News & Views

Ghostly Walks in Providence

Want to walk on the haunted East Side? Take a Providence Ghost Tour with founders Mike Gertrudes ’01 and Courtney Edge ’04, who lead visitors on a stroll through this historic neigborhood that has had its share of murders and mayhem.

The two alums combined their talents: Edge was once a Newport Ghost Tour guide, while Gertrudes is an independent researcher for the Providence Historical Society. The tours began last fall after the pair spent 300 hours haunting librarians at the URI Library and the Providence Public Library and archivists at the Rhode Island State Archives. The bulk of the tours are given in September and October.

“We like to consider ourselves as skeptical believers in the paranormal,” says Edge who, when not leading tours, works 40-plus hours weekly as a case manager for a residential home for pregnant and parenting teenagers.

“My theater courses taught me how to maintain the energy and enthusiasm needed to take people through an hour-and-a half tour,” she says. And thanks to her vocal study, she can project her voice without damaging her vocal chords, so that everyone can hear her. She’s also ready to put her B.A. in French to use if the opportunity presents itself.

“My mechanical engineering professors wouldn’t have graded me kindly if I handed in a paper without citing valid sources. We have to do the same thing when leading a ghost tour, because some people will question the information and its validity,” says Gertrudes, who credits his speaking abilities to a URI public speaking course he forced himself to take—even though the thought of it scared him more than any ghost story ever has.

While attending URI, he and a few friends started an organization for musicians and bands on campus called the Musicians’ Guild. “We put on shows, developed a jam space, and put out a compilation CD of all URI student bands. It turned out to be an excellent business model, and I continue to use that experience nearly a decade later,” said Gertrudes, who plays bass in a band called Live Coverage and designs Web sites. To find out more about the tour, click on providenceghosttour.com.

M. Beverly Swan, left, Giselle LaFrance, and Nancy Potter.

Birthday Presents Provide Gift of Education

Ever scratched your head trying to come up with the perfect gift for a friend’s birthday? Longtime friends M. Beverly Swan ’63, M.A. ’66, provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Nancy Potter, professor emerita of English, have a unique solution that helps URI students with their educational expenses. Each woman donates to the other’s endowed scholarship fund. This year, Giselle LaFrance ’07 was the recipient of both scholarships.

“I would not have been able to even go to college if it weren’t for the help I have received,” says LaFrance. “My twin sister goes to URI as well, so it was even harder on my family, as with any family, to have two kids in college at one time.”

“There are only so many pins or watches you can give a friend,” says Potter. “It’s rewarding to give a gift that benefits students.”

Swan, known for her remarkable memory, says: “I met Nancy on Saturday morning, September 26, 1959, in Room 219 in Pastore Hall. It was my very first college class and she was my English professor. She has remained a mentor, role model, and friend ever since.”

Bravo to Concert Choir

Italians, with their vast knowledge and love of music, aren’t always easy to impress, but 24 members of our Concert Choir—all undergraduates—did just that last spring when they traveled to Italy. In fact, the choir got standing ovations in all three churches in which they performed—in Rome, in the spa resort of Montecatini Terme, and in Impruneta, a Florence suburb. People in Impruneta even asked some of the students for their autographs.

The choir, which specializes in a variety of works from the Renaissance to the present, performed sacred music by Italian composers, some Russian Orthodox pieces, and such American spirituals as “Motherless Child.”

“It was a great cultural experience for our students,” says Mark Conley, director of choral activities, “and a magnificent chance for them to use their voices in the settings the composers intended. For example, they could discover how the echoes from church arches were used. I teach about this in class, but it’s another thing altogether to actually experience it.”

The students raised money for the trip and were supported by the Richard Beaupre College of Arts and Sciences Hope and Heritage Endowment.

Elise Wilson with ball.

Rhody Women Win National Rugby Title

National titles are nothing new to URI club teams, but there is a new member of the club—women’s rugby.

By virtue of a fall 2006 undefeated season during which the team captured the New England Rugby Football Union’s Division IV club team title, the squad earned the right to play for the national title last spring.

In late April, the Rams traveled to Philadelphia and crushed Ursinus College 36-5 for the national title.

Head coach Nate Godfrey said: “These 25 women are terrific people and dedicated ruggers. They were into it from the start, and you could see the progress each week. They took care of all of the off-field stuff, the paperwork to get us squared away with the rugby union, referees’ fees, getting the fields ready, and having a medical kit and trainer on the sideline. They got all of this done so the coaches could focus on training and game preparation.”

Orienting Fulbright Scholars

URI hosted a pre-departure orientation for 25 American educators who spent five weeks this summer in Russia and Poland as Fulbright Scholars researching ways to link their students to their counterparts in international classrooms.

Fulbright commissioners from abroad, members of the diplomatic corps in Washington, representatives from the U.S. Department of Education, and URI professors who are Fulbright alumni briefed the participants about the countries they would visit.

“My Fulbright experience absolutely changed my professional life and made me feel like a citizen of the world,” says John Leo, professor of English and director of the Film Media Program, who organized the orientation, the second in five years. Leo, a former Fulbright Distinguished Chair of American Studies and then Fulbright Senior Scholar to Poland (1998-2000), is shown on the far right in the photo with (from left) Andrzej Dakowski, former director of the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission; Ola Augustyniak, education director for the Polish Commission; and Andrzej Rabczenko, minister counselor for science and technology, Embassy of Poland.

The Fulbright, the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchanges, is designed to promote mutual understanding between Americans and people in 150 cooperating countries. URI has one of the largest Fulbright concentrations in New England among its faculty.

Clothing Pattern Archives Grow in Size

URI has the world’s largest commercial pattern collection buttoned up. Here’s the latest: McCall’s has transferred all of its patterns to URI’s Commercial Pattern Archive. Kathleen Lenn, senior vice president of McCall’s, described the company’s donation goal as a way “to enrich that which already is an outstanding archive in the entire commercial pattern industry rather than maintain smaller collections of our individual brands.”

One extremely rare pattern in the donated archive is for a bodice produced by A. Burdette Smith around 1875. Rather than an illustration of the garment, a 1/8” scale hand-sewn model was folded within the full-scale pattern pieces. “I’ve read about Smith’s cloth models, but never have seen one,” said a thrilled Joy Emery, professor emerita of theatre, former adjunct professor of textiles, fashion merchandising and design, and curator of URI’s pattern archive, which contains more than 31,000 pattern packages spanning more than a century-from 1868 to 1990. “There’s a wealth of history here,” says Emery.

Honors Roll In

Congratulations to our latest major national scholarship winners. Congratulations also to our students and to the Office of National Scholarships, housed in the Honors Program, which, along with faculty and staff committees, helps students prepare for these major competitions.

Fulbright Scholars

Sharon Ruggieri ’07 spent two months in Puerto Rico studying how to reduce saltwater damage to concrete bridge supports, six months in Spain studying manufacturing processes and computer-aided design, and six months in Mexico as a quality-engineering intern at Texas Instruments. She is returning to Mexico for 10 months, this time as a Fulbright Scholar. “My entire university career has been about the globalization of engineering,” said the International Engineering Program graduate, who has degrees in mechanical engineering and Spanish. “The Fulbright is a wonderful opportunity to get more international experience.”

Melissa Lake from Phoenix, Ariz., an English and German major, was also named a Fulbright Scholar, the second straight year that two URI students were so honored. She is completing her undergraduate education at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, and volunteering at a language center to help Germans improve their English. She will use her Fulbright award to serve as an English teaching assistant at a high school in Germany while also coordinating an after-school English literature program.

Udall Scholar

Rachael Gately has tended a flock of sheep since elementary school and has won numerous national awards at livestock shows.

She has worried, however, that much of the agricultural land around her hometown of Somers, Conn., and elsewhere has been disappearing, converted to housing developments. That concern, along with her desire to work to preserve farmlands, has earned her the Morris K. Udall Undergraduate Scholarship, the nation’s most prestigious scholarship for students preparing for environmental careers. The scholarship provides a $5,000 stipend toward her senior year.

Gately’s interest in improving farming practices to help preserve farmland started early. By age 19, she had been awarded two grants from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, including one for $70,000 to work with a soil conservationist to redesign the layout of her family’s farm. That effort turned the farm into a model of farmland conservation by demonstrating how farmers can use the land without harming it.

The animal and veterinary science major’s ultimate objective is to work with zoonotic diseases—those that can be passed from animals to humans, like mad cow disease and bird flu—and eventually earn a master of public health degree to work in the regulatory field.

Goldwater Scholar

Elana Viola, a senior, is majoring in four different disciplines—chemistry, mathematics, electrical engineering, and German. She wants to conduct research in the field of nanotechnology, most likely in the national defense arena. Those four majors are going to help her get there.

Viola’s exemplary academic and research success has earned her a $7,500 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in math, the natural sciences, and engineering.

Carbon nanotubes are long, thin cylinders with unique physical properties that make them potentially useful in minute structures and technologies. Using scanning electron microscopes and other instruments not typically used by undergraduates, Viola is investigating the efficiency of carbon nanotubes in optical devices like switches, motors, and sensors.

NSF Undergraduate Research Grant

Instead of working eight weeks at the pro shop at the Newport County Club last summer, Bridget Druken spent that time with math pros at San Diego State University.

Supported by a $3,000 National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research grant, Druken took part in a program designed to give its participants a clear understanding of the world of mathematical research through firsthand experience. She was in a five-person team composed of undergraduates from other colleges and universities and high school teachers. The team was led by a graduate student and advised by a professor. The research group focused on phages, viruses that eat bacteria. “Mathematical modeling of diseases seems like an ever-growing field of study to which I can apply my math skills,” says Druken.

Her bio-mathematical interest may be inherited. Her father, Patrick, is a tax preparer and good with numbers. Her mother, Valerie, is a nurse.