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Author, editor and journalist Harriet Rubin spent a week this spring partnering with faculty to bring her unique experience to their classes and discuss art, society, business and leadership with students. Bringing a lifetime of experience mixing business and the creative arts to campus, she inspired students to achieve big goals and helped them identify the tools they need to do so.

“There is a maturity here that I’ve noticed in the students, and an unambiguous desire for success,” says Rubin, senior writer and columnist for Fast Company and the author of the international bestseller The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women. “They seem to be thinking about how they can make their lives most useful to the world at large. There’s something about the Bryant culture that encourages the expression of that.

“I think the Bryant students are standouts — in their focus, in their sense of what they can do, and in the sort of work they can do,” she said.

Rubin was at Bryant as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, a program offered through the Council of Independent Colleges.

The drive to be the best

Throughout the week, Rubin visited courses ranging from a history class on trends in modern thought to a management class on power and influence. In a Marketing for Competitive Advantage class, she discussed the concept of “competitive edge” and explored how companies like Apple and Google strive to reverse-engineer why their strategies worked and discover the “secret recipe for success.”

“Harriet Rubin’s visit definitely made an impression on the students,” says Associate Professor of Marketing and Global Supply Chain Management Michael J. Gravier, Ph.D. “She helped them understand how so many companies strive to be the best, and why only a few succeed.”

Inspiring others

Rubin also aided The Workshop in Creative and Critical Practices students with developing their artist statements. Using her expertise in editing and writing, she helped them explore their goals and identity as artists.

“Harriet guided the students to think through how to talk about how and why they create,” says English and Cultural Studies Professor Terri Hasseler. “She asked students powerful questions about their lives and the motivations behind their work as artists, musicians, performers. The class learned so much just watching her work through the examples. It was a really fantastic opportunity.”

It was amazing how she was so invested in my work after just meeting us,” says Nicholas Wilkinson ’19, one of Hasseler’s students. “She’s passionate about her work and wanting people to be invested and confident in their work. Her guidance helped give me a clearer vision and direction for who I am as an artist and what that means for my future.”

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — On the night of Saturday, June 3, just six days before Amos House installed six “NaloxBoxes” — wall-mounted kits with doses of the opioid overdose reversing medicine naloxone — a resident nearly died of an overdose.

In that case, the affected woman, who was found on the floor of a bathroom, survived because fellow residents happened to have their own naloxone and were ready to act, said Eileen Hayes, director of the homelessness and recovery services center on Pine Street in Providence. But now there are NaloxBoxes arrayed strategically around the center’s main building and residences so that the medicine will always be within reach to residents and staff alike.

“It’s crucial that we educate people and make it available,” Hayes said. “We’re a recovery program, and we’re working with men and women who are really working hard to be in recovery, and yet that doesn’t mean that relapse doesn’t happen.”

NaloxBoxes are the creation of professors Dr. Geoff Capraro of the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Claudia Rébola of the Rhode Island School of Design. Capraro, a Lifespan emergency medicine physician, had the idea that naloxone should be made readily available in public places where overdoses may occur. Through a connection he made at Brown Hack Health, he brought the idea to RISD, where Rébola has ultimately led the boxes’ design.

What they’ve developed is an emergency kit with the same goals as a fire extinguisher or an automated external defibrillator — to enable anyone in the wrong place at the right time to save lives. Nationally, drug overdoses are rising sharply, mostly because of opioids like heroin or prescription painkillers. The epidemic is especially severe in Rhode Island, where 336 people died from overdoses in 2016 alone, prompting a series of programs and actions by the governor including an executive order signed just today.

“There’s no publicly available naloxone,” Capraro said. “It’s all by prescription or pharmacy dispensed. So we saw potential for putting this medicine in the hands of bystander good Samaritans so they could give it quickly. The time to deliver the medicine matters.”

With grant support from the Rhode Island Department of Health and the Preventing Overdose and Naloxone Intervention program at the Miriam Hospital, Capraro and Rébola produced 48 boxes this spring. They have begun to install them this summer, conducting trainings in opiate overdose recognition and rescue in conjunction with the installations, beginning at Amos House and continuing at least 12 other community facilities such as shelters within the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless.

Simple and smart

The boxes, not much bigger than a ream of office paper, contain four injectable doses of naloxone, printed instructions for how to administer it and a mask for providing rescue breaths (in an overdose, people stop breathing). The boxes are also being outfitted with cellular electronics that send a simple text message to their host when they are opened. That way, whoever is responsible for the box is alerted when someone has used it, so that the possible emergency is documented and any taken naloxone can be refilled.

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Community members who created public installations featuring their art and poetry are featured at numerous locations on Aquidneck Island as part of the “Poetry of the Wild” exhibition, which runs through Aug. 6.

Ana Flores, ecological artist, sculptor and founder of Poetry of the Wild, says the project connects people to the landscape by combining poetry, visual art and the natural world. It is supported by Salve Regina with help from additional community partners.

Flores – who runs Earth Inform Studio – has been bringing Poetry of the Wild to locations both public and wild for the last 12 years. Each installation features a box or sculpture, built by artists and community members using recycled materials, that contains an original or classic poem as well as a journal for passersby to contribute reflections of their own. Each unique site reflects the spirit of each place.

Jen McClanaghan, assistant professor and writer-in-residence at Salve Regina, and her class took on a leading role in organizing Poetry of the Wild in Newport, engaging with Flores and local artists to encourage submissions.

Installations are featured at more than a dozen sites throughout the island, including Eisenhower Park, Redwood Library, Aquidneck Land Trust, FabLab, the Met School, Community Garden at Quaker Meeting House, the Cliff Walk, Ballard Park, the Salve Regina campus and more.

The University’s engagement in Poetry of the Wild is one example of the type of community collaborations being spearheaded by Salve Regina faculty as part of a $173,800 grant from the Davis Educational Foundation to intentionally infuse community engagement and civic learning into the curriculum.

The courses developed by faculty in each of the three years of the grant are built around a significant project developed in conjunction with partners that will fulfill a demonstrated community need and allow students to apply concepts and skills they learn in class. Regardless of discipline, students will be engaging with literature, practice, and reflection on justice, fairness, and social change in relation to their subject matter and their community project.

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Six high school graduates from Rhode Island will enter Roger Williams University this fall with Feinstein Leadership Scholarships, following in the footsteps of a recent RWU graduate who helped others by working in soup kitchens and rebuilding homes.

The six students – who come from Bristol, Central Falls, Cumberland, East Providence and Portsmouth – are Feinstein Junior Scholars, student leaders who pledge to do good deeds while in elementary and/or middle school.

Earlier this year, Rhode Island philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein committed $500,000 to help fund scholarships for more Feinstein Junior Scholars to attend RWU. The Feinstein Foundation is providing $50,000 per year for 10 successive years to help send those students to Roger Williams.

That generous gift built on Feinstein’s significant past contributions to RWU, including a previous gift to the Feinstein Leadership Scholarship Fund, which supported 11 RWU students during the 2016-2017 academic year.

This year, RWU will rename its day of service for all incoming freshman as Feinstein Community Connections Day. That event, set for Aug. 28, will recognize the multi-layered partnership that the University has built with the Feinstein Foundation over several decades.

“Our mission at RWU is ‘to strengthen society,’ and Mr. Feinstein’s most recent gift allows us to support an additional group of students with a demonstrated commitment to the public good,” RWU President Donald J. Farish said. “We are delighted to have the opportunity to expand our relationship with Mr. Feinstein and his philanthropic commitment to the people of Rhode Island.”

One Feinstein scholarship recipient, Hannah Augustyn, just graduated from RWU with a degree in architecture plus a double minor in construction management and art & architectural history.

Augustyn, who went to East Providence High School, became a Feinstein Junior Scholar in elementary school. Her pledge to do good deeds brought her to Philadelphia to serve hot meals in soup kitchens and to Colorado to rebuild a public playground. At RWU, she discovered the many service opportunities available to students, once foregoing a spring break vacation to join RWU Habitat for Humanity in rehabilitating a disadvantaged family’s home in West Virginia. Her commitment to community will continue in her new job in construction management at Shawmut Construction, where she’ll take part in regularly held employee service days in local communities. And as a woman working in a male-dominated field, she’ll inspire the young female generation to keep cracking the glass ceiling.

The six Feinstein Leadership Scholars following in Augustyn’s footsteps are:

• Maia Costa, of Bristol, who graduated from Mount Hope High School and became a Feinstein Junior Scholar at Colt Andrews Elementary School. She plans to study engineering at RWU. “From a young age, I have been taught that giving back to the community when possible is an important aspect of life,” she wrote in her scholarship essay. “I have chosen to instill this mindset in my life thus far by giving back to the community frequently and effectively.”
• Karissa Piros, of East Providence, who graduated from East Providence High School and was a Feinstein Junior Scholar at Waddington Elementary School and Riverside Middle School. She plans to study architecture at RWU. “During the past two years, I have had the opportunity to take care of an autistic boy,” she wrote. “Also, volunteering for the Special Olympics was a highlight…I enjoy giving back and will continue to do so.”
• Stephanie Aldana, of Central Falls, graduated from Central Falls High School and became a Feinstein Junior Scholar at the Alan Shawn Feinstein School. She plans to study biology. “My community service started when I was very young, seeing my mom give food to local kids in the summer and clothes to shelters in the winter,” she wrote. “I have taught science through a program called the Need Project at Calcutt Middle School…I later mentored and coached a youth track team called F.A.S.T. Track.”
• Haylee Pacheco, of Bristol, graduated from Mount Hope High School and became a Feinstein Junior Scholar at Colt Andrews Elementary School. She plans to study marketing at RWU. “When I became a (soccer) referee at 13, I realized that the reason why I fell in love with becoming a referee is because I wanted to give back,” she wrote. “I wanted to give back to the game that had given so much to me over the years. I wanted to give the coaches who volunteer their time a fair and honest game.”
• Jocelyn Nogueira, of Portsmouth, graduated from Portsmouth High School and was a Feinstein Junior Scholar at Elmhurst Elementary School and Portsmouth Middle School. She plans to study marketing at RWU. “I first volunteered at a soup kitchen at the Salvation Army near my home in 2016,” she wrote. “It was gratifying to know that I was helping a famished person have a wholesome home-cooked meal. As Mr. Feinstein stated, ‘Helping to better the lives of others is the greatest of all achievements.’ ”
• Brianna Valcourt, of Cumberland, graduated from Cumberland High School and became a Feinstein Junior Scholar at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Academy. She plans to study architecture. “It has always been instilled in me to reach out to help others and teach others the importance of caring,” she wrote. “Caring for others consists of compassion and brotherhood.”

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