When many Rhode Islanders think about chemistry, they probably remember a challenging course they took in high school or college. What may not immediately come to mind, however, are jobs. Yet chemistry is absolutely essential to many industries, including those that provide good-paying jobs here in Rhode Island.
According to the American Chemistry Council, chemistry companies in Rhode Island directly employ more than 3,700 people and indirectly contribute more than 8,700 jobs.
For Toray Plastics (America), innovation by chemistry is at the heart of our success and growth. At our Quonset Business Park manufacturing facility, we are making some of the world’s most advanced high-tech plastics. We’re able to manufacture these advanced plastics and employ more than 600 Rhode Islanders thanks to chemistry. And in order to continue our success, we will need more qualified workers.
That’s why support for Ballot Question No. 2, to approve $61 million for the construction of a new state-of-the-art chemistry building at the University of Rhode Island, is so critical to creating good-paying jobs and helping Rhode Island’s economy move forward.
URI’s Chemistry Department is currently housed in Pastore Hall, which opened in 1953 when just 800 students took chemistry courses each year. Today, more than 6,000 students take chemistry courses, and about 40 percent of all URI degree programs require at least one chemistry course. A new chemistry building will triple the size of teaching space, double the space for research labs, and increase total student capacity in laboratories by more than 50 percent, from 1,200 to 1,900 students per semester. This additional capacity is seriously needed in order to address a critical bottleneck that has hampered growth in pharmacy, biotechnology, engineering, and many other fields.
In these difficult economic times, some people might say that we just can’t afford to spend tens of millions of dollars on a new building. But supporting Question No. 2 is more than just an investment in a physical building, it’s also a vote to invest in our state’s future infrastructure for research, innovation and 21st-century job growth.
URI is already attracting more than $100 million in research grants, and each outside research dollar brought in by the university contributes $1.67 either directly or indirectly to Rhode Islands’ economy. A modern chemistry facility will allow URI faculty to better compete for additional research grants and move promising scientific discoveries out of the lab and into the marketplace more rapidly. That is precisely the kind of innovation that helps companies like Toray develop new products.
There’s no question that chemistry is essential to many growing industries here. That’s why supporting Question No. 2 is so important for the education and creation of our 21st-century work force. •
Scott Van Winter is a vice president & general manager at Toray Plastics (America) Inc.
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