URI seeking $125M engineering upgrade

RENDERING COURTESY BALLINGER
BOOSTING ENROLLMENT: University officials say the new College of Engineering building will allow URI to increase not only the size of the faculty but the number of students.
RENDERING COURTESY BALLINGER BOOSTING ENROLLMENT: University officials say the new College of Engineering building will allow URI to increase not only the size of the faculty but the number of students.

(Editor’s note: This two-part package is part of a planned series of stories on statewide ballot questions voters will consider.)

By Patricia Daddona
Daddona@pbn.com
If an engineering student and professor working at Bliss Hall in the College of Engineering at the University of Rhode Island needs access to the school’s million-dollar electron microscope, they would have to go across campus to use it.
The sensitive piece of equipment is being housed in a small, environmentally controlled, vibration-proof room in Morrill Hall. Other equally sensitive equipment is scattered around the campus, says college Dean Ray Wright, making it difficult to coordinate classwork and capstone projects – the final projects undergraduates complete in order to graduate.
The need for a central place for state-of-the-art equipment at URI is just part of the reason the university is seeking voter approval of a $125 million bond issue on Election Day this Nov. 4. If the funding is approved, five of the six buildings, which date back to 1958, would come down, and one new building would be erected in their place near Bliss Hall, Wright said.
Each year, Wright says, 30 companies who work with URI students on nine-month capstone projects that often lead to prototyping potential business products meet in traditional classrooms throughout the engineering college. The old-fashioned classrooms and lecture halls do not include a place that brings them all together so they can work in teams, he said.
Companies such as Raytheon, Apex and Amgen “come back and tell us, ‘You are doing a great job technically, but we want the student to be very efficient and active right away,’ ” Wright noted. “‘You’ve got to put them into teams early.’ ”
Add to that the loss of two young engineering faculty members who left last year in part because of better facilities at other universities in the country, says URI President David M. Dooley, and attracting faculty becomes yet another reason for supporting the project. An additional $20 million in fundraising by the school would supplement the money raised by the bond sale and be used for equipment, furniture and scholarships.
There was no opposing testimony during General Assembly hearings on the ballot question, according to Larry Berman and Greg Pare, spokesmen for House and Senate Democratic leadership respectively. In addition to the higher education facilities bond for URI, which is Question 4 on the ballot, there are three other bond issues up for approval on Election Day. They include: Question 5, for $35 million in creative and cultural economy bonds; Question 6, for $35 million for mass-transit-hub infrastructure; and Question 7, for $53 million for clean water, open space and healthy communities.
According to Dooley, “the annual economic impact of the College of Engineering of URI has been calculated to be $142 million a year. For less than one year’s worth of positive economic impact, Rhode Islanders can assure themselves that this will continue for the next 25 years or more and even increase. And that makes this a very good investment with an extremely high return.”
If approved, the project is expected to generate nearly 1,500 construction and professional-service jobs during the three-year construction period.
The Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the URI bond issue.
“We have the College of Engineering, but its facilities are not 21st-century quality and are not competitive with other universities around the country,” said Chamber President Laurie White. “Students are attracted by faculty, but faculty are attracted by facilities, so you need to have both.”
If the funding for renovations is approved, five buildings would be demolished – Crawford Hall, Kelly Hall, Kelly Annex and the Gilbreth and Wales buildings. In their place, Wright said, one building would increase academic and research space by 40 percent.
Specialties within the college, including biomedical, chemical, civil, mechanical, electrical, industrial and computer engineering, would come under one roof, with ocean engineering remaining at the Bay campus, Wright said.
“The spaces we educate students in are no longer simply lecture halls,” he explained. “They have to be built in such a way that students are put together on teams dealing with open-ended problems. What we’re trying to do is bring together that interactive lecture along with the hands-on laboratory in the same environment.”
Dooley said a state-of-the-art facility will allow the university to increase not only the size of the faculty but the number of students, which is already on the rise. URI engineering enrollment was 1,116 in the fall of 2003 and 1,547 in the fall of 2013, an increase of 39 percent, according to the latest figures available, a URI spokesman said.
Dooley added that he anticipated the number of faculty in the engineering college could grow from 62 to about 75, particularly in such focused disciplines as energy, materials and advanced technologies, as well as in engineering’s evolving connection to medicine and health.
As many as 50 companies engage URI engineering students in any given year, Wright and Dooley said, and there are some firms that the university has to turn away.
“We have more companies that want capstone projects than we have students [to participate],” Wright said. “That’s another reason to grow the college.”
Toray Plastics (America) Inc. of North Kingstown has hired 75 URI graduates overall and 22 from the College of Engineering alone, said Lisa Ahart, vice president of human resources. Toray has pledged $2 million to the college renovation project, added President and CEO Mike Brandmeier.
“URI grads … help us to make our product,” Brandmeier said. “These pieces of [plant] equipment … are complex [and] highly engineered, and we need people that have the capability to understand them mechanically, as well as understand the chemistry that goes into the plastics we make.”
Toray is known for its manufacturing of plastic packaging film for snack food such as cookies, crackers and granola bars, as well as industrial films used in tinted solar window film applications, he said.
One of Toray’s key employees, Matt Brown, is a general manager for a division within the company, Brandmeier said. Brown got his mechanical engineering degree from URI in 1988, Brandmeier said, and has played a pivotal role in introducing new products to market.
Brown introduced new packaging at the firm, designing a new film for military and soup pouches that peels evenly across the top of the pouch. The product is being used for MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), as well as for Campbell’s “Go Soup,” Brandmeier said.
More information about the project and ballot question can be found at www.engineering4ri.com. •

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