URI QuadAngle Winter 2016-2017

QUADANGLES 125 Years of URI

We’re prepping for a big birthday with some weird and wonderful moments in University history | 12

New Mores, New Vocab The struggle for gay rights at URI, and how to talk about gender now | 16

WINTER 2016

The Joy of Song How a music professor founded a chorus and changed lives | 26

Alumni Who Shine This year’s Distinguished Achievement Awards | 28

AND

Life in Black White The marriage made international headlines.

From Suzanne Leclerc ’78, the story of life under apartheid, and what came after | 20

k n a Th

d n a l s I e d o h R u o Y

yeson4ri.com

Together we will innovate for the future.

Your “yes� vote on Question 4 has paved the way for renovating and expanding Bliss Hall at URI, and building an innovation campus program where cutting-edge research can be turned into new products, services, and jobs.

By partnering with industry and building a URI-affiliated innovation campus, the Rhode Island economy is leveraging higher education to create 21st century jobs for Rhode Islanders and its economic revitalization.

QUADANGLES WINTER 2016 | VOLUME 24, NO. 2 FEATURES

12 Celebrating 125 Years On the eve of our quasquicentennial, we invite you to linger over some faces—some of them might even be familiar—and read the tale of a Kingston man’s eureka moment.

16 Brave New Gender World The freedom to explore and be true to yourself—most students

at the University have taken it for granted. We take a look at the struggle to extend that privilege to all students, and at our brave new climate—and the vocabulary that goes with it.

20 Life in Black and White From Rhode Island to apartheid-era South Africa, a girl from

Left to right: Stephen Coon, Ash Mayo, Jess Coon, Melanie Coon.

Cumberland fought for her marriage, and for social justice, through the most turbulent times.

CONTRIBUTOR

26 In Praise of Songs Music, mentorship, and the sheer joy of singing: all are

encapsulated in a local chorus and the relationship between the two men who have led it to worldwide fame.

28 11th Annual Distinguished Achievement Awards This year’s winners have brought distinction to themselves,

and to the University, through their professional achievements, leadership, and community service.

MORE ONLINE

uri.edu/quadangles

The URI Bucket List What’s on yours? Check out our suggestions, and let us know if we missed any!

Explore Underwater

A multimedia story brings the national parks alive.

DEPARTMENTS 4 PRESIDENT'SVIEW 5 LOOKINGBACK The Singing Voice of the Rams 6 NEWS&VIEWS 10 PRESSBOX 30 CLASSACTS News from your classmates 35 CLOSEUP Jessie Saunders ’08 37 CLOSEUP Robert Saute ’50 40 BACKPAGE Help us make up a caption!

On The Cover: Suzanne Leclerc ’78 and Protas Madlala in a 1985 news clipping.

COVER: COURTESY SUZANNE LECLERC; CONTENTS: © CHRISTINE OTTE 2016

For Melanie Coon, who wrote "Brave New Gender World" (page 16), this story was personal.

“My daughter, Jessica, tried to come out to me twice when she was in middle school. I dismissed both of those attempts, telling her she was too young to know she was gay. One day when she was in high school she seemed in an unusually good mood. When I asked why, she replied, ‘I came out to the entire upper school during silent meeting today.’

My response: ‘When were you going to tell me?!’

(Idiotic, I know). I didn’t understand why I was having such a hard time accepting the news. Didn’t I have ultra-liberal social views? Hadn’t I had been both supportive and protective of my gay brother for 30-odd years?

Well, it turns out there was an inner, conservative me—a Donna Reed/June Cleaver me—who had to reconcile classic fantasies of what Jessica’s life would look like, including a fairy tale wedding to Prince Charming, with the reality that I had pretty much zero say in the matter. (Also, fairy tales are overrated.)

Watching the film “It Gets Better at URI,” hearing both the heartbreaking and the heartwarming stories, I could empathize and connect. The journey really is different for everyone. And those of us who have gay loved ones should all remember what Annie Russell says about SafeZone participants: ‘You are not the hope for all queer people!’

Fast forward to May of 2016. Jessica and Ash, her sweetheart, were married at the Providence Public Library—perfect for two bookworms who met at the University of Chicago. I am so grateful to live in a country where my daughter can get married to anyone she loves. May it always be so. I am lame enough to admit I was elated that Jessica wanted to wear a gown, and that she looked every bit the princess. But I was also happy that Ash wore a sharp suit complete with bowtie. She, too, was a beautiful bride. They are two young women completely comfortable in their own skin, writing their own story.”

FEEDBACK Write to us: pjack@uri.edu Read more online: uri.edu/quadangles Update your email address to get the magazine electronically: pjack@uri.edu Dear Readers, The University is approaching its 125th year, and we will be celebrating the quasquicentennial—what a mouthful!— in this issue and throughout 2017.

Look for historical content and event listings and, if you’d like to have some fun, please participate in the contest on page 40, in which we invite you to come up with weird, clever or silly captions for an old photo.

A big thanks to all who have written in about their experience in the Peace Corps. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response and are busy planning a story that will do justice to such a compelling subject.

As always, thanks for reading, and email me at pjack@uri.edu with your thoughts on these or other subjects.

—Pippa Jack Editor in Chief

I very much enjoyed “The Secret POW Camp That Fought Nazi Idealogy” (Fall 2016) by Paul E. Kandarian.

I was a married veteran student in my freshman year in 1952–53, and lived at Fort Kearney. My first son was born at South County Hospital while my wife and I were residents there. It was interesting to read about the history of the Fort—all I was told was that it was an old Army camp.

After that first year, we moved to a Quonset Hut at the back of the campus and stayed there until my senior year, when we moved to Providence. ­—Leland E. Phillips ’56 San Antonio, Texas “The War Gap” was a great article. I want to personally thank URI for its commitment to veteran students by establishing a support committee and allowing them space for a Student Veterans Center. After graduating from URI in 1971 with a degree in sociology, I spent time in two different branches of the military. While working on my master’s and doctorate, beginning in 1976, I had the dubious honor of being the Veteran Services Coordinator at a public university in the Southwest that had a veterans office because they could get money 2 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

from the Veterans Cost of Instruction Program (VCIP)—a federal grant intended to provide start-up money to create offices to serve Vietnam Era veterans. They never provided any support except office space, and had a poor attitude toward veteran students in spite of the fact that we graduated at a much higher percentage than general students. They refused to use the DANTES manual to grant credits for technical training and were very conservative in granting transfer credits from classes taken in-service. My predecessor allowed other programs to drain money intended to be used for vets, and I was fired when I attempted to stop the practice.

In spite of being in mobility operations, when I got out of the military the only job I could find was selling vacuum cleaners, but I walked away from it after two days of training because it seemed like it involved ripping people off. During job interviews no one seemed to understand or care that I was a veteran. I went in the Army National Guard because they paid half my tuition when I was working on my doctorate (and ended up on alert for the Iranian Rescue Mission).

Outside of the military I have worked as a juvenile probation officer in a detention unit, run a chronic pain management and head injury day-treatment program as well as doing biofeedback at a rehab center for injured workers for 15 years, and my last full time job before retiring was in adult corrections, where I ran a mental health unit for five years and profiled sex offenders, was a hostage negotiator and academy instructor.

So, once again, thank you for your commitment to veterans. The SVA sounds a lot like the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), created by and for veterans because the VA wasn’t sensitive to the needs of that era of vets. Go Rhody!

—Ron Shaver ’71 Las Vegas, Nev. I enjoyed the recent article “The War Gap” (Fall 2016). However, in the late 1940s we did have a very loose veterans’ group.

Since most students at Rhode Island State College (as we were then) were Rhode

Island residents, many went home over the weekend, so the campus was pretty quiet.

Most of us went “down the line” to Giro’s in Peace Dale. Transportation was fairly easy then, you just put out your thumb and almost the first car would stop for you. There wasn’t much war talk, just comradery, but it did give a chance to discuss campus problems like course work. At the time we didn’t know what PTSD was, so any anxiety encountered was just passed off as “war nerves” and a few beers would, we expected, solve it.

When I returned to URI after Korea, I was married and didn’t particularly seek out any veterans’ groups but, I am sure, the informal meetings were still held at Giro’s.

If there are any more of us “old guys” left, maybe they can add their comments. ­—Dick Hanley ’56 Fruit Cove, Fla. (land of no snow) “The War Gap” by Ellen Liberman is a profound and enlightening piece; a story that needs to be told over and over again. Ms. Liberman’s work is from the very top shelf, and elicits both a deep pain and a glimmering hope for those veterans featured and, of course, for all who have served. Reflecting on these stories reminded me of my own experiences, and, in hindsight, struggles, as a returning combat veteran from the Vietnam War. The photographic work accompanying the article is excellent.

My wife Claire and I have had the great good fortune of having raised two highly successful URI graduates, Katharine M. Johnson ’06, and William C. Johnson ‘09, M.S. ’11.

Always impressed with QuadAngles, we think you have reached an even further height and importance with “The War Gap” and your ongoing work. Thank you!

—Stephen G. Johnson Little Compton, R.I. It has been a long time since I started at URI after leaving the Army—I had been afraid to try college after high school— and finally earned my degree decades later.

Why so long? Well I took two courses a semester at the Providence Campus and summer courses at Kingston, with lots of stops and starts, while helping my father run his business.

Meanwhile, with living on our small farm, I got to know the agriculture

department well and ended up becoming a master gardener. Later, I got a master’s and doctorate in Bible sciences at a Christian college, worked in the Lutheran Church, and went on medical missionary trips to Haiti.

Your magazine brings back many memories and the fall issue was especially interesting. I love animals so the cover caught my attention. And the story being about veterans got my attention, too, as someone who went to college on the GI Bill. Finally, I have been to the campus on the bay, but did not know the POW history.

About contributor Todd McLeish: In my world travels, I have tried many different foods, from camel to topi (a cow-like animal in Africa). But I have not tried rattlesnake, grubs or chocolate coated ants yet.

—William K. Harter ’90 Each edition of QA brings me back and makes me proud to be a URI grad and Rhody native.

I shared “The War Gap” (Fall 2016) and “The Martians” (Spring 2016) with my family of military veterans and rocket scientists. “On Guards” (Summer 2016) actually made me laugh with a memory.

My twin, an ’81 grad, was a lifeguard at Charlestown Beach “watching over” the then clothing-optional Moonstone Beach next door.

Our education and experiences at URI have definitely served us well!

—Kathy Perry Ojeda ’81 Merritt Island, Fla. This is one of the best QuadAngles I have read. Two articles got my attention: “The War Gap” and “The Secret POW Camp that Fought Nazi Ideology” (both Fall 2016). I grew up in Apponaug, R.I., graduated Warwick Veterans Memorial High School in 1959, and URI in 1963 with an ROTC commission as a 2LT. I never knew we had German POWs in R.I. My dad served in WWII and he never mentioned anything about them being in R.I. I am familiar with the area that is mentioned in this article.

I served in the Army/Army Reserve for 28 years, retiring out in 1991 as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Keep up the good work, especially with the military articles.

—Thomas F. Soule Jr. ’63 Chesterfield , Mo.

I appreciated Ellen Liberman’s article “The War Gap” (QuadAngles, Fall 2016) about veterans and efforts to improve veterans’ services at URI. Keep up the good work.

I’m the Acquisitions Librarian and Website Wizard at the Hyannis Public Library in Hyannis, Massachusetts. I also coach patrons about using their portable devices to get the most out of the many digital library services our library offers.

And I just reached my fifteenth work anniversary in August!

I’ve been a happy member of the Cape Cod Chorale, a community chorus comprised of about 50 SATB voices, since 2013. We sing classical and contemporary choral works—challenging pieces—and still have so much fun in rehearsals.

I enjoy receiving QuadAngles and look forward to future issues.

—Sherry Evans M.L.I.S. ’00 Hyannis Mass.

Just finished reading through the latest QuadAngles and wanted to tell how much I enjoyed it; especially the articles on veterans, kelp research and Fort Kearney, too!

Living here, directly on the West Coast in Santa Barbara, sometimes makes it seem like URI is just too far away for some of us.

But QuadAngles keeps us in touch and brings us close again to a place that has been important in helping shape our lives.

Plus, it makes us very proud to know of the great things going on there. Thank you, President Dooley and all at Kingston.

I did return to URI for my 60th last June and enjoyed it a lot. I returned home, filled with clams and lobster, and a ton of wonderful memories. I was also impressed with the program put on for us by Michele Nota and her staff. The campus looked great too. For a few years, I was Vice Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder and, among other things, worked to make that campus beautiful.

Now URI has matched it and that pleases me. Of course, I also recognize that impressive educations and research is always going on in those buildings too.

Again, thanks for a wonderful publication and all the other information we get which lets us know the good things happening back East! Yeah Rhody.

—Ted Tedesco ’56 Santa Barbara, Calif.

QuadAngles is a quarterly publication of the University of Rhode Island Alumni Association.

The URI Alumni Association informs and engages current and future alumni as committed partners of the University, its mission and traditions.

E xecutive Editor Michele A. Nota ’87, M.S. ’06, Executive Director, URI Alumni Relations; Secretary, Alumni Association Executive Board Editor in Chief Pippa Jack, pjack@uri.edu

Art Director 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 Susan Froberg

Designers Johnson Ma Bo Pickard Photographer Nora Lewis Digital Media Tina Walker Editorial Board 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 Alexis Giordano, Specialist Relations Staff Christina Haas ’05, Assistant Director Karen LaPointe ’77, M.B.A. ’84, Associate Director Kate Maccarone ’08, Assistant Director Nicole Maranhas, Associate Editor 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. Susan R. Johnson ’82, President Executive Board Daniel G. Lowney ’75, President-elect

Louise H. Thorson, M.B.A. ’85,

Past President Kathleen P. O’Donnell-White ’90,

Vice President Patrick J. Cronin ’91, Vice President Steven R. Frazier ’07, Treasurer Alumni Assoc.

Councilors-

at-Large

Laurel L. Bowerman ’77, M.B.A. ’84 Matthew T. Finan ’11 Colleen Gouveia Moulton, M.B.A. ’98 Mackenzie Hofman ’12 Sulina M. Mohanly ’07 John J. Palumbo ’76 Joseph F. Penza, Jr. ’69 Perry A. Raso ’02, M.S. ’06 Karen E. Regine ’81 Thomas F. Shevlin ’68

Alumni Assoc. Representatives: Arts and Sciences, Nancy J. S. Ferrara ’88, M.B.A. ’97 Business Administration, Jordan D. Kanter ’99, M.S. ’00 Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Education and Professional Studies, Bianca S. Rodriguez-Slater ’10 Engineering, Anthony J. Rafanelli ’78, M.S. ’85, Ph.D. ’95 Environment and Life Sciences, Catherine Weaver ’82, B.L.A. ’96 Human Sciences, Christine S. Pelton ’84 Nursing, Silifat “Laitan” Mustapha ’97 Graduate School of Oceanography, Veronica M. Berounsky Ph.D. ’90 Pharmacy, Henrique “Henry” Pedro ’76 URI Foundation, Thomas M. Ryan ’75 Faculty Senate, Diane E. Kern ’84, M.A. ’93, Ph.D. ’03 Student Senate, Cody Anderson ’17 Student Alumni Association, Anthony Kennedy ’17

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 3

PRESIDENT’SVIEW

Thank you for your support, your confidence, and your belief in our vision.

Above, engineering Dean Ray Wright helps Rhody and students celebrate the 2016 Bond Kickoff on October 5.

4

QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

As 2016 draws to a close, there’s a great spirit of optimism and gratitude on campus. Gratitude because, on November 8, voters approved Question 4—the $45.5 million bond I wrote to you about in the last issue. And optimism because so many wonderful programs and activities are underway at the University of Rhode Island— more on those in a minute.

For years we’ve talked about reversing the brain drain here in Rhode Island. How can we keep our students from leaving the state? We’ve talked about how to attract the businesses and the highpaying jobs with potential for growth that are critical to future economic success, and about how to prepare our students for them. Rhode Islanders answered the call. Voters—including alumni, families, friends, and community partners— understood the value of making critical capital investments in higher education-related projects that foster innovation and economic growth.

As a reminder, $20 million of the bond will fund the University of Rhode Island Affiliated Innovation Campus, a center where universities and businesses will collaborate on cutting-edge research that can be applied to develop new products, services and jobs. The remaining $25.5 million in the bond will fund phase two of the College of Engineering renovation. I’m proud and delighted that URI has taken the lead on turning talk into action for Rhode Island. Thank you for your support, your confidence, and your belief in our vision.

As we look ahead, the campus community is preparing to celebrate a milestone birthday. 2017 marks our quasquicentennial: the 125th anniversary of our founding in 1892. We have plans to kick off the yearlong celebration in style on January 25, and there will be many occasions throughout the year—from academic symposia to magic shows to road races to WaterFire—to join together in honor of our rich history and great promise.

Consider what a remarkable 125 years it has been. Since we were established as a land-grant institution by the Morrill Act of 1862, we’ve branched out considerably from our agricultural beginnings. Our Colleges of Nursing, Pharmacy, Business, and Engineering, and our Graduate School of Oceanography, have all become

signature centers of scholarship and research. In more recent history, our Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences, the George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience, and the new Academic Health Collaborative have furthered our reputation as a premier public research institution.

Our annual honors colloquium focuses on a universal topic of interest and attracts standingroom-only crowds, as do our superb theatrical productions. Our programs in diversity and inclusion serve as national models, and as you will read in this issue, we were the first American university to build a freestanding Gender and Sexuality Center. Our size and location are tremendous assets. We can think big and execute nimbly.

As a community, we can be proud of all we have achieved in just over a century.

But even as we celebrate the accomplishments of our alumni, students, and faculty, and reflect on our rich history and traditions, we will also look at where we are heading for the next 125 years . . . and beyond. Our goal is to foster a broader and deeper understanding throughout the state and the region of our unique qualities and many advantages. We’re excited to share our plans for even greater impact locally, nationally, and globally, as an academic powerhouse, an engine of economic development and a center of civic engagement.

As a public institution we have made a deliberate decision to keep the celebration public.

We plan to involve and engage current and prospective students, alumni, generous donors, faculty and staff, industry partners, global partners, community partners, government leaders, and friends of the University near and far.

The University of Rhode Island has served the ideals of public education, diversity, and innovation for 125 years. We can’t wait to take all that we have learned as an institution and leap into the next century, always thinking big. Join us on the journey.

David M. Dooley President, University of Rhode Island

PHOTO: JOE GIBLIN

ALUMNIVOICE

Happy Birthday to the Singing

Here’s hoping the University’s big birthday next year is as much fun as the one just enjoyed

by Ward Abusamra. The former music professor turned 100 in October; family gathered at his daughter’s house in Kingston. Son Joe ’82, who lives in Annapolis, Md., was there, and penned this note about his father:

Engineer majors singing. Biology majors singing. Business majors singing.

Everyone singing, or at least with the opportunity to sing.

That’s what Ward Abusamra set out to bring to the University of Rhode Island Music Department when he joined the faculty as voice professor in 1953 and where he taught for 29 years. For many years, he was known as the “Singing Voice of the Rams,” as he sang the national anthem for countless games at Keaney Gym and the Providence Civic Center (now the Dunk).

“Music should be for everyone,” he believed, and set out to make that possible. As director of the university chorus, one of his first moves was to hold rehearsals on Monday nights, rather than in the middle of the day when students typically had other classes.

This was one of many ways he grew the chorus to over 100 people, performing annual holiday concerts in December in Keaney Gym. Abusamra conducted; his wife, Barbara, also performed at the concerts.

PHOTOS: ROBERT J. IGGO; COURTESY JOE ABUSAMRA

Ram

In October, Abusamra turned 100 years old, and his legacy lives on. Residing just a few miles from the campus he loves, he counts numerous former students as friends. While many are involved in other professions, they still enjoy singing or attending concerts. Besides influencing all those non-music majors, he also taught music and voice majors—many music educators around the country had their beginnings with him at URI. Abusamra continues to attend URI basketball and football games, as well as concerts. He has Rhody blue in his blood, and always loves talking about and promoting the school, which offers a scholarship fund in his name for voice students. •

Above left, Abusamra singing at commencement; at right, with his wife Barbara.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 5

NEWS&VIEWS

Celebration Time!

Come see the Quad as you’ve never seen it before—even you ’60s and ’70s graduates—when the University of Rhode Island kicks off its 125th anniversary celebration with fire pits, live music, warm drinks and festivities galore on January 25, 2017.

All are invited to visit familiar haunts from 4 to 6 p.m.; just remember to bundle up for the cold.

On February 10, the quasquicentennial action moves to the basketball courts for a men’s anniversary matchup against Atlantic 10 rival Dayton. The next day, America’s Got Talent winner Mat Franco ’10 will bring his show-stopping magic to campus; tickets are available now at theryancenter.com.

Stay tuned for more celebrations planned throughout 2017.

More info: uri.edu/125.

Tom Selleck

Remembering Pearl Harbor In the latest offering from the World War II Foundation, Hollywood icon Tom Selleck narrates a documentary that focuses on the personal stories of the people at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, who lived through the events that drew the U.S. into the Second World War. Remember Pearl Harbor, which won an Indie International Film Fest Award in late October, is the official film of the 75th anniversary commemorations of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii this December.

“Having Tom lend his voice to this project is very meaningful,” said Tim Gray ’89, chairman of the World War II Foundation and the film’s director and producer. “Besides having a truly outstanding voice, he was a member of the National Guard when he was younger and obviously knows Honolulu and Pearl Harbor well from his days filming Magnum, P.I. in Hawaii.”

The film features interviews with veterans, Hawaiian citizens and even a rare interview with Mitsuo Fuchida, the leader of the Japanese air attack on December 7, 1941.

The Foundation’s 17 films (with more in production) rank in the top five most requested programs by PBS stations nationally.

More info at wwiifoundation.org.

URI psychology major Samantha Pierre ’18 takes a selfie video.

Selfie This A smartphone may soon be the best way to avoid the dental drill. Associate professor of psychology Theodore Walls participated in a pilot study this fall to investigate how people brush their teeth, and how training can improve their dental hygiene. It found that participants who filmed themselves as they brushed, then shared the video with their dentists, ended up brushing better.

6

QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

A Re-Engineered Flu Vaccine Not all flu vaccines are created equal, and some flu viruses are better than others at beating them. The H7N9 avian influenza virus in particular has been called a “stealth virus’’ because of its ability to evade the human immune response, both in natural infections and in vaccine formulations. H7N9 vaccines developed using conventional methods have significantly underperformed in clinical trials.

Research professor Annie De Groot, director of the URI Institute for Immunology and Informatics, and her team at EpiVax think they may be on to a solution: immune engineering vaccines to be more effective. The National PHOTOS: MICHAEL SALERNO; COURTESY WWII FOUNDATION ; ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

The Road to Miss Rhode Island Two years ago, Kelsey B. Swanson was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Self-pity was not in her lexicon, so she continued her studies, despite surgery and a long recovery, and at the same time, forged ahead with another dream. Her courage and resolution paid off in September when the Cranston resident was crowned Miss Rhode Island USA 2017 on her third run at the title, qualifying to compete in the Miss USA national pageant in Las Vegas in June.

Swanson, a psychology major, was more interested in sports as a little girl, and says she was terribly shy. But Kelsey B. Swanson two years ago, while already a student at URI, a friend urged her to try the pageant. She was a runner-up that fall, but found the experience more valuable than she’d expected. “I learned so much—on-stage presence, poise, speaking skills. I also made friends with a lot of the other women.’’

A month later, a drunken driver ran a red light and crashed into a car in which she was a passenger. Swanson, sitting in the back seat, was thrown forward and hit her head on the dashboard.

At the scene, she thought she was fine, but the next day as a precaution she went to the hospital for X-rays of her head. Her skull was intact, but doctors found something else alarming: a dime-sized tumor on her pituitary gland, pressing against her optic nerves. The tumor wasn’t cancerous, but she would go blind if it wasn’t removed.

“We caught it just in time,’’ says Swanson. “I was very lucky. I guess you could say that the car accident was a blessing in disguise.’’

She put a hold on surgery to compete in the August 2015 pageant. “I know people might have trouble understanding this,

Institutes of Health awarded the company $600,000 this fall to bring the concept to trials.

Re-engineering the viral proteins in a vaccine may produce more of an immune response without modifying their ability to generate protective antibodies to the original “wild-type” version, De Groot explains.

The first version of the vaccine from EpiVax will soon enter a trial in Australia in collaboration with Vaxine in Australia and Protein Sciences Corp. in Connecticut.

H7N9 influenza emerged in China in 2013, and PHOTOS: COURTESY KELSEY B. SWANSON; NORA LEWIS.

Annie De Groot

but I didn’t want to give up my dream,’’ she says. “The doctor said I could delay the surgery as long as I didn’t have any symptoms. I felt confident going forward.’’

Once again she was runner-up—“but losing made me even stronger.’’

Last fall came the fourhour surgery; while recuperating, she reduced her class load at URI but didn’t withdraw. Her professors, she says, were compassionate and understanding. “I had a very optimistic outlook,’’ she says. “The tumor wasn’t cancerous. The experience advanced me mentally in life.’’

And it steeled her for her third run at the beauty competition, held in September. “I was more determined than ever,’’ she says, training for months with daily workouts, a special diet, wardrobe selection and mock interviews.

When her name was called on stage, she struggled to hold back tears. Family members and friends weren’t so stoic and wept with joy. “It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,’’ she says. “My dedication paid off.’’

For the next few months, she’ll continue training for the national pageant—and studying. She expects to graduate next fall with a focus on child psychology.

Meanwhile, she’s fulfilling her pageant responsibilities in her free time, attending charitable events, including those for children in foster care. She’s also modeling.

The tumor has a 7 percent chance of growing back, but Swanson isn’t dwelling on that. She’s too excited about the national pageant—and life.

“Never give up on your goals,’’ she says. “Nothing worth it ever comes easy. The harder you work for something, the better it feels when you achieve it.’’

has one of the highest mortality rates among all avian influenza viruses for humans. Although sustained humanto-human spread of this virus has yet to occur, the high mortality rate of the virus is of great concern should it develop pandemic potential, De Groot says.

“We are fortunate to have Dr. Annie De Groot and her team conducting innovative biotech research here in Rhode Island,” says U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. “This federal funding is a boost for EpiVax’s work to engineer new vaccines and an investment in Providence’s life sciences industry.”

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 7

NEWS&VIEWS

ove rhea rd

“The university is a special place to me and I believe it is better positioned than ever before.

I am at a point where I am able to commit my time and effort toward supporting the vision of President Dooley and this team, all working hard to further elevate our state university.”

—Former CVS Health chairman and CEO Tom Ryan ’75, in the Providence Journal, on why he has agreed to serve in the volunteer role of chairman of the University of Rhode Island Foundation Board of Directors.

“What is the impact? What is the effect on the people of Rhode Island?

Our job was to respond to those questions and bring the experts to the people.”

—Director of U.S. Coastal Programs at URI’s Coastal Resources Center and of extension programs for Rhode Island Sea Grant Jen McCann, explaining in an RIPR interview how Deepwater Wind’s Block Island Wind Farm made it to operational tests this fall. It’s the first offshore wind farm in the country—others, notably Cape Wind in Massachusetts, started planning years earlier but have been mired in litigation. Sea Grant’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan, and the wind farm itself, are drawing visitors from around the world looking to import its lessons for success.

“When sea-level rises, it makes the water table rise, and that reduces the distance between the groundwater and the drainfield,” Amador said. “It means there is less of an opportunity for the soil to treat the wastewater before it reaches the groundwater.”

—Professor of Soil Science and Microbial Ecology Jose Amador, urging state and federal officials to rethink the regulations for home septic systems in coastal zones, in EcoRI. His team’s research concludes that the combination of warming temperatures and rising sea levels will make conventional systems less effective. About a quarter of U.S. households use septic systems to treat wastewater; in Rhode Island, the number is closer to one-third.

“Our economy places a large portion of the burden on individual workers to prepare for eventual retirement....There is a direct link between what you do early in your career and how difficult it is to prepare later.”

—URI assistant professor of marketing Stephen Atlas, telling Providence Business News why he launched an 18-month study this fall tracking student’s financial-literacy retention rates. He’s exploring the vexing finding that financial literacy fades rather quickly, leading some people to experience false confidence in their financial decision making.

“I like to tell young people... that their generation, not mine, will explore more of earth than all previous generations combined. The great explorers that will be written up in the history books are in middle school right now.”

—Ocean engineering professor and Titanic explorer Robert Ballard, quoted in the Tuscaloosa News after a lecture at the University of Alabama in which he talked about the massive changes that undersea robots have brought to his field, likening it to the James Cameron movie “Avatar.”

“Even if we accounted for health effects attributed to being overweight, these people still experience double the risk of allostatic load because of weight discrimination.”

—Assistant professor of nutrition and food sciences Maya Vadiveloo, explaining how the social stigma that may accompany being obese or overweight can make the health risks far worse, on PsychCentral.

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How Tip-Based Pay Discriminates The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors of the American economy, and it is also the lowest paying—and has been since restaurant owners were allowed to hire free slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 for no pay, forcing them to live on customer tips.

Saru Jayaraman Tip-earning employment has persisted to this day, affecting more than 11 million workers. Saru Jayaraman, a food labor researcher at the University of California-Berkeley and co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, told us why we should care at this fall’s Honors Colloquium, “Inequality and the American Dream.”

What sparked the idea to found Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and what was your biggest challenge getting it off the ground?

We founded Restaurant Opportunities Centers United as a relief center after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, together with displaced World Trade Center restaurant workers. It quickly grew into so much more as a result of demand—there had never been a center for restaurant workers before in New York City.

How does low-wage tip employment disproportionately affect women and minorities?

Seventy percent of tipped workers in America are women, and disproportionately women of color. They face the worst sexual harassment of any industry because they have to tolerate inappropriate customer behavior to earn their income in tips.

Does the One Fair Wage legislation you advocate face a significant challenge from inertia, and the generally accepted American custom of tipping?

No. The campaign is not to eliminate tipping—it is to eliminate the lower wage for tipped workers. The seven states that have already done this face higher restaurant sales per capita, faster growth among servers and all restaurant workers, and higher rates of tipping than Rhode Island and the 43 states with lower wages for tipped workers. The challenge comes from the money, power and influence of the National Restaurant Association, which seeks to keep wages as low as inhumanely possible.

Americans, when they learn about this issue, generally are outraged that their tips are subsidizing multi-million dollar corporations.

Given its roots in slavery, why do you think low-wage tip employment continues to this day?

Money, power and the influence of the industry trade lobby.

PHOTO: MICHAEL SALERNO.

Professor Kunal Mankodiya (center), Nick Peltier ’17 and Matt Constant ’18 display smart textiles. Peltier and Constant are creating a smartwatch app that will help people with autism.

Smart Gloves May Monitor Parkinson’s Disease Prescribing a medication plan for a patient with Parkinson’s disease is a big challenge for doctors, but biomedical engineering professor Kunal Mankodiya, director of URI’s Wearable Biosensing Laboratory, and his students are researching how to transform gloves, socks, clothing and even shoes into high-tech items that will make people healthier—and improve their lives.

“We are in the era of game-changing technology, especially in health care,’’ says Mankodiya. “URI’s College of Engineering is pioneering new medical devices that will change the way people receive medical care.’’

Mankodiya’s research focuses on smart textiles—wearable items embedded with sensors, electronics and software that can collect data from patients, even though they are at home, and deliver it to doctors. That allows doctors to make more informed decisions remotely, and patients to be more involved with their care.

The gloves are embedded with sensors on the fingers and thumb that measure tremors and rigidity—common symptoms of Parkinson’s. Data is sent through cell phones to neurologists, who can then adjust treatment plans on a day-to-day basis— ensuring that medication is working properly and eliminating the need for patients to make so many stressful clinical visits.

“Patients with Parkinson’s face many mobility issues—driving and even walking long distances,’’ Mankodiya says. “The gloves will give patients the option of receiving health care while at home, and also reduce the risk of falls and other accidents.’’

Mankodiya is also working on high-tech socks for people who have suffered strokes and smartwatches for patients with psychiatric illnesses and autism.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 9

PRESSBOX

Donohoe Coaches Team USA to Silver Medal Twenty-four years after winning an Olympic silver medal as an athlete, Rhode Island women’s rowing head coach Shelagh Donohoe coached Team USA’s LTA 4+ boat to the silver medal at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio. On Sept. 11, Donohoe’s American boat of rowers Jaclyn Smith, Dorian Weber, Zac Burns, Dani Hansen and coxswain Jenny Sichel finished in a time of 3:21.65, behind only the gold-medal boat from Great Britain, which posted a time of 3:25.08 on the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas race course.

The members of the boat trained with Donohoe throughout the summer in Boston. Burns, Hansen, Smith and Sichel were all part of the boat that Donohoe coached in France at the 2015 World Championships on Lake Aiguebelette. (The LTA designation means the athletes have the ability to use their legs, trunks and arms. As para-athletes, they have certain physical disabilities and visual impairments that create challenges.)

McGinnis at the Great Wall of China.

McGinnis drafted for Chinese Indoor Football League This is the fourth time overall in her career Donohoe has been part of a medal-winning team for the United States. She was a silver medalist for Team USA at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in the women’s straight 4 (coxless) event. Donohoe also has two world championship medals as a rower to her credit.

At Rhode Island, Donohoe has coached the Rams to five Atlantic 10 championships and two appearances in the NCAA Championship in 10 seasons.

Shelagh Donohoe recieving her fourth A-10 Coach of the Year award.

10

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Former Rhode Island football player Willie McGinnis—one of the top defensive linemen in the Arena Football League—was part of the inaugural draft class for the six-team China Arena Football League, which began its first season this fall.

The CAFL—which is associated with the Arena Football League—will feature teams of players from the AFL, China and other indoor leagues around the world. The eight-on-eight style of football will feature four Chinese nationals and four foreign players on the field at one time for each play. Teams play a 15-game regular season that began in late September, followed by three rounds of playoffs.

McGinnis, a four-year veteran and two-time All-Arena Team selection in the American AFL, is playing for the Shanghai Skywalkers in the CAFL. Taken in the 10th round of the CAFL draft, McGinnis was the second defensive lineman picked up by the Skywalkers. Also taken by Shanghai was quarterback Shane Austin, an AFL teammate of McGinnis in Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

In four seasons in the American Arena Football League, McGinnis has 106 tackles, 26.5 sacks and 35 tackles for loss. He twice earned All-Arena League honors while playing for the Cleveland Gladiators.

McGinnis also has played for the Pittsburgh Power and the Orlando Predators.

A native of Norwich, N.Y., McGinnis started all 45 games he played for Rhode Island from 2008–11.

One of the program’s best players, he was named to the Fans’ Choice Rhody Grand Team in 2013 that honored the top 50 players in program history. He earned Second Team All-CAA accolades and was named his team’s Defensive MVP as a senior in 2011.

PHOTOS: COURTESY URI ATHLETICS, 1981 RENAISSANCE YEARBOOK

Bob Schneck

Schneck Retires After 36 Seasons Rhode Island women’s volleyball coach Bob Schneck announced in September that he will retire at the end of the 2016 season. The program’s only head coach since women’s volleyball was recognized as a championship sport by the NCAA in 1981, Schneck’s retirement will become official on Dec. 31.

“Bob Schneck has been a legend in the volleyball community for the past 36 years,” Rhode Island Director of Athletics Thorr Bjorn said. “I have truly enjoyed working with him since I have been at Rhode Island and I wish him all the best in retirement.”

Now in his 36th season, Schneck entered 2016 as one of 20 active Division I coaches with 600 career victories. He currently has a career mark of 606–492 as the Rams prepare for the conference portion of this year’s schedule.

“It’s been quite a run, with so many great memories and so many wonderful people,” Schneck said.

During his tenure with the Rams, Schneck has twice been named the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year, and he has led Rhode Island to three conference tournament titles (1991, 1992 and 1996).

Bjorn Named VP of FCS ADA Rhode Island Director of Athletics Thorr Bjorn has been appointed the first vice president of the Division I Football Championship Subdivision Athletics Directors Association, the organization announced Aug. 18.

Bjorn, who is in his 10th year at Rhode Island, will serve alongside Tennessee Tech University Director of Athletics Mark Wilson, who was tabbed as the FCS ADA president for the 2016–17 year.

“I’m very honored to represent FCS football by serving in this capacity,” Bjorn said. “FCS football provides a great opportunity to compete at a very high level for thousands of young men across the country. If there is any way that we can work to better the sport, we should be striving to achieve it.”

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 11

Faces of URI Noted as having “a great fondness for mathematics and for bossing the show.”

1899 Sally Rodman Thompson

1905

Blydon E. Kenyon

Nellie Armstrong Harrall

1935

Gerald Bean

Florence Santos

1960 Cynthia Bateman Hammett

Ralph Hazard

Enoch Story

1940 Mary Logee

1965

John Hallel

Lorraine Saxon

James Hitchen

Murshed Khondker

Sandra Spinney

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1995 Erica Allocco

Darren Wah

Vernon Loveitt

1970

its cover. “There has got to be change,” This year’s Grist displayed a gun onopeni ng letter. protested its

1990 Beth Johnson

Carmen Andrews

This business major from Portland, Maine, played football and basketball and was a member of Scabbard and Blade.

1930 Dorothy May Kenyon

Jean Gilman

1910

William Staffopoulis

2000 Nicole Gordon

Robert Foster

ent majors, Two business managem looking all business.

These yearbook photos span 125 years, from the first Grist—or at least, the first we could find that featured

individual photos, in 1899—to 2015. The odds are good that one of them was your classmate. Captured every five years, these students show us how times have changed, and how they haven’t. We were enchanted by their expressions, their hairstyles and clothes, and the idea that their lives were just launching. As you browse through them, we hope you wonder about them, too. What did they do after college? Did they marry, stay in Rhode Island, move far away, raise kids, devote themselves to some cause or profession? What trials did life send them? Were they happy? Taken together, each at a pivotal time in their lives, they tell the story of who University of Rhode Island students are—creatures of our time and culture, to be sure, yet with more in common than not. —Pippa Jack

This year’s yearbook wa

s dubbed “The Victory

1915 Ada Harding

1920

George Lewis

Louise Baker

Rudolph Kohlberg

1945 June Michie

Otis Wyatt

1975 Donna DeGroff

1925 Vera Swan

Raymond Sutcliffe

1950

WWII changed the face of campus and the ly yearbook—that year’s senior class, most female, passed on individual photos.

1955 Claude Bourrand

1980

Ronald Albert

Charlene Abruscato

Gary Carson

Grist.”

Kathryn Crouchley

1985 Krista Barmakian

Brian Foley

ady knew that.

A psych major. But you alre

2005 Melissa Banks PHOTOS: GRIST, RENAISSANCE

Charles A. Williams

2010 Wendy Lopez

Patrick Connors

2015 Audrey Eloius

High achievers: Tw she in chem ry o double majors, and math, he in human developist ment and psyc hology.

Andrew Hodulik

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

13

O

nce Upon A S

The littleknown story of the man whose eureka moment— along with his remarkable tenacity and political savvy— changed your life (and that of all your classmates)

BY JIM LESLIE

14

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W

hat is now the University of Rhode Island was founded by a Kingston shopkeeper and part-time postmaster who overcame tremendous odds and political opposition to realize his dream. His name was Bernon Elijah Helme. Nowhere on the campus is there a single plaque or structure to carry his name, and few alumni are familiar with his efforts. He is a forgotten man.

In 1888, Helme (his name is also spelled Helm in some histories) raised $2,000 from 30 people to purchase the 140-acre Oliver Watson Farm in Kingston as the location for

the state’s Agricultural School and Experiment Station.

In the late 19th century, $2,000 was a significant sum of money. For example, the college’s first president received an annual salary of $1,600.

Yet Helme also persuaded the Town of South Kingstown to contribute the same sum (awarded on a split vote).

The farm was eventually given to the state, which needed to come up with just $1,000 to meet the selling price of the property. This was the nucleus for what was to become URI, but there was a long road ahead filled with rancorous and prolonged political debates.

Let me set the scene a little: In 1888, Kingston was a thriving farm center with a post office, church, bank, tavern, grade school, courthouse, jail, a blacksmith’s shop, and a private finishing school—which attracted young ladies from as far away as Cuba, according to one report.

South Kingstown in general was also thriving. The wealthiest agricultural town in the state, it boasted more than 100 farms within its boundaries. In 1890, the U.S. Census listed 6,231

inhabitants in South Kingstown, compared to 8,099 in Cranston, for example.

Helme, an 1877 graduate of the Friends School in Providence (now Moses Brown), was a prominent citizen in Kingston: clerk of the church, a trustee of the Kingston Savings Bank, and a leader in the temperance movement, as well as part-time postmaster and small business owner.

Art lovers may recall that the South County Art Association, just off campus in what remains of the Kingston village center, is housed in a building that still bears his name: Helme House. According to the Reverend J. Hagardon Wells, then pastor of the Kingston Congregational Church, Helme came up with the idea of establishing a college in Kingston while sweeping the floor in his store.

Wells wrote: “But there is one important and indubitable fact in regard to the location of the R.I. College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Kingston, which I am morally certain will be buried in deep oblivion unless I embalm it in imperishable history. I happened sometime in

Bernon and Mary Helme with their mother, at home in Kingston in an undated photo.

A Shop Floor the last of the 80s to be in the store along with Mr. Helme. He was sweeping the floor… and exclaimed: ‘Mr. Wells, Mr. Wells, I have got an idea. I’ll tell you but don’t say anything yet.’”

The idea was for an agricultural school to be located on the Watson farm, near the village, fully paid for, with an agricultural experiment station attached.

Helme and his allies saw the Hatch Act of 1887 as a way to go forward. It gave federal funds, initially $5,000, to state land-grant colleges in order to create a series of agricultural experiment stations, as well as to provide agricultural information, especially in the areas of soil minerals and plant growth. The problem at this point, however, was that Brown University had already been named Rhode Island’s land-grant school in 1863, in accordance with the first land grant act, also known as the Morrill Act, named for the U.S. Senator Justin S. Morrill from Vermont.

The purpose of land-grant colleges was to teach courses related to agriculture and the mechanic arts (engineering) as prescribed by the legislatures in

PHOTOS: URI SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

each state “in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes...” They were also required to teach courses in military tactics, so ROTC programs were created.

Farmers in the state, who complained that Brown’s curriculum was not preparing students to become farmers, mounted a campaign to cut Brown off from Hatch funds.

Instead, they lobbied for an agricultural school and experiment station that would meet their needs, so in 1888 the Rhode Island State Agricultural School was created by an act of the General Assembly.

The first students arrived in Kingston in September 1890, after the erection of three buildings, including College Hall (later renamed Davis Hall). The four floors of this building housed classrooms, administrative offices, and other facilities.

College Hall and the experiment station were built with stone quarried at the foot of Kingston Hill and hauled up on tracks to the building sites by oxen. The quarry, just east of today’s football field, is now

flooded. Some stone was also taken from what is now the quadrangle.

The next battle arose with the passage of the second landgrant act. Again, the issue was whether Brown or the newly established agricultural school at Kingston should get the funds. In May 1892, the legislature again decided to give the funds to the Kingston school, but in the process they also rechartered it as the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. This is the official birth date for the college that would later be rechristened Rhode Island State College and eventually the University of Rhode Island.

When the news of this turn of events reached Kingston, there was wild rejoicing. The afternoon that Helme returned from Providence, where he had spent the week lobbying, he was met at the railroad station by a group of students who had borrowed a carriage, without a horse, to pull him up the hill.

Residents and coeds strewed flowers and ferns in the path of the carriage, as it moved up to his home.

As darkness cloaked the

village that night, there was the thunderous roar of a cannon, called “Old Ben Butler,” which students had borrowed to celebrate. Their celebration continued throughout the night. At dawn the students were tired, but decided on one last mighty blast. They stuffed the cannon with all the remaining powder and lit it.

When the smoke drifted away, they found that the cannon barrel had ruptured. Today that cannon rests on the southwest corner of the quadrangle, across from the Carlotti building.

After 88 eventful and productive years, Helme passed away. He lies buried in a tiny cemetery at the corner of Torrey Road and Route 1 in Wakefield. He had no offspring or wealth, but the “college” was his legacy. As you know, it has grown and prospered. • Note: Much of the information about Helme comes from a diary kept by his brother and available at the South County History Center. The University of Rhode Island: A History of Land Grant Education in Rhode Island by Herman F. Eschenbacher is also a reference.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 15

For so many people, the four years of an undergraduate degree are transformative. But the freedom to explore and become true to yourself has been a luxury historically closed to some students. That’s all changing.

BY MELANIE COON

he doors of the University of Rhode Island Gender and Sexuality Center open into a cool vestibule lined on one wall with stone. The choice of material was intentional. “That’s our nod to Stonewall,” says Center Director Annie Russell, referring to the famous gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village—now a national monument—where a police raid in June 1969 sparked neighborhood protests that formally launched the gay rights movement in America.

The Center, which opened in May 2015, is a combination retreat, gathering space, counseling mecca, and living classroom for the entire University community. It is also a symbol for just how far the University has come.

As recently as six years ago, prospective students Googling URI got a very different impresAnnie Russell, director, URI Gender and Sexuality Center sion: it was on

16 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

Princeton Review’s top 20 LGBTQ “unfriendly” list. That September, LGBTQ students staged an eight-day sit-in at the library. Brian Stack ’12 was one of the organizers. He recalls his frustration at attending multiple diversity retreats—after which progress seemed to be made, but not on LGBTQ issues. “Issues like harassment in the dorms were not being addressed,” he recalls.

During the URI sit-in, 150 miles away, Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide after his roommates circulated video of him engaging in sexual activity with another male student. Suddenly there was a national debate on bullying and the treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students at colleges and high schools. Response on campus here was huge. More than 1,400 students signed the protestors’ petition.

President David M. Dooley said at the time that the protest “was good for the campus. It helped us all understand what these students are facing and what we need to do to make the campus more supportive and welcoming. It is our responsibility to make sure that every student feels safe and can enjoy an atmosphere that encourages learning and development.”

Higher education is hardly known for its agility or capacity to pivot. Yet, in the fall of 2014—just four years after the Library sit-in—Campus Pride, a national nonprofit organization, gave URI a

Brian Stack ’12, an organizer of a student sit-in

CHANGING MORES. CHANGING WORDS.

Gary Burkholder ’92, M.A. ‘95, Ph.D. ‘00, student activist

PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS; GARY GLION

Grammarians, hold on to your hats.

“They” is no longer accepted only as a plural pronoun.

The American Dialect Society, a 127-year-old organization of linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, editors, students, and independent scholars, voted for “they” used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun as the Word of the Year for 2015. “They” was recognized by the society for its emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a person who consciously rejects the traditional gender binary of he and she—in other words, someone who may identify as “non-binary” in gender terms. In 2015, singular “they” was also endorsed by the Washington Post style guide.

It will probably not come as a surprise that the resources section of the Gender and Sexuality Center features not one, not two, but four glossaries of terms. Russell explains: “Language matters in the history of the queer movement. When people claim and name who and what they are, they are no longer marginalized.” Here is a sampling of our brave new vocabulary:

Transgender: Umbrella term for any gender identity that differs from the one associated with the sex assigned at birth.

five-star rating and named it one of the top 50 LGBTQ-friendly universities in the country.

In the equivalent of a University nanosecond, URI underwent a transformation. Today, more than 15 national institutions and one international institution use URI as a model for their own LGBTQ programs and services.

For Stack, now pursuing a Ph.D. in the history of sexuality at Washington State University, the fact that people “came together and addressed these issues with gravitas” gives him hope. His dream would be for URI to develop a queer studies program, lending credibility to queer academia. “I don’t think President Dooley ever imagined that part of his legacy at URI would be turning around the climate. I give him a lot of credit for taking us seriously and taking action.”

But the story has been decades in the making, and progress hasn’t always been in a straight line.

When Gary Burkholder arrived on campus (Burkholder earned degrees at URI in 1992, 1995 and 2000, and was a recipient of a 2014 Distinguished Achievement Award) he had newly come out and was eager to collaborate with other students around issues of diversity and acceptance.

“The Gay Lesbian Bisexual Association (GLBA)— that was what we called it at the time—went through a number of iterations and degrees of

strength,” he recalls. “Often when someone in a leadership position graduated, the organization would dissipate.”

A mobilizing moment came in the spring of 1993, when Burkholder and others successfully united to lobby the undergraduate senate for funds to attend the historic April 25th March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. A year later, he took part in a State House demonstration organized by the Rhode Island Network of Gay Students that brought together students from different schools to fight for civil rights. “It was such an exciting time,” says Burkholder, now editor-in-chief of Higher Learning Research Communications and a senior executive at Laureate Education, Inc. “And honestly, we did not run into many roadblocks. It felt like we had support for what we were trying to do.”

But URI was also part of a national backlash against gay rights. Strongly worded letters and articles protesting the visibility of the gay rights movement, which are featured in a retrospective exhibit at the Center, hint toward why, in the late 90s, GLBA went underground. URI was not alone in this regard. In fact, a number of studies conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Penn State Professor Susan Rankin, a leader in the

Genderqueer: A gender identity that falls outside of the male/female binary.

A third gender.

Pangender: Having a fluid identity. Might be expressed as both male and female, or shift from one gender to the other.

Under the umbrella term genderqueer.

Cisgender: Possessing the gender identity commonly associated with one’s biological sex. “Cis-” is a Latin prefix meaning “on the same side as.”

Heterosexism: The belief that all people are heterosexual, the assumption and/or belief that heterosexual relationships and behavior are superior, and the actions based on this assumption.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 17

Holly Nichols ’98, counselor, URI Counseling Center

field of assessing the institutional climate for under-served communities, showed that at colleges and universities nationwide, students “considered leaving their schools because of the climate. They didn’t feel safe or welcome.”

Holly Nichols ’98, who has been a member of the URI community for nearly two decades, is a firsthand witness to the dramatic changes from the 90s to today. A clinical counselor in the University’s counseling center, Nichols’ most cherished role is as facilitator of the LBTQ women’s group she co-founded in 2010. “It’s a place for women to give and receive support around issues of identity and other life stressors, while also having fun,” she says. “We laugh, color, or decorate cookies, all while making time to listen deeply to one another, and offer comfort and encouragement.” It was the students in this group who produced the 2011 film It Gets Better at URI: Coming out for Change, part of the national “It Gets Better” effort founded by gay activist and writer Dan Savage after Tyler Clementi’s suicide.

“It does get better,” says Nichols, noting that the 41-minute film has been shown to more than 2,000 people and is required viewing for URI athletes, coaches, and staff members in athletics.

More than 80 members of the URI community— LGBTQ people and their allies—participated in making the film. There is a moment in the film when Nichols shares her own experience. She recalls picking up a copy of GLBA newsletter The Three Dollar Bill in the 1990s, and feeling like she was finally part of a community. “Then I think about this project, and working with all the students on this, and the connection between those two. I am hoping this is someone’s Three Dollar Bill.”

When Russell arrived in January 2012, she found that despite the progress, mistrust between administrators and students persisted. “The campus was hurting. My first two years, there were some low lows. It took a tremendous amount of hard work to reconcile differences and build trust. But there were also some high highs, and

ONE STORY. MANY LIVES. When Jessica Brand ’14 was wheeled into an operating room for major surgery last year, she wasn’t nervous.

“I was calm and happy,” she reflected soon afterward. “I’d been waiting for this all my life.”

Brand knew there was a problem with her body as far back as she can remember. She and other toddlers were telling secrets at daycare.

One boy whispered that he didn’t have a belly button. Brand spoke up: “I’m a girl.”

But Brand had been born a boy. By age 4, she wanted Barbie dolls for Christmas. She hung around girls playing house—or at least tried.

“They always kicked me out,” she says. In grade school, women TV characters tugged at her heart. Sabrina, the teenage witch, was her idol.

She kept her feelings inside, coping by studying obsessively. “I learned my sorrows away,” she says. “I couldn’t be myself. Living in the wrong body made me feel like an outsider, and it made me feel strange.”

She withdrew in middle school—and then she hit puberty in ninth grade, and her world fell apart. Depressed, she rarely left her bedroom. She wouldn’t allow anyone to take her photo. She tried to kill herself.

“I wasn’t developing right,” she says. “I needed to look and develop like the other girls, which was the opposite of what was happening to me. I was getting male characteris-

18 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

Jessica Brand ’14 and URI President David M. Dooley

tics, and that was frightening.”

Finally, she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

She remembers the exact day: Jan. 24, 2009.

She was 16. Sitting in a restaurant parking lot with her mother, Brand asked if her love was unconditional.

“Yes,” replied her mother, Susan Trostle Brand, of Exeter, a longtime education professor at URI. (Jessica Brand’s father, Stephen

Brand, was also a URI education professor and supportive of his eldest daughter; he died unexpectedly three years ago.)

Hormone treatments followed, and in 2013, she changed her name. She would be Jessica, Jess for short. At URI, where she was a double major in finance and French, she felt safe and accepted, and found the courage to start reaching out to other students, hoping to help them find peace. She spoke in her mother’s social equity class.

She gave a talk to students during URI’s Diversity Week. And she spoke at the 2015 opening of the University of Rhode Island’s Gender and Sexuality Center: “Just be, and be yourself,” she told the crowd. “No matter your body, your background, your sexual orientation, your gender identity, or, as in my case, your voice.

The rest will fall into place.”

Just a few days later, she flew out to California for her gender confirmation surgery, with much of the cost covered by her student health insurance. She was the first URI student to use the coverage.

A documentary, What I’m Made Of, featuring Brand and others, is expected to air next year. wimodoc.com

A CENTER FOR EVERYONE The Gender and Sexuality Center features programming year round, punctuated by three events: Trans Awareness Week, the Symposium, and Coming Out Week. Additionally, URI’s Safe Zone Program, run through the Center, has been a phenomenal success, with more than 2,000 participants to date. Through Safe Zone, the Center provides two-hour workshops on basic issues affecting the LGBTQ community and how to be an ally. The program is designed to increase awareness, knowledge, and support of people and issues; build a visible support network on campus; and improve the campus climate. “Allies help transform the culture,” says Russell. “And learning to be an ally is about the other person,” she adds. “You are not the hope for all queer people.”

obviously, breaking ground on the Center was one of those.”

Russell recognizes the importance of the University’s past even as she is laser focused on URI’s potential for even greater change. Under her leadership, the Center has reinvigorated the campus community with more than 100 new programs, services and events.

Nichols believes the Center is especially valuable for the emerging trans community. “In my role as a counselor, I see more people willing to be out as trans—that is a wonderful shift. The Center has created more programming for trans people, inviting trans speakers and offering training on trans-specific issues. Culturally we have come so far as an institution. More often than not students are happily surprised at the reaction when they come out.”

Nichols would like to see the Center’s planned “Visibility Project” take off so that students can quickly identify supportive faculty and staff.

Mara Migdalski ’16, who worked at the Center as a student specialist in health and research of LGBTQ and identities, says the climate has been set at the top: “President Dooley is openly supportive. He comes to our events and is photographed. That is just such a sign of campus solidarity. He addresses issues immediately and ensures that we are safe.”

PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS

FACULTY PIONEERS Students have not been the only drivers of awareness and solidarity at URI. On October 18, 1994, Professors Mary Cappello and Jean Walton (now, respectively, in the English Department and the Harrington School of Communication and Media) put out a call for papers for the first annual interdisciplinary symposium “in the area of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Studies.”

As leaders of the Committee to Eliminate Heterosexism and Homophobia on Campus, Cappello and Walton were URI faculty-pioneers. The inaugural symposium, “Setting Out,” was held in 1995. Cappello and Walton’s original memo to fellow committee members is displayed as part of a retrospective exhibit at the Gender and Sexuality Center, along with materials from student protests.

The Center played a catalytic role when, on June 12, 2016, the nation was shaken by the tragic shooting deaths at an Orlando club. A 29-year-old security guard killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at a gay nightclub, the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in United States history and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBTQ people. Shaken, the campus came together for a peace vigil on the Quad.

Migdalski’s reflections just before the Orlando tragedy seem prescient. As she was preparing to leave the place she had described as the cornerstone of her URI experience, Migdalski noted, “The Center is the most welcoming place on campus today for LGBTQ students. And its roots of welcome are spreading. We’ve come so far— but the work is never done.” •

Mara Migdalski ’16

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 19

In apartheid-era South Africa, a girl from Rhode Island found joy and heartbreak, forced a reluctant government to institute reform, and showed her children that they can change the world.

BY NICOLE MARANHAS

20 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

AND

Life in Black White O n the morning of the wedding, Protas Madlala and Suzanne Leclerc ’78 rode to the church together. It was customary for a bride and groom to arrive separately, but caution prevailed. Although there had been talk of the South African government relaxing its laws, and an official from the U.S. Embassy had agreed to attend the wedding in case of trouble, as they turned down the passage through the sugar cane fields—a deserted road of blind turns and steep, grass-covered hills, the most likely spot for an ambush—the Zulu groom and his white, American bride were afraid.

But the ambush that awaited was not the one they expected. When they reached the church, they found hundreds of onlookers lining the streets, many cheering and crowding the wedding car. Some had followed gossip overheard hours away in Johannesburg; one news photographer was on a rooftop, angling for a shot of the mixed-race couple about to defy the government and marry.

Leclerc, in a handmade gown she had sewn in secret while staying with nuns in a nearby guesthouse, was struck by a song that rose from the crowd: Africa will be saved.

“It wasn’t exactly ‘Here comes the bride,’” she reflects.

At the altar, the couple learned their wedding night would not be spent in prison— the apartheid ban on interracial marriage had been lifted just the night before, in tacit acknowledgement of the couple’s wedding plans. Suzanne and Protas would read about it on the front page of the next morning’s newspapers, alongside the photo that accompanied headlines around the world: On Sunday, June 15, 1985, they were South Africa’s first legally-married interracial couple.

As a child in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Suzanne had been an adventurer. She spent hours playing pilgrim or building huts in the woods, soaking up stories her father, an appliance business owner and World War II veteran, told her about life on a submarine in the South Pacific. “I knew that someday I wanted to travel,” says Suzanne. “Not just for the sake of it, but to do something while I was there.”

After graduating high school early, she left home to study health sciences at a community college in Connecticut, then transferred to the University of Rhode Island to major in anthropology. On the second or third day of

classes, she sat in a classroom at Chafee Hall and listened as Professor James Loy vocalized the pant hoot of a chimpanzee. “I was so impressed,” says Suzanne. Not long after earning her degree, she announced to her parents that she was joining the Peace Corps.

Her mother was initially perplexed—first the anthropology degree (“She didn’t see jobs in the paper for anthropologists,” says Suzanne), now the Peace Corps, which didn’t seem suitable for a young woman—but ultimately supportive. “My dad was very proud,” Suzanne says. “He thought it was wonderful.”

For two years, Suzanne taught English at a lycee in Gabon, on the west coast of central Africa. When it was time to return to Rhode Island, Peace Corps administrators asked her to stay in Gabon for a third year to build a school. There were no other women in the construction program, but having spent part of the previous year working with local doctors to collect ethnographic data researching how people managed illness in their families, she was eager for the opportunity to immerse herself further in the local community.

Armed with an instruction manual on how to mix cement and pour a foundation, she hired a crew of nine Gabonese men, making sure to include the native Baka pygmies,

News clippings from the family scrapbook show Suzanne and Protas at the church and crowds of onlookers at the history-making wedding.

Above, Suzanne visits a Zulu craft shop on her first day in South Africa. Opposite page, left to right, Darienne, Saroya, Alicia, and Racquel on the day of Saroya’s graduation from high school.

whom she had observed as marginalized by the villagers. “Everybody has their prejudices,” she says.

She thinks of returning to Gabon, to see if the school she built still stands. She says, “It’s on my bucket list.”

In graduate school, she met Protas. She had returned to the U.S. to study medical anthropology at George Washington University in D.C.; Protas was a student at American University, earning his master’s in international relations and communications. They met through a mutual friend who was living in the basement apartment of the house Suzanne had rented with other students. Passionate, political—their similarities were striking for a couple that would go on to shock so many with their perceived differences.

Her parents found common ground with their daughter’s boyfriend as well. Suzanne’s father and Protas talked war, politics, history.

“The first time I brought Protas home, my father had a big stack of Time magazines for him to read and discuss,” she says. He passed away

22 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

before he saw Suzanne marry, but she knew she had his blessing. “He liked Protas very much,” says Suzanne.

The couple had planned to settle in the States, but when Suzanne asked Protas to take her home to South Africa to meet his family before the wedding, plans changed. “He was very involved in the movement against apartheid,” says Suzanne. “Everywhere we went, people kept saying, ‘We need him here.’ I felt guilty taking him away.”

By then, Suzanne’s mother was unfazed when she called home to say they had decided to remain in South Africa to marry. Her mother made the journey to South Africa two months later for the wedding—her first time overseas.

“At the wedding, Protas’s family presented her with a big bowl of cow’s blood as an offering of thanks,” says Suzanne. “She took it in stride.

When reporters asked what she thought of the wedding, she said, ‘Protas is a nice Catholic boy.’ To her, that was the most important thing.”

After the wedding, law did not permit Protas to live outside the black townships.

Though interracial sexual relations and cohabitation bans had been repealed, the Group Areas Act—restricting races to live in designated areas—remained. Suzanne was assigned her husband’s legal status (“honorary black,” she says), and the newlyweds lived in a tin-roofed shack in Mariannhill with no electricity or running water, typical conditions in many of the townships that were left to deteriorate by the government in hopes of driving nonwhites out of urban areas to designated rural homelands.

While the villagers embraced the couple (“They were so welcoming and supportive, but they were embarrassed that Protas and I were university graduates living in these conditions”), the streets turned violent at night. “The army would come down the main road, patrolling with their guns,” says Suzanne. Suspected informers were necklaced—a rubber tire shoved down over their shoulders and set on fire—or their houses were burned. Unable to obtain a work permit or take the black bus to reach town (her legal status only applied to her residence), Suzanne was isolated. Even so, she still finds things to miss about their life on the homestead. “It was a simple life,” she says. “My sister-in-law would wash her clothes outside in the bucket, and I would wash mine next to her, and we would talk. Neighbors would come around. We would make tea on the kerosene stove, eat avocado sandwiches. In many ways, it was a quiet, simple time.”

PHOTOS: COURTESY THE MADLALA FAMILY

Below, Darius with baby Alicia; at right, news clipping announcing the couple’s refusal to classify their children.

Suzanne and Protas refused to classify the baby, adamant that accepting race classification meant accepting the systematic degradation that came with it.

24 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

By the end of the first year, Suzanne moved out of the township to the city then called Umtata (now Mthatha) in the territory of Transkei, one of the designated homelands nearly 250 miles away from Mariannhill, where she had obtained a work permit to teach at the local university. Protas, whose work as a community organizer was heavily tied to Mariannhill, stayed behind. For the next two years, they saw each other once a month, meeting at a friend’s farm halfway between their homes. When Suzanne became pregnant with their first child, they were determined to live together, asking around until they found a white woman who agreed to let them stay in hiding in an apartment on her property. With two children who had been involved in the fight against apartheid—a daughter jailed for sending photographs to the press, and a son exiled for organizing trade unions on the docks of the city of Durban—she was willing to take a risk for the young couple.

The baby was a boy, named Darius. After his birth, the Department of Home Affairs required the infant be classified as black, white, Indian, or “colored,” a term that referred primarily to South Africans of mixed Asian, indigenous, or European descent. Suzanne and Protas refused, adamant that accepting race classification meant accepting the systematic degradation that came with it. “For his race, I wrote ‘human’ on the form,” says Suzanne. The designation was changed

afterward by the Department of Home Affairs to “undetermined.”

She remembers her early days of motherhood with some sadness: “I wanted to be a new mother doing new mother things, pushing the baby around in the pram.” Instead, she bundled Darius in blankets to hide his dark skin, sneaking him onto the bus when she occasionally went into the all-white town. “People would look me up and down and gossip,” says Suzanne. “Some recognized me from television. ‘Aren’t you the woman we saw?’ I would say no. Or I would speak French.”

At five years old, Darius was killed by a hitand-run driver in front of their home. Suzanne does not know if it was an accident or deliberate, related to the black chickens that had been tossed into their yard, the pervading sense they were being watched, retaliation for Protas’s outspoken activism. “The U.S. Embassy looked into it,” says Suzanne, but they were unable to find any conclusive evidence.

She speaks carefully. “It clamps your personality, living in segregation. You don’t feel that you belong in the public space, you don’t feel free. The apartheid system was so successful at keeping those worlds separate, you had these white grannies going on about their lives, talking about their granddaughters taking ballet. They had no idea of the conditions that blacks were living in beyond their suburbs.”

PHOTOS: COURTESY MADLALA FAMILY

She adds: “I felt angry at the government, angry at the people. You couldn’t blame them for wanting to enjoy the sunshine and get on with their lives, but they should have wanted to know about their country and the great injustice going on in their backyard. You can’t just live your nice life— with laser security around the house and killer dogs at the gates. Can you enjoy your life like that?”

Apartheid ended in 1994, but the pressures on Suzanne and Protas—social, political, professional—did not. In 2001, they separated. Adding to tensions, Suzanne had become increasingly worried for the safety of their daughters, four in all: Alicia was born in 1989, then Racquel, Darienne, and the youngest, Saroya. As a chief research specialist and professor of anthropology at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal in Durban, where her work focused heavily on how gender roles and culture were connected to the spread of HIV and AIDS, Suzanne feared the country’s growing climate of sexual violence. “When you have a bigger struggle, all other struggles take a back seat,” says Suzanne. “Once apartheid ended, other issues came to the foreground—gender inequality, violence, criminality—issues that there had been no space for when all energies were focused on fighting against segregation.” She and Protas questioned whether South Africa, reeling from tensions caused by sudden political change, was the right environment for their young girls.

“Alicia would dress as a boy to walk to school because she couldn’t stand the harassment,” Suzanne says. “As a young woman, I had enjoyed exploring and riding my bike freely through the neighborhood—I wanted my daughters to know how that freedom felt.”

In 2009, Suzanne and the girls moved to D.C., where she is now a senior anthropologist for the Global Health Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development, addressing the sociocultural and economic determinants of health.

Protas stayed in South Africa, where he is a noted political analyst.

Her work still brings her to South Africa, where she remains an external examiner for the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal. It is a small world: One of her colleagues turned out to be the exiled son of the woman who had rented the apartment to Suzanne and Protas when they left the black township. “I knew about his whole life,” says Suzanne. His name is David. They are now married.

The girls, each in their own way, have followed in their parents’ paths. Darienne left this past October for the Peace Corps. Saroya, an international development major, spent her last semester abroad in Central America. Alicia recently earned

her master’s in school counseling, and Racquel works in communications for the National Multifamily Housing Council. “Our parents taught us that it was okay to challenge the status quo,” says Alicia. “The things they did together represent making a big, positive change in the world. We are all trying, in the careers we pursue, to make a difference.”

The girls go back to South Africa to visit their father, and they visit Suzanne’s family in Rhode Island each year, struck by the two worlds. “When I go to Cumberland, I am always amazed that she met our father and chose to help him with the struggle,” says Alicia. She has imagined the life of her mother: a young woman working in construction with the Peace Corps, a newlywed living in squalor, a first-time mother hiding her newborn baby on the bus. Scrutiny, harassment—even now, fighting for global health—all starting from a childhood in a small town that seems to have changed little since Suzanne was an adventurous girl, riding her bike and hanging on to her father’s stories.

“I am amazed,” Alicia repeats. “She could have lived an easy life.” •

Suzanne is now a senior anthropologist for the Global Health Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “I’m privileged to be in a role where I can promote anthropology and use it to solve global health problems,” she says.

“I take it seriously.”

A

ndrew Howell ’05 and George Kent ’58 walk the grounds of Ogontz Camp in the far reaches of Northern New Hampshire, a camp for music long owned and run by Kent and his wife, Lynn. It is where the two first met, Howell as a boy uncertain of his place in the musical world, Kent as a middle-aged man firmly ensconced in his.

In 1959, Kent began the Chorus of Westerly, an intergenerational assemblage of musicians and singers that has put on nearly 600 performances for more than 1.6 million people, locally and abroad, winning awards and accolades. In 2012, he retired as music director, turning over the reins to his protégé, Howell—who joined the chorus at the age of 13.

Kent is now 79, Howell 33— two men 46 years apart and hundreds of miles away from Westerly as they walk through Ogontz Camp, where young and old gather to learn, play and embrace music. But they are as close in spirit as teacher and student can be.

26 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

IN PRAISE OF Among thousands of local choral groups, the Chorus of Westerly stands out, bringing generations of children and adults together to learn how to perform to exacting standards.

The two men who have led it are living examples of how mentorship and music can profoundly shape a life.

BY PAUL E. KANDARIAN

“He’s my mentor, without question,” says Howell, who also teaches at the camp, confessing that “I get sappy when I talk about him. Growing up, it was just my mom and me; my dad wasn’t in the picture.

Mr. Kent has always been like a father to me.”

Kent founded the chorus to give children and adults equal share in singing major works of music from the world’s best composers, with members ranging in age from under 10 to well over 80. He ran it as music

director until 2012, when he stunned the chorus with word of his retirement.

“That was big news; none of us expected it,” Howell says, adding with a laugh, when asked if he thought he could take over: “Of course! I’ve been thinking that since I was 13. I just hope the kids now are thinking the same thing about me.”

Kent’s decision to retire wasn’t hard, or planned, he says.

“It was just time,” Kent shrugs. “I just decided, and didn’t even tell my wife right

away. I was at a meeting, and someone told her by text.”

The chorus has performed nearly 100 major choral works, always with fully professional orchestras, presenting more than a dozen major American premiers. International venues have included Smetana Hall in Prague, Westminster Abbey in London, St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Its regional traditions include Summer Pops, an event drawing 25,000 people, and the “Celebration of Twelfth Night,” with more than 350 performers.

More than 2,500 people have been singing members of the chorus, 1,500 of them singing as children. The chorus has its own venue—the George Kent Performance Hall—and is one of only two independent American choral organizations to own its space, and the only one in the United States that combines adults and children in all its performances. An as-yet untitled documentary film about the chorus by filmmaker Caswell Cooke Jr. will be released soon.

None of which would have happened if not for Kent’s

S

F

Songs choppers. As a boy growing up in Pawcatuck, Conn., he had buck teeth and was advised by his dentist to take up the trumpet, figuring the mouthpiece would help push them straight.

“It worked, pretty much,” Kent laughs, who was also taking piano lessons at the time.

His piano skills found him work playing jazz in local nightclubs, probably, he says, “Because I was one of only three piano players in town.”

He went on to find his path as a professor at URI. “That’s where I got serious about music,” he says. So he founded the chorus 57 years ago, creating a rich cultural resource for his community and a launching pad for many musicians.

Former member Bill Thorpe, who now performs as a professional singer and actor, says: “For my generation of young singers, George Kent not only provided a solid musical foundation with exposure to high-quality music, the opportunity to sing in foreign languages, and to perform with professional orchestras and soloists, but also a major social outlet that included im-

PHOTOS: PAUL KANDARIAN; COURTESY WESTERLY CHORUS

portant interaction with adults.”

Professional musician Peter Niedmann of West Hartford, Conn., who sang and studied organ under Kent, says the transition to Howell has been smooth. “He is an outstanding choral conductor.

His approach is very exacting; timing cutoffs perfectly, diction, variations in tone color. The chorus has a great new leader and a strong future.”

Not bad considering Howell never considered music as a boy, until he was forced to take piano lessons by his mother.

“Then I came here, and it turned my life around,” Howell says of attending Ogontz as a 12-year-old boy. A year later, he joined the chorus. “It gave me a home surrounded by people enjoying the same thing. No matter where you’re from, we all had this thing that made us one.” • For more on the Chorus and its ambitious yearly schedule, which includes tours abroad, classical concerts, Christmas and Summer Pops, and summer camp for children, visit chorusofwesterly.org.

Top: Westerly Chorus rehearses. Above: Passing the torch. George Kent ’58 (standing), a URI professor who has inspired generations of students here and at the chorus; and Andrew Howell ’05.

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 27

ambrello of ht: Michael Ch

Left to rig

M. Dooley esident David

hite ’81, Pr

IGT, Laurie W

ELEVENTH ANNUAL

distinguished achievement awards gala

Saturday, October 22, marked the Eleventh Annual Distinguished Achievement Awards and Gala in Newport, when the University honored alumni, corporations, and friends of URI who have brought distinction to themselves and the University through their professional achievements, outstanding leadership, and community service.

10

QUADANGLES SUMMER 2015

raboys, Hon.

and George G

’99

2016 DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS RECIPIENTS PRESIDENT’S AWARDS George Graboys, Hon. ’99, Chairman and CEO (retired), Citizens Financial Group Scott Singer ’83, Head of Global Business Services, Rio Tinto Laurie White ’81, President, Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce International Game Technology (IGT) (Corporate Award) Award accepted by Michael Chambrello, CEO of IGT’s North American Lottery Organization

RISING STAR AWARD Raymond Two Hawks Watson, M.C.P. ’05, Founder and CEO, Providence Cultural Equity Initiative

ATHLETIC DIRECTOR’S AWARD Edward B. Deutsch ’68, Managing Partner, McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP

DEANS’ AWARDS College of Arts and Sciences

College of Nursing

Adam Wiener ’87, Executive Vice President and General Manager, CBS Local Digital Media

Karen L. Waldo ’88, Registered Nurse, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

College of Business Administration Frederick J. Newton ’78, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.

College of Pharmacy Susan C. Johnson ’81, Pharm.D. ’88, Director of Research, Eastern Connecticut Hematology & Oncology Associates Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Education

College of Engineering

and Professional Studies

Jay Blazensky ’82, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, VoiceBase, Inc.

Laura A. Pisaturo ’91, Chairperson, Rhode Island Parole Board

College of the Environment and Life Sciences

Graduate School of Oceanography

Kenneth Ayars ’83, M.S. ’85, Chief, Division of Agriculture, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management

The G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation Award accepted by Ambrose Monell, President and Trustee of the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and the Ambrose Monell Foundation

College of Health Sciences R. Bert Reid Jr., M.S. ’93, Co-Owner, OPT Physical Therapy

PHOTO: NORA LEWIS

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

11

CLASSACTS

Swim Team alumni gathered this summer.

Robert Green, Pharm.D. ‘13 and Caitlin Dowd, Pharm.D. ‘13

Benjamin Mark Weisberger and Elizabeth Josephine Botcheller ‘06

Baby Maya Caroline Longo

Colonel Stephen Falcone ‘83

Baby Dylan Matthew Goldman

Chi Phi alums gather in East Greenwich

STAYED CONNECTED

URI Alumni Association @URIAlumniAssoc | #URIAlum flickr.com/urialumni URI Alumni Association alumni.uri.edu Baby Aiden Hudson Greenberg with older siblings 30

QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

’58

Tony Chatowsky of Palm City, Fla., writes: “My granddaughter Megan Chatowsky entered this fall into the school of Pharmacy. Her sister Catie Chatowsky is already in the Pharmacy school. My nephews Michael and Anthony Chatowsky are graduates of URI, as is my son, John Chatowsky, Megan and Catie’s father.”

’63

Julien Ayotte of Cumberland, R.I., the best-selling author and multi-award winner for Flower of Heaven and Dangerous Bloodlines, has just released his third novel, A Life Before, another mystery thriller. Apex Reviews calls the book “a psychological thriller in the upper echelon of literary greatness and an absolute must read.” www.julienayotte.com will link you everywhere to buy a copy.

’64

On July 22, 2016 a reunion of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity brothers from Classes 1964–1965 was held at Howard Cook’s home in Westborough, Mass. (Photo page 32)

’65

Bob Langevin of Tequesta, Fla., writes: “Chi Phi Brothers: you’ll see the picture (opposite) of our illustrious group/brotherhood that was taken at the Volunteer Firemen’s Hall in East Greenwich. It was a terrific evening enjoyed by all and a big thank you goes out to Paul Lane for putting this annual event together every year. Thank you, Paul. It was a GR8 night and I’m already looking forward to the one in 2017. Cheers, adult beverages, and best regards.”

’66

Marie Grosseto of Lafayette, Colo., writes: “I have had a change of address since the 50th reunion for the class of 1966. New address: 231 Rendezvous Dr., Lafayette, Co. 80026. Love to hear from old friends!”

’73

Sally (Carlson) Gunning of Brewster, Mass., had her 15th book out in September. Monticello (William Morrow) will be her fifth historical fiction novel. She wrote 10 mysteries (Pocket Books) previous to switching genres. Sally, who was a sociology major, married Tom Gunning ’74, who was an English major. Somehow their career goals clashed and he has been a social worker for the past 38 years. They will be celebrating their 41st year of marital bliss this September.

How well do you know your alma mater?

Test your knowledge in our 125th Anniversary edition word search!

’74

Dr. Ken Osfield, M.S. ’86 of Gainesville, Fla., recently finished his latest book on international student services. The book, Supporting Students Globally in Higher Education (Osfield, Perozzi, Bardill Moscaritolo, & Shea, NASPA, Oct. 2016) is a book written for both the new and seasoned student services professionals around the world.

This is a follow-up text to Internationalization of Student Affairs and Services: An Emerging Global Perspective, released in 2008 (Osfield & Associates, NASPA, 2008).

’76

Kathy Oldham Neill of Cranston, R.I., has her MSW from Rhode Island College, specializes in PTSD and is recognized in the field. She’s asked to speak at numerous forums and was one of the featured voices in the Trinity Rep play, Boots on the Ground. Kathy also received the inaugural Social Worker of the Year Award this year. The committee received over a hundred nominations highlighting the work of 32 individual social workers across multiple disciplines. These nominations were considered by an interdisciplinary committee who ultimately felt Kathy’s contributions to the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center during her career set her apart.

Visit alumni.uri.edu to check your answers, plus discover the benefits of Alumni Assocation membership (such as exclusive invitations to our fun-filled expanded series of member events) all while helping support more than 65 programs that keep URI traditions strong.

Here’s to the next 125!

1. URI originally began as a school in this discipline 2. Located in the corner of the quad, a remnant from 1892 campus celebration 3. Dining hall, named for high-impact president 4. First women’s dorm on campus in 1909 5. The Animal Husbandry Facility, which produced milk and food served in dorms

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

6. Beloved coach, chemistry professor, and athletic director 7. Beloved entertainer and USO supporter; 1992 Commencement speaker 8. Said to be the model for Camp David 9. The most energy efficient residence hall 10. Rhody’s breed 11. URI’s 11th president

alumni.uri.edu

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 31

’78

Andrew Morang, M.S. of Vicksburg, Miss., writes: “I retired on Dec. 31, 2015, after 31 years at the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (formerly the Coastal Engineering Research Center), in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

During the last decade or so, I conducted sediment budget studies in the Great Lakes, Puget Sound, Louisiana, and Texas and dredging studies at various U.S. Navy harbors.

It was fun, but now I am having more fun and am so busy, I wonder how I had time to work. So far, I have traveled in Utah, Arizona, and California, driven a big piece of Route 66, and my wife and I are getting ready for a seven-week trip to Poland, Germany, Austria, and Greece. We do not have any specific future plans—it is just nice to not always be rushed for time. Cheers from Mississippi.”

Ashley ‘12 and Samuel ‘09 Hawkes

Cheryl Lussier Poppe of Salem, Mass., writes: “Since retiring from the Massachusetts National Guard I have been working for the Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services, most recently as the deputy secretary. In November 2014, I was sworn in as the superintendent of the soldiers’ home in Chelsea. It is truly an honor to continue to serve veterans and families.”

’80

Dennis Freed of New York, N.Y., writes: “I have written a book, Love, Loss, and Awakening. It is a fun, introspective and unique story about a man who lost his wife of 31 years to cancer and decided to live life and not grieve himself into misery. Here is what world-famous Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D have to say about the book. Their endorsements do not

Baby Samuel Lincoln Hawkes Jr.

Wedding party of Alicia Collozzi ‘11 and Jason Coppa ‘10

Henry Fiore Jr., M.A. ‘85

32 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

Erin O’Dell ‘08 and James Acone ‘08

come easily: Love, Loss, and Awakening is an engaging story of how one man bounces back after losing the love of his life. It is an ode to the power of being in relationship, especially when faced with incredibly difficult and heartbreaking loss. And it is with much humor that Dennis Freed takes the reader on a journey to find what we are all looking for to be joyous and fulfilled in a relationship.”

Col. Stephen Falcone of Hudson, Mass., was honored at an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) international conference held in Washington, D.C. He is presently director of engineering for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Battle Management Directorate at Hanscom AFB, Mass.

Henry Fiore Jr., M.A. ’85, of Westerly, R.I., has been appointed as the new superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Norwich. The Catholic schools in the Diocese of Norwich consist of 12 elementary/middle schools, two high schools and one school with grades 6–12. There are two private independent Catholic schools, a clinical day school program for adolescent boys and young men and two pre-school programs.

Chris Mutkoski of Braintree, Mass., just celebrated the 10 year anniversary of his company, Axon Communications (www.axonrx. com). Axon provides unique digital media solutions to most of the world’s top pharmaceutical and biotech companies. As part of its year-long anniversary celebration, Axon moved into new offices after rehabbing a 23,000 square-foot warehouse into open concept creative agency space that even includes an indoor pickleball court! When asked about the best part of his job, he points across the office to his wife and Axon’s co-founder, Laney, and says, “I get to work with my best friend every day!”

’83

Eva Conti of Rivervale, N.J. is in her 18th season as principal horn with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.

Also an accomplished flamenco dancer, she has been a soloist, company dancer and musical arranger with the Alborada Spanish Dance Theatre for eight seasons and is in the ensemble “SEGUE.” More information on Conti’s dual life as a musician and dancer can be found in a New York City Musicians Union Magazine article; search for her name at www.local802afm.org.

Baby Oscar Zorilla Jr.

’88

’93 George “Hopper” McDonough of Bath, Maine, writes: “We had a URI Swim Team alumni gathering last week in Wilton, Conn. It was also a good chance to celebrate Coach Westkott’s 40 years of coaching.

Paola Perez ‘02

Lambda Chi Alpha Brothers: Howard Cook, Paul Summers, Leo Crosby, Barry Lees, Edward Sowa, Norm Shorrock, and Richard Durfee. Larry Aker was also present but not pictured.

CLOSEUP

Big Fish Jessie Saunders ’08 Almost nothing about Dr. Jessie Saunders’ veterinary practice is what you would expect.

She makes daily house calls, she’s constantly damp, and her patients are difficult to handle.

That’s because she is one of the nation’s few veterinarians to specialize in caring for fish kept in home aquariums and ornamental ponds.

Most of her patients are koi, large Japanese goldfish, but she says she “treats everything that swims,” including turtles and frogs.

The primary problems her patients face can often be resolved by improving water quality, so Saunders spends much of her time instructing fish owners on how to properly maintain their tanks and ponds. But she also conducts surgeries, administers medication, and diagnoses a wide range of diseases.

She started her practice, Aquatic Veterinary Services, near Santa Cruz, California, in 2013, spending every day on the road visiting her patients. She opened a fish hospital last January where she now cares for saltwater and freshwater fish of all sizes and varieties.

“It’s always neat to work with new owners who have bonded with their fish,” she said.

“You can’t take them out and snuggle with them, but they have a deep-seated attachment.”

While earning a marine biology degree at URI, Saunders completed an honors thesis at Mystic Aquarium, where she received her introduction to caring for marine species.

“Everybody else wanted to work with the big guys, the whales and seals,” she said, “but I moved on to the fish, which have a broad spectrum of personalities.

They’re much more fun.”

BY TODD MCLEISH

PHOTO: COURTESY JERILYN MEARNS ‘72, MBA ‘78

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 33

34 QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

PHOTO: MICHAEL SALERNO

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UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 35

Rhody Gift Guide Put a Little Rhody on Your Holiday Shopping List!

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIP where to buy: alumni.uri.edu/membership When you give someone a membership to the Alumni Association, it’s a gift that keeps on giving: your recipient will get amazing discounts and perks, and URI students will benefit from Alumni Association scholarships.

CENTURY WALK BRICK where to buy: alumni.uri.edu/centurywalk Make a statement that will last forever with a brick on the URI Quad. We’ll inscribe the brick with your personalized message.

AT A GIFT TH ETIME! LASTS A LIF tion: or for more informa k or 401.874.2218 To order a brick urywal u/alumni/cent advance.uri.ed

the heart on the Quad— bricks are placed s to graduates and Century Walk permanent tribute your gift to include of campus—as alize affiliation, You can person ity, club, athletic friends of URI. sorority, fratern name, class year, gful to you. or anything meanin

RHODY MERCH where to buy: ramszone.uri.edu At the Rams Zone online gift shop, the possibilities for URI-branded items are endless, from the adorable—URI baby blankets!—to the elegant, like a Vineyard Vines bow tie.

This was the second of three planned gatherings, with alums from about ’83 to ’93 attending.” (Photo p.30)

’99

Shannon L. (LaDuke) Neufeld of Houston, Texas, was hired in August 2014 as the communications manager for the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health.

’02

Paola Perez of Charlotte, N.C., graduated from Northeastern University, Boston, Mass., on May 6 with a master’s in engineering in energy systems. She graduated URI with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a B.A. in German. She now works at Daimler Trucks NA as a custom application engineer and lives with her family in Charlotte, N.C.

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’03

Holly J. Susi, M.A., of Providence, R.I., was recently promoted to full professor in the English Department at the Community College of Rhode Island.

’11

Colin Giblin of Somerville, Mass., was promoted to the role of Chief eCommerce Turtle for Turtle Fur. Turtle Fur is the leading headwear and accessories company in the snowsports industry, and was founded in 1982 in Stowe, Vt.

’12

Corey Lester, Pharm.D., of Madison, Wis., was recently named the 2016–17 Joseph Wiederholt Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Student Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Pharmacy. This fellowship is

awarded annually to a graduate student in the social and administrative sciences program demonstrating outstanding achievements in their coursework and research competencies. Lester is a fourth-year Ph.D. student working on his dissertation examining medication errors in community retail pharmacies.

Alicia Colozzi ’11 to Jason Coppa ’10 on July 23, 2016

Weddings

Caitlin Dowd, Pharm.D. ’13 to Robert Green, Pharm.D. ’13 on June 11, 2016

Elizabeth Josephine Botcheller ’06 to Benjamin Mark Weisberger on May 14, 2016 Cassandra L. Guglielmetti ’06 to Damir Kahrimanovic on July 2, 2016 Erin O’Dell ’08 to James Acone ’08 on August 8, 2015 Melissa Adley ’09, M.B.A. ’13 to Dean Perdikakis on June 4, 2016 Morgan McGowan ’09 to Michael Handwerk on September 17, 2016

Sara Duphily ’11 to Robert Sanchez II on May 15, 2016 Keith Murray ’11 to Amanda Beaudoin on July 16, 2016 Ashley (Hopkins) Hawkes ’12 to Samuel Hawkes ’09, M.B.A. ’12 on October 3, 2015

Births Adam Russell ’98 and Ema Rodrigues, a girl, Claudia Amanda Russell, on March 22, 2016 Jessica Jarvis Greenberg ’00 and Lonn Greenberg, a son, Aiden Hudson Greenberg, on June 21, 2016 Ellen (Salkin) Goldman ’03 and Leben Goldman, a son, Dylan Matthew Goldman, on June 16, 2016

CLOSEUP

A Father of Skin Care Robert Saute ’50

When Bob Saute was drafted into the U.S. Army as the Korean War was coming to an end, he was thankful for his pharmacy degree. It helped him get assigned to a post-war medical unit in Japan, where he was placed in charge of the hospital pharmacy and medical laboratory, despite only having the rank of private. It was one of several fortuitous circumstances in a career that eventually earned him a lifetime achievement award from the Society of Cosmetic Chemists.

A native of West Warwick, R.I., who now lives in Northridge, California, Saute had a highly successful career leading the research and development divisions of Avon Products, Gillette and other companies that manufacture personal care products. Working long hours in the lab, he developed the formulas for hundreds of hair care, skin care and cosmetics products, and he was an early pioneer in the development of sunblocks—long before public concerns were raised about the effects of the sun’s rays on skin.

Along with his wife Arda, he started a consulting firm in 1975 to advise companies on the formulation and manufacture of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

His sons describe him as “generous with his knowledge of pharmaceutical chemistry.” They speak from experience: Saute helped son Richard start Cosmetic Enterprises, a private label manufacturer of health and beauty products. Robert later purchased Zerran International, one of his consulting clients, a company that makes hair care products for professional salons from formulas Saute devised. That company is now managed by Saute’s other son, Steven.

BY TODD MCLEISH

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE SAUTE FAMILY

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 37

Your cover letter and resume— why do you need both?

Your resume and cover letter are important partners in your job search. In our latest Alumni Career Services article, we offer some important advice on how these two tools should work together to help you promote your experience and skills—plus, why you should customize them for each job that you seek. If you aren’t sure why cover letters matter, visit the Alumni Career Services website to read more.

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

alumni.uri.edu/careerservices Melinda Golembeske ’04, M.L.S. ’13 and Timothy Golembeske, a son, Henry Charles, on April 4, 2016 Megan L. (Corbett) Longo ’05 and Robert Longo, a girl, Maya Caroline Longo, on Sept. 6, 2016 Jessica Rusack Becker ’07 and Matt Becker ’07, a girl, Lucy Blair Becker, on December 3, 2015 Dianna Schoder ’07 and Andrew Finan ’07, a girl, Amelia Kae Finan, on July 10, 2016 Ashley Hawkes ’12 and Samuel Hawkes ’09, M.B.A. ’12, a son, Samuel Lincoln Hawkes, Jr. on July 9, 2016 Oscar Zorrilla ’12 and Eleanor Gendron, a boy, Oscar Zorrilla Jr., on July 21, 2016

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In Memoriam Margaret Bagni ’41 of Naples, Fla., on July 9, 2016 Joseph D’Angelo ’43 of North Andover, Mass., on August 19, 2016 Natale J. Federico ’44 of Ipswich, Mass., on April 29, 2016 Everett Berlinsky ’44 of West Greenwich, R.I., on September 22, 2016 Murray G. Cordin ’47 of Wakefield, R.I. on August 8, 2016 Robert S. Sweet ’48 of Scotch Plains, N.J., on July 12, 2016 Lt. John Bruce Blount ’50 of Columbia, S.C., on August 23, 2016 Edwin Cull Jr. ’50 of Cranston, R.I., on July 5, 2016

F. Robert Ennis Jr. ’50 of Colchester, Vt., on August 15, 2016

John Whitford II ’68, M.A. ’73 of Peace Dale, R.I., on July 6, 2016

James Gavin Kennedy ’50 of Shelbourne, Vt., on August 5, 2016

Stephen A. Carbine ’69 of Rutland, Vt., on July 16, 2016

Kibarian Barkev Kibarian ’50 of Potomac, Md., on September 4, 2016

Stephen C. Salkeld ’69 of Sea Girt, N.J., on April 8, 2016

Matthew J. Lynch ’50 of Wilmington, Del., on June 26, 2016

Kathleen Spangler ’70, M.A. ’76 of Wakefield, R.I., on June 28, 2016

George V. Malgieri ’51 of Wakefield, R.I., on January 24, 2016

Garret P. Caffrey ’71 of Rumford, R.I., on September 16, 2013

Darius Nickerson ’51 of Pittsburgh Pa., on March 14, 2016

Grant Denniston ’71 of Amherst, N.H., on April 6, 2016

Joseph George Oliveira ’51 of Nashua, N.H., on July 21, 2016

James Francis O’Hearn ’71 of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, on July 5, 2016

Gustav E. Benson ’52 of Pataskala, Ohio, on July 1, 2016

Francis M. Crowley ’72 of Providence, R.I., on September 21, 2016

Frank L. Cherms Jr. ’52 of Chico, Calif., on July 25, 2016 Stephen Dresner ’53 of Pawtucket, R.I., on July 20, 2016 Anthony F. Mancini ’53 of Scituate, Mass., on June 26, 2016 Raymond McGuire ’54 of Holmes Beach, Fla., on June 27, 2016 Lawrence E Sprague ’54 of North Scituate, R.I., on June 28, 2016 Edith C. Gadoury ’58 of Watertown, Conn., on May 3, 2016 Normand J.B. Langevin ’59 of Kaysville, Utah, on July 4, 2016 Albert Lindemann Jr. ’59 of Charlottesville, Va., on August 18, 2016 James Roy ’59 of Escondido, Calif., on July 24, 2016 Charles E Porcao Sr. ’61 of West Warwick, R.I., on September 3, 2016 Teresa Renola, M.A. ’61 of Cranston, R.I., on August 17, 2016 John Hickey, M.S. ’62 of Narragansett, R.I., on August 9, 2016 John O. Pearson ’63 of Granite Bay, Calif., on April 5, 2016.

Robert Mabbett Briggs ’66 of Narragansett, R.I., on September 4, 2016 Richard Joseph Glodzik ’66 of Ballwin, Mo., on December 1, 2015 Niles Rodney Larson ’66 of Knoxville, Tenn., on September 23, 2016 Paul Dennis Sullivan ’66 of Gardiner, Maine, on August 13, 2016 Philip J. Fox ’67 of Seekonk Mass., on September 21, 2016 Joseph A. Walton ’67 of Punta Gorda, Fla., on August 23, 2016

Jeffrey A. Feroce ’72 of Rupert, Idaho, on June 4, 2016 Rexford Hurlburt Jr. ’72 of Chenango Forks, N.Y., on June 29, 2016 Edward J. Melenkivitz ’72 of Hopedale, Mass., on September 21, 2016 Carol Previte ’72 of Boston, Mass., on August 5, 2016 Capt. David B Eldridge Jr. ’73 of Ashburn, Va., on August 10, 2016 Capt. Elwood Joseph Euart ’73 of Pawtucket, R.I., on October 26, 2016 Anthony M. Rybarczyk ’73 of Virginia Beach, Va., on June 25, 2016 Michael William Titzler ’73 of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., September 4, 2016 Joseph Richard Brady ’74 of Newport, R.I., on July 2, 2016 Stephen Neal ’74 of Theodore, Ala., on September 7, 2016 Peter Anthony VonVillas Jr. ’74 of Terrell, Tex., on May 31, 2016 David J. Lane, M.A. ’75 of Saltsburg, Pa., on July 25, 2016 Robert W. Waitorwicz ’75 of Framingham, Mass., on July 22, 2016 Wendell Bernard Pols ’76 of Warren, R.I., on April 1, 2016 Sharman E. Prouty, M.L.S. ’76 of Orange, Mass., on July 31, 2016 Michael H. Ouimet ’77 of Foxborough, Mass., on March 26, 2016 Patricia C. McAllister ’78 of East Hartford, Conn., on August 19, 2016 Rose Anna Morrow ’78 of North Branford, Conn., on June 26, 2016 Stephen McGinn ’79, of North Attleboro, Mass., on Sept. 29, 2016.

Katherine Brockett Joslin, M.A. ’80 of Westerly, R.I., on July 1, 2016 Robert Silvestri ’81 of Westerly, R.I., on July 9, 2016 Barney Rinaldi ’83 of Wakefield, R.I., on August 26, 2016 Scott Sanborn ’84 of North Scituate, R.I., on July 14, 2016 Carla Edith Gockel Moore ’85 of The Villages, Fla., on August 12, 2016 Carl A. Pearson ’85 of Orleans, Mass., on August 21, 2016 Paul DeCoste, M.C.P. ’86 of Winston-Salem, N.C., on July 27, 2016

ALUMNISCENE August 18, 2016 URI in Chicago: Rhody Clambake “The Rhode Island style clambake was a nice taste of home and a good chance to talk with other alumni.”

—Paul Shea ‘87

Roy L. Eastman Jr. ’86 of Lincoln, R.I., on March 8, 2016 Karen Kilborn McBride ’86 of Colchester, Vt., on August 2, 2016 Tracey A. Paczosa ’86 of Wakefield, R.I., on August 5, 2016 John D. Ivers Jr. ’88 of Meriden, Conn., on August 10, 2016 Christine Michele Ashburn ’89 of Niantic, Conn., on June 23, 2016 William Charles Gluck ’89 of Weston, Conn., on November 27, 2016 Christine Elizabeth Daley ’90 of Hamilton, Ga., on July 21, 2016 Gregory Sousa ’93 of Durham, N.C., on July 14, 2016

September 6, 2016 Alumni of Theta Chi Dinner “We’ve been having quarterly dinners since 1998, and we always have two or three active students join us. They like to hear the stories of the old days and the fun we had.

It helps carry on the tradition.”

—Mike Testa ‘63

Stanis Gill ’98 of Coventry, R.I., on September 10, 2016 Robert McGale ’00 of East Matunuck, R.I., on August 15, 2016 Matthew J. Wnuk ’13 of Westerly, R.I., on August 16, 2016 Adam Gardner ’05, M.A. ’14 of Narragansett, R.I., on August 8, 2016 Ryan Kenneth Sutcliffe ’14 of Cumberland, R.I., on August 13, 2016

Faculty and Staff In Memoriam Professor Emeritus of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering Allen G. Lindgren of North Kingstown., R.I., former chair of Electrical Engineering, on Aug. 15, 2016.

Irving K. “Sandy” Taylor, former URI architect, of North Kingstown, R.I., on Oct. 17, 2016.

October 1, 2016 Legacy Brunch URI is more than just my university; it’s a part of my family. Keaney blue is in our blood. Coming home to URI every fall for a luncheon and football game with my family gives us the opportunity to marvel at the amazing things that have been taking place here for generations.”

—Karolyn Sundberg ‘19

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

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it Subm y sb entrie y 6, r Janua 7 201

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 enter it on the comments section of the online version of the magazine, for a chance to win a year’s free subscription to QuadAngles. Ok, you already have that, but we can offer bragging rights and your name in print in the next issue, when we’ll showcase the winning captions and tell you what (little) we know about this photo. Game on, Rhody! —Pippa Jack

What are these ladies up to?

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QUADANGLES WINTER 2016

PHOTO: URI LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Give the gift of

opportunity Your gift this Holiday Season will support the dreams of University of Rhode Island students by helping them afford the cost of their education, providing support for otherwise unattainable opportunities and showing them that you care enough to invest in their success.

Every gift matters.

Take advantage of current-year tax deductions and give by December 31 with an online gift at urifoundation.org/giveonline, or by mail, using the reply envelope in this magazine or by sending your check to the URI Foundation at P.O. Box 1700, Kingston, RI 02881.

Make your gift to URI this Holiday Season and

change lives.

(401) 874-7900 | urifoundation@uri.edu

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

Alumni Center 73 Upper College Road Kingston, RI 02881 USA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Big Chill Weekend 2017

E H T E SAV RY A U R FEB 4

!

E T A D

IT’S ALL ABOUT SCHOLARSHIPS.

2–

alumni.uri.edu/bigchill