Suilou Huang Graduates
I: The Ceremony

    Suilou Huang officially received her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island in May 2000. She came here several years ago from China, where she had received a B.S. in chemistry and an M.S. in physical chemistry from Sun-Yatsen University in Guangzhou. She got an M.S. in oceanography here in 1995, with a thesis on sources and transport of lead in aerosols over Bermuda. Her advisor was Dr. Richard Arimoto of GSO. She then continued into the Ph.D. program and focused on broader aspects of transport over the North Atlantic in a thesis entitled "Trace Elements Over the North Atlantic Ocean: Sources and Transport Pathways," again with Dr. Arimoto as advisor. She defended it in May 1999 and then accepted a postdoctoral position in the Physics Department at New Mexico Tech, Socorro.
    In an unusual move, Suilou followed up her Ph.D. work with an M.S. in statistics from URI, for which Prof. James Heltshe was her advisor. That thesis was entitled "A Computer Intense Method for Comparing Aerosol and Precipitation at Narragansett, Rhode Island."
    Graduation was held on Saturday, 20 May 2000, in URI's Mackal Field House. Accompanying Suilou were her husband Eric, her six-year-old son Kim, and Eric's parents, who are visiting from China. I stood in for Dr. Arimoto, who was unable to be present. The pictures below were taken by Eric and me, with a little help from Kim. Enjoy!

Here is the line-up of some of the professors who had students graduating. In the center of the picture are Phyllis Brown of Chemistry and Dan Urish of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Faculty members getting ready to take their seats after processing to the front of the field house. The woman with the young chemist is Jimmie Oxley of the Chemistry Department. Her husband, Jim Smith, is just to the right.

URI oceanographers will recognize Elijah Swift, second from left. The Oxley-Smith family is on the right.

Showing the proper respect, the graduating students entered and took their seats after the faculty.

Master's candidates moving to their seats behind the Ph.D. candidates.

The dignitaries on the platform.

The Ph.D. candidates and their professors would walk to the platform by means of the ramp on the right, with the candidates on the left so that the audience could see them clearly. (You can see a pair at the right edge of the platform.) After being announced, they would proceed to the middle of the platform, where Provost Beverly Swan would help the professors hood the candidate (thus confirming all students' suspicions that professors continually need help). Then they would move to the left end of the platform, where URI President Robert Carothers would congratulate them and hand the degree to the student.

In the middle of this photo you can see yellow-shirted Kim photographing Ken. If you look closely, you can even see the light-blue display of the digital camera that Kim is using.

The student's-eye view of the goings-on. Any resemblance between this fence and those used in midwestern stockyards is strictly coincidental.

A happy Suilou leaving the ceremony.

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