In the winter and spring, the Pier and Pumphouse Replacement project became highly visible along the shore of the Narragansett Bay Campus as the contractor moved a barge and crane into place. Temporary indicator piles were driven in December and January. A month later, they were re-struck with the driving hammer and all of them […]

Hongjie Wang, Assistant Professor of Oceanography By Alexander Castro Hongjie Wang grew up near the Yellow River, the sixth largest river in the world, but even that immensity didn’t prepare her for the ocean. Upon reaching the Pacific’s shores for the first time as an undergrad, she says: “I went to the beach. [And I […]

Aboard GSO, Spring 2022 The transition from spring to summer is bittersweet on URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus. Late spring is when we part with our new graduates (27 in 2022) who, after several years of working side-by-side with peers and mentors, have become family. But summer is also when we welcome new students from across […]

By Veronica M. Berounsky, Ph.D. ’90 Courtney E. Schmidt, M.S. ’09, Ph.D. ’14, coastal ecologist and environmental scientist, loves urban estuaries. She grew up near the industrialized Passaic and Hackensack Rivers in New Jersey, she went to college at the University of Tampa in Florida, and did research on the Providence River and Narragansett Bay […]

By Alexander Castro Predicting the future has never been precise. Sheep or bird entrails were the ancient Romans’ preferred methods. Saint Augustine, who despised all things magical, cataloged water and the dead as other oracular mediums. Aeromancy, or divination by clouds and wind currents, was another arcane specialty. And today’s clairvoyants? They’re arguably the scientists […]

By Hugh Markey In 1954, one of the worst disasters in Rhode Island history swept through the state. Hurricane Carol brought wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Worse, it made landfall at high tide, creating a storm surge that flooded downtown Providence with 12 feet of water. When it finally passed, the storm […]