Rice Magazine | Summer 2014

The Magazine of Rice University

SUMMER 2014

SUMMERTIME While the campus welcomes hundreds of children for recreational camps and activities, the resident population of undergraduates has taken flight.

Also: Rice School of Architecture preceptorship students check in via words and images, worldwide study abroad opportunities thrive, faculty share sabbatical views, and more campus and research news.

The Magazine of Rice University

SUMMER 2014

Contents

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FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

All the World’s a Studio Dateline: Experience. Since 1969, the Rice School of Architecture’s preceptorship program has sent students to work in the world’s best architecture firms before returning for their final year.

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By Rose Cahalan ’10

A Sabbatical Sampling Sabbaticals offer faculty members a welcome period of time away to reconnect with the deep passion for scholarly inquiry that first drew them to academia. Beyond that, no two sabbaticals are alike.

By Lynn Gosnell

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World Views It’s not your parent’s study abroad program. We look at Rice’s burgeoning opportunities for study, research and volunteering abroad through the eyes of one student — and the lenses of many who documented their recent experiences.

By Jenny Blair

Summer on campus, new ARA director announced, hitting the business plan jackpot and the Anderson-Clarke Center opens.

President’s Note

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Study abroad’s formative influence — then and now.

Scoreboard 11 A roundup of this year’s conference records.

Abstract 13 Evolving insects, OEDK inventions, capturing greenhouse gas at wellheads, improving student learning, Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey and more.

Scene 18 A new tradition begins.

Voices 43 Meet Rice staff member Jenny Brydon.

Arts & Letters

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Q&A with author Elizabeth Crook ’82, a Hermann Park pavilion, night-herons, and more faculty and alumni books.

Parting Words

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Ms. V (Venora Frazier) retires from Baker College.

Harp Player, Barcelona, Spain

Photo by Isabella Adamiak ’13, taken while traveling during the spring 2012 study abroad program through IFSA-Butler in Edinburgh, Scotland. “Early one morning as I walked I heard music being played in the distance. I followed its sound. I reached a corner near the Barcelona Cathedral, and there stood a lone harp player, plucking out a tune that echoed through the empty streets.” s um m e r 2 0 1 4 | Ric e M aga z i n e 1

on the web FEATU RED CON TRI BU TORS JENNY BLAIR

(“World Views”) is a freelance writer and editor based in Austin, where she writes about science, medicine and culture. View her writing portfolio at www.jennyblair.com.

ROSE CAHALAN ’10

UN CO N V EN T I O N AL ST UDE NTS AT R IC E

“How I Got My First Camera” Soorya Avali ’14 is one of the students behind the popular Humans of Rice University series on Facebook, which was inspired by Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York project. Avali, who graduated with a B.S. in materials science and engineering, started taking photographs his sophomore year at Rice. From there, his interest and talent took off.

“At the beginning I wasn’t very good. But that’s all photography is. You just keep taking pictures, learn your camera and then you get better,” he said. This story is part of Rice videographer Brandon Martin’s series on Rice’s unconventional students. To see more videos starring unconventional students, visit: ricemagazine.info/212

whose research stories often appear in Abstract, is a senior media relations specialist for the Office of Public Affairs, where he writes about science, engineering and architecture for Rice. An ex-Boston newspaperman, he is also a hang glider pilot, lighting designer and occasional musician.

FO L LOW RI CE U N IVE R SIT Y

ON TH E COVER

Follow Rice news and more via the Office of Public Affairs’ social media outlets. From Instagram to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more, we document the daily goings on about campus and beyond. And don’t forget to check out Rice Magazine’s dedicated blog and Twitter feed. To read the current issue online, check out ISSUU. Links below.

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(“All the World’s a Studio”) lives in Austin, where she is an assistant editor at Alcalde, the alumni magazine of the University of Texas at Austin. She wrote the Summer 2013 profile “Reel Nerds,” about Rice alums Tim ’92 and Karrie Smith League ’92 — a reader favorite. Her Rice allegiance remains with Martel College, KTRU and the Rice Coffeehouse.

ISSU U rice.edu/ricemagazine

FLICKR flickr.com/photos/ricepublicaffairs/

TW I T T E R @RiceMagazine

I N STAG R A M instagram.com/riceuniversity

RIC E MAGA ZI N E B LOG ricemagazine.blogs.rice.edu

YO U TUB E youtube.com/riceuniversity

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MIKE WILLIAMS

Summertime … and the campus is busy.

To a large extent, Rice’s campus transforms each summer into a community venue for camps, conferences and programs. Almost 600 children, ages 6 to 11, sign up for Rice’s Summer Youth Activity Program, which is run out of the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center. These noncompetitive camps keep kids busy with a daily schedule that includes swimming, dance, archery, games, art and more. In addition, hundreds of local kids enroll in sports camps, which are coached and run by Rice Athletics. (Tennis camp alone sees about 1,000 campers.) Students in summer school (a short Maymester and two five-week sessions) enjoy a more relaxed campus before the bustle of new students and O-Week begins in mid-August.

Photo: Brandon Martin

forEword The Magazine of Rice University summer 2014 Rice Magazine is published four times a year and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, parents of undergraduates and friends of the university.

Published by the Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president EDITOR

Lynn Gosnell ART DIRECTOR

Tanyia Johnson CREATIVE SERVICES

Jeff Cox senior director Dean Mackey senior graphic designer Jackie Limbaugh graphic designer Tracey Rhoades editorial director Jenny W. Rozelle ’00 assistant editor Tommy LaVergne senior university photographer Jeff Fitlow university photographer CONTRIBUTING PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF

TA N Y I A J O H N S O N

B.J. Almond, Jade Boyd, Jeff Falk, Amy Hodges, Brandon Martin, Tracey Rhoades, Jenny W. Rozelle, David Ruth, Mike Williams

An Iced Coffee To Go, Please

D

UCKING OUT OF THE ALLEN CENTER AND AMBLING OVER TO

RICE COFFEEHOUSE FOR MY DAILY ICED JOLT offers ample time to consider the rhythm of college life. When the heavy glass doors swing open and air-conditioned comfort gives way to a breathtaking humidity, summer is announced.

And while the campus still hums with activities like seminars, invited talks, exhibitions, and community and nonprofit conferences, there is no denying a slower, more informal pace has taken hold. Most students have headed home — or elsewhere in the world — for work, internships, training, volunteering and more. (One hopes their summer agendas include time for rest and relaxation.)

The Summer 2014 issue features three linked profiles on the virtues and value of getting away — for faculty on sabbatical, for Rice School of Architecture students on yearlong preceptorships and for the growing numbers of Rice students who are learning abroad. The chance to focus intensely on academic research, to work in professional settings and to experience life in another culture are enriching experiences, not only for the individual student or professor, but especially for the campus community to which they return — both rested and restless with new ideas.

Those precious weeks after the pomp and circumstance of graduation and before the wild enthusiasms of O-Week signal a pause, of sorts, before we reboot the academic year. Many Rice staff will spend this time in catch-up or planning mode; for some, projects and demands will continue apace. My goals for the summer include long-range planning for next year’s magazines. I think a cup of iced coffee will help. Grab your favorite summer beverage, and please enjoy this issue of Rice Magazine.

—Lynn Gosnell lynn.gosnell@rice.edu

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letters

Reader Response

THE RICE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

DEAR EDITOR

The Spring 2014 issue was one of the best ever. Rather than skimming the issue, I read it. Perhaps it was because you touched on topics that appealed to diverse audiences, or perhaps you simply hit on topics that are close to my heart. Whatever it was, the chemistry worked.

Sincerely, Denise Reineke Fischer ’73, Brown College REPLY: Thank you for reading. None of us are chemistry majors, but we’re glad to get passing marks in magazine chemistry.

SPRING 2014 SURVEY FINDINGS After each issue of Rice Magazine is published, we send an e-survey to a representative group of 1,600 readers who have current email addresses. Our survey return rate ranges from 8 to 14 percent. We appreciate receiving thoughtful and critical feedback, as this is one way we learn what alumni, staff, faculty and others find valuable in the magazine.

And congratulations to our survey winners, whose names were randomly drawn from an electronic hat. Each lucky reader received an “Unconventional Wisdom” T-shirt or Rice University poster.

SELECTED COMMENTS FEATURES “Breaking Cancer’s Social Network” Eshel Ben-Jacob is taking cues from the collective intelligence of bacteria to learn how to interrupt communication between cancer cells.

“From a scientific perspective, I found this profound. From a philosophical perspective, it was quite sobering — I suppose you could be amazed at cancer’s sophistication or dismayed at the arguable lack of human superiority!”

“A Bird’s-Eye View” For earth scientist Cin-Ty Lee, observing the world includes the view through his binoculars.

“Birds are not high on my lists of interests, but it is refreshing to see an unexpected article.”

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“Ora et Canta” (Pray and Sing) When Martina Snell became a Benedictine nun, she left behind a life as a professional musician, or so she thought.

Robert B. Tudor III, chairman; Edward B. “Teddy” Adams Jr.; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; Keith T. Anderson; Doyle Arnold; Laura Arnold; Nancy Parker Carlson; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Mark Dankberg; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Doug Foshee; Lawrence Guffey; John Jaggers; Charles Landgraf; R. Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal; Ruth Simmons; Jeffery Smisek; Amy Sutton; Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Guillermo “Memo” Treviño; James S. Turley; Randa Duncan Williams; Huda Zoghbi.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS

“As a Catholic Christian and Rice alum, I was intrigued and pleased by her unusual life choices.”

“Rice culture is largely secular, which I like, and this piece was an interesting exception. The writing on the music was great, but also fascinating was the discussion of the person Martina was and has become.”

“The article was a surprise, and that caught my attention enough to want to read.”

Finally, to the reader who answered our question, “What ELSE would you like to see in Rice Magazine?” with the suggestion, “more stories of Rice in international events and projects,” this issue is dedicated to you.

David W. Leebron, president; George McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president 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.

EDITORIAL OFFICES

Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 713-348-6768 ricemagazine@rice.edu POSTMASTER

Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 ©July 2014 Rice University

TO M M Y L AV E R G N E

News and Updates from Campus

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ew traditions were begun with this year’s Commencement ceremonies. Four smaller ceremonies at which Ph.D., business school, master’s and bachelor’s graduates were recognized individually were held May 16, and a plenary ceremony for all graduates was held May 17. The reason for the reordered program was a matter of comfort and hospitality for the weekend’s honored guests. “The growth in enrollment of both graduate and undergraduate students was making Rice’s unified commencement ceremony untenably long,” said

Keith Cooper ’78, chief marshal and the L. John and Ann H. Doerr Chair in Computational Engineering. See graduation by the numbers on Page 6 and a photo from Convocation on Page 18.

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BY THE NUMBERS Graduation 2014

1,896

TOTAL DEGREES CONFERRED

TOP 3

UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS AND MINORS AWARDED

Social Sciences Engineering Natural Sciences

986

BACHELOR’S DEGREES*

719

191

MASTER’S DEGREES

DOCTORAL DEGREES

DOCTORAL DEGREES AWARDED

MOST POPULAR MAJORS

MOST POPULAR MINORS

MASTER’S DEGREES AWARDED

Chemistry Bioengineering Computer Science and Physics

Biochemistry and Cell Biology Psychology Bioengineering

Business Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Business Administration Music Chemistry

Poverty, Justice and Human Capabilities

*Some students earned multiple degrees

Marthe “Marta” Druska Golden has been appointed assistant vice president for alumni relations at Rice University beginning July 21, 2014.

She also will serve as executive director of the Association of Rice Alumni.

At Rice, Golden will lead the university’s 48,000 alumni in support of the institution’s goals and build a strong and supportive community among Rice’s external constituents.

“Marthe brings an incredibly diverse range of skills and experiences to Rice, including her ability to manage complex, universitywide initiatives and build strong relationships with strategic partners within and beyond the university,” said Darrow Zeidenstein, Rice’s vice president for development and alumni relations.

Golden joined the University of Chicago’s Office of Career Advancement in 2005 as assistant director of events and marketing. Over the past decade she has managed alumni steering committees and advisory boards, helped create and launch a departmental website, managed career fairs for the university’s more than 5,000 undergraduate and 8,000 graduate students, and served as executive board president of the Big Ten Plus Consortium.

In her most recent role, she oversaw advising, programming and employer services as well as the office’s print and online communications strategy. She also 6

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works closely with the Office of Alumni Relations and Development, the Alumni Board of Governors, the Parent and Family Leadership Council and the Office of College Admissions to increase support of the university’s career-focused initiatives, including internships and preprofessional and full-time job programs.

“One of the most exciting elements of this role at Rice is the opportunity to be as strong a communicator as possible, reaching out to alumni at all stages of their experience,” Golden said. “I want to immerse myself at Rice to really get to know the alumni population and understand the institution.”

Originally from Defiance, Ohio, Golden said she is happy to move to Houston.

“Houston is a vibrant, diverse and exciting city. Plus, we had a brutal Midwestern winter. It’s not hard to say goodbye to that,” she said.

—David Ruth

In a culture that values being No. 1, sometimes being runner-up is pretty sweet, too.

That was the case for A-76 Technologies, the Rice student team that placed second in the 2014 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC).

Their startup is developing a corrosion inhibitor and lubricant with applications in the oil and gas, transportation, marine and other industries. Judges awarded A-76 Technologies more than $550,000 in investment and cash prizes.

“The second-place showing not only

gave us the prize money to get us started, but also has been great validation for fundraising and networking,” said CEO Lauren Thompson, a 2014 graduate of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. The management team includes four other 2014 Rice MBA graduates.

Forty-two university teams from around the world traveled to Rice’s campus in April for the annual competition, which Fortune magazine calls “the Super Bowl and World Series of business plan competitions.”

More than 250 venture-capital and investor judges put the teams through three days of pitching and challenge rounds. The winning startup was Medical Adhesive Revolution of RWTH Aachen University, Germany, the first international team to win the competition.

The business idea for A-76 Technologies was hatched in a Technology Entrepreneurship course taught by Tom Kraft, who directs technology ventures development for the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship.

What’s next for A-76? Space. “We’ve been working with CASIS (NASA’s Center for the Advancement of Science in Space), who awarded us a prize to test A-76 on the International Space Station … . I can’t wait to get a photo of A-76 in space!” Thompson said.

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship was named No. 1 among the top university business incubators for the second year in a row June 24 by UBI Index, a Swedish research initiative.

See more at alliance.rice.edu/rbpc.aspx.

—L.G.

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THE SEVEN-ON-SEVEN RUNNER In March, Matthias Henze, the Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Professor in Biblical Studies, realized his goal of running a marathon on every continent when he completed 26.2 miles on Antartica’s King George Island. Henze’s journey to long-distance distinction began in 2006, when he finished his very first marathon in Houston, having taken up running only a few years earlier.

Incredibly, Henze was not the only Rice professor to run a marathon in Antarctica this year: In January, Mikki Hebl, professor of psychology and management, ran her first international marathon, having previously completed a marathon in every single state, a quest that began in 2000.

RUNNING IN ANTARCTICA I traveled to Antarctica on a boat from the southern tip of Argentina with 100 fellow runners. We ran on King George Island from research station to research station through mud and snow — undoubtedly the greatest physical challenge of my running career.

A DA M C R U F T

HIGHLIGHT REEL: ANTARCTICA I also visited with the penguins, smiled at a whale that came right up to my kayak in the icy waters, and marveled at the dark blue of the glaciers and the majesty of the icebergs.

WHERE I’VE RUN My first international race was in Paris in 2007, followed by runs in Santiago, Chile; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; Tokyo, Japan; Sydney, Australia; and finally King George Island, Antarctica.

RUNNING IS LIFE I think marathons are a great metaphor for life: You have a clear objective, you train hard, you deal with multiple obstacles along the way, and you try hard to feel confident when finally on race day you walk up to the start line. Some races will be glorious and rewarding, while many will be a disappointment. You always pick yourself up, regardless of how the race went, you heal, and then you start training again.

SOLITUDE There is something very honest about running: there is nobody else to blame if you had a bad day, no equipment to hold responsible. It’s just you and the road.

WHY RUN? I love to travel, and I love to run. Running in a city you don’t know is the perfect

way to get a feeling for the place. Runners form a close community, we give each other a lot of support, and it is very easy to make friends.

HIGHLIGHT REEL: TANZANIA I stayed in Tanzania for two weeks; ran through the coffee plantations at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro; visited schools, hospitals and an orphanage; stayed for a day with the Massai; and fell in love with the amazing beauty of East Africa.

FAVORITE MARATHON The greatest foot race in the world is the New York City Marathon: 50,000 runners run in three great waves through the five boroughs and finish in Central Park on a glorious New York City fall day.

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A NEW HOME FOR CONTINUING STUDIES

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RON SASS TEACHES ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AT CLASSROOM CONNECT

The Glasscock School offers personal and professional development classes, online and hybrid courses, and certificate programs with additional offerings from the Center for College Readiness, the Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, the Foreign Language program, the English as a Second Language program, the Master of Liberal Studies, the Master of Arts in Teaching, and School Literacy and Culture.

Classroom Connect, formerly dubbed Alumni College, was held in June in the Anderson-Clarke Center. Co-sponsored by the Association of Rice Alumni and the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, the program featured a variety of courses, keynote presentations and interactive programs.

RODOCLIX

Rice University’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies celebrated the dedication of its new home, the D. Kent and Linda C. Anderson and Robert L. and Jean T. Clarke Center, in May. Located on the west side of Rice’s campus at Entrance 8, the threestory, 55,000-square-foot facility houses 24 classrooms, conference rooms, a language center, an auditorium and a commons area.

The building’s construction was made possible by a naming gift from Rice trustee emeritus Kent Anderson ’62 and his wife, Linda Anderson, and Rice trustee emeritus Robert Clarke ’63 and his late wife, Jean “Puddin,” as well as more than 400 other donors.

Construction on the $24.2 million facility began in December 2012, and the center was built to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for silver certification. To preserve the spirit of Rice’s historic buildings, the center’s architects, Overland Partners, used the campus’ original architects’ design of a vertical to horizontal ratio with long, low buildings, a tripart division of windows and an arched entryway.

The center also features an art installation, “In Play,” by Houston-based international artist Joseph Havel, director of the Glassell School of Art. An additional installation by French-American artist Stephen Dean, “Black Ladder,” will be completed later this summer. A student gallery is named in honor of Peter T. Brown, a longtime photography instructor for the Glasscock School as well as an accomplished photographer whose work has been featured in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Menil Collection, among others.

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N OT ED AN D Q U OT E D

From th e op en i n g of th e D. Kent and Linda C. Anderson and R ob er t L . and Jean T. Clarke Cente r, May 22 , 2014

Not only did [my father] receive an outstanding education for free, he met countless numbers of friends and business partners through Rice — none more important to the Anderson family than that of Bob Clarke, his suitemate at Hanszen. This began a friendship that was so sincere and genuine that Bob even felt comfortable introducing him to and playing matchmaker with his younger sister.

Clarke Anderson ’01, the son of Kent and Linda Anderson Mary McIntire ’75, Susanne Morris Glasscock ’62 and Linda C. Anderson at the opening ceremony of the Anderson-Clarke Center

Buildings are important, but what happens in buildings is more important.

I really think that the legacy of this building will be all the people and the generations that benefit from what happens here.

Ed Jones, director of the Mabee Foundation

Supporting us in this high endeavor has put Rice in the forefront of continuing education nationally, and I know a lot of my colleagues around the country are a little bit envious about our new building.

Mary McIntire ’75, dean of the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies

The D. Kent and Linda C. Anderson and Robert L. and Jean T. Clarke building is the completion of a circle that began over 50 years ago, when Kent and Bob and I were undergraduates together at Rice. Mel, Linda and Puddin joined the circle in the ’60s, and our lives have intertwined in so many ways through the years. That their generosity should become the naming decision for this building completes the circle and begins a new one.

Susanne Morris Glasscock ’62, who, with husband Melbern G. Glasscock ’61, has supported a vision for lifelong learning, transforming the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies into one of the country’s finest programs

If there’s one point at which we know that William Marsh Rice’s vision and Edgar Odell Lovett’s vision intersected, it was around this idea that this institute, which became this university, would be something great for the city of Houston.

President David Leebron

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President’s note

When I was 13, I took my first trip outside North America as part of a Boy Scout exchange with Denmark. The idea of getting on a plane to cross the Atlantic seemed new and exciting. Although my parents had taken us on extensive travels across the United States, with brief excursions to Mexico and Canada, I had rarely been on an airplane. I stayed with Danish families near Svendborg, on the agricultural island of Fyn, and in Ribe, a town dating back to the eighth century.

The month abroad also included some travel in Switzerland, Sweden and Norway. It was for me the beginning of a lifelong fascination with both learning about other cultures and travel. My family fostered that interest by hosting a string of exchange visitors to the United States, mostly students but also a couple from Switzerland and a young woman from Japan. And just before I turned 17, I went off for half a year as an exchange student to Germany, followed by three months of traipsing across Europe — from Lisbon to Narvik and Belfast to Istanbul — on a budget of $5 per day.

In college, I studied German history and literature to deepen my understanding of the country other than the U.S. that I had spent the most time in and began learning another foreign language.

Following law school and a clerkship in Los Angeles, I embarked on a fourmonth trip around the world, the vast majority of it exploring Asia — Taiwan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma (now Myanmar), India and Nepal — with final stops in Egypt and Europe as I circumnavigated the globe.

Travel in those days seemed more exotic than it is today, although much depends on both destination and experience. But travel was just a part of international engagement. I met people from other countries during every stage of my education and career. Food played no small role in the development of this international passion.

Today, internationalization and globalization are buzzwords in almost every endeavor, but nowhere more so than higher education. A key point of our Vision for the Second Century 10

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President David W. Leebron and University Representative Y. Ping Sun were special guests of the Chinese minister of education during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

DAVI D W. LEEBRON

An Education for Today’s World was to become a more international university with increased global reach.

We provide a vast array of international topics and foreign perspectives as part of Rice’s curriculum, hire faculty and attract students from around the world, and provide an extraordinary variety of opportunities for our students to study, work and travel abroad.

Why do we think this is so important?

There are three fundamental reasons.

First, the world our students will enter is globalized. Virtually every enterprise they engage in has international aspects to it. Pollution or disease in one part of the world has consequences around the globe.

Neither our most pressing problems nor the solutions are confined within political borders. The talent to operate in different cultures and environments, including language capability, will be highly valued in a wide range of endeavors. For many, exposure to other peoples and lands will sow the seeds of lifelong engagements and passions.

Second, international experiences build capacity in dealing with new situations and different people and perspectives. Even in our digital age, developing strong interpersonal connections and relationships is valuable.

But the ability to engage effectively with people of different backgrounds is valuable not just for international work, but here in our own increasingly diverse country. International experiences foster the ability to work collaboratively with people who bring different experiences to common endeavors.

Third, like any exploration of new ideas and experiences, an international experience “stretches” one’s mind and leads to questions about one’s own familiar approaches and assumptions.

Students who study internationally often become more open-minded in thinking about problems and solutions, understanding that there are many different approaches and that not everyone thinks about a situation or a problem in the same way. It’s a big world, and there’s a lot to learn from it.

Looked at through this lens, it becomes easy to understand why every aspect of international engagement ultimately serves to better educate our students for a world that is likely to become even more internationalized.

One out of every five students on our campus is a foreign student, and an even higher percentage of our faculty grew up in another country. Over the last decade, Rice has gone from less than 3 percent international undergraduate students to about 12 percent. We have built new programs and capacity in subjects related to Asia and Latin America. We have expanded study abroad opportunities for our students, as well as foreign internships and work experiences.

P R E S I D E N T ’ S NO T E continued on Page 44

Sports News and Profiles

C-USA 2014 Baseball Championship-winning pitchers (left to right) Zech Lemond ’15, Trevor Teykl ’15 and Ryan McCarthy ’15

College of Champions

N A N CY M C CA RT H Y

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school record was set this year for Rice with five athletic conference championships.

In 1999–2000, Rice won five titles, but four were in track. Rice’s 2013–14 championships were won in football, tennis, swimming, golf and baseball.

The No. 1-seeded Owls baseball team won its sixth C-USA Championship title in nine years in May and their 19th-straight conference title (regular season or tournament) dating back to the last year of the Southwest Conference (1996). In doing so, the team clinched a spot in this year’s NCAA tournament, their 20th consecutive appearance in the NCAA Division 1 Baseball Championship. The latest tourney crown was led by Michael Aquino ’14, who went 3-for-4 with a home run and four RBI against the University of Texas at San Antonio in an 11-5 victory. Skyler Ewing ’15, Ford Stainback ’15, Chase McDowell ’14 and Blake Fox ’16 joined Aquino on the 2014 all-tournament team.

The Owls next hosted the regional NCAA tournament at Reckling Park, ultimately falling to Texas A&M in an elimination game of the home regional. That game followed a loss in 11 innings to the University of Texas in a game that lasted 3 hours and 27 minutes and started late due to a rain delay. The Owls closed out the season 42-20. Fox and Shane Hoelscher ’14 earned All-American honors from the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper. Under the direction of head coach Wayne Graham, Rice baseball has had at least one AllAmerica selection from a national organization (on either a first, second or third team) every year since 1993.

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scoreboard

Football Rice began its championship run last December when the football team captured its first-ever Conference USA Championship with a decisive 41-24 win over Marshall. Ten members of Rice’s championship squad were honored by league coaches who named them to the USA All-Conference football team, including team captain Phillip Gaines ’13. Gaines’ suffocating pass coverage was a key component in Rice’s rise to conference championship. In May, Gaines was selected in the third round of the NFL draft by the Kansas City Chiefs.

The team will be looking to build on its success this fall when the Owls return 21 lettermen on offense and 20 on defense, including six starters on each side of the ball.

Women’s Tennis Repeats In April, Rice’s women’s tennis team defeated top-seeded Tulsa 4-2 to repeat as Conference USA Champions. Needing wins in three of the six singles matches to retain their title, the Owls picked up two points in rapid fashion.

Swimming

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atalie Beazant ’15 and Alison Ho ’17 won in straight sets to bring Rice to within a point of the crown. But Tulsa rallied to win the opening sets in each of the four remaining singles matches. The Golden Hurricane gained momentum with a pair of wins to close the gap to 3-2. Katherine Ip ’17 extended her match to a third set, when the freshman from Hong Kong finally broke through in the sixth game to win the match and give the Owls their championship.

Ip was named C-USA Freshman of the Year, while Beazant earned Outstanding Singles Player of the Championship. Beazant and her partner, Liat Zimmermann ’15, were also named the Outstanding Doubles team. In May, Dominique Harmath ’14 was named Texas Region winner of the ITA/Cissie Leary Award for Sportsmanship. For the third year in a row, head coach Elizabeth Schmidt was named Conference USA Coach of the Year.

ment over the University of Alabama at Birmingham by one stroke. Senior Tommy Economou ’15 and Kevin Reilly ’17 earned places on the all-tournament team for finishing in third and fourth place, respectively. After the tournament, Reilly was named C-USA Freshman of the Year. He, along with Alex Levy ’17, give the Owls a strong foundation for the future.

Golf The men’s golf team capped off a remarkable spring by recording its best Conference USA Championship performance in nine seasons to win the 2014 tourna12

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Track Two of Rice’s track and field athletes won individual titles this season. Owl pole

vaulter Chris Pillow ’15 won his second Conference USA outdoor championship with a mark of 5.28 meters. Pillow, from Mechanicsville, Va., won his third-straight C-USA pole vault title overall with this year’s indoor championship sandwiched in between the 2013 and 2014 outdoor titles. Evan Karakolis ’16 won the C-USA javelin championship on his final throw of 69.06 meters. Just a week before, Karakolis broke his own school record in the javelin with a monster throw of 70.80 meters at the Virginia Challenge.

—Rob Grant

C H U C K P O O L / R I C E S P O RTS I N FO R M AT I O N

The Lady Owl swimmers also earned their second-straight Conference USA title in March. Casey Clark ’15, Erin Flanigan ’15 and Cora McKenzie ’16 all won individual events in the meet, to go along with a dominating relay victory. That gave the Owls a program-best 1,000 points and their third title in the last four years.

Rice head coach Seth Huston was named the C-USA Swimming Coach of the Year for the fourth time in the past five seasons, while Clark was named the C-USA Swimmer of the Meet. After the championship, the Owl standout from Spring, Texas, received the Catherine Hannah Award, presented to the program’s top swimmer, for the second time. Lilly Marrow ’14 won the Kathryn E. Scholl True Blue Spirit Award, which is presented to the Owl who has shown dedication, discipline, leadership, and most importantly, consistent hard work and commitment to the team.

Abstract

Findings, Research and more

The study of this walking stick-type insect is revealing new facts about speciation and natural selection.

BIOLOGY

An Evolving Insect

M. MUSCHICK/UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

Researchers used a combination of ecological fieldwork and genomic assays to see how natural selection is playing out across the genome of a California stick insect.

A first-of-its-kind study by a team of evolutionary biologists at Rice University, the University of Sheffield and eight other universities suggests that the genomes of new species may evolve in a similar, repeatable fashion — even in cases where populations are evolving in parallel at separate locations.

“Speciation is the evolutionary process that gives rise to new species, and it occurs when barriers prevent two groups of populations from exchanging genes,” said Scott Egan, the Huxley Faculty Fellow in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice and a co-author of the study. “One way to study how speciation occurs is to look for examples where

partial reproductive barriers exist but where genes are still exchanged.”

The stick insect Timema cristinae is one such example. Timema are closely related to “walking sticks,” plant-eating insects that look like twigs. Timema’s shape and color act as natural camouflage and help them avoid being eaten by predators, such as birds. More than a dozen unique species of Timema have evolved to feed on specific plants in California and northern Mexico.

“Populations of T. cristinae on the two host plants have evolved many differences in their physical form while still exchanging genes,” said Egan. “These same populations have also evolved barriers to gene flow. We call this process ‘speciation

with gene flow,’ and evolutionary biologists have long wondered if the genetic basis for this process is highly repeatable and if the genes involved are spread out across the whole genome or in a few discrete regions.”

Though the genomes of many plant, animal and microbial species have been sequenced over the past decade, most of those are for “model” organisms, species that scientists most often use for laboratory studies of critical biological processes.

Egan said the study of nonmodel organisms is often the key to ecological questions, including those related to how the environment influences natural selection and speciation.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/213 —Jade Boyd s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 13

abstract

Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen is an 18,000-square-foot space where students work all year to design, prototype and deploy solutions for a host of realworld design challenges. Here’s a sampling of projects completed in 2013–2014.

See more at ricemagazine.info/214

and textured mats that slip under the frame to give patients a strong visual reference as they navigate the course.

“They’re a diligent, hardworking group of students, and they’ve done a really nice job of communicating with us and problemsolving along the way,” said Marla Lafferty, a staff physical therapist at Pediatric Therapy Center. Lafferty said the ladder will help therapists who work with patients with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other motor-coordination issues. See full story and video: ricemagazine.info/215 —Mike Williams

Small Steps, Big Moves

A team of five Rice freshmen stepped up to a challenge when they designed the StepUp Floor Ladder, a device for physical therapists who help children with balance issues.

The ladder is a simple frame with movable rungs that tests children’s ability to balance as they traverse obstacles.

The multidisciplinary team came together with a goal: to make something that would serve their clients for years to come. The team included Fanny Huang (bioengineering), Lauren Wood (computer science) Nicole Moes (mechanical engineering), Denise Yee (architecture) and Lauren McCarley (civil and environmental engineering).

The 17-pound final version is a frame of strong plastic tubes covered in outdoor tablecloth material and padding. The ladder replaces a slotted wooden frame the center had been using for years. “The old frame is not adjustable horizontally or vertically, and it’s started to fall apart,” Moes said. “The old device was heavy and when it was lifted from the side, all the slats would fall out.”

The students designed vertical foam dividers that stay in place with PVC clamps until the therapist decides to move them.

The therapist also can change heights with pieces that slide into the divider frames. The students also designed and delivered colored 14

R i c e M a g a z i n e | SUMMER 2 0 1 4

and applied mathematics). The team collaborated with Shriners Hospital for Children, Houston, and Rice advisers Gary Woods, a professor in the practice of computer technology in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Eric Richardson, a lecturer in bioengineering, on their capstone project.

The team won the $5,000 grand prize at Rice’s annual George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Showcase and Poster Competition in the spring and placed second at the International Student Design Showcase at the University of Minnesota’s Design of Medical Devices Conference.

Gloria Gogola, a doctor at Shriners, perceives a future for the Rice invention beyond cerebral palsy therapy. “For example, it could be used to evaluate patients recovering from stroke, spinal cord injuries, trauma — any situation where the ability to use their hands is affected.”

See full story and video: ricemagazine.info/216 —Mike Williams

Cerebral Palsy Therapy

It looks like a game board and many of its users will find it fun, but there’s serious intent behind DeXcellence, a device designed by Rice students to test the abilities of cerebral palsy patients.

At the heart of the DeXcellence platform is a small peg comfortable enough for a 3-year-old to hold. But packed inside are enough electronics to tell a nearby computer, tablet or other Bluetooth-enabled device how the cylinder is moving in space.

In tandem with a board that directs the patient’s movements, the cylinder sends a steady stream of data to the computer.

That data is analyzed by the Rice team’s software to give a therapist a clear picture of a patient’s progress in occupational therapy.

The DeXcellence device is the work of five recently graduated Rice students, Sonia Garcia (bioengineering), Shaurya Agarwal (mechanical engineering), Allison Garza (mechanical engineering), Vivaswath Kumar (electrical and computer engineering) and Andrew Schober (bioengineering and computational

A Virtual Fit

One blessing of the Internet: shopping conveniently online for clothes. One curse of the Internet: shopping conveniently online for clothes.

“Nothing fits,” said Lam Yuk Wong, a recent Rice graduate in electrical and computer engineering. “Everybody says this. They order clothes and they don’t fit.

People get very unhappy.”

Wong and her design partner, Xuaner “Cecilia” Zhang ’15, are Team White Mirror, creators of what they call a “virtual fitting room.” Their goal is simple and consumer-friendly: to assure online clothing shoppers a perfect fit and a perfect look with every purchase.

J E F F F I T LO W A N D B R A N D O N M A RT I N

ENGINEERING /OEDK

abstract

Carbon Dioxide Breakthrough

RICE POROUS CARBON MATERIAL

MATERIAL UNDER PRESSURE REACTS WITH CO2 MOLECULES IN NATURAL GAS

CO2 MOLECULES POLYMERIZE WITHIN THE PORES WHILE HYDROCARBONS PASS THROUGH THE MATERIAL

WHEN THE PRESSURE IS RELEASED, CO2 MOLECULES DEPOLYMERIZE TO A GASEOUS STATE TO BE REDIRECTED

FILTERED HYDROCARBONS POROUS MATERIAL POLYMERIZED CO2

DEPOLYMERIZED CO2 REDIRECTED FOR OTHER PRODUCTS, ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY OR SUBSURFACE LONG-TERM STORAGE

NATURAL GAS

TA N Y I A J O H N S O N

MIXTURE OF CO2 AND HYDROCARBONS

“We put the clothes on the shopper’s 3-D body models and show how they look when they are dressed. The existing virtual fitting rooms don’t use customized body models that look like the shoppers.

It takes a long time to display the fully dressed models, and they don’t look realistic,” Wong said.

With the software developed by the students, shoppers are able to see realistic details, even wrinkles in the garments.

They can rotate the model to see how the garment fits from all sides. Thus far, Wong and Zhang have adapted the software to show dresses and shirts, and they are working on shorts.

The team won the $5,000 Willy Revolution Award at Rice’s annual Design Showcase in April. See full story and video: ricemagazine.info/217 —Patrick Kurp

CHEMISTRY

Separating Carbon Dioxide

Rice University scientists have created an Earth-friendly way to separate carbon dioxide from natural gas at wellheads. A porous material invented by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour sequesters carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, at ambient temperature with pressure provided by the wellhead and lets it go once the pressure is released. The material shows promise to replace more costly and energy-intensive processes.

“Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel.

Development of cost-effective means to separate carbon dioxide during the production process will improve this advantage over other fossil fuels and enable the economic production of gas resources with higher carbon dioxide content that would

be too costly to recover using current carbon capture technologies,” said Tour, who is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and nanoengineering and of computer science.

The new material, a nanoporous solid of carbon with nitrogen or sulfur, is inexpensive and simple to produce compared with the liquid amine-based scrubbers used now, Tour said. “Amines are corrosive and hard on equipment,” he said.

“They do capture carbon dioxide, but they need to be heated to about 140 degrees Celsius to release it for permanent storage. That’s a terrible waste of energy.”

Chih-Chau Hwang, Rice graduate student and the lead author of the paper that announced the invention, first tried to combine amines with porous carbon.

“But I still needed to heat it to break the s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 15

abstract

BIOENGINEERING

Building Bones

Rice bioengineers have created a hydrogel that instantly turns from liquid to semisolid at close to body temperature — and then degrades at precisely the right pace. The gel shows potential as a bioscaffold to support the regrowth of bone and other three-dimensional tissues in a patient’s body using the patient’s own cells to seed the process.

The hydrogel, created in the lab of Rice bioengineer Antonios Mikos, is a liquid at room temperature but, when injected into a patient, becomes a gel that would fill and stabilize a space while natural tissue grows to replace it.

“This study describes the development of a novel thermogelling hydrogel for stem cell delivery that can be injected into skeletal defects to induce bone regeneration and that can be degraded and eliminated from the body as new bone tissue forms and matures,” said Mikos, Rice’s Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

A problem with thermogelling polymers is that once they harden, they begin to collapse and then force out water, said Rice graduate student and the paper’s lead author, Brendan Watson. Watson and his colleagues at Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative solved the problem by adding chemical cross-linkers 16

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BRENDAN WATSON

to the gel’s molecules. The hydrogel is designed for stability over its long-term use as a scaffold for cells to take root and proliferate. But it’s also designed for its own timely destruction. Watson described it as semismart: “As new bone is formed, the gel should degrade more quickly in that area to allow for even more space for bone to form.” See full story and video: ricemagazine.info/219 —Mike Williams SOCIOLOGY

Reinforcing Occupational Sex Segregation New research from Rice assistant professor of sociology Erin Cech finds that one factor that perpetuates sex segregation by occupation is gendered patterns of self-expression — whereby efforts to express one’s unique sense of individuality can often end up reinforcing collective societal gender differences.

Cech’s study examines this selfexpressive career decision-making by examining how three particular selfconceptions influence college students’ likelihood of choosing female-dominated or male-dominated careers. Cech found that regardless of their university, GPA, family background and race/ethnicity, men and women with more emotional, unsystematic and/or people-oriented selfconceptions (compared with their peers’ self-conceptions) are likely to enter more female-dominated fields, such as teaching or nursing; this reinforces occupational sex segregation.

“In society in general, men and women typically occupy different types of jobs,” Cech said. “This is something that is reflected all over the place — in popular media, and even in the types of toys that

children play with (for example, doctors are portrayed as men and nurses portrayed as women). These are things that young people learn and identify with very early in life.

The study included more than 700 students at four U.S. universities in the Northeast. Rice students were not included in the study. Cech followed respondents from their freshman year in college in 2003 through 18 months postgraduation in 2008 and asked them about their self-conceptions, their college major, career activities and their views about the role of men and women in society. See full story and video: ricemagazine.info/220 —Amy Hodges DIGITAL LEARNING

Improving Student Learning

A study from Rice University and Duke University has found intriguing evidence that simple and inexpensive changes to existing courses can help students learn more effectively.

The findings by a team from Rice’s Center for Digital Learning and Scholarship (RDLS) and Duke’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience demonstrate how technology and cognitive science can be combined to develop effective educational changes that required no changes to course curriculum.

“The results exceeded everyone’s expectations,” said Richard Baraniuk, the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, director of RDLS, and the instructor of the upperlevel signals and systems engineering course where the experiment took place.

In the study, students switched back and forth from week to week between two different styles of homework. One style, which followed the standard practice that Baraniuk has used for years, consisted of one homework assignment per week, which was graded and returned the following week. The second style, which was called the “intervention,” incorporated three principles from cognitive science that have been shown to promote learning and increase long-term retention. Read more: ricemagazine.info/221 —Jade Boyd

J E F F F I T LO W

covalent bonds between the amine and carbon dioxide molecules,” he said.

The porous carbon powder he settled on has massive surface area and turns the neat trick of converting gaseous carbon dioxide into solid polymer chains that nestle in the pores.

“Nobody’s ever seen a mechanism like this,” Tour said.

Tour said the material did not degrade over many cycles, “and my guess is we won’t see any. After heating it to 600 degrees C for the one-step synthesis from inexpensive industrial polymers, the final carbon material has a surface area of 2,500 square meters per gram, and it is enormously robust and extremely stable.” See full story and video: ricemagazine.info/218 —Mike Williams

abstract

KINDER INSTITUTE FOR URBAN RESEARCH

2014 Houston Area Survey

N

ow in its 33rd year, the Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey is the nation’s longest-running study of any metropolitan area’s economy, population, life experiences, beliefs and attitudes. The 2014 survey included 1,353 respondents from the Greater Houston metropolitan area. Comparisons with past years are based on the

respondents from Harris County only. Social Science Research Solutions conducted the interviews by phone between Feb. 12 and March 12.

For more information or to download a copy of the survey report, visit kinder.rice.edu/.

HOUSTON’S URBAN SPRAWL BALTIMORE 0.6 MILLION 81 SQ. MI. DETROIT 0.7 MILLION 139 SQ. MI.

HOUSTON 2.1 MILLION 600 SQ. MI.

CHICAGO 2.7 MILLION 228 SQ. MI.

“The Houston region is one of the most sprawling, least dense, most automobile-dependent metropolitan areas in the country,” said Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology and co-director of the Kinder Institute. “By 2030, the Houston-Galveston Area Council forecasts that Harris County will add another 1 million residents, and another 3.5 million will move into the nine-county region as a whole. Area leaders need to think long and hard about how best to accommodate this growth.”

PHILADELPHIA 1.5 MILLION 134 SQ. MI.

HARRIS COUNTY UNEMPLOYMENT RATES The peak year for unemployment was 1986. The lowest rate was in 2000.

10

9.8

10.1 8.6 7.8

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4

1982

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2004

4.3 2008

2011

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DOCUMENTED U.S. IMMIGRANTS, BY DECADE (1820–2010)

S O U R C E : K I N D E R I N ST I T U T E

From 1942 to 1965, 82 percent of all immigrants coming to America came from Europe.

After reform in 1965, 88 percent of all the new immigrants have been nonEuropeans.

10.5

MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS 10

8.8

8 6

1965 HART-CELLER ACT

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0

NATIONAL ORIGINS ACT 1820s

1840s

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1920s

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QUALITY OF LIFE While Houstonians agree on the city’s livability — 77 percent said the Houston area is an “excellent” or “good” place to live — residents are evenly divided in their support for improved public transit (49 percent) or expanded highways (47 percent) and for living in single-family, car-dependent residential areas (47 percent) or in more urbanized neighborhoods with a mix of developments (51 percent).

2000s

SOCIAL ISSUES AND ETHNIC RELATIONS Attitudes toward immigration and diversity have also shifted consistently over the years, with 68 percent of area residents today asserting that Houston’s increasing diversity will become “a source of great strength for the city” rather than “a growing problem,” up from 55 percent in 1996.

“Immigration itself has slowed considerably in recent years, and more Houstonians are recognizing the benefits that immigrants have brought to our city,” Klineberg said. “The surveys reveal a marked reduction in anti-immigrant attitudes among the general public.”

ECONOMIC OUTLOOKS AND JOBS As the local economy strengthens and the unemployment rate drops (from 6.8 percent in February 2013 to 5.7 percent in January 2014 — more than a full percentage point below the national average), Houstonians’ personal economic outlooks have also brightened. s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 17

Scene

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Night (Owl)

Convocation Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Rice held a new undergraduate Convocation ceremony during which the names of graduating students were read the Friday evening before the 101st Commencement.

Unde r g r a du a t e s r e c e iv i n g Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Music degrees crossed the stage in the Academic Quad, where they were presented both a diploma and congratulations. (And hugs, as you can see here.)

The ceremony featured another new twist — remarks from a studentselected member of the graduating class (Helene Dick ’14). Earlier that day, doctoral, business school and master’s students were honored in separate ceremonies designed especially for those students and their families.

The plenary commencement event took place in the same location the next morning and focused on the communal experiences of graduation — academic processions, the address and the conferral of degrees. And, of course, more hugs.

s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 19

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All the World’s a Studio For more than 50 years, a one-of-a-kind training program at Rice’s School of Architecture has been quietly launching students into top careers all over the globe.

On a humid day in August 1969, Rice architecture student John Casbarian ’69 boarded a plane with a one-way ticket from Houston to Los Angeles. He was bound for a year working at the firm Gruen Associates. In the 1950s, the office’s principal, Victor Gruen, had earned a place in history by inventing and popularizing the shopping mall, but nearly two decades later, the firm wasn’t aging well. “They needed some young blood to shake things up,” said Casbarian, “so they WORDS hired this little-known architect named Cesar Pelli.”

ROSE CAHALAN ’10 Under Pelli’s leadership, the office grew exponentially — and PHOTOS so did Casbarian’s career. As he worked long hours with a team RICE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS of other young architects, designing dozens of projects, he felt IMAGES at home. “I was able to see scraps of paper turn into buildings,” TANYIA JOHNSON he said, “and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.” Pelli went on to become one of the biggest stars in the architectural world.

s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 21

And Casbarian? A renowned architect himself, he’s also a professor in Rice’s School of Architecture, where he now directs the same program that launched his own career: the preceptorship.

After four years at Rice, architecture students are sent to work full time for a year at some of the world’s most prestigious firms (including Pelli’s). After a sixth year of classes in Houston, some 90 percent have job offers waiting for them. It’s a pipeline that relies on one thing: talent.

“The program only works because firms know they’re getting the best of the best,” Casbarian said. “They know every Rice student will be extremely smart and hardworking. They take us on our word, and we don’t let them down.”

The Rice preceptorship is the only program of its kind in the nation. Other colleges assist with optional internships, often for a semester or a summer, but only Rice matches every student with a leading firm for a year of full-time work. “Being there for a year is important,” Casbarian said, “because it gives you time to become invaluable to the office. With most internships, by the time they’ve trained you, you’re gone.”

Casbarian and his team carefully match each student with an office, taking into account everything from geographical preference — there’s a big difference between Hong Kong and Los Angeles — to personality. Some offices are more extroverted, while others are just the place for a reserved student to flourish. It’s a delicate balancing act, but one thing is clear: the preceptorship program makes careers. Quite a few of the biggest names in architecture are Rice alumni, like Charles Renfro ’87 and Karen Cook ’84 — both of whom now train Rice students in their own firms.

Below, meet five students who are in the program now.

Remember their names — they’re the next generation of architectural stars.

DESK FAVORITES HEADPHONES FOR LISTENING TO NPR AND “THIS AMERICAN LIFE”

FREQUENTED LOCAL SPOTS VARIOUS LOCATIONS ON THE YALE CAMPUS

TANVI SHARMA NEW H AVEN / P ELLI C LARKE P E L L I

BRIANNA ROGERS LO S ANG ELES / ZG F ARC H IT ECTS

KELSEY OLAFSON NEW YOR K C IT Y / DILLE R S C O FIDIO + RE NF RO

CELINE ZHOU H O NG KO NG / OM A

GRANT NUNNELEE LO NDO N / P LP ARC H IT ECT UR E

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TANVI AND CESAR PELLI

How has this job surprised you?

On my first day, I was asked to come up with some design options for the exterior of a building and discuss them with the team. I thought I’d be doing a lot of intern grunt work, but even on the very first day they were already asking for my input.

What’s been the biggest difference between school and work life?

At school, we focused on the artistic side of architecture. This year is about being thrown into the practicalities and learning how a building actually comes together. I hadn’t realized how many different people are involved in making it happen — structural engineers, mechanical engineers, designers, architects, clients, government agencies, developers. And there is no standard for how all these people are supposed to communicate and get it done. It’s pretty organic that way.

FAVORITE LOCAL ARCHITECTURE YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

What do you think of New Haven?

I’ve lived in Bombay, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and Houston before coming here. So it was a big change being in a small town instead of a big city. I like that I can walk all of New Haven end-to-end in 40 minutes.

I also joined a Bollywood dance team at Yale, which has NEW H AVEN / P ELLI C L A R K E P E L L I been so much fun. They’ve kind of adopted me. I’ve gone to a lot of free lectures and events on the campus.

TANVI SHARMA

Tell me about your dream job.

I want to go into city planning and urban design so I can use architecture to solve bigger problems. Having grown up in Bombay and seen the slums there, slum rehabilitation is one kind of work I’m inspired by. For example, an architect named Alfredo Brillembourg designed a cable car system in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela, that completely transformed the lives of the people there. I like that idea of working within slums rather than demolishing them.

When you return for your last year at Rice, what will you take back from your preceptorship?

Well, right now I’m working on bringing a two-day workshop on public interest design to Rice. I went to the workshop at Yale and it was amazing. It’s not just training for architects, but also for students and city planners and people from other fields, all talking about design that’s sustainable ecologically, economically and socially. I’m really excited about bringing it to Rice.

FAVORITE PERSONAL DESIGN SENIOR YEAR PROJECT — HOUSING

MUST-HAVE APP ARCHITECTURE POCKET GUIDE

s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 23

What’s your favorite task at work?

I’ve done a lot of watercolor renderings for presentation materials. There were only a couple of people when I got here who knew how to make them, so I asked them to teach me how — and now I’m kind of the go-to person for renderings. I love doing them because it’s a chance to let my creative side loose and imagine how people will use a finished space.

FAVORITE LOCAL ARCHITECTURE THE HILTON FOUNDATION IN AGOURA HILLS, DESIGNED BY ZGF ARCHITECTS

Can you describe your neighborhood?

I live in North Hollywood, pretty far from where I work downtown. I don’t mind the commute, though. The train ride is my favorite time to read, and occasionally I’ll see strange things, like the time a guy with a parrot got on. And there’s this place in my neighborhood that makes the best pie in the world.

Are Californians different than Texans?

People are so well-dressed here! It rained the other day and somehow everyone’s hair still looked perfect. I like it, though, because I’m a very aesthetically driven person and I always felt a little overdressed when I was at Rice.

BRIANNA ROGERS

Any celebrity sightings?

I passed Johnny Depp walking LOS A N GE L ES / ZGF A RC H I TECTS down the street. And at Chipotle I saw the guy who plays Winston Bishop on “New Girl.” Both times I was like, “Wait, do I know this person from somewhere? Should I say hi?”

If you could give advice to a freshman architect student at Rice, what would you say?

I’d say explore and find the thing within architecture that makes you get up in the morning. Because it’s such a generalists’ profession that I think you have to find your niche. You have to find the thing that you love.

FAVORITE PERSONAL DESIGN FRESHMAN YEAR STUDIO PROJECT

ARCHITECTURAL INSPIRATION “THIS OLD HOUSE” FAN SINCE 8 YEARS OLD

DESK FAVORITE LOVES THE VIEW

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And what’s the thing that you love?

I love thinking about the people who will be in the spaces I design. I’m always asking, in this corner, is there going to be someone quietly reading a book? Or someone crying? How will the light come in from that window and how will it feel? I try to make every nook and cranny, every doorknob, feel intentional. I want to create spaces where people can love other people.

That’s what it’s about for me.

What are some projects you’ve worked on?

My first project was a competition for a park in Moscow, and then I spent a lot of time on Culture Shed, which is a museum-type structure in New York. Now I’m working on a residential tower. It’s a little of everything.

Describe the culture of the office.

It’s fast-paced and design-intensive, with about 100 people. There are weeks when I’ve worked 60 hours and then on a few really intense deadline weeks it’s been closer to 100 hours. There’s the expectation that you pull your weight, especially as a younger person.

How do you like your neighborhood?

My apartment is on the edge of Chinatown, close to so many amazing Chinese restaurants and the best and cheapest dumpling places. The next block over has a Dominican barbershop where everyone plays music from their cars and hangs out outside the shop. My window looks over a soccer field, and I wake up every morning to the sound of Tai Chi music playing in the park.

I remember my first couple nights the noise outside my window would keep me up at night, but now I have no idea how I’m going to be able to sleep NEW YO RK C IT Y / without it!

FAVORITE LOCAL SPOT DS+R ROOFTOP

KELSEY OLAFSON DILLE R S C O FIDIO + R E N F RO

Any favorite spots in New York?

I love going to the MOMA; I have a membership there. The New Museum also is one of my favorite museums in the city since the collection is always changing. There’s just an endless supply of things to do in New York. I’ve barely scratched the surface of everything there is to see. And just the peoplewatching here is great as well.

At Rice, some architecture students practically live in the studio, while others are more involved outside the architecture school. Which were you?

I was one of the crazy ones! I was always in the studio.

I don’t regret a minute of it, though, because I loved it and I felt really well prepared for what I’m doing now.

Of course, there’s a lot that you can only learn on the job, but the intensity of the work wasn’t new to me.

What have you learned at your preceptorship that you couldn’t learn at Rice?

I feel that working in an office is a second degree. There are so many skills involved with realizing a building that we aren’t exposed to in school. I still have so much to learn about construction and material details.

It’s exciting to think about how the learning process doesn’t end with school.

ARCHITECTURAL INSPIRATION DIA: BEACON, MODERN ART MUSEUM IN UPSTATE NEW YORK AND FORMER NABISCO BOX-PRINTING FACILITY

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FAVORITE LOCAL ARCHITECTURE AND INSPIRATION I.M. PEI’S WORKS AND BANK OF CHINA, HONG KONG

What are your coworkers like?

The office is very international. We have Americans, Germans, French, Italians, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Scottish, Irish, Australians and more all working together. We are always talking about cultural differences and accents and that kind of thing, which is really fun.

I imagine that makes for some good parties.

It does. We have this thing called Beer Fridays, where every Friday we all take a break to drink a beer and a lot of times tell stories about H ON G KON G / OM A our home countries. It reminds me of Rice.

CELINE ZHOU

What’s the biggest challenge in your job?

Definitely communication. How to communicate with clients is a whole different side of architecture that you can’t learn in school. Sometimes clients don’t know what they want. They’ll say they want it one way, so you design exactly that, and then they go, “No, that’s not it at all!”

So I’m finding that it takes a lot of leadership skills to help clients figure out what they don’t even know they want yet. And because I speak Mandarin, they’ll call on me to do translation work for the office. I’ve become a much better communicator this year.

How’s life in Hong Kong?

Chaotic, busy, loud, exciting. The streets are packed shoulder to shoulder; you’re always bumping into people when you walk. And it’s even more international than my office. In my apartment building, I’ll hear 10 different languages in the stairwell. One thing is just like Houston, though — the humidity.

Tell me about a memorable work experience.

I recently got to tour a construction site with Rem Koolhaus! He is the founder of OMA and one of the most famous architects in the world. We were touring the CCTV [Chinese state television] site in Beijing, and he basically led the tour. It was totally amazing.

FAVORITE PERSONAL DESIGN 2013 COLLAGE PROJECT

APP I WISH EXISTED ARCH DAILY

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What was he like?

He was really tall. It was kind of intimidating [laughs].

Why did you choose London?

I always wanted to study abroad, but at Rice the architecture program is so rigorous that we don’t have time for it. So it was a no-brainer, a two-birds-one-stone kind of situation. I get to work in a great firm and live in London for an entire year and see the city like a local.

GRANT WITH KAREN COOK ’84

Have you noticed any cultural differences between Brits and Americans?

Yes, so many! The tea thing is huge. A lot of people at my office don’t drink coffee, which I think is insane because architects need to stay up late a lot when there are LO NDO N / P L P A RC H I TECTU R E deadlines. The casual nature of coworker relationships is really interesting, too. It’s totally encouraged to go out for a pint with your boss, and then you’ll see half the office at the pub. I think there’s more camaraderie than at a lot of American offices.

GRANT NUNNELEE

What about cultural differences when it comes to the work itself?

The value placed on history is enormous. One week I had to work super late to finish this residential tower, and then at 9 p.m. the mayor’s office called and said we had to lower the tower by 10 floors. That was three months of work we had to change at the last minute, because it blocked the view to St. Paul’s Cathedral from King Henry’s Mound. There’s this bench where King Henry used to sit and look at the cathedral, and you can’t block that sacred view. That would never, ever happen in the U.S. We don’t have anything that old!

LOCAL HANGOUT SPOT THE DRAFT HOUSE ON SEETHING LANE

Has that changed the way you think about architecture?

Yeah, it makes me think about how Americans can be a bit wasteful. It’s really common in the U.S. to knock down a building and put up a new one, because it’s cheap and easy. But in London that would be a last resort, if it’s allowed at all. So buildings here are designed to last a long time. My office building here is older than the entire city of Houston.

What’s a typical Sunday morning in London like for you?

I’ll wake up and make breakfast — I’m still clinging to coffee — and maybe go for a run in Richmond Park, which is this huge, beautiful park a mile from my flat.

Later I might meet up with friends and go pub-hopping.

Everything in the city is a 15-minute ride away on the Tube, which is kind of amazing. And I live right across the street from King’s Cross Station — you know, Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter? — where I can take the Chunnel. Next week I’m going to Brussels.

LOCAL ARCHITECTURAL INSPIRATION THE SHARD, SHROUDED IN FOG,

BY RENZO PIANO

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a sabbatical sam We talked with six Rice faculty members who traveled abroad for faculty leaves and found out that no two sabbaticals are alike.

MICH

he word sabbatical, derived from sabbath, means rest. And while faculty members on sabbatical are not subject to the duties and schedules inherent in on-campus teaching, the sabbatical semester or year is rarely restful. In talking with six faculty members who have recently returned from a sabbatical, what’s clear is that such leaves are critical for the production of new scholarship.

Rice’s sabbatical policy is similar to other research universities, in that tenure-track or tenured professors are eligible for paid academic leaves devoted to research, scholarship or creative work after a period of service to the university.

Such leaves are granted for one or two semesters, depending on the faculty member’s tenure status and other factors.

The ultimate goal is for the sabbatical to benefit the university’s students and faculty. The fruit of this extended time away from campus is generally scholarly publications or creative works — and, of course, new knowledge to share in the classroom.

“Faculty might be at the beginning, middle or end of a project,” said Paula Sanders, the vice provost for academic affairs and former dean of graduate and postdoctoral studies. Depending on the discipline or project, the faculty member might be working individually or collaboratively, close to home or far away “depending upon the resources they need,” she continued. Here are six examples of sabbatical leaves with an international component.

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Departme

MAR

CYMENE HOWE

Department of Anthropology

mpling

WORDS LYNN GOSNELL ILLUSTRATIONS TANYIA JOHNSON

HAEL EMERSON

ent of Sociology

RINA VANNUCCI

Department of Statistics

MICHAEL GUSTIN

Department of Biosciences

MARC A. ROBERT

Department of C hemical and Biomolecular Engineering SHIH-HUI CHEN

Shepherd School of Music

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DAT E L I N E : A B E R D E E N, S C O T L A N D, A N D H O U S T O N, T E X A S

MICHAEL GUSTIN Department of Biosciences ward-winning professor Michael Gustin applied for a yearlong sabbatical soon after he’d completed his tenure as Wiess College master (2006–2011), a job that kept him “pretty involved in college life.” To those familiar with Rice’s system of residential college governance, that’s an understatement. While living at Wiess, Gustin ran a research lab and taught large classes. “I was pretty stretched.”

“Because I was so involved, I thought I really needed to get away,” he said. And so he did, to the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. There, Gustin rented a small flat and rode his bike two miles uphill to campus in the morning and back down every evening.

“They have the largest research group in the world for what I work on,” said Gustin, who is an expert in medical mycology and fungal biology. Specifically, Gustin studies the biology of Candida albicans.

Normally present in humans, Candida doesn’t cause a problem “unless your immune system is depressed,” he said. Gustin went to work with a longtime collaborator, Alistair Brown, who heads a “super-research group” of more than 50 researchers in the School of Medical Sciences. What Gustin particularly enjoyed was

the chance to work at the bench, trading ideas and knowledge with students who were just beginning their careers. People came from all over the world to study there.

“In a late stage of your career, late stage of your life, to go away for six months to a completely different country and work there … it’s challenging, right?” said Gustin. While away, he used Skype to keep in frequent touch with his research lab back at Rice. That usually made for long days. His family stayed back in Houston, except for a brief visit and tour of the country in September. (Gustin returned to Houston for the second semester of his sabbatical.)

In addition to the pleasure of being able to conduct experiments, absorb new ideas and mentor doctoral students, the sabbatical, said Gustin, “was a kind of restart for me that was really helpful — reinvigorating my mind.”

Another aspect of getting away that Gustin enjoyed was the lack of interruption. “My phone never rang.

I never expected it to ring.” This was in marked contrast to his time as a master, where distractions were the rule rather than the exception. “But there I could focus. It was amazing. It was lovely.”

DATELINE: TEHRAN, IRAN

MARC A. ROBERT Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering wiss-born Marc Robert, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been a Rice faculty member for 30 years. A polymath, who is equally at home teaching and researching thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and quantum field theory as he is playing the piano and pipe organ, Robert recently returned from a semester-long sabbatical in Tehran, Iran. When he speaks about his sabbatical, it is with enthusiasm for a rich and varied intellectual experience tinged with frustration at Americans’ general lack of knowledge about the country’s history, natural beauty and culture.

Based at Sharif University of Technology, the premier university for science and engineering in Iran, Robert’s days were filled with research, lectures and seminars. He mentored students, some of whom may make their way to Rice — or MIT or Stanford — after graduation.

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In addition to his students’ intellectual rigor, Robert was struck by a respectful formality in the classroom. “When you enter the classroom there, he recalled, “everybody stands up.”

Robert also had time to study Persian music and take part in poetry classes and readings. “Poetry to Iranians is what sports are to Americans,” he said.

The chemical engineering students, he said, have department-sponsored poetry contests. “Imagine this!

Students have to recite poems by other poets and have to improvise poems on the spot,” Robert said, adding that a meal is provided for all participants.

“I mean, it’s unbelievable for me.” Now back in Houston, Robert mused about the potential for a similar event at Rice. “I’m sure there are poets on campus who are scientists too.”

DAT E L I N E : TA I P E I , TA I WA N

SHIH-HUI CHEN Shepherd School of Music hih-Hui Chen, an associate professor of composition and theory, is in her 14th year of teaching at Rice. A native of Taiwan, she has been educated, trained and professionally employed in the U.S. for 30 years. From this deep immersion in Western music came a renewed longing for and interest in traditional Taiwanese music.

For the past two decades, Chen has worked to merge Taiwanese musical materials and conceptions with structural and technical ideas that have evolved through her study of Western music.

Traditional and aboriginal Taiwanese music has an entirely different notation system and ethnic point of view than Western music, she said. “In my years of Western music training, I had never experienced music this way, not even in my studies of 20th-century music, where articulations and other parameters are at least as important as the pitches.”

Chen’s research is motivated not only by a belief in preserving traditional forms, “but also because I strongly believe that digital communications technology in our time has lifted perceived barriers between countries and continents, bringing humanity closer together and blurring the lines between individual cultures.”

Chen recently spent two nonconsecutive years in Taiwan studying indigenous music and Nanguan music, a traditional form of Chinese music. The first year was taken as a sabbatical with additional support from a Fulbright grant; the second was a professional leave with support from a Taiwan Fellowship grant.

Chen’s compositions reflect her deep interest in combining Eastern and Western musical aesthetics.

For example, a collaboration with anthropologist Hu Tai-Li on the documentary “Returning Souls,” about the aboriginal Amis tribe, resulted in a series of concerts across the United States. A current workin-progress, “Messages From a Formosan Paiwan Village,” is a 50-minute storytelling musical drama.

Back at Rice, Chen is organizing a Chinese Music Festival to take place in spring 2015, which will include concerts, demonstrations, master classes and more.

“Using musical compositions or events to create a broader sense of international community is an important goal,” Chen said. “It is my ultimate hope that through mutual understanding and combined efforts, a new world musical identity will be formed that breaks down the traditional boundaries separating Asia from the West.”

The Sir Duncan Rice Library at the University of Aberdeen

Northern-style Taiwanese instruments

Azadi Tower in Tehran and statue of Persian poet Ferdowsi s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 31

DAT E L I N E S : P E R U G I A , I TA LY ; L O N D O N, C A M B R I D G E , L I V E R P O O L A N D C A N T E R B U RY, U N I T E D K I N G D O M ; B R E M E N, G E R M A N Y ; A N D L O F O T E N, N O RWAY

MARINA VANNUCCI Department of Statistics arina Vannucci, professor and newly appointed chair of the Department of Statistics, uses data to study diseases — big amounts of genetic data to study confounding and complex diseases like arthritis, lung cancer, hypertension and schizophrenia.

“The ultimate goal in my research is to advance statistical modeling of complex data by addressing problems arising specifically in genomics, neuroimaging, metabolomics and environmental toxicology,” said Vannucci, who is also editor of the journal Bayesian Analysis.

Over the past semester, Vannucci traveled widely to collaborate on research, give talks and attend symposia. When not traveling, she caught up with graduate students and postdocs. Her appointment as department chair begins upon her return to campus this summer.

At the University of Perugia, she worked on graphical models, “one of the statistical tools I use in my research,” she said. Vannucci, who was born and raised in Florence, also is serving as a foreign member

on a national committee that evaluates the scientific qualifications of professorial candidates in Italian universities. “For better or for worse, I have quite a bit of visibility in the field at the moment.”

She was visiting fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, an experience she found to be especially enjoyable. “Cambridge is a vibrant environment. I had the opportunity to visit with some of the local people and to exchange ideas with the other visitors at the institute,” Vannucci said.

At the University of Liverpool, she visited longtime colleagues and also received an honorary chair appointment in statistical genomics. She was the co-organizer of a workshop on high-dimensional data in Lofoten, Norway, and also gave invited talks in Bremen, Germany, and Canterbury in England.

Strengthening international collaborations has clearly been a sabbatical benefit. “Going forward, I would like to be able to offer more opportunities for international exposure to my students and postdocs.”

DAT E L I N E : OA X AC A , M E X I C O

CYMENE HOWE Department of Anthropology ymene Howe is an associate professor of anthropology who studies environmental and ethical questions around the issue of renewable energy as well as the dynamics of sexual rights in Latin America. Her sabbatical came on the heels of 16 months of field research in Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca, where she and Dominic Boyer (also a Rice anthropologist) had been studying the cultural and political issues surrounding a wind park development.

Along the Oaxacan coast, “the wind has many resonances, meanings and lives,” Howe describes, and she is aiming to illustrate the complicated dynamics of industrial scale wind power generation in her talks and publications.

“On the one hand, the region is home to hurricaneforce winds that, when put to use by turbines, can be transformed into massive quantities of renewable electricity, ameliorating millions of tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere,” Howe said. The area’s potential for wind energy is huge.

“Wind … can go from being the force that overturns 18-wheel semitrailers,” she said, “to being what some officials call the diamond in the crown of Mexico’s 32

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very ambitious and comprehensive climate change legislation.”

As a cultural anthropologist, Howe’s fieldwork involves interviewing and conducting participant observation within and among various communities.

She and Boyer recorded hundreds of interviews and conducted focus groups and a communitywide survey of a town that is entirely encircled by wind parks.

They also interviewed key players in the region’s renewable energy planning, including government officials in the city of Oaxaca and Mexico City, wind company representatives, development bankers, NGOs and activist organizations.

“The data we gathered is incredibly rich, and so my sabbatical was spent analyzing this material and shaping it into scholarly articles and the first chapters of a book manuscript.” (Howe is under contract with Cornell University Press.) Howe also traveled extensively to present the research, which she describes as a burgeoning area of anthropological research. This particular project delves into important questions about renewable energy, development, landholder rights, social inequalities and communicative breakdowns.

DAT E L I N E : C O P E N H AG E N, D E N M A R K

MICHAEL EMERSON Department of Sociology n April, sociologist Michael Emerson missed the ceremony in which he was honored with Rice’s top teaching prize, the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching. That’s because he had extended his fall teaching and research sabbatical in Copenhagen, Denmark, to complete his projects in the country ranked as the world’s happiest.

Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology, is co-director of Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. An urban sociologist, he also studies race and ethnic relations, transportation and religion.

In Copenhagen, Emerson sought out “a Western city as different from Houston as possible” as part of his work comparing different cities emerging in the modern world. “Copenhagen fit the bill in most every way.”

With students from the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, Emerson conducted the first Copenhagen Area Survey (released in May 2014), modeled after the Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey. Taking advantage of Copenhagen’s location, Emerson took students on study tours in Hamburg, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Budapest, Hungary.

“What is terrific about comparing these cities is that they are all the same size (about 1.7 million people) yet have drastically different histories, architectural styles and cultures.”

What will he bring back to Rice from his sabbatical? Tales of the city’s amazing bike culture, for one.

“Along with Amsterdam, Copenhagen is the most biked city in the world,” Emerson said. The survey findings revealed that “a stunning 55 percent” of residents bike to work. (For comparison, less than 1 percent of Houstonians bike to work.)

Both Copenhagen and Houston were traditionally car-dependent in the 1950s and 1960s, Emerson said, but both faced a crisis in 1973 — the oil shortage.

“Houston found ways to push through and remain car dependent. Copenhagen decided to adopt a different strategy — to encourage biking first and to expand their public transportation. They now have the world’s most complete, organized system of cycle tracks, cycle parking and cycle-friendly culture.”

Another benefit of living in a less car-dependent city: “It makes for a much friendlier city — less noise, more priority given to people moving around the city, more pleasant to be outdoors on the streets. People interact more, it is easy to meet people, and there are always spontaneous events going on around the city — street performers, drum lines, public art displays, parades — and crime is extremely low.” That does sound happy.

The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen Oaxaca wind farm

Circular data graph

Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge

Frederik ,s Church

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Bhangra dance parties under the brilliant Milky Way. Scooter rides through Hanoi.

Meditation in a remote Tibetan monastery.

Trent Navran ’15 has college memories that aren’t exactly typical.

And because of Rice’s growing commitment to learning abroad, more and more Rice students, like Navran, are turning the world into their classroom.

World Views Words JENNY BLAIR Photos FROM RICE STUDENTS’ STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENCES

See more student photos at ricemagazine.info/222

TRENT NAVRAN OVERLOOKS CAPE TOWN FROM LION’S HEAD PEAK IN SOUTH AFRICA Photo Anna Tallmadge, Stonehill College

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Top: A Palestinian sahra honors a groom.

Amman, Jordan.

By Max Katner ’15.

Bottom, left: Floating torii gate, Itsukushima Shrine, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.

In

six countries, Navran, a McMurtry College senior, has taken his interests in Eastern thought and global health straight to the source. In his first three years of college, he journeyed to Tibet; toured health facilities in India, Vietnam and South Africa; and volunteered in Ecuador and Peru. He taught street kids about nutrition, visited rural ICUs, conversed with monks about great Buddhist texts and lived in a South African township built in the apartheid era.

Then there was the time in rural India when he climbed a rickety bamboo ladder to lay his blue yoga mat on a schoolhouse roof. “The view from there was incredible — miles and miles of farmland in every direction,” Navran recalls. “The sun (was) greeting me as I greeted it.”

Navran, a cognitive sciences major with a concentration in neuroscience, is one of a growing number of Rice students who go beyond the hedges to supplement their education abroad. With dozens of countries and options to choose from and multiple university offices ready to smooth the way, this might be a golden age to be a Rice student abroad.

With family in Iran, Navran grew up traveling.

By contrast, Don Ostdiek didn’t go abroad — to Australia — until he was in his 30s. Now associate dean of undergraduates and head of the Study Abroad Office, Ostdiek grew up fascinated by slideshows of foreign countries put on by two uncles who were priests.

He worked for years in Lincoln, Neb., to arrange local tours for international visitors.

By Valerie Diaz ’15.

Bottom, right: LittleVillage. Český Krumlov, Sudetenland, Czech Republic.

By Lydia Smith ’15.

“Travel is transformative,” Ostdiek says, “and it’s a crucial part of a Rice education. To get to know yourself and where you’re at, you have to see the other. It just changes how you understand yourself and the world around you in such significant ways.”

Nationwide, about 14 percent of U.S. undergraduates studied abroad for academic credit during their bachelor’s programs in the 2011–2012 academic year, according to a 2013 survey by the Institute of International Education. That rate is climbing steadily and has tripled since the 1990s.

With most students studying social sciences, business and humanities, the United Kingdom was the most popular destination, followed by Italy, Spain, France and China. At Rice, the U.K. and Spain top the list, with Latin America as another popular choice. New programs will soon boost opportunities in China.

“Currently, Rice’s study abroad participation (for academic credit during bachelor’s programs) tracks around 20 percent,” says Ostdiek. When you combine the traditional idea of study abroad — exchanges and for-credit programs lasting a semester or more — with shorter trips embedded in courses, internships, service and research opportunities, Rice’s participation is close to 40 percent of the student body. Ostdiek aims to double this percentage.

He advises would-be international scholars to think first about what to study and how that fits into a curriculum. Only after that should they choose a destination.

Trent Navran ’15

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TRANSFORMING TRAVEL ABROAD

“The

approach had been, ‘Where in the world do you want to go? We’ll find something for you.’ Now it’s more structured,” Ostdiek says. His philosophy: Study something that makes sense for you in a place that’ll do it well. Since he took the helm four years ago, the Study Abroad Office has culled hundreds of international programs of questionable or redundant value. What’s left has been carefully vetted, and the office now offers about 150 experiences in 68 countries.

That’s just one office, though. There are many more ways Rice students can incorporate international studies into academic course work and programs.

Want to do research? The Office of Fellowships and Undergraduate Research connects students to international research opportunities, like the Fulbright UK Summer Institutes or the ThinkSwiss stipend. Want a service trip? The Community Involvement Center offers Loewenstern Fellowships for volunteering in Latin America or Asia, as well as summer group international service trips.

Prefer an internship? The Gateway Summer Fellows program has sent interns to the Argentine National Senate and the World Health Organization in Geneva, while Leadership Rice offers internships in Paris. Want to meet scholars in your field? As Century Scholars, undergrads can accompany their mentors to international conferences.

There’s funding out there, too, including transferable financial aid and an array of scholarships.

Navran covered his Tibet trip with a Parish Fellowship from Wiess College. Paid for or not, though, the prospect of leaving Rice for months on end may not tempt students who have strong ties to a residential college or campus organizations. And for science and engineering Top, left: Monk in Canterbury Cathedral. students who take Canterbury, England. certain courses in a set

By Caroline Zhu ’16. order, long absences can be tough to arrange.

Top, right: Amber Palace. Amer, India.

So Ostdiek is

By Trent Navran ’15. expanding Rice’s Bottom: Street soccer. Havana, Cuba. shorter-term options.

Field trip, Spanish 392.

For example, the School

150 EXPERIENCES

COUNTRIES of Social Sciences’ Global Urban Lab offers for-credit, faculty-led policy studies experiences in London and Istanbul. Those experiences follow and are “embedded” in a class at Rice.

Summer programs are growing as well. Ostdiek soon will announce a summer 2015 launch of the new Rice Summer International Institute. Classes in South America, Europe and China will be designed

by Rice faculty in partnership with the Study Abroad Office. Rice faculty will teach the for-credit courses, which initially are likely to include business, sociology and political science.

Some foreign-language students already can attend summer school abroad. This summer, the Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication (CLIC) sent Meng Yeh, senior lecturer of Chinese, and a group of students to Nanjing, China, for a six-week study of Chinese called Rice-in-China. Rice-in-Spain debuted this summer, too, while Rice-in-Jordan is in its second year of bringing Arabic language students abroad. CLIC is set to add seven more programs in other countries.

Also on the horizon: academic majors with an international track. As of this spring, English majors can take some core classes at British universities, and more majors in the humanities are next.

Not to be outdone, engineering students can check out Beyond Traditional Borders, which offers eight-week internships to Africa or Switzerland to design technological solutions to pressing health care problems.

All this doesn’t mean you can’t design your own adventure. (When Navran heard about the Tibetan monastery, he arranged the trip himself.) If you can demonstrate a good academic reason, Ostdiek says, you could even get the trip approved for credit and a transfer of financial aid.

By Luis Duno-Gottberg, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese.

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If you leave Rice for a semester and discover completely new ways of thinking or learning or living, what have you really missed out on?

EPIC JOURNEY

For

Navran, summer service trips to Latin America cemented his interest in global health.

So for his junior semester abroad, he signed up with SIT Study Abroad, a respected organization that offers students an up-close look at health care on the ground in India, Vietnam and South Africa. Last fall, along with 32 other undergraduates from around the United States, Navran undertook that epic journey.

In Delhi, Hanoi and Cape Town, as well as in rural regions, the students learned about global health firsthand. They stayed with families. They crowded into Jeeps to reach rural outposts doing maternal health, mental health and nutrition initiatives. They talked to NGO workers, store owners and hospital patients.

And all the while they studied anthropology, publichealth research methods and globalization with SIT faculty. Navran returned to Rice with a semester’s worth of credit.

Trips to developing countries often evoke visions of Westerners who swoop in bringing know-how and equipment to help stricken locals — what Navran calls the “white-savior industrial complex.” But this program advocated a more anthropological approach.

“You’re there to participate, to assimilate, to integrate yourself within the community as much as possible, and then be a soundboard. It was really not about pitying,” Navran says. “It was more about appreciating and cherishing the time we had with these communities.”

Cherishing that time, for Navran, included reflecting on it. At the end of the semester, he headed to a yoga center in India for a three-week breather. By then his faithful blue mat was in tatters. He bought a new one before flying home.

Before long, going abroad may come to seem like an indispensable part of the Rice experience. Ostdiek says Rice graduates face a world that expects them to have had international exposure.

“You are going to work with people who are

international. You are going to work in international settings. The business (and) law firms that you work with will have international clients,” Ostdiek says.

“Pragmatically, you have to have an understanding of the international world, and that’s hard to do just staying here.”

Navran says his travels made his courses more relevant. They interrupted the passivity of the traditional classroom and expanded what it means to get an education. And that education has beckoned Navran down an unexpected byway. Though he’s a Rice/Baylor Medical Scholar with a slot at the Baylor College of Medicine after he graduates, what he saw abroad got him thinking about tackling global health problems with a social entrepreneur’s tool kit. He decided to defer med school to learn more and is working this summer as a health care strategy consultant.

Though he admits it can be challenging to slip back into campus life after a long absence, Navran says he would never trade his experiences for more time at Rice. However, some students don’t see it that way. Many, he says, have a fear of missing out, better known as “FOMO.” “If you leave Rice for a semester and discover completely new ways of thinking or learning or living,” he asks, “what have you really missed out on?”

Navran likes to take FOMO and flip it on its head.

“Your fear should not be missing out on Rice. It should be missing out on the world.”

Top, left: A parade during fête de mouton.

Yaoundé, Cameroon.

By Abby Marcus ’14.

Top, right: Zebras at the zoo in Prague.

By Lydia Smith ’15.

Bottom, right: Vietnam.

By Trent Navran ’15.

Bottom, left: Lone Survivor.

Wadi Rum, Jordan.

By Max Katner ’15.

Middle: Roof of Casa Milà in Barcelona, Spain.

By Jiaxing Yan ’16.

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Greta Shwachman ’15 Institute for Study Abroad — Butler University Valparaíso, Chile

HOW TO … LEARN ABROAD Remember junior year abroad? Being an exchange student? You went to Spain or Italy, maybe France, stayed with host families or — better yet — students from all over the U.S. You studied language and literature and generally had a good time. That model of study abroad is so last century.

At Rice, faculty, administrators and students are expanding the traditional idea of “study abroad” so that research, volunteer, study or even work experiences are better integrated into the undergraduate curriculum.

These opportunities may take place over a week, a month, a summer, a semester or, rarely, a year and go far beyond language study. More and more students are going abroad to enrich their course work in engineering and technology, social sciences, business and economics, natural sciences and the humanities. President David Leebron has stated that Rice is striving “to make international opportunities both more abundant and more accessible.”

Reimagining study abroad is motivated in part by the students themselves. “Students are less willing today to spend a semester or year abroad, just because there’s so much they want to do on campus,” said David Vassar, senior assistant to the president and associate director of the Américas Research Center.

In response to these trends, said Vassar, “Our job is to create an experiential value proposition that is attractive enough for more students to trade a semester or other length of time on campus for a life-changing opportunity abroad.” —L.G.

Here are just a few of the resources that help Rice students take their education out into the world.

Study Abroad

abroad.rice.edu Exchange programs, language programs, research abroad, internships, service learning, summer programs and more

Office of Fellowships and Undergraduate Research

ofur.rice.edu A gateway to competitive fellowships and research awards for undergraduates, graduates and recent alumni

Community Involvement Center cic.rice.edu

International service learning opportunities Beyond Traditional Borders rice360.rice.edu/btb

Interdisciplinary, global health internships

Cusco, Peru

Hannah Abrams ’16 and Daniel Hwang ’15 Beyond Traditional Borders Namitete, Malawi

Sachin Allahabadi ’13 ThinkSwiss 42 Scholarship R i c e M a g a z i n e | SUMMER 2 0 1 4 University of Geneva, Switzerland

Jessica Wilder ’15 Lowenstern Fellowship

Voices

Stories from the rice community

B RYDO N WELCOMES TH E WORLD TO RI CE

W

Jenny Brydon

J E F F F I T LO W

ith Rice’s growing diversity, the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) is a bustling place to be. During the 2013–2014 academic year, about 12 percent of the undergraduate population and about 38 percent of the graduate population came to the university from 76 countries outside the U.S. This coming fall, Rice is expecting more than 500 new international students — undergraduate and graduate, as well as visiting and exchange students who study at Rice for one or two semesters. That number may seem daunting, but for Jenny Brydon, that’s 500 new friends she’ll soon meet.

Brydon, program manager and senior international adviser in OISS, is excited to meet with all international students who visit OISS in their Lovett Hall office. Specifically she oversees Rice’s

undergraduate international students as well as J-1 scholars — international scholars who come to Rice to do research or lecture in short-term, nontenured positions. She also organizes workshops

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voices

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President’s note continued from Page 10

Between breaks while filming the iPREP 2014 video, Maple Zhao ’17 (left) and Sophia Shao ’17 (right) got to show their Owl pride with Sammy the Owl. Both Maple and Sophia were part of an iPREP Task Force, led by Jenny Brydon, that focused on increasing prearrival communication with new international students.

Mexico. Brydon first became interested in working with international students when she was in college at the University of Idaho. She participated in a language partnership program for students who wanted to practice their English with an American student. “I would talk with them about fun subjects like dating in the U.S.,” she said.

After college, Brydon considered going into the Peace Corps as a way to combine her desire to make a contribution to society and to travel. “But I wasn’t so sure about bugs and living outside,” she joked.

“I needed something international — but with air conditioning.” So she found a job working with international students.

After working in several positions at other universities around the country, she joined Rice’s OISS in April 2013.

“Moving around when I was younger kind of stuck with me — being new and understanding that it can be difficult when you’re starting out. Sometimes you don’t understand the culture, you’re not used to the food, and the people act differently. You have to learn how to adapt to that. I always liked that, and I want to help other people because of those who helped me.”

—Jenny West Rozelle ’00

Student organizations also can play a strong role. Engineers Without Borders, for example, sponsors life-changing trips to help impoverished communities build essential infrastructure.

The research collaborations of our faculty span the globe, and it is incumbent upon us as a university to enable and foster those collaborations.

The result is graduates who better understand the world they will encounter, are better prepared to be effective in that world and are smarter in developing creative solutions to the challenges they will face. Building international experiences and relationships contributes in the long run to fostering peace and prosperity.

My everyday experiences may be more international than some, as often I can’t even understand the conversation around the dinner table. But my international experiences have been woven into my outlook now for four decades. I was lucky to have those opportunities at a young age, and we should support and encourage our students to seize those opportunities in today’s world as soon as they are able. Every student entering Rice should ask — and be asked — how they intend to incorporate that international element into their education. It’s not always easy — especially for engineering students, architects, athletes and others — but it is in fact always possible. And as is often the case, the possible of today is the gateway to the possibilities of tomorrow that we could not have imagined.

C O U RT E SY O F J E N N Y B RY D O N

for undergraduate internationals on topics such as student well-being and employment in the U.S. and coordinates iPREP (international — Preparation and Regulatory Education Program), the international student orientation session that takes place during the three days preceding Rice’s O-Week for new undergraduates. iPREP focuses on visa compliance and immigration regulations and helps students settle in by providing opportunities to open a bank account, shop at Target for basic supplies and visit the Rice Village to purchase a U.S. cell phone.

“Our largest groups are usually from China and South Korea, but I just completed paperwork for someone from Trinidad and Tobago, and we also have students coming from Malaysia and Thailand,” said Brydon.

OISS continually restructures iPREP to make sure that the program is meeting the needs of new international students.

For the next incoming class, Brydon worked with a group of current undergraduate students to create a short video to help new internationals understand iPREP and what to expect when they arrive. OISS also moved the program from a hotel near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, where it took place last year, to a hotel closer to Rice to make it easier for students to acclimate to the area and get to campus the morning that O-Week begins.

Working in OISS is not all logistics, paperwork and regulations. The office also coordinates social activities for international students. During winter and summer breaks, they attend Houston Rockets’ games, tour NASA, visit the nearby zoo and local museums, and have dinners together.

Community members often chip in.

“We had a local lawyer who opened her home to students for Christmas. We have some really great community connections that allow our students to feel a little bit of the American holiday season while they’re here,” Brydon said.

Brydon has spent most of her life learning about different cultures. As the daughter of a military lawyer for the Air Force, she moved around a lot during her formative years, living in places as diverse as Greece and Alaska, Hawaii and New

arts & letters

creative ideas and endeavors

Graceful Gateway “Convergence,” the Rice Building Workshop’s contribution to Art in the Park, celebrates Hermann Park’s centennial.

TO M M Y L AV E R G N E

P

erhaps it’s a harp for an ensemble of giants. Or a suspension bridge looking for a river to cross. Whatever your interpretation, the 19-foot-high pavilion — designed by Rice School of Architecture students and located in Hermann Park across the street from Entrance 1 to the Rice campus — is a welcome place for park visitors to pause.

The pavilion is a project of the Rice Building Workshop (RBW), which was invited to contribute one of eight pieces of

public art to celebrate the park’s 100th anniversary. The yearlong effort to design and build the pavilion will soon be complete with the installation of lighting that will turn it into an eye-catching sculpture by day and night. “Convergence” is so named for its placement between the realms of the park, the Texas Medical Center, the Houston Museum District and Rice. Read more and watch a video: ricemagazine.info/223.

— Mike Williams

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arts & Letters

Student Clarinetist Wins Houston Symphony Competition Shepherd School of Music graduate student and clarinetist Lin Ma won first prize in the 2014 Houston Symphony Ima Hogg Competition held in May. Named in honor of Houston Symphony co-founder Ima Hogg, the prestigious international competition is open to musicians from 13 to 30 years of age who play standard orchestral instruments or piano. Following a rigorous preliminary audition process, four finalists are chosen to compete for the grand prize of $25,000 and the opportunity to perform at the Houston Symphony’s Houston Chronicle Concert, set for July 12.

LIN MA ’13

The contest was the first international competition for Ma, a member of the inaugural class of the Shepherd School’s esteemed Artist Diploma in Music program. He is a student of Richie Hawley, professor of clarinet. Ma also received a Master of Music from the Shepherd School in 2013.

“I feel very grateful to win this award,” Ma said. “The Shepherd School, especially my teacher, Richie Hawley, has done so much for me,” Ma said. Read more: ricemagazine.info/224.

—Amy Hodges

Ma performed Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 2 and Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major for the competition.

Author Q&A “Monday, Monday” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) by Elizabeth Crook ’82

Because you live in Austin, Texas, was “Monday, Monday” and its storyline more personal for you?

Do you have any special memories of Rice or professors that influenced your career?

It was much more personal, for a lot of reasons. My husband teaches at UT, we live close enough to campus to hear the tower bells ring, and I have a number of friends who were there in the sixties, and who were there that day when Whitman shot so many people. Austin is a big city now, but what happened is still very much with us.

Yes, I certainly do. I was lucky enough to take writing courses from Max Apple — an extraordinary teacher and a very kind man. He was always finding some kernel of wisdom or some nicely constructed paragraph even in the worst stories. He has that rare gift of criticizing a story without demoralizing the author. I remember thinking, “Wait a minute. Why do I feel so pleased and excited? He just told me this story has major problems; I believe he suggested I start over … .” He could do that without making you turn on yourself as a writer, or turn on your story.

While I was writing this book I was very aware that I was trespassing on a tragedy that didn’t belong to me. It was important to be as accurate as possible for the sake of people personally touched by it, and this meant talking to people who had been there that day, who had been wounded, who put themselves in danger to save others, or who didn’t and later questioned why they hadn’t. No amount of reading or research was going to get me to the place where these people had been, so I was dependent on them to let me see it through their eyes.

Did you somehow know that you would someday write about the UT tragedy?

It never occurred to me that I would write about the event until I read Pamela Colloff’s article “96 Minutes” in the August 2006 Texas Monthly. She told the story by stitching together dozens of firsthand accounts from people who were there, and it was those perspectives — from the ground, up, not the tower, down — that I wanted to translate into fiction. What is it like to be living your life and then one sunny day, when you’re walking across a plaza on a university campus, to find yourself singled out by a gunman and carried off, wounded, in a different direction, with a different life before you?

How do you live that different life for the next 40 years?

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Crook’s fourth novel, “Monday, Monday,” follows the lives of three fictional victims of the University of Texas tower massacre in August 1966.

Read more about the book and author at www. elizabethcrookbooks. com.

Do you discover a piece of Texas history that intrigues you and then turn it into a story or vice versa?

I just stumble onto something that for some unknowable reason moves me and starts to generate a kind of urgent feeling. It can happen unexpectedly. I can wander down into a kiva at Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico and suddenly know that this is a place I’m going to be writing about — a place I’m going to live for a few years. I can pull a Texas Monthly out of the mailbox and find Pamela Colloff ’s story inside, and suddenly the light, comedic novel I was intending to write has turned very dark.

What is your biggest challenge with writing historical fiction? And what was most challenging about writing “Monday, Monday?”

The blank page of the next chapter — the question of what happens next — is always the biggest challenge for me. To say I don’t have vision is an understatement. I don’t even have an outline.

—Tracey Rhoades

J E F F F I T LO W

During the research process for the book, did you speak with any survivors of the 1966 shooting?

arts & Letters

On the Bookshelf West Boulevard Night-Herons

by Robert Flatt ’69 introduction by Peter Brown poetry by Jim Blackburn ’74 stories by Larry Larrinaga and Patti Hart (Robert Flatt, 2014)

Excerpt from “Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron”

by Jim Blackburn in Robert Flatt’s “West Boulevard Night-Herons.” Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Flatt follows up his first book of photography, the much-beloved “Rice’s Owls,” with this visually stunning book that combines the crisp photography of Flatt with works by local writers and other bird enthusiasts.

For this piece, Flatt’s attention turns to groups of night-herons that migrate every spring from Central and South America to the Gulf Coast, including a neighborhood close to Rice, in order to mate and breed.

Flatt is an adjunct professor in management at Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business.

Brown is an instructor of photography at Rice’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.

Blackburn is a professor in the practice of environmental law at Rice.

What is a university if not a rookery, A place for rearing the young And teaching them to fly and feed On their own, A place apart from the world, safe, Secure from the coons and coyotes Looking for easy prey.

And when the university is right, It is a place for charging young minds With the electricity of invention, of creativity, Of the curiosity to solve the problems that Our generation has created, which are many.

So I go to watch the Night-Herons Before my class, before I try to describe The challenge and the opportunities of today, Of the chance to redefine the way economics and Environment and the social systems interact To define a sustainable society, One that protects Night-Herons and our own, One which makes us proud to be humans.

R O B E RT F L AT T

Buy the book at: ricemagazine.info/225.

You can also buy the ebook at: ricemagazine.info/226.

“The Petropolis of Tomorrow”

edited by Neeraj Bhatia and Mary Casper ’14 (Actar Publishers and Architecture at Rice, 2013) A series of “Petropolises,” or cities formed from the logistics of resource extraction, have sprung up along Brazil’s coast in recent years, spawned by the discovery of large amounts of petroleum offshore. “The Petropolis of Tomorrow,” based on a design and research project of the same name, contains a compilation of articles, photo essays and design proposals

by Rice students and faculty members for sustainable floating communities close to oil production platforms that could accommodate oil workers and their families on a long-term basis. The project was originally undertaken at Rice under the leadership of Bhatia, Rice’s former Visiting Wortham Fellow.

“A People’s War on Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston”

by Wesley G. Phelps ’08 (The University of Georgia Press, 2014) Phelps explores how President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s affected Houston, where it spawned fierce political battles and galvanized local activists over the meaning of American democracy and the rights of citizenship.

Phelps is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University.

“Disconnected”

by Colin Hendricks ’93 (Colin Hendricks, 2014) This novel follows Tom, a lost soul who feels that he lives a fairly conventional and anonymous life in a mass-produced society.

When Tom moves from Houston to New York City with his wife, he discovers that a stranger has been following his every move.

Understanding why will change his life forever.

Hendricks is executive vice president of software development at Enbase.

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Parting Words

A GREAT JOURNEY WHEN I CAME TO RICE, I WAS THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN IN MY DEPARTMENT AND WORKED IN THE JONES BUSINESS SCHOOL. I CAME IN AS A REGISTRAR FOR THE OFFICE OF EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT IN 1984 AND WAS QUICKLY PROMOTED TO OFFICE MANAGER. I WAS REQUIRED TO DO THINGS THAT OTHER PEOPLE DIDN’T NECESSARILY HAVE TO DO; BOSS WAS EX-MILITARY, VERY STRAIGHTFORWARD; YOU HAD T O B E T H E B E S T, O R NO T H I NG . I R E A L I Z E D T H AT R I C E WA S A L L A B O U T E XC E L L E NC E, AND TO BE A PART OF IT I NEEDED TO BE EXCELLENT AS WELL.

Growing up, neither [of my] parents had a fifth-grade education; both were hardworking and taught us to work hard and have integrity. They taught us to realize that everyone has worth, no matter who they are and what they do. My mother said that “if you are a street sweeper, be the best. The position doesn’t define who you are; it’s what you do.” We were reared that way, and it helped us appreciate life and people, to know that no matter what, you can see the good in people.

This is the start of my 25th year at Baker [College] and my 28th year at Rice. The thing for me is that I really don’t look at my job as a job. I consider it more of an encouragement ministry, since what I’m able to do is impart who I am and help others in their quest for life. I’m able to talk to them and get to know them, be a part of their lives and have them be a part of mine. So many times, people come back and say: “Ms. V, if you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have made it.” For many, it’s just letting people know that you’re there for them.

So many have come in, and we talk about anything and everything. Sometimes there are personal issues, family issues, and I try to help students understand what’s going on. We just become a part of each other; it’s not about what you feel you’re giving, it’s about whether people feel that you’re true in what you do. For me, it’s been a great journey, seeing these young people come in as scared freshmen, and later they’re all excited about graduating.

I just feel like Rice is a great place to be. I don’t care what it is, if you’re not helping people, you’re not doing it right.

This excerpt was part of an interview with Venora Frazier, known to students as Ms. V, for an oral history project for last fall’s Introduction to the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality course. Seven interviews with faculty and administrators were conducted by students in the class and became part of “The Women of Rice: Our Legacy and Labor,” a campuswide initiative to document and archive the contributions women have made to the university. An accompanying photo exhibit by Hallie Jordan ’12, titled “The Women of Rice: The University Works Because We Do,” included the portrait of Ms. V shown above. A compilation video of the interviews as well as other documents and photos from the initiative are archived in Fondren Library’s Woodson Research Center. Ms. V retired as Baker College coordinator after Commencement this year.

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Rice University, Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892

A blessed place

Photo by MAX KATNE R ’15

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Permit #7549 Houston, Texas

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AND FIRST PLACE, PEOPLE “It is not uncommon to see nuns and priests in the narrow streets of the Christian Quarter, home to many monasteries and convents in Old Jerusalem. I spotted a Greek Orthodox monk walking back from a trip to the grocery store. He stopped suddenly, gazing into the distance, and smiled a hearty smile. Curious, I approached him and asked what the matter was. In a robust Greek accent, the monk said: “Why am I so happy? Look around you. This street is beautiful. Life is magnificent, and the proof is in this ancient stone.

This place, it is a blessed place, my son.” —Max Katner See more photos from the 2013 and 2014 Study Abroad Contest at ricemagazine.info/222