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2Nd Annual Report Cluster Topic Water and Water Resources

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2Nd Annual Report Cluster Topic Water and Water Resources 2nd Annual Report Cluster Topic Water and Water Resources Submitted by Akanda, A., Amador, J., Boving, T.*, Craver, V., Guilfoos, T., Johnson, K., Lohmann, R., Opaluch, J. * Contact: Tom Boving ([email protected]) May 31, 2014 A. Background Life on Earth depends on water and there is simply no substitute for it. Yet, humanity has degraded or depleted many sources of water and is now confronted with a severe water crisis that already affects large parts of the World. Humanity's response to the water crisis requires that scientists, engineers, economist and policy makers to work together and develop effective and sustainable strategies for managing this essential natural resource. For the foreseeable future, it is of vital importance to strive for an understanding of the compleX connections between the various compartments of the environment that influence the availability and quality of water on local and global scales. In an area that is critical to the Rhode Island and the world, and equally important, to student learning and future employment, the study of water enhances the magnitude and impact of learning and discovery at the University of Rhode Island. Consequently, URI decided to invest into a cluster of three new faculty positions that strategically address the most pressing issues of the 21st century: Safe, Sustainable, and Secure Water. The following provides an overview of the activities that completed the hiring process of three new water cluster faculty members. It also provides a perspective on the activities of the water cluster faculty during the Academic Year 2013/14. B. Summary of Activities The “Water Cluster” is a university wide initiative in which four Colleges (CELS, COE, A&S and GSO) and ten departments (BIO, CHE, CHM, CVE, GEO, LAR, NRS, PSC, PLS, and WRT) and several eXtension and outreach programs proposed to hire three new faculty members. In that proposal, we suggested to focus the hiring of new faculty in three strategic areas, namely (1) Water Resources and Quality, (2) Water Technology and Planning and (3) Economic and Policy Dimensions of Water Use. The water cluster hire proposal was submitted in April 2012 and approved in May 2012. The “Water Cluster” is one of four cluster proposals selected. The Water Cluster Search Committee (SC) was established in August 2012 and consisted of six faculty (incl. departmental affiliation): Jose Amador (NRS), Tom Boving (GEO/CVE), Vinka Craver (CVE), Kristin Johnson (POS), Rainer Lohmann (GSO), and Jim Opaluch (ENRE). Boving agreed to chair the committee. By March 2012, after screening and interviewing potential candidates, the SC recommended names for each of the three positions advertised. Two of the positions were successfully filled, while the search for position (1) Water Resources and Quality failed. The two new faculty members, who officially joined URI in August 2013, are Dr. Ali Akanda, Civil and Environmental Engineering (CVE; Position 2), and Dr. Todd Guilfoss, Environmental and Natural Resources Economics (ENRE; Position 3). The SC convened again in August 2013 to continue the search for the unfilled position. A revised job advertisement was submitted to and approved by both Affirmative Action (AA) and Human Resources (HR). The job was posted under the number 6001252 in mid-October. Simultaneously, the opening was advertised in diverse media outlets (hard copy and online editions). In each instance, the job was clearly advertised in the conteXt of the water cluster initiative. The SC began evaluating applications in November 2013. On Nov. 26, AA to put a ‘temporary hold’ on the search, which permitted the SC to review and rank all 82 application received to that date. Out of that pool, the SC selected 11 candidates for whom letters of recommendation were requested. Four of those candidates (Drs. Mascaro, Warner, Kayser, Pradhanang) were interviewed in January and February 2014. On Feb. 18, 2014, the SC informed the Deans of GSO, COE, CELS, and A&S that approval was granted by AA and HR to eXtend a conditional offer to Dr. Soni Pradhanang. The negotiations with Dr. Pradhanang were led by Dean Dr. Kirby (CELS). An offer was made to and accepted by Dr. Pradhanang in May 2014. By the time the search closed on May 20, the number of application had reached 108. Dr. Pradhanang is joining the Department of Geosciences in Fall 2014. The search committee was afforded $7,500 in support of the Water Cluster initiative. Much of that support (ca. $5,000) had to be used to advertise the position and to cover the costs of hosting the interviewee’s. Related Activities: • The Water Cluster has a presence on the internet: http://egr.uri.edu/waterE2S2 . While the website remains work in progress, it already is the portal to URI’s water research, the faculty and their students who work on water projects. • The Water Cluster faculty continues teaching a large number of water related courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. Just to highlight one, the Honors class HPR 411 Developing Sustainable Solutions for Developing Countries continues to attract URI’s best and brightest students. In Fall 2013, Drs. Craver and Boving tasked their students to design and build stormwater harvesting structures and debris removal technologies. One of the students presented the projects during a meeting with other students and faculty in Indonesia in January 2014. • The Rhode Island Stormwater Technology Demonstration (RI STD) site at Flagg Road was funded by the RI Dept. Transportation and the URI Transportation Center (URI TC). The RI STD facility offers the Water Cluster members access to a fully equipped stormwater quality research field site right on campus. Besides new water treatment technologies, such as tree filters, it features a solar power work and storage structure. That structure, including the solar panels, was installed by URI students. • Dr. Craver is chairing the Second International Environmental Engineering Education conference (Asociación Interamericana de Ingeniería Sanitaria y Ambiental) (http://egr.uri.edu/dicei2014/). The conference was held on the Kingston Campus May TBB ! 5/22/2014 12:28 PM 21 through 22, 2014 and featured professors, researchers, and practitioners from South, Deleted: will be Central and North America, including URI. That conference provided an opportunity for TBB ! 5/22/2014 12:29 PM our Water Cluster faculty to connect with researchers from the Americas. Deleted: 0 • The Water Cluster is actively engaged with prominent research universities in Indonesia. TBB ! 5/22/2014 12:29 PM Deleted: 1 One of the first accomplishments resulting from this new collaboration was a class of 12 TBB ! 5/22/2014 12:29 PM URI students visiting Indonesia during the January J-term 2014. During this two-week Deleted: s visit, our students engaged with their Indonesian counterparts and collaborated on TBB ! 5/22/2014 12:29 PM Deleted: s community water projects. More important, the students experienced first-hand what it means to live and work in a developing country. This J-Term eXperience has been an eye-opening eXperience for our students and we hope to make this trip a permanent feature of the Water Cluster. • With support from the National Ground Water Research and Educational Foundation, we will host Dorthe Wildenschild, Ph.D., who is the 2014 Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecture Series. Dr. Wildenschild is an associate professor in the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering at Oregon State University and will in talk about groundwater science. The Darcy lecture is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 30, 2014. • Dr. Guilfoos is chairing the planning committee for the Northeast Agricultural and Resource and Economics Association workshop planned for summer of 2015, which is hosted by the University Rhode Island in Newport. The theme of this workshop is on water quality economics and will attract many eXperts in water economics and water quality modeling to the area for possible collaboration with the Water Cluster faculty. Other Accomplishments: • Submission of a Concept Paper to the U.S. Agency for International Development (US AID), Indonesia (May 2014). Titled “Yogyakarta Center of EXcellence in Water”, the paper proposes to forge cadres of Indonesian “Water Leaders” by integrating innovative education methods, cutting-edge research, and hands-on traineeship centered on the management of water quality, quantity, and infrastructure. That program will be first hosted at URI and later integrated into the future Center of EXcellence in Water in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. • The water cluster is preparing a proposal to the NSF Traineeship Program (NRT). Water Cluster member Dr. Craver is leading the proposal preparation and submission. She is assisted by Water Cluster Co-PI Drs. Boving, Amador, Johnson, Guilfoos, Akanda, Lohman and Opaluch. The proposal is due on June 24, 2014. • Dr. Craver received an NSF CAREER award to study the effect of long term eXposure of nanomaterials to aquatic environmentally relevant microorganism • Drs. Craver and Boving received funding from RIDOT to evaluate the seasonal performance of best management practices for stormwater runoff containment and treatment. General Comments about the Search Process: • Should the search fail the first time around and the search remains open, HR will not pay for bringing in a new set of candidates. We had to use cluster start-up funding to cover the on- campus interviews. • Future cluster searches have to take into account that the cost of the job advertisements is likely higher than is covered by HR. We had to use cluster start-up funding to cover the difference. • The HR allowances for lunches and dinners do not even remotely cover the true eXpenses of hosting the candidates and the search committee. We had to use cluster start-up funding to cover the difference. • HR has narrowly defined reimbursement rules according to which each candidate can stay for only one night.
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