Rice Magazine Issue 13

| Kitchen Wizards

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| Atget’s Paris

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| Skyspace Opens

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| Houston Survey

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The Magazine of Rice University

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| Banner Years

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No. 13 | 2012

Design Driven

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Contents 3

It’s official. We’re a “tree campus.”

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A roundup of awards and honors

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Alumni newlyweds jump for joy.

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Now and then: Beer Bike

4 Rice grad turns 100.

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Her essay was fit to print. Schermerhorn wins N.Y. Times contest and trip to Africa.

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Rice’s Latin American initiatives take big steps this spring.

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New master’s in space studies. What’s new at Rice Space Institute.

5 Student team builds a better baby monitor.

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Rice MBA graduate goes from business plan to business owner in a few short months.

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How to wash your eyes in space, as envisioned by a team of Rice students

On the Cover: Iron talons secure the license plate on Rice’s entry in the 25th annual Houston Art Car Parade. Photo: Jeff Fitlow

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A low-cost learning tool gets put to work in rural India.

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How do you spell innovation? OEDK students invent neck brace for trauma victims.

Plus, OEDK by the numbers.

Students

Features 18 Houston, we have engagement.

Arts

As evidenced by the UnConvention and Rice’s growing outreach programs, Rice both gives back and grows stronger from working with the city.

40 Out of ordinary materials, artist Yasuaki Onishi created the stunning installation “reverse of volume RG.” Held over through July at the Rice Art Gallery.

By David W. Leebron

20 Time and Again She’ll always have Paris. Hallie Jordan ’12 revisits the world of photographer Eugene Atget.

By Jenny West Rozelle

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24 Above Us Only Sky

43 EMERGEncy Room gallery is open for art.

The much-anticipated public art installation

by James Turrell opens.

Bookshelf

Photo by Paul Hester

26 A City in Transition So you think you know Houston? Chances are you could learn a surprising thing or two about Rice’s hometown from the Kinder Houston Area Survey.

By Lynn Gosnell

44 Shepherd School alumni record a CD for flute and piano.

44 A poem by Joseph Campana

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28 An UnConventional Celebration

44 “Democracy Despite Itself” explains why the system works, against all odds.

45 “The I Ching, A Biography,” by Richard Smith, illuminates the history of a classic.

For three days this spring, Rice welcomed neighbors, alumni and families to campus.

Read all about it.

Sports

By Alyson Ward

32 Banner Years A walk through campus spurs 50 years of memories.

By Ron Sass

42 Shepherd School doctoral student Robert McClure and musicians perform original compositions at the Orange Show.

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36 The Case of the Blogging Historian

46 By his senior year, talented tennis player Christian Saravia had lost his game. And then …

48 Sports news and happenings

Wherein the centennial historian, Melissa Kean, finds clues to Rice’s past and solves a few mysteries, too.

By Lynn Gosnell

38 Running on Sunshine

They came. They broke down. They conquered. Student-built solar car finishes strong.

By Lynn Gosnell and Mike Williams

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Rice Magazine

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F O R E W O R D

Rice Magazine

Rice University 101

No. 13

I feel lucky to have arrived at Rice during its centennial year, not only for the public pomp and festivities that abound, but also for the opportunity to access Rice’s backstory. Having enrolled in a crash course in 100 years of Rice history, I’m also getting lessons in the vision for Rice’s future.

The syllabus for this crash course has kept me well and truly — though not unpleasantly — occupied. Assignments have included reading history, looking at old photos, formally and informally touring the campus, attending a Shepherd School concert, meeting staff and faculty over coffee (can I get a meal plan at the Brochstein Pavilion?) or lunch just about anywhere, volunteering at the UnConvention, viewing works of art, wandering hallways and cloisters and pathways on foot and bicycle and bus, listening to students talk about their research, and generally learning about the people and places that are formative to Rice’s spirit.

I’m grateful for the welcoming hospitality of my teachers, most especially my colleagues in the Office of Public Affairs.

So, what’s inside this issue? We’ve stepped away from themebased issues for the moment, though you’ll find plenty here on community engagement and outreach.

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Check out our account of the UnConvention. If you missed it, we hope you’ll see something that will draw you to the next campus open house.

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The Kinder Institute’s remarkable longitudinal surveys inform both long-term residents and newcomers alike about their city.

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Our stunning new public artwork by James Turrell is not only a gift to Rice, but also a gift to the community, perfectly attuned to Houston’s audacious support for the arts.

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President Leebron’s column brings together a wealth of information on Rice’s community engagement, which has increased dramatically under his administration.

In honor of our centennial, we also take a look back in time — through Hallie Jordan’s photographic lens on Paris, through the memory of Professor Emeritus Ron Sass and through centennial historian Melissa Kean’s blog. You’ll meet one of the two amazing centenarian alumni we recently interviewed — George Illes, Class of 1933.

You may notice a few changes from previous issues, mostly in the front section, “Through the Sallyport,” which we’ve expanded to include a wider variety of news and formats.

We plan to check in with our readers more often to see how we’re doing. You may be one of the readers randomly selected to receive a survey. This data will be much appreciated as we look for ways to improve our stories and design of the magazine.

While working as an editor at The University of Texas at San Antonio in the early 2000s, it was not unusual for our creative staff to pull out issues of Sallyport, as Rice Magazine was then called. We’d thumb through each beautifully designed issue, read the stories and shake our heads in admiration. Rice’s magazine inspired us to capture the identity, successes and challenges of our own young and growing campus.

Fast forward, and here we are in summer 2012. Rice Magazine is going strong, thanks to the efforts of former editor Christopher Dow, art director Chuck Thurmon, Creative Services Director Jeff Cox and the tremendous support of Vice President Linda Thrane, as well as the administration overall.

There is a legacy of editorial and design excellence here, one that is humbling and exciting (and, truth to tell, a little daunting) to join. I welcome your feedback, tips and story ideas.

Published by the Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president Editor Lynn Gosnell Editorial Director Tracey Rhoades Creative Director Jeff Cox Art Director Chuck Thurmon Editorial Staff B.J. Almond, staff writer Jade Boyd, staff writer Amy Hodges, 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; Edward B. “Teddy”” Adams Jr.; J.JD. D. Bucky Allshouse; D D. Kent Anderson; Keith T. Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha Viswanathan Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth; Robert T. Brockman; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Lawrence Guffey; James T. Hackett; John Jaggers; Larry Kellner; Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal; Charles Szalkowski; Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley; Lewis “Rusty” Williams; 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

Lynn Gosnell lynn.gosnell@rice.edu

Fax: 713-348-6757 Email: ricemagazine@rice.edu © J UNE 2 01 2 RICE UNIVE RSITY ONL INE AT: WWW.ISSUU.COM / RICE UNIVE RSITY

Correction: In the story on Amy McCarley ’98 in issue No. 12, we incorrectly stated McCarley’s home state. She hails from Alabama.

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The Arbor Day Foundation has designated Rice University as a Tree Campus USA for taking exemplary care of its 4,300 trees. The program honors colleges and universities that use sustainable practices and engage students in conservation initiatives.

More than 100 higher education institutions (nine in Texas) received this honor for 2011. Neville Mann, Rice’s lead arborist, said this honor is especially meaningful because of the challenges posed by Houston’s severe drought last year. “We implemented a rigorous watering program to make sure that every tree got watered at least once a week,” said Mann, who spearheaded the Tree Campus USA effort. According to Ron Smith, grounds superintendent, the vast majority of Rice’s trees, some as big as the ents of Middle Earth, are in the oak family.

Tree Campus

Where would owls be without strong trees in which to roost?

Watch a video about Rice’s Tree Campus USA designation: ››› ricemagazine.info/116

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Smile of the Century

George Illes ’33 arrived in the world just as Rice opened its doors.

And he has lived to celebrate Rice University’s 100th year.

George Illes was born in September 1912, just days before the ambitious new Rice Institute welcomed its first class. He spent the first years of the Depression at Rice and graduated in 1933. And here he is in Houston 100 years later, celebrating Rice’s centennial. As Illes and his alma mater both prepare to celebrate their 100th birthdays, we asked him to share his memories of Rice.

Illes grew up in Dallas, and after high school he had a scholarship to attend Southern Methodist University. “But I didn’t want to stay in Dallas,” he said. “I wanted to get out of town.” He arrived at Rice in fall 1929, a month before the Wall Street Crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.

“I was so broke it didn’t make a difference,” Illes said. Rice offered free tuition, and he paid for his room and board by selling Fuller Brushes door-to-door in the summer. During the school year, he played violin with the Houston Symphony.

Rice freshmen had to wear “slime cap” beanies in those days. There was more serious hazing, too. One chilly evening in 1929, Illes got word that freshmen were going to be rounded up and beaten with brooms. He decided to disappear.

“I put on all the clothes I had,” he said, and ran south from the campus to hide in Hermann Park. “I laid down and spent the night under Sam Houston’s statue.” He didn’t return until the next morning when the coast was clear.

Money was tight, but Illes remembers attending dances at the old Rice Hotel downtown. He still has his Campanile yearbook from 1933. “The only picture that’s worth a damn is in the back,” he said, looking for it. “It shows me at a dance.”

Illes earned his B.A. and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in May 1933, during some of the Depression’s worst days. Only a handful of seniors had jobs lined up after graduation, “and most of that was pumping gas.”

Illes was lucky, though. He went to work at his father’s Dallas company, Illes Seasonings and Flavors. He married and had two children, joined the Navy Supply Corps and became a war bond officer during World War II. He and his wife, Eleanor, collected art and moved to Santa Fe after he retired.

In 2004, Illes moved back to Houston. He has maintained his connection with Rice over the years through alumni trips and lifelong friendships. Illes keeps his diploma on the wall, signed

by Edgar O. Lovett. And he still wears his class ring. “After all these years, it still looks pretty good,” he said.

—Alyson Ward

George Illes, third from left, at a Rice Institute dance, 1933

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THROUGH THE

Sallyport

Rice Undergraduate Wins New York Times Contest

Getting Babies Breathing Again From left: Andrea Ulrich, Bridget Ugoh, Rachel Gilbert, Jordan Schermerhorn and Rachel Alexander

Bridget Ugoh ’12 had the best of incentives to join Team Breath Alert, a group of engineering seniors studying apnea in infants. Her sister’s son suffered from the condition, which causes a sudden stoppage of breathing while asleep.

“She would stay up at night worried whether her son was breathing or not,” Ugoh said. “I told her, ‘Next year I’m going to make you a device that detects breathing and will let you know if there is trouble.’”

Ugoh wasn’t the only Rice bioengineering student interested in the problem. She and the other engineering seniors — Rachel Alexander ’12, Rachel Gilbert ’12, Jordan Schermerhorn ’12 and Andrea Ulrich ’12 — formed Team Breath Alert with the knowledge that nearly half of the 12 million babies born prematurely in developing countries experience episodes of apnea. The project was the students’ senior capstone experience.

In general, a tap on the foot can prompt the child to resume breathing, but apnea’s widespread occurrence means there isn’t always someone available to administer that simple remedy.

The team’s solution was to create the Babalung Apnea Monitor. The Babalung has an elastic sensor embedded in a strap that surrounds the infant’s chest.

“The strap expands and contracts as the infant breathes, which the system sees as a sine wave,” said Ulrich. When the wave stops for 20 seconds, an attached microcontroller turns on a vibrating motor to prompt the infant to take a breath. If the child still isn’t breathing five seconds later, a visual alarm is triggered.

“We considered a n audio alarm,”

Alexander said, “but there’s the risk that a nurse wouldn’t hear it in a large room. And an alarm loud enough to hear might damage the baby’s hearing.”

“We went with a flashing bike light raised above the crib, so you can see it across a room,” Gilbert said. “Now we’re doing research into what frequencies of pulsation attract the most attention.”

“The team worked tirelessly to design a useful technology for very low-resource settings,” said Maria Oden, director of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and an adviser to the team.

This summer, the team hopes to send three prototypes for testing in developing nations through Beyond Traditional Borders, part of Rice 360˚: Institute for Global Health Technologies.

Team Breath Alert recently entered the Babalung in the second annual National Undergraduate Global Health Technologies Design Competition hosted by Rice 360˚ and the Beyond Traditional Borders initiative. The competition encourages students to define a global health problem and describe a technology they designed to solve it. The Babalung took first place among the 24 national entries.

Jordan Schermerhorn ’12 knows how she’ll spend at least part of her summer vacation. The winner of Nicholas Kristof’s annual “Win-a-Trip” competition, Schermerhorn will go on an international reporting trip with the Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist.

As a bioengineering student, Schermerhorn works extensively with Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders initiative, but this will be her first trip outside the United States. “So this is really exciting for me,” she said.

In a column last December, Kristof called for entrants with excellent communication skills, especially online, and Schermerhorn fit the bill. “I like using Twitter a lot and try to use that for a combination of professional and personal stuff,” Schermerhorn said. “So I keep it relevant to my academic interests, and I think he found that appealing.”

Schermerhorn’s winning essay described a solo trip after high school to Big Bend National Park — “the instant I realized the world was bigger than my hometown” — that encouraged her to find a way to relieve the poverty she witnessed across the border in Mexico.

She’ll write for a national audience when she blogs for The New York Times during her trip. She and Kristof, whose work focuses on human rights abuses and social injustice, will be accompanied by a videographer who also will file regular reports on their travels.

—Mike Williams

—Mike Williams

Watch a video of the Babalung in action: › ›› ricemagazine.info/125

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In the first half of 2012, Rice University formalized several partnerships and agreements in Brazil as part of the university’s growing Latin American initiative.

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Here are the highlights:

Rice University and the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil will share administration and use of a new supercomputer housed at Rice. The new P series Blue Gene supercomputer, which became operational in May, is based on IBM’s POWER processor technology, which was developed in part at the company’s Austin, Texas, labs. Rice and IBM shared the cost of the system. When fully operational, the system is expected to rank among the world’s 300 fastest supercomputers as measured by the TOP500 supercomputer rankings.

“When I was at Rice, it looked inward. Today it looks outward through this agreement. It strengthens not only Rice University, but also the city of Houston.”

—Mayor Annise Parker ’78

facebook.com/ricecentennial

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CENTENNIAL.RICE.EDU FOR MORE CENTENNIAL NEWS

ON OCT. 10–14, 2012, RICE UNIVERSITY WILL HONOR ITS CENTENNIAL AND CELEBRATE THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY THAT TRANSFORMED A BOLD LITTLE INSTITUTION ON THE EDGE OF A PRAIRIE TO AN INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF EDUCATION AND RESEARCH.

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The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy signed a formal agreement with Brazil’s premier think tank, Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), in Rio de Janeiro, to enhance research and academic relationships and to lay the foundation for longterm cooperation.

“Our agreement with FGV will open the door to joint research collaborations and new opportunities for our Rice faculty and students and Brazilian counterparts,” said Baker Institute Founding Director Edward Djerejian.

Recently, Rice and Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological

Supercomputers are used to simulate things that cannot be reproduced in a laboratory — like Earth’s climate or the collision of galaxies — and to examine vast databases like those used to map underground oil reservoirs or to develop personalized medical treatments. Officials at USP said they expect their faculty to use the supercomputer for research ranging from astronomy and weather prediction to particle physics and biotechnology.

USP is Brazil’s largest institution of higher education and research. The collaboration was officially inaugurated in March during a trip to Brazil led by Houston Mayor Annise Parker, a 1978 Rice alumna.

“When I was at Rice, it looked inward,” she said. “Today it looks outward through this agreement. It strengthens not only Rice University, but also the city of Houston.”

Rice and USP also agreed to launch an exchange-student program.

Development (CNPq) signed an agreement that will enable approximately 100 graduate and undergraduate students from Brazil to study at Rice annually with financial support from CNPq. A new Latin American studies major will be available to students this fall. “This major is designed to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the field of Latin American studies and the interdisciplinary research interests of participating faculty at Rice,” said José Aranda, chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies and associate professor of English, who will serve as adviser for the major.

For more information: ›› › ricemagazine.info/117 ›› › ricemagazine.info/119

Students

Q&A:

JoséAranda

South

Rice will offer a new major in Latin American studies (LAS) beginning this fall. José Aranda, associate professor of English and chair of the Hispanic studies department, will be the program’s adviser of record. Students may customize their major according to their interests and available faculty expertise, Aranda said. A capstone research seminar will draw from research undertaken during the LAS major’s required semester-abroad experience.

How was the students’ response to the approval of the new major?

What about students who want to study domestic Latin American topics?

Within the first 10 days between the major being approved and the first required course, Introduction to Latin American Studies, going online, we had 19 students sign up. That’s a lot for something untried.

Luis Duno-Gottberg and Dean Nicholas Shumway are co-teaching the course.

The new major does not preclude the possibility of students incorporating more domestic or U.S. issues. Students interested in U.S. immigration policies directed at Latin America might choose to be an LAS major precisely because it provides for an interdisciplinary and comparative framework by which to understand the issues.

The study abroad requirement filled in Mexico, for example, would enhance such a study tremendously.

The major has been described as interdisplinary. Can you give us an example of what that means?

Let’s say a student is interested in 20thcentury Mexican art. The student will be advised to take courses at Rice wherever Mexican art is taught directly. In the end, that student will take courses from Hispanic studies, art history, history, political science, etc., and will thus study their focus through a variety of disciplinary fields, from literature to history, from art history to political science.

How does the capstone experience work?

When a student completes the major with the capstone research seminar, she or he will bring to bear all previous course work and research in producing a research paper that will be workshopped with other students in a colloquium format.

What are some milestones in the creation of this major?

When I became department chair [in 2007], we formed the Américas Research Center, which promotes interdisciplinary research on the broad topics of Latin America, Latin American studies, Chicano/a studies, borderland studies and American studies, for example.

This was about the same time that President Leebron made a decision to put Latin America as one of his global initiatives. So, we all started to coalesce our ideas and work toward drawing attention to Rice’s connection to Latin America, to figure out ways to increase Rice’s presence in Latin America, and to create collaborations with universities.

José Aranda

What role did students play in creating this major?

In spring 2007, the students were very vocal, and there was agitation for a Latin American studies presence in the humanities, as well as a Ph.D. program. We’ve understood that the desire for it was out there; students were looking for other things they could do, other places to go study.

How many Latino students are there at Rice?

Every year, it’s somewhere between 11 and 13 percent of the entering class.

Why is it important to have a formal major in Latin American Studies?

It’s clarifying. What a major does is it concentrates that activity so people can find out easily if there’s, for example, a famous writer coming to town, a well-known historian giving a lecture.

Anything you’d like to add?

We suspect that the LAS major will become a popular major, especially for double majors. Hispanic studies/LAS is likely to be a successful pairing. At the moment, Hispanic studies is doing extremely well in its course enrollments and majors. We have, at last count, 40 majors, including graduating seniors. And we feel that we will be able to grow that number for years to come.

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They Just Clicked Here are all the places Alesha Herrera ’00 and her husband, José-Miguel Yamal ’00, have been photographed together in midair, heels clicked — churches, monuments, historic buildings, tourist attractions and natural wonders around the world. On beaches, city streets, bridges and, recently, underwater — “We thought it would be our first underwater heel-click photo,” said Herrera, “but we have to practice more.”

How did this coordinated clicking get started? “It’s all my husband’s fault,” Herrera said, referring to Yamal’s penchant for executing an exuberant little dance move in out-of-the-way places. The family has a photo of him, circa 2006, clicking heels in the dunes of White Sands, N.M. “We call it the original,” said Herrera, who got into the act during a two-week trip to Spain in 2008, not long after she and Yamal started dating.

“My friends thought I was crazy to travel with someone I had just met.” Just met? At Rice, they didn’t know each other. “We were friends of each other’s friends” but never formally met inside the hedges.

So when Yamal suggested to Herrera that they try a tandem heel click on a Madrid street, she was game.

“I’d been in musical theater my whole life.” His cousin documented their efforts to get it right. Yamal claims that about halfway through the shoot, he had this sensation that this might be the girl he could marry.

“We have so many heel clicks from this trip,” Herrera said. So that was the beginning. Herrera, who earned a degree in chemistry and environmental science and engineering at Rice, is a belly dancer and teacher, whose work frequently takes her to far-off places.

Yamal works as a biostatistician at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and plays jazz piano in the evenings. Married in February 2012, the couple loves to travel, and when the moment moves them, click heels.

—Lynn Gosnell Photo: José-Miguel Yamal and Alesha Herrera show off in front of the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

50,000 I-slates Hit the Desks How do you teach students in places like the primarily rural district of Mahabubnagar in the Indian state Andhra Pradesh, when electricity is scarce and teachers are almost as rare? Krishna Palem, Rice’s Ken and Audrey Kennedy Professor of Computer Science, thought he could help answer that question and, in 2008, conceived the I-slate.

A low-cost learning tool designed for classrooms with no electricity and too few teachers, the I-slate is a joint project of the RiceNanyang Technological University Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID), which includes hardware and software experts at Rice and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, social outreach partners from the Indian nonprofit Villages in Development and Learning Foundation (ViDAL), and a Los Angeles-based design team.

“The I-slate is not a tablet computer,” said Palem, who directs ISAID and also is a Nanyang visiting professor at NTU. “It is a device designed for a single purpose: education in a lowresource environment.”

optimization,” Palem said, “is a systematic way of improving the user experience by taking advantage of our knowledge of how the human brain processes the information so we can invest the minimum amount of resources for the effectiveness level we’re trying to reach.”

The hardware and graphic content for the I-slate are being developed in tandem because they will ultimately use a revolutionary low-power computer chip — another of Palem’s inventions. The new chip, which could be ready for use in the I-slate by 2013, will cut power requirements in half and allow the device to run on solar power from small panels similar to those used on hand-held calculators.

“The I-slate is not a tablet computer.

It is a device designed for a single purpose: education in a lowresource environment.”

—Krishna Palem

Initially, Palem thought power consumption would be the I-slate’s biggest hurdle because many rural schools in India lack electricity, and a solar-powered I-slate would need to run on no more than three watts of power. As soon as students in Mohamed Hussainpalli Village School in Mahabubnagar District began testing early prototypes, however, it became obvious that usability and effectiveness also would be challenges.

The designers evaluated feedback from children at the school and spent thousands of hours scrutinizing the placement and flow of features and the way children interacted with the I-slate both visually and by touch. They then incorporated elements from video games and social networking to draw students in and hold their interest. For example, a colorful cartoon creature in the corner of the I-slate screen watches the student and changes expression based on the child’s actions. The better the student’s grades are, the happier the creature appears.

The result is the fourth generation of the I-slate, which also is the first to feature a “sense-optimized” user interface designed to improve educational outcomes in rural India. “Sense

Krishna Palem Mahabubnagar District, which has about 500,000 students in government schools, now plans to adopt 50,000 of the low-cost electronic educational slates into middle- and high-school classrooms throughout the district over the next three years. With sufficient volume, the unit cost for the I-slate will be around $45.

“The I-slate project is about empowering local communities with education and knowledge,” said Rajeswari Pingali, ViDAL founding chairwoman.

The I-slate’s Los Angeles-based design team, which includes Marc Mertens, CEO of the Seso Media Group, and project leader Henrik Andersson, volunteered their time to work with ViDAL, NTU specialists in human-computer interaction and Rice student interns Lauren Pemberton ’12 and Shelby Reinhardt ’12; Samuel Tang ’12; and Carter Wang ’11.

—Jade Boyd

Watch a video about the I-slate: ›› › ricemagazine.info/120

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What’s cooking

in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen?

The OEDK is a 12,000-square-foot center where students come together to design prototypes and test solutions to real-world engineering challenges.

The challenge: Develop safe and effective cervical spine protection for trauma victims.

The result: The HeadCase, a disposable unit that can be placed on the patient in 60 seconds and increases immobilization.

The inspiration: John Hipp, former director of the Spine Research Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, has long sought a replacement for standard cervical collars. A team led by Hipp published a study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery in 2010 showing abnormal separation between vertebrae due to cervical collars.

Why it works: Standard collars wrap around the neck. “We placed the support on the side of the cheeks and the chest, and the top of the back,” said Prabhu. “The result has been greater immobilization. Also, you’re immobilizing with contacts in places that won’t hurt the patient.” The disposable HeadCase is expected to cost less than the $15 price tag on current disposable collars, of which 15 million are used in the United States each year, the students said. “Mass production will drive down the cost,” said Akpotaire.

The team: Rice students Oviea Akpotaire ’12, Kelsey Horter ’12, Michael Zylberman ’12, Elias Hoban ’12, Georgia Lagoudas ’12 and Sailesh Prabhu ’12 took on the challenge of building a safer version of cervical collars to stabilize the heads and necks of accident victims. The team was equally divided between mechanical engineering and bioengineering majors.

This was their senior capstone project.

The feedback: “Their design has the potential to save the lives of many people following severe blunt trauma,” Hipp said.

Engineering Houston’s Future 2011 conference poster session: 1st place — Entrepreneurship, Excellence in Engineering Prize.

Special expertise: Team members Zylberman and Horter are certified as emergency medical technicians.

2012 Rice Engineering Design Showcase: Winner of the Best Health-Related Engineering Design Project.

Research: The students tested a cervical collar currently used and found that when a patient’s neck is injured, the collar can push the head away from the body. “That separates the vertebrae and can make neck injuries worse. Some physicians believe the current collar may have compounded injuries,” Horter said. “We went back to basic emergency-care ideas. As EMTs, we’re taught that if the knee is hurt, you stabilize above and below it. You never just stabilize the part that’s injured — which is exactly what we think the current cervical collar does.

We jumped on the premise that if we could stabilize the head and the torso right beneath the neck, then we could stabilize the neck.

That’s what our device does.”

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ASME iShow: Semifinalists — will compete with nine other teams in Montreal in June 2012.

What’s next: The team has filed a provisional patent through Rice’s Office of Technology Transfer. Tests of the prototype are ongoing.

—Mike Williams

Video: ›› › ricemagazine.info/121 Learn more: ›› › ricemagazine.info/122

Oviea Akpotaire

730-plus undergraduate students used the OEDK for engineering design courses and project development.

Students participated in at least 81 design teams/clubs.

Undergraduates using the OEDK represent 7 different engineering disciplines, as well as architecture, natural sciences and humanities.

More than 27 design teams were interdisciplinary.

OEDK teams were recognized more than 16 times for awards in local, national and international competitions.

Of these recognitions, 12 were national or international.

20 teams sponsored by industry partners; 5 teams sponsored by individual donors.

22 courses actively used OEDK resources.

OEDK DK STATS FOR 2011–2012 ›› ›oedk.rice.edu/statistics

Bravo!

The end of the academic year brings honors and awards to students, faculty and staff. Here is a selection.

Fulbright Scholarship

Five Rice students or recent alumni were selected to receive Fulbright Scholarships from the U.S. State Department. Graduate student Amanda Moehnke and alumni Francesca Schley ’12, Tracey Lam ’11, Payton Odom ’09 and Jasdeep Mangat ’09 will each receive a fellowship to study, teach or conduct research abroad for one academic year.

Goldwater Scholarship Three undergraduates were among 282 students in the country to be named Goldwater Scholars by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.

Senior Juhye Lee and juniors Stephanie Tzouanas and Jeanette Wat will each receive a maximum of $7,500 for tuition, fees and other college expenses. The scholarship is awarded to students who intend to pursue careers in math, science or engineering.

Truman Scholarship Two Rice seniors were among just 54 students nationwide who were awarded Truman Scholarships. Benjamin Chou and Rahul Rekhi will each receive up to $30,000 for graduate study, priority admission at some premier graduate schools, career counseling, leadership training and special internship opportunities with the federal government.

Udall Scholarship Rice senior Christina Hughes was one of 80 national winners of the Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Scholarship from the Udall Foundation. The $5,000 scholarship is awarded to students who are committed to careers related to the environment.

Benjamin Chou

Rahul Rekhi

Watson Fellowship Two graduating seniors were among 40 students nationwide to receive Thomas J. Watson Fellowships. Rachael Petersen ’12 and Becky Wade ’12 will each receive $25,000 for a year of independent study and travel outside the United States. Dylan McNally ’12 received the Roy and Hazel Zeff Memorial Fellowship, which is awarded to the highest-ranking Watson nominee from Rice who does not receive a Watson Fellowship.

Staff Award Crystal Davis ’87, current funds accounting manager in the Controller’s Office, was selected as the recipient of this year’s Elizabeth Gillis Award for Exemplary Service. This annual award, given by the Rice Board of Trustees, recognizes outstanding achievements and service by a staff member in support of the university’s mission.

Faculty Achievements Luay Nakhleh, associate professor of computer science, ecology and evolutionary biology, and biochemistry and cell biology, was selected to be one of 181 Guggenheim Fellows.

Scholars, artists and scientists are awarded grants that support their work for six to 12 months, giving them creative freedom.

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Moramay Lopez-Alonso, assistant professor of history, is one of 65 scholars to receive a six-month fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, which promotes research in the humanities and social sciences.

Herbert Levine, the Hasselmann Professor of Bioengineering, has been named an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow. The AAAS, an independent policy research center, annually selects some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders.

Teaching Awards Each year, Rice honors faculty members for exemplary teaching, mentoring or service.

This year, the winner of the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Rice’s top annual teaching award, is Mark Embree, professor of computational and applied mathematics and director of the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership.

The George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching is presented to a number of faculty members each year who are nominated by alumni who graduated two and five years ago.

This year’s recipients are Mikki Hebl, professor of psychology and management; Steven Cox, professor of computational and applied mathematics; James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, and professor of computer science; Maria Oden, professor in the practice of engineering and director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen; Bridget Gorman, associate professor of sociology; Alma Novotny, lecturer of biochemistry and cell biology; Paul Stevenson, professor of physics and astronomy; José Aranda, associate professor of English and chair of the departments of Hispanic studies and French studies; and Roberta Anding, lecturer of kinesiology.

Rachael Petersen

Becky Wade

The Nicolas Salgo Distinguished Teacher Award, Rice’s oldest teaching award, is decided by the junior and senior class. Brent Houchens, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, received this year’s award.

The Presidential Mentoring Award is given to faculty members who have demonstrated a strong commitment to mentoring students. The 2012 winners are Elizabeth Long, professor and chair of sociology, and David Scott, the Noah Harding Professor of Statistics.

Christina Keefe, lecturer of visual and dramatic arts and director of the Rice Theatre Program, is the recipient of this year’s Sarofim Teaching Prize. The annual award goes to an outstanding lecturer in the School of Humanities.

The Charles Duncan Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement is presented by the university’s deans to a faculty member with fewer than 10 years of experience and outstanding performance in both scholarship and teaching. This year’s recipient is Kurt Stallman, the Lynette S. Autrey Associate Professor of Composition and Theory in the Shepherd School of Music.

Rachel Kimbro, assistant professor of sociology, received the 2012 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize. The prize is awarded to a nontenured assistant professor who demonstrates an outstanding commitment to education in the liberal arts or sciences.

Jones School graduate combines entrepreneurial zeal, an engineering background and lessons from the Rice Business Plan Competition to launch toy business.

L–R, Phillip Leech, Jessica Fenlon and Michael Pariser

Where the Action (Figure) Is Of the 42 university teams from around the world that competed in the 2012 Rice Business Plan Competition last April, only one pitched a retail toy business to potential investors — Action Figure Laboratories (AFL) of Rice University.

“Action Figure Laboratories is an exciting retail store concept that will provide young boys with the experience of creating custom-built toys, much like what girls experience at Build-A-Bear for creating stuffed toys,” went the elevator pitch, which was enthusiastically delivered by Phillip Leech, a 2012 graduate of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business’ MBA for Professionals.

Leech, a software engineer, and fellow Jones School student Michael Pariser ’12 developed the business plan as part of Jones School lecturer Dennis Murphree’s class in creative entrepreneurship. But it was Leech who owned the inspiration. His light-bulb moment occurred at the mall.

“I had taken my daughter, who is 7, to Build-A-Bear for her last three birthdays.

My son, who is 10, was mostly sitting on the floor playing Nintendo DS. I thought that there should be an equivalent experience for boys,” Leech said.

Inspiration also came from 3-D printing technology, something Leech had been experimenting with ever since he purchased a Thing-O-Matic, a 3-D printer for hobbyists. A former hardware and software engineer, Leech bought the device with the intention of prototyping ideas for fun and because “it was really cool.”

“When 30 people in the same room all say that you have a great idea, perhaps there is something to it.”

—Phillip Leech

Leech bounced around his idea for a store that featured 3-D toymaking to family and friends, but it wasn’t until he enrolled in the entrepreneurship class that the business concept took serious shape.

He also took the idea to a monthly meeting of the Jones Graduate School Entrepreneurs Organization.

“When 30 people in the same room all say that you have a great idea, perhaps there is something to it,” Leech said. AFL went on to win a slot in the Rice Business Plan Competion and added a third member, current MBA student Jessica Fenlon, who brought a wealth of retail experience to the team.

AFL took home $7,300 from the Rice Business Plan Competition and, though not a finalist, was mentioned in Fortune Magazine’s on-the-scene report.

“The primary feedback from judges, which we had expected, was the risk associated with retail concepts and consumer products in general,” Leech explained.

But that was not the end of the story for Leech. His transformation from employee and student to entrepreneur is complete.

He has hired freelance 3-D artists to help with prototyping, an online store is in the works, and he has invested in a professional 3-D printer. At the end of May, Leech became Action Figure Laboratories’ first employee. And that elevator speech is right in his back pocket.

Read more about the 2012 Rice Business Plan Competition: › › › alliance.rice.edu/rbpc

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Rice to Offer Professional Master’s in Space Studies When President John F. Kennedy stood

in Rice Stadium in 1962 and challenged the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, Rice responded by creating the country’s first Department of Space Science.

During Rice’s long association with NASA in the decades since, the university has produced more than a dozen astronauts and scores of alumni who have worked at NASA. Now, Rice continues that upward trajectory with a new master’s degree track for space studies under the auspices of the Professional Science Master’s (PSM) Program at the Wiess School of Natural Sciences.

The space science master’s track includes advanced engineering, biological and physical science classes and introduces students to economics, public policy and management disciplines.

There is a critical need for qualified professionals interested in the new paradigm for space exploration and utilization, said Dagmar Beck, PSM Program director.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the aerospace industry are focused on translating space technologies to energy, medicine and other areas and on re-emphasizing research and development. To accomplish that, NASA is working more closely with universities and entrepreneurs. Rice signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA last year to further those collaborative efforts.

—Mike Williams

Learn more: › › › www.profms.rice.edu

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Rice Space Institute:

Stage Two

L–R, Simon Helberg, Pasha Lychnikoff and astronaut Mike Massimino in the season finale of “The Big Bang Theory.”

To read about Massimino's guest role on “The Big Bang Theory,” visit www.ricemagazine.info/124.

Astronaut Mike Massimino became the public face of NASA during his last mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009, one of the riskiest ever.

On that mission, he not only became the first astronaut to send messages from space via Twitter, but also gained notoriety when, during a spacewalk, he ripped a stuck handle from the space telescope to gain access to an instrument due to be repaired.

Since returning to Earth, Massimino has appeared on a number of talk shows and hosted a NASA-produced series of videos, “Inside the International Space Station.” Now he has a new mission as executive director of the Rice Space Institute (RSI), which coordinates the university’s space-related research, education and outreach programs.

Massimino, an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice since 2004, joins David Alexander, a Rice professor of physics and astronomy and new director of RSI, as part of the university’s collaborations with NASA. Last September, the institutions signed the Rice–NASA Space Act Agreement to streamline educational and research collaborations. The signing came during the university’s NASAversary, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of Houston’s selection as the site of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, now Johnson Space Center, built on land donated by Rice.

RSI’s immediate goal, Alexander said, is to increase awareness about the broad scope of space-related research at Rice, which includes solar, space, Earth, astronomical and life sciences; materials, nanotechnology, electronics and robotics research; national and international policy studies through the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy; and work at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, based at Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative.

David Alexander and Mike Massimino

—Mike Williams

No Gravity?

No Problem for Zero-G Eyewash

L–R, Team Helios members Zachary Foster, Rob Bauer, Thierry Rignol, Malcolm Blake and Eric Lee

Most laboratories have an emergency eyewash station to help save lab workers’ eyes in the event of a mishap. But what about the International Space Station, one of the most visible laboratories in — or out of — the world, where water doesn’t flow as conveniently as it does on Earth?

The challenge of developing a viable zero-gravity eyewash for astronauts was taken on by Rob Bauer ’12, Malcolm Blake ’12, Eric Lee ’12 and Thierry Rignol ’12, all bioengineering majors, and Zachary Foster ’12, a mechanical engineering major.

Calling itself Team Helios, the group had to create a set of goggles that not only would allow spacefarers to wash their eyes in an emergency, but that also would contain and eliminate the rinse water.

The team’s solution was a set of eyewash goggles that borrowed suction from a space toilet to help contain the rinse water.

“The device will only work in zero gravity,” said Matthew Wettergreen, a lecturer in bioengineering, who along with Brent Houchens, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, advised the team. “So the exciting opportunity the students had was to solve a problem that won’t even be used in the environmental conditions they inhabit.”

Team Helios pitted their device against the creations of 10 other teams at the annual NASA-sponsored Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC) Design Challenge, where it took home the Top Design Team award as well as a slew of other awards.

NowandThen

Beer Bike

A

ccording to the Rice Program Council website, the first Beer Bike was held May 5, 1957. Baker College finished first, followed by Will Rice and Wiess. Since then, Beer Bike has evolved into a highly anticipated, friendly competition among colleges and something uniquely Rice.

B E E R B I K E 2 0 1 2 R E S U LT S ALUMNI RACE

1st: Will Rice

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2nd: Brown

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3rd: GSA

WOMEN’S RACE

1st: Will Rice

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2nd: Duncan

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3rd: McMurtry

MEN’S RACE

1st: GSA

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2nd: Will Rice

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3rd: McMurtry

Complete rankings, times and penalties: ›››rpc.rice.edu/beer-bike

Brown College students senior Ben Seidensticker and junior Justin Warren prepare for the men’s race.

NotedandQuoted “My daughter will call me at home. … ‘Dad, you can’t be watching basketball on television if you have a test coming up, if you have a paper due. You need to be studying, Dad.’ She keeps me in check like that.”

—Ricky Pierce, who returned to Rice to finish his degree in kinesiology 30 years after he left the university as the 18th pick in the 1982 NBA draft

“Very simply, within groups selfish individuals in the process of natural selection win over others.

Between groups, the group of altruists beats the selfish individuals.”

—Edward O. Wilson, the father of sociobiology, who spoke at Rice as part of the President’s Lecture Series, April 3, 2012

“Shot a cameo for ‘The Big Bang Theory’ this morning, it was awesome, almost as much fun as a space launch!”

—Mike Massimino, in a tweet sent April 16, 2012. Massimino, an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice since 2004, has joined the university full time for a year under NASA’s Executive on Loan program.

“Cover your necks, because the nasty strain of vampirism that wreaked havoc throughout 2010’s bestselling ‘The Passage’ will return in this hotly anticipated sequel.”

—Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly, Dec. 30, 2011, in “10 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2012,” about Rice English Professor Justin Cronin’s “The Twelve,” scheduled for publication in October 2012

“Best military, best universities, best capital markets, best businesses. Why are we all so damn depressed all the time?”

—Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaking on “Global Affairs and the Global Economy” at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, April 11, 2012

Gift Supports New Home for Social Sciences Rice University has received a $25 million gift from alumnus Robert Klein to name a new School of Social Sciences building.

The Robert A. Klein Hall for Social Sciences will house the majority of the school’s academic departments, institutes and centers. The hall will be built along the campus’ south axis, near the Baker Institute and the Jones Graduate School of Business.

Klein holds two degrees from Rice, an M.A. (1975) and a doctorate (1976) in economics.

He is a director of the renewable energy firm Riverbank Power, which develops, constructs and operates hydropower facilities in North and South America. His years at Rice were “the richest part of my education,” he said.

“At Rice I learned how to realize George Bernard Shaw’s philosophy — ‘Imagine what you desire, will what you imagine and create what you will.’”

—Robert Klein

“Academics believe that someone has to pay them, but that the someone that pays them has nothing to say about what they do. Isn’t that odd?”

—Scholar, writer and educator Stanley Fish, April 10, 2012, on the first evening of the seventh annual School of Humanities Campbell Lecture Series. The series topic was academic freedom.

“If someone asks me what’s in the soup, I know exactly what’s in it.”

More than one-third of Rice undergraduates choose a major in one of the social science departments (anthropology, economics, political science, psychology and sociology). “I am thrilled to have one of our very own social sciences graduates’ names on this building,” said Lyn Ragsdale, dean of the School of Social Sciences.

—Cari Clark, Baker College executive chef, “Campus Folk: Look at Rice’s own master chef,” The Rice Thresher, March 16, 2012

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, Houston “ we have engagement.”

B Y

DAV I D

W.

L EEB R O N

No, not exactly what was uttered from the moon (or on the way), but rather a more earthbound description of the state of the relationship between Rice University and its home city. While Rice is putting increasing emphasis on that engagement, it has been a priority from the very beginning.

B

eginning in 1920, just eight years after it was launched, Rice held a biennial open house for the engineering departments. Rice opened its campus to the Houston public and put on an astonishing array of engineering and science exhibits and demonstrations. The Houston Post ran the headline “Scientific Marvel on Display Today at Rice Institute,” with the subheading “Ordinary Air Will Be Turned Into Liquid by Students.” The following day the headline was “10,000 People See Science Marvels at Rice Exhibit.”

A Houston event was born, 12 years before the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, then called the Houston Fat Stock Show. After a pause for World War II, the event was consolidated with other academic departments and continued through 1956 as the Rice Institute Exposition of Arts and Sciences.

A half century later, we returned to that tradition, albeit in a much broader way, with the UnConvention — a play on our “Unconventional Wisdom” motto — held April 12–14 on our campus. The more than 120 events included art exhibitions, Shepherd School music performances, academic lectures, the Rice Business Plan Competition, the Asian Film Festival at the Rice Media Center, walking tours, dramatic and dance performances, tennis and volleyball matches, almost a whole day of special events for kids of all ages — and, of course, astonishing science and engineering demonstrations. It was a veritable cornucopia of all

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the university offers and a chance for everyone and anyone in Houston to get a sample of what is, in fact, available at Rice nearly every week of the academic year.

These days we engage the city in so many ways. People come at all times of the year to hear speakers at the Baker Institute for Public Policy or at one of our lecture series. A Shepherd School performance or concert may be the best free cultural entertainment in the country. An afternoon spent at a Rice baseball game in Reckling Park is among the great sports bargains and experiences. Our growing collection of campus art is another point of engagement, and the Suzanne Deal Booth Centennial Pavilion and artist James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace is a new arts destination for the city and the world. But it isn’t every day we invite the public into the laboratories of Rice or put on scientific and engineering exhibitions for all ages.

Seven and a half years ago, I wrote in this magazine of our founding president’s enthusiasm for and commitment to the city of Houston. I don’t think President Lovett would be disappointed to see the scope of the engagement today. Since that letter, Tony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies, has launched Houston Enriches Rice Education, or H.E.R.E.; Associate Professor of Sociology Ruth Lopez Turley presides over the Houston Education Research Consortium supported by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation; and Sociology Professor Steve Klineberg and Michael Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline

1929 Rice Engineering Show

Professor of Sociology, are the directors of our new Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Our engagement with K–12 education is broader than ever before, epitomized perhaps by REEP — the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program — which, with the support of the Houston Endowment, provides a business- and managementoriented education for rising school and school district leaders. Phil Bedient, the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering, founded and directs SSPEED, the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center. And Rice’s STEMscopes — “a completely digital science curriculum resource developed for

2012 UnConvention

Part of Rice’s strength and distinction is working closely with the institutions of the city. Our educational endeavors build on a history of engagement with the Houston Independent School District as well as other nearby districts and charter schools such as KIPP and YES Prep. Our efforts in the biosciences depend on our working relationships with the institutions of the Texas Medical Center. Our BioScience Research Collaborative, the building we constructed five years ago at University Boulevard and Main Street, houses, for example, BioHouston and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and will soon house researchers from Texas Children’s

“Now we embrace a porous university that reaches out to a home city that is also constantly reaching in.

We are both the greater for it.”

—David W. Leebron

grades 5–8” — has been widely adopted throughout Texas.

Our students learn what it means to be engaged from their first days at Rice. The Rice Center for Civic Engagement was founded in 2006 to build on earlier efforts to engage more comprehensively our students, staff and faculty in contributing to the betterment of our city. Students conduct research that has helped guide policy and design solutions on issues from clearing disabled cars from highways to feeding giraffes at the zoo. Most recently, our students designed and largely built a new Habitat for Humanity home, the Rice Centennial House, in the city’s Fifth Ward that is so innovative it will likely serve as a model for other low-cost housing around the country. In addition, our 1-year-old Community Bridges program is directly involving our students, through a combination of course work and fieldwork, in helping alleviate poverty in the Fifth Ward.

Hospital and other TMC members. Joining them is a consortium aimed at moving discoveries into application called the Houston Area Translational Research Consortium, or HATRC. These relationships are critical to cultural endeavors as well.

Most recently, we are seeking to deepen our relationships with the city’s art museums as we invigorate Rice’s commitment to the arts, a commitment that is now increasingly visible to all who visit us through the stunning artworks throughout the campus. And neither the Houston Symphony nor the Shepherd School would be as strong as they are without each other.

This is an exciting time to be at Rice as we approach our October Centennial Celebration. And we can especially celebrate the fact that our hedges do not separate the campus from the city. Now we embrace a porous university that reaches out to a home city that is also constantly reaching in. We are both the greater for it.

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BY

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W E S T

R O Z E L L E

Rice student Hallie Jordan revisits the Paris of photographer Eugene Atget and comes back with a treasure trove of timeless images.

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Houston native Hallie Jordan ’12 had only visited Paris once before last summer. But her passion for photography led her there again — haunting the latenight streets, documenting the life of the historical metropolis and searching for a new view of an old city.

IN

spring 2011, Jordan won a Rice University School of Humanities Focus Europe grant to travel from mid-May to mid-June through the City of Light, photographing the same locations immortalized by French photographer Eugene Atget (1857–1927) 100 years ago.

The resulting show, “Days and Nights in Paris: In the Footsteps of Atget,” was on view as part of Houston’s FotoFest 2012 Biennial.

Jordan chose Atget as a subject on the suggestion of photographer Geoffrey Winningham ’65, Rice professor of visual and dramatic arts, whom she sites as a mentor throughout the duration of her project.

Atget documented Paris extensively for more than 20 years and wrote down the addresses of almost all of his photographs. Jordan chose about 100 photos taken between 1895 and 1920 in the city. “I was curious if I’d be able to locate the same places or not,” said Jordan. By searching on Google maps, she was able to locate in some cases the exact spot where Atget photographed, but in all cases at least the street in the scene.

“Paris has been around for many centuries. It’s all tiny narrow streets. So it hadn’t really changed in 100 years — that’s a short amount of time in Parisian history,” said Jordan. “The first place I went was the Pantheon. I could stand in the same street corner that was in the photograph. I was blown away by that — that I could stand in the same spot and it looked pretty much the same. The cars on the street were different, but the buildings around it, which were residential apartments, looked like pretty much the same buildings.”

While the subjects are similar, photography as an art has made many advances since Atget first picked up a camera. He worked with a large, tripod-mounted view camera with glass photographic plates, all of which would have been very heavy. Jordan, on the

Hallie Jordan

other hand, had the benefit of modern technology — she worked with a much lighter and more portable hand-held digital camera. Because of that, the type of photograph she was capable of creating was inherently different, which gave her more freedom to make her own art. “I would think about keeping Atget’s style in the back of my mind all the time but still photographing new things I saw.”

Sometimes, depending on the location, rather than taking a photograph of the exact scene Atget chose, Jordan would photograph the entire street to create a similar but distinct image. “A lot of times I’d have, for instance, a building that was in his picture in my picture, but maybe I’d change the frame or I’d walk around to a different side of the street. You could still see that the subject was the same. My goal was to make my own photographs but also have them reminiscent of Atget’s. It became my own artwork, but you could still recognize that it was the same

“My goal was to make my own photographs but also have them reminiscent of Atget’s. It became my own artwork, but you could still recognize that it was the same place and see how it has or hasn’t changed.”

—Hallie Jordan

place and see how it has or hasn’t changed.”

Another aspect of Jordan’s photography that was different from Atget’s was time of day. Atget photographed mostly in the early morning hours. There are not a lot of people in his photos, either because of the time of day or because his long exposure would have blurred out movement. When Jordan arrived in Paris, it rained constantly, making all of her photographs gray. Upon the advice of Winningham, she began taking night photos. This was a turning point for her photography, resulting in many more dramatic scenes and a total of 8,000 photos.

For her show, Jordan and Winningham sorted through all of those 8,000 images to choose the most artistic and to pair each of them with a similar photo by Atget. “I actually found a lot of the pairings that I used in my show after I came back,” said Jordan. “I was looking through books in Fondren Library, and there were photos I hadn’t scanned or taken with me but matched photos I took. That was exciting.”

Jordan thinks that photography will be a lifelong passion, even beyond her recent graduation. “I’ve been photographing more or less most of my life,” she said.

“I don’t remember not wanting to take pictures — at home and on family trips. I’ve been taking photography classes every semester since my sophomore year.

They’ve been my favorite part about Rice. At least in some capacity I’ll always take photographs.” Perhaps someday we’ll read about a student who is studying Jordan’s immortal photos.

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ABOVE US

Only Sky

Photo by Paul Hester

On June 14, Rice’s public art profile changed dramatically with the opening of a new installation, James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace and Suzanne Deal Booth Centennial Pavilion.

The work is the latest example of the artist’s series of skyspaces — enclosed rooms where visitors can view the sky through an opening in the roof. At Rice, a 72-by-72-foot white roof rising over a berm provides a canvas for an LED light performance. The aperture, a 14-foot square, offers a celestial view. Visitors who find their way to Rice’s campus at sunrise or sunset can witness a cerebral light show, where intensely hued LED lighting plays with and alters visual perception. “This is a gentle reminder that because we give the sky its color and can then change the color of the sky, we create the reality in which we live,” Turrell said. The Skyspace is engineered for acoustics as well and will be the site of concerts featuring students from the nearby Shepherd School of Music. This commissioned public artwork was made possible by a gift from Rice trustee and alumna Suzanne Deal Booth ’77.

For more information: ›› › ricemagazine.info/126

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Earlier this year, more than 1,600 residents of the 10-county Houston metropolitan area received a phone call from a stranger asking if they would kindly contribute to a survey about Houston.

“We’re calling for Rice University. We’re conducting our 31st annual study of public opinion in the Houston area. The Houston Chronicle will be carrying a front-page story about the findings in a couple of months. Would you help us?”

Many did, and many have every year since 1982 when Rice Sociology Professor Stephen Klineberg and his students first

predicated on education, addressing the quality of life issues that are critical for enticing new talent to the city and navigating the demographic revolution.

“Those basic stories remain the same, but every year there are new patterns that emerge,” Klineberg said. In April, Klineberg and the Kinder Institute released this year’s findings.

Americans could share in the prosperity of our country — minimum wage, progressive income tax, access to quality education.”

Another big story told by the survey is Houston’s ongoing economic reinvention, from a city where the economic resources lay in the ground to a city where economic resources are housed “between the ears” of the bright people who live and work here.

Houstonians are starting to show a preference for urban living with walkable neighborhoods over a single-family home in car-dependent suburbs. Hand in hand

Transitio

BY LY N N G O S N E LL

A CI T Y I N

The 31st Kinder Houston Area Survey adds to the ongoing portrait of the region’s economic and demographic character and reveals residents’ attitudes about their changing world.

began what today is known as the Kinder Houston Area Survey.

Housed at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, the Houston Area Survey (HAS) has tracked the region’s economic and demographic trends and recorded the public’s evolving opinions on an incredible range of topics, including the economy, immigration, ethnic relations, gay rights, religion and politics.

Such a comprehensive, longitudinal study is unique among American cities, Klineberg said.

“We add questions each year and take some out. It’s a living thing, with a focus on tracking the changes over time,” he added.

Over the past three decades, Klineberg said, the survey’s data reveal several key challenges for the city: counteracting the growing inequalities

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The survey results picture an uneven economic recovery: •

More than 37 percent said the economy was Houston’s biggest problem.

•

Houstonians think that job opportunities are improving and 27 percent said their financial situation was “getting better” during the last few years.

•

Yet, more people today than ever before (32 percent) said they had difficulty buying groceries to feed their families — one of the survey’s most haunting findings. “It’s a powerful reminder that the rising tide no longer lifts all boats,” Klineberg said.

Klineberg is passionate on this score: “The greatest political challenge of our time is how to restore the equalizing institutions that used to ensure that most

with this trend is growing support for mass transit improvements.

Only the basic demographic questions — about one-third of the survey — are asked every year, Klineberg said. “Then there’s a series that we include every other year that we’ve been tracking over time. We sit down together with each class and look back over previous questions to ask if there’s any reason to pose that question again.”

The class, Sociology 436/536: The Houston Area Survey, is open to just 10 students each spring. Their role is to plan and test the survey, as well as analyze the data and write research reports. They get hands-on experience in professional survey research. These days, an outside firm does the actual interviewing. The 2012 interviews were conducted by phone between Feb. 16 and March 27 and reached a scientifically representative sample of 1,610

area residents, including 344 (21 percent) from outside Harris County. Thirty-one percent of all respondents were contacted by cell phone.

This year, the survey revisited abortion rights. Strikingly, said Klineberg, there has been “no change” in attitudes about abortion rights in 30 years.

In 2012, 54 percent agreed with the statement, “It should be legal for a woman to obtain an abortion if she wants to have one for any reason,” but 56 percent also believe that abortion is “morally wrong.”

Twenty percent or so of the Houston

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74 percent of Harris County residents support “granting illegal immigrants a path to legal citizenship if they speak English and have no criminal record.”

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82 percent favor “allowing the children of undocumented immigrants to become U.S. citizens, if they have graduated from college or served in the military.”

Klineberg is the public face of the survey, making numerous presentations to civic groups, nonprofit organizations,

ion population are what Klineberg calls “tolerant traditionalists,” people who espouse traditional values for themselves but also believe that a woman has to make that decision herself. The numbers have hardly changed at all across the 31 years of surveys.

This year’s survey also revisited the topic of gay rights. Every question about gay rights has shown a significant increase in support, especially among younger people, the survey has found. “This is a unidirectional shift in support for gay rights,” Klineberg said.

This year’s survey also finds that Houstonians are growing more optimistic about the region’s burgeoning diversity, and they are less antagonistic in their attitudes toward undocumented immigrants.

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49 percent say ethnic relations are “excellent” or “good,” the highest level recorded in the surveys.

businesses and elected officials — close to 100 presentations last year. To help make the HAS results even more widely available, the Kinder Institute created a 24-minute video that features Klineberg summarizing the survey’s results over the past 30 years. (See “Interesting Times.”)

“No other metropolitan region in the country more clearly exemplifies the trends that are rapidly refashioning the social and political landscape of urban America,” Klineberg said.

Thanks to Rice’s Kinder Houston Area Survey, we have a time-lapse portrait of a city that may very well be the future face of America.

‘Interesting Times’ Explores 30 Years of Data on the City of Houston Got 24 minutes? That’s the runtime of “Interesting Times,” a fascinating minidocumentary about Houston’s economic and demographic transformations over the past 30 years. Watching the video is like attending a lecture given by a gifted professor — the film’s narrator is Rice University Professor of Sociology Stephen L. Klineberg. The recipient of 10 teaching awards, including the George R. Brown Certificate of Highest Merit, Klineberg and his students are responsible for the Kinder Houston Area Survey, which has tracked significant trends and changes in Houston since 1982.

Klineberg tells the story of the country’s longest-running urban research project with infectious enthusiasm, and even humor, though the information he imparts can be dire. The upshot is that viewers are unlikely to realize that they are watching a documentary about data. And that’s because the data, as delivered, is so compelling.

Against a background of archival and modern-day images, Klineberg describes how the initial purpose of this one-time survey was to measure the social costs of growth during Houston’s oil-fueled boom.

But when the region went bust in 1983, Klineberg and his students decided to repeat the survey.

Year after year, phone interviewers have reached out to a random sample of Harris County residents and asked the same questions: How do you see the world? What’s happening in your life?

Watch and learn about Houston (and America’s) new economy, which is characterized by a growing inequality of wealth and a critical need for access to education in order to feed the knowledge economy. The survey documents the emergence of quality-of-life issues as civic priorities and most significantly, the “fundamental, irreversible transformation in the ethnic composition of the Houston, the Texas and the American population,” Klineberg says. From time to time, Klineberg digresses to give some historical background, such as an explanation of the National Origins Act, which shaped the country’s immigration policy until 1965.

Today’s Houston has been shaped by the demographic revolution that has turned many major cities into microcosms of the world. “No city has been transformed as fully, as completely, as suddenly, as irreversibly, as Houston, Texas.” What was historically a “biracial, Southern city” in 30 years has become one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the country, with an increasingly aging Anglo population and a growing non-Anglo younger population. And we are at risk, Klineberg says, if we do not address issues of poverty and education. The takeaway? Houston is where the American future is being worked out. “I don’t think there have ever been more interesting times,” Klineberg concludes. Class dismissed. L.G.

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Rice opens up its campus to the community.

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In early spring, billboards started appearing around the city: “Houston, you’re invited.” Then came posters, fliers and emails making the message clear: Come one, come all to Rice’s threeday open house, aka the UnConvention.

1. Christa Clarke ’12 uses liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. 2.Rice students help kids create their own Silly Putty. 3. Rice’s John Anderson discusses the impact of climate change on the sea-level rise in Galveston Bay. 4. President David Leebron dedicates the centennial tree. 5. Serving up short stacks at the Pancakes for Parkinson’s benefit. 6. Campus tours highlight Rice’s architecture, history, public art and more. 7. James Rozelle enjoys the UnConvention with his mom, Rice staffer Jenny Rozelle ’00. 8. Inspecting the basketballplaying robot designed by Lamar High School students and Rice mentors. 9. The Rice Jazz Ensemble draws a crowd in the Sewall Hall Courtyard. 10. Students show off their projects at an engineering design competition. 11. A tent full of activities draws children to the Central Quad. 12. Kids and teens learn the basics of physics from Rice’s Barry Dunning.

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or three blue-sky days, April 12–14, Rice welcomed trees and buildings. “This is the first time we’ve been to a univerneighbors, alumni and families to campus. Visitors sity in the U.S.,” he said. Suneel Tiruveedhula earned a master’s toured the university’s tree-lined paths, attended degree in computer applications in India, but he and his famlectures, played games, watched performances, ate ily hadn’t found reason to visit a campus since they moved to pancakes, explored labs, colored sidewalk murals, made origami Houston. He studied the schedule for more activities that might owls and danced along with the Rice Marching Owl Band. interest his son.

The UnConvention, a celebration of the university’s centennial, “He’s going to a university (someday),” he said of Abhinav, was a modern-day reinvention of the old Rice Engineering Show, who’s a whiz at math already. “I wanted him to have a visit.” which debuted in 1920. Every other year until World War II, then Across campus, the Houston Zoo’s ZooMobile drew wide-eyed again in the 1950s, engineering students would wow the crowds kids to its tent near Herring Hall. Inés Alfaro-Rodriguez, a secondwith the latest marvels of technology — microwave ovens, X-ray grader, shyly stroked an orangutan hand and peered at a lion’s machines, remote-controlled cars. skull. She talked pythons with zoo education In 2012, the UnConvention wasn’t so differprograms specialist Elizabeth Fries. Suddenly, A basketball-playing ent. A basketball-playing robot drew a steady Fries brightened. “Do you guys want to touch stream of challengers. A Rice-designed solar a lizard?” robot drew a steady car attracted curious attention. And in the As Charles the chuckwalla emerged from stream of challengers. activity tent near Brochstein Pavilion, Christa a plastic cooler, Inés stared with big eyes. “You A Rice-designed solar Clarke ’12 made instant ice cream with liquid can touch him,” zoo docent Lois Hardt told car attracted curious nitrogen and a dramatic flair. her. Inés placed a finger on the animal’s back.

As she stirred cream and sugar into an “Whooooaaa.” Her dad moved in to get a betattention. And in the enormous pot, kids crowded in to watch. ter look. “Holy moly,” Ernesto Alfaro muttered activity tent near “Everybody step back from the table,” said as the 24-year-old lizard peered back at him.

Brochstein Pavilion, Clarke, a bioengineering major at McMurtry Alfaro ’00 and his wife, Marie Rodriguez ’01, Christa Clarke ‘12 made both earned master’s degrees from the Rice College. “This gets really cold, so make sure you don’t come too close.”

School of Architecture. In fact, Alfaro is a instant ice cream with When she added the liquid lecturer in the school today. “The truth is, we liquid nitrogen and a nitrogen, a cold cloud floated weren’t planning on coming for an extended dramatic flair. out over the crowd. While her period of time,” he said, but they were captiaudience gasped and giggled, vated by all the activities for Clarke took the opportunity to give the whole family. a quick science lesson.

By early evening on “This is a phase change; it’s going Saturday, the UnConvention from a liquid to a gas,” she said. “And was winding down. But Joe Watt this (ice cream) is freezing, so it’s going ’54 and ninth-grader Chris York from a liquid to a solid.” Minutes later, that were still going strong. “We’re not solid was served up with sprinkles and handed completely done. Can we go back to out to a line of eager kids and adults. Clarke the Sallyport?” York said. “I want to made another batch, and then another, repeatsee the statue and the architecture.” ing the show all afternoon.

Watt and York, who live in Beaumont, Each day of the UnConvention offered a had been on campus since that morning. packed and varied schedule. Latin jazz, courThey sat in on Mechanical Engineering tesy of the Rice Jazz Ensemble, rose from and Materials Science Professor Sewall Hall’s courtyard. Just above, in Enrique Barrera’s “Materials Rice Gallery, artist Yasuaki Onishi took Magic” show. They watched questions about his spectacular new robots and learned about installation, “reverse of volume RG.” nanoscience. They spent the afOnishi’s captivating work came from ternoon exploring the Oshman unlikely materials: A sheet of plastic Engineering Design Kitchen. hung artfully from the ceiling, sus“It was good to be able pended by delicate strands of black to walk through people’s hot glue. People tiptoed around the labs and talk to them and edges, spun around beneath the ask questions,” said Watt, plastic folds and took pictures with a retired Lamar University their smartphones. professor. York peered into In a Duncan Hall classroom, the windows of Fondren 7-year-old Abhinav Tiruveedhula Library and assessed the events sawed a bow up and down across the of the day. strings of a violin, screeching and squawking “I’m pretty much happy I went,” his way through a “Guitar Hero”-style video he volunteered. Then Watt smiled. “I’m game. The game, developed by Rice grad very happy I went.” An hour later, as the student Linda Hill, was designed to help sun sank lower in the sky, the two were players master the basics of violin. still wandering the campus — guests Outside, Abhinav’s dad, Suneel who weren’t in a rush to leave.

Tiruveedhula, admired the campus —Alyson Ward

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By Ron Sass

During a Saturday afternoon walk through campus, Rice’s centennial banners spark 50 years of memories for Professor Emeritus Ron Sass.

It was a lazy February afternoon. The sun was shining with an uncommonly brilliant display of energy even though the day was relatively cool. There was no breeze to speak of, and it was easy walking weather. I had come to the Rice campus to walk alone for an hour or so and get a bit of exercise. With no specific destination in mind, I parked just inside Entrance 20 — the one most directly leading to and from my home. Without intending to, I was about to step back in time and relive, in a virtual way, 50-plus years of association with Rice University.

The campus beckoned with its characteristic calm. Only a handful of students, looking just slightly purposeful, moved from one building to another. In all my years at Rice, the campus has always struck me as being a kind of oasis of quiet.

Just in front of the student center, I came face-to-face with Rice’s fifth president, George Rupp — or at least a photo of him adorning a banner marked 1985, hanging from a lamppost.

The George Rupp banner is one of 100 celebrating Rice’s centennial and hanging from lampposts on the Inner Loop road. They start with 1891 in front of Tudor Fieldhouse, wend along College Way, out to the front gate, back along Laboratory Road, looping past the James A. Baker III Institute, out past the new recreation facilities and ending up just past Alice Pratt Brown Hall with the 2012 banner honoring Richard Tapia.

I had come to the Rice Institute as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1958. The banner for that year is located near the front gate of the campus and pictures the opening of Rice Memorial Center, then the new student center. Instead of the RMC, I saw groups of 1958 students and faculty crammed into “The Roost,” the old student gathering place in the basement of the library. Not modern, not comfortable, not roomy and airy, but intimate and great.

In 1958, William V. Houston was president. I would have had to step back to the banner for 1946 to find his picture, but I can still see myself in his office as we shook hands, and he hired me — no contract, no signatures, no legalese jargon. Just a hand shake. (I never had to sign an official document related to my employment until my “official” retirement in 2005.)

Every banner from 1958 to 2011 brought a flood of memories. The 1959 banner showed the R1 Rice computer, where I spent endless hours programming in machine language to solve the structures of several crystal compounds. The 1961 banner featured Kenneth Pitzer becoming Rice’s third president and my second. So much happened to both Rice and me during the following decade. I had been at Rice just five years when the newly arrived president announced adoption of a tenure policy.

The first year of the new policy, I was automatically to be considered for promotion, which would be based on teaching, research and service — but primarily research.

I had been teaching two sections of Introductory Chemistry (more than 400 students), five afternoons of laboratory, plus a senior course in Physical Chemical Problem Solving, a really full load.

Happily, I had gotten used to working 12 to 18 hours a day in graduate school and had found a couple of graduate students to work with me. My research output was enough, apparently. In 1962 I was awarded the position of associate professor rather than being asked to look for a new job.

That same year’s banner depicted President Kennedy delivering the moon speech at Rice. I had skipped the graduation ceremony after my first year at Rice to go back to Long Island and finish some research I had started before moving. I hadn’t known or didn’t pay attention to the policy expecting every faculty member to attend commencement.

My penalty for being a bad boy was to be appointed to the university marshals. The up side was that the marshals were to escort President Kennedy into the

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stadium. It was a great honor to be that close to the president and to be present at such an important and fateful day.

I also remember vividly the terrible news, while working with the R1 Rice computer, that he had been shot in Dallas.

A sad time indeed.

Walking through the ’60s banners reminded me of key events, such as when Rice admitted its first African-American student (1964), started charging tuition (1965) and initiated the Graduate Student Association (1969).

What the banners didn’t mention, but nevertheless was behind the events depicted, was the turbulent character of those years, throughout the country, and affecting Rice in real ways: student unrest over the Vietnam War and the draft, the sexual revolution, the questioning of authority and the Masterson Crisis.

I was reminded that both my best and worst times at Rice occurred during those years. The best time then was being the master of Hanszen College. I was only 32 years old when appointed, and the ensuing experience certainly prodded me to grow up. The students were supposed to do that, but we did it together. Together, we also built the Corner for the Dreaming

chemistry faculty member and I rode one year representing “Pitzer College.”

We wore orange shirts that we had ordered from Pitzer College in California and had a great time showing off. We were, of course, disqualified, but not before drinking a few beers and taking cheers as we zipped past the bleachered crowds.

In 1965, I took a sabbatical leave, spending the year as a member of the theoretical chemistry department at the University of Cambridge. It was a beautiful year, full of English culture and good science — but it convinced me that my future was not to be in theoretical studies, but something more practical and closer to the real world.

I made professor in 1966, just after returning to Rice from England, and my growing days were supposedly over. True to my experience in England, I switched research interests from molecular and crystal structure to comparative physiology.

Continuing along toward the original Chemistry Building (Keck Hall) where I started my career at Rice, I encountered the 1970 banner of Norman Hackerman, also a chemist, and a very good one, who was named Rice’s fourth president that year.

By 1975, I had become a member of the biology department,

Monkey coffeehouse in the attic of the old section of Hanszen and started the radio station that eventually became KTRU. My worst time was when, after a speech urging integration, I was told by the Ku Klux Klan to get out of town — or die. That was also one of my proudest moments, because I was there to help Rice integrate, and I didn’t get out of town or die.

Many other things happened during those years, the sum of which was that Rice began a journey to establish itself as a first-rate research university. The faculty increased in size, as did the graduate program. Grant money flowed in from the National Science Foundation, NASA and other agencies. Rice grew and gained international respect. But to me, it also lost the sense of being an intimate family that was there from the beginning, and which I felt from my first moment on campus.

I guess the loss was necessary in order to aspire to greatness, but I miss the old ways.

Continuing around Inner Loop, I recalled the Beer Bike races that were held during those years. In fact, the 1957 banner near the campus entrance commemorates the first Beer Bike race. I recalled the bicycle built for two that another

moving my teaching, office and laboratory to the Anderson Biological Laboratories. I taught only biology and concentrated on more applied research from that year on.

I became chair of the biology department in 1981. I find it difficult to say something positive about being a departmental chair. Nothing you do as chair pleases everyone and those who are displeased — both the faculty and the administration — are anxious to let you know how they feel about you and your decisions.

During a faculty meeting one year, we were discussing teaching assignments for the next semester. The person who normally taught general physiology was going on sabbatical.

Not a single faculty member would agree to teach the course while he was gone, claiming that it was just not their field. All arguments were to no avail. Though I was the only faculty member in the department lacking a biology degree, I ended up teaching the course myself and actually enjoyed it enough to continue teaching it for the next several years.

I endured as chair until 1988 when I escaped via a sabbatical leave. Ironically, the centennial banner for 1988 celebrates

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the student’s turning of Willy’s statue by 180 degrees. I was myself ready for a 180-degree life change at that time.

For a year, I had been looking for a new research area of study. Climate change was just becoming a hot topic and one that promised exciting possibilities. I decided to study methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, but one not as concentrated in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Ultimately, I chose to spend my sabbatical leave at NASA studying the contribution of methane emissions from natural wetlands to climate change. I spent part of the year in southern Virginia at NASA’s Langley Research Center, learning laboratory and field techniques; the rest of the time was spent on the tundra of western Alaska in the Kuskoquim River delta.

The science I did there began a 25-year experience studying methane emissions from rice agriculture (also a wetland), in the laboratory and in the field, around the world.

In fact, the Chinese were so impressed that I came from a university that was obviously dedicated to the study of rice that they gave me a few acres of rice to study right outside of Nanjing in Jiangsu Province.

For the next two dozen years, Frank Fisher, now Rice professor emeritus of biology, and I worked in the rice fields of Texas and China. It was a wonderful and rewarding research journey.

We, along with many dedicated undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students, were able to contribute significantly to an understanding of the process and magnitude of methane emissions from the rice fields and related natural wetlands around the world.

Obviously, research was not the only activity that has occupied me since 1988. It did allow me the opportunity to work closely with other scientists from around the world and to travel to many countries in Europe, South America and especially Asia. It did not allow me to escape from again being a departmental chair.

This time I chaired the newly formed Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from its beginning in 1990 until 2003, the year Rice won the national championship in baseball, and I suffered from congestive heart failure. As dismal as being a departmental chair is, I would never recommend congestive heart failure as an antidote, even though it was successful for me.

Other really exciting things were happening to me and to Rice in those years between 1988 and 2003. The banners attest to many. For example, 1993 has four banners: Malcolm Gillis becomes Rice’s sixth president, Jimmy Carter gives the commencement address, the world’s first nanotechnology research center is established at Rice and so is the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

My internationalization and Rice’s developed in tandem.

In 1993, I took my first of many trips to China. Four of us, including Frank Fisher and me, were on a scientific exchange trip sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture. We traveled for most of May, visiting researchers across China. The results were collaborative friendships that have lasted ever since.

I want to note the 1996 banner in particular, which celebrates the winning of the Nobel Prize in chemistry by Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. I am proud of Bob Curl and his achievement. He is very smart and humble — a truly winning combination. Bob and I started teaching chemistry at Rice at the same time. Our offices were just down the hall from each other, and we soon became good friends. Since neither of us made much money back then, we carpooled to

work. I had been having pains in the top of my head and was worried that I had a brain tumor. It was my fi rst fall in Houston, and I was not used to the weather and did not think that my head problem and Houston’s dismal weather were related. One day on the way to work, Bob started describing this pain he had in his head. Realizing that we both had the same symptoms, I was overcome with relief. “Bob,” I said, “Statistically, the chance of both of us having a brain tumor has to be close to zero! It must be a sinus problem.” It was, still is and probably always will be chronic Houstonitis.

But thankfully it was not a brain tumor in either case.

My next banner year was 2003, when I was given the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professorship in Natural Sciences. I also became a fellow at the Baker Institute, a position that I have held ever since. And as I mentioned earlier, near the end of the year, I experienced congestive heart failure.

I was playing tennis and losing two straight sets without winning a single game. Something was wrong. I ended up in the hospital where I just got worse. My health did not get any better for more than a year. Of course, I was through as chairman.

I want to note the 1996 banner in particular, which celebrates the winning of the Nobel Prize in chemistry by Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. I am proud of Bob Curl and his achievement.

He is very smart and humble — a truly winning combination.

—Ron Sass

For a while, I was on short-term sick leave until the time ran out. Rather than my going on long-term leave at half pay, the dean decided that I was due for a sabbatical and gave me a semester more to get better at full salary.

I don’t know if that act of kindness on the part of the administration helped me get better, but I was determined to go back to work, and did, teaching for another year. Since I couldn’t stand at the blackboard, I taught mainly sitting down.

After a year, I felt that it was time to retire gracefully and did so in 2005.

My affection for and affiliation with Rice did not end with retirement — it seldom does for a faculty member. In 2006, I received the Association of Rice Alumni’s Gold Medal. I still teach in the Master of Liberal Studies program and am active in the Baker Institute. Rice and I have been traveling together for more than half a century now. We have been friends for most of that time. The relationship has been great, and I am thankful for it. I hope Rice is, too.

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Blogging THE CASE OF THE

Historian When it comes to Rice’s history, Melissa Kean finds the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Owing to the weekly episodes of Rice News’ Centennial Video Series, Melissa Fitzsimons Kean is one of the most public faces of this year’s celebration. Kean, who earned a master’s and a doctorate in history from Rice (in 1996 and 2000) is the centennial historian. In each three-minute video, she relates a story about the people, places and traditions that have shaped Rice’s identity. The newsreel-style videos draw on materials from the Woodson Research Center Special Collections and Archives, as well as Kean’s own archival research. In the videos, one sees not only Kean’s knowledge on display, but also her enthusiasm for topics as diverse as campus buildings, engineering fairs, aerial photographs and student hangouts.

But there’s another medium that Kean uses to document archival sleuthing. Since November 2010, she has blogged about Rice history and a few mysteries at http://ricehistorycorner. com. To date, the blog has registered about a quarter of a million hits. As with the videos, Kean’s conversational tone and investigative zeal is evident. The blog, however, gives free reign to Kean’s penchant for viewing history through the lens

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of humble artifacts and ordinary lives. When she asks readers, “What is this?,” Kean aims to bring them into the archivist’s world, enlisting their help in solving historical puzzles. “The posts I like the most are not about important things,” she said.

“They are the places where I was able to connect the dots.”

We asked Kean to show us a few of the archival fi nds that inspired her blogging.

THE GIRL IN THE PLAID SKIRT Bessie Smith, Class of 1923 While researching commencement processions, Kean came across a photo from the 1921 commencement that included a girl in a plaid skirt taking photos. “For one wild moment I dared hope that the figure in the plaid skirt right where the procession is turning the corner might be a bagpiper,” she posted. Then she saw her in another commencement photo, standing on the balcony overlooking the ceremony. A piece of paper in the file

Next, tragedy. “Manaker was killed on May 23 near Fulshear, within sight of his parents, when the DeHaviland plane he was flying went down in a high wind and burst into flames.”

The Mystery of the missing ironwork The Rice President’s House K Kean has dedicated no fewer than four blog entries to the state of decorative ironwork on campus, in particular the ornamental scrolls that surrounded the former President’s House. As is

Left: Fred Manaker ’18; top center: Bessie Smith ’23; bottom center: early aerial photo of campus; right: President Houston; facing page: Bessie Smith, 1921 commencement

noted ‘Bessie Smith on the balcony.’ Kean learned from Bessie Smith’s yearbook entry that she was the Campanile photographer all four years at Rice. Other than that? “Her married name was MacLaughlin, but I know nothing else about her.” For now, that mystery remains unsolved.

The man who fell to Earth Fred Manaker and the first Rice aerial photos Aviation was still in its infancy during Rice’s early years. Kean found a few of the earliest aerial photos of the university in the scrapbook of student Fred Manaker ’18, who came to Rice in 1914 from the small town of Alvin to study engineering. “Manaker,” Kean posted, “had the aviation bug pretty bad.” In his scrapbook, which is in the Rice archives, Kean found evidence of a fun-loving and popular student. “Besides airplanes, he enjoyed goofing around in the residence hall and playing a lot of poker in addition to the usual dances and Rice athletic events.” In 1917, he piloted a plane from which Rice mechanical engineering professor J.H. Pound took photos. Later that year, Manaker joined the Army and was stationed at the then-new Ellington Field in spring 1919.

typical of the archivist’s life, she was focused on one topic — a a dapper-looking photo of then-President Houston — when the ironwork caught her eye. From the blog: “So as I sat there, I began to think about when and where the picture was taken.

It’s not obvious at first, but I’m certain that he was standing on the back patio of the newly completed President’s House, which was finished in 1949. The biggest clue is the beautiful decorative ironwork that he has his hand on.” Knowing that the library had recently acquired a collection of the original architect’s drawings and metalwork patterns, Kean went to see if she could find the pattern for that particular design. Of course, she did. Next, she took a quick trip over to Huff House to see if the ironwork was still there. Only a small piece on an upstairs balcony remained, which she photographed and shared with readers. “I’m certainly no expert, but I think the most elegant thing about the original house was this exceptional ornamental metal.”

—Lynn Gosnell

To read more of Kean’s musings on Rice history or to subscribe to her blog, go to: ›› › ricehistorycorner.com

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Quick-thinking solar car team overcomes repeated challenges to finish in second place at energy-efficient car competition.

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was Sunday, April 1, the third day of the Shell Ecomarathon Americas 2012, a competition for students to design, build and drive energy-efficient vehicles.

Rice’ s entry, an 11.5-foot solar car dubbed the RSC Enterprise, was on track to finish its 10-lap trial within the allotted time frame. Team member Robert Wilson ’12 was documenting the car’s progress from the sidelines.

Even before reaching the track, club members pulled a series of all-nighters at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen to configure individual solar cells that arrived days before the event and had to be painstakingly pieced together into an original solar panel design. Soldering the cells took four or five students working around the clock for about 36 hours, the team estimated.

“When we got started we were breaking them left and right,” they said. Gradually the process got more efficient.

On the way to the finish line, the team faced numerous other challenges.

In their first run, the joule meters provided by Shell to measure the vehicle’s efficiency malfunctioned. Since they did not display the amount of energy gathered by the solar panels, the main criteria for judging, the team had to go again.

Running on Ly n n G o s n e l l a n d M i k e W i l l i a m s

“We were following our strategy to the note,” Wilson said.

“Then I heard someone say, ‘Did the roof just fall off?’” It was not an April Fool’s joke.

On bumpy city streets, the Enterprise’s front-opening hood had caught some air and folded back on its hinge, flooding driver Kerry Wang ’12 in sunlight and causing a slight panic among team members. “We lost 20 percent of our photovoltaics,” said Andrew Owens ’12. “A lot of them were cracked and shattered, but they continued to produce electricity, just not as efficiently as before.” Wang carefully steered the brand new solar convertible off the track. It was a good thing the steering mechanism hadn’t broken — like it had the day before.

The Rice Solar Car club endured numerous mechanical and engineering malfunctions to claim a second-place finish in the solar prototype category of the competition, held at Discovery Green in downtown Houston. It was the team’s first competition.

The student-run project had started more than two years earlier and evolved into a 16-member club. To finance the project, students raised more than $90,000 from various sources, including a generous gift from Rice alumni Burton ’56 and Deedee Meck McMurtry ’56. The team’s adviser was Andrew Dick, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. In spring 2011, Dick taught a mechanical engineering class that focused on designing a solar car.

In the Shell competition, each team had 10 chances to drive 6 miles (10 laps) within 24 minutes and 15 seconds. Cars were judged not so much for speed as for efficiency in each of the categories, which also included gas, diesel, electric and alternative fuels. More than 130 teams from across the country and abroad competed; Rice’s car was one of eight in the solar prototype category.

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On the second run, the car’s left steering arm attachment broke. “For a couple seconds, my car was wobbling uncontrollably, then it stopped because the wheel turned perpendicular to the direction it was going,” said Wang. “Kind of scary.” Another team offered them a drill press so they could repair the steering attachment; the car was up and running in no time.

On their third attempt, one of the car’s two batteries died. The competition required that the vehicle weigh no more than 140 kilograms, or a little more than 300 pounds, including the carbonfiber frame and two battery packs that total about 8 pounds. With a nod to Dr. Seuss, the team named their batteries Thing One and Thing Two. “Thing One lost charge faster than it should have,” Wilson said.

And on the fourth round, the roof cantilevered. “Did that just happen?” thought Wang. To get back in the competition, the team had to find a way to secure the car’s solar roof. Their elegant solution involved lanyards and zip ties. “We jerry-rigged the thing,” Wilson said. It took two minutes.

Wang got back in the vehicle, and with one hand pulling down the roof and the other steering, he navigated the course to a near-miraculous second-place finish. “We were learning the greatest way possible, by trying something and messing up,” said Owens.

Wilson said that fundraising, scheduling, motivating people and other logistics were just as important as the engineering tasks. “This is so much more than an engineering project,” said Owens. “It’s a great opportunity for leadership. It’s like running a small business.” Two team members from this year’s competition — juniors Allison Garza and Joseph Song — will lead the club’s efforts next year.

And for Wang, driving the RSC Enterprise was the highlight of his time at Rice. “It was intense, but it was fun.”

Students

“This is so much more than an engineering project. It’s a great opportunity for leadership. It’s like running a small business.”

Sunshine —Andrew Owens

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Ordinary Extraordinary For two months this spring, Rice Gallery’s window looked like a 14th-century Japanese ink painting of mountains in the rain. Yasuaki Onishi used plastic sheeting, hot glue and fishing line to create the stunning installation “reverse of volume RG.” And while they may not sound like promising raw materials for an ethereal wonderland, the artist transformed these inexpensive hardware store offerings into something otherworldly.

Standing in front of the gallery window, the image seemed to float in the air as its three-dimensional nature slowly became apparent. Inside the gallery, you could walk underneath the translucent levitating mass and the mountain range became a blanket of clouds in the sky. Your perception and experience of the piece constantly changed as you interacted with its dangling hollow volume.

To create the work, Onishi stretched rows of fishing line across the gallery and hung a massive sheet of plastic from a central point in the room. Propping the sheeting up with scaffolding and stacks of boxes to shape it as he worked, Onishi suspended the rest of the sheet by melting black glue down from the fishing line to the plastic, creating slender dark strands. The installation took the Osaka-based artist and his assistant three weeks to execute. The thousands of little black threads of glue not only suspended the work, they also created the illusion of rain as you looked into the gallery. And where it stuck to the surface of the plastic, the glue became inky, painterly marks.

In earlier works, Onishi has created three-dimensional forms from thin plastic sheeting, using tiny fans at their base to inflate them. Other installations incorporated lengthy strands of yarn. His current work is a sort of combination of the two. Onishi started experimenting with plastic and hot glue while in a residency at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley.

He draped plastic over items like a suitcase, trash can and chair, dripping hot glue over them to fix their shape, creating a kind of mold before taking away the underlying objects. At Rice Gallery, his exploration of forms and volumes occurred on an architectural scale.

The Japanese artist’s installation was created to coincide with the grand opening of the new Asia Society Texas Center.

As with most other Rice Gallery installations, when the show closed, the work ceased to exist. All that remains are the photographs and video of the piece and the memories of those who experienced it.

—Kelly Klaasmeyer Editor’s note: The exhibition has been extended through July.

Additional images and video of this installation and others can be viewed at: ›› › ricegallery.org/new/exhibition/

Yasuaki Onishi, ”reverse of volume RG,” Rice Gallery, April 13–July 27, 2012 40

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Un-concert

Shepherd School doctoral student Robert McClure mixes original compositions, poetry, city sounds and a little Jackson Pollock to create a singular musical experience at the Orange Show.

There are certain unspoken conventions to attending a musical performance. We arrive at the theater or hall, take a program, fi nd our seats, settle in and listen to the musical offerings of the evening.

It’s a linear narrative, from opening to ovation.

But what happens to the musical experience when the hall is not an acoustically perfect interior but a funky outdoor shrine to outsider art? What happens when the audience is free to move around, and the noises of the city become part of the concert?

Last spring, Houston’s beloved Orange Show Center for Visionary Art hosted Shepherd School doctoral student Robert McClure and about a dozen talented musicians in a concert titled “Untangle My Tongue.” The concert featured three original pieces by McClure, including a work composed specifically for that location titled “Music Box 9.”

This piece began with seven separate movements comprising solos and duets positioned throughout the Orange Show.

As audience members walked around the venue, they could listen to the individual performances, in no particular order.

Eventually these separate performances came together as an ensemble in the eighth movement.

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“We marketed it as a sound installation or an event. We stayed away from the term ‘concert,’ because as soon as you bring it up there’s a certain etiquette involved. I wanted people to get up and move around.”

—Robert McClure

This is where “all of the bits fit together,” McClure said. The ninth movement included vocals and was sung while the audience walked out.

What’s going on here? “Music Box 9” is “an experiment in memory,” said McClure, because audience members hear, remember and reassemble parts into a coherent whole.

“We marketed it as a sound installation or an event,” McClure said. “We stayed away from the term ‘concert,’ because as soon as you bring it up there’s a certain etiquette involved. I wanted people to get up and move around.”

McClure is in his third year of studies for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

A native of Ohio, he started composing in high school while taking lessons in percussion and piano and studied music at Bowling Green State University and the University of Arizona. At Rice, he has taught a range of courses and serves as the electronic music studio teaching assistant. His interest in the relationship between aural and visual art led him to take an art history course that explored the work of Jackson Pollack, among other modern artists.

“It was in this class that I truly started thinking deeply about how art and music can communicate,” he said. His final project for the course was inspired by the work of avante-garde composer John Cage and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Alexander Calder.

“As a composer, you have to give up some of the control that you exert on the audience just by virtue of having your piece performed in a nontraditional setting. None of the social and cultural norms of audience were in place.”

Big Plans A tiny new gallery offers big opportunities.

—Robert McClure

Although McClure is interested in pursuing alternatives to the traditional concert experience, performing at a place like the Orange Show does present some unique challenges. Logistically, for example, musicians can’t take for granted the availability of chairs, music stands and lights.

“As a composer, you have to give up some of the control that you exert on the audience just by virtue of having your piece performed in a nontraditional setting. None of the social and cultural norms of audience were in place. They could get up, walk around and drink a beer without worrying about proper concert etiquette.”

The benefit, said McClure, comes when something unexpected and unscripted adds to the performance. While performing the title piece, “Untangle My Tongue,” there was an extended portion in

which the only sounds heard were recorded cicadas.

“As I was listening, I noticed that the bird calls changed. I think I might have confused the birds into thinking that the cicadas had returned.” In another part of the performance featuring gongs, a train horn sounded. “The pitch interaction was perfect between the gongs and the train,” McClure said.

The response was so positive from audience members and Orange Show staff that McClure has been asked to make a return appearance (stay tuned). But even if McClure does perform the same pieces at the Orange Show, the performance and the audience’s experience will surely be one-of-a-kind.

—Lynn Gosnell

Y have to put forth some effort to find You the EMERGEncy Room. Turn right inside Sewall Hall’s main entrance, then left.

Take the elevator up a floor, then travel a long, relentlessly white hallway toward the back corner, where a red neon X marks the spot. Here, tucked away behind a glass wall, is a shoebox of a room that looks a lot like a department store window. But twice a semester, this tiny space is transformed into Rice’s newest art gallery.

The creation of Christopher Sperandio, an assistant professor in the visual and dramatic arts department, the EMERGEncy Room opened in 2012 with financial assistance from the Rice Public Art Program. Its purpose is to showcase talented up-andcoming artists in the Houston area who need a bit of exposure to kick-start their careers. Each artist’s work is shown for about a month, and the installation serves as a small-scale, emerging artist’s version of a one-man gallery show.

“We wanted to do something,” Sperandio said, “that would help create a new bridge with the art scene in Houston and, at the same time, provide a real benefit for our students.” The EMERGEncy Room is “already having a direct impact on our curriculum, which is the very best we could have hoped for,” Sperandio said.

Artists don’t apply for the chance to show their work; for now, Sperandio selects each EMERGEncy Room artist, with input from John Sparagana, professor and chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. For more information, go to http://studioart.rice.edu and click on “EMERGEncy Room Gallery.”

—Alyson Ward

Watch a video of “Music Box 9” at the Orange Show: ›› › robertwmcclure.com

Robert McClure

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Vote Here Music Notes Merrie Siegel ’97 (flute) and Milton Rubén Laufer ’98 (piano) recently released “Flute Music of the Americas, Vol. II,” on Beauport Classical. It features “Recuerdos de México,” a piece written for this recording by Arthur Gottschalk, professor of composition and theory at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Siegel has been hailed by the U.S. and international press as “magnificent, jovial and radiant, with purity of tone and great technical command of the instrument.” In great demand as a recitalist and teacher, she currently holds the position of principal flute in the Northwest Symphony Orchestra in Seattle. Laufer is an awardwinning pianist who made his debut at Chicago’s Petty Auditorium at the age of 12. He is recognized internationally as a leading performer and scholar of Spanish piano music.

Listen to a sample or learn more about this recording at:

›› › ricemagazine.info/123

Snake Always a song sliding under a porch always a tooth dragging stars around dirt: skin is not for air skin is not for water.

Something wants a voice in dark places.

Something wants to curl around the whirling earth.

—Joseph Campana

Joseph Campana, assistant professor of English at Rice University, won the 2011 Iowa Poetry Prize, which resulted in the publication of his new collection, “Natural Selections” (2012). Published by permission of the University of Iowa Press.

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Do you remember voting for class officers in high school, where the race was a popularity contest rather than a reasoned decision on which candidate might be best qualified to lead the class? Jump forward a few years, and you’re voting in local, state and national elections, where the outcome is critical to the well-being of you and your family. The stakes are tremendous, but is the process any more sophisticated?

The book’s engaging style opens up the statistics to reveal the inner workings of a system that works, despite its faults, and encourages us to be better citizens.

Not ot really, said Danny Oppenheimer ’00, associate professor of psychology at Princeton University, and Mike Edwards ’00, founder of Leftfielder.org, a blog on politics and media. In their new book, “Democracy Despite Itself: Why a System That Shouldn’t Work at All Works So Well” (MIT Press, 2012), the authors delve into the flaws inherent in the democratic system. These include voter ignorance, psychological manipulation by voting officials as well as candidates, personal ideals of attractiveness and other decisive biases. In short, we often vote as we do for irrational reasons that have nothing to do with the qualifications of the candidates.

But if that’s so, how can democracy function as well as it does? The good news in part two of the book is that biases even out, there is a wisdom in crowds, and

there is a public sense that, ultimately, the system is fair, which encourages fairness overall.

Most books on politics seem to be dry texts that concentrate on the process or polemics that reinforce partisanship.

“Democracy Despite Itself” is neither, but rather a lively examination of the system on which all Americans depend.

The authors have filled it with interesting and telling statistics drawn from both the historical record and research — and among them are many factoids that you can whip out on your friends. Even better, the book’s engaging style opens up the statistics to reveal the inner workings of a system that works, despite its faults, and encourages us to be better citizens.

—Christopher Dow

ON THE

Bookshelf

History of an Enigma While most books come and go, a few remain as true classics of human expression.

Of these, only a handful can trace their roots as deeply as the “I Ching,” which dates back at least 3,000 years.

Smith’s historical survey traces the evolution of the “I Ching” in China and throughout the world, explaining the book’s complex structure, its manifold uses in different cultures and its enduring appeal. He shows how the indigenous beliefs and customs of Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Tibet “domesticated” the text, and he reflects on whether this Chinese classic can be compared to religious books such as the Bible or the Qur’an. Smith also looks at how the “I Ching” came to be published in dozens of languages.

An entry in Princeton University Press’ the Lives of Great Religious Bo ok s s er ie s, “T he I C h i ng: A Biog raphy” i s w r it ten pr i m a r i ly for the nonspecialist and offers an unparalleled look at an enigmatic ancient classic that has become a global phenomenon.

Even ven more amazing than its antiquity and central place in Chinese culture is the continuing impact of the “I Ching” on the modern world. Its philosophical, sociological and psychological insights have attracted and influenced admirers in the West ranging from writers and artists to philosophers, businesspeople and politicians.

As with all books of similar antiquity, the genesis of the “I Ching” is obscured by the veils of time. But that hasn’t stopped Richard Smith, Rice’s George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities, from attempting to unearth its development across the centuries. In his latest book on the subject, “The I Ching: A Biography” (Princeton University Press, 2012), Smith tells the extraordinary story of how this cryptic and once obscure book became one of the most widely read and extensively analyzed texts in all of world literature.

— Christopher Dow

“Prayer and Parable: Stories,” by Paul Maliszewski ’91 (Fence Books, 2011).

“To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker,” by Sydney Nathans ’62, professor emeritus of history at Duke University (Harvard University Press, 2012).

—Publishers Weekly starred review

“Going Back to Galveston: Nature, Funk and Fantasy in a Favorite Place,” by Jimmie Killingsworth; photographs

by Geoff Winningham ’65, professor of visual and dramatic arts at Rice (Texas A&M University Press, 2011).

“Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm,”

by Rene Almeling ’98, assistant professor of sociology at Yale University (University of California Press, 2011).

“Translating Nature into Art: Holbein, the Reformation, and Renaissance Rhetoric,” by Jeanne Nuechterlein ’93, senior lecturer of history of art at the University of York (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).

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BY CHUCK POOL

Return and Rally

Senior Christian Saravia takes the long road back to honor his dad’s memory and energize the Owls’ play.

RICEOWLS.COM

Sports

Some seven months after he appeared to have ended his collegiate tennis career, a rejuvenated Saravia had improbably worked his way up to the top of the Rice lineup and now stood poised to face off against Texas A&M on the center courts at the Aggies’ George P. Mitchell Tennis Center.

For his teammates, the match represented the next challenge in an uphill climb to overcome some early season missteps and to extend the career of their Hall of Fame coach, Ron Smarr, who was retiring at the end of the academic year.

For Saravia, it was also a chance to honor his late father by fulfilling a prediction made years earlier.

As a 16-year-old player from Guatemala, Saravia and his parents, Carlos and Jean, walked the grounds of the Mitchell Tennis Center after competing in a junior event. The center courts of the complex are divided by a special club seating area. Two center courts, places of honor, are emblematic of a player reaching the pinnacle of his sport. Carlos Saravia surveyed the scene and predicted that one day his youngest child would earn the right to play there.

The Saravias are a tennis family. All the children played at some level, and as the baby of the family, Christian first experienced the game as a toddler. It would become his conduit to a scholarship at Rice, fulfilling his parents’ desire to see him use his athletic talent to help earn a college degree from a respected institution.

In spring 2009, as the college dual season was just heating up, Saravia was with his new Rice teammates in Oxford, Miss., competing in the opening round of the National Indoor Championships, when the world he knew at home was shattered. A head-on car collision had taken his father’s life and left his mother in critical condition. Tennis and Rice became irrelevant. All that mattered was going home to be by his mother’s side.

However much his mother appreciated the effort it took to come home, she made it immediately clear that her son was heading back to Houston as soon as possible.

“My mother wanted me to go back, so how could I not do as she said?”

Tennis and the challenge of catching up on school gave him brief moments of distraction from concerns about his mother’s recovery.

“It helped me get busy and focus on something,” he said. “That was a tough time, but I think those things give you clarity to see the bigger picture and not stress out about small things.”

Two months later, Saravia found himself taking to the Mitchell Center courts to face the 12th-ranked Aggies in a dual. Playing in the sixth spot in the lineup, he was within sight of the center courts.

The memory of his father’s passing was impossibly fresh in his memory.

There was no time to decide if he had failed on his father’s prediction — there was a match to play. If he was not on the center courts, he would deliver a result that was center-court worthy.

Saravia combined with fellow freshman Sam Garforth-Bles to clinch the doubles point with a 9–8 tiebreak win, then gutted out a three-set win at No. 6 to clinch the match for Rice.

The win propelled them to a seventh-straight NCAA bid.

Saravia earned C-USA Men’s Tennis Athlete of the Week honors for his effort. One year later, he and his teammates ground out an

electrifying win over Tulsa to capture the C-USA title on their home court. Last year, the Owls once again reached the conference finals and made coach Smarr the college tennis career wins leader.

Yet when faced with the start of his final season of tennis this past fall, Saravia found himself strangely indifferent.

“I had always loved playing tennis, but it had come to a point when I wasn’t having any fun anymore. The coaches were very supportive and told me to just take a break.”

The time away allowed Saravia to reassess his goals. When offered the chance to return, he did so with no expectations other than to savor every ground stroke as special, no matter if it was a winner or wide.

“I honestly didn’t think I was going to come back after last semester, but once I did, I saw this was my last chance to give it my all. I knew it was my last few months of tennis and it really has helped me to approach the game better,” he added.

“The first few years at Rice, I practiced hard and played hard but wasn’t playing my best,” Saravia said. “After taking a break in the fall, I wasn’t really expecting to be playing this well.

“But I think I’ve been seeing the game differently. I enjoy it more and have a better view of how to approach the game. I’m playing pretty well and been really happy with how the team has been playing, especially in the last six or seven matches,” he added.

Saravia gradually broke back into the lineup, playing No. 2 doubles with senior Michael Nuesslein. At the end of January, he returned to the singles lineup at No. 6.

When Rice played the University of Texas at San Antonio, he won his match at No. 5, then watched as his teammates could not overcome listless play in a 4–3 loss.

In the aftermath of that match, the Owls’ lineup was retooled, and Saravia found himself playing at No. 2 singles, while Garforth-Bles took over at No. 1. Both had long sought a chance to play at the top of the lineup, and now they had their chance.

Saravia’s approach became more relaxed, more grounded.

“It’s amazing how four years of tennis can teach you about pressure situations. I used to lose a lot of matches 7–6, 6–4 at No. 6. Now when I get into those tiebreakers, I feel very comfortable. Now I do it because I like it.”

Perspective also allowed him to take his debut on the Mitchell Center courts in April in stride.

His mother, now fully recovered, was there to watch, as were his brothers and his sister. They saw him battle bravely against a nationally ranked Aggie opponent, only to lose in three sets. The outcome might seem cruel, but the path taken to fulfill his father’s prediction is what will be remembered long after the result becomes just a statistic on a page. The journey validated his parents’ decision to place a racket in his young hand.

“I really feel that I am playing tennis for the best reason of all, because I enjoy it.”

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Sports

RICEOWLS.COM The Rice women’s tennis team earned its first berth in the NCAA Women’s Tennis Sweet 16 when the Owls routed 16th-ranked University of Mississippi.

Women’s Tennis

Ron Smarr

Men’s Tennis Legendary head coach Ron Smarr retired at the end of the 2012 season. Smarr is the winningest coach in collegiate men’s tennis. In May, he was inducted into the International Tennis Association’s Men’s College Tennis Hall of Fame. In his 15 seasons at Rice, Smarr has posted a 257-143 record while leading the Owls to 10 NCAA appearances, the last nine in consecutive seasons. He has won a pair of conference titles and produced eight All-Americans.

In 2004, he was named the National Coach of the Year after the Owls reached as high as No. 5 in the national polls and reached the Sweet 16 at the NCAA Championships.

Baseball The Owls won their 17th-consecutive regular season conference championship. Rice’s conference championship streak, which includes regular season and tournament titles, spans the Owls’ mem-

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Facing a lineup heavy with nationally ranked opponents, the Owls were decided underdogs in their first appearance in the Sweet 16. They eventually lost to No. 1-ranked UCLA. “This is the first time that Rice has been here, but it’s not going to be the last,” head coach Elizabeth Schmidt said.

In the individual competition, Rice sophomore Natalie Beazant reached another milestone when she picked up the Owls’ first win in NCAA Women’s Singles competition in 26 years downing Stacey Tan of Stanford, who was a 2011 women’s singles finalist, 7–5, 6–2. Beazant and junior Dominique Harmath joined forces the next day to become the first doubles team in school history to win a match in the NCAA Women’s Doubles Championship in Athens, Ga., downing Alabama in first round action.

Wayne Graham

Becky Wade

bership in three different conferences. The 2012 C-USA title is the Rice program’s seventh straight since joining the conference in 2006.

Head baseball coach Wayne Graham is one of seven 2012 National College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees. The class includes Lou Brock, Ed Cheff, Nomar Garciaparra, Tim Jorgensen, Frank Sancet and Brad Wilkerson. Graham will continue to build on his remarkable legacy for the next six years, thanks to a contract extension announced by Rice in early June. Graham, 76, just completed his 21st season as Rice’s head baseball coach.

Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame class.

Rice Athletics’ annual Night of the Owl celebration honored Travis Bradshaw ’12 (football) and Becky Wade ’12 (track and field), among many other student–athletes.

Wade received the Joyce Pounds Hardy Award, presented to the top overall female student–athlete. Bradshaw received the Bob Quin Award for Rice Athletic’s most outstanding all-around senior male athlete.

Football

Distance runner Becky Wade ’12 competed in the 10,000-meter run at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championship in June. Senior Sharae Robinson also won first and a gold in discus at the same event.

Wade, a five-time C-USA gold medalist, set numerous records while at Rice.

Record-setting quarterback Tommy Kramer ’77, who thrilled Rice fans and haunted opposing defensive coordinators with an aerial attack that was far ahead of his time, is among 14 former college greats and three legendary coaches who make up the 2012 National

Track and Field

Students

In all that Grant Parks ’12 did as a student — whether exploring China using his near-fluent Mandarin, promoting U.S.–China relations in Washington, D.C., or sailing with the USS Chung-Hoon in the South China Sea — he did Rice proud. His record of scholastic achievement and leadership so impressed Rice’s ROTC officers that they awarded Grant with the Mary Henry Gibson Scholarship.

James “Bo” and Mary Henry Gibson ’39 established the Gibson Scholarship to honor their son, James, who was a lieutenant commander and intelligence officer in the United States Navy. By supporting top students like Grant, their gift makes a powerful impact on Rice’s future and associates the Gibson name with excellence.

If you are looking for a way to honor a loved one, help Rice attract top students in every field or leave a meaningful legacy to the university, please consider endowing a scholarship through a life income gift, estate gift or revocable bequest intention.

[

Scholarships Help Students Set Sail Endowed scholarships raised through Rice’s $100 million Centennial Scholarship Initiative, a signature priority of the Centennial Campaign, enable the university to attract and admit top students based on their capacity to learn, not their capacity to pay. Of the $90 million raised through this initiative to date, $62.6 million has come from planned gifts.

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Sign up today at www.rice.planyourlegacy.org to receive important updates on tax laws, creative tips for maximizing your philanthropy and inspiring stories about Rice’s proud supporters.

To learn more about including Rice in your estate plans, please contact the Office of Gift Planning.

Phone: 713-348-4624 • Email: giftplan@rice.edu • Website: www.rice.planyourlegacy.org

New tennis stadium planned

New building for Continuing Studies named

Design of a new $7 million tennis facility at Rice has begun, thanks to a lead gift from trustee emeritus Ralph O’Connor and his wife, Becky. The university has received donations totaling approximately $5 million for this project and will begin construction on the new facility when an additional $2 million is raised. The new facility will be built in West Lot 3, between Entrances 17 and 18 off of Rice Boulevard.

Rice will name a new Continuing Studies building in honor of the families of trustee Kent Anderson ’62 and trustee emeritus Robert Clarke ’63 in appreciation of a major gift to Rice’s Centennial Campaign. The D. Kent and Linda C. Anderson and Robert L. and Jean T. Clarke Center will be the new home of Rice’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. The Anderson– Clarke Center will be located on land that is now a parking lot between Rice Stadium and campus Entrance 8 at University Boulevard and Stockton Drive.

An additional $1.3 million is needed to reach the fundraising goal for the building and to begin construction.

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Permit #7549 Houston, Texas Rice University P.O. Box 1892

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Creative Services–MS 95 Houston, TX 77251-1892

What a hoot

The Centenni-Owl, formerly a 2000 Oldsmobile Alero, swooped into a third-place award in the 25th annual Houston Art Car Parade. The entry was created by 13 Rice undergraduates and their instructors as part of a spring semester forcredit course, Art Car 101. Decorated with paint, insulation foam, metallic foil, welded rebar, and recycled and reshaped No. 10 food cans, the project also drew participation from Rice alumni and staff. This year’s art car entry was made possible through the generous support of Brasher Motor Company of Weimar, Texas; Saifee Signs; the Rice University Office of Public Affairs; and the Rice Centennial Celebration committee. —L.G. Watch the video: › › › ricemagazine.info/127