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BRISTOL, R.I. – With wide-ranging access to Roger Williams University’s SECCM Labs construction project as a real-world teaching resource, construction management and engineering students have their own “operating theater” to observe and learn the construction process directly from industry professionals.

Much like medical students witnessing open-heart surgery, Roger Williams students don the trade gear of hard hats, yellow reflective vests, protective eyewear and steel-toe boots to wade into the middle of the active construction site. As part of the partnership between RWU and Shawmut Design & Construction, the SECCM Labs project is a “living laboratory” where students in the School of Engineering, Computing, and Construction Management (SECCM) are getting behind-the-scenes lessons on the intricate confluence of the excavation, construction, and systems work that goes into erecting the campus’s new three-story, state-of-the-art building.

“There’s been a lot of synergy between the project and the classroom,” according to Bill Seymour, RWU’s Director of Capital Projects who also teaches construction engineering courses. “In my course, students are using actual plans and specs, real-time schedules and change orders, as they observe this project. They’re taking away an understanding that what they’re learning in the classroom mirrors industry practice, demonstrating that the techniques and tools they’re employing from lessons are identical to those that are being practiced on the job.”…Click to Read More

When she visited campus in early November as part of RISD’s Social Equity and Inclusion Initiative, playwright, screenwriter, producer and director Lynn Nottage took time to answer a question that she’s been fielding a lot lately: Why be a theater artist in a time of crisis?

It’s striking that a writer whose honors include two Pulitzer prizes (Nottage is the only woman to have received the award twice) and a MacArthur “genius” grant grapples with an existential question as basic as this one, but such is our current political climate. Creative professionals are taking stock of whether or not their work is bettering the world around them, and whether or not they feel it should.

Throughout her career, Nottage has used her art to reveal and elevate instances of social and economic inequity. She won her first Pulitzer Prize for Ruined, a play about the wave of sexual violence that accompanied the Congolese Civil War, and has also written plays dramatizing the garment industry, the illegal ivory trade and domestic service. For Nottage, a major call to action came in 2008 at the beginning of the financial crisis when a close friend admitted to being in economic dire straits. For catharsis and clarity, she and her friend spent some time in NYC’s Zuccotti Park talking with Occupy Wall Street protestors. The experience “forced [her] to realize that we all live within shouting distance of someone in crisis.”…Click to Read More

11/13/18 | The combined power of two of the region’s prominent higher education institutions — one an internationally recognized food authority, one an internationally recognized design authority — and a venerable local food hub is changing the way college students eat.

Johnson & Wales University (JWU), Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Farm Fresh RI will share a 2018 New England Food Vision Prize, a $250,000 award from the Henry P. Kendall Foundation, to encourage colleges and universities to increase the amount of regionally-produced food on campus menus.

The award will support a two-year collaboration to research and develop food products that will be tested and integrated into the dining services at each campus with subsequent plans for distribution through Farm Fresh RI….Click to Read More

It’s become one of Bryant’s best-known annual student-alumni events, combining a student learning day on Wall Street with a networking event organized by Bryant’s Wall Street Council.

A full bus of students made the trek to New York City Oct. 25, where they heard from a variety of speakers and networked with alumni, parents, and friends in the finance industry. Popular with students from finance majors and members of the Smart Women in Finance group and the Archway Investment Fund, the Walk Down Wall Street is organized by the Amica Center for Career Education and sponsored by the Finance Association.

The first event of the day was a panel discussion hosted at US Trust and led by Joseph C. “Joe” Capezza, Jr. ’08, Vice President and Portfolio Manager at US Trust. The panelists, including William Brian Gowen ’13, Financial Analyst and Bank Examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Garrett Hayward ’16 MBA, Equity Research Analyst at Douglass Winthrop Advisors; and Samantha Merwin ’12, Vice President at BlackRock, shared stories, offered advice, and answered questions from the students…Click to Read More