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Alicia Bradley
Four Become Faculty Emeriti With a cumulative total of more than 130 years at Rice under their belts, four faculty members joined the ranks of professors emeriti this year: Stephen Baker, professor of physics; John Polking, professor of mathematics; Anne Schnoebelen, the Joseph and Ida Kirkland Mullen Professor of Music; and Madeleine Alcover, professor of French.
Bradley a Shining Star in Registrar’s Office For successfully managing requests from faculty and staff for available classrooms and assigning those rooms, Alicia Bradley has been awarded with the Distinguished Employee Award. Bradley, a room reservation assistant in the Office of the Registrar, has worked at Rice for more than three years. The Distinguished Employee Award is given by the human resources department on behalf of the university to recognize employees who perform above and beyond their job description to the benefit of the Rice community.
Fondren’s Oster Honored for Exemplary Service Karen Oster, a Fondren Library computer programmer who maintains the database control-
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Karen Oster
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Edie Carlson
ling the online catalog, received this year’s Shapiro Library Staff Innovation Award. Oster’s efforts to keep the online catalog available 24 hours a day were among her achievements that lead to the honor. The Shapiro Award recognizes a library staff member who has developed an innovative program to provide library services at Rice or who has shown exemplary service to the university community. Since joining the Fondren staff in 2001, Oster, a senior Sirsi database administrator, has managed several major upgrades to the Sirsi software, the integrated library system that includes the online catalog. When Fondren changed the interface through which library users access the catalog from a DOS-based program to a Web-based program, Oster was responsible for the programming that ensured the new interface could access the database correctly. Oster also helped implement a new underlying database structure known as Oracle, which serves as a back-up system for the online catalog.
Hsu, Carlson, Kumari Promoted to Associate Dean Three long-standing assistant deans in the School of Continuing Studies have been promoted to the level of associate dean: Edie Carlson, Laura Ling Hsu, and Siva Kumari.
Laura Ling Hsu
Carlson has worked in the school since 1978 and was named assistant dean in 1991. She directs professional development programs in certified financial planning, financial analysis, and treasury management, as well as in personal development courses. She began the school’s program for teachers of advanced placement courses in 1995 and also directed the Rice University Publishing Program for nine years. Hsu has worked in the School of Continuing Studies since 1984. She develops public noncredit courses in the cultural arts and has directed the Institute for Human Resource Education since 1996, which has become the largest producer of certified professionals in human resource management in Texas and is one of the three largest university programs of its kind in the country. Kumari has been with Continuing Studies since 2000 and was named assistant dean that same year. She directs teacher professional development programs, including the Advanced Placement Summer Institute, which has become one of the largest in the country, the Workshop for High School Teachers of the Gifted and Talented, and the Advanced Placement Digital Library (http://apdl.rice.edu). Kumari also directs the Rice Technology Education Center, which offers information technology courses for the public.
Siva Kumari
Impact Awards Honor Those Who Have Made Their Mark on Rice One Rice faculty member and two staff members have been recognized with Women’s Resource Center Impact Awards: Nancy Elliott, department coordinator for facilities and engineering; Brett Ashley Leeds, associate professor of political science; and Ken Nipe, Rice police officer. The honors are given annually to men and women at Rice who demonstrate service to the campus and community, show involvement and participation in student life and activities at Rice and beyond, work to make a positive impact by raising awareness of women’s issues, and serve as role models in the empowerment of women. — Reported by B. J. Almond, Jade Boyd, Jennifer Evans, Lindsey Fielder, and Carol Hopkins