  | Selected alumni profiles. Jeffrey Ross ’75Josh Fenton ’85Marco G. Velarde, M.S. ’88Liz Nickerson ’95Nicole Bonuso ’96 | |||||||||||
Class Acts Profiles
Jeffrey Ross ’75 Deep in the Heart of Texas The common boast in Texas is that something—a ranch, for instance— is bigger than the whole state of Rhode Island. Now Jeffrey Ross is giving Texas a different reason to be grateful to little Rhody. A proud Rhode Island native, Dr. Ross is helping to make Texas a healthier place. In 2001, Dr. Ross, a Houston resident, was hand-picked by Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve on the Texas Diabetes Council. Subsequently, he also became co-chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Physical Fitness, a stakeholder member of the State of Texas Obesity Task Force, and an ambassador for the Centers for Disease Control VERB program. VERB promotes physical activity for children ages 9 through 13 and is being piloted in Houston. A sports medicine podiatrist who recently received his M.D., Dr. Ross is a self-proclaimed poster-child for nutrition, exercise, and an overall healthy lifestyle. A foot and ankle board certified surgeon and sports medicine specialist, he has an impressive level of physical activity and has run 21 marathons and numerous triathlons. Governor Perry, also an ardent runner, relies on Dr. Ross’s good sense and professional skills. His numerous appointments to crucial Texas health committees are just one mark of the Governor’s respect for Ross. “Mostly the governor just calls me Doc,” laughed Ross. Dr. Ross writes about the obesity epidemic and lectures all over the country. But he hasn’t forgotten his Rhode Island roots. He is always up-to-date on URI events and serves as president of the Texas Alumni Chapter, known as the Rhode Horns. “I think it’s absolutely amazing what is going on at the school,” he remarked. “URI has gotten a lot of impressive grants lately. This is exciting for the future of our University and is what keeps alumni coming back to campus.” —Jennifer Sherwood ’89
Josh Fenton ’85 Field of His Dreams There is nothing lax about Josh Fenton’s approach to life. He’s highly committed to his family (wife, Julie, and their two children) and to his career, and he has been quite busy since getting his journalism degree in 1985. In between, and sometimes concurrently with, stints as minority leader of the Providence City Council, aide to U.S. Senators George Mitchell and the late John Chafee, and as the assistant director of the Department of Environmental Management under former Rhode Island Governors Edward DiPrete, Bruce Sundlun, and Lincoln Almond, he has also found time to complete the Leadership Rhode Island program, earn an M.A. in Environmental Policy from Brown, coach his kids’ lacrosse teams, and even play basketball most Thursday nights. Fenton heads up The Fenton Group, an advertising and public relations firm in Providence. Prior to opening his own shop in early 2003, he worked as a partner at another advertising agency, Trion, which was picked by Adweek magazine as one of the fastest-growing agencies in New England. Fenton gets to have all the fun. In a typical day he might be dreaming up image-shaping campaigns for corporate and non-profit organizations, coaching lacrosse, shooting a TV commercial at an edgy film studio in New York City, playing lacrosse with his kids, or setting up press conferences for his clients. The downside to his abundant energy and numerous talents may be that Fenton has more ideas than he has time to express. His solution to this strategic problem? Cell phone-based multi-tasking. It allows him to meet his commitments in parallel whether he’s taking marketing ideas from concept to completion, coordinating child care with his wife, or rescheduling a rained out (or sometimes snowed out) game. And he hasn’t forgotten his alma mater, even at this pace. Fenton is now serving on the Communications Advisory Committee. —Karin Waldman Welt ’86 ;
Marco G. Velarde, M.S. ’88 A Coastal Affair It’s a long way from Ecuador to Rhode Island, but a shared interest in fisheries and coastal management led Marco G. Velarde to make the move. Velarde is a native Ecuadorian with a passion for conservation and education. He earned an undergraduate degree in engineering at the Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Ecuador and a Master’s in Naval Engineering at the University Federal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before coming to URI in the mid 1980s. Velarde’s journey to URI was set in motion by a meeting with a URI professor who was at ESPOL to advise the institution on how to develop its maritime engineering and marine science departments. The meeting led to ESPOL’s decision to send Velarde to URI. At URI, under the tutelage of Professor John Gates, Velarde earned his M.S. in Resource Economics, with the centerpiece of his work being a paper on the blue crab industry in the United States. It’s an impressive achievement, considering Velarde spoke no English before he arrived in this country. A 16-week intensive course in English at Iowa State University, which he took before coming to URI, helped, but it was still difficult going. According to Velarde, “It was really hard to study in a foreign language, because my background was in engineering. I remember my first course in English at URI—we watched the film The Maltese Falcon. I had to listen carefully in order to understand the close and fast dialogue. It was tough, but I got an A.” Today, Velarde is on the faculty of Maritime Engineering and Marine Sciences at ESPOL, where he is preparing an Innovation and Entrepreneurship course while working in the school’s Sciences Interactive Center for non-formal education in the sciences. He is also a member of the Evaluation and Accreditation National Council for the entire Ecuadorian university system. He recently completed a five-year term as provost of ESPOL. Before that, he twice served as vice dean of the Maritime Engineering and Marine Sciences faculty; he was director of the Humanities and Economics Sciences Institute; and he was the head of the ERSPOL Planning Direction. —Laura Nelson
Liz Nickerson ’95 Running the Marathon for a Cause When a loved one needed Liz Nickerson’s help, she didn’t run away—she entered the Boston Marathon. And now she wants to share the story of her inspired run to increase public awareness of Alzheimer’s disease. In December 2001, Nickerson’s mother was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s. She was only 54 years old. This baffling disease afflicts approximately four million Americans. Continued research is helping to bring about more accurate diagnoses, effective treatment, and an overall better understanding of Alzheimer’s, but it takes money to fight this disease. So Liz Nickerson took her fight to the streets. Nickerson began running in the 1990s shortly after she graduated from URI. She started with a 5K road race and worked her way up to a few 10K races. Taking on the Boston Marathon, however, was something altogether different. “My mom inspired me to achieve my goal of running the Marathon,” Nickerson said. “Before I started training, I hadn’t run more than six miles. I figured that running 26.2 miles is nothing compared to waking up and facing Alzheimer’s every day.” As Nickerson began the grueling task of training for the race, her mother became her #1 supporter. “My mom has always told me if I set my mind to something, I could do it. This has remained consistent despite the other effects of the disease. Throughout my entire training she kept reminding me that I could do this.” Her mother was right. On April 21, Nickerson proudly crossed that finish line, completing the race in 5 hours and 33 minutes. The best moment came when Nickerson ran past her parents wearing a T-shirt that read “FIGHT ALZHEIMER’S!” Until then, Nickerson’s mother hadn’t known that her daughter was running the Marathon in her honor. Later, Nickerson showed her mother how many friends and relatives had supported her run by donating over $1,000 for early stage Alzheimer’s programs in Massachusetts. —Jennifer Sherwood ’89
Nicole Bonuso ’96 Rock Star It isn’t often that a graduate student has two major published articles come out of her master’s thesis. It’s even less common to have that thesis cast doubt on a prevailing scientific theory. But then, Nicole Bonuso is anything but ordinary. Her master’s thesis, completed at the Department of Earth Sciences at Syracuse University, threw a fairly recent theory of species evolution, called coordinated stasis, in doubt. Bonuso’s thesis required an analysis of 20 years of fossil data (38,000 specimens) collected from central New York state. She found that the central premise of coordinated stasis—that species living together in the same environment go through long periods of stability and then undergo rapid turnover during which they disappear jointly and new ones emerge—may not apply to certain species. Her study was published as the lead article in the December 2002 issue of Geology, while another version was published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology a year earlier. Today, Bonuso is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California, where she continues her work in paleoecological research. Says Bonuso, “I am interested in discovering the big picture stories concerning paleoecological evolution. The focus of my doctoral dissertation is to try to determine why certain organisms reappear as the dominant species for a short time period in the Mesozoic.” Paleoecology was not on Bonuso’s mind when she first entered URI as an undergraduate in the early 1990s. She intended to major in civil engineering, but after taking a required course in geology, she switched her major. A few months of paleonological fieldwork during an internship at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona convinced Bonuso that this was her life’s calling. While Bonuso’s passion for geology is her own and not the result of any familial influence, she does note of her family, “We all have this innate fascination with rocks.” —Laura Nelson |
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