abstract
School District) Teacher of the Month award for January; and Andrew Touma received Kempner High School’s (Fort Bend Independent School District) 2013– 14 Rookie Teacher of the Year award. Judy Radigan, director of the Rice University Teacher Education Program, said the MAT program made a commitment to go into Houston’s public schools, and the awards speak to this commitment. Read more: teach.rice.edu/master-arts-teaching
VISUAL ART
C H R I STO P H E R S P E R A N D I O
Drive-by Art
In January, four billboards in and around College Station, Texas, displayed artwork created by visual and dramatic arts students at Rice. The students’ works of art were part of Christopher Sperandio’s Outside Context course, which examined the evolving role of art in contemporary society. The four billboards measure 22 feet by 11 feet each. Sperandio, assistant professor of visual and dramatic arts, said the students’ art was designed to be thoughtprovoking and seen by a wider audience. “We wanted to make artworks that were either quizzical on purpose or set in some kind of context,” he said. The context was determined by the students, who wanted to engage with students at another university and ultimately chose Texas A&M University (TAMU). After researching different ideas and meeting with TAMU students and faculty, the Rice students went through a design phase to create artworks that aimed to illustrate their chosen topics in a visually engaging display. Brevity was key, Sperandio said. “The message needs to be incredibly simple if people are going to be driving by at 40 mph.” “Howdy?”, a one-word billboard created by Michael Loconte ’15, seeks to bring to light the apparent duality of Texas A&M’s famous “Howdy!” greeting. Loconte painted the greeting’s letters in the rainbow flag colors signifying the LGBT community. While the greeting “Howdy!” is a harmless and traditional Texan welcome, he said, it also can raise questions about LGBT inclusion on a university campus that has been ranked as one of the least LGBTfriendly in the nation. Other student-created billboards included: “What’s Left? Her Right to Write,” by Yutian He ’15, who wanted to highlight gender inequality in education around the world. “Trust people with dirt on their hands,” by Heather Olson ’14, who worked with TAMU students at the Howdy Farm, a sustainable student-run farm, to create the billboard.
MANAGEMENT
Merging Companies? The Customer Comes First.
“Have you seen this child?” by Constance Lewis, a Master of Arts in Teaching graduate student, who addressed the state of art education in public schools. The “missing child” depicted in her billboard is a 15-year-old Pablo Picasso. See all the billboards here: ricemagazine.info/204. —Jeff Falk EDUCATION
Beginners and Masters
Recognition came as a sweet surprise for four students in the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies’ Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. In their final semester of the program, all four were recognized as outstanding “rookie” teachers by the Houston-area public schools where they’ve been interning in their first year of teaching. Elisa Cardnell received Carnegie Vanguard High School’s (Houston Independent School District) 2013–14 Beginning Teacher of the Year award; Grace Magnani received both Ridge Point High School and Fort Bend Independent School District’s 2013–14 “Rookie of the Year award; Ranjani Sheshadri received Manvel High School’s (Alvin Independent
Merging companies that focus on a dualgoal emphasis of simultaneously enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction show the highest increase in long-term financial performance, according to a new study from Rice University, Kent State University and the University of Pittsburgh. “However, achieving a dual emphasis is very difficult,” the study’s authors said. “Managers need to be prepared with a realistic timetable and implementation plan.” Study co-author Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, said there are many recent examples where firms have overestimated their ability to achieve a dual emphasis. When Hertz merged with Dollar Thrifty in November 2012, the Federal Trade Commission forced Hertz to shed its subsidiary Advantage Rent a Car brand. Unable to stay efficient, Advantage recently filed for bankruptcy protection. Similarly, when United Airlines and Continental merged, Continental clearly had more satisfied customers than United, Mittal said. After the merger, the combined satisfaction declined as the merged entity — marketed as “United” — tried to become more efficient. “It has taken Continental-United over three years,” Mittal said. “They are still in the process of achieving a dual emphasis.” This paper was published in the Journal of Service Research. Read more: ricemagazine.info/205. —Jeff Falk s p r i n g 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 17