Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed on Thursday released the first piece of a plan to make it easier to do business in Rhode Island, calling for preferences to Rhode Island small businesses in state contracting, among other things.

While Washington debates health care reform, Rhode Island is proceeding with its own set of changes to improve the quality of health care. Just as information technology has changed our daily lives – in activities ranging from banking to social networking, among others – now Health Information Technology has the potential to transform health care delivery as well.

Michelle Pope has been promoted to chief operations officer at Atrion Networking Corp. In her new role, Pope will lead Atrion in working to meet client needs and developing service-delivery processes in line with the company’s client-service philosophy. She joined Atrion in 2001, most recently serving as director of support service.

The Providence College Corporation reappointed Rev. Brian J. Shanley as college president last month. Shanley starts his second five-year term on July 1 at the private, Catholic school in the capital city.

Shanley leads a college with about 274 full-time faculty, and roughly 3,900 enrolled students who can select from 49 majors. He recently spoke with Providence Business News about his plans for the next five years.

Throughout the presidential- search process and during my time in Rhode Island so far, one thing has been repeatedly emphasized: The University of Rhode Island must take on an expanded and central role in the renewal of the Rhode Island economy. This new responsibility for URI is characterized as urgent and critical. I fully agree. In Rhode Island “recovery” will not be sufficient. We must renew, rebuild — in essence, re-create — an economy that is vibrant and sustainable in the 21st Century. This is certainly an ambitious goal. But such ambition is essential if we are to create and sustain the jobs required to ensure a high quality of life for Rhode Islanders.