{"id":13824,"date":"2022-04-13T11:48:53","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T15:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/?p=13824"},"modified":"2022-04-18T12:36:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T16:36:44","slug":"french-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/news\/french-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"URI French students win competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week students in a French course won a virtual environmental challenge hosted by URI\u2019s partner institution, the University of Rennes 2 in Rennes, France. Focused on how to make university communities more sustainable and conducted entirely in French, the competition included two teams from URI and three teams from the University of Madrid. The winning team \u2013 including group members Temitope Aina, Rachel DiMartino, Geo Espinoza, Aidan Kindopp, Gavin O’Connell, Justine Thiare, and Allison Vanasse \u2013 focused their project on creating a better composting program for URI. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cURI does not currently have a composting system in place for students to compost directly in the dining halls or in their residence halls,\u201d says Allison Vanasse, a cell molecular biology and French double major. \u201cWe created a system that would only take a few seconds for students to separate the waste on their plate. With this increased compost, we could partner with local farmers and create a cycle of producing compost for the farms and buying back locally grown products to feed students at the dining halls. Our project really sought to use composting in a way to benefit the environment, the university, and the students attending URI<\/span>.\u201d The team also worked on outreach and education efforts directed at students on the basics of composting and how composting as a practice can improve our community environment. A video teaser of their project can be viewed<\/span> here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Students participating in the virtual challenge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c<\/span>A highlight of this experience for me was to think about the future and how composting can be used as a means for sustainability and regional food security.\u201d says Aidan Kindopp<\/span>, a chemical engineering major who is enrolled in the French International Engineering Program. \u201cT<\/span>his project allowed me to learn a new subset of French vocabulary in the realm of sustainability and environmental issues.\u201d Rachel DiMartino, a film\/media and French double major, notes that she enjoyed how each group member was able to contribute a different skill to achieve one cohesive project. \u201cWe’re all studying different topics in addition to studying French so it was interesting to see them all come together,\u201d she says. \u201c<\/span>I was most involved in the artistic side of this project. I created the video trailer and the infographics that’ll be put in buildings around campus. I combined my video editing skills and graphic design skills with my French major to create the art!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

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Gavin O’Connell led the TedEx-style presentation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The competition involved several phases: to begin, the teams created logos, conducted research, <\/span>and worked on visuals and video teasers of their proposed projects. In the quarterfinal, they presented their projects as a group. In the semifinal, the best video teaser was selected. And in the final round, a TED-talk style presentation was given live on Zoom by one student from each group. Throughout each step, graduate students in Rennes from the Universit\u00e9 de Rennes 2 Masters program in Didactique des langues\/Language Didactics served as mentors. This was URI\u2019s first time participating in the challenge. \u201cI hope that other students can hear about this and be inspired to propose their own solutions in the hopes of making URI a more sustainable and ecologically friendly community,\u201d says Vanasse.<\/span><\/p>\n

-By Anna Gray<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students in a French course won a virtual environmental challenge hosted by URI\u2019s partner institution, the University of Rennes 2 in Rennes, France, that was focused on how to make university communities more sustainable. It was conducted in French. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1089,"featured_media":13825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,85,297],"class_list":["post-13824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-french","tag-languages","tag-modern-and-classical-languages-and-literatures"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13851,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13824\/revisions\/13851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}