Rice Magazine Issue 11

| Targeting Cancer

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| Happiest Students

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| Nanobattery

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| Shale Gas

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The Magazine of Rice University

20 THE CENTENNIAL CAMPAIGN: NO UPPER LIMIT. STILL. 24 A CAMPUS RENEWED 26 AN MBA FOR MDs AND RNs 28 FOR LOVE OF LIFELONG LEARNING 32 IN THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION 34 EPIDEMIOLOGICAL PIONEER 36 GUIDING LIGHTS

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No. 11 | 2011

Bullish on Business

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business

Contents 13

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The geopolitical repercussions of expanding U.S. shale gas production.

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Three leading cancer researchers join Rice to take aim at the deadly disease.

The DNA evidence is in, and Ben Franklin didn’t do it.

A top 5 research university, one of the world’s top 100 universities, a best place to work and more: The latest rankings are in.

Now on tap: Centenni-Ale honors Rice’s Centennial Celebration.

9 Richard Tapia, a Rice University mathematician and longtime

champion of diversity in U.S. education, has received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama.

11 A digital science

curriculum developed at Rice makes the grade.

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Freshman memories in the making.

Kevin Schell ’11

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Tired of all those heavy batteries?

We’ve got one that’s really, really small.

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The Centennial Story Project is creating a video archive of fond Rice memories.

What’s yours?

Students

Features

Students

20 The Centennial Campaign: No Upper

16 The Capteur Soleil solar energy device captivates a new class of young Rice innovators.

Limit. Still.

17 A student-developed medical training mannequin eases stress for young patients.

With a little more than a year to go, the Centennial Campaign already is having a positive effect on Rice.

Arts

24 A Campus Renewed Are you having trouble picturing the Rice campus after the new spate of construction?

Well, picture this.

40 It’s not often you find a stand-up comic with a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

42 Rice history is on display in a new Fondren Library exhibit.

26 An MBA for MDs and RNs

43 One of North America’s finest organists joins the Rice faculty.

With health care costs rising, it’s important for the medical industry to operate efficiently. That’s where the Jones School is making a difference.

44 The demon barber of Fleet Street brought them together, and they’ve been making music together ever since.

By Alyson Ward

28 For Love of Lifelong Learning Which school at Rice educates the most students and covers the largest diversity of topics? You might be surprised at the answer.

Bookshelf

By Christopher Dow

46 Put your company’s intellectual capital to work through intangible assets of personal networks, company reputation and capacity to innovate.

32 In the Business of Education

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Public school principals are top campus leaders and directors of instruction. The Jones School wants to add CEO to that list.

46 A new collection of poems by Susan Wood taps the confessional poets of the late 1960s.

By Alyson Ward

47 In Texas, people of all backgrounds have fought hard to safeguard the places they hold dear when those places are threatened.

34 Epidemiological Pioneer Thirty years ago, Wayne Shandera was a young epidemiologist working for the Centers for Disease Control when he helped identify HIV, a new virus that would help define an age.

By Mike Williams

Sports 28

36 Guiding Lights Can you imagine a nature trail for the visually impaired? Two Jones School staffers did more than imagine.

48 Rice earns the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the sixth-straight year.

48 Owls volleyball spikes the American Volleyball Coaches Association Team Academic Award.

By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

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Rice Magazine No. 11

F O R E W O R D

What makes a university great? Some might say its size or age or the breadth and depth of its academic offerings, particularly when those are combined with the school’s research capabilities. All of these are important, though none alone are sufficient. What makes a university really stand out is the more elusive quality of thoughtful synthesis that both transcends these elements and focuses them and gives them purpose.

At Rice, every school is exceptional and interdisciplinary collaboration is the norm, but there is one school that has proved to be the master of synthesis: the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Long a training ground for business leaders, the Jones School has, during the past decade, grown beyond its traditional MBA programs to become an entrepreneurial center that builds a real economic foundation for new discoveries and technologies. The core of this effort is the school’s entrepreneurship program — this year ranked No. 9 in the United States by the Princeton Review — and this core is supported by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, a strategic collaboration between the Jones School, the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. The Rice Alliance hosts a number of world-class programs each year, including the Rice Business Plan Competition — the largest such competition in the world, and the richest, with $1.3 million in prizes this year. To date, the Rice Alliance has assisted in the launch of more than 300 companies that have raised more than $1 billion.

You can read more about the Rice Alliance and other aspects of the Jones School in this issue, but be sure to check out the three features that look at the unexpected ways in which the school is lending its expertise to fields not normally associated with business: “An MBA for MDs and RNs” covers the program that provides medical professionals with a solid background in the business of health care; “In the Business of Education” describes the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, which teaches principals, school superintendents and other educators the core principles of business; and “Guiding Lights” follows two Jones School staffers who took their expertise outside the hedges to help create a guided nature trail for the visually impaired at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center.

These and other articles in this issue amply demonstrate the growing ambitions of the Jones School, which, though unranked a mere 10 years ago, is now considered one of the best in the country.

If there is another school at Rice that has mastered synthesis as well as the Jones School has, it is the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Last year, the Glasscock School drew more than 13,000 lifelong learners — many from foreign countries — to its multitude of credit and noncredit courses. Our feature “For Love of Lifelong Learning” looks at the school’s growth over the last four decades and the expanded curriculum that has made it one of the largest and most respected continuing education programs in the region. And for you photographers, don’t forget to look in this issue for information on the Centennial Celebration photo contest being sponsored by the Glasscock School. Your current or historical photo might be a winner and be included in a special Centennial Celebration photo exhibit.

We have much more in this issue — too much to detail — but for inspiration, read the profiles of two Rice alumni: medical research pioneer Wayne Shandera, who helped identify HIV in the early stages of its initial outbreak, and rising comic Joe Wong. And last but not least, for those of you who are curious about what the campus looks like after Rice’s latest building boom, turn to Pages 24–25 for an updated map of campus showing where all those award-winning new buildings are located.

Published by the Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president Editor Christopher Dow Editorial Director Tracey Rhoades Creative Director Jeff Cox Art Director Chuck Thurmon Editorial Staff B.J. Almond, staff writer Jade Boyd, staff writer Franz Brotzen, staff writer Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor David Ruth, staff writer Alyson Ward, staff writer Mike Williams, staff writer Photographers Tommy LaVergne, photographer Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer The Rice University Board of Trustees James W. Crownover, chairman; J.JD. D D. Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith T. Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha Viswanathan Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth; Robert T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson; T. Jay Collins; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Douglas Lee Foshee; Lawrence Guffey; James T. Hackett; John Jaggers; Larry Kellner; Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal; L. E. Simmons; Charles Szalkowski; Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley; Randa Duncan Williams.

Administrative Officers David W. Leebron, president; George McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice pr esident for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Chris Muñoz, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development.

Rice Magazine is published by the Office of Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate students, parents of undergraduates and friends of the university.

Editorial Offices Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, T TX X 77251-1892 Fax: 713-348-6757 Email: ricemagazine@rice.edu

Christopher Dow cloud@rice.edu

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© OCTOBER 2 011 R ICE UNIVE RSITY ONL INE AT: WWW.ISSUU.COM / RICE UNIVE RSITY

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Renowned Scientists Recruited for Cancer, Physics and Chemistry Research

Cancer research at Rice just received a boost with the recruitment of three of the country’s leading researchers in physics and chemistry. Physicists Herbert Levine and José Onuchic and chemist Peter Wolynes, all members of the National Academy of Sciences and currently on the faculty at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), are moving their research laboratories to Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC).

happen more in medicine.”

The cancer research community has recognized that collaborating with physical scientists is a way to achieve this integration, which makes the BRC an ideal location for Levine and Onuchic’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. The NSF supports university-based Physics Frontiers Centers to boost collective efforts by integrated teams of scientists that can accomplish transformational advances in the most promising research areas.

“As we help reinvent biology and figure out how physics methods Levine and Onuchic are co-directors of the Center for Theoretical can be used, these approaches will become widespread,” Levine said.

Biological Physics, which is funded by the National Science “Today’s frontier will become tomorrow’s standards at the National Foundation (NSF) Physics Frontiers Centers program, and will Institutes of Health.” bring the core of the center to the BRC in stages over the next two Levine is the past chair of the American Physical Society’s Division years. In addition to continuing their basic research, they will colof Biological Physics and recently completed a six-year term as assolaborate with cancer specialists in the Texas Medical Center to apciate editor of the Biophysical Journal. At Rice, he will be the Karl F. ply new concepts from physics to cancer research and treatment.

Hasselmann Professor of Bioengineering beginning in 2012. Onuchic The recruitment of Levine and Onuchic was a co-director of La Jolla Interfaces to Houston was made possible by a $10 in Science and a senior fellow of the San million grant from the Cancer Prevention Diego Supercomputer Center. At Rice, and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) he will be the Andrew Hays Buchanan and support from the Welch Foundation.

Chair of Physics and a professor of physics Levine and Onuchic have been nomiand astronomy. He joined the faculty this nated as Established Investigators/CPRIT summer.

Scholars in Cancer Research, and their Wolynes is the Francis Crick appointments are pending approval by Endowed Chair in the Physical Sciences CPRIT’s Oversight Committee. and distinguished professor of chemistry Herbert Levine José Onuchic Peter Wolynes Levine’s and Onuchic’s research is and biochemistry at UCSD. His primary complementary, and they plan to expand research area is in theoretical chemistry, their focus to tackle complex issues in cancer progression and treatand he is most well-known for his work on the protein-folding probment. According to the two researchers, cancer is a complex set of lem — the “second half” of the genetic code. His energy landscape diseases marked by changes at different scales. At the smallest scale, theory of folding shows how the forces within proteins guide them changes occur in molecules and genes; at higher scales, they are seen to their functioning structures. This theory has made possible the in cells, and higher still in the tissues and organs that are made up of development of computer programs that can predict the structures those cells. Levine and Onuchic led the biological physics community of proteins from their genetic sequences. At Rice, he will be the D.R. in devising an integrated picture of many model biological systems, Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor of Science and a professor of and they hope to use a similar approach in developing an integrated chemistry, thanks to support from the Welch Foundation. He also view of the many changes caused in the body by cancer. joined the faculty this summer.

“The reality is that the new, larger quantity of biological data —B. J. Almond cannot be analyzed in the conventional descriptive way,” Onuchic said. “Theory needs to be integrated into cell biology and is Learn more about the BioScience Research Collaborative: needed to understand tissues and organs, and that is starting to › › › brc.rice.edu

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.CLASS OF 2015.

It was your typical hot and sunny summer day in southeast Texas, but the real warmth came from the dozens of Rice upperclassmen who gathered to offer a Texas-size welcome to 1,000 Rice freshmen who moved to campus Aug. 14.

Move-in day marked the beginning of O-Week, a weeklong orientation program designed to familiarize incoming students with their new campus, residential colleges and classmates. Across campus, laughter and cheering filled the air as O-Week volunteers rushed to arriving cars to meet the new freshmen, greeting them like long-lost friends.

“We’re here to welcome them — cheering, clapping — and we all know the freshmen’s names, so we can greet them personally,” said Raymond Verm, a Hanszen College senior.

“I’ve done this three times, and each time it brings back memories of my freshman year.”

Meredith Ventura, a Wiess College junior, said her own great O-Week experience inspired her to serve as part of the welcoming committee for new students.

One of the reasons we all come back for O-Week is because our advisers gave us such a great experience,” she said. “We want to pass the same experience on.”

The upperclassmen, including members of the Rice Owls football team, did more than just welcome the students — they were there to act as movers and helped the new freshmen by doing all the heavy lifting: unloading the car, carting belongings to the residential colleges and lugging them up the stairs to the students’ rooms.

Rice football player Hosam Shahim said he and his fellow teammates were happy to help out the freshmen and their families.

“When we beat the University of Houston last year, the student body came out to show their support and school pride,” he said.

“This is our way to give back to the students.

It’s the least we can do.”

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John and Paula Hutchinson

One parent grateful for the extra help was Greg Moore of Long Beach, Calif., who helped his daughter, Tierra, settle in at Baker College. “I think it’s great — any time you’re moving it’s good to have extra help,” he said. “It definitely makes things more relaxed.”

Like many other parents, Greg said he and his wife faced a wave of emotions as they prepared to send their first child off to college.

“It’s exciting and, at the same time, kind of bittersweet,” he said. “We’re really proud, though.”

Tierra was eager to get the day started and meet her new roommates, with whom she will share one of Baker’s suites. She said she chose Rice because of the intimate, friendly atmosphere. “It’s nice coming here and seeing my expectations reaffirmed,” she said. “I’m expecting a lot of great things here.”

Another set of parents, Myrna and Tom Begnel of Arlington Heights, Ill., also admitted that it was tough seeing their first child, Emily, go off to college but said their impressions of Rice have been “awesome.”

“Everyone is so welcoming and makes you feel like you’re part of this big family,” Myrna said. “That’s one of the reasons Emily decided to come here.”

Both parents agreed their daughter made an excellent choice for her college education.

“I think Rice is a really good fit for her — very distinguished with a good reputation,” Tom said. “There are lots of opportunities, and she’s excited to be here.”

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Brown College O-Week advisers, affiliates and staff

In Duncan College, incoming freshman Mary Anderson and her family were busy unpacking her belongings and awaiting the arrival of her new roommate. The family didn’t have to travel far to move Mary in — they live in Houston — but were just as grateful for the warm welcome from the Rice community. “It’s been amazing,” said Kristine, Mary’s mother.

That sense of community was one of the reasons Rice topped Mary’s list of college prospects. “Rice is more than just a place to learn — it’s a family,” she said. “I’ve visited so many schools where you’re just a number.

Everyone here is so approachable. I love that you can sit and eat lunch and have professors come up and talk to you.”

Like so many parents across campus, Mary’s parents were thrilled with her

Baker College O-Week advisers and freshmen

decision to attend Rice. “We’re elated that she’s here,” Kristine said. “It was her top choice.”

Mary plans to study English and film and is interested in writing for the Rice Thresher.

“I’m really, really excited,” she said.

Anthony Nguyen from Sugar Land, Texas, shared his fellow students’ enthusiasm. “It’s definitely a different atmosphere here, pretty wild and exciting at the same time,” he said. “I feel like I’m part of something great.” Nguyen is a member of Jones College and plans to major in biochemistry.

Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson was all smiles as he watched the move-in day events unfold.

He and his wife spent much of the day riding around on his scooter, taking time

to visit with new students and families at the different residential colleges.

“I love the fact that students immediately find out just how friendly Rice is,” he said.

“They are greeted with warmth, attention and assistance, and they know they’ll have that kind of support throughout their Rice careers.”

—Amy Hodges

Watch videos of O-Week: ›› › ricemagazine.info/101

Rice Is No. 5 Among Top Private Research Universities A new study by the think tank Education Sector ranks Rice University No. 5 among top private research universities with the lowest ratio of student debt to degrees awarded.

Tops in Best Quality of Life The nation’s happiest students with the best quality of life are at Rice University, according to the 2012 edition of The Princeton Review’s “The Best 376 Colleges.” Who told them? Our students.

Among the 33 private institutions classified as top research universities by the Carnegie Foundation, the debt-to-degree ratio ranged from $2,385 (Princeton University) to $25,886 (New York University). They attributed the wide variance to differences in the size of the schools’ endowments, financial-aid policies and students’ economic status.

Princeton was followed by Caltech, Harvard, MIT and Rice on the lower end of the ratio scale.

All had a debt-to-degree ratio less than $7,500.

The average ratio at private nonprofit colleges and universities was $21,827. The average ratio at public four-year universities was $16,247.

Read a summary of “Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success”: ››› ricemagazine.info/99

For the third year in a row, students surveyed for the annual college guide ranked Rice No. 1 for best quality of life. The new edition also ranks Rice No. 1 for happiest students. The rankings are based on a survey of 122,000 students at 376 schools during the last three school years.

“There’s nothing more important to a university than its success with its students,” said President David Leebron, who cited campus beauty, opportunities to engage with the city of Houston, Southern hospitality and new facilities on campus as some “But at the end of of the factors that contributed to Rice’s high rankthe day, it’s really ings. “But at the end of the day, it’s really about how about how people people treat each other — how our students treat treat each other — each other, the way our staff treats the students and how our students the way the faculty regards the students,” he said. treat each other, “All those really are the core of the quality of life for the way our staff our students.”

In addition to topping the lists for best qualtreats the students ity of life and happiest students, Rice ranked No. and the way the 5 in the categories “School Runs Like Butter” and faculty regards the “Town–Gown Relations,” No. 6 for “Lots of Race/ students.”

Class Interaction,” No. 8 for “Best Athletic Facilities,” —David Leebron No. 13 for “Great Financial Aid” and No. 18 for “Best Health Services.”

According to a student quoted in the guide, Rice University offers “the most amazing balance of serious education and an unbelievably rewarding personal life.” Most of the undergraduates surveyed note that Rice’s residential colleges, which are described as a “Hogwarts style” housing system a la Harry Potter, are “the key to life at Rice.” Another student notes that the academic advising is “amazing” and that professors invite students to join them for coffee at the student center or to visit them during office hours to discuss class material, research, papers or “even what’s going on in our lives.”

Other students rave about “strong research opportunities for undergraduate students,” opportunities to do volunteer work around Houston and the “fantastic” weather.

—B.J. Almond

Learn more about the rankings: › › › ricemagazine.info/98

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Rice No. 17 Among Nation’s Best Colleges

Rice Among World’s Top 100 Universities

Once Again One of the City’s Best Places to Work

For the eighth year in a row, Rice University has been ranked No. 17 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 edition of “Best Colleges.”

Rice University is one of the world’s top 100 universities, according to new rankings released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

For the sixth year in a row, Rice University has been named one of Houston’s “best places to work” by the Houston Business Journal (HBJ).

Tied with Vanderbilt University for the 17th spot, Rice also appeared on several other lists in “Best Colleges,” including:

Rice is No. 93 — up from No. 99 last year — in the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Harvard University is No. 1. Only three other schools in Texas are among the top 100: the University of Texas at Austin (No. 35), the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (No. 51)

In the category for businesses with more than 500 employees, Rice ranked No. 9 based on employees’ responses to an online survey.

As one of eight employers that have won the award for five or more consecutive years, Rice also received a Burnett Staffing Summit Award.

• Rice is No. 16 on the list of best-value schools.

• Rice is ranked No. 9 among national universities whose students graduate with the least debt.

• On the list of national universities demonstrating economic diversity, Rice ranked 12th highest.

• Rice also appeared on the list of top 20 national universities with a high proportion of racial and ethnic diversity.

• Among the best undergraduate engineering programs whose highest degree is a doctorate, Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering is in a three-way tie for No. 17 with Texas A&M University and Pennsylvania State University at University Park.

• Rice’s biomedical engineering was ranked No. 6, an improvement from last year when it was in a three-way tie for No. 6.

For more on the rankings: ››› ricemagazine.info/97

“I can’t think of a better compliment than to be identified as one of the best places to work in the fourth-largest city in America in the great state of Texas.”

— John Beddow

and Texas A&M University (No. 100).

In ARWU’s comparison of world universities by broad subject fields, Rice ranked No. 47 for natural sciences and mathematics, and it tied for Nos. 52–75 in the social sciences and the engineering/technology/computer science categories.

In the rankings by subject fields, Rice was No. 27 for chemistry; it tied for Nos. 51–75 in both computer science and economics/business and Nos. 52–75 for mathematics.

The rankings take into account the number of alumni and faculty winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific, the number of articles published in the journals Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation IndexExpanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per-capita performance with respect to the school’s size.

“I can’t think of a better compliment than to be identified as one of the best places to work in the fourth-largest city in America in the great state of Texas,” HBJ publisher John Beddow told the 54 businesses that were honored this year.

Sue Burnett, president of Burnett Staffing Specialists and a sponsor of the awards, also congratulated the winners. “You’ve done something that’s very great. You’ve created a company culture where people love to come to work.”

Mary Cronin, Rice’s associate vice president for human resources, praised the staff and faculty for making the award possible.

“I’m very proud,” she said, “that we have so many dedicated employees who take enough pride in Rice to express their feelings about working here.”

Learn more about the rankings: › ›› www.shanghairanking.com

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U.S. Shale Gas and Shifting Petro-Power Rising U.S. natural gas production from shale formations has already played a critical role in weakening Russia’s ability to wield an “energy weapon” over its European customers, and this trend will accelerate in the coming decades, according to a new study, “Shale Gas and U.S. National Security,” by Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, projects that Russia’s natural gas market share in Western Europe will decline to as little as 13 percent by 2040, down from 27 percent in 2009.

“The geopolitical repercussions of expanding U.S. shale gas production are going to be enormous,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies and one of the authors of the study. “By increasing alternative supplies to Europe in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) displaced from the U.S. market, the petro-power of Russia, Venezuela and Iran is faltering on the back of plentiful American natural gas supply.”

The study concludes that timely development of U.S. shale gas resources will limit the need for the United States to import LNG for at least two to three decades, thereby reducing negative energy-related stress on the U.S. trade deficit and economy. By creating greater competition among gas suppliers in global markets, shale gas will also lower the cost to average Americans of reducing greenhouse gases as the country moves to lower carbon fuels.

The Baker Institute study dismisses the notion, recently debated in the U.S. media, that the shale gas revolution is a transitory occurrence. The study projects that U.S. shale production will more than quadruple by 2040 from 2010 levels of more than 10 billion cubic feet per day, reaching more than 50 percent of total U.S. natural gas production by the 2030s. The study incorporates independent scientific and economic literature on shale costs and resources, including

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assessments by organizations such as the U.S. Geological Survey, the Potential Gas Committee and scholarly peer-reviewed papers of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

“The idea that shale gas is a flash-inthe-pan is simply incorrect,” said Kenneth Medlock III, the James A. Baker, III, and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics and co-author of the study. “The geologic data on the shale resource is hard science, and the innovations that have occurred in the field to make this resource accessible are nothing short of game-changing. U.S. policymakers should not get diverted from the real opportunities that responsible development of our domestic shale resources present.”

Other findings of the study include that U.S. shale gas will: • Reduce competition for LNG supplies from the Middle East and thereby moderate prices and spur greater use of natural gas, an outcome with significant implications for global environmental objectives.

• Combat the long-term potential monopoly power of a “gas OPEC.”

“The idea that shale gas is a flashin-the-pan is simply incorrect. The geologic data on the shale resource is hard science, and the innovations that have occurred in the field to make this resource accessible are nothing short of game-changing.”

—Kenneth Medlock III

• Reduce U.S. and Chinese dependence on Middle East natural gas supplies, lowering the incentives for geopolitical and commercial competition between the two largest consuming countries and providing both countries with new opportunities to diversify their energy supply.

• Reduce Iran’s ability to tap energy diplomacy as a means to strengthen its regional power or to buttress its nuclear aspirations.

—Franz Brotzen

Read the study: ›› › ricemagazine.info/96

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Richard Tapia, a Rice University mathematician and longtime champion of diversity in U.S. education, has received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama.

The medal is the highest national honor for a U.S. scientist, but it won’t be the first White House honor for Tapia. He received the inaugural Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring in 1996, the same year he earned a presidential appointment to the National Science Board, the nation’s highest scientific governing body.

“This National Medal of Science is wonderful recognition of someone who has had tremendous influence and dedication both

in the country. Due partly to his influence, Rice’s Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics has graduated more than double the national average of both minority and female Ph.D. students for more than a decade.

Tapia’s dedication to mentoring and his outspoken support for diversity in education have earned him numerous awards, including the Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Prize for

A Legacy Honored in his field and beyond,” Rice President David Leebron said. “Richard is an extraordinary scientist and a great mathematician, but he’s also had a much bigger impact on the world.

“He’s helped make Rice a more diverse university, and he is recognized across the country as the person who has helped countless students, particularly Hispanic and African-American students, overcome obstacles and succeed in graduate studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many of these students now carry on his legacy at some of our great universities.”

Tapia joined Rice’s faculty in 1970 and is currently a University Professor — Rice’s highest rank — and the Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering and professor of computational and applied mathematics. He is also director of Rice’s Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.

The son of Mexican immigrants, Tapia grew up in Los Angeles and was the first member of his family to attend college. He excelled in math and science and went on to earn international acclaim for his research into numerical optimization methods. That success led to his election to the National Academy of Engineering. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 100 mathematical research papers, and he is currently authoring a graduate-level textbook on the foundations of optimization.

Tapia has directed or co-directed more underrepresented minority and female doctoral students in mathematics than anyone else

—

“I never thought that this would happen. I am extremely honored.

When I look at the list of the mathematicians, computer scientists and statisticians who have won the National Medal of Science, I’m totally humbled. The names on the list are just phenomenal.”

—Richard Tapia

Distinguished Service to the Profession from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Award for Distinguished Public Service from the American Mathematical Society, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science. He is the first academician to be named Hispanic Engineer of the Year by Hispanic Engineer magazine.

Since its establishment in 1959, the medal has been awarded to 468 people. Other Rice faculty who have received the National Medal of Science include chemist Frederick Rossini, who was awarded the medal in 1976 by President Jimmy Carter for contributions to basic reference knowledge in chemical thermodynamics, and former Rice president and chemist Norman Hackerman, who was chairman of the Welch Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board when he was presented the medal by President Bill Clinton in 1993 for his contributions to electrochemistry, higher education and science. Rice alumni who have received this honor include James Gunn ’61, who was presented the medal by Obama in 2009 for his design of many of the most influential telescopes and instruments in astronomy, and Dennis Sullivan ’63, who was presented the medal by President George W. Bush in 2004 for his work on algebraic topology, quantum field theory and string theory.

—Jade Boyd

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Battery in a Wire

The world at large runs on lithium ion batteries, and soon so might the world of the super small thanks to the development of an entire lithium ion energy storage device packed into a single nanowire.

The device comes courtesy of the lab of Pulickel Ajayan, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and chemistry, which reported the discovery in a recent issue of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. The researchers believe their creation is as small as such devices can possibly get and could be valuable as a rechargeable power source for new generations of nanoelectronics.

In the paper, the researchers described testing two versions of the battery/supercapacitor hybrid. The first is a sandwich with nickel/tin anode, polyethylene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline cathode layers; it was built as proof that lithium ions would move efficiently through the anode to the electrolyte and then to the supercapacitorlike cathode, which stores the ions in bulk and gives the device the ability to charge and discharge quickly. The second packs the same capabilities into a single nanowire. The researchers built centimeter-scale arrays containing thousands of nanowire devices, each about 150 nanometers wide.

Ajayan’s team has been inching toward single-nanowire devices for years.

The researchers first reported the creation of three-dimensional nanobatteries last December.

“The idea here is to fabricate nanowire energy storage devices with ultrathin separation between the electrodes,” said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a research scientist at Rice and co-author of the paper. “This affects the electrochemical behavior of the device. Our devices could be a very useful tool to probe nanoscale phenomena.”

The team’s experimental batteries are about 50 microns tall — about the diameter of a human hair and almost invisible when viewed edge-on, Reddy said. Theoretically, the nanowire energy storage devices can

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An ultrathin battery/ supercapacitor hybrid contains thousands of nanowires, each of which is a fully functional battery. The Rice University lab of Pulickel Ajayan developed the device.

vary in length and width. They also demonstrate good capacity; the researchers are fine-tuning the materials to increase their ability to repeatedly charge and discharge, which now drops off after about 20 cycles.

“There’s a lot to be done to optimize

“The idea here is to fabricate nanowire energy storage devices with ultrathin separation between the electrodes.”

— Arava Leela Mohana Reddy

the devices in terms of performance,” said the paper’s lead author, Sanketh Gowda, a chemical engineering graduate student at Rice. “Optimization of the polymer separator and its thickness and an exploration of different electrode systems could lead to improvements.”

Rice graduate student Xiaobo Zhan is a co-author of the paper. The Hartley Family Foundation, Rice University, National Institutes of Health, Army Research Office and Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative supported the research.

—Mike Williams

A schematic shows nanoscale battery/supercapacitor devices in an array, as constructed at Rice University. The devices show promise for powering nanoscale electronics and as a research tool for understanding electrochemical phenomena at the nanoscale. Drawing courtesy of Ajayan Lab

Read the paper: ›› › ricemagazine.info/95

Sallyport

THROUGH THE

STEMscopes Selected by Texas The Texas State Board of Education has put an online science curriculum developed by Rice University on a list of instructional materials schools may select as a supplement to older textbooks this year.

STEMscopes, a completely digital science curriculum resource developed for grades 5–8 by Rice’s Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning, is the only program created at an educational institution on the approved list of publishers. (STEM is shorthand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.) The Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced the selections in July.

“STEMscopes is a comprehensive curriculum teachers can use over the course of a year,” said Reid Whitaker, director of STEMscopes. “It includes videos, interactive games and experiments to address the new alignment of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) science content.” The curriculum also incorporates classroom work, homework, independent activities for students and assessment tools for teachers. “We were fortunate to have the expertise of several of Rice’s science faculty involved in reviewing our content,” he added.

Beginning this fall, Texas school districts may choose one program to be paid for by the state from among nine to 14 offered at each grade level. A major criterion for selection to the list was that materials align with new or revised parameters set by the board under TEKS. STEMscopes’ competitors include commercial textbook publishers Pearson Education (Prentice Hall), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, McGraw-Hill and others.

According to TEA, this is the first year the state has exclusively adopted what it calls “supplemental materials” rather than a mix of traditional textbooks and online materials. By purchasing online curricula for selected grades and subjects rather than textbooks for K–12, the board expects to cut the cost of materials from $347 million to $60 million this year.

Whitaker said Rice is in a good position to maximize the opportunity presented by the state’s budget-driven initiative. STEMscopes’ predecessor, TAKScopes, was already part of more than 150 Texas independent school districts, including districtwide partnerships with Austin and El Paso ISDs and a strong presence in Houston ISD. He said many of those previous customers have indicated they will transition to STEMscopes this year. Though the state did not seek K–4 programs, STEMscopes covers those grades as well.

“There were no online resources for elementary science when we started TAKScopes in 2007,” Whitaker said. “We were among the first to provide materials truly aligned to the curriculum standards. Our next course of action is to evaluate the efficacy of our new materials and determine how a similar model might be taken to the national level.”

“STEMscopes is a comprehensive curriculum teachers can use over the course of a year. It includes videos, interactive games and experiments to address the new alignment of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) science content.”

—Reid Whitaker

—Mike Williams

Visit the site: ›› › www.stemscopes.com

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Genetic Evidence Clears Ben Franklin The DNA evidence is in, and Ben Franklin didn’t do it.

Genetic tests on more than 1,000 Chinese tallow trees from the United States and China show the famed U.S. statesman did not import the tallow trees that are overrunning thousands of acres of U.S. coastal prairie from Florida to East Texas.

analyzing the results.

There were a few surprises. First, the tallow trees that are running amok in most of the U.S. aren’t from the batch that Franklin imported. The descendants of Franklin’s “It’s widely known that Franklin introduced “This raises some interesting scientific trees are confined to a few thousand square tallow trees to the U.S. in the late 1700s,” said questions,” Siemann said. “Are tallow trees miles of coastal plain in northern Georgia Rice University biologist Evan Siemann, coin the U.S. undergoing evolutionary selecand southern South Carolina. All other U.S. author of a study published recently in the tion? Did those original plants brought from tallow trees the team sampled were deAmerican Journal of Botany. “Franklin was China have the traits to be successful or did scended from seeds brought to the U.S. by living in London, and he had tallow seeds they change after they arrived? Does it matfederal biologists around 1905. shipped to associates in Georgia.” ter where they came from in China, or would “The genetic picture for Franklin’s trees Each tallow tree can produce up to a any tallow tree do just as well in the U.S.?” is muddled; we may never know where they half million seeds per year. That originated,” Siemann said. “But fertility is one reason Franklin the genetic evidence for the other and others were interested in population — the one that’s probthem; each seed is covered by a lematic in the Gulf Coast — clearwaxy, white tallow that can be ly points to it being descended processed to make soap, candles from eastern China, probably in and edible oil. the area around Shanghai.”

What Franklin couldn’t have In controlled tests in China, known at the time was that talthe researchers found the U.S. low trees would overachieve in trees even grew and spread faster the New World. Today, the trees than their Chinese forebearers, are spreading so fast that they’re despite the lack of chemical deToday, the trees are spreading so fast that destroying native habitats and fenses to ward off insects. they’re destroying native habitats and causing causing economic damage, and “In some ways, this raises economic damage, and they’re now classified they’re now classified as an invaeven more questions,” Siemann as an invasive species. sive species. said, “but it clearly shows that if Siemann, professor and chair you are going to explore control of ecology and evolutionary biology, has Siemann set out to gather genetic evimethods for an invasive species, you need spent more than 10 years compiling evidence dence that could help answer such questions. to use appropriate genetic material to make on the differences between U.S. and Chinese With funding from the National Science certain your tests are valid.” tallow trees. For example, the insects that Foundation and the U.S. Department of Siemann said that with many new spehelp keep tallow trees in check in Asia do Agriculture, he and study co-authors William cies of plants and animals being introduced not live in the U.S., and Siemann and his colRogers, now at Texas A&M University, and from foreign environments into the U.S. each leagues have found that the U.S. trees invest Saara DeWalt, now at Clemson University, year, it is vitally important for scientists to far less energy in producing chemicals that collected leaves from more than 1,000 tallow better understand the circumstances that ward off insects. They’ve also found that U.S. trees at 51 sites in the U.S. and a dozen sites cause introduced species to cross the line trees grow about 30 percent faster than their in China. They then conducted genetic scans and become dangerous invasive pests.

Chinese kin. on the leaves and spent more than two years —Jade Boyd

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THROUGH THE

Sallyport

More Than Doors

In the business world, a statement is a summary of financial activity over a period of time.

But McNair Hall, home of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, makes a statement the moment you approach its open doors.

McNair Hall’s impressive formal entrance, which faces Jamail Plaza and the James A. Baker III Hall, celebrates not only the nature of studies happening inside the building — highlighted by robust bronze sculptures of the iconic bear and bull — but also the nature of the man for whom the business school at Rice was named.

Except during Hurricane Ike, the bronze doors have always stood open to welcome students, alumni, prospective students and visitors to the Jones School. They are a constant reminder of who Jesse Jones was and how he influenced a city and a nation with his leadership and compassion.

Jones’ legacy of service endures today through his lifelong contributions toward the common good. As early Houston’s foremost builder, chairman of the National Bank of Commerce and publisher of the Houston Chronicle, he inspired the city to grow beyond its small-town borders.

He was the Houston Harbor Board’s first

that would nurture Houston’s people and encourage the city’s growth.

To the careful observer or anyone on a formal university tour, the doors illustrate the many accomplishments of Jesse Jones and tell his story. Commissioned by McNair Hall architect Robert A.M. Stern, the doors, the tympanum above the doors, and the columns and wings, as well as the bull and bear on pedestals flanking the doorway, were designed and created in bronze by Kent Bloomer Studio in New Haven, Conn.

Each door measures 3’1” wide by 8’8” high and alternates foliated panels with shallow relief plaques that depict 10 themes from Jones’ varied career: railroads, government, agriculture, World War II mobilization, the Houston Ship Channel and shipping, the Houston Chronicle, electrification of rural areas, the Federal Housing Authority, lumber and banking.

The tympanum is a stylized version of the Houston skyline, with the Gulf Building,

To the careful observer or anyone on a formal university tour, the doors illustrate the many accomplishments of Jesse Jones and tell his story. chairman and led the effort to complete the Houston Ship Channel. As chairman of the federal government’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation, he stimulated economic recovery during the Great Depression and, later, as secretary of commerce, helped prepare the nation and its allies for global defense during World War II. Jesse and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones, established the Houston Endowment in 1937 to formalize and perpetuate their philanthropy. The couple had donated more than $1 million during the early years of their marriage, and through the endowment, it was their intention to help create and develop institutions and organizations

which was built by Jones, centrally featured.

The bull and bear embody the American capital markets. The bronze columns and wings recall details from Rice’s beloved Lovett Hall, designed by Ralph Adams Cram, and make reference to the university’s symbolic owl.

To stop for a moment on the threshold of McNair Hall and study the doors is an opportunity to appreciate yet another story that makes up Rice’s vibrant history. Jesse Jones’ vision for business and public service continues to serve as a great model to all who enter the school that bears his name.

—Weezie Mackey

Rice Magazine

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CENTENNIAL STORY PROJECT

Your story is Rice’s story.

This is the Rice story, 100 years in the making, told by those who lived it — alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends — and shared worldwide. It’s a living history full of iconic moments and everyday achievements, personal “aha” moments and events both big and small that say, “This is Rice.”

Join us as we chronicle Rice’s first 100 years and set the stage for our next century.

There are three ways to participate online:

1

Record your story Submit your one- to three-minute video.

2

Flash your Owl sign Send us your photo from anywhere in the world.

3

Tell us why you “Celebrate Rice” Your reason could be featured among the top 100!

››› centennial.rice.edu/stories

An Entrepreneurial Award Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business has the No. 9 graduate entrepreneurship program in the country, according to survey results announced Sept. 20 by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine. The award comes on the heels of being recognized as the National Model MBA Entrepreneurship Program by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

During the past decade, the Jones School has moved from an unranked position into one of the top 10 programs in the country. The Jones School is one of only four schools to achieve a top 10 ranking for the past three years.

“Our approach,” said Bill Glick, dean of the Jones School, “is to build a quality curriculum taught by the best professors and entrepreneurs while engaging students in business plan competitions and networking with entrepreneurs.”

A recent Jones School alumni survey revealed that 22 percent of Rice MBA alumni have started one or more entrepreneurial companies, and 76 percent of those are still in business today.

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which is Rice’s nationally ranked initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship, was formed as a strategic alliance of the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jones School. The Rice Alliance hosts a number of worldclass programs each year, including the Rice Business Plan Competition — the richest and largest such competition in the world. To date, the Rice Alliance has assisted in the launch of more than 300 companies that have raised more than $1 billion.

Among the world-class entrepreneurship educators at the Jones School are Edward Williams, the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professor of Management and professor of statistics, and Albert Napier, professor of entrepreneurship and psychology and director of the Center on the Management of Information Technology.

Businessweek ranked Williams as one of the top three entrepreneurship university educators in the country. In 2008, Napier received the Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurial Excellence’s national award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Education. In addition, numerous Jones School faculty have published research in the area of entrepreneurship in top academic journals.

The Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) (see Page 32) is another component of Rice’s entrepreneurship initiative. REEP is designed to equip current and aspiring school leaders with the management tools, strategic framework and supportive networks they need to meet the challenges of public school leadership.

With a combination of world-class business training from the Jones School and REEP’s unique education entrepreneurship institute, students are challenged to explore what is possible in education today.

—Mary Lynn Fernau

View the complete rankings: ›› › ricemagazine.info/102 Learn more about the Rice Alliance: ›› › alliance.rice.edu

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THROUGH THE

Sallyport

President David Leebron, Kathleen Boyd, Centennial Celebration director, (background) and Brock Wagner

Alum’s Centenni-Ale Celebrates Rice Centennial Now on tap: A beer that pairs well with the Rice Centennial Celebration.

Saint Arnold Brewing Co. plans to repackage two of its craft beers — a dark and a blonde — with a new label that cleverly commemorates Rice’s first 100 years: Centenni-Ale. The he Houston brewery, founded by Rice alumni Brock Wagner ’87 and Kevin Bartol ’81, tapped the first kegs of Centenni-Ale Sept. 10 at the inaugural home game of the Owls’ 100th football season. Later that month, 22-ounce bottles of the specially labeled brews became available at local stores.

“We wanted to have fun with this and create a little celebration in a bottle,” Wagner said. Centenni-Ale will be available at stores and, he hopes, at Rice events through October 2012, which is the culmination of the Rice Centennial Celebration.

The Saint Arnold beers that will get the Centenni-Ale label are Weedwacker, a Hefeweizen that the brewery started selling in June, and the brand new Santo, a darker brew Wagner describes as a “black Kölsch.”

It’s all a tasty fundraiser: Wagner will donate all Centenni-Ale profits to Rice, which isn’t just his alma mater — it was the birthplace of his craft-brewing career.

An economics major, Wagner learned how to home-brew from his resident associate in Lovett College — and by his senior year, he was known around campus

“We wanted to have fun with this and create a little celebration in a bottle.”

— Brock Wagner

for his brewing skills.

It’ll be the fi rst time the craft brewery has packaged anything in a 22-ounce bottle. The big bottles are more practical than 12-ounce six-packs for a limited run, Wagner said, and besides, “a 22-ounce bottle seems a little more celebratory.”

If out-of-town alumni want a bottle of Centenni-Ale, though, they’ll have to work for it. The label will be sold only in Houston, and state law forbids Saint Arnold to ship beer directly to customers.

“They’re going to have to track down a friend in Houston who’ll agree to ship it to them,” Wagner said.

The project is the brainchild of Wagner and another Rice alum, Greg Marshall ’86, Rice’s director of university relations in the Office of Public Affairs, which is actively involved in the events leading up to Rice’s Centennial Celebration Oct. 10–14, 2012.

“Among Rice’s beloved traditions are our Beer Bike race each spring and Valhalla, the place where our graduate students go for a cold beer after long hours in the lab,” Marshall said. “A 100th anniversary comes once in the life of an institution, and there is no better way to toast it than with a beverage created by one of our outstanding alumni.”

—Alyson Ward

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From Cooking Food to Cooking Germs Capteur Soleil, a passive solar collector designed decades ago by French inventor Jean Boubour, holds possibilities that intrigue Rice students working in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.

Two years ago, the device was modified by students to serve as a solar-powered cookstove for places where electricity — or fuel of any kind — is hard to get. This year, Team Sterilize modified it further to help solve a long-standing health issue for developing countries by creating an autoclave that sterilizes medical instruments.

“This is really the latest iteration of a much larger project,” said Doug Schuler, the team’s faculty adviser and associate professor of business and public policy at

Members of Team Sterilize (from left): David Luker, William Dunk, Daniel Rist and Sam Major

“This is really the latest iteration of a much larger project. We already have a version of Capteur Soleil being used in Haiti for cooking, but we felt it could do more.”

—Doug Schuler

Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. “We already have a version of Capteur Soleil being used in Haiti for cooking, but we felt it could do more.”

The Capteur Soleil unit uses a set of curved mirrors, held up by an A-frame of steel tubing that contains water. Sunlight

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focused on the tube at the frame’s apex turns the water to steam, which can be harnessed as it circulates through the tubes.

Rather than choose to pump steam directly into the autoclave, the Rice team used the steam to heat a custom-designed conductive hotplate.

“It basically becomes a stovetop, and you can heat anything you need to,” said Sam Major ’11, a team member along with Daniel Rist ’11, David Luker ’11 and William Dunk ’11, all mechanical engineering majors. “As long as the autoclave reaches 121 Celsius for 30 minutes — the standard set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — everything should be sterile, and we’ve found we’re able to do that pretty easily.”

He said one person could easily adjust Capteur Soleil by ratcheting up the back leg to align the mirrors with the sun. Within half an hour of receiving strong sunlight, Capteur Soleil begins to produce steam that heats the hotplate and then the standard-issue, FDAapproved autoclave. With good midday sun, Major said, it takes 40 minutes to an hour to begin significant heating of the autoclave.

The autoclave, which looks like a modified pressure cooker, has a steamer basket inside. “We put about an inch of water inside, followed by the basket with the tools and syringes,” Major said.

“We’ve used some biological spores from a test kit, steamed them, and then incubated them for 24 hours and they came back negative for biological growth. That means we killed whatever was in there.”

— Mike Williams

Students Child-size Mannequin Spares Real Patients Amy Middleman, a pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH), had a problem.

She needed to be able to teach medical students physical exam skills for children, but she didn’t want to expose young patients to further stress and pain. Nor did she want to cause consternation for parents who might not be comfortable with medical students examining their children. The solution: a childsized training mannequin. Manufacturing that solution, however, proved a greater challenge than she expected.

“I’ve been trying since 2003 to develop a mannequin,” said Middleman, who also is an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), “but I didn’t have the bioengineering skills.”

After trying unsuccessfully to work with medical device manufacturers, Middleman looked across the street to Rice. There, she found Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) and its director, Maria Oden.

Oden pitched the idea to student teams, and four students — Kshitij Manchanda, Zachary Henderson, Minsuk Kwak and Michelle Thorson — stepped up to tackle the problem for their senior design project with the help of funding from BCM. The result was Ped.IT, short for Pediatric Evaluation Device Intended for Training.

Ped.IT, which students have dubbed the “MiddleMannequin” in honor of their mentor, began as a hard-shell mannequin

Computer-controlled actuators in the 4-foot-long mannequin allow medical students to change the organs from normal to enlarged states.

donated by Laerdal Medical. Under the supervision of their Rice adviser and lecturer in bioengineering, Renata Ramos, the team replaced the neck and midriff areas of the plastic with simulated skin and added the simulated liver and spleen that TCH requested. The students even went beyond TCH’s requests by adding simulated lymph nodes, and they left room for more organs to be added by future OEDK teams.

“There are a lot of conditions our mentors at Texas Children’s would like to see in a future version of the mannequin, including an enlarged thyroid and tonsils,”

Henderson said. “They also would like joints that could be popped out of place and put back in.”

Computer-controlled actuators in the 4-foot-long mannequin allow medical students to change the organs from normal to enlarged states. To create the right effect, team members spent time at TCH feeling the livers and spleens of patients willing to help.

“We were completely confused about how a liver actually felt,” Manchanda said.

“Is it as hard as a rock? As soft as a pillow?

When I felt them, I thought, ‘Oh, this feels like Tempur-Pedic.’ You squeezed, and it came back to its shape.”

Tempur-Pedic, best known as material for mattresses, was the right stuff for simulating organs. Another material, Dermasol, was used to simulate skin.

“We don’t have anything like this in pediatrics,” said Jennifer Arnold, medical director of the TCH Pediatric Simulation Center and a BCM assistant professor of pediatrics. “In fact, there’s nothing quite like this in the adult world either.

I think there are huge possibilities for commercialization.”

Arnold is already talking with manufacturers. “Laerdal is interested,” she said. “If we can mass-produce this, every medical school — even, potentially, every nursing school — could use it to train their students.”

For her part, Middleman is thrilled.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for years,” she said, “but it’s the students who have really brought it to fruition.”

— Mike Williams

The Ped.IT team (clockwise from left): Kshitij Manchanda, Michelle Thorson, adviser Amy Middleman, Minsuk Kwak, Zachary Henderson and adviser Jennifer Arnold

Rice Magazine

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Diplomats in the Making

From left, Navtej Dhaliwal, Devin Glick, former Ambassador William Ramsay and Christian Keller discuss Rice’s Summer Mentorship Experience in Paris.

For some students, summer break is a time off from academic pursuits. For others, like junior Christian Keller, junior Navtej Dhaliwal and senior Devin Glick, it’s an opportunity to make a mark on the world.

The three found the means to do just that through the Summer Mentorship Experience (SME), a program that makes it possible for Rice students to study for nine weeks at the Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri), a prestigious think tank in Paris, France.

Run by Leadership Rice and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, the program pairs participants with a mentor who is responsible for overseeing the student’s learning and personal development.

to succeed in any professional setting — be it a research institution, a multinational organization or the U.S. Foreign Service.”

Keller, Dhaliwal and Glick were selected out of 150 applicants. They took their first step with LEAD 150, a class that met after spring final exams, during which, they interacted with Leadership Rice staff and were familiarized with essential leadership skills that are key to success in professional contexts.

Over the summer, they wrote papers that

population. He emphasized the heterogeneity of the group and found that growing numbers do not always translate into power. “In the context of a Hispanic population boom,” Dhaliwal wrote, “it appears that both among voters and within the government, underrepresentation of Hispanics persists.”

Keller turned to another subject entirely in his “Kanal Istanbul: Pipedream or Politics?” He looked at a proposal by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to construct a waterway that would allow ships to go around Istanbul and avoid the crowded Bosporus. Keller acknowledged Erdogan’s political skills but had questions about the estimated cost and the actual need for an

The program is designed to give students an idea of what’s involved in the development of policy to prepare them for a career path in the fields of diplomacy and public service.

The program is designed to give students an idea of what’s involved in the development of policy to prepare them for a career path in the fields of diplomacy and public service. The experience abroad, in particular the work with mentors and writing a research paper, provides participants with real-world experience they can use in the future.

Keller’s mentor was former U.S. Ambassador William Ramsay, the former deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and currently senior adviser of the Center for Energy at Ifri.

“Ambassador Ramsay asked the critical and deeply personal questions about my interests, strengths and values that pushed me to find a research topic that both motivated me to work as well as fit with the objectives of Ifri’s energy program,” Keller said. “In addition to facilitating my personal development, he helped me build the ‘soft’ skills necessary

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linked concepts with work experiences and interviewed industry leaders to understand how those leaders have developed their own leadership capacities.

Glick’s “A Look at the IEA 2011 Release of Strategic Oil Reserves” examined the repercussions of the IEA’s effort to stabilize energy prices as the Libyan crisis unfolded.

Citing forecasts for tighter supplies, a vow by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries not to increase production and an expected rise in demand due to the approaching driving season, in addition to the sharp reduction in Libyan supply, Glick concluded, “It can still be said that this is a positive improvement in the use of strategic stocks.”

In “U.S. Demographics: The Hispanic Boom,” Dhaliwal discussed the political, economic and cultural effects of the rapid increase in the United States’ Hispanic

alternative route for oil tankers. Noting that Erdogan announced the canal plan shortly before national elections last April, Keller wrote, “The plan appears to be merely the words of a popular leader vying to be reelected in a country that is eager to grow.”

The three papers reflect the diversity of interests the SME encourages. “This program provided the opportunity to get graduatelevel work experience after just two years of undergraduate education,” Keller said. “It gave me access to top-tier leaders in a foreign professional context, and it required that I look into myself while simultaneously reaching out to the world. To my knowledge, no other comparably comprehensive undergraduate experience exists.”

—Franz Brotzen

Students

Roving Field Correspondent Sophomore Matt Vale loves the desert. “I need something that’s the opposite of the modern human habitat,” he said, “and the desert comes close.” Last summer, Vale found a rare opportunity to pursue his passion by serving as a “roving field correspondent” for the Nature Conservancy.

Working with a videographer — University of Texas film student Riley Engemoen — Vale visited six sites around Texas that are owned and managed by the conservancy, from the distant Davis Mountains to the downright obscure Las Estrellas Preserve. In addition to trekking through parts of Texas most Texans don’t know about, Vale wrote essays that detailed his impressions of the wild landscapes he encountered. His essays and the videos are posted on the Nature Conservancy website.

“Everybody, wherever they live, needs to dip their toes in nature,” Vale said. “Or maybe get fully submerged. I hope I can encourage more people to do that.”

Vale’s accounts of his nearly six weeks of traveling between Austin and the Nature Conservancy sites may well convince readers to do just that. “There’s often an artificial distinction made between life in cities and towns and life in the natural world,” Vale said. “I hope my writing will chip away at that.”

In his essay on the pair’s visit to Half

Moon Reef and Mad Island Marsh Preserve in Matagorda Bay, Vale described the scene: “Back at Mad Island, things bristle with maternity. A bobcat trots past to draw me and Riley away from her cubs. At a roadside pond, a 7-foot mamma gator slides toward us, wraithlike, and sets her forelimbs on the bank, mouth robotically agape and hissing thickly. Her nest is back in the reeds. And somewhere behind her inscrutable blackglass eye, some outrageous maternal love clicks with terrific exactitude. With beautiful precision.”

Most of their treks, however, were to far-flung parts of Texas that are considerably more arid — even without this year’s epic drought. In the conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve, Vale hiked through what he described as “a sky island rising from a desert ocean.” He and Engemoen camped in Wolf Den Cave, a rock shelter used by humans centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. They felt like intruders, Vale wrote, but after hours of “listening for

the inconceivable knowledge of thousands of years of human life come before us,” they made their peace with the place.

They vowed to return next summer, but for more than just the sights. “You stop being just you and start being you in the valley, as empty and as full as warm, dry wind,” Vale wrote. “Being alone here is not being alone; it’s opening into a new kind of companionship, quiet, inexorable, mountainous. And when you put down roots in these mountains, they put down roots in you.”

At Independence Creek Preserve, another site in West Texas, Vale and Engemoen found an oasis where thousands of gallons of fresh, clear water bubbles up to form pristine pools and a major tributary of the Pecos River. In addition to the unique flora and fauna, the preserve contains an archaeological dig holding bison bones and evidence of the prehistoric people who consumed them.

While in high school in his native Austin, Vale did volunteer work in the Davis Mountains. That led to the invitation from the Nature Conservancy to travel to the preserves and document his travels. Vale, a religious studies and English major, said he was grateful to the organization for giving him a platform.

“The things I most want to express are not necessarily matters of high seriousness,” Vale said. “I just want to show people that being in these outside places can affect somebody spiritually and emotionally. These places have something to teach.”

—Franz Brotzen

Learn more about Matt Vale: › ›› ricemagazine.info/104

•

View Matt Vale’s Nature Conservancy page: ›› › ricemagazine.info/105

“Everybody, wherever they live, needs to dip their toes in nature.”

—Matt Vale

Matt Vale (left) and Riley Engemoen

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

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momentum toward its $1 billion goal. As of Aug. 31, 2011, volunteers and donors raised a total of $739 million, of which $106 million came in during the 2010–11 academic year. Already the surge of new funding is proving transformative across a range of endeavors at Rice, and it also offers an inspiring preview of the great potential to be realized as the final goal is reached.

Brockman Hall for Physics, which opened in spring 2011, is a powerful example of how the campaign is putting Rice on the cutting edge of research. Made possible by the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the 111,000-square-foot, four-story building provides state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment for fundamental and applied physics research.

“Brockman Hall already has provided an incredible boost to our work,” said Randall Hulet, the Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics and Astronomy, who specializes in atomic and condensed matter physics.

“Previously, I had to walk to six different buildings to talk with colleagues, and now I run into them every day. This has already added a much greater level of coherence and cooperation to our research programs. Our graduate researchers are thrilled to have a vibration-free environment for their experiments and new spaces to interact with one another. We’re extremely grateful for the generosity of the Brockman

Last fiscal year, more than 15,500 alumni, parents, faculty, staff and students invested in the Rice Annual Fund, accounting for $6.7 million, including $4.7 million in current-use scholarships and fellowships. Eighty-seven percent of alumni who have given to the campaign are doing so through the Annual Fund, and their gifts are fueling a range of important student initiatives, including research and internships with community partners, residential college life, library resources and more.

Rice’s young alumni (Classes of 2000–10), who comprise onequarter of the entire alumni body, continued to maximize their support through the Annual Fund’s third annual Centennial Challenge to Young Alumni, a matching gift program sponsored by alumni Charles Landgraf ’75 and Rice trustee Keith Anderson ’83. Previous challenges were sponsored by Rich ’80 and Karen Waggoner Whitney ’79 in 2009–10 and a group led by Cathryn Rodd Selman ’78 in 2008–09.

“Giving participation continues to be an important challenge to Rice’s future competitiveness,” said Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development. “Aside from influencing national rankings, such as those in U.S. News & World Report, it is essential to building a loyal base of support that will strengthen Rice into the foreseeable future.”

“It isn’t just about celebrating the past century — it is really about building upon that amazing foundation and setting the stage for greater achievements to come.

— Susanne Morris Glasscock

Trust and for its vision of Rice as an outstanding research university.”

Another important measure of the campaign’s success is its ability to raise scholarship support for low- and middle-income families. As of August 2011, the $100 million Centennial Scholarship Initiative has generated more than $83 million toward undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships and established a total of 222 new endowments.

“During the economic recession, several of our supporters also stepped up to invest in current-use scholarships through the Rice Annual Fund or to supplement existing endowments,” said Kevin Foyle, associate vice president for Resource Development. “That commitment demonstrates how firmly our community believes in supporting a highperforming student body from all backgrounds, and it is a big reason why we’re on the upswing.”

The upcoming Centennial Celebration presents a unique opportunity for Rice’s supporters to profoundly increase participation, not just in giving, but in a range of important areas like volunteering, attending events and serving as ambassadors for Rice in their local communities.

“That’s part of the excitement and potential of the centennial,” said Susanne Morris Glasscock ’62, Rice trustee emeritus and co-chair of the Centennial Campaign. “It isn’t just about celebrating the past century — it is really about building upon that amazing foundation and setting the stage for greater achievements to come. Our ambitions have never been higher, and we encourage everyone to participate, to contribute and to enjoy the celebration.”

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No Upper Limit. Still.

The Centennial Campaign

ThreeBigIdeas

The Centennial Campaign is dedicated to the pursuit of three overarching objectives, each distilled from the Vision for the Second Century, a strategy to advance Rice’s impact and reputation in an increasingly competitive educational landscape. Already, the campaign’s Three Big Ideas are transforming day-to-day life at Rice.

Transforming Extraordinary Students Into Extraordinary Leaders

Facing Challenges, Generating Solutions

The Centennial Campaign will fuel the expansion of our deeply held commitment to undergraduate and graduate education and prepare the next generation of leaders to make a distinctive impact on the world.

The campaign will generate extensive investment in our research enterprise so that we can put our interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborations to work in solving problems that face us all.

Not even a month into his freshman year, Josh Rutenberg, now a senior, experienced for the first time what is meant by the phrase “hunker down.” When Ike slammed into the Galveston coastline Sept. 13, 2008, he was in relative comfort at Rice in a campus safe zone. After the hurricane passed, he wasted no time in exploring the damage along Houston’s streets — the large tree limbs and severed power lines — that left much of Houston without basic utilities. It raised an important question: How can we make Houston’s power grid more resilient?

Since Ike, Rutenberg has worked with civil and environmental engineering professor Leonardo Dueñas-Osorio to study the failures of Houston’s infrastructure during the hurricane. Through a fellowship sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement and supported by the Rice Annual Fund, Rutenberg is helping Houston’s Office of Emergency Management look more closely at how the city’s power, water and telecommunications systems interact, how they fail, and what can be done to speed their recovery after a hurricane. “No matter what I do at Rice or whom I interact with,” Rutenberg said, “it seems as though nothing is out of reach.”

In the popular documentary, “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” a young girl and her mother play the lottery in an elementary school cafeteria packed with hundreds of families, each hoping desperately that their number will be called. If the girl wins, she will attend a premier school. If not, maybe next year.

Ruth López Turley, associate professor of sociology, wants to remove luck from the equation, and thanks to new funding generated through the Centennial Campaign, the odds are in her favor.

At Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Turley is spearheading a new partnership between Rice and the Houston Independent School District, the seventh-largest district in the nation. Funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Houston Education Research Consortium will unite researchers with local education leaders to generate solutions that are grounded in the realities of actual communities.

“Sociologists are good at identifying social problems, but at Rice we’re also serious about effecting change,” said Turley, who has studied the impact of such factors as poverty and ethnicity on educational attainment. “It’s great not just for Houston but for other communities, because the demographics in Houston represent what will happen in the rest of the country in the coming decades.”

Campaign Progress Duncan and McMurtry colleges Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center • New minors in business and Jewish studies • Center for Engineering Leadership • •

What’s Next Reaching our $100 million scholarship goal $7.3 million in Annual Fund gifts 2011–12 • Summer mentorship experiences through the Center for Civic Engagement • Rice 360º and Beyond Traditional Borders • •

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Campaign Progress 23 new endowed professorships Brockman Hall for Physics • Kinder Institute for Urban Research • Houston’s first Ph.D. in art history • •

What’s Next Innovative bioscience initiatives Faculty exchange programs • Graduate student fellowships • Investments in entrepreneurship • •

Centennial Campaign “Scoreboard” Rice is counting down to one of the biggest birthday parties Houston has ever seen — Rice’s centennial.

Learning and Leading Locally and Globally The campaign will foster partnerships with leading institutions in Houston and around the world that will benefit our students and faculty and extend our global reach.

On her first-ever trip to Los Angeles, Sue Biolsi found herself in a heptagonal home that seemed to hover precariously off a hillside in the Angeles National Forest. She had seen the famous house in pictures, but now she was experiencing it: walking up the winding drive, peering skyward through the polygonal facades and making her way through doorless rooms that seem to flow together effortlessly.

Thanks to funding generated through the Centennial Campaign, Biolsi, a graduate student at the Rice School of Architecture, and eight of her classmates visited L.A.-based, nationally renowned architect Michael Maltzan. Over several days, the students presented their work to Maltzan, explored his firm and received a firsthand, in-depth look at the city while touring some of his landmark buildings, including his heptagonal house and transitional apartments for the homeless in Skid Row. “I fell in love with his work,” Biolsi said. “Everyone deserves a nice place to live and to be inspired by truly innovative design, and Maltzan is able to do so much with a tight budget. We were all blown away.”

Over the prior year, Rice architecture students visited New York, Istanbul, Shanghai, Mexico City and other pivotal urban destinations as part of a new initiative to fully integrate class travel into the curricula. The initiative builds on the groundwork laid by architecture Professor John J. Casbarian, who established Rice’s first regular traveling studio and founded Rice School of Architecture Paris, Rice’s only satellite campus. In Casbarian’s honor, his longtime friend and former Rice trustee Ralph S. O’Connor is matching all gifts to the newly established John J. Casbarian Travel Fund up to $1 million.

There’s plenty to celebrate already, as generous donors and longtime friends have committed $739 million toward the campaign’s $1 billion goal.

The funds are hard at work transforming students into leaders, fueling life-changing research and energizing our city and nation — offering an inspiring preview of even greater successes to be realized ahead. Here are just some of the highlights: •

Nearly 42,000 supporters and volunteers have invested in Rice during the campaign.

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18 new or enhanced facilities and spaces debuted during the campaign.

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$83 million raised (and counting) toward the $100 million Centennial Scholarship Initiative.

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23 new endowed professorships.

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A student experience ranked No. 1 in the nation for three consecutive years.

CAMPAIGN GIVING BY SOURCE

Campaign Progress Chao Center for Asian Studies Rice Public Art Program • New collaborations with Houston’s museums • Simmons Collaborative Research Grants • •

What’s Next Continuing Studies building Humanities international postdocs • Architecture class travel • Gateway global internships • •

www.giving.rice.edu/campaignreport

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A Campus Renewed During the past several years, the Rice campus has seen some of the most significant additions in its history. Rice Magazine has featured many of these construction projects, and now that the spate of campus construction is winding down, we’re pleased to give you a view of the new Rice. For a closer look, be sure to visit our online virtual tours.

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—Heather Kufchak

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An MBA for MDs and RNs BY

“A lot of business

practices apply as equally to health care as they apply to any other industry.”

—Vikas Mittal

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hen Mary Ann Lee finished her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at the University of Texas in 2007, she decided to get some work experience before going on to earn a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry.

So Lee took a job at a pharmaceutical testing company, applying her finely tuned research skills to the corporate world. That’s when her plan changed.

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A LYS O N

W A R D

“I realized,” she said, “that in terms of career paths, an MBA would be a better investment than a Ph.D.” So Lee enrolled in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice. But she didn’t have to leave her biochem background behind.

She opted for the Jones School’s MBA program with a health care concentration. When she graduates in 2012, Lee will have a solid background in the business of health care.

Health care professionals of all types have chosen to earn Rice MBAs since the Jones School rolled out three new health care tracks in 2010. Students in these programs take core classes with the rest of the business school, then specialize their degrees with health care electives that examine the issues within the industry. They can merge their primary knowledge and experience — in medicine, pharmaceuticals or biotech — with business savvy to become leaders in their fields.

The programs have attracted professionals in various stages of their careers: doctors preparing to be hospital department heads, nurses who have management roles and physicians who plan to open their own practices. Now, they’re attracting recent graduates who, like Lee, want to succeed beyond the research lab.

In 2009, Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing, saw a need for Rice to offer a health care specialization. “We’re in Houston,” he said, “where health care is a major industry.”

But he realized that there was a gap in the health care industry that medical schools aren’t filling and that professionals in the field need but often are missing: a solid knowledge of business.

“A lot of business practices apply as equally to health care as they apply to any other industry,” Mittal said. The basics of business — quality of service, cost efficiency, good operations management and logistics — are as important at hospitals, private practices or insurance companies, he pointed out, as they are anywhere else. But while health care involves commerce, business basics aren’t usually taught in medical programs.

“The training that’s been offered to health care providers has been very technical,” Mittal said. “They learn a lot about the medical aspect of everything, but they don’t get a lot of training in the organizational aspects.”

Mittal proposed the Jones School health care program and helped put it together to help fill that need by turning out health care professionals and researchers who know how to handle a budget and manage an organization.

The Jones School offers several tracks for health care students.

The MBA for Professionals track is designed for students who have seven to 10 years of experience in their field — those who are mid-career, perhaps working as junior administrators, and want to advance.

The MBA for Executives track targets professionals who are further

“The training that’s been offered to health care providers has been very technical. They learn a lot about the medical aspect of everything, but they don’t get a lot of training in the organizational aspects.”

—Vikas Mittal

along in their careers — a hospital department head, for example, who needs to understand financial statement analysis. Both tracks are part-time, two-year programs, with classes offered in the evenings and on weekends. The third track is a full-time MBA that also requires two years of study. It’s designed for recent college graduates or career-switchers — those just starting out in health care who want an education that will prepare them for administration or consulting.

Of course, those aren’t the only options for people interested in combining business and medicine. The Jones School has long offered a graduate certificate in health care management designed for those who want to get a business background but don’t have the time to earn an MBA. And the five-year MBA/MD program allows students to simultaneously pursue an MBA from the Jones School and a medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine.

Throughout the Jones School’s health care offerings, Mittal sees students who are moving up in their careers. “A lot of them are physicians who are taking on administrative responsibilities,” he said.

“They might be department chairs or involved in research and starting their own biotechnology companies.”

Learning business concepts helps them grow and get ahead, but because health care students share classes with students who aren’t on the health care track, they learn about those other industries as well.

“It’s very important for people in health care to take a lot of classes alongside students who are not from health care,” Mittal said. “One of the things we believe is that the learning comes from interaction.”

This gives health care students the opportunity to build relationships and connections outside the medical field. “You come to business school to learn a new language,” said Deanna Fuehne, executive director of the Jones School’s Career Management Center. In the medical track, MBA students can add the language of business to the skills they already have, and the combination is particularly valuable to employers.

“In the health care field, you’re taught to think in a way that’s very compelling to other industries,” Fuehne said. Adding business savvy to a thorough, methodical work ethic produces an excellent candidate for leadership and management.

Indeed, many of the graduates have landed just across the street from Rice, in leadership roles at premier hospitals in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. Others have become leaders at places like Medtronic, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and top health care consulting companies.

Lee is an ideal example. After her first year of study, she completed a summer internship with the health insurance provider Humana.

On the job, she worked on a plan to reduce the hospital readmission rates of Medicare recipients. It was a problem that required knowledge of the medical field and an understanding of good business

“ I realized that

in terms of career paths, an MBA would be a better investment than a Ph.D.” —Mary Ann Lee

practices — exactly the sort of work Lee’s MBA program is preparing her to do well.

“It was an amazing internship,” Lee said. And because she had spent two semesters focusing on what was happening in health care, she was up to speed on the issues. “An operations class I took last year,” Lee said, “gave me the understanding and the framework to approach the problem.”

It’s that sort of skill — understanding both the health care and the business of the health care business — that makes the new degrees so valuable, Mittal said. “Health care costs are rising quite fast, and it’s becoming more important for the industry to operate more efficiently.

It’s very important for everybody associated with health care to get a good understanding of best practices in business.”

Lee is still deciding whether she wants to follow up her internship with a career in health insurance or venture out into medical consulting.

“I think the end goal right now,” she said, “is to be able to contribute to health care reform in some way.”

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W

hich school at Rice educates the most students? Which one covers the largest diversity of topics? Which one has the largest direct impact on the greater Houston community? If you answered the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, you might also know that the history of continuing studies at Rice has foundations almost as old as Lovett Hall.

“There’s this wonderful early quote from Edgar Odell Lovett,” said Mary McIntire, dean of the Glasscock School. “He said, ‘Education does not begin with the university, nor does it end with the university. It’s a matter of the whole span of life.’ He thought that it was the responsibility of faculty to engage with the community.”

In fact, much of the university’s opening celebration nearly a century ago consisted of public lectures attended not just by the invited dignitaries, but also by people throughout the community.

And during Rice’s early years, open lectures were so popular that the city ran extra trolleys down South Main Street to bring people to campus.

for teachers in both AP and IB.” The AP program draws teachers from the Houston area and quite a few from outside the state and abroad. Last year’s IB program, which is much more international in scope, drew more than 650 teachers, 100 of whom were international participants from 16 countries. Teachers from 37 countries have participated over the program’s history.

In 2006, the School of Continuing Studies received an endowment from Susanne Morris ’62 and Melbern Glasscock ’61 and was renamed the Glasscock School. With nearly 13,000 enrollments last year, it is not only one of the oldest, but also one of the largest continuing education programs in Texas. And as the school has grown,

For Love of

BY CHRISTOPHER DOW

The Rice School of Continuing Studies officially began in 1967 under the direction of Carl Wischmeyer. “He was basically an engineer,” McIntire said, “and the first courses we offered were designed to bring engineers — predominantly Rice alumni, but not always — up to speed on new technology.”

By 1974, the school had begun establishing other programs.

One was the language program, which consisted of instruction in foreign languages and English as a Second Language (ESL). The school also offered a certificate program in translation. The personal development program, which offers noncredit courses in arts, history, science, writing and photography, also began about this time.

The mid-1980s brought a series of fundraising courses, and 1995 saw the genesis of the Teacher Professional Development program. Every summer, this program hosts an Advanced Placement (AP) Summer Institute for teachers, which trains high school teachers who teach college preparatory curricula in their schools.

The Teacher Professional Development program has grown by leaps and bounds. “We started the AP Summer Institute with just a couple of hundred teachers,” McIntire said, “and we soon became one of the largest such institutes in the country for AP teacher training. About 5,000 of the school’s enrollments are in the area of education. And the education program is set to grow even more thanks to a $1 million grant from the Department of Education to work with two area school districts to help American history teachers become more effective.

“A number of years ago, we also began an International Baccalaureate (IB) professional development program for teachers,” McIntire said. “We’re the only place in the country offering training

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so have its programs. The ESL program now averages about 250 students in each of six sessions a year. “More than 100 countries have been represented since 2000,” McIntire said, “and we have ongoing relationships with several governments that send students to us on a regular basis.”

The number of foreign language enrollments is similar to those for ESL. “The classes are small and offer multiple levels of proficiency depending on the language,” McIntire said. “We teach Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, French, Arabic and Japanese. These courses are highly popular for individuals who are planning to travel and for corporations doing business abroad.”

The Glasscock School’s personal development program has become one of the largest in the region — its current catalog lists about 40 courses ranging from history to nature to creating and appreciating the arts. “The size of the program is not typical of a lot of continuing education programs,” McIntire said. “It’s also fairly unusual to have the extensive faculty involvement that we have.”

Five years ago, the school made a notable entry into the territory of degree programs with its Master of Liberal Studies (MLS).

The MLS is an interdisciplinary program that appeals not just to recent graduates, but also to people who have been out in the world for a while and want to broaden their education. “The classes are scheduled for people who lead busy lives,” McIntire said, “and we have students of all ages and walks of life.”

The Glasscock School also is working with other schools at Rice to help develop additional professional master’s programs.

“We bring to the table significant marketing experience and a staff with extensive, long-term backgrounds in adult learning,” McIntire

said. “We have people who are not just coordinators, but who also have substantial knowledge in developing curricula.”

Another relatively new program is the school’s Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership. “This came out of the fundraising courses we started in the mid-1980s,” McIntire said.

“A couple of years ago, we got a wonderful gift from Hank ’40 and Demaris De Lange Hudspeth ’42 to launch the center.”

The need for the center is clear, McIntire said. “The Baby Boomers are beginning to retire, and in the next 10 to 15 years, there will be a major exodus from the nonprofit sector.

It’s crucial for us to help develop new leaders for the nonprofits and other organizations that help to create the social fabric of the city and keep it strong.”

One of the center’s offerings will be a certificate program designed for the people who are responsible for nonprofits’ financial aspects, such as how to fill out government forms and handle auditing, projections and fundraising.

Another will provide training for individuals who head up nonprofits or departments within nonprofits, and there will be one for board members to develop their effectiveness.

“We do on a community basis what Rice is trying to do on the campus, which is to change lives and make them more fruitful, valuable and intellectually complete.”

—Mary McIntire

Lifelong Learning “There’s been a lot of support from foundations for this program because they want to see better proposals, better caretaking of the funding, and more effectiveness in the planning and execution of projects,” McIntire said. “Eventually, we’d like to offer a master’s degree in nonprofit leadership.”

This fall, the Glasscock School’s mission of fostering lifelong learning will set its sights on a younger crowd than usual for continuing studies programs with the launch of an experimental program for Rice students. The courses will range from science to world religions. “We’ve also developed a small program for local high school students who have the ability to get into Rice’s summer school, which we administer,” McIntire said. “They take courses with Rice undergraduates. Many do very well, and some of them come back to Rice as undergraduates.”

With enrollments set to reach 18,000, it’s not surprising that the school has outgrown its small building located at the south edge of campus. “We would like to develop extensive daytime programming and offer classes year-round, but because of space constraints, we have to squeeze everything into the summer and midsemester breaks,” McIntire said. “We also want to add significant Webdelivered programs, and those would be much easier to add for both personal and professional development if we had the facilities.”

The solution is a new building, which will be sited along University Boulevard, near Rice Stadium. Preliminary designs have been done by Overland Partners in San Antonio, which designed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, a number of buildings at the University of Texas at Austin and the Bonfire Memorial at Texas A&M University.

“It’s clearly a Rice building, but it’s different in some regards in that it will have a lot of large windows that allow views of the activities going on inside,” McIntire said. “Its inviting and open face exemplifies Rice’s permeability to the community. We’re just a shade under $15 million toward our $24 million goal, and we’re hoping we can get the fundraising done in a year. As part of the Centennial Campaign, we’ve had wonderful support from the Development Office, the president and the board.”

Speaking of the centennial, the school will be offering several courses specific to next year’s celebration of Rice’s first century, such as one on the builders of Rice. Of special interest to photographers is a centennial-oriented photography contest sponsored by the Glasscock School. “The contest is open to just about anybody,” McIntire said. “Entries have to be shots of exteriors that are recognizably Rice, and they can be submitted online. There’ll be prizes and a reception. One subcategory will be historical photographs, and I’m hoping that we can add those to the Rice archives.”

McIntire noted that it’s no coincidence that the school’s major programs specifically address concerns that are crucial to the social fabric of our city, such as helping people with their jobs, making their lives more rich and interesting, helping them understand other cultures and languages, and so on.

“It’s important for Rice to reach out to the community,” McIntire said. “We do on a community basis what Rice is trying to do on the campus, which is to change lives and make them more fruitful, valuable and intellectually complete.”

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“ The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking

The Art and Science of Giving

The Next Level for Lifelong Learning

In the mid-1980s, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies offered its first course designed for the nonprofit community, the Art of Fundraising. Twenty-five years later, the course is still drawing participants, but it’s now just one of nearly 20 dedicated to improving the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations in the Houston area.

“A degree in liberal studies is an education few get but we all need,” said Emma Tsai, an editorial associate in Rice’s psychology department, who graduated with a Master of Liberal Studies (MLS) last spring. “It’s reading, writing, conversation. We read great science like Dawkins, Darwin and Galileo. We read great poetry: Homer, Virgil, even the Bible. We read great drama: Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams.”

T Today, the courses are offered through the new Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, created in 2010 with the assistance of a donation from Rice alumni C. M. “Hank” ’40 and Demaris De Lange Hudspeth ’42. The center’s dedicated staff hopes to help Houston achieve and sustain a vibrant philanthropic culture in which individuals of all ages and means are inspired to give and to serve, and where nonprofit leaders — both professional and volunteer — have access to the highest quality of educational resources to support their work.

To ensure the center would get started down the right path toward serving the needs of the community, director Angela Seaworth conducted an extensive survey of the nonprofit community in Houston and convened a strategic task force made up of local philanthropists and nonprofit executives, Rice faculty, nonprofit faculty and practitioners from around the country. The task force envisioned, and put into motion, a plan for extended continuing education courses, certificate programs (including master’s-level certificate programs) and a master’s degree in nonprofit leadership.

Seaworth and the staff of the center are committed to fulfilling these initiatives over the next several years. Existing courses covering the basics of fundraising, proposal writing, capital campaigns, major gifts, board responsibility and more will be augmented with new ones covering such topics as stewardship, data mining, nonprofit law and fund development planning.

“As the nonprofit sector continues to professionalize, we want to expand the educational opportunities to support the professionals and volunteers who lead nonprofit organizations,” Seaworth said. “We want to help them serve more people effectively.”

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Currently the only degree program offered by the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, the MLS grew out of the desire of many participants to take their lifelong learning to the next level.

More than 30 students were accepted into the first session in 2005.

“Clearly,” said Mary McIntire, dean of the Glasscock School, “there was a pent-up demand.”

Within a few years, the MLS became one of the largest master’s programs at Rice, and it now stands at No. 3. The number of people enrolled each year averages 65.

Student diversity often is cited as one of the most valuable aspects of the program, according to John Freeman, Rice professor emeritus and research professor of physics and astronomy, who has served as director of the MLS program since its inception. Students range in ages from 20 to 70, and their careers run the gamut: teachers, doctors, artists, lawyers, homemakers, military officers, corporate executives, retirees and others. Freeman said he has noticed an increase in applications from young professionals. “They know the program will help them improve valuable career skills such as writing, making presentations, research and analytical thinking.”

Espousing the virtues of a liberal education, Freeman recalls Marcel Proust’s quote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

“The MLS program gives its students new eyes on the worlds of art, literature, music, human affairs, international issues, science, contemporary thought and just about every imaginable subject of interest,” Freeman said. “It takes its students on a true voyage of discovery.”

new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

—Marcel Proust

Personal Perspectives

Bridging the Professional Gap

On any weekday evening this fall, you’ll see hundreds of Houstonians eagerly walking to classrooms across campus to participate in courses such as The Civil War and Its Impact on America, Spotlight on Rice University’s School of Architecture, Writing the Novel and The Photo Essay.

Shawn Matthys was several years into his career when the nation’s financial crisis began to threaten the funding for his position in a local school district. “Rather than allow myself to become a victim of the crisis,” he said, “I decided that changing careers was an option I needed to seriously explore.”

These short noncredit courses, offered by the Personal Development program at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, give Houstonians the opportunity to learn a variety of subjects from faculty from Rice and other universities as well as from local experts. “Because we want to make a significant impact on the continuing education of our community,” said Steve Garfinkel, director of community programs, “we’ve always tried to present the best in academic scholarship and expertise.”

Each fall and spring, Garfinkel coordinates a slate of dozens of courses in arts, humanities, science, lifestyle, creative writing, personal finance, studio art and photography. Last spring’s lineup attracted more than 1,700 enrollments. “Some of our participants take two and three courses each semester,” he said. “They tell us we’re an important part of their lives.”

Demetre Grivas of Sugar Land has taken more than 15 personal development courses over the past five years. He believes these types of courses are beneficial from a practical perspective, by engaging and exercising the brain. “They also benefit from a creativity perspective by stirring the participant toward the examination of his or her life,” he said. “My belief is that an unexamined life — the life of those who know nothing of themselves or their real needs and desires — is not worthy to be lived.”

Historian Newell Boyd has taught classes in the Glasscock School for many years because he enjoys the passion for learning that adults bring to the classroom. “It is an instructor’s dream to teach adult students who don’t have to be present for career enhancement,” he said. “It’s the unadulterated desire to learn that motivates them.”

His research on career fields led him to the Paralegal Certificate Program at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. “My experience seemed to fit in well with paralegal studies, as it affords people from various professional backgrounds the opportunity to advance both professionally and financially.”

After finishing the program in 2010, Matthys was hired as a paralegal by a local law firm. Now he works as lead paralegal for an Austin law firm. “Not only have I succeeded,” he said, “I have excelled.”

While not all students achieve such a dramatic career transformation, the professional development programs offered by the Glasscock School provide the opportunity for real growth and advancement. In addition to paralegal studies, programs are offered in human resources, financial services (including courses that lead up to Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Treasury Professional exams), career development and communication skills (including public speaking, presenting, grammar, business writing, persuasion and creativity).

Professional development was the catalyst for the school’s formation in 1967. The first director of Continuing Studies, Carl Wischmeyer, stressed that the program would be “designed primarily to bridge the widening gap between formal education and the swift changes in basic knowledge” and would become “a potentially strong force in the anti-obsolescence battle.”

That notion seems even more relevant now than it did then, said Carroll Scherer, director of professional programs. “Careers are evolving faster and faster. Postbaccalaureate professional development will always be in demand from those who want to stay up-todate and increase their value in the job market.”

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BY A LYS O N WA R D

In the Business of Education A public school principal serves as the top campus leader, director of instruction and staffing and maybe even head disciplinarian. The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business wants to add another title to that list: CEO.

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he Rice University Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) is the Jones School’s MBA and fellowship program designed for K–12 educators by offering an alternative — or an addition — to an advanced degree in education that tackles education issues within a curriculum based on the core principles of business. It strives to give Houston-area teachers, principals and future principals the business savvy to play the role of visionary CEOs so they can reform education one school at a time.

“We were born out of the idea that the schools aren’t getting it,” says Andrea Hodge, the program’s executive director. “The program is small — we just admitted our 100th student this fall — but our graduates have a fresh, bold energy to stir up their struggling or stagnating public schools.”

The idea behind REEP is that, in order to run a school smartly and efficiently, a principal — like any top executive — needs a solid understanding of cost-benefit analysis, organizational behavior, strategy

master’s degree and a few years of experience in teaching and administration; the second is the Summer Institute for School Leaders, a two-anda-half week program for REEP students and other educators who gather to discuss innovation, leadership and problem-solving with leaders in the field; and the last is the REEP MBA for School Leaders, a two-year program with classes offered on weekends or in the evenings.

The MBA is about as close to free as an MBA can get. Underwriting by the Houston Endowment has made it possible for educators to have most of their tuition money fully reimbursed, provided they graduate from the program, stay in Houston-area schools for the next five years and move into a leadership role.

Before they earn an MBA, REEP students must complete a project that focuses on improving some aspect of education. And those projects are starting to make a difference in schools already.

Two REEP students who work in different school districts — Spring Branch and Houston — are working together on a proposal

The idea behind REEP is that, in order to run a school smartly and efficiently, a principal — like any top executive — needs a solid understanding of cost-benefit analysis, organizational behavior, strategy and finance.

and finance. REEP endeavors to produce school CEOs who can lead a staff; manage a campus budget; analyze methods and programs to determine whether they’re efficient, effective and affordable; and come up with creative solutions to perennial problems.

They’re asking questions that cut to the heart of education reform.

“What kind of learning environments do we need to create?” Hodge said. “And, given budget constraints and time constraints, how can we do it more efficiently?”

The program, which is available to K–12 public school educators in the Houston area, is designed for those who have the desire and the potential to move up in the system — to be principals or other school leaders. To date, it has attracted teachers and administrators from all over the Houston area — charter schools and public schools alike.

REEP offers three options. The first is the Business Fellowship Program for School Leaders, a 15-month sequence designed for those who have a

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to start a college-credit program with Houston Community College.

Another is working to get the community involved in offering better after-school programs. And yet another works for a troubled school that needed a spark of life. She researched the benefits of International Baccalaureate (IB), the popular education program that lends a global focus to a school’s curriculum. Now her school is applying to be an IB school, and she’s been named coordinator.

All this talk of reforming schools and revolutionizing education could sound a bit threatening to the folks running public schools, but that’s not the case, said Ann Best, the chief human resources officer for the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Twenty-eight educators in the Houston school district have enrolled in REEP programs, more than in any other district. And Best — who’s in charge of finding leaders who will carry Houston schools into the future — says REEP is a step in the right direction.

“We ask principals to be strong instructional leaders,” she said, “but we also ask them to also be sophisticated managers, sometimes over million-dollar operations. It’s in HISD’s best interest to develop a cadre of leaders who have this level of business savvy and skill.”

REEP applicants from HISD are hand-selected by HISD administrators, who identify the employees who show the most potential to be good principals and other leaders. “We know well in advance which teachers show real leadership potential,” Best said, “and the school district wants to invest in them.”

The educators who go through REEP are then fast-tracked into leadership roles in the district. Cendie Stanford, who finished her REEP Business Fellowship in May, is one of those educators. Until last summer, Stanford was a seventh-grade principal at a Spring Branch middle school. Now she’s a Leading Excellence Fellow at a YES Prep charter school and is in training to be the founding principal next year of a new YES Prep campus in Spring Branch. And she’s on the cutting edge of a new partnership between Spring Branch ISD and some successful charter schools.

Stanford had two master’s degrees already — in technology education and educational administration — but she believes REEP offered her a more “tangible experience” that was in touch with what’s really happening in schools. “I feel like it was much deeper learning,” she said. “The stuff we were exposed to was real, not just textbook examples.”

For example, Stanford did a case study that examined the practice of using outside consultants to help turn around low-performing schools. It was a real-life example: At her school, a consultant had been hired to recommend changes. She wanted to take another look at this common practice in education.

“You can get so caught up in being in the same system for so long,” Stanford said, “that you don’t know what something else looks like or how something else operates.”

Stanford said it opened her eyes when she met other educators with different practices and new ideas. They compared notes, visited each other’s schools and shared ideas.

“I had an opportunity to really learn from those people, and I’ve kept in touch with them,” Stanford said. “Having those authentic conversations and those campus walkthroughs was invaluable.”

That interchange of ideas is one of the most important opportunities that REEP provides. “There are a lot of folks who don’t even know what it is they don’t know when they come into the program,” Hodge said.

“They’ve been in their bubble — their district, their school — and they may not even know what the sister high school in their district is doing.”

Like business, education can be all about connections, and REEP is good at building connections. REEP students learn from fellow educators, yes, but they’re also making connections outside of education, and the exchange flows both ways. In the Jones School, REEP students take classes with students enrolled in the standard MBA for Professionals program, and Hodge has witnessed the power of having, “in a high-powered classroom full of young professionals,” a handful of educators asking new questions and offering different perspectives.

Cendie Stanford and Andrea Hodge

“People talk about how the teaching profession is underpaid, or like it’s some sort of social mission,” Hodge said. “And there’s that condescending phrase: ‘If you can’t do, teach.’

But our regular MBA students were able to say, Wow, there is talent in education.” Because of this, Hodge believes that REEP is helping foster a new respect for teaching that is long overdue.

Apparently the MBA students think so, too. Last year, Jones School students started the Education Leadership Club composed of a mix of educators and business professionals.

“They’re creating partnerships and friendships with future business leaders in Houston,” Hodge said, “and that’s a good thing for educators and their schools.”

REEP is building connections to the Houston community as well. A lecture series has brought in several big names in education and entrepreneurship, and a REEP Innovation Exchange last July welcomed more than 200 public-school educators to campus for an all-day session with entrepreneurs.

The REEP program is small, and it’s just getting established. But with a web of solid connections — and the energetic desire to make a positive change in education — REEP can create a ripple effect, Hodge said. As graduates return to their schools with the knowledge they’ve gained from REEP, they are making a difference on each campus, and their influence will spread as they move up through the ranks in their districts.

“Our graduates — and even our students — are fast-tracking into leadership positions in the Houston area,” Hodge said. “That, for us, is an early indicator that something valuable is happening here.”

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BY MIKE WILLIAMS

Epidemiological Pioneer Wayne Shandera wants to set the record straight.

The physician and Rice alumnus was not alone in discovering HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, which has infected more than 60 million people and killed nearly 30 million worldwide. He was, he clarified, one of a small group of Los Angeles-based physicians who identified the first serious infection associated with what later became known as AIDS. But Shandera’s role in the initial report to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), is well-known. For that, the Texas native received nationwide attention on the report’s 30th anniversary this summer.

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handera ’73 is an assistant professor of internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and an attending physician at Harris County’s Ben Taub General Hospital and the Thomas Street Health Center, one of the nation’s largest HIV/AIDS treatment facilities.

But in 1980, fresh out of a residency at Stanford University (which followed medical school at Johns Hopkins), Shandera was the CDC’s epidemic intelligence services officer in Los Angeles, where a former immunology fellow at Stanford, Michael Gottlieb, had taken a faculty job at the University of California at Los Angeles.

“Gottlieb went on to make what I think was the important connection in Los Angeles,” Shandera said. “We’d often talked about doing a project together, and over the ensuing eight or nine months, we all knew something was going on in the gay community in Los Angeles.

“No one could really identify it completely. In fact, a famous lymphoma pathologist called me from the University of Southern California’s L.A. County Hospital in December 1980 and said he had six patients with very distinct lymphoma pathology and asked if we could identify what that was.”

After seeing strikingly similar cases of severe immune deficiency in gay male patients, Gottlieb was advised to report his findings on what appeared to be an outbreak to the CDC’s journal. That’s when he, too, called Shandera.

Although the CDC had heard about the outbreaks, Shandera hadn’t personally seen the symptoms. “As an epidemiologist, I didn’t get to do very much clinical work,” he recalled. “I was dealing with outbreaks of neuromyasthenia in Santa Monica, stillbirths in Long Beach and diarrhea in a day care center in East L.A.” He also was volunteering in the city’s free clinics and elsewhere, “just to keep up my skills.”

And he was working on a report with Gottlieb and other L.A. physicians who had seen patients stricken with what they presumed to be pneumonia caused by a strain of Pneumocystis, an organism formerly called a parasite but whose genetic structure suggests that it is a fungus. Shandera said the culture of caring among public health workers in Los Angeles, along with the Stanford-oriented scientific background he and Gottlieb brought to their professions, provided the unique combination of skills that allowed them to recognize the genesis of an epidemic.

“People knew about it in San Francisco, but it was in New York and Los Angeles where the disease first broke, where the first isolates were described,” he said. “Mike was very aggressive about getting it into the papers first because he knew other cities were about to report it.”

Shandera remembers delivering the initial report — titled “Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles” — to the journal by phone, dictating it word by word. “There were no faxes or emails,” he said.

In fact, Shandera’s name doesn’t appear on the paper. By CDC tradition, its staffers were not named; Shandera is credited as “Field Services Div., Epidemiology Program Office, CDC,” along with coauthors Gottlieb and doctors at UCLA and Cedars-Mt. Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

A week after the paper appeared on June 4, 1981, in MMWR, Shandera himself encountered three men dying of the condition in a county hospital ICU and realized the magnitude of their discovery. “We had thought this was just an isolated, unusual phenomenon occurring in gay men in L.A.,” he said. “But it was the tip of an iceberg, a phenomenon that epidemiologists talk about all the time because there are many more cases than you ever see.”

A year later, the mysterious disease became officially known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — AIDS.

“There’s been a sort of revisionist history since that time,” Shandera said, “because a number of physicians say they noticed an increase in the requests for pentamidine, the medication used for Pneumocystis pneumonia. But none of us remember that from back then. In fact, the CDC was criticized for not noticing an increase in this one medication. They should have picked up on it in Atlanta.”

Shandera’s work soon took him away from AIDS research to CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. He subsequently spent time in Boston, San Antonio, Portland, South Carolina and Dallas, where he worked at the Parkland HIV/AIDS Clinic, which is associated with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, before joining BCM in 1988. At BCM, he teaches courses on HIV/AIDS and studies malaria.

“I was elected to the Houston Philosophical Society at Rice last year and gave a lecture on the past, present and future of HIV and malaria,” he said. “To learn about malaria in Houston, I called the state health department, and on that very day, they were throwing out their files. I rescued the data.”

Shandera doesn’t consider himself an advocate for HIV research despite the occasional interview about his historic link with the disease. He prefers to work with patients one-on-one at Ben Taub and at Thomas Street, where he spends two days a week, often seeing patients he’s treated since the late 1980s.

“It is amazing that they have lived so long,” he said, crediting the drug cocktail that keeps the disease at bay for so many sufferers. Shandera said the turning point against HIV came via mathematical modeling studies by Alan Perelson at Los Alamos and others that revealed that combinations of protease inhibitors could effectively lower the levels of virus in the blood. “Because of that, it was decided that you have to hit this virus very hard with a combination of agents,” he said. It’s a strategy that also has proven worthwhile in treating malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis B. Shandera might have become a mathematician himself if he’d pursued his initial course at Rice. “I took a class with Ronny Wells [professor emeritus of mathematics] and 120 other people, all of whom had placed out of calculus, and it was an unbelievable experience,” he said. “But I realized that to pass the course, I’d have to spend all my time doing nothing but that. So I realistically decided I would do something else.”

He turned from science and engineering to biology, influenced by a physician uncle in San Antonio. “I remember discussing with Frank Fisher [professor emeritus in ecology and evolutionary biology] whether I should go academe or SE, and he said that if you’re going to be a treating physician, it’s much better to be an academic,” Shandera said. “But I learned a great deal about science. I was able to explore political science and history and a whole variety of things as a student at Rice, and that’s what I liked about having a lot of elective time. You could use it to sink or swim. You could take what you wanted.”

He also greatly enjoyed enhancing his keyboard skills by learning pipe organ with Klaus-Christhart Kratzenstein, a skill he still employs as a church organist in Houston.

Shandera said he’s gratified by ongoing efforts at Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative to improve the diagnosis of HIV and malaria to meet urgent global health needs. But he downplayed his own role as a pioneer, preferring to wage the fight side by side with his patients.

“One shouldn’t be in this to be a hero,” he said. “You do what’s necessary at the time. You recognize that with each stage of evolution of the disease, there are going to be profound developments that are far beyond what you can do yourself. You do what you can at that stage, and the next generation will take it to another level.”

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Guiding 36

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From matriculation to accepting their first postgraduate jobs, students in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business forge their way through a complex maze. There are classes to negotiate, projects to complete and a plethora of other issues from medical care to housing to learning about Houston businesses.

And for some, it’s all done while maintaining a full-time job.

BY LESLIE CONTRE R AS SCHWARTZ P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y T O M M Y L AV E R G N E

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hat’s where Yolander Albert, associate director of employer relations in the Jones School’s Career Management Center, and Brooke Bond, student services director for the MBA for Professionals Program at the Jones School, come in. They have the knowledge and expertise to guide students through what can be an intimidating process, both within the program and throughout the city, where networking opportunities are key to landing executive-level positions.

Recently, however, the two stepped outside the hedges to hone their own leadership skills as participants in Leadership Houston, a program that brings people together from Houston’s private and public sectors and educates them about all aspects of the city, from its history to government structure to arts and education. As members of Leadership Houston Class XXIX, Albert and Bond reversed roles and went from educators to students.

Since graduating its first class in 1983, Leadership Houston has become one of the most prestigious civic leadership programs in Houston. During a 10-month period, participants are exposed to a variety of issues facing Houston leaders, learn how to become more effective in their own organizations, and select and implement a class project. Through workshops, scavenger hunts and informative classes, participants are exposed to social, educational and cultural aspects of Houston. Each graduating class culminates its experience with a special community service project. Past projects have included permanent public art exhibits, the creation of

programs that benefit Houston youth and now, thanks to Albert and Bond’s class, the Palmetto Multi-Sensory Trail.

Specifically designed for the blind or visually impaired, the quarter-mile trail on the grounds of the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center opened to the public in June. The first of its kind in the southern U.S., the trail includes 18 educational stations with large-text and Braille signage and various features that allow visitors — visually impaired or fully sighted — to take advantage of touch, smell and sound to learn about the natural environment. A rope marks the side of the trail to guide those who are visually impaired, and sighted visitors can tour the trail with a blindfold available at the arboretum’s visitor center.

The trail, which is truly multisensory and participatory in nature, includes tactile displays, such as an armadillo shell and the roots of a fallen post oak tree. Guided audio and text encourage visitors to feel summer vines hanging from branches. Woodpecker and mockingbird sounds play from other stations, and one station directs visitors to crush and smell — but not taste — the poisonous cherry laurel blossom.

“I’m not a nature person,” said Albert, who is from Durham, N.C. “It’s outside of my comfort zone. But we laid mulch, planted shrubbery and dug holes. We actually created that trail.”

In addition to supplying physical labor, Albert served on the public relations committee for the project, which took six months to plan, fund and create. “The time frame was astonishing,” she said.

“Projects of this type usually take two full years.” Although Albert

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The trail, which is truly multisensory and participatory in nature, includes tactile displays, such as an armadillo shell and the roots of a fallen post oak tree. Guided audio and text encourage visitors to feel summer vines hanging from branches. Woodpecker and mockingbird sounds play from other stations, and one station directs visitors to crush and smell — but not taste — the poisonous cherry laurel blossom.

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Students

Brooke Bond and Yolander Albert had never been to the Houston Arboretum, she said she now takes people to the center.

Unlike Albert, Bond, who grew up in Colorado, is a nature lover. Even so, she had yet to discover the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. “The project taught me things about the city that I was really embarrassed that I didn’t know — things I had never paid attention to,” she said. “Now I’ve been exposed to a lot more of what the city has to offer.”

Bond also believes she’s discovered a lot about herself. “I learned how I work as a leader,” she said. “I lead by example and work as part of the team.” Bond served on the engineering and construction committee, using her coordination and leadership skills to keep track of volunteers and help make sure there was enough lumber ready when needed.

record in Leadership Houston’s 29 years of existence, said class chairwoman Macy Bodenhamer. “I’ve been with Leadership Houston for three years, and we have never had a project of this scope and value to Houston,” she said. Through leftover funding, the class gave money to the arboretum to help maintain the trail, something Bodenhamer said “surpasses the goal of benefiting the city of Houston. They created a legacy for the city of Houston for all walks of life.”

For Bond, the project leaves her with an appreciation for what an individual can do to shape the community. “People forget that an individual can truly impact what’s going on in the city,” she said.

“It was an eye-opening experience.”

At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Albert said the completion of the project was “surreal” given the scope of the project and how

“I’ve been with Leadership Houston for three years, and we have never had a project of this scope and value to Houston.”

— Macy Bodenhamer

Both staff members cited their knowledge of helping others through Rice’s MBA program as an asset when turning their attention to community service through Leadership Houston. And they believe that the knowledge they gained will help them do their Rice jobs better.

“Leadership Houston gained from my knowledge; I gained from theirs,” said Albert. “Many of our Leadership Houston classmates are employers, so it will provide good networking opportunities for Rice MBA students. By the same token, some of our Leadership Houston classmates were interested in the Rice MBA program.”

The Palmetto Multi-Sensory Trail was conceived because one of the class members had a spouse with a visual impairment. The class agreed to move forward with the project because class members thought it “was something sustainable for the arboretum and there already was space there,” said Bond. Albert noted that the class also selected the project because of its wide-reaching impact.

The class raised $72,000 for the project, surpassing the $40,000

quickly the group finished it. But ultimately, she said, it was about a coming together of different kinds of people.

“It was a very worthwhile experience,” she said. “At first I thought it was a good resume builder, but I left understanding that you gain so much from meeting people you would never cross paths with unless it was directly related to your work.”

“I built relationships with people from various backgrounds,” Bond said. “And since I work with students — all of them very different — I can now relate to them a little bit better and have more educated conversations.”

Bond said the experience, for her, was about understanding other people’s perspectives. “Everyone needs to be humbled,” she said, adding that she plans to travel the trail blindfolded. “This is how some people experience the world. We should appreciate that and learn to be still and quiet and use all of our senses as we experience life.”

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“My name is

Joe Wong, but to most people, I am known as ‘Who?’”

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Joe Wong ’01 gave a deadpan look as he stared across the spacious convention center. This wasn’t the usual comedy club setting he was accustomed to.

This was the annual Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, which was being broadcast across the country, and the audience numbered congressmen, Supreme Court justices and the vice president of the United States.

Unfazed by the pressure, Wong delivered his punch line: “Which is actually my mother’s maiden name. And the answer to my credit card security question.”

As rolls of laughter echoed throughout the room, the C-SPAN cameras cut to Joe Biden, catching him in stitches.

It’s not very often that a comedian gets to perform such a highprofile gig. Then again, it’s not very often that you find a standup comic with a Ph.D. in biochemistry who speaks English as a second language. But it’s this unparalleled uniqueness that, in two years, has taken Wong from local favorite at Boston comedy clubs to international sensation.

Wong’s journey from experimenting in chemistry labs to performing on TV didn’t happen overnight. For the 41-year-old comedian, earning his place in the national spotlight was a nearly decade-long effort.

Wong was born in Baishan, a city of 1.3 million in the Jilin province of China. In 1994, he moved to the United States to begin his doctoral studies at Rice. According to Wong, who uses an anglicized version of his birth name Huang Xi, he performed in a few comedy sketches back in China, but he never considered having a career in entertainment. His dream was to become a scientist.

“When I was younger, all of the smartest kids were good at

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science,” said Wong, who is a married father of one. “Having a career in the sciences seemed like this great thing to do. It was something that would bring you a lot of respect.”

But the comedy bug couldn’t be ignored. It bit Wong again while he was a student at Rice — this time with a vengeance — when he went to a Houston-area comedy club to see Emo Phillips perform. Wong admits that he couldn’t understand half of the jokes, but he thought that he ought to give stand-up comedy a try.

It wasn’t until after his move to Boston, though, that Wong pursued his new goal. In 2002, he began taking stand-up writing lessons at an adult education center, and once he was armed with enough jokes, he decided to try his talents out at a local bar’s open mic night.

“After my first show, a comedian came over to give me advice,” recalled Wong, who cites Woody Allen and Mitch Hedberg among his comedic influences. “He told me he thought I probably was funny, but he couldn’t understand what I was saying most of the time.”

Wong’s nighttime hobby of comedy was a stark contrast to his days spent working as a research scientist for Sanofi-aventis, a company that produces medications. He began honing his material at comedy clubs and quickly evolved into one of Boston’s favorites,

Arts performing up to four times a week. In 2009, he even made the Bostonians of the Year list published by the Boston Globe.

“Part of what makes Joe’s comedy so effective and hysterical is that you see him and who he is in all of his material,” said Rick Jenkins, owner of the Comedy Studio in Cambridge, Mass., where Wong frequently performs. “He’s not just doing an act. There’s only one Joe Wong, and we meet him through his comedy. He has evolved as a comedian just as he’s evolved as a person. He’s no longer only an immigrant outsider to America. He’s also a father and a family man.”

Despite Wong’s long residency in America, Chinese culture still plays a crucial role in his comedy. A number of his jokes touch on his status as an immigrant who has endured the typical bumps and bruises of adjusting to life in America. “I used to drive this used car

However, Brill contacted Wong in 2008 and asked to see him perform again. In April 2009, Wong made his debut on national TV, performing a set on Letterman. Dressed in a suit jacket, Wong looked at first as if he had wandered onstage by accident.

He appeared uncomfortably nervous, his eyes darting around the room. “So, I’m Irish,” he said and followed his comment with a calculated pregnant pause that soon had the audience erupting in belly laughs — laughter that continued until the end of the set.

According to Brill, Wong’s success on the show was not surprising. “Joe is a one of a kind — a very unique and smart comic,” he said. “His performance was amazing. He is one of the funniest people who has ever appeared on the show.” Brill booked Wong to perform again the next year.

After Wong appeared on Letterman, his reputation as a

with a lot of bumper stickers,” Wong begins in one of his bits. “One of them said, ‘If you don’t speak English, go home,’ and I didn’t notice it for two years.”

Wong said he even has begun to attract a following in China.

His performances have been broadcast with subtitles, and his jokes have been quoted in newspapers, though Wong admits the translations aren’t always smooth. For Wong, this newfound publicity has allowed his family to keep track of his burgeoning career.

“My father heard I was performing comedy, and one day I told him I was going to be on television in New York City,” Wong said, referring to his first appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” “A few months later the show was broadcast on Chinese radio and became the No. 1 online clip in China. Even though my dad had no idea who David Letterman was, he was still very happy with my career.”

Though Wong has developed a following in East Asia, his strongest fan base is in America, where he has become a bit of a sensation since first appearing on Letterman. Getting on the show was a four-year process for Wong. In 2005, he met Eddie Brill, a comedian who books performers for the Letterman show, at the Boston Comedy Festival. Over the years, the two stayed in touch, though Wong admits that he lost hope at one point.

“I had sent him this DVD of my performance, and he said that he only liked a couple of the jokes,” Wong says. “But I’m Chinese, so I just took that as a no.”

comedian skyrocketed, and he began receiving appearance requests and casting calls. Ellen DeGeneres hired him to cover the American Music Awards for her show. As Wong began receiving recognition from across the nation, he landed what he considers to be the greatest gig of his career to date: being the main performer at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2010.

“I worked on it for months,” Wong said. “Every morning I’d go and write at Dunkin’ Donuts before going to work. It was amazing to sit at the head table with all these journalists and politicians. I kept thinking, ‘What if I bomb?’ But I ended up getting a standing ovation.”

Currently Wong is in the early stages of developing a sitcom with Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants. In the meantime, he continues to perform across the country and hopes to have a half-hour special on Comedy Central.

Ultimately, even though he spent his childhood dreaming of being a scientist and seven years working for his Ph.D., Wong has no regrets about his decision to leave his full-time job in the pharmaceutical industry last year.

“I just love to make people laugh,” Wong says. “With comedy, people can resonate with what you’re saying. You have people who are with you and hanging on your every word. It’s something you can really reach people with.”

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Exhibit Chronicles the Construction of Rice’s Earliest Buildings A new exhibit at Fondren Library displays photos, documents and artifacts from the earliest days of what was then referred to as the Rice Institute. The display, “Constructing the Rice Institute: 1910–1914,” will be of particular interest to the Rice community, but Texas history buffs also will be intrigued.

One photo, dated March 2, 1911, shows many of the key figures of the university’s founding — Edgar Odell Lovett, Capt. James Baker, Will Rice and William Ward Watkin — helping to lay the cornerstone of the Administration Building, today’s Lovett Hall.

Another, from Feb. 4, 1912, depicts Watkin, who founded the Rice School of Architecture and designed several of Rice’s earliest buildings, looking over the residence halls as they began to take shape.

“Mary Bixby, director of Friends of Fondren Library, and I had a great time putting this exhibit together,” said Lee Pecht, head of special collections at Fondren.

“We’re delighted to display these materials that document Rice’s history and how it first sprouted out of the empty landscape.”

The exhibit, located in two display cases along the eastern wall of the main reading room, also includes period tools, like hammers, files, wrenches and nails — all suitably rusted with age. At the bottom of one case is an intriguing letter from Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, the architecture firm that sent Watkin to Houston, approving payment for his salary and traveling expenses. “We do not think it advisable at present to open an office bank account in Houston,” the letter

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reads, then asks that Watkin “handle the finances personally.”

But the photos will probably have the most meaning to members of the Rice community today. Alumni who sat through 8 a.m. lectures in the Physics Building’s main auditorium will enjoy seeing a Jan. 8, 1914, picture of workmen pouring concrete to form the ramp that would become the room’s seating section. And all Rice students, past and present, will get a kick out the Jan. 25, 1912, photograph of the setting of the Sallyport arch.

Perhaps the most iconic of the photos

“We’re delighted to display these materials that document Rice’s history and how it first sprouted out of the empty landscape.”

— Lee Pecht

shows Lovett Hall (dated Feb. 10, 1913), almost completed, rising out of the empty prairie. No other building is visible, just mud puddles in the foreground and an overcast sky as backdrop.

The exhibit is part of a series that will culminate with a display about the official opening of Rice, which will coincide with the celebration of the university’s centennial in fall 2012. The current exhibit will be on display through next spring.

—Franz Brotzen

Arts

Acclaimed Organist to Join the Shepherd School of Music

Internationally renowned for his artistry, technique and programming, Kenneth Cowan has earned a reputation as one of North America’s finest concert organists. In fall 2012, he will bring his skills as a performer and teacher to Rice when he joins the faculty of the Shepherd School of Music as an associate professor of organ.

Cowan maintains a rigorous performing schedule that takes him to top concert venues throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, and he has numerous critically acclaimed studio recordings to his credit. Cowan is currently a member of the faculty at the Westminster Choir College at Rider University in Princeton, N.J., where he was awarded the 2008 Rider University Distinguished Teaching Award.

Cowan has performed recently at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall, Spivey Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. In addition, Cowan has been a featured artist at the national conventions of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) held in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, has performed at many regional conventions of the AGO, and has been featured at several conventions of the Organ Historical Society and the Royal Canadian College of Organists.

“In a relatively short amount of time, Ken Cowan has established himself as one of our country’s premier organists,” said Robert Yekovich, Shepherd School dean and the Elma Schneider Professor of Music. “Having been at Westminster, a highly respected program in its own right, for the past several years, Ken also brings a wealth of teaching experience to Rice. The Shepherd School is extremely fortunate to have someone of his caliber to continue the fine tradition established here by Clyde Holloway, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor Emeritus of Organ.”

“I am sincerely honored to be joining the esteemed faculty

of the Shepherd School of Music,” Cowan said. “The variety and quality of musical activity present in the Shepherd School will be nourishing for me and my students alike, and the facilities at Rice present an ideal situation for training organists of the highest caliber. I eagerly await moving to the community.”

“The search for a new organ professor has been a long and arduous one,” said Robert Roux, Shepherd School chair of keyboard and professor of piano. “Ken Cowan was our very top candidate and is recognized everywhere as a most accomplished, personable and academically astute young virtuoso. He is already one of the

“Ken Cowan was our very top candidate and is recognized everywhere as a most accomplished, personable and academically astute young virtuoso. He is already one of the world’s greatest organists.”

— Robert Roux

world’s greatest organists. His hiring represents a coup that will resonate strongly throughout the organ world as well as the music world in general. He will only add to the prestige of an already stellar music program at the Shepherd School.”

A native of Thorold, Ontario, Cowan received a Master of Music and an Artist Diploma from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Prior to attending Yale, he graduated with a Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Cowan’s wife, Lisa Shihoten, is an accomplished violinist and will teach young violin students in the Shepherd School’s preparatory program.

Cowan is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. —Amy Hodges

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The Vote Has Been Cast

By Kelly Klaasmeyer

The demon barber of Fleet Street brought Ryann Ferguson and Steven Jamail together, and they’ve been making music together ever since.

W

riting partners Ferguson ’04 and Jamail ’02 met during a Rice production of “Sweeney Todd.” Jamail was the music director, while Ferguson describes her role as spending most of the show in an insane asylum sporting crazy ratted hair. “But it was a great show,” she said, “and it made me think that this is what I want to do forever.”

Writing partners for nearly a decade now, the pair returned to Houston this September when their production “VOTE! A New Musical” made its southwest regional premiere at Theatre Under The Stars (TUTS). The TUTS Education team selected “VOTE!” for their 2011 Apprenticeship Conservatory Training (ACT@TUTS) production program with the Humphreys School Steven Jamail and Ryann Ferguson of Musical Theatre.

“VOTE!” is a musical comedy that explores politics through a high school election at Green Valley High in which getting votes becomes the most important thing. It follows the experiences of three offbeat candidates as they are forced to define themselves and consider the importance of each vote. The show is described by Ferguson (book and lyrics) and Jamail (music 44

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and additional lyrics) as a “cartoon musical” both in terms of the cartoon soundtrack and video game-inspired music as well as the quirky tongue-in-cheek humor of the work — picture a clean episode of “South Park.”

Previous incarnations of “VOTE!” have appeared nationally and internationally at such venues as the New York International Fringe Festival and the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival in Scotland. The TUTS production of “VOTE!” at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts presented a full production of the show, with the teenage roles performed by more than 30 teens.

Ferguson and Jamail arrived at musical theater through unique paths.

Ferguson was an English major at Rice and studied with Justin Cronin, whom she described as “my fiction writing mentor and a huge supporter and influence.” But Ferguson could also sing and grew up with a professional musician father who played steel guitar and banjo. “My dad and I used to jam together,” she said. She also had done a lot of musicals and said, “When I realized how good the Shepherd School of Music was, I started to pilfer off them.”

Arts Jamail was a composition major at the Shepherd School, studying with noted composers Karim Al-Zand and Pierre Jalbert. “I learned how to do 21st-century art music,” Jamail said. He had been a percussionist, but he learned to play the piano as part of his composition studies.

The duo began collaborating a year after they met, first working together on an opera aria. At the time, Ferguson was an exchange student in Japan, and they collaborated via Skype. That aria, “Lotus Song,” went on to win a Harper’s Guild Award for Opera. Skype collaboration is a process they continue today with Jamail in New York and Ferguson pursing her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

After she graduated from Rice, Ferguson, who attended high school in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, returned home for a year to work as a marketing director for Anheuser-Busch.

“When I moved to New York, I had no place to live, but I did have an interview with a producer. My first job in New York was working on a revival of ‘Sweeney Todd’ — the first show I did at Rice.”

But theater jobs don’t exactly pay well. “‘We’re pleased to offer you $11,000 and a metro card,’” Ferguson quipped, “or, ‘We’ll pay you in lunch.’” So, like a lot of other NYC 20-somethings, she would cobble together a variety of jobs. “I would basically do anything, as long as it was theater-related.” In the process, she found herself working for a wide assortment of personalities. “You don’t become a professional theater person in New York without being a little wacky, so you meet a lot of interesting characters.”

Ferguson ultimately found a job she really liked. “I was working as a marketing director for a wonderful visionary Broadway director, Ken Davenport, but I worked long hours — so much of your time and energy goes into just being able to afford to live in New York.”

Because she didn’t have time to pursue her own projects, she decided to leave the city and go abroad to graduate school.

Jamail, who was born in Galveston and grew up in Friendswood, decided to stay in Houston for a few years after his graduation to hone his piano skills. “Composers make money being music directors or playing piano at auditions or accompanying dance classes,” he said. “It’s all piano focused, and it wasn’t a skill set I’d developed. I wasn’t good enough for New York. But I got really, really lucky.”

Jamail was hired to teach music and drama at Awty International School and took over the fine arts department. “It was a great experience. I’d been upset about not moving to New York right away, but things worked out better this way.”

Because he stayed in Houston, he had the opportunity to participate in a musical theater lab led by Stuart Ostrow, a multiple Tony Award-winner and producer of musicals like “1776” and “Pippin.” “I learned more from Ostrow,” he said, “than I have from anyone else aside from my composition teachers at Rice.” Jamail wrote the score for two works at the Hobby Center under the direction of Ostrow.

In 2007, Jamail decided to move to New York and, at same time, applied for a job working with Rosie O’Donnell as the music director for her children’s charity, Rosie’s Theater Kids. “After eight rounds of interviews, I got the job, and I’ve been doing that full time ever since,” he said. “She has been a great woman to work for, and she’s opened up a lot of doors.”

“So much of our confidence in what we want to do with our lives came out of our time at Rice. You hear ‘no’ a lot in this business, and you have to be confident enough to survive that. Rice gave me that foundation.”

—Ryann Ferguson

Jamail’s musical “My Life: Today” was commissioned by Rosie’s Theater Kids and was featured in the 2010 New York Musical Theatre Festival. Jamail also recently premiered his concert feature “No Ordinary Monday” at the Hudson Terrace in New York City.

“VOTE!” has roots in Ferguson’s Friendswood High School experiences, and the musical’s government teacher character is based upon Ferguson’s own high school government teacher, a memorably enthusiastic and inspirational woman. “A lot of the lines in the show are things she actually says,” Ferguson said. “She’s a woman who loves government, suffers no fools and has a mnemonic device for everything.”

Ferguson was slightly worried about how her teacher would respond when she told her she had based a character on her.

“Luckily,” Ferguson said, “she said it was the most flattering thing that has ever happened in her teaching career. ‘It shows I’m getting through to you!’”

Grad school has been a blessing for Ferguson as she and Jamail continue to work together on projects. “Since I’ve been here, I’m able to write full time, and I’ve had so many amazing opportunities.” And she and Jamail can collaborate via Skype at the drop of a hat.

They’ve been able to work together on some of Jamail’s New York-generated freelance endeavors, which often come with tight deadlines.

“Can we write a song for Rosie O’Donnell right now? Can we pitch something to Oprah right now?” Ferguson said. “I could never stop work and do that at my day job.”

The two also are developing other musicals. “Tercio de Muerte” is about a bullfighter, and the writing process took Ferguson to Spain to witness bullfighting firsthand. The other, “Nicholas and Alexandra,” is about the last Russian czar and his wife. A Russia trip is in the works for next summer.

The road back to Houston has been interesting and satisfying for Ferguson and Jamail. “I’m very proud of coming from Houston,” Jamail said. “Some of the best theater I’ve seen has been at TUTS and the Alley Theatre. And I’m really proud to talk about Rice in the theater community up here. I’ve been bragging about my hometown for so long that it’s wonderful to have my work showcased by a theater company that I believe in.”

She also brags about her alma mater. “So much of our confidence in what we want to do with our lives came out of our time at Rice.

You hear ‘no’ a lot in this business, and you have to be confident enough to survive that. Rice gave me that foundation.”

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Putting Intellectual Capital to Work The shift to a knowledge economy has been under way for decades, and today, the value of an average company is intangible and depends on invisible assets such as personal networks, company reputation or capacity to innovate. Yet most managers continue to emphasize tools optimized for industrial organizations and tangible assets.

Mary Adams ’81 and Michael Oleksak aim to rectify that situation with “Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st-Century Organization” (Praeger, 2010). The book takes the 10 basic building blocks of traditional, industrial-era businesses and defines their knowledge-era equivalents: intangibles are the new raw materials, intellectual capital is the new factory, assessment of intellectual capital is the new balance sheet and networks are the new organizational chart.

The intent is to provide a clear road map for managers adapting to the realities of business today, one that helps translate the new world of the knowledge-based economy into understandable terms and ready-to-implement ideas.

Adams is one of the leading U.S. experts on intangible capital and is the author of the Smarter Companies blog and creator of the IC Knowledge Center. Oleksak is an adviser to owners and managers of middle-market businesses.

—Christopher Dow

Lament and Wit Reminiscent of English Romantic poetry, the thoughtful work in “the book of ten” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), by Susan Wood, also is in direct literary descent from the confessional poets of the late 1960s.

The 32 elegiac poems in the collection move between lament and wit as they examine distressing episodes from Wood’s life to express the emotional and psychological effects of personal trials. They then go beyond this to examine the broader cultural and social implications of pain and loss.

The core of the book’s meaning resides in a series of poems based on “The Decalogue,” 10 short films by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, each of which represents one of the Ten Commandments. Wood’s decalogues are interspersed among the other poems in the volume and deal with life’s choices, particularly those pivotal choices that either strengthen or betray the self as we strive to discover our essential humanness.

Wood, who is the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English at Rice, is the author of “Bazaar” and “Campo Santo: Poems,” which was a Lamont Poetry Selection in 1991 and won the Natalie Ornish Award of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her third book, “Asunder,” was chosen by Garrett Hongo for the National Poetry Series.

—Christopher Dow

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ON THE

Bookshelf

Passion for Preservation A city dweller’s vacant lot ... A rancher’s back 40 ... A hiker’s favorite park ... In Texas, people of all stripes and backgrounds have fought hard to safeguard the places they hold dear when those places are threatened.

To

find and preserve these stories of courage and perseverance, the Conservation History Association of Texas (CHAT) launched the Texas Legacy Project in 1998, and since then, CHAT founder David Todd ’84 and documentary director David Weisman have traveled thousands of miles to conduct hundreds of interviews with people all over the state. These remarkable oral histories now comprise an extensive archive that records the efforts of veteran conservationists and ordinary citizens to preserve the natural legacy of Texas.

More than 60 of these stories are contained in “The Texas Legacy Project: Stories of Courage and Conservation” (Texas A&M University Press, 2010), a largeformat book richly illustrated with contemporary and archival photographs. “We believe that the passages presented here have value for what they tell about the history of a particular place, time, and cause,” the authors wrote in the introduction. “Texas in the twentieth century serves as a wide-ranging case study on how the country’s conservation themes have played out.”

The people at the heart of these stories come from all sorts of communities and walks of life, and their causes are equally varied, ranging from a West Texas grocer fighting nuclear waste to a Gulf Coast Baptist minister concerned about environmental health to an Austin lobbyist pressing for green energy. Each one relates firsthand accounts of battles fought for land and wildlife, for public health, and for a voice in media and politics, and their impassioned accounts remind us of the importance of protecting and conserving the natural resources in our own backyards, wherever they may be.

The book includes several maps of Texas showing the state’s ecoregions, major river basins and aquifers, and a lengthy appendix gives a timeline of Texas environmental history from 1729 to 2010.

—Christopher Dow

“Physical Activity and Health Guidelines: Recommendations for Various Ages, Fitness Levels and Conditions from 57 Authoritative Sources,” by Riva L. Rahl ’95 (Human Kinetics, 2010).

“Faces I Have Seen: A Memoir of Murder, Volume 1,” by Ted Johnson ’84 (Lulu, Inc., 2010).

“Conversations With Tom Robbins,” by Liam O. Purdon ’76, professor of English at Doane College, and Beef Torrey (University Press of Mississippi, 2010).

“The Columbia History of the Vietnam War,” edited by David L. Anderson ’68, professor of history at California State University at Monterey Bay (Columbia University Press, 2010).

“Social Statistics: The Basics and Beyond,”

by Thomas J. Linneman ’90, associate professor of sociology at the College of William and Mary (Taylor and Francis, 2010).

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Sports

RICEOWLS.COM

Volleyball Spikes AVCA Team Academic Award

Accolades from C-USA Rice University has earned the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the sixthstraight year.

The award is given to the C-USA institution with the highest grade-point average during the current academic year for all student– athletes in conference-sponsored sports.

Rice student–athletes combined for an average annual GPA of 3.174, which is the highest in the Owls’ six-year run. Student–athletes at Southern Methodist University, Tulane University and University of Central Florida also combined for a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better.

The Sport Academic Award is given to the team in each conference-sponsored sport with the highest GPA for the current academic year. Rice led the league with eight. Four Rice programs were repeat Sport Academic Award winners: football (2.835), men’s track and field (3.331), volleyball (3.557) and swimming (3.477), which also won the 2011 Conference USA Swimming and Diving Championship. Other Rice athletic teams to garner Sport Academic Awards were men’s basketball (3.026), women’s basketball (3.182), women’s cross-country (3.635) and women’s track and field (3.466).

Rice student–athletes from eight of Rice’s 14 intercollegiate athletic programs were named recipients of the 2010–11 Conference USA Scholar Athlete of the Year awards for their respective sports.

Determined by the league’s Faculty Athletics Representatives, the C-USA Scholar Athlete of the Year awards are presented to the top student–athlete in each conferencesponsored sport. They were Philip Adam ’11 (men’s track and field), senior Matt Carey (men’s cross-country), senior Connor Frizzelle (men’s basketball), senior Rebekka Hänle (women’s tennis), Tracey Lam ’11 (volleyball), senior Erik Mayer (golf), senior Oscar Podlewski (men’s tennis) and senior Allison Pye (women’s track and field).

Who Knew? ›› › ricewhoknew.info/17

The Rice Owls volleyball program, under the direction of head coach Genny Volpe, once again has earned the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Team Academic Award. The award honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that display excellence in the classroom during the school year by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale or a 4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale.

The Rice volleyball squad posted a 3.557 team grade-point average. Other Conference USA institutions earning the AVCA Team Academic Award were the University of Houston, University of Memphis, University of Southern Mississippi and University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Who Knew:

› ›› ricewhoknew.info/18

Students

A Challenge Worth Taking Hailing from the small town of Muskogee, Oklahoma, Alan Taylor ’78 was always at the top of his high school class. When he matriculated to Rice as one of the university’s first biochemistry majors, being at the top suddenly reached a whole new level. “Until I came to Rice, most things came very easily,” Taylor said.

“Being in a tough academic environment was a very positive experience and taught me persistence.”

He quickly stepped up to Rice’s rigorous academic program and made the most of his undergraduate years, honing his science skills and preparing for graduate school and a future in the biopharmaceutical industry. Later, as head of regulatory affairs for Gilead Sciences, Taylor helped push through FDA approval of the drug Atripla, which has revolutionized the treatment of HIV. Taylor credits his education with preparing him for a challenging career helping thousands of individuals with HIV move forward with their lives. Now, he has established a bequest to ensure future generations of Owls have opportunities to get ahead in theirs.

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