Rice Magazine Issue 4 by Rice University

| New Architecture Dean

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| Impact Earth

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| Unzipping the Future

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| Rocky Road

Touch the towering Sky Rice’s achievements

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THE GULF COAST SINCE IKE COOKING UP THE FUTURE REDEFINING ACADEMIC PUBLISHING MIXING SCIENCE AND BUSINESS

Contents 6

Rice’s state-of-the-art BioScience Research Collaborative opens for business.

A Rice physicist is on a quest to understand death — or at least a little part of it.

Once again, Rice is in the top 20 of U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges.” Patricia Reiff returned to Houston just in time to destroy the city.

An expert in urban and architectural theory has been named the new dean of architecture. An economist looks at the effects of insuring America’s children.

When it comes to quality of student life, Rice is tops.

A tough, electrically conductive material is being unzipped in a lab near you.

4 Brockman Hall

Brockman Hall for Physics benefits from federal stimulus funds. It’s made of tiny cups. It redirects light. It’s invisible. Managing a name change is good business.

6 Cover photo: Tommy LaVergne

Department of Defense awards to Rice top $100 million for the decade.

She keeps powerful company.

Students

20 It’s a rocky road from Marrakech to Casablanca, and for Rice geology students, that’s a good thing.

Features

21 A paleontology graduate student’s first sea voyage is a core experience.

24 Owlmania

22 What do you get when you combine Rice students’ innovation, Project Row Houses and the Solar Decathlon? The ZEROW HOUSE, of course.

It’s all about the Owls. by David Leebron

26 Coastal Watch

23 Sometimes there’s no hard-and-fast rule for concrete construction.

Hurricane Ike wrought great changes to the Texas coast, but geologist and oceanographer John Anderson thinks human development may be hastening destructive coastal processes.

Arts

by Christopher Dow

42 Where most people saw old, peeling plywood, Henrique Oliveira saw a new artistic medium.

30 Cooking Up the Future In the year since it opened, the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen has given students the means to develop a surprising range of innovative creations.

43 Rice art students help bring a sense of history to the resurrected Mexican ghost town of Mineral de Pozos.

36 Touch the Sky As a premier research university, Rice is known for its towering academic achievements — but the campus has a few towering achievements of its own. P h o t o s b y To m m y L a Ve r g n e Te x t b y C h r i s t o p h e r D o w

44 Walk softly and carry a big instrument.

Bookshelf

38 Publish, Not Perish The resurrected Rice University Press is redefining the parameters of academic publishing.

46 It’s hard to second-guess the Lone Star State, but one thing you can say for sure is that it’s going to flood.

by Christopher Dow

40 The Business of Science An unconventional career track at the intersection of science and business opens a world of possibilities. by Christopher Dow

45 Everything is big in Texas, and that includes Rice student art.

47 Hoaxes, scams, forgeries and fabrications say something not just about those who perpetrate them, but also about our media culture. 47 There is really only one pertinent question managers need to ask when filling empty positions: Who?

Sports 44

48 And the winner of the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the fourth straight year is … . 48 Olympic training isn’t just for athletes. Rice Magazine

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Rice Magazine

F O R E W O R D

Vol. 65, No. 4

There are many ironies inherent in our passage from the Industrialized Age into the Age of Information, not the least of which is that much of our path is littered with information that is trivial, paltry, erroneous or deliberately misleading. An even greater irony is that much of this clutter and rubbish is spread via the greatest information tool ever invented: the Internet. It certainly doesn’t help that there is much we simply don’t yet know, from deciphering the nature of subatomic particles or effectively dealing with cancer, to developing better ways to generate energy or comprehending what constitutes great art. There are, though, places dedicated to making sense of the world and bringing order to it — places such as Rice University, where discoveries by committed researchers are filling gaps in our understanding of the world and of ourselves with knowledge that will impact us profoundly in the years to come. In this issue, for example, you can read about John Anderson’s research into natural and human-generated coastal processes; the growth of the Professional Science Master’s Program, which produces graduates who combine scientific expertise with business acumen; and how the recently resurrected Rice University Press is advancing a new paradigm for academic publishing. Our shorter articles also demonstrate the breadth and depth of the research going on here at Rice. They include an analysis of the economic benefits of insuring America’s children; the identification of a property of cell membranes that is responsible for cell death and that may play a role in cancer; and the invention of the I-slate, an electronic device designed to bring educational technology to remote rural regions. And, as is to be expected from an international leader in nanotechnology, there are major developments on the ultrasmall scale, such as nanoribbons, which are sheets of tough, electrically conductive material that could be incorporated into aircraft, electronics and a host of other products. Our students — the leaders and researchers of tomorrow — are doing amazing things as well. You can read about some of them in the student section, but also be sure to check out our feature on the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, where students are taking advantage of one of Rice’s newest facilities to create innovations that are then tested in realworld settings. Across the board, Rice is an international leader in the profound scientific, social and cultural changes that are taking place worldwide. But you don’t have to take our word for it: The U.S. Department of Defense puts its money where its mouth is. DOD funding to Rice last year totaled more than $32 million and pushed Rice well over the $100 million mark for DOD awards during the past decade. And, as always, Rice is tops in rankings from a number of other outside sources. We are a Fiske “Best-Buy School,” a perennial U.S. News & World Report top 20 national university, ranked No. 1 by the Princeton Review for the “Best Quality of Life” for students, and rated a best place to work by both the Houston Business Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education. And PayScale, a Web site that scores companies and universities based on salary data, reveals that Rice alumni have the highest median salaries among graduates of any Texas institution of higher education and that they hold their own against graduates of our peer institutions nationwide. As these rankings and the stories in this issue show, Rice is a place where rigorously examined information is being generated and put into the service of humankind. Even better, it’s the kind of information you can rely on, whether you read about it in Rice Magazine, on www.rice.edu or in the national media. In this day and age, some people might call that kind of trustworthy information uncommon. We simply call it unconventional wisdom.

Christopher Dow cloud@rice.edu

Correction In the last issue of Rice Magazine, the review of David Eagleman’s book, “Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives,” incorrectly listed Eagleman as assistant professor of psychology at Rice. His correct title is former adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Rice. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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 David Ruth, staff writer 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 Viswanathan 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 de J. 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: 713-348-6757 E-mail: ricemagazine@rice.edu Postmaster Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 © OCTOBER 2 0 0 9 R ICE UNIVE RSIT Y

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Rice Names Architecture Dean

Sarah Whiting Sarah Whiting, a member of the Princeton University School of Architecture faculty and an expert in urban and architectural theory, has been named dean of the Rice School of Architecture. Whiting will take the helm Jan. 1 from John Casbarian, the school’s longtime associate dean who has been serving as dean since 16year veteran Lars Lerup stepped down from the position earlier this year. Lerup will return to Rice in 2010 as a professor. “Sarah Whiting’s strengths as a teacher, author and architect are clear, and she brings abundant energy and intellect to Rice,” said President David Leebron. “Her aspirations for the School of Architecture align perfectly with the goals we set for Rice in the Vision for the Second Century — in particular our commitment to broaden and deepen our interaction

Whiting currently is working on projects both for the drama division of the Juilliard School in New York and for the Golden House, a private residence in Princeton, N.J. Before forming WW, she worked with Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where she was involved with a number of architectural, urban and writing projects, including the master planning of Euralille, a business center in Lille, France, that opened in 1994. Witte also will join the architecture faculty, and Whiting and Witte will relocate WW Architecture to Houston.

Kennon Memorial Symposium last spring. “Sarah has a distinguished record of achievement in the profession and in the history and theory of architecture,” Casbarian said. “Based on my initial conversations with her, she has a very compelling vision for the future of the school.” Whiting said she brings to the School of Architecture a strong commitment to the humanities, to emerging developments in science and technology, and to the overlap between these realms that architecture is uniquely able to exploit. “Architecture’s combination of form and space affects the public by forming an aesthetic realm,” she said, “but it also fosters new experiences, relationships, economies and possibilities.” It is a “happy coincidence,” Whiting said, that her views mesh so well with Rice’s Vision

“Sarah Whiting’s strengths as a teacher, author and architect are clear, and she brings abundant energy and intellect to Rice.” —David Leebron

with our home city of Houston. Under Sarah’s leadership, we expect our already acclaimed school to be at the forefront of innovation in architecture education and enterprise.” Before joining Princeton in 2005, Whiting served for six years on the faculty of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Prior to that, she taught at the University of Kentucky, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in the history, theory and criticism of art, architecture and urban form from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a principal of WW Architecture, a firm she co-founded with her husband, Ron Witte,

Perhaps best known for her professional criticism, Whiting has published dozens of articles on urban and architectural theory. In addition to editing several journals, she has edited books on Ignasi de Solà-Morales and James Carpenter and is the series editor of “POINT,” a new architectural book series to be published by Princeton University Press. She also is the author of the forthcoming book “Superblock City.” Whiting is no stranger to the Rice School of Architecture. She has served on end-ofterm project reviews many times over the past decade. She also has lectured at the school several times, most recently at the Paul A.

for the Second Century: “Two of the school’s strongest attributes are its historic commitment to innovative practice and its focus on the contemporary city. Cities like Houston, in particular, often have been ignored in urban studies, even though they are the paradigmatic cities of the 21st century.” These strengths, Whiting said, form a terrific basis for moving the school forward. “Everything felt just right — poised for new possibilities,” she said. “I can’t wait to take on those new horizons come January.” —Mike Williams Naomi Halas

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That Rice Is One of the Best Places to Work? We Knew. Rice’s reputation as a first-rate educational institution has again been complemented by its reputation as a great place to work. Twice. The Chronicle of Higher Education named Rice one of this year’s “Great Colleges to Work For.” The publication ranked colleges for specific best practices and policies, such as compensation and benefits, faculty–administration relations and confidence in senior leadership. The ranking was based on a random survey of faculty, administrators and staff and an audit of demographics and workplace policies and practices from more than 300 two- and four-year colleges. Rice was honored in 16 of 26 categories among four-year schools with 3,000 to 9,999 students. Rice also was named to the Chronicle’s honor roll, which recognizes the 10 colleges that were cited most often across all categories. The honor came just a few weeks after the Houston Business Journal lauded the university as one of Houston’s “Best Places to Work” for the fourth year in a row. Rice was named in the category of businesses with more than 500 employees. The winners were determined by responses of employees who completed an online survey measuring a variety of attributes associated with employee satisfaction and involvement with the workplace. Participating institutions were considered for the rankings only if the percentage of their employees who took the survey was high enough to represent a statistically valid sample based on the size of their workforce. “These recognitions mean a lot to all of us at Rice because the primary factor in deciding whether an institution was honored was favorable feedback from faculty and staff,” said Mary Cronin, associate vice president for Human Resources. Rice’s consistent ranking as a best place for employment helps the university recruit and retain the best faculty and staff, she said. “It’s particularly gratifying that their positive comments spanned so many aspects of life at Rice, from job satisfaction to work–life balance to pride in the university,” Cronin said. “They are the best.”

Learn more: ››› ricemagazine.info/08 See the Chronicle of Higher Education’s survey results: ››› ricemagazine.info/07

Giving the Jones School the Business It’s official: Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management is now the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Research shows that the majority of the top MBA programs use the term “business” rather than “management” in their names and logos, and that online searches for the Jones School predominantly incorporate “business” as well as “Rice MBA” and “Rice.” “The update better reflects our association with Rice University and provides clearer branding for the Jones School’s exciting programs and initiatives,” said Bill Glick, dean of the Jones School. “Everyone already knows us as a business school. The ‘business’ designation in our new name better captures the breadth of our current offerings.” Those offerings have expanded during the last two years. New programs include an undergraduate business minor and the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, which is geared toward aspiring K–12 principals. In fall 2009, the school launched a Ph.D. in business as well as a new weekend option for the Rice MBA for Professionals program. The new name also better incorporates Rice Executive Education courses, which have been a part of the Jones School for more than 30 years. —Julia Nguyen

Learn more about the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business: › › › business.rice.edu

Mexico’s Top Business Magazine Ranks Rice MBA Best in Southwest “The Best Global MBAs for Mexicans, 2009,” an international MBA ranking by Mexico’s leading business magazine, Expansión, named Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business the best in Texas and the Southwest. The ranking also placed the Jones School 14th nationally and 26th globally. The ranking evaluated the educational experiences of Mexico’s students at full-time foreign MBA programs, including the programs’ academic quality, their international population and the return on student investment. The schools’ reputations in the Mexican market also factored into the ranking as assessed by the corporate leaders, decisionmakers and top executives who make up Expansión’s readership base. The Jones School has strong business connections in Latin America that include partnerships with the Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership, based in Monterrey, Mexico, and an exchange program with INCAE Business School in Costa Rica. Over the past few years, Rice has recruited extensively in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Columbia and Peru, and the university recently partnered with the Princeton Review GMAT prep centers in Latin America. —Julia Nguyen

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

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Eye on the Goal

Despite the setbacks caused by Hurricane Ike and the prolonged economic downturn, Rice’s $1 billion Centennial Campaign is on target.

As of the close of the fiscal year on June 30, 2009, the campaign has raised a total of $555.8 million, of which $84.7 million came in during 2008-09. The funds raised by the campaign will be used to prepare Rice students for leadership roles in their workplaces and communities, enhance the university’s scholarship and research capabilities, and expand Rice’s community and international outreach. “A year ago we were about nine or 10 months ahead of schedule,” said Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development. “Although we lost that cushion during the economic slump, this fiscal year has been the third-largest fundraising year in Rice’s history, thanks to the generosity of our donors.” One of the key messages of campaign fundraisers is that during periods of economic uncertainty, the vision of Rice University becomes even more important. “Access to well-educated, talented and innovative people is in the long-term interest of the United States,” Zeidenstein said. Rice’s supporters, including faculty, staff and students, responded over the prior year with an increased number of gifts to the Rice Annual Fund, which brought in more than $6.9 million to the campaign. Bill Kazmierski ’09 contributed to the Annual Fund even before he graduated in May. “Rice was a truly life-changing experience for me,” he said. “Rice made it easy to get involved and make a difference around campus, and the professors made a noticeable effort to make sure that I got the attention I needed. I see contributing to the Annual Fund as a way to express my gratitude.” About 1,600 other recent graduates also expressed their gratitude to Rice by donating more than $176,000 in response to the Centennial Challenge to Young Alumni. Their gifts brought in another $487,000, thanks to a matching program offered by Cathryn Rodd Selman ’78 and two anonymous board members that ended on June 30. Geared toward supporting students, the Centennial Scholarship Initative is another important campaign highlight. So far, it has

received $55 million in commitments toward its $100 million goal. Several buildings funded by campaign gifts already are in operation. The Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, for one, opened

last December, enabling engineering students from different specialties to collaborate on projects — just as they will in their careers. (See story on Page 30.) Tudor Fieldhouse, which opened last fall, provides a modern facility for men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball games, and the Youngkin Center, housed in the fieldhouse, includes a study area for student–athletes and offices for the Athletics staff. The Rice community also has access to state-of-the-art workout facilities with the opening of the Barbara and David Gibbs

Recreation and Wellness Center. Another popular campus destination is the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion, which opened last year. Located in the Central Quad, the pavilion quickly became a popular hangout for students, faculty, staff and visitors to campus. This fall, Duncan and McMurtry colleges opened to help house the largest freshman class in Rice’s history. The increased fresh-

man population is part of the Vision for the Second Century goal to expand the undergraduate student body. The campaign, the largest fundraising effort in Rice’s history, is scheduled to continue through the end of the university’s centennial year in 2012–13.

—B.J. Almond

Support the Centennial Campaign: › › › giving.rice.edu

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U.S. News & World Report Ranks Rice in the Top 20 U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges 2010” guide ranks Rice University No. 17 among 262 schools classified as national universities — institutions that offer a full range of undergraduate majors and master’s and doctoral degrees and are committed to producing groundbreaking research. U.S. News also compared schools on the basis of specific features, and Rice appears on a number of those lists: • No. 5 on the list of national universities whose students have the least amount of debt. Based on the Class of 2008, this list shows 42 percent of Rice students with debt, and an average debt of $11,108. Only the top two schools on the list have average debts of less than $10,000. • No. 11 on the “Top Up-and-Coming Schools” list. Schools on this list were singled out as having recently made promising and innovative changes in academics, faculty, students, campus or facilities. • No. 11 on the “Focus on Undergrads” list. This list features schools where the faculty has an unusual commitment to undergraduate teaching. • No. 12 on the “Great Schools, Great Prices” list. This best-value list relates a school’s academic quality to the 2008–09 academic year net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid.

Powerful Company

• No. 14 on the “Economic Diversity” list. This list is based on the percentage of Rice undergraduates receiving federal Pell Grants, which are awarded to low-income students.

Rice alumna Lynn Laverty Elsenhans ’78 is in some pretty powerful company.

• No. 19 on the list of best undergraduate programs at engineering schools whose highest degree is a doctorate. Two specialties in Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering are highlighted among undergraduate engineering specialties. Rice is ranked ninth in biomedical engineering and 19th in electrical engineering.

The chairman of the board and CEO of the major petrochemical company Sunoco, she earned the No. 10 spot on this year’s Forbes list of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women,” keeping such notable company as German Chancellor Angela Merkel (No. 1) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair (No. 2). Elsenhans was listed ahead of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (No. 54) and U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama (No. 40).

—B.J. Almond

See the complete U.S. News & World Report rankings: ›› › www.usnews.com

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

The Forbes recognition is based on a combination of two scores: visibility and the size of the organization or country the women lead. Elsenhans joined Sunoco as its CEO and president in 2008 and was named chairman of the board this year. Her earlier career was with Shell, where she climbed the management ranks in national and international posts. She has remained active with Rice as a member of its board of trustees, and she has been a major contributor to scholarship funds and to the renovation of Autry Court. In an interview published last year in Rice Magazine, Elsenhans said her decision to attend Rice was because of its reputation in math, engineering and science. “For me, [Rice] was the total experience, both inside and outside the classroom,” she said. “I have a tremendous passion and deep love for Rice. I had a fantastic experience here as a student. It prepared me extremely well and is a part of my success.” —Dwight Daniels

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“Our program has been vetted by numerous experts on asteroids, and, even though they don’t always agree with each other, they agreed our presentation is accurate.” —Patricia Reiff

Houston in the Cometary Crosshairs Patricia Reiff returned from India just in time to destroy Houston. Actually, the culprit is an imaginary comet, and the razing of Rice’s home city is only make-believe. For now. Reiff, professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Rice Space Institute, was in India to install two Discovery Domes — completely immersive domed planetariums that utilize digital technology and can be installed in fixed facilities or in mobile, inflatable domes. The domes, which can bring lessons about the heavens to some of the most remote places on Earth, have been delivered to 75 locations on six continents since Reiff and her partners at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) built the first digital fixed dome in 1998 and the first portable one in 2003. The imaginary destruction of Houston was part of the somber message of Reiff’s latest production: a planetarium show titled “Impact Earth,” which premiered at Burke Baker Planetarium at HMNS in May and currently is in worldwide release. The show, funded by NASA and produced by Rice and HMNS, demonstrates the dangers asteroids and comets pose to the planet. In the climax, viewers get an up-close-and-personal look at what would happen if a comet the size of Shoemaker-Levy 9, which slammed into Jupiter in 1994, landed in the Gulf of Mexico. Let’s just say it wouldn’t be pretty. Asteroids hitting Earth are the stuff of B-movie legend, but that makes the peril no less real. “There have been Hollywood movies about comets and asteroids hitting Earth, like ‘Deep Impact’ and ‘Armageddon,’ but they were not fully scientific in their explanations and animations,” said Carolyn Sumners, director of astronomy at the museum and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at Rice. Reiff said “Impact Earth” sets the record straight. “Our program has been vetted by numerous experts on asteroids, and even though they don’t always agree with each other, they agreed our presentation is accurate.”

The show explores major impacts in Earth’s history and recreates a meteorite fall on the Great Plains 10,000 years ago, the explosive Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908 and the impact that contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The production also takes viewers to visit asteroid hunters at the museum’s George Observatory to see how they locate asteroids that might pose a threat to the planet. One such space rock is already raising concerns. On Friday, April 13, 2029, the asteroid Apophis will come within 18,000 miles of Earth — closer than the geostationary satellites that monitor the weather and carry television signals. The impact of an asteroid the size of Apophis could wipe out a city or cause a devastating tsunami. That gave Reiff and her crew the perfect excuse to visualize just such an event for the finale of “Impact Earth.” She also expects Rice and HMNS to continue to impact the globe through their collaboration. “This is a partnership that’s been very, very deep over the years,” Reiff said. “Twenty years ago, I helped design the sundial that’s at the museum, and Rice helped the museum get George Observatory. There’s a long history of cooperation between Rice and the museum.” —Mike Williams

Learn what Rice is doing to explore our planet — and beyond: ›› › rsi.rice.edu Find out what Rice researchers are working on in physics and astronomy: ›› › physics.rice.edu

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Rice physicist Huey Huang pioneered the use of bromine atoms (red) as markers in membrane studies. Last year, the technique helped Huang confirm the toroidal shape of pores that trigger cell suicide.

Huang’s team was the first to predict that certain proteins would react with cell membranes in such a way as to cause them to curve and form the rounded, doughnut-like hole.

The “Hole” Story of Cell Suicide Rice physicist Huey Huang is on a quest to understand death — or at least a little piece of it. Huang has spent the past 15 years studying the properties of cell membranes in an effort to unravel the mystery of cell suicide, a mystery that starts with a tiny hole. The hole is important because it’s a trigger that kicks off a process known as apoptosis. Scientists want to understand apoptosis because of the role it plays — or fails to play — in cancer. In healthy bodies, defective cells are marked for an orderly death by apoptosis. These cells commit suicide and even have the courtesy to package their remains for convenient recycling. Why this happens is a mystery. Cancer cells, however, avoid apoptosis. How they do that is perhaps the bigger

helping change that. Thanks to Huang, scientists now know the shape of the hole, or pore, that triggers apoptosis. The hole occurs in a membrane that walls off the mitochondria inside a cell. The mitochondria are the cell’s internal power centers — the places where the cell produces the energy necessary to live. In cells marked for suicide, an unknown signal creates a protein called Bax that punches the holes, and molecules leak out, kicking off a pro-

Huey Huang

doughnut. Late last year, Huang, his graduate students and his longtime colleague Lin Yang of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., used the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven to take

Thanks to Huang, scientists now know the shape of the hole, or pore, that triggers apoptosis. mystery, and one reason scientists want to crack the code on apoptosis is to find better ways to fight cancer. Unfortunately, apoptosis is not well understood. Huang, Rice’s Sam and Helen Worden Chair of Physics and Astronomy, opened a leading cell biochemistry textbook to the chapter on apoptosis, which amounted to only a handful of pages. “This is all,” he said. “We really understand very little about it.” But breakthroughs in Huang’s lab are

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

cess that ends with “executioner” proteins systematically dismantling the entire cell. Knowing that Bax forms pores and understanding how it forms them are two different things. In 1996, Huang and his graduate students proposed a new idea about the way proteins might form pores in the bilayered mitochondrial membranes. They suggested that certain proteins, including Bax, react with the bilayered membrane in such a way as to cause it to curve, forming a rounded hole like the one in a

hundreds of painstaking X-ray diffraction images of pores formed by pieces of Bax. They confirmed the toroidal, or doughnutshaped, hole, settling the debate about how Bax forms holes in membranes. Huang said the group is now turning its attention to a more difficult investigation. The group is trying to work with the entire Bax protein to find out what causes it to start making holes in the first place. —Jade Boyd

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New Year, Even Greater Challenge 2009–10 Centennial Challenge to Young Alumni

A (Health Insurance) Stitch in Time Might Save … Extending health insurance coverage to all children in the United States would be relatively inexpensive and would yield economic benefits that are greater than the costs, according to new research conducted at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The researchers — Vivian Ho, chair in health economics at the Baker Institute, professor of economics at Rice and associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and Marah Short, senior staff researcher in health economics at the Baker Institute — based their findings on recent studies that examined evidence regarding the economic impact of failing to insure all children in the U.S. Ho and Short compared children’s health care in the U.S. to the care provided in other industrialized countries and found that, despite the highest per-capita spending on health care among 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the U.S. ranks third-highest in the percentage of the population lacking health insurance, with one in seven people uninsured. They estimate the number of uninsured children in the U.S. to be more than 8 million. Studies clearly indicate that this lack of coverage leads to “lower access to medical care and lower use of health care services,” the researchers wrote in their report, titled, “The Economic Impact of Uninsured Children on America.” It may even be reflected, they argued, in relatively high child morbidity rates in the U.S. Moreover, lack of health care for children has long-term effects — some of them economic — as those children become adults. Children who receive better health care and enjoy better health are generally more productive as adults, the researchers said. The cost incurred by providing universal coverage to children “will be offset by the increased value of additional life years and improved health-related quality of life gained from improved health care,” they wrote. “From a societal perspective, universal coverage for children appears to be cost-saving.” The report concludes that there is compelling evidence that covering all children in the United States with health insurance will yield not only immediate improvements in the health of children, but also long-term returns of greater health and productivity in adulthood. “The up-front incremental costs of universal health insurance coverage for children are relatively modest,” said Ho, “and they will be offset by the value of increased health capital gained in the long term.” —Franz Brotzen

Read “The Economic Impact of Uninsured Children on America”:

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WHY I GIVE

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“Rice provides unparalleled opportunities for its undergraduates that extend far beyond graduation.” —Jo Ling Kent ’06

Last year, more than 1,600 young alumni rose to the challenge for Rice and demonstrated why our graduates are among the most elite and supportive in the nation. Now Rich ’80 and Karen Waggoner Whitney ’79 are issuing an even greater challenge for 2009–10. They will match every gift from young alumni (Classes of 1999–2009) made to the Rice Annual Fund through June 30, 2010. Gifts received Sept. 1–Dec. 31, 2009, will be matched 3-to-1. Jo Ling Kent ’06, who currently works as an associate producer for CNN’s Beijing bureau, 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.A. in history, policy studies and Asian studies from Rice, Jo earned master’s degrees in international affairs from Peking University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. As a journalist, she has covered stories ranging from the 2008 Taiwan elections to the Beijing Olympics.

Tell us how you are rising to the challenge at:

www.rice.edu/centennialchallenge

›› › ricemagazine.info/20

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Find out how you can help Rice University achieve its goals for the next century: ›› › giving.rice.edu

Chip Off the Old School Slate The image of rural schoolchildren in underdeveloped countries chalking their lessons on old-fashioned blackboard slates may soon change, thanks to an energy-stingy computer chip invented by Krishna Palem, Rice’s Ken and Audrey Kennedy Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Palem’s breakthrough chip, called PCMOS (for probabilistic complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), trades off precision in calculations for significant reductions in energy use. Prototype PCMOS chips were found to use 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today’s best technology. Although PCMOS runs on standard silicon, it breaks with current computing by abandoning the set of mathematical rules — called Boolean logic — that have thus far been used in all digital computers. PCMOS instead uses probabilistic logic, a new form of logic developed by Palem and his postdoctoral research associate, Lakshmi Chakrapani. A key to using the technology is finding applications — like streaming video for cell phones or low-powered video displays — where error can be tolerated. The upshot could be cell phones that have to be recharged every few weeks rather than every few days. The chips will find their first real-world use in a solar-powered electronic slate, or I-slate, an electronic version of the slates used by many schoolchildren in rural India. The I-slate’s developers are working with educational technologists from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, in India, to develop a visually based mathematics curriculum that allows children to learn by doing, regardless of their culture, their native tongue, their grade level or whether they have a full-time teacher. “We expect to begin testing prototypes of the curriculum and the I-slates next spring,” Palem said. Inspired by microfinance, the I-slate’s innovators intend to use social entrepreneurism to create a self-sustaining economic model for the I-slate that both creates jobs in impoverished areas and ensures the I-slate’s continued success. —Jade Boyd

Research Funding Champ Rice is challenging Texans’ notion that bigger is better, particularly when it comes to security-related research. U.S. Department of Defense awards to Rice during fiscal year 2009 totaled more than $32 million, pushing Rice well over the $100 million mark for DOD awards during the past decade. The awards come in areas where the university already has notable research strengths — computation, digital signal processing, nanotechnology, quantum magnetism and high-temperature superconductivity. “If you do a per capita adjustment on the amount of funding we receive per faculty member, I’m sure we are competitive not only in Texas but across the nation,” said Sallie Keller, dean of Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. “The depth of our offering on security-related research covers everything from the evolution of influenza and new treatments for breast cancer to improved chemical safety and atomic physics.” Dan Carson, dean of Rice’s Wiess School of Natural Sciences, said that the key to Rice’s funding success is the quality of the faculty. “That’s one reason you see such a wide array of research getting DOD funding here,” he said. “We have great faculty across the board.” Rice’s breadth of security-related research may be a surprise given the university’s size. With 5,339 students, Rice is the secondsmallest member of the Association of American Universities, an organization representing the nation’s top 62 research universities. But Rice held its own against the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, despite having only about one-tenth the number of students. —Jade Boyd

What is Rice University planning for the next century? Find out here: › › › professor.rice.edu/professor/Vision.asp Discover what innovations are being made at Rice: › › › natsci.rice.edu Want to help out? Find out how: › › › giving.rice.edu

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Dash for ‘Dots’ Raises Questions Quantum dots have the potential to bring many good things into the world: efficient solar power, targeted gene and drug delivery, solid-state lighting, and advances in biomedical imaging, for example. But they may pose hazards as well. A team of Rice researchers has been working to discover the health risks of quantum dots, which are molecule-sized semiconducting nanocrystals that generally are composed of heavy metals surrounded by an organic shell. Pedro Alvarez, Rice’s George R. Brown Professor and chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, published a paper in Environmental Science & Technology showing that under even mildly acidic or alkaline conditions, the shells can break down, releasing their toxic contents into the body or the environment. He co-authored the paper with colleagues Vicki Colvin, the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering; research scientist Shaily Mahendra; and postdoctoral research associate Huiguang Zhu. “We’re interested in the long-term implications of nanotechnology, and we recognized that quantum dots are going to be produced in large quantities,” said Mahendra, who did the bulk of the research. “We thought we should be proactive in studying their effects so that we can take part in the development of safety guidelines.” The dots, 1/50,000 the width of a human hair, were found to be safe in applications with a neutral pH environment. However, the study suggested that when such products are discarded, they can eventually release

their toxins into the environment. “In that way, quantum dots resemble batteries,” said Alvarez, referring to common nickel-cadmium cells people are warned not to throw in the trash. “They’re often made of coatings that are biocompatible and stable in water, but the moment we lose that coating, which can happen through a variety of mechanisms, they can release toxic compounds.” Used in solar cells, quantum dots may be quickly weathered by acid rain, he said. Another concern is that acids in the body could break down dots used in medical applications. On the positive side, the researchers found that certain proteins and natural organic matter, such as humic acids, may mitigate the effects of decomposing quantum dots by coating them or by complexing the metal ions released, making them less toxic. “If the dots degrade faster than they can be excreted, there’s the potential for heavy metals to be released into the body,” Alvarez said. “Then their impact becomes a question of dose.” The researchers cautioned that shortterm studies can’t easily predict whether toxins released by quantum dots will build up in the body over time. “We hope our work will stimulate research by other labs into the release dynamics,” said Alvarez. —Mike Williams

Sallyport

Rice = ‘Best Quality of Life’ The Princeton Review may have broadcast the news, but Rice’s own students said it first: Rice is No. 1 nationally for “best quality of life.” The ranking appears in the newly released 2010 edition of Princeton Review’s popular guidebook “The Best 371 Colleges.” Rice has consistently placed in the guide’s top 10 in this category over the past several years. This year, Rice also ranks No. 8 for “happiest students,” No. 11 for “lots of race/class interaction” and No. 19 for “great financial aid.” The rankings are based on a survey of 122,000 students attending the 371 colleges named in the book. They assessed their institutions on food, dorm comfort, campus beauty, ease of getting around campus, relationship with the local community, campus safety, surrounding area, interaction between students, friendliness and happiness of the student body, and smoothness with which the school is administered. “We are a genuine community where every individual feels that they matter, and they do,” said Rice President David Leebron. “This is also about the quality of our campus, and it’s about having a campus with numerous trees and open, green space in the heart of a major city where students can enjoy the best of urban living. Mostly, though, Rice received that ranking from our students because they know that every student is important.” —David Ruth

Learn more: › › › ricemagazine.info/23 Read Rice’s complete Princeton Review profile: › › › ricemagazine.info/24

Shaily Mahendra and Pedro Alvarez display a sample of quantum dots.

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Nanocups Brim with Potential Superlenses. Ultra-efficient solar cells. Cloaking devices. Once the stuff of science fiction, these may soon be possible, thanks to a metamaterial that collects light and emits it in a single direction. Created by Naomi Halas, an award-winning pioneer in nanophotonics, and graduate student Nikolay Mirin, the metamaterial uses tiny, cupshaped particles called nanocups. Mirin had been trying to make a thin gold film with nano-sized holes when it occurred to him that the knocked-out bits were worth investigating. Previous work on isolated gold nanocups had given researchers a sense of their properties, but Mirin found a way to lock ensembles of nanocups into sheets that orient the nanocups in a unified direction. The resulting metamaterial — a substance that gets its properties from its structure and not its composition — excels in capturing light from any direction and focusing all of it in one direction. Redirecting scattered light means none of it bounces off the metamaterial back into the eye of an observer. That essentially makes the material invisible. This means that the observer does not see the material, but what is behind it. “The material should not only retransmit the color and brightness of what is behind it,” Mirin said, “but also bend the light around, preserving the original phase information of the signal.” Halas — Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of chemistry, of biomedical engineering and of physics and astronomy — said the embedded nanocups are the first true three-dimensional nanoantennas, and their light-bending properties are made possible by electronic surface excitations known as plasmons. Electrons

Nikolay Mirin and Naomi Halas

inside plasmonic nanoparticles resonate with input from an outside electromagnetic source in the same way that a pool struck by a drop of water ripples. The particles act the same way radio antennas do, with the ability to absorb and emit electromagnetic waves that, in this case, include visible wavelengths. Because nanocup ensembles can focus light in a specific direction, they make good candidates for thermal solar power. “Solar-generated power of all kinds would benefit,” said Halas. “In solar cells, about 80 percent of the light passes right through the device. And there’s a huge amount of interest in making cells as thin as possible for many reasons.” In addition, a solar panel that focuses light into a beam that’s always on target without having to track the sun would save a lot of money on machinery and the energy needed to power the machinery. Using nanocup metamaterial to transmit optical signals between computer chips has potential, and it also might be used in enhanced spectroscopy and to create superlenses. “We’d like to implement the material into some sort of useful device,” said Halas of her team’s next steps. “We also would like to make several variations. We’re looking at the fundamental aspects of the geometry, how we can manipulate it and how we can control it better. Probably the most interesting application is something we haven’t thought of yet.” —Mike Williams

Learn more: › › › ricemagazine.info/25

“We’re looking at the fundamental aspects of the geometry, how we can manipulate it and how we can control it better. Probably the most interesting application is something we haven’t thought of yet.” —Naomi Halas

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Sallyport

Unzipping the Future

In the process developed by the Tour group, nanotubes open into nanoribbons sequentially, from the outer to inner layers.

Scientists at Rice University have found a simple way to create sheets of tough, electrically conductive nanomaterial that can be used as basic elements for aircraft, flat-screen TVs, electronics and other products. And the process begins with a zipper.

But the multiwalled nanotubes, which unzip in one hour at 130 to 158 degrees F, are a much cheaper starting material, and the resulting nanoribbons would be useful in a host of applications. “If a company wants to produce these,” Tour said, “it could probably start selling small quantities within six months. To scale it up and sell ton quantities might take a couple of years — it’s just a matter of having the right reactors. But the chemistry is very simple.” Discovered in the lab of James Tour, the technique — which uses a Tour is excited by the possibility that conductive nanoribbons room-temperature chemical process to split, or unzip, carbon nanocould replace indium tin oxide (ITO), a material commonly used in tubes to make flat ribbons of graphene — can produce the ultrathin flat-panel displays, touch panels, electronic ink ribbons in bulk quantities. Until now, making and solar cells. “ITO is very expensive,” he said, such material in more than microscopic quan“so lots of people are looking for substitutes that tities has involved a chemical vapor deposition will give them transparency with conductivity. process at more than 1,500 degrees F. You’d have There are thin films of nanotubes that fit the to place thousands of the ribbons side by side to bill, but when you stack two cylinders, the area equal the width of a human hair, but tests show that is touching is very small. If you stack these graphene is 200 times stronger than steel. ribbons into sheets, you have thinner films with “If you want to make conductive film, this is very large areas of overlap and equivalent conwhat you want,” said Tour, Rice’s Chao Professor ductivity or better.” of Chemistry and also a professor of mechaniTour envisions nanoribbon-coated paper that NANOTUBES cal engineering and materials science and of could become a flexible electronic display, and UNZIPPED computer science. “As soon as we started talking A route to graphene he’s already experimenting with nanoribbonabout this process, we began getting calls from nanoribbon electronics infused ink for ink-jet printers. “We’re actually manufacturers who recognized the potential.” printing electronics with these inks,” he said. The unzipping action can start on the end or “This is going to be the new material for many in the middle, but the result is the same — the NATUREJOBS RISING SEA LEVELS Go with the wind A fossil record applications.” tubes turn into flat, straight-edged, water-soluble BIG BANG COSMOLOGY In search of inflation Tour said discussions already are under way ribbons of graphene. When produced in bulk, EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Darwin on the mind with several companies looking into large-scale these microscopic sheets can be “painted” onto production of nanoribbons and with others ina surface or combined with a polymer to make terested in specific applications for nanoribbons it conductive. in their core product technologies. Formal indusTour credited Rice temporary research scientrial partnering already has begun through Rice’s tist Dmitry Kosynkin with the discovery. “Dmitry Office of Technology Transfer. came to me and said he had nanoribbons,” reThe work, which was featured on the cover of called Tour. “It took a while to convince me, but the April 16 issue of the journal Nature, was fundas soon as I saw them I realized this was huge.” ed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Also contributing were graduate students Amanda Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration and Higginbotham, Jay Lomeda and B. Katherine Wright-Patterson Air Force Research Laboratory Price; postdoctoral researcher Alexander Sinitskiy, through the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific and visiting scientist Ayrat Dimiev. Research. The basic process is the same for single or —Mike Williams multiwalled tubes. Single-walled carbon nanotubes convert to sheets at room temperature and are good for small electronic devices because the width of the unzipped sheet is highly controllable. 16 April 2009 | www.nature.com/nature

THE INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE

Tour envisions nanoribboncoated paper that could become a flexible electronic display, and he’s already experimenting with nanoribbon-infused ink for ink-jet printers.

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Feminist Economics by the Book

Breaking News from the Future

Thanks to the Rice University-based journal Feminist Economics, economists in China will have greater access to comprehensive research about gender issues and economy.

In an era when newspapers are downsizing coverage of basic research, how can universities get the word out about breakthroughs?

The journal teamed up with graduate students in Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research to publish in book form a Chinese translation of its 2007 special issue on gender, China and the World Trade Organization. Like the special issue from which it was derived, the book, which is titled “China’s Transition and Feminist Economics,” examines the consequences of China’s opening up to international trade and its transition from socialism to a market economy. It also illustrates how the accession of China to the World Trade Organization and the growth of the Chinese economy have elevated the overall well-being of many Chinese women but adversely affected others. “Traditional economic analyses pay little attention to the unpaid sector of the economy and do not adequately theorize how activities like unpaid child and elder care are influenced by government policies and then feed back into decisions about formal work, production and consumption,” said Diana Strassmann, editor of Feminist Economics and professor in the practice of humanities at Rice’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. “There is an interest and demand for such information,” said Xiao-yuan Dong, who, along with Günseli Berik and Gale Summerfield, guest edited the issue. “Many economists just haven’t been introduced to feminist economic analysis. With this book, we hope to train them to approach their research with a more comprehensive outlook.” The feminist economic outlook takes into account factors such as who household decision-makers are, gender roles and quality of life. From that framework, the journal research shows that minority women in China are now working outside the home at much lower rates. This may signal a return to traditional gender roles and indicate that minority women appear to be losing out in the more global economy. —Jessica Stark

For more information on Feminist Economics visit: ›› › feministeconomics.org

It’s a problem that puzzled University of Rochester Vice President for Communications Bill Murphy, who hit upon a solution. Last March, Murphy presented a beta version of a Web site called Futurity.org at a meeting of the Association of American Universities. That’s where Rice Vice President for Public Affairs Linda Thrane jumped on board. The site, a group effort by 33 universities, is dedicated to sharing research breakthroughs directly with the public in an era when traditional news outlets are rapidly shrinking. The site reports on discoveries in science, health, society and culture. Thrane said that Rice was a good fit for the pioneering project. “We signed Rice up right away when we learned about this elite venue,” she said. “This is one more option for us to share the tremendous work of our faculty members in ways that reach and interest broad audiences. And that visibility builds respect and support for our faculty and our university.” Rice already has had more than 20 stories featured on the site, and more are in the works. —David Ruth

Read breaking news from Rice and other research institutions: ›› › futurity.org

Nano-safety Journal Ratings Debut The Rice-based International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) has introduced an interactive feature to its Virtual Journal of Nanotechnology Environment, Health and Safety (VJ-NanoEHS) that allows users to post ratings and comments about technical papers archived at the site. The five-star rating system, which was developed with extensive input from interested stakeholders, provides registered users an opportunity to acknowledge the publications that best exemplify good research practice and effective communication. A survey of potential contributors found that, as the pace of nano-EHS publication rapidly increases, a rating system would help the highest-quality work to be identified. That will allow such work to serve as a model to others moving into the field and to better inform the public dialogue about nanotechnology’s risks and benefits. With the introduction of this new feature, ICON continues to extend the utility of its comprehensive database on nano-safety. Other features include a customized search function and an analysis tool that allows users to track research trends over time. Read the ICON Virtual Journal at: ›› › icon.rice.edu/virtualjournal.cfm

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A Pioneer Returns

“It’s purely a Rice story. While I was here, I met my future wife, Ava Plummer, who’s also a Rice grad, Class of 1978. We started talking, then we started dating, and we got married last December.” —Raymond Johnson

When Raymond Johnson stepped to the front of a Rice University classroom for the first time this fall, few of his students realized the significance of the moment. In an extraordinary turn of events, the first black student to earn a degree at Rice had returned as a professor. The mathematician, who earned his doctorate here in 1969, holds a unique place in Rice history as the first African-American to be admitted and earn a degree — breaking a whites-only barrier that had been part of the Rice Institute charter since the founding of the university. Johnson, now Rice’s distinguished W.L. Moody Jr. Visiting Professor of Mathematics, spent a 40-year career at the University of Maryland, where he was the first black faculty member. He taught in, and for a while chaired, the mathematics department and pursued research in harmonic analysis. With retirement beckoning, Johnson agreed to come to Houston two years ago for an event called “Our History, Our Present, Our Future” that honored the 40th anniversary of the first African-Americans to enter Rice as undergraduates and earn degrees. Johnson’s own history, present and future also came together that day. “It’s purely a Rice story,” said Johnson, sitting in his office in Herman Brown Hall. “While I was here, I met my future wife, Ava Plummer, who’s also a Rice grad, Class of 1978. We started talking, then we started dating, and we got married last December.” Plummer, however, had no intention of leaving her position as a lawyer at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to move to Maryland. “I started looking for a position in Houston,” Johnson said. “I knew I could retire from Maryland, and the backup plan was, in theory, to do that.”

Not so fast, said Rice officials, who jumped at the chance to bring him aboard. “He was well-known to the department for his research, for the fact that he was our first African-American graduate and for his exceptional work mentoring doctoral students, which brought him national recognition,” said Brendan Hassett, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics. At Maryland, Johnson mentored 23 students — 22 of them African-American and eight of them women — who went on to earn doctorates in mathematics, and his efforts earned him the 2006 Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Rice President David Leebron recognized the value of what Johnson brings. “It’s especially poignant to have Raymond here to greet our largest and most diverse freshman class ever,” he said. “His perspective of Rice then and experience with Rice now will help all of us better appreciate the progress that has been achieved through the work of so many. He is a pioneer who helped us get to where we are today.” Johnson modestly maintains he happened to be at the right place at the right time. “There were a couple of bumps, but it was very straightforward,” he said of his education. “I hope one of the things I can teach is that black students can succeed here. If they’re qualified and they work hard, they’ll complete the degree.”

Sallyport

Rice Graduates Among Top Earners Rice University graduates have the highest median salaries among graduates of Texas colleges and universities, according to the 2009 Education and Salary Report by PayScale.com, a Web site that collects employee salary data. Rice graduates earn median starting salaries of $57,900 and median mid-career salaries of $105,000 — at least $9,300 more and $8,100 more, respectively, than graduates of any other school in the Lone Star State. Among the nearly 600 U.S.-based schools included in the report, Rice ranked 23rd for salaries of those with five or fewer years’ experience and 34th for salaries of those with at least 10 years’ experience. The numbers were based on more than a million users of PayScale.com who reported their salaries and educational backgrounds in a survey over the past year. All reports were for graduates who work in the U.S. and whose highest academic degree is a bachelor’s. The entire report is available at: › › › www.payscale.com

Rice a Fiske ‘Best-buy School’ Rice is one of the few elite private colleges to make the list of “best-buy schools” in the 2010 edition of “Fiske Guide to Colleges.” The book, which serves as a reference tool for students, parents and high school counselors, combined cost data with academic ratings and quality of student life on campus to determine which institutions offer remarkable educational opportunities at a relatively modest cost. The guide did not rank the 44 best-buy schools in any order. The Fiske rating complements two other independent rankings of best values among private colleges that were published this year. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and the Princeton Review “Best Value Colleges for 2009” both ranked Rice No. 4 among private schools. Find out why Rice is a great value: › › › futureowls.rice.edu

—Mike Williams

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Building for Breakthroughs For years, Rice University has explored the frontiers of research and education. Now, it has started exploring another type of boundary entirely — the physical seam between the university and other Texas Medical Center institutions. At the heart of this quest is the newly opened BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC). The building, meant to serve as a hub for collaboration between researchers at Rice and other Texas Medical Center (TMC) institutions, is located at the corner of Main Street and University Boulevard — about a four-minute walk from medical powerhouses like Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Biochemistry and Cell Biology. The Gulf Coast Consortia, an organization formed to help build interdisciplinary collaborative research teams and training programs in the biological sciences, also is now headquartered in the BRC, and in July, Texas Children’s Hospital became the first TMC institution to lease space in the building. Talks are ongoing with several other TMC institutions that have expressed interest in leasing space. Conceptualized and built by Rice, the 477,000-square-foot BRC is equipped for cutting-edge laboratory, theoretical and computational investigations and features eight floors of research labs, classrooms and auditoriums. It is designed to eventually accommodate a visualization center and an entire floor dedicated to biomedical informatics. The building’s amenities also include a science marketplace that houses

Conceptualized and built by Rice, the 477,000-square-foot BRC is equipped for cutting-edge laboratory, theoretical and computational investigations and features eight floors of research labs, classrooms and auditoriums.

“Within this region around the TMC and Rice, and reaching out a little bit farther to the University of Houston and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, we have all of the capabilities necessary to make very important advances in the biosciences,” said Rice Provost Eugene Levy. “Still, in order to capitalize on these complementary competencies, we need to bring together a variety of institutions to produce the specialized capabilities that none of the institutions have alone. That’s really the underlying idea behind the BRC.” Rice faculty members have been transferring their laboratories and offices to the new building since early July, and the entire Department of Bioengineering will soon call the BRC home, along with several members of the Department of Chemistry and the Department of

scientific resources shared by the entire BRC community and an urban plaza with 10,000 square feet of retail space for a restaurant and shops. But while the building is full of thoughtful details, it’s what takes place inside that will truly help foster advances in research. “I would like to see the BRC become a vanguard for showing how it is possible to bring the best basic science and the best clinical or applied science together for a smooth transfer of knowledge from ‘bench to practice,’ which is even broader than the ‘bench to bedside’ so often talked about,” said Mary “Cindy” Farach-Carson, Rice’s associate vice provost for research. “We live in the Bio Age, and the opportunities for integrating life sciences discoveries at Rice with world challenges are enormous.” —Merin Porter

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Texas Children’s Hospital Joins Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative Late in July, Texas Children’s Hospital became the first Texas Medical Center institution to lease space in the BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC). Ranked among the top 10 best children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, Texas Children’s will lease space on the eighth floor of the 10-story BRC for 10 years, with an option to renew up to 40 years. Because the space is still under construction, dates for occupancy have not been finalized. “We believe that this building and the collaborative work that it will foster between Rice and other institutions of the Texas Medical Center will provide a new impetus to the center’s leadership in medical research,” said Rice University President David Leebron. “Texas Children’s Hospital, with its strong commitment to medical research as well as teaching and health delivery, has become an increasingly important partner for Rice, and we are immensely pleased to enter this new and deeper phase of working together.” Texas Children’s president and CEO Mark Wallace said that joining the BRC was a natural progression in the hospital’s journey from “excellence to eminence.” “The BRC is ideally situated to draw from a pool of intellectual talent that is second to none,” said Wallace. “We are proud not only to demonstrate our unwavering commitment to research, basic sciences and collaboration, but also to be the very first partner of this amazing venture.” Although patients will not be treated at the BRC, they will benefit from new treatments developed there by researchers, physicians and scientists. Nanobiotechnology, for example, is expected to be used increasingly to design noninvasive treatments for diseases that now require surgery. —Jessica Stark

Sallyport

MovingOnUp The students in the lab of Vicki Colvin, Kenneth S. Pitzer–Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, are used to pioneering nanoscale research, but in July, they were pioneers of a different sort when they became the first tenants of Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative. After spending a week packing up their old lab and a week unpacking in their new one, the researchers were ready to take full advantage of what the new space offered, including innovative workbenches, new equipment and prime office space. They also were looking forward to something the BRC offers outside of the lab: the student hub. “It has a great view of campus, but it will also be a really great space where we get to know other undergrads, graduate students and postdocs working in the BRC,” said Hema Puppala, a graduate student researcher in the Colvin group. “It will be a place where we can talk about what we’re working on and hear about what others are doing and maybe find ways to work together.” The BRC also has become home to a host of Rice chemists, biochemists, bioengineers, biomedical engineers, cell biologists, and electrical and computer engineers. Other Rice groups and offices are scheduled to make the move by the end of January, including the rest of the Department of Bioengineering, the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Beyond Traditional Borders, Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies, the TexasUnited Kingdom Collaborative Research Initiative, and the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology. “It will be fun once we get everyone in here,” said Arjun Prakash, a graduate student researcher in Colvin’s group. “The facilities are definitely nice, and proximity to other researchers in the building and within the Texas Medical Center makes collaboration more possible.” —Jessica Stark

A full list of Rice researchers relocating to the BRC can be found at: › ›› rice.edu/ brc/researchers Mark Wallace, president and CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital, signs an agreement with Rice President David Leebron that makes Texas Children’s the first Texas Medical Center institution to lease space in Rice’s new BioScience Research Collaborative.

See more photos of the Colvin Group’s move into the BRC: › ›› ricemagazine.info/ 27

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Construction @ rice New Home for Physics and Astronomy Imagine your department being divided among six buildings or your researchers having to conduct experiments in the dead of night to avoid disturbances from traffic on nearby streets that could skew results from highly sensitive instruments. Now imagine Brockman Hall for Physics, currently under construction, bringing an end to all that. One thing you don’t have to imagine is the $11.1 million in federal stimulus funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that will aid in the construction of the new research facility. “The NIST funding provides not only an impressive and tangible demonstration of the timeliness and importance of the Brockman Hall for Physics building project, but also the culmination of literally years of dedicated work by former dean Kathleen Matthews, Rice project manager Pat Dwyer and others,”

Safe and Sound The Rice University Police Department (RUPD) will soon add public address capabilities to the arsenal of weapons it uses to ensure campus safety. The PA system will be affixed to approximately 18 of the campus’s 54 emergency phones and will allow RUPD officers to alert the Rice community to environmental and other types of emergencies, including weather-related situations and fires. The upgrade is part of a four-year initiative begun in 2006 to bring Rice’s emergency phones into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which was signed into law after the original phones were installed approximately 20 years ago. So far, 32 of Rice’s firstgeneration emergency phones have been replaced with their ADA-compliant counterparts, which also feature strobe lights that operate when the phone is activated. According to Facilities, Engineering and Planning Project Manager Bob Flumach, who has been working with Rice Chief of Police Bill Taylor on the emergency phone upgrades, the strobe light will alert other people in the area that an emergency has been reported and will also help guide security personnel to the location. “The blue-light phones and public address–system upgrades are really high tech, and I’m very excited about them,” said Taylor. “The new technology truly brings Rice’s emergency phone system up to speed.” —Merin Porter

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

The 110,000-square-foot Brockman Hall for Physics will support research and education in fundamental and applied physics that is of direct relevance to the missions of the U.S. Department of Commerce and NIST. Faculty from Rice’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will occupy the building, which is scheduled to open in spring 2011. “These are going to be absolutely stateof-the-art facilities,” said Barry Dunning, chair

“This new facility will enable Rice to remain on the cutting edge of physical science research.” —James Coleman

said Dan Carson, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “This highly significant award will provide the Wiess School and Rice University with much more flexibility in planning and program development at a critical time.” The NIST funding also will help ensure Rice’s preeminence in research concerning atomic/molecular/optical physics, biophysics, condensed-matter physics, nanomaterials and photonics. “It’s fantastic that NIST has recognized the tremendous opportunities in physics-related research at Rice,” said James Coleman, Rice’s vice provost for research. “This new facility will enable Rice to remain on the cutting edge of physical science research.”

of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “We will be able to do research and not be limited by the available space, vibration, humidity — all the things we’ve had problems with in the past.” The building is expected to earn silver status under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The architect is KieranTimberlake Associates in Philadelphia. External project management services are provided by Linbeck, and Gilbane Building Company is the construction contractor. The building previously received a naming gift from the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust. —Jade Boyd and Mike Williams

THROUGH THE

Sallyport

Common Ground Rice’s athletic teams have shared a commitment to excellence for decades — now they share a front door, too. Completed in spring 2009, the Audrey Moody Ley Plaza is a grassy quadrangle featuring several concrete and decomposed-granite pathways that connect Tudor Fieldhouse and Youngkin Center, Jake Hess Tennis Stadium, Rice Track Stadium and Reckling Park. A variety of trees surround the plaza, including Washingtonia palms, Mexican buckeyes and burr oaks, while underground infrastructure installed during the construction phase sets the stage for a future fountain. But the plaza isn’t just common ground for Rice’s athletic facilities — it’s also becoming a common place for students to relax. “I am seeing students use the area more and more often, maybe just putting a blanket down or throwing a Frisbee,” said Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information Chuck Pool. “I think as the plaza’s greenery matures, we will see it being occupied even more.” In addition to connecting Rice’s athletic facilities and providing students with a space to unwind, the plaza brings Reckling Park into the public eye. Rice’s baseball stadium has long been nearly invisible from College Way, where most Rice visitors travel. “Before the plaza was built, people might have caught a glimpse of Reckling Park’s scoreboard as they hit the tennis courts,” Pool said. “But it’s no longer an afterthought. There are so many signature architectural facades on campus, and I think that Reckling Park now is visible enough to become one of them.” —Merin Porter

South Colleges Get a Facelift The explosion of new colleges on the north side of campus may have temporarily eclipsed the South Colleges, but that ended in May as the South Colleges renovations and additions project moved into high gear. The project includes a new bed tower for Baker College and another for Will Rice College. The 1955 wing of Will Rice will be demolished, and a new kitchen/servery for Will Rice College and Lovett College will be built. In addition, the Baker College kitchen/ servery will be completely renovated. Decorative limestone and other materials have been salvaged from both Baker and Will Rice to help match the renovations to the existing buildings. The final phase of the project, which will be completed in time for the beginning of the fall 2010 semester, will see a total of 82 new beds added to the three renovated colleges.

Baker College

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Rocky Road

There are a lot of interesting rocks along the road from Marrakech to Casablanca, and a coterie of Rice students and their professors had a good look at a lot of them during the summer break.

“The beauty of Morocco is that we observed rocks from Precambrian times, about 700 million years old, up to half a million years old. The age, diversity and types of outcropping rocks were all really astonishing.” —André Droxler

Led by Earth science professors André Droxler and Gerald Dickens, a group of undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and professors about 25 strong traveled more than 2,000 miles during a two-week journey through Morocco, one of the planet’s most unique geological regions. There they were able to study geological formations from the northwest Sahara desert to the Atlas and Rif mountains. These last, located along the Mediterranean coast, contain rock that formed in the Earth’s upper mantle only to be pushed to the surface by tectonic activity. “The field trip gave students the opportunity to see a wide range of geology as well as rocks that cover a great time span,” Droxler said. “The beauty of Morocco is that we observed rocks from Precambrian times, about 700 million years old, up to half a million years old. The age, diversity and types of outcropping rocks The students could were all really astonishing.” The lack of vegetation in much of the sense a disconnect country made it particularly easy to peer back between Berbers and through the ages as the group traveled though the mountains of Morocco in a bus and two Arabs, and underfour-wheel-drive SUVs. “You get to observe the completely uncovered outcrops, and the overall standing the social landscapes are absolutely stunning,” Droxler organization and obsaid. “Morocco gives you this great palette of not only different types of rocks, but also differserving the different ent formations and structures.” The deep structures of the Atlas and Rif living conditions in mountains are at the heart of an international project that involves Alan Levander, the Carey Morocco became part Croneis Professor of Earth Science. The project of a wider learning is investigating the ranges, which are part of the line of demarcation where the Africa and experience for them. Eurasia plates meet, to determine what happens when continents collide. Droxler said Albert Bally, Rice’s Harry Carothers Wiess Professor Emeritus of Geology, was an immense help in preparing students by teaching a spring seminar on Moroccan geology, which he became familiar with when he worked for Shell and did research with graduate students while at Rice. Droxler got further help from his own former teacher, Professor Emeritus Jean-Paul Schaer from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, who’d spent a lot of time in Morocco. “He knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, and so on,” Droxler said. Three of Droxler’s colleagues doing field research in Morocco — Francois Negro, Romain Bousquet and Lahssen Baidder of Switzerland, Germany and Morocco, respectively — led the Rice students through their journey of discovery. Most of the people helping the students along the way were Berbers. “Morocco is mostly inhabited by Berbers,” Droxler said. “Arabs moved to Morocco a long time ago but never really established themselves in the mountains, where the Berbers have lived forever.” The students could sense a disconnect between Berbers and Arabs, and understanding the social organization and observing the different living conditions in Morocco became part of a wider learning experience for them. “One reason the Department of Earth Science organizes these long field trips every other year,” Droxler said, “is to give students the chance to learn to make their way in the world, no matter where they go, not only as Earth scientists but also as Earth citizens.” —Mike Williams

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Students

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Graduate student Lizette Leon Rodriguez had never been on a boat for more than a couple of hours before embarking on the voyage of a lifetime. A paleontologist specializing in planktonic foraminifers, otherwise known as forams, she was one of 27 scientists among a crew of 120 that left Hawaii aboard the JOIDES Resolution, a research ship operated by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. As the vessel skirted the equator, the crew drilled hundreds of meters of core samples to give them a glimpse at what the planet looked like in the Eocene Epoch, approximately 55 to 34 million years ago — core samples that Leon Rodriguez analyzed for clues that may ultimately reveal something about the nearand long-term fate of Earth’s ocean–atmosphere dynamics. Sinking to the sea floor in a constant shower over millions of years, forams and their calcium carbonate shells were buried in sediment, creating a fossil record that can reveal a lot about the Earth

Leon Rodriguez believes more evidence exists in the gooey sediments beneath the Pacific in the chemical composition of plankton’s calcium carbonate shells. “We can look at isotopes and different chemical processes and know, for example, the temperature and the acidity of the oceans at the time. We can track periods from the beginning to the end and all of the processes that happened during that time. The equatorial Pacific is a very productive place to get these samples.” Collecting the core samples one after another from each of seven target locations was hard work, and Leon Rodriguez put in 12-hour shifts analyzing the samples, which one scientist on board described as “white ooze, like toothpaste, and brown ooze, like crumbly brown sugar.” Each 30-foot core was cut into manageable pieces, and samples were extracted from the eras the scientists wanted to analyze. “We had to cut the pieces in the right places, wash the samples — sometimes a couple of times — and then go to the microscope and check the forams to determine their ages by comparing them to comprehensive fossil records,” Leon Rodriguez said. “It got stressful,

“We can look at isotopes and different chemical processes and know, for example, the temperature and the acidity of the oceans at the time.” — Lizette Leon Rodriguez during times when atmospheric carbon dioxide peaked and the planet suffered bouts of global warming. “What is interesting about the Eocene is there were periods very similar to what we’re experiencing now in terms of global warming,” said Leon Rodriguez, a native of Colombia who earned her master’s degree at Florida International University before coming to Rice. “There was a huge release of carbon into the oceans and the atmosphere that increased temperatures.” Her adviser, Gerald Dickens, a professor of earth science, and his colleagues argued in a paper in Nature in late 2007 that a chain reaction of events in the Eocene that probably started with a period of intense volcanic activity led to the release of a massive amount of greenhouse gases that warmed the planet. The paper was based on Eocene sediments from what was then the ocean floor but is now New Jersey.

because we could see them drilling, and samples were coming, and we had a bunch waiting for us to wash, and we were looking at the forams — we were racing all the time.” Now that a huge box of samples has landed in her Rice office, Leon Rodriguez can begin detailed analysis to learn about ocean conditions eons ago. “This is the real thing in terms of my research. On the ship, you have to know what you’re doing, but you’re more like a technician. Here, I can run my chemical analyses and play with the samples. We’re going to have different curves that will tell us how the temperature and carbon levels in the ocean fluctuated over time. It’s going to be fun.” —Mike Williams

Discover unique opportunities for Rice graduate students: › › › gradresearch.rice.edu

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ZEROW HOUSE What do you get when you combine Rice student innovation; a commission to build a zero-energy home; and Project Row Houses, a neighborhood-based art and cultural organization that seeks to develop housing for low-to-moderate-income residents of Houston’s Third Ward? The ZEROW HOUSE, of course. ZEROW HOUSE is an entry in the U.S. Department of Energy’s upUnlike the other entries, however, ZEROW HOUSE was designed coming Solar Decathlon, a housing competition in which teams of colwith affordability and a specific site in mind. While other entries operlege and university students vie to design, build and operate the most ate on half-a-million-dollar budgets, ZEROW HOUSE was created with a attractive, effective and energy-efficient solar-powered house. The building and material budget of about $150,000 in a way that will allow Rice student team was the only one from Texas among the 20 teams its design and concepts to be replicated in six energy-efficient one- and chosen from around the world to participate. This year’s competition two-bedroom homes on two 50-by-80-foot lots in Houston’s Third Ward. will be held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in October. “Our students have worked Design Challenges at the highest level to create this house, which is on par with profesEngineering a house for Houston sional work,” said Danny Samuels, was a challenge. The team specially the Harry K. Smith Professor in the tailored the house to withstand the Practice of Architecture at Rice. rigors of Houston’s Gulf Coast cli“Through working with Project mate by limiting the number of winRow Houses, we have taken the dows and using a high-reflectivity next step in providing affordable, roof membrane. Both reduced the appropriate technologies for people solar heat load during the day. For who need it.” the same reason, some of the walls Like other Solar Decathlon were thickened to limit the amount houses, ZEROW HOUSE will be able of heat that might seep into the to produce all the energy needed for house during the hot months. The its operation on-site using phototeam also used a foundation and voltaic solar panels and other green materials that could withstand hurtechnologies. The judges will look ricane-force winds. Rebecca Sibley, Allison Elliott and Joseph Nash at 10 specific areas of competition: “The Solar Decathlon offers the architecture, engineering, market challenge of providing innovation viability, communications, comfort, appliances, hot water, lighting, and quality of design within a limited space,” said Nonya Grenader, energy balance and transportation. Each house should produce professor in the practice in the Rice School of Architecture. “By skillenough electricity and hot water to perform all the functions of a fully placing elements that provide all services — a wet core — and home, from powering lights and electronics to cooking and washing natural light and ventilation — a light core — the students began to clothes and dishes. define and transform the small building envelope into much more.”

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Students One of the most vexing design parameters had nothing to do with energy efficiency or cost. It had to do with transportation. Aside from the international competitors, the Rice team has the farthest to travel for the competition. While the team members will have five days to reassemble ZEROW HOUSE in the National Mall, they had to find a way to transport it and make it roadworthy while taking into account laws from each state they will travel through on their journey to D.C. “The main challenge was designing within all these limits,” said Roque Sanchez ’09, the environmental engineering student who entered Rice in the competition. “We had great ideas, but we had these boundaries to factor in. It inspired us to do more and push our own limitations. I’m still shocked at how everything came together. We’ve had so much support, and you can see that in the house itself.” Sanchez said various sponsors from the Houston community pitched in and offered services and supplies, though the costs were figured into the home’s final price tag. “Many of the energy-efficient materials and technologies featured in ZEROW HOUSE, such as solar panels and solar water heaters, can be implemented in almost any home,” said senior Allison Elliott, one of the student leaders. “A house can be both environmentally friendly and affordable.” Collaborative Effort The team worked on the house for about a year and a half, and its efforts were aided by more than 100 people from disciplines across campus. “This was a great project to give our engineering students more hands-on experience,” said Brent Houchens, assistant professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering faculty lead for ZEROW. “They had to learn how to optimize the systems such as the solar array and solar water heater to make the house functional but as cost effective as possible. The collaboration between them and

The team worked on the house for about a year and a half, and its efforts were aided by more than 100 people from disciplines across campus.

Concrete Evidence Sometimes there’s no hard and fast rule for concrete construction. Just ask Brantley Highfill and Zhan Chen. The two are graduate students in the Rice School of Architecture, and they recently were runners-up in the building element division of the international student design competition Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World, sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. More than 300 students from 55 schools of architecture from around the world participated in the competition. The competition asked students to design innovative applications for Portland cement-based materials to achieve sustainable design objectives. Highfill and Chen’s proposal, Constructed Ecologies, made use of permeable concrete planks called GeoPlanks to allow people more access to water in environmentally sensitive areas — particularly along bayous, seawalls and other places that land and water meet — than is possible with traditional barriers. The idea for GeoPlanks was born in a class on concrete taught by Douglas Oliver, a professor in the practice of architecture who served as the team’s adviser, when the students took a long look at Houston’s bayous. “Concrete often is used to cover these waterways for flood-control purposes, but it also damages the existing natural environment,” Chen said. “The resulting condition is miles of paved rivers that resemble major highway infrastructure in terms of both cost and construction. Constructed Ecologies offers a productive alternative to this hard landscape.” GeoPlanks, which are straight and angled interlocking sections of concrete, can dip above and below the surface of a body of water and are designed to blend into the earth. The porous surface of each plank naturally collects soil and seed deposits to reduce the surface area of exposed concrete and mitigate the “heat island” effect. “We would love the opportunity to fabricate a system and test it out,” Highfill said. —Mike Williams

the architecture students and faculty has given them very rewarding real-world experience.” ZEROW HOUSE is just the latest project in an affordable housing initiative and long-term collaboration between the Rice Building Workshop and Project Row Houses. In the past, Rice students have designed and constructed other new housing on property owned by Row House Community Development Corporation, including the SixSquare House and a row of eight recently completed duplexes. The direct inspiration for ZEROW was the 500-square-foot XS (extra small) House constructed in 2003 at a cost of $25,000. “The Rice Building Workshop allows students to experience architecture at full scale, working in a spirit of collaboration,” Grenader said. “The Solar Decathlon brought a talented mix of students together who benefited greatly from the larger Houston community. Many individuals and companies gave their support and expertise in realizing the project.” After the Solar Decathlon, ZEROW HOUSE will be transported back to its permanent location in Houston, where two local residents will actually call it home. —Jessica Stark

To learn more visit: ››› solardecathlon.rice.edu

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Owl 24

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

D AV I D L E E B R O N

When I received the offer to become president of Rice University almost six years ago, I don’t think I had any possession in the shape of an owl or with an owl depicted on it. Now I am constantly on the prowl for an owl, and through purchases and gifts, my wife, Ping, and I have acquired owl-laden pins, pendants, rings, earrings, ties, cuff links, key chains, water pitchers, decanters, glasses, candles, soap and small boxes, as well as innumerable owl sculptures of every shape, size and material. Single owls, double owls, triple owls (hearing, seeing and speaking no evil) and quadruple owls. Some are literal representations and some abstract. As I travel around the world, I look for an owl to buy in every country I visit, and I typically return with some small owl souvenir for my office staff. I have cloisonné and lacquer owls from China, ceramic owls from Korea and Japan, copper owls from Chile, a marble owl inlaid with

This past summer, my family and I were in Athens. As you might imagine, Athens is to owlmaniacs what Havana is to cigar aficionados. Everywhere you go in Athens, you find things that have not only an owl on them, but an owl that looks like the official Rice owl on our seal. Even the Greek version of the one euro coin features the traditional Athenian owl. In fact, you can find more Rice symbols in Athens than you can in Houston’s airports or at the Galleria — unfortunately. Although those afflicted with owlmania can be a bit indiscriminating — almost any owl will do! — it is nonetheless important that we also treasure and elevate our official owl. You probably already have begun seeing that owl a bit more often, and not only as part of our

semiprecious stones (in the style of the Taj Mahal!) from India, glass owls from Venice and a wooden owl carved by Native Americans near the Grand Canyon. In fact, I have developed a somewhat uncanny ability to walk into a shop, look around quickly, and spot the two-inch owl 30 feet away. (Possibly an exaggeration, but if so, only a slight one.) In short, I have fully succumbed to owlmania. The dictionary defines a “mania” as “excessive excitement or enthusiasm” for something (assuming we fall short of the psychiatric definition of “a form of insanity characterized by great excitement”). Of course, we at Rice would never agree that our mania for owls is excessive. It is merely appropriate. The official Rice owl is not just any owl. It is the Athenian owl taken from a Greek coin that is nearly 2,500 years old. Most Greek gods were associated with some animal, and Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was associated with the owl. Thus the owl became the symbol of wisdom in Western culture.

shield. Last year, for example, in addition to having a “RICE” pin in the official Trajan font, we began producing small pewter owl pins that can be worn discreetly on a lapel. I am not alone in my enthusiasm for all things owl, and for good reason. One of the critical roles of symbols is that they enable us to communicate to others our common sense of identity and belonging to a community — in this case the Rice community. Thus, owlmania is a common characteristic of Rice alumni and others dedicated to Rice. In the homes of Rice graduates, you are likely to find more than a few owls. And as I wander around offices at Rice, I discover that even the most rational and mild-mannered of my colleagues have succumbed to the affliction. This is as it should be. Our passion for our university is reflected in our passion for its symbols, and no symbol has endured longer or endeared itself more to the Rice community than the owl, whether it takes the form of Sammy the Owl, the “war” or “predator” owl of athletics, or the three Athenian owls on our shield. Owlmania is simply one more way in which we demonstrate our loyalty and affection for Rice.

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Coastal By Christopher Dow â&#x20AC;˘ Photography by Jeff Fitlow

You might think that the Antarctic and the Texas Gulf Coast are about as different as possible while still sharing the same planet, but for John Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and professor of earth science, the two are inextricably linked.

A 26

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ndersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s love of the Gulf Coast goes back to his childhood, and even after he began research on the Antarctic that focused on ice sheets and their decay and contribution to sea level-rise, he maintained his interest in the Texas coastline. The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ike was an opportune time to talk to Anderson about what is happening to the Texas coast and to get his prognosis for the future.

Watch What makes the Texas coast a good subject for study?

The Texas Gulf Coast is a beautiful natural laboratory for understanding how coasts evolve and how they respond to sea level change and hurricanes because it has a fairly low gradient, and it doesn’t have the huge subsidence rate that Louisiana does.

How do you determine the effects of sea level rise, and what are you finding? We study drill cores and other data from a wide range of estuaries — from Mobile Bay all the way to Corpus Christi Bay — to see how they developed and responded to changing conditions over the last 10,000 years. The information we gather allows us to estimate future response. These bays have changed dramatically during that time, and they continue to change. It’s predicted that, by the end of this century, sea level rise will be about 5 millimeters per year, or half a meter in a

century. It’s well known that the bays of the Gulf Coast are much more sensitive to sea level rise than is the coast. Coastal erosion gets a lot of attention because people have houses on the beach, but the bays are really the most threatened.

Why? In some places, sediments coming down rivers help balance out rising water levels, but that’s rarely the case in Texas. Our bays have a very low gradient, and Galveston Bay, in particular, is very shallow. Around here, a sea level rise of 5 millimeters per year can result in 1 to 1.5 meters of coastal retreat, and that amount starts to exceed the capacity of the bays to keep up. The effect is widespread flooding, changes of the bay margins and, at times, complete disappearances of deltas. Changes like these in the past occurred at a time when the ice sheets, particularly in Antarctica, were still experiencing some episodic retreat, but there’s little question that humans are responsible for the accelerated rise we’ve seen over the past 50 years.

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Why aren’t people more concerned? Saying that the sea level will rise half a meter doesn’t mean a thing to most people — certainly not to policymakers. You have to put it into context using maps that show how much area gets submerged. Sometimes it rings a bell and makes them think, but the reality is, maps like those show best-case scenarios. Coastal systems don’t just sit there while sea level rises and slowly inundates the landscape. When coasts are in perturbed modes and along comes a hurricane like Ike, the system can respond radically. We get what might be 10 years of normal erosion in a single day. And in bays, we see dramatic changes, as well. We know that Sabine Lake once had a large bay head delta, much like Galveston Bay has, and it disappeared sometime during the last couple of centuries, probably in response to a large hurricane.

When you look at our area, many of the chemical plants along the Houston Ship Channel could be endangered by that kind of sea level rise, which is certainly an economic consideration for policymakers. Absolutely. Some of the best storm surge models come from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake. You might wonder why, but they’re in a pretty vulnerable place, and it got a lot more vulnerable in the 1970s because of all the subsidence. They lost half their elevation, and the area is extremely prone to storm surge.

What effect did Hurricane Ike have on the Texas coast?

“Public education is the main issue. We’re living in a state of denial, and we keep making the same mistakes over and over. We can’t continue to rebuild right back where we did before the last hurricane.” —John Anderson

The dunes that once lined the coast of Bolivar Peninsula are another thing that puts things into context. They were 1,500 to 2,000 years old, and Ike destroyed them overnight. And it’s not the first time such a thing has happened. Everything south of the highway on Bolivar is only 600 years old. What that tells us is that the peninsula was decapitated around 600 years ago, and it’s taken all this time to reform. People say, “The beach will recover,” and, yes, the beach does recover, but it doesn’t recover where it was. It recovers where it is now, and the dunes would recover, except there are houses sitting where dunes would develop. The same is happening on Galveston, where some fairly prominent dune ridges now are gone, replaced by miles and miles of real estate. That’s the end of those dunes.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports an elevation loss of between three and 10 feet on Bolivar, leaving an average elevation of only three feet. That might make it vulnerable to even a strong tropical storm, much less a hurricane. Elevation is a big thing. I’ve heard people who aren’t very knowledgeable about these things say that those little beach ridges you see in aerial photographs can’t possibly offer any protection from storm waves. On any given day at the beach, you see fairly large waves breaking over sandbars that are less than a meter high. That’s a daily reminder that it doesn’t take a lot of elevation to disrupt wave energy. When sea level goes up during a storm surge, and those waves move across the barrier islands, this ridge-and-swell topography is a very effective way of dampening that energy and causing those waves to break and lose their energy. Yet, on the west end of Galveston, developers are allowed to go in and level the landscape. I don’t understand the rationale. People who are rebuilding there and on Bolivar face an even greater threat because there’s not much left to protect them. We know from Hurricane Alicia, and now from Ike, that no matter what we do, houses that are built in the first two rows from the beach are going to get wiped out. People might pile sand under endangered houses, but once that beach profile is cut down, they can pile all the sand they want, and it’s not going to last. It’s just going to wash away during the next storm. Unfortunately, people’s memory spans on storms only last about a year. I hate to see people rebuilding right back in spots where house were destroyed a year ago.

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Hurricane Ike caused considerable erosion around Rollover Pass on Bolivar. Because of the pass, Bolivar is, in effect, an island rather than a peninsula. Would another hurricane like Ike make Bolivar an island in fact? Follett’s Island, which is just west of Galveston Island, was once part of Galveston Island. It became a separate island when a storm breached Galveston sometime within the last 2,000 years — more than likely, within the last several centuries. This is a natural progression of barrier island evolution. They tend to get longer and narrower, and along comes a big hurricane and just slices off the end, and there’s a new barrier. So, yes, the day will come when Bolivar will be breached. Right now, Galveston is in a sort of quasi-equilibrium. It actually underwent a phase of growth for several thousand years, and now

Recently, there has been publicity about a plan to extend the Galveston seawall to the west end of Galveston Island and all the way up Bolivar Peninsula. The plan includes huge retractable dikes across Bolivar Roads and San Luis Pass to limit storm surge. What would be the effects on the coast here if such a seawall were built? Chris Hight, an associate professor in the School of Architecture, and I have a project funded through the Shell Center for Sustainability called Sustainable Strategy for Galveston Island. When the Ike Dike idea was raised, our response was: After the 1900 storm, they put that seawall in there, and that set the stage for the way Galveston was going to be for the next hundred years. Then along comes Ike, and now they’re going to completely entomb the island. Despite all the hype around the Ike Dike, I’ve yet to see a serious storm surge model to determine if it’s even going to work. It’s ironic that a lot of supporters for the Ike Dike are people who have property on the west end on the beach. I think they envision this thing out at the water’s edge protecting their private property. If you’re going to spend $3 billion on a feature for which the justification is to prevent storm surge in the Houston Ship Channel, the last place you’re going to want to put it is on the beach. If they did, the reality is that the beach is going to continue to erode, and in a predictable number of years, the water will be right up to the seawall just like it is now along the west end of the present seawall. End of beach. If they do build an Ike Dike, it’s going to have to be far enough inland that it won’t have to be maintained every year as we do the seawall. It probably will be along the highway rather than the beach, or maybe on the other side of the island at the Intercoastal Waterway. Another consideration is the effect it will have on the wetlands. San Luis Pass, which is one of the top natural preserves on the Texas coast for birding and wildlife of all sorts, is probably going to be devastated because there’s no way to put a lock across San Luis Pass without destroying the integrity of the tidal inlet. And the geometry of that inlet controls the exchange of water between the gulf and West Bay. At the very minimum, I’d like to see some studies done.

What are the most important issues facing the communities along the Upper Texas Coast? Are there any practical solutions to these?

it’s starting to retreat. It’s actually shrinking — eroding on both the gulf and bay sides. Follett’s Island is retreating three times faster than Galveston on its gulf side, but if you look at the bay side, you see that it’s actually growing on its landward side. It’s shifted into what’s called the rollover stage, where hurricanes take sand off the beach and pile it onto the back side of the island. Follett’s will continue to migrate landward at a rate of about 10 to 12 feet per year until it reaches some geological feature, such as the big fault line that runs along the north shore of West Bay and East Bay. If we allow the shoreline to do its natural thing, the waves will eat an escarpment there, pile up the sand and form the next barrier shoreline. The system could step to that location pretty quickly if we have three or four Ikes in a matter of 20 years.

Public education is the main issue. We’re living in a state of denial, and we keep making the same mistakes over and over. We can’t continue to rebuild right back where we did before the last hurricane. That ignorance of coastal processes goes to a fairly high level in state government. Texas spends millions of dollars each year dumping truck loads of sand on beaches, and the sand doesn’t last a year. We could use that money on a sand nourishment project that would really do some good. We’re convinced that we can engineer our way out of the problem with an Ike Dike, or other such project, when we actually need to accept the fact that this coastline is changing and that it’s going to change even faster in the next several decades. The project Chris and I are working on is to develop a 50- to 100-year plan for how Galveston Island might fortify itself, and more important, how it might change the way it does things. The current trend is that developers come in and buy a big tract of land on the west end, then level the terrain and chew up wetlands. Chris and I have been trying to change the culture of the island to get people to want to move to high-rise condos on the east end. The Strand is there, there’s already a seawall and there’s a natural beach. Beyond that, we need to think about coastal sustainability — not just sustainable development but sustainable preservation of the coast. To accomplish that, we may need to just let go. Look at Galveston Island State Park. It’s doing quite well and has a nice beach. It may be that we ought to just back off and live with the changes.

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Most alumni remember it as Hicks Kitchen, the central food service kitchen where chefs prepared meals for the college serveries. Since last September, though, R ice st udents have k nown it as the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, and it’s the place where they’re cooking up the future. Gone are the stoves and freezers and food preparation areas, replaced by a machine shop, a welding shop, a computational area, an etching room with a wet lab, conference rooms, classrooms and much more — even a kitchen sink! The renovation, accomplished thanks to a $2.4 million gift from Rice Trustee M. Kenneth Oshman ’62 and his wife, Barbara, and an additional gift from National Instruments, has given students a facility for cross-disciplinary and cross-technology training that draws not only engineering students, but also those in the humanities, social sciences, architecture and business. The completely redesigned 12,000-square-foot facility has been operational for one year, and to celebrate, we are reviewing some of the real-world solutions that students have developed there since it opened. P h o t o g r a p hy by Je ff F i t l ow

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Bone

It would be terrible if the first humans to reach Mars stepped onto the surface to discover their legs could no longer hold them. NASA will take extraordinary measures to see that doesn’t happen, of course, and a team of Rice students may play a role. T Team Taurus — Charlie Foucar, Shannon Moore, Evan Williams, Bodin Hon and Leslie Goldberg, all of whom graduated in the spring — designed a device to help astronauts keep their skeletons strong and healthy by measuring bone mineral density loss, literally on the fly. Their design of a bone-remodeling monitor for use in microgravity shared the top prize in NASA’s third annual Systems Engineering Paper Competition. It’s the first national honor to hang in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. The team looked at all of the risks it could reasonably address from a bioengineering approach and discovered that NASA had no way of determining bone loss in space. It’s a critical issue. Astronauts lose bone mass at a rate of up to 2 percent per month while aloft. That’s not a big deal on an orbital jaunt of a week or two, but residents of the international space station stay there for up to six months and don’t have the tools on board to get a real-time measurement of what turns out to be a hazard of living in microgravity. Travelers to Mars face a six-month trip as well,

and that’s just one way. Long before that can happen, NASA expects to send explorers for more extended periods to an eventual moon base in one-sixth of Earth’s gravity. Bone-density markers can be found in blood, sweat and saliva, but the team decided that measuring deoxypyridinoline, which is found in urine, would be best because it can be collected noninvasively. The team’s prototype has three stages: a collection unit that ties into the spacecraft’s waste disposal system, an immunoassay process and a photometer that reads the absorbance spectra of the combined solution and feeds the data to an analysis program personalized for each astronaut. Ground crews could then determine the proper response, such as prescribing dietary supplements or increasing the astronaut’s physical regimen. Eventually, the technology might be applied to other biological processes to create an all-encompassing health monitor. —Mike Williams

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The award-winning members of Team Taurus in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen: (from left) Shannon Moore, Leslie Goldberg, Bodin Hon, Charlie Foucar and Evan Williams

Sunlight may be free, but converting it into electricity is expensive. Leave it to Rice students to find alternative solutions to the problem.

Capteur Soleil inventor Jean Boubour, left, and Rice’s Doug Schuler are commercializing a low-tech solar technology that harvests the sun’s heat for cooking and other tasks.

“We want to alleviate energy problems in some of the poorest regions of the world, so we’re using low-cost technology to capture the sun’s heat for cooking and other uses,” said team leader Doug Schuler, associate professor of management in Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Schuler is the principal investigator on a seed grant from Rice’s Shell Center for Sustainability that aims to commercialize a technology called “Capteur Soleil.” Capteur Soleil, which is French for solar capture, is the brainchild of French inventor Jean Boubour, Schuler’s co-investigator on the grant. Boubour invented the device after searching in vain for a simple, motorless solar technology that would be inexpensive enough for rural Africa. Capteur Soleil looks something like an ultramodern lawn swing holding a bed of curved mirrors. The mirrors focus sunlight onto a steel pipe at the apex of the frame. Water running through the pipe is converted into steam, which can be used for cooking and other tasks like making soap or sterilizing medical instruments. Schuler’s team is building prototypes in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen for testing in developing nations. The team hopes to show that the devices can pay for themselves easily by offsetting the cost of propane, which currently is used despite its high cost in remote, rural communities. The first Capteur Soleil prototype was installed in Terrier Rouge, Haiti, at St. Barthelemy School, which hosted undergraduate interns from Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders program last summer. Schuler hopes the Capteur Soleil can save the 450-student elementary school thousands of dollars per year in fuel costs. Boubour and Claire Krebs ’09, a mechanical engineering major, built the first prototype in about two weeks. A second prototype will be tested in Nicaragua this fall. A third prototype will stay at the design kitchen for testing by students in bioengineering design courses next fall. —Jade Boyd

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While it doesn’t look like R2-D2 or the other robotic stars of the silver screen, an assistive robotic device designed and built by Rice undergraduate engineering students to help stroke and spinal cord injury survivors could be an even bigger hit. The Rice team built the robot to perform everyday tasks for patients recovering from diseases that affect motor skills and to give the patients exercise in the process. Armed with a scissorlike claw, the remote-controlled prototype can rove about and perform a variety of functions, including moving a glass of water or snatching a pen off the floor. Working at Rice’s new Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen under adviser Marcia O’Malley, assistant professor in mechanical engineering and materials science, the Rice team included bioengineering students Christine Moran ’09 and Austin Mueller ’09 and mechanical engineering students Claire Krebs ’09, Beth Rowan ’09 and David Meyer ’10. To manipulate their remote-controlled robot, Rice team members use an instrument designed by O’Malley called an exoskeleton. In a rehab setting, this device would be attached to one of the patient’s arms. Using the exoskeleton could help patients build endurance by gradually increasing their range of motion and the amount of exertion required to operate the robot. Before the students started the project, they conferred with people recovering from stroke or spinal cord injuries at the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research, Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation hospital in the Texas Medical Center, and with the physical therapists who care for these patients. The prototype rolls on treads similar to those on a tank and is less than 20 inches tall and about 18 inches by 18 inches at the base. It is equipped with lifts designed to raise a grabber to the height of a table for access to glasses, utensils and dishes, which is no easy task since its maximum height is around 3 feet. Tests are being planned to see how well the prototypes work on patients in a realworld environment. —Rob Cahill

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Gift

The hot cot design team includes (clockwise from left) Mimi Zhang, Lindsay Zwiener, Larissa Charnsangavej, Richard Romeo and McKenzie Smith.

Lightbulbs in a plywood box — how complicated could that be? Maybe more complicated than you think when the lives of premature babies are at stake. So when a team of Rice seniors began optimizing a low-tech incubator last spring, they were determined to take every small issue seriously. The project was a “hot cot,” a primitive device that Rebecca Richards-Kortum, director of Rice 360°, and Maria Oden, director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, spotted being used at a hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. The original, designed by students in Kenya, used lightbulbs as the heating element and aluminum flashing on the bottom as insulation. Angled planks directed warm air into the top chamber. “It fills a niche between having nothing and having an incubator,” Richards-Kortum said. “It’s really designed for low-resource settings to keep premature babies sufficiently warm.” Oden instructed her team to make the device as efficient but also as inexpensive as possible. The students determined the most thermally optimal combination of design and materials by analyzing airflow to maximize heat and maintain the right amount of oxygen in the infant’s chamber, seeing how well it worked in hot and cold climates, finding the right electrical components to ensure the widest possible use and building models to test all of the above. A must for the design was that it could be constructed with materials readily available worldwide. The hot cot found a real-world trial when a team of students from Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, under mentor Marc Epstein, distinguished research professor of management, took the plans to Rwanda on spring break. Within five days, the team found a way to get a cot built by local carpenters, demonstrated it briefly in a clinic and worked with local officials to begin to obtain regulatory approval. Plans for the cots will be refined during the upcoming year based on feedback from the returning students. —Mike Williams

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Hand

Five recently graduated bioengineering students spent their senior year brainstorming and then building a device that will revolutionize the way doctors measure hand strength in patients — the Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator, or PRIME. Maria Oden, who teaches Rice’s senior bioengineering design course and is director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, challenged the team — Jennifer Cieluch, Caterina Kaffes, Matthew Miller, Neel Shah and Shuai “Steve” Xu — to come up with a device that accurately measures the strength of intrinsic hand muscles. These are the muscles from wrist to fingertip that allow humans to play a piano, grip a pencil or perform any task that requires dexterity and precision. Such a study is important because neuromuscular disorders such as spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, diabetes and multiple sclerosis affect the intrinsic muscles of the hand. Also, 20 percent of emergency room admissions in the United States are hand-related. Doctors routinely test hand strength, but the tests are usually subjective, done by feel. And the few devices currently available aren’t nearly accurate enough to be truly useful and do not work for individuals with small hands or those with unusual morphologies.

PRIME aims to fill that gap. In a typical five-minute test using PRIME, a patient puts one hand on a pegboard, and the doctor places pegs to immobilize all the fingers but the one being tested. A loop is fitted around the finger, and when the patient moves it, the amount of force applied is measured by a force transducer. In tests, the device has a data error rate of less than 10 percent, and the team believes that under 5 percent is achievable. With more hands-on experience, the students expect PRIME to be ready for institutional review at Shriners Hospital for Children–Houston. Already, the device has garnered two prestigious honors: It took first place at the IShow, a competition sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and was one of five winners in a student design competition sponsored by the National Science Foundation at the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America conference. —Mike Williams

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The PRIME team — (from left) Jennifer Cieluch, Neel Shah, Matthew Miller, Steve Xu and Caterina Kaffes — show off the Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator.

HOWARD KECK HALL

The Campanile Height: 125 feet Built: 1912 Architects: Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson

THE CAMPANILE

TOUCH

1925

THE SKY

When Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, Rice’s founding architects, began designing the campus, they envisioned a tower that would hold water. That plan was scrapped in favor of underground tanks, but the idea of a tower so captivated then-President Edgar Odell Lovett that the architects sought a practical function to justify one. The result was the Campanile, the campus’s first and most impressive tower. Built to decoratively mask the smokestack for the Power House, it is still used to vent steam. In the beginning, the Campanile was simply described as campanilelike; it didn’t have a capital “C” until after the publication of the first edition of the “Campanile” yearbook in 1916. The hipped tile eave that originally hooded the top was removed when the tower was rebuilt in 1930 following a lightning strike. Architectural historian Stephen Fox calls the Campanile Rice’s “most ambiguous component … because it has no visible base. It is always seen from a distance.”

Rice is famous for being the modestly sized university that produces towering achievements in teaching and research. In keeping with that idea, the modestly sized Rice campus displays a few “towering achievements” of its own.

Howard Keck Hall Height: 82 feet Built: 1925 Architects: William Ward Watkin and Cram & Ferguson

Photos by Tommy LaVergne Text by Christopher Dow

1912

With thanks to: “The Campus Guide: Rice University,” by Stephen Fox (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001); “A Walking Tour of Rice University,” by James C. Morehead Jr. (Rice University Press, 1990); “A History of Rice University: The Institute Years, 1907–1963,” by Fredericka Meiners (Rice University Studies, 1982); and Susann Glenn of Rice University’s Facilities, Engineering and Planning department.

Originally known as the Chemistry Building and then as Dell Butcher Hall, Howard Keck Hall is a storehouse of scientific symbols, a number of which are located on the building’s tower. Most notable are those that use contemporary representations to depict the first part of the periodic table of elements. The tower was built to house a mechanical system for venting the laboratories.

RUSS PITTMAN TOWER

The Rice Memorial Center Chapel Campanile Height: 70 feet Built: 1958 Architect: Harvin C. Moore Even a nonsectarian place for fellowship such as the Rice Memorial Center Chapel needs a bell tower. Unlike its larger sibling to the north, the Rice Chapel’s tower is a true campanile, although its bells are electronic chimes rather than real bells. The chapel and its campanile are based on the design of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, though on a much smaller scale. Architect Harvin C. Moore was a member of Rice’s class of 1927.

The Crystal Campanile Height: 85 feet Built: 2009 Architects: Antoine Predock Architect PC, Morris Architects, Michael Graves & Associates When Antoine Predock designed the new South Plant, which will supply the steam and chilled water necessary to heat and cool buildings on the south side of the campus, such as the new 10-story BioScience Research Collaborative, he came up with his own modern take on the Campanile. Although the newest tower at Rice, called by some the “Crystal Campanile,” may be a functional sibling to the oldest, the two couldn’t be more different. The sleek, high-tech South Plant tower shows not only how design has changed during the last century, but also just how far we’ve come technologically. Built to cool and recycle steam rather than belch smoke, the Crystal Campanile resembles a modernist sculpture more than it does a functional piece of equipment.

THE CRYSTAL CAMPANILE

2000

THE RICE MEMORIAL CENTER CHAPEL CAMPANILE

Russ Pittman Tower Height: 94 feet Built: 2000 Architect: Alan Greenberg

2009

1958

The Humanities Building is highly visible from College Way, but when you are standing in the Academic Quad, its Russ Pittman Tower is what you notice most. This is the one tower on campus that always has been purely decorative — unless you count it serving as a roost for the large sculpted owl that watches over the western half of the Academic Quad.

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2009

“Publish or perish” goes the old saying in academia, but what happens when it’s the publishers who are perishing? Enter the recently resurrected Rice University Press, which is blazing an unconventional path in redefining the parameters of academic publishing.

By Christopher Dow

cademic publishing is nothing new for Rice. The university published an academic journal titled the Rice Institute Pamphlet (1915–62) and later renamed Rice University Studies (1962–82), and a number of academic journals currently are housed at Rice. In 1982, Rice instituted a book publishing arm, Rice University Press (RUP), primarily as an outlet for the work of Rice faculty and limited largely to topics of regional interest or of interest to faculty members here. In a sense, the original RUP was the canary in the coal mine of academic publishing. It succumbed in 1996 due to financial pressures caused by the rising costs of conventional publishing and distribution colliding with the typically low readership experienced by niche publishers. “It’s the essential problem for traditional academic presses whose businesses are built on the commercial publishing model,” said Fred Moody, editor-in-chief of Rice’s 2.0 version of Rice University Press, which came online, literally, in 2008. “You print a large number of books, then you distribute them all over the country in the hope that sales will recoup the investment.” Academic publishers generally follow this model even though the purpose and market for academic books is far different than for commercial fare. “Academic books tend to be of interest to a few experts and their students in a particular field,” said Moody. “They serve to advance understanding of specialized topics and, if they earn good reviews from expert readers, help the authors further their careers.” Nowhere in this equation is book sales, which usually number in the hundreds, considered an important or legitimate reason for doing academic research resulting in a published book.

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Even so, academic publishers operating on the commercial model must live with the massive expense of production, marketing and printing a relatively large number of copies, which has led, Moody said, to a crisis in academic publishing. “Publishers are ceasing operations or cutting back drastically in the number of titles they do each year,” he said, “and growing numbers of young faculty are finding fewer outlets for their research.” As a result, deserving work is going unpublished because of the skewed economics of academic publishing rather than because the work lacks intellectual merit. A New Model RUP and its new model for academic publishing is, Moody believes, the solution. Started by then-vice provost and head of Fondren Library Charles Henry and Joey King, who was the executive director of the Connexions project, Rice’s digital collaborative environment for the development of educational material, RUP is administered by the Office of the Provost. “To put it grandly,” Moody said, “we want to save academic publishing by making it financially viable without compromising editorial excellence. Like any academic press, we employ standard, time-honored editorial rigor and peer review to submitted manuscripts, and our acceptance of a book is based solely on its intellectual worth.” The difference comes with production methods and distribution. RUP leverages digital technology for both, and the key is that its books are published in two formats: an online version and a reasonably priced print-on-demand (POD) edition for those who prefer traditional books. Using POD technology reduces costs by eliminating the need to print a large number of books beforehand, maintain an inventory

and deal with returns. Ordering an RUP book online is similar to ordering a book from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble’s Web site. The cost of production for RUP is a fraction of that borne by traditional publishers, thanks to an automatic layout program developed by Connexions. The same program is utilized for the online versions of the books, as well, but the digital versions don’t simply replicate the printed ones. Instead, they are expanding the definition of what a book can be by allowing for new forms of scholarly argument that incorporate multimedia elements and digital forms of expression. One example is “Houston Reflections: Art in the City, 1950s, 60s and 70s,” by Sarah C. Reynolds, which includes 18 hours of audio recording in its online edition. Another is “Images of Memorable Cases: 50 Years at the Bedside,” a book on medical diagnostics by Dr. Herbert L. Fred ’50, which is interactive, allowing the reader to study a case then click on a link to find the diagnosis. “Being online also allows us to link to other Web sites,” Moody said. “It’s another way of both augmenting a book and redefining what a book is. Future titles will include video, threedimensional models and, eventually, virtual environments that readers can inhabit and study. Our titles never go out of print, and they can be updated easily and inexpensively.” Another huge advantage to RUP’s open source model is the number of readers RUP can attract via Web-based publishing, and that is crucial because academic publishing is more about readership than dollars. “Our mission is to disseminate the fruits of academic research as widely as possible,” Moody said. “We see academic material as an open-source educational platform rather than as a source of revenue that you attempt to make more valuable by restricting access to it through price and outmoded distribution models.” New Directions

direction RUP is taking is its new series, Literature by Design: British and American Books 1880–1930, which consists of facsimile editions of out-of-print classic titles republished with fresh accompanying material by leading contemporary scholars. RUP will produce 17 of these books over the next three years, mostly for use in graduate-level English literature classes. The first of the series, “Le Petit Journal des Refusées,” originally an 1896 parodic pamphlet printed on wallpaper and trimmed in a trapezoidal shape, has just been released. New Additions, New Editions Moody is excited about RUP’s future. In the pipeline, in addition to the 17 facsimile editions, are one new title awaiting reader feedback and five others in peer review. He estimates that the press should be able to manage seven to 10 titles per year without any staff other than himself, but the demand from prospective authors may require the press to make decisions about whether to maintain that level of output or expand. Those decisions also hinge on the press’s financial situation. “Our initial projections were to break even in five years,” Moody said. “Now, we think we can do that by the end of 2011 with a combination of foundation funding and sales revenue.” So far, RUP has been funded by the university with help from two important establishing grants. The first was $80,000 from Isabel Brown Wilson of the Brown Foundation, Inc., which funded a Connexions content specialist for one year. This person is developing and optimizing RUP’s automatic page-layout system, updating the Web site and making many other technical enhancements to RUP’s overall system. “Mrs. Wilson grasped the technical matters immediately and understood better than almost anyone I’ve encountered the rationale behind our publishing model,” Moody said. “She is a truly imaginative, visionary benefactor.” The second grant — $15,000 from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation — will be used to develop five book design templates for RUP’s automatic page-layout program that will allow the press to automatically produce books that look professionally designed by hand. —Fred Moody In 2009, RUP received an ongoing Google Grants award, worth $120,000 per year. “This grant allows us to craft ad campaigns for our books that link our book sales Web site to commonly used search terms associated with our books,” Moody said. “Since our marketing is based entirely on people finding us via the Web, this is a massively important grant for us.” In the long term, RUP hopes to be completely funded by a combination of sales and a modest endowment provided by foundations interested in promoting good scholarship. With just 11 titles under it’s belt, RUP may be the fledgling among academic publishers, but that might not be the case much longer. “No one else in the academic publishing world is trying this,” Moody said. “If we can sustain this model, we not only can be among the best academic publishers in the world at a fraction of the cost, but we also will be at the forefront of publishing academic work in the digital age.”

“To put it grandly, we want to save academic publishing by making it financially viable without compromising editorial excellence.”

RUP’s model seems to be working. The press’s first title, “Art History and Its Publications in the Electronic Age,” by Mariet Westermann and Hilary Ballon, normally would have sold 200 copies, mostly to libraries, and in the end be read by fewer than 1,000 people. RUP’s online version has attracted more than 110,000 readers. Dr. Fred’s book, written for the medical education field, was accepted for publication by a major academic publisher but then was declined for cost reasons due to its more than 150 color illustrations. Dr. Fred submitted the book to RUP, and in less than a year, it has had more than 200,000 visitors. These gratifying numbers show that RUP’s publishing model helps a book find an appropriate worldwide audience. Cost and distribution aren’t the only reasons an author might approach RUP. One of the press’s most recent books is “Flowering Light: Kabbalistic Mysticism and the Art of Elliot R. Wolfson,” by Marcia Brennan, an associate professor of art history at Rice, and Moody says it was perfect for RUP for two reasons. “It is a brilliant work, probably one of the best titles we’ll ever publish, and it is interdisciplinary — a very hard title to pigeonhole. I think that very few academic presses would have had the imagination or courage to publish this book because it’s very unusual, even unique. Peer reviewers, by the way, were uniformly ecstatic.” Originally, RUP started with a focus on art history, but Moody has received manuscripts in so many other fields that the press has reconsidered its direction. “Now we think of ourselves as the demonstrator of a new publishing paradigm rather than as a publisher specializing in a given subject area,” he said. An example of a surprising

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2009

The Business of Science

An unconventional career track at the intersection of science and business transforms a dead-end bachelor of science degree into a world of possibilities. By Christopher Dow

There is much talk these days of the need for young people pursuing college degrees to seriously consider science. After all, basic scientific research is at the heart of advances in biosciences and medicine, computing, power generation, the development of novel materials, and the myriad other technologies that sustain our lives and our civilization. The reality, however, is that many students who come away from college with a bachelor’s degree in the sciences do not go on to earn the advanced degrees necessary to enter into research and development. Some are not interested in becoming researchers, and others simply are not suited to a life in the lab. What, then, can these students do with a bachelor’s degree in science? A great deal, it turns out. A 1997 survey by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation found that science- and technology-oriented businesses need more employees who combine an understanding of science with skills in business and communications. At the time, there were few, if any, academic programs offering a curriculum that melded science with business, so the foundation began offering seed money to universities to develop what have come to be called professional science master’s programs. Rice took to heart the Sloan Foundation’s call to action and, in 2001, became one of the fi rst universities to develop a professional science master’s program. “The idea is to give another option to students who love science but really don’t want to do research,” said Dagmar Beck, director of Rice’s Professional Science Master’s Program,

who has been with the effort since it began enrolling students in 2002. “Students who choose science for a bachelor’s degree most likely don’t get jobs in science-related industries without an advanced degree. Rice’s program helps them develop business and communications skills that, in conjunction with their scientific knowledge, open up job opportunities.” The general recipe for the two-year program is 70 percent advanced science and 30 percent core courses comprising a management course; a science, policy and ethics course; special communication training; a capstone course; and an internship. Students also can take specialized elective courses, such as fi nance or accounting, at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. The semester-long internship is a vital element that excites students. “A lot of them choose the program because of the internship,” Beck said. “They feel they need more practical experience, and the internship is a wonderful opportunity for them to get into the marketplace and see how their course work applies to a real job.” Employers like it, too, because it gives them a way to preview job candidates. The majority of students get job offers from their internships, and most accept them, while others keep on looking. “We’ve had a few students who’ve decided, say, that consulting isn’t really what they want, and they might then look at nonprofits or government,” Beck said. “One of our graduates is working with the city of Houston under the mayor in the environmental department.”

“The idea is to give another option to students who love science but really don’t want to do research.”

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Three Tracks When Rice began to develop its professional science master’s offerings, it was important to target areas that promised the greatest returns on the investment, and three fields showed the highest potential: environmental analysis and decision making, nanoscale physics, and subsurface geoscience. The majority of graduates from the environmental program go to environmental consultancy companies, and most have remained in the Houston area. “We work with a great assortment of environmental companies in Houston,” Beck said, “and we’re starting to make inroads with the big oil companies, too. Chevron Corp. just hired one of our interns.” Beck has found that the program has been successful at placing nanoscale physics students with larger companies that have multiple divisions where the skill sets of professional science master’s graduates can find a fit. Currently, the nanoscale program is based on areas in physics such as advanced materials, photonics and electronicsrelated nanotechnology, but Beck would like to further diversify it with offerings in biotechnology, biochemistry and bioengineering to open up even more opportunities. The subsurface geoscience graduates primarily go into oil and gas. “We’ve had favorable feedback from many oil and oil exploration companies,” Beck said. “They have been really excited about our students and have hired a lot of them. In fact, the recruiter at Shell Oil Company is one of our graduates.” Raise in Status Rice may have offered one of the first professional science master’s programs when the initiative began, but things are changing rapidly. Now, similar programs have been developed at universities across the country. In 2006, the Council of Graduate Schools, the only national organization in the United States that is dedicated solely to the advancement of graduate education and research, began lobbying the government to have professional science master’s program degrees formally recognized in the United States. The council also held conferences and set up meetings for program directors to meet and exchange ideas. Out of that synergy grew the National Professional Science Master’s Association (NPSMA), which was established in 2008. “The Council of Graduate Schools has a lot of constituents to look after,” Beck said. “We wanted to create an association that would be a voice for the programs, assist alumni and help universities that want to develop new programs.” From its initial membership of 13 program directors and deans, NPSMA today consists of 70 universities plus several statewide systems. “California implemented statewide professional master’s science programs at all of their facilities and so have the New York State system and the North Carolina State system,” said Beck, who was elected to NPSMA’s board this year. “Florida is in negotiations to add 24 more programs at their different state universities. As more

people become involved, the goals are getting more refined, and we’re working on a strategy for the organization.” The federal government has taken notice, too. Although funding from the Sloan Foundation may taper off now that the ball is rolling, professional science master’s programs are recognized in the federal stimulus package to the tune of $15 million. “Of course, all the programs will apply,” Beck said, “so there is stiff competition.” If Rice is a recipient, Beck hopes to be able to embellish the program with student stipends, and she also would like to add two tracks to the existing three. One of these would be a professional science master’s in integrated energy studies. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Department of Energy has funding available for universities that are starting such programs, and a professional science master’s in energy would dovetail with the energy policy focus at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy as well. The second new track — science and technology policy — also would be a cooperative effort with the Baker Institute. “We’d pick focus areas, like health or nanotech or environment, and would still require the science background, but instead of training students in business, we would train them in policymaking.” ‘A Neat Environment’ The national growth of professional science master’s programs is matched by increased interest among students. Conventional wisdom says that when the economy slumps, people go back to school. For the Rice professional science master’s program, this certainly has been true. Originally, the program was capped at five students for each of the three tracks, but last year the program had approximately 20 students and another eight or 10 in internships. This fall, another 18 enrolled. “The level of academic excellence is rising along with the numbers and is now very substantial,” Beck said. “Plus we’re getting higher acceptance rates from applicants. A lot of them realize Dagmar Beck that if they develop higher skills, they have a better chance of being hired, and they know that they’ll get a lot of contact with companies through our program.” Those contacts have panned out in a big way. Even with the recession, the program has had 100 percent placement with corporations, government and academia. And the interaction has become a two-way street by engaging corporate executives and bringing them to campus. “A lot of corporate executives think that Rice is a neat environment,” Beck said. “They get the opportunity to attend events, and we’ve invited a lot of them to speak at our seminars. It really gets them to become champions for the university, not only with our program, but for Rice as a whole.” Learn more about Rice’s Professional Science Master’s Program:

›› › sloan-pmp.rice.edu

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No. 4

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2009

No Barriers During the two years that Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira pursued his master’s degree at University of São Paulo, the scenic view from his studio window was of a plywood fence surrounding a construction site across the street. Over time, Oliveira watched the once-brand-new sheets deteriorate and peel apart to reveal layers of color in a process that reminded Oliveira of the act of painting. A week before his final student exhibition, the construction project was completed, and the dilapidated fence was torn down. Inspired, Oliveira rushed out, gathered the scraps and used them to create his work for the show. It was the painter’s first installation.

in part relying on high-tech, flexible plywood to form the substructure for the patchwork of veneer fragments. Oliveira then used variously hued wood swatches like strokes of paint, layering them together over the armature and painstakingly stapling each piece in place. The multicolored surface of “Tapumes” seemed to roil and undulate across the back wall of Rice Gallery. It bulged out and then curved onto itself, creating tunnels. Stalactites dangled from the ceiling; bulbous forms sprouted from the ground. Those seemingly unpromising scraps of plywood read like individual brush strokes and created a dynamic visual swirl of the sort you might see in the background of a

Oliveira collects the fencingg scraps p for his work from the streets of São Paolo. For “Tapumes,” Oliveira’s installation at Rice Gallery, the artist again created something amazing from this most unpromising of materials. The word tapumes can translate from Portuguese as “fencing,” “boarding” or “enclosure,” and in Oliveira’s hands, delaminated and decrepit construction fencing is transformed into a sculptural tour de force. Oliveira collects the fencing scraps for his work from the streets of São Paolo. He works with the pre-existing paint on the plywood surfaces or sometimes tints the irregular strips of raw veneer with sheer washes of earthy colors that allow the tone and texture of the wood to show through. To create “Tapumes,” Oliveira and the installation team constructed an elaborate armature across the back wall of Rice Gallery,

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Van Gogh. In fact there is something slightly ominous about the work. Stare at it a while, and it’s as if the famed Dutch painter’s choppy, frenetic brush strokes have escaped from one of the late artist’s canvases and gone viral, infecting and consuming the gallery wall. In the art world, it’s often said that everything has been done before, and that’s probably true, in some form or fashion. And it’s also probably true that a great idea can turn into a gimmick in the hands of some artists. But Oliveira’s work seems surprising, fresh and highly original as he keeps pushing the boundaries and exploring the possibilities of tapumes that are no longer barriers. —Kelly Klaasmeyer

Where most people saw old, peeling plywood, Henrique Oliveira saw a new medium.

Arts

Deep in the heArt of Mexico High in the rugged central region of Mexico, about 185 miles northwest of Mexico City, lies the unlikely destination of a group of Rice art students: the former ghost town of Mineral de Pozos. Once one of the most important mining towns in the region, Pozos had, at the end of the 19th century, 300 working mines and a population of 70,000. But by 1910, silver prices had fallen, and the mines began closing down. In the 1950s, only about 200 people called the half-forgotten town home. But life eventually returned to the old ghost town. Today, about 3,500 residents are reclaiming the ruins and treading the dusty cobbled streets. There are shops and hotels and, amazingly, about 10 art galleries — testimony to the fact that many of the approximately 50 Americans who live at least part time in Pozos are artists. Among them are Geoff Winningham ’65, Rice professor of visual arts, and his wife, Janice Freeman, and the two have brought a penchant for art instruction — as well as a little bit of Rice — to the people of Pozos. In 2007, the Jung Center of Houston commissioned Winningham to organize an exhibition for FotoFest 2008, an international showcase of photography and photo-related art. As he mulled over ideas for the exhibition, he recalled a printmaking class Freeman had taught in her Pozos studio to some children from a nearby orphanage. “The prints they made were quite beautiful,” Winningham said. “So I began to wonder if I could do something similar for the kids in Pozos — teach them basic photography, help them photograph their town, process and print their work, and still assemble a show in time for FotoFest.” Winningham had only six months to get funding, buy cameras and materials, find and teach the Pozos children who wanted to participate, help them produce the pictures, and then frame the show and hang it. Others might have panicked or scrapped the idea altogether, but Winningham had ready and willing resources in the form of Rice students. With the Jung Center’s full support, the Pozos Children’s Project was off the ground, and Winningham, Freeman and a group of Rice students were bound for the town. There, they gave cameras and other materials to local children ages 7 to 16, who explored and captured their town through photography. The result was “Mi Pueblo,” an exhibition of photographs and monotypes that has toured Texas and Mexico and that eventually will stop at art galleries at the University of Notre Dame, Duke University and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, among others. The project also grew into a larger endeavor: the Pozos Art Project Inc., a Texas nonprofit corporation founded last year. And the work continued this past summer when Winningham and Freeman led another group of Rice students on a month-long artistic and educational outreach trip to the former ghost town. The students taught classes and workshops on photography, painting and drawing to the community’s children and young adults and organized public art exhibitions. This year, a small group of Houston high school students also went along to further create opportunities for cultural exchange. “We’ve had so much success with the project, we feel that we must keep it going and growing,” Winningham said. “It’s not just about making extraordinary art. We hope that through our projects, we can foster understanding, good relations and shared cultural experiences between young people of the U.S. and Mexico.” —Jessica Stark

In 2007, the children of Pozos, ages 7 to 16, were given cameras and other materials to help them discover, explore and capture their town through photography.

Walk Softly and Carry a Big Instrument Ah, the life of the double bassist — not only do you have to lug around the largest of the stringed instruments, but your playing is constantly being upstaged by those scintillating violins and mellow cellos. But two Shepherd School of Music bassists don’t have to go around begging for either respect or an audience. They earned both this past summer at the 2009 International Society of Bassists Double Bass Competition, the field’s most prestigious competition.

“This is the most important event of its kind in the bassist world. Placing first in this is similar to an athlete winning the Heisman Trophy. These prizes are as important as they get.” Kevin Brown and Paul Ellison

“ I came to learn from

Paul, but I also found all these other great people and a great environment. Rice is a competitive place, sure, but in the Shepherd School, especially in bass, it’s not about competition; it’s about learning from one another.” —Shawn Conley

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—Paul Ellison

Shawn Conley ’05 earned first place in the jazz division and senior Kevin Brown placed first in the orchestra division. Both studied under Paul Ellison, the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Double Bass and chair of strings. “This is the most important event of its kind in the bassist world,” Ellison said. “Placing first in this is similar to an athlete winning the Heisman Trophy. These prizes are as important as they get.” For Conley, Ellison was the draw to the Shepherd School. As a youth, Conley attended orchestra classes but never had much enthusiasm for playing until he heard the bass. Hooked on the sound, he convinced his parents to buy him a bass, and while still in high school, he won a position with the Honolulu Symphony. He saw Ellison perform during a summer music festival, and when it came time to consider colleges, there wasn’t a question in his mind. “I wanted to study with Paul,” Conley said. “He might not remember the first time I met him, but I do. He made a lasting impression on me.” Conley is thankful that the bass led him to Ellison and Rice. “I came to learn from Paul, but I also found all these other great people and a great environment,” he said. “Rice is a competitive place, sure, but in the Shepherd School, especially in bass, it’s not about competition; it’s about learning from one another.” Conley took traits from his Shepherd School colleagues with him as he mounted the stage for the International Society of Bassists competition. Though the stylings of jazz are different from those of the classical music he was accustomed to, Conley won the prestigious Scott LaFaro Prize and earned a coveted expenses-paid concert appearance to open the society’s 2011 biennial convention. During the summer, Conley worked as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, which Brown also attended. The two share more than a talent for bass. “My work at the Shepherd School with Paul has been the basis of what I have been doing for the past two years,” said Brown, who has been playing the bass since he was 3. “It’s what brought me to the level that I’m at.” After besting a record-breaking field of 50 entries, Brown earned a week’s paid internship with the Philadelphia Orchestra. “When I took the stage, I just tried to eliminate my ego. I didn’t want to ‘play better’ than the other players; I just wanted to play music,” Brown said. “I had the attitude that whatever happened was going to happen, and I was well enough prepared that even if something went wrong, I could still make a presentable showing.” Brown said the Shepherd School’s collegiality is one of the best things about his Rice experience. “Rice is a great place to be a student because there are a lot of resources available,” he said. “The ensemble opportunities are amazing, and so is the faculty.” —Jessica Stark

Learn more about the Shepherd School of Music: ›› › music.rice.edu

Arts Another Roadside Attraction Everything is big in Texas, and that includes Rice student art. This past summer, original work by five Rice students was displayed in heroic scale on a series of billboards in and around College Station. Though there is a long tradition of artists making dramatic visual statements in space usually reserved for advertising, it is rare for such an opportunity to be made available to students, said international artist and Rice professor Christopher Sperandio. Lamar Outdoor Advertising donated the five 11-by-23 billboards when Sperandio approached the company with the idea. He then secured Meredith Goldsmith, curatorial associate at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, to jury and select pieces for the student billboard project. “The range of artwork that Rice University students are making is impressive, and my selections reflect that range,” Goldsmith said. “This billboard project was a unique opportunity for the artists to stretch their subject matter and styles for a venue that audiences experience in motion. I am sure the students’ images will delight and challenge their unsuspecting audience of drivers, as banal familiar landmarks are transformed into works of art.” The student billboard project exemplifies the reinvigoration of Rice’s Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. “The billboards are just part of the changes,” Sperandio said, noting that the faculty has revised the studio program curriculum. “You can expect some exciting artworks to flow out of our program. Visual Art 2.0 is here — a critically minded, student-focused, boutique arts program perfect for artist–scholars who want to take advantage of the interdisciplinary nature of Rice and work in an expanded cultural field.” —Jessica Stark

“The range of artwork that Rice University students are making is impressive, and my selections reflect that range. This billboard project was a unique opportunity for the artists to stretch their subject matter and styles for a venue that audiences experience in motion.” —Meredith Goldsmith

Burnett treats each flood in its own chapter that details background information, such as the structures of dams or relative positions of watercourses to cities and towns.

Bad Water Rising The late Texas musician Stevie Ray Vaughan probably was speaking from personal experience when he sang, “It’s flooding down in Texas,” but that matter-of-fact line also highlights an unfortunately predictable aspect of the Lone Star State: It’s going to flood somewhere. “Flash Floods in Texas” by Jonathan Burnett ’85 (Texas A&M University Press, 2008) may not mention all of the state’s floods — probably an encyclopedic task — but it does cover 28 of the most devastating, beginning with the Austin Dam break of 1900 and continuing through the Guadalupe River flood of 2002. As his collection shows, few areas of Texas are impervious to destructive inundations. Floods in the eastern part of the state are generally of the sort where shallow rivers, streams and bayous overflow their banks and drown the relatively flat countryside. In 2001, for example, Tropical Storm Allison made much of Houston resemble a huge lake with a mirage of a city rising from the water. The rougher terrain of the Hill Country and West Texas is another story. Flooding there frequently is accompanied by rushing walls of water that add incredible violence to the saturation. That was the case in 1954, when an 80-foot wall of water spawned by rains from Hurricane Alice swept down the Pecos River canyon, taking out highway and railroad bridges and stranding travelers and residents alike. When the deluge reached the Rio Grande, it demolished the international bridge at Del Rio like so much

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kindling before washing down the river and spreading havoc all the way to Laredo. Burnett treats each flood in its own chapter that details background information, such as the structures of dams or relative positions of watercourses to cities and towns. He then explains the prevalent weather conditions that led to the flood, how the flood progressed over the landscape and what the aftermath was like. Each chapter is accompanied by dramatic photos of the flood and, often, of the area both before the water rose and after it subsided. The case histories show why Texans have gone to great lengths to abate the effects of flooding, such as by building Addicks Reservoir to protect Houston and rechanneling the San Antonio River where it runs through downtown San Antonio. But despite these and other protections, Texas is going to experience flooding nearly every time a hurricane or major tropical storm blows in over the coast. We can learn something about the nature of these events from Burnett’s book, but a century from now, another Rice alum might aptly pen a similar volume that takes up where Burnett’s leaves off. —Christopher Dow

ON THE

Bookshelf

Don’t Believe a Word of It

Hiring the Right People

Did you hear the one about the 1,600-pound man-eating grizzly bear killed by a forest ranger? The Internet story contained convincing details, was accompanied by photographs of the bear and the ranger, and was a fabrication based on a tissue of truth.

Your success as a manager — and the success of your company — is simply the result of how good you are at hiring employees. For Randy Street ’92 and Geoff Smart, that means that there is only one really pertinent question managers need to ask when filling empty positions: Who?

Did you believe what you read about JT LeRoy, the rough-talking, crossdressing, precocious teenage hustler whose tale of sex work, abuse and abandonment was recounted in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article? Another fake — the brainchild of a 41-year-old woman from Brooklyn. These two stories are among dozens of others in “Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders” (The New Press, 2008), by Paul Maliszewski ’91. It’s a compendium of literary hoaxes, political scams, art forgeries and other fabrications given life through the efforts of people who would mislead others for profit, notoriety, political gain or just the sheer orneriness of it. Many of the fakes that Maliszewski outlines are of recent origin, but he also exhumes historical examples that might boggle the minds of contemporary readers. One is a series of articles published in the New York Sun in 1835 that claimed the famous astronomer John Herschel had used a powerful telescope to observe a civilization of bat-winged humanoids on the Moon. The series, purportedly written by Herschel’s assistant, supposedly drew on extracts published in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The journal was real enough, but the rest was pure hokum born of a circulation war between the New York Sun and its rivals. Maliszewski examines these fakes and hoaxes not as shocking aberrations but as part of a larger fake media culture, that we inhabit unquestioningly every day. In doing so, he investigates our relationship to truth and authenticity and exposes the contradictions in our communication culture. Add it all up, and you have the makings of an entertaining and informative, if highly twisted, read.

That is the premise of Street and Smart’s book, “Who: The A Method for Hiring” (Ballantine Books, 2008), which lays out a formula for selecting employees who will excel, whether the person being hired is a call-center worker or a CEO. To create their hiring technique, the authors researched hiring procedures and gained several years of practical experience dealing first-hand with hiring issues. In the process, they gathered data on more than 300 CEOs, which was then processed by a financial team at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. Street and Smart gleaned further insights from interviews with business billionaires, CEOs of multibilliondollar companies, and dozens of managers, investors, heads of nonprofit organizations and other experts on management. The pair identified four parts of the hiring process where failure typically occurs. Fortunately, these failures are preventable, and the authors offer a blueprint for evaluating job candidates. Called a “Scorecard,” it comprises three parts: mission, outcomes and competencies. These three pieces describe what a person must accomplish in a job and provide a clear linkage between personnel and company strategy. Finally, the authors present an interview mechanism designed to elicit accurate and comprehensive information that will allow hiring managers to make informed decisions. “Who” is written in a concise, straightforward style and should be a valuable resource to anyone building a team of first-class employees.

—Christopher Dow

“African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod,” by Anthony B. Pinn, Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies at Rice, and Allen Dwight Callahan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

“Escape into the Future: Cultural Pessimism and Its Religious Dimension in Contemporary American Popular Culture,” by John M. Stroup, Harry and Hazel Chavanne Professor of Religious Studies at Rice, and Glenn W. Shuck (Baylor University Press, 2007)

“Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments,” by Michael James Winkelman ’76, director of the Ethnographic Field School at Arizona State University, and Thomas B. Roberts (Praeger Publishers, 2007)

“Unruly Bodies: Life Writing by Women with Disabilities,” by Susannah B. Mintz ’96 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007)

“Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle,” by Paige Reynolds ’89 (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Rice Magazine

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No. 4

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2009

Sports

RICEOWLS.COM

Carrying the Olympic FLAME The Olympic torch is a familiar icon, but the Olympics has another fire that burns just as brightly. It’s called FLAME — Finding Leaders Among Minorities Everywhere — and this past summer, senior Samuel Sok was one of 30 minority student leaders from universities across the nation selected by the U.S. Olympic Committee to attend the program. FLAME provides students with an in-depth look at the Olympic movement and gives them a chance to explore the Olympic ideals of persistence, commitment, vision, focus and determination. Participants are mentored so they can apply Olympic-oriented principles to all aspects of their lives. Sok, a sport management major with an interest in public relations, expects the experience to benefit his career. “My job will primarily be to create and maintain an acceptable image,” he said. “Since the Olympics stands for worldwide unity in the world of sports and consistently enforces that image, I feel that the chance to learn from an organization that publicizes its brand very well and translates it into real-world situations is the opportunity of a lifetime.” Sok said that because he is a minority — an AsianAmerican of Korean descent — creating a world where unity is possible is very imSamuel Sok portant to him, and he considers his selection for the FLAME program an honor. While attending the program at the U.S. Olympic Complex in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sok lived among U.S. Olympians, Paralympians and hopefuls. The program itinerary included presentations by USOC and national governing body senior staff members, as well as one-on-one discussions with motivational speakers such as legendary Olympian Billy Mills (track and field, 1964), Paralympian John Register (track and field, 2000) and two-time Paralympian April Holmes (track and field, 2004 and 2008). Additional activities included sport demonstrations conducted by USOC resident athletes, a networking-skills seminar and a hike through the famous Garden of the Gods. “FLAME has consistently been one of the USOC’s most successful outreach programs,” said USOC acting Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Streeter. “FLAME program alumni have gone on to become Olympians, USOC college interns, USOC sponsor employees, and leaders in companies and organizations throughout the country.”

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Four Times Up, Four Times a Winner And the winner of the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the fourth straight year is, ta-da! Rice University. The award is given to the C-USA institution with the highest grade point average during the academic year for all student–athletes in conference-sponsored sports. For 2008–09, Rice student–athletes combined for an annual GPA of 3.099, which is the highest in the Owls’ current four-year run. The Owls have won the C-USA Institutional Excellence Award every year since joining the conference. The Rice football, women’s swimming and women’s tennis teams all won the C-USA Sport Academic Award for having the highest team GPA in the league for the 2008–09 academic year. The women’s tennis team posted the highest annual GPA of any sport at 3.748. The Owl swimmers had the highest team GPA — 3.531 — of any other Division I women’s or men’s swim program in the nation. And not only did Rice football record the league’s best team GPA at 2.843, the Owls won 10 games, including a postseason victory in the Texas Bowl. See the full list of the 2008–09 Sport Academic Award honorees:

›› › ricemagazine.info/26

The women’s tennis team posted the highest annual GPA of any sport.

3.748

Students

A Gift for the Long Run Throughout their lives, Edward ’33 and Naomi “Petie” Guion Holloway ’33 worked hard and lived modestly. When it came to Rice’s track and field program, however, they were willing to splurge. When they first met on Rice’s campus, Edward was an accomplished track athlete, and Petie was a typist for the Campanile. In the years that followed, a vast collection of Rice memorabilia — including photos of Edward at various track events — filled their home and their hearts. While planning their wills, Edward and Petie chose to create a lasting legacy of support for the university that also would honor Edward Holloway their shared love of Rice’s track and field program. Through the generous bequest of their estate, the Holloways’ dreams for the program will soon come to fruition. The poor condition

of Rice’s track has prevented the university from holding competitive track meets. Thanks to the Holloways, the track will be replaced with state-of-the-art materials, and an endowed track scholarship will ensure that Rice’s award-winning track-and-field program continues to grow and thrive well into the future. Additional endowed funds will provide scholarships to students with financial need “Petie” Holloway as well as generate yearly contributions to the Rice Annual Fund. With this enduring gift, the Holloways’ support for Rice will benefit students and athletes for generations to come.

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.rice.planyourlegacy.org

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

B R I G H T

F U T U R E S

Fall move-in day brought a record number of smiling young faces to the Rice campus. The 896 freshman students, surpassing last year’s record number by more than 100, were selected from the largest applicant pool in Rice’s history: 11,173. The incoming class is almost 14 percent larger than last year’s, putting Rice’s Vision for the Second Century plan for a 30 percent expansion of the undergraduate student body ahead of schedule.

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