RWU Magazine, Issue 12

Número 12 / Otoño 2015

La Revista de Roger Williams University

o v e u N Estado de R A NZA

ES P E

hode R islanD

Pizza, Nuevo Estilo de Brooklyn • ¿Que Hay Para Comer? ¡Pescado!

El

14

IN THIS ISSUE

Let Them Eat Pizza In a city where pizza is king, newcomer Emily reigns supreme. Just ask any of the dozens of diners huddled outside the hip Brooklyn eatery, mouths watering, waiting for a table and a slice. The restaurant, replete with comfort food from wings to the hard-to-get-your-hands-on Emmy burger, is making a name for itself far beyond the Clinton Hill corner they call home, landing on the cover of Saveur magazine and Top 10 lists nationwide in its first year.

Read “Love at First Slice� on Page 30.

20

40

RWU Issue #12 / Fall 2015

The Magazine of Roger Williams University

Features 22

Cover Story

The New State of Rhode Island – By Ellen Liberman

With big shifts in the smallest state’s demographics – Latinos now comprise 14 percent of the Ocean State’s population, representing more than 20 different countries of origin – experts from the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University and beyond concur: What’s good for Latinos is good for Rhode Island.

30 Love at First Slice – By Melissa A. Patricio

Matt and Emily (Shaw) Hyland’s love for pizza – and each other – brought them from Bristol to Brooklyn, where they’re tossing tradition in favor of a more avant-garde style pie that’s landing their restaurant, Emily, on “best of” lists across the country.

40 Scup. It’s What’s for Dinner! – By Jill Rodrigues ’05

To investigate the safe consumption of the silver-speckled finfish, RWU researchers head to sea (and the bay) to land answers about the native fish that’s been brought home by generations of New England’s recreational fishermen and, more recently, stolen cod’s thunder as a sustainable alternative whitefish at local restaurants.

Departments 2

Open Source

3

Off the Script

4

On the Waterfront

14

Mission Critical

Your letters to the editor Featuring President Donald J. Farish Snapshots from across the RWU campus Our core values in action

20

A Braver Voice

48

Sports Center

50

Voices in Common

56

13 Things...

Finding Your Footing Athletics news and notes News from our alumni and friends ...You Might Not Know about Commencement at RWU

RWU

Open Source

®

The Magazine of Roger Williams University

Your letters to the editor

A Poet’s Point of View I read with interest the article on the Mount Hope Bridge [“6 Suspenseful Questions on the Mount Hope Bridge, Issue #11] and thought you might enjoy this poem about the artistic attraction of this unique span, given the role of the bridge not only as a gateway to the town, but also to the RWU campus. The University’s architecture department helped in the effort to maintain the original lamp design and artistic integrity when the bridge’s old lamps were removed. I wrote the poem in December 2004 and it appeared in local newspapers a few years ago.

© 2015 Roger Williams University Published by the Division of Marketing and Communications Issue #12 / Fall 2015

President Donald J. Farish, Ph.D., J.D. Vice President of Marketing and Communications Judi Connery Director of Public Affairs / Editor-in-Chief Brian E. Clark

The Bridge’s Light Brigade

The Bridge’s Light Brigade

At night your swooping lights trace outstretched arms wound tight to lift the hefty road you tote across Aquidneck Island’s moat, exulting your imposing form for miles around.

Their helmets set with tinted panes, in gothic style they fend the dark to clarify your highway’s lanes – in two long lines from end to end.

Associate Director of News and Publications / Editor Melissa A. Patricio

Mount Hope Bridge – Though lifting is your major part, you startle and amaze us as a brilliant work of art.

Contributing Writers Adam Braver, Lori Cochrane, Ryan Edmonds, Ellen Liberman, Kevin Terbush ’15, Justin Wilder, Alexandra Wojtanowski ’15

To supplement this light array are lampposts on each balustrade, sentinels that hold their sway as the bridge’s light brigade.

Contributing Editors Sabrina Polin ’17, Jill Rodrigues ’05

Director of Design and Production Ray Talamo Assistant Art Director Jaci A. DaCosta

– John J. DaPonte Tiverton, R.I.

Senior Graphic Designer Daniel Ruth ’08

From Elder Care to Daughters on Campus Just want to thank you for placing me on the list to receive your RWU Magazine. It is wonderful.

I love it! I just read the excellent story by Melissa Patricio on elder care and Philip Marshall [“Beyond Brooke,” Issue #11] as well as Don Farish’s “Off the Script” piece about Mitch O’Hara and his four daughters attending RWU. I really enjoy it, and it’s beautifully put together.

– Lindsay Green Bristol, R.I.

Production Coordination Kim Sousa Contributing Illustrators Lauren Nassef, Tom Parsons Contributing Photographers Julie Brigidi, Jill Futter, Robyn Ivy, James Jones, Mario Morgado, David Silverman, Peter Silvia Please direct questions, comments, letters and other editorial inquiries to: email: magazine@rwu.edu phone: (401) 254-5552 fax: (401) 254-3185

Tell Us What You Think!

As we head into the holiday season – for many of us, a time of reflection and gratitude – the RWU team wants to thank you, our readers, for allowing the magazine to grace your counters and coffee tables for 12 issues. In the coming weeks, look for an email from us asking you to participate in a brief survey that will allow us to create more of the content that you want to see. In the meantime, head over to http://pdq.rwu.edu/mag12 for more information – and keep an eye on your inbox!

– Editor

FIND MORE ONLINE…

from the entire issue of RWU Magazine. Additional content is just a click away at http://pdq.rwu.edu/mag12

WRITE TO RWU We welcome short letters on topics pertinent to the magazine and the University and will publish as many as space allows.

email:

magazine@rwu.edu write: RWU Magazine Roger Williams University One Old Ferry Road Bristol, RI 02809

Please include your full name, address and RWU affiliation. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length.

RWU Magazine Roger Williams University One Old Ferry Road Bristol, RI 02809 Send subscription requests and changes of address to: email: jwhetstone@rwu.edu phone: (401) 254-3004 fax: (401) 254-3599 Joyce Whetstone Director of Advancement Services Roger Williams University One Old Ferry Road Bristol, RI 02809 While every effort has been made to ensure that information is accurate and up to date, we’re writing about a dynamic educational environment, and it is not possible to guarantee that all items will be accurate at all times.

Roger Williams University and RWU are registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

Off the Script

Featuring University President Donald J. Farish Study abroad has long been a cornerstone of the academic experience at Roger Williams, sending students to six continents across the globe for everything from weeklong service projects to yearlong immersion programs at international universities. And with programs bringing students from countries like China and Brazil to RWU’s Bristol campus, the cultural exchange rate among students continues to grow. Don Farish chats with chemistry student Talita Malewschik about coming to America.

Donald Farish: Let’s start with an easy question.

How did your year at Roger Williams go?

Talita Malewschik: I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I met so many people, made so many connections, and I’ve been to so many places. But this year was not just about traveling for me. It was about my future, and I think that I have accomplished a lot for my chemistry career.

Farish: That’s quite daring, to come all this way for a year! But I know you had a lot of company.

Malewschik: Yes, we were 14 students. The Brazilian government is really, really good because they give you the opportunity to come and study – not just in America but anywhere in the world. In the U.S. we’re 17,000 from Brazil this year!

Farish: And was it a smooth transition?

I know that for international students, it can be difficult to break into the campus culture.

Malewschik: Some people had that problem, but I didn’t. I was blessed with many good friends. From the beginning my perspective was that I needed to make as many American friends as possible and practice my English, so I actively went outside my Brazilian group.

They welcomed me, they took me places, they gave me so many new experiences and memories. I have more American friends than I have Brazilian friends here!

Farish: Nearly half of our American students have an overseas experience, but that also means that half don’t. So it’s important for us to do all that we can to broaden the horizons of our own students, and if they can’t go overseas then we can bring overseas to them. I think

that to expose them to people their own age who come from very different backgrounds is just a great learning experience. It gives them a perspective that they didn’t have or wouldn’t have if they hadn’t met you. I think our country benefits from having people from other countries come – they learn that it’s not all about hamburgers and French fries. They learn some other things about our country, and we learn from them as well.

Malewschik: Well, it was really interesting because through the Transition Academy here they showed us history and they showed us culture and they showed us something else behind the American vision that we have. It was just what we needed.

Farish: It occurs to me that some of those experiences may have included things that don’t have a counterpart in Brazil. Strange American holidays, for instance.

Malewschik: I thought that Halloween was really fun. I actually went with Professor Quezada-Grant. She has a 6-year-old daughter and I went trick-or-treating with her around Bristol. And I didn’t have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but my boyfriend and I went to New York and I got to see people go crazy about Black Friday!

That was something else.

Farish: It’s a wonder you’re here to talk about it!

spreading the sweet joys of chemistry on campus and in the community.

Malewschik: We’ve been talking a lot about this, that people have this closed perspective about science. Especially chemistry. We try to make people see that it’s fun and it’s actually very important for everything. We went to Mount Hope High School in Bristol to judge their science fair, and we did presentations at Roger After Dark; we do trivia and we do chemistry demonstrations during our meeting times.

Farish: And you got to go to Denver for a big conference.

Malewschik: Yes! Thanks to the University for funding my travel. It was amazing for me to go to the American Chemical Society conference.

It’s the biggest chemistry conference in the world, so to attend was an honor. Our chapter did a poster presentation documenting all of those activities we did on campus.

Farish: Well we’re very happy to have had you and your friends on campus. It’s been a good experiment, as we say in science, so now we need to replicate it.

Malewschik: I’m very happy, too. Thank you.

This is going to help me a lot in the future. My résumé is better. My English is better. I think my worldview is better, so that makes me a bigger person.

Malewschik: It was crazy. People get excited.

Farish: Speaking of getting excited, you worked particularly hard with the RWU chapter of the American Chemical Society to increase interest in the sciences – “Confectionary Chemistry,” Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

3

On the Waterfront

POWERLIFTER With a 715-pound deadlift and enough muscle to hoist a Toyota Corolla, Nick Cambi ’11 ranks among the strongest middleweights in the world – and he’s got a fourth-place finish in the 2015 Arnold Amateur Strongman World Championships to prove it. As he preps for a bid on the professional strongman circuit, the 6-foot, 231-pound Cambi bares his strategy for coming out strongest.

Work Smarter, not harder Whether pressing “the log” overhead or heaving an Atlas stone, Cambi wields speed and leg strength to get under and push up to raise heavier weights. It’s a mechanical advantage he’s developed to overtake his competitors.

“Technique is king – you can’t always muscle up something,” Cambi says.

DON'T

Avoid the Chinese buffet Cambi typically eats lean with lots of greens and avocados.

Still, he never passes up a Chinese buffet, loading plates with sushi, General Tso’s chicken and broccoli.

Start wrestling Four years on the RWU wrestling team gave Cambi a weightlifting foundation and honed his technique for launching an object with his hips, among other skills.

DON'T

…when you should have worn sneakers. Cambi’s first strongman competition featured a car deadlift, but he slid all over the mat trying to hoist it in socks.

lift a friend (or three)

RWU {Fall 2015}

DO

Wear Socks...

Cambi recreates car lifts and garbage truck hauls in the gym. No car available? He throws an 800-pound tire on the deadlift implement and rounds up several friends to sit on top.

4

DO

DO

Just Plane

Brilliant!

For the second year in a row, engineering students from RWU captured top honors in the FAA’s university design competition.

How do they do it? Professor of Engineering Linda Riley, who served as faculty advisor for the two winning teams, says that undergrads bring an unfettered perspective that leads to new ideas that often evade even the most experienced professionals.

“Seasoned scientists are constrained by what they already know, but the minds and

the dispositions of these undergraduate students are uncluttered,” Riley says. “I encourage them to keep an open mind, to explore fringe approaches to the problems they’re investigating, to embrace that discovery and then to apply it. They end up creating practical, innovative solutions that nobody in the world has come up with before.”

Here’s a glance at the two outside-of-thebox solutions they came up with this year.

THE CATEGORY

THE CATEGORY

Airport Environmental Interactions

Airport Operations and Maintenance

THE TEAM

THE TEAM

Hy Dinh, Emily Field, Andrew Hannigan, Kristen Tetreault

Ryland Brickner-McDonald, Mohamad Ghulam

THE DESIGN CHALLENGE

THE DESIGN CHALLENGE

To provide lighting for jet bridges – the walkways between airport terminals and aircraft doors – in a way that’s both energy efficient and cost effective.

To improve methods for detecting and removing stray pieces of material (i.e., steel, plastic or asphalt) that could potentially damage an aircraft traveling on a runway or taxiway.

THE SOLUTION An innovative Piezoelectric Carpet System that harnesses the energy of each human step in the jet bridge to illuminate LED lights on the carpet – and can save an airport some $3,000 per year for each jet bridge when compared to existing lighting.

ADVISOR’S TAKE “Piezoelectric solutions have been tried, but they’ve never been affordable,” Riley says.

“The students’ system was cost-effective compared to existing approaches to lighting, which is what makes it so appealing.”

THE SOLUTION An unique Foreign Object Debris Removal Machine in which no extra vehicle is needed to sweep airport surfaces – instead, the machine is designed to be retrofitted between the front and rear axles of the baggage carts used at commercial airports.

ADVISOR’S TAKE “Existing machines require investments in a vehicle for towing and personnel for operations,” Riley says. “This solution – which the students fabricated and tested on a donated baggage cart from Delta – eliminates costs, saves energy and reduces airport traffic.”

You Say You Want a

Revolution?

“When I took office, I put a call out to all the people of Rhode Island. I said: ‘We are going to spark an economic comeback of this great state.

And in order to do that, everyone has a role to play…’ Roger Williams University responded.

Roger’s Revolution is exactly responsive to making sure that higher education delivers what we need in order to have an economic comeback.”

With those words spoken in September at a boisterous rally in downtown Providence, Gov. Gina Raimondo offered her take on Roger’s Revolution – an initiative whereby RWU has committed the collective force of the entire University toward the Ocean State’s health and prosperity.

Among a series of bold goals, the University promised over the next three years to: provide 100 percent of its graduates – 2,500 over three years – with vitally important marketplace experience; generate 2,100 skilled, job-ready workers through the School of Continuing Studies; develop hundreds of new partnerships; and open a vital new Providence campus as part of its commitment to the state’s urban core.

The announcement came in the wake of a yearlong undertaking to articulate a new core purpose – to strengthen society through engaged teaching and learning – set of core values and a university goal to serve as a roadmap for the future of Roger Williams University. Through Roger’s Revolution, RWU is taking that commitment to the greater good and putting it into action, with a particular focus on starting at home.

“Our public leaders have issued a call to action,” says RWU President Donald J. Farish. “With Roger’s Revolution, we are answering with tangible goals and a force of more than 6,000 students, faculty and staff. We are committed. We are ready.

We know we can be part of the solution.”

Look forward to more detail in the University’s annual President’s Report, scheduled to hit mailboxes this winter. Or better yet, join the revolution at www.rwu.edu/revolution.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

5

On the Waterfront

FIND MORE ONLINE AT

OUT OF THIS WORLD Award-winning mixed-media artist Elizabeth Duffy, an associate professor of visual arts at Roger Williams, doesn’t

rely on a telescope to inform her perspective on the universe. “I love thinking that you can see the whole world in a small detail of life, much like what happens when you experience an epiphany or revelation,” Duffy says. Her “Skin/Hair/Breath” series replicates the expanse of outer space on a miniscule scale through a process of layering enlarged – and unrecognizable – photographs of skin particles, loose hair, condensed breath, retinal images and other natural elements. “It’s a parallel for the way we experience life, because we are always caught up in our daily lives and don’t always realize the extraordinary, large system we’re a part of.”

Checking in With…Governor Chafee’s Portrait Former R.I. Gov. Lincoln Chafee – until recently a dark-horse candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination – has a well-chronicled history of bucking tradition, having served in the U.S. Senate as a Republican before running for governor as an Independent and later declaring himself a Democrat. It should come as no surprise, then, that his official state portrait would be less than conventional.

In Issue 11 of RWU, readers got a sneak peak “Inside the Artist’s Studio” as visual arts adjunct Julie Gearan painted Chafee for posterity. He asked for something “different,” and at the official unveiling in January, Gearan said her rendering reflects the sense of isolation Chafee felt in office.

“He very much liked the idea of feeling himself to be a thoughtful, pensive person – and to have that reflected in the portrait,” Gearan told media at the ceremony.

The portrait – featuring a somber Chafee standing with his hand resting on a rock, rather than sitting in his office like his predecessors – debuted to mixed reviews at a State House ceremony, sans Chafee. But don’t let his absence fool you – Gearan says Chafee praised the portrait privately and, aside from being on vacation, was simply keen to step aside for the newly inaugurated Governor Gina Raimondo.

6

RWU {Fall 2015}

REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST

Seventy years have passed since the Holocaust ended with liberation of the concentration camps, but people like Rosalie Franks work to ensure its legacy is never forgotten. In the 1990s, she devoted five years to interviewing 92 Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a web archive of 51,000 video testimonials from survivors around the world. Since that experience, Franks – a longtime adjunct professor of critical writing, literature and philosophy at Roger Williams – has brought back lessons on human rights and social justice to her classroom.

WHAT PREPARATION DID THE SHOAH FOUNDATION GIVE YOU?

We trained with scholars of Holocaust studies, who provided additional texts to study.

They explained the importance of being sensitive to the survivors – that over and above hearing their story, we had to acknowledge the person’s humanity. I would pre-interview each person and then return with all that background information for a second interview, which could last three to seven hours.

HOW DID YOU REMAIN COMPOSED WHILE LISTENING TO THEIR STORIES?

It affected me deeply to hear about the terrible suffering of another human being.

Sometimes I would be very sad for days after an interview. But that meant I empathized with the person.

WHY CHOOSE VIDEO AS THE MEDIUM?

Visual histories allow us to witness a person’s emotional response, to see their sadness and perplexity in telling it.

IS THERE AN ART TO CREATING VISUAL HISTORIES?

You have to be a careful listener who knows when to say nothing but also knows how to shape the interview so it remains coherent and interesting. You search for details and the richness of the meaning of the experience being described.

HOW SHOULD PEOPLE TODAY HONOR THE LIVES LOST TO THE HOLOCAUST?

People need to remember what happened to the Jews and to millions of other people so that it never happens again. We must commit ourselves to ensuring that society – here, now – teaches people of all ages the importance of safeguarding democracy and respect for diversity.

IS THAT WHY YOU DESIGN COURSES AROUND THOSE THEMES?

I want students to develop their own sense of values, and I use readings from Plato, Langston Hughes and Holocaust survivors to introduce them to that process. Through literature that examines ethics, human rights and racism, we ask questions like: ‘What are you willing to stand up for?’

WHAT IS OFTEN OVERLOOKED ABOUT THE LEGACY OF THE HOLOCAUST?

The impact on the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators – they feel an overwhelming sense of shame.

They were deeply saddened by the horror of what their families had done. What we do lives on after us. The good that we do lives on. But the evil that we do affects not only the people perpetrated against, but future generations.

FULL NAME Rosalie Franks FUN FACT Studied theology with Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel

FIND MORE ONLINE AT

FURTHER VIEWING Two of her full-length interviews with survivors – one of whom escaped a concentration camp and immigrated to the U.S. – are available at http://sfi.usc.edu

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

7

On the Waterfront

JIMMY FLYNN ’15 MARINE BIOLOGY

Breaking Ice, Making Waves In June 2011, as Jimmy Flynn approached the check-in table at Orientation, the undergrad staffer was quick to point him in the right direction: “Sir, you’ll find the parents’ table over that way…” Oops! Flynn may have been 49, but he was as much a college freshman as any 18-year-old in line. After a lifetime of adventure – childhood in Alaska, a dip at the North Pole, years on a polar icebreaker – college was simply his latest expedition. THE LAST FRONTIER: Compared to his first 11 years in the Philly suburbs, growing up in the shadow of Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier meant the wilderness for a backyard.

“There are three ways to get to Juneau,” Flynn says. “By boat, by plane or by birth canal. It was like nothing I’d seen before – an endless adventure.” ISLANDS TO ICEBREAKERS: A planned four years in the Coast Guard turned instead into 30. From a year spent with just 19 people on Attu, the last of the Aleutian Islands, to running electronics for icebreaker research vessels headed to the Gakkel Ridge, the South Pole and other far-flung outposts, more than a few memorable trips came with the experience. Swimming at the North Pole, for example. “The water was 29 degrees, and the air temperature was 31. You jump in, jump out. And then you watch the ice crystals form between your toes.” WHAT LIES BENEATH: Life on the high seas inspired an interest in all things aquatic, and Flynn had long wanted a college degree. Upon retirement from the Coast Guard, those interests converged in the Wet Lab at RWU, where Flynn came to study marine biology. “I spent 30 years on top of the water. I wanted to see what was going on underneath.”

STUDENT/TEACHER: Sure, it took a little while to fit in with the 20-something crowd – but Flynn had fun with the age gap, posing as a professor and sharing his love of surfing and standup paddleboarding with many an undergrad. “I got nicknamed Pops or Dad or something like that. But really, I was just one of the kids.” COMMENCEMENT ADVICE: Flynn graduated with honors and now protects the Ocean State’s waterways with nonprofit Clean Ocean Access. After four years with Millennials, he’s optimistic about the generation ahead, but not shy in offering advice for his classmates: “Think outside the box about relationship building,” he urges. “So many of us go through life with blinders on, but the people around us have incredible stories. You never know who might be sitting next to you.”

8

RWU {Fall 2015}

For One Night, a Step Ahead of Cancer Sneakers? Check. Purple swag?

Got it. Can-do attitude?

“If cancer doesn’t sleep, neither should we,” says Kimber-Leigh Burkhart ’17, president of the RWU chapter of Colleges Against Cancer, who spent months planning and hours motivating hundreds of walkers during the fourth annual Relay for Life last May. An American Cancer Society tradition for 29 years, the teambased walking relay raises funds and awareness in the fight against cancer and honors survivors and victims. It has quickly become a signature event at RWU, and Director of Student Programs and Leadership Carol

Sacchetti was awarded the Society’s 2015 Sandra C. Labaree Volunteer Values Award for her efforts across numerous fundraisers at the University.

“Relay on a college campus brings a different feeling than a traditional Relay event,” says Sacchetti, who took 12 pies to the face during a fun “Pie Carol S.” fundraiser. “Students plan and implement this and bring it here to RWU on their own.

There is no doubt in my mind that Relay will grow into something larger than it already is if everyone continues to put in a little bit of time and dedication.”

325 300

40

participants from RWU and surrounding communities

luminaria bags decorated, dedicated and lit

students and faculty on the planning team

36

25

12

relay teams

10

cancer survivors walking with teams

“Kicking Causes” boards broken

hours of nonstop walking

$39,016.67 raised in 2014-15 – thousands over goal!

EVER WONDERED HOW TO…

REMEMBER – OIL AND WATER DON’T MIX

Build Bioplastic Bricks Using Cooking Oil Waste?

The team’s design stood out against the competition for straying away from the popular path of working with water; tackling the less-popular option of oil was a factor in the team notching second place.

Take a trip to the Dining C ommons and it’s clear that the French fries are popular fare among undergrads. But what happens to the gallons of used canola oil that soak the spuds that tantalize our taste buds? At RWU, it became fuel for thought for a team of engineering students. After two semesters of trial-and-error and a trip to New Mexico, the team took second place at the 2015 WERC International Environmental Design Competition for a groundbreaking system that addresses a universal environmental issue of cooking oil waste by converting it to firm, structurally sound bioplastic landscaping bricks. Civil engineering grads Gina Lombardi ’15 and Aaron Towers ’15 share their secrets to success.

Running the oil through two five-gallon filtration drums, and then through a centrifuge, the cleaning system can purify 55 gallons of murky, dark brown cooking oil waste into clear, clean oil ready for reuse in just an hour.

KNOW YOUR STUFF The team researched oil, its properties and bioplastic for nearly three months before beginning to put the three-step system together, collaborating with professional engineers and RWU dining staff along the way.

GO WITH YOUR GUT “We were not a very confident team,” says Lombardi, noting that they originally took up the task of separating oil from water. “But we knew that if we didn’t change gears [to work on repurposing oil], we would be set back even further.

We really surprised ourselves with our success.”

BE SQUEAKY CLEAN

EMBRACE THE ADDITIVES Oil to plastic? To make the transformation, the team mixed together and heated 1 part oil, 6 parts water, 4 parts corn starch and 1 part acetic acid to generate the tough, rubbery bioplastic material.

STAY OFF THE GRID By harnessing the power of the cleaned oil and running the entire system on a diesel generator, the design was zero-energy and – with a biodegradable product – totally green.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT “Cooking oil is one of the biggest sources of waste on college campuses, so we focused on a new, innovative outlet for this waste,” Towers says. On average, Roger Williams discards 130 gallons of cooking oil waste per week – all repurposed via Newport Biodiesel. The students’ system takes just 84 hours to transform the refuse into ready-to-use bricks.

LEAVE ROOM FOR INNOVATION “While we showcased our bioplastic landscaping bricks beautifully, what we were really showcasing was our system,” Towers says. “Through the cleaning and manufacturing aspects of the system, you can really make any plastic product you want; our system allows for expansion.”

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

9

On the Waterfront

PPAC Presents...

HAWKWARD featuring Jay Leno

Performing far more than a few be boop ba do dos on the quad during campus events, RWU a cappella group Hawkward soared to new heights this spring when they warmed up a crowd of 3,000 for late-night television host and stand-up comedian Jay Leno at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Leno personally selected Hawkward as the special guest performers from a pool of collegiate, regional and semi-professional groups.

“Jay has a huge love for a cappella groups,” says Kelly Milukas, PPAC’s vice president of concerts who played a key role in the selection process. “It was a direct request from him to find a local group to open the show. We researched a number of groups in the area and liked Hawkward the best. They were our first pick.”

Hawkward rehearsed for dozens of hours ahead of its 25-minute performance. Missed the show? Check out the set list, featuring songs from folk to funk.

“As Long As You Love Me” Justin Bieber

“Wide Awake” Katy Perry

“That Lonesome Road”

“Royals”

“Superstition”

“Uptown Funk”

James Taylor

Stevie Wonder

“No Diggity”

Lorde

Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars

Blackstreet

STEP BY STEP:

Planning a Fabulous 5K

10

Planning a 5K fundraiser? It may seem like a simple task, but there are a number of steps involved to get your organization to the finish line. When Saint Elizabeth Community, a nonprofit that provides residential care for seniors and people with physical disabilities, needed help launching their first-ever 5K walk/run, they enlisted the experts from the Mount Hope PR team – a project group of communication students Jami Hall, Christina Alario, Chandler Capozzi, Lauren Smith and Alexia Shabo – via the Community Partnerships Center. Here are five steps that made the Walk for Wellness 5K a galloping success out of the gate.

1 km:

2 km:

3 km:

4 km:

5 km:

On your mark, get set… give out free pedometers to encourage more activity and generate excitement.

(A monthlong countdown calendar helps, too.)

Pick up the pace with incentives – event t-shirts and water bottles make for inexpensive gifts to boost participation numbers.

Happy trails make for happy runners! Pick a place like Pawtucket’s Slater Park, featuring picnic grounds, a carousel and the scenic Ten Mile River to encourage family participation.

No advertising budget?

None necessary! For an internal audience, emails, flyers and brochures will go the distance.

Run with the right message – to keep momentum going beyond the 5K, SEC’s employee wellness motto soared from simply “Fit to care” to “Care to be fit, so you are fit to care.”

RWU {Fall 2015}

6 Insightful Questions on…

blue eyes – brown eyes On April 5, 1968 – one day after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. – a 35-yearold third-grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa, divided her students into groups based on eye color. A simulation in how we treat others based on their physical traits, the Blue Eyes – Brown Eyes exercise spotlighted the insidiousness of racism in America and catapulted Jane Elliott into a career as an anti-racism activist and diversity trainer. During a visit to campus last semester, Elliott took a look back.

FIND MORE ONLINE AT

Why did your experiment take off the way it did?

How do you embody the role of a racist bigot when you administer the exercise?

What does racism have to do with women’s reproductive rights?

Never call it an experiment – that would be unethical. Why did it grow legs and run?

Because I was on the Johnny Carson show. If you could get on that show, people would discuss what it was you were discussing. And I think that’s disgusting.

Every time I do it I have a migraine headache the next day because I’m doing something that is in complete opposition to what I believe in as an educator, as a Christian and as a human being.

If you think the Right to Life movement is about morality or religion or protecting the fetus, you’re wrong. It is about perpetuating the white numerical majority in the United States of America. If a male has the right to tell a woman what she can do with her body, as far as carrying a child to term as a result of unwanted pregnancy, then women have a right to tell a male that he has to submit to involuntary vasectomy so that he won’t contribute to another unwanted pregnancy.

How did your students’ behavior change that day?

They became vicious and domineering and arrogant and prejudiced and discriminatory.

Before the first recess, I was out in the hall with my head against the lockers crying because of what my students were doing to one another and to me.

Do adults who participate in your program react differently than children?

The adults are more violent. I’ve been hit by a white male during the exercise. I’ve had a knife pulled on me. They took me out of Uniontown, Pa., because the teachers called the superintendent and said: “If you don’t get that bitch out of town we’re going to shoot her!”

How can we achieve greater equality among racial and ethnic groups?

We’re not guaranteed equality under the Constitution. We are guaranteed equitable treatment under the law. You must vote. The U.S. should not be a melting pot, it should be a stir fry – a place where people are appreciated as they are and where you can make a difference without being white.

On the Waterfront

Tinker, Thinker, Rocker

Guy: They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Take a peek inside historic preservation senior Andrew Moore’s workshop and you’ll find a trove of vintage transportation and electronics that he’s spent years collecting and restoring (just for fun).

12

1.

Keep an eye out on campus for Moore’s green 1969 Columbia Play Bike, which he had to grind down to bare metal. “It was rusted and nasty – almost garbage,” he says. “Almost…”

2.

Ludwig snare drums have been the gold standard for more than a century. A new one will set you back up to $700. Or you could scout a tag sale and snag a vintage one – with the original drumhead – for just $25.

3.

A drummer and lead singer in more than one band, Moore’s favorite project has been restoring a 1952 Magnecorder preamplifier that he found for $10 at an estate sale. Tubing – not wires – adds natural warmth to the sound, something digital equipment often cancels out, Moore says.

4.

Fancy the sound of an old-fashioned recording? Moore’s 1957 reel-to-reel tape recorder captures a warm (if not incredibly clean) sound. He restored it in his dorm at RWU where he taught himself from online tutorials.

5.

Needle-nose pliers are Moore’s go-to tools for small wiring jobs on pieces like his Dynavox record player. The turntable spins some sweet tunes, but Moore is fiddling with a grounding wire to eliminate a humming sound.

6.

Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew is in the building! An Elvis-style microphone affixed to a hinged stand was the perfect solution for the musician who needed a mic that wouldn’t interfere with his drum kit.

7.

Why order parts online when you can pull them off a rotting car in the middle of the woods? When Moore needed a nut for the steering wheel of his new-to-him 1969 VW Beetle, a car he’s searched for since he was 14 years old, that’s just where he went. With original floors and engine, Moore’s Bug was in fair condition – and with a bit of tinkering should soon be roadworthy.

RWU {Fall 2015}

6 2

3

Art Auction Brings Awareness to Plight of Ugandan Child Soldiers

5 1

4

The thatched-roof, mud-and-wattle huts that pepper Uganda’s landlocked landscape are a far cry from the water view residence halls of RWU, but for Mikayla Diamond ’15, they quickly became a home away from home on two separate service trips to the war-torn country.

A volunteer at ChildVoice International’s Lukome Centre – a community healing program for child-mothers who were orphaned or forced to be child soldiers by the Lord’s Resistance Army – Diamond has spent a total of 10 weeks in northern Uganda over the past two years, living alongside the program’s residents, attending classes, helping with chores and childcare, and even attending church services with them.

FIND MORE ONLINE AT One of Diamond’s favorite tasks? Fetching water from the borehole. She marveled at the women carrying 20-liter jugs on their heads and in their arms, most with a baby strapped to their backs, making multiple trips each day. It was an incredible feat of strength, Diamond says.

“It was hard enough for me to hold the jug with my hands, never mind my head,” Diamond recalls. “But I loved being able to step into that part of their life, which was so normal to them and so foreign to me.”

It was fitting, then, that when Diamond organized an art auction at Roger Williams to benefit the Lukome Centre, her creative contribution was a glass mosaic of the hut that she called home. Eighty pieces of art were donated to the Art for Africa silent auction, courtesy of students and local artists, raising $2,733 to subsidize the cost of a grain grinder. The machine will more easily mill wheat into flour for women whose lives have been defined by endless struggle.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

13

•

E N G A G E D

•

E X P E R I E N T I A L

•

I N C L U S I V E

•

I N N O V A T I V E

Mission Critical

TRANSFORMATIVE

Coming Soon to a City Block Near You…

Your Very Own Neighborhood Health Station

School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation students team with medical experts and a renowned design firm to conceptualize the future of health care delivery

By Brian E. Clark For longtime family physician Michael Fine, M.D. – who last spring concluded a four-year tenure leading the Rhode Island Department of Health – it starts with the very definition of health itself. It’s easy to equate health, he says, with longevity. Yet the ability to function is equally important.

And it turns out that the ability to function well physically, mentally and socially and to live a long life is as much influenced by non-medical factors – the built environment, opportunities for physical activity and healthful eating, as well as social determinants like race, education or income – as by medical care itself.

“What matters isn’t whether there’s a hospital down the street,” Fine says. “What matters is where you live, who you live with and how you interact within the communities that surround you.”

14

RWU {Fall 2015}

Enter the concept of the neighborhood health station – a community-based building home to an array of medical professionals and additional services designed to promote wellness, prevent illness, encourage social interaction and improve the well-being of an entire community.

“It’s not a health center, although it provides medical care,” says RWU Professor of Architecture Lefteris Pavlides. “It’s not a YMCA, although it supports healthful living.

It’s one building that does both.”

Fine describes it this way: “Open from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, open on weekends and there for you if you’re sick.

That means doctors and nurses, dentists and dental hygienists, physical therapists and home health workers, mental and behavioral health people, substance abuse counselors

and more – everyone required to care for a population of 15,000 to 20,000 people.”

Add to that a portfolio of communityoriented spaces – gyms, pools or farmers markets, for example – and you’re looking at a full-fledged neighborhood health station to serve an entire locality. “This creates a center where much of the rich and active life of a community might happen,” Fine says. “But doing it in a way that promotes the well-being of individuals in that community.”

The connection between Pavlides and Fine, whose long-term vision is for one station to serve every community in Rhode Island, began in the process of planning an Environmental Design Research Association conference called EDRA44 in 2013, which focused on the theme of Healthy + Healing Places. That inspired an architecture studio in which RWU students

designed concepts for a potential NHS in the community of Scituate, R.I. Last spring – with alumnus David Mistretta ’13 linking his alma mater and his world-renowned employer – the School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation enlisted MASS Design Group as a teaching firm in residence and called upon its expertise in global healthcare and education architecture to advance the concept. With Pavlides and the MASS Design team at the helm, a group of graduate architecture students designed neighborhood health stations for five sites across Rhode Island.

They started with research – analyzing data, visiting communities and speaking with residents. Next, David Saladik, a founding member and director at MASS Design, asked the students: “How do you translate what you’ve learned from people into a design for a neighborhood health station? We gave the students flexibility to develop the spaces and the services in the building based on their research. There were similarities between the designs, but we urged them to customize their ideas for the specific community in which they were working.”

Fine says the results – a stockpile of community-specific research as well as design concepts and renderings for five stations spread throughout Rhode Island – are critical assets as he advocates his vision for a system of neighborhood health stations across the state.

“It’s a $100 word, but the notion of reification becomes really valuable here,” he says. “It’s one thing for me to describe all this stuff – it’s another thing for people in these communities to see images. The student work has probably been the single most significant

thing we’ve done to help people understand what we’re talking about and to draw support.”

Saladik says the community-informed feedback the students collected has proven useful as well. “To see the research represented graphically, through the lens of architecture, provides a lot of ammunition to back up the concept and describe the need.”

The value of a network of stations, Fine says, hits on multiple levels. For individuals, it means convenience and community. For a local community, it means economic

“What matters is where you live, who you live with and how you interact within the communities that surround you.”

-Michael Fine, M.D. development – in the form of new jobs and increased economic activity in the area, as residents stay in town for health care services – and better health of its citizens.

Statewide economics play a role, too.

While it’s impossible to predict overall cost savings with precision, small-scale experiments have seen major reductions in emergency room visits and hospital stays, which translate to major savings. “If you do the math, you can’t afford not to create neighborhood health stations,” Pavlides says.

“When preventive care is widely available, it

can reduce acute healthcare costs by a least a third. That’s really a paradigm shift.”

While ground has yet to break on a realworld neighborhood health station in Rhode Island, a pilot program under way in Central Falls is the next step in demonstrating the concept. This summer, Jacob Droogan and Richard Jean-Baptiste – two of the SAAHP students from last spring’s studio course – worked with MASS Design and a coalition of civic leaders to poll local residents on their needs and determine whether existing health care spaces in the heart of the community have the potential for transformation into a neighborhood health station.

Michael Haggerty of MASS Design says that with a new or renovated building still years into the future, the focus has shifted to how to activate the site in the near term, with a local urgent care center and a nearby community health center teaming together to offer a combination of services comparable to that which an NHS would offer. “If there is an opportunity to create the first neighborhood health station, what needs to happen to move this forward?” Haggerty asks. “We need to show something tangible on the ground right now. Something that starts to capture people’s imaginations and spread by word of mouth.”

SAAHP Dean Stephen White says the entirety of the project – the on-the-ground work in Central Falls as well as the conceptual designs for the other communities – points out the importance of harnessing the immense talent of students to invest in the challenges facing the University’s home state.

“This is literally something that would be good for potentially all Rhode Islanders,” he says.

“And what’s unique about this, given that Rhode Island is a small state, is that it can be achieved.” RWU

In creating designs for a network of neighborhood health stations like the one depicted here, polling local residents at community events like this one in Central Falls (right and facing page) emerged as a critical research component.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

15

Mission Critical

Safe Passage Through Guardianship Via Pro Bono Collaborative A young person’s passage from the sheltered years of childhood to the independence of adulthood can be challenging for any parent.

But when the child reaching 18 is mentally or physically unable to handle adult responsibilities and demands, establishing an appropriate form of guardianship can carry emotional and financial trauma of its own.

One of dozens of programs coordinated through the Pro Bono Collaborative at the Roger Williams University School of Law, the Bradley Hospital Guardianship Project offers a fascinating glimpse at just how the Collaborative operates – and how clients, law firms and students all benefit from the experience.

Launched in 2008, the Guardianship Project – operated through Bradley Hospital’s Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities in Riverside, R.I., in partnership with the law firm of Barton Gilman LLP – has donated hundreds of hours assisting the parents of disabled children turning 18 by providing legal advice and counsel regarding their options and, where appropriate, establishing legal guardianship of their children.

“These are some of my most rewarding cases that I deal with,” says Jenna Pingitore ’12L, a medical malpractice litigator at Barton Gilman who has handled about 10 guardianship cases through the PBC program since 2010. “You really see tangible results, the positive impact you’re having on the child’s parents and on the entire family. It’s a very gratifying experience all around.”

Pingitore begins each new case by meeting with the child’s family at their home. The initial meetings can last up to two hours, a sort of informal discovery that gives her a sense of each family’s circumstances and environment and establishes the case history and the family’s goals.

The home visits are an essential step for the parents, many of whom are confronted with legal ramifications of their child’s transition to adulthood, says Christine Brown, director of the family and community liaison 16

RWU {Fall 2015}

program at Bradley. With the turn of a calendar page, these parents suddenly can’t obtain test results, stop receiving return calls from doctor’s offices – not to mention the complications that arise with federal benefits.

Yet the disabled child remains unable to represent his or her own best interests as an adult. Legal guardianships can make such routine transactions easier, but also carry emotional costs.

“Sometimes the parents are just coming to terms with the fact that their child isn’t going to get better,” Brown says. “It’s one thing when they don’t go off to college with everyone else; it’s another when you need to take their rights away and make all their decisions for them.”

It’s important to recognize that there is a continuum of possible solutions, Pingitore says, and that sometimes, full guardianship may not be the right fit for a family. Take, for example, the family whose daughter had “some mental health issues,” but was otherwise “fully functional,” attending high school and holding down a part-time job.

“As we proceeded, the parents decided they would go with a limited guardianship,” Pingitore said. “They’ll be in charge of her financial issues and her health care power of attorney, but it’s not as restrictive as a full guardianship.”

In addition to the emotional impact, guardianship proceedings can be a costly, time-consuming legal expense that many families – already burdened with the expenses associated with raising and caring for a disabled child – are simply unable to meet.

That’s where the PBC’s resources – and reputation – shine, from uncovering financial resources available to clients to leveraging relationships with the courts.

“The second that any probate court hears you’re involved with the Pro Bono Collaborative, they go out of their way to make it easy for you,” Pingitore says. “On the first few cases I handled, the clerks would literally send me a checklist basically laying out, ‘Here’s everything you need to do and submit.’ Every

town is different, so it makes it a really wonderful experience when everyone is working together for the same ultimate goal.”

Families gain peace of mind and financial relief, as well as top-quality legal assistance from attorneys who show them tremendous respect, Brown says.

And RWU Law students benefit, too. Lena Thomas ’15L notes the important practical exposure to legal practice before entering the profession: “I got to attend client meetings with the parents, did legal research, and even tagged along to probate hearings.”

Pingitore, who supervised Thomas, says that as a litigator, being able to witness what happens in court is an invaluable learning tool: “It’s helpful for Lena to do research and fill out forms, but when you actually see the final product in court, I feel that that’s the best learning you can get. I got that as a student at Roger Williams, so I want to pass it along and help others.”

– Michael M. Bowden

Constructive Solutions, Courtesy of Construction Management It’s a bitter cold day in the most brutal winter New England has seen in decades. Mountains of snow the size of small houses line the streets as folks bundled in coats like sleeping bags do the huddle-shuffle down the sidewalks, bracing against relentless wind. Most of them are heading home to warm abodes where they’ll thaw out in front of a fireplace or under blankets. But nearly 5,000 Rhode Islanders will be left out in the cold, in search of shelter.

If they arrive early enough, 145 homeless men will find warmth and a bed at Harrington Hall, an emergency shelter in Cranston operated by House of Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to the prevention and eradication of homelessness in the Ocean State. In early 2015, with $1.5 million in state funds and support from the Rhode Island Department of Administration, plans were put in motion to upgrade Harrington Hall. An architect was hired to design facilities improvements including an industrial teaching kitchen, upgraded heating and ventilation, and a multipurpose training room, among other enhancements. Also on the working team?

Senior construction management majors from RWU Assistant Professor Mike Emmer’s Mechanical/Electrical Design course.

“It’s a really great way to learn, working in an existing building,” Emmer says of the project – an added element to the semester’s coursework when the University’s Community Partnerships Center came calling. “There is an unquantifiable value to working in a building with real systems. This was an older building, not very well taken care of, with new systems connected to old systems. It’s so valuable to show something in a lecture and then go out to see it in action.”

There’s a clear difference between new build and renovation, adds Alex Bradley ’15, a project manager for TRAC Builders who spent his senior year at work on the University’s new Sailing and Education Center.

“A lot of what we deal with in the classroom is new build – you’re not dealing with existing issues,” he says. “So we had to go out and see what was already there. The architect designed

the building as best they could, but we had to to go,” Bradley says. “To hear that and to see take what was there and work with that. It’s not the people that were there was surprising.” like you could take down the building and put One particularly innovative student up a new one.” contribution was a raised floor design for the Over the course of the semester, the students training room featuring under-floor wiring and documented and assessed the existing plumbing, electrical outlets that would allow for the space heating and electrical systems before compiling to be reconfigured in a matter of hours. It recommendations and developing plans for aligned with House of Hope’s mission and was increased efficiencies. the highlight of the final project submission.

“The building was an energy pig,” Emmer “Shelters aren’t a solution – permanent says, noting that in a heat-loss analysis the housing is a solution,” Bradley says, reiterating students discovered that Harrington Hall had Foisy’s mantra. “She thought they should move almost no insulation; a heat-gain analysis away from what it is currently, find permanent determined how much cooling would be housing for those in need and make Harringneeded if the building were to be air ton Hall more of a learning facility where conditioned. It’s not just about comfort, he people can come and get their résumé together, says, but health and well-being – many take seminars and help them get back on homeless people suffer chronic respiratory their feet.” illnesses due to lack of medical care and poor It’s not a big ask, he says, particularly for a living conditions. population that suffers so much – many of them And while the students gained invaluable due to circumstances beyond their control. hands-on experience interacting with “It doesn’t have to be a LEED-certified architects, building engineers and a real-world platinum building, but it needs the little client (House of Hope’s Christine Foisy), they changes to make it a little bit better,” he says. also came away with a deeper understanding “You can’t imagine what it’s like when 145 of the homeless epidemic and a growing sense people are stuffed in a building the way they of social responsibility. were during those awful winter storms.”

“Christine explained to us that this could

– Melissa A. Patricio be your father, this could be your brother – what you have one day could be completely gone the next day, and you have to have a place Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

17

Mission Critical

ELL Training for Math Teachers = A Formula for Success As three kids stand to the left and two to her right, Elizabeth Weinick ’15 presents her handmade alligator and asks a student to solve which number of classmates is greater by pointing “Allie’s” gaping jaws toward the larger figure. A young boy from Senegal, who recently started first grade without knowing a word of English, aims “Allie” left and with delight, chants, “Three is alligator than two. Three is greater than two!”

An elementary education major and student-teacher at the time, Weinick supported that student’s remarkable progress using specific strategies for English Language Learners derived from a collaborative partnership between RWU’s School of Education and the Providence Public School District. In the PRIME-ELL (Providence Rhode Island Mathematics Excellence – English Language Learners) program, RWU faculty work with elementary school teachers to develop teaching practices that improve mathematics achievement for ELLs – then teach RWU education students, like Weinick, these classroom-proven methods.

For ELL students, who are actively acquiring English, a visual cue like “Allie” can mean the difference between learning math and being thwarted by a language barrier.

Recent research from the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University shows that Latino students – who comprise 75 percent of the ELLs in Rhode Island – regularly score two to three grade levels behind their white peers in math.

“Some teachers have low expectations and disbelief that students with language difficulties can do more, so they are modifying the mathematics to accommodate for the language difficulties,” explains Jenny Tsankova, an associate professor of education at Roger Williams who led the PRIME-ELL program. “It’s one thing to adapt language; it’s another thing to modify math. PRIME-ELL enriches teachers’ toolkits with strategies that have the students understand the big picture and structure of the problem, without compromising the math.”

18

RWU {Fall 2015}

Teachers come to the professional training days with specific issues they seek to address and continue the work in mathematics professional learning communities throughout the year.

From these sessions Denise Backman, a teacher at Providence’s George West Elementary School, brought back “real strategies, like hint cards and math word walls, that we could immediately use in the classroom, in every single lesson, and see the kids succeed.”

The math learning communities are an empowering way for teachers to collaborate in examining what’s most effective for their students, she adds.

While 35 Providence teachers are expanding their knowledge base on the job, RWU

education majors like Weinick are commencing their teaching careers already armed with experience teaching ELLs. And with greater numbers of ELLs entering the public school system each year, certain states now require that educators take courses in teaching ELLs in order to work in their schools.

“Even though these are math strategies, I’ve used them across every subject area,” Weinick says. “Seeing these strategies work, particularly with the student from Senegal, gave me the confidence to come to an urban area and know that I will be able to teach students from any culture.”

– Jill Rodrigues ’05

In the Aftermath of Disaster, Engineering Solutions for Public Health in Peru

As the bus bounced along on the route from Lima to La Merced, the excitement grew more palpable among the cohort of Roger Williams students and faculty the farther they journeyed from the Pacific coast into the heart of Peru, to the small city nestled between South America’s central Andes and the Amazon region. It took 10 hours to reach their destination and its lush emerald forests, gushing waterfalls and rich culture of indigenous tribes that live as their native ancestors had for centuries before them.

For weeks, while many other friends planned spring break trips to hot spots like South Beach and the Dominican Republic, these 17 students had readied themselves to provide health education to impoverished communities in Peru via the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children. It was a dream trip that culminated a yearlong effort by the thriving FIMRC chapter at Roger Williams to raise funds, stockpile supplies and prepare to launch the La Merced site, as the organization’s first group to travel to Peru.

No amount of planning, however, could have prepared them for the devastation they encountered upon arrival. Houses crushed and buried under mountains of mud. Entire villages submerged in waist-high water. Boulders the size of Volkswagen Beetles everywhere they

looked. Debris scattered through the streets.

Just days prior to their arrival, a massive mudslide descended on the area, killing three children and destroying 60 homes. Overnight the community transformed into a “tent city” and displaced families with an average of five or six children each – they now crouched together in 10-by-10-foot tents merely inches apart. So much for the carefully orchestrated mission the undergraduates had planned stateside. What greeted them instead was a public health situation with dire consequences.

With spotty Wi-Fi access yet a healthy dose of classroom know-how, a group of engineering students immediately set to work to MacGyver a water filtration device from up-cycled Coke bottles, thin strips of fabric and charcoal created from a bonfire they had the night before – a critical need among the community members, who had no access to clean water or bathrooms in the aftermath of the mudslide.

“It was definitely different than what you’d expect your first real-world engineering project to be,” says junior engineering major Briana Tremblay. “We didn’t have many resources; we didn’t have CAD programs, textbooks, anything like that. What we did have was four very hardworking engineers and a great team of people in general.”

The water sanitation team worked through several prototypes – including models using sand, gravel and woodchips – before settling on the charcoal filter. In the prototype, thin fabric stretched across the bottle’s opening served as a first line of defense, capturing large debris. The ashes then served to trap and filter out smaller particles. The water was put through this purification process three times before it was boiled to eliminate any microscopic toxins and particles – all of which Tremblay and her fellow engineers communicated to the families during a presentation.

Students from other academic disciplines – FIMRC’s mission is public health focused, but the RWU chapter’s members major in areas as diverse as anthropology, criminal justice, psychology and more – worked to develop additional disaster relief projects, from sanitation-based presentations focused on disease prevention and distributing tubs of hand sanitizer to organizing action plans to address the mental health of children affected by the disaster.

“Working in an emergency situation, the most important insight they gathered was that the knowledge they’re learning here at Roger Williams is applied knowledge,” says faculty advisor Autumn Quezada-Grant, an assistant professor of history at RWU. “What they’re learning in the classroom is not abstract – it has real-life use and impact.”

So much so that, after returning from a soccer match with more than 30 children, Nick Calabrese ’15 overheard a radio station broadcast that the locals were tremendously pleased with the presence and efforts of a group of Americans that had come to help.

“That’s the first time we’ve ever heard raw, honest feedback from the work we were doing,” says Calabrese, a marine biology graduate and longtime FIMRC volunteer. “It was amazing to have had that moment.”

– Sabrina Polin ’17

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

19

a Braver voice

At large in the community with writer-in-residence Adam Braver

finding your

FOOTING

It was an early October evening. Traces of summer lingered in the air, but the oppressive heat had departed for the year. All day long, Eric had been going on about the electric blue Doc Marten boots that he had bought earlier in the day, finally earning enough in tips after we’d finished last night’s shift. He was wearing them. And they were loud.

Self-consciously so.

20

RWU {Fall 2015}

For the bulk of the day he’d resigned to returning them – the Docs were too much of a statement. But by evening he’d grown used to them, even declaring that they were part of his “new look.”

We were in Sacramento, standing in the small, narrow parking lot that separated Tower Books from Tower Records on 16th and Broadway, when we heard yelling. When we turned to look, there was a man

Adam Braver is an associate professor of creative writing and writer-inresidence at Roger Williams University. He is the author of five novels, including November 22, 1963, about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and Misfit, a fictional account of the days leading up to Marilyn Monroe’s death. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated worldwide.

standing beside a car in the far corner, the driver’s door open, waving his arms. Just as we turned to face him, he announced: “That’s right, maybe I have a gun!”

I didn’t know if he was alone. I didn’t know if there was someone in the car. And honestly, in retrospect, I didn’t think he even had a weapon beyond his power to scare us. What I do know is that Eric and I froze, still holding our stares. The rational parts of our minds and our natural survival instincts were out of sync.

“What are you staring at?” he called at us, arms twisting like a windmill.

“I’m talking to you, Blue Shoes!” At that point, adrenaline kicked in, and we turned and ran toward the entrance to the bookstore. It maybe was 100 feet, but it felt like miles. Later, Eric and I both would recall the twin sensations – clenching our backs, shoulder blades w inging out, anticipating the worst.

Inside the bookstore we flopped on the sales counter and told the clerk to call the police. By the time they came, the man had long since left, causing no damage or further incident.

When Eric finally spoke, he turned to me, his eyes flashing more defiant than scared. “He had to bring the shoes into it,” he said. “He had to bring in the shoes.”

By nature I can be sentimental and nostalgic – traits that typically don’t serve me well. They are small cracks that allow for being manipulated by people either for whom that is their trade, or simply their pathology.

Nevertheless, even with a self-awareness of it, that vulnerability always is present, particularly during milestone moments.

Late May is one of those annual milestone moments, when graduation comes.

I will confess that after more than a decade at Roger Williams University, there are names of former students that no longer are familiar. And there are some that live deep in the recesses of my mind and only come forward when prompted by key memories. But every year, there is at least one senior – often more – that I realize I really will miss and never forget.

In general, I don’t care much for saying goodbye; it always seems a bit awkward and forced, with its reassuring platitudes that serve as temporary salves. And while I am always immensely proud of those students who have impacted me in some way, I am also fully aware that it is time for them to go; that their lives are just beginning. Of those few, some know exactly where they are heading, while others will stumble vaguely in a direction that only feels right – a little like being spun around blindfolded and then swinging the bat for the piñata.

My cat fell out of the second-story bathroom window once, tumbling in what looked like a spastic, flailing, Olympic-style optional dive before landing on her feet and then immediately preening. Even if these particular seniors don’t quite know how, where or when they will land, I trust they too will end up on their feet. They’ll find their place. I have no doubt for those driven with passion and curiosity. They will locate their homes, be it in book preservation or in tending to others. On the page or in the law.

And while I know for a fact that that uncertainty scares the daylights out of them – who wouldn’t be scared? – having a calling is to be envied, even if you haven’t quite tuned into the echolocations.

I don’t worry. They really will find it. Even if it takes a maniac who doesn’t like the color of their shoes to point them in the right direction. RWU

In general, I don’t care much for saying goodbye; it always seems a bit awkward and forced, with its reassuring platitudes that serve as temporary salves.

That we took refuge in a bookstore isn’t the coincidence of the story. After all, bookstores were our libraries – the places where we could endlessly search for things we didn’t yet know existed, and once we stumbled upon them, could be lost in the pages or the liner notes for hours.

We knew the salespeople, and they knew us. They understood we would only make the occasional purchase, not because we didn’t want to buy more, but because our funds were limited. And they understood how we loved kneeling between the shelves, dragging our fingers along the spines, and opening up new worlds. But thinking back on it, while we’d believed and evangelized on how books had saved our lives on more than one occasion, this was the first time books really had saved our lives – reinforcing in a purely symbolic way that not only had we found a safe place, we had found our place.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

21

The

State of

hode R islanD

With big shifts in the smallest state’s population, experts from RWU and beyond concur – what’s good for Latinos is good for Rhode Island

By Ellen Liberman Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza glides to the curb in front of the Museum of Natural History and Planetarium and dismounts his mountain bike in one smooth motion. It feels warm for a mid-May morning, and the air that sits comfortably on the shoulders now will feel heavy and soggy by the end of a three-mile jog along the rolling boulevards of Roger Williams Park in the city’s South Side.

The mood, however, is light. About 50 people – stroller-bound, seniors, black, brown, white, fit and hoping-to-be – have gathered for the Sunday run with the mayor. It’s a new City Hall tradition, inaugurated along with Elorza, who left his RWU Law professorship in January to lead Providence.

“I’m here out of curiosity,” says James Deignan, a 32-year-old Providence middle school teacher and runner. “It’s a cool idea – getting people interested in getting outside and getting fit. I’m not political, but I think it’s great that the mayor is making an effort to reach out and meet people.”

The park’s oaks and red maples have just come into full leaf, lending a canopy to the serious runners stretching their calves. The mayor, a son of the West Side, born to Guatemalan parents, threads through the crowd with an outstretched hand, greeting folks as easily in English as in Spanish. Elorza started the weekly event toward a goal of making Providence New England’s fittest city. If there’s any talk of politics, it’s in the first mile.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

23

LATINOS in RHODE ISLAND: By the Numbers

148,095

12TH

LATINO POPULATION IN RHODE ISLAND

LARGEST LATINO POPULATION SHARE AMONG ALL U.S. STATES

INCOME

The median income for Latino households is just above half of the median income for all RI households

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

MEDIAN INCOME IN RI

14.0%

MEDIAN LATINO INCOME IN RI

UNEMPLOYMENT

RI’S POPULATION IDENTIFIED AS LATINO

Latino unemployment in RI is the highest in the nation

220

%

AMOUNT THE RI LATINO POPULATION HAS INCREASED SINCE THE YEAR 1990

60,000

ELIGIBLE LATINO VOTERS, ABOUT 8 PERCENT OF RI’S TOTAL

A YOUNG MAJORITY Median Latino AGE in RI

26

Median AGE in RI

40

17

The unemployment rate for Latinos is more than two and a half times the rate for all RI population age 16+

6.2% 5%

10%

16.2% 15%

20%

UNEMPLOYED AGED 16+ IN RI UNEMPLOYED LATINOS AGED 16+ IN RI

ORIGIN

Latinos in RI represent more than 20 different countries of origin. Comprising the greatest share are Latinos from:

ELECTED LATINO OFFICIALS IN RI

22%

LATINO EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT FOR THE POPULATION AGE 25 +

$56,361

$31,820

1-3%

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

PUERTO RICO

60%

GUATEMALA

MEXICO

COLOMBIA

OF LATINOS IN RI ARE U.S. CITIZENS

OF THE STATE’S STUDENTS ARE LATINO

OF THE STATE’S EDUCATORS ARE LATINO

39%

26%

22%

13%

NO HS DIPLOMA

HS DIPLOMA

SOME COLLEGE

BACHELOR’S OR +

About the Data The majority of the data presented in this feature’s infographics comes from a series of reports issued in recent years by the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University and HousingWorks RI at Roger Williams University. For a complete list of sources, visit http://pdq.rwu.edu/mag12.

24

RWU {Fall 2015}

LATINOS & HOUSING IN “By the second mile, I’m out of breath,” he says, smiling. But the run has another purpose.

“I’ve always been in different circles. And I’ve always liked bringing different people together.”

Elorza’s avocation is the state’s challenge.

Latinos now make up 14 percent of the population, with 148,095 residents clustered primarily in Providence, Central Falls and Pawtucket. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2014, Rhode Island was home to the 12th largest Hispanic statewide population share nationally. Here, as nationally, Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group.

In last fall’s elections, the Ocean State polls felt the full force of their presence. Elorza became the Capital City’s second Latino mayor, while Central Falls re-elected its first, James Diossa. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea – the former leader of HousingWorks RI at Roger Williams University – became the first Latina to win statewide office. Voters in Pawtucket, Smithfield and Newport put Latinos on their city councils. In total, the state now boasts 17 elected Latino officials.

But those political gains have not been matched by other key quality-of-life indicators.

The state’s Latino unemployment rate has stubbornly remained highest in the nation with an annual average in 2014 of 16.2 percent (although the Economic Policy Institute has forecasted a decline). One in four Latino children lives in poverty. And Latinos lag other Rhode Islanders in income, educational attainment and home ownership.

With deep roots in the manufacturing economy, Rhode Island has long attracted, opposed and finally absorbed successive waves of immigrants. The current generation of community leaders knows that to be brought together – fully folded into the state’s story – Latinos must move out of the urban cores and into the middle class. The challenges facing Latinos, they say, should concern every Rhode Islander.

“When you have a fast-growing population encountering documented challenges, that is everybody’s opportunity,” says Anna Cano Morales, director of the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University. “Or everybody’s challenge, if we ignore it.”

Since its launch in 2005 (with Jorge Elorza co-founder), the LPI has worked to generate and communicate non-partisan data on Latinos, with the aim of starting conversations at the policy level – reports on academic achievement by Latino students, for example, and on homeownership gaps and workforce participation among Latinos.

“What’s good for Latinos is what’s good for Rhode Island,” Morales says. “We are the workforce. We are the voters. Homeownership is just one good example. Who cares whether Latinos can afford homes? Well, you care if you’re a little old lady in Johnston who wants to downsize. If our fastest-growing population is too cost-burdened to afford a home, who’s going to buy it?”

Morales says she sees lots of tinkering on issues affecting Latinos, but no wholesale change in the state. “There’s no sense of urgency. We have a vibrant citizenry, and we need leadership to take this demographic shift seriously.”

A

Community is Born

Oral historian and community activist Marta V. Martínez can trace that shift back to one family. Tony and Josefina – better known as Doña Fefa – Rosario came to Rhode Island in 1956 to work in the kitchen of the Yankee Inn across from T.F. Green Airport. The eatery failed, but the Rosarios, immigrants from the Dominican Republic, stayed.

“They fell in love with the place,” says Martínez, who recounts the Rosarios’ story in her book Latino History in Rhode Island. “They realized it was a much more tranquil place to raise a family.”

After deciding to open their own restaurant featuring Latin American food, the Rosarios searched for Latino customers who might patronize it. Save for two Puerto Ricans living in East Providence, they found none, so the couple built a community from scratch.

“They were inspired to tell others about Rhode Island,” Martínez says. “They never considered themselves pioneers. They just went to work and said: ‘Let’s just do what we can.’”

RHODE

ISLAND

OWNERSHIP RATE Rhode Island

26%

64%

LATINO

NON-LATINO National

45%

66%

LATINO

NON-LATINO

HOUSING COST BURDENS

Nearly 1 in 3 RI Latino owners pay over 50% of income on housing costs

More than 1 in 3 of RI Latino renters pay over 50% of income on housing costs Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

25

PUBLIC RELATIONS, POLITICS – AND POSSIBILITIES In her senior year at Roger Williams, Theresa Agonia ’13 mentally thumbed through her career options.

Agonia had chosen RWU to prepare for a future in PR specifically because it was home to a thriving chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America. After multiple internships – in the University’s public affairs office, with local PR agencies and at the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University – Agonia had decisively eliminated one possibility: “I didn’t want to do politics,” she recalls. “I thought I would have to know all of the laws.”

So naturally, she wound up in politics. Within months of graduating, she landed a job as business outreach and communications coordinator for Central Falls Mayor James Diossa; and last winter, after RWU Law Professor Jorge Elorza’s election victory, she became the Providence mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

Both jobs put her in the midst of a historic demographic shift in those cities – the rise in the Latino population – a rich mélange of many nationalities, bound by a common language and a story very much like her own.

“I am Portuguese, born and raised in Central Falls,” Agonia says. “Both of my parents came here in the late 1970s. My mom came with a fourth-grade education, wanting a better life. I grew up with a lot of Latinas and Latinos in similar households with parents who didn’t speak much English. I was the first in my family to graduate college.”

Her communication skills, combined with her unique perspective, persuaded Diossa, the first Latino mayor of his city, that Agonia would be a perfect fit. “When I envisioned becoming mayor, I knew that I wanted to diversify the administration,” he says. “I wanted young people with energy, and I wanted people who grew up in Central Falls and understood the issues intimately. I saw that Theresa was very smart and had that passion to go the extra mile for her community.”

After two years of running events and press conferences and bringing community organizations together with the two cities, Agonia – 23 years old and recently crowned Miss Rhode Island USA 2016 – has found that a career in politics dovetails neatly with her values.

“I’ve always been interested in public service, and I’ve always wanted to give back to people like me who grew up in tough circumstances,” she says. “I do what I do for my family – to make them proud. I lost my dad when I was 16.

My mom is the epitome of the American Dream – she is a factory worker and owns her home. And she is proof that the dream is alive.”

– EL

26

RWU {Fall 2015}

The Rosarios settled in a triple-decker on Chester Avenue and began sponsoring other Dominican families fleeing the political instability and poverty of their homeland, or the stresses of New York. In 1959, they stopped shopping for Dominican coffee, plátanos and cilantro in Connecticut and opened Fefa’s Market on Broad Street in Providence, to serve the burgeoning demand for familiar foods.

Escorted into their lives here by Fefa and Tony Rosario, Dominicans became workers in the jewelry factories. Migrations of Colombians and Puerto Ricans followed. In 1970, there were 5,596 Latinos in Rhode Island; by 1980, the community tripled to 19,707. In the mid1990s, the community that the Rosarios inspired began to explode. By 2000, the Latino community numbered 90,826, accounting for 12.4 percent of the state’s population.

Today, Latinos in Rhode Island represent more than 20 different countries of origin. They are a young population, with a median age of 26, compared to 40 years old for the state’s total population. The vast majority of their children are American-born, the Immigration Policy Center reports. About half of Latinos are naturalized citizens and half citizens by birth. A small percentage are undocumented.

José F. Batista – a 2014 RWU Law graduate who is now president of the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee – sees strength in this diversity. He points to the distinct family roots of the state’s highest profile Latino politicians: Elorza is Guatemalan, Diossa is Colombian, Gorbea is Puerto Rican, and former Providence mayor Angel Taveras is Dominican.

“It runs the gamut,” Batista says. “If you look at our four shining political stars, each represents a very different thriving community.

Our successes now are a product of the waves of migration that came through the East Coast in the 1970s and 1980s. We have different Latino neighborhoods, but we do a good job of being unified politically.”

The Political When Pablo Rodriguez – a prominent medical doctor and a longtime community leader – moved to Providence in 1985, there were few Latino professionals and “definitely no political leadership,” he recalls. The community was courted the old-fashioned way.

“Politicians would go to neighborhood leaders, and they would bring the votes,” Rodriguez says. “And it didn’t matter what they did.

All that mattered was the neighborhood captains were paid.”

A decade later, during the 1996 election cycle, a series of antiimmigrant measures – both national (legislation that turned local police into immigration officials) and local (an English-only campaign that caused uproar in Rhode Island) – spurred local Latinos to take action.

“We realized that we needed to educate candidates to understand what we care about,” Rodriguez says. “We needed an endorsement process that was about issues, not personalities.”

“What’s good for Latinos is what’s good for Rhode Island.

We are the workforce. We are the voters.”

Anna Cano Morales Director, Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University

In 1998, Rodriguez became the first president of the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee. Some of its earliest members have gone on to political prominence: Gorbea was its second president; Taveras, Providence’s first Latino mayor, wrote its bylaws.

“We were being proactive and making sure that our voices were heard in unity,” Taveras says.

Today, no serious candidate would dream of skipping the Latino Public Radio annual political barbeque or miss a chance to stump from the studios of Poder 1110. But back then, “we were a rag-tag band,” Rodriguez says. “Some meetings only one person would show up. We were a paper tiger, but people thought we were a tiger. Over time, we developed good relationships with the media,

A Growing Population...

5.6%

-5.0%

AGES 16-64

THE WORKING AGE LATINO POPULATION IN RI IS EXPECTED TO INCREASE BY 5.6% FROM 2010 TO 2020....

DURING THIS SAME PERIOD, THE NON-LATINO WORKING AGE POPULATION IS EXPECTED TO DECREASE BY 5.0%. working age

grew slowly but surely and became more influential.”

In 2002, RILPAC began to lay other tracks for advancement. The state’s Latino Civic Fund, a nonprofit to promote Latino civic participation, founded the Latina Leadership Institute in 2003. Sandra Cano, Pawtucket’s first Latina city councilwoman, is a graduate.

She came to the U.S. in 2000, after her Colombian family sought political asylum. She had to leave school in Colombia, complete 12th grade at Shea High School in Pawtucket and learn English. But she plunged into civic life, enrolling in the leadership program.

In 2012, Cano was elected to the School Committee; in 2014, voters swept Cano into a two-year City Council term.

“I never had any political aspirations,” she says. “But I love the city of Pawtucket, and I

wanted to give back to the country that has provided us so much.”

Despite the successes of individual candidates, broader Latino political engagement remains a goal. According to the Pew Research Center, Rhode Island has 60,000 eligible Hispanic voters, representing about 8 percent of the state’s total. But the number of registered Latino voters and participation rates are harder to gauge. Diossa says his own father had never voted until his son was a candidate. Now in office, Diossa sees one of his primary tasks as building trust with the Latino electorate.

“My father had no interest,” he says. “He comes from Colombia where politicians were so corrupt, they lose all faith in the political process. I’ve been focusing on showing everyone the difference in having a

latinos in the ri workforce With Limited Job Opportunity...

a growing population

2X

LATINOS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY AS NON-LATINOS TO WORK IN MANUFACTURING

in

a shrinking industry

RI LOST LARGEST SHARE OF MANUFACTURING JOBS IN THE COUNTRY SINCE 1990

a trailing population

37%

RI LATINOS EMPLOYED PART-TIME INVOLUNTARILY DUE TO ECONOMIC REASONS

in

growth centers

39%

RI LATINOS (AGES 25+) WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA OR EQUIVALENT

good person in office – being accessible to the community in both languages. It’s very important to have the doors open. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of Central Falls has my cell phone number.”

The Challenge of

Moving Up

“The work never stops.

For every threshold we break, there’s another challenge.”

José F. Batista ’14L President, R.I. Latino Political Action Committee

28

RWU {Fall 2015}

There is hardly a school district in the state that doesn’t have a building or addition designed by the firm founded by Colombianborn Luis A. Torrado. His family came to Providence in 1970. One of the state’s few Spanish-speaking doctors, his father opened an office on Broad Street to tend the growing Latino community.

“Any Latino born in the 1970s to mid-1980s, my father delivered,” he says.

“Including Mayor Elorza.”

Torrado became an architect after studies at Roger Williams University and the Pratt Institute, and in 1996, he opened his own firm.

He raised his family in the suburbs, built a successful business in Providence and sent two sons (Luis, Class of 2013; and Andrew, Class of 2015) through the School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation at RWU. Over nearly two decades, Torrado Architects has put its stamp on projects that range from airplane hangars to a historic armory. But it is Torrado’s work in schools that brings into bas-relief just how far many other Latino families have to go.

“I see what is happening, and it infuriates me,” Torrado says. “It wasn’t easy for my parents. We started very humbly, and it was a struggle for many years. But what I learned from that process is the importance of education in realizing the American Dream.

Without that, the chances are so slim of making it. You destroy any opportunity to have a future.”

Yet only 13 percent of Latinos in Rhode Island have a bachelor’s degree; nearly 40 percent have not graduated high school. In 2013, a Latino Policy Institute report put a finer point on the achievement gap. Among

the findings: Latino students in Rhode Island do worse than their peers nationally, scoring one-half to one full grade level behind and ranking as low as 41st among states in Latino student performance. In addition, Rhode Island’s Latino English language learners are among some of the lowest performing in the nation, ranking last in eighth grade mathematics achievement, for example.

The LPI report posits that poverty may be a significant factor.

Latinos have a significant impact on the state’s economy, with purchasing power estimated at $2.8 billion in 2012, and Latinoowned businesses have grown from 71 in 1997 to 2,999 in 2007. But U.S. Census data released last year shows that Latino median income is $31,820, compared to $56,361 for non-Latino households. Fewer Latinos are homeowners – only 29 percent compared to 60 percent of the total population – and one in three Latino renters pays more than 50 percent of income on housing costs.

“Our percentage of Latino renters is higher than other parts of the country, although we aren’t unique in our region,” says Nicole Lagace, director of HousingWorks RI at Roger Williams University, which partners with LPI annually to analyze Latino housing issues in the state. “But with the rate of homeowner ownership so low, we know there’s untapped potential in the housing market. They are the fastest growing group, so we need Latinos to become more engaged in the homeowner market, to invest and build equity – otherwise we won’t have much of a home seller market.”

Yet there are few initiatives to address the disparities. Political leaders have struggled to shore up Rhode Island’s weak economy, and the decline in the state’s manufacturing economy has disproportionately affected Latinos, many of whom moved here to take those jobs. Their children and grandchildren now make up 22 percent of the state’s student body, but less than 3 percent of its educators are Latino.

There is near constant talk of creating a 21st century workforce that thrives in the knowledge economy, but how will Rhode

New Generation

Island get there if Latinos are not welleducated? The General Assembly, for example, has declined to codify a 2011 policy approved by the former Board of Governors for Higher Education extending lower in-state college tuition to undocumented students, even though an LPI study showed that it would decrease the Latino high school dropout rate and increase college revenues at no cost to the taxpayer.

“State Rep. Grace Diaz and State Sen. Juan Pichardo have submitted that bill for 11 years,” Morales says. “It has gotten as far as a hearing.”

Latinos need to push harder – together, says Mario Bueno, executive director of Progreso Latino, the 38-year-old education and advocacy nonprofit.

“It takes resources and it takes time,” Bueno adds. “The Latino community is fractured by nationalities and special interest groups. We need to talk together about a common platform and common goals. That’s the next stage of development. It takes a lot of energy, but we can do it.”

The

FROM SOCCER BALLS TO CYBERBULLYING: PARTNERING WITH PROJECT GOAL

them weren’t really thinking about college, and that surprised me.”

Perreault’s opportunity came as part of a Community Partnerships Project that partnered SOAR students from Roger Williams with Project GOAL, a nonprofit program in which 86 kids split three hours after school between tutoring sessions and soccer. The RWU students developed lessons on research and study skills, time management, social media responsibility and cyberbullying; over six weeks this finished – they wanted to get more involved spring, they delivered them at Calcutt and continue with Project GOAL.” Middle School in Central Falls, Project More important than the actual lessons, GOAL’s site during the school year. says Vicktoria Barokha of Project GOAL, Week one taught the volunteers that they “was the mentorship – the relationships needed a more interactive approach to hold that develop motivate them.” For example, the attention of middle-schoolers. one Roger Williams student revealed that “They did a great job of working on what her parents did not have the resources they could improve for the next week,” to finance her college education, so she says Kasey Geremia, assistant director of paid her own way. Personal stories like student programs and leadership. “But by those open Project GOAL kids’ to other the end, many felt like their work wasn’t possibilities, Barokha says.

– EL

Junior Kristi Perreault entered the University’s SOAR leadership program to teach – and she came out schooled.

For the 20-year-old computer engineering major from Andover, N.H., academic life moved in a straight line from high school to college, and you couldn’t start planning for it too soon. But the college prep classes that she and her fellow SOAR teachers presented to sixth, seventh and eighth grade students from Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls taught her that many students have a trajectory that is neither set nor straight.

“I’m from a more privileged area,” Perreault says, “and my parents drilled it into me that I was going to college. A lot of

The vast majority of Americans assume their national identity by degrees. One generation comes, seeking safety and prosperity, often with a different language and few resources.

They work hard at the jobs others don’t want and push the next generation ahead. The father sweeps the factory floor; his son sells insurance; his granddaughter becomes a lawyer; so our mythology goes. Hardship becomes a story and only a few words of the Old Country remain. The new generation of Latino leaders in Rhode Island are American in the best sense: ambitious, industrious, optimistic. And they are making their mark.

Batista, the recent RWU Law graduate, is looking forward to seeing Latinos populate the ranks of CEOs and philanthropists, but his own career plans will take him back to the humbler Providence neighborhood where he grew up. Inspired by the law school’s focus on diversity and social justice, he has decided to pursue a career in criminal defense, to fight

against mass incarceration and the justice system’s treatment of poor minorities.

“The work never stops,” says Batista, now a public defender. “For every threshold we break, there’s another challenge.”

Torrado credits Sandra Cano with opening opportunities for Latinos in Pawtucket by persuading the city to start complying with minority contracting laws.

“It has become a priority, and it’s a huge change – because of one person,” he says.

As prominent elected officials, Gorbea, Elorza and Diossa intend to build bridges.

“There are people in the Latino community whose perspectives have not been taken into account, but I’m really excited,” Gorbea says.

“We have an amazing opportunity in the next four years to really show how wonderful it can be for a community to embrace the emerging group, because that is going to bring about the change in Rhode Island’s economy and in our future.” RWU

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

29

PHOTO BY jill futter

30

RWU {Fall 2015}

e c i l s t s r i At f A decade after a passion for pizza brought Matt and Emily (Shaw) Hyland ’04 together at RWU, the pair is uniting their Brooklyn neighborhood – and food critics alike – with a new take on an old classic

BY MELISSA A. PATRICIO

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIO MORGADO

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

31

Emily’s PIZZA

“Pizza is not that old – maybe a century. And if I want to change a 100-year-old tradition, I will.”

- matt hyland ’04

Matt’s PIZZA

32

RWU {Fall 2015}

It’s Friday afternoon at Emily, a cozy pizzeria in

Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, and the prep staff is scurrying around to set up for the evening. Chairs are flipped back onto the floor, tabletops cleaned, each cutlery roll and water glass arranged just so. In the kitchen, flames blaze as the oven heats up to 900 degrees, and the kitchen staff readies the night’s ingredients.

With just an hour until the doors open, the restaurant is already bustling.

Passersby peer in the front window, some anticipating dinner and others simply curious. Emily (Shaw) Hyland ’04 – the restaurant’s co-owner and namesake – paces the narrow pathway between the dining room and the kitchen making minor adjustments. She’s about to head back to the bar when a bubbly blonde girl bursts through the front door bearing a blue paper fish almost as big as she is. A gap-toothed smile spreads across her glitter-painted face when she catches sight of Emily, who immediately abandons her task to greet her favorite customer with a hug.

Quinn and her family have been Emily loyalists since the restaurant moved into their neighborhood – so much so that a pizza was named in her honor. There is an easy familiarity between the two as Quinn updates Emily on her end-ofschool recital and what her younger sister, Phoebe, has been up to. It is this sense of intimacy and homegrown hospitality that has propelled the restaurant to such success in a short 16 months says Quinn’s dad, Ben Swire, who has called Clinton Hill home for the past eight years.

“It’s stayed just as welcoming as it always has been, and Emily always makes time for the girls,” he says as Quinn helps Emily arrange silverware on the tables. “We’re in here three times as much as we actually eat here. We hop off the bus after school and pop in to say hello. We send pictures back and forth.

We see the same people when we come in… It’s really become a nexus for the neighborhood.”

And the stuff little girls’ dreams are made of. Not only does Quinn, when she grows up, want to be a pizza-making tooth fairy who leaves star-shaped pepperoni pies for children who’ve lost their teeth, she has also imagined a series of bedtime stories featuring anthropomorphic animals whose adventures are set in Pizza Land, where Emily is both the queen and the hero.

Emily’s smile is as bright as the fire glowing in the dome-shaped oven behind her as Quinn tells her tale, a contented look of achievement across her face.

This is why she and her husband, Matt Hyland ’04, poured their hearts, souls, savings (and then some) to bring their love of pizza to the people.

“We wanted to open someplace that feels like an extension of our home,” she says. “And this is really an extension of our own dining room, right down to the décor. Everything you see on the walls came from our childhood homes.

Matt’s cooking food, I’m serving wine.

It’s a fun spot with a sweet neighborhood core of people.”

And whether you’re Quinn Swire or a stranger in search of a great slice, when you’re at Emily, you feel like family.

Families and folks across the city are crossing the bridges and tunnels to get a taste of what Emily has to offer. Lucky for locals like Ben Swire and his daughter, Quinn (an Emily regular), their favorite restaurant is just a hop, skip and a jump from home. In the neighborhood? Try the Quinn pizza – a white pie with mozzarella, fontina, pecorina and ricotta cheeses.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

33

Within minutes of opening, every table at Emily is full – with friends and food! The Hylands describe their fare as “adult junk food,” upping the ante on guilty pleasures like pizza, wings and burgers. (And they’ve won awards for all three.)

34

RWU {Fall 2015}

Heart and Soul Food Nine minutes before the doors officially open, Emily calls the staff to the bar for “family dinner.” They’re coming off a chaotic Thursday night that Emily says would be more typical of a Friday. As the team chows their own meal – a concoction of rice, pulled pork and beans piled on every plate – Emily calls out logistics for the evening and is greeted with relief from the staff when she reveals that there are no reservations that evening. Emily is happy to seat up to three reserved parties per night for larger groups, though it can make an already busy dinner service a dash more demanding. And with the Friday night rush reaching full tilt within minutes of opening, it’s a slight reprieve for the cooks and servers.

Matt’s up next, announcing the special – a chive and mint pesto pizza with mozzarella and mushrooms, some fontina and cracked pepper “to make it nice.” There will be 53 burgers tonight, more than double the usual offering. The night before they sold out in less than 90 minutes – a new record.

A line is starting to form on the sidewalk as Emily shouts the two-minute warning. The staff scramble to eat the last of their supper as they clear the bar and brace for the onslaught. As soon as the door opens, two regulars saunter in and take seats at the far end of the bar, as close to the kitchen as they can get, telling the hostess they like to be in the action. Next, a young family rides up on their bicycles, their young daughter performing the alphabet song as she is seated in the corner window. Soon the dining room fills and folks readily leave their names, knowing it may be an hour and a half before they’re seated.

There are thousands of pizza joints in NYC and at least a dozen within walking distance of Emily’s Fulton Street location.

And yet Emily has become a dining destination. Zagat, the longtime authority on all things food in New York and beyond, named Emily one of the “8 Hottest New Pizza Joints” and “15 Hottest Restaurants” within months of opening in 2014. They’ve made local and national “best of” lists in the Daily Meal, and Trip Advisor included Emily on its list of “Best Pizza Worth Traveling For.” And when Brooklyn was named Saveur magazine’s top food destination in the world, it was the Hylands who were featured on the cover.

But in a city where a good slice is always within arm’s reach, how does Emily keep ’em coming – and waiting? You put your whole heart into it, Matt says, and you give the people what they want. A publicist will help get people in the door, but the product is what keeps them coming back, and often.

“A lot of people think of pizza as junk food,” he says, “but I treat pizza the way I’d treat a duck breast or anything nice, with just as much time and care.”

That’s the secret to any New York pizza, Matt notes. It’s not the water, or any other specific ingredient – it’s the person preparing it.

“When you take your time and do something to the best of your ability, people will notice that you’re doing it right.

Even in a place like New York where pizza is king, you can stand out. That’s the only reason why New York has good pizza compared to other places – it’s people who really care about what they’re doing.”

All You Need is Love Everything about Emily feels warm (and not from the heat of the pizza oven). The copper accents throughout the restaurant glow under the light of vintage Edison bulbs, and the upcycled crates displaying trinkets along the walls create an earthy contrast to the concrete landscape of the city outside. Everyone smiles, and you get the sense that folks here are friends. At a table tucked into the corner next to the bar, a young couple only takes their eyes off each other to admire the pizza placed in front of them. In another time and place, they could be Matt and Emily.

At the heart of Emily is a love story that started over pizza in the Stonewall residence at Roger Williams, circa 2000.

Emily Shaw was a resident assistant majoring in creative writing, and Matt Hyland was studying computer information systems. Their first three meals together all featured pizza – delivery from local staple Classic Pizza – and the pair bonded over their love of food.

“Matt has always been very foodinclined, and I think that’s why he liked me so much!” Emily says. Their first official date was at Al Forno in Providence where they enjoyed the famous grilled pizza, and the pair would go on to work together at local mom-and-pop operation the Casual Inn – Matt as a cook and Emily as a server.

They’re a fluid team, bringing forward each other’s strengths. When Matt laments having less time to devote to the creative aspects of his culinary craft, Emily interjects that he’s doing more menu evolution than he may realize. But even the

And the Emmy Goes To. . .

Emily may have made her name with pizza, but lately it’s the burger that’s been getting all the attention.

Born one evening when Matt couldn’t bear to bite into another slice of pizza, the Emmy burger has become a hot commodity that has people crossing the boroughs to try. It’s been named the Best New Cheeseburger in New York (Bloomberg Business) and was a hit at the 2015 Burger Bash competition in South Beach.

“People go bonkers for the burger!” Emily Hyland says. “We’re more of a burger restaurant lately than a pizza restaurant, which has been strange.

And we’ve had people sit down after waiting for 45 minutes or an hour, and they hear we’re out of the burgers and instead of trying anything else they just leave.”

It could be the pretzel bun (made locally, of course, at the Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City) or the gooey sharp cheddar against the tangy combination of Korean gochujang-infused mayonnaise and slightly melted garlic butter, but the hands-on experience of this artisan cheeseburger is worth it’s weight in dry-aged beef.

And with just 25 burgers offered each night, the early bird gets the burger.

– MAP

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

35

“We wanted to open someplace that feels like an extension of our home. Everything you see on the walls came from our childhood homes.

Matt’s cooking food, I’m serving wine. It’s a fun spot with a sweet neighborhood core of people.’’

- Emily (Shaw) Hyland ’04

36

RWU {Fall 2015}

most supportive couple faces challenges when doing business together.

“This has by far been the hardest year of our relationship,” Emily says as Matt nods his agreement. “The biggest struggle has been differentiating how we’re speaking to each other – verbalizing when we’re talking to each other as a business partner, or as husband and wife, because it can get really muddy. And understanding that it’s not personal – we’re just getting work done.”

The work can be exhausting. And finding time for each other is tough. But they’re learning to rely on their trusted staff so that they can take vacation together – their first time away since Emily opened in January 2014 – and not talk about business.

“I’m really bad at it, but Matt’s really good at saying ‘let’s have lunch – we’re not going in right now, we’re going to go take a walk and eat a meal.’ We don’t have to take this vacation, but if we didn’t, then what’s the point? The worst that happens is maybe a few people don’t have a great time or the restaurant burns down.

We’ll deal with whatever comes to be.”

The Accidental Entrepreneurs As Emily strolls the aisle greeting patrons – many familiar faces, and some good friends – and Matt melts into the background to make the meals, it’s hard to imagine them doing anything else.

Under the pressure of a Friday night dinner service, they rise to the occasion like perfectly leavened dough.

Still, there was a time when Emily put her creative writing degree to work in a more traditional setting – the New York Department of Education. Uninspired and unsatisfied in serving as an “administrative mouthpiece,” Emily decided to launch her own Emily Hyland Yoga. Around the same time, Matt – who attended the Institute of Culinary Education after graduating from RWU and helped launch two pizzerias in Brooklyn – was considering his next move after a decade of cooking across the city.

“Cooking is something I’ve always had a passion for, but after cooking for a long time, where do you go from there? You could be an executive chef at a hotel or something – be in a union and doing more paper-pushing than anything. Or you can go out on your own and hope the freak show works,” he says, referring to the daily circus that is restaurant ownership.

Business has been good, but it was “gut intuition” without a lot of business acumen that led to their joint venture, Emily says.

Still, they’ve started to build savvy – and though it kicked her butt, she says, made it through tax season – and are establishing a stronger business structure with focus on cost saving and human capital.

“It was scary at first,” Emily says, noting that four restaurants in the same space failed in the previous three years.

“People would walk by and tell us it was

Craving a beverage along with your bite to eat? Grab a seat at Emily’s cozy corner bar. There’s wine on tap, creative cocktails and some locally sourced libations to tickle your taste buds while you wait for your meal.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

37

Old World Oven

Meets New Brooklyn-Style Pizza The pizza at Emily may not be Neapolitan, but the wood-fired oven it’s cooked in is about as traditional as it gets. Here are a few fun facts about the Pavesi: •

Any Pavesi oven can be customized to match its restaurant’s décor, but each is painted Ferrari red underneath – a nod to the company’s neighbor in Modena, Italy

•

Sheathed in copper, Matt’s oven was funded via a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $16,000

•

Burning at about 900 degrees (Fahrenheit), pizzas cook in just two minutes

•

This oven will give any campfire a run for its money – s’mores calzone, anyone?

•

Emily’s oven traveled across the Atlantic in six pieces and was assembled in a single day

38

RWU {Fall 2015}

cursed. That was hard. But the space that was in here before was a white tablecloth restaurant serving entrées at $30 a pop and had a wine list of bottles in the $70s, $80s, $100s. That is not what this is – a legit neighborhood spot. People want a place where you can just sit at the bar and have a pizza and a beer, you know?

Nothing fancy.

“I feel like Brooklyn in particular has this post-college, young adult – even middle adult – state of arrested development. Not in a bad way, but I feel like this generation is very creatively driven, stepping out of the traditional roles of business and career, and are just hanging. This sort of environment of food is tailored toward them.”

They call it “adult junk food,” but Matt points out that they are incredibly conscious of their supply chain, sourcing ingredients as locally as possible for freshness and seasonality. All of the mozzarella (40 pounds a day) and ricotta is made in-house, and Emily’s basil supply comes from Gotham Greens, a hydroponic garden on top of the Whole Foods up the street. Fruits and vegetables come from farms in Massachusetts and Vermont via Annie Myers, a longtime friend and colleague who owns Myers Produce.

What this means is that when you stop by the restaurant in April, the menu may look slightly different than it does in October. Matt, a self-proclaimed “apple snob” who refuses to use year-round apples, will feature the fruit of Eden during its peak season – September to March. Mushrooms will also make a more formidable appearance in the fall, courtesy of a forager who procures them from the Pacific Northwest and Midwest – not local, but still sustainably sourced.

“It’s really important that when you can use it, you have to use it,” Matt says.

“I’m going to pay a little bit more to get the local stuff that’s much better quality and support other small businesses as opposed to these massive companies from China.”

And it’s not just the local supply chain that Emily is helping to support. The Hylands believe in being good neighbors and are sharing the fruits of their labor with other entrepreneurs in the area. Guests are welcome to order take-out and bring it to the beer garden around the corner. If there’s a long wait (and there usually is), the hostess is instructed to take a phone number and direct diners to other bars in the neighborhood where they will wait for a text message that their table is ready.

Everyone gets a piece of the (pizza) pie.

Tossing Tradition Back in the kitchen, Matt is a commanding presence in blue jeans and ball cap, inspecting every morsel that makes its way to plate as his team of cooks move like cogs in the wheel of a well-oiled machine. Everything must be done exactly the way Matt would do it – with genuine love. If done correctly, the proof will be in the pizza.

He may be a pizzaiolo in the traditional sense of the term, but Matt is more of a maverick when it comes to creating a hit menu. The New York Times describes Matt’s pizzas as “familiar and far-fetched,” or as he likes to call them, avant-garde.

Sure, you can find traditional toppings like pepperoni or olives on the menu – but are you daring enough to try pickled chili, pistachios or honey?

“Pizza is not that old – maybe a century,” Matt declares. “And if I want to change a 100-year-old tradition, I will.”

You must be willing to take risks to reap the reward of a better product, he says; trial and error will get you further than following ironclad guidelines. That’s why there are test kitchens – fittingly, in Emily’s case, at Matt’s mother’s home.

“When I did a lot of the dough testing, I was looking at the baking percentages of most pizza dough, and every dough I made was just awful,” Matt recalls. “I threw those in the garbage and just started adding insane amounts of things – 10 percent

salt, 5 percent yeast, all this clearly out-ofwhack stuff – and that’s basically where our dough ended up. It’s been a hit.

“So not following those ironclad guidelines that say you cannot make a pizza without following these rules – well, here they are and they’re really good. I feel like if I had followed any of that advice of every pizza person ever, I’d be making the same shitty pizza as everyone else around.

That’s the difference. I’m not going to stand by and follow tradition for its own sake.”

Instead, the Hylands offer a new style of pizza – something neither American nor Italian that they call New Brooklyn style – cooked in a wood-fired oven that produces a perfect char on the crust and toppings to the very edge.

“I created a pizza that I wanted to eat based on my memories of what I like,” Matt says. “I had no idea it would turn into a New York sensation.”

He may have had a hunch, however.

After all, history tends to repeat itself.

Matt took a chance on Emily once, and the second time around has been just as sweet. Give Emily a shot – it’ll be love at first slice.

Say cheese! Emily specializes in “adult junk food,” but caters to all ages. This cheerful trio worked up an appetite riding their bikes to the restaurant, arriving early enough to enjoy the evening’s special Thai chili chicken wings along with their cheese pizza (a.k.a. The Classic).

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

39

40

RWU {Fall 2015}

As the silver-speckled finfish steals the spotlight from fan favorites like cod, RWU researchers investigate whether this sustainable alternative is safe for frequent consumption

By Jill Rodrigues ’05

•

Photography By Robyn Ivy

Find out more online at pdq.rwu.edu.

Adrift below the Mount Hope Bridge

42

in an 18-foot center-console AquaSport, Jon Cambra and his 9-year-old son, Cody, cast fishing lines into the moss-green waves, letting the weight of sinkers pull baited hooks into the depths of Narragansett Bay. Vehicles rumble overhead and a salty spray mists their skin as they take in the springtime view along the Prudence Island coast. Within seconds, they feel rapid-fire taps on the lines.

Reeling in their pint-sized prey, they admire the spirited scuffle the feisty fish put up while surfacing. Cast after cast, one after another, the father-son team lands a pile of thrashing scup – small, spiny-finned silver fish flecked with iridescent blue-pink spots.

Later, as the sun melts behind Poppasquash Point across the bay, they beeline up the Kickemuit River, a hefty cooler overflowing with fresh scup on ice in tow.

At home, the senior Cambra – whose family shares his culinary talents with Roger Williams University, where he is head chef for Bon Appétit – coats the scup in olive oil, pimento moida (a Portuguese spicy red pepper sauce), fresh garlic and herbs, wraps the whole fillets in foil and steams them on the grill. Cody tells stories from the fishing trip as the family, seated at the dinner table, digs into the piping-hot scup.

The scene paints a portrait of coastal New England living at its tastiest, deeprooted in the tradition of family-based subsistence fishing, which brings dinner from water to plate in mere hours.

“I enjoy providing food for my family,” says Cambra, also a board member for Eating with the Ecosystem, a local nonprofit that advocates for consumption of sustainable native seafood to aid in preserving the ecosystem. “We’re fortunate enough to live here, by the water, and have access to be able to do that. My wife and I

RWU {Fall 2015}

educate our kids that we should be taking advantage of the food we have available here in Rhode Island.”

A Portuguese Bristolian who grew up on Bristol Harbor, Cambra began angling at age 4, setting out with his father and grandfather across Narragansett Bay to procure fresh feasts of flounder, quahogs and periwinkles for the family. Most often, though, scup took center plate.

But while steamed scup may be a familiar meal to New England families who have fished for themselves for generations, it’s an unknown quantity to those who more typically procure seafood

“My wife and I educate our kids that we should be taking advantage of the food we have available here in Rhode Island.”

-Jon Cambra

in restaurants and supermarkets. Now, thanks in part to groups such as Eating with the Ecosystem – which partners Rhode Island fishermen and restaurant chefs to relay details on the health of local fish populations – scup is a rising star on the native fish scene.

And that’s a very necessary development, Cambra says. New England’s commercial fishery has changed significantly in the last half century, creating the need for eating habits to evolve with it. Where Atlantic cod was once king, the much-loved fish is fast disappearing from local waters and restaurant menus alike.

As scup enjoys its moment in the spotlight, however, consumers are growing hungry for more information about this new fish on the block. For tuna, swordfish and other popular catches, research abounds on mercury concentration and the potential for adverse health effects (mercury toxicity, impaired neurological development) that may come from over-consumption.

Now that we’re eating a lot more scup, similar questions emerge: How much do we know about scup? Is this finfish safe to eat on a regular basis? How does where the fish is caught affect its mercury levels?

Murky Depths of Mercury

Drop into David Taylor’s office in the Marine and Natural Sciences building at Roger Williams, and it’s tough to tell if you’re in a bait and tackle shop or a research lab dedicated to aquatic animal dissection. Fiberglass fishing rods racked up like pool cues and a Narragansett Bay nautical chart peppered with sticky notes marking field sites share space with bookshelves that hold resin-cast dogfish anatomy and specimen jars of bleached skate jaws.

But then Taylor references the catalog number of a vial of black sea bass tissue, takes a seat behind his computer to query his database of nearly 12,000 native fish samples and identifies exactly when and where the bass was caught, its vital statistics, the environmental conditions, and most importantly, how much mercury its flesh contained. The animated discourse that ensues on mercury levels in fish paints a crystalclear picture of him as a marine biologist.

For the last decade, Taylor has worked to fill an information abyss on the health risks of consuming native fish. From black sea bass to striped bass, tautog, bluefish, summer and winter flounder, and most recently, scup, he has analyzed mercury concentrations in the species that comprise some 95 percent of the recreational fishing catch in Rhode Island.

Carrying on a family tradition, jon cambra and his son, cody, fish together, then partner on cleaning and cooking their catch.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

43

aboard the floating classroom, the low tide crew (including biologist David Taylor, center, in Boston Red Sox cap) conduct their preferred research duties − fishing for scup samples.

44

RWU {Fall 2015}

“While exploring environmental toxicology issues, I found that, historically, a lot of research has been conducted on commercial and offshore saltwater fisheries and freshwater fish, but there is a tremendous data gap on inshore fisheries,” he says.

Further complicating the issue, Taylor says, is the fact that the Food and Drug Administration bases most of its health advisories on mercury levels in fish on national averages as opposed to targeted locations. Environmental data from one spot is not necessarily reflective of other waters, particularly in New England, where centuries of manufacturing have resulted in mercury deposits along its shores.

“With mercury contamination, it really matters where you catch that fish,” Taylor says. “Health advisories might be overstating the concern in certain areas, but in other areas it might be underselling the danger of the fish.”

Those concerns intrigued the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Foundation, which in 2013 awarded its inaugural research grant to Taylor to measure mercury levels in scup. With an eat-whatyou-catch cultural identity at heart, an estimated 30 percent of Rhode Island’s recreational fishermen regularly bring scup home for dinner in the summer.

“The average person who fishes two or three times a year probably doesn’t ever consider whether the fish they catch contains toxic levels of mercury,” says Foundation President Stephen Medeiros.

“But the hardcore anglers tend to be more knowledgeable of fisheries management and science and have been asking questions like these.”

A Shore Thing

On a balmy June morning, RWU marine biology major Molly Fehon stands barefoot at the stern of the Low Tide and casts the first squid-baited hook into the glassy water. Elsewhere on deck, juniors Josh Jacques and Kelly Cribari, a pair of fellow

summer research assistants, collect fishing poles from Taylor and prepare to pluck scup samples from Narragansett Bay. Motoring northwest toward Warwick Neck, the researchers stop frequently in the 24-foot powerboat to drop hooks down to the bay floor and around rocky ledges. Scup will either hit the bait right away, nibbling furiously at the raw calamari, or the absence of a swift charge on the fishing line means there’s no scup in that spot.

As they fish from this floating classroom, Taylor – or D.T., as his students call him – points out a pale-pink lion’s mane jellyfish quivering past the boat and identifies the species of seaweed pulled from the depths along with empty hooks. Other trips into tidal rivers and along coastlines have featured snapping turtle and osprey sightings or, while seining for young flounder buried in the sand, discussions of how currents work in tidal flats – a wealth of practical field training through direct observation.

While the student scientists/anglers snare scup at sea, junior Mary Yurkevicius prepares specimens from previous fishing trips on dry land back at basecamp.

Carrying on the work of her teammates – who bring their catch to the lab and employ painstaking precision to cut pieces of scales, fins and tissue – Yurkevicius carefully catalogs each fish sample and then freeze-dries the morsels. These bits of powdery tissue will eventually be scorched inside a DMA-80, an instrument that detects the amount of mercury absorbed from several blasts of intense heat. From there, the scientists factor in the weight of the sample to determine mercury concentrations in the scup’s flesh.

Fresh samples are always needed. And while the crew on board the Low Tide competes for the biggest fish and the most plentiful catch, each scup reeled in is critical in allowing the researchers to compare mercury levels from juvenile to adult fish, with levels expected to

A Scup By Any Other Name Did you know that scup was making a splash in the fish market more than 370 years ago? In his 1643 book, A Key into the Language of America, none other than Roger Williams himself

cited the value of scup – its name derived from the Narragansett mishcup-pauog – noting that he “hoped it may be as well accepted as cod at the market, and better, if once knowne [sic].” In Williams’ day, the Narragansett smoked the plentiful scup, while the English favored a salted scup jerky.

student research assistants kelly cribari ’17, molly fehon ’17 and josh jacques ’17 hold up some of the day’s catch.

accumulate throughout a lifetime. Just as significant is where they make their catches. The students have learned from Taylor that environmental mercury concentrations are site-specific and can build up in fish tissue, especially in species that hunker down in a contained area – scup and sea bass, for example.

After collecting more than 100 scup samples from points all over Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound, Taylor and Jacques proceeded to compare mercury levels between inshore and offshore samples.

Their findings? Overall, native scup contain low amounts of mercury, but about 8 percent of the legal-size recreational catch from the bay contained mercury levels exceeding the EPA’s guideline of what’s safe to consume once a week over a lifetime. Meanwhile, none of the specimens farther offshore in Rhode Island Sound exceeded the EPA mercury limit – a strong implication of human influence on the inshore environment, Taylor says. Still, he is confident that his research reveals that native scup are generally safe to eat.

That’s good news for recreational fishermen, who typically consume more seafood than even the average New 46

RWU {Fall 2015}

Englander and bear a greater exposure risk to mercury. And with scup landing on the menus of area restaurants more frequently, the silvery finfish impacts many more people than just fishermen.

“Now we know we can enjoy scup without fearing health risks,” Medeiros says.

Scup – The Other White Fish

For some seafood lovers, seeing the unfamiliar scup on a menu may pique curiosity; for those who have fished rocky shorelines with mom and dad, it may invoke waves of nostalgia. But whether or not you know a scup from a sardine, don’t call its appearance at local restaurants a novel idea. With colonists and Native Americans consuming as much scup as cod centuries ago, its reemergence is more of a culinary revival.

From Nick’s on Broadway in Providence serving citrus-roasted Point Judith scup fillet, to the RWU Dining Commons featuring native scup chowder and scup tacos, scup has become the white fish embraced by chefs joining the movement to serve local and sustainable seafood species. North Atlantic cod populations are at a historic low, according to Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Deputy Chief Mark Gibson,

and cod catch restrictions are constantly being tightened. Scup, on the other hand, prevails with a healthy, robust population.

“Scup is the up-and-coming fish right now because of the chefs driving the local food movement,” says Cambra, who emphasizes serving locally sourced seafood, meats and produce as much as possible at Roger Williams. “Scup is on many more menus because of chefs with the passion to source our local culture and because of consumers who have made the commitment to eating more sustainably and locally.”

Taylor – a self-proclaimed aficionado of wild-caught salmon – is quick to add that his investigation of mercury concentrations isn’t intended to scare people away from fish.

“I’m a huge supporter of fish consumption – it’s one of these super foods with tremendous health benefits in Omega-3 fatty acids,” he says. “It’s not about eliminating fish consumption, but making informed decisions on which fish to eat and how much is safe.”

From all angles, scup looks like a mighty fine choice for dinner. RWU

EAT THIS, NOT THAT

1.0 PPM

D.T.’S GUIDE TO LOW-MERCURY FISH If you’re debating scup vs. swordfish for dinner tonight, David Taylor has a tip for you – go for the scup! Taylor’s research supports scup and flounder for frequent consumption due to their minimal mercury concentrations – especially when compared to tuna and swordfish, two of the most popularly

SWORDFISH*

consumed fish with excessive mercury levels. He bases his evaluations on the EPA’s mercury threshold of 0.3 parts per million (ppm) for safe eating once a week over a lifetime.

Here’s a handy comparison guide, courtesy of Taylor and the Low Tide crew:

0.995 PPM

80

Hg

TUNA*

MERCURY

STRIPED BASS 0.330 PPM 54.2%

TAUTOG

0.391 PPM

0.361 PPM 30.1%

EPA

LIMIT

0.3

PPM BLACK SEA BASS

SUMMER FLOUNDER

0.177 PPM 9.4%

0.156 PPM 0%

BLUEFISH 0.242 PPM 20.6%

SCUP

KEY TO MERCURY DATA PPM – Average mercury level in samples % – Samples testing above EPA mercury limit

* – Sourced from FDA

0.156 PPM 4.7%

0.0 Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

PPM 47

Sports Center

The Old College ‘Try’ National champion women’s rugby squad goes head-to-head with Irish national team

By Kevin Terbush ’15

There was a wee bite in the spring air as the women’s rugby team took to the emerald pitch at the University of Limerick in Ireland. It was there, on the shores of the River Shannon, that the Hawks found themselves head-to-head – quite literally – with members from the Irish national team, aiming to score a “try” for five points.

Fresh off their second Small College National Championship in the team’s short history, they were invited to play (courtesy of an opposing team’s coach) with the Irish national team during spring break.

Jumping at the opportunity, they quickly found themselves competing against athletes who have played at the World Cup level.

“I wanted them to see the level that they could one day be at,” says Tommy Rickard, a native of Ireland who coaches RWU rival Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, as well as the 48

RWU {Fall 2015}

Colonial Coast Rugby Conference all-star team.

Rickard says he was astonished at the Hawks’ abilities. “They are hardworking, dedicated and talented girls, and I knew they would get a great experience from this trip.”

Even some of the team’s top talent was surprised by their ability to hang tough with some of the world’s elite ruggers. “The fact that we could lay a hit on some of these women who are going to be in the Olympics, I think is just awesome,” says captain Allison Dykes ’15, a flanker.

But it’s taken more than the luck of the Irish to achieve the success that the Hawks have enjoyed over the past two seasons. The team – or “union,” as it’s called in the rugby world – has been on a winning streak since Fall 2013. They’ve since won the grueling Beast of the East tournament (routing Rickard’s Panthers 52-0) and in March were awarded

the Small College Achievement Award at the 69th annual Words Unlimited Sports Awards Banquet. It takes an unbreakable bond, according to the team.

“People always ask what it’s like to win a national championship,” says Marie Giustino ’15, a back row player. “But it’s about much more than just winning a championship. It’s being a family.”

For now, that entails getting the rookies ready for the future. With both Dykes and Giustino graduating, they’re determined to sow the seeds of continued success among their teammates and reinforce the roots of their championship legacy.

“In order to win the national championship, you have to develop that bond as a team,” Dykes says. “I still definitely think that the team will make it to nationals again next year.”

One thing is for sure – they’ll certainly try. RWU

The Tickah In the annals of college coaching, few can boast having spent nearly a quarter-century accruing championships and mentoring hundreds of players to personal achievements – on and off the pitch – with a single team. As he rides off toward a hard-earned retirement, here’s a look at Coach Jim Cook’s legendary legacy leading the men’s soccer team:

293-132-43 Career Record at RWU

All-CCC players coached

62.6%

winning percentage

Men’s and women’s track and field simultaneously win the CCC Championship for a second consecutive season … For the first time in school history, RWU earns the CCC Women’s All-Sports Trophy for top performances across the board in league competition … Sailing qualifies for ICSA Team Racing National Championships for the fifth consecutive year with a runner-up performance at the Fowle Trophy … Junior volleyball player Elizabeth Flaherty becomes the first two-time ACVA All-American in RWU history with a nod from the American Volleyball Coaches Association … Baseball becomes the first #5 seed since 2010 to advance to the CCC Championship game after defeating top-seeded Endicott and second-seeded Western New England on the road … Junior Mariah Kaiser is named to the National Soccer Coaches Association of America All-America Third Team, becoming the first All-American in program history … Women’s lacrosse standout Kelsey Rahilly ’15 finishes her career as RWU’s all-time leader in career assists (182) and points (306), leading all NCAA Division III women’s lacrosse players in assists (68) in her senior season.

All-New England players coached

22

years coached at Roger Williams

Academic All-New England players coached

7

All-Americans and one Academic All-American players coached

Championships in just eight seasons

5

CCC Coach of the Year honors

appearances in the NCAA Round of 32

2

ECAC Division III New England Championships

Remembering Ryan Always ready to lend her teammates an assist from her position as guard, the late Ryan Weekes ’12 was a quiet leader with a great sense of humor and a smile that could light up the room. Her positivity and sportsmanship left an indelible mark on all of her teammates.

The 24-year-old passed away in March after a four-year battle with cancer that interrupted her athletic career at RWU when she was diagnosed at the start of her senior season. Off the court, Weekes was an Intercultural Leadership Ambassador who majored in psychology and aspired to law school. Also active in her hometown of Worcester, Mass., Weekes volunteered as a coach for the local Girls Inc. basketball league.

As testament to her impact, as both a student and a teammate, every player from Roger Williams that had ever been on a team with Weekes attended her services.

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

49

Voices in Common

Alumni Profile

Sara (Brown) Toffoli Communication ’95

You Can’t Take It With You

By Alexandria Wojtanowski ’15 Sara Toffoli’s New Jersey driver’s license can tell you a lot about her.

It lists her place of residence, her hair color, her eye color – even her height. But perhaps the most revealing bit of information about Toffoli is a small notation at the very bottom of that piece of plastic: organ donor.

“Your organs are not going to do you any good after you die,” Toffoli says. “Think about it: My eyes could live on in somebody and give them sight; my heart could beat in somebody else’s body; and I would hope that if my husband ever needed an organ, it would be there to save his life.”

It seems reasonable enough that a person would willingly opt to give away vital organs when they’re no longer alive to use them – but what about while you’re still living?

For Toffoli, it was never a question. A longtime supporter of organ donation, she had long considered what medical professionals call “living donation.” So in October 2013, as she watched a WPIX television news segment called “Help Me Howard” and heard the story of Torrey Green – a middle school art teacher from Florida in desperate need of a kidney transplant – her response was instinctive.

50

RWU {Fall 2015}

Making sure to include her blood type, she emailed the station with a single question: “Can I help?”

According to Toffoli, she had thought specifically about the possibility of donating a kidney – one of the few living donations a person can offer, along with the lobe of a lung and part of the liver, pancreas or intestine – and seeing Green’s passion and positive attitude in light of suffering seven years on dialysis further inspired her to take action. And while an estimated 6,000 people make living organ donations each year, it’s rare for the donation to be altruistic, where the donor has never met the recipient, and rarer still that the altruistic donation be for a targeted patient.

Eight months later, with support from her family and her employer – the chemical and healthcare corporation Bayer, where she is a senior executive assistant in the marketing group – Toffoli sat in the waiting room at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center sneaking glances at the man who would soon host her kidney.

Per protocol, she could not contact Green before the procedure.

But following the successful surgery and her six weeks of recovery

Class Notes 1970s Brian Dennis ’72 Fine Arts Moscow, Idaho

time (with full salary and a team of employees happy to fill in for her, Toffoli notes), the pair finally met, even having dinner and taking in a Broadway show together. They continue to keep in touch, Toffoli says, and she plans to visit him in Florida soon.

“He has become like a brother,” she says.

“We often say that we are kindred spirits.”

Toffoli calls Green her “kidney-in-law;” he calls her his angel and his hero, having given him a gift even his own family members would not.

“I’m not a zombie anymore,” Green told WPIX reporter Howard Thompson in a follow-up feature segment the television station aired after Toffoli and Green had recovered from their surgeries.

“I have life again. I feel young again. I feel energetic. I feel happy. I feel motivated. I feel inspired.” Turning to peer into Toffoli’s eyes and take her hand, Green says through tears, “I’m just so grateful. You saved my life.”

Toffoli says that Green gave her a gift as well: inspiration to improve her own health.

To that end, she recently took up tap dancing and ran her first 5K, a fundraiser for the New Jersey Sharing Network, which educates the public on how organ and tissue donation can give someone another chance

at life. After completing the race, Toffoli spent time in the Sharing Network’s 5th Annual Celebration of Life community outreach area, visiting with people who had received life-saving organ transplants and (in some cases) their donors, and meeting families raising money in memory of their loved ones who died while waiting for a healthy organ.

“Learning about the recipients who had gone on to live a long life, and the people who had passed tragically, it really struck a chord with me,” she says. “It was bittersweet – I felt really proud to be a part of that, but there’s still so many people out there who need a donation.”

She may be short an organ to donate these days, but Toffoli continues to advocate for the cause via the Save 1 Person. Save the World. campaign and encourages others to consider organ donation, whether living or post-mortem. After all, she says, you can’t take it with you. RWU

Brian Dennis discussed the role of statistics in modern life when he delivered the 2015 Lamberson Ecology Lecture at Humboldt State University in California in February. The presentation offered an opportunity for the university and community to discuss the future of statistics in the sciences and social sciences, along with advice on how scientists-in-training should structure their study of statistics. Brian is a professor in the University of Idaho’s departments of Fish and Wildlife Sciences and Statistical Sciences.

Robert Stebenne ’75, ’02P American Culture West Kingston, R.I. On May 6, Summer Infant, a global leader in premium juvenile products, appointed Robert Stebenne as the company’s new chief executive officer. A Summer Infant board member, Stebenne has 30 years of juvenile product development and marketing experience, including 20 years in positions of increasing responsibility at Hasbro Industries.

1980s Walter Ramos ’83 Political Science Boston, Mass.

Walter Ramos, formerly the CEO and president of DotHouse Health, has been named president of Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Mass. “I understand and appreciate the diverse communities that Carney Hospital serves,” Ramos said in a press release. “I am excited to join Carney Hospital and look forward to working with caregivers, patients and community leaders to build on the hospital’s excellent track record in recent years.”

Want more stories? Go to pdq.rwu.edu.

51

Class Notes Joe Miech ’88 Criminal Justice Wakefield, R.I.

Thanks For Coming and See You Next Year! (add)ventures Chief Operating Officer Joe Miech hosted students last spring from the RWU chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America for a tour of the multidisciplinary brand culture and communications firm; (add)ventures colleagues Dawn Ratté, Dominic Green and Kayla Farrands met with students and presented case studies, provided internship and career advice, and participated in a Q&A with students during the event. Pictured, from left to right, in the front row: Mary Dinnean ’18; Brittany Rayburn ’16; Hannah DuPont ’15. Back row: Michelle Ryder ’16; Amelia Scott, career advisor, RWU; Kayla Farrands, specialist, pr/strategy, (add)ventures; Joe Miech ’88, chief operating officer, (add)ventures; Dawn Ratté, director, pr/media, (add)ventures; Kristine Parker ’16; and Clayton Durant ’16.

2000s Emily (Ricca) Guest ’06 Marketing Stamford, Conn.

Will Guest ’06

It was a record year for the Roger Williams Alumni Association when 360 alumni returned to campus to celebrate Alumni Weekend in June.

On Friday, more than 100 golfers descended on Montaup Country Club to play in the Ninth Annual Ray Cordeiro Golf Classic. RWAA President Michael La Scala ’83 welcomed guests and thanked them for their support of the University.

Following the tournament, alumni and their guests congregated back on campus for the annual Lobster and Steak Dinner with musical guest Rendition.

Weekend highlights included campus walking tours with Scott Yonan ’77 and RWU senior Megan Fitzpatrick, who pointed out the bricks-and-mortar transformations that have taken place at Roger Williams over the past four decades; a remembrance of former Alumni Association President Ron Tippe ’72, courtesy of Megan Alves ’91 and

fellow theatre alumni; and a retirement celebration for theatre professor Peter Wright, whose career at RWU spanned 35 years. On Saturday afternoon, the Rhode Island and Boston alumni chapters joined forces to host a beer and wine tasting on the back deck of the North Campus Residence Hall, while a family-friendly area was set up with inflatables, outdoor games and Del’s Lemonade behind the Alumni Tent.

Topping off the festivities was the Alumni Awards Banquet, honoring three extraordinary alumni who have demonstrated the importance of service to the greater community.

Kaitlin Baird ’06 was awarded the Young Alumni Achievement Award; Daniel Gumb ’08 earned the Alumni Service Award; and Michael Ayles ’91 was presented with the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award. The Class Leadership Award for reunion participation and engagement was presented to the

Class of 2005, marking the first time since the re-establishment of Alumni Weekend that a GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) class captured the award. Accepting the recognition on behalf of the class were Billy Leaver ’05 and Tanya White ’05.

The RWAA and the Alumni Weekend Planning Team credited all of the volunteers, coordinators and attendees for making this year’s Alumni Weekend a huge hit. As the annual tradition continues to evolve, those teams will continue to work together to meet the ever-changing requests from the University’s alumni base.

If you missed the weekend or want to relive the fun, visit the Alumni Weekend photo album on Flickr at http://alumniweekend. rwu.edu.

– Ryan Edmonds

Computer Information Sciences Bedford Hills, N.Y.

SAVE THE DATE :: JUNE 10 TO 13, 2016 Join us for Alumni Weekend

Ahoy!

For a Historic Bristol Landmark, a New Home at RWU

Emily Ricca and Will Guest were married on September 27, 2014. Pictured, from left to right: Erin Newcomb, Heidi Giraldi, Jeff Wells ’07, Cara Cuticello ’06, Mike Moody ’06, Stacy Fabrizzio ’06, Jimmy Maznio ’07, Tracey Lemle ’06, Vincent Costa ’06, Ryan Allessio ’05, Ben Powell, Matthew Greely ’06, Jessica Greely ’06, Elizabeth Costa, James Breck ’09, Erin Scholz, Emily Ricca ’06 and Will Guest ’06.

52

RWU {Fall 2015}

For 13 years, the halfway point of the oldest Fourth of July parade in the country has been marked by the tallest flagpole in the state, located on the Herreshoff Marine Museum’s waterfront site on Hope Street. Visible from more than three miles away, the 107-foot-tall flagpole served as a landmark to guide seafaring travelers into Bristol Harbor.

Thanks to the University’s friends at the museum, the RWU sailing team proudly claimed this piece of history last spring. The Douglas Fir topmast is now the permanent flagpole for the Richard L. Bready Mount Hope Bay Sailing and Education Center, guiding sailors in Mount Hope Bay to the RWU campus.

Alumni Profile

Thomas Prohaska, Ph.D. Psychology ’74

Forging a New Path in Public Health From promoting hand-washing and seatbelt safety to encouraging the use of vaccines and prophylactics, the public health field has

expanded over a millennium to mobilize strategies and solutions worldwide to prevent disease and prolong life. Yet while increased life expectancy is a sign of success, the healthcare community now faces the challenges that accompany an aging population – just in time for the Baby Boomers to skyrocket the senior citizen population. At the head of the charge is Thomas Prohaska ’74.

He may have started out a bit behind the curve at Roger Williams – “like every other student I bounced around a little bit” before settling on psychology, he says – but an innate sense of curiosity has kept him well ahead of the field. After completing a master’s degree in behavior modification, Prohaska undertook his doctorate in experimental psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical college.

“I didn’t want to do straight psychology anymore, and I came across the field of gerontology,” he says. “I found it fascinating and really under-investigated. And so I went on to apply both of these content areas together.”

Prohaska progressed to the University of Wisconsin, where he continued his work in geriatric behavioral medicine and health psychology, publishing research on symptom perceptions and attributions to aging and chronic diseases. In a field as ancient as the Roman ruins, Prohaska had found an emerging niche.

“The rest is history,” says Prohaska, who is often credited as one of the developers of the field in which public health and aging intersect.

“Twenty-six years as a professor, chairman of the department and then director of a research institute on aging.”

Not to mention the volumes of scholarly research and 12 years spent as a consultant for the Centers for Disease Control’s Healthy Aging Research Network. Getting to know his colleagues has been an ongoing reward, he says – particularly, growing old together.

For his next chapter, Prohaska will capitalize on his interdisciplinary perspective to bring a multi-disciplinary approach to George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services, where he has served as dean since

Thomas Prohaska ’74 (second from right,) poses with Shannon Turner (second from left) – one of his students who became a Skolnik Global Health Fellow and worked on tuberculosis infection control in Swaziland – and others during an award presentation at George Mason University, where he is dean of the College of Health and Human Services. Photo: Craig Bisacre, George Mason University 2012. That multi-disciplinary approach is the future of health care, he believes – nurses who have background in social work, or epidemiologists who know nursing. And with a $71 million dedicated building for the college – a “hub for health care” named Academic VII – set to open on George Mason’s main campus in Fairfax, Va., Prohaska has big goals, including doubling the enrollment.

“With such a large number of collaborators, we have the size and scope to make a powerful contribution in the region,” he says. “In the next three to four years, I hope to have the first School of Public Health in the state of Virginia.”

Prohaska’s protégés are making strides far outside of the Mid-Atlantic, however. Shannon Turner, a Skolnik Global Health Fellow, recently

traveled to Swaziland where she developed a tuberculosis infection control policy in a local hospital – the first time this hospital had a policy for treating TB among patients weakened

by HIV. And with his alma mater now offering an undergraduate public health major, Prohaska is quick to encourage its potential for students at Roger Williams University.

“A bachelor’s degree is a very strong degree,” he says. “Not only for the purposes of getting people into public health, but many people get their entrance into medicine and other fields in health care as a function of understanding the broader health side.”

— Justin Wilder

Please email information for Class Notes to: alumni@rwu.edu.

53

Class Notes Michael O’Shea ’06 Marketing Barrington, R.I.

Ashley (Gingerella) O’Shea ’07 Communication Barrington, R.I. Michael and Ashley welcomed new baby Caitlin Elizabeth into their family in May. Ashley is the deputy communications director for R.I. Gov. Gina Raimondo, who after learning about Ashley’s pregnancy decided to implement new features to the State House, making it more accessible to families and new mothers returning to work. The State House now has a dedicated lactation room as well as changing tables in the public restrooms.

Kaitlin (Nugent) Boucher ’07 Communication

Nathan Boucher ’09

favorite D.C. monument. The couple works at Syracuse University where Jerrel is coordinator of mentoring programs in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and Danielle is a member of the faculty support staff in the College of Law. In attendance at their wedding were former RWU students Jeffrey Chong and Stephanie Monteiro, as well as fellow RWU alumni: Caitie Abrahamson ’11, Alice Badger ’11, Lauren Bartolotti ’10, Lauren Buckley ’11, Lauren Carlotto ’10, Jill Conroy ’11, Paul Doolan ’10, Brian LeDuc ’10, Charnele Luster ’11, Christine Nelson ’10, ’11M, Megan Rafferty ’10, Mary Randazzo ’11, and Julia Weiss ’11.

Robert Hayward ’11 Business Griswold, Conn.

Jenna Rothstein ’11 Communication Jewett City, Conn.

Engineering Harwinton, Conn.

Kaitlin Nugent and Nathan Boucher were married in June 2014 in Southington, Conn.

Nearly 20 fellow RWU alumni attended the wedding. Kaitlin works as a merchandising coordinator for Phillips Van Heusen and Nathan serves as vice president of the civil division at Supreme Industries, Inc.

Molly Anderson ’08 Creative Writing Brooklyn, N.Y. Molly, an account executive with user review site Yelp, is engaged to be married to Kenneth Perkins.

A wedding is planned for October 2016.

2010s Jerrel A. Burgo ’10 History

Danielle L. (Jordan) Burgo ’10 Criminal Justice Syracuse, N.Y. Jerrel and Danielle (Jordan) Burgo were married on July 27, 2013, at Our Lady of the Assumption parish in New Bedford, Mass., with a reception following the ceremony at the Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth, Mass. Jerrel and Danielle met as freshmen at RWU and were on the Willow Hall Team CARE staff together for two years. Jerrel proposed to Danielle in September 2012 at the Tidal Basin on the National Mall under a cherry blossom tree overlooking the Jefferson Memorial, Danielle’s

54

RWU {Fall 2015}

Robert and Jenna were engaged in July 2014 and are set to be married on November 7, 2015. “If it wasn’t for RWU, we would have never met, grown together and had this fabulous love story. Thank you RWU, we love you!”

Christine Durnin ’12 Marketing Shelton, Conn.

Pinckney Hugo Group, a full-service marketing communications firm, has hired Christine Durnin of Shelton, Conn., as an account manager.

Prior to joining Pinckney Hugo Group, Christine worked as a digital marketing director for Drink Caffeine, a full-service marketing agency in Madison, Conn.

Shannon Deegan ’13 Global Communication Scotch Plains, N.J.

Samuel Wroblewski ’13 Global Communication Portsmouth, R.I. Shannon and Samuel announced their engagement on December 2, 2014. Shannon, now an event coordinator for the American Lung Association, and Samuel, a digital editor/reporter for Cumulus, plan to wed in Fall 2015.

In Memoriam Murray Massover ’71 March 3, 2015 William A. Mantha ’89 November 27, 2014 Daryl Carr ’07 February 21, 2015 Perry Maltese ’15 February 20, 2015

Reminiscing with Roger Recruits: The Alumni Admission Ambassadors Program “It takes you back to that moment in your life, and you get to relive it a little bit. It’s very rewarding.”

That’s according to Matt Egan ’78, one of nearly 200 alumni volunteers from across the U.S. who have joined the Alumni Admission Ambassador program, reconnecting with Roger Williams and helping to recruit a new generation of students.

It’s been an exceptional inaugural year, says Director of Alumni Recruitment Dawn Occhi, noting that volunteers attend college fairs and high school information sessions to meet prospective RWU students, answer questions and share stories of their campus experiences.

“It was easy for us,” says Egan’s wife, Nancy ’78, after spending a Sunday afternoon at a college fair in Anaheim, Calif. “We had stories to tell while other [college representatives] were pushing a paper. We talked about the programs and how we met there and got married.”

Matt Egan, who was the campus radio station’s first general manager during his time at Roger Williams, teased the teenagers, playfully telling them that their spouse was waiting for them at the University.

“It was interesting to catch back up with the school and see how it’s grown,” he says. “This school changed my life, and I’m at a point where I’d like to give back. This gave me an opportunity to do something even though I am far away.”

Ready to share your RWU story? Join the Alumni Admission Ambassadors program by contacting Dawn Occhi at docchi@rwu.edu or (401) 254-3856.

– Justin Wilder

Attention California Alumni!

Stay connected to RWU from the West Coast.

Visit us at www.facebook.com/RogerWilliamsCA

What’s New With You? Let us – and your fellow alumni – know what you’re up to! Please send your name, class year, major, address and any professional degrees or certifications you hold along with your class note to alumni@rwu.edu.

If you send a photo, please make sure it is at least 300 dpi at a print size of 4” x 6” or larger. You can also call us with your update at (401) 254-3005 or (800) 458-7144, x3005.

Alumni Profile

Dianna Pozdniakov Architecture ’06

Career Re:Design From New York City sophistication to Maine simplicity, Dianna Pozdniakov ’06 has undertaken a less-than-traditional post-graduate path to pursue her passion for architectural design – and if the early predictions for her success ring true, she’s got it in the bag.

As a young, award-winning, emerging architect, Pozdniakov quickly encountered the pitfalls of being a cog in the corporate wheel.

She wanted to create wonderful spaces for people and be a part of their day through her designs, but she found her creativity stifled.

“I didn’t get to explore projects as much as I wanted to,” she says. “I didn’t feel free, and I was sick of sitting at my desk behind a computer screen. Work was never supposed to only be a job. I wanted it to be my passion, my life, my everything – and it wasn’t. The reality was hard to swallow.”

So she took a chance on herself, abandoning the security of full-time work for the freedom of freelancing, while she moonlighted as a design student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. In 2012, with an amplified artillery of skills at her disposal, Pozdniakov officially traded skyscrapers for handbags and launched Sofia Fima – a line of architecturally inspired carryalls named for her parents,

Ukrainian immigrants with roots in the textile industry. Within five months, Pozdniakov was armed with a set of mockups, models and digital simulations of her first bags.

“A small percentage of buildings are actually created by architects, and a smaller percentage of people get to enjoy spaces that are really thoughtfully designed,” Pozdniakov says. “I wanted to take my craft to a scale where more people could enjoy it, and I’ve always had this dream of making a really great bag. Sofia Fima is architecture for the masses.”

The brand reflects a style centered on shapes and geometry, a result of Pozdniakov accepting accidental happenings and designs – a technique she says she often applied as a student – and all of her handbags are handcrafted in New York using vegetable-tanned goatskin leather that lends elements of luxury and durability to the designs.

As far as accidental happenings go, winding up in Lewiston, Maine, couldn’t have been a happier one. It may be hundreds of miles from New York City, but Lewiston has fashion roots in its own rite as a textile manufacturing and mill town. Pozdniakov and her husband, Kevin Morin ’06 – a fellow School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation graduate who runs

CNC programming and operations at Morin’s Machine Shop – have found a welcoming small business community that nurtures creative spirits like theirs, she says, and together they have purchased an old building that for generations housed a bridal boutique. She has joined the Chamber of Commerce, volunteers teaching fashion design at a local middle school and publicly launched Sofia Fima in the fall with six pieces in her inaugural collection.

“Even though I left New York, my experiences there helped me put things in perspective and figure out where I want to be and what I want to do,” Pozdniakov says. “It feels really awesome to believe in my vision and see it come true.”

For more on Sofia Fima, visit www.sofiafima.com.

–Sabrina Polin ’17

Funny Business

Susan Bedusa ’01 debuts new documentary on National Lampoon True Facts: laughing is good for your health and National Lampoon has kept the world guffawing for more than four decades. Also true? Critics are raving about Susan Bedusa’s recently released documentary, Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon.

Bedusa ’01, a journalism and creative writing graduate, produced the film with director Douglas Tirola, and the pair – senior vice president and president of 4th Row Films, respectively – debuted the film at the Sundance Film Festival in February. With commentary from familiar faces like Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Kevin Bacon and Meat Loaf, Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead features both legendary and new footage from the groundbreaking brand that revolutionized comedy and entertainment.

FIND MORE ONLINE AT

Please email information for Class Notes to: alumni@rwu.edu.

55

13 Things

You Might Not Know about Commencement at Roger Williams

Ever wonder where the first Commencement ceremony for Roger Williams was held, or why bagpipers lead the processional? We’ve got you covered. From unearthing facts about planning Commencements to traditions and the quirky things keynote speakers and honorary degree recipients have done, here’s the dish on 59 years of that special celebration of graduates…

1

Instead of the customary, brass-heavy Pomp and Circumstance, bagpipers are tradition at Commencement.

The idea originated when a student, grieving the 9/11 attacks, played a haunting tribute on bagpipes the following day on campus. The overwhelming response inspired planners to have the Rhode Island Highlanders Pipe Band perform to honor the victims’ lives at Commencement 2002; it’s been a hallmark ever since.

2

Before calling Bristol home, Roger Williams College resided in the YMCA building on Broad Street in Providence. When it came time to confer degrees, Commencement exercises were held in the Central Congregational Church, the Beneficent Meeting House and Brown University’s Alumnae Hall, each at different points in history.

3

Picture the first Commencement on the new Bristol digs in 1970: 342 grads and their guests assembled on the “Campus Green,” facing a podium in front of the former library (now the Mario J. Gabelli School of Business), where additional onlookers viewed the ceremony from stairs and windows above.

56

RWU {Fall 2015}

4

Famous for his “Yogisms” almost as much as his Hall of Fame career with the New York Yankees, Yogi Berra offered this pearl of wisdom to the Class of 2001: “You have a great future, even if the future isn’t what it used to be.”

5

Inspired by Little Roger’s travels around the world, First Lady Laura Bush invited him to the White House and punctuated her 2006 keynote address with a photo montage of Little Roger (a cut-out cardboard ambassador for the University) on the South Lawn, in the Rose Garden, with the First Family’s Scottish terriers, and at a state dinner, where “he was charming and diplomatic – the perfect ambassador.”

6

That mystery man seated on stage next to the First Lady clad in traditional black regalia? Known as “Agent Nacho,” the Secret Service Agent acted as bodyguard and gave the signal to a dozen other disguised agents in the audience when it was time for Mrs. Bush to exit the stage.

7

What does it take to keep the 7,000 or so graduates, guests, faculty and staff dry on Commencement day?

Not one, but two colossal tents: a 120-by-300-foot main tent and a 60-by-220-foot overflow tent. An order of 6,950 zip ties to latch the chairs. Sixteen fire extinguishers and emergency exit signs. And quite a bit more…

8

Despite meticulous preparation, not all Commencements go according to plan. At 4:40 a.m. on the day of the 1982 Commencement, a last-minute decision had to be made – chance a soaking rain, or move the ceremony.

At daybreak, the 14-man facilities crew hustled to pack more than 4,000 chairs, equipment and the podium in two trucks and drive them over to the Newport Naval Base, where the celebration was held in a Quonset hut.

9

What’s fondly called the “fountain run” has become top of graduating seniors’ RWU bucket lists. In bathing suits or costumes, clutching pool toys and floaties, seniors jump into the fountain the night before Commencement to dance, splash and relish their last hours together.

10

As an insurance measure for wearers of sky-high heels, the uncoordinated or those who are simply nervous, a strong, agile

person serves as “The Catcher” at the stage stairs to prevent a tumble or lend a hand in a stumble.

11

Here in 2003 to receive an honorary degree, legendary film actor Tony Curtis spent days schmoozing and taking photos with anyone who asked. Loving the experience so much, he inquired whether he could keep his robe to wear while lounging around his pool. Who could say no to that?

(The University didn’t.)

12

Katie Francisconi ’07 reaped more than a degree at her Commencement.

During their keynote address, Peter and Bobby Farrelly – Rhode Island brothers best known for creating Dumb and Dumber – randomly chose a graduate to be an extra in The Heartbreak Kid. She was flown out to L.A. and appeared in a beach scene with Ben Stiller. Her film credit? “Cabo surf shopper.”

13

A parting gift of 1,050 Norway spruce saplings for the Class of 2015 (one to each graduate) aims to leave a lasting impact on the world by contributing to reforestation efforts and combating climate change.

Building a Legacy

“

Like many undergraduates, I could not have known how significantly my days at Roger Williams would impact the rest of my life. I can still recall the sense of accomplishment that came with true learning, including the many facets of business.

That discovery led to a growing awareness that I had to become a part of that dynamic business community. What could be a better way to give back to young people on their own paths to selfdiscovery and lifelong learning than to establish an endowed scholarship fund for business majors at RWU? Using the planned gift approach, my wife, Dr. Janet Thomas, and I have an opportunity to support the academic and professional goals of new generations of business leaders.

It is indeed a privilege to leave a legacy that can make a real difference in the lives of others.

David J. Thomas ’72

Director of Global Business Operations, EMC Corporation

There are many ways that you can build a legacy at RWU through planned giving, some of which may also help lower the estate taxes for your beneficiaries or provide you with additional income in your retirement. Alumni, parents and friends who have generously chosen to make a gift to the University in their estate plans or through a deferred gift are invited to join the Roger Williams University Heritage Society.

If you would like more information about the advantages of planned giving, please contact: The Office of Institutional Advancement (401) 254-5383 universityadvancement@rwu.edu You can also learn more online at http://rwu.edu/go/heritage-society

Heritage Society ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY

One Old Ferry Road Bristol, Rhode Island 02809-2921 (401) 253-1040 • (800) 458-7144 toll free Change Service Requested

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Providence, R.I. Permit No. 795

From taking a knee to closely inspect a rusted bolt to climbing onto the catwalk below-deck to evaluate the weathering effects of salt water, 21 first-year students in the Engineering LLC (Living Learning Community) scaled the Mount Hope Bridge to get an up-close feel for the ins and outs of structural maintenance, courtesy of the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority. They received a firsthand lesson at points all over the bridge, from the inner workings of the center span expansion joints to following in the footsteps of RITBA engineers – literally – as they mounted a ladder one-by-one inside a dark, cramped bridge tower.

As part of our ongoing commitment to sustainability, Roger Williams University prints RWU Magazine entirely on paper certified to FSC® standards. By using FSC-certified paper, we’re sure that the raw materials used to produce this magazine come from forests that are managed according to FSC’s strict social and environmental standards.