Daily
Herald
the Brown
vol. cxlvi, no. 8
Friday, February 4, 2011
Since 1891
U. boosts research funding
At Emory, Simmons confronts slavery
By Sahil Luthra Senior Staff Writer
By jake comer Senior Staff Writer
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Courtesy of Inform Studio
A new bridge designed to connect the East Side with the Jewelry District will feature a cafe and terrace with seating.
Bridge to link East side, Jewelry District By Caitlin Trujillo Senior Staff Writer
The city of Providence has chosen a design for a pedestrian bridge to link the East Side to the Jewelry District, though budget problems leave the timeline for the project in doubt. The bridge would join College Hill to the new home of the Alpert Medical School, which is set to open in 2012. The design competition winner, Michigan-based Inform Studio, was announced in December after a selection committee presented the top two choices — which
also included a design from local firm Studio Providence — to then-Mayor David Cicilline ’83 for final selection. According to Inform Studio’s description, the bridge will include a cafe on the lower deck, a terrace to the south with available seating, water jets near the Dorrance Street entrance and an extension of the proposed western waterfront park that would incorporate a garden into the deck’s access points. The selection committee chose the winning design based on its potential to attract residents and
By Sarah forman Staff Writer
When Charlie Wood ’10 wants to withdraw his monthly paycheck, he leaves home at 4:30 a.m. and spends five hours traveling through southeastern Africa in the back of a pickup truck alongside 20 to 30 people, produce for
Feature
Herald file photo
Stuart Theater, which most recently housed Kym Moore’s staging of “Pippin,” will feature “As You Like It” in March. See the full theater roundup on page 4.
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Streamlining
way the school is organized — or not organized — to be precise,” Wood wrote. “It wasn’t until the second week that I got my schedule and kids started showing up.” Although Wood said he has to sweep dead insects out of his “really, really nice” home every morning and can expect many of his students to leave school before his classes begin because the teachers of other classes never showed up, he insisted that “(I) can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.” Part of the allure of the Peace Corps is its promise of complete integration into local culture, since volunteers live in the same conditions as their community members and see few other Americans, according to the organization’s website. Jeanine Chiu ’10 said the chance to see a developing nation at a “grassroots level” compelled her to sign up as a Peace Corps volunteer in south-
Recent structural changes to the Office of the Vice President for Research contributed to the growth in funds by encouraging grant proposals, Briant said. Last February, the Organizational Review Committee — a task force working to cut $14 million from this year’s budget — outlined recommendations to, among other things, facilitate the grant proposal process. The recommendations included using the Office of Sponsored Projects to help with grant contracts and subcontracts and creating a consolidated center that would provide administrative support in areas such as grant proposals, according to an ORC report released last February. But the University opted not to provide research support through a consolidated administrative center and reorganized Briant’s office instead. As a result, “a number of backlogs in the office have gone away,” Briant said. “For example, we have overseen all of the subcontracts that are associated with our awards, and we feel that that’s going extremely smoothly now. But in general, I think it’s just the overall processing has flowed out in a very nice sequence.”
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Peace Corps’ challenge lures students abroad
T e a r s o f a c lo w n
news...................2-4 Arts........................5 editorial..............6 Opinions...............7 SPORTS...................8
ability to connect the two parks on either side of the Providence River, said Mike McCormick, the University’s assistant vice president of planning, design and construction, as well as a member of the bridge’s selection committee. As part of the selection process, the city displayed the contestants’ designs in City Hall, so the public could provide feedback, which the city’s Department of Planning and Development shared with the selection committee, McCormick said. Each design team’s
a local market, a few chickens and a goat. Once he makes it to the closest city — Nampula — he stops at the bank, turns around and starts the whole process over again. The lack of transportation was only one of the difficulties Wood faces as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching physics to eighth and 11th grade students in a rural village in Mozambique, he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “The most challenging aspect of the Peace Corps so far has definitely been getting used to the
D&C
Taxing Sin
The registrar gets coal — find out why
Fast ’12 opposes tax on ‘unhealthy goods’
Diamonds & Coal, 6
Opinions, 7
weather
Almost a decade after the University began examining its own historical ties to slavery, President Ruth Simmons delivered the keynote speech at “Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies,” a conference hosted by Emory University, last night. At the conference, which runs until Feb. 6, representatives from universities across the country will address the role slavery has played in the developments of their schools and how to come to terms with those aspects of their histories. It is “somewhat distressing how unnecessary people thought it was for so many decades” to confront the role of slavery in the history of universities in the country, Simmons told The Herald. “It’s all about demonstrating how important it is for the university,” she said. Simmons’ speech is titled “From the Shadows to Plain Sight: Slavery
After taking steps to streamline administrative support for research and to secure additional grants, the University has seen a 37 percent increase in sponsored research this fiscal year. Some departments still continue to fight for scarce funds, even though others have seen their awards double. Brown received $179.7 million in research grants for the fiscal year that ended in June, said Clyde Briant, vice president for research. Of these, Brown secured approximately $27 million from funds made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Obama. Although the one-time boost from stimulus funds contributed to the overall increase, other funding avenues rose 16 percent from levels consistent over the past few years, Briant said. “It’s a really positive statement about the faculty and their interest in sponsored funding and the good job that they do to attract it,” he added.
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