URI QuadAngles Fall 2017

FALL 2017

English Majors Unite

Ann Hood ’78 defends bookishness | 18

That’s Cub

Mental conditioning and the World Series | 22

QUADANGLES

Rise The and Fall of Antibiotics Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

The Bad Luck Girl

A tale of perseverance and triumph, from Vietnam to URI | 28

ORIENTATION, THEN AND NOW

"Orientation was everything I'd heard it would be," says Josh Reyes '19, who just completed his first year as an orientation leader at Kingston. "It was like summer camp, only way better."

This photo collage, featuring 1950s orientation leaders on the left, with Reyes on the right, shows what's different about orientation these days—think omnipresent smart phones and more casual clothing—and what's the same: smiles and camaraderie.

PHOTO: NORA LEWIS; COURTESY URI ARCHIVES

QUADANGLES FALL 2017 | VOLUME 25, NO. 1 FEATURES

12 The Thin Red Line Antibiotics remade the medical landscape, our relationship to bacterial infections and our life expectancies. Is their time running out?

18 The Power of Literature Bestselling author Ann Hood ’78 on the joys and, yes, job-search benefits of being an English major.

22 That’s Cub Before Chicago won the World Series last year, the team had already won something back: pride. Cubs mental conditioning coach Joshua Lifrak ’94 tells the story of how the Cubs reclaimed their name, then broke the 108-year curse.

26 Back to the Future It was 50 years ago this year that the University of Rhode Island established a new fangled thing: a computer science department.

28 Mai: A Love Story The secrets she tried to spare her American children came back to haunt Mai Donohue ’02 as her children left the nest. Then it all came flooding out: her father’s murder; her abusive teen marriage; the son she left behind.

DEPARTMENTS 2 FEEDBACK 4 PRESIDENT'SVIEW 5 ALUMNIWRITE The fight for gay marriage in Texas

6 NEWS&VIEWS 10 PRESSBOX 32 CLASSACTS News from your classmates 35 CLOSEUP Amma Marfo ‘07 40 BACKPAGE Round four of our photo caption contest

MORE ONLINE

uri.edu/quadangles

See the whole print issue and more. Follow the orange arrow icons to see exclusive online content.

COVER: ISTOCK PHOTO.COM

FEEDBACK Write to us: pjack@uri.edu Read more online: uri.edu/quadangles Dear Readers, We were honored this summer when the New Hampshire Supreme Court Society reached out to us for permission to use “The Age of Disinformation” by Ellen Liberman [Summer 2017] during its June Freedom of the Press consortium. The teaching seminar is aimed at lawyers and public school teachers and this year examined challenges to freedom of the press in an era of distrust and fake news.

A few weeks later, we learned the University had won two international awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) for stories featured in these pages.

More than 710 institutions from countries as diverse as Australia, Switzerland, South Africa and the United Kingdom took part in CASE’s 2017 Circle of Excellence awards. Judges in particular saluted the story, “Life in Black and White,”

by Nicole Maranhas [Winter 2016], which tells the incredible story of how Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala ’78 helped change apartheid laws in South Africa. If you haven’t read it yet, it—like “Age of Disinformation” and all our content—is easy to find at uri.edu/quadangles.

You’ll next find Liberman’s writing in our Winter 2017 issue, when our cover story will bring URI expertise to bear on your everyday lives, from how to avoid mosquito bites to how to have better arguments with your spouse. Maranhas, meanwhile, wrote this issue’s cover story on antibiotics. We’ve all seen the headlines that warn we’re approaching a post-antibiotic era; her story takes us inside the latest research and the little-known but compelling history of these miracle drugs, and helps us understand what may be coming next.

Maranhas just landed a new job as a writer for URI’s George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience. Who knows what stories she will find to tell there?

Stories of struggle and hope, of new paths taken, and just maybe the next big breakthrough in treating and curing neurodegenerative disease. We’re looking forward to reading more.

Pippa Jack Editor in Chief

2

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Letter from Mars itting in pitch darkness, my crewmate’s headlamp pierced our only window, illuminating the layered lava flows outside.

Nonessential systems were powered down because a storm meant our solar panels weren’t charging well. High winds had knocked out our communication back to ‘Earth’ entirely. My crewmate turned to me and deadpanned, “There are no rules anymore.”

This is life on Mars.

I am writing this email from our Martian-analog habitat on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Due to communication delays, 20 minutes will pass between my pressing “send” and anyone reading this. These delays, and lack of internet, make problem-solving difficult and live interactions with family impossible. That’s just one of our challenges.

Six of us are serving as crewmembers on HI-SEAS Mission V. We will be here for eight months. The purpose of the experiment is to better understand psychological challenges, stressors, and factors that affect crews to better select astronauts for future planetary spaceflight missions. We live in our small dome-shaped habitat, leaving only in simulation space suits, and survive off our own power and water supplies.

Officially, I’m the Health and Performance Officer. I’m responsible for emergency plans, preparing medical equipment for extravehicular activity, and coordinating with ground medical teams. In addition, I run 3D printing to create anything that’s needed, from lab equipment to special occasion cookie cutters. I fly our drone for 3D mapping the environment and outreach, and have even gotten to film an episodic series for The New York Times.

Isolation has its benefits.

Imagine living and working with five people you can’t get more than 20 feet away

S

from—for the better part of a year.

Conflicts must be resolved quickly since your colleagues will also be the ones you share breakfast with and say goodnight to, every day. It demands patience, humility, and good communication. It requires being cognizant that open-mouth chewing may be deadlier than the outside Martian environment.

Every day includes research tasks to study group cohesiveness and individual stress levels. We are given geological challenges whose solutions we need to plan for, practice, and execute. These range from taking field measurements to exploring underground maze-like lava tube caves carved out by old eruptions.

At URI, I studied electrical and biomedical engineering. One day during my junior year, I was searching for some muchneeded inspiration. I stumbled onto an article about engineers who became astronauts and soon found myself applying for NASA internships. Eventually, I landed a position working in the Mission Operations Division of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. I was asked to come back three more times throughout my academic career, each time learning about a different aspect of human spaceflight. After graduating, I decided I wanted to experience working in developing countries and travel to different corners of the world. In the following years, I had the pleasure of doing short-term work and volunteer contracts with an incredible organization known as Engineering World Health. I traveled to Africa over the summer while pursuing a degree at the International Space University, and to Nicaragua the following year to work with biomedical students and staff in several hospitals while studying the local language and culture. Although these two pathways seem disconnected, both industries have PHOTOS: COURTESY BRIAN RAMOS

aspects of exploration and of improving life on Earth.

And so my path has led me to this.

Admittedly, no experience prepared me for needing to remove human waste from our compost toilet, but it’s important to keep life interesting.

The possibility of participating in the space industry revolution was not in my mind at URI. Now I realize it’s alright to come from the smallest state, so long as you keep your dreams big.

Brian Ramos ’11 Mauna Loa, Hawaii Editor’s Note: Ramos is the second alum to serve at the space dome; Sheyna Gifford, M.S. ’06, spent a year there for HI-SEAS IV. You can read about her experiences in “The Martians,” [Spring 2016].

Mission to South Dakota just returned from a second mission to South Dakota as a volunteer with Veteran Service Corps (VSC). As a veteran of the R.I. National Guard, I volunteered with Veterans Stand in December of 2016.

This group was formed to support Native American water protectors during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Although I did not end up going last December, I traveled to North Dakota in February to assist in building a camp in support of the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters and water protectors at the nearby Oceti Sakowin camp.

The Cheyenne River Sioux tribe of South Dakota leased the land where we built this support camp, called Four Bands.

As a result, VSC has formed a partnership with them.

Unemployment on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation hovers around 90 percent, and 60 percent of households live under the poverty line. Average male life expectancy is 48 years old; along with Haiti, this is the lowest in the Western hemisphere. There have been 13 suicides on the reservation this year alone, many of them teenagers. It is vitally important that programs are created to keep youths on the reservation positively engaged. VSC and the tribe are working to accomplish this goal.

With this in mind, my son Willem and I collected sports equipment from Wickford Little League, parents, and friends to donate to the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, and stayed on the reservation for a few

I

days. While there, we helped refurbish a youth community center and set up outbuildings for the Sioux Sundance ritual.

I am happy to say that the tribe started up Little League softball and baseball leagues this summer!

Veteran Service Corps is a registered nonprofit, and all donations are tax deductible. Donations can be made at veteranservicecorps.org or to the Lakota People’s Law Project at lakotalaw.org.

Dave Andrews ’94, Ph.D. ’18 Saunderstown, R.I. The Great Rhody “R” Debate found the latest edition [Summer 2017] of QuadAngles to be one of the most informative ones I have read. Great job!

However, I do take issue with “Riley’s Rhode Island Glossary” on page 9. I was born in Pawtucket and raised in Newport.

One of the defining characteristics of my speech is a hard “R,” not a dropped “R.” The dropped “R” is a characteristic of Eastern Massachusetts speech, with some inflection creeping into northeastern Rhode Island.

Bye now; I have to go paRk my caR in the gaRage.

Bob Cudworth ’54 Moosic, Penn.

I

QuadAngles is published by the University of Rhode Island Alumni Association. Copyright pending, all rights reserved. The URI Alumni Association informs and engages current and future alumni as committed partners of the University, its mission and traditions.

Executive Editor Michele A. Nota ’87, M.S. ’06, Executive Director, URI Alumni Relations; Secretary, Alumni Association Executive Board Editor in Chief Art Director

Pippa Jack, pjack@uri.edu Kim Robertson

Contributing Editors

Barbara Caron Dina M. Dionizio ’91 Shane Donaldson ’99 Dave Lavallee ’79, M.P.A. ’87 Kate O’Malley Elizabeth Rau

Contributing Designers

Susan Froberg Johnson Ma Cynthia McMillen Bo Pickard

Photographer Digital Media Editorial Board

Nora Lewis Kyla Duffy Kelly Mahoney ’03, Executive Director, External Relations and Communications Linda A. Acciardo ’77, Director, Communications and Marketing Tracey A. Manni, Director, Communications, URI Foundation

URI Alumni Relations Staff

Christina Haas ’05, Assistant Director Karen LaPointe ’77, M.B.A. ’84, Associate Director Meredith Morrow, Program Assistant Mary Ann Mazzone, Office Assistant Esther Reynoso ’15, Executive Assistant Samantha Rodrigues ’11, Specialist Amy Simonini, Assistant Director Samantha Stevens, M.S. '15, Specialist McKayla Stubbs ’16, Program Assistant

Alumni Assoc. Daniel G. Lowney ’75, President Executive Board Susan R. Johnson ’82, Immediate Past President Colleen M. Gouveia Moulton M.B.A.’98 Vice President Kathleen P. O’Donnell-White ’90, Vice President Steven R. Frazier ’07, Treasurer Alumni Assoc.

Councilorsat-Large

The Roots of His Degree dabble in genealogy and am descended from the Northup family, long found in the Kingston, R.I., area. While researching these ties, I read that John V. Northup, Jr., was one of 30 original subscribers to buy farmland in 1888 for the R.I. Agricultural Experiment Station and school. This school, of course, became URI. I wonder what my great-grandfather would think if he knew his contribution enabled me to earn my Ph.D. in chemistry 92 years after he helped establish the university?

John V. Northup, Jr., and his wife are buried in the cemetery on Route 138, just a few miles west of Kingston campus.

W. F. “Rick” Howard, Ph.D. ’80 Haverhill, Mass.

I

Laurel L. Bowerman ’77, M.B.A. ’84 Matthew T. Finan ’11 Jordan D. Kanter ’99, M.S.’00 Mackenzie K. Hofman ’12 Sulina M. Mohanty ’07 John J. Palumbo, Sr. ’76 Joseph F. Penza, Jr. ’69 Perry A. Raso ’02, M.S. ’06 Karen E. Regine ’81 Thomas F. Shevlin ’68

Alumni Assoc. College Representatives: Arts & Sciences, Nancy J.S. Ferrara ’88, M.B.A. ’97 Business, Marianne Gattinella ’79 Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Education & Professional Studies, Kaitlin E. Donahue ’07 Engineering, Anthony J. Rafanelli ’78, M.S.’85, Ph.D. ’95 Environment and Life Sciences, James D. Marques ’79, M.P.A.’88 Health Sciences, Marcia A. Costello ’77 Nursing, Silifat “Laitan” Mustapha ’97 Graduate School of Oceanography, Veronica M. Berounsky Ph.D. ’90 Pharmacy, Ewa M. Dzwierzynski ’96 URI Foundation, Thomas M. Ryan '75 Student Senate, Ryan Buck ’18 Student Alumni Association, Timothy J. O’Connor ’18

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

3

PRESIDENT’SVIEW “Fostering a diverse, welcoming and inclusive community requires individual commitment in action, modeling respect for each individual and valuing the human differences that enhance our learning community.”

– Naomi Thompson, URI Chief Diversity Officer

At the Cornerstones message board at URI’s Multicultural Center during orientation this summer.

4

QUADANGLES FALL SPRING 2017 2016

As I write this letter, we are preparing to welcome the class of 2021 to campus. They are an outstanding group of entering students by any measure.

As was the case with the class of 2020, the class of 2021 continues a trajectory of raising URI’s academic profile, with the highest average SAT scores and highest average GPA—3.54—of any entering class. With record applications of 22,630, the 3,250 members of the class of 2021 are also part of our most selective class ever.

We couldn’t be more delighted that these bright students have chosen to matriculate at URI, as discerning and well informed as they are. Most of these students were born just around the turn of the century. They were toddlers on 9/11, and they have no memory of a world before cell phones, the advent of social media, and the ubiquity of Google searches. Their formative years were shaped by technology that today increasingly informs every aspect of our lives and has dramatically changed the way we teach and the way we learn. They were barely middle-schoolers when the first AfricanAmerican was elected President of the United States.

And so, in addition to their expectations about technology and the availability of endless streams of information, our freshman class enters URI with the expectation that they will find a community that celebrates different cultures, lifestyles, beliefs, abilities, religions, political systems, and philosophies. They enter with the expectation that URI has a strong Office of Community, Equity and Diversity (CED) focused on creating an inclusive environment that supports each individual member of that community of differences. From the beautiful Gender and Sexuality Center at the heart of our Kingston campus, to programs like the Diversifying Individuals Via Education (DIVE) conference, URI walks the talk when it comes to diversity and inclusion.

Consider these data points: The class of 2021 is our most diverse in URI history, with 24% identifying as students of color. Of course that is not our only measure of diversity, but it is important to note that in 2010, just seven years ago, 16.1% identified as students of color. Faculty diversity, thanks to faculty hiring initiatives led by CED, has also seen significant gains. In 2010 the full-time tenured faculty included 16% from diverse racial and

ethnic groups and in 2017 that percentage has risen to 18.6%. During the academic years 2015– 2017, URI hired 34 new full-time tenure-track faculty members and two deans from diverse racial and ethnic groups.

The homepage of our Office of Community, Equity and Diversity website features a quote from Chief Diversity Officer Naomi Thompson that summarizes a critical element of diversity and inclusion: “Fostering a diverse, welcoming and inclusive community requires individual commitment in action, modeling respect for each individual and valuing the human differences that enhance our learning community.”

The story of Mary Mai Donahue, found in these pages, exemplifies this sentiment. Mai’s life stands in stark contrast to the lives of most of our entering freshmen. As a non-traditional student, Mai graduated in 2002, when she was in her 50s.

Determined to get an education after having been denied the opportunity as a child in Vietnam, Mai didn’t start her studies until her six children started to leave home for college. And she persevered for 12 years to earn first her associate’s and then her bachelor’s degree. When you read about Mai, you will understand how she greatly enhanced our learning community by her very presence, and how she stood as a shining model of the importance of valuing human difference.

I’m proud that URI is a place where we recognize that differences strengthen us rather than divide us. We’ve made progress toward becoming a truly inclusive community—and with the help of our 3,250 newest members, I know we will continue the journey, together.

David M. Dooley President, University of Rhode Island

PHOTO: JOE GIBLIN; NORA LEWIS

ALUMNIWRITE

Finding Your Inner ACTIVIST An author gives the inside story on the writing of his new book.

BY DAVID COLLINS ’67, M.S. ’69

I

n the summer of 2013 Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes contemplated joining a lawsuit challenging statutory and constitutional laws prohibiting samesex marriage in their home state. The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v.

Windsor had opened the door to marriage equality. Someone, they knew, needed to take the lead in Texas. But friends and relatives, aware of very real dangers, urged caution.

Phariss was not “out” at work, and was afraid he and Holmes would be hammered by the conservative opposition. “Politics in Texas…it’s a blood sport,” he thought with no little trepidation. “They’ll just make stuff up!”

Holmes was no less concerned. “We weren’t worried that there would be a massive uprising,” he remembers, “that suddenly a horde of people with pitchforks and torches would come tap dancing in our direction. What worried us was that one extremist—that one hard-core nut case who had decided he was going to ‘fix’ all this with his long-shot rifle.”

In the end, though they had imagined a hundred, a thousand reasons to say no, they said yes—and changed the history of Texas.

My involvement in their story began in the fall of 1978 when I walked into a classroom for that “first class of the semester.”

Searching the expectant faces for distinguishing marks to help me remember who was who, I found only one that really stood out, a function of his light-skinned, freckled face topped by a shock of red hair. His name was Mark Phariss.

Phariss turned out to be the student every professor dreams of: smart, serious, hard-working yet funny. Semester after semester, we got to know each other well— or so I thought. I learned a great deal about his family, about his life in Oklahoma, about his ambition for a life in the law. I had no idea, however, that he was gay. More important, I had no idea of the difficulties that entailed in 1970s Missouri—flyover country.

BOOK COVER: COURTESY DAVID COLLINS

That changed in the 20 months it took me to write Accidental Activists. I don’t write sequentially; I bob about, tackle the easier chapters first. I put off until last the early chapter that would tell Phariss’ and Holmes’ stories to the point where they sued Texas.

The problem wasn’t a lack of material. I had boxes of notes from hours and hours of in-person interviews, from phone calls, emails, and text messages. Too much material. The problem was deciding what to leave out, and what to include.

As a straight man setting out to write the story of two gay men, I knew I faced formidable obstacles. To provide context, I’d have to learn more about the history of LGBTQ rights. To write clearly about legal issues in Supreme Court decisions and the hearings in their case, I’d have to learn a whole new language.

But I knew my greatest challenge would be to write in a way that would do justice to the struggle of growing up gay. I wanted readers not just to understand, but to feel the pain inflicted on Phariss and Holmes, and millions more, by straight culture.

In the end I found an effective guide through that troublesome early chapter, a principle of selection that narrowed my choices: focus on incidents that would demonstrate how in their formative years, Mark and Vic had been bombarded by messages from straight America that being gay was wrong, that it would destroy their lives, condemn them to hell—that being gay was dangerous, even life-threatening.

Messages that led them for years to deny who they were, to struggle for authenticity and integrity, for dignity.

Accidental Activists is a civil rights story, a story of the voyage of the hero, but most of all it is the story of two men in love, together for 16 years when their case began, who wanted nothing more than what any lovers want: the right to marry, to devote their lives to one another and to be happy together. • Phariss and Holmes, after two years of tense legal battles and 18 together, were married in 2015, deep in the heart of their home state of Texas. Their friend, author David Collins, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from URI, taught English for 40 years at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and has been widely published. He lives in Pineville, North Carolina.

PRAISE FOR ACCIDENTAL ACTIVISTS This is the best book on the hugely important topic of gay marriage that I have encountered.

The courtroom scenes—beautifully rendered, stirring, enlivened by the novelistic revelation of character—are simply superb and brilliantly handled. I was riveted by the explanations of precedents, accounts of legal tactics, and descriptions of lawyerly performances. Collins movingly captures the two men’s lifelong struggles with shame and self-loathing and, finally, the personal triumph of their confronting the public to claim their right to love in the country they love.

–George Hodgman, author of Bettyville

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 5

NEWS&VIEWS Associate professor Anita Jacobson at Green Line Apothecary in Wakefield.

The Anti-Lyme Crusader

By Carol McCarthy ’84 During the summer two Rhode Island pharmacies—Green Line Apothecary in Wakefield and Seaside Pharmacy in Westerly— became the first in the nation to dispense a single dose of antibiotics, on-site and without a doctor’s order, to potentially prevent Lyme disease in a person bitten by a tick. Anita Jacobson, clinical associate professor of pharmacy, had seen prior studies that showed a prophylactic dose could be effective, and worked for five years to bring the treatment to the public. Rhode Island residents and tourists— whose doctors at home may be less familiar with the disease— have used the service.

What made you pursue this project?

It’s a is a serious public health concern. Whenever I give a presentation and ask who has had Lyme disease or had a family member affected, every hand goes up. Rhode Island is one of 14 states with a high incidence of the disease. Timely treatment is important, but prevention is key.

How did the program start?

I collaborated with Kelly Orr and Jeff Bratberg (College of Pharmacy faculty members) as well as infectious disease specialist physician Fredric Silverblatt to develop the trial protocol in 2012. The only way to have pharmacists initiate antibiotic therapy was if we did it as a study, with a research exemption from the Rhode Island Board of Pharmacy.

State law did not allow pharmacists to initiate new drug therapies—other than immunizations or naloxone (opioid overdose-reversal medication).

The trial was successful: No subjects developed Lyme disease or serious adverse effects, and the service was a seamless fit within pharmacy settings. The protocol— a 200-milligram dose of doxycycline—is proven effective as a prophylaxis against Lyme disease. But people should note that it protects against Lyme only, not other tick-borne illnesses.

what other patient-friendly initiatives might come from that law—primary care for underserved populations comes to mind.

What happened next?

It was 2014, everyone in the study was satisfied, but we couldn’t continue. We needed to change the law. I went to the state Department of Health, which was totally supportive, and we began working with the General Assembly. We collaborated with the Rhode Island Pharmacists Association and the Rhode Island Society of Health-System Pharmacists and passed legislation in 2016 expanding pharmacists’ role to include initiation of drug therapies under collaborative practice agreements with physicians. It’s exciting to wonder

Shore For All

So how does it work?

It’s open to any pharmacist in the state—they simply have to be part of a collaborative practice agreement with a doctor and receive training at the URI College of Pharmacy.

Pharmacists assess the customer and go through an eligibility checklist set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The person must be at least eight years old; the tick has to be attached for at least 36 hours; and it must have been removed within the last 72 hours. The customer cannot have Lyme disease at the time of treatment.

What’s next?

I would like to see this expand to the other states with endemic Lyme disease. They currently encompass New England, the Eastern Seaboard as far south as Delaware, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

All To The Shore

A new interactive web app, Discovering the Rhode Island Shore, points the way to more than 300 public access points along the Ocean State’s gorgeous coast. Years in the making, the website (which is fully mobile accessible) allows you to see every shoreline access point and place of interest in the state, from lifeguarded beaches to coastal hiking trails, from picnic-perfect parks to wildlife refuges, and from fishing spots to historic sites to boat launches. This app is a digital update to a 2004 publication, Public Access to the Rhode Island Coast, and was prepared by URI and Sea Grant staff.

It is searchable by town or activity—click on a place, and a photo pops up along with directions, weather, lists of amenities, and a tide chart.

What’s better than access to the 400-mile coastline that’s the pride of Rhode Island?

Actually making it to the shore. For more info, visit shoreline-ri.com.

6

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Jane Goodall with chimpanzee.

Jane Goodall to Speak at URI The famous animal behavior expert, conservationist and United Nations Messenger of Peace will headline the 2017 fall Honors Colloquium, which this year is titled Origins: Life, the Universe and Everything.

Goodall’s discovery that chimpanzees make and use tools revolutionized the world of primatology and redefined the relationship between humans and animals. Today, Goodall travels an average of 300 days per year, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises and her reasons for hope.

In her speeches and books she emphasizes the interconnectedness of all living things and the collective power of individual action.

Other speakers in the fall lecture series will examine questions such as:  Where did we come from?  How did the universe begin?  How did intelligent, rational beings arise?  And, from such humble beginnings, how did we develop a mind that can ask these big questions?

The Honors Colloquium, now in its 54th year, is the University’s premier public lecture series. All talks are free and open to the public. Goodall speaks Sept. 19; visit uri.edu/hc for details and ticket information.

How to Save Money on Health Care Home visit program saw big drop in hospitalizations Hospitalization rates plummeted 61 percent, and emergency room visits fell 64 percent, among a group of patients who received home visits from nurse practitioners and graduate students during a six-month period in 2016, according to a University of Rhode Island College of Nursing study.

The home visits to financially disadvantaged patients with chronic health issues were part of a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Public Health Service’s Health Resources and Services Administration, awarded to Nursing Professor Denise Coppa in 2015. The project established academic and clinical partnerships with PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS; ISTOCKPHOTOS.COM; COURTESY THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE

Providence Community Health Centers and Thundermist Health Centers in Rhode Island.

Nurse practitioners from Thundermist and nurse practitioner students from URI visited 82 patients over a six-month period in 2016, recording health data that included hospital admissions and emergency room visits. In fall 2016, researchers compared their findings to data from the same group of patients during the six months prior.

It was so successful that Thundermist now plans to continue its home visit program, Coppa says. Meanwhile the project team is analyzing state records for

emergency room and hospitalization costs for the general population to determine the potential economic benefit from extending the program. “The savings could be significant,” Coppa said.

Rhode Island has a shortage of primary-care health providers, leaving 67 percent of care needs unmet in Rhode Island, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Licensed primary-care nurse practitioners are fully authorized to diagnose and treat acute and chronic health conditions in Rhode Island; the URI-led project is preparing more than 100 students at the master’s or doctoral level, with enrollment doubling this year.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 7

NEWS&VIEWS

Study helps second-graders move without disrupting class The second-graders at West Kingston Elementary School in Rhode Island were models of scholarly focus, reading silently and intently. At the same time, they wobbled in their seats, pedaled their legs under their desks or swayed on balance boards.

And no one was asking them to sit still.

That’s because University of Rhode Island researchers were studying the effects of movement on learning and language over four weeks in May. “It’s everything we got in trouble for when we were kids,” says Emily Clapham, associate professor of kinesiology.

Kinesthetic classrooms, as they’re called, are not new, but the URI project is breaking new ground by measuring language patterns and usage in the context of movement. No other school is studying a kinesthetic classroom in a controlled manner, and no other school is looking at connections between movement, language and being on task, the researchers said.

Clapham and fellow researcher Michelle Flippin, assistant professor of communicative disorders, outfitted the school’s three second-grade classrooms with standing desks, bouncy foot rests, exercise balls, pedal desks, balance boards and learning stools—all of which allow kids to be in motion while they learn.

Helping Wigglers Become Learners Second-graders at West Kingston Elementary School use swivel stools and balance boards while they read in one of the school’s kinesthetic classrooms.

The researchers analyzed data from pedometers the children wear and recorded observations of whether the 43 children in the three classrooms are on or off task at a given time.

They took baseline measurements of behavior and academic focus before installing the equipment, then collected data weekly. They removed the equipment for a week, recorded more data, and then re-installed the equipment to continue the research. Meanwhile the children filled out weekly surveys assessing their own behavior and learning, as did the parents, Clapham said.

“We will have a wealth of data, so we will have a good idea of whether this is improving student focus as well as which piece of equipment works best for each individual student,” Flippin said.

The community at West Kingston Elementary School didn’t need to wait for research findings to offer their endorsements. “Oh my gosh, I love it,” said teacher Caighln Perrin. “We have a very rigorous curriculum, so for them to be able to move and make their own choices is super. They are ready to work, willing to work and motivated. And for some it even helps their confidence.”

The children will quickly tell you which piece of furniture they like best. “My favorite is the standing desk. When you move, it exercises you and it helps you Night Sky Gazing at W. Alton Jones—free and open to focus,” one girl offered. the public.

“You can kind of move Jane Goodall headlines Honors Colloquium. around a little bit. If you get WaterFire Providence with Rhody Place on Steeple Street. tired of sitting down, you can Wakefield’s OktoberFest—URI’s Big Band performs behind stand up and get a little stretch,” the Contemporary Theater Company off Main Street. one boy explained.

Woonsocket AutumnFest Parade—URI’s Marching Band “It never used to be like this,” is the headliner. Lionel Savaria ’86 is the 10th Division Perrin said, looking around the Marshal. quiet room of attentive readers.

Open House at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, “It makes such a difference for Narragansett Bay Campus—Ocean Science for the them to be able to move.”

Ocean State.

And more students will get Alumni and Family Weekend. to experience that difference in the fall. The school gets to keep Check out these and more at uri.edu/125. the equipment.

We’re wrapping up our Come celebrate with us.

Sept. 18, 6:30 p.m.

Sept. 19, 7 p.m.

Sept. 23, dusk Oct. 7, 6 p.m.

Oct. 9, 9 a.m. to noon

Oct. 14, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m

Oct. 20–22

8

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

th year!

Good Eating URI Dining Services gobble up two national awards

It’s the sixth year since 2008 that the University has earned recognition from National Association of College and University Food Services: One gold medal highlighted the recent expansion of Butterfield Dining Hall, from 210 seats to 560. Butterfield provides students with plenty of custom options and foods from the grill, deli or salad bar. Much is locally sourced and students can choose from vegan, vegetarian, Kosher and other ethnic food varieties. And a smartphone app displays daily menus at all the dining halls, live camera views to see how busy they are, and balances on meal plans.

The second gold was for a March special event, “Candyland.”

Staff decorated the hall to look like the classic board game and served Candyland-themed foods, using candy in savory dishes, or creating dishes that looked like sweet confections. Menu items included “Lemon Drop” tortellini, meatball “cupcakes,” and even fried candy bars. Music such as “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Strawberry Fields” set the atmosphere.

“Our staff know students by their first names and quickly learn each student’s specific preferences,” says Steve Mello, director of Dining and Retail Food Services at URI. “Some students just order their ‘regular,’ or can’t wait to have a staff member make them something special after a tough exam.

My staff probably interacts with these students three or four times a day. This is the students’ dining room and we are happy to make them feel at home.”

PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS; COURTESY URI DINING AND RETAIL FOOD SERVICES; COURTESY STEPHANIE CARTER

Back to School Is your baby struggling in grade school or starting at college?

These alumni can help.

Tracy L. Jackson ’93’s blog, The Extraordinary School Counselor, offers pithy advice and left-field leads on everything from how to find and apply to college scholarships, to great board games for high school seniors, to fun reads for elementary schoolers.

Jackson knows of what she writes. Currently a district supervisor in New York, she has been a school counselor since 1997, and has worked at all levels in three different states.

Her blog just got a nod as one of the best of the year from onlinecounselingprograms.com.

Stephanie Carter, M.A. ’01, and Laurie Hazard ’88 have written a book for parents of college students, Your Freshman is Off to College: A Month-by-Month Guide to the First Year. The duo currently work at Bryant University together, where Hazard is assistant dean for student success, and Carter is director of the Academic Center for Excellence. Structured as a month-bymonth guide for parents, the book takes a fun look at the first year of college. “During our years of working with students and families,” says Carter, “it became clear that parents were finding it challenging to know when to step in and when to support them from a healthy distance.”

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 9

PRESSBOX

Two Go To MLB Draft

R

hode Island second baseman Chris Hess ’18 and catcher Martin Figueroa ’17 both heard their names called on day three of the 2017 Major League Baseball Draft in June. Hess was selected in the 17th round (512th overall) by the New York Yankees, while Figueroa went to the Astros in the 32nd round (961st overall). It was the sixth consecutive year Rhode Island has had at least one player drafted.

After signing a contract with the Yankees, Hess was assigned to the organization’s Single A Short Season team in Staten Island. However, after just four games there, the North Kingstown, R.I., native was promoted to the fullseason Single A Charleston RiverDogs, where he has been an everyday starter for most of the summer.

10

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Hess was named 2017 NCBWA District I Player of the Year, as well as NEIBA Division I Player of the Year, after hitting .347 (77-for-222) this season. He collected 22 doubles, three triples and eight homers while stealing 12 bases, scoring 44 runs and driving in 48.

A three-time Atlantic 10 All-Conference player and two-time ABCA/Rawlings All-Northeast Region pick, he ended the season on a tear, hitting .500 (5-10) with three home runs and two doubles at the 2017 A-10 Championship. For his performance, he was named to the All-Championship team. After just three full seasons with the Rams, Hess owns URI’s career triples record (19), ranks second all-time in doubles (46) and is third in extra-base hits (82).

Figueroa served as a utility player for the Rams, playing infield, outfield and designated hitter before taking over as URI’s everyday catcher in 2017. He battled through injuries during his senior year, appearing in 45 games and hitting .248 with 39 hits, 24 walks, 27 runs scored, 12 doubles, two home runs and 10 stolen bases. Behind the dish, he turned in a perfect fielding percentage on 247 total chances (226 putouts/21 assists).

The Elizabeth, N.J., athlete was named to the 2015 Atlantic 10 All-Conference Team as well as the 2016 A-10 All-Championship team,

in addition to earning Most Outstanding Player accolades at last year’s conference championship. Figueroa finished his collegiate career ranked fifth in program history in career doubles (49) and seventh in career extra-base hits (66).

He was assigned by Houston to the Rookie League Greeneville Astros as a reserve catcher.

This marks the first time since 2009 Rhode Island has had multiple draft picks in the same year. In 2009, Eric Smith (2nd round, Arizona Diamondbacks), Nick Greenwood (14th round, San Diego Padres), Dan Rhault (26th round, Tampa Bay Rays) and Luke Demko (29th round, San Francisco Giants) were all selected. Hess joins Al Alvarez ’58 as the second Ram in the Yankees organization, while Figueroa follows Steve McCumiskey ’90 at the Astros.

New Coach for Women’s Soccer Director of Athletics Thorr Bjorn announced Megan Jessee as the ninth women’s soccer head coach in program history this spring.

“We are thrilled to have Megan join the Rhode Island Athletics family as our new women’s soccer head coach,” Bjorn said. “She has enjoyed success at every level of soccer and possesses the passion, energy and leadership qualities that we sought. I am excited to work with her.”

In nine seasons with Wake Forest’s Demon Deacons, Jessee was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the women’s soccer program. She worked with the Demon Deacon goalkeepers, totaling 86 shutouts during her tenure—including 15 shutouts in 2009 and 14 in 2011, which rank as the two highest totals in school history.

“After playing at UConn and growing up in Pennsylvania, I couldn’t be more excited to get back to my roots in the Northeast,” Jessee said.

“The women’s soccer program has a history of success and I look forward to helping the Rams return to national prominence.”

Jessee helped guide Wake Forest to the 2010 Atlantic Coast Conference team title and six NCAA Championship appearances. In 2009, the Demon Deacons program reached historic heights, advancing to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championship and finishing with a final national ranking of No. 8 in the country.

Before her time at Wake Forest, Jessee spent a year as the women’s soccer graduate assistant at Slippery Rock University. At Slippery Rock, Jessee coached the field players and goalkeepers and helped with recruiting and team operations.

Jessee also has coached for the Connecticut Olympic Development Program, the FSA Soccer Plus Football Club, Soccer Plus Camps and the Region 1 ODP Girls Soccer Camp.

Junior Wins N.J. State Amateur Golf Championship Dawson Jones ’19 of Howell, N.J., won the 116th New Jersey State Amateur Championship in record-setting fashion in June. The 19-year-old accounting major shot 274 over four rounds, a record for the contest, breaking the prior record of 276 set by Asian Tour pro Mark McCormick of Suburban at Baltusrol in 2012.

Entering the final round, Jones trailed Dan O’Rourke by seven strokes, but his seven-under 65 helped him claim the title at the NJSGA Amateur Championship, hosted by Tavistock Country Club in Haddonfield, N.J. Buoyed by a birdie and an eagle to start the final round, Jones’ round of 65 was just one shot off the lowest round ever recorded in the State Amateur. Jones drew even with PHOTOS: COURTESY URI ATHLETICS

O’Rourke at minus-12 with a birdie on the 15th hole, then took the lead for good with an eagle on the par-five, 489-yard No. 17.

“I never had a doubt about winning because you never know what can happen when you start making birdies and the other guy bogeys,” Jones said. “This will definitely help my career so much and give me so much confidence, now that I know what I’m capable of.”

The title capped a successful week for Jones, who played six rounds of golf in four days, including 36 holes at the U.S. Open sectional qualifier at Canoe Brook, where he shot three-under-par and tied for 17th place.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

11

The Thin Red Line Almost instantly, antibiotics were a miracle drug. But bacterial infections that can resist them are now one of the biggest global health threats—and it’s our fault. University of Rhode Island researchers take us inside the fight to save modern medicine as we know it. BY NICOLE MARANHAS Perhaps you’ve heard the famous story. A scientist returns from his summer vacation to a messy lab and discovers that mold, blown in from an open window, has infiltrated a petri dish of diseasecausing Staphylococcus and killed the bacteria.

That’s the tale of Alexander Fleming and the birth of penicillin. A less-famous story: In 1945, the same year Fleming wins the Nobel Prize in medicine, he speaks at the Waldorf Astoria hotel at a dinner held in his honor and warns that “thoughtless” misusers of the drug will someday have blood on their hands.

12

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

He is quoted the next morning in The New York Times, in a column that runs on page 21 alongside news of meat and butter rations in restaurants, a tunnel to Staten Island, and Mighty Seventh war bonds. He cautions, “I hope this evil can be averted.”

To make this easy, there are catch phrases.

“Cold or flu? Antibiotics don’t work for you.”

“Snort. Sniffle. Sneeze. No antibiotics, please.” For Kerry LaPlante, stewardship comes down to the three Ds: “the right drug, in the right dose, for the right duration.”

The deadliest of bacteria can build up an entire stockpile of warfare tactics. Shown here is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

LaPlante is a professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy and director of the infectious disease research program at the Providence VA Medical Center. She is also co-director of the Providence VA’s Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, and vice chair of the Antimicrobial Stewardship and Environmental Cleaning Task Force for the Rhode Island Department of Health. Both are leading initiatives in the state to curb the overuse of antibiotics that drives antibiotic resistance, recently cited by the World Health Organization as one of our greatest public health threats. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), two million antimicrobial-resistant infections now occur each year (the term “antimicrobial” refers not only to antibiotics that treat bacterial infections, but also to drugs that treat infections caused by other PHOTOS: ISTOCK.COM

microorganisms, such as fungi), resulting in 23,000 deaths. This number is expected to rise to 10 million deaths per year by 2050—in the U.S. alone. The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reports similar numbers overseas.

“Alexander Fleming warned us to be careful on overusing antibiotics,” says LaPlante. “We’ve only had them for 70 years, and here we are.”

Resistance, or the ability of diseasecausing bacteria to fight off an antibiotic drug, isn’t anything new; the ongoing war between bacteria and the antibiotics found in nature, such as the one waged in Fleming’s petri dish, has been playing out for billions of years. But in recent years, bacterial infections that do not respond to antibiotic treatment have reached crisis levels.

Here is what happens every time you

take an antibiotic: While the drug kills most of the bacteria causing the infection, some bacteria will be naturally resistant. Meanwhile, the antibiotic also kills microflora in your gut, mouth, and skin—the good bacteria that protect you. As microflora are killed off, the “bad” bacteria have a window of opportunity to multiply, or spread their resistant genes to other bacteria. Often, our immune system catches them, but sometimes antibiotic resistant bacteria build big enough numbers to make trouble. Particularly if the immune system is weakened—a risk for patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and health care settings—these bacteria can cause a new infection, requiring a different antibiotic.

At the same time, we’ve raised the stakes. “If the body gets the wrong UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 13

Kerry LaPlante is a professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy and director of the infectious disease research program at the Providence VA Medical Center.

drug, dose, or duration, it can tease the bacteria into developing resistance,” says LaPlante. Skipping doses, sharing medications, saving leftover prescriptions to try to treat recurring infections (often caused by the very bacteria that don’t respond to the antibiotic you have already taken), or taking antibiotics when they aren’t needed— all these things can give healthy bacteria just enough exposure to train them to mutate and develop resistance to the drug.

In its 2015 report on the state of the world’s antibiotics, the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy showed a 30 percent increase in global antibiotics use between 2000 and 2010. As our use of antibiotics in health care and agriculture has grown, we have helped to launch armies of more powerful bacteria to fight them—exhausting our treatment options for a growing number of infections and outpacing our ability to discover new drugs.

Like any germ picked up on a door handle or on an airplane, drug-resistant bacteria spread easily from one person to another. This was ultimately Fleming’s warning and the crisis scientists are racing to solve.

Antibiotics can be challenging to prescribe. While a bacterial infection will respond to an antibiotic, infections caused by a virus will not. Newer technology, such as rapid diagnostic testing, can identify a bacterial infection within hours (many patients with strep throat, for example, can 14

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

get same-day results), but otherwise, the cause of an infection may take days to diagnose. Rather than delay treatment in the meantime, prescribers may give patients a broad-spectrum antibiotic that can wipe out a range of possible infectious bacteria types—but broad-spectrum antibiotics can also create a broad spectrum of resistance. “A lot of times, prescribers don’t know what is causing the infection, so they have to take their best guess at deciding if an antibiotic is necessary—and if it is the right drug, at the right dose, for the right duration,” says LaPlante. More widelyavailable rapid diagnostic testing could significantly help curb misuse and overuse.

Meanwhile, patients can also feel frustrated to leave their doctor’s office without a prescription. “The pressure is very apparent when you do primary care,” says David Dosa, a geriatrician at Rhode Island Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Brown University, who has worked with LaPlante to help bring stewardship guidelines to nursing homes.

“When people go to the doctor, they’ve reached a critical point where they’ve taken time off work and paid to see a doctor, and they want something that will help. If a doctor tells them it’s a virus and to go home, or to wait and come back, they are upset—and many doctors don’t want to upset their patients and risk losing them.

Many will write a prescription so the patient feels heard.”

Data shows that 30 to 50 percent of anti-

biotics are prescribed unnecessarily— making stewardship programs critical in hospitals, long-term care facilities, nursing homes, and other health care settings. At the Providence VA, LaPlante works with a six-person team that includes two URI College of Pharmacy fellows, as well as Assistant Professor Aisling Caffrey, a pharmacoepidemiologist who helps LaPlante’s team track outcomes of antibiotic treatment. Each day, members of the team review a list of every antibiotic drug prescription in the hospital to ensure each patient receives the correct drug, dose, duration. In addition to being one of the most progressive stewardship programs in the state, it is also the only antimicrobialresistance pharmacy training program in the country. “The program is a great partnership between doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and clinical microbiologists to protect patients,” says Providence VA’s Chief of Infectious Disease Melissa Gaitanis, who has co-directed the program

Data shows

to 30 50 percent that

of

antibiotics

are prescribed

unnecessarily

How Antibiotic Resistance Happens

1.

Lots of germs.

A few are drug resistant.

with LaPlante since 2012.

LaPlante’s efforts have also included establishing clear-cut prescription guidelines (known as treatment pathways) for doctors. At URI, she works with College of Pharmacy Program Coordinator Jennifer DeAngelis to maintain an Antimicrobial Stewardship Program website, which has been a resource for physicians as far away as South Africa in eliminating the guesswork and error of antibiotics prescribing.

Overall, stewardship is not only vital from a public health standpoint but from an economic one: The CDC estimates that the costs of antimicrobial resistance are as great as $35 billion per year in the U.S. alone. “Inappropriate use of antibiotics and health-care-associated infections are real threats to our national health-care infrastructure,” says Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health. “They also affect health-care expenditures in Rhode Island and could pose a threat to the stability of the healthcare system in our state. Dr. LaPlante’s incredible passion, leadership, and expertise have been absolutely crucial to our work to address these issues.”

It was easy to call it a miracle drug.

Penicillin cured the incurable—deadly infections from wounds, childbirth, strep throat. And as pharmaceutical companies rushed to discover and develop new antibiotics to treat more types of infections, medicine leapt into a new era of possibilities, from organ transplants to chemotherPHOTO: JOE GIBLIN; ILLUSTRATION CDC

2.

Antibiotics kill bacteria causing the illness, as well as good bacteria protecting the body from infection.

3.

The drug-resistant bacteria are now allowed to grow and take over.r.r

apy, that were unthinkable before infections could be controlled. But miracles cannot be explained or understood—and understanding the way antibiotics work, as Fleming tried to warn, is critical.

In a recent World Health Organization survey of 10,000 respondents in 12 countries, 64 percent agreed that “Medical experts will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance before it becomes too serious.” So many health scares—SARS, bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease—seem to stir up apocalyptic headlines, then vanish. To many of us, threats of a post-antibiotic era that sends us back to 1920s medicine are no different.

Fleming spoke multiple times of the need for antibiotic stewardship. Months after the Waldorf Astoria dinner, he gave his Nobel Lecture, delivering this hypothetical: Mr. X has a sore throat. He buys some penicillin and gives himself not enough to kill the streptococci but enough to educate them to resist penicillin. He then infects his wife.

Mrs. X gets pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. As the streptococci are now resistant to penicillin, the treatment fails.

Mrs. X dies. Who is primarily responsible for Mrs. X’s death? Why, Mr. X, whose negligent use of penicillin changed the nature of the microbe.

The crisis of antibiotic-resistant infections is complex, the collateral damage of drugs that every one of us, in some way, relies on. As we depend on scientists and medical professionals to solve it, they are

4.

Some bacteria give their drug-resistance to other bacteria, causing more problems.

True or False? Test your knowledge of antibiotics use.

Drug-resistance is a problem humans created.

FALSE. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria will always exist. Overuse of antibiotic drugs, however, has helped create widespread infections that are resistant to multiple, or all, antibiotic treatments.

Antibiotics can treat viral infections, such as cold and flu.

FALSE. Colds and flu are caused by viruses.

Antibiotics can fight only bacterial infections.

You don’t need antibiotics every time you have a bacterial infection.

TRUE. Doctors may prescribe a few days of “watchful waiting” before starting an antibiotic for mild bacterial infections that can get better without treatment.

I should stop taking an antibiotic when I feel better.

FALSE. Taking an antibiotic for the wrong duration (too long or too short a period) can be harmful. Talk with your prescriber about when to stop taking them.

If I develop a drug-resistant infection, I can spread it to another person.

TRUE. Bacteria, not people, become resistant to drugs. Bacteria spread easily through the air and on surfaces.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 15

“Bacteria will always evolve to develop resistance to antibiotics.”

David Rowley, URI’s chair of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences.

also depending on us.➔ Meanwhile, the hunt is on. “We’ve been finding the same molecules over and over and over,” says David Rowley, URI’s chair of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences.

“If we want to find new drugs, we need to look in new places.”

The last new class of antibiotics was discovered decades ago. By the 1970s, most pharmaceutical companies turned away from developing new antibiotics— with a broad arsenal to treat infections and seemingly no more stones left unturned, they turned their attention to chronic disease.

By the time the looming antimicrobial resistance crisis grew unmistakably dire, developing new antibiotics had become a lengthy, expensive enterprise with almost no economic incentive and very little government support. In 2012, the Food and Drug Administration’s bipartisan GAIN Act (Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now) took a step toward stimulating drug

companies to develop new medications.

Developing any new drug is a “long, arduous” path, says Rowley—from initial research and discovery, through pre-clinical and three phases of clinical trials, to FDA approval and post-approval monitoring, all of which can cost billions of dollars and take at least 10 years. But the first hurdle— finding new compounds that have never been tested or evaluated for antibiotic potential in the first place—is even more massive, sending scientists on a global scavenger hunt for clue-giving germs and never-before-seen compounds, searching everywhere from the scummiest subway stations to the blood samples of Komodo dragons.

And searching the ocean. “The marine environment offers a vast and relatively

Get Smart on Antibiotics: How You Can Protect Yourself and Others

• Do not take antibiotics for cold, flu,

• Never pressure your doctor for an

• Take antibiotics as prescribed.

• Never share medications or take an

• Practice good hand-washing hygiene

• Do not save leftover antibiotics to

• Ask your doctor about vaccines

and other viral illnesses.

antibiotic prescribed to someone else. treat future infections.

16

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

antibiotic.

to prevent the spread of bacteria to yourself and others.

recommended to prevent infections.

unexplored source of biodiversity for us to investigate,” says Rowley, whose research focuses on marine microbes with potential infection-fighting abilities. “A microbe that lives in the ocean has adapted to a different environment and is likely to have adapted different ways to kill pathogens.” One partner in his quest is David Smith, professor and associate dean of URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, who has brought deep-sea sediment samples from his own research in locales as far-flung as the Arctic back to Rowley’s lab for testing— not only in pursuit of a potential antibiotic, but for a potential drug that could block bacteria from spreading or developing resistance at all. One of the most fascinating areas of Rowley’s research is quorum sensing, the language that bacteria use to coordinate their efforts. “If we can use other molecules to shut down the bacteria’s ability to communicate, we can prevent the bacteria from causing infection,” says Rowley. “Think of it this way. When we go to war, we usually take out the communication system of our enemy first.”

The enemy in this war is ingenious— bacteria have been successfully defeating antibiotics in nature for billions of years.

Some use enzymes to break down antibiotic compounds. Some mutate, making themselves invasion-proof. Others can pump the drug out of their cells. Once bacteria acquire resistance, they multiply (each bacterium can divide into two in as few as 20 minutes) or transfer their resistant genes to healthy bacteria. The deadliest bacteria can build up an entire stockpile of warfare tactics. These show up on the news, with names like methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), carbapenum-resistant enterobacteriacea (CRE), and Clostridium difficile (“C. diff.”), the “superbugs” that can withstand multiple, or all, antibiotics.

“Bacteria will always evolve to develop resistance to antibiotics,” says Rowley. “We need to stay one step ahead. I don’t know if we’ll ever have enough to overcome drug PHOTO: NORA LEWIS

Examples of How Antibiotic Resistance Spreads

George gets antibiotics and develops resistant bacteria in his gut.

Animals get antibiotics and develop resistant bacteria in their guts.

George stays at home and in the general community.

Spreads resistant bacteria.

George gets care at a

Drug-resistant bacteria can remain on meat from animals.

When not handled or cooked properly, the bacteria can spread to humans.

hospital, nursing home or other inpatient care facility.

Fertilizer or water containing animal feces and drug-resistant bacteria is used on food crops.

Vegetable Farm

Resistant germs spread directly to other patients or indirectly on unclean hands of healthcare providers.

Drug-resistant bacteria in the animal feces can remain on crops and be eaten. These bacteria can remain in the human gut.

resistance. The more options we have available, the better we’re going to be.”

For Rowley, these options also include probiotics. Locally, he has worked with professors Marta Gomez-Chiarri and David Nelson in the College of Environment and Life Sciences, and also with shellfish farmers, to investigate how health-promoting bacteria can be used to prevent disease in aquaculture. That research could have further implications toward curbing antibiotics in agriculture generally—a critical task, given that agricultural demands are projected to rise to 105,600 tons, or nearly two-thirds of the world’s total antibiotic applications, by 2030. “If we can find beneficial microbes that can prevent disease in plants and animals, we can avoid the use of antibiotics in food consumption,” says Rowley.

He adds, “This is all hands on deck.

There isn’t one solution to this problem.”

Hands. Eighty years before penicillin changed the world, the power of hand ILLUSTRATION COURTESY: CDC

Patients go home.

washing to prevent infection was a revolutionary discovery. It doesn’t sound exciting now, but it did when Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelwiess realized that this simple act nearly eliminated deaths from puerperal fever in the maternity clinic at the hospital where he worked.

After using the bathroom, while preparing food, before eating, before and after changing diapers, or when caring for someone who is sick, it takes 20 seconds to prevent the spread of germs and potentially save lives. Fittingly, that’s two rounds of “Happy Birthday,” as the rule of thumb goes—one for others, and one for yourself.

As Rowley notes, there won’t be one solution to the threat of drug-resistant infections. Science may find the next miracle, but prevention and stewardship will always be key. Taking antibiotic drugs only when needed and as directed, raising awareness, keeping hands clean. Whatever miracles await, you are one of the heroes in this story. •

Healthcare Facility

Resistant bacteria spread to other patients from surfaces within the healthcare facility.

2017 Antibiotics

Awareness

Week is November 13–19.

Visit cdc.gov/

getsmart

for facts, FAQs, and more information.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 17

ESSAY BY ANN HOOD ’78 ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANTHONY RUSSO ’74

E

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

AND A PRACTICAL AL DEFENSE P H I LO S O P H I C

18

ITERATURE THE POWER OF L

veryone should, of course, be an English major.

Let me explain.

I started at the University of Rhode Island in the fall of 1974, a 17-year-old girl who knew exactly nothing, except one thing: literature can save our lives.

This I had figured out on my own when I was seven.

I grew up in West Warwick, 24 miles and a world away from Kingston, the odd kid in thick glasses who liked to raise her hand too much and started reading Hints From Heloise and Dear Abby in first grade. My elementary school, Providence Street Grammar School, was the same one where my mother and her nine siblings had gone and, before that, where my grandmother had gone until third grade when she had to go to work at the Natick Mill.

We were Italian-American immigrants who worked hard—some still in the mills—and cooked a lot and talked around the kitchen table over black coffee and cigarettes well into the night. Reading? Not so much.

It’s hard for me to discern how I came to love reading as much as I did. Oh, I know what I loved about it: how it took me to places I never thought I’d see, like London or Alaska or Prince Edward Island; how it showed me people so different from the ones I knew, like orphans and explorers and teenage sleuths; how when I read, the world around me disappeared and hours passed in a gentle fog of words and emotions. For the least popular kid in my class, the one who didn’t get invited to birthday parties or to practice the twist after school in Michelle Kincaid’s rec room, getting transported into Nancy Drew’s roadster or to the March family’s dinner table kept me from feeling lonely.

But how I came to pick up my older brother’s reading book one day when I was four and actually read it, no one can explain. Yet somehow I did. I opened that book and the letters on the page formed a word and I could read that word. “LOOK! LOOK!” I turned the page and read that one too, and the next and the next. “UP! UP!,” I read, and I had one thought: “I want to live in a book.”

It’s easy to think that of course I should have been an English major. I loved to read from an early age and I went on to become a writer. In fact, writers from Stephen King to Toni Morrison were English majors. But so were Harold Varmus, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; former CEOs of Xerox, Avon, MTV, Disney, and NBC; Stephen Spielberg; Conan O’Brien; Garrison Keillor; Mitt Romney; Mario Cuomo; Sting—all of them English majors. So there is something more than a love of reading that propels people with such varied interests and talents to study English. ➔

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

19

“I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to transport people to places they’d never been with characters they’d never met, the way books did for me.”

–Ann Hood ’78

20

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

The summer of 1974, I spent most days at Scarborough Beach slathering myself with Coppertone and adding Sun-In to my hair. I worked at Jordan Marsh at the Warwick Mall and was in love with a boy entering his junior year at URI. The last thing I thought about was what I would major in or what I would do when I graduated in four years. One evening after dinner, my father sat me down and explained to me why I should major in Business. A woman majoring in Business at this point in time could write her own ticket, he told me.

I probably smiled and nodded at him, even though the one thing I was certain of was that I would not major in Business. I loved poetry and Russian novels and thinking about Man vs.

Nature and Man vs. Man. I loved staring out the window and daydreaming about the big world outside. Business? An office in a high rise somewhere? A suit and floppy bow tie? Not for me.

At freshman orientation that July, we were walked through the overwhelming and complicated process of registration, including how many credits in each division we needed. When my orientation leader asked me what I wanted to major in, I told him I wanted to be a writer.

“Okay,” he said. “Journalism.” Before I knew it, I was enrolled in Journalism 101 as a journalism major. (How was he to know that the two greatest journalists of that time, Barbara Walters and Bob Woodward, were both English majors?)

But it took only one journalism class to send me down to the registrar to change my major to English. As soon as the professor told us that in journalism you can’t make things up, I knew I was in the wrong place. I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to transport people to places they’d never been with characters they’d never met, the way books did for me. When the professor of my American literature class handed out the syllabus, I felt like she’d given me a great gift: an entire semester’s worth of books to read and think

about and discuss. That semester I was introduced to the work of Willa Cather and William Carlos Williams and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the effects of which have never faded.

In my junior year, I took my first Shakespeare class. One day, after our discussion on King Lear, I went to the teacher in tears. “This play speaks to me,” I told him. “To my whole generation! How could Shakespeare have known this so many hundreds of years ago?”

“Ah,” Dr. Smith answered, “that is why we still read Shakespeare. Why we read at all. To figure out who we are and why.” This idea made me dizzy with possibility and understanding.

Not long ago I read about a man who asked his friend, a Shakespeare scholar, how much she knew about Shakespeare. “Not as much as he knows about me,” she said.

This is at the heart of the value of majoring in English. By studying literature we don’t learn data points or increase our productivity. Instead we learn to understand human nature, to write sentences that are clear and sometimes beautiful, to weigh moral dilemmas, to use critical thinking and abstract reasoning.

Perhaps you are thinking that this is all well and good, but none of this will get you a pay-check or even a job.

However, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, English majors in 2010 had only 9.8 percent unemployment upon

ILLUSTRATIONS: ANTHONY RUSSO ’74

graduation, which is very close to computer science majors (8.7 percent). Employers actually prefer liberal arts grads because of their critical thinking skills, ability to write clearly, and broad range of knowledge in many areas.

Still, to be honest, none of these reasons are why I—and I daresay, many—English majors chose to study literature. I chose it because I loved to read, and to think. And that’s what I did for four years in college. I read dozens and dozens of books and then thought about and wrote about the themes they explored: love, war, betrayal, family, home, loyalty, death, childhood, old age, nature, light, darkness, good, evil. In other words, all the things we are confronted with every day of our lives. “All students—and I mean all—ought to think seriously about majoring in English,” Mark Edmundson stated in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Becoming an English major means pursuing the most important subject of all—being a human being.”

Yet I know that especially in today’s world of technology and start-ups and computers, being an English major seems, to some, downright archaic, like selling buggy whips after the first Ford was introduced. However, even Business Insider argues for majoring in English because of the skills you learn. Among them: setting schedules and working under deadlines (reading 400 pages of Virginia Woolf and literary criticism, and then writing a 25-page term paper on it, all in five days); communicating clearly; thinking critically and successfully arguing a point; and taking constructive criticism. But undergraduates will tell you that pressure from their parents and society lead them away from the humanities and toward majors that they believe will lead to good jobs, like the ubiquitous communications major.

“We are drowning in information,” Pulitzer Prizewinning scientist E.O. Wilson tells us, “while starving for wisdom.” Of course information is a good thing. But wisdom is even more vital, and we can feed our need for it by reading books.

PHOTOS: COURTESY ANN HOOD; NORA LEWIS

My path after college was a crooked one.

I worked as a flight attendant for TWA, sold coats at a Casual Corner, stood behind the cash register at a bookstore, slung ribs at a Tony Roma’s. All the while I worked on novels and short stories, all of them terrible. I went to graduate school to study American literature and finally finished and sold a novel that went on to become a best-seller, eight years after I graduated with my B.A. in English. How foolish we are to think that our successes in life must be immediate and therefore only those skills that have a pay-off are worthwhile.

As New York Times op-ed writer Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote, “What is an English major good for? The best answer...[is] wait and see.”

If I were to enter college today, I would do many things differently than I did back in 1974. I would choose better boyfriends and live at the beach and be a better friend. I would learn a language. I would take computer science and economics classes, which are even more important today than they were back then. I would study abroad for a semester.

But there is one thing I would not change—if I started college today, I would still happily, eagerly, major in English. •

New York Times best-selling author Ann Hood ’78 is the author of 14 novels, three memoirs, a short story collection, a 10-book series for middle readers and one young adult novel. She is a contributor to The New York Times, The Paris Review, O, Bon Appetit, Tin House, The Atlantic Monthly, and Real Simple, and has won numerous awards. Her most recent work is The Book That Matters Most, published with W. W. Norton and Company in 2016. She is a faculty member in the MFA in Creative Writing program at The New School in New York City, and lives in Providence with her husband and their children.

Anthony Russo ’74 is a freelance illustrator and fine artist. His work is featured regularly in magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Esquire, LA Times, and Vanity Fair. He has illustrated books for Random House, MacMillan, Picador, Harper & Row, Steerforth Press, St. Martin’s, David R. Godine Publishers Inc., Rowohlt, and Franklin Library. His illustrations have won numerous awards. He has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and Parsons in New York. He lives in Little Compton with his wife.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

21

That’s Cub 22

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

If ever there was a story about finding your own path, it belongs to Joshua Lifrak ’94. In his case, that path would lead to being part of the team that triumphed over the last great curse in U.S. sports. Here’s his take on career paths, Cubs culture, and what it’s like to approach the season after your big win.

BY PIPPA JACK

Josh Lifrak Josh Lifrak remembers sitting in class for his master’s in sports psychology at Ithaca College as the professor regarded his students doubtfully. “You know jobs are tough to find in this field, right?” he asked the class.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if Lifrak had been the same age as his classmates.

But here’s how things had gone after Lifrak’s sociology degree at URI: some time traveling in Europe; an attempt to put down roots in Portland, Oregon; 10 years waiting tables in NYC. There was no way that was the endgame, but finding the path forward, that was the struggle. How to reconcile the way he was with the things he was drawn to?

Lifrak has always been interested in the life of the mind—his parents both held Ph.D.s in psychology from URI, so perhaps he never had much choice about that. But he is also a habitual, proud skeptic of conventional wisdom (his favorite memory from URI is of an adjunct lecturer, Russell Chabbot, who told him: “F*** the facts.

Everything can be disproved sooner or later. Do your own analysis.”). He felt a deep yearning to make an impact somewhere in the world. And then there was his love of sports. He’d rowed crew at URI, gone on to mountain-bike and rock climb in those amorphous post-college years. He liked to push himself. And it was during one such COURTESY: JOSH LIFRAK, CHICAGO CUBS

bike ride, a really bad one, that he came to a central realization: His performance? It was all in his head.

“That’s when I knew I wanted to get back into sports,” he says. “But on the soft skills side.”

He didn’t have the right degree to get into a sports psychology program, so he took 20 credits at Brooklyn College, then applied to Ithaca. The whole time, he kept hearing the same thing: It’s nice you’re here, but employment rates stink. He was undeterred (those pesky facts). “One of the things I never took advantage of in Rhode Island was an internship,” Lifrak says. “At Ithaca, I knew I was going to have to get some real-world experience or no one was going to hire me. The college sports program at the Dill School always needed help, so I got a job there and immediately started devising my own mental skills program.”

He used the foundations of sports psychology: confidence, energy management, how you talk to yourself, focus and awareness. “You use your mind as a weapon to help you be successful,” he explains. The three biggest tools: affirmation, visualization, meditation.

Except, you couldn’t talk to the average college athlete about meditation back then.

“Now, with all the research coming out, everyone is on board, everyone has a meditation app on their phone,” he says. “Many

major sports franchises now have a yoga and breathing instructor embedded with the team. But back then, we had to steal a term from the military: tactical breathing.

It sounded tough.”

The experience paid off at graduation, when he landed a job at the International Management Group (IMG) Academy in Florida. A specialized prep school and eliteathlete training center, it was one of the few workplaces for someone who wanted to do what Lifrak does. “You meet everyone at that place, they all just come through,” he says.

“They paid me like I needed to pay them to work for them. They knew there weren’t many jobs. But it was a launching point.”

For nine years, he gave 15 to 20 lectures a week, for 37 weeks a year.

“It was like getting a Ph.D. in presentations,” he says. “But it was great because you had to come up with new stuff each week. You had to almost be an artist, and that’s something they talk about there a lot: the art and the science. A good practitioner has the scientific background to know what things to do, and the artistry to meld it all together and work through the cracks.”

In between lectures, “I would go work with a group of 15-year-old tennis players, then straight to an Olympic medalist, then to work with kids who were going to be in the NBA in two years. It’s a really unique and crazy place.” ➔ UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 23

“So eve r

t h in om e y ti m e s o m e o n e d id s

th

ve

er e

bo

.’”

ga d

r ig

ht

an n

ev en

C

yo

ub

be

d,

if

it

wa

sa

p la

From left: Cubs Senior VP of Scouting Jason McLeod, President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein, Lifrak and General Manager Jed Hoyer at the 2016 World Series Ring Ceremony.

Maddon “just thought about everything a little differently,” Lifrak says.

“The ingredients were there, and this chef came and mixed everything up and made a four-star meal.”

24

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

yer

o ew pi c k w , up ing up a di s c ar d e d c

The exposure helped him narrow his goals. There was something about working with baseball players. “The game sets itself up really well for mental skills development,” Lifrak says. “There’s the one-on-one competition in it, and the fact that the bat is round so the failure rate is really high. So there you are, and you’re having to deal with failure all the time, and the game stops and starts—not like hockey or something that’s fluid and keeps your mind from wandering. In baseball, something happens, then nothing, nothing, nothing. How do you train your mind to stay on it?”

So Lifrak felt he had something to offer the players. And, importantly, they tended to be open to it. “The guys are out there on the field, alone, and they come into the dugout and they immediately start talking because they’ve got so much going on in their head,” he says. “They tend not to have filters. And that’s great, because guys who

ul

a ds

‘T y,

t ha

’s

are guarded are tough clients.”

When it was time to leave IMG, Lifrak started making calls—at least eight former coworkers were in professional baseball. He interviewed with the Cleveland Indians, and didn’t get the job. “Fit matters when you’re looking to join an institution, and I didn’t fit there,” he says. But the Indians admin liked him, and they knew something Lifrak didn’t: that the Chicago Cubs were hiring. “They called the Cubs on my behalf and said, ‘Listen, we found your guy,’” Lifrak recounts with wonder. “I walked into my office and there was a little light blinking and it was the Cubs calling me in for an interview.”

When Lifrak saw the young team assembled at his interview, it felt right. And then there was the century-plus Curse of the Billy Goat. It attracted him—he wanted to be there when they beat it. He wanted to see that fan base, unrivaled perhaps by any

Courage Urgency Belief other except that of the Boston Red Sox, go wild, the city electrified.

It was August 2014, and the Cubs were in last place. Lifrak went straight onto Wrigley Field his first day and the game was sold out. “There was this energy to it,” he says. “I remember thinking the team was going to be really good in a year or two.”

Manager Joe Maddon came on board the same season, and the next year, the Cubs won 95 games and went to the National League Championship Series. It had a lot to do with how Maddon “just thought about everything a little differently,” Lifrak says.

“The ingredients were there, and this chef came and mixed everything up and made a four-star meal.”

But there was a cloud. In the past, every time the organization had got close to success, something bad had happened.

The curse made them feel they were up against the impossible. It almost had the weight of a fact.

Lifrak and his team set out to change all that: “When we came in, there wasn’t a true understanding of what it was to be a Cub. Sociology had trained me to look at people in groups, at the collective. From the minor leagues on up, we pushed the idea of culture.”

They co-opted the term ‘That’s Cub,’ which for decades had been far from a compliment. “We wanted to be great people first, and great baseball players second,” Lifrak says. “So every time PHOTOS: COURTESY JOSH LIFRAK, CHICAGO CUBS

someone did something above and beyond, even if it was a player picking up a discarded cup, we would say, ‘That’s Cub right there.’”

Cub itself became an acronym, standing for courage, urgency, and belief.

“Courage to do the right thing, urgency to do it right now, and belief that you’re going to get it done.”

The team bought in. The next season, they won 103 games and then the World Series, breaking the 108-year curse.

Some five million people showed up for the parade—the seventh largest gathering in human history. It was pure triumph.

In the aftermath, the organization hit some bumps. “We all got pulled in a lot of different directions,” Lifrak says. “I’m behind the scenes and even I felt it— speaking engagements, too much time away from family. I can’t imagine how the players felt.”

This season—Lifrak talked to us over the summer—the players were still finding their feet, and the slogan that had been their inside-baseball byword was suddenly everywhere. “Our marketing team used That’s Cub this year,” Lifrak says. But as far as the team goes, “I’m not hyper concerned,” Lifrak says. “We won our way. It was about togetherness, playing the game the right way, blue-collar hustling, everything that Chicago is about. We blew what was possible out of the water. If we trust our ability and work hard, more great things will happen.” •

Get In The Game Whether getting ready for a weekend run or a sales presentation, Lifrak gives this quick tip for how to get in the right mindset:

“Get ready to be ready.”

Sounds simple, but “you have to get yourself grounded,” he says. “For a few days before, take a minute or two to meditate—there are hundreds of apps—and visualize what’s going to happen and how you’re going to handle it.

See it happening, and tell yourself you’re confident, smart, professional. That way when you get to the event, you can stay in the moment.”

Lifrak says the phrase “Get ready to be ready,” by the way, is one he first learned from Cubs Hall of Famer second baseman Ryne Sandberg.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 25

URI established a computer science department 50 years ago. From punch cards to big data, what’s changed—and what’s coming next.

BY PIPPA JACK

I

n 1967, at the then brand-new—and first of its kind in New England—computer science department at the University of Rhode Island, people spent a lot of time punching cards.

In those days, a single huge mainframe computer took up most of Tyler Hall’s basement. It had less computing power, says Professor Edmund Lamagna, than one of today’s smart phones.

Students initially came for master’s degrees in computer science and statistics. Undergrad programs launched in 1975, and Lamagna, then a young assistant professor, was hired the following year.

There was no simple keyboard interface. Instead, “Students would write programs by placing the instructions on punch cards using a desk-sized keypunch machine,” recalls Lamagna. “One error meant the entire card had to be re-punched.”

Each card could hold only one program statement, so students needed to feed multiple cards into the computer in order. A “deck” of cards formed the program—drop your cards, and you had, catastrophically, “shuffled your deck.”

“A good example of a program that might be assigned in an intro class would be to determine whether a number is a prime,” says Lamagna. “Another might be to take a list of names and sort them alphabetically—this, of course, is something Excel can do for us now.” Toward the end of the semester, computer science majors might be challenged: “We might ask them to take a paragraph and translate it into pig Latin.”

26

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Pig Latin has now fallen out of favor, it’s a lot harder (although still not impossible) to lose all your files, let alone whole programs, and students have hundreds of computer science offerings to choose from. Indeed, computers and their ability to manipulate complex data have become part of almost every area of everyday life, from art to sports and from biomedical research to movie special effects—all of which are reflected in URI course offerings.

No surprise, then, that the department now teaches nearly 1,700 students each semester, only 400 of whom are computer science majors. That’s been one of the department’s challenges as it grows, says Professor Joan Peckham, who stepped down this summer as chair—as more students come from different disciplines, seeking complementary majors, minors or certificates to go with pretty much every other course URI offers, professors find themselves teaching students who are less prepared in math and problem solving than traditional computer science majors. Another challenge: the industry is constantly and rapidly evolving, so courses must respond to new techniques and languages.

Thinking Big Data

This September, undergraduate students began enrolling in new programs under the umbrella of the University’s campus-wide Big Data Collaborative. The courses examine everything from the condition of the oceans to health care systems, and from global financial systems to threats to national infrastructure, and they

PHOTOS: COURTESY URI COMPUTER SCIENCE; BETTY-JO CUGINI

To left, cutting-edge 1970s punch card technology. Above, virtual reality—for applications both serious and fun—is one of the burgeoning users of big data. Below right, at the keyboard of URI’s IBM 360, circa 1976.

reflect the nearly unfathomable amount of information affecting our lives. For perspective, consider this: IBM estimates that 90 percent of the data in the world today was created in the past two years. In the future, how we control access to that data, and how we apply its lessons, may be hallmarks of a just society.

“We need the natural scientists, social scientists, policy experts, and yes, also the humanities, if we are to make best, and safe, use of the oceans of data in which we all now swim,” says Peckham, who is now coordinating the Big Data Collaborative. “For good examples, read the book Weapons of Math Destruction [by Wall Street analyst Cathy O’Neil], which examines policies that were developed on the heels of data analysis, but did more harm than good.

We need to go beyond procuring, cleaning, archiving, accessing, and analyzing data, and inject the knowledge of the domain experts who might be able to help us predict the possible benefits and harms of the actions that follow what we think the data is telling us.”

And as we learn to analyze huge data sets to reveal patterns and associations, there’s one pattern that Lamagna finds hard to ignore.

“Big Data is back to the future for URI’s computer science,” he says.

“The department’s first chair, Bill Hemmerle, was a computational statistician interested in making sense of data.” • URI’s computer science department will celebrate its 50th anniversary on October 14, when national speakers will tackle topics such as election hacking. More information at cs.uri.edu.

THE COMPUTER WORKFORCE Computer programming was originally thought of as women’s work—“it’s just like planning a dinner,” a 1967 Cosmo article assured readers, “you schedule everything so it’s ready when you need it”—and the field was small, restricted to universities and the large corporations that had the money, and space, for a huge mainframe.

Women’s participation in computer science nationally has now dropped to 18 percent, according to research from Accenture and Girls Who Code. But the job market is huge and growing. Nationally, there were 500,000 computing job openings in 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and fewer than 40,000 computer science grads to fill them. In Rhode Island, nearly 1,700 computing jobs go unfilled with average salaries of $90,000, significantly higher than the average state wage of $52,000.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 27

Mai: A Love Story The secrets she tried to spare her American children came back to haunt Mai Donohue ’02 as her children left the nest.

Then it all came flooding out: her father’s murder; her abusive teen marriage; the son she left behind.

BY PIPPA JACK

28

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

“We grew up learning in parables,” says Maeve Donohue.

Mai Donohue ’02, above, at her home in Barrington, R.I. At left, Mai and her husband Brian on their honeymoon in Vietnam in 1970.

Her mother, Mary Mai Donohue, a homemaker and later educator, a taker-in of lost and parentless children, a fantastic cook and a stalwart member of the Barrington, R.I., community, just talks that way. It’s a holdover from her childhood in Vietnam. “Spoiled kids are like fat little birds,” she would tell Maeve and her brothers and sisters.

“They can’t take care of themselves when they fall out of the nest, and the cat gets them.”

The six Barrington siblings, all born within seven years of each other in the 1970s, all a striking mix of their tiny Vietnamese mother and their tall Irish Catholic father, Brian, flourished in the public schools in leafy, sleepy Barrington. The town had welcomed the interracial family after they’d been turned away by towns in Brian’s native Massachusetts. The kids—four girls, two boys, athletic and smart—got along fine with their mostly white schoolmates. Sure, their family was a little different—for one thing, they took in refugee teens from Vietnam for a year at a time, a cause the community rallied around, dropping off mattresses and clothes to their modest three-bedroom home, which would be stuffed to the rafters with well-regimented children. Their mother deployed her cooking skills like a weapon, offering thenexotic Vietnamese dishes like banh mi to community fundraisers, along with her pitch-perfect pizza and Portuguese sweet bread. In her accented English, despite her fifth-grade education, she kept them in line and kept their homework on track. When it started to challenge her, she studied for her GED at night, keeping pace with their education.

But there was so much she didn’t tell them.

How she didn’t go by Mary because it wasn’t her real name—it was the name on the paperwork she’d bought to escape Vietnam. How in the 1950s, when she was very young, her wealthy grandfather’s political ambitions and religious beliefs had attracted the enmity of the local Viet Minh who ran her small village, Thong An Ninh in central Vietnam, a place torn between north and south in the violent decades that spanned the French and American Vietnam Wars. How her grandfather, father and uncles had been taken from the house one night and executed. How her mother had

PHOTOS: COURTESY MAI DONOHUE; NORA LEWIS

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 29

struggled to raise her four children, selling off land to pay for their educations—funds that ran out for Mai at only 11, since her younger brother’s education took precedence. How she had rebelled against her repressive rural upbringing, how her desperate mother had married her off to an abusive man who left her for dead on the side of the road.

How, still just a teenager, she fled with her baby son, Anh, and they starved on the streets of Saigon.

How she was the Bad Luck Girl.

Bernard “Brian” Donohue, 74, has Parkinson’s, the result of his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. When a visitor tells him what a pleasure it’s been getting to know his wife, he replies succinctly: “Likewise.”

30

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Brian had decided from the start that those were Mai’s secrets, and he’d support her whenever she was ready to tell them. But Mai (her name’s pronounced “My,” although she’ll never correct you) had found it impossible to reconcile her two worlds. She wanted to protect her welladjusted, successful American children—who attended colleges like Stanford, Smith and Brown and may never have been rich, but had never known arbitrary violence or wondered when they would next eat—from the bad luck that had followed her for so long. Mai’s mother told her that she had lingered in the womb and almost killed her in childbirth, that she had been “born into the world under a cloud of bad curses, a bad luck girl.” That name had been the parable of her early life. She wouldn’t let it follow her here.

But as the kids left for college, she felt herself being left behind.

Things came to a head as her two eldest daughters, Maura and Maeve, drove cross-country to Seattle one summer, and Mai wondered if a boyfriend was secretly going to accompany them. “Before they left, we had a huge fight,” Mai recounts. At some point, Maura wondered aloud what Mai knew about having a hard life.

So it was that Mai found herself suddenly telling her whole life story, for the first time, to one of her children.

Maura, a professional dancer and choreographer, wrote her first signature dance out of that experience. It’s called When You’re Old Enough, and the first time Mai saw it, she wept. “I realized that in not telling my children, I’d lived a lie for many years,” Mai says. “Always the memory of my

lost child was like a knife in my heart, but the lie didn’t make the pain any better.”

The family rallied. Maura was the first to reach out to Anh, who had moved to the United States and joined the Navy by then; he and his wife and children are part of all their lives now.

And Mai, in characteristic fashion, made some bold moves—three, in quick succession. She went back to Vietnam for the first time, visited her mother and saw her siblings, now reconciled from the political differences that had torn their family apart, like so many others in Vietnam. She started working in the Barrington School’s Alternate Learning Program, teaching cooking to troubled teens, a connection that meant yet more children would end up taking shelter with the Donohues for a week or a year.

And she went back to school.

“I used to take my brother’s homework and use it to practice letters and math with my fingertip in the dirt of our back yard, after my mother told me I couldn’t go to school any more,” Mai says. “I always wanted an education. And as my kids went to college, I realized I wanted to be able to use the language that they and my husband used, be in the same world as them.”

It took her seven years to earn her associate’s degree in general studies from the Community College of Rhode Island. Another five to get her bachelor’s in human studies from URI, cum laude.

Those degrees each represent a story in their own right, and Mai is quick to say how grateful she is to both schools for helping her fulfill her life-long dream of a college education. But perhaps Brian put it best in a 2009 PBS documentary about his luminous wife, titled Mai: A Lesson In Courage, Passion, and Hope: “Mai’s graduations are triumphs,” he says, “triumphs of the spirit.”

It was from Mai’s college experience that her book was born. It began as a class essay, and 25 years later, in September 2016, was printed by Stillwater River Press. It has so far sold close to 2,000 copies locally and on Amazon.

Crossing the Bamboo Bridge: Memoirs of a Bad Luck Girl chronicles Mai’s life up until she left Vietnam. It’s a way to come to terms with her younger self, the rebellious survivor who’s still a big part of Mai; and it’s a page-turner. There’s more there of Mai’s story: How she left baby Anh in her mother’s care while she tried to make a living in Saigon, where she ended up hiding out from the Viet Cong by nannying on an American base.

How she began to teach herself English from the scraps of paper thrown away in the wastebasket of a bar she cleaned. How her abusive husband took Anh from her mother, and she despaired of ever seeing him again. How she figured out a method

for working the wartime black market in dollars.

How she met a tall Navy officer with the heart of a poet, who planned to be a priest, and told him her whole life story the day they met. How he would go on to give up everything, including his Naval commission, so they could be married.

“I always say Brian loves God, his country, and the Navy,” says Mai, “but he loves me more.”

She still cries when she talks about her early life, but she says that’s ok. There’s been a lot of healing, and there’s a lot more cohesiveness.

Maura got married on the family farm in Vietnam, a place the Donohues, pitching in with their Vietnamese cousins, now help maintain. People live all over, but the warm months bring a constant parade of family back to Barrington’s Hampden Meadows neighborhood, where Mai’s grandkids remind their parents that her food is better than theirs.

She gives a lot of talks, after which audience members often come up to her to tell her how

PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS

touched they are by her story, and how it inspires them to tell their own. And she’s planning more books. Sometimes she says the next one will be a memoir of her early years in the U.S.—the racism she and Brian encountered, the bewilderment she felt in U.S. supermarkets and during her first doctor’s visit, the time Brian was out of work one year and the electricity got shut off, but she made sure the houseful of kids never went hungry. How she and Anh found and forgave each other.

Other times, she says the next book will be fiction, based on her experiences with the Vietnamese underworld. But she’s probably furthest along with her cookbook. The working title is, wonderfully, Mai Goodness (that’s also the name of her website).

One thing is sure: Whatever she sets her mind to, she’ll accomplish. This bad luck girl makes her own luck. •

Mary Mai Donohue, age 72 or so (she’s not sure exactly what year she was born), making chai goi and bap cai ga at home in Barrington, R.I.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

31

CLASSACTS

The Kingston Guard Drill Team, then and now.

Top, in 1967, under the command of Doug Knapp ’69.

Bottom, five members of the team met this summer: (left to right) Bill Cummings ’71, Leo Walsh ’71, Bob Spaulding ’70, Jim Stewart ’71, and Doug Knapp ’69.

See entry for Walsh ’71, page 33.

STAY CONNECTED alumni.uri.edu URI Alumni Association @URIAlumniAssoc | #URIAlum

32

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

flickr.com/urialumni URI Alumni Association

KEEP US UP TO DATE ON YOUR NEWS! Submit your class note at alumni.uri.edu/note

’69

Elizabeth A. Light, daughter of Attorney Stanley Light ’69 and Bonnie Light ’70, both of Springfield, Mass., will graduate from the University of Albany on May 19, 2017, where she will receive a master’s degree in social work. Liz attended Springfield public schools and completed high school in 2009 at The Marvelwood School in Kent, Conn. After attending URI, she went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in 2013 at Westfield State University.

Following graduation, Liz will work as a clinician for Child and Family Services of Newport, R.I.

’70

Stillwater River Press of Glocester, R.I., has released Wandering Across America, written and photographed

by Larry Grimaldi and his wife Kathy.

The book chronicles their 2015 crosscountry drive. For more information, go to stillwaterpress.com.

’71

Leo A. Walsh of Riverside, R.I., writes: “On June 17 we had an informal reunion of The Kingston Guard Drill Team. It has been 50 years since three of us joined the drill team in 1967. At that time Doug Knapp ’69 was the commander and Roger Lord ’69 (not pictured) was the XO. The Kingston Guard was a University competition drill team, not just an ROTC team. (See photos, opposite)

’74

Daniel A. Procaccini, associate justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court and resident of East Greenwich, R.I., was honored at the Rhode Island Bar Association’s Annual Meeting Luncheon on June 16. He was presented with the 2017 Chief Justice Joseph R. Weisberger Judicial Excellence Award. (See photo, page 36.)

Kim Snyder of Titusville, Fla., was inducted into Pit & Quarry magazine’s Hall of Fame.

’80

Dennis Freed of Hudson, N.Y., won the National Indie Excellence Award for his book Love Loss and Awakening, (Mis)adventures on the Way Back to Joy. He writes, “I wrote

the book cathartically to heal after the loss of my wife of 31 years.” Visit www.lovelossandawakening.com for more information.

’82

Commander. Matthew Haag has retired from the U.S. Navy after 32 years of service, and was honored at a ceremony held at the Women in War Memorial, Arlington Cemetery. His retiring officer was Rear Admiral Andrew Lewis, who presented his retirement certificate, end of tour award, presidential letter of appreciation, and permission to go ashore for the last time. He will now start the next chapter of his life in Buchanan, Va.

’84

Sheri Rosen of Robbinsville, N.J., received a proclamation from the Senate and General Assembly State of New Jersey for her volunteering efforts in the fight against drug abuse.

She is an optometric physician practicing in Princeton, N.J., and an active member of the Prevention Coalition of Mercer County. She is married and has two sons.

Student Survival Kits are created and distributed by the URI Student Alumni Association, a nonprofit on-campus student organization.

Each kit is filled with treats, URI gear, and a special message from you!

’85

Order by November 3 to get your Survival Kit delivered in time for fall semester finals!

Brenda Greene of Wyoming, R.I., has joined Centreville Bank as vice president, senior communications manager, (See photo, page 36.)

’90

David A. Bush of Greenville, R.I., has renewed his Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) annual designation.

’92

Denise Snee of La Plata, Md., was awarded the Part-Time Faculty Excellence Award at the College of Southern Maryland. This award is given to those faculty who have demonstrated amazing ability in teaching and serving the college community.

’94

Diana Felici of West Greenwich, R.I., writes: “I’m excited to announce that I have fulfilled a long-time dream of mine and opened up a boutique for cats and dogs. Located at 68 Cliff Street in East Greenwich, R.I., Purrs and Woofs pet boutique carries

ALUMNI.URI.EDU/SAA unique, fabulous items that you just won’t find in traditional pet supply stores, plus a line of wholesome foods with prices comparable to online prices! Come shop where service is personal and the merchandise is visually attractive, and bring your pooch or kitty. URI alums bring in this page to get 10 percent off all nonfood items.”

’96

Michael Nula, M.S. ’01, of East Greenwich, R.I., is the author of the book The First Step: Pain-free Living and Better Health through Expert Physical Therapy. He writes: “The book is now on Amazon and Kindle, and 100 percent of the proceeds are donated to the American Physical Therapy Association for growth and development to forward the profession.”

’97

Mara Dolan of Cambridge, Mass., announced that she is now communications director for Massachusetts State Senate President Stan Rosenberg.

’03

Corry Wheeler of Warwick, R.I., has been appointed president and managing officer of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services (BHHS) Gammons Realty.

’06

Liatte Krueger of Union, N.J., graduated from University of Massachusetts Amherst on May 12 with a master’s in public health and focus in nutrition. She graduated URI with a RPh/ PharmD. She now works at the Food and Drug Administration as a pharmaceutical compliance officer.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

33

THANK YOU

TO OUR SCHOLARSHIP GOLF TOURNAMENT SPONSORS 125th Anniversary Carousel Industries Sponsor Gold Sponsor Dimeo Construction Company Silver Sponsor BankRI Beltone New England COSCO, Inc. Gilbane Building Company Beverage Hole Christopher L. Franklin, CPA ’88 Sponsor O’Leary Law Associates Hole-In-One Bald Hill Ram, Dodge, Sponsor Chrysler, Jeep, Kia Tee Sponsors Bristol County Savings Bank Coastway Community Bank Destination Athlete Gates Insurance Agency, Inc. Ocean House Marina Ockham’s Ideation, LLC River Bend Athletic Club South County Orthopedics URI Athletics URI Campus Store URI Health Services Viti Automotive Group 125th Contributors Edward Field Ronald Joseph ’67 Jack Parente ’85, Linda Parente ’86 Program Sponsors AAA Northeast Bristol County Savings Bank Destination Athlete Interbuild, Inc. Navigant Credit Union Peter Kohlsaat ’57 Pizza Gourmet Richard Proulx ’84 Beat the URI Player Gregg Burke, Donation URI Men’s Golf Coach Putting Prize Donation Steve Lombardi ’74 Beverage Donation Coca-Cola

’10

Brittany Giusti Iafrati of East Greenwich, R.I., who graduated from URI’s nursing program and later received a bachelors’ in science, writes: “I worked in ICU and endoscopy units at Rhode Island Hospital before finding my true passion as a nurse injector. I have completed training in artistry and technique of facial rejuvenation and am now the proud owner and founder of Bel Viso Medical Spa. I am also happily married for six years to Mike Iafrati and have two sons, Lucca, 4, and Roman, 2.” (See photo, page 36.)

Talene Derbabian of Media, P.A., was awarded Young Dietitian of the Year from the Pennsylvania Academy of Nutrition and The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

’11

Eleanor Langham of Danbury, Conn., writes: “Since my graduation from URI, I went on to receive my M.A. in museum studies from Johns Hopkins University. I used to be the director of events and programs at Slater Mill. I am currently the executive director of Coggeshall Farm Museum in Bristol, and now a member of Providence Business News’ 40 Under Forty Class of 2017.”

’12

Christopher Breene of Washington, D.C., started a creative marketing agency, GFTB Digital, in fall 2016.

He moved to Washington, D.C., in 2013 and has since worked for two of the top creative agencies in the Beltway (ISL, Brllnt), currently serves on the board of DC Tech Meetup, and is a mentor at an international startup incubator, 1776. GFTB Digital counts LexisNexis and the Smithsonian as flagship clients.

Previous clients include Kroger, Volkswagen, Balvenie, Samuel Adams, Gates Foundation, and more.

His story of battling illness and entrepreneurship is featured in The Valley Breeze and Technical.ly.

(See photo, page 36.)

Weddings Diana Bobe ’99 to Christopher A. Gately on May 26, 2017. (See photo, page 36.)

Keith J. Murray ’11 to Amanda G. Beaudoin on July 16, 2016

34

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Births Jennifer Langheld Byrne ’99 and Aidan Byrne ’99, a boy, Dylan Aidan, on February 23, 2016 Lara (Hinz) Proctor ’99 and Benjamin Proctor, a son, William Hudson Proctor, on March 22, 2017.

(See photo, page 36.)

Jessie (Haytaian) French ’08 and Levi French, a daughter, Jovie Valentina French, on Sept 6, 2016.

In Memoriam Eleanor G. Morris ’38 of North Kingstown, R.I., on Dec 2, 2016 Doris F. Pamer ’47 of Cumberland, R.I., on August 16, 2016 Ernest G. Ashton ’49 of Homosassa, Fla. on March 7, 2017 Thomas E. Burgess ’49 of Falmouth, Mass., on April 1, 2017 Alan Klein ’49 of Milton, Mass., on January 21, 2017 Earlene J. Lancaster ’49 of Raleigh, N.C., on March 31, 2017 Patrick Michael Toscano ’49 of Lexington, Mass., on April 24, 2017 Nicholas Apostolou ’50 of Warwick, R.I., on June 10, 2017 Ann Randall Ashton ’50 of Homosassa, Fla. on July 3, 2017 William T. Avison Sr. ’50 of Kennebunk, Maine, on May 4, 2017 Albert C. Bailey ’50 of Apalachin, N.Y., on January 3, 2017 Albert E. Bragger Jr. ’50 of North Kingstown, R.I., on April 16, 2017 Archibald Belmont Kenyon ’50 of Wakefield, R.I., on December 9, 2016 John Champlin Lathrop ’50 of Providence, R.I., on May 22, 2017 Louis A Pieri ’50 of Little Compton, R.I., on June 16, 2015 George A. Vanasse ’50 of Chelmsford, Mass., on Nov. 27, 2016 Walter Zajo ’50 of Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 1, 2017 James J. Mulvey ’51 of Manchester, Conn., on February 1, 2017 William F. Redding ’51 of Grand Rapids, Mich., on January 16, 2017 Antonio DeFilippo ’52 Wellesley, Mass., on April 28, 2017 Robert M. Spilecki ’52 of Newington, Conn., on May 30, 2017

CLOSEUP

The Best Medicine Amma Marfo ’07

Comic greats like Steve Martin, Larry Sanders and Nora Ephron will tell you all of life is material.

Amma Marfo understands this.

Post-surgery, Amma Marfo’s father lay in his hospital bed, his cancerous prostate removed. His was the biggest prostate removed that day, the doctor said.

“See, I told you I felt skinnier,” Marfo’s dad joked.

Such moments confirm for Marfo that she made the right decision two years ago when she left her position as the assistant director of student activities, involvement and assessment at Emmanuel College in Boston, Mass., to start her speaking and consulting business. Areas of expertise: creativity, conducting and navigating tough conversations, developing and articulating career skills, and empowering student activists. The former communication studies major has given a TED talk, “Lessons in Laughter,” and has written for national publications such as Business Insider, most recently on how introverts should approach job hunting.

Whatever form Marfo’s work takes, the one constant is humor. “Maybe a situation isn’t funny but you can attack it with humor,” said Marfo, who, after URI, found her first job search so stressful that her hair began falling out. “I realized I didn’t have time to feel anxious when I was laughing. Find those moments when you can laugh, when it is the hardest thing in the world to do and, I promise you, you’re gonna be better for it.”

BY MARYBETH REILLY-MCGREEN

PHOTO: COURTESY DAMITA DAVIS

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

35

The vice president for Student Affairs, Kathy Collins, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Winifred Brownell, attended the ROTC Awards Ceremony on April 7 in the Memorial Union.

Arthur N. Votolato ’53 of Providence, R.I., on May 28, 2017

Brittany Giusti Iafrati ’10, owner of Bel Viso Medical Spa, with husband Mike Iafrati and sons Lucca, 4, and Roman, 2. P. 34

Vincent W. Bruno ’54 of Dryden, N.Y., on May 30, 2017 Murray Lukatch ’54 of Sudbury, Mass., on October 25, 2015 Joseph D. McLaughlin Jr. ’55 of Providence, R.I., on March 3, 2017 Thomas Fort Tisdell ’55 of Leesburg, Fla., on March 9, 2017 Walton Earle ’56 of Westport, Mass., on May 12, 2017 Francis X. Girr ’56 of Newport, R.I., on January 26, 2017

Brenda Greene ’85, Centreville Bank vice president and senior communications manager. P. 33

David S. Follett ’57 of Westerly, R.I. on May 13, 2017 Diana Bobe ‘99, P. 34

Jean F. (Chappell) Nordon ’57 of Wyoming, R.I., on March 20, 2017 Patricia M. Steen ’57 of South Kingstown, R.I., on June 23, 2017 Daniel J. Faber M.S. ’59 of Ottawa, Ontario, on May 4, 2017 Eugene P. O’Gull ’59 of New Milford, Conn., on April 4, 2017 Andrew S. Petrides ’59 of Raleigh, N.C., on December 6, 2016

William Hudson Proctor, P. 34 Christopher Breene ’12 has started a creative marketing agency, GFTB Digital, in Washington, D.C., P. 34

36

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Richard W. Reynolds ’59 of Plympton, Mass., on April 22, 2017 Kenneth R. Crowley ’60 of Severna Park, Md., on January 18, 2017 Daniel A. Procaccini ’74 won the 2017 Chief Justice Joseph R. Weisberger Judicial Excellence Award., P. 33

Roger Pearson ’60, M.A. ’63, of Narragansett, R.I., on May 10, 2017 Americo Richards ’60 of Warwick, R.I., on June 7, 2017 Anne C. Spearman ’60 of Narragansett, R.I., on April 2, 2017

twelfth annual

distinguished achievement awards gala

The twelfth annual Distinguished Achievement Awards and Gala will be held at the Newport Marriott in Newport, R.I., on Saturday, October 14, 2017.

The event honors alumni and friends of URI who have brought distinction to themselves and the University through their professional achievements, outstanding leadership, community service, and philanthropic support.

Meet this year’s honorees at

uri.edu/daa

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 37

Why, Why, Why?

Florence (Clothier) Densmore ’71 of Punta Gorda, Fla., on April 24, 2017

S. Michael Appolonia ’61 of Cranston, R.I., on March 21, 2017

John David Dickens ’71 of Augusta, Maine, on August 31, 2015

Vincent D. Morgera ’61 of Providence, R.I., on June 4, 2017

Sandra L. (Milewicz) Martin ’71 of Cranston, R.I., on April 8, 2017

Barbara M. Sorlein ’61 of Blue Hill, Maine, on April 5, 2017

Gerry Gimelstob ’72 of Arnold, Md., on March 18, 2017

Orian A. Archambault ’62 of Narragansett, R.I., on Dec 4, 2016

Arthur G. Lavallee ’72 of Danielsville, Ga., on December 8, 2016

Bruce A. Smith ’62 of Kingwood, Texas., on November 11, 2016

Judith Desfosses ’73 of Rochester, N.Y., on December 7, 2016

Richard M. Hanchett ’63 of Warwick, R.I., on February 2, 2017

Paul T. LaRocca ’73, Ph.D. ’76 of Burlington, Vt., on May 3, 2017

Beverly Kirwan Levinson ’64 of James City County, Va., on March 22, 2017

Thomas W. Barao ’74 of Hingham, Mass., on March 30, 2017

Ronald J. Rodrigues ’64 of Riverside, R.I., on November 28, 2016 Ernest Dupuis Jr. ’65 of Bristol, R.I., on August 5, 2015

A good “why” is like a key. It has the ability to unlock your motivation, direction, and career.

Understanding why you want to pursue a job, leave a job, or move up in your job keeps your goal targeted and allows you to communicate powerfully to others. Try this exercise: Choose one of the following “why” questions and write for five minutes: Why am I unsatisfied in my current role? Why do I want to make a change? Why do I want to pursue this major

Russell A. Johnson ’65 of Portsmouth, R.I., on June 6, 2017 Alan Lavender ’65 of Newburyport, Mass., on March 1, 2017 Lee Z. Mania ’65, M.A. ’68, of Rio Rancho, N.M., on February 5, 2017 William S. McDade, M.B.A. ’65 of Rye, N.H., on March 17, 2017 W. Redwood Wright, M.S. ’65, PhD. ’70, of Woods Hole, Mass., on May 8, 2017 Eileen Adams ’66 of Rehoboth, Mass., on November 11, 2014 Richard G. Gauthier ’66 of Old Lyme, Conn., on June 3, 2014

or job? Why have I not achieved my goal

Arthur G. Lipman ’67 of Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 23, 2017

yet? (Keep writing even if you feel like you

Glenn A. Baxter ’68 of Belgrade Lakes, Maine, on May 5, 2017

already have the answer or nothing to write!)

Alumni Career Services is a free service to support alumni in their “why” quest.

Appointments available by phone or in person.

CONTACT ALUMNI CAREER SERVICES 401.874.9404 Audra Lavoie: audraryan@uri.edu Karen Rubano: krubano@uri.edu

alumni.uri.edu/careerservices

38

Doris E. Stedman ’60 of Wakefield, R.I., on June 7, 2017

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

Richard Allen “Chic” Costa ’68 of Seekonk, Mass., on June 8, 2017 Agnes Klement, M.A. ’68 of Greenville, R.I., on April 5, 2017 Patricia Bartosiak ’69 of Port Orange, Fla., on May 27, 2017 Robert J. Perrello ’69 of Newport, R.I., on February 6, 2017 Nancy L. Braman, M.A. ’70, of Pawleys Island, S.C., on May 6, 2017 Lillian Charves ’70 of New Bern, N.C., on March 14, 2017 George A. Berg ’71 of St. Leavenworth, Kan., on Jan 27, 2017 Frances A. Boudreau ’71, M.A. ’73 of Vernon, Conn., on March 27, 2017

Richard R. Vanasse ’74 of Warwick, R.I., on March 26, 2017 Stanley N. Wallach ’74 of Dunellen, N.J., on November 4, 2016 Nancy Allen ’75 of Roxbury, Conn., on May 16, 2017 Stephen E. Haley ’75 of Richmond, R.I., on May 16, 2017 Sheila A. Kimball ’75 of Swansea, Mass., on April 9, 2017 Steven Fales ’77 of Ames, Iowa, on April 24, 2017 Edward J. McManus ’78 of Narragansett, R.I., on May 2, 2017 Kenneth L. Waldron ’78 of North Kingstown, R.I., on April 7, 2017 Margaret D. Davidson, M.M.A. ’81, of Charleston, S.C., on May 23, 2017 Jeffrey G. Jones, M.S. ’82, of Wilbraham, Mass., on May 25, 2017 Desmond J. DeVille ’83 of Bristol, R.I., on June 1, 2017 Thomas E. Niles ’83 of Wellesley, Mass., on May 17, 2017 M. Rick Sykes, M.B.A. ’83, of Waverly Hall, Ga., on November 5, 2017 Mark Stoermer ’85 of Seattle, Wash., on December 3, 2016 Carol J. Donnelly Cooke ’86 of North Kingstown, R.I., on June 18, 2017 Ernest L. Gaines Jr. ’87, M.B.A. ’94, of Saunderstown, R.I., on June 18, 2017 Martha Parker-Magagna ’87 of Grantham, N.H., on Dec. 4, 2016 Sarah J. Cafiero ’88 of Greenwich, Conn., on February 24, 2017 Joan B. David, Ph.D. ’89 of Newport, R.I., on March 13, 2017

Hans P. Edwardsen ’89 of Providence, R.I., on May 31, 2017 Michael D. Weiler, M.S. ’91, Ph.D. ’93, of West Greenwich, R.I., on March 20, 2017 Michael L Karl, M.B.A. ’92, of Benicia, Calif., on December 22, 2015 Joe E. Head ’99 of New London, Conn., on December 9, 2016 Christopher S. York, M.A. ’99, of Columbia, S.C., on April 13, 2017 Anne Thatcher, M.L.S. ’04, of Stonington, Conn., on March 18, 2017 James R. Fink, M.B.A. ’05, of Exeter, R.I., on May 5, 2017

ALUMNISCENE May 20 Commencement Weekend Legacy Family Brunch “The URI Legacy event was such a great family experience and made graduation weekend very special. Being a part of the URI Legacy was something that gave me a lot of pride. Thank you, URI Alumni Association! “ —Joseph Lennon-Tierney ‘17

Pamela C. Mutter ’09 of East Providence, R.I., on March 30, 2017 Jason J. Carvalho ’12 of Cumberland, R.I., on December 10, 2016 Kyla Vinacco ’17 of Warwick, R.I., on June 16, 2017

June 2–3 Golden Grad Weekend

Faculty and Staff In Memoriam

“This year was my 70th Reunion! I looked forward to it all year.

There were only two of us from my class, but we enjoyed reminiscing. I am glad I went.”

Theodore J. Smayda of Jamestown, R.I., on April 5, 2017 William H. Krueger of West Kingston, R.I., on October 3, 2016 James Guthrie, MD., medical director and physician at URI Health Services, of Narragansett, RI, on March 17, 2017

–Helen (French) Dayton ’47

Alexander M. Cruickshank ’43, M.S. ’45, of South Kingstown, R.I., on June 10, 2017 Stanley J. Pickart, of Falmouth, Mass., formerly of Kingston, R.I., physics faculty emeritus and former department chair, on July 13, 2017.

June 15 Alumni of Color Network Welcomes the Class of 2017 “The ACN event made me feel so valued. The ACN is a space that makes being an educated person of color normal, not just a statistic or an ‘exception.’”

—Ben Concepcion ‘17

If you attended a URI alumni event and would like to share a photo and a reminiscence, we’d love to hear from you!

Please write to us at alumni@uri.edu.

Learn more I alumni.uri.edu

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

39

BACKPAGE

PHOTO CAPTION CONTEST Have a funny idea for what’s going on in this photograph from the University of Rhode Island library archives?

Email your caption to pjack@uri.edu, or respond at uri.edu/quadangles.

it Subm y sb entrie , Oct 6 2017

WINNING CAPTION:

“Now, how much detergent to remove that Pi stain?”

—Bill Rosenberg ’77 RUNNER UP: Two engineering students use a slide rule to calculate soap-to-water ratios, drum rotational speed, torque and conservation of angular momentum, while a liberal arts major (right, with cigarette) wonders when they will notice the instructions on the wall behind them.

—Don Yost ‘83 HONORABLE MENTIONS:

JUNE WINNERS This photo of handsome students with turned-up trousers next to a marvelously designed washing machine is titled simply “1954 Laundry” in our archives. We’re not certain, but we think this may have been a posed photo taken to advertise the University’s new laundry facilities—complete with a student smoking a cigarette! Different times, indeed. In any case, readers riffed delightfully on the concept of men using a slide rule to figure out how to wash their clothes.

Slide rules, by the way—for those (like us) who had no idea—were used “primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as exponents, roots, logarithms and trigonometry,” according to Wikipedia.

Thanks, as always, to all who responded.

40

QUADANGLES FALL 2017

“Gee fellas, we’ve got to find the anti-shrink setting on this new-fangled washing machine. Just look what’s it’s doing to our trousers.”

—Dave McQuaid ‘86 “Hey guys, by my calculations, if we roll him up real tight, we can stuff Louie in there with room to spare.”

—Patricia Lynch, M.S. ‘74 “No man, the hops go in first and then the malt!”

—Len Light ‘69 PHOTOS: COURTESY URI ARCHIVES

Life income gifts to URI… receive payments for life If you own low-yielding assets and would like to increase your income, a gift annuity or charitable remainder trust is worth exploring.

Let us work through a gift solution with you.

Contact the University of Rhode Island Life income gift s areCAPTION: a personal way to give. You make an irrevocable WINNING Foundation Office “Now, how much detergent to remove that Pi stain?”

—Bill Rosenberg, donation to the University of Rhode Island, typically with cash or of Planned Giving BSBA 1977 securities, triggering payments to you for life. After your lifetime, at 401.874.9530 RUNNER UP: the remainingTwo giftengineering will support according to your wishes. or email us at students URI use a slide rule to calculate soap-to-water ratios, drum rotational speed, torque and conservation of angular momentum, while a liberal arts major (right, with cigarette) foundation@uri.edu whenboost they willyour notice retirement the instructions on the wall behind them.—Don These unique wonders gifts can income, provide for Yost ‘83 to discuss with our MENTIONS: your heirs, andHONORABLE reduce your taxes while also investing in the knowledgeable team.

“Gee fellas, we’ve got to find the anti-shrink setting on this new-fangled washing machine. Just University of Rhode Island. look what’s it’s doing to our trousers.”

—Dave McQuaid ‘86

urifoundation.org

“Hey guys, by my calculations, if we roll him up real tight, we can stuff Louie in there with room to spare.” —Patricia Lynch M.S. ‘74 “No man, the hops go in first and then the malt!” —Len Light ‘69

Alumni Center 73 Upper College Road Kingston, RI 02881 USA

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Alumni Association University of Rhode Island

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Alumni & Family Weekend October 20–22, 2017 Weekend Highlights: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20 Faculty Lectures, Open Houses & Welcome Receptions Various times and locations 9th Annual Be 5K Race 6 p.m. / Quadrangle $15-25 per runner Proceeds benefit the Heather Fund and MARCS Foundation SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 Rhodyville 9 a.m. to Noon / Plains Rd. Parking Lot Join us before the game for family-friendly activities including inflatables, novelties, entertainment, spirit gear, and food trucks.

Homecoming Game: URI Football vs Elon Noon / Meade Stadium $15 per person (while supplies last) URI Students Free with ID (Limit 1 ticket per student) Young Alumni Homecoming Social 3 to 5 p.m. / Whalers Brewing Co. $15 per person ($5 discount if registered

by September 15) Join URI graduates from the last 10 years for a post-game social.

(Must be at least 21 years of age to attend.)

ni& m u l A mily Fa

d n e k We e

Legacy Family Reception 6:30 p.m. / Ryan Center $45 per person; $20 per URI Student Includes ticket to An Evening with Whoopi Goldberg and hors d’oeuvres An Evening with Whoopi Goldberg 8 p.m. / Ryan Center $30-37 per person $20 per URI Student (Limit 1 ticket per student) SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22 Think Big Tank 9 to 10:15 a.m. / Beaupre 100 Student research competition; audience selects scholarship recipient 125th Anniversary Brunch 10:30 a.m. to Noon / Pharmacy Building $25 per person Includes a ticket to the State of the University address and brunch

For a complete schedule and event registration, visit

uri.edu/afw