Regrettably, our first full summer in Rhode Island is coming to a close. It will be great to have all our students back at the University of Rhode Island but the summer here has been delightful. It’s also been very busy. A lot of research, scholarship, and training gets done at URI over the summer – by faculty, research staff, graduate students, undergraduates, and even high school students who work in the facilities and labs. Last week I attended a terrific small poster session, organized by Professor Angela Slitt of the College of Pharmacy, to highlight the research done by students over the summer. Their work was first rate, and the enthusiasm of the students was infectious. And the results of the students’ research are relevant to multiple issues in human health. Dr. Slitt and her students are making a difference.
I also had an opportunity to visit the teams of URI faculty and Rhode Island teachers working on innovative ways to make lasting improvements in the teaching and learning of science in our middle schools and high schools. This program, known as the Rhode Island Technology Enhanced Science (“RITES”) Program is a partnership between URI, RIC, Johnston Public Schools, and RIDE, with the participation of school districts and teachers across the state. Supported by a major grant from the National Science Foundation, the goal is to impact all of the 686 middle and high school science teachers and their over 83,000 students with excellent science teaching materials and practices in order to dramatically improve the quality of science teaching and learning. Judging by the commitment and dedication of the teachers, faculty, and staff I met, they will succeed.
The University of Rhode Island hosts a wide variety of summer events – ranging from the superb Kingston Chamber Music Series, the Summer Writing Conference, and the Balloon Fest. One of unique ones for me was Leapfest, one of the many ways that URI partners with our Armed Services. You can get a good sense of this event from the video on our homepage, which you can also watch here:
These are only a few examples of what goes on at the University of Rhode Island in the summer. I will be writing about several more over the next week or two as we prepare for the start of the fall semester. In the meantime, here are a few more photos from one of my personal highlights for the summer – climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
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