Rice Magazine Issue 3 by Rice University

| Literary Gold

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| Science of Shred

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| Oscar’s Red Carpet

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| Light and Space

(RE) DEFINING A VISION HUNTING RICE HISTORY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

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No 1

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Contents 7 8

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Not your parents’ career services center The world’s richest and largest business plan competition is even better.

Three Rice luminaries are elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

4 4 5

Student applications top the record — twice. A major gift will transform the way engineers are educated at Rice. Kinetic learning is a Wii bit of fun.

15 Healing physical problems

What is that word?

doesn’t automatically improve the quality of life for elderly patients.

The award-winning journal, positions, comes to Rice.

Rice researchers are ratting out cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s.

6 If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Rice’s new image of a virus’s protective coat is seriously undervalued.

11 WARP wireless is whetting the appetites of communications technology heavyweights.

On the cover: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Rice alumnus Larry McMurtry delivering a recent Friends of Fondren Library Distinguished Guest Lecture

It’s enough to make you sweat.

SciRave mixes a little science with a lot of shred.

Students 18 They came. They filmed. They conquered.

Features

20 Weightless 21 An undergraduate entrepreneur finds success in an organic produce co-op.

24 Defining and Realizing Vision The vision with which Edgar Odell Lovett defined Rice opened the university to possibilities he could not have dreamed of.

22 Pioneering stem cell research to aid stroke victims gets personal for a Rice doctoral student.

By David W. Leebron

23 Owl Microfinance student group honored by Clinton Global Initiative University

26 Unique Leadership for a Unique Time James Crownover, chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, reflects on his past and the university that has played such a large role in his life.

Arts

By Mike Williams

30 Larry McMurtry: On Rice, Writing and the Fate of Books

42 The infamous FEMA trailer is transformed by art.

Larry McMurtry is fond of saying that his parents wanted him to stay on the ranch and herd cattle, but he wanted to herd words.

43 Developing a master plan for public art on the Rice campus

By David D. Medina

34 Super Sleuth A modern-day Nancy Drew, Rice’s centennial historian Melissa Kean experiences both thrills and chills in her fearless hunt for Rice history.

Bookshelf

By Merin Porter

36 The Countdown Begins

46 John Anderson likes to joke that he studies the Antarctic in the winter and the Gulf Coast in the summer, but what he sees happening along the Texas coast is no laughing matter.

Rice’s 100th birthday is fast approaching. Here’s a preview of the centennial anniversary celebration already in the works. By Mike Williams

38 Taking Care of Business Executive Education is not only a source of revenue, but also an important connection between the university and the practicing professionals in Houston’s business community.

40 Literary Gold

By Christopher Dow

47 Richard Smith’s friends and colleagues warned him not to tackle the evolution of the “Yijing.” 47 A neuroscientist uses fictional vignettes to explore the possibilities of the afterlife.

By Weezie Kerr Mackey

A lot of people dream about finding buried treasure. Most don’t succeed, but occasionally, a rare individual actually does make a discovery worth noting. You can add literary detective Logan Browning to that list.

44 It’s not unusual to hear artists talk about the use of light and space. It’s pretty rare when one’s art consists of light and space.

Sports 48 Vaulting to new heights.

Rice Magazine

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No. 3

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2009

Rice Magazine

F O R E W O R D

Vol. 65, No. 3

Sometimes, momentum is everything. As in, if you don’t keep peddling the bicycle, you will topple over. Or if you pause to enjoy your lead, you may find yourself bringing up the rear on the homestretch. Rice has always had the kind of momentum necessary to carry it into the upper echelons of higher education — a momentum that is a direct result of the high aspirations set forth by the university’s founding president, Edgar Odell Lovett. It has been a century since Lovett traveled around the world to develop those aspirations. Lovett visited great universities in England, Europe and Japan to understand what made an exceptional institution of higher learning. His journey led to two of Rice’s enduring principles: A great university must be international in scope, and it must be flexible enough to change with the times and take advantage of unforeseeable opportunities. Thus, Lovett endowed Rice with the ability to capitalize on and significantly contribute to the subsequent century’s monumental advancements in computation, digital communications and nanoscale science and technology well before the basic tenets of those fields were even conceived. With that momentum behind us, we will celebrate, in three years, the university’s most important birthday yet: its centennial. Preliminary preparations already are under way, and you can read about them in “The Countdown Begins.” Be sure to read, also, our piece on Melissa Kean, Rice’s centennial historian. After assuming Rice’s helm five years ago, President David Leebron charted a fresh set of destinations for Rice with his Vision for the Second Century. While building on Lovett’s original intent to keep Rice a great undergraduate university, Leebron’s vision expands the scope of Rice’s graduate education and deepens and broadens the university’s research mission. Added to the many disciplines in which Rice already excels are newer fields, such as biosciences and biomedicine and the study of cultural and religious differences, that will affect, on many levels, the lives of people around the world. This issue of Rice Magazine is filled with stories of advancements and discoveries being made by Rice researchers across the board, from the sciences and engineering to the social sciences, humanities and professional schools. And read, also, about alumna Suzanne Deal Booth’s contributions to Rice’s artistic environment; the new university art director, Molly Hubbard, who will have an active role in bringing more public art to campus; and LouAnn Risseeuw, the woman responsible for the interior design of Rice buildings. They help create a campus environment that allows our community to flourish. Nowhere is the fact that Rice encourages excellence more evident than in its students and alumni. Students who stand out in this issue are seniors Faheem Ahmed and Anish Patel, who won the “Oscar Correspondent Contest” sponsored by MTV’s 24-hour college network and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and wound up hobnobbing with the stars on the red carpet at the Academy Awards ceremony. Other standouts are the students who created Owl Microfinance, recognized recently by former President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative University for their efforts to help the poor help themselves by starting businesses. And last but not least, be sure to read this issue’s profiles of two very different alums whose work has had far-reaching impacts: Rice Board of Trustees Chairman James Crownover and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry. Momentum and a well-charted course have, indeed, carried Rice far, and the achievements and influence it has realized during the last century are a fitting commemoration to Lovett’s aspirations. But Rice’s journey is just beginning. The Vision for the Second Century and the Centennial Campaign provide focus and fuel for our momentum. Enjoy the ride with this issue of Rice Magazine.

Christopher Dow cloud@rice.edu

Published by the Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president Editor Christopher Dow Editorial Director Tracey Rhoades Creative Director Jeff Cox Art Director Chuck Thurmon Editorial Staff B.J. Almond, staff writer Jade Boyd, staff writer Franz Brotzen, staff writer Merin Porter, staff writer Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor Jessica Stark, staff writer Mike Williams, staff writer Photographers Tommy LaVergne, photographer Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer The Rice University Board of Trustees James W. Crownover, chair man; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith T. Anderson; Subha Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth; Alfredo Brener; Robert T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson; Robert L. Clarke; Bruce W. Dunlevie; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Douglas Lee Foshee; Susanne Morris Glasscock; Robert R. Maxfield; M. Kenneth Oshman; Jeffery O. Rose; Lee H. Rosenthal; Hector Ruiz; Marc Shapiro; L. E. Simmons; Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley. Administrative Officers David W. Leebron, president; Eugene Levy, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Chris Muñoz, vice president for Enrollment; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Scott W. Wise, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Richard A. Zansitis, general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development. Rice Magazine is published by the Office of Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate students, parents of undergraduates and friends of the university. Editorial Offices Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, T TX X 77251-1892 Fax: 713-348-6751 E-mail: ricemagazine@rice.edu Postmaster Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 © J ULY 2 0 0 9 RICE UNIVE RSIT Y

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“A friend who is also a member told me I can’t miss it. I’ll never get another chance to see Kenny Barron, Nelson Mandela and Dustin Hoffman all in the same place.” — Naomi Halas

Move Over Bono — Naomi’s Here Naomi Halas recently found herself searching Wikipedia to learn about Thomas Pynchon and delighting in the possibility that, somewhere out there, Bono was Googling her. The Rice University scientist, along with two Rice alums — philanthropist John Doerr and economist Karen Davis — joined the reclusive novelist, the U2 singer and a host of others renowned in their fields when they were elected members of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Halas, Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of chemistry, biochemistry and bioengineering, is an expert in photonics and plasmonics whose lab deals in biomedicine, advanced display technology, solar power and many other applications that depend on the nanoscale manipulation of light. Recent breakthroughs have led to human trials of a novel cancer treatment and have suggested the possibility of an invisibility cloak. She’ll certainly make tracks for Cambridge, Mass., to be among the inductees in October. “A friend who is also a member told me I can’t miss it,” Halas said. “I’ll never get another chance to see Kenny Barron, Nelson Mandela and Dustin Hoffman all in the same place.” Other marquee names among this year’s group of 212 new fellows and 19 foreign honorary members are James Earl Jones, Marilyn Horne and Emmylou Harris. Doerr ’73, who earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Rice, is a venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers whose

interests as an entrepreneur and philanthropist include innovative green technology, urban public education, poverty abatement and the advancement of women as leaders. He was an early champion of Google and Amazon, among many other companies. Doerr, Rice’s commencement speaker in 2007, and his wife, Ann ’75, recently donated $15 million through their Beneficus Foundation to establish the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership. Davis ’65, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health care think tank, is a former assistant professor of economics at Rice who earned both her undergraduate and doctoral degrees here, the latter in 1969. Before joining the fund, she chaired the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she also was a professor of economics. She was deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1977 to 1980, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a visiting lecturer at Harvard. In 1991, Rice recognized her achievements with its Distinguished Alumni Award. Davis returned to Rice last year to speak at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy’s “Campaign 2008: The Issues Considered” event on health care reform.

Halas wasn’t aware she’d been nominated to join the academy, and she admitted she didn’t know the particulars of how her name rose to the top of the list. “But certainly the area we work in — nanoparticles and light — has become a hot topic in nanoscience,” she said. “It has really exploded in the last year or two. I think that probably played an important part.” Halas appreciates the challenge of keeping pace with her peers, especially since being named an associate editor of Nano Letters, the most highly cited journal in nanoscience and nanotechnology. “This area has absolutely caught on fire across a bunch of different disciplines because it’s very useful,” she said. “So I get to enjoy the burden of the success of this field. There’s a lot of great new work coming out every single week.” —Mike Williams

Naomi Halas

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2009

Application Boom $15 Million Gift to Redesign Engineering Education John Doerr

Word is spreading that Rice University is on the move, and prospective students are hearing the call. This year, undergraduate applications passed the 10,000 mark for the first time in Rice history and then went on to officially top 11,000. Vice President for Enrollment Chris Muñoz credits Rice’s standing as one of the best values in education for keeping the university as the top choice for the best students. “Students know we are taking our exceptional educational experience to even higher levels; populating our campus with great new educational, residential and recreational buildings; and setting our sights on being one of the best research universities in the world,” Muñoz said. Although applications from residents of Texas, historically Rice’s strongest constituency, were up 10.5 percent, the most dramatic increases were from foreign nationals, AfricanAmericans and non-Texans. The number of female applicants to Rice rose 15.2 percent, compared with a 9.8 percent increase for males. The figures are good news as Rice prepares to admit its largest freshman class ever. With two new residential colleges nearing completion, the university will have the capacity to welcome an estimated 900 new undergraduates in 2009, up from the record 2008 freshman class of 789. —Mike Williams

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Two Rice University alumni with engineering degrees — he a famed venture capitalist, she an environmental activist — have given their alma mater $15 million to transform the way engineers are educated. The gift from the Benificus Foundation, a private charitable organization set up by alumni John ’73 and Ann Howland Doerr ’75, will fund the new Rice Center for Engineering Leadership and raise the bar for engineering educators nationwide. The center’s mission is to broaden Rice engineering education by incorporating current and

University. His interests as an entrepreneur and philanthropist extend to innovative green technology, urban public education, fighting poverty and the advancement of women as leaders. Ann Doerr, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Rice, is an environmental activist and a trustee of the New York-based

“Our increasingly complex and global world demands great, ethical engineering leaders, and you can’t fake integrity.” —Ann Doerr

emerging crises facing society and developing personal leadership skills needed to solve pressing global problems. “Our increasingly complex and global world demands great, ethical engineering leaders,” Ann Doerr said. “And you can’t fake integrity.” “The world’s best engineers are entrepreneurs and leaders,” added John Doerr, who was No. 1 this year on Forbes Magazine’s Midas list of the world’s top 100 tech deal makers. “They’re willing to take risks. They know innovation matters but execution is everything. It takes leadership to change the world.” Doerr earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rice and an MBA from Harvard

Environmental Defense Fund. The gift brings the Doerrs’ commitment to the Centennial Campaign to $22.5 million. A matching component of their donation could bring an additional $10 million to the center. Their other recent donations funded computational cancer research administered by the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology and two endowed chairs, one named for Kennedy’s parents and currently held by Professor Krishna Palem and one held by Professor Keith Cooper. —Mike Williams

Learn more about the Centennial Campaign and giving to Rice University: › › › www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign

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Collecting Data Is a Wii Bit of Fun Why are some people fast learners? Can we teach everybody to be like them? Yes, Wii can.

In a research project recently funded by the National Science Foundation, Rice professors Marcia O’Malley and Michael Byrne are making use of Nintendo’s popular Wii video game technology to codify learning systems in ways that can be used in a range of human endeavors, from sports to surgery. The project follows up on O’Malley’s pioneering work that utilized robots to map out how people learn physical tasks. The study was used to treat stroke victims, but its ultimate goal was to program robots to teach in new ways. With the new NSF grant, O’Malley and Byrne will spend the next three years measuring the motions involved in tasks

“We’re already grabbing motion data from the Wiimote.” said O’Malley, “Soon, we’ll be able to measure a range of motion and then turn it into a mathematical model.” For the researchers, that’s where the games really begin. Their plan is to bring together robotics and virtual reality in a way that lets people absorb information through repetition of the motor pathways. Think of

suddenly ‘get it.’ We’re interested in how these groups of performers differentiate and if there are inherent characteristics of movement and control policies that lead to expertise.” Here’s where Byrne’s own expertise comes in. An associate professor of psychology who specializes in computer–human interaction, he’ll analyze feedback on the range of motion used in performing a task and figure out precisely where the most efficient learning happens. “I work with the sort of mathematical computational theory of human performance that’s never been extended to the kind of dense motor activity we want to

Their plan is to bring together robotics and virtual reality in a way that lets people absorb information through repetition of the motor pathways. as mundane as playing paddleball and as complex as flying a fighter jet. To do that, having a motion-capture device at hand will be invaluable. The device is called an accelerometer, but video game fans know it as a Wiimote, the handheld wand that serves as a wireless interface between player and screen. “It’s the only part of the system we really need,” said O’Malley, director of Rice’s Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces Laboratory. The researchers will compare data from the Wiimote to that from a more expensive Vicon motion capture system to “see how good the Wii really is.”

hitting a tennis ball. Learning by trial and error is fine, but it would be much easier if a robotic sleeve could tell you exactly where that hitch in your swing is and gently prod you to hit the ball correctly. O’Malley and Byrne’s research into what they term the “cognitive modeling of human motor skill acquisition” will focus on three types of learners. “There are experts, who learn at a slow, steady pace, but they get there,” O’Malley said. “There are novices, who learn at a slow, steady pace, but sometimes they never get there. And then there are those who start off awful, but somewhere in the middle of training they

study,” said Byrne. “We find that some Wii games have really good learning properties we can measure, and there also are some that people don’t seem to get a lot better at. I can tell you I’m about as bad at Wii golf now as I was when I started playing it.” —Mike Williams

Read more about engineering at Rice: › › › engr.rice.edu

Discover the research being conducted in psychology: › › › socialsciences.rice.edu

Find out how you can contribute to Rice’s research:

› › › www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign

Rice Magazine

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No. 3

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2009

Viral Mug Shot Painstakingly created from hundreds of high-energy X-ray diffraction images, the image paints the clearest picture yet of the viruses’ genomeencasing shell, called a “capsid.”

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Rice University’s precise new image of a virus’s protective coat is seriously undervalued. More than three years in the making, the image contains some 5 million atoms — each in precisely the right place — and it could help scientists find better ways to both fight viral infections and design new gene therapies. The stunning image, which debuted in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals the structure of a type of protein coat shared by hundreds of known viruses containing double-stranded RNA genomes. Painstakingly created from hundreds of high-energy X-ray diffraction images, the image paints the clearest picture yet of the viruses’ genome-encasing shell, called a “capsid.” Capsids come into play because viruses can reproduce themselves only by invading a host cell and hijacking its biochemical machinery. But when they invade, viruses need to seal off their genetic payload to prevent it from being destroyed by the cell’s protective mechanisms. “When these viruses invade cells, the capsids get taken inside and never completely break apart,” said lead researcher Jane Tao, assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice. Though there are more than 5,000

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known viruses, including whole families that are marked by wide variations in genetic payload and other characteristics, most of them use either a helical or a spherical capsid.

Jane Tao

Junhua Pan

In their attempt to precisely map the spherical variety, Tao and lead author Junhua Pan, a postdoctoral research associate at Rice, first had to create a crystalline form of the capsid that could be X-rayed. They chose penicillium stoloniferum virus F, or PsV-F, a virus that infects the fungus that makes penicillin. Although PsV-F does not infect humans, it is similar to others that do. By analyzing the way the X-rays scattered when they struck the crystals, the

team created a precise 3-D image of the spherical capsid. Previous studies had shown that spherical capsids contain dozens of copies of the capsid protein, or CP, in an interlocking arrangement. The new research identified the sphere’s basic building block: a fourpiece arrangement of CP molecules called a tetramer, which could also be building blocks for other viruses’ protein coats. By deciphering both the arrangement and the basic building block, the research team hopes to learn more about the capsidforming process. “Because many viruses use this type of capsid, understanding how it forms could lead to new approaches for antiviral therapies,” Tao said. “It could also aid researchers who are trying to create designer viruses and other tools that can deliver therapeutic genes into cells.” The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the USDA, The Welch Foundation, the Kresge Science Initiative endowment fund, the Agouron Foundation and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. —Jade Boyd

Learn more: › › › ricemagazine.info/02

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Not Your Parents’ Career Services Center If Rice’s Career Services Center was the chrysalis, then the butterfly is the Center for Student Professional Development (CSPD), a dynamic and interactive learning center designed to enhance Rice students’ knowledge and skills for long-term professional advancement. Unlike most college career centers, which focus on job placement, the CSPD offers resources that help students far beyond their initial employment by focusing on three core areas: postgraduate planning, employment research and professional communication. Tailored to meet the needs of Rice students, the center aims to increase student understanding of personal strengths, professional options, pre-employment communication skills, and knowledge of institutions, organizations and companies. The focus on education and skill building has transformed the CSPD from a collection of services based on job placement to a resource and training center that helps students understand their interests and values and translate that self-knowledge into sound judgments about which industries, fields and graduate programs to choose. One of the center’s principal resources is its new Web site, which expands the reach of the CSPD and provides students a more streamlined, user-friendly resource that supports their professional development needs. Future versions of the site will include innovative software for job and internship exploration. —Jessica Stark

Learn more about the Center for Student Professional Development: ››› www.cspd.rice.edu

Share Your Rice Memories Make a contribution to the rich archival past of Rice University by answering the Fondren Library Woodson Research Center’s call for materials on the history of the student experience at Rice University. Among the items the center is seeking are student letters that describe undergraduate and graduate life at Rice — academic and extracurricular — along with items such as uniforms, costumes, class rings, party favors, trophies, photographs and scrapbooks. It also is soliciting memoirs on every aspect of the student experience, including sports, professors, dorm (and later, college) life, dances and anything else that may have helped characterize your time at Rice. A contribution from Jean Thomas McCaine ’45 will facilitate the cataloging of these materials. To submit collections of letters or other items, please contact Fondren Library’s Head of Special Collections Lee Pecht at 713-348-2120 or pecht@rice.edu. To donate your student memoirs, please send them to Rice University, Woodson Research Center–MS 215, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251. Be sure to include your name, major and original hometown with your submission, as well as the dates you attended Rice and a brief summary of your post-Rice life.

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2009

Business Plan Competition Offers a Wealth of Opportunity

The Rice Business Plan Competition, which has become the world’s richest and largest business plan competition, saw a 45 percent increase in entries for this year’s event in April. Forty-two teams were chosen from nearly 340 entries submitted from around the globe. The teams presented their new technology business plans to more than 200 venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders who served as judges. At stake was a chance to win a share of more than $800,000 in cash and prizes. Thirty-six of the teams contended in four categories — life sciences, information technology, energy/clean technology and sustainability — and the other six competed in the area of social entrepreneurship, a new category this year. Carnegie Mellon University’s Dynamics team won the $325,000 grand prize with a marketing proposal for interactive credit and debit cards. The team’s next-generation interactive payment cards use programmable magnetic stripes to communicate dynamic information to the 60 million 1970s-era magnetic stripe readers that process day-to-day payment card transactions. “We hope this year’s crop of competitors turn out to be as successful as last year’s,” said Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. “Through the mentoring and networking available at the Rice Business Plan Competition, nearly 70 percent of last year’s competitors have gone on to successfully launch their companies, raise funding and build their businesses.” The Rice Business Plan Competition is hosted by the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business and the Rice Alliance, which was formed as a strategic partnership between the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jones School. FORTUNE Small Business magazine co-sponsored the competition again this year and featured the winners, teams and competition in its June 2009 issue and on CNNMoney.com. —Mary Lynn Fernau

For a comprehensive list of winners visit: ››› ricemagazine.info/19

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Pulickel Ajayan, left, and Sanketh Gowda

Batteries Get a Boost

Need to store electricity more efficiently? Put it behind bars. That’s essentially the finding of a team of Rice University researchers who have created hybrid carbonnanotube/metal-oxide arrays as electrode material that may improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries. With battery technology high on the list of priorities in a world demanding electric cars and gadgets that last longer between charges, such innovations are key to the future. Electrochemical capacitors and fuel cells also would benefit. The Rice research team, led by Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry, is growing nanotubes that look — and act — like the coaxial conducting lines used in cables. The coaxial tubes consist of a manganese oxide shell and a highly conductive nanotube core. “The nanotube is highly electrically conducting and also can absorb lithium, and the manganese oxide has very high capacity but poor electrical conductivity,” said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a Rice postdoctoral research associate. “When you combine them, you get something interesting.”

That would be the ability to hold a lot of juice and transmit it efficiently. The researchers expect the number of charge/ discharge cycles such batteries can handle will be greatly enhanced, even with a larger capacity. “At this point, we’re trying to engineer and modify the structures to get the best performance,” said Manikoth Shaijumon, also a Rice postdoc. The microscopic nanotubes, only a few nanometers across, can be bundled into any number of configurations. Future batteries may be thin and flexible. “And the whole idea can be transferred to a large scale as well,” Shaijumon said. “It is very manufacturable.” The hybrid nanocables grown in the Rice-developed process could also eliminate the need for binders — materials used in current batteries that hold the elements together but hinder their conductivity. The project is supported by funding from the Hartley Family Foundation, and the findings appear in a paper written by Reddy, Shaijumon, doctoral student Sanketh Gowda and Ajayan in the online version of the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters. —Mike Williams

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Science Rocks at Rice You wouldn’t expect to hear the names “James Tour” and “Guitar Hero” in the same sentence. Until now.

The much-honored Rice University professor and a team of students have been working away on a set of songs for the popular video game that mixes a little science with a lot of shred. And for those who’d rather move their feet than their fingers, well, Tour’s got something for them, too. T Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science, covers a lot of beats in the world of nanoscience at Rice, where he developed the first nanocar and recently ushered in a breakthrough in graphene that may make

body and believes that all work and no play is not necessarily the best way to teach material that can be abstract at best. “Finnish kids are blowing everyone away, science-wise,” he said. “In Finland, they alternate 20 minutes of instruction with 20 minutes of play. There’s a lot to be said

concepts in young minds. The compositions are by Bram Barker, a 1999 graduate of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music now living and working in Japan, and Aidin Ashoori, a Martel College sophomore and biochemistry major who also writes music for video games. With undergraduate students Matt Szalkowski, Gustavo Chagoya Gazcon, Keenan May and Johnny Li handling game programming and Web design, the costs have been relatively low. Downloading components for “StepMania” or “Guitar Hero” from the site gets users a half-dozen or so songs for the

Tour went to eighth- and ninth-grade textbooks, reduced each chapter to about 10 bullet points and gave it to the composer, who converted the bullet points into lyrics with music.

memory for computers and devices cheap and plentiful. His new twist isn’t meant for scientists, but for scientists-to-be. “SciRave,” developed through a grant from the National Science Foundation, aims to work the basics of a science education into “Guitar Hero” and “StepMania,” both proven winners in the world of video games. Tour, who developed “SciRave” as an extension of his NanoKids project, wants “SciRave” (called “SciJam” in its “Guitar Hero” incarnation) to feed the mind and

for not making a kid who’s bursting with energy sit in a seat for two hours straight.” Two sample songs on the “SciRave” Web site put cellular biology to a funkmetal track (“All the Pieces”) and a robotic reading of measurements to a scratch beat (“SI System”). Tour went to eighth- and ninth-grade textbooks, reduced each chapter to about 10 bullet points and gave it to the composer, who converted the bullet points into lyrics with music. The repetitive natures of metal, hip-hop and scratch make the styles perfect for embedding scientific

games, which can be played on a computer with or without dedicated controllers. All of the downloads are free. The big question among Tour’s colleagues is, of course, has he tried out the dance pad? He admitted he has, sort of. “I watched my son do the dance pad, and he was very good. I tried it for about five seconds and said, ‘This isn’t possible for me.’” —Mike Williams

Visit SciRave: › › › www.scirave.com

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2009

Scientists have long known that animals use scent to communicate. But how much does the human sense of smell complement the more powerful senses of sight and hearing? T find out, Denise Chen, an assistant To professor of psychology, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at how the brains of female volunteers processed and encoded the smell of sexual sweat from men. Nineteen healthy female subjects inhaled olfactory stimuli from four sources, one of which was sweat gathered from sexually aroused males. The study is the first fMRI study of human social chemosignals. The results of the experiment indicated that the brain recognizes chemosensory communication, including human sexual sweat, and that several areas of the brain are involved in processing the emotional value of the olfactory information. These include the right fusiform region, the right orbitofrontal cortex and the right hypothalamus. “With the exception of the hypothalamus, neither the orbitofrontal cortex nor

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“Our results imply that the chemosensory information from natural human sexual sweat is encoded more holistically in the brain rather than specifically for its sexual quality.” —Denise Chen

the fusiform region is considered to be associated with sexual motivation and behavior,” Chen said. “Our results imply that the chemosensory information from natural human sexual sweat is encoded more holistically in the brain rather than specifically for its sexual quality.” Humans are evolved to respond to salient socioemotional information, and just as distinctive neural mechanisms underlie the processing of emotions in facial and vocal expressions, so, too, do mechanisms for human social chemosignals. The research, co-authored by Chen and Wen Zhou, graduate student in the Department of Psychology, was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Neuroscience. —Franz Brotzen

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Sallyport

Wireless at WARP Speed

Nothing kills innovation like having to reinvent the wheel, and that’s especially tr ue for electronics researchers who had to build every test system completely from scratch to assess new high-speed wireless technologies. “It was incredibly frustrating,” said Ashutosh Sabharwal, director of Rice University’s Center for Multimedia Communication (CMC). So, in 2006, CMC set out to change that by creating a turnkey, open-source platform that would let wireless researchers expand their tech menus. Now, the platform — dubbed WARP — is whetting the appetites of heavyweights like Nokia, MIT, Toyota, NASA and Ericsson, and it’s already being used to test everything from low-cost wireless Internet in rural India to futuristic “unwired” spacecraft. WARP stands for “wireless open-access research platform,” and physically, WARP is a collection of circuit boards containing

said researchers have talked for years about designing smart, “cognitive” networks that can shift frequencies on the fly, opening up vast, unused amounts of the spectrum for consumer use. Motorola is using the system to test an entirely new low-cost architecture for wireless Internet in rural India. It’s the sort of low-profit-margin project that probably wouldn’t have gotten beyond the drawing board if not for WARP. Another early adopter, NASA, is using WARP to look for ways to save weight, cost and complexity in the wiring systems for future spacecraft. Several large wireless companies are using WARP to test schemes for wireless phone networks

“When you put a new technology into people’s hands, they’ll inevitably find innovative ways to use it.” —Ashutosh Sabharwal

a powerful processor and all the transmitters and other gadgets needed for high-end wireless communications. What makes WARP boards so effective is their flexibility. When researchers need to test several kinds of radio transmitters, wireless routers and network access points, all they need to do is write programs that cause the WARP boards to act as those devices. The concept is starting to pay off. At Rice, CMC Project Manager Patrick Murphy — the former CMC doctoral student who developed the original WARP architecture — is collaborating with graduate students to use WARP in proof-of-concept technologies for “cognitive wireless.” The cognitive wireless concept stems from the fact that up to half of the nation’s finite wireless spectrum is unused at any given time. Sabharwal

that can transfer data up to 100 times faster than current 3G networks. Toyota is using WARP to test car-to-car communications — systems that automotive engineers hope to use in the future for collision avoidance, traffic management and more. Some users are even partially disassembling the boards to add new functions. “When you put a new technology into people’s hands, they’ll inevitably find innovative ways to use it,” Sabharwal said. “That’s one of the best things about WARP. It is going to lead to innovations that we never could have anticipated.” —Jade Boyd

Learn More: › ›› ricemagazine.info/11

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research project at Rice has brought scientists to the brink of comprehending a long-standing medical mystery that may link cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and perhaps even Alzheimer’s disease. And for that, we can thank the rat.

Read the paper in Artery Research:

Sallyport

Rice evolutionary biologist Michael Kohn and his collaborators — Roger Price of Baylor College of Medicine and Hans-Joachim Pelz of the Julius Kuehn Institute in Germany — report they have found that common rats with a genetic mutation have developed a resistance to rat poison, aka warfarin. That’s good news for the rats, but it comes at a price. The mutation also leaves them susceptible to arterial calcification and, potentially, osteoporosis, and that’s good news for humans. In the mutated gene, the researchers found what could be the link that solves the calcification paradox: the puzzling association between metabolic bone disease and vascular calcification that has eluded researchers for years. Kohn said a good part of the answer lies in the vitamin K cycle, which is known to regulate the coagulation of blood — clotting. It also is suspected of helping keep calcium out of the body’s vessels and in its bones, which has particular ramifications for postmenopausal women for whom loss of bone density is a serious issue. Warfarin has long served humans as a medicine called Coumadin, because it interferes with the vitamin K cycle. In regulated doses, it thins the blood by reducing its ability to coagulate, which helps prevent heart attacks, stroke and blood clots. In larger doses, it once excelled as rat poison; rats that ingested the poison would simply bleed to death. But the genetic mutation in rats Michael Kohn effectively blocks that interference. “I have a feeling the mutation predated the introduction of warfarin,” said Kohn. “But it was rare because it causes side effects. It’s not an advantageous mutation unless it’s exposed to warfarin.” Rats without the mutation died, while those with the mutation multiplied. “These rats, in the absence of poison, suffer from cardiovascular disease, just like we do,” said Kohn, who added that the kidneys of rats in the study were “calcified to an extent that is shocking.” His hope is that the equivalent gene in humans turns out to be the key to a number of ills. “As you look at humans, this calcification of arteries is, I suspect, a very important precondition to thrombosis and stroke,” he said. “So to find such a strong effect astonished us. We had a tough time publishing the paper because people might have thought it was too good to be true, that you can explain the effect to such a degree by looking at just one gene.” Kohn and his colleagues have begun a study on osteoporosis in rats that have the mutation, and early results are promising. “The prediction is the mutant rats have a lower bone density,” he said. “I think if we complete and confirm that as well, it would be a major breakthrough. That means one gene — one mutation — explains the so-called calcification paradox.” Finally, he noted, Alzheimer’s patients tend to be vitamin K-deficient, which opens up avenues for further study. “Could there be one mutation that explains osteoporosis, arteriosclerosis and Alzheimer’s?” he wondered. “That would be huge.” —Mike Williams

› ›› ricemagazine.info/01

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Rice Ranks Third in Nanotoxicology Publications A new study by researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) finds that Rice University ranks third globally in publications in the growing field of nanotoxicology. The study noted that peerreviewed research on the toxicology of nanomaterials has grown nearly 600 percent since 2000 and that Rice scholars have authored 23 papers on the subject. That’s just a handful of papers fewer than the entire University of California system and just two fewer than the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The UCSB study made significant use of the Virtual Journal of Nanotechnology Environment, Health and Safety, or VJ-Nano EHS, published by the International Council on Nanotechnology, an affiliate of the Rice Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology. The virtual journal is the only repository that attempts to compile all published research on the safety, health and environmental implications of nanomaterials. —Jade Boyd

Read the study in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research: › ›› ricemagazine.info/13 Visit ICON’s Virtual Journal of Nanotechnology Environment, Health and Safety: › ›› icon.rice.edu/

virtualjournal.cfm

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What Is That Word ... ? Ever been frustrated because the word you’re looking for is eluding you? Most of us forgive ourselves the occasional forgetfulness, but for stroke patients suffering from aphasia, the inability to find the right word can be frequent and profound. Tatiana Schnur wants to know why. When speaking, a person must select one word from a competing set of words. A speaker who wants to mention a specific animal, for example, has to single out “dog” from “cat,” “horse” and other similar possibilities. Schnur, an assistant professor of psychology, wondered whether a particular part of the brain is necessary for resolving the competition for choosing the correct word. She and her colleagues compared brain images from 16 healthy volunteers and 12 volunteers who suffer from aphasia, a language disorder acquired as a result of stroke. People who have aphasia frequently experience difficulty with speech. The study covered two experiments where people named a series of images and conflict between words increased as more images were named. In the first experiment, healthy speakers’ brain activations were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The second experiment mapped performance deficits to lesion locations in participants with aphasia. The researchers found that while two parts of the brain — the left inferior frontal

gyrus (LIFG) and the left temporal cortex — respond to increased conflict among words competing for selection during speech, only the LIFG is necessary to resolve the competition for successful word production. The LIFG includes Broca’s area, which is responsible for aspects of speech production, language processing and language comprehension. It is of particular interest to the researchers because damage to this area may explain the hesitant, nonfluent speech exhibited by those described as Broca’s aphasics. By looking at direct parallels between the healthy and aphasic volunteers, Schnur and colleagues coupled location in the brain with specific speech processes, and they learned that the ability of aphasic speakers to resolve competition that arises in the course of language processing does appear to depend on the integrity of the LIFG. The study, “Localizing interference during naming: Convergent neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence for the function of Broca’s area,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health. —Franz Brotzen

Read the study › › › ricemagazine.info/06

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Sallyport Journal Takes Top Honors One of the world’s leading interdisciplinary journals on Asia, Rice University-based positions: east asia cultures critique, was unanimously selected as the winner of the 2008 Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) award for Best Special Issue for “War Capital Trauma.”

Healing vs. Quality of Life Healing an elderly patient’s physical problems does not automatically improve the patient’s quality of life. That’s what Vikas Mittal of Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business and coresearchers at the University of Pittsburgh learned from a study of residents in two nonprofit elder-care nursing homes in western Pennsylvania. “A lot of people look at the care of elderly people in terms of clinical outcomes such as ulcers, depression and pain,” said Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management. “The conventional think-

to monitor the health and quality of life in nursing homes, but all measurements are based on clinical factors. Consequently, when evaluating nursing homes for their elderly relatives, people may not be able to understand the extent to which their loved ones could have a high quality of life there. “The system is completely devoid of psychological factors,” Mittal said. “This is a very limiting approach because it treats the elderly person as a set of symptoms and not as a whole individual.” The study also suggests racial and cultural implications for nursing home patients, but the sample was too small for

“Forty years ago the national focus was on taking care of children. Now we see more and more people struggling to care for elderly family members.” —Vikas Mittal

ing has been that if you heal the patient’s physical condition, their quality of life will automatically improve. We found that this isn’t always the case. While there is an overall connection between physical health and self-reported quality of life, not every finding was consistent.” The researchers interviewed the patients at six-month intervals over a three-year period to determine the association between changes in clinical health factors and the patients’ perception of their quality of life. They found that patients with improved physical conditions didn’t always feel their quality of life had improved. The results show the need for incorporating psychological factors into evaluating nursing homes and the care they provide to the elderly, Mittal said. Currently, the U.S. government mandates the data used

valid conclusions. The researchers plan long-term studies with larger sets of patients across more nursing homes. What they learn could prove extremely useful, especially in culturally diverse states. “Forty years ago the national focus was on taking care of children,” Mittal said. “Now we see more and more people struggling to care for elderly family members. It is critical for us to better understand the psychological factors that comprise quality of life for the elderly, as well as physical health of these individuals, so that we can provide them with the best possible care.” Learn more: › ›› www.ricemagazine.info/14

Edited and founded by Tani Barlow, director of Rice’s Chao Center for Asian Studies, the publication also received the prestigious 2005 Best New Journal award from CELJ. The special issue explored the notions of trauma and memory in relation to societies in Asia in recent history. Essays ranged from discussions of ghosts and politics to analysis of militarized sexual slavery during Japanese imperialism. It also included reflections on surviving Khmer Rouge extermination camps in Burma, an examination of the 1997 Asian finance crisis and a discussion of fantasies about the atom bomb contained in the manga “Akira.” “I am particularly proud of this award because ‘War Capital Trauma’ seeks to make a historical and philosophical contribution to thinking about our own moment,” said Barlow, who also serves as the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Asian Studies. “It is a great honor to receive the Best Special Issue award from our peers and to know that scholars and readers are claiming a stake in this debate about politics, capital, suffering and the future.” —Jessica Stark

Read the introduction to “War Capital Trauma”: › › › www.ricemagazine.info/12 For more information about the Chao Center, visit: › › › chaocenter.rice.edu

Read the study in The Gerontologist › ›› www.ricemagazine.info/15

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Let Your Mind Fly It was no mere flight of fancy. To commemorate the December 1903 flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright — and in the “spirit of intellectual mischief” — anonymous students stealthily mounted an overhead display of paper airplanes in the main foyer of Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. At least that’s what the note they left said. The note also encouraged passersby to “take a moment to appreciate being here,” “take on the knowledge of the ages” and “feed an intellectual curiosity.” No one has come forward to claim responsibility for this feat, which, according to Carolie Allgood, school administrator in the George R. Brown School of Engineering, “took a good bit of planning and fishing line.”

BRC à la Cart When hen the BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) begins blazing new biomedical trails in July, faculty, staff and students traveling to the new center from campus will need a trail of their own. Fortunately, Rice’s Facilities, Engineering and Planning department anticipated the need and has constructed a 1,000-foot-long path for that purpose. For use by pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers of the university’s small electric service carts, the path originates near Wiess College, passes through the storm-water detention basin, and runs between Main Street and the track stadium. Since university carts are not allowed to cross public thoroughfares, the path ends in a cart parking lot at the corner of Main Street and University Boulevard. Pedestrians and bicyclists can then access the BRC via the intersection’s pedestrian crosswalk.

An Advanced Degree of Living Rice University graduate students have a new place to call home with the opening in January of the Rice Village Apartments, located on Shakespeare Street, one block south of the Rice Village. The four-story residential building, totaling 119,000 square feet, features 237 beds in 137 fully furnished units, a bike room and dedicated shuttle service to and from the university.

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Owlets Ryan Moore, manager of networking for Network Management, put his ingenuity to work to create this family of tiny Lego owlets, which were displayed in the second floor conference room of the Mudd Building.

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Sallyport

Barry, Deal Booth Elected Rice Trustees

Native Texan Deal Booth graduated cum laude from Rice in 1977 with a B.A. in art history. Through the work-study program at Rice and her later studies at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she received an M.A. degree in art history and a certificate in art conservation, Deal Booth benefited from the direct guidance of legendary Houston art collector and philanthropist Dominique de Menil. “Subha’s experience with integrating diversity Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Inspired by de Menil, Deal Booth has into one of the world’s leading financial comBarry serves on the board and the made a career of preserving art and hispanies, and Suzanne’s commitment to proCorporate Circle advisory committee of the tory. She has worked at such notable institecting visual and cultural heritage around National Council for Research on Women. tutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the world will give our board special insight She is a Corporate Council member of the the Menil Collection and, with a grant from into issues that have become increasingly White House Project and a Hidden Brain the Smithsonian Institution, at the Museum important as Rice extends its international Drain Task Force member. She also serves of New Mexico. Her postgraduate fellowship, reach and interaction,” board Chairman Jim on the advisory board for Voice, Hyperion’s funded by the Kress Foundation, took her Crownover ’65 said. “They are wonderful adimprint for women. to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she ditions to our board.” restored important 20th-century President David Leebron paintings. She then moved to said Barry and Deal Booth Los Angeles to work at the Getty have already benefited Rice in Conservation Institute and, later, many ways. “Subha’s internaas a consultant at the J. Paul tional expertise and network Getty Trust. were a huge help when Sallie Deal Booth and her husKeller-McNulty and I made our band, David, created the Booth visit to India in 2007 to meet Heritage Foundation, which with educational, business and provides many cultural activities government leaders,” he said. and community services, and “Suzanne’s active involvement founded the Friends of Heritage with the Rice Art Committee Preservation, a nonprofit orhas helped expose our stuganization that responds to dents to all aspects of art, and critical preservation needs in she has also helped Rice build the United States and abroad. collaborations with Houston’s They also established the Booth art community and museums Family Rome Prize Fellowship through the Suzanne Deal for Historic Preservation and Booth Collaborative Arts Fund. Conservation at the American Suzanne Deal Booth Subha Viswanathan Barry (See story on Page 44–45.) Academy in Rome. Deal Booth “Both bring expertise and recently started a publishing experience that will contribute richly to the Barry’s awards include the Women’s company, Orsini Press, which published objectives we’ve set in our Vision for the Fund of New Jersey Award for Outstanding “Venus Rising” by her father, Harry William Second Century, extending our international Achievement in Banking and Finance, and Deal. reach and Houston outreach among them.” she has been inducted into the YWCA of She serves on boards for the Centre Barry earned a master of business and the city of New York’s Academy of Woman Pompidou Foundation, the American public management degree and a master of Achievers. The National Organization for Academy in Rome, the Geffen Playhouse, accounting degree from Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Women honored her as one of its 2008 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Graduate School of Business in 1985 before Women of Power and Influence. A three-time Institute of Fine Arts at New York University joining Merrill Lynch in 1989. There, she has cancer survivor, Barry supports and coaches and the art committee for the University of served as a financial adviser and branch newly diagnosed patients with coping strateChicago Booth School of Business. manager in the private client group and cregies and work/life balance. At Rice, in addition to co-chairing the Rice ated the firm’s Multicultural and Diversified Barry serves on the Jones School’s Art Committee, she serves on the Humanities Business Development group, which helped Council of Overseers and has been extenAdvisory Board and the Art History Advisory establish Merrill Lynch as the pre-eminent sively involved with Rice by attending alumCommittee. She has supported lecture series wealth-management firm among diverse ni events in the New York area and Jones and museum collaborations and commisand multicultural markets. She then served School events on campus. She and her hussioned art pieces, such as the James Turrell as head of Global Diversity and Inclusion for band, Jim ’84, are Rice Associates and estabpublic art installation that will be located by Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., with responsibility lished the James and Subha Barry Fellowship the Shepherd School of Music. She is a memfor managing and integrating existing and in Business to provide financial assistance ber of Rice Associates and the William Marsh new diversity efforts across the corporato students at the Jones School. One of their Rice Society. tion worldwide. In 2005, she was appointed children — Tara — is an undergraduate in to her current role as managing director at Rice’s class of 2010. —B.J. Almond

Rice University alumnae Subha Viswanathan Barry and Suzanne Deal Booth have been elected to the Rice Board of Trustees.

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Faheem and Anish Go to Hollywood They came. They filmed. They conquered. They are Faheem Ahmed ’09 and Anish Patel ’09, who entered the “Oscar Correspondent Contest” sponsored by MTV’s 24-hour college network and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The prize was the chance to hobnob with the stars on the red carpet while serving as special mtvU correspondents for the Academy Awards ceremony. All they had to do to win was impress film professionals and a huge, video-savvy audience. The competition called for teams of two student journalists to submit short videos explaining why they would make great correspondents for the 81st Academy Awards. Ten semifinalist teams were selected, and online voters narrowed the list to three and finally selected Ahmed and Patel as the winners. The duo knew they’d be up against some tough competition, so they pulled out their unconventional wisdom to create a two-minute video essay that broke the mold of typical contest entries in which hopefuls list reasons they should be chosen. Ahmed suited up in a tuxedo, grabbed a microphone and began interviewing other Rice students, who acted as celebrities. “Most of it was improv,” Ahmed said. “Anish and I would see someone we knew on campus, grab them and explain to them quickly what we were doing. Then we’d come up with a celebrity for them to be and go from there. Everyone was happy to help.” The finalists were then asked to do a short follow-up video about people they were looking forward to meeting at the Oscars. While the other contestants listed celebrity names, the Rice students used a Bollywood-style dance number to show their hopes of meeting the cast of “Slumdog Millionaire,” the Oscar-winning film set in Mumbai, India. “I can’t wait to ask the directors how they take the written word and turn it into a motion picture,” Ahmed said before leaving for his assignment. “But we’re also excited to ask actress Freida Pinto if she’s single — you know, get answers to the important questions.” Pinto was lead actress in “Slumdog Millionaire.”

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Students A trip to the 81st Academy Awards might not be a professional milestone for most premed students, but Ahmed and Patel, both members of the highly selective Rice University/Baylor College of Medicine Medical Scholars Program, are anything but conventional. Their love for medicine is matched perhaps only by their love for entertaining others. Actively involved in Rice Sketch Comedy and the South Asian Society, both students dream of going to medical school, practicing medicine and then becoming medical correspondents. “This experience gave us a glimpse into how the media influences people,” Patel said. “We would like to use that influence to help and entertain people.” “I don’t know if I’d say it changed my life,” Ahmed said, “but it definitely impacted my career path.” Did they accomplish their objective of meeting the cast of “Slumdog Millionaire”? Of course. “Interviewing them was definitely the most memorable part of the night,” Patel said. “Their story is incredible. Not just the movie, but also the people who played those characters. It’s probably the biggest transition ever seen at the Oscars — from the slums of Mumbai to the red carpet of Hollywood.” “The kids were my favorite because they were the most genuine and were so excited to be there,” Ahmed said. “Like us, it was their first time on the red carpet. They reflected a lot of what we were feeling — that happiness and excitement, that ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’” Ahmed and Patel asked the children to show them some dances, but unfortunately, that didn’t help them win the affections of Freida Pinto. “I blurted out, ‘I’m in love with you,’” Ahmed recalled. “But then I turned to Dev Patel [the film’s male lead] and told him I felt the same way about him. You know, I had to cover my tracks.” Among others they got to meet were Danny Boyle, Frank Langella, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Anthony Hopkins, Queen Latifa and Baz Luhrmann. They also got to interview Oscar winners in the backstage pressroom and attend the Governor’s Ball. “It was exciting to see how it feels to be a celebrity,” Patel said, “but I definitely want to do something behind the camera. My real passion is writing.” “I love everything about the camera,” Ahmed said. “Being in front of it or behind it, I love it. This experience made me realize I can’t discount my passion for journalism. Instead, I’ll have to find an entertaining way to do both that and medicine.” So, could the duo take to the red carpet as Oscar hopefuls themselves? “We definitely would want to keep medicine as our focus, but who’s to say we won’t incorporate that in some way to make something Academy Award–worthy?” Patel said. “Maybe it’s not probable. But, then again, it wasn’t probable that two students from Rice — a small private school without a journalism program — would win a contest for student journalists.” —Jessica Stark

See the winning videos: › › › ricemagazine.info/03

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Finding Your Way When You Don’t Weigh a Thing Many people resolved to lose weight this year, but Kathryn “Kate” Montgomery ’09 and her student colleagues from six other universities aspired to be weightless. Montgomery, a bioengineering major, served as both an investigator and a test subject in an experiment to examine how a person’s sense of direction is impacted by lack of gravity and whether a simple device can improve the ability to navigate. The students, mentored by Scott Wood of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, planned details of the experiment while working as interns last summer at the NASA Johnson Space Center. “We use our sense of gravity as an anchor to orient ourselves, but in a microgravity environment, the sense of down isn’t clear, and that can cause problems when navigating around a large space craft like the space station,” said Wood. “The inner ear plays a role in detecting your orientation relative to gravity, so some patients with inner-ear disorders have similar navigation problems.” The students tested a belt-like device to determine if it improved navigation ability. The wide belt contained a series of equally

spaced pagerlike vibrators that signaled the direction of the floor to the wearer. The experiment was conducted in an aircraft that simulates weightlessness, or microgravity, by going into steep dives. A chair aboard the aircraft was fixed in a tilted position that could be rotated and then locked into any one of 360 degrees. One student served as the subject, seated in the chair wearing sound-canceling earphones and virtualreality goggles, and the other students ran the experiment. During each microgravity period of the flight, the subject was turned in the chair to a random position and shown an image in their goggles of a location in the plane — cockpit, rear, or left or right side. Using a hand controller, the subject then indicated the direction needed to travel to get to that area of the plane. During the experiment, the subjects were randomly tested with and without the belt’s cues. The students will analyze the results to

determine if the belt improved a person’s ability to navigate while in microgravity. They hope to publish the results of the study in a scientific journal, but the immediate benefit of the study will be to elementary- and middle-school classes in the students’ hometowns. “Each of us committed to give presentations to local schools,” Montgomery said. “We hope to teach younger students a little about microgravity and our experiment while showing them that science can definitely be fun.” But the belt’s usefulness doesn’t stop there. It also could be modified for use in extravehicular activities on the moon — vibrators could be programmed to fire in the direction a crew member needs to go. In addition, it could become an aid for patients with neurological disorders experiencing navigation problems. The student research was supported by funds from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and the private corporation Excalibur Almaz and was conducted through NASA’s Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. —Kathy Major

Want an education that is out of this world? Find out what’s happening in the Rice Department of Bioengineering:

› › › engr.rice.edu/

Kate Montgomery was both researcher and guinea pig in an experiment to learn if a simple tactile device can improve a person’s sense of direction in a weightless environment. Discover how Rice’s Centennial Campaign is helping prepare Rice students for the world: ››› www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign

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Students

Raw Deals

For Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram, helping raw foodists feed the habit is all in a day’s work. “Thursday’s child has far to go,” says the old nursery rhyme, and Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram ’09 is proof positive. For the founder and administrator of the Rawfully Organic produce co-op, Thursdays start at 6 a.m. as she works with area farms to order and pick up organic fruits and vegetables, sorts them along with produce from a local distributor, sells them to coop members from her home in west Houston and then spends the rest of the day tying up loose ends and preparing for the following Thursday’s co-op. Carrillo-Bucaram does it for love. “I have more than 800 people on my mailing list, and I fill 60 to 90 orders per week,” she said. “I don’t make one dollar off of it, but I don’t want to say I do it all for nothing because I’ve met the most amazing people through the co-op — people who have become like family.”

ate more than 10 pounds of fruits and veggies a day, he told her about his dietary lifestyle — known as raw foodism — in which participants eat only uncooked fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Although Carrillo-Bucaram was skeptical about the wisdom of a hyperglycemic gorging on fruit, she was desperate to feel better and decided to give it a try. “After the first day, I felt okay — no vomiting and no migraines,” she said. She kept up the diet, eventually incorporating raw vegetables, and a week later realized that her hyperglycemic symptoms had disappeared completely. Now, almost four years after going raw, Carrillo-Bucaram hasn’t even had a cold. Getting enough calories eating raw fruits and vegetables requires huge volumes of produce: An entire head of romaine lettuce contains only about 85 calories and a large banana about 100 calories. To sustain her raw food diet, Carrillo-

Getting enough calories eating raw fruits and vegetables requires huge volumes of produce: An entire head of romaine lettuce contains only about 85 calories and a large banana about 100 calories.

Participants join the co-op for the same reasons she started it in 2008: to enjoy fresh organic fruits and vegetables without paying retail prices. But for CarrilloBucaram, it was also a way to economically sustain a lifestyle that just may have saved her life. While a junior in high school, she began to suffer from crippling dehydration, migraine headaches and vomiting. Diagnosed with hyperglycemia, she was hospitalized numerous times. Carrillo-Bucaram tried overhauling her diet by cutting out sugar and fruit and opting instead for chemically sweetened foods but found that her symptoms only grew worse. She lost so much weight that her classmates began to spread rumors about her “eating disorder,” and she missed so much school due to hospitalization that she was only one absence away from failing to graduate — despite being at the head of her class academically. Then she met a vegetarian at a local health food store. A raw foodist who

Bucaram bought organic produce in bulk from local health food stores, but she was still spending upwards of $300 per week on groceries. When she asked a local organic produce distributor about buying from them wholesale and learned that their minimum order was 40 cases, she knew it was time to start thinking big. She gathered 12 foodie friends interested in healthy eating, and together they split the first order. Word spread, the co-op grew — and the rest, as they say, is history. “I still pay for my own food, but I spend about $80 a week max,” CarrilloBucaram said. “There are some weeks when we have so much extra food that I don’t even have to pay, and we can donate surpluses to the Salvation Army, fire stations, underprivileged neighborhoods or local churches. It’s so much fun, and so much good comes out of it. It really is food that loves you back on every single level.” —Merin Porter

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Sometimes the Research Becomes Personal When Christy Franco learned she’d be doing pioneering research on using stem cells to help stroke victims recover neurological function, it was the science that drove her enthusiasm. But things turned personal when her father suffered a debilitating stroke soon after the bioengineering doctoral student began her work at the Rice Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering.

Research by graduate student Christy Franco focuses on using stem cells to help stroke victims recover neurological function.

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“For several days my father lost the ability to communicate,” she said. “He couldn’t speak or even write. You could see his frustration. He wanted to communicate, but he couldn’t.” Franco and her family were relieved when her father recovered, but Franco knows that not all stroke victims are so fortunate. Nor are sufferers of such brain disorders as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and that knowledge now spurs her enthusiasm. Specialized neural stem cells help make up the body’s central nervous system during human development. They also can transform themselves into any type of brain cell and can be used to replace cells lost to disease or injury. “Since we know the brain has very limited capacity for selfrenewal and repair after an injury,” Franco said, “the idea is to find an effective niche to allow neural stem cells to grow and differentiate in the lab.” As part of the process, the Dallas native collaborated with colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine to gather stem cells for microscopic encapsulation into tiny polymer beads through a unique emulsion technique. The gelatin-like polymer substance is specially designed to help regenerate both brain tissue and blood supply. It is hoped that microencapsulated cells from the niche can be placed into the damaged brains of stroke patients to provide a source of neural and vascular cells that may develop and differentiate. The process could lead to repairing injured tissue and restoring function in stroke victims or people with other brain diseases. This summer, Franco flew to the Centre for the Cellular Basis of Behaviour at King’s College London to share the microencapsulation technique. It was used there for the first time in trials to inject cells into the brains of stroke-damaged rats. “To date, one of the greatest challenges in reconstructing brain tissue in stroke victims has been to provide structural support to neural stem cells in a cavity,” said Michel Modo, the Wolfson Lecturer in Stem Cell Imaging at King’s College London. “What the research from the Rice team has allowed us to do now is to inject these cells into this hole with a support structure that potentially could reconstruct the lost tissue.” Franco’s research at Rice is supervised by Jennifer West, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor and chair of the bioengineering department. The work is being funded by a three-year, $2.9 million inaugural Quantum Grant from the National Institutes of Health. Rice and Baylor researchers are the recipients and head up an international collaborative effort to push the research. Franco is happy to be contributing to the research and plans to continue working in the field after she earns her doctorate. “I really believe in this work,” she said. “And my dad says he’s waiting for me to come up with a cure for people who’ve suffered strokes.” —Dwight Daniels

Students Clinton Honors Microfinanciers Small thinking brought a big honor to officers of Owl Microfinance in February when they were recognized at the Clinton Global Initiative University for their efforts to help the poor help themselves by starting businesses. The group began in a bioengineering class taught by Rice 360˚ Director Rebecca Richards-Kortum, where juniors Josh Ozer and Dillon Eng worked out a training program for microentrepreneurs. The students raise money from events, tutoring and private donations to microfinance projects in Tanzania, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, China, Cameroon and elsewhere. Along with vice presidents Tommy Fu ’09 and sophomore Elena White, Ozer and Eng are working with a Rice alum at a Houston law firm to incorporate Owl Microfinance, transforming it from a student club into a nonprofit organization. —Mike Williams

Centennial Challenge to Young Alumni

Sandheep Surendran with stacks of concentrated photovoltaic receivers that he designed

[

WHY I GIVE

]

“I want to support an environment and culture that I am a product of.” Sandheep Surendran ’00, who now engineers solar technologies, is one of many recent graduates who have risen to the challenge by making a gift to the Rice Annual Fund for Student Life and Learning. After earning a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rice, Surendran worked in the toy and automotive industry designing products that he later realized were ultimately destined for the landfill. Concerned by the The officers of Owl Microfinance were honored at the Clinton Global Initiative University: L–R, standing: Dillon Eng, Tommy Fu and Elena White ; sitting: Josh Ozer.

environmental and social effects of global warming, he chose to pursue a new path in clean technology. Today, he provides solar technology expertise as an independent consultant with Surya Design and also develops his own solar solutions.

LEARN MORE

w w w.rice.edu /cen tennialchallenge See a video of Clinton talking about Owl Microfinance and making the presentation: ››› ricemagazine.info/05

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DAV I D

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DeďŹ ningand Realizing 24

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FROM THE

President

An early and abiding image of Rice University is a photograph of our first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, articulating his vision for the university before an international audience of scientists, scholars and dignitaries at Rice’s opening ceremony on Oct. 12, 1912.

is especially powerful because the aspirations he put forth were more ambitious and farsighted than an institution of Rice’s modest beginnings and size had any right to expect. After all, Rice matriculated a mere 59 students that first year, and they were taught by a faculty of 10 on a campus that consisted of four buildings. Lovett saw more: He saw an institution that would “aspire to university standing of the highest grade” and that would “assign no upper limit to its educational endeavor.” Rice’s founding Board of Trustees shared that ambition. They could have purchased 30 acres in downtown Houston on which to build the institute. Rather, they purchased nearly 300 acres at what was then the considerable distance of three miles from downtown. They wanted enough land for growth for Rice to emerge as a leading university across a broad spectrum of human endeavor. Early maps actually included sites for a medical school and a law school. Some might have called that hubris. In the northeast, where I come from, we call it chutzpah. But there is no doubt that Lovett and the founders had big plans for Rice and the courage to take the necessary actions, and even some risks, to realize them. Lovett took that courage even further when he embarked, in 1908, on an arduous ninemonth journey to personally survey leading academic institutions around the world. He interviewed university presidents and professors, recruited eminent faculty and toured facilities in an effort to distill the best elements of higher education and apply them to the new institute. Lovett returned to Texas from that journey just over 100 years ago. Two things emerged with clarity from his voyage: his view that Rice should aspire to be among the best universities of the world, and that it should take an international perspective in formulating its ambitions and measuring its success. The Rice University we know and esteem today is, in large part, a product of that journey of discovery. Each of my predecessors since President Lovett has contributed to the further

achievement of his vision. Each seized opportunities that the times presented. The significance of NASA coming to Houston — and of John F. Kennedy promising, in his famous speech in Rice Stadium, a manned landing on the moon by the end of the 1960s — was, for example, not lost on President Kenneth Pitzer, who responded to Kennedy’s gesture by creating, in 1963, the first university space science department. Pitzer also notably increased the breadth of scholarship and research at Rice. To make the young institute immediately viable, Lovett had advocated a concentration on science and engineering, but he also recognized the need to later strengthen the arts, which included the humanities and social sciences. Under Pitzer’s tenure, Rice further developed the School of Architecture, the Department of Art and Art History and the Office of Continuing Studies — now the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. When we herald the 100th anniversary of Rice’s opening in three years, we will remember much more than a single event. Rather, we celebrate all that has flowed from the founding accomplishment and the hard work and sustained vision since then. These include the launching of successful interdisciplinary efforts such as the Rice Quantum Institute, the Chao Center for Asian Studies and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. The success of the James A. Baker III

Institute, The Shepherd School of Music and the Jesse H. Jones School of Business is testimony to the capacity of Rice to think boldly and expand the scope of its endeavor. We have been bold and yet prudent, and that combination has enabled us to move our great institution forward in changing and challenging times. The Rice that people attended 50 years ago is not the same Rice of 25 years ago or the Rice of today. The question that demands our attention as we celebrate our centennial is what the Rice of 25, 50 or 100 years from now will be. Will we have continued on our historic trajectory toward greater scope and prominence, or will we have paused and, in so doing, perhaps fallen behind in the dynamic and highly competitive landscape of higher education? Of course, even as we progress and adapt, there are things about our beloved Rice than must endure, and it is equally critical to our success that we recognize and sustain those. These include, for example, the extraordinary quality of our students, our supportive and collegial atmosphere, the small classes and the access students have to their professors, the college system, the beautiful green campus environment and the sense of student responsibility that we seek to nurture. These values and characteristics of Rice are not obstacles to our progress, but essential elements of it. We have earned the right to celebrate Rice and all we have achieved on the occasion of our centennial. But we will celebrate not merely by looking back, but rather by taking from that history a sense of confidence and destiny that informs and shapes a bold future. Four years ago we launched the Call to Conversation, which produced the Vision for the Second Century. Over the next few years, it is the continuing responsibility of all of us who care deeply about Rice to continue the process of defining and realizing the vision that will not merely carry on the legacy of our founding, but will take us to ever greater achievement.

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Unique The chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees reflects on his past and the university that has played such a large role in his life. By Mike Williams

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Jim Crownover ’65

was in the Rice infirmary suffering from the flu when he got a lesson that may have been the most lasting of his undergraduate days. “I remember a professor of chemical engineering, Harry Deans,” said Crownover. “He was young, but he was a bigger-than-life figure, a real terror. A brilliant guy. He came by the infirmary. I will never forget that. He just sat there, and we talked — about school and all sorts of different things. For me, it captured the feeling, which is still here, of the relationships Rice students have with their professors.” That incident motivates Crownover to this day. He feels responsible for preserving Rice as a place where those close relationships can form, because he knows what they’ve meant to him, even as he guides the university through a period of change and growth. “I was smart enough to seek people out,” Crownover said recently as he relaxed with coffee cup in hand in an Allen Center conference room. “Life is a contact sport — you’ve got to seek people out. Talk to them. Find out their views. And I learned that here at Rice because people were so accessible. Even if you didn’t quite know what you were going to learn, you learned something.” My simple, simple life After a career in the contact sport of business consulting, Crownover came back to Rice, where he’s still learning: He’s even taken a couple of undergraduate Spanish classes in recent years.

southwest office, Crownover found himself trying to gain a foothold in an energy industry that, he said, deeply mistrusted outsiders. Thanks to his perseverance and skill, McKinsey survived and thrived in Houston while many competitors failed. “Jim became really important in my life when I persuaded him to go to Texas,” said his former boss, D. Ronald Daniel, who headed McKinsey in the 1970s and 1980s. “The office kind of went sideways until I was able to get Jim there, and then McKinsey in Texas really took off.” You’re lucky! This is a good deal! Crownover was thrilled at the prospect of moving back to Texas, but not his wife, Molly. “When it looked like we were going to move, Molly was tearful,” he recalled. But Crownover had an ally in her parents, native Californians who were stationed in Corpus Christi during World War II. “They said, ‘You’re lucky! This is a good deal!’ They had a tremendous affection for Texas.” It didn’t take long for both Jim and Molly to become well known and respected, in part because of their generous contributions of time and talents to the Houston community. Crownover has served on the boards of the United Way, Houston Grand Opera and many other worthy causes. “The man has a heart bigger than Texas,” said Anna Babin, president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Houston, which named Crownover its Volunteer of the Year — twice. “When Jim

for a Unique Time A member of the Rice Board of Trustees since 1999, he replaced Bill Barnett as chairman in 2005. Recently, he was elected by his fellow trustees to a second term that will run until 2013, which will take him through Rice’s Centennial celebration and complete his service to the board. Crownover characterizes himself as “a very loyal, steady guy.” “I have a wife of 32 years, I have a clothier of 32 years, I worked with McKinsey for 30 years. I went from Rice to Stanford, Stanford to McKinsey and then back to Rice,” he said. “Welcome to my simple, simple life.” Simple? Crownover’s friends would disagree. Armed with an MBA from Stanford (where his daughter, Mary Corwin Crownover, now studies architecture), he joined the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in 1968, eventually rose to its board of directors and also served as co-chairman of McKinsey’s worldwide energy practice. In the early years, charged with running the Houston-based

Crownover speaks, it’s after much thought and consideration, and people listen.” “Jim is able to help people understand the key role we play and establish great relationships,” added Anne Neeson, United Way’s vice president of donor relations. “That’s the basis of his approach to fundraising.” Neeson considers Crownover her mentor. “I have this little card in my desk with something I’ve heard him say often. He says you’ve got to constantly ask yourself, ‘Am I a valued member of a team in pursuit of a noble purpose?’ I think about that a lot.” The Stanford Graduate School of Business also appreciates Crownover’s extensive input and honored him last year with its John W. Gardner Volunteer Leadership Award. “He’s just phenomenal in what he’s done as a volunteer,” said Robert Joss, the school’s dean. “Helpful and selfless — he’s a terrific guy. The last three reunions in a row, his class has set fundraising records. And he’s a real leader of that class.”

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This one is too big … At 6 feet 2 inches tall, with sparkling blue eyes and a big smile, Crownover projects a warmth that tells you something about how he thrived for so long in the world of business consulting. In conversation, he doesn’t shy away from topics that can be controversial. He prefers to deal with them head-on while keeping the Rice board focused on the long view. Those issues include the growth of the campus and expansion of the undergraduate student body, financial challenges caused by the struggling global economy and its effect on Rice’s endowment, and discussion of a possible combination with nearby Baylor College of Medicine. He expects that the Rice–Baylor issue alone — still in discussion between the two institutions as of press time — will keep the board occupied through many hours of meetings. “For some issues, we can form an ad hoc committee and say, ‘Look, you study this thing and come back with a recommendation,’” Crownover said. “This one is too big for that. I want the entire board to get all the information possible.” Having Baylor as a member of the Rice family “appears to make a great deal of strategic sense for the university,” he said, although it would be a complex undertaking that requires a mixture of vision, courage and prudence. “There are many issues the board has looked at, but the most difficult questions are: Can we bring all the necessary participants together, and can we make it work financially?” People told me I had no chance Crownover deserves considerable credit for bringing David Leebron to Rice as its seventh president. He led the search committee for a successor to retiring President Malcolm Gillis and was the first from Rice to meet with Leebron, then dean of Columbia Law School. “People told me I had no chance,” Crownover recalled. “They said, ‘You’re not going to get him to leave New York.’” But, as he said, you’ve got to go seek people out. “I had breakfast with David at the Palace Hotel in New York and met him at 7:30 or 8,” he recalled. “At 11 o’clock, we parted, and I don’t think either one of us looked at our watches. Just three hours, locked in.” “We really hit it off, and my first impression was that Jim was very engaging,” said Leebron. “Jim is an incredibly thoughtful, dogged person. Sometimes when you’re talking on the phone you have to ask, ‘Are you still there?’ Because he’s thinking, listening. He’ll often leave a meeting and call me five minutes later with a question or another idea because he’s still thinking about it.” Crownover had an early ally in his campaign to lure Leebron to Rice in Y. Ping Sun, Leebron’s wife and now university representative.

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Jim Crownover addressed an enthusiastic crowd at the campus Centennial Campaign kick-off celebration. With him, from the left, were Rice President David Leebron and campaign co-chair Bobby Tudor.

“Partway through the process, I’d given him some advice, and there was a moment when Ping turned to David and said, ‘Trust Jim,’” he recalled, pleased to have won her confidence. “That was important.” “Jim felt from the beginning,” said Leebron, “that the secret to getting me was getting Ping.” I just dropped off the face of the Earth Crownover’s own reconnection with Rice took a while, and there was a note of frustration in his voice when he said he had no contact with the university for decades, despite his status as a community leader in Houston. “Literally, I was not contacted by Rice for more than 20 years, other than maybe a letter,” he said. “I just dropped off the face of the Earth.” A series of chance meetings with Rice trustees spurred the quest to get him more involved, and Crownover quickly found out why. He recalled the wisdom of a Rice financial officer at his board orientation in 1999. “The very first words out of his mouth were, ‘The big endowment is good news and bad news.’ I said, ‘I think I understand the good news, but what’s the bad news?’ He said, ‘Rice always felt like it had a lot of money. It developed in a way that’s very different from other universities. It didn’t feel the need to be aggressive.’” Something needed to change, and Crownover came back to Rice as great change was brewing. There was a new emphasis on fundraising that has evolved into the current $1 billion Centennial Campaign, and the board was evolving as well. Among other things, it had grown from a two-tiered organization with permanent appointees to a larger board with fixed terms. As an agent of change in the business world, Crownover was quite comfortable taking on a new set of challenges — even though he said it sometimes felt “like building a bridge under traffic.” McKinsey’s Daniel understands the challenges business professionals face in an academic environment — he served as one of the seven board members of the Harvard Corporation and as the university’s treasurer and also has been on the boards of Brandeis, Wesleyan and Rockefeller universities. He said Crownover is uniquely suited to

the golf team and whose possession of a car throughout his undergrad years made him pretty popular. “My other memories are of great social times,” he said. “Great parties. We’d go to the San Jacinto Inn sometimes, and on Saturday afternoons, I would treat myself to a hot fudge sundae in the Village. I remember wonderful times studying in the basement of Hanszen. We had these little carrels, and I’d drink coffee like crazy and do my work.” We’re the strange bird in the top 20

his role at Rice. “I’ve had a lot of academic affiliations, and I know most businesspeople would get in there and say, ‘Why can’t we do this tomorrow? The hell with the faculty, let’s just do it!’ But Jim is a gentle soul and has the sensibility to think of Rice as a client and figure out how to really help and win their trust and confidence, which he has clearly done.”

Those memories are motivation enough for Crownover to preserve the qualities he sees as truly unique among American universities. Beyond that, he feels growth is essential for Rice to keep its place among the elite institutions of higher education. “It’s amazing we’re ranked as high as we are, frankly, because we’re so small, and we don’t have a medical school or a law school,” he said. “We’re kind of different and, other than Caltech, we’re the strange bird in the top 20.” Crownover said the trustees were well aware that the status quo was not an option and welcomed Leebron’s Call to Conversation that led to the development of the Vision for the Second Century. “It’s not just me — we all have high aspirations for Rice,” he said. “We realize the competition is really strong, and we’ve got to change.” He’s particularly excited about the soon-to-open BioScience Research Collaborative (previously known by its working name, the Collaborative Research Center), the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, and the possibilities a combined Rice and Baylor would offer. “You talk about ‘no upper limit,’” he said. “Right now, we have some centers of excellence, big and small, and we can enhance the quality of those centers and create new ones. Arguably, in two or three decades, Rice can be the best story of advancement among American universities. That’s not just pie-in-the-sky. I’ve actually thought this through.”

“Jim is an incredibly thoughtful, dogged person. Sometimes when you’re talking on the phone you have to ask, ‘Are you still there?’ Because he’s thinking, listening.” — D avid Leebron

I’d drink coffee like crazy and do my work

We’re improving the story

Crownover, a native of Norman, Okla., felt at home at Rice from the first time he stepped onto the campus with his parents, Maurice and Nell. “They’re both gone, but they were so proud that I came to Rice. I hope they know I’m here chairing the board. They’d be amazed.” Crownover was a National Merit Scholar. “I was assured I would be accepted early. I may have applied to Duke and Stanford, but it was always Rice for me,” said Crownover, who majored in chemical engineering. “I liked that it had the reputation of being hard. I wanted to feel like I could live up to the challenge.” So why didn’t he become a chemical engineer? “I hated the smell of chemicals,” he said. “I thought I liked the security of getting to a definitive answer, but the lightbulb went on when I took an economics course, and I found I enjoyed those problems. They were open-ended, unstructured and dealt with people more.” Rice offered many advantages, said Crownover, who played on

Crownover said Rice was never really static and, over the years, has grown and evolved. “There were 1,600 students when I was here, and now there are more than 3,000,” he said. “Does that mean we’re not small anymore? It’s a nonissue. There’s nothing I feel more strongly about than the wisdom of increasing the size of our undergraduate student body. Not that it’s going to be easy, but it’s the smart thing to do.” That entails making more people aware of the superior educational experience and environment Rice offers. “In the past, we made a fine art of keeping our light under a bushel, so it’s tremendously important that we’re figuring out how to convey Rice to the world,” he said. “But we’re improving the story. I like this tag line of ‘Unconventional Wisdom.’ To me, being an old Rice guy, that really does capture us. “Some people have tried to pin me down on what university we aspire to be like, and I say, ‘We aspire to be unique. One of a kind.’” Like Crownover himself.

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Herding Words

Larry McMurtry: On Rice,Writing and the Fate of Books BY

DAV I D

M E D I N A

LARRY MCMURTRY IS FOND OF SAYING THAT HIS PARENTS WANTED HIM TO STAY AT THE RANCH AND HERD CATTLE, BUT HE WANTED TO HERD WORDS.

orn in 1936 in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised outside Archer City, Larry McMurtry began his literary journey when he was 6 years old. He was living on a cattle ranch deprived of books, but one day a cousin, on his way to enlist for the Army, dropped off a box of 19 adventure books. “I picked up one, and I have been reading ever since,” McMurtry said. “I’d play hooky from the first grade to read.”

McMurtry’s slow Texas accent belies his sharp, encyclopedic mind. He can impart obscure information on any number of topics: writers, history, diseases, comics and manners. That knowledge comes from the 28,000 books stored in his personal library and the one million books he has handled as an antiquarian bookseller. “I have been reading for 66 years,” he explained. “That’s a lot of years.” During that time, the 72-year-old also has contributed his fair share of writing to the world’s library: 29 novels, two collections of essays, three memoirs and more than 30 screenplays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove” and an Oscar for co-writing “Brokeback Mountain.” “He’s certainly a productive writer,” said Walter Isle, a Rice professor emeritus of English. Isle has known McMurtry since 1960, when they both attended Stanford University as English students. “I think he is a good storyteller. He’s a very good essayist, and he knows a lot about the American West.”

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MC M U R TRY H AS PRODUC E D A BODY OF WOR K TH AT, BY A N Y M E AS U R E , I S E X TR AOR DIN A RY.

If he had to pick his best book, he probably would choose “Duane’s Depressed,” which is part of a series that started with “The Last Picture Show.” He considers “Lonesome Dove” to be the “Gone with the Wind” of the West.

Intellectual Home When it was time for McMurtry to go to college, his mother suggested Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. “My father then had the worst idea of all, which was that I go to Texas A&M and become a vet,” McMurtry wrote in his latest tome, “Books: A Memoir,” which talks about his passion for books. “I’m not sure why my father made that suggestion, which, had it been adopted, would have been a mistake of epic proportion.” McMurtry was saved from this fate by the happy accident of seeing a television program about Rice, then called the Rice Institute. “The campus had what I supposed to be an Oxford-like look,” McMurtry said. “Actually, the architecture was partly Moorish. I, of course, had never been to Oxford at the time, but the program pointed out that the school was organized on a residential college system, like the real Oxford.” McMurtry arrived at Rice in 1954, and he moved into a garage apartment on South Boulevard near Shadyside. He had three roommates, one of whom was Douglas Milburn, who received a B.A. in 1956, an M.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1964 in German. For McMurtry, one of his fondest memories of Rice was Fondren Library, which, at the time, contained 600,000 volumes. “I was, to say the least, thrilled,” McMurtry wrote in “Books,” “and when I went back to Rice as a graduate student and later a professor, I still spent much of my time wandering around Fondren.” McMurtry said that he romanticized Fondren in his book “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers,” in which the

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hero, Danny Deck, sleeps on the couches of the library. When McMurtry arrived at Rice, the university was just beginning to balance humanities and the sciences. “It was still, however, an oldfashioned, Johns Hopkins-type school with a lot of philology, German, French and Old English,” he said. “It was taught by a generation of people like Alan McKillop, who had studied at Harvard with William James.” McMurtry also remembered being taught by English professors Jackson Cope and Wilfred Dowden, who died in 1999. Sumarie Dowden said that her husband often talked about the young McMurtry. “Larry was in Wilfred’s freshman class,” she recalled, “and he said that Larry was very smart and knew a lot more about literature than any student his age.” Dowden encouraged McMurtry to take a writing class with George Williams ’23. The class was reserved for upperclassmen, but McMurtry didn’t stay at Rice long enough to be eligible for the course. “I knew I was going to leave Rice almost from the time I arrived,” McMurtry admits. Like many Rice students of the time, McMurtry fell victim to Math 100. He would, however, be a part of Rice on two other occasions: as a graduate student from 1958 to 1960 and a professor from 1963 to 1969. Though McMurtry left Rice, he still thinks fondly of the university. “I began reading seriously when I was at Rice,” he explained. “I love Rice and think of it as my intellectual home.”

Career Choices McMurtry transferred to North Texas State College (now University of North Texas) in Denton, where his interest in writing began after taking a creative writing class with English Professor Jim Brown. McMurtry received his B.A. in 1958 from North Texas and returned to Rice for graduate studies in English, earning an M.A. in 1960. He originally planned to pursue a doctorate in English but settled for the master’s. By then he had finished drafts of his first two novels, and he used the manuscripts to enter the Wallace Stegner Fellowship creative writing program at Stanford University, where he spent a year. From California, McMurtry returned to his home state to teach at Texas Christian University for a year before moving back to Rice to teach freshman English and creative writing. “I had the ideal teaching job,” McMurtry said. He had to teach only two classes a semester, while at TCU, he taught five. “If I had wanted to remain in academia,” he said, “I could have stayed at Rice.” Instead, he decided to write books and become an antiquarian bookseller.

Writing McMurtry developed his method of writing when he was 23. He would get up early every day, including holidays and weekends, and write five pages. As he became more proficient, he increased the number of pages to 10. “Very quickly I came to realize that I

“I began reading seriously when I was at Rice. I love Rice and think of it as my intellectual home.” —Larry McMurtry

couldn’t write anything short,” he revealed in “Books.” “I was neither a poet nor a short story writer.” Like a scribe from the past, McMurtry continues to use a manual typewriter — a Hermes 3000. Unabashedly a dinosaur in the world of technology, he has never used a computer, written an e-mail or done research using Google. “It just takes more time away from reading and writing,” he said. “The only way I have managed to improve anything is by typing it over. I do three drafts, which is usually enough.” As for research, McMurtry claims he doesn’t do any. “My research has been my lifelong reading.” Reading is, in fact, his source of inspiration. “Mostly the reading fertilizes the writing. Reading is the aquifer that drips, spongelike, into my fiction.” By plucking away at his typewriter every day, McMurtry has produced a body of work that, by any measure, is extraordinary. Such an outpouring can produce unevenness, as he admits in “Books,” where he offers a humble assessment of his books: “Most were good, three or four were indifferent to bad, and two or three were really good.” If he had to pick his best book, he probably would choose “Duane’s Depressed,” which is part of a series that started with “The Last Picture Show.” He considers “Lonesome Dove” to be the “Gone with the Wind” of the West. Despite his level of output, McMurtry still hammers away on his Hermes. He is working on the last two books of his memoirs — one about writing and the other about Hollywood — and his new novel, “Rhino Ranch,” will be published this June.

Like a scribe from the past, McMurtry continues to use a manual typewriter — a Hermes 3000.

Unabashedly a dinosaur in the world of technology, he has never used a computer, written an e-mail or done research using Google.

He hopes, however, that he doesn’t have to write another book of fiction. “Eventually all novelists, if they persist too long, get worse,” he said. “Writing great fiction involves some combination of energy and imagination that cannot be energized or realized forever.”

New Generations While McMurtry expressed concern that the culture of books is coming to an end, replaced by technology such as Google and the Kindle, his favorite pastime continues to be reading. “Reading, to me, is the perfect pleasure,” he explained. “It’s stable, inexpensive and gratifying. It’s everything a culture should be.” If the response to his recent Friends of Fondren Library Distinguished Guest Lecture was any indication, he’s not alone. The overflow crowd was clearly filled with lovers of the written word, both young and old. One Rice student said the very first paperback book she read was “The Last Picture Show,” and another student told McMurtry, “It’s tremendous to have you here at Rice. I remember the copy of ‘Lonesome Dove’ my grandfather used to read when I was little.” A graduate student dressed in a cowboy hat and boots said, “I spent eight years on the rodeo circuit, and I’ve seen many copies of your books on the dashboards of pickups.” For a man who left the ranch to herd words and hone his craft at a small Oxfordlike university in Houston, coralling whole generations of readers the world over is a pretty good legacy.

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A modern-day Nancy Drew, Riceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s centennial historian Melissa Kean experiences both thrills and chills in her fearless hunt for Rice history.

super By Merin Por ter

For a woman with five degrees, a quick sense of humor and a limitless supply of fearless curiosity, it takes surprisingly little to bring Melissa Kean to her knees. Recently it was the renovation of Autry Court, which laid bare cupboards and secret rooms filled to the brim with dusty papers, crumbling boxes and plenty of long-lost gems that enabled Kean to piece together a Rice Athletics past that had been just as dim as some of those Autry Court closets.

he treasures she retrieved while crawling around the old building’s are a reflection of Kean’s professional goals at Rice. As a historian who completed her Rice dissertation in 2000 on the desegregation of five Southern, private universities and who recently published a book that explores the same theme more deeply, she was ecstatic to discover reams and reams of papers from the coaches’ offices, from the Committee on Outdoor Sports and from the athletic director’s office that go all the way back to the 1930s. As an antiquarian seeking to build the university’s collection of Rice-related artifacts, Kean was tickled to find another brand of history in the old gym: the kind that sits in a display case and not only symbolizes a glorious past, but also hints at a great future. Nestled in the gymnasium’s forgotten depths, Kean found, among other glimpses of history, game balls from the Cotton Bowl, ribbons won by Rice runners in the 1920 Southwest Conference track meet, programs, trophies and a treasure trove of football-game films. “For different reasons, I’m interested in both types of finds,” Kean said. “I’m trying to do things that are related to each other but are really quite different. One is to be a scholar and the other is to be a resource for alums and other people at Rice who are interested in historical things.” But sleuthing the past and unearthing treasures can be risky. In the line of duty, Kean has braved everything from paper cuts and stubbed toes to brown recluse spider bites.

Campaign and upcoming centennial anniversary, which will celebrate the very history that Kean is enriching. Kean takes the Rice-related items she finds in those offices and other places to the university archives in Rice’s Woodson Research Center, where they are either sent through the shredder or enjoy new life as part of an archival collection. She and the Woodson archivists determine which — and sometimes the task is more serious than you might expect. A case in point are the Masterson papers, which she ranks among the most important finds she’s ever made. The papers, which date back to 1969 and reflect the record keeping of Herbert Allen, then-vice chairman of the Board of Trustees, came to Kean through Allen’s daughter, Anne Symonds. They chronicle in gritty, unvarnished detail a dark moment in university history known as the Masterson Affair, which began when the board appointed a president without first consulting the faculty and ended less than a week later when the new president resigned as a result of the faculty’s uprising. Kean said the find helped her understand the Masterson Affair from the trustees’ perspective in a way that wasn’t possible when all she had to go on was the board’s official minutes. And that’s the way much of her understanding of Rice’s complex history has materialized. “It’s like I’m doing a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces, and every once in a while I’ll get one — like the stuff from Anne Symonds — that enables me to do a whole corner,” she said. “But every piece goes somewhere, which is part of why this job is so joyful. I just love to see where stuff fits.” That natural curiosity is only one of the attributes that makes Kean a good fit for her job, according to Lee Pecht, certified archivist and Fondren Library’s head of special collections. “Melissa is inquisitive, incredibly perceptive, attuned to the gaps in information in the university archives — and she knows how to talk to just about anyone to learn what she needs.” Kean’s former Rice history professor and current colleague John Boles ’65 also praised her optimism, sense of humor and — Melissa Kean nonstop energy. “She is an inspiration to be around,” he said. Still, when students ask Kean how a person gets a job like hers, she answers in all seriousness that she has no idea. “I was standing still, and all this stuff just happened to me,” she said. Her path to the position of centennial historian was laced with happy accidents: a career as a lawyer that gave way to two children 12 months apart; a Hebrew class that offered free child care and resulted in a full scholarship for graduate study in history at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.; a move to Houston when she was only four hours from completing her Creighton master’s; a graduate-level course with Boles that ignited her love for Southern history; and, through it all, a will to do the best she could with whatever task fell to her at any given time. Kean still lives according to that philosophy. And whether it means unearthing dark secrets, crawling around on all fours in a dusty gymnasium closet or interviewing older alums and eating until she pops, she’s happy to do it for the joy she fi nds on her adventurous hunt for Rice’s history.

“I’m trying to do things that are related to each other but are really quite different. One is to be a scholar and the other is to be a resource for Rice alums and other people at Rice who are interested in historical things.”

“You’ve got to be made of pretty stern stuff to manage that, because it’s dangerous!” said Kean, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Not to mention the older ladies. I spend a lot of time talking with them about their history at Rice, and they’ll feed you ’til you pop!” Kean’s job also gives her a front-row view of the idiosyncrasies and deep devotion of Rice’s faculty and administration throughout the years. Her insights stem partly from her intimacy with their papers and artifacts but also come through one of the more difficult aspects of her job. “I clean out people’s offices after they’ve died, and sometimes the things you find in there rip your heart out,” she said. One faculty member, for example, kept every grade book for every single class he taught. “That’s very moving to me,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “It makes me even more committed to doing the best job I can as a scholar.” That job is even more important in light of Rice’s Centennial

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The

Countdown Begins BY MIKE WILLIAMS

The

event is three years away, but Rice University is already deep into preparations for its 100th anniversary, which will include reflection on the achievements of its first century and anticipation for the century to come. With the billion-dollar fundraising effort known as the Centennial Campaign up and running, Rice University officials are turning to a multiyear, campuswide commemoration culminating Oct. 12, 2012, the anniversary of the Rice Institute’s formal opening. Three volunteer co-chairs have been chosen to lead the Centennial Commission: Rice trustee J.D. Bucky Allshouse ’71 and trustee emeriti Janice Cornell Doty ’60 and Teveia Rose Barnes ’75. “We are so very pleased that Bucky, Janice and Teveia have agreed to serve in these leadership roles during this historic time for the university,” said Rice Board of Trustees Chairman Jim Crownover ’65. “They will provide important insight and great ideas for making the most of this once-in-a-century celebration.” Allshouse is a Houston attorney and member of the Centennial Campaign cabinet who has been involved with the Rice community almost continuously since his graduation. A trustee since 1988, he also served as a board member and president of the Association of Rice Alumni and was president of the Owl Club from 1981 to 1983. Allshouse

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and his wife, Cynthia, helped drive the effort and raise the funds to support the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and The Shepherd School of Music. Doty, of Greenwich, Conn., was for many years an executive with IBM. She has broad experience in sales, marketing, product development, corporate communications, direct marketing and real estate management. She led the development of the IBM Gallery of Science and Art in New York City. When she became a Rice trustee in 1999, she was executive vice president of Harris McCully Associates, a career management consulting company in New York City. Doty also served on the executive committee of the Association of Rice Alumni board. Barnes is a San Francisco attorney whose work in diversity programs is legendary. She founded Lawyers For One America to promote racial and ethnic diversity in the profession, has served as general counsel and executive director of the Bar Association of San Francisco and was associate general counsel and senior vice president of Bank of America. She joined the ranks of Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was given the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award by the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in

Lovett spent nine months on a fact-finding mission to 88 institutions of higher learning in 21 countries, which greatly informed his vision for Rice.

the Profession in 2004. She is currently a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP and practices in the Finance and Financial Institutions and Bankruptcy and Business Reorganizations groups. “Bucky, Janice and Teveia are dedicated alumni,” said President David Leebron. “I have no doubt that with their guidance we will commemorate this important milestone with as much distinction as did our founders at the university’s opening nearly a century ago.” The responsibility of the commission chairs will be “to provide a public face for the centennial and to set strategic direction for the Centennial Commission — a soon-to-be-formed representative group

Each year from now through 2012 will feature centennial events with an annual theme based on the university’s history or aspirations. This year’s theme — “Engaging the World” — recognizes the 100th anniversary of founding president Edgar Odell Lovett’s trip around the globe. Lovett spent nine months on a fact-finding mission to 88 institutions of higher learning in 21 countries, which greatly informed his vision for Rice. This journey of academic exploration, Boles said, “convinced Lovett that the Rice Institute, from the very beginning, should aspire to be an international university” — a goal that is still central to Rice’s mission today.

Each year from now through 2012 will feature centennial events with an annual theme based on the university’s history or aspirations. of Rice’s many constituencies,” said Kathleen Boyd Fossi ’80, who serves as the director of the centennial effort. Committees were formed more than five years ago to start the planning process. Boyd Fossi will be taking advantage of opportunities already in place to create a series of events leading to the official commemoration in October 2012. “Our plans are to leverage existing initiatives and events rather than create expensive new ones,” she said. John Boles ’65, Rice’s William Pettus Hobby Professor of History, is helping to identify the historic milestones leading up to the centennial. “The opening convocation in 1912 announced bold ambitions for the new university and carefully projected its ultimate place in the highest echelon of world universities,” he said. “The centennial commemoration will celebrate that trajectory and help set our sights even higher for the coming decades.”

Events during the year will highlight a number of the university’s Vision for the Second Century priorities that have international themes, among them global health, the Chao Center for Asian Studies and the Latin American Initiative. Boyd Fossi has extensive experience to prepare her for the work ahead. She spent 16 years with Continental Airlines, where she was responsible for product development and branding and led the creation of its blueand-gold identity and “BusinessFirst” international service. Boyd Fossi also spent 12 years as a consultant to airlines and airports worldwide. “We will seek involvement campuswide — the departments, centers, institutes and colleges as well as alumni, friends and community members — to make sure we cover all of the bases in the centennial commemoration,” she said. “This is about and for all of the Rice community.”

Learn more about the centennial anniversary: ›› › w w w. r i c e . e d u / c e n t e n n i a l Rice Magazine

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Taking Careof By Weezie Kerr Mackey

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â&#x20AC;˘

Photography by Tommy LaVergne

Brent Smith

ANALYZING

paused in the doorway of his office in Janice and Robert McNair Hall to survey a beloved stomping ground: the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. “It’s not a position I would have accepted anywhere but Rice,” he said of his appointment last summer as associate dean for Executive Education at the Jones School. “It was a unique proposition.” Smith has been a professor at the Jones School for eight years, aside from a two-year stint to teach organizational behavior at the London Business School, where he designed and directed many of their executive leadership programs. He has taught in the Rice MBA programs as well as Executive Education, logging more hours teaching leadership courses to high-level executives than any other fulltime faculty member. He not only understands the lay of the land at the Jones School, but he’s also well aware of Executive Education’s strong foundation.

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION,

ORIGINALLY CALLED THE

OFFICE

EXECUTIVE

Development, was begun in 1978. At the time, it operated in conjunction with the MBA program and offered nondegree short courses, seminars and conferences to the Houston business community. Before long, it had become not only a source of revenue, but also a significant connection between the new business school and the city’s practicing professionals. Under the leadership of Sal Manzo, the department grew in its ability to satisfy the needs of the business community by introducing the MBA for Executives in 1998. “We saw the impact of our outreach,” former associate dean Wil Uecker remembered. “It was one of my main objectives to launch that program.” Under it’s various directors—Kim Kehoe held the post beginning in 1989, Harry Wilkerson in 1992, Uecker in 1997, Bill Lee in 2005, and Smith in 2008—Executive Education has continued to provide directors, managers, supervisors and senior management the latest industry knowledge and managerial techniques by combining the talents of industry experts with world-class faculty and classroom research. “The Jones School is a resource in the community for companies to keep current with the best thinking in the business,” Kehoe said, emphasizing the school’s mission of developing thought leaders.

FROM HIS EXPERIENCE WITH EXECUTIVE PROGRAMS IN EUROPE, ASIA AND South America, Smith understood the many challenges that executive education departments face. When the economy thrives, executive education programs do very well. When the economy suffers, companies look at executive education as a discretionary expense that can be cut. Undaunted, Smith set formidable goals for himself and the department. “We want a broader engagement of our target audience,” he said. “We want to take a more active stance in the market and help companies develop leaders”. At the heart of his plan is the university’s mission to engage the city and extend the Jones School’s reach. The first step was to identify everything the department was doing right, learn how to improve on it and discover ways to make it resistant to economic turmoil. Smith recognized that Executive Education could better engage the corporate Houston community by more closely matching its customers’ needs with Jones School expertise. Following that, he reprioritized the open enrollment course offerings to make Executive Education a reliable partner for management educational opportunities. Then he sought to provide specialized instruction for the department’s two largest customer bases: up-andcoming leaders and rising managers. “We have been talking for some time about the growing corporate talent shortage,” Smith said. “Our program can help organizations accelerate the development of companies’ most valuable resources: their people.”

AND FULFILLING THE NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY

resulted in more than 35 different open enrollment classes and certificate programs over the last year. The department nearly doubled open enrollment attendance since 2002, and some of the industryspecific certificate programs in energy and health care became custom programs — courses designed and expertly tailored to focus on a particular company’s employees and goals. Smith’s experience in leadership — the most-requested subject in the department’s custom programs — was the ideal complement for the Jones School. From the first custom client, Brown and Root, to collaborations with Memorial Hermann and Marathon Oil Corp., custom programs evolved into a major segment of Executive Education’s work and became an important opportunity for the faculty to demonstrate their talents in a more sophisticated way. Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. (CB&I), an engineering, procurement and construction company in the energy and natural resource industries, has been a long-term custom client and continues to be a vibrant partner. To date, 225 managers from CB&I have completed tailored programs in executive education at the Jones School. Their key take away, according to CB&I spokesperson David Bordages, has been “the benefit of combining academic principles with CB&I operational practices.”

“We want to take a more active stance in the market and help companies develop leaders.” —Brent Smith

That means faculty and staff worked together to understand CB&I’s specific business model and markets. They looked at balance sheets and profit and loss statements. They partnered with their client to deliver the information and techniques necessary for participants to carry back to the workplace and put into action. And relationships with clients didn’t end there. NCI Building Systems’ former CEO, A.R. Ginn ’62, had been a football player at Rice, and although he had to drop out before graduating, he never forgot the value of that education. With his company flourishing, Ginn tapped Executive Education to create a custom program for his employees that would tie cutting-edge business acumen back to NCI operations. Over the next couple of years, 120 NCI employees attended one-week programs that included sessions in leadership, strategy, and finance and accounting. When Ginn retired in 2007 after nearly 50 years in the metal construction industry, his employees wanted to give him something profound in return. In his honor, they donated $300,000 to the Jones School. The A.R. Ginn Fund now supports the undergraduate business minor for any use within that program that the school deems necessary. For 30 years, companies like CB&I, NCI Building Systems and a legion of others have benefitted from the Executive Education program at the Jones School, but as the NCI story illustrates, learning is a two-way street. Executive Education has found a wealth of inspiration from its partners in developing ways to approach lifelong learning. Brent Smith would have it no other way.

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A lot of people dream about finding buried treasure. Most don’t succeed, but occasionally, a rare individual actually does make a discovery worth noting. You can add Rice’s own Logan Browning to that list. Browning, a lecturer in English who also serves as editor of the Rice-based academic journal SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, has uncovered a previously unpublished story by Walker Percy, the award-winning Southern writer best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans.

LiteraryGold By Christopher Dow

he discovery came about because of Browning’s association with The Hopkins Review, a literary quarterly published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The review had been out of print for more than 50 years when it was resuscitated by famed critic John Irwin, the Decker Professor in the Humanities at Hopkins, who earned his Ph.D. in English at Rice in 1970. The Rice connection went deeper when Irwin tapped Glenn Blake to serve as managing editor. Blake earned his undergraduate degree from Rice in 1979 and taught here for a number of years, and it so happened that he and Browning are good friends. The two of them frequently talked about The Hopkins Review, and Browning contributed enough ideas, articles and book reviews to earn a spot on the masthead as an advisory editor. The first issue of the review contained unpublished pieces by Blake’s mentor, Donald Barthelme, which set Browning to thinking about his friend Tom Cowan, whom Browning met while they were undergraduates at Sewanee: The University of the South. Cowan is the nephew of Walker Percy, the distinguished author whose novels include “The Moviegoer” and “Love Among the Ruins.” Past experience had taught Browning that there might be a good chance that Percy’s archives held unpublished material. Browning had served as research assistant to Robert Patten, Rice’s Lynette S. Autrey Professor in Humanities and publisher and executive editor of SEL, when he was at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. “Bob sent me to the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle to root around in all these old letters and records, and I got to go to the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford and its John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera,” Browning said. “After digging around in all that, I realized that no matter how well a collection has been cataloged or researched, there’s almost always going to be something that people haven’t found or that was misfiled.”

One night last year, when Browning was visiting Cowan in New Orleans, he broached the idea of searching the Percy archives to see if he could find any material that was previously unpublished. “I’ll call Aunt Bunt and ask,” Cowan told Browning. Aunt Bunt was Mary Bernice Percy, Walker Percy’s widow. After brief discussions with Mrs. Percy and Roy Percy, a nephew

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Photography by Tommy LaVergne

who counsels Mrs. Percy on literary matters, Browning was given permission to search the archives, which are housed in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Browning spent several days going through the archives, initially pessimistic that he would find something that was unpublished. His perseverance paid off, though, and he came away with four possibilities: three short nonfiction prose essays and a 27-page short story titled, appropriately enough, “A Detective Story.” The three essays, it turned out, already had appeared in various small-circulation publications, but there was no trace that “A Detective Story” had ever been published. “Finding the story was a wonderful feeling,” Browning said. “Sort of, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’” The Hopkins Review editors were equally delighted. “I kept trying to downplay their expectations,” Browning said. “I told them not to get too excited until they’d seen it. I sent copies to them, and within a few hours, they called, saying, ‘It’s fantastic. Let’s do it.’” Securing rights consisted primarily of obtaining Mrs. Percy’s permission. “She was very kind about it all,” Browning said. “She read the story, and I had a long telephone interview with her. I learned a lot of things — not necessarily about the story, but it was fun to talk with her.” Browning still worries that the story actually has been published before. “I remain slightly terrified that the call is going to come in the middle of the night saying, ‘We published this,’” he said. “More and more, though, I think we’re safe, but I’m aware that these things can happen.” Although detective fiction was popular at the time Percy wrote “A Detective Story,” Browning said that it isn’t a genre story. “Percy seems to have had little interest in the detective story, as such,” Browning said. “You don’t even find it in his favorite reading list that comes up in his correspondence with friend Shelby Foote or in his library, much of which is housed at Chapel Hill. I’m not saying that there aren’t any detective writers in there, but they’re a very small part.” The story, instead, is sort of a play on the detective genre.

“The protagonists are detectives only in the sense that they become detectives by deciding to look for this man who tells his wife he’s going out for cigarettes one evening and doesn’t come back,” Browning said. The wife of the vanished man calls a couple — the husband of which is the story’s narrator — who are good friends to help her find him, and the search takes them from their small Mississippi Delta town to Memphis, Tenn.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Cincinnati, Ohio. “The story reveals a very curious couple’s relationship,” Browning said. “There are all kinds of hints that they didn’t like each other all that much or that they were irritated by this or that or curious about various things about each other. And there is a lot of doubling. It’s clear that the narrator has imagined doing something like this himself.” Ultimately, the disappearance is partly solved, but an air of mystery hovers around the conclusion. An air of mystery with its own doubling also surrounds the story’s composition with relation to its time frame, stylistic elements and plot. When Browning was talking to Mrs. Percy about the story’s origin, she thought it might have been connected to an incident that involved her husband in 1972. “One day, to Percy’s astonishment, this guy showed up at the Percy home in Louisiana,” Browning said. “Percy hadn’t seen him since college, and he told Percy that he’d just left home and not gone back after telling his wife he was going out for cigarettes.” Despite the similarities between the incident and the setup of “A Detective Story,” 1972 seems to Browning to be too late for the story to have been written. By then, Percy had been a successful novelist for a decade, and the story exhibits stylistic elements that point to it being more of a neophyte effort. “I never felt like I wasn’t reading a Percy story,” Browning said.

“But I felt there were a few moments that weren’t quite worthy of Percy at his best, and Mrs. Percy felt the same way. I maintain this delicate balance between recognizing that it’s not Percy at his absolute best and feeling very strongly that it’s good and worthy of Percy.” Internal evidence also points to a composition date earlier than 1972. Scenes in Memphis take place in the Peabody Hotel and the Chisca Plaza Hotel, both of which are described in their glory days, although by the early 1970s, the former was a Sheraton and the latter no longer was open. While it is possible that Percy intentionally set the story in a previous time frame, that doesn’t jibe with Browning’s perception of the author’s work. “Consciously moving the setting back 10 or 15 years doesn’t seem to be what Percy ever tried to achieve,” Browning said. “It’s certainly possible, but my overall sense is that that isn’t the case because he doesn’t try to make anything out of it being set in an earlier time.” Even though questions remain regarding the story’s genesis, “A Detective Story” may help scholars better understand Percy and his work. “It won’t change the face of Percy scholarship,” Browning said, “but it does contain motifs and themes that Percy utilized in his more important work, so you can see that these concerns and interests had been a part of Percy for a long time. I hope I’m not kidding myself, but the more I read the story, the more interested I got in it. I really think it’s a pretty rich place to go to learn more about Percy.” Read “A Detective Story” and Logan Browning’s comments in The Hopkins Review › › › ricemagazine.info/18

“I kept trying to downplay their expectations. I told them not to get too excited until they’d seen it. I sent copies to them, and within a few hours, they called, saying, ‘It’s fantastic. Let’s do it.’” —Logan Browning

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Villinski When New York artist Paul Villinski was preparing for a 2006 exhibition in post-Katrina New Orleans, he wanted to immerse himself in the city and its culture while he created work in response to the devastation. But making art requires space and a host of accoutrements, all of which were in short supply in New Orleans at the time, so Villinski decided to bring his studio and living quarters with him. Villinski’s solution — “Emergency Response Studio” — utilized one of the most notorious symbols of the disaster: the FEMA trailer. He obtained one of the 30-foot Gulf Streams and set about reworking — and greening — the dreaded trailer’s interior. Over a seven-month period, he reconfig-

of a clear polycarbonate side panel and a geodesic dome the artist built into the roof. Fresh air circulated through the open porch, and power was generated through solar panels and a micro-wind turbine and stored in eight mammoth batteries. The result, which was parked in front

To drive home that point, Villinski created a skeletal mock-up of an unaltered FEMA trailer inside the gallery that more than achieved his goal of emphasizing the “cagelike” quality of the original trailer space. Visitors could enter it and imagine what it would be like to live with their kith and kin — possibly for years — in a space that most families wouldn’t be able to stand for more than a weekend camping trip at a national park. The artist’s working studio was infinitely spacious in comparison. Believing that artists should be deployed “as part of the mix of disaster workers, medical personnel, architects and

Villinski created a skeletal mock-up of an unaltered FEMA trailer inside the gallery that more than achieved his goal of emphasizing the “cagelike” quality of the original trailer space.

ured the space to allow for a studio and added a drop-down porch. He ripped out the trailer’s much publicized hazardous and formaldehyde-laden materials and replaced them with green materials like reclaimed wood, bamboo cabinetry, linseed oil linoleum tiles and insulation made of recycled denim. The traditionally dark trailer became light-filled, even when closed, because

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of Sewall Hall as part of Villinski’s recent Rice Gallery installation, was a functional, portable and aesthetically pleasing space that seemed adequate, if tight, for one or two people. One wonders how in the world FEMA determined that a family of six could actually live for an extended period of time within the confines of the standard-issue trailer design.

urban planners charged with responding to, repairing and re-envisioning disaster sites like New Orleans,” Villinski sees his Emergency Response Studio as a vehicle — both literal and figurative — that will allow artists to embed themselves in and respond to disaster situations. —Kelly Klaasmeyer

Arts

A Venue for Art

Building on its commitment to incorporate art into its landscape and interior public spaces as part of Rice’s Vision for the Second Century and the Centennial Campaign, Rice has appointed Molly Hubbard as university art director. Hubbard will have an active role in collaborating with artists and patrons to create opportunities for public art on the Rice campus. The collection will create a more vibrant and dynamic campus and will more intimately connect Rice with the arts community in Houston and beyond. In her newly established role, Hubbard is charged with developing a master plan for art on campus and steering Rice’s art committee, co-chaired by Raymond Brochstein ’55 and Suzanne Deal Booth ’77, to review artists’ works and proposed projects. She also will have a role in developing collaborative art education programs within Rice and with other Houston art groups as well as engaging patrons to support the programs. Hubbard and the art committee plan to work with both established and emerging artists from diverse backgrounds and regions. The commissioned works will be sitespecific and multidimensional in a variety of media, with a focus on high aesthetic value and conceptual merit. “Think of the entire campus as a venue for art,” Hubbard said. “We will not only make meaningful contributions to the lives of Rice students and stakeholders, but also by opening our campus to the Houston community and visitors, we will become a destination for the experience and enjoyment of art.” Hubbard is well-prepared for her new role at Rice. She has been a member of the Rice Art Committee for a year and served as director of special projects for the School of Humanities for art, film and creative writing projects. Recently, she was appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to a six-year term on the Texas Commission on the Arts. The commission encourages appreciation for fine arts in Texas and works to drive economic development and increase access to the arts. —Jessica Stark

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Sky space It’s not unusual to hear artists talk about the use of light and space. It’s pretty rare when one’s art consists of light and space. Meet celebrated American artist James Turrell, who uses some of nature’s most ephemeral elements to create experiential works of art, one of which has been commissioned by Rice. Shown above is Turrell’s Skyspace located in the Draper Courtyard at Pomona College, Claremont, Calif. Take a tour of the Pomona College Skyspace: ›› › ricemagazine.info/16

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Arts Turrell‘s installation, which inaugurates the new public art program at Rice, will stand in the green space in front of Alice Pratt Brown Hall, home of The Shepherd School of Music. The Rice Art Committee, co-chaired by Raymond Brochstein ’55 and Suzanne Deal Booth ’77, will lead the efforts for the development and construction of the project. The design will be open-air and could include a water element. Just as important will be the piece’s accessibility: The space was deliberately selected for the nearby parking and the openness around it, and the work will be visible from some high-rises around Houston and the Texas Medical Center. “I’ve worked in a lot of museums and private collections, and I think that, in a way, people in the art world have done a disservice to the field because it’s become too elite and insulated,” said Deal Booth, whose gift is making the Turrell piece possible. “So I’ve made a big attempt to bring access to art. Let’s not even call it ‘art.’ Let’s call it ‘interesting spaces.’” Both art and Rice are ingrained in Deal Booth’s blood. Fresh from a summer spent in Europe touring museums and studying paintings, she entered Rice thirsting for all things art: the culture, the history, the lifestyle. An art history major studying closely with the department’s four faculty members, Deal Booth found what she was seeking, but when she met Dominique de Menil, a new hunger emerged. “She set an example for me of how to get involved with the people around you,” Deal Booth said. “She set a tone for what I would call ‘high-level philanthropy.’” Deal Booth got a firsthand look into her mentor’s passion by working as a student assistant during the time de Menil was involved at Rice University. Her job was to go through the late John de Menil’s files and catalog the information from the note cards. The work might have been dull to some, but Deal Booth loved it because of the art it introduced her to and the insight it afforded her into the de Menils’ collecting process. Deal Booth’s association with Turrell dates back to 1980, when she was a graduate student in art history and art conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. During that time, she worked as Turrell’s part-time assistant and helped build one of his first “skyspaces” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. She later worked with him to install his first retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “I have always been intrigued by James’ work and his passion to create spaces where ephemeral or even invisible light — as is usually perceptible only in our dreams — can be experienced,” Deal Booth said. “It is with great joy that I am able to extend this gift to the Rice community.” For more than three decades, Turrell has used light and indeterminate space to extend and enhance perception. His work has been the subject of more than 140 solo exhibitions worldwide since 1967. Since 1972 he has been transforming the Roden Crater, a natural cinder volcano situated in the Painted Desert in northern Arizona, into a large-scale artwork. Through the medium of light, the piece relates to the surrounding sky, land and culture. His permanent installations are on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas; the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; and the Panza Collection in Varese, Italy, among others. Turrell has two other major projects in Houston, the Quaker Meeting House and “The Light Inside,” a site-specific, artificially lit, interior installation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. With the addition of Rice’s naturally

“I have always been intrigued by James’ work and his passion to create spaces where ephemeral or even invisible light — as is usually perceptible only in our dreams — can be experienced.” —Suzanne Deal Booth

lit, outdoor installation, Houston will become the only city where the public can see both types of Turrell’s work. “Having a new work by an artist with the stature of James Turrell at Rice will be a profound statement for the university’s intention of creating a public art program with high aesthetic merit,” said Molly Hubbard, Rice’s newly appointed university art director. “Imagine the experience for the multitudes of viewers who will be drawn to the work, not unlike a pilgrimage site.” —Jessica Stark

Learn more about Suzanne Deal Booth’s philanthropy to Rice University ›› › ricemagazine.info/17 Have an artistic view for Rice? Find out how you can help. ›› › www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign

Rice Magazine

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No. 3

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2009

“Along our low gradient Texas and Louisiana coastlines, an annual rise in relative sea level of between 1/16 and 1/8 inch per year results in an average of three feet to five feet of coastal retreat.” Evolution of the Upper Texas Coast John Anderson likes to joke that he studies the Antarctic in the winter and the upper Gulf Coast in the summer, but what he sees happening along the Gulf Coast is no laughing matter. Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and professor of Earth science, has spent two decades studying the Texas coastline and continental shelf, and he put what he has learned in “The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast: A Geologist Answers Questions About Sand, Storms and Living by the Sea” (Texas A&M University Press, 2007). In this richly illustrated book, he sets out to answer fundamental questions about coastal evolution, natural processes that affect the coastline and how human development can be managed to help preserve it. Want to know what happens to the sand that erodes from Texas beaches or if beach erosion can be stopped? Can a hurricane have positive impacts? How much development can the coast stand? How severe is the possibility of extensive coastal flooding due to rising sea levels? The answers to these questions and others might be surprising. Sand, for example, does not erode from beaches — some of it is washed down the coast by currents that run parallel to the shoreline, some collects in tidal deltas or behind man-made barriers such as jetties, and some is layered over by river silt. Beaches merely seem like they’re eroding due to rising sea levels and the second-worst coastal subsidence in the United States

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— both exacerbated by decreasing infusions of river sand due to up-stream dams. Equally fascinating is Anderson’s recounting of the geological history of the upper Texas coast. Did you know that, at the end of the last Ice Age, the Texas shoreline was located approximately 80 miles farther out in the Gulf than it is today? At the time, Galveston Bay was a broad valley carved by the San Jacinto and Trinity rivers — a valley that was about 170 feet deep. Between 14,000 and 5,000 years ago, the shoreline moved landward as much as 60 feet a year in some locations, flooding the valley, which then filled with sediment. Galveston Island didn’t exist until the end of that period, and Bolivar Peninsula didn’t form until 2,500 years ago. Anderson’s projections into the future are a little more frightening. While the geophysical interactions involved in relative sea level rise are complex — a combination of rising sea levels and land subsidence — and well explained in the book, the outlook is not rosy. “Along our low gradient Texas and Louisiana coastlines,” Anderson wrote, “an annual rise in relative sea level of between 1/16 and 1/8 inch per year results in an average of three feet to five feet of coastal retreat.” This will subject significant portions of Galveston Island and much of southern Chambers County, which is below five feet in elevation, to flooding in the next century or two. Aerial and satellite photos, maps and charts augment Anderson’s text, giving dramatic evidence that the landscape, which we tend to view as eternal, is, in fact, more ephemeral than we’d like to admit. —Christopher Dow

Bookshelf Mystery of Life After Death The question of what happens to us after we die has been a topic of uncertainty and debate for millennia. People argue over whether death is the end or whether our souls live forever on another plane of existence. This mystery has engaged the imagination of neuroscientist and writer David Eagleman ’93, who decided that there are many more possibilities than we have begun to fathom. In “Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives” (Pantheon, 2009), Eagleman, who also is an assistant professor of psychology at Rice, presents 40 fictional vignettes that describe the purpose of our existence and what happens after we die. In the book’s eponymous story, “Sum,” he proposes the possibility that similar events in our lives are reordered and experienced in groups: We spend 15 months looking for lost items, then spend the next 18 months waiting in line before moving on to a 200-day shower. “Ineffable” posits that everything that exists also gets an afterlife, including plays, stores and sessions of Congress. “Mary” hypothesizes that God’s favorite book is “Frankenstein,” and he has created a throne in the afterlife for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In “Prism,” we are split into our multiple selves at all ages of our lives and can interact with ourselves along with everyone else in the afterlife. Other stories address the personality and substance of God — and whether all current ideas of God are completely off the mark — or whether there actually is no afterlife. None of the 40 stories presents itself as a serious expectation of what comes after this life. Instead, in thoughtprovoking and often humorous ways, they embrace the idea that the opportunities for our uncertain future are endless.

Seeking the Oracle Richard Smith’s friends and colleagues warned him not to tackle the evolution of the “Yijing.” The topic is too big, they said. Too complicated. “There is probably no work circulating in the modern world that is at once as instantly recognized and stupendously misunderstood as the ‘Yijing,’” said Smith, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and professor of history at Rice. “Although most people know that the ‘Yijing’ originated in China, few are aware of how it evolved, and even Chinese scholars can’t agree on its basic nature. It’s been described as a book of philosophy, a historical work, an ancient dictionary, an encyclopedia, an early scientific treatise and a mathematical model of the universe. To some, the ‘Yijing’ is a sacred scripture, to others it is a work of awesome obscurity.” Smith said his friends’ warnings were valid, calling the “Yijing” — also known as the “I-Ching” and “Classic of Changes” — “a black hole within the China field, a dense and immense space that allows no possibility of escape for anyone drawn by its powerful pull.” But the “Yijing” also is one of the most important documents not only in Chinese history but, arguably, in world history as well, and Smith couldn’t resist its attraction. The result is “Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The ‘Yijing’ (‘I-Ching,’ or ‘Classic of Changes’) and Its Evolution in China” (University of Virginia Press, 2008), the first full-length work in any Western language on the development of the “Yijing.” While Smith admitted that his book barely scratches the surface of the “Yijing”’s history, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He collected massive amounts of research material from nearly everywhere the document has been — enough, he said, to fill several books. In addition to exploring the foundations of the “Yijing” itself, “Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World” provides a rough map of the historical and intellectual terrain that led to the several stages of its genesis. Smith’s intent is to give readers a good sense of how scholars and practitioners talked about and used the “Yijing” and to explore the vast field of interpretive possibilities the text presented to creative minds over time and across space. Written for the specialist and nonspecialist alike, “Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World” can be a daunting read but rewarding for those who are curious about this ancient and ubiquitous Chinese text. —Christopher Dow

—Jenny West Rozelle

“The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women,” by Jane Chance, the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Chair and professor of English and director of the Medieval Studies Program and Workshop at Rice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

“Measuring Vortices: Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics,” by Christopher Hight, assistant professor of architecture at Rice (Routledge, 2007)

“A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gulen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse,” by B. Jill Carroll, executive director of the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance and adjunct associate professor of religious studies at Rice (The Light, Inc., 2007)

“Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite,” by D. Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice (Oxford University Press, 2007)

“Moon Flights,” by Elizabeth Moon ’68 (Night Shade Books, 2007)

Rice Magazine

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No. 3

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2009

Sports

Colwick Goes Up and Comes Down in the Record Books

“This is all happening very fast, but I am sure I’ll catch up. I have never been an All-American before, so this is all very new to me. I am just glad my parents were able to see me win.” —Jason Colwick

Rice pole vaulter Jason Colwick became a two-time NCAA champion on June 12 after capturing the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field title at the University of Arkansas’ John McDonnell Field. He cleared 5.70m/18’ 8.25” at the meet after previously winning the 2009 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships, held March 13–14 at Texas A&M’s Gilliam Indoor Track Stadium, with a height of 5.60m/18’ 4.5”. An upcoming senior, Colwick entered the indoor championships as the top-ranked vaulter with a season best of 5.61m/18’ 4.75”. He is the Owls’ first NCAA indoor pole vault champion, and their first individual NCAA indoor champion since Allison Beckford ’03 won the NCAA Indoor 400 meters in 2002. He also is the first C-USA product to win an NCAA Men’s indoor title. Colwick is the first vaulter in C-USA history to top 18 feet, which he did three times during an indoor season that saw him surge past a crowded field to become the NCAA Champion. He holds the world’s second and NCAA’s No. 1 mark at 5.72m/18’ 9.25”, set at the 82nd Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin in April. ”It was a great night to jump with perfect weather conditions,” Colwick said of the outdoor meet at Arkansas. With the win there, he becomes Rice’s first NCAA outdoor champion since Ryan Harlan won the 2004 decathalon. In June, Colwick was named South Central Field Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. He is the third Rice student to win an NCAA pole vault title overall: Dave Roberts ’73 took three consecutive titles from 1971 to 1973, and Fred Hansen ’63 captured the NCAA title in 1962. “This is all happening very fast, but I am sure I’ll catch up,” Colwick commented. “I have never been an All-American before, so this is all very new to me. I am just glad my parents were able to see me win.” —Chuck Pool Jr.

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ON THE

Bookshelf

“When I was younger, my mother told me that I would be married in Cohen House at Rice. Of course, protocol says the girl’s family decides that.” —Ron Borschow

A Gift to Rice That Is Music to the Ears Ron Borschow didn’t get married in Cohen House as his mother Hazel Borschow ’28 predicted, but her love for Rice University certainly made an impression on him. It wasn’t the only thing the enthusiastic alumna passed on to her son. Hazel, who played the violin and piano, also shared her deep affection for classical music. Ron recalls coming home from school every afternoon to the sound of Chopin and Beethoven playing on his mother’s Victrola, and he fondly remembers joining her on regular trips to the symphony and opera. Today, Borschow is commemorating his mother’s love of music by establishing the Borschow Family Endowed Scholarships in violin, piano, cello and voice. He also plans to endow a need-based scholarship for undergraduate students in honor of the education his father, Reuben Borschow ’28, received at Rice. Taken together, these planned gifts will provide a legacy of support for Rice’s Centennial Campaign and will enable students to create the high caliber of music that has been a joy in Borschow’s life.

To learn more about this fund or about making charitable gifts to Rice through your estate, please contact the Office of Gift Planning for gift illustrations and calculations tailored to your situation. Phone: 713-348-4624

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E-mail: giftplan@rice.edu

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Web site: www.giving.rice.edu/giftplanning

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Internationally acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming performed to a sellout crowd of 700 at the Shepherd School of Music’s recent gala. During the first half of the performance, Fleming was accompanied by her longtime friend and musical collaborator Richard Bado, director of Rice’s opera studies program, and during the second half by the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Larry Rachleff, the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Orchestral conducting. The performance helped raise a record-breaking $2.4 million, which will benefit the opera program, which is gaining national attention; and increase endowed scholarships as part of Rice’s Centennial Campaign.