a Roger Williams University professor and her students find answers and insights in Narragansett Bay

by Reza Corinne Clifton

This summer, when you take your first plunge into Rhode Island's cool ocean waves, or as you're looking down during a lazy sail ride on the bay - take a look at your surroundings and take a long look at that seaweed. Is it the same color you remember from last year? From the year before that? What about from ten, twenty or thirty years ago?

It may not be the same seaweed. It may be a type of red seaweed that appeared relatively recently in Rhode Island's waters, or perhaps another variation all together. Additionally, there may be other implications besides finding different colored plant and slime between your toes and in your bathing suit. “There are lots of examples of invasive species that have come in and eliminated local species. They have ruined lots of coral reefs, fish, and other organisms,” said Marcie Marston, Ph.D – associate professor in biology at Roger Williams University in Bristol.

“They can take over and alter ecosystems . . . make it like a big monoculture,” she continued during a recent interview for She Shines. She refers primarily to findings on about an invasive seaweed that arrived and altered parts of the Mediterranean Sea. “Picture a big forest with all the diversity in the plants, animals, and organisms. Now imagine it as one big cornfield,” illustrates the 12-year Roger Williams University professor who, several years ago, joined colleagues at the university and abroad in tracing the movement of the then new-to-Rhode Island seaweed.

The curious discovery was made by an undergraduate student at the university, who found samples of it doing research for a class. When the student tried searching for it in a research guide of Rhode Island seaweed, it was not included.

Marston, one out of three women in the 14 member department, does not hesitate to reveal that it was the findings of an undergraduate student that caught the attention of her and her other advanced-degree colleagues and professors. Unlike the biology departments at many other colleges and universities, “Roger Williams University does not have a masters or Ph.D level program,” explains Marston. Therefore all the research done there is by undergraduates, and “undergraduates,” boasts Marston, “have contributed to great knowledge of the [Narragansett] Bay.”

In a Roger Williams University research lab, Professor Marcie Marston and her students look at flasks of marine phytoplankton from the bay. From left to right, Christine Logue, junior marine biology and chemistry major; Christopher Amrich, sophomore biology and chemistry major; Jacqueline Urankar, junior marine biology major; and Marston. photo courtesy of Roger Williams University

The kind of knowledge Marston talks about is not limited to predictions of water systems with loss of native traditions and indigenous cultures. It also contributes to a local understanding of more current problems, like the ecological consequences of dumping sewage in Narragansett Bay. “Especially because it's the bay and therefore Rhode Island - focused,” explains Marston, the research conducted is applicable to our immediate human needs.

But like those who encourage producing art for art's sake rather than to package and sell life's lessons and messages, Marston also encourages science for science sake. “My approach to teaching is allowing the students to see how science works; to ask the questions and learn about what we don't know.”

And many asking the questions are women. “More than half of our students,” explains Marston, “or maybe 60 - 40 are women.” In addition, most of the students that have worked and researched very closely with Marston, she reflects, have been women. Yet this is a difference you see in biology and medicine, explains Marston, where unlike engineering or physics, these two sciences and fields see more women than men.

Read more about Marston and the red seaweed findings in Roger Williams University's magazine, The Bridge, Spring Edition 2005, at http://www.rwu.edu/depository/bridge/Bridge_spring05.pdf .

Reza Corinne Clifton is the publisher and editor of http://www.RezaRitesRi.com, a news and events website for Rhode Island's ethnically, artistically, and socially diverse. She also regularly contributes articles and photographs to several print and online publications, and works as acommunity development specialist at the Urban League of Rhode Island.
photo courtesy of Clifton