General

Brown gets $11.5 million grant from National Institutes of Health

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The National Institutes of Health has awarded Brown University an $11.5-million grant aimed at bettering the understanding of the genetic nature of such diseases as cancer, severe lung infections and preeclampsia, a serious and sometimes fatal complication of pregnancy.

The five-year grant establishing a new Center of Biomedical Research Excellence will not only fund research but boost collaboration among Brown faculty who specialize in such distinct but related fields as immunology and molecular biology.

All will involve the use of advanced computer analysis, an important new tool of the digital age – computational biology, as it is known in the life sciences.

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Rhode Island School of Design Announces Institute for Design + Public Policy with the Rhode Island Foundation

For the first-time ever, Rhode Island School of Design’s Institute for Design + Public Policy will offer a session designed specifically for Rhode Island-based leaders and innovators thanks to a new partnership with the Rhode Island Foundation.

Throughout the five-day institute, running August 4-5 and 10-12 in Providence, participants will build their design capacity through experience-based training grounded in a challenge brief. They will immerse themselves in a collaborative, rigorous studio workshop exploring human-centered design as a tool for addressing complex public policy issues, ultimately building a cross-sector community of practice for design and public policy. Led by expert design instructors from RISD and featuring guest lecturers and critics from across sectors, the studio topic will beCIVILian: Reimagining a More Civic Rhode Island. In the face of issues such as climate change, globalization and terrorism, participants will examine what the notion of “civics” means as both an idea and a community and individual practice in today’s world.

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Study: Completion rates at private nonprofit institutions in R.I. higher than national average

PROVIDENCE – A new study by the National Student Clearinghouse looked at the ways students achieve a college degree.

It found that the overall six-year completion rate for first-time, degree-seeking college students who first enrolled in 2008 was 55 percent, including 13 percent who finished at an institution other than where they started.

The total completion rates for students who started at each of the three largest institution categories ranged from 39.1 percent for students who started at two‐year public institutions to 62.8 percent for those who started at four‐year public institutions and 73.6 percent for students who started at four‐year private nonprofit institutions.

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