As the song’s lyrics go, it’s Summertime, and the livin’ is easy… but not if you are one of the more ambitious students in the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences.

A check of the college rosters shows that many students have decided to further their education by seeking experiences in their fields of interest. And if they can do that work in some nifty places like Hawaii or the British Virgin Islands, all the better.

Take Julie Furmanski (shown above) for instance. She did not have to travel far from the URI campus for her summer work. She is a volunteer at the Mystic Aquarium taking care of seals and penguins. She cleans their areas and pools, feeds them each day.

Furmanski, who will be a junior in the fall, wants to get into marine mammal training and feels that the volunteer work at Mystic will give heressential experience. She previously worked in admissions at Mystic and that gave her an “in” to be a volunteer.

When she’s not at Mystic, she works two days a week in the accounting office at the Bay Campus—a paying job. After all, says the Brooklyn, Conn., resident, there are tuition bills to be paid.

Thanks to a post-doc who appreciated her volunteer work, Laura Chartier is spending more than two months in the Hawaiian Islands and needless to say she is enjoying every minute of it.

Chartier, who will be a senior in the fall, got the opportunity for a Hawaiian “vacation” when the post doc she was working for offered to bring her out there in May.

She spends much of the day in a lab studying tissues from California halibut, extracting DNA and running data for a population genetics study.

She works at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology which has marine facilities on Coconut Island, a short boat ride off the east coast of Oahu. Her day starts around 7:30 a.m. followed by several hours in the lab and then some recreational strolls about the island which she says is only about a mile in circumference.

Asked about the weather, she says she misses the rain and snow in her native Cranston but intends to go to grad school in either California or Hawaii to continue working with fish.

Kathleen Hoffman, a senior who is an animal science major, is enjoying working this summer with Dr. Conrad Jones, DVM, who specializes in treating horses.

Hoffman said she was most fortunate to land the volunteer internship because there are only two equine veterinarians in the state.

It all started when she attended a veterinary presentation put on by Dr. Darlene E. Jones, DVM, a professor in the Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science. She brought her husband to the class. “I latched onto him like a fungus,” says Hoffman, explaining that while she had some experience handling small animals, she had none handling large ones.

She works with Dr. Conrad Jones one day a week. Starting in the morning, she helps him choose and place gear and medicines into his truck and then they hit the road, usually all day. Most times it is easier for the vet to make house (or stable) calls than to bring them to his facility, Oceanside Equine Associates.

The stable calls can involve a variety of procedures including sterilization, vaccination, annual exams and medical and handling problems. The work is physically difficult and of course a horse vet is almost always working outside, winter and summer. Jones’ office is on Tower Hill road in South Kingstown but it has no advertising sign—with only two equine vets in the state, both have more business than they can handle.

Contrary to the popular perception, horse owners are not all affluent, says Hoffman. There are many horse owners who are of modest means and either have modest facilities or have to board their animals. “The clients are all across the board,” says Hoffman.

Hoffman, 28, comes late to the veterinary field. She started out at the New York Maritime College studying engineering but after two years felt she had to leave to get her bearings. She worked in Manhattan for five years for a firm that performed energy management services such as audits of heating and air conditioning systems and then decided to return to Rhode Island.

She wanted to work in a veterinary clinic but without experience in handling small animals she found no open doors. She then started a dog grooming business and that gave her enough handling experience to be hired as a veterinary technician. She then found her goal—she wants to go to veterinary school and next spring should get her pre-vet degree.

A native of Norwood, Mass., she now lives in Bristol, RI and, no, she does not own a horse. She would like to some day, though. “I love horses. When you walk into a stable and that smell hits you—to me, it’s just like candy.”

Sara MacSorley majors in marine biology and while she has done lab and field research, she is more interested in spreading the word about marine biology. She found the perfect opportunity toward that end right at URI.

This summer, she has been busy at the Bay Campus working on four outreach programs for the Office of Marine Programs and the professional Graduate School of Oceanography.

She started off helping prepare for young journalists who were accepted into the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting. The week-long program is designed to hone reporters’ skills in covering science.

Then MacSorley helped with the ARMADA Program, which brings in science teachers (14 this year), gives them a week of training and then sends them out on research vessels to assist scientiests in their research projects. These teachers are then required to mentor other teachers for two years. The idea is to create an “armada” of science teachers who will help other teachers, says Sara Hickox director of The Office of Marine Programs at GSO.

After that MacSorley was involved in the Science and Engineering Program for Rhode Island middle and high school teachers. This program is a joint venture with MIT and involves video conferencing.

Finally MacSorley is helping with the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year program that has the unbelievable goal of documenting all organisms in the ocean. MacSorley is in the process of assembling a giant PDF of links for the census.

“Sara has been our designated pinch hitter for the summer,” says Hickox.

MacSorley, a native of Maryland, says she knew she wanted to get into marine biology since she was 8 and first visited the aquarium in Baltimore.

“I’ve done research in the past,” says the URI senior, “but this summer I wanted exposure to the educational side,” she says, adding she plans on grad school and wants to enter the field of informal marine education and outreach aspect of marine biology.

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