Rice Magazine | Summer 2015

The Magazine of Rice University

SUMMER 2015

SUMMER A TO Z Sammy’s summer tour of Rice’s campus includes an alphabet of cool activities, experiences and events.

ALSO: Our 102nd commencement, Doerr Institute for New Leaders announced, solving puzzles and Duncan College traditions

The Magazine of Rice University

SUMMER 2015

Contents FEATURE

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SUMMER A TO Z The Rice campus is still in high gear during the summer months.

From planning O-Week to teacher prep, sports camps to youth activities, signs of the season and atmospheric alignments, the campus bustles with learning, activities and summertime fun.

By Jade Boyd, Scott Egan, Lynn Gosnell, Mijin Han ’15, Patrick Kurp, Carrie Obenland Owens, Tracey Rhoades, Jenny Rozelle ’00, Ted Walker, Kelly Weinersmith, Mike Williams

DEPARTMENTS S A L LY P O R T P R E S I D E N T ’ S N OT E

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A B ST R ACT

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ARTS & LETTERS FA M I LY A L B U M

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An aerial view of the Texas Medical Center and Rice campus, with Lovett Hall visible in the center of the photo.

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on the web FEATU RED CON TRI BU TORS MIJIN HAN ’15

(“Ultimate Win”), a senior English major from Duncan College, is Rice Magazine’s summer intern.

Before working for the magazine, Han didn’t know too much about it. But now, with only the fall semester left until she graduates, she’s glad to know that she can still keep in touch with the Rice community thanks to the magazine that will be delivered to her quarterly.

MICHAEL HARDY ’06

MO RTA RBOARD GR AM Rice’s Instagram account collects an astounding variety of images — from the latest Whoo Deli lunch specials to the recent Pride Parade float, Shepherd School of Music events and Rice Gallery art exhibitions. And of course, candid campus images, such as this collection of mortarboards from the Class of 2015, snapped and posted by Rice photographer Jeff Fitlow. Share your Rice photos with us by adding #riceuniversity to your image. instagram.com/riceuniversity

(Clark Davis ’86 Q&A) is a Houston-based freelance writer, former arts editor at Houstonia magazine and contributor to many publications, including The American Scholar, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. At Rice, he studied English, co-edited University Blue literary magazine, played racquetball and was a resident of Brown College.

PATRICK KURP

(Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in “Summer A to Z”) is the science writer for the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice. He is proprietor of the literary blog Anecdotal Evidence: http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com.

FO L LOW RI CE U N IVE R SIT Y

DEAN MACKEY

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, or visit the Atavist website for our feature stories.

ISSU U rice.edu/ricemagazine

FLICKR flickr.com/photos/ricepublicaffairs/

ATAVI ST ricemagazine.atavist.com

I N STAG R A M instagram.com/riceuniversity

TW I T T E R @RiceMagazine

YO UTUB E youtube.com/riceuniversity

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

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is a senior graphic designer in Public Affairs’ Creative Services.

One afternoon this summer, he stepped away from his computer to don the suit of feathery finery and play Sammy for the day.

ON TH E COVER Sammy the Owl is Rice’s enduring mascot, having gone through several incarnations to reach Rice’s second century. A fixture at athletic events, Sammy is pictured here in his summer plumage.

Photo by Tommy LaVergne

forEword The Magazine of Rice University summer 2015 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 Mijin Han ’15 Intern CONTRIBUTING 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

The Keys to Summer

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hough part of the well-rehearsed rhythm of university life, the quiet that descended on campus after May’s exuberant celebrations still came as a surprise. It was just enough time for the campus to catch its collective breath and for staff and faculty to get used to moving about a workplace that felt sleepy, if not downright empty.

But no sooner had all the colleges emptied and the last minifridge been sold than the campus was buzzing once more.

The idea for our single feature, “Summer A to Z,” came about when Housing and Dining staff told us that every available room in Rice’s residential colleges would be filled in the summer.

In fact, Rice opened its campus to all sorts of summer academic, athletic, enrichment or youthoriented activities. The alphabet of activities and phenomena — with a guest appearance by Sammy the Owl — begins on Page 22. Especially telling are the H&D stats, including this whopper: more than 67,000 room keys were distributed over the summer.

Elsewhere in these pages, we review Rice’s eventful 102nd commencement, which took place with all the expected pomp and circumstance despite the flood of spring rains that wreaked such havoc on Houston in the late spring; celebrate the planned Doerr Institute for New Leaders; interview an unconventional problem-solver; excerpt a biography of a “writer’s writer” and more. We hope you enjoy this issue.

Lynn Gosnell lynn.gosnell@rice.edu

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letters

Reader Response DEAR EDITOR:

Please thank Jenny Rozelle for her nostalgic article “Home Sweet Campus.”

As one of the very first offspring of a college master, I would like to share with you some very early college history.

My father, Roy V. Talmage, Ph.D., professor of biology (d. 2012), was the first master of Wiess College. My family, including my two younger brothers, Van Talmage and Chuck Talmage, moved into the original Wiess House in March 1957. There were only five colleges and the remnants of a muddy road that ran between the four men’s colleges.

“My house” is now used for administrative purposes, I believe.

[Editor’s note: It is now the Housing and Dining office.] The original Wiess House had none of the additions or enclosed rooms it has now. I occasionally climbed the wall to watch the world of Rice go by.

I was in the seventh grade and had just turned 13. My brothers were 10 and 8. I thought I was in boy heaven. We ate every evening meal in the Wiess Commons with the men of Wiess College. The freshmen wore beanies and had to wait tables. There was the occasional dropping of a full tray of food and the subsequent applause from the rest of the dining room.

My mother (d. 2013) knew every student, his name, his year, his major and his hometown. She provided at least one home-cooked meal to each Wiess student each year. The students were invited to bring guests, but very few did so they could have more to eat.

My father resigned in 1969 to move to the University of North Carolina Medical School, where he continued his pioneering research into osteoporosis. He used to speculate on what his research would have been like if he had not been a master. I told him that because he was the master of Wiess, I am who I am today with fantastic and endearing memories of being an offspring of a college master. (Is there still a Tally-Boo award?)

In 1962, I went to Wilson College, Chambersburg, Pa., for two years, and then transferred back to Rice in 1964. I graduated in 1966 as a member of Jones College and with a biology degree. Wiess House was my permanent address until I married in 1968. The original masters did not have term limits or temporary assignments. I have been married to Ebb Mobley ’64 (Hanszen) for 47 years. I recently retired as an anatomy and physiology instructor from Kilgore College. Ebb is still a practicing attorney.

There are still living a handful of the original offspring of college masters.

We are all in our late 60s and 70s, but we have fond memories of being in a small group who can call the Rice campus “Home Sweet Campus.”

—Laney Talmage Mobley ’66

DEAR EDITOR: As a Brown girl from Brown’s “all woman” years, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the reminiscences of Franz Brotzen about his years living in the Brown Masters House. After I graduated, Dr. and Mrs. Brotzen and I always kept in, at least, Christmas card contact until age and infirmity put an end to this tradition. I was very fond of both of them, and I loved seeing those old photos and reading about the good old days. Surely there must be a photo out there somewhere of Mrs. Brotzen and assorted Brown girls in the Hackermans’ swimming pool after Beer Bike. ...

—Kathy Broussard ’85

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THE RICE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Robert B. Tudor III, chairman; Edward B. “Teddy” Adams Jr.; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; Keith T. Anderson; Doyle Arnold; Laura Arnold; Nancy Packer Carlson; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Mark Dankberg; Doug Foshee; Lawrence Guffey; Patti Lipoma Kraft; Charles Landgraf; R. Ralph Parks; David Rhodes; Lee H. Rosenthal; Ruth Simmons; Jeffery Smisek; Amy Sutton; Gloria Meckel Tarpley; Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Guillermo Treviño; Randa Duncan Williams; Huda Zoghbi.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS

David W. Leebron, president; Marie Lynn Miranda, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Klara Jelinkova, vice president for IT and chief information officer; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Caroline Levander, vice president of Strategic Initiatives and Digital Education; 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 Development and Alumni Relations.

EDITORIAL OFFICES

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

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

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©August 2015 Rice University

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News and Updates from Campus

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BACHELOR’S DEGREES

(Some students earned multiple degrees)

MASTER’S DEGREES

Videographer Brandon Martin captured the emotions during the Friday night Undergraduate Convocation (held in Tudor

Fieldhouse on account of a spring deluge) and Saturday’s commencement ceremony (held outdoors in a slightly soggy Academic Quadrangle), which featured retired Gen. Colin Powell as speaker. “Four years ago, we all came in during O-Week, 18-year-old freshmen. It’s unbelievable to know finally all that work has paid off,” said Christian Covington ’15. Watch the video here: ricemagazine.info/282

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DOUBLE MAJORS

SINGLE MAJORS

TRIPLE MAJORS

J E F F F I T LO W

DOCTORAL DEGREES

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n May, Rice awarded 1,033 undergraduate degrees, some with students earning double or triple majors, and 887 graduate (master’s and doctoral) degrees.

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1 0 2 ND CO M M EN CEM E NT

Cortez honored with Powell Commencement Award for Leadership

—Amy McCaig

Daniel Cortez with President David Leebron (left) and retired Gen. Colin Powell, receiving the 2015 Gen. Colin Powell Commencement Award for Leadership 6

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Powell shares leadership lessons Colin Powell, the retired four-star general who served as national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan and secretary of state to President George W. Bush, made leadership his theme at Rice University’s 102nd commencement ceremony May 16.

Rice President David Leebron introduced Powell as an “icon of American and indeed global leadership” for his military career, including command during the first Gulf War, his extensive government service and his continued inspiration to new generations through the school for leadership that carries his name at his alma mater, City College of New York (CCNY). Powell was the first African-American to serve as secretary of state and also chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

“Everything I learned about leadership started in the Army,” Powell told the graduates and their families, recalling his arrival at Fort Benning as a young lieutenant. “You drive onto the post; you see the motto of the institute, ‘Follow me.’

“Leadership is all about followership. Leaders put followers in the best possible environment to accomplish a unit mission or an organizational mission. It works in the Army; it works in the university; it works in any endeavor in the world where humans come together to achieve a purpose.”

Powell finds great pleasure in his rise, considering his own academic career. “I wasn’t considered at the time one of CCNY’s great successes,” he said. “In fact, the only reason I graduated was that they took a look at my overall record. I was in my fifth year at CCNY and they said, ‘What are we going to do with this guy?’ And finally they noticed that I got straight A’s in ROTC. So they took my GPA from ROTC and rolled it into my overall GPA, brought me up to a 2.0. ‘Good enough for government work. Give him to the Army.

We’ll never see him again.’

“So for those of you who are not graduating at 3.5 or higher, have faith. Have faith, my young friends. It isn’t where you start out in life; it’s what you do with life which will determine where you end up.”

Powell reminded students that he went into the Army to become a soldier, not a general.

“I became a general, but I always considered myself just a soldier trying to do his very best for the country. You should go through life trying to do your very, very best every single day.”

—Mike Williams

TO M M Y L AV E R G N E

Each year, Rice University honors a graduating senior who exemplifies the values and ideals of the commencement speaker. This year’s speaker was retired Gen. Colin Powell, former secretary of state and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Daniel Cortez ’15, who received a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies and policy studies, was selected for the award because of his passion for supporting minority engagement in public service.

“For me, the award is a validation that I belong here and that I have a space among the university’s many distinguished students and alumni.

The commencement speaker award is not so much a celebration of my achievements as a Rice student, but a challenge to continue to seek out opportunities to make a positive impact in the community.”

Cortez called Powell “a role model who has deeply influenced young people interested in public service.”

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NE W IN ST I T U T E

Ann and John Doerr donate $50M to develop new leaders at Rice

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ith a $50 million gift from venture capitalist John Doerr ’73 and his wife, Ann ’75, through their private family foundation, Rice is planning an unconventional approach to developing students into leaders. Retired Brig. Gen. Tom Kolditz, who has headed leadership training at Yale and West Point, will direct the Doerr Institute for New Leaders to maximize the leadership capabilities of all students at Rice.

“We couldn’t be more grateful to Rice alumni Ann and John Doerr for this extremely generous support of their alma mater,” said Rice President David Leebron. “By donating the largest single gift in the university’s history and dedicating it to leadership education, the Doerrs will enable Rice to be the frontrunner in empowering students with the skills, training and confidence to make a true difference in the world.”

The Doerr Institute for New Leaders will offer each student an innovative combination of proven, timeless techniques together with modern, nextgeneration practices. The strengths of each student will be assessed and their potential will be developed in a four-year comprehensive, custom-made plan of hands-on, real-world experience and guidance from personal coaches.

John Doerr, who has partnered with iconic entrepreneurs to help build such highly successful companies as Amazon and Google, said he considers leadership at Rice to be a wise investment in the future.

“Millennials want to see the big picture and their role in it, get frequent feedback and be empowered — not micromanaged,” he said. “Now more than ever, the pressing problems of our nation and world need great teams and great leaders. New leaders must be inclusive, self-aware and

RETIRED BRIG. GEN. TOM KOLDITZ HEADS THE DOERR INSTITUTE FOR NEW LEADERS. KOLDITZ WILL DEVELOP OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS TO LEARN AND LEAD THROUGH UNIQUE EXPERIENCES.

great listeners who are attuned to the needs of their teams.”

“Throughout our lives and on any given day we are both leaders and followers,” Ann said. “The Doerr Institute’s goal is to train each student to become an effective leader. A true leader needs the skills to evaluate the goal, understand its validity, succinctly articulate it and then lead with deep compassion, moral integrity and empathy.”

Kolditz was most recently a professor in the practice of leadership and management at the Yale School of Management, where he was directing the Leadership Development Program. He has more than 25 years of experience in leadership roles, including 12 years leading the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership

at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and two years as a leadership and human resources policy analyst in the Pentagon.

“Most of a person’s capacity to lead is learned,” Kolditz said. Seventy percent of that is gained through experience, not classrooms, so the opportunities to lead teams at Rice are essential to the success of the Doerr Institute, he said.

The real-world leadership opportunities provided by this new effort are an integral component of Rice’s Initiative for Students, a three-year volunteer engagement and fundraising effort creating opportunities for hands-on experiences that allow students to apply their analytical, entrepreneurial and leadership skills. Rice students have indicated that they highly value this type of learning, and the university has made such experiences for students a priority.

“Higher education today is in a period of great transformation,” Leebron said. “Residential college and graduate education must be life-changing.” He noted that the Doerr Institute will say to every student at Rice, “You are here because you can be a great leader, and our job is to make sure your Rice experience enables you to fully realize that potential.”

The Doerrs know from personal experience how a Rice education, strong leadership and thoughtful choices can have a positive impact globally. Both Ann and John have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rice. Their previous contributions to the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership have been successful with leadership training of engineering students.

Read the full announcement here: ricemagazine.info/283 —B.J. Almond

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UN C O N V EN T I O N A L WISDO M

THE PUZZLE SOLVER Matthew Wettergreen ’08, a lecturer and undergraduate student team adviser in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), has always loved puzzles. As a specialist in bioengineering, prototyping and community building, Wettergreen sees each new engineering task as a puzzle to solve — and an opportunity for interactive learning. Wettergreen, who earned his Ph.D. in bioengineering from Rice, has an eclectic résumé that includes a specialization in biomechanics and organ printing as well as arts management, conference planning and marketing. This spring, Wettergreen and Ann Saterbak, a professor in the practice of bioengineering education and associate dean of engineering education, traveled to Ethiopia’s Jimma University, where they set up prototyping and engineering design workshops for their biomedical engineering program.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT TEACHING PROTOTYPING IN ETHIOPIA The types of simple materials that we use in the OEDK 8

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are widely available in the U.S. When I got to Ethiopia, I needed to obtain materials that were going to be widely available there. So I went to the markets in Ethiopia with the singular goal of understanding what materials are available.

We walked around for an entire day just looking at what was being sold. What’s remarkable about the Ethiopian markets, or really just the culture, is that they’ve got this great cradle-to-cradle mentality.

They don’t acquire, acquire and acquire — they acquire, use, and recycle or sell off. It’s just remarkable to see that there’s so little waste. So I had challenges [learning exercises] for faculty and students that used what was locally available.

WHAT’S THE SAME ABOUT TEACHING PROTOTYPING IN ETHIOPIA The vigor with which the students and faculty approached prototyping leads me to believe that building things from scratch with readily available materials is something that is so apparent to everyone that you don’t need to teach it. So if I put

A DA M C R U F T

ON THE NATURE OF LOWFIDELITY PROTOTYPING Low-fidelity prototyping is a system or method of making things with very inexpensive, widely available household items. It’s very useful in the engineering design process.

It’s useful for gaining consensus and for brainstorming.

It’s also useful for generating functional mechanisms. Here at the OEDK, we have a lowfidelity prototyping kit. Inside are foam blocks, Post-it notes, pipe cleaners, yarn, string, burlap twine, rubber bands, clothespins, markers, tape, scissors, Popsicle sticks, paper clips, note cards, balls, glue and Play-Doh. Also, treasures like whistles and decks of cards.

The great thing about lowfidelity prototyping is that no one is expecting it to work, look nice or be well constructed.

Nobody says, “that Post-it note looks bad,” because it’s supposed to — that’s the point.

Of course it does.

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TR A D I T I O N S | D U N CAN C O L L EG E

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UNCAN COLLEGE, RICE’S NEWEST RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE, opened in 2009, but that doesn’t mean it’s too young to have established a few traditions. Named for Ann and Charles Duncan ’49, the five-story, 324-bed college earned a LEED Gold certification for its eco-friendly design.

The college’s opening coincided with Baker College’s major architectural overhaul, during which Baker students were housed at Duncan. When the Bakerites left, they took their amenities with them, including a Ping-Pong table, recalls Drayton Thomas ’14. (“It was theirs,” he acknowledged.) Then-freshmen Zack Carlins and Evan Austin, wanting to play Ping-Pong late one Wednesday night in 2010, got creative. They moved some tables from the game theory classroom into the quad and collected rolls of toilet paper in a pillowcase from around the college to serve as an impromptu net.

Justin Winikoff ’14 brought a guitar. Others followed.

Soon, the party was moved to Mondays at midnight.

Flyers were posted inviting all Duncaroos to Monday Night Lights, and a tradition was born.

Eventually, Monday Night Lights shifted to once a month at 10 p.m. “It is part of the O-Week schedule and is one of the first things new students get to see about Duncan,” Winikoff said.

“MNL is among the most inclusive events we have at Duncan and was a great study break and opportunity to catch up with friends and make new ones.”

Incoming freshmen can be an imaginative lot. Thomas credits Becca Hamm Conard ’14 and

TA N Y I A J O H N S O N | D U N C A N C O L L EG E

a bin of things in front of you, you’re going to want to play with them.

MIXING FORMAL AND INFORMAL LEARNING I think the definition of formal education is shifting right now. Where we need to be in the future is a learning environment that is much more open and active and includes things like low-fidelity prototyping as a method of instruction.

One of the successes of the OEDK is the layout — it promotes peer-to-peer learning, social learning, etc. If you observe someone in the room doing

Josh Chartier ’14 with devising a variation of “capture the flag” in fall 2010. Students armed with NERF guns prowled through the halls of Duncan in a game that came to be known as Donnybrook. “Now, it’s often held during oneof the nights of Willy Week, and the last one I was there for (March 2014) had well over 50 students participating,” Thomas said.

Students at Duncan have little chance of staying dry on their birthdays. “On a Duncaroo’s birthday, he or she is thrown/lowered into the Dunc Tank (water feature outside of Duncan’s Commons) by his or her friends while they sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” explained Lidija Wilhelms ’14, who served as secretary and later vice president in the Duncan government. “This dunc-ing happens regardless of the weather and time of year,” she added.

Some birthday celebrants are understandably hesitant to take part in this tradition.

Wilhelms cited cases of students who ran, deleted their birthdates from their Facebook pages or even purposefully stayed away from campus on their special day. But, she said, almost all are eventually dunc-ed. Their reward — such as it is — is for the drenched birthday person to hug everyone who was involved in the dunking to share the “Dunc love.”

—Franz Brotzen

something you want to learn, you just ask.

Design education has formal models and methods of instruction, but the execution and practice of design has embedded informal learning within it.

There’s always going to be a place for formal and informal education.

But “the classroom” might look different — it might be students presenting to teachers or games being played that teach the concepts of engineering design process. Or, the classroom might not have walls anymore — it might be a trip to the zoo.

ON PUZZLES THAT ARE “CHEWY” I particularly like “chewy” puzzles. These are puzzles that can be extremely frustrating at the very beginning, but reward the player by spending a little bit of time thinking about it. They are excruciatingly difficult when you first see them and require a paradigm shift in order to attack them.

PLAYING TO LEARN The best case for informal learning is play. Play is nothing more than a safe place to fail.

—Interview by Jana Olson ’15 S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 9

PICTURED WITH PRESIDENT LEEBRON ARE ANN ’75 AND JOHN DOERR ’73, WITH Y. PING SUN.

DAV ID W. L E E B R ON

Can you teach that?

Two months ago we announced a gift, the largest ever to Rice, from alumni John ’73 and Ann Doerr ’75 to establish a new institute at Rice to develop the leadership capacities of our students. One of the most common questions I have been asked since then has been, “Can you teach leadership?” Or take the flip question, “Can you learn leadership?” The answer that underlies the new Doerr Institute for New Leaders is an emphatic “Yes.” That is not to say that some people are not born with more of certain leadership aptitudes. To take a different context, we have recently learned that a number of diseases have both environmental and genetic components. Likewise, some of our skills and habits may also have a genetic component, but the manifestation of those attributes will be greatly affected by both learning and practice. There is increasing evidence, for example, that genetics plays a role in determining whether we are introverts or extroverts. And while extroverts may naturally come by some leadership skills

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or attributes, many great leaders and public personalities have actually been introverts.

I wrote earlier this year about some of the changes occurring in higher education, and what our students now expect from their colleges and universities. Much more important than changes in technology are changes in the view of what can actually be taught and learned. I saw this first in the evolution of law schools. It used to be thought that some lawyering skills one “came by naturally” or could only be learned “on the job.” A good example was negotiation.

But that view changed, and sophisticated programs to teach students negotiation emerged. This was closely related to an increasingly sophisticated analysis of the negotiation process by researchers and scholars.

Much has historically been excluded from the formal domain of higher education because it was thought of either as innate or as something that could only be learned through practical experience

gained after completing formal education.

The expanding notion of what we both can and should teach university-level students demands not only that we create programs to do so, but that we find ways to measure our success and to assess the effectiveness of such programs.

Another central example of a “can we teach that?” topic is creativity and its close cousin, innovation. A great deal of ink has been spilt on the subjects of creativity and innovation, and the difference between them, but innovation can be thought of as the execution of the results of creativity, namely new ideas and ways of looking at things. Without creativity, you get no innovation.

This is one of the reasons Rice and other universities take a liberal arts approach to a college education, emphasizing a broad education and the importance of the humanities. We urge a solid foundation in art, literature and other areas, in part, because we believe the study of those areas helps develop creative capacities and habits.

This importance of education for creativity and innovation was reflected at Rice in the decision to build the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), which provides students the space, materials and instructional resources to foster creativity and enable innovative solutions to problems. This was an immediate hit not only with engineering students, but also other students who became part of interdisciplinary teams.

Indeed, one of the educational goals served by the work taking place in the OEDK is the learning of effective teamwork.

This kind of learning was quickly determined to be both very effective and exciting for students. The result was demands to make it more available in the engineering context, while adapting and applying the concept to other areas. The new Moody Center for the Arts, scheduled to open next spring, will include a space that is an arts analogue to the OEDK. And we are now exploring the design kitchen concept for biosciences and social sciences.

Leadership, creativity, innovation and teamwork. Yes, we can teach that, and we must if our students, whatever their chosen endeavors, are to realize their full potential.

TO M M Y L AV E R G N E

President’s no te

Sports News and Profiles

Rice Baseball Goes 20-for-20

R I C E S P O RTS I N FO R M AT I O N

In May, the Rice baseball team brought home its 20th-straight conference championship, an eyeopening two-decade streak that includes regular season and/or conference tournament titles spanning three different league affiliations.

T

he Owls posted another winning record (37-22) and advanced to NCAA Regionals for the 21st consecutive year. Rice’s roller-coaster ride in a rain-soaked (doubleelimination) NCAA Tournament included a first-round loss and bounce back to beat two crosstown foes. The Owls beat Houston Baptist 3-1 on a Sunday morning before coming back to face the University of Houston later that evening. Having a late 8 p.m. start from earlier rain delays was tough enough, but the challenge got even more demanding as the rivals proceeded to battle in a 20-inning marathon that lasted past 2 a.m. Rice broke the six-hour deadlock, 3-2, with freshman Ryan Chandler scoring the

winning run. It was an epic victory, but with little time to recover the Owls’ season came to an end in the tournament in an afternoon game only a few hours later.

Chandler, Grayson Lewis ’16 and Ford Stainback ’15 were named to the All-NCAA Regional Team. Matt Ditman ’15, Austin Orewiler ’15, John Clay Reeves ’16, Stainback and Jordan Stephens ’15 were named first team C-USA All-Conference, and Kirby Taylor ’15 earned second team All-Conference honors. Chandler also was named C-USA Freshman of the Year. “It was a good championship season,” said Rice head coach Wayne Graham.

—john sullivan S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 11

scoreboard

Ultimate Win

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n May 17, Torque was yet again the No. 1 seed entering bracket play and defeated Williams College 15-6 in the quarterfinals before winning a 12-9 victory against Carleton College in the semifinals. Torque moved on to the championship game and defeated Bowdoin College with a final score of 8-6.

Ultimate Frisbee is a team field sport played with a disk. The field is divided into two end zones, one each at the right and left end of the field, and a play field in the middle. Two teams begin at opposite end zones and try to advance the disc to the other end zone. If a team successfully advances the disc into the opposite end zone, that team scores a point. Then teams swap directions, and the team that scored starts again with the first throw.

Rice’s Ultimate Frisbee club team began in 1996 under the pun-fueled name Catch Her on the Fly. Since then, the team has gone through a couple of name changes and played in several different divisions. The current team name, Torque, 12

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is a play on the formula: torque = R x F (“R” for Rice, “F” for Frisbee).

After its first championship win in 2014, the team lost one of its strongest handlers, Monica Matsumoto ’14, upon graduation. With a change in strategy and recruitment, the team continued to be successful. Instead of focusing on a few key players, the team adopted strategies that allowed the whole team to work together and create a stronger offense and defense.

But it wasn’t just the strategy that led

the team to its second win. Looking back on this winning season, Maya Stokes ’15, last season’s co-captain, noted the whole team’s dedication as one of the biggest reasons behind the team’s success. “We had over 30 people coming out to practices, and there’s only seven people at a time on the field,” Stokes said. Some of the team members even created the “five push-up club,” voluntarily doing five push-ups every time someone dropped the disk.

All of the seniors, including Stokes and Nichole Kwee ’15, even missed graduation to participate in the championship tournament. For some, it was a hard decision to make.

“My dad was pretty upset. It took a lot of talking back and forth and letting him know how important this was to me. The decision to miss graduation was unanimous,” said Kwee. Stokes added, “There’s nothing cooler than celebrating your four years at Rice by winning a national championship with your team.”

—Mijin Han ’15

R O B E RT B R A Z I L E

The Rice women’s Ultimate Frisbee team, Torque, won its second national championship at the 2015 USA Ultimate Division III College Championships, held in May in Rockford, Ill. Torque was the No. 1 seed heading into the tournament and won their pool May 16, beating Wake Forest University 15-9, Luther College 15-7 and St. Olaf College 15-6.

scoreboard

SOPH OMORES RU LE

Multiple Honors for Daisy Ding Track and field standout Daisy Ding ’17 is Conference USA Female Field Athlete of the Year. The accolade came soon after Ding placed eighth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore., earning her First-Team All-American honors.

At the June championships, Ding’s triple jump performance included a personal best of 13.18 meters. This year, she also won CUSA titles in the indoor and outdoor seasons, competing in both triple jump and high jump. She is the first women’s outdoor track and field athlete to earn All-American DAISY DING status since 2012, when long distance runner Becky Wade ’12 earned the title. Not since 1993 have Rice triple jumpers advanced to the national championships. Cybil Obiozor ’17, who was nursing a hamstring injury, also competed in the triple jump at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, earning AllAmerican honorable mention by placing 20th with a best jump of 12.51 meters.

R I C E S P O RTS I N FO R M AT I O N

Decathlete Scott Filip Earns All-American Honor Scott Filip ’17 (left), who competes in the grueling decathlon event, earned FirstTeam All-American honors after placing eighth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in June. Filip set a personal record by totaling 7,647 points. He had previously won the decathlon at the C-USA Outdoor Championship. Decathletes compete in these events over a two-day span — a 100-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400-meter dash, pole vault, hurdles, discus, javelin and 1,500-meter run.

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Scene

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The Tastes of Summer Photo by Jeff Fitlow Summer and its bounty are evident every Tuesday from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Rice’s Farmers Market, where seasonal fruits and vegetables abound. Marketgoers can also find fresh baked breads and pastries, handmade goat cheeses and natural pet treats from more than 30 vendors, including Atkinson Farms, Angela’s Oven, Blue Heron Farms and more. The market, with free parking, is behind Rice Stadium at 5600 Greenbriar Dr. and accessible from Entrance 13B. Learn more: www. facebook.com/ricefarmersmarket —Tracey Rhoades

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Abstract

Findings, Research and more

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Rice University boots up powerful microscopes This summer, Rice completed a complex installation of new electron microscopes that will allow researchers to peer deeper than ever into the fabric of the universe.

The Titan Themis scanning/transmission electron microscope — one of the most powerful in the United States — will enable scientists from Rice as well as academic and industrial partners to view and analyze materials smaller than a nanometer — a billionth of a meter — with startling clarity.

“Seeing single atoms is exciting, of course, and it’s beautiful,” said Emilie Ringe, a Rice assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry. “But scientists saw single atoms in the ’90s, and even before. Now, the real breakthrough is that we can identify the composition of those atoms, and 16

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do it easily and reliably.” Ringe’s research group will operate the Titan Themis and a companion microscope that will image larger samples.

Images will be captured with a variety of detectors, including X-ray, optical and multiple electron detectors and a 4K-resolution camera, equivalent to the number of pixels in the most modern high-resolution televisions. The microscope gives researchers the ability to create 3-D structural reconstructions and carry out electric field mapping of subnanoscale materials.

Ringe said Rice’s Titan is a fourthgeneration model manufactured in the Netherlands. It’s the first to be installed in the U.S. “The beauty of these newer instruments is their analytical capabilities,” Ringe said. “Before, in order to see single

atoms, we had to work a machine for an entire day and get it just right and then take a picture and hold our breath. These days, seeing atoms is routine.

“And now we can probe a particular atom’s chemical composition. Through various techniques, either via scattering intensity, X-rays emission or electronbeam absorption, we can figure out, say, that we’re looking at a palladium atom or a carbon atom. We couldn’t do that before.”

The second instrument, a Helios NanoLab 600 DualBeam microscope, will be used for 3-D imaging, analysis of larger samples and preparation of thin slices of samples for the more powerful Titan next door. Both tools reside in the university’s Brockman Hall for Physics. Watch a video: ricemagazine.info/299 —Mike Williams

J E F F F I T LO W

New electron microscopes will capture images at subnanometer resolution

abstract

POLITICAL SCIENCE

When it comes to female mayors, Texas cities have strong showing

Y EO N J O N G KO O | TO M M Y L AV E R G N E

When San Antonio voters recently elected Ivy Taylor, an African–American woman, to serve as mayor, it was a first. But it was not the city’s first female mayor — that distinction belongs to Lila Cockrell, who served several terms starting in 1975.

In fact, although Texas’ conservative political culture is usually seen as an impediment to women’s political success, Texas has had a remarkably high number of women mayors, according to a recently published article by a Rice political scientist. “A Descriptive Analysis of Female Mayors: The U.S. and Texas in Comparative Perspective,” by Melissa Marschall, a professor of political science, appeared in “Local Politics and Mayoral Elections in 21st Century America: The Keys to City Hall” (Routledge, 2014).

Marschall’s key finding reveals Texas cities have a strong record of electing female mayors. Among the largest 20 U.S. cities, 13 have elected a female mayor at some point in their history, and six of those 13 cities are in Texas. Marschall found that 635 female mayors have been elected in Texas since 1957 (when the research collection began); they represent slightly more than half of the state’s 1,207 municipalities.

Marschall also found that in Texas many of the largest cities have elected more than one female mayor. For example, Houston has elected (and re-elected) two women mayors, and Corpus Christi elected its third female mayor in 2012. In addition, the largest cities in Texas can claim several firsts — the first Latina mayor in the U.S.

FLUORESCENT QUANTUM DOTS IN THE LEAVES OF ARABIDOPSIS PLANTS UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT.

(Laredo), the first openly gay female mayor (Houston) and one of the first cities to elect a female mayor (San Antonio). Read more: ricemagazine.info/284 —Amy McCaig CHEMISTRY

Scientists trace nanoparticles from plants to caterpillars In one of the first studies to examine how nanoparticles move through human-relevant food chains, Rice scientists traced the uptake and accumulation of quantum dots from water to plant roots, plant leaves and leaf-eating caterpillars.

“With industrial use of nanoparticles on the rise, there are increasing questions about how they move through the environment and whether they may accumulate in high levels in plants and animals that people eat,” said study co-author Janet Braam, professor and chair of the Department of BioSciences.

Braam and colleagues studied the uptake of fluorescent quantum dots

by Arabidopsis thaliana, an oft-studied plant species that is a relative of mustard, broccoli and kale. In particular, the team looked at how various surface coatings affected how quantum dots moved from roots to leaves as well as how the particles accumulated in leaves. The team also studied how quantum dots behaved when caterpillars called cabbage loopers (Trichoplusia ni) fed upon plant leaves containing quantum dots.

“Very little work has been done in this area, especially in terrestrial plants,

which are the cornerstone of human food webs,” said the study’s first author Yeonjong Koo, a postdoctoral research associate in Braam’s lab. Some toxins, like mercury and DDT, tend to “bioaccumulate,” or become more concentrated as they move up the food chain from plants to animals.

To examine if nanoparticles bioaccumulate, Koo studied quantum dots, submicroscopic bits of semiconductors that were easy to measure because they glow brightly under ultraviolet light. She treated the surface of quantum dots with three different polymer coatings — one positively charged, one negatively charged and one neutral.

“Our tests were not specifically designed to measure bioaccumulation in caterpillars, but our data suggests that particles with positively charged coatings may pose a risk of bioaccumulation,” Koo said. “Based on our findings, more tests should be conducted.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation. Read more: ricemagazine.info/285 —Jade Boyd BIOENGINEERING

Microendoscope could eliminate unneeded biopsies In a clinical study of patients in the United States and China, researchers found that a low-cost, portable, battery-powered microendoscope developed by Rice bioengineers could eventually eliminate the need for costly biopsies for many patients undergoing standard endoscopic screening for esophageal cancer.

The study, which involved 147 U.S. and Chinese patients undergoing examination for potentially malignant squamous cell tumors, explored whether Rice’s low-cost, high-resolution fiberoptic imaging system could reduce the need for unnecessary biopsies when used in combination with a conventional endoscope — the worldwide standard of care for esophageal cancer diagnoses.

All patients with suspect lesions were examined with both a traditional endoscope and Rice’s microendoscope. Biopsies were

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abstract

BIOENGINEERING

Designing a better way to study stomach flu The bacteria and viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis often come from contaminated food or water and result in cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. In medical terms, these pathogens fall under the heading of “human enteric disease,” and while they may be common, they can also be deadly. Diarrheal diseases still account for about 17 percent of worldwide human deaths each year, and they are the secondleading killer of children 5 and younger.

One roadblock to studying enteric pathogens, like human rotaviruses and E. coli, is that the organisms behave differently in humans than they do in animals typically used in medical research. Stem cell research has led to recent breakthroughs in the development of more realistic cell culture models, but there’s room for improvement.

“Infectious-disease labs that study enteric disease need better models that faithfully simulate the physiology of the intestine,” said Rice tissue engineering 18

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researcher Jane Grande-Allen, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering.

“This organ contains multiple types of cells that are arranged in complex patterns, and these tissues are constantly on the move. They contract and expand all the time, and we suspect some pathogens take advantage of that motion to mount their attacks.”

Thanks to a $5.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Grande-Allen and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center are embarking on a fiveyear program to create a bioreactor that more closely simulates the complex tissues and dynamic movements of the intestinal track. Read more: ricemagazine.info/287 —Jade Boyd

CHEMISTRY

Carbon nanotube fibers make superior links to brain Carbon nanotube fibers invented at Rice University have proven superior to metal electrodes for deep brain stimulation and to read signals from a neuronal network.

Because they provide a two-way connection, they show promise for treating patients with neurological disorders while monitoring the real-time response of neural circuits in areas that control movement, mood and bodily functions.

The fibers created by the Rice lab of chemist and chemical engineer Matteo Pasquali consist of bundles of long nanotubes originally intended for aerospace applications where strength,

REBECCA RICHARDS-KORTUM HOLDS A FIBER-OPTIC CABLE ATTACHED TO THE MICROENDOSCOPE. BELOW: IN THESE MICROENDOSCOPE IMAGES, THE WHITE SPOTS ARE CELL NUCLEI, WHICH ARE IRREGULARLY SHAPED AND ENLARGED IN CANCEROUS TUMORS (RIGHT) AS COMPARED WITH HEALTHY TISSUE (LEFT).

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obtained based upon the results of the traditional endoscopic exam. A pathology exam revealed that more than half of those receiving biopsies — 58 percent — did not have high-grade precancer or cancer. The researchers found that the microendoscopic exam could have spared unnecessary biopsies for about 90 percent of the patients with benign lesions.

“For patients, biopsies are stressful and sometimes painful,” said lead researcher Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and director of Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies. “In addition, in low-resource settings, pathology costs frequently exceed endoscopy costs. So the microendoscope could both improve patient outcomes and provide a significant cost-saving advantage if used in conjunction with a traditional endoscope.” The research was supported by the National Cancer Institute and is available online in the journal Gastroenterology.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/286 —Jade Boyd

abstract

weight and conductivity are paramount.

The individual nanotubes measure only a few nanometers across, but when millions are bundled in a process called wet spinning, they become threadlike fibers about a quarter the width of a human hair.

“We developed these fibers as highstrength, high-conductivity materials,” Pasquali said. “Yet, once we had them in our hand, we realized that they had an unexpected property: They are really soft, much like a thread of silk.

Their unique combination of strength, conductivity and softness makes them ideal for interfacing with the electrical function of the human body.”

The simultaneous arrival in 2012 of Caleb Kemere, a Rice assistant professor who brought expertise in animal models

of Parkinson’s disease, and lead author Flavia Vitale, a research scientist in Pasquali’s lab with degrees in chemical and biomedical engineering, prompted the investigation.

“The brain is basically the consistency of pudding and doesn’t interact well with stiff metal electrodes,” Kemere said.

“The dream is to have electrodes with the same consistency, and that’s why we’re really excited about these flexible carbon nanotube fibers and their longterm biocompatibility.” Read more: ricemagazine.info/288 —Mike Williams

FLAVIA VITALE PREPARES CARBON NANOTUBE FIBERS FOR TESTING.

J E F F F I T LO W | PA S Q U A L I L A B

CALEB KEMERE DISCUSSES NEW RESEARCH AIMED AT USING CARBON NANOTUBE FIBERS.

MERGING INSTITUTES

Meet the Smalley-Curl Institute It’s quite literally the brainchild of two multidisciplinary research institutes at Rice — the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the Rice Quantum Institute. The merger will be finalized this summer.

“The new institute will engage faculty, postdoctoral and student researchers at all levels to participate in activities where they communicate their breakthroughs, establish new collaborations, forge into new, crosscutting and interdisciplinary research areas, and seek new means of supporting their work,” said Alberto Pimpinelli, who was named executive director. Pimpinelli is a faculty fellow in the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering.

The Rice Quantum Institute was founded as the university’s first interdisciplinary institute in 1979

by Robert Curl, Richard Smalley, Frank Tittel and other Rice faculty members. Since 1990, it has hosted a highly successful and internationally respected graduate program in applied physics. Smalley, who died in 2005, shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Curl, now University Professor Emeritus and the Kenneth S. PitzerSchlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences, and Harold Kroto, now the Francis Eppes Professor of Chemistry at Florida State, for the discovery of carbon fullerenes at Rice in 1985.

The Smalley Institute grew from Rice’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, which Smalley established in the mid-1990s to foster growing interest in nanotechnology.

The Smalley-Curl Institute will support the activities of each of its parent institutes while simultaneously broadening its efforts to engage more faculty and students and foster new collaborations at the frontiers of science.

—jade boyd

PAIRS OF CARBON NANOTUBE FIBERS

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abst ract

O SHM A N EN G I N EERI N G DE SIG N K ITC HE N

E

ach academic year, the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen hums with activity, as student teams work to create solutions to a broad range of engineering problems. Here is a small selection of some of the ingenious projects that students developed this past academic year. For a complete list, go here: ricemagazine.info/300

It’s a tragedy that happens multiple times every year: An average of 38 children die each year after being left in hot cars. Five recent Rice University graduates have designed a new car seat accessory that not only can protect infants accidentally left in hot cars, but also can notify caregivers and emergency personnel.

Audrey Clayton, Rachel Wang, Jason Fang, Ralph LaFrance and Ge You, who graduated from Rice in May, spent the past year working at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen to develop Infant SOS. The project builds on several previous OEDK car seat projects.

The device is fitted into standard car seats and can issue auditory, visual and text alerts when it senses that the infant is in danger. It also features a passive cooling system designed to keep an infant’s core temperature below a critical point (heat stroke begins at 104 degrees Fahrenheit) until emergency responders arrive.

“The benefit of our project is not only the alert system, but also the cooling system,” Wang said. “The device actually absorbs heat from the environment and the baby and is able to keep the baby cool longer, giving extra time for the parent to return or for someone to notice the flashing lights and see that a baby is trapped in the car.”

The students’ ultimate goal is to make the removable accessory easy to use and accessible to a large market.

The students expect the device to cost approximately $150.

The project was funded by Dr. Susan Baldwin ’82 through her company, Mamoru Enterprises LLC. She proposed the senior design project after learning that the child of one of her patients had nearly died in an overheated car.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/289 —Amy McCaig

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AmbuLink strengthens connections between doctors, ambulance crews Rice engineering students are helping a Houston hospital develop a more reliable way to keep in contact with inbound ambulance crews. The AmbuLink team worked closely with Texas Children’s Hospital over the past year on a system that bridges gaps between cellular service signals and streams audio and, when necessary, video, from the ambulance to doctors and dispatchers.

The students, all May 2015 graduates and electrical engineering majors, are Adam Bloom, Christopher Buck, Supreeth Mannava and Chase Stewart. They assembled laptops, cellular modems, a camera and wireless headsets into a suite that allows emergency medical technicians to keep their hands free while communicating important information back to base.

Brent Kaziny, a Texas Children’s doctor specializing in emergency medicine, said occasional but ongoing frustration over gaps in communications prompted him and colleague Benjamin Choi, also an emergency room doctor at Texas Children’s, to brainstorm. Kaziny and Choi are also assistant professors at Baylor College of Medicine and co-directors of knowledge management and innovations for the section of pediatric emergency medicine at Texas Children’s.

“There are often times where the quality is poor and it’s difficult to make out what’s going on,” Kaziny said of communication with ambulance crews.

Texas Children’s in-house ambulance service, known as the Kangaroo Crew, moves patients as necessary from hospitals across the globe 24 hours a day, seven days a week and performs more than 1,500 transports by ground or air every year. The crew keeps an electronic record of vital signs, but the AmbuLink system should someday allow data to stream continuously from the ambulance while en route.

Because cell service can be spotty between cities, the Rice team aims to eliminate gaps in coverage by combining the signals of three providers.

Watch a video: ricemagazine.info/290 —Mike Williams

J E F F F I T LO W

Rice engineers design car seat accessory to save children left in dangerously hot cars

abstract

Have a seat and mind the gravity

A team of Rice University students have designed furniture intended for use on the moon, Mars and whatever other far-flung destinations humanity may consider in the future.

At the behest of NASA, a team of five then-seniors in mechanical engineering designed and assembled a prototype chair and table meant to give maximum flexibility to astronauts in space or for habitats in places other than Earth. The Lunar Lounger team assembled the pieces at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen as its capstone project.

Capstone projects are required of most of the university’s senior engineering students.

“You’re going to have very limited space, so you can’t just send any furniture up,” said team member Laura Blumenschein.

“And then you’ve got the partial gravity.”

(Roughly one-sixth of Earth’s gravity on the moon, one-third on Mars.)

“In addition to changing how humans interact with the furniture, it’s a lot easier for

astronauts to stand and work,” she said. That requires tables, in particular, to easily adjust for both standing and seated work.

The team of Blumenschein, Archit Chaba, Rey Amendola, Alex Schmidt and Dan Peera also had to consider gravity while balancing weight and strength requirements. “We can make our furniture a lot lighter, a lot less strong (than Earthbound designs),” Blumenschein said. The chair and table pack flat for shipping and are designed for maximum adjustability.

“Part of our mission requirement was to focus on the daily activities of the astronauts and not their sleep habits or anything like that,” Amendola said. “When we thought about what astronauts do every day and what kind of furniture they need, we narrowed down the scope of the project to chairs for sitting and tables for working, relaxing or mealtimes.” Watch a video: ricemagazine.info/291 —Mike Williams

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

Runway Boys fly where no Owls have gone before In an age of routine air travel, drone aircraft and robotic pilots, it’s easy to forget that aviation is difficult and unforgiving.

Runway Boys, five Rice students who spent more than 2,000 hours creating a remote-controlled airplane to compete in the world’s premier collegiate aerospace engineering contest, had a daily reminder over a period of eight months.

“This is a huge optimization problem,” team member Cory Black ’15 said just before the team’s third and final test flight at an airfield south of Houston in Alvin, Texas. “If we only had to worry about one thing, it would be different, but we need to fly three missions with very different parameters.”

Black and teammates Leon Chen, Sam de la Torre, Ryan McKnight and Matt Lord, all mechanical engineering majors who graduated in May 2015, built their plane for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ annual Design/Build/Fly competition April 10–12 in Tucson, Ariz. The contest was limited to fewer than 100 teams from the world’s top aerospace engineering programs.

No Rice team had ever competed, and Runway Boys finished with distinction: They got 29th place and were one of only 23 teams to complete all three flight missions. The team also captured the $500 award for best aerospace or transportation technology in Rice’s annual Engineering Design Showcase last spring.

“There were teams from Israel, Turkey, China, Japan and all across the U.S.,” de la Torre said.

“MIT has a budget of $25,000 for this each year. And the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Turkish Air Force Academy were there.”

The final version of the airplane had a balsa and spruce frame covered with Mylar film.

It weighed about five pounds and was designed to perform in a speed test, a cargo-carrying flight and a cargo airdrop mission.

Runway Boys finished ahead of most of the other teams on the speed test. On the crucial cargo flight, their modified controls allowed the plane to clear the runway with inches to spare, and the redesigned landing gear took the weight. They also dropped all four plastic balls on target. In the end, Runway Boys finished all three missions without a crash — which 70 percent of the competitors were unable to do. Read more and watch a video: ricemagazine.info/292 —Jade Boyd

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SUM

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MMER

AZ to

BY J A D E B OY D SCOTT EGAN LY N N G O S N E L L MIJIN HAN ’15 PAT R I C K K U R P CARRIE OBENLAND OWENS TRACEY RHOADES JENNY ROZELLE ’00 T E D WA L K E R K E L LY W E I N E R S M I T H MIKE WILLIAMS PHOTOS + IMAGES JEFF FITLOW T O M M Y L AV E R G N E TA N Y I A J O H N S O N

While the majority of students have left for the summer to pursue internships, jobs, study abroad fellowships or just some needed R&R, the Rice campus manages to stay fully occupied as we welcome visitors of all ages to our colleges, classrooms a n d p l a y i n g f i e l d s . We ’ v e alphabetized a compendium of cool things that give Rice its unique summer vibe.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LETTER?

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A

AP SUMMER INSTITUTE

Every summer, more than 2,000 teachers from across the U.S. and several countries visit Rice to attend AP and pre-AP classes through the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies Advanced Placement Summer Institute (APSI). As one of the largest programs in the nation, Rice provides 80 four-day courses for new and experienced teachers in English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, social studies, art and music.

More and more high school students around the world take AP courses as a means to earn college credits in advance. And because of this trend, the demand for AP teachers has increased significantly since 1995 when Rice first opened APSI, which has grown into a program that is considered a rite of passage for teachers who are involved in advanced academics.

“Participants have the opportunity to learn from master AP teachers and engage with peers from all across the country,” said Jennifer Gigliotti, executive director of the Center for College Readiness and associate dean of the Glasscock School.

While taking their APSI courses at Rice, teachers get a chance to learn about not only the subject matters of their courses, but also techniques they can use in their classrooms. —M.H.

B

D

BARBECUE

Barbecues abound, even on campus.

Whether it’s Housing and Dining providing a Friday-night feast for the Rice students who are living on campus this summer, the BioScience Research Collaborative’s Patties on the Patio or even the occasional group lighting up the grill by Valhalla, relaxing with burgers and hot dogs is a popular campus pastime. —J.R.

C

COMMON READING

Prior to arriving for the fall semester, new students are given a glimpse of the academic side of Rice through the Common Reading program, which selects a single book for each year’s matriculating class to create open dialogue about a significant topic. New students will be expected to read three chapters of this year’s selection, “Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do” by Claude M. Steele, as well as a variety of supplemental readings and materials through an online resource. Organized discussions will follow after students arrive for the school year.

The Common Reading program is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduates’ Student Success Initiatives, a campuswide effort that aims to support students emotionally and academically throughout their years at Rice. —J.R.

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DUKE TIP

For the second consecutive summer, Rice is hosting two threeweek terms of Duke TIP’s (Duke University Talent Identification Program) Academy for Summer Studies. The program offers an exceptional academic and social experience for approximately 380 eighth- through 10thgraders, who attend classes on campus while residing in one of the colleges.

Students qualify for TIP during seventh grade through the 7th Grade Talent Search.

They are admitted based on being in the 95th percentile on state standardized tests or an equivalent test. Part of the 7th Grade Talent Search is then taking the SAT/ACT as an abovegrade-level testing experience, after which Duke TIP invites students for their Summer Studies program based on their SAT/ACT score. During Summer Studies, these academically gifted young people attend class for seven hours each weekday and three hours on Saturdays.

The intense, stimulating courses encourage students to think critically about themselves and their world. —J.R.

E

EMS

While the undergraduate and graduate student population is decreased during summer months, almost every college is occupied with residents attending overnight camps, training programs or college preparedness workshops. Therefore, REMS — Rice University Emergency Medical Services — remains at the ready.

Emergencies are handled the same as they are during the academic year, but emergency technicians do see an increase in outdoor calls. “We get more calls for heat emergencies,” Lisa Basgall, EMS director, said.

“Fire ant bites, sprains and allergic reactions are common calls in the summer.” —T.R.

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F

FROZEN TREATS

What better way to beat the heat than with ice cream? For one afternoon every summer, Rice’s Staff Advisory Committee sponsors an annual Ice Cream Social for all university employees. More than 800 staff and faculty members line up to eat ice cream scooped by Rice VIPs like President David Leebron and other university officials. At other times around campus, you might find one of our chemists freezing a new batch of ice cream with liquid nitrogen, which is a big hit with young visitors.

—J.R.

GALL WASPS

Gall wasps are a peculiar group of plant-feeding insects that feed on the southern live oak, the oak species covering the Rice campus. They perform an amazing trick over the summer. As the mom lays the egg and the baby larva hatches, the chemicals they release induce the tree to grow a tumor-like growth of plant material that the insect lives within and feeds on called a “gall.” There are four very common species all growing this summer: Disholcaspis cinerosa, Belonocnema treatae, Andricus quercuslanigera and Callirhytis quercusbatatoides. Each forms a different gall structure on a different part of the tree, including a pea-shaped brown gall and a fuzzy tuft gall that form on the underside of new growing leaves, or silver stem swellings and spherical orange galls that form on the branches.

Each houses the gall-forming wasp and usually a diversity of predatory insects too, trying to attack the gall-former or just feed on the gall tissue as well. —S.E. S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 25

H 3

HOUSING AND DINING More than any department, Housing and Dining has its finger on the pulse of Rice’s summer activities. These stats hint at the massive effort involved in keeping campus running smoothly during summer 2015.

CHEFS participating in national competitions

I

5

SERVERIES used to feed various organizations and student groups WEST SERVERY, NORTH SERVERY, SOUTH SERVERY, BAKER SERVERY AND SID RICHARDSON SERVERY

17

CHEFS WORKING

56

OVERNIGHT PROGRAMS staying on campus

240

HOUSING AND DINING STAFF MEMBERS working this summer, out of the 251 who work during the academic year

INSTITUTE OF BIOSCIENCES AND BIOENGINEERING REGATTA

Twelve teams of girls competed June 25 in a cardboard canoe regatta at the Chávez High School natatorium as part of a multiyear STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) engagement initiative sponsored

by Rice’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB). The races featured cardboard, two-person boats that 50 IBB Girls STEM Initiative participants spent the week designing, building and testing. Each boat was covered in colorful duct tape, and a pair of girls paddled each boat in qualifying heats and finals as the girls’ families and mentors cheered from the stands. The regatta was the signature event of this year’s IBB Girls STEM Initiative, an intensive three-year preparatory program designed to immerse high-school girls in cutting-edge biomedical research, address areas in their educational background that need strengthening and foster longreaching mentoring relationships.

Watch a video: ricemagazine.info/293

—J.B.

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JUPITER

“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight” ... is probably the planet Venus. For much of 2015, the second planet from the sun shined brightly as the “evening star,” beginning at dusk. But beginning June 29, Venus and Jupiter — the evening’s other bright planet — approached one another in a rare conjunction. The two planets achieved their closest approach June 29–July 2, when they appeared less than

1 degree apart, about half the size of the full moon. The Rice Campus Observatory opened for the event, which was hosted by Patrick Hartigan, professor of physics and astronomy. About 20 people viewed the planets from small telescopes set up on a Brockman Hall terrace.

“The planets are in actuality far-separated, with Jupiter on the opposite side of the sun as seen from Earth and Venus on the near side.”

500

PEOPLE WHO HAVE LOCKED THEMSELVES OUT OF THEIR ROOMS at some point during the summer

More than

500

LOAVES OF BREAD made each week to be distributed across the campus and at the Whoo Deli

11,250

BOX LUNCHES made for groups on campus

K

More than

67,000 ROOM KEYS distributed

More than

145,000 MEALS SERVED

K–12

The Rice Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM) seeks to improve K­–12 science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in Houston-area school districts by offering a number of summer programs, including the Schlumberger Energy Explorations Academy.

This program exposes rising 10th-graders to the field of energy through laboratory experiences, hands-on activities and various tours. During two weeks on campus, students gain an understanding of energy transformations as well as valuable experience in basic laboratory skills. From designing and building solar ovens and roller coasters, to operating fuel cell cars and making microrockets, students engage with energy on many different levels.

They also get to tour Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, the Thomann research labs, the 3-D Visualization Lab and the BioScience Research Collaborative. Docent-led tours and scavenger hunts at the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum in Galveston and the Houston Museum of Natural Science round out the program.

Offered free of charge, the summer academy hopes to encourage and enable students from backgrounds historically underrepresented in STEM. The partnership between Schlumberger and R-STEM has provided an exciting educational opportunity for students since 2008. —C.O.O.

Hartigan, who has written extensively about the conjunction online, said the next comparable evening conjunction between Venus and Jupiter won’t occur until 2023.

So, what did they see? “A nasty cloud obscured the event for two hours and followed the objects as they set,” Hartigan reported. Most of the crowd left, “but the few who stayed were treated to something truly spectacular — the planets right next to one another setting over the Galleria.” —L.G. S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 27

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LIFEGUARDS

High temperatures in Houston encourage a refreshing dip in the pool. At Rice’s Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, Caroline Scruggs ’16 and Ryan Towart ’14 (pictured) help put safety first — they are two of the 20 vigilant lifeguards on staff this summer to keep visitors out of harm’s way. —J.R.

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MOSQUITOES

It’s the rainy season again, and nature has lovingly gifted us with a plethora of mosquito habitats in the form of puddles and ponds. But, as you strain to resist the urge to scratch, take solace in the fact that endless, heavy rains may not be ideal for the insects either. Too much heavy rain can kill adult mosquitoes and wash away mosquito youngsters. But no matter what nature brings us this summer, it’s always a good idea to drain or dump standing water when possible to reduce mosquito habitat.

—K.W.

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NIGHT LIGHTS

In June, a spectacular display of Northern Lights — the result of a powerful geomagnetic storm — bathed the night sky in color, reaching as far south as Virginia and Texas’ own Davis Mountains. Alas, Houstonians missed out, but we have a credible and much more reliable alternative, right here on campus.

James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace features a light sequence timed to the setting sun each evening (closed on Tuesdays).

With a 72-square-foot roof that seems to float above a grass pyramid, this unique public art project welcomes visitors with a soft glow on late summer evenings. For the next 40 minutes, LED lights project colorful hues onto the ceiling, where an aperture in the center reveals the darkening sky. See for yourself the strange trompe l’oeil effect of the projected light next to the natural sky.

While seating is available on two levels for up to 120, on summer evenings, the best views may well be from the parklike expanse surrounding the Skyspace. (A very early sunrise sequence runs the same days and is especially popular with morning joggers.) —L.G.

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O-WEEK

In Hanszen Commons, a dedicated group of Rice students gather at 6 p.m. each evening to work on plans and projects for Rice’s new students — more than 1,000 freshmen, transfers and exchange students who arrive in mid-August. These are the Orientation Week, or O-Week, coordinators, 32 upperclassmen who stay at Rice throughout the summer to plan this signature week of welcome.

Each residential college has two or three coordinators and about 40 O-Week advisers assigned to oversee what’s become a critical introduction to Rice’s academic rigor, culture and community. O-Week student director Sneha Kohirkar ’15 oversees the effort, working closely with Chris Landry, assistant director of First Year Programs.

So what do the coordinators do over the summer?

One task is to create and publish giant information books, which are mailed to each new student, along with their roommate assignment, in July. Another is to decide how to integrate each college’s theme, which traditionally ends with an o-sound, with their individual O-Week. Junior Seth Berggren, a McMurtry College coordinator and computational and applied mathematics major, said themes “have to go beyond pop culture and be something that puts our vision into action.” McMurtry’s theme, “MarshmallO-Week,” connotes camping, nature and outdoor equipment like tents. “Tents need a framework, and O-Week is about creating a framework for new students to build upon.” Over at Martel, junior bioengineering major Anita Alem is working on “Chateau-Week.” The castle-friendly theme encourages students to author their own stories or tales.

The coordinators also match all new students to their roommates — a fraught task indeed.

“You do your best,” said Kohirkar, who added that coordinators receive free room and some meals for the summer and generally hold part- or full-time jobs in addition to their coordinating duties. —L.G.

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PRIDE

Rice’s original LGBTQIA organization, the Rice Gay/ Lesbian Support Group, was formed in 1979, the same year as Houston’s first official Pride Parade.

The group’s founder was Houston Mayor Annise Parker ’78. Ryan Levy ’97, a vocal advocate for LGBT equality for the last 20 years, served as the Male Grand Marshal for this year’s parade. Since 2008, Q&A and Rice Alumni PRIDE have partnered with University Relations in the Office of Public Affairs to sponsor a Rice float in the annual parade. Each year, more than 50 rainbow-clad students, staff, faculty and alumni walk, ride and wave to an estimated 250,000 cheering spectators in this illuminated nighttime parade. —T.R.

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Q

QUEEN ELIZABETH CENTRAL HOSPITAL

Before they started building one together, Eckhaire Beluah had never seen a 3-D printer and Elizabeth Peacock had never used one.

“In my country, we don’t have many of the things you have in the United States. We have a good education. We learn the theory but we don’t have the machines, the technology, to use it,” said Beluah, a fourth-year student in electrical engineering at the University of Malawi Polytechnic.

“This has been fun. Studying to be an engineer is about finding solutions to problems. Together, we figured out how to build a 3-D printer, something I didn’t know how to do before,” said Peacock, a sophomore in mechanical engineering at Rice University.

From two continents and two cultures, Beluah, Peacock and their fellow student interns spent much of the summer in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) learning to become engineers and entrepreneurs. The exchange program was supported by the Lemelson Foundation, OEDK and Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies.

“We are so pleased to have engineering students from Rice and Malawi working together to invent solutions to real-world challenges. They’re learning a lot from each other and are adding to the work of the OEDK and Rice 360° in a significant way,” said Maria Oden, professor in the practice of bioengineering education and director of the OEDK. Since 2007, Rice 360° has worked with physicians and nurses in Malawi to implement innovative health technologies for improving patient care. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and founder of Beyond 30

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Traditional Borders; Ann Saterbak, professor in the practice of bioengineering education and associate dean for engineering education; and Oden are leading a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Malawi Polytechnic’s new biomedical engineering degree program, the University of Malawi Medical School and at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre.

The Malawian students arrived May 31 and returned home July 24. They spent 40 hours a week working in the OEDK alongside their Rice counterparts, learning such skills as laser and plasma cutting, 2-D and 3-D design and finishing.

The other Rice interns at the OEDK were senior Hanna Anderson, sophomore Harrison Lin, senior Whitney Orji, sophomore Leah Shermann, sophomore Mikaela Juzswik and Bailey Flynn ’15. The other Malawian students were Nehuwa Namuthuwa, James Fungulani and Florence Sadyalunda.

While working with electrical engineering student Fungulani to assemble a 3-D printer, Orji said, “I’ve learned as much from him as he’s learned from me, maybe more. He knows more about the electronics than I do. We formed a pretty good partnership.”

Four other Rice undergraduates and an alumna spent the summer in Blantyre: senior Sarah Hooper, sophomore Catherine Dunaway, senior Tanya Rajan, senior Emily Johnson and Karen Haney ’15. They worked with four Malawian students on health technologies developed by both groups over the past year. With funding from the Lemelson Foundation, Rice is working with Malawi Polytechnic to develop its own version of the OEDK. —P.K.

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ROADWORK, RENOVATIONS AND REPAIRS

“Summer is our busiest time,” said Susann Glenn, manager of communications for Facilities Engineering and Planning and for Housing and Dining. Between repairs to campus buildings, sidewalks and roads as well as new construction work, improvements are being made to the campus beginning immediately after Commencement and lasting until O-Week — and beyond.

• JONES COLLEGE NORTH is being updated with solar panels, a few new residential rooms, and new and refurbished bathrooms.

• Construction has started on a grandstand, enclosed press box and team facilities for soccer and men’s and women’s track and field and cross country at HOLLOWAY FIELD.

• A BRC LAB is being expanded and improved.

• The OSHMAN ENGINEERING DESIGN KITCHEN will gain more working space for student projects.

• Construction on the new MOODY CENTER

FOR THE ARTS (below) is continuing on the land formerly occupied by the Jake Hess tennis courts.

• Construction of the BRIAN PATTERSON SPORTS PERFORMANCE CENTER in the north end zone of Rice Stadium is ongoing.

These, along with many other projects like electrical work in buildings across campus, will have the university in tip-top shape when the fall semester begins. —J.R.

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SUMMER SEND-OFFS

Before they step onto campus for O-Week, many incoming students already will have received a hearty welcome to Rice from alumni, parents and current students at student send-off parties in their hometowns. In cities across the U.S., from New York City to L.A. to Chicago and at locations across Houston, new Owls and their families had the opportunity to meet students who are in the thick of campus life and alumni who have been through it all before.

“We love the chance to bring alumni and parents together with current and incoming students,” said Kay Lauer Williams ’86, who hosted Atlanta’s send-off party with her husband, Doug ’84. “It’s a wonderful tradition ­— this year marks our 25th party, and we hope one day to welcome the children of the students we’ve sent off.”

Many of the send-off events, organized by the Association of Rice Alumni, will take advantage of the summer weather at parks and gardens — a preview, perhaps, of the live oaks and azaleas yet to come — while others will take place at the homes of area alumni hosts. A real, live owl will be on-hand for selfies at the Dallas-Fort Worth party, while in Washington, D.C., owls and other fauna are a stone’s throw away at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park. —T.W.

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TEACH FOR AMERICA

Each summer, about 5,000 new Teach For America recruits — recent college graduates and young professionals — attend summer institutes to prepare for entering the classroom in the fall. For six years, Rice has hosted the Houston National Institute, providing housing and meals for about 500 recruits, called corps members, and 100 staff members.

This year’s institute ran June 7–July 11.

It’s an intense schedule. The days begin early — typically around 5 a.m., when the corps members rise, eat breakfast and prepare to spend time observing and teaching in a Houston classroom. That’s followed by more training back on Rice’s campus, as well as feedback, coaching with experienced TFA teachers, additional lesson planning and presentations. Five or six hours of sleep is the norm, corps members say.

Mary Beach, a recent Texas A&M University graduate who’s training to teach pre-K and kindergarten, has enjoyed seeing the growth in her young students’ abilities in just a few weeks: “Some students who were not able to write their names are working really hard to write them.” Beach will be headed to a school in Las Vegas Valley along with corps member Viviana Ramos, a University of Southern California graduate. “I love being able to see the students make new connections and have those ‘aha’ moments,” Ramos said over dinner with her fellow corps members at Rice’s West Servery. TFA recruits are being housed in Duncan and McMurtry residential colleges.

Jonathan Flores, a recent graduate of Florida International University, said that he joined TFA out of a sense of responsibility and desire to give back to his community.

“Education is in the front line — that’s where we can change the future,” said Flores, who will be teaching middle school English.

While most of the corps members will soon settle in at schools in South Texas, Florida, Nevada and Missouri, more than 100 of the trainees will stay in Houston. Last year, Rice University was one of the top contributors of alumni to TFA, as 20 graduates joined the 2014 corps. The 2015 statistics are not yet available. —L.G.

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UNCONVENTIONAL COLLABORATION

The annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Boston is the place to be for aspiring synthetic biologists, and students from Rice and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will make history there in September as the first team to feature students from two institutions on opposite sides of the world.

Six Rice undergraduates went to Hong Kong this summer to work side by side with their HKUST teammates on their entry — a potassium, phosphate and nitrate biosensor. Back in Houston, the rest of the team, including six undergrads and two graduate students — worked on various non-wet lab aspects of the project, such as maintaining the project’s wiki. Rice graduate students in the systems, synthetic and physical biology program served as advisers.

Their goal: use synthetic biology to create a tame strain of E. coli bacteria that changes color to let gardeners know if their soil has the right mix of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Regardless of whether the color-coded soil sensor hits paydirt at the Sept.

24–28 iGEM competition, faculty mentors Beth Beason-Abmayr, a lecturer of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice, and King Chow of HKUST say they plan to continue the cross-continental student iGEM collaboration for years to come. To follow the team’s progress, visit their home page at ricemagazine.info/294 —J.B.

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V

VOLLEYBALL, BASKETBALL, SOCCER

Just three of the nine sports camps offered throughout the summer on Rice’s campus. Kids ages 4 to 18 meet for overnight, half-day or full-day sessions to learn a new sport or perfect their skills. Rice coaches and staff teach many of the individual camps, and current and former players lend a hand to the thousands of sports enthusiasts who attend. This summer, basketball camp participants got extra-special treatment from Rice’s new basketball coach, Mike Rhoades (pictured at right), and his family, who were an integral part of the camp, greeting campers, running the camp store and providing instruction during lecture sessions. —T.R.

WEDDINGS

All year long, Rice alumni, faculty, staff and students can say “Owl do” in the Rice Chapel, but summer months are especially festive. June brought five weddings and several receptions to campus, said Henny Halliburton, the business and event coordinator for the Rice Memorial Center. Halliburton directs the brides and grooms to all the resources they need to put together the wedding they desire.

The intimate chapel seats 125 in wooden pews and up to 100 more when additional chairs are added.

The interior of brick, traditional stained glass and sparkling gold tile mosaic walls also features a C. B. Fisk pipe organ. Many wedding parties hold their receptions on campus — in the Ray Courtyard, the Grand Hall or the historic Cohen House. Some couples hold receptions at Valhalla and a few couples manage to inJU clude several campus venues in LI E WI their special day.

LH ITE PHO TO G R A P H Y Such was the case with Kelsey Adams and Robert Knox (pictured), who both graduated in 2012 from Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. The couple held their wedding ceremony for about 160 guests at the Rice Chapel in May. “With several of our guests from out of town, it was an easy decision to select the chapel for our ceremony so that we could share the beautiful Rice campus and a different side of Houston,” Adams said. The chapel carried additional significance for Adams, whose mother married her stepdad, William McNeill ’73, there. The Adams-Kelsey party held their reception at Cohen House and the “after party” at Valhalla. —L.G.

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X

Rice made news this summer with the installation of two new and amazingly powerful electron microscopes. The Titan Themis scanning/transmission electron microscope enables scientists to view and analyze materials smaller than a nanometer with startling clarity. A research group led by Emilie Ringe, assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry, will operate the Titan Themis and a second microscope, a Helios NanoLab 600 DualBeam microscope. Electron microscopes use beams of electrons rather than rays of light to illuminate objects of interest. Rice plans to host a two-day workshop in September to introduce the microscopes and their capabilities to the research community at the university and beyond. Ringe looks forward to bringing researchers into the new microscopy lab — and to the research that will emerge. “I would like every paper from Rice to have fantastic, crystal-clear, atomic-resolution images and the best possible characterization.” Read more about these new instruments in Abstract on Page 16. —M.W.

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YOUTH

When school ends, the fun begins. Rice’s Summer Youth Activity Program, based out of the Rec Center, offers a wide range of daily activities, including swimming, basketball, soccer, tennis, dance, art, fencing, archery and baseball. This summer, 400 participants took to the pool, courts and fields. Whose kids participated?

27 percent were community members, 30 percent staff/faculty, and 43 percent alumni. Pictured are Sofia Lowery and Rowan Marshall. Sofia is the daughter of Mary Lowery ’88 and Rowan is the daughter of Greg Marshall ’86. Sofia and Rowan bridged two categories — their respective parents are both staff members and alums. —T.R.

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ZOO

Two Allen’s swamp monkeys at the Houston Zoo have a new “toy” to play with this summer thanks to the work of a team of Rice students who created an interactive enrichment device as part of their freshman engineering class. The device, built at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, is a heavy-duty plastic box containing three shelves staggered with holes. Nuts or sunflower seeds are put on the top shelf, and the monkeys have to work them down to a hole at the bottom. Built to be noisy, the puzzle-like box is providing a daily dose of enrichment and peanuts for Naku (male) and Oda (female), who are housed in the zoo’s primate exhibit. Watch a video: ricemagazine.info/295—T.R. 34

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arts & letters

creative ideas and endeavors

A rendering of Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts, which is currently under construction.

Weaver named director of Moody Center Alison Weaver, an art historian and former director of affiliates for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, has been named executive director of Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts.

C O U RT E SY M O O DY A RTS C E N T E R

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eaver will oversee the $30 million, 50,000-square-foot facility, currently under construction, which will be an interdisciplinary center with space for arts education, performances, gallery exhibitions, material fabrication and digital media art production, as well as a site for collaborations with local and international arts institutions.

In her six years at the Guggenheim, Weaver led its programs and operations in Berlin, Venice, Las Vegas and Bilbao, Spain, while managing its departments of exhibition management, registration, art services and library/archives in New York.

“A crucial part of my role will be to listen and respond to the various creative ideas of the depart-

ALISON WEAVER WILL LEAD THE MOODY CENTER FOR THE ARTS, NOW UNDER CONSTRUCTION ON RICE’S CAMPUS.

ments across campus,” Weaver said. “My goal is to involve everyone — whether you’re an artist or an engineer or a member of the visiting public. There will be exciting programs and classes held at the Moody Center designed to attract and engage diverse audiences.”

Weaver grew up in Houston and developed her own passion for the arts by visiting local museums, theaters and community art spaces. She has a Master of Arts degree from Williams College and will complete a Ph.D. in art history this fall at City University of New York.

Weaver will start her new position Sept. 1. The Moody Center was made possible by a $20 million gift from the Moody Foundation with additional support from the Brown Foundation and other donors.

—B.J. Almond

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arts & Letters

Biography of William Goyen captures time, place of “writer’s writer” Clark Davis ’86, a professor of English at the University of Denver, first stumbled upon the work of novelist William Goyen ’37 (1915–1983) in graduate school, quickly becoming fascinated by the enigmatic writer and fellow Rice alumnus.

A contemporary of Norman Mailer, Katherine Anne Porter and Truman Capote — all of whom he knew personally — Goyen is best known for his lyrical novel “The House of Breath” (1950), based on memories of his childhood in the small East Texas town of Trinity. Davis’ definitive new biography of Goyen, “It Starts With Trouble: William Goyen and the Life of Writing,” was published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press and has received strong reviews in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Rice alumnus Michael Hardy ’06 caught up with Davis during his book tour in Houston and continued the conversation via email. An edited version follows.

Author Q&A “It Starts With Trouble: William Goyen and the Life of Writing” (University of Texas Press, 2015) by Clark Davis ’86

How did you first encounter William Goyen’s writings?

What was his experience at Rice like?

Though I grew up in southeast Texas, in Beaumont, I had never heard of Goyen until I bumped into an article about him when I was in graduate school at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

I sometimes spent time reading periodicals in the wonderful library there, and on this particular day I was skimming a French magazine called Magazine Littéraire just to practice my language skills.

There was a feature on the best 20th-century U.S. writers in alphabetical order.

When I came to the G’s, I found someone named William Goyen, and my first thought was that this would be some odd figure who only appealed to French tastes. When I started reading the bio, however, I was stunned to learn that this American writer listed in a Parisian literary magazine was from Trinity, Texas, a place I knew, a town in my region of the state — in other words, an East Texas writer. The next sentence told me that Goyen had graduated from Rice, and by the time I finished the little article I was already on my way to the stacks to find his books.

When he came to Rice as a freshman, he felt out of place and restricted to his family’s goals for him. He claimed later on that he had spent most of his freshman year in Hermann Park, hiding out until it was time to go home rather than attending class. It wasn’t until he was a sophomore and took George Williams’ ’23 British literature class that his attitude started to change. He wrote plays, performed in his own and other works, and even won awards for writing by the time he was a senior.

During his lifetime, critics tended to group him with the other postFaulkner Southerners like Truman Capote and Carson McCullers.

But Goyen’s work doesn’t really partake of the post-Civil War psychodrama; he’s much more of a modernist located somewhere between D.H. Lawrence and the other high modernists he greatly admired, like Ezra Pound. Blend this with his use of East Texas materials, and you have some sense of where he is. And yet this still doesn’t account for his sense of himself as a “singer,” a role that clearly came to him from 19th-century figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman.

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CLARK DAVIS

Read more about the book and author at ricemagazine. info/296

He was published for most of his life by mainstream, New York publishers like Random House who tried to present him as another Capote, but he was far more experimental and, I think, a far more adventurous and risky writer than his distinctively Southern counterparts. Also, and I think this is crucial, his work is emotional in a way that some readers find difficult to deal with. He asks a great deal of the reader, including a willingness to forgo the protections of irony and accept a kind of emotional nakedness.

—Michael hardy ’06

C O U RT E SY O F C L A R K DAV I S

Where does Goyen fit in 20th-century American literature?

Why isn’t Goyen better known today?

arts & Letters

“THE SEADOWNS’ BIBLE” AN EXC E RPT FROM

It Starts With Trouble: William Goyen and the Life of Writing

J. G A RY D O N T Z I G / C O U RT E SY O F D O R I S R O B E RTS

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hough he’d been writing since his teenage years, pouring “fantastical passages” into his notebooks, it was at Rice that Goyen converted his teenage desire to perform into a more serious devotion to literary work. As he did for many student writers, George Williams provided the first real validation of Goyen’s efforts to get his strong but undisciplined feelings onto paper.

The quiet, skinny undergraduate approached the popular professor in his sophomore year but wasn’t allowed to enroll in his creative writing class because it was already overcrowded. Instead, he was invited to participate in the meetings of the Writing Club, a less formal gathering where students shared their work.

Williams remembered a reserved, studious young man showing up one evening at Autry House, the student center just across Main Street, to read a short piece later published in the undergraduate magazine: “I was much impressed (bowled over, actually) by the extraordinary promise the little piece showed. Until then I had no idea Billy could do anything like that.”

Goyen later explained how vital this first chance to share his work had been for him. “I lived for those meetings where I sat in a dark place and when asked to offer what I had written, found, terrified though I was, the very first open release, the window I searched for. In the living room of somebody’s house, somewhere in Houston, among fellow students who’ve long ago gone their way and left me few names to remember, I gasped out my dreams and songs from Woodland Heights.” ...

In ... “The Seadowns’ Bible,” written during Goyen’s sophomore year, the central character and storyteller, Joe Edward Marks, does return to the small town of his youth, this time to visit “an old man and a woman,” family friends who had read the Bible to him when he was very young. Significantly, he reenters this home-like place as a stranger: “It was my old town. No one knew me now except in the way a town feels a stranger walking up and down in it and is uneasy with him in it, and curious (and wants to spew him out or take him closer to it and ask him questions).” But soon the town’s geography revives his memory, and the narrator takes the same path Goyen would later describe in “The House of Breath”:

I walked toward the Seadowns’ hill, past the Tanners old place with the cedar tree that still had a forked limb, like a chicken’s wishbone, where once I slipped

(and fell) and hung like Absalom until Mrs. Tanner came running to save me; past the sawmill, still, now, and like the ghost of a sawmill, and past the graveyard with the same enormous grasshoppers still vaulting over the graves in it, and down the sandy road where I used to walk barefooted, coming home with some fryers or summer squash from Mrs. Larjens.

And then I saw the Seadowns’ house. It was still there on the hill and it was the same, although the shutters had fallen and had not been moved from where they had fallen.

The couple are still alive but very old. Mr. Seadown walks shakily with a cane, and his wife is immobile, “lying like a shriveled bean in her bed.” Joe asks Mr. Seadown to read the Bible to him the way he used to, but the old man’s voice is like “the noise an old door makes when the wind opens and closes it,” and the passage he reads is from Ecclesiastes: “And the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: Because man goeth to his long home, And the mourners go about the streets.” Joe’s reaction is a kind of confession: he sees his life as empty; he lives with a woman he doesn’t love; his job is meaningless. He goes back to the city, haunted by the experience, but soon forgets and falls back into his routine. Several years later he returns to the town to find the Seadowns dead, their house occupied by someone else. But he notices the Bible on a table and decides to buy it from the new owner. He takes it home and tries to read from it but can’t: “[I]t would sound dry and forced like a lot of words from a catalogue or like the numbers from a calendar.”

The Bible no longer speaks without the Seadowns’s voice to give it life, and Joe never opens it again. …

Already at the age of nineteen he had begun to assemble the memories and shape the feelings that would move him toward his first successful novel. A great deal of technical maturity would follow, but Goyen’s sense of both the subject and purpose of his fiction was essentially determined at least from his time at Rice.

He was a writer of sensibility from the beginning, compulsively returning to the same subject year after year, digging deeper, certainly, and improving the manner of his telling, but always looking inward at the mystery of his early exile.

COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY THE UNIVE RSITY OF TEXAS PRE SS AND USE D BY PE RM ISSION OF T HE PUBLISH E R

For more information, visit www.utexaspress.com.

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arts & Letters

Art of Science A new permanent art

Watch a video: ricemagazine.info/297

HOUSTON-BASED ARTISTS DEBRA BARRERA AND CARLOS HERNANDEZ

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Unbounded: THROUGH AUG. 28 FOR HIS RICE ART GALLERY INSTALLATION, UNBOUNDED (JUNE 4–AUG. 28, 2015), ARTIST BEN BUTLER USED APPROXIMATELY 10,000 THIN, hand-cut sticks of poplar wood to create a large and intricate lattice that is simultaneously rigid and rhythmic, dense and airy.

Butler’s sculptural process mirrors the natural world’s systems of order and construction in which simple, predictable patterns repeat and accumulate to form unexpectedly complex structures.

“I am fascinated by complex phenomena that emerge from very simple processes. This is the underlying behavior of the natural world, and vivid examples can be found at every scale,” Butler said. “Biology emerges from chemistry. The experience of consciousness emerges from the accumulation of neural activity. The myriad activities and complex behaviors observed in ant colonies, and even human cities, are simply the product of the accumulation of the myopic actions of individuals within those societies. Unbounded is essentially a distillation of this idea.”

Butler plans to reclaim all the materials used in this installation and take them back to his Memphis studio, “carrying with them the history of Unbounded and the insights I gained from the experience,” he said.

An assistant professor of art at Rhodes College, Butler received an MFA in sculpture

from the School RICE GALLERY Sewall Hall (ground floor) of the Art Free and open to the public.

Institute of For more information, Chicago and a visit www.ricegallery.org.

B.A. in visual arts from Bowdoin College and has exhibited widely throughout the United States. He lives and works in Memphis and Quogue, N.Y. On Aug. 18, Rice Gallery members are invited to a gallery party featuring Memphisthemed cocktails in celebration of the installation and the artist’s roots. Located on the ground floor of Sewall Hall on the Rice campus, Rice Gallery is open in the summer from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Admission is free. For information about parking or directions, go to www.ricegallery.org/visit.

N A S H B A K E R | TO M M Y L AV E R G N E

installation in Brockman Hall for Physics is a largescale screen-printed work that represents the history and evolution of scientific discovery. Culled from images that scientists and students create and work with in their research, “Asymmetric Seekers” presents colorful images that correspond to a specific field of study within physics and astronomy.

Houston-based artists Debra Barrera and Carlos Hernandez created the installation after Barrera became an artist-inresidence in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

“My work and residence here at the Department of Physics and Astronomy has led to a deeper understanding of what connects artists and scientists,” Barrera said. “We are ultimately excited by the same idea: making the impossible possible.”

“Asymmetric Seekers” was commissioned by the Rice Public Art Program.

arts & Letters

On the Bookshelf “Bluestone”

by Michael Peron ’12 (Michael Peron, 2014) The year is 2219, and robots have become commonplace. The Fenix Corporation, the world’s premier robotics corporation, headed by new CEO Lauren Care, is hard at work developing a program for robotic altruism, which will give robots the ability to make decisions based on a desire to help humankind and could ultimately lead to human-level intelligence and self-awareness. But some people fear giving robots such power. When high-level sabotage threatens the future of Project Bluestone, Stewart Anders is falsely implicated in the plot. As Anders races to hide from the Department of Criminal Investigation, both he and Care learn more about the potential consequences of robotic consciousness than either one ever imagined.

Peron, who graduated from Rice with a B.A. in visual arts and a B.S. in physics, is an assistant coach for the Rice women’s swim team. This is his first novel.

“The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance”

“Written in Water: A Memoir of Love, Death and Mystery”

“Sane Enough: Recovery From a Mother’s Sexual Abuse”

Whitehurst is the president and CEO of Red Hat, the largest open source software company in the world. The book describes his journey from traditional to a more “open management” style of leadership, one that challenges conventional ideas about how to run a successful business.

“Rather than the CEO be at the top of the hierarchy, the CEO is more of a catalyst to get an organization aligned, capable and enabled to act on its own,” Whitehurst said. Watch a video about the concept: ricemagazine.info/298

After the sudden death of her husband during a kayaking trip, Chapman embarks on a pilgrimage of slow grief. The book follows her journey around the globe, bringing together encounters with timely advice, music, the natural world and even technology. Grief as consolation not only allows her to heal, but also reach thresholds of transformation. About this touching book, Stephen Harrigan wrote, “‘Written in Water’ strikes universal chords of heartbreak and hope.” Chapman is a writer and a journalist in Austin, Texas.

After losing her managerial position at IBM, Day turns to therapy, through which she finds repressed memories of her mother’s sexual abuse. This candid memoir about motherdaughter incest recounts Day’s rediscovery of her past and grapples with her struggle to redefine her identity. Day, a previous contributor to Rice Magazine, earned a B.A. in chemistry and an M.A. in biology at Rice. She is a freelance writer in Houston.

by Jim Whitehurst ’89 (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015)

by Carol Flake Chapman ’69 (2nd Tier Publishing, 2015)

by Linda A. Day ’62 (Crossvine Press, 2015)

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family album

End of Semester = Sand and Sun by

Melissa Fitzsimons Kean ’96 Centennial Historian

Ever since the pre-air-conditioned days of the early institute, Rice’s denizens have fled campus for more temperate climes as soon as the last graduate commences. But before everyone scatters, there is another tradition to be observed: the trip to the beach. Beginning with the very first class, there have been countless late spring visits by Rice groups to the shore. In early days, students and faculty alike headed by train to Sylvan Beach in La Porte. Even more popular, though, were outings to Galveston.

Department picnickers, members of social clubs and just groups of friends loaded cars with food and drinks, drew up maps and headed down. It’s one of the few old Rice traditions that effortlessly survived the shift to the college system, one so ingrained that we don’t even realize it’s a tradition. This happy group camped out on the sand in 1955.

Do you recognize anyone here? If so, write to us: ricemagazine@rice.edu

THANK YOU! We received such a great response from our request to identify the KOWL founders (Spring 2015) that we decided to hold the photo “reveal” until the Fall 2015 issue.

In her popular blog, Rice History Corner, Melissa Kean solves puzzles and unearths the stories behind the photos, objects and ephemera that reside in Rice University archives. Read the blog: ricehistorycorner.com

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Owl Edge Externships give Rice students the education of the future today.

Matt Harrigan ’07 brings startup entrepreneurs together under one impressive roof as managing director of Grand Central Tech in New York City.

When Harrigan hosted bioengineering major Andy Zhang ’18 at Grand Central’s Manhattan offices through the Owl Edge Externship program, he showed a current student (and an aspiring entrepreneur) a day in the life of a tech accelerator.

“The workplace was great, with different teams working side by side,” said Zhang, a member of Rice’s Comfortably Numb student design team working on a device to make injections less painful. “I was able to meet new people, learn about their ideas and share my own.”

“It was a pleasure to give Andy the chance to see what we do every day,” said Harrigan. “I hope we added to his toolkit as he pursues his own vision. I wish I had something like this when I was at Rice.”

Matt Harrigan ’07 + engaged alumnus + tech startup accelerator + Owl Edge Externship host Rice alumni, through the Owl Edge Externship program, help students gain real-world experience and take their education to the next level. Post your externship at ccd.rice.edu/externship or contact Debbie Diamond, director of special projects for Development and Alumni Relations, at ddiamond@rice.edu.

>> owledge.rice.edu

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

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John Boles ’65, the William Pettus Hobby Professor of History, just returned from guiding a group of Traveling Owls through Montana and Idaho, as they traced a portion of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s momentous trek to the Pacific. Rice photographer Tommy LaVergne documented the group’s 10-day sojourn. This image, taken at the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park just outside Great Falls, Mont., hints at Lewis and Clark’s encounters with Native Americans and the mythological landscape of the West. Look for a photo essay about this trip in the Fall 2015 issue of Rice Magazine.