Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design

News

Spring 2008

• Several students have won awards and/or scholarships. Kelly Poorman,a graduate student,  won the Costume Society of America award to attend the national meeting in New Orleans in late May. TMD major Lisa Marie Carroll won a Rainville Leadership Award for Team Excellence for her work on "We're Offering Women Wisdom." Ten sophomores and juniors won scholarships at the fifth annual Spring Splash (Michaela Kiley, Stephanie Nash, Stephanie Romano, Jasmine Souza, Jacki Floyd, Kelly Oliveira, Laura Tanzer, Stephanie Pati, Ashley Sayers, and Shannon Endander). 
•  This spring semester 27 of our majors are studying abroad.  Must be some kind of record!  18 are in Italy, 5 in Australia, 2 in France and one each in Greece and Spain.  This furthers our goal of making our students more globally aware.
• Last semester eleven students studied in New York City at Kent State University's New York Studio.  This opportunity will happen again this coming summer and we expect several more students to take advantage. 

• The Textile Conservation Lab remounted twelve Lesage embroidery samples from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.  They are now back on display at the school.

• Susan Hannel, Diane Martin and some students are being trained on the Lectra CAD system that the department won through a Champlin  Foundation grant.
• Fourteen students went on the Winter break study tour of London and Paris, led this year by Abby Lillethun.  In January 2007, Linda Welters led the tour: you can see photographs from the tour, and read Jenna Richards' journal .
• Martin Bide is half way through his two year term as President of the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists. In March, he attended meetings of two local AATCC sections in India.  In April, he represented AATCC at the Annual Day of Celebration of the Society of Dyers and Colorists in Bradford, UK
• The seminar class (TMD 402) is the "capstone class" for the department's majors. It runs with a different theme each spring semester, and features a series of guest speakers from industry. Linda Welters directed the Spring 2008 seminar on the theme of Sustainability. You can see all the details of past seminars: the Spring 2007 seminar was "Fashion for all Ages",  the Spring 2006 seminar was "Made in China", organized by Sook-Hyun Kim.  Susan Hannel led the 2005 seminar on  "The Art and Science of Fashion".  Past semesters have dealt with Current Issues in Retailing (2004) "Innovation" (2003),   Globalization in the Textile and Apparel Complex (2002), "The Future of Fashion." (2001), and  "Changing Demographics" (2000).  Follow the links to see the lists of speakers, and summaries of their talks.  
• Linda Welters are finishing up an NEH grant  to add data from RI's Quilt Documentation Project to a national database.  The work began in 2007 with the help of grad student Katie Baker, and continues through October.  Look out for a link to the study database!
• Martin Bide joined Billie Collier and Phyllis Tortora as a co-author for the 7th edition of "Understanding Textiles", which hit the bookshelves in April.  
• Students worked at a variety of internships last summer.  You can see where they were on our internship page. It will soon be time to organize this coming summer's internships!
• A postgraduate certificate in Fashion Merchandising was approved in 2005. Ryan Hagaman is completing the certificate program this spring.
• Grad students are busy. Sarah Moore, Sandy Aho, Katie Baker, Deb Siravo, Shey Desillier, and Mary Juillet-Paonessa are defending this spring.
• The spring semester sees continuing contributions from our cadre of part-time faculty.   Gideon Loewenstein (interior design), and Karl Aspelund (apparel design) are doing their usual sterling job.  George Dubois is teaching  the textile science lab (TMD 313), and Jan Doyle is teaching the weaving course (TMD358).  You can see their faces and bios on our "Lecturers" page.
• Karl has begun a Ph.D. program at Boston University, concentrating on design history.  His book "The Design Process" with Fairchild Publications has been widely adopted as a textbook.   The book explores the route of a design from the World of Imagination to the World of Objects, guiding the reader through seven stages of the journey. 
• Martin Bide is working with grad student Sarah Moore on  a two year, $75,000 grant from BioSurfaces of Ashland, MA to work on infection resistant sutures.  US Patent 7,037,527 for "Bifunctionalized polyester material for surface treatment and biomodification" was issued  on May 2, 2006 to URI and BioSurfaces  
• "The Fashion Reader" edited by Abby Lillethun and Linda Welters has been published by Berg.  It includes contributions from Ric McIntyre, Yngve Ramstead and Art Mead of URI's Economics Department.  Illustrations from Joy Emery and The Commercial Pattern Archive as well as URI Library's Special Collections are featured, along with photos of items from the Department's Historic Collection. Order your copy now!!

Return to TMD home page