“The university is a special place to me and I believe it is better positioned than ever before. I am at a point where I am able to commit my time and effort toward supporting the vision of President Dooley and this team, all working hard to further elevate our state university.”

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

“What is the impact? What is the effect on the people of Rhode Island? Our job was to respond to those questions and bring the experts to the people.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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