The Rundown
The Rundown
6
9
Rice MBA Programs ranked and recognized
Wright Fund students’ winning ways
MBA for Executives rises to top The Rice MBA for Executives (EMBA) program is still on top in the state and region, according to new rankings from the Financial Times. For the fourth year in a row, the EMBA program — designed for upperlevel managers — was ranked No. 1 in Texas and the Southwest. It was ranked No. 8 in the U.S. (up from No. 11 last year) and 30 globally, up seven spots from 46 in 2012. In the specialty categories, the Rice EMBA program was also recognized as No. 1 globally in entrepreneurship, as rated by 2010 graduates.
REEP recognized for innovation Rice University Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) was announced as the 2013 winner of the MBA Roundtable Innovator Award. The award recognized the Jones School for MBA curricular innovation with the delivery of REEP, a highly selective program that combines an elite business school education with a K-12 leadership and entrepreneurship practicum. The goal is to equip campus leaders with leadership principles and management tools.
7 Fleck named Assistant Dean Following a nationwide search, the Jones School named Rachel Fleck assistant dean of external relations. She was previously the director of development and interim external relations team lead for the Jones School. Emerging as the top candidate with enthusiastic support from the search committee and Jones School deans, her role as assistant dean began Jan. 1. Rachel led the external relations team through the successful completion of the $65 million Centennial Campaign and the school’s fundraising efforts on important initiatives, such as relaunching the Master of Accounting degree program, initiating the Military Scholars Program, supporting the Crownover Scholars Program and overseeing management of the Jones Fund. “Her record of success at the Jones School has been consistent and remarkable,” said Jay Collins, Jones School Council of Overseers chairman. “I am confident our development objectives will continue to progress under her leadership.” 6 // JONES JOURNAL SPRING 2014
8
Rebellion Photonics wins ‘Startup of the Year’ Allison Lami Sawyer ’10, cofounder of Rebellion Photonics, a Houston-based startup company founded with Robert Kester, a Rice Bioengineering Ph.D., won the first ever Wall Street Journal "Startup of the Year" competition last fall. Rebellion’s camera is the world's only real-time chemical imaging camera for continuous monitoring of rigs and refineries. The technology can be used for a variety of groundbreaking chemical imaging products in markets such as defense, biological research, food contamination detection, rig/refinery safety, quality control and forensics. Rebellion Photonics competed as graduate students at the 2010 Rice Business Plan Competition and finished as runner-up, winning over $100,000 in seed funding and then went on to receive funding from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, a fund that supports promising early-stage companies in Texas.
Congratulations go to CFA Institute Research Challenge (IRC) team of Wright Fund students — Aries Arifien ’14, Nael Ashour ’14, Jaime Bullon ’14 and Jane Wang ’14 — on winning the Southwest U.S. finals at the Texas Investment Portfolio Symposium (TIPS) conference hosted at SMU in February. Scoring is based evenly on presentation and research report. The eight finalist teams who presented at the TIPS conference were selected from a preliminary field of 24 teams (the second largest region in the world) based on a written research report. The win earned the team a place at the Americas Regionals in Denver, where they placed second overall out of 48 teams from North and South America.
11
10
Jan Goetgeluk speaks at TEDxHouston. Photo by Alex Barber.
Alum takes bite out of Shark Tank Shortly after his TEDxHouston appearance, Virtuix CEO Jan Goetgeluk ’10 showed up on the television program Shark Tank to pitch the Omni, a virtual reality treadmill. ABC’s business-themed reality series features the sharks — tough, self-made, multi-millionaire and billionaire tycoons — who give budding entrepreneurs the chance to secure business deals that could make them millionaires. At the end of April, as the Omni neared its commercial launch, Virtuix completed a $3 million seed investment round with investors including Mark Cuban (Radical Investments), Maveron, Tekton Ventures (Partech), Scout Ventures, The Houston Angel Network and a series of other VC firms.
Current student publishes first novel As of April 1, Mike Freedman ’14, president of VIBA and architect of this past fall’s Veteran’s Experience, added published author to his list of accomplishments. The former Green Beret penned the satirical novel School Board, about high school senior Tucker “Catfish” Davis, who attempts to be elected to the local school board. Armed with idealism and an ever-present fedora, he enlists his school buddies, an indicted Louisiana governor and a gay journalist with political ambitions to join him in opposing a candidate backed by an Enron-esque oil services company. Along with several off-campus appearances in April, a book signing and reception at Rice celebrated Freedman’s debut work.
SPRING 2014 JONES JOURNAL // 7