The concept for a Coastal Institute developed in the late 1980s. Robert Duce, the dean of GSO at the time, put the creation of a coastal institute on the University radar screen with its inclusion in the 1988 Annual Report for the Graduate School of Oceanography. From the very beginning, the fundamental principles of the Coastal Institute have remained firm.

      It is instructive to review what the Coastal Institute is not: The Institute does not administer academic programs. Development and delivery of curriculum rightly belongs to the excellent departments and colleges of the University. The Institute does not lobby, advocate, or write regulations; these activities would compromise the neutrality of the program.
      While it is true that the academic community cannot be accused of working too hastily, it is a community that takes the time to examine every proposal and its ramifications with care. It took more than a decade to assemble the key elements of the portfolio that defines the Coastal Institute. A milestone event in 1990 turned the concept into a physical reality. The citizens of Rhode Island handily approved a bond referendum of $7 million to build the Coastal Institute (CI) on Narragansett Bay. The building was completed in 1996 and fully embodies the mission of the Institute. Scientists who conduct both basic and applied research, outreach programs (Sea Grant, Office of Marine Programs, the Metcalf Institute), and the public converge at the Coastal Institute on Narragansett Bay to examine and resolve environmental issues in coastal ecosystems.
      State funds that were used to build the Coastal Institute on Narragansett Bay were leveraged to obtain a construction grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Coastal Institute building on URI's main campus in Kingston. The late Tom Weaver, Chairman of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (ENRE), worked tirelessly for three years to secure funding for this component of the Institute. He envisioned a place where natural resource scientists and resource economists would work together on the social and the environmental dimensions of coastal problems. In January 2001, the building was finished. It houses the offices and research labs of the ENRE and Natural Resources Science departments. Furthermore, many outreach programs including the natural resource and environmental management team of Cooperative Extension, the Watershed Watch Program, and the Rhode Island Natural History Survey are housed in the Coastal Institute in Kingston.
      Concurrent with the construction of these buildings, the institutional charter for the Coastal Institute was developed. In 1998 the Board of Governors for Higher Education approved the creation of the Coastal Institute. In June 2000, I was appointed as its first director. It was instantly clear to me that the opportunities before the Coastal Institute were so abundant and diverse that I needed to recruit other members of the University community to assist in launching this initiative. Art Gold, a watershed hydrologist; Candace Oviatt, a marine ecologist; Judith Swift, a communications professor; and Steve Olsen, an expert in coastal zone management systems, all agreed to serve as associate directors of the Coastal Institute.
      The Coastal Institute is now fully engaged in carrying out its mission. Some of the initiatives are:
      The Partnership for Narragansett Bay (PNB)—The CI is the institutional home for the PNB. The Partnership consists of public, private, and non- government agencies working to ensure an economically and environmentally viable future for Narragansett Bay and coastal Rhode Island. The concept of the PNB originated at the Bay Summit Conference in April 2000, and the CI was chosen to be the institutional home of the program. (www.ci.uri. edu/projects/pnb)
      Fisheries Management in Rhode Island—The Governor and leaders of the Rhode Island Senate and House of Representatives requested that the CI serve as the neutral setting where a multitude of issues and ideas on managing commercial fisheries in the State could be presented and debated. This is an incredibly complex issue, which is affected by biology, economics, law, cultural preservation and diversity, and social equity. The Institute has convened a series of meetings and forums to begin dissecting the issues and identifying the management options available to our regulatory agencies. (www. ci.uri.edu/projects/rifish.)
      Scientific Response to Oil Spills in Coastal Rhode Island—The Institute has convened a series of planning meetings to identify how the scientific community should be mobilized in the first moments of environmental emergencies in the Bay and coastal Rhode Island. Critical data on the source and amount of spilled materials must be gathered immediately so that a containment plan can be developed. In cooperation with members of the University community and other partner agencies, this group is coordinating the sequence of events that must occur to ensure that the necessary scientific data are collected accurately and rapidly. (See article by James Quinn.)
      The Pulses of the Bay—With the leadership of Sara Hickox, director of the Office of Marine Programs, the Coastal Institute is helping to develop a public display and research venue where real-time data reflecting the condition of Narragansett Bay (including tides, temperature, dissolved oxygen, sounds, wind) can be examined using several technologies including virtual reality systems, the Internet, and interactive displays. The Smithsonian Institution and Heritage Harbor Museum in Providence are partners in this project. The display, to be housed in part at the Coastal Institute on Narragansett Bay, will consolidate real-time data and make it accessible to the research community and the public.
      Web Access to Reliable Data and Information—The Coastal Institute is heavily involved in using the Internet to bridge the gap between the research community and the public. One example of this is the Narragansett Bay web portal (www. narrbay.org) that serves as a gateway to data and environmental information for the Bay. The Coastal Institute is working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory and the Narragansett Bay Program at DEM to build the system. Another example is the watershed management web portal for New England being developed with the United States Department of Agriculture with the leadership of Art Gold of the URI Department of Natural Resources Science. The purpose of this system is to provide simple and efficient access to state-of-the-art watershed management programs throughout the country.
      The CI is a supporter of the Sustainable Communities Initiative, which will offer the University's Honors Colloquium in the fall semester of 2001. This four-month colloquium entitled "A Just and Sustainable Future: Overcoming Barriers to Action" will examine the role of sustainability research and outreach and will work with a number of groups from outside the university to forge a vision and plan for a sustainable southern New England.
      The CI is also planning numerous seminars and public events designed to bring interested constituents—from schoolchildren to lawmakers, from scientists to tourists— together to consider the current and future challenges of preserving our coastal regions for future generations.

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