{"id":22388,"date":"2026-10-16T09:15:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/?p=22388"},"modified":"2026-10-16T09:15:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:15:42","slug":"remembering-bridget-ruemmele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/news\/remembering-bridget-ruemmele\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cShe loved plants\u201d: Remembering Bridget Ruemmele"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

URI community members reflect on the plant sciences professor whose care for the people she taught reached well past the greenhouse.<\/em>

Last December, then University of Rhode Island plant sciences major Abby Snoeren-Place \u201926 sat down with her advisor, Professor Bridget Ruemmele<\/a>, and broke down in tears. With one semester left before graduation, she couldn\u2019t picture a job that would let her do the work she loved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruemmele listened, talked through options, and floated, half-teasing, a career on a golf course, which was her own specialty. The two laughed together. \u201cHer support in that time of uncertainty meant the world to me,\u201d Snoeren-Place says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, when a nursery manager position opened at the Newport Tree Conservancy, Ruemmele helped Snoeren-Place work out a schedule so she could take the job and still finish her coursework and exams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe made a huge impact on my life and my future,\u201d Snoeren-Place says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 35 years, Ruemmele did some version of that for countless URI students. A turfgrass specialist and plant breeder who joined the University in 1991, she brought a scientist\u2019s knowledge and a farmer\u2019s practical sense of growing things to the classroom and the greenhouse. What her students remember most, though, is how much she cared about them.

She passed away in early October, just shy of her 68th birthday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vroom, vroom: Learning plants the Ruemmele way<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask her students about her classes, and they\u2019ll mention the mnemonics. To teach the arrangement of a flower\u2019s petals, Ruemmele invoked a revving Toyota Corolla. She told stories about her brother back on the farm and nursed a running grudge against taxonomists who kept splitting plants into ever-finer categories. She never seemed to run out of corny jokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe broke information down in a way that was digestible but quirky and funny,\u201d Snoeren-Place says.

For Kaylyn Wood \u201926, her stories and personal connections helped the material stick. \u201cTaking that first plant science class with her made me want to do plant science,\u201d she says.\u00a0
\u00a0
Ruemmele felt just as strongly about her students. \u201cI enjoy the teaching aspect of my position most of all,\u201d she wrote in her syllabus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Nolan Banever was building an insect collection for a field entomology course recently, Ruemmele found a way to help. A spotted lanternfly had flown into her car; she caught it and kept the specimen for him in a McDonald\u2019s cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe cared about what her students were doing even outside of plant science,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her classroom extended past campus, too. Allegra Halverson, assistant manager of URI\u2019s farms, remembers teaming up with Ruemmele for an elementary school outreach day at East Farm. With the 4-H program coordinating the event, Halverson had little contact with Ruemmele beforehand and worried she might have to manage 60 children on her own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Ruemmele arrived right on time, teaching kit in hand, and settled onto the grass among the kids, passing around books, pictures, and medicinal plants. \u201cThe kids were truly learning, captivated by her fun and fact-filled charm,\u201d Halverson recalls. \u201cAt that moment, I could see exactly why she chose to be a teacher.\u201d

A farmer\u2019s daughter

<\/strong>Ruemmele grew up on her family\u2019s dairy farm in Hudson, Wisconsin. \u201cShe was enormously proud of her agricultural heritage,\u201d says Nathaniel Mitkowski, a professor of plant pathology and her longtime colleague. \u201cShe loved the soil. She loved plants. She loved farmers. She was a farmer\u2019s daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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That pride came with serious science. \u201cShe wanted to spread the joy and work ethic of a farming lifestyle,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut she was also a consummate scientist and geneticist. She knew complex biology and could mix it all together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At URI, she and Mitkowski built PLS 150 together, the plant breeder and the plant pathologist each bringing their own lens to the core course for the major.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI could look at issues and say, \u2018What do kids on a busy street need to know about agriculture?\u2019\u201d Mitkowski says, \u201cand she could say, \u2018What do farmers need to tell the world?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At home, she fed the feral cats that came to her back door and worried when they stopped showing up. \u201cShe was one of the kindest, most generous people I ever knew,\u201d Mitkowski says, \u201cand would do anything she could to help anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing together<\/strong>

<\/strong>Ruemmele was a beloved fixture at the URI greenhouse, often parked in the lot with her window rolled down, ready for a chat. No question was too small, and no one who stopped by her car or office left feeling like an inconvenience. She had a habit of giving unexpected compliments, the kind that could buoy someone through the rest of their day.

“When I worked in the greenhouse on weekends, just knowing she was there made me feel safer,” says Sharday Johnson, a plant sciences student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruemmele\u2019s teaching didn\u2019t end when class did. She spent hours in her office helping students plan schedules and find jobs. She cheered from the stands at their hockey, baseball, and basketball games, and she prepared the turf team for national competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn\u2019t end at graduation, either. Her former students range from their early 20s to their 50s, and they work across Rhode Island\u2019s nursery, landscape, and turf industries, often alongside one another. She didn\u2019t just teach individual students; she brought them together, and the community she built has outlasted their time in Kingston.
<\/strong>
<\/strong>At Farming Turtles in Exeter, Wood now works for Nick Testa \u201911, also a former student of Ruemmele\u2019s. \u201cShe made a difference in so many people\u2019s lives,\u201d Wood says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are all very fortunate to have had the time we had with her,\u201d adds Larry Englander, a retired faculty member, former colleague, and longtime friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruemmele\u2019s influence grows in yards across New England, too. Cuttings, grafts, and air-layered magnolias that her students propagated in the department\u2019s greenhouse have taken root far beyond Kingston.

Planted in her honor
<\/strong>
The day after they learned of Ruemmele\u2019s death, Snoeren-Place went out with her boss, Joe Verstandig \u201917, to plant a rhododendron in her honor. Verstandig is also a URI plant sciences graduate; he had taken more classes with Ruemmele than with any other professor.

Come spring, the rhododendron will bloom at the Newport Tree Conservancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


First Frost by Kaylyn Wood \u201926<\/strong>
A poem dedicated to Professor Bridget Ruemmele<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trees are changing color<\/em>
painting the world in shades of gold<\/em>
the flowers still clinging to summer<\/em>
unaware of the coming cold<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autumn has a way of taking what it cannot keep<\/em>
first frost came without a peep<\/em>
the flowers never said goodbye<\/em>
they simply just ran out of time<\/em>
the first frost, not my first los<\/em>s<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some things fall with autumn leaves<\/em>
every season has its end<\/em>
but knowing flowers cannot stay<\/em>
you never taught me to let them<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the flowers never leave<\/em>
not entirely anyway<\/em>
for even when their petals fall<\/em>
something of them stays<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every seed I place in soil<\/em>
every flower I help grow<\/em>
will carry something you once taught me<\/em>
more than you can ever know<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first frost may take the flower<\/em>s
and winter may take the green<\/em>
It cannot touch the garden\u00a0<\/em>
you’ve planted inside of me<\/em>

Celebrating Her Life<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

URI\u2019s Department of Plant Sciences and Entomology is hosting a Celebration of Life in Professor Ruemmele\u2019s honor on Wednesday, October 28, 2026 from 5:00 – 7:00 P.M. in URI\u2019s Avedisian Hall, room 170. Please RSVP here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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