This spring, the University of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management will be teaming up to reopen the W. Alton Jones Campus.
The renovations and reopening of the campus will focus on increasing public access, recreation and opportunities for the new environmental education degree program, according to a press release that announced the reopening by Gov. Dan McKee and RIDEM on March 2.
In the expansion of public access, the 2300-acre campus will be available for use by all URI students, not just those in the environmental education program, according to chair of the environmental education program Sarah Sweetman. She noted the correlation between students being outside in natural spaces and their willingness to care and learn more about them.
“One of the things we know about improving our environment is the more collective we are, the more impact there’s going to be,” Sweetman said. “Getting the public involved is going to be an important part of that collective.”
There is no exact date yet on when these renovations will begin and when the West Greenwich campus can expect to be fully open, according to Sweetman.
“There’s a lot of steps that have to happen when universities get together with government agencies to make a collaboration,” Sweetman said. “It’s been closed for long enough that there is a little bit of upkeep and updating and maintenance that needs to happen before we have students really engaging.”
The environmental education students are the most enthusiastic about the WAJ campus reopening, according to Sweetman. They will now have a home base to practice building educational programs and lessons and inciting environmental hope.
“They want to apply it to actually help get programming started out there,” Sweetman said. “Their ideas are going to be more connected to what the students here want and what’s going to be really beneficial for the whole state.”
For the last two years, the environmental education practicums have looked like students working at local zoos and aquariums, the Audubon Society and the Compass School, according to Sweetman.
“We have gotten a EC4 Climate Change Education Grant,” Sweetman said. “They’re helping us build a repository of climate science education that’s going on in the state.”
Providing transportation for students and allowing Rhode Islanders to see the new vision of the campus will be the most prominent challenges in the reopening, according to Sweetman.
“Alton Jones was, for so many years, this amazing, beloved camp and field trip space,” Sweetman said. “I think that there’s lots of opportunity to take what we knew worked so well out there and try and bring it into something in today’s world that’s going to work for our students and the community.”
The reopening is a full circle moment for Sweetman, who worked as a field instructor for one year at the WAJ Campus after her undergraduate studies in the late 1990s.
“I felt like I learned as much in that year as I did in college,” Sweetman said. “I feel like from the beginning of my career to where I am right now, there is a synergy there.”
