Williams Geosciences Professor Awarded NSF Grant to Study Boulder Beach Response to Storms

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Rónadh Cox, the Edward Brust professor of geology and mineralogy at Williams College, has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The three-year, $340,000 grant will support her research on how boulder beaches respond to storms and how they change over time.

Boulder beaches record wave action on stormy coastlines, but surprisingly little is known about them. Cox's NSF-funded project, titled "Boulder Beaches: The Understudied Archive on High-Energy Coasts," aims to increase understanding of their dynamic evolution. The study focuses on 22 sites in Ireland, which has a wide range of boulder-beach settings, so that the results will be applicable to other locations world-wide. 

Using a combination of state-of-the-art aerial photogrammetry and hands-on field measurements, she will determine how factors such as wave energy, coastal geometry, topography, geology and boulder sizes control beach morphologies. As the first multi-parametric study of boulder beaches and how it responds to storms, Cox's project, which will engage students in every phase of the work, will be the most comprehensive examination yet undertaken of this dynamic and long-ignored environment.

"The moment is ripe, because as sea level rises and high-energy wave attack on coastal infrastructure becomes more frequent, there is a growing need for studies of high-energy coasts, both to understand coastal response to storms and coastal hazards, and also as a resource for engineers as they work to improve coastal protection approaches," Cox said. "As the main depositional record of wave action on rocky coasts, boulder beaches should be playing a central part in this conversation, but the lack of data and understanding have prevented their integration into coastal geomorphologic thinking. I’m particularly excited to involve Williams students in this work, and I have an excellent rising senior, Aria Mason, who has already begun research on the project."

Cox's research interests include sedimentology, sedimentary petrology, geochronology and planetary geomorphology. At Williams since 1996, she has taught courses on oceanography, geochemistry, planetary geology, and earth resources, among other subjects. Her work has been widely published and cited. She received her B.Sc. from University College Dublin, Ireland, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Williamstown Fire Committee Sees FY27 Budget with Sizable Operational Increase

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:50AM / Tuesday, March 31, 2026

The Prudential Committee held its first meeting in the new station in late March with Treasurer Billie Jo Sawyer, left and committee members Lindsay Neathawk, David Moresi and Craig Pedercini.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Prudential Committee last week reviewed a draft annual fire district meeting warrant that includes an operational expenses budget up 9.4 percent from the figures approved at the May 2025 annual meeting.

 

And, with a new line item added to the district's operational budget the total increase is closer to 24 percent.

 

Last May, meeting members — the meeting is open to all registered voters in town — approved an FY26 spending plan that totaled $686,991.

 

On July 1, the first day of the fiscal year, a special district meeting voted to allocate $40,000 from the district's stabilization fund to the operating budget, effectively raising the baseline to $726,991, a 34 percent increase, year over year, from FY25 to FY26.

 

The July 1 meeting moved $20,000 of stabilization funds to the firefighter pay line and $20,000 to the maintenance and operation line — nearly doubling the former and raising the latter by 75 percent from FY25 to FY26.

 

Both those lines are up again in the planned FY27 budget, but more modestly: 2 percent for M&O (up from $123,000 to $125,500) and 27 percent for firefighter payroll ($110,000 to $139,900).

 

Most of the other line items net out to no significant change; some are up a little, some are down a little.