The Magazine of Rice University
FALL 2014
A WAY OF SEEING At 100, Elinor Evans, the Albert K. and Harry K. Smith Professor Emerita of Architecture, continues to make art and inspire students. Also: Dr. Barbara Murray ’69 fights superbugs, students launch a memorable summer camp, Ulyana Horodyskyj ’07 recounts a season of research in the Himalaya, and more campus and research news.
The Magazine of Rice University
fall 2014
Contents FEATURES
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IN SEARCH OF BLACK ICE Ulyana Horodyskyj studies climate change in the high Himalaya. By Ulyana Horodyskyj ’07
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KIDS’ CAMP Rice students launch Camp Kesem for children of cancer patients. By Amy Hodges
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SUPERBUGS’ SUPER FOE Dr. Barbara Murray ’69 combats antibiotic-resistant bacteria. By Jenny Blair
DEPARTMENTS S A L LY P O R T
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P R E S I D E N T ’ S N O T E 12 SCOREBOARD
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A B ST R ACT
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S C E N E 22
Postholing, or sinking
knee- or thigh-deep into loosely packed snow accumulation, is occasionally a fact of life for climbers in the unforgiving landscape of the Himalaya.
VOICES
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ARTS & LETTERS
FA M I LY A L B U M
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Cover photo of Elinor Evans by Jeff Fitlow. See her story on Page 41. FA L L 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 1
on the web FEATU RED CON TRI BU TORS JENNY BLAIR
(“Superbugs’ Super Foe”) is a freelance writer and editor based in Michigan, where she writes about science, medicine and culture. She wrote “World Views” for the Summer 2014 issue of Rice Magazine. View her writing portfolio at www.jennyblair.com. AMY HODGES
ST U D EN T L I F E V I A INSTAG R AM
Pause for Corgis and Yearbooks University photographer Jeff Fitlow roams the campus looking for candid shots for Rice’s Instagram feed. Recently, he snapped the Rice “Campanile” distribution and study break event, which featured special guests from the Greater Houston Pembroke Welsh Corgi Fanciers. Whether you’re missing Rice or right on campus, our Instagram feed will keep you connected. Visit ricemagazine.info/227
FO L LOW RI CE U N IVE R SIT Y
(“Kids’ Camp”) is a senior media relations specialist at Rice. She and Rice videographer Brandon Martin traveled to Leblanc, La., to report the story of Rice’s student-run summer camp for children of cancer patients. “These children were (and still are) facing utterly heartbreaking situations,” said Amy, “and seeing their strength of spirit in spite of their circumstances moved me beyond measure.” JENNI ROOLF LASTER
(“The Concertmaster”), a recovering print journalist, has worked in media and public relations for almost 20 years. She currently works in corporate communications in San Antonio, Texas, where she enjoys the city’s arts scene. GEORGE W. WEBB III ’88
Follow Rice news and more via the Office of Public Affairs’ social media outlets. From Instagram to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more, we document the daily goings on about campus and beyond. And don’t forget to check out Rice Magazine’s dedicated blog and Twitter feed. To read the current issue online, check out ISSUU. Links below. FLICKR flickr.com/photos/ricepublicaffairs/
TW I T T E R @RiceMagazine
I N STAG R A M instagram.com/riceuniversity
RIC E MAGA ZI N E B LOG ricemagazine.blogs.rice.edu
YO UTUB E youtube.com/riceuniversity
J E F F F I T LO W
ISSU U rice.edu/ricemagazine
(“Q&A With Joe Karlgaard”) wrote the Rice Magazine cover story on the Owls’ 2003 national championship in baseball. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rice and was a resident of Wiess College. By day, George is a patent lawyer in Houston.
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forEword The Magazine of Rice University Fall 2014 Rice Magazine is published four times a year and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, parents of undergraduates and friends of the university. Published by the Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president EDITOR
Lynn Gosnell ART DIRECTOR
Tanyia Johnson CREATIVE SERVICES
Jeff Cox senior director Dean Mackey senior graphic designer Jackie Limbaugh graphic designer Tracey Rhoades editorial director Jenny W. Rozelle ’00 assistant editor
O
NE OF THE FIRST THINGS I DO AT WORK EACH MORNING IS TO SCROLL THROUGH
the online campus events calendar looking for items to highlight on the magazine’s Twitter feed. Perusing the astounding menu of specialized talks, symposia, lectures, films, performances and more, I’ll light on an event that
locals can attend or anyone may check out online. Or something that just sounds ... interesting. For example, recently there was a 4 a.m. lunar eclipse viewing at the Rice University Campus
Tommy LaVergne senior university photographer
Observatory for the early birds. Many times, I’ll find something that propels me out the door
Jeff Fitlow university photographer
Operators,” but spending an hour at a musical recital at the Shepherd School can be both
CONTRIBUTING STAFF
B.J. Almond, Jade Boyd, Jeff Falk, Amy Hodges, Brandon Martin, Tracey Rhoades, Jenny Rozelle, David Ruth, Mike Williams TO M M Y L AV E R G N E | R A N DY G L A S S
Open To The Public
and across campus to Duncan Hall or a humanities classroom or Rice’s Baker Institute. It’s true, I’m not likely to darken the door of the math department’s “Reflectionless Jacobi refuel and rest. It’s one of the perks of working at a research university — partaking of the shared knowledge, public discourse and creative talent that is freely available. Here’s another kind of perk: Rice Magazine is mailed at no charge to 58,000 alumni, staff, faculty, donors and friends of the university. This issue is chock-full of news, features and profiles, not to mention original photography and illustrations that tell a story about Rice University. We hope you’ll put reading Rice Magazine on your calendar, today and tomorrow.
Lynn Gosnell lynn.gosnell@rice.edu
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letters
Reader Response
THE RICE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES
DEAR EDITOR
Many thanks for the terrific story on the study abroad program. When I was at Rice from 1960 to 1964, there was no such thing. I had the good fortune to be chosen in 1962 as the first student in the Rice-Trinity College, University of Cambridge, exchange (initially the Abraham Scholar, now the C.D. Broad Scholarship). I became so fascinated by early modern European history during my year at Trinity that I changed my intention to go to law school and went to graduate school instead. In September, I will begin my 43rd year at UC-Santa Barbara and owe my very enjoyable career to my time in Cambridge. I rejoice that so many Rice students are now having such experiences. —Sears McGee ’64
SUMMER 2014 SURVEY FINDINGS After each issue of Rice Magazine is published, we send an e-survey to a representative group of 1,600 readers. Our survey return rates range between 8 and 14 percent. We welcome thoughtful and critical feedback, as this is one way we learn what alumni, staff, faculty and others find valuable in the magazine. SELECTED COMMENTS FEATURES “All the World’s a Studio” RSA’s preceptorship program sends students to work in the world’s best architecture firms before returning for their final year. “I went to Europe at 17, just before beginning my studies at Rice. Actually climbing on Stonehenge, walking around the Colosseum in Rome in the moonlight and seeing magnificent architecture ‘in person’ brought light and life to my whole formal education. I loved the personal touches in this article.” “A Sabbatical Sampling” No two faculty sabbaticals are alike. “It was enjoyable to read about the different places and focuses that the Rice faculty
experienced during their sabbatical. Made me a little jealous!” “World Views” Rice’s burgeoning study abroad offerings are detailed. “I absolutely agree that international opportunities are part of a great university experience for students and profs. I wish more had been available when I was at Rice. My first trip out of North America wasn’t until I was 45!”
IN MEMORIAM On Page 2 of the Summer 2014 issue of Rice Magazine, we featured Soorya Avali ’14, one of the seniors who was profiled in a video series on Rice’s unconventional students. Shortly after that issue was released, Soorya passed away unexpectedly July 28 in Dallas, where he had started his postgraduation job as a business analyst. He will be remembered by the Rice community for his enthusiasm, his kindness and his beautiful photography, among many other things. You can read a Rice News story about Soorya at ricemagazine.info/228.
WRITE TO US Rice Magazine aspires to make you dream of Europe, care enough to point out an error, give advice, feel jealous and learn something new. Write to us at the address to the right, or simply email your comments to ricemagazine@rice.edu. 4
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Robert B. Tudor III, chairman; Edward B. “Teddy” Adams Jr.; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; Keith T. Anderson; Doyle Arnold; Laura Arnold; Nancy Packer Carlson; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Mark Dankberg; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Doug Foshee; Lawrence Guffey; John Jaggers; Charles Landgraf; R. Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal; Ruth Simmons; Jeffery Smisek; Amy Sutton; Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Guillermo “Memo” Treviño; James S. Turley; Randa Duncan Williams; Huda Zoghbi. ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS
David W. Leebron, president; George McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Caroline Levander, vice president of Strategic Initiatives and Digital Education; Chris Muñoz, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development. EDITORIAL OFFICES
Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 Phone: 713-348-6768 ricemagazine@rice.edu POSTMASTER
Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 ©October 2014 Rice University
TO M M Y L AV E R G N E
News and Updates from Campus
L
ook familiar? Rice’s campus has seen innumerable changes since opening its doors in 1912, but one space has remained relatively intact — the Physics Amphitheater. Anchored in a corner of Herzstein Hall, formerly the Physics Building (the first building completed after the university’s formal opening in 1914), the 300-seat column-lined expanse has served as a venue for countless events through the years. From weekly classes to public lectures, to matriculations and pep rallies, the space has even been used to shoot a scene in the movie “The Evening
Star,” the sequel to “Terms of Endearment,” both based on novels written by Rice alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry ’60. Save for a few 21st-century upgrades, the amphitheater, once the biggest room on campus, continues on as a place for today’s students to learn with a dose of Rice nostalgia.
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can take many forms, all of which are unacceptable.” Cervantes and Rice Student Wellbeing adviser Saralyn Hernandez blended pop culture, humor and a lot of serious talk about the importance of communication when two people hook-up for a date or at a party. Among the key messages: Consent is not assumed. Drunk sex is risky sex. Silence is not consent. Consent is hot; assault is not.
Jeff Fitlow meeting with a Common Reading group to discuss “Photography as Activism,” by Michelle Bogre.
ONE BOOK
NOT ALONE
The Office of First Year Programs and a campus committee chose “Photography as Activism: Images for Social Change” (Focal Press, 2011) by author, educator and documentary photographer Michelle Bogre as this year’s Common Reading book. All new students received a copy of the book, which they discussed in small groups during O-Week. “This book and its beautiful imagery illustrate the powerful ways in which photographs can encourage action and agency — two ideas that we hope first-year students will incorporate into their own experience at the university,” said Shelah Crear, director of First Year Programs and Student Success Initiatives. Jeff Fitlow, assistant university photographer in Rice’s Office of Public Affairs, led a Common Reading discussion group at Wiess College, where he is an associate. Fitlow noted that this year’s selection was “a much different book” than previously selected common readings. “I feel that with so many students traveling, learning and exploring life during their time at Rice, the book is very relevant,” he said.
Cristal Cervantes stood before a Sewall Hall classroom filled with O-Week advisers a few days before freshmen arrived on campus and engaged them in a frank discussion about sexual assault. An energetic, personable community specialist for the Houston Area Women’s Center (HAWC), Cervantes had no difficulty getting the student advisers to shout out ways to describe a “good hook-up”:
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No regrets. You feel good physically and emotionally. Safe — no babies, no STDs. Both parties consented. You can remember it! She also generated various descriptions for a “bad hook-up”: Uncomfortable. Consent, but expectations weren’t met. No protection. Drugs, alcohol. Boundaries weren’t set. “‘Hook-up’ means something different to each person,” Cervantes said. “Any nonconsensual sexual behavior is not a ‘hook-up’ — it’s sexual violence, which
The O-Week advisers’ training on preventing sexual assault included bystander intervention techniques and how to respond when a classmate tells them about a sexual assault or an incident of sexual misconduct. The goal was to educate the O-Week advisers about how to maintain a safe, caring and helpful environment at Rice and give them the skills to do something if they observe someone in a similar situation. “You can be a part of someone’s support system,” Hernandez said. That support system includes an extensive network of resources at Rice for students who become a victim of sexual assault or sexual harassment, including masters and associates at the residential colleges and counselors and physicians at Student Health Services, Rice Counseling Center, Student Wellbeing Office and HAWC, with whom Rice has a partnership. The training is just one component of Rice’s ongoing efforts to prevent sexual assault and sexual misconduct on campus. Matt Taylor ’92, associate vice provost, is chairing a group of faculty, staff, and undergraduate and graduate students to make recommendations for the university’s sexual assault policies, procedures and educational programs. The project is known informally as the Not Alone Working Group — a reference to the “Not Alone” report issued in April by the White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault. Feedback and suggestions for the Not Alone Working Group can be submitted to notalonewg@owlspace-ccm.rice.edu. —B.J. Almond
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BY THE NUMBERS
Class of 2018*
948 15% 45% 1 STUDENTS
Owls in Harmony: Nocturnal, one of four student a cappella groups, rehearses for an upcoming performance.
J E F F F I T LO W
A CAPPELLA The first week of school is nicknamed “syllabus week,” where classes are (mostly) eschewed for parties, pub and picking up friendships where they left off before the long gap of summer. Even for freshmen, this week is supposed to be the relaxed sigh after O-Week’s frenzy. But for this freshman, syllabus week held another trial — a cappella tryouts. I had always envisioned myself being part of an a cappella group at Rice — singing is one of my passions, and I had a lot of choir and audition experience in high school. I just didn’t know I would have to prepare myself to sing so quickly. On the evening of Aug. 25, I attended an info session, where I listened to pitches by Rice’s different groups — the Phils, Low Keys, Nocturnal and the Apollos. Truth be told, I had already decided which one I was going to try out for — Nocturnal, a coed group that emphasizes having fun as well sounding great. I had caught a cold during O-Week, so one of my concerns was having enough of a voice to carry me through the week. Success would be gauged on how well we could hit the notes, capture the rhythms and blend our voice with the voices of other members in the group.
I was a little nervous, but the Nocturnal tryouts had a fairly relaxed atmosphere. My audition went well enough to receive a callback for the second day, where the process mirrored the first: learning a new song (that night, it was “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap), singing the song solo and with other members, and then participating in a short interview. The next day, when I woke up, there was an email telling me I was one of the six people (out of 60) they had accepted. Needless to say, I was overjoyed. Our first concert is in October, and practices have already started. —Griffin Milan ’18, as told to Thomas Chen ’16 Learn more about Nocturnal: nocturnal.rice.edu Rice Philharmonics, better known as the Phils, are in their 20th year of singing, recording and touring: ricephilharmonics.com Keep up with the Rice Low Keys, all-female a cappella group, here: www.facebook. com/RiceLowKeys
INCREASE IN APPLICANTS OVER PREVIOUS YEAR
CALL TEXAS HOME
ONE STUDENT EACH FROM
ARGENTINA, BELGIUM, BULGARIA, FRANCE, GERMANY, INDONESIA, MEXICO, NEW ZEALAND, PHILIPPINES, SAUDI ARABIA, TAIWAN, THAILAND, AND TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
TOP STATES WITH MOST ENROLLEES AFTER TEXAS
CALIFORNIA, FLORIDA AND NEW YORK
TOP COUNTRIES REPRESENTED
CHINA, SOUTH KOREA AND CANADA
*Source: Office of Enrollment
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NEW LEADERSHIP William “Bill” Fulton became director of Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research this fall. Fulton comes to Rice from San Diego, where he led the city’s planning department, overseeing a staff of 120 and a $24 million annual budget. He has been a senior fellow in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California and served as mayor of the city of Ventura, Calif. A former journalist, Fulton is a prolific author on the topics of urban planning and growth and is the publisher of the California Planning & Development Report. In 2009, Planetizen, a public interest information exchange for the urban planning, design and development community, named Fulton to its list of “Top 100 Urban Thinkers.” “The 21st century will be the century of cities, and Houston will be a major laboratory in the search to make cities more prosperous and livable,” Fulton said. “I’m looking forward to working with everyone at Rice — and everyone in Houston — to bring about a better urban future in Houston and translate those lessons to help other cities around the nation and the world.” Read more: kinder.rice.edu
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Rice Homecoming 2013
In Brief Rice Homecoming & Reunion 2014 will be Nov. 7–9. Join your classmates for a packed schedule of celebrations, including class reunions and residential college gatherings, campus tours, open houses, parties and more. Refresh your knowledge of Rice’s educational offerings via Classroom Connect. Hang out at Tailgate Owley before cheering on the Rice Owls against the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Roadrunners. For more information, contact reunion@rice.edu. For schedule and ticket requirements, visit alumni. rice.edu/homecoming/ schedule.
Interested in learning about the history of the soul? Want to improve your digital photography skills? Discover clues to a good mystery novel? These topics and others are being taught in the late fall at the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.
The program’s fall course schedule features a wide range of personal development classes (including a monstrously fun class on Universal Studios’ reign of classic horror films) as well as professional development and nonprofit management courses and certificate programs. For class schedule and prices or to join their mailing list, go to glasscock.rice.edu.
Applications are now being accepted for the Master of Global Affairs degree, which will launch in fall 2015. This new graduate degree program is offered jointly by Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the School of Social Sciences. The two-year program features a concentrated course schedule grounded in public policy, academic theory and practical training. The program will take advantage of Houston’s status as a center of international business and organizations. Read more: mga.rice.edu
Are you a Rice faculty or staff member, or alumna/ us, who has authored a book, edited a journal, composed a major musical work or had a oneperson art show in 2014? (Or all of the above? We know our audience.) If so, the Friends of Fondren Library would like to honor your achievement at its annual event and reception for creative productions. This year’s event will take place Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Farnsworth Pavilion, Ley Student Center. If you would like to be recognized, please go to the Friends of Fondren Library website for more details. Alternatively, you may email or call the Friends office to register. Deadline for submissions is Jan. 15, 2015. To participate, go to library. rice.edu/about/friends-offondren or contact Friends of Fondren Library at fofl@ rice.edu or 713-348-5157.
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UNC O N V EN T I O N AL WISDO M
THE CONCERTMASTER Now 23, Eric Gratz ’14 is in his first year as the concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony, a high-profile role that he calls both “incredibly exciting” and “pretty surreal.” “This industry is so competitive that when someone gets an orchestra position, it’s like being drafted to the NBA,” he said. Gratz is particularly excited to lead the symphony in its inaugural year in the city’s all-new Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. “It’s a joy to go to work every day. I love it.”
SO WHAT IS A CONCERTMASTER ANYWAY? You’re the link between the conductor and the orchestra. The conductor doesn’t make any sounds, so I have to translate what he or she wants into something more technical. You’re kind of directing traffic.
A DA M C R U F T
AND WHY THAT MATTERS I want to connect with as many people in that room as I can, both the people on stage and the people in the audience. When I’m in the concertmaster chair, I’m looking at the people farthest away from me. Those are the ones I want to be able to engage. That’s my main priority — making each person feel something. ALL THE ‘FEELS’ This idea of having a couple thousand people in a room, and not a word being said … it’s pretty amazing. There’s something very mystical about music, the same as looking at a painting. You can’t always verbalize what you feel, but it’s there.
KEEPIN’ IT REAL Live music is a lot more real, especially now. It used to be that a violin soloist would record a concerto, and it was generally still pretty raw, pretty real. Nowadays, recording artists might have 400 edits in a Paganini caprice. It becomes an artificial process. It gets a bit more sterile sounding. It’s a very different experience than going to a concert and hearing musicians have just one “go” at something. Art is flawed in a way, and that’s what makes it really wonderful. WHY CLASSICAL MUSIC ISN’T SCARY I think a lot of people who are intimidated by it are people who don’t realize how prevalent classical music is in our lives. And all you have to do is give it a chance. You just have to feel something. And the only way to feel something is to go in with an open mind. WHAT HE’S LISTENING TO My satellite radio is on Sinatra radio right now. I do
continued on Page 10
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Market Tuesday
A
bounty of fruits and vegetables, baked goods, free-range eggs, handmade goat cheese and premade meals are just a sampling of what you’ll find at Rice’s Farmers Market, now located in the Stadium Lot at the corner of Greenbriar and Rice Boulevard. While the day and time — every Tuesday from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. — hasn’t changed, the market, now in its seventh year at Rice, offers a variety of new items and activities each week that keep the market “fresh” for old and new patrons. Recent offerings have included local beer and wine tastings, chef demonstrations and live music. A stop at the Juice Girl, a mobile juice and smoothie bar, is the perfect beginning, middle or end to your visit to the market. For weekly market updates, visit the farmers market Facebook page at www.facebook. com/ricefarmersmarket.
UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM
continued from Page 9
a good amount of listening to classical music for work, of course, and I do listen to classical music for fun too. But I enjoy pretty much everything, depending on the mood I’m in: jazz, world music, rap, electronica — everyone has something to say. PLAYING IN THE TOBIN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS It’s a multipurpose venue and very versatile, but they really had the orchestra in mind when creating acoustics. It’s going to put the city on the map artistically, and I’m excited to be part of it. ALL-TIME FAVORITE The Beethoven violin concerto. It’s just perfect. It’s just one continuous flow of joy and celebration. There’s something so pure about it. So removed from the world we live in now. Listening to it completely transports you.
TO M M Y L AV E R G N E
COLLEGE PRIDE Larry Rachleff [the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Orchestra Conducting and director of the Shepherd School Symphony and Chamber orchestras] is a genius. He’s done incredible things for the school, and the faculty there are really professional and friendly. The friends I made there, my colleagues … I formed a lot of relationships. Rice was a transformative experience. —Jenni Roolf Laster
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N OT ED AN D Q U OT E D
The sheer silliness is connecting us, and it is a reminder that collective action can be powerful. Angela Seaworth, director of the Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at Rice’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, commenting on the many lessons to be learned from the ALS Foundation’s unexpectedly successful Ice Bucket Challenge fundraiser.
Reading other writers who wrote about their often troubled homelands, often from afar, with such bravery and honesty, inspired me and challenged me to reconsider the way in which my writing engaged, or didn’t engage, with the world. It gives me courage to try and perhaps fail, but at least try and tell stories about Israel. Writer Ayelet Tsabari, speaking about language, identity and place in her writing during a Program in Jewish Studies lunch lecture Sept. 18, 2014. Tsabari, an Israeli immigrant who lives in Canada, didn’t start writing stories about Israel until graduate school.
This is their ideological civil war in the Muslim world pitting the forces of moderation against those of extremism. We cannot win it for them. Our policies can help influence the outcome, but I think one of the worst mistakes is to create a perception that this a U.S.– Muslim conflict. Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, speaking at the inaugural Founding Director’s Lecture Series presentation, “The Middle East in Turmoil: Challenges to U.S. Policy.”
America is failing to make the R&D investments that are necessary to remain a global leader in industry and commerce. Neal Lane, Rice’s Malcolm Gillis University Professor, testifying before the full Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, July 17. Lane is a senior fellow in science and technology policy at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and a professor of physics and astronomy.
I asked myself: What kind of desperation could it possibly take for a mom to walk away from her children and go 2,000 miles north? Sonia Nazario, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, speaking about the impetus for her award-winning story, “Enrique’s Journey.” Nazario spoke as part of the President’s Lecture Series in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month Sept. 25, 2014.
Climate has varied over all time scales over the entire human history. But humans have taken over control of the climate on decadal and centennial time scales. Andrew Dessler ’86, speaking on “The Alternative Reality of Climate Skepticism” at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Oct. 1, 2014. Dessler’s talk focused on how climate change skeptics interpret data. He is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University.
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President’s note
DAV ID W. L E E B R ON
What a difference a decade makes What a difference a decade makes. This past June 30, I returned from a brief trip to Mexico City just in time to quietly celebrate 10 years at Rice the following day. Some colleagues and I reflected on that decade over some beers at the Ginger Man pub in Rice Village. On the one hand, we could note the changes in Rice during that time. Our student body — undergraduate and graduate — has grown about 30 percent and is more diverse along every dimension. We have added new programs, such as the Chao Center for Asian Studies, the undergraduate business minor, the freshman writing intensive seminar, and new doctoral programs in art history, sociology and business. We built critical new academic buildings, new residential colleges and also buildings that support the campus community in multiple ways, including the Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, Brochstein Pavilion, Tudor Fieldhouse and other athletics 12
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facilities. We are more engaged both with the city and with the world. But what is equally and perhaps even more striking have been the changes in the general landscape of higher education, and especially in public and political attitudes toward it. Ten years ago, almost no one questioned the value of a college degree. Now many people are. Ten years ago, important issues like sexual assault were being widely ignored and often badly mishandled; now campuses across the country, including Rice, are working hard to handle these difficult issues with fairness and integrity. Ten years ago, few people were raising questions about the amateur model of college athletics; now many critics are. Ten years ago, there was little serious interest or engagement in online education by elite colleges and universities; now we are scrambling to understand and compete in this new arena. And companies that didn’t exist
a decade ago are major players in this landscape: Coursera, edX, 2U and others. A decade ago, states competed to have the best public universities; today they seem instead to be competing to reduce their level of support. And 10 years ago, research funding was on a big upswing, whereas in recent years it has been flat to declining. A decade ago, you rarely heard the word bankruptcy uttered in connection with colleges and universities; today it is commonplace. Ten years ago, the economy was booming, and today, having suffered a great recession, it continues a slow recovery. Thus the next decade brings a new set of challenges. In some ways, when I walked into my office July 1, 2014, I was walking into a very different set of challenges. But it is, of course, an incredible opportunity. It is an opportunity to persist in and build on the values and characteristics of Rice that have served us well since our founding: a commitment to student access regardless of a family’s financial means; an emphasis on the true value of education. At the same time, it is an opportunity to strike out on new ground, to redefine both the quality of our education and the reach of our university by harnessing new educational technologies. In considering the challenges ahead, I have been struck by the boldness of the Rice Board of Trustees in their willingness to consider new possibilities; by our students, who have played a consistent role in formulating an ambitious vision; and by our faculty, who contribute time over and above their work in classrooms and laboratories to make Rice such a distinctive institution of learning and discovery. At the end of my centennial speech two years ago, I quoted President Kennedy’s speech at Rice Stadium: “We must be bold.” I am more convinced than ever that a boldness guided by our most cherished values and commitments must be our path forward. Not everyone likes change, but it is change that is ultimately our most constant challenge. A decade ago, I was attracted to an exciting place I had just gotten to know called Rice University. Today I am attracted to an exciting place I have now for 10 years called home.
Sports News and Profiles
TO M M Y L AV E R G N E
Q&A With Joe Karlgaard Rice Director of Athletics, Recreation and Lifetime Fitness Joe Karlgaard joined Rice as director of Athletics in September 2013, after serving as senior associate athletic director for development at Stanford University from 2011 to 2013 and as athletic director at Oberlin College from 2005 to 2011. He grew up in Bismarck, N.D., where his dad was a high school athletic director. “I spent the majority of my youth on his hip, running around on football fields, basketball courts, hockey rinks, you name it.” Joe earned a B.A. in history from Stanford (where he lettered four years in track and field) and a Ph.D. in educational policy and administration from the University of Minnesota, while serving as assistant coach for the men’s track and field and cross country teams. Karlgaard and his wife, Jill, an attorney, are the parents of Charlie, a first grader.
Alumnus George W. Webb III ’88 sat down with Karlgaard in August to learn more about his background and how he plans to make the new vision for Rice Athletics a reality. This summer you published A New Vision for Rice Athletics, a blueprint for where you intend to take the program in the next few years. What makes this effort different from past approaches? We’re placing an emphasis on competitive success in a way that maybe we haven’t expressly articulated before. I know that our coaches, our student–athletes, and certainly our alumni and fans have always wanted us to win the right way. But sometimes there has been a tendency to use our values as an excuse rather than as an asset. The New Vision is about changing that mindset, so people believe that we can attack the challenge of being competitively successful and not selling our soul to do it. What will it take to make the New Vision a reality? We have to get our fundamentals right: We have to raise our profile, we have to sell more tickets and get more fans in our venues, and we have to raise more money. We need both to grow our annual fund and to build our athletic endowment to support scholarships, coaching positions and operations. With a school our size, we need to have permanent funding sources in place for us to be viable in the future. The immediate goal is to win conference championships. If you do that, you’re a relevant player nationally. I expect that when
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our student–athletes come in here as freshmen, at some point during their career they’re going to compete for and win a conference championship.
Tell us about the upcoming improvements to venerable Rice Stadium. The first priority is to take care of our coaches and student–athletes who live and work there every day. So we’re building a facility at the north end zone that will give them excellent locker and meeting rooms, coaches’ offices, a weight room, equipment room and team auditorium. It will sit right between the practice field and the game field, which will make workouts much more efficient for Coach Bailiff and his players. We have a little ways to go to finish the funding, but we’re a lot further along than we were just four months ago. Construction is booming in Houston and prices are escalating rapidly, so we need to finish the funding now. I also envision a multiphase restoration of Rice Stadium to make it a better experience for our fans. We want to preserve all that’s great about Rice Stadium — the wonderful sight lines, 14
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TO M M Y L AV E R G N E
How strong is the support for Athletics on campus today? David Leebron is a phenomenal advocate for Athletics. There is no way I would have taken on this role if I didn’t believe that we have a president who believes in the goal of championship athletics within our value system. And in my first 10 months here, the evidence of his support has been obvious: the access I have to him, his willingness to engage in any number of discussions about strategy and direction, his understanding of the college athletics landscape. I’ve seen our students turn out for many of our events. But with our small size, it’s critical that we be really good at getting our students engaged more often, and that’s part of my task. I want to make sure we have a student body that is excited by what we’re doing, and that our student–athletes and nonathletes relate well. And I also want to ensure that our faculty embraces the educational benefits of being a student–athlete.
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the column work, the concourse that allows you to walk 360 degrees around the stadium — while also ensuring it’s properly updated for the 21st century.
What’s next for Rice’s other facilities? We have important plans for our soccer and track facilities to make those of the caliber of the rest of our facilities. And while Reckling Park and Tudor Fieldhouse are beautiful and serve us well, we have to be proactive about keeping those up-to-date.
TO M M Y L AV E R G N E
And staff? Our focus right now is that any additional resources we receive from the university, we’re putting into revenuegenerating opportunities. So we’ve added six new positions on the resource side: in development, the ticket office, marketing, a business strategy analyst and a chief revenue officer. Our hope is that over time, those positions begin to work for us in a way that will allow us to add additional resources in student-facing areas such as strength and conditioning, the training room, those sorts of things. At Stanford, how did you balance the demands of athletics and academics? I’m actually not a big fan of the word “balance.” I think people have to live integrated lives. They have one life and one identity, and they have to find a way to make all things fit. I have great empathy for students — whether they are student– athletes or not — who come to Rice and who struggle, because I struggled my first three or four quarters at Stanford. It was really in the fall of my sophomore year that I started to get into a groove, and I also found a major that I really loved in history. Many of the lessons I learned in track and field are ones that I apply today: the ability to focus, the ability to persevere, the development of resilience, the ability to go through and embrace painful situations as a way to improve. Those were all things I learned in track and they were really valuable parts of the educational experience for me.
In one sentence, what is the message you’d like Rice alumni to tell their friends and colleagues about Rice Athletics? Rice is all in on the marriage of worldclass academics and championship athletics. Why do you believe the marriage will work? Certainly my experience at Stanford tells me it works. But the most relevant evidence is right here at Rice: football, baseball, women’s tennis, women’s swimming and men’s golf all winning conference championships this past year, and my firm belief that we’ve got four or five more programs that this year could win conference championships for the first time in a long time. So we’re not as far away as people may think. Going forward, what kind of support are you looking for? First, we need you to support Rice Athletics by buying season tickets. And when you can’t get to a game, we need you to give your tickets to a neighbor or a friend and encourage them to go, or give them back to us so we can redistribute them. Second, we need you to give to the Owl Club, which is our current-use funding. Your gift is a direct value-add to Athletics; it’s not offset by a reduction in other support. Third, one of the best things people can do is to talk about the virtues of Rice Athletics and bring their friends to a game. The uniqueness of Rice is a terrific reason for us to be optimistic. You can look at our admission requirements and the rigor of the course work here and choose to view it as a hindrance, or you can view it as a huge promotional tool. I also will take our small, passionate alumni base over a large, dispassionate one every day. If we get out there and do a better job of promoting our values and telling our story, I think we’re going to have wild success.
Berkman Returns to the Nest Six-time Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Lance Berkman, who played for Rice during the 1995–97 seasons, plans to finish his Rice degree in kinesiology. While he is attending classes, he also is supporting the current Owls baseball team as student assistant coach. In 1997, Berkman helped lead the Owls to their first-ever appearance in the College World Series. The All-American was then drafted at the end of his junior year. After playing in 15 major league seasons — 12 with the Houston Astros and the rest with the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees and Texas Rangers — Berkman retired from MLB earlier this year. He is proud to be able to finish what he started at Rice and hopes to set an example for his four daughters and teach them that an education is important, even if right now they are too young to understand the full implications of that. “They think it’s funny that I have to do homework like they do,” he said. —Jenny West Rozelle
Career Stats To see a video about the New Vision: www.rice.edu/athleticsvision/
Batting average: .293 Home runs: 366 RBIs (runs batted in): 1,234 OBP (on base %): .406 FA L L 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 15
Abstract
Findings, Research and more
A Rice lab is using light sensors and optical hardware to bring both mathematical predictability and cut-and-paste simplicity to the world of genetic circuit design.
BIOENGINEERING
Lighting Up Genetic Circuit Analysis
“Our goal is to engineer a new probiotic bacterium that can protect against a common large-intestine disorder that causes obesity and depression,” said Tabor, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice and the lead investigator on a new project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). A three-year grant from ONR’s Young Investigator Program will fund Tabor’s work, one of the first studies to combine two of the hottest fields in the life sciences — synthetic biology and microbiomics. Probiotics — edible bacteria that improve health — are increasingly
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being used to treat diseases, but they have not yet become a major medical paradigm. In his new ONR-funded research, Tabor plans to program probiotics for highly reliable disease prevention in people with different genetic backgrounds, diets and so on. Tabor’s team aims to do this by creating a network of genetic circuits that can sense, compute and respond to disease in a highly reliable way. “There are about 10 times more bacterial cells in our bodies than human cells, and numerous studies over the past decade have found that these bacteria
play important roles in obesity, immune function, depression and other health processes,” Tabor said. Innovative studies over the past decade have found that a person’s microbiome — the trillions of bacteria in our bodies — contain more genetic information than the human genome. Increasingly, clinicians and scientists like Tabor are interested in finding ways to use the microbiome to treat disease and improve health. Read more: ricemagazine.info/229 —Jade Boyd
B R A N D O N M A RT I N
Rice synthetic biologist Jeff Tabor is on a quest to help the Navy create an edible probiotic bacterium that can help protect sailors and marines from obesity and depression.
abstract
MATERIALS SCIENCE
J E F F F I T LO W, I M U S H
Nanotube Forests Drink Water From Arid Air
If you don’t want to die of thirst in the desert, be like the beetle. Or have a nanotube cup handy. New research by scientists at Rice demonstrated that forests of carbon nanotubes can be made to harvest water molecules from arid desert air and store them for future use. Researchers in the lab of Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan found a way to mimic the Stenocara beetle, which survives in the desert by stretching its wings to capture and drink water molecules from the early morning fog. They modified carbon nanotube forests grown through a process created at Rice, giving the nanotubes a superhydrophobic (water-repelling) bottom and a hydrophilic (water-loving) top. The forest attracts water molecules from the air and, because the sides are naturally hydrophobic, traps them inside. “It doesn’t require any external energy, and it keeps water inside the forest,” said graduate student and first author Sehmus Ozden. “You can squeeze the forest to take the water out and use the material again.” The forests grown via water-assisted chemical vapor deposition consist of nanotubes that measure only a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) across and about a centimeter long. If it becomes possible to grow nanotube forests on a large scale, the invention could become an efficient, effective water-collection device because it does not require an external energy source, the researchers said. Ajayan is Rice’s Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering, professor of chemistry, and chair of the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. The U.S. Department of Defense and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative supported the research. Read more: ricemagazine.info/230 —Mike Williams
Rice graduate student Sehmus Ozden holds a carbon nanotube forest. Ozden treated nanotube arrays to harvest water in the same way beetles do in the desert, by combining hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces.
EARTH SCIENCE
Massive ‘Ultrasound’ of Mount St. Helens
Rice geophysicist Alan Levander led one of 2014’s largest scientific field experiments in July — a massive effort by more than 75 researchers to perform what amounted to a combined ultrasound and CAT scan of Mount St. Helens’ internal plumbing. The ambitious project, a joint undertaking by earth scientists at Rice, the University of Washington, the University of Texas at El Paso and other institutions, required placing more than 3,500 active seismological sensors and 23 seismic charges around the volcano over just a few days. Levander hopes to publish initial findings in 2015.
Approximate layout of shot points and seismic lines for the Mount St. Helens active seismic experiment.
The “active seismic” experiment took place July 23, 24 and 31. The tests followed two years of detailed planning and are part of a four-year project called Imaging Magma Under St. Helens (iMUSH), which could bring improvements in volcanic monitoring and advance warning systems at Mount St. Helens and other volcanoes. “Mount St. Helens and other volcanoes in the Cascade Range threaten urban centers from Vancouver to Portland, and we’d like to better understand their inner workings in order to better predict when they may erupt and how severe those eruptions are likely to be,” said Levander. Levander, Rice’s Carey Croneis Professor of Earth Science, said the instruments measured seismic waves generated by the detonation of charges in the boreholes that are each about 80 feet deep. The detonations produced vibrations that approximated a magnitude–2 earthquake, which typically cannot be felt. The National Science Foundation funded the research. Other institutions involved include Oregon State University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich and the U.S. Geological Survey. Read more about the iMUSH collaborative research project: ricemagazine.info/231 —Jade Boyd
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abstract
SOCIOLOGY
African-American HomeOwnership Grows Less Stable
African-Americans are 45 percent more likely than whites to switch from owning their homes to renting them. That’s the conclusion of sociologists at Rice and Cornell University who examined racial inequality in transitions out of homeownership over the last four decades. “The 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act outlawed housing market discrimination based on race,” said Gregory Sharp, a postdoctoral fellow in Rice’s Department of Sociology and the study’s lead author. “African-American homeowners who purchased their homes in the late 1960s or 1970s were no more or less likely to become renters than were white owners. However, emerging racial disparities over the next three decades resulted in black owners who
bought their homes in the 2000s being 50 percent more likely to lose their homeowner status than similar white owners.” Sharp said the deregulation of the mortgage markets in the 1980s — when Congress removed interest rate caps on first-lien home mortgages and permitted banks to offer loans with variable interest rate schedules — and subsequent emergence of the subprime market are likely reasons blacks were at an elevated risk of losing their homeowner status. “African-American homeowners’ heightened subprime rates were not only due to their relatively weaker socioeconomic position, but also because lenders specifically targeted minority neighborhoods,” Sharp said. The authors used longitudinal household data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the period 1968 to 2009,
with a study sample of 6,994 non-Hispanic whites and 3,158 black homeowners. The study was published in the journal Social Problems. Watch a Rice News video: ricemagazine.info/232 —Amy Hodges CHEMISTRY
New Solutions Needed to Recycle Fracking Water Rice scientists have performed a detailed analysis of water produced by hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) of three gas reservoirs and suggest environmentally friendly remedies are needed to treat and reuse it. More advanced recycling rather than disposal of “produced” water pumped back out of wells could calm fears of accidental spillage and save millions of gallons of fresh water a year, said Rice
The Nixon Tapes
A
T 740 PAGES, “THE NIXON TAPES” IS A FASCINATING TOME OF POLITICAL REVELATION, containing the transcriptions of 3,700 hours of private conversations Nixon had in the White House between February 1971 and July 1973. Moments captured by these voice-activated tapes include discussions of Nixon’s historic visit to China, the SALT I arms treaty with the Soviet Union, his secret bombings of Southeast Asia and his 1972 re-election campaign that resulted in a landslide victory. In between these momentous political occasions, these tapes also illuminate all aspects of Nixon’s complicated nature, as conversations diverged from the usual foreign policy topics to his views on homosexuality, his paranoia of political rivals (often those who were the closest to him) and his love of sports — particularly baseball. “The Nixon Tapes” highlights the inner machinations of one of our most complex presidents, in years that were critical in shaping our nation. In fact, Nixon realized the magnitude of his presidency and his legacy; in an excerpt from the book, Nixon bounced some ideas off his chief of staff:
edited and annotated by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)
HALDEMAN: There are a lot of good stories from the first term. NIXON: A book should be written, called 1972. HALDEMAN: Yeah. NIXON: That would be a hell of a good book. And somebody should have thought of it. ... You get
in China, you get in Russia, you get in May 8th [his dramatic decision to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong just before his summit in Moscow], and you get in the election. And it’s a hell of a damn year. That’s what I would write as a book: 1972, period. “The Nixon Tapes” probably isn’t what Nixon would have wanted published, but the book succeeds at documenting a tumultuous period in American history. —Thomas Chen ’16
Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice. Luke A. Nichter is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University–Central Texas. Nichter’s website, nixontapes.org, offers free access to all publicly released Nixon tapes.
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abstract
S H U T T E R STO C K
A night view of an oil derrick drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale.
chemist Andrew Barron. Barron and the study’s lead author, Samuel Maguire-Boyle ’12, a Ph.D. graduate of Rice’s chemistry department, recently published their findings in the journal Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts. The project began with chemical analysis of fracking fluids pumped through gas-producing shale formations in Texas, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Fracking fluid is 90 percent water, Barron said. Eight to nine percent of the fluid contains sand or ceramic “proppant particles” that wedge themselves into tiny fractures in the rock, holding open paths for gas and oil to escape to the production well. The remaining 1 or 2 percent, however, may contain salts, friction reducers, scale inhibitors, biocides, gelling agents, gel breakers, and organic and inorganic acids. The organic molecules either occur naturally or are a residue from the added components. The researchers found most of the salt, organic and other minerals that appear in produced water from shale gas reservoirs originate in the connate waters trapped in the dense rock over geologic time scales. But they also found that produced water contained potentially toxic chlorocarbons and organobromides, probably formed from interactions between high levels of bacteria in the water and salts or chemical treatments used in fracking fluids. “We believe the industry needs to investigate alternative, nonchemical treatments to avoid the formation of
compounds that don’t occur in nature,” Barron said. Currently, fracturing fluid pumped into a well bore to loosen gas and oil from shale is either directed toward closed fluid-capture systems when it comes out or is sent back into the ground for storage. But neither strategy is an effective longterm solution, Barron said. “Ultimately, it will be necessary to clean produced water for reuse in fracking,” he said. “In addition, there is the potential to recover the fraction of hydrocarbon in the produced water.” Primarily, he said, the researchers want their analysis to anticipate future problems as industry develops processes to remove organic compounds from water bound for reuse. Barron is Rice’s Charles W. Duncan Jr.–Welch Professor of Chemistry and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering. The Robert A. Welch Foundation and the Welsh Government Sêr Cymru Program funded the research. Read more: ricemagazine.info/233 —Mike Williams
PSYCHOLOGY
Practice Makes Perfect. Or Does It? “This question is the subject of a longrunning debate in psychology,” said Fred Oswald, professor of psychology and one of the authors of a recent study from Rice, Princeton University and Michigan State University. “Why do so few people
who are involved in sports such as golf, musical instruments such as the violin or careers such as law or medicine ever reach an expert level of performance?” The researchers reviewed 88 previous studies (more than 11,135 total participants) published through 2014 that investigated relevant research on practice predicting performance in music, games, sports, educational and occupational domains. Within each domain, the researchers averaged the reported results across all relevant studies. They found that “deliberate practice” — defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a specific field — explained 26 percent of the variance in performance for games, 21 percent for music, 18 percent for sports, 4 percent for education and less than 1 percent for professions. “Deliberate practice was a strong overall predictor of success in many performance domains, and not surprisingly, people who report practicing a lot generally tend to perform at a higher level than people who practice less,” Oswald said. “However, perhaps the more important contribution of our study is that no matter how strongly practice predicted performance in our findings, there was always statistical room for other personal factors to predict learning a skill and performing successfully, including basic abilities.” —Amy Hodges BIOENGINEERING
Rice Developing Mobile DNA Test for HIV
Rice bioengineers are developing a simple, highly accurate test to detect signs of HIV and its progress in patients in resource-poor settings. The current gold standard to diagnose HIV in infants and to monitor viral load depends on lab equipment and technical expertise generally available only in clinics, said bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum. The new research features a nucleic acid-based test that can be performed at the site of care. Richards-Kortum, director of the Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies, and her colleagues reported their results in the American Chemical continued on Page 20 FA L L 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 19
abstract
PSYCHOLOGY
Best Illusion of the Year Contest Neural Correlate Society Third Prize: “A Turn in the Road: Metamers, Anti-metamers and False Pop Out” Kimberley Orsten, graduate student, psychology James Pomerantz, professor of psychology
A Turn in the Road
WHICH TWO OF THESE THREE ROADS ARE IDENTICAL? Why this is tricky: This illusion takes advantage of the way the brain can misinterpret information from the eye about color, light and pattern. It mixes two images called “metamers,” which are different but look the same, with two images called “anti-metamers,” which are identical but look different. People almost always are wrong about which road is the odd one out. The team created a movie of their illusion. “Our illusion shows how humans sometimes struggle to interpret flat images,” Orsten said. “This should not be a big surprise, because humans — like other creatures — evolved to see a 3-D world, not a 2-D one. When we see an irregular, four-sided figure, we try to perceive it as a simpler figure like a rectangle that’s being viewed from an oblique angle. We see 2-D shapes as identical if they could be depicting the identical 3-D object even if their 2-D projections are different.”
continued from Page 19 Society journal Analytical Chemistry. The proof-of-concept work by co-lead authors Zachary Crannell and Brittany Rohrman, both graduate students in the Richards-Kortum lab, follows their similar technique to detect the parasite that causes the diarrheal disease cryptosporidiosis, reported earlier this year. The students originally intended their work to look for HIV in infants, but the technique can also help to track viral loads in older patients. “It’s important 20
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WHY IT MATTERS: Both Orsten and Pomerantz said that while people have been delighted by visual tricks for centuries, illusions are also a very important tool of the trade for scientists who study perception. Pomerantz noted that this field of study is conducting important work on designing camouflage, robotic systems for performing tasks such as driving cars and accident prevention. “As fun as they are to play with, illusions are serious business for visual scientists,” Orsten said. “They are the fingerprints left behind by our perceptual system that provide us essential clues to figure out how perception works.”
Watch a Rice News video about this illusion: ricemagazine.info/234
for clinicians to be able to quantitatively monitor patients’ viral loads in order to ensure the disease is responding to therapy,” Crannell said. To be clinically viable, a DNA-based test for HIV has to be able to quantify virus loads over four orders of magnitude, from very low to very high, the researchers said. They reported the Rice test easily meets that goal. They are developing tools for lowresource settings where high-tech lab equipment is not available. Although they
—Amy Hodges
used a thermal cycler, the researchers are working on a technique that will keep the entire procedure between room and body temperatures so that it can be performed at the point of care in the developing world. The research was funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. Read more: ricemagazine.info/235 —Mike Williams
abstract
N E W FACES
A SMARTER WAY TO TREAT ADDICTIONS
DAV I D W E T T E R
by Jenny Blair
Y
OU’RE ATTENDING A PARTY AFTER A HARD DAY. YOU RECENTLY QUIT SMOKING, BUT YOU’RE TEMPTED TO LIGHT UP. At that moment, your smartphone vibrates, offering tips to prevent a lapse. David Wetter wants to make that scenario a reality. In August, Wetter became the Elma W. Schneider Professor and chair of the Department of Psychology, joining Rice from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He studies risky behaviors like smoking in disadvantaged populations, and he examines environmental factors — from neighborhood characteristics to advertisements to friends — that affect those behaviors. Working with sociologists, engineers, urban planners and many others, Wetter is designing clever ways to intervene.
P H OTO C O U RT E SY DAV I D W E T T E R
Q Getting people to quit smoking is tough. What’s your approach? A We’ve developed a mindfulness-based addiction approach that is actually more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy at helping people recover from a lapse. We’ve also developed smartphones-based interventions as well as a hybrid approach that addresses a lot of the contextual factors that are important. Q What do you mean by contextual factors? A At the community level, contextual influence fits into three categories. One is socioeconomics on a neighborhood level, comparing, for example, the ritzy area of Houston, River Oaks, versus the Third Ward. Then there is social cohesion — the trust you have in your neighbors. And the last is the physical and social environment. If you live in River Oaks, there’s a giant flagship grocery store. They sell cigarettes, but you don’t see them; there’s no advertising for them. In the Third Ward, there’s three or four gas station convenience stores on every block, and every window in every one of those is plastered with cigarette ads and alcohol ads. Q What about the idea that addiction is a matter of genetics? A I think in the human genome era that the powerful effects of context are grossly underestimated. A lot of people think that
genomics is going to be the solution to the social ills of the world, and it’s just not the case. The environments we live in are so profound in terms of their impacts on our behavior. Part of the reason they get underestimated is they’re really hard to measure. [But] we’ve been able to show that simple little things that seem ridiculous influence behavior. For example, how close you live to a tobacco outlet predicts how fast you’ll relapse. Your craving for smoking in real time measured with a smartphone actually goes up as you get closer to a tobacco retail outlet.
Q Yes; where do the smartphones come in? A We’re using smartphones to assess what’s going on right in the moment. We’ve been able to show that certain situations result in a lapse — or smoking when someone’s trying to quit — about one in every 250 times that situation’s encountered. There are other combinations of situations that have incredibly high risk, where one out of every five of those situations result in a lapse. We looked at three risk factors that we know can trigger lapses. One is simply whether there are other people smoking in your environment. That increases the risk of lapsing about two- to threefold. There’s also whether you’re drinking — not surprisingly, alcohol is associated with lapse. You put both of those together and it goes up further. The last one is negative affect — if you’re sad, angry, anxious. When you have all three of those, your risk goes through the roof. Q It’s fascinating that you were able to quantify it. A That’s the beauty of the new assessment approaches. Imagine a situation where you’ve got a little patch that detects alcohol in sweat and also detects nicotine byproducts in the air and could look at physiological signals of negative affect. So now you wouldn’t even have to ask about it — you know these factors are present and you can deliver a real-time intervention. Your smartphone can start beeping and make suggestions. All this stuff’s coming down the pike at a very rapid rate. It creates an enormous amount of information that can be used in a very positive way if we’re able to harness it and use it effectively.
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Scene
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That First Week Photos by Jeff Fitlow and Tommy LaVergne Throughout the morning of Aug. 17, 2014, more than 900 new Owls arrived for Move-In Day, the first day of Rice’s uber-packed orientation week, better known as O-Week. The scene at each of the 11 residential colleges was one of vocal welcome and energetic mayhem, as O-Week advisers cheered each new arrival. Members of the Rice football team lent a hand to parents and students, helping to unload belongings from overstuffed vehicles. The day ended with the traditional Matriculation ceremony and symbolic procession through the Sallyport. And fireworks! Throughout the following week, new students — freshmen, transfers and international exchange students — were introduced to the campus via presentations, addresses, receptions, dinners, discussions and dozens of other scheduled (and unscheduled) activities. One evening, the president and his wife invited everyone over for a Texas-style barbecue. By Thursday, students had met with advisers and learned about a dizzying variety of student clubs and organizations. They registered for courses on Friday, and, on Saturday, more than 500 students volunteered for service projects around Houston as part of Outreach Day. O-Week 2014 concluded with a campuswide Welcome Back Festival Saturday evening. —amy hodges
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In Search of Black Ice
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PHOTOS AND STORY BY ULYANA HORODYSKYJ
Ulyana Horodyskyj ’07 goes to extreme measures to collect data on climate change in some of the world’s most forbidding mountainous environments. Though perilous at times, the fieldwork of climber scientists like Horodyskyj is critical to understanding the causes and implications of glacial melting throughout these sensitive — and exquisitely beautiful — ecosystems.
n the early morning hours of April 18, 2014, in the Nepalese Himalaya, I rolled over in bed in a lodge 14,000 feet in the mountains and hit the snooze button. The sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky. The wind, strong and cold. I started off the brisk morning with a cup of hot chocolate, briefly running through a checklist in my notebook: get to Everest base camp, just a few hours’ walk away now, join the rest of the Sherpa team, unpack all the scientific gear and run diagnostics on electronics.
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TIBET
N E PA L
MOUNT EVEREST MOUNT LHOTSE
K AT H M A N D U
INDIA I was trekking and climbing in this mystical landscape as a member of the American Climber Science Program (ACSP), a nonprofit organization that brings together scientists, climbers and other volunteers from all walks of life to conduct research in high alpine environments. After a year of especially intense (and sometimes harrowing) training and preparation, I was excited, but also a bit nervous, to be on my first peaks above 24,000 feet (Mount Everest is 29,029 feet high and Lhotse is 27,940 feet). Our team’s mission was to do groundbreaking scientific work on the effect of pollution on snow and ice in the high Himalaya. The driving force behind the expedition was to learn how pollution from black carbon (soot) and dust can hasten melting in different altitudinal zones on the Khumbu Glacier and Western Cwm of Mount Everest. Sources for black carbon include cars and motorbikes, industrial factories, forest fires, road construction and other land use development. These dark particles absorb solar radiation, just like your body does when wearing a dark versus light shirt. The more heat that gets absorbed, the more melting can occur. Why does this matter? Glaciers grow by accumulating snow. As more snow falls, it gets compressed and turned into ice, slowly flowing downhill. Thus, the more snow that melts up top, the less there is to create a new glacier. On the other ends of glaciers, large lakes are growing and deepening with time, leading to even more ice mass loss and resulting in flood hazards to villages and cities down-valley. Together, the whole glacial system is in distress, warranting greater scientific attention. My fellow climbers included John All, an associate professor of geography from Western Kentucky University, executive director of the ACSP and the leader on this expedition; volunteer climbers and scientists Chris Cosgriff from Washington, Jake St. Pierre from New Hampshire and David Byrne from Oregon; and Nepali support team members Anil Bhattarai, Ashman Tamang, Lama Sherpa and Endra Gurung, employees of Himalayan Ecstasy Nepal, a Kathmandu-based trekking and climbing operator. Carl Schmitt, project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, provided ground support. The data we planned to collect would add crucial information to my doctoral research at the University of
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Colorado at Boulder, where I am finishing my dissertation. All these details were in the back of my mind as we (Jake, Chris, David and I) headed out and up toward Everest’s crowded base camp, which on that morning had witnessed a terrible loss of life. Along the trek, we soon learned that an ice serac had collapsed earlier that morning, causing an avalanche that buried 16 climbers in the Khumbu Icefall; these men had been fixing ladders and were en route to Camp 2 to drop off supplies. Helicopters brought bodies down from the accident site to a makeshift morgue and also rescued the few survivors. The rhythmic sound of spinning blades contrasted with the chaos of 16 climbers dead. We were heartbroken to learn that one of our own young team members, Ashman Tamang, was killed on impact. It was the single deadliest day for climbers in Everest’s history. In the midst of lingering grief and shock, we tried to focus on work — gathering snow samples and other data in the lower reaches of the mountain. The process was mechanical, mostly a way to try to get our minds off of what had happened. Day by day, more and more teams left base camp, until it was virtually a ghost town. We could not, in good conscience, continue our climb, and so we too headed back down to Kathmandu to consider our next steps.
How soot and dust accelerates snow melt
No black carbon in snow
When sunlight hits clean snow or ice, most of it is reflected back into space.
A Season of Research
B
efore joining the ACSP team on Everest in April, I had spent the better part of eight months in the Himalayan mountains as a Fulbright scholar, trekking more than 750 miles through the hills and valleys in central and eastern Nepal with Western and Sherpa field assistants. I spent most of my time documenting glacial lake changes on Ngozumpa, one of Nepal’s largest and longest glaciers, as well as collecting snow samples from lower peaks (Island Peak, Lobuche East), mountain passes (the Cho La) and villages (Gokyo, Tangnak, Chukkhung) at altitudes Left to right: Jake ranging from 15,000 to 20,150 St. Pierre, David Byrne, feet. Although I had spent the Ulyana Horodyskyj previous July in Peru’s Cordillera and Chris Cosgriff Blanca, training to sample glacier contaminants with another American Climber Science expedition, the research on glacial lakes was my main focus in Nepal. In October, something unexpected happened that would send me to research “black ice” at even higher altitudes in the Western Cwm and South Col of Everest, locations that had not been sampled before. While I was leading a trek to lakes on the Ngozumpa Glacier, our group was taken by surprise when a lingering
Black carbon in snow
Black carbon particles make the snow and ice slightly darker — so less is reflected. Instead, the light is absorbed and turns into heat so snow and ice warm up and melt faster.
cyclone off the coast of India made landfall and slammed against the Himalaya, dumping three feet of snow in just two days. This led to treacherous trail conditions, including avalanche tracks stopping mere feet from the trail and postholing through the snow, sometimes up to midthigh. At one point, I resorted to crawling. The greater surface area kept me from falling through the snow. The glacial lakes we were trekking to were partially frozen, and we could not get to instruments I had placed there earlier. We set up a new station to track snowmelt over time and collected snow samples just days after the storm to look for soot and other contaminants. The station included a camera to track weather changes and snowmelt; an air temperature/relative humidity probe; and two pyranometers, instruments that measure albedo or reflectivity. (Fresh snow has a relatively high reflectivity, sometimes upward of 90 percent. Accumulation of dark particles can lower this significantly, leading to melting.) What seemed at first like a major setback for data collection ended up giving me valuable and unanticipated measurements from the cyclone. When I returned to the region later that winter, I downloaded the station data and noticed, despite dropping temperatures, the pyranometers had recorded a 20 percent decrease in albedo. The three feet of snow that fell in October had mostly melted away — and the remainder was very dirty.
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This analysis is still in progress to determine if soot or dust is the dominant component in the snowmelt. If the former, this may indicate long-range transport of pollution, either from Europe or other regions in Asia. For the latter, the data may indicate a more localized effect, but one that still warrants attention. I was not only collecting snow samples and honing field techniques, but also strengthening and conditioning my body. Sometimes I would carry loads up to 45 pounds to the base camps — either to train or, sometimes, because of lack of funds to pay for extra support after federal funding had fallen through. Higher up on the mountains, where Sherpa assistance was needed, I could not compromise safety, so a little creative fundraising was in order. Thus, in December, I hosted the first “Glacier Olympics” and raised about $800. While locals and foreign trekkers competed for medals on the ground in speed tent setup, boat pull and overhand ice axe throw events, remote participants could buy in and bet on the ice curling event to win gift cards. My mentor, David Breashears, the filmmaker and mountaineer, always talks to me about being mentally strong, and matching abilities with ambitions. I feel the challenges we encountered during the eight months prior to Everest taught me how to continue on in the face of great tragedy and adversity.
From Kathmandu to Himlung
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ack in Kathmandu, our team decided to travel to another peak to meet our scientific objectives, this one up the NarPhu valley and close to the Tibetan border. Called Mount Himlung, it stands nearly 23,500 feet, and, while not quite giving us the extreme altitudes we had wanted, Himlung would work as a new spatial data point, given its location in central Nepal. The journey from Kathmandu included eight hours in a van and then eight more bone-jarring hours in a Jeep, driving on roads with thousand-foot drop-offs. Our arrival at the trailhead was met with relief, albeit temporarily. There was still a 25-mile hike to the base of the mountain, with a lot of rough terrain in between. While donkeys carried our climbing and A helicopter transports camping gear and two weeks’ worth climbers’ gear from of food (rice, potatoes, vegetables Everest base camp to and raw chicken), we carried the Kathmandu in late April. fragile electronics on our backs. Following the April 18, Given the approaching monsoon 2014, avalanche on season, it was important for us to Everest that killed 16 get set up on the mountain. We had climbers, the ACSP already spent weeks at high altitude, team canceled their so we were acclimatized and able planned ascent. to carry heavy loads to our camps
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without Sherpa support. This was not an ideal situation, but, given no refunds for Everest, we could no longer afford Sherpa assistance. On Himlung, the strategy was to establish three camps before pushing on to the summit, all the while collecting snow samples at different altitudes. We were making decent progress, considering the state of the route: large crevasses widening as the days progressed; snow darkening underfoot and turning to slush, even in the morning hours. After a particularly exhausting haul up to Camp 2 and a heart-stopping descent (where I went for an unintentional vertical ride down a slushy slope), we arrived back at Camp 1. The next morning, exhausted, Jake and I returned to base camp to rest, re-evaluate and gather some more group gear, which included extra fuel for cooking and our last tent for Camp 3. John headed back to Camp 2, deciding to do a bit of route-finding and snow sampling. On the morning of May 19, as Jake and I were making our way back up to Camp 2, carefully navigating the crevasse maze, we heard a helicopter in the distance. At first, I did not think much of it, but a few minutes later, it turned toward us, until it was right overhead. My heart sank. We watched as the helicopter continued on up the mountain, landed near Camp 2, and then took off about
Growing Into Science
15 minutes later. We dropped our gear and headed back down to base camp to figure out what a good part of the world had already heard via social media and satellite communication. John had fallen 70 feet into a crevasse and, quite miraculously, climbed out, despite multiple injuries that included broken bones. From the tent, he sent out an emergency message, which posted to Facebook, via a DeLorme satellite phone. Colleagues stateside at the ACSP were the first to see the message and put out the calls to organize the rescue. As John recovered from his injuries in Kathmandu, our team headed back up the mountain one last time, this time to recover our gear. It was bittersweet. The summit was only a few days away — and we didn’t have enough samples to complete the altitudinal profile. But, given the events of the past two months and the destabilization of the climbing route, it was the correct choice. What drives me to trek into the Himalaya is the challenge of climbing to extreme altitudes, while having the privilege to conduct research that will bring about change in the way we treat our planet. As temperatures continue to increase and the mountains and glaciers destabilize and adjust to the current climate, the critical need for this research also increases. What kind of legacy will my generation leave behind? I hope it is one of environmental responsibility and stewardship. The time is now.
GREW UP IN A UKRAINIAN AMERICAN community in Ohio, the grandchild of immigrants. When I was a child, my father, a civil engineer, and my mother, a music teacher and stay-at-home mom, took my two older brothers and me on trips to teach us about our planet in an experiential manner. When I was just 6 years old, we visited Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps. During a playful snowball fight at 10,000 feet, which my dad caught on film, we witnessed an avalanche in the distance. At that age, I did not have the capacity to understand what I was witnessing, other than something big and scary-sounding. That childhood experience — where I found that mountains were not only places to learn and have fun, but also places that demanded respect and vigilance — came full circle on my most recent expedition to Everest. I started out as an astronomy major at Rice, working at the Rice Space Institute and dreaming about exploring space. During my sophomore year, I switched majors to earth science. Under the guidance of Earth Science Professor Cin-Ty Lee, I gained lab experience, wrote and published my first scientific paper, and took part in field trips across the United States, Canada and Belize. The pinnacle of my undergraduate career, though, was going to Antarctica with John Anderson [Rice’s W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography] on the Palmer icebreaker. Just a month prior to graduation, I found myself in the land of ice and penguins — a dream come true. Working 12-hour shifts, sometimes outside on the deck of a research ship in -40 C temperatures, and sometimes buried elbow-deep in mud in the ship’s lab, I realized that I could do this for the rest of my life. The journey of discovery, of approaching the world’s unknowns through creativity and with childlike curiosity — is what I had been searching for and what I found in the middle of the ocean, working in a tiny mobile lab, while studying the effects of climate change in one of the most sensitive regions of the planet. The laws of physics drive glaciers to behave in a certain way. Their secrets are locked in the ice. By treading carefully and with respect, perhaps those secrets get revealed in time. Thus, my life’s journey was revealed while doing sea-level science, and seven years later, it would take me to the top of the world. Ulyana Horodyskyj ’07 earned a B.S. in earth science and was a resident of Brown College. Her doctoral research has been funded by a USAID Climber-Scientist grant; the Fulbright Program; Hartmut Spetzler, University of Colorado at Boulder; the Rice Space Institute; the Horodyskyj family; and crowd funding from Petridish.org and RocketHub.com. She documents her explorations into the science of climate change in the Himalaya at blackicehimalaya.wordpress.com.
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KIDS’ CAMP CAMP KESEM
WORDS AMY HODGES PHOTOS BRANDON MARTIN AND DAVID LAM ’16
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Student-run Camp Kesem welcomes children of cancer patients to its inaugural summer camp.
SUNSHINE
BUBBLES
S TA C E Y Y I ’ 16
M
“My camp name is Cat, and the reason I’m at Camp Kesem is because my mom has breast cancer.” This isn’t the introduction you’d expect from someone on the first day of summer camp. But Camp Kesem (kesem means “magic” in Hebrew) is not an ordinary summer camp. Held Aug. 3–8 at the idyllic Uskichitto Retreat Center in
MARIAH L AW H O N ’ 1 6
LeBlanc, La., Camp Kesem welcomed approximately 30 children between the ages of 6 and 16 from Louisiana and Texas to a week filled with swimming, archery, rock climbing, arts and crafts, and other traditional camp activities. The kids — and counselors, too — were encouraged to choose a special name to use exclusively during the week. Camp Kesem Rice is one of 54 student chapters of the national Camp Kesem organization, the country’s only nonprofit dedicated to running free summer camps for kids
KAZOO
SMOOCHES
K I NS EY D I T T M A R ’ 16
D AV I D K I M ’ 1 6
affected by a parent’s cancer. Juniors Stacey “Sunshine” Yi and Mariah “Bubbles” Lawhon co-founded the Rice chapter, marshalling more than 100 students to help coordinate their inaugural year. “The needs of these children are often not addressed,” Yi said. “They suffer quietly, which can have longlasting effects. This free overnight camp allows kids to gain strength and confidence, make friends with similar experiences and just have fun. Our ultimate goal is to create a peer network for these kids that has a lifelong impact.”
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Sadly, Yi knows of what she speaks — at a young age, she lost her own mother to cancer. “My mom was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer when I was 9 and passed away soon after I turned 10,” Yi said. “My world fell out from beneath my feet, and I didn’t know what to say or do. From her diagnosis to her death, I struggled a lot and felt very alone and misunderstood. I wanted to talk, but it was too painful to talk about it with my family, my friends had no idea what I was going through, and I was virtually silent when I visited my counselor.” Yi said when she heard about Camp Kesem and visited a camp, she was moved to tears.
CAMP CONVERSATION Wiess College junior David “Smooches” Kim, one of the 19 Rice camp counselors and administrative team members, said that bringing together children with similar life experiences is what makes Camp Kesem live up to its magical name. Despite their young ages, he added, the campers are very open about what they’ve had to deal with and really supportive of one another.
C AT
“One kid is like, ‘My dad passed away,’ and another kid is like, ‘It’s okay. I lost my mom. I understand,’” Kim said. “Seeing these kids bond over something and being around other people like them is just amazing.” “The Doctor,” a camper from New Orleans, chose a nickname inspired by the popular British television show “Doctor Who,” a favorite of his and his mother’s, who died a few weeks before the camp. “She was just a really great person,” he said. “She was a person
THE DOCTOR
who would never stop fighting and wanted to help everybody.” He described camp as energizing and fun, as well as a good place to talk about his feelings. At the end of each day, counselors gathered for small-group conversations with their campers. It was during these sessions that Kim, Yi and Lawhon said they witnessed firsthand the strength and positivity displayed by the kids. “(My mother) is going through her second time (facing breast cancer), and she’s going to fight through
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B U I L D A B E A R D W I T H S H AV I N G C R E A M
HIGH-ROPES COURSE
it,” said “Bumblebee” from Kenner, La. The best thing about Camp Kesem, she said, is “being with people who are going through the same thing I am.” And then there’s the fun part. “You get to sleep in cabins, there’s a rock-climbing wall, a pool and a bunch of other fun activities.” Another camper from Austin, “I Got Mustard On My Feet,” whose father was diagnosed with leukemia last spring, offered some advice to his fellow campers. “You always have to have faith and know that your parent is going to be all right, no matter what happens,” he said. This camper’s humorous nickname was inspired by an incident in the mess hall. When asked about her counselors, Bumblebee said, “They’re really great and really nice and they basically do everything for us. Even though they’re really strict about lights out, I love them.”
SETTING UP CAMP The camp was organized entirely by Rice students, who spent last year fundraising, marketing, recruiting participants, training volunteers and performing a myriad of tasks associated with starting a summer camp.
Student volunteers contacted hospitals in the Texas Medical Center, bereavement centers and cancer support groups and also posted on blogs and dropped off brochures to spread the word about the Camp Kesem opportunity. Because of the limited amount of financial resources and the need to have enough counselors available to ensure individual attention to each child, the program processed applications on a first-come, first-served basis. The program director screened applications to make sure the camp and kids were a good fit. “All of our student leaders put in so much time and energy to bring our goal to life,” Lawhon said. The Rice chapter raised more than $34,000 overall to pay for this year’s camp. A $10,000 starter grant from the Livestrong Foundation and subsidized costs from the national Camp Kesem organization helped launch the project. To prepare for the emotional challenges of counseling kids whose
parents have cancer and how to answer their questions, the Rice students spent fours hours a week during the spring semester in training sessions taught by members of the executive board of Camp Kesem Rice. They also had to complete 18 online sessions designed by the national Camp Kesem staff. Tracey Landstrom, a program director with the national Camp Kesem organization, said that the Rice students were truly on top of things. “They have a full camp, they raised more money than we asked our first-year campuses to raise and they’re all just so motivated. It’s been amazing to work with them.” Landstrom likens Camp Kesem responsibilities to running a nonprofit organization. “(These students) have to do everything,” she said. “It’s a full-on business that they’re running while being students, and it’s incredible.” Mac Griswold, director of Rice’s Community Involvement Center and staff adviser to Camp Kesem Rice, said the chapter “appropriately planned the management of risk, finances and human resources for this complex event. The students should be proud of all they have accomplished in a short period of time.” Despite the many valuable life lessons the counselors took away from this experience, the team agreed that what they treasured most was the opportunity to impact the lives of children who needed them. “Camp Kesem is a chance for us to connect with these children and have conversations with them so they can realize, ‘Hey, it’s okay; life will go on,’” said Baker College junior Anjali “Sparkle” Raghuram. Lawhon noted that although the camp is over, their connections to the kids will continue. “We want to serve the families year-round, not just through the week of camp,” she said. “We plan to stay in touch and to have two camp reunions in the fall and spring. And then we’ll be getting pumped up for next year’s camp.” Lawhon and Yi are aiming for 60 campers in 2015, including campers who attended this summer.
Camp Kesem was supported by numerous private and community donations, including grants from the Livestrong Foundation and the Farb Fund. This fall, Camp Kesem Week, Nov. 9–15 at Rice, will bring camp activities to campus. Watch a video of Camp Kesem: ricemagazine.info/236 FA L L 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 33
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Physician Barbara Murray ’69 works to get new antibiotics in production before resistant strains make current antibiotics ineffective.
SUPERBUGS’ SUPER FOE words jenny blair illustrations tanyia johnson and mark seydewitz
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These days, it doesn’t take much to be colonized by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A day care scuffle, a meal on vacation abroad or a short hospital stay can be enough. Once germs like these latch on, they may jump to other people or bloom into an infection that standard antibiotics can’t treat. There aren’t enough new antibiotics on the horizon, and public health experts warn that we may see an end to the antibiotic era in our lifetime. Murray works in the lab, at the bedside and on the national stage to try to ward off that calamity. As a global expert in antibiotic resistance, Murray, a professor of internal medicine and an infectious diseases researcher at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, also brings a friendly and collaborative approach to the task of understanding “superbugs.” She was elected last fall to the presidency of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), a group of more than 10,000 infectious-disease physicians and scientists that is engaged in efforts to steer the country away from a future without antibiotics. Dangers aside, she pursues her work in large part for the thrill of discovery. “New things are always being discovered about infectious disease,” Murray said. “Our ability to sequence everything, and to identify even things that we can’t culture, are now opening all sorts of new doors.” Murray is one of the last true classic academic physicians, according to Marcus Zervos, M.D., a Wayne State University School of Medicine researcher and another expert in the field. “What we look up to is somebody who is outstanding as a teacher, as a clinician and also as a researcher, and she’s been recognized as outstanding in all of those areas,” Zervos said. Murray studies the intestinal superbug VRE, or vancomycin-resistant enterococcus. This germ has shown up in hospitals around the world and has been caught colonizing even healthy Greek infants. Though a less prolific killer than the notorious methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, it can cause
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devastating heart-valve infections, meningitis and other diseases in critically ill people. VRE generally resists all but two antibiotics — some strains shrug off those two as well. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an ancient fact of life. Microorganisms secrete antibiotics to ward off competition; tetracycline, for example, is a natural product of soil bacteria, and penicillin famously comes from a fungus. The natural response from other species is to evolve resistance and secrete antibiotics of their own. Humans joined this ancient arms race when they began using antibiotics to control human infections. What began as a miracle cure for diseases like pneumonia has grown into a group of drugs we take largely for granted. But we have done so at our peril. Children down antibiotics for colds (which are caused by viruses and thus not cured by antibiotics), while factory-farm animals eat feed laced with the drugs; many physicians fail to prescribe the ideal antibiotic for the problem at hand. Subjecting bacteria to so much evolutionary pressure guarantees that some will evolve to survive it. Humans must dodge these changes by stewarding the antibiotics we have and finding new ones, but, at least for now, we are losing this race.
Murray grew up in Baton Rouge, where her father taught geology at Louisiana State University. From the age of 12, she planned on a medical career. At Rice, she decided to major in math in order to broaden A global expert her horizons and graduated cum laude. Her choice of in "superbugs," major was extremely formative, she said, for the habits Dr. Barbara of mind it instilled. Murray '69 “What math taught me,” Murray said, “was how recently testified to sit down calmly for hours and focus on a problem. in front of the When you have to prove such-and-such, and that’s all U.S. House of you’ve got, you just have to keep working with it and Representatives' trying to figure it out and trying different paths. In Energy and infectious diseases, we’re often problem-solving and Commerce doing detective work.” Committee on Murray attended medical school at the University combatting of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, graduating the public first in her class in 1973. She did her residency in inhealth crisis ternal medicine at Harvard’s Massachusetts General of antibiotic Hospital. Training stints in Costa Rica, Guatemala resistance. and Colombia convinced her to specialize in infectious diseases, and she also completed a fellowship at Massachusetts General. After six months pursuing research with the Army in Thailand, she joined the University of Texas Medical School at Houston faculty in 1980 and has risen to become director of the Division of Infectious Diseases there. “We have strains that are resistant to everything, or In the 1980s, Murray was among only a few realmost all antibiotics, and we don’t have even invessearchers interested in enterococci. They once caused tigational antibiotics to use for therapy,” Zervos said. so little disease that she recalls transporting a batch “It’s really chilling to us.” from Thailand using an informal VIP — Vial In Murray is well aware of the stakes. She helped Pocket — transportation method. She had a front-row develop a 2010 initiative to get 10 new antibiotics into seat when some strains began to evolve from ordinary production by 2020 and helped pass last year’s Genfecal flora to their current deadly incarnation. erating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act to stimulate In a series of groundbreaking discoveries, Murpharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotray and her colleagues learned what enterococci are ics. Market forces in the industry select in favor of capable of. In 1983, they were surprised to see that a developing blockbuster drugs like Viagra, not antibistrain collected from a Houston hospital patient was otics, which must be used sparingly. Murray and the producing penicillinase, a substance that defends IDSA also are helping push for the establishment of bacteria against penicillin. Penicillinase hadn’t been an Office of Antimicrobial Resistance, as well as for observed in enterococci previously, and it appeared changes to federal rules that would make it easier to they had borrowed the genetic instructions from an test experimental antibiotics. unrelated species (Staphylococcus aureus), a transaction that did not bode well. “This was really scary,” Murray recalled. In 1991, when the team examined resistant enterococci from a group of hospital outbreaks in five mid-Atlantic states, they made another unsettling —DR. BARBARA MURRAY discovery: the outbreaks
New New things things are are always always being being discovered discovered about about infectious infectious disease. disease. Our Our ability ability to to sequence sequence everything, everything, and and to to identify identify even even things things that that we we can’t can’t culture, culture, are are now now opening opening all all sorts sorts of of new new doors. doors.
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VRE
VANCOMYCIN-RESISTANT ENTEROCOCCUS
66,000
20,000
DRUG-RESISTANT INFECTIONS
INFECTIONS PER YEAR
1,300
DEATHS FROM DRUGRESISTANT INFECTIONS
PENICILLIN
1943 1940 PENICILLIN-R* STAPHYLOCOCCUS
TETRACYCLINE
1950
1959
TETRACYCLINE-R SHIGELLA
METHICILLIN
1960
VANCOMYCIN
1962
METHICILLIN-R STAPHYLOCOCCUS
were caused by a single strain that had spread far and wide. Given that the organism resides in human stool, this was an unexpected and unsavory prospect. Murray and her team went on to pry open the enterococcal arsenal, identifying many of the bacteria’s virulence weapons, like proteins, for sticking tightly to the host. They have made some progress sidestepping VRE’s resistance, successfully immunizing rats against some virulence factors. They are now searching for substances that could inhibit the bacterium so that it passes out of the gut without doing any harm. In recent months, Murray has been returning to her academic roots by linking up with Rice researcher Yousif Shamoo, professor of biochemistry and cell biology and vice provost for academic affairs. Recently, they have submitted a grant to characterize the protein in enterococci that causes high-level antibiotic resistance. That information would lead to future studies to design inhibitors against that protein, Murray said. After Murray introduced Shamoo to her former mentee, Cesar Arias, Arias and Shamoo swiftly coauthored seven papers on enterococcal resistance to the last-ditch antibiotic daptomycin — three of them with Murray. Their technique involves exposing bacteria to antibiotics, then observing in real time how the organisms tweak their genes to evolve resistance, a technique Shamoo calls evolutionary reconnaissance.
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2003 1988
VANCOMYCIN-R ENTEROCOCCUS
*Antibiotic drug resistance was reported for penicillin before the drug entered widespread use in 1943.
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2002
2005
VANCOMYCIN-R DAPTOMYCIN-R FULL RESISTANCE REPORTED ENTEROCOCCUS
CEFTAROLINE
2010
2011
CEFTAROLINE-R STAPHYLOCOCCUS
S O U R C E : C E N T E R S FO R D I S E A S E C O N T R O L A N D P R E V E N T I O N , W W W.C D C.G OV/ D R U G R E S I STA N C E A N D P B S .O R G N OVA
By joining forces with cancer drug pioneer K.C. Nicolaou, Rice’s Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Chair of Chemistry, the group hopes to design drugs that would block those predictable evolutionary changes — thus, perhaps, circumventing the antibiotic resistance problem altogether. The researchers’ ultimate goal is to create a larger center to study infectious disease, one that would combine Rice’s research strength with the Texas Medical Center’s top-flight clinicians. Funding and a location remain uncertain. But given the group’s expertise, Murray said, “It’s the logical thing to do.” If Murray’s colleagues are any judge, any collaboration she’s involved with stands a good chance of success. Shamoo and other researchers laud not only Murray’s science, but also her easygoing personality. Murray is generous with her time, expertise and lab resources. Both her support of younger colleagues and a focus on what would benefit her field in general, Shamoo said, are unusual in academia. “That’s the kind of person you want at the top.” —Jenny Blair
READ MORE MORE ABOUT ABOUT RICE'S RICE'S WORK WORK WITH WITH READ ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE: RESISTANCE: ricemagazine.info/237 ANTIBIOTIC
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ANTIBIOTIC ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE IDENTIFIED INTRODUCED
THE FIGHT AGAINST SUPERBUGS
Voices
Stories from the rice community
Cindy Dinh with Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
CH A N GEMA KER
A Present-Day Freedom Fighter
O P H OTO C O U RT E SY C I N DY D I N H
n July 2, Cindy Dinh ’11 boarded a school bus, but she wasn’t headed to class. Dinh, along with a select group of high school, undergraduate, doctoral and law students, was embarking on a ride commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With key stops along the way, the mobile journey afforded Dinh a glimpse into milestones that changed the nation and put her in the company of others — young and old — who have made civil rights their life’s work. A joint degree candidate in law and public policy between the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Dinh was chosen through a competitive process sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Participants came from 18 states and the District of Columbia and were joined by six original Freedom Riders — civil rights
activists — who a half century ago rode buses into the segregated South, making a stand for justice, equality and freedom. The ride took place exactly 50 years later to the day that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and for Dinh it further strengthened her commitment to affect social change.
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Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (center) with Anne Moody and John R. Salter of Tougaloo College at the Jackson, Miss., Woolworth sit-in, May 28, 1963, the most violently attacked and publicized sitin during the ’60s.
department] on how acculturation factors such as English language ability affected one’s access to health care.” After graduation, Dinh spent a summer in Washington, D.C., where she worked with attorneys in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, to investigate Title VI complaints on discrimination. When she moved back to Houston, Dinh’s work with minority populations and community service didn’t end. She continued on at the Harris County Clerk’s Office doing voter outreach to recruit more bilingual individuals and introduced a countywide initiative to recruit students to work as election poll workers. A first-generation Vietnamese-American and native Houstonian, Dinh learned firsthand from her father — who escaped Vietnam shortly before the war, leaving behind his parents and eight siblings — how anti-foreigner sentiments impact minority community involvement. To encourage minority groups and help get them involved in civic and political activities, Dinh, who speaks Vietnamese and Spanish, conducts bilingual trainings for advocates ranging from 18 to 85 and empowers people to meet elected officials through the use of interpreters and bilingual education material. Dinh’s experiences in Washington fueled her in organizing constituent meetings for Vietnamese Advocacy Day, an annual event that brings nearly 1,000 people to meet their U.S. Congress members.
Returning to Washington, D.C., for the commemorative ride enabled Dinh not only to share her experiences with other like-minded peers, but also reminded her that civil rights remain relevant today. The convoy of buses made brief stops at the U.S. Supreme Court, where Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, and the Lincoln Memorial, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, before reaching Richmond, Va., the former capitol of the Confederacy where Jim Crow Laws were enforced. The keynote address was given in the Old House Chamber at the Virginia State Capitol by Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education, but not before another Owl, Jessica Faith Carter ’08, noticed Dinh’s Rice ring. Carter, a graduate student in special education at the University of Texas at Austin, came away from the experience feeling much the same way as Dinh. “It was amazing to get to know the other students and documentarians,” Carter said. “I left the Freedom Ride feeling empowered and motivated to continue working to improve education for all children in this country.” Dinh is back in action at Berkeley, where she is spearheading a new studentled initiative to bring implicit bias training to students and faculty. Regardless of where she is or what she is involved in, it’s a sure thing — Dinh is creating her own memorable ride. —Tracey Rhoades
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“There was so much symbolism on the trip,” Dinh said. “Many of us on the bus were the same age as the original Freedom Riders when they first traveled through the South.” Reverend Reginald Green and Joan Trumpauer Mulholland joined Dinh and her bus mates, and student leaders rotated seats throughout the ride, giving them time to talk to the civil rights veterans. Mulholland, the first white student to join the Freedom Rides, has continued to fight social injustice throughout her life. She is well known for participating in the now infamous May 1963 Woolworth lunch counter sit-in in Jackson, Miss., which was pivotal in breaking through state-sanctioned segregation. Dinh asked Mulholland what she thought the most pressing issues of today’s generation were, and Mulholland said, “Voting rights.” “The issues that moved her and her peers in the ’60s,” said Dinh, “are the same issues we have today.” For Dinh, a past recipient of Gates Millennium and Barbara Jordan scholarships and a 2010 Harry S. Truman Scholar, a national award presented to college students who exemplify a commitment to public service and record of leadership, helping educate minorities about voting rights has been a priority. “Since the age of 18, I have worked as a bilingual poll worker to help Spanishand Vietnamese-speaking voters with instructions on how to cast their ballot,” Dinh explained. “During my senior year at Rice, I jumped at the opportunity to become an election judge and run the election polling site on campus.” She successfully applied for grants, organized voter registration drives on campus and started a competition among the colleges to increase voter turnout. Dinh’s voter outreach efforts paid off. The number of voters who came out on Election Day quadrupled. “The variety of extracurricular activities at Rice and living and volunteering in Houston helped me develop a deeper interest in some of the civil rights issues that I care about,” Dinh said. “As a sociology major, I studied inequality and racial health disparities and performed research with Bridget Gorman [chair of the sociology
arts & letters
creative ideas and endeavors
The Process of Becoming At 100, Rice School of Architecture’s Elinor Evans is still fired up about her art.
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et’s all offer a word of thanks for Elinor Evans’ grandfather. Nearly a century ago, he inspired the child who in turn inspired generations of Rice architecture students to see beyond surfaces to the richness of the natural world. “He taught me to see,” she said. At 100, Evans, the Albert K. and Harry K. Smith Professor Emerita of Architecture, is coming into her prime as an artist. The modest but determined Kansan was the focus of a series of events on and off campus to celebrate her centennial Aug. 4, 2014. They included an exhibition, “Some Truths to Learn From Leaves,” of her highly personal art at Houston’s Moody Gallery, along with a birthday brunch sponsored by the Rice School of Architecture (RSA), an exhibition of work by her students at the American Institute of Architects Houston, and a homecoming exhibition and reception at the RSA’s Anderson Hall.
The events raised more than $230,000 in Evans’ honor, including the establishment of an endowed fund in her name. The fund will support RSA students far into the future. Evans taught design to RSA freshmen from 1964 to 1985 and lectured there into the ’90s. In her Houston studio, she creates art ranging from painting to collage to off-loom weaving and more. At Rice, she challenged students to look to nature to help them think about structure, as she still does in her art. She draws a direct line from days on her parents’ ranch in Oklahoma, walking with her twin brother and their grandfather, James Monroe Evans, to her career as a teacher and life as an artist. Their grandfather “lived with us and took me every week or, in the summers, every day on walks and pointed out things about nature,” Evans said. “And it impressed me that he knew the Latin names of these plants. “We would walk and see a small sprout coming up from the
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ABOVE: Artist and centenarian Elinor Evans taught generations of Rice architecture students. RIGHT AND FACING PAGE: Evans’ apartment studio is filled with perfectly organized collections, lovingly preserved student projects, collages, artworks and more.
Samuels said creative design is now the new fashion in education, but Evans was on the case half a century ago. “Architecture in general has always been about learning how to approach a problem,” he said. “But Elinor is the paradigm of what architectural education is at its best, and a great example of how you can imbue a student with an approach that serves them for anything they might want to do in life.” Today, Evans has more ideas for projects
“My course … taught them to see and to invent and to discover their own creativity” through structuring problems that required students to gather materials that suited their solutions. —Elinor Evans
than she can possibly produce. “My problem is that while I’m working on one process or idea … I get other ideas, simultaneously, many ideas, and sometimes it’s quite frustrating that I can’t do five ideas at the same time.” Betty Moody, owner and director of Houston’s Moody Gallery, compared seeing Evans’ studio for the first time to “The Secret Garden”: “It’s like walking through this portal into another kind of world. It’s wonderful.” In that visit, she immediately took a liking to Evans’ leaf collages, which were offered for sale at the exhibition. (Evans is donating her proceeds to the RSA endowment in her name.) “I was quite honestly unprepared for how exquisite they were,” Moody said. “They’re beautiful. They’re simple. They’re spare in some cases, but they’re real interesting, complex compositions, and there are some great combinations of colors.
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ground and then he would say, ‘We’ll look at that tomorrow,’ or ‘We’ll look at that next week,’ and when we did, it had changed. And we would follow this growth, this plant, until it matured or until it blossomed. So I saw the whole process of becoming. ... This was my diet growing up, so it stuck with me somehow.” Evans’ winding path led her from her alma mater, Oklahoma State, which recruited her to help teach the mass of soldiers returning from World War II, to Yale, where she earned a master’s degree and studied with celebrated GermanAmerican artist Josef Albers. A more significant contact, she noted, was future RSA director William Caudill, who was a classmate at Oklahoma. When Caudill recruited Evans to join the Rice faculty, he offered what she still describes as her “dream” job. “He said, ‘Don’t use the word architecture in your class,’” Evans recalled. “My course … taught them to see and to invent and to discover their own creativity” through structuring problems that required students to gather materials that suited their solutions. One such problem — the stick and string — became a ritual in Evans’ class. The challenge was to find “a structure that could be continuous, that could go on and on and on, repeating itself, but reinventing itself, also, in the process,” she said, showing three projects by students that “glued themselves” to her. “Sticks could be toothpicks. They could be twigs. They could be broken weeds, stems from weeds. They could be straw. They could be all kinds of materials.” The wonder came from looking around the classroom to see that not only had every student found a unique solution but that many had multiple solutions. “Anyone in class could find many, many solutions to this one restricted problem,” she said. “They say you may be lucky to have one great teacher in your whole lifetime,” said Danny Samuels ’71, a Rice professor in the practice of architecture and former student of Evans. “Well, she was that for almost everybody who had her. I feel a special relationship because I went on to teach freshman architecture for almost as long as she did. I never had the touch that she had, though.”
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arts & Letters
“Elinor is a clear thinker; she has a great eye, and there’s a freshness about her collages that I really love,” Moody said. Evans also has a clear memory. RSA alumna and designer In Shik Lee ’83, who helped organize the events, recalled watching a documentary about the Dust Bowl when it occurred to her Evans would know something about that. “So I asked her,” Lee said. “She said, ‘Oh, yes,’ and started telling me about the routine when she was a teenager, putting wet towels around the doors and windows every night to keep dust out of the house. She remembers everything.” Evans attributes her memory to her tenacious creative pursuits. It seems every one of the overwhelming number of perfectly organized objects in her studio — some by students, most by her — brings forth a story. Showing visitors around her studio, she pointed to a large basket of smooth
rocks she took from a Massachusetts beach over the protests of a friend, who said they belonged there. “I understood what she was saying. But I still took them,” she laughed. She retrieved another basket and displayed a most orderly collection of hundreds of aluminum pull-tabs. Decades ago, Houston’s streets sloped inward and the centers provided ripe pickings for Evans, who said she surveyed them for “as found” objects of interest. Then there are the writing tools made by students who were given a problem: Find or fashion a device for making its own unique calligraphic mark on paper. The collection includes matchbooks, toothpicks, twigs and other bric-a-brac, each blackened on one end as proof of their success. Evans said she never stopped evolving her approach to teaching design. “My course was an organic thing. I worked at it every year, and I added new experiences.
And I added new attitudes for myself about old experiences, so that I was always making and remaking the course. And to this day, when I’m not teaching, I’m still finding myself remaking the course — or making it better, finding another problem which would offer another experience and another kind of structuring.” Evans’ former students tell her often that she’s changed the way they look at life. “I didn’t set out to change anybody’s way of looking at life,” she said. “I wouldn’t know how to do it. But in the process of hunting for solutions to the ideas I presented them, they somehow have sewn it into their lives, into their way of looking. “I teach them to see.” —Mike Williams
If you would like to donate to the Elinor Evans Centennial Fund, visit www.arch.rice.edu/donation.
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arts & Letters
CA LE N DAR
ARTIST YUSUKE ASAI USED MORE THAN TWO DOZEN MUTED, YET DISTINCTIVE, COLORS OF DIRT AND MUD to transform Rice Gallery’s walls and floors into a carnival of creatures and plants of the artist’s own imagination. The soil was laboriously collected by Rice Gallery staff, students and volunteers, who ventured throughout Houston and as far as the Texas Hill Country to gather as many shades as possible. The natural pigments, mostly in oranges, yellows and browns, include a rare shade of YUSUKE ASAI’S green (from a “YAMATANE” location north of 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Fredericksburg Rice Gallery Sewall Hall where the dirt Free and open has magnetic to the public properties) and www.ricegallery.org 44
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something akin to lavender. Asai, from Kumamoto, Japan, and two assistants were in residence for two weeks prior to the opening of the installation, which he named “yamatane” (mountain seed). The result is something like a gigantic Seussian mural, made all the more remarkable with an understanding of the artist’s humble materials and philosophy. “I accepted the ephemeral nature of dirt as a medium from the moment I started painting with it,” Asai said of his short-lived creations. “There is a desire for artwork to be permanent, but to try and keep it forever would mean that my painting would become unnatural.” This installation is part of the Menil Collection’s exhibition, “Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence.” Read more and view a time lapse of the installation: ricemagazine.info/238
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arts & Letters
Together Through the Tube
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“SOUNDWORM!” IS DESIGNED FOR CREATIVE EAVESDROPPING, BUT RICE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE (RSA) STUDENTS built the bright yellow sculpture to bring the community together in more ways than one. To them, it’s all about connections. At five points along the twisty steel pipe between Anderson Hall and Fondren Library, speakers link listeners to various campus locations (for starters, the Rice Coffeehouse, Duncan Commons, Lovett Commons, Anderson Hall, and the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center). Well-marked microphones pick up snippets of conversation and the random workaday sounds of people going about their business. The form and function were determined during a frenetic charrette that called for a physical installation to represent the intersection of analog and digital lives. George Hewitt ’16, Juan Borbon ’15, Adelina Koleva ’14, Lydia Smith ’15, Juncheng Yang ’14 and Nathan Keibler ’14 designed the project over a weekend in January. Their work was judged the best of six entries a week later. But a fanciful design, however complete, is a long way from landing in the real world. “This wouldn’t have happened without the involvement of so many people,” said Sophie Eichner, a junior who co-led the charrette and helped see the project through to completion. The students expect “soundworm!” to stand for at least a year, and they will relocate the microphones regularly. Watch the video: ricemagazine.info/239 —Mike Williams
Rising Stars Viewers of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” cheered the gospel/soul group Sons of Serendip all the way to the Season Nine finale, which aired the week of Sept. 15. The talented quartet includes harpist Mason Morton ’11, who earned his B.Mus. from the Shepherd School, where he studied with associate professor of harp Paula Page. “As I watched Mason perform, I was proud to see his beautiful technique and was reminded of his positive attitude toward me and his fellow harpists,” Page said. Morton pursued graduate studies at Boston University, where he met three other musicians with a similar vision to touch the world with their talent. They formed Sons of Serendip in March 2014 to audition for the show, vying with some 100,000 acts for a spot on Season Nine. The group attributes landing in the AGT finals to its unique sound and instrumentation. Although they didn’t take home the top prize, the Sons of Serendip’s lead vocalist says the quartet plans to continue making music together. —Holli Clements Learn about the Sons of Serendip’s musical journey (and listen to a song) here: www.sonsofserendip.com FA L L 2 0 1 4 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 45
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Walt Whitman at Pfaff’s Saloon An excerpt from Justin Martin’s ’87 latest book, “Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians” (Da Capo Press, 2014), reprinted here by permission of the publisher. When Whitman first wandered into Pfaff’s cellar, likely sometime in 1858, he’d already published two editions of Leaves of Grass, a collection of experimental poems. But the work had generally been ignored. Between the two editions, he’d sold only a handful of copies. Whitman was lost and in considerable torment. Part of him was so certain that fame was his rightful station. Not merely fame: Whitman’s ambitions were boundless, and on a good day, becoming the “greatest poet” of his age, America’s representative bard, an immortal artist — all seemed inevitable. He could even marshal a tantalizing piece of evidence, an endorsement he’d received from Ralph Waldo Emerson, then one of America’s leading artistic tastemakers. But his work had received only a small number of reviews, typically filled with puzzlement and derision. Mostly, he’d been met with the worst thing for an artist: terrible, souldeflating silence. So Whitman also had
all the proof he needed that failure and anonymity would be his destiny. He wasn’t altogether sure that he shouldn’t abandon poetry and move off in some radical new direction. When he started frequenting the saloon, Whitman was thirty-nine years old. He stood roughly six feet, tall for the era, but weighed less than two hundred pounds. He wasn’t yet the beefy, shaggy poet of legend. His hair was cut short, a salt-and-pepper mix of brown and gray. His beard was trimmed. Only later would he put on weight, the wages of stress and illness and advancing age. Only later would he grow his hair long and let his beard go thick and bushy. But he was already an eccentric dresser. Whitman favored workingmen’s garb, such as his wideawake, a type
of broad-brimmed felt sombrero. He liked to wear it well back on his head, tilted at a rakish angle. His trousers were always tucked into cowhide boots. He wore roughhewn shirts of unbleached linen, open at the collar, revealing a shock of chest hair. Whitman had a rosy complexion, almost babylike, and quite incongruous for a big man. Because he was meticulous about hygiene, he always smelled of soap and cologne. His manner of dress often struck people as more like a costume. Or maybe it was a kind of armor, protecting the vulnerable man underneath. Whitman wasn’t much of a drinker. In fact, no one at Pfaff’s would ever recall seeing him so much as tipsy. He would sit hour upon hour, nursing a single lager, intrigued by the spirited banter. “I think there was as good talk around the table as took place anywhere in the world,” he would say.
Author Q&A “Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians” (Da Capo Press, 2014)
The group of Bohemians who frequented Pfaff’s Saloon, along with Walt Whitman, was unique and colorful. Did you encounter any other eccentrics during your research who might warrant another biography? It was quite a cast of characters, wasn’t it? Besides Whitman, you had Artemus Ward, America’s first stand-up comic, who was a favorite of Lincoln and friend of Mark Twain. There’s Fitz Hugh Ludlow, psychedelic pioneer and author of “The Hasheesh Eater,” one of the best-selling books of 1857. There’s also Adah Menken, an actress who gained fame for her role in a risqué equestrian drama called “Mazeppa.” They all feature large in my narrative. But the main figures in the Pfaff’s Bohemian set all led such fascinating lives. Any one of them might make for a good biography subject.
The amount of research that went into the book must have generated an enormous amount of copy. How did you keep all of the subjects separate and more importantly keep Whitman as your main focus? Whitman is such a towering figure — staggeringly talented, 46
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mercurial, soulful. He simply had to be the centerpiece. I think of him as the narrative rock, surrounded by a sea of colorful loonies. In the end, I went with a classic structure where you have a main character, Whitman, some ample secondary characters like psychedelic pioneer Ludlow, and a bunch of minor characters filigreed along the edge of the narrative. But you’re right: It took a lot of research to piece together the story. Details were often widely dispersed (I had to go to a bunch of different libraries and archives) or sometimes buried deep. After all, my subjects were a group of artists that hung out in a bar 150 years ago.
Read more about the book and author at www. justinmartin1.com.
While researching Whitman, his life and his evolution with the original American Bohemians, what did you find most interesting about him? What most struck me about Whitman was his groundedness — how real he was, for lack of a better term. He was fiercely ambitious, of course. But living life well and ethically was something he placed even above his art. That’s why he went to Washington, D.C., during the Civil War and ministered to the wounded soldiers. He recognized that this was so much
arts & Letters
On the Bookshelf The First World War in the Middle East by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (Hurst Publishers, 2014) World War I carried extensive consequences for the Middle East, an oft-forgotten theater of conflict that, in reality, had enormous impact on the war itself. Ulrichsen provides a multidimensional history of the conflict in the Middle East, beginning with the differing political economies of the empires fighting over the area and concluding with the destruction of one such empire, the Ottomans, by the war’s end. Ulrichsen is the fellow for the Middle East at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
The River Way Home: The Adventures of the Cowboy, the Indian, and the Amazon Queen
Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria
by Kristin Peterson ’04 (Duke University Press, 2014)
by Mary E. Holekamp Dawson ’66 (AQ Press, 2013)
Inspired by the diverse and complicated history of Florida’s Martin County — also known as the state’s “last frontier” — this novel for young adults traces the adventures of three young and unlikely friends as they traverse through the dangerous Florida jungles in the early 1910s. Dawson is a writer based in Florida.
Peterson investigates how speculative capital, local economic transitions and the globalization of Western pharmaceutical companies has destabilized the drug market in Lagos, Nigeria. Peterson is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine.
more important than mere poetry. I think that attitude at least partly accounts for why he lived to a ripe old age while many of his fellow Bohemians burned out and died young.
If you could sit at the table with Whitman, Adah Menken, Henry Clapp Jr. or any of the regulars at Pfaff’s, what would you discuss with them? That would make me a time-traveler from the future. So I’d just show them my iPhone. They’d be gaga. During the 19th century, this crowd was always super informed, up on the latest current events. They’d be fascinated to learn about 21st-century celebrities, political intrigues and sex scandals — some things never change. At some point, vain actress Adah Menken would snatch my iPhone and start taking selfies. Later, Whitman would pry it away from her. I picture him off by himself at the end of the table, tweeting. He was always more comfortable writing words than speaking them.
Herr Pfaff seemed incredibly interesting. Does anything remain of the basement saloon? Herr Pfaff’s original establishment was at 647 Broadway in New York City. It was literally an underground saloon — as in, below street level. Today, there’s a discount women’s shoe store in that location. Sadly, there aren’t many traces left. The basement space where Whitman and America’s first Bohemians once met is now piled high with boxes of pumps.
Representation: The Case of Women
edited by Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon and Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson ’85 (Oxford University Press, 2014)
This collection of essays focuses on women’s political representation in various contexts, from theoretical orientations regarding women’s interests to international case studies. TaylorRobinson is a professor of political science and affiliated faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Texas A&M University.
The group that made up the Bohemians was so interesting and risqué for their time. At times, did they almost seem like fictional characters instead of real–life poets, artists and journalists? They felt very real to me. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I’d go into an archive, request an old letter, say, and soon find myself alone with the intimate thoughts of someone 150 years gone. These were passionate people. They burned for art, and some of them suffered terribly, too. Many of the members of this Bohemian circle — Whitman excepted – died young, often under tragic circumstances, before slipping into relative obscurity. I felt an obligation to revive the Pfaff ’s Bohemians — to tell their stories.
Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer? Growing up, I wanted to be all kinds of things, including a herpetologist and a baseball player. At Rice, I set off in a different direction. I was a double major, history and English, which was perfect preparation for what I do now: write about the past. But maybe the biggest thing I got out of Rice was that classic college experience: great teachers, interesting friends, hanging out talking until 4 a.m., getting exposed to all kinds of new ideas.
—Tracey Rhoades
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Golden Anniversary Fred Hansen ’63 by
jeff cox
ON DEC. 20, 2014, longtime Houston dentist Fred Morgan Hansen will turn 74 years of age. However, the year holds another special meaning for Hansen and his alma mater. It was 50 years earlier, on June 5, that Fred became the first pole vaulter in history to clear 17 feet, jumping 17 feet, 1 inch, and a few weeks later topped his own world record of 17 feet, 4 inches, in a match versus the USSR in Los Angeles. (That world record stood for two years.) After a magical summer season, it was in October that Hansen represented the United States in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The competition came down to Hansen and three German vaulters in the final round with the Rice alumnus coming out on top, winning the gold medal. He remains the only Rice athlete to win Olympic gold. In an event tied to homecoming this year, Hansen will be honored for his amazing accomplishments.
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Rice University, Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892
Rice’s New Advantage Photo by TOMMY LAVE RGNE
Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Permit #7549 Houston, Texas
RICE’S NEW GEORGE R. BROWN TENNIS COMPLEX, LOCATED IN THE WEST LOT 3 AREA NEAR RICE STADIUM, WILL OPEN DURING HOMECOMING WEEKEND, NOV. 7–9. The home for Rice tennis, which includes the 2013–2014 Conference USA Championship women’s team, offers an enhanced facility that will improve the experience of both the student–athletes and the fans, with 14 tennis courts, locker rooms, training and equipment rooms, covered spectator seating, and a court configuration that provides views of multiple matches simultaneously.