Five Questions With: Anthony Marchese

Anthony Marchese is the dean for the University of Rhode Island College of Engineering. Marchese became dean of the university’s engineering college in February.

Marchese spoke with Providence Business News about how URI is keeping up with the engineering industry and how the engineering college will be involved in shaping the state’s blue economy.

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PBN: How much is the engineering industry evolving and how is the engineering program at URI keeping up with it?

MARCHESE: As the flagship public research university, it’s incumbent upon the University of Rhode Island to be responsive to the changing needs of our citizens. Our role in the College of Engineering is to develop the technology workforce necessary for Rhode Island to remain economically competitive, to provide technological solutions to society’s most pressing problems through world-class research, and to serve as an economic catalyst by transforming the results of our research to create jobs.

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Some of the major challenges that we will face in the years to come – such as climate change, access to affordable health care, aging infrastructure, etc. – also provide opportunities for technological solutions that will transform our economy. The College of Engineering at URI is constantly changing and evolving to meet these needs. This is what the engineering profession has always done and will always do.

Indeed, our eight accredited undergraduate engineering programs are required by our accreditation board to constantly evolve to the changing needs of society and our graduate research programs continually evolve based on the research needs of those that fund our work, which includes NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], the Department of Energy and many others.

PBN: What local engineering firms does URI have partnerships with?

MARCHESE: The College of Engineering at URI continues to receive strong support in a variety of ways from local industry. For example, Toray Plastics (America) [Inc.], FM Global, Hexagon [Manufacturing Intelligence], and Taco [Comfort Solutions] have all contributed philanthropically to the college in recent years and they, and other firms, provide funding and mentoring support for our Senior Capstone Design students. The Naval Undersea Warfare Center, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Pratt & Whitney are among a list of institutions who support our faculty and students by partnering with us on funded sponsored research programs.

Finally, we are honored to have relationships with those companies who invest in the future of our students and our workforce through internships and job placement. In addition to those external partners already named above, the growing list of employers that count on us to educate their future workforce include Amgen [Inc.], Dimeo [Construction Co.], Gilbane [Building Co.], Raytheon [Co.], Pare Corp., GZA GeoEnvironmental, Rite-Solutions [Inc.], Steere Engineering [Inc.] and many more.

PBN: URI is playing a major role in wanting to shape Rhode Island’s blue economy. How will the engineering department at the university be involved with that?

MARCHESE: All you need to do is look at a map to see how integral the ocean is to the state of Rhode Island. That interplay creates both challenges and opportunities. How do we create a diverse economy with high-quality, high-paying jobs for our citizens while maintaining the natural beauty of our shoreline? How do we maintain Rhode Island’s role as a unique tourist attraction while ensuring our citizens have access to affordable housing to raise a family?

We can solve those challenges by investing in the blue economy of tomorrow and the College of Engineering is pleased and poised to be a key contributor in URI’s efforts. These efforts include revitalizing URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus, which our Ocean Engineering Department shares with our partners in the Graduate School of Oceanography.

Developing new facilities, which include a new ocean robotics laboratory and ocean engineering complex, will enable us to perform multidisciplinary research with our partners in oceanography and environment and life sciences on undersea exploration, wind power, fisheries management, undersea defense, coastal resiliency and climate change. This research will have a direct path to commercialization at the Bay Campus in our planned Blue Tech Innovation Center, which will include incubation space for blue tech startup companies.

Other blue economy initiatives include our National Institute for Undersea Vehicle Technology in partnership with General Dynamics Electric Boat Division, NUWC [Naval Undersea Warfare Center], UConn [University of Connecticut], and the Smart Bay Initiative, to name just a few.

PBN: How much has the pandemic impacted the engineering sector, and how much of a need is there for locally skilled engineers?

MARCHESE: While the pandemic has changed the way we work and live, it has only underscored the need for a highly trained workforce in the engineering and technology sector. URI engineering graduates are in high demand in all areas, whether it be Amgen hiring our chemical engineering students, numerous engineering consulting firms hiring our civil engineering students, or NUWC and Electric Boat hiring our mechanical, ocean and electrical engineers, just to name a few.

We are seeing a lot of pent-up demand from employers who are thrilled to be able to conduct in-person interviews with our students as we emerge from the pandemic.

PBN: What new engineering programs, if any, are in the works at URI?

MARCHESE: As I mentioned above, our profession and our programs are continually evolving. At the same time, an undergraduate engineering degree in one of the major disciplines is extremely valuable. This is why, for example, our world-renowned International Engineering program is a five-year degree that enables our students to obtain an engineering degree in any one of our eight undergraduate programs simultaneously with a B.A. in Chinese, French, German, Italian or Spanish.

So, while we are always on the lookout for potential new programs that are responsive to changing societal needs, the most important thing is that we provide our students with a solid engineering education with the recognition that they will need to be lifelong learners.

Indeed, one area where we can do even more is to provide additional opportunities for continuing education and training for our alumni who are already satisfied customers. Such offerings don’t need to be full graduate degree programs but could be a series of courses – or a certificate program – in emerging areas such as big data, machine learning, systems engineering and others. Keeping in mind that I have only been on the job six weeks, these are the opportunities I have been thinking about.

James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.