No Upper Limit. Still.
The Centennial Campaign
The Centennial Campaign
NoUpperLimit.Still.
In the not-too-distant future, a descendant of a small unmanned plane designed by Rice students might fly over the barren, cratered surface of Mars collecting valuable scientific data.
Last spring, those students hovered over a bench in Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, tweaking their prototype plane, the Electric Owl, and testing the custom avionics that allow it to self-navigate. Aided by philanthropic support from the Centennial Campaign, a bold effort to raise $1 billion to secure Rice’s impact and reputation in its second century, the Electric Owl project was able to lift off the ground. The story actually began well before the Electric Owl was conceived, when Rice proposed an ambitious strategy to equip students to lead and succeed in complex global environments via interdisciplinary, team-oriented design challenges. As with many of Rice’s philanthropic successes, gifts of all sizes and types helped turn that vision into reality. Several alumni donated
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scholarships that allowed Rice to attract the most capable students; a lead gift from the late M. Kenneth Oshman ’62 and his wife, Barbara, helped transform a kitchen servery into a state-of-the-art design facility; current-use donations of all sizes provided lab equipment and supplies; and NASA supplied funding for the design while Texas Instruments supplied funding for travel to the national Texas Space Grant Consortium Design Challenge competition. The result: The Electric Owl team and another Rice team, CardiOwls, swept every major award, and Electric Owl also won top prize at the Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest. With almost one year remaining before Rice’s 100-year anniversary Oct. 12, 2012, the Centennial Campaign is gaining