(Published 07/30/05, Issue 20-16) What could Rhode Island accomplish if it took some of its brightest scientific minds, honed their policy-making and outreach skills, then put them to work protecting and enhancing the state’s coastal resources?

Could they clean up the rivers that funnel into Narragansett Bay? Promote environmentally conscious development while preserving wetlands? Put an end to fish kills and shellfish contamination?

In what University of Rhode Island leaders describe as a major coup, the school is getting more than $3 million from the National Science Foundation to put that concept to the test, enlisting 25 doctoral students to tackle some of the biggest threats to the state’s coastal environment. The grant is part of NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, which provides interdisciplinary training opportunities and real-world exposure for scientists and engineers, aiming to produce strong leaders who can solve problems, help shape public policy, and educate their communities about critical issues.

IGERT grants are competitive: This year, only 20 of about 500 proposals were funded, URI officials said; URI’s was the only program dealing with coastal issues.

“Without the depth of many other research universities in any one discipline, URI has chosen to be among the leaders in the nation on interdisciplinary work,” said URI President Robert L. Carothers. “With this grant, our faculty has been recognized not just for their individual talents, but for their ability to combine their talents for a collective purpose.”

“This is an exciting day,” said Gov. Donald L. Carcieri at an event to announce the grant Aug. 4 in Wakefield. URI is a major player in environmental protection in Rhode Island, he noted, especially effective because it works closely with local, state and federal agencies – as well as groups such as Save the Bay and The Nature Conservancy – to tackle problems.

“I’m very happy to see this happening,” Carcieri said. Protecting Rhode Island’s coastline is “not only the right thing to do,” he said, but because it’s such a key part of the state’s appeal, “there’s all kinds of spinoff economic development opportunities.”

The students in the new program will work with state agencies and environmental groups on issues such as land use, conservation of biodiversity, water quality, economic development, fisheries management, suburban sprawl and bay health.

The IGERT fellows are all pursuing doctorates at URI’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences and the Graduate School of Oceanography, and they’ll be dividing their time between the program and their regular studies, said Peter August, director of URI’s Coastal Institute and a co-director of the new initiative.

The first cohort, five women and two men who applied for fellowships in the spring, after URI heard it was likely to get the IGERT grant, come from “an incredible diversity of backgrounds,” August said, and the focus of their studies runs the gamut: natural resource economics and science, biological and geological oceanography, marine affairs.

In the fall, they’ll begin with an introduction to interdisciplinary, real-world work, learning how to “dissect” environmental problems, looking not just at the science, but at social, political and ethical implications, August said. They’ll also hear from top scientists.

In January, the team will spend a week on a “leadership retreat” with humanities professors who will help them hone their communications and negotiating skills. Then, in the spring semester, they’ll be “embedded” in the R.I. Department of Environmental Management and various agencies involved in coastal issues, producing “white papers” on topics of interest to those agencies and gaining hands-on experience.

Next summer, they’ll work on Rhode Island’s rivers and in Narragansett Bay. In the fall, they’ll help train the next cohort, and then in the spring of their second year, they’ll be assigned full time to an outside agency, doing more in-depth work.

“We are taking our best and brightest young minds and putting them to work developing solutions to the coastal challenges we face in Rhode Island,” August said.