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one degree in engineering. We also remain committed to maintaining a strong core of communication experts who hold Ph.D.s in such areas and have industry experience in technical communication because we often echo the saying that an engineer who cannot communicate will work for one who can. The rise of new technologies based on artificial intelligence (one of my own areas of research) and data analytics has shown us that individual persons increasingly will not be able to remain hidden or private. Therefore, the biggest currency of all will become which companies and institutions can be trusted. RCEL will send out future leaders in engineering and technology who are taught to hold ethics as a constraint in all of their decisions. In this annual report, we elaborate on the strategy we employed to develop and launch RCEL 2.0. We then report on the latest data from this past academic year, namely whether or not RCEL is making a difference. We also describe the prior academic
year chronologically, and highlight RCEL’s new Emerging Leaders in Technology and Engineering (ELITE) pre-college engineering leadership summer camp for high school students. The ELITE camp provides RCEL students coaches with summer internships and academic research experiences that enhance their abilities to lead the next generation of engineers. It also allows RCEL to help Rice to engage Houston, and ‘get beyond the hedges’ to impact the state of Texas and the nation. Finally, this report profiles RCEL students who are not waiting until after graduation to lead teams and organizations; they are putting on their super-leadership capes now and all over the university. In the following pages, we hope you will share our excitement about where RCEL has been and where it is going. We encourage you to visit us in person or online and contact us to see how you can join us as partners to help accelerate RCEL 2.0 now and well into the future.