Rhode Island College Digital Commons @ RIC What's News? Newspapers 3-28-2005 What's News At Rhode Island College Rhode Island College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/whats_news Recommended Citation Rhode Island College, "What's News At Rhode Island College" (2005). What's News?. 59. https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/whats_news/59 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Newspapers at Digital Commons @ RIC. It has been accepted for inclusion in What's News? by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RIC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. What’s News at Rhode Island College Vol. 25 Issue 10 Circulation over 50,000 March 28, 2005 Highlights Sherlock Center to hold forum on shortage In the News of special education teachers Sherlock Center forum to address need for special ed teachers Rhode Island College campus. The by Jane Fusco forum is part of a statewide effort Upward Bound future in doubt What’s News Editor to attract students and current teachers to a career in the various Gehrenbeck Lecture to disciplines of special education. highlight Albert Einstein The state The event is sponsored by RIC’s could face a Sherlock Center on Disabilities. The Features shortage of Sherlock Center was named for the over 600 special late Paul V. Sherlock, long-time RIC Liberian mother and daughter education professor, state representative and earn nursing degrees teachers by champion of disability services and 2006. Forum Visiting Fulbright professor education in Rhode Island. is part of a Tom DiPaola, director of special spends semester on campus statewide populations at the R.I. Department Kathleen Soares ’87 M’96 is a recruitment of Education, will be the keynote campaign to attract students speaker. Forum panelists Compassionate Friend and teachers of other subjects to include Barrie Grossi ’91, CSPD Museum boxcar exhibit created careers in special education. coordinator, special populations/ with help of RIC students R.I. Department of Education; Why is special education a good Anthony Antosh, director of RIC’s Foundation/Alumni career choice? RIC special education student teacher Sherlock Center; Julie Wollman- That will be the topic of Olu Jones (right) reads with a student Bonilla, interim dean of RIC’s Ellie O’Neill updates Alumni discussion in a forum to address from the Greystone Elementary School Feinstein School of Education and Association activities the impending shortage of special in North Providence. Human Development; Steve Imber, education teachers in the state, special education professor at RIC; and recruitment efforts to attract on April 12 at 3:30 p.m. in the Debra Abbruzzini, master teacher/ Sports new teachers to the profession, Student Union Ballroom on the Winter highlights Continued on page 15 Spring preview Where Are They Now? John Veader ’57, Jonette (Walker) Lopes ’93 Arts/Entertainment JAM@RIC, throughout April Wednesday Chamber Music Series: Stevie Holland, April 6; Jordan Rudess, April 20 Jeffrey Siegel’s Keyboard Conversations, April 7 Bannister Gallery studio jewelry display, April 7-29 Faculty Recital, April 14 The Pirates of Penzance, by RIC Theatre, April 14-17 National Acrobats of Taiwan, R.O.C., April 19 Index Looking Back 2 The World at RIC 2 Focus on Faculty and Staff 2 Foundation/Alumni News 4 (Not Just) Academically Speaking 5 Sports 6-7 Arts & Entertainment 9-11 Book Marks 14 MERCI BOXCAR: After fi ve years of restoration and refurbishment, the Merci train boxcar was unveiled in an exhibit at the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket. The boxcar, originally sent by the French in 1949, was found in a junkyard Faces of RIC 15 in 1999 after being lost for over 30 years. Students of adjunct professor George Marshall’s class conducted interviews of war veterans and used them for an interactive exhibit that portrays real-life war stories. See story on page 13. Page 2 — What’s News, Monday, March 28, 2005 Looking Back The World at RIC Here at What’s News, we will feature historical photos from the This regular feature of What’s has received College’s past. Please go to your scrapbooks and send us photos with News looks at the links between the thousands as much information as possible. All photos will be handled carefully world and Rhode Island College. of refugees and returned to sender. Send to: Rhode Island College, Office of News The story below was written by from war-torn and Public Relations, Kauffman Center, Providence, RI 02908. Richard A. Lobban Jr., professor of Liberia seeking anthropology and former director Temporary Protective Status. of the Program of African and Afro- Rhode Island is also home American Studies. to thousands of Nigerians, and To seek linkages between Li’l probably tens of thousands of Rhody and huge Africa might be Cape Verdeans. Consequently, a peculiar mission. Yet the ties RIC has many people from these are many, for almost the entire nations on our campus. Over the European history in America. years, there have been students, Yes, Rhode Island and Providence faculty, and guests speaking well Plantations was closely tied to over a score of African languages the slave shipping business. including Amharic, Arabic, This trade involuntarily brought Ashante, BaKongo, Coptic, Dinka, Africans from Ghana, Gambia, and Fur, Igbo, Krahn, Krioulo, Mande, the Slave Coast (modern Nigeria Manjaco, Nubian, Ovambo, Swahili, and Dahomey) to our state and Tigre, Vai, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, especially to the Caribbean and and Zulu, not to mention, French, Charlestown, S.C. Portuguese, and English. In the 18th century alone, more Over the years, largely due to the As our seniors prepare than 100,000 slaves were carried Shinn Study Abroad program, we to graduate, we thought it on Rhode Island ships. Less have sent RIC students to Egypt, would be fun to look back known is that the first slave trade Ghana, Kenya, and Morocco. For to 1985 when RIC gradu- business in Rhode Island was the Cape Verde we operated a joint ate Alfred Niquette found export of Pequot and Narragansett RIC/URI study abroad program a novel way to look for war captive slaves while the state there for three years. that first job: printing his was governed by Roger Williams. In 1981, the Sudan Studies résumé on a T-shirt. Most of these Native Americans Association was officially With a degree in com- went into lifelong exile in the incorporated in Rhode Island with munications and public Bahamas and Bermuda. I’ve been Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban and myself relations, Niquette reckoned the competition for a job in advertising down there and found modern being among the founders. The would be tough. He wanted an attention-getting entrée. descendants of those exported Sudan Studies Association has His prospective employers didn’t get an envelope (remember this was from New England. before email. They got a box with a card saying, “Try me on. I guarantee taken the leading academic role in A few of these Native Americans I’ll fit.” Underneath was a white T-shirt with Niquette’s résumé on the hosting non-partisan conferences front. from Rhode Island were even about all aspects of the Sudan. It “It worked,” Niquette told What’s News in 1986. “Out of 25 shirts sent transported to Africa to be sold supplies an international forum out, I got 20 interviews. Some people didn’t even have job openings, but there as slaves. Less appreciated for its 300 members to engage they said they had to meet ‘this T-shirt guy’. Even the receptionists were is that the famed Industrial in the complex debates on the looking for me. It was also a good way to feel out the company I was ap- Revolution at Slater’s Mill in north-south war and the peace plying to. I figured if they were stuffed shirts, I wouldn’t want to work for Pawtucket was built on slave- agreements just concluded as well them.” grown cotton from the South and as the current conflict in Darfur. He even got national attention when Reader’s Digest picked up the a substantial portion of the cloth Its regular newsletter has been story from a Rhode Island College news release. produced was for use as a trade published for almost a quarter of a Shortly thereafter, Niquette got a full-time position with Ducharme As- item in the slave trade. One may century. I have also taken scores of sociates, a public relations agency where he had interned during his time say that the start of maritime Rhode Islanders, including faculty at RIC. globalization was tied to our and students, to Egypt for tours of Today he is a senior regional service advisor, covering Alabama, state, as it had connections to the the antiquities there and we have Florida, Mississippi and Tennessee, for the McKesson Corporation, a Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. now started antiquarian tourism in healthcare services and information technology company. He is married To trade for slaves, half of Rhode northern Sudan. with three children and lives in Maitland, Fla. Island’s production of thousands Another link between the College And he has kept that knack for creating attention-getting résumés. He of “pipes” of rum was for export to and Africa is our Program of once applied for an internal promotion using a multimedia PowerPoint Africa. African and Afro-American Studies, presentation. The name Rhode Island College He got the promotion. which has been in existence for was first applied to Brown University Seniors, take note. over three decades. This program that was, in part, funded by money not only boasts an undergraduate from the slave trade and, in part, major or minor, but also has the even built by slave labor.