One
of the most frequent questions I get following commencement until Labor Day is
something along the lines of: “Must be nice to have a break; are things pretty
quiet at URI?” I have previously
commented on the University of Rhode Island’s summer (in 2010), but 2014 and
the summers that immediately preceded it have been extraordinary, and warrant
some comment here.
The
campus hosted over 57,000 people this summer, in programs and events that
included the Rhode Island Special Olympics, the US Youth Soccer Association
Region 1 Tournament, the RI National Guard parachute competition, multiple
sports camps, and numerous educational and research programs. I will highlight some of these, but first I
want to thank the staff, faculty, and managers who made all of these programs
so successful. Staff from URI’s
maintenance, grounds, custodial, residence life, and dining operations were simply
outstanding. So also were the essential administrative and support staff from
all the divisions of the university. In
addition to creating, teaching, or supervising numerous special or intensive
summer programs, the faculty of URI taught 5,250 students over the summer, and
directed the research and scholarly work of hundreds of graduate and
undergraduate students. Thanks again, to
you all.
In
order to keep this post to a readable length, I can only mention some of the
highlights of an extremely busy summer, a summer with far too little South
County beach time. Noteworthy events and
programs include:
- The annual Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) conference, supported by the NSF and NIH, featured 138 posters by undergraduates and over 400 attendees from URI and the other eight participating colleges and universities in Rhode Island, (see http://web.uri.edu/surfconference/)
- The Graduate School of Oceanography also provides a SURF program in oceanography, which included undergraduates from 14 colleges and universities across the country, and is in its 30th year, see http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/?id=7144
- The Kingston Chamber Musical Festival, hosted and supported by URI, celebrated its 26th season with eight near-capacity concerts featuring “many of the world’s finest solo and chamber music artists” – to quote Artistic Director Natalie Zhu.
- URI presented its Eighth Annual Ocean State Writer’s Conference with 176 attendees, which has become one of the premier writer’s conferences in the northeast; the link for this summer’s conference is http://www.uri.edu/summerwriting/2014/index.html
- URI has an expanding array of special educational programs for international students, including the International Summer Engineering Academy and multiple Summer Cultural Exchange Programs for students from China and Taiwan; students in the latter programs study either Finance and Investment or Global Enterprise Management, as well as English.
- Intensive
language programs involved dozens of students in the study of German and
Chinese; in addition a new program for middle- and high-school instructors in
French was launched in 2014, sponsored by the French Embassy in
Washington, D.C., the French Consulate in Boston, and URI’s Modern and
Classical Languages and Literatures Department; see the story on our homepage, http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/?id=7142
There
is much, much more of course, but a final note: approximately 100 of our
student athletes were on campus this summer taking classes, working, and
preparing for their seasons, which reflects their commitment to excellence in
their academic work and in competition.
I
would not be surprised if here may well be folks at the University of Rhode
Island who look upon the fall as the time when things “quiet down”. A modern research university like URI truly
does operate on a 12-month, nearly 365-day calendar. As you know, Lynn, Rhody
and I live on campus and there are truly quiet days – December 25 and January
1.
