitive sailor at Columbia University, was awarded the 2005 Ann Hershfang Graduate Scholarship by the Boston chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar. The scholarship provides Smythe with $1,500 toward graduate studies and enters her into a national competition for the $6,000 Helene M. Overly Memorial Graduate Scholarship.

§ A new endowment has been established to provide scholarships for students who demonstrate a mastery of English in either their fictional or non-fictional work. The Spencer Award is named after the late Gertrude Spencer, a former English teacher who created a charitable trust to take effect after her death. The endowment was established with an initial $25,000 gift, but at least $100,000 will be donated over the next four years.

Engineering

Junior Meghan Leclerc has received the Ronald Jalbert Scholarship in recognition of her academic excellence in the Department of Civil Engineering. After graduation, she plans to pursue a master’s degree and to become a geotechnical design engineer.

Feinstein College of Continuing Education

Nicole Crothers, a graduate student studying cytotechnology, was recently awarded a highly competitive scholarship from the American Society of Clinical Pathology. Cytopathology is the microscopic study of cellular samples from body tissues, and cytotechnologists are the medical laboratory professionals who evaluate these samples to detect evidence of disease at the cellular level. Crothers is the first URI student to receive this award.

Jeff and Maria Collins and their children in their new home with Dean Lynn McKinney (in back), professors Karen McCurdy and Susan Roush (front), and at far right, Jean Leo Gagnier, vice president on the board of South County Habitat for Humanity.

Human Science & Services

A new book, Twentieth-Century American Fashion (Berg Publishers), edited by Linda Welters, right, chair of the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising, and Design, and Patricia Cunningham of Ohio State University, traces the socio-political, cultural, and economic changes that have shaped American fashion over the last century.

§ On April 2, 2005, the College of Human Science and Services and South County Habitat for Humanity celebrated the completion of a new home in Westerly. The college initiated the construction as a community service project in celebration of its 25th anniversary and took the lead in raising funds and finding volunteers to build the home.

§ A patient requires a small-diameter bypass graft to replace a diseased blood vessel, but his veins can no longer be used for such a procedure. While artificial arteries can replace large blood vessels, the creation of a small-diameter artificial artery has so far been unsuccessful. Now textile chemist Martin Bide has joined a team hat is working to develop a new way to synthesize such grafts from material made of polyester and collagen.

§ The Cranston Print Works Foundation has pledged $25,000 to establish an endowed scholarship fund for students enrolled in the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising, and Design. Currently, there are just two scholarships designated exclusively for TMD students. Cranston Print Works is the oldest textile printing company in the nation.

Nursing

For a few years now, Dean Dayle Joseph has wanted to renovate space on the second floor of White Hall for a new, more welcoming student/faculty center. Thanks to a recent $25,000 donation from the Journal Register Co., Joseph is on her way to reaching the $200,000 goal for the project.

Graduate School of Oceanography

Ninety-two subsurface floats were loaded on a truck for the start of a long scientific voyage in January 2003. One of them has been unexpectedly returned to Professors David Hebert and Thomas Rossby thanks to a fisherman working off the coast of the West African country of Guinea. The floats - oceanographic instruments that measure water temperature, pressure, and oxygen content every six hours - were being used as part of a National Science Foundation-funded research project to determine the processes that mix water in the ocean horizontally.

§ Professors Chris Kincaid and Deanna Bergondo have received a two-year, $157,000 grant from the Narragansett Bay Commission to develop a computer model for tracking and predicting the dispersion of water from the commission’s water treatment facilities within the Providence River and Narragansett Bay.