Rice Magazine No. 12 by Rice University

| The UnConvention

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| Looks Matter

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| Better Violins

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| Mothers’ Worries

The Magazine of Rice University

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| Asthma App

No. 12 | 2012

Right Brain Views A Look at the Arts

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A PLACE FOR ART THE ART OF THE UNIVERSITY ARTISTIC PASSION A NEW STAGE ONE JOURNEY’S END IS THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER 34 AROUND THE WORLD IN 88 KEYS 36 MOB RULES

Contents 28

Battling bugs with rhythm

Designing better violins by applying mathematics

FivePrime founder elected to the Rice board

The UnConvention comes to Rice in April.

The rankings are in: Princeton Review, Leiden Ranking and Financial Times.

What worries mothers when their children play outside?

And the CAREER Awards just keep on coming.

The demographics of Islamic terrorist detainees

Rice alumna makes TIME’s “People Who Mattered” list

Shepherd School alumna gets Grammy

When you’re interviewing for a job, looks do matter.

17 7

Owls help HISD kick off sustainability initiative

The Glasscock School of Continuing Studies launches the Center for College Readiness.

On the Cover: Geoff Winningham's photography students studied a special display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, of the photography of Irving Penn, including this portrait of Pablo Picasso in 1957. Photo: Tommy LaVergne

Students

Features

Students

14 If you need an app for asthmatics, check out mobileSpiro.

18 A Place for Art

15 The Matchbox Gallery hasn’t gotten larger, but it’s still showing great student art.

There are good reasons why Edgar Odell Lovett opened Rice’s doors to art a century ago, and today, art is at the core of Rice’s spirit.

16 Intern to the world helps launch the Virtual Student Foreign Service.

By David W. Leebron

17 Senior Rowan Canter helps develop a sustainable energy model for HISD.

20 The Art of the University To the outside world, Rice has been decidedly left-brained, but one look at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts will change that perception.

Arts 40 A lot of people live in model neighborhoods, but not like the one created by Ana Serrano.

By Alyson Ward

26 Artistic Passion

41 One of Rice’s newest sculptures, a large bronze owl, presides over the new Hindman Garden.

Rice artists aren’t limited to the traditionally creative majors, such as studio arts or English. Musician Amy McCarley is forging her own path.

42 A new piece of artwork by Jaume Plensa draws people inside — literally.

By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

28 A New Stage As the Rice theater program comes into its own, students — and audiences — have more options than ever before.

Bookshelf 20

By Alyson Ward

44 Welcome to Houston: 1 million acres and no zoning.

of Another

44 “ Adrenaline,” the latest from thriller writer Jeff Abbott, will get your blood moving.

What happens when a professor prods a shy student to expand her artistic scale? Ask photographer Gena Dawn.

45 Jeff Kripal boldly goes where few religious studies professors have gone before.

32 One Journey’s End Is the Beginning

By Kelly Klaasmeyer

Sports

34 Around the World in 88 Keys Pianist Kimball Gallagher is out to conquer the world, one small concert at a time.

By Jessica C. Kraft

46 What’s it like behind the scenes in pro football? Ask Will McClay. 48 Introducing the newest addition to Rice Stadium.

36 MOB Rules The Marching Owl Band has been poking fun, creating controversy and making football crowds laugh for 40 years. By Alyson Ward

Rice Magazine

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No. 10

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2011

Rice Magazine No. 12 Published by the

Ofﬁce of Public Affairs

Linda Thrane, vice president

F O R E W O R D

This is an auspicious time for the arts at Rice. When I began editing Rice Magazine more than 17 years ago, art had a presence on the Rice campus, but you had to look for it. There were a couple dozen portraits hanging in various buildings, and half a dozen sculptures occupied the quads and other open spaces. Fine arts majors had to share a department with art historians and did not have their own dedicated exhibition space. And the Shepherd School of Music had just built Alice Pratt Brown Hall and was beginning to develop its stellar international reputation. Today, as Rice approaches its centennial, it seems as if Edgar Odell Lovett’s dream of the arts taking their rightful place alongside the sciences and letters is finally coming to fruition. Sculptures have cropped up all over campus — inside buildings as well as on the grounds. Paintings and photographs now grace the walls of many interiors. And the area just east of Alice Pratt Brown Hall is the site for the new skyspace, a permanent environmental art piece by James Turrell scheduled for completion this spring. In fact, just recently, Rice dedicated a new sculpture by renowned international artist Jaume Plensa. Rice has become a destination for art lovers, but the artworks that adorn the campus are just the most obvious examples of the arts at Rice. Art majors now have their own department that includes theater and film in its offerings, and the university boasts four exhibition spaces: Rice Gallery, the Matchbox Gallery, the EMERGEncy Room and the exhibition space in the Rice Media Center. And just as important for the future of the arts at Rice is the establishment of the Rice Public Art Program, which is working to further enhance the campus with thoughtful and intriguing pieces of art. In this issue, we strive to bring you the breadth and depth of the arts at Rice, first by taking a look at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, then by surveying a number of other artistic offerings and achievements that are taking place here. Among our features are one on the Rice Theater Program and profiles of three young alumni who recently launched artistic careers in the public sphere. I am as pleased to present this survey of the arts at Rice as I am astounded at the changes that have been wrought here in the arts and other disciplines since I began editing Rice Magazine. Then, of course, it was titled Sallyport, and it, too, has undergone several transitions over the years. And now it, and I, are preparing for another major change. It is time for me to move on to other projects, and this will be my final issue as editor of Rice Magazine. I will miss my co-workers and friends on campus, but I will miss even more having the opportunity to showcase the best of this great university to its most ardent fans and supporters. My successor is Lynn Gosnell, former editor of Sombrilla, the magazine of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Please welcome her with as much generosity as you have shown me during my time here. May you and Rice prosper. Christopher Dow cloud@rice.edu

Editor Christopher Dow Editorial Director Tracey Rhoades Creative Director Jeff Cox Art Director Chuck Thurmon Editorial Staff B.J. Almond, staff writer

Jade Boyd, staff writer

Amy Hodges, staff writer

Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor

David Ruth, staff writer

Alyson Ward, staff writer

Mike Williams, staff writer

Photographers Tommy LaVergne, photographer

Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer

The Rice University

Board of Trustees

James W. Crownover, chairman; J.JD. .D. D. Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson;

Keith T. Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha

Viswanathan Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth;

Robert T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson;

T. Jay Collins; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans;

Douglas Lee Foshee; Lawrence Guffey;

James T. Hackett; John Jaggers; Larry

Kellner; Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal;

L. E. Simmons; Charles Szalkowski;

Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley;

Lewis “Rusty” Williams;

Randa Duncan Williams.

Administrative Ofﬁcers David W. Leebron, president; George McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice pr esident for Finance ; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; 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. Rice Magazine is published by the Ofﬁce

of Public Affairs of Rice University and

is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff,

graduate students, parents of undergradu ates and friends of the university.

Editorial Ofﬁces Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX X 77251-1892 77 Fax: 713-348-6757

Email: ricemagazine@rice.edu

ONL INE AT: WWW.ISSUU.COM / RICE UNIVE RSITY

Correction: The last issue of Rice Magazine contained an error in the feature on the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, “For Love of Lifelong Learning.” The article stated that the fund for the new Continuing Studies building is “just a shade under our $24 million goal.” The sentence should read, “just a shade under halfway toward our $24 million goal.” Our apologies to the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies and to our readers for this regrettable error.

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGH THE

Sallyport

“My Rice education was a great springboard for many aspects of my professional and personal life. I am truly honored to serve on the Rice board.” — Rusty Williams

Rusty Williams Elected to Rice Board Lewis T. “Rusty” Williams, founder of San Francisco-based biotech com pany FivePrime Therapeutics, has been elected to the Rice University Board of Trustees. FivePrime Therapeutics specializes in the discovery and development of in novative protein and antibody drugs. Williams serves as the company’s ex ecutive chairman and president. The 1971 Rice alumnus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fel low of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “Rusty Williams is known for his pioneering work in drug discovery,

collaborations with other institutions in the Texas Medical Center. Our growing biomedical and bioscience research is aimed at discovering breakthroughs that will contribute to better health around the world and to the economic vitality of Houston, and Rusty’s record as an innovator and entrepreneur in that arena will help Rice realize those aspirations.” Williams, who graduated from Rice

ofﬁcer and a member of the board of directors of Chiron Corp. and president of Chiron Technologies, a biopharma ceutical company, where he was instru mental in applying genomics research to its drug research and development. Prior to joining Chiron, Williams was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute in vestigator at the University of California, San Francisco. He also is a co-founder of COR Therapeutics Inc., which before being acquired by a larger company, special ized in therapeutic products for treating and preventing acute and chronic car diovascular diseases.

“Our growing biomedical and bioscience research is aimed at discovering breakthroughs that will contribute to better health around the world and to the economic vitality of Houston, and Rusty’s record as an innovator and entrepreneur in that arena will help Rice realize those aspirations.” —David Leebron

and his work has led to breakthroughs that are improving health and medical treatment today,” said Jim Crownover ’65, Rice board chairman. “We’re very honored that he has agreed to bring his valuable experience to the Rice govern ing board.” “We are thrilled that Rusty is joining our board, as he brings a wealth of ex perience and accomplishment in higher education, science and innovation,” Rice President David Leebron said. “Rusty’s expertise will be especially invaluable as Rice expands its research

with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, also has an M.D. and a Ph.D. in physiolo gy, both from Duke University. He com pleted his residency and a clinical fel lowship in cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. “My Rice education was a great springboard for many aspects of my professional and personal life,” Williams said. “I am truly honored to serve on the Rice board.” Before Williams founded FivePrime in 2002, he served as chief scientiﬁc

Williams received the Basic Research Prize from the American Heart Association in 1997 — the same year he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ section on medical genetics, hematology and oncology for his con tributions to the understanding of the process of signal transduction in cells. Williams also serves on the boards of Juvaris BioTherapeutics, Beckman Coulter Inc. and Berklee College of Music. —B.J. Almond

Rice Magazine

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No. 12

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2012

Rice MBA Ranks in Top 20 Nationally Rice University’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) program is among the top 20 full-time MBA programs in the nation, according to new rankings from the Financial Times. In addition, the program at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business is still best in Texas and the Southwest. Last year, the pro gram ranked No. 21. “We are pleased with the continued recognition from publications such as Financial Times on the quality of our programs, students and faculty re search,” said Bill Glick, dean of the Jones School. “Considering the increase in ap plication volume, increasing selectivity and ongoing development and recruit ment of world-class faculty, I am very happy with the positive momentum in the rankings.” The Rice MBA Full-Time Program provides students with a comprehensive MBA learning experience that combines specialized course work and real-world experience to improve and amplify their strategy, leadership and creative creden tials. The program features innovative classes, expert faculty and a diverse group of candidates who often become colleagues for a lifetime. Unlike other rankings, the Financial Times also con siders alumni success three years post graduation. On this metric, Rice MBA alumni rank 16th in salary increase. —Amy Hodges

View the Financial Times rankings: ››› www.f t.com/home/us For information on Rice MBA programs, visit: ››› business.rice.edu

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Rice Among Princeton Review’s Top 5 Best-value Private Universities Rice University is one of the country’s top ﬁve best values among private schools for 2012, according to the Princeton Review’s newest rankings.

The rankings are based on data about the quality of academics, cost of attendance and financial aid, and student opinion surveys collected from 650 colleges and universi ties. During the past decade, Rice has been among the Princeton Review’s top 10 best values almost every year, and three times it has been the No. 1 best value. “Rice’s consistently high ranking on the best-value lists by the Princeton Review, Kiplinger and others reflects its success at keeping its high-quality education affordable and accessible to talented students from all backgrounds,” Rice President David Leebron said. “The word ‘value’ is important here because it encompasses not only our com paratively low tuition, generous student-aid programs and need-blind admission, but also the dedication of our faculty members and their personal engagement with our stu dents made possible by one of the lowest student–faculty ratios in the country.” The 2012 edition of the Princeton Review’s “The Best Value Colleges” notes that in addition to Rice’s “terrific financialaid policy,” the university offers a number of merit scholarships. “Even for students who receive no financial assistance, Rice remains one of the best values in higher education. With tuition set thousands of dollars lower than Ivy League and other peer institutions, Rice walks the walk of keeping the highest caliber of education affordable for all.” Rice admits students regardless of their

ability to pay and provides financial-aid packages that meet 100 percent of students’ demonstrated need. Since 2009, entering freshmen from families with incomes of up to $80,000 do not have to take out loans, and Rice has limited loans to no more than $10,000 for need-eligible incoming freshmen for their four undergraduate years. The Princeton Review refers to Rice as “one of the top universities of the nation” and notes that Rice “offers students the op portunity to develop a strong rapport with their professors, and the tier-one research institution offers robust and extensive op portunities for research and internships.” The profile notes that Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life by the Princeton Review three years in a row and is also currently ranked No. 1 for happiest students. In addition to Rice, the other private schools on the top five list are Williams College, Swarthmore College, Princeton University and Harvard College. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine has ranked Rice as its No. 4 best value among private schools four years in a row. —B.J. Almond

For more information on the Princeton Review rankings, visit: › › › ricemagazine.info/109

THROUGH THE

Sallyport

Her TIME Rice University alumna Virginia Moyer ’74, a high-profile professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, was named one of TIME magazine’s “People Who Mattered” in its “Person of the Year 2011” edition. The magazine cited her work as chairwoman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, first convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984 and responsible for providing rigorous, independent assess ments of a range of clinical preventive services. The panel is considered to be the “gold standard” for such recommendations and has far-reaching impact on decisions by Medicare, health insurers, clini cians and medical schools. TIME noted that in October the task force set off shock waves when it recommended healthy men do not need routine screen ings for prostate cancer. The findings followed five clinical trials that showed the tests, which measure levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood, not only do not save lives overall, but also put patients at risk of harm in the form of needless surgery, impotence and incontinence. “The fact is we considered it extremely carefully,” Moyer said. “We went over the data with a fine-tooth comb, and our conclusion was that the downsides of screening outweigh any potential benefits. I say that carefully because it is not clear that there is any benefit.” She noted that biopsies commonly show that what look like can cer cells under a microscope do not behave like cancer and perhaps should not be called cancer. She also said that two-thirds of men age 65–85 have cancerous cells in their prostates, and the vast majority of them will never be affected by it in their lifetimes. So finding it out is not going to benefit them. “Better tests would be most welcome,” she said. “If we could find a new biomarker for aggressive prostate cancer, that would be terrific.” Moyer said that credit for the recommendation should not be hers alone but belongs to the 16-mem ber panel of health professionals who look at many issues. “We have between 70 and 90 topics in our active list, some of which have not been revised in a while, and we have several new topics under way,” Moyer said. “Another that recently came out was a draft recommendation to counsel young people about exposure to ultraviolet light, to avoid skin cancer. Another had to do with falls and the elderly. “For all of us, our passion is getting the science right,” Moyer said. “We are not advocates, and that is what most significantly distinguishes the Preventive Services Task Force from other groups that are interested in prevention. The most important thing is to get it right and not promote preventative activi ties that might not be beneficial. One of the reasons is that they take time away from things we know are beneficial.” —Mike Williams

Shepherd School Alumna Gets Grammy American mezzo-soprano and Shepherd School of Music alumna Sasha Cooke ’04 received the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for her performance as Kitty Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic.” Praised in The New Yorker for her “fresh, vital portrayal, bring ing a luminous tone, a generously supported musical line, a keen sense of verbal nuance and a ﬂair for seduction,” Cooke has per formed at such famed venues as Carnegie Hall and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is the recipient of numerous professional awards and honors. Cooke earned a Bachelor of Music from Rice’s Shepherd School of Music, where she specialized in vocal performance. She also has a master’s degree from the Juilliard School.

Rice: A Scientific Powerhouse Rice University has been ranked No. 4 among the world’s top 500 universities for the quality and impact of its scientific publica tions, according to the Leiden Ranking 2011/2012, a product of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. The rankings are based on sci entific publication data from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database covering the years 2005–09 and are normal ized for university size. The rankings depend heav ily on the proportion of a uni versity’s presence in “top 10 percent” publications, defined as those most frequently cited, as well as collaborative indicators. The top-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology had just over a quarter of its publications in top 10 percent publications; Rice had 22.2 percent, fractions of a percentage point behind No. 2 Princeton and No. 3 Harvard. View the complete rankings: › › › ricemagazine.info/108

—Amy Hodges

Rice Magazine

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No. 12

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2012

In a study of the molecular underpinnings of plants’ pest resistance, Rice University biologists have shown that plants both anticipate daytime raids by hungry insects and make sophisticated preparations to fend them off.

Battling Bugs With Rhythm

“We found that the plants whose clocks were in phase with the insects were relatively resistant, whereas the plants whose clocks were out of phase were decimated by the insects feeding on them.” — Danielle Goodspeed

“When you walk past plants, they don’t look like they’re doing anything,” said Janet Braam, an investigator on the new study, which appeared this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s intriguing to see all of this activity down at the genetic level. It’s like watching a besieged fortress go on full alert.” Braam, professor and chair of Rice’s Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, said scientists have long known that plants have an internal clock that allows them to measure time regard less of light conditions. For example, some plants that track the sun with their leaves during the day are known to “reset” their leaves at night and move them back toward the east in anticipa tion of sunrise. In recent years, scientists have be gun to apply powerful genetic tools to the study of plant circadian rhythms. Researchers have found that as many as one-third of the genes in Arabidopsis thaliana — a widely studied species in plant biology — are activated by the cir cadian cycle. Rice biochemist Michael Covington found that some of these circadian-regulated genes were also connected to wounding responses. “We wondered whether some of these circadian-regulated genes might allow plants to anticipate attacks from insects, in much the same way that they anticipate the sunrise,” said Covington, now at the University of California, Davis. Danielle Goodspeed, a graduate student in biochemistry and cell biol ogy, designed a clever experiment to answer the question. She used 12-hour light cycles to entrain the circadian clocks of both Arabidopsis plants and cabbage loopers, a type of caterpillar that eats Arabidopsis. Half of the plants

were placed with caterpillars on a regular day-night cycle, and the other half were placed with “out-of-phase” caterpillars whose internal clocks were set to daytime mode during the hours that the plants were in nighttime mode. “We found that the plants whose clocks were in phase with the insects were relatively resistant, whereas the plants whose clocks were out of phase were decimated by the insects feeding on them,” Goodspeed said. Wassim Chehab, a Rice faculty fel low in biochemistry and cell biology, helped Goodspeed design a follow-up experiment to understand how plants used their internal clocks to resist in sect attacks. Chehab and Goodspeed examined the accumulation of the hor mone jasmonate, which plants use to regulate the production of metabolites that interfere with insect digestion. They found that Arabidopsis uses its circadian clock to increase jasmo nate production during the day, when insects like cabbage loopers feed the most. They also found that the plants used their internal clocks to regulate the production of other chemical de fenses, including those that protect against bacterial infections. “Jasmonate defenses are em ployed by virtually all plants, including tomatoes, rice and corn,” Chehab said. “Understanding how plants regulate these hormones could be important for understanding why some pests are more damaging than others, and it could help suggest new strategies for insect resistance.” The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and Rice University. Additional co-authors include Amelia Min-Venditti ’11. —Jade Boyd

Watch a video about this research: ›› › ricemagazine.info/111

THROUGH THE

Sallyport

Rice Launches Center for College Readiness Local school district administrators and Rice K–12 leaders gathered on campus in September for the launch of the Center for College Readiness, a division of the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Formerly known as Teacher Professional Development, the center was renamed to reﬂect the growing diversity of its K–12 outreach programs. With its ﬁrst teacher training in 1995, the Glasscock School began its journey to provide top-level programming to en sure teachers were properly prepared for the classroom experience. The school’s Advanced Placement Summer Institute has been offered 17 consecutive years and is now the largest such training in the na tion, attracting more than 2,200 AP teach ers this past summer. Over the years, the school has added training for International Baccalaureate teachers as well as programs for admin istrators, counselors and secondary stu dents. Other programs include extensive

two years. Of those who take remedial cours es in their ﬁrst year of college, only 17–39 per cent will earn a degree. “The research is incontrovertible,” Gigliotti said. “Rigorous course work in high school, such as AP and IB, better prepares students for postsecondary education and helps ensure that more students will successfully complete their university degrees.” The center will continue to offer its current AP and IB programming, she said, adding that Rice is the only institution offering training in both of the two major college-preparatory cur ricula. The center will offer speciﬁc new pro gramming that will focus on “closing equity

“We have so many ﬁne K–12 programs at Rice. With this new role, we look forward to working with them toward our shared goal of improved education in our community.” —Mary McIntire

training in American history, Chineselanguage teaching, a Global Education Certificate program, and customized dis trict work for teachers and administrators focused on building and sustaining suc cessful AP programs. To date, more than 30,000 educa tors and students from all 50 states and 37 countries have taken part in the pro grams. Since 2007, annual enrollments have increased 102 percent, now stand ing at more than 5,700. This growth and diversity necessitated the name change to Center for College Readiness. At the launch celebration, Jennifer Gigliotti, executive director of the center, said the programming “has and will con tinue to be centered on innovative strate gies and content to increase the college readiness of students.” Only 45 percent of students enrolled in postsecondary education will earn a bachelor’s degree, Gigliotti said, primarily because many students find it necessary to take remedial course work in their first

and achievement gaps among students, build ing a college-going culture, and supporting students as they navigate the path to college.” Also at the launch, George McLendon, Rice’s Howard R. Hughes Provost and profes sor of chemistry, announced that through the Center for College Readiness, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies would take a more central role in coordinating K–12 out reach efforts throughout the campus. “We have so many ﬁne K–12 programs at Rice,” said Mary McIntire, dean of Continuing Studies. “With this new role, we look forward to working with them toward our shared goal of improved education in our community.”

The UnConvention For 100 years, Rice faculty, researchers and students have believed that anything is possible — that drive, devotion and innovative thinking can turn ideas into achievements. We call it unconventional wisdom. Help us celebrate an unconventional cen tury at the UnConvention, a campuswide open house April 12–14. We’re inviting all of Houston to venture inside the hedges and explore Rice through tours, demonstrations, con certs, lectures, athletic events, art exhibits and more.

—Carol Hopkins

For details, visit For more information on the Center for College Readiness, visit:

›› › unconvention.rice.edu

››› www.collegeready.rice.edu ››› www.facebook.com/RiceCCR

Rice Magazine

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No. 12

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2012

Looks Do Matter

People with birthmarks, scars and other facial disﬁgurements are more

likely to receive poor ratings in job interviews, according to a new

study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Houston.

“Discrimination Against Facially Stigmatized Applicants in Interviews: An Eye-Tracking and Face-to-Face Investigation,” published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology, is one of the ﬁrst studies to examine how individuals with facial blemishes fare in job interviews. “When evaluating applicants in an in terview setting, it’s important to remember what they are saying,” said Mikki Hebl, Rice professor of psychology and management, who co-authored the paper with University of Houston assistant professor and Rice alum Juan Madera ’05. “Our research shows if you recall less information about competent can didates because you are distracted by charac teristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them.” The research included two studies, the ﬁrst of which involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated in terview while their eye activity was tracked. After the interview, they were asked to recall information about the candidate. “When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally di rected in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth,” Madera said. “We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidate’s inter view content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant.”

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

“Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them.” —Mikki Hebl

The second study involved face-to-face in terviews between candidates who had a facial birthmark and 38 full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing appli cants for their current or past staff positions. Despite the increase in age, experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera said. In fact, the effects of the stigma were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview set ting. “It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma,” Madera said. Both Hebl and Madera hope the research will raise awareness about this form of work place discrimination. “The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influ ence the success of an interview,” Hebl said. “There have been many studies showing that specific groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further by showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.” The study was funded by Rice University. —Amy Hodges

Watch a video of Professor Hebl talking about the research: › › › ricemagazine.info/107

THROUGH THE

Sallyport

Turning Math Into Music Standing in his office beside a white board scrawled with equations, Sean Hardesty lifted a violin to his shoulder and played the opening of the Sibelius Violin Concerto. His instrument has an angular, asymmetrical body painted black and red and was built of balsa wood and carbon-fiber laminates by a boat designer in Maine. In his Duncan Hall office, with the door closed, its sound is piercing and precise. “This is an experimental violin,” said Hardesty, a postdoctoral re search fellow and lecturer in computational and applied mathematics (CAAM). “It’s a work in progress, not a finished product. I think it sounds pretty good.” Hardesty distills sound to its mathematical essentials; he is work ing to design violins by applying the tools of optimization to shell structure acoustics.

For a decade he has been a regular participant in the acoustics workshops sponsored by the Violin Society of America (VSA) and has built a violin top using a mathematical model he devised and state of-the-art 3-D printing technology. During a recent VSA gathering at Oberlin College in Ohio, Hardesty played a Stradivarius, often judged the instrument’s sonic ideal. He noted that the Stradivarius violin known as “The Hammer,” which sold at auction for $3.54 million in 2006, was built in 1707, the year Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler was born. “You could eas ily be tempted to believe that violin making is one of those rare ﬁelds of human endeavor that has become drastically worse over the last 300 years,” he said. “But this view undervalues the best contemporary traditional makers and leaves nothing for the future.” Hardesty, like other avant-garde violin designers and builders, in tends to challenge the supremacy of the “Strad” and other traditionally

“Sean is working at the intersection of mathematics, music and materials. Speciﬁcally, he is developing mathematical and computational tools to model and ultimately design violins.” —Matthias Heinkenschloss

“Sean is working at the intersection of mathematics, music and materials,” said Matthias Heinkenschloss, professor and chair of CAAM and Hardesty’s former Ph.D. thesis adviser. “Speciﬁcally, he is developing mathematical and computational tools to model and ultimately design violins.” For Hardesty, the well-documented relations between music and mathematics have been a living fact since childhood. His family was casually musical. “My mother put a violin in my hands when I was 2 or 3 years old,” said Hardesty, who began taking lessons at age 5 and continued through high school, when he began thinking about the physics of musical instruments. “I realized in college,” he said, “that I was more interested in violin physics than in quantum physics.” Hardesty went on to earn his B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics in 2006 and 2010, re spectively, from Rice. From 2007 to 2009, Hardesty played viola with the Doctors Orchestra of Houston (now the Texas Medical Center Orchestra), and until 2011, he served as the group’s principal violist.

designed instruments. “With the violin, there isn’t a best sound,” he said. “It depends entirely on the taste and skill of the player.” Key to the sounds produced by a violin is the resonating top, or soundboard, which turns the energy of the vibrated strings into the instrument’s distinctive voice. Hardesty’s task is to turn a player’s subjective reactions to that sound into the mathematical essentials that produced it. “Every instrument is different,” said Hardesty, who would like to customize instruments to the precise tastes of their owners. “You al ways get something, and then you lose something. Most professional players end up making trade-offs, one quality for another.” At the opposite end of the skill spectrum, Hardesty also foresees designing and manufacturing inexpensive but comparably sophisti cated violins for students just beginning their studies. “I would really like to make it possible for more people to play the violin and to play it well and produce a good sound,” he said. “I know how much pleasure I’ve derived from making music and listening to it all my life.” —Patrick Kurp

Watch Sean Hardesty discuss his work: ›› › ricemagazine.info/106 —

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CAREER Winners National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards support the research and educational development of young scholars expected to become leaders in their ﬁelds. With only about 400 per year given out across all disciplines, the grants are among the most competitive NSF awards, and so far this year, three are from Rice.

Bridging the Gap

Imagining Better Imaging

Mathematics and Mentoring

When Amina Qutub turned her attention from the chemistry of oil to the myster ies of the brain, she liked what she saw. An assistant professor of bioengineering, Qutub is working to understand brain processes using methods that bridge the gap between computational biology and clinical application. Her research may lead to new treatments for victims of stroke and neurodegenerative diseases. Qutub’s research has progressed from work to understand the bloodbrain barrier to a focus on the way the body responds to hypoxia — or lack of oxygen. With her computational background, she’s uniquely positioned to look at the way brain cells behave when they lack oxygen, such as after strokes or during neurodegeneration. The goal is to know how cells process information and to learn to direct how they make decisions, especially under stressful conditions like hypoxia. “We want to know what makes cells more responsive so they can be more vi able under hypoxic conditions,” Qutub said. “In the case of a stroke, for in stance, we might learn to regrow areas of the brain.”

How molecules get from here to there in vari ous environments is a fundamental question Rice University chemist Christy Landes would love to answer. Now Landes, the Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator and an assistant professor of chemistry, will get the chance to do so with the help of the National Science Foundation CAREER grant. Landes and her group will develop state of-the-art single-molecule spectroscopic techniques to help researchers understand and control the transport of molecules across charged polymer membranes, particularly at water/membrane interfaces. The work has implications for energy and water puriﬁcation applications. It’s also a departure from the biomolecular research for which Landes is already known. Last year, she imaged protein-binding process es using a unique mathematics tool developed at Rice for a project that advanced research into memory, learning, and the roots of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and stroke. She said the project is perfectly suited for Rice because it involves chemistry, physics, materials science, environmental science and applied mathematics. “I’m interested in lots of things,” Landes said, “and I like my students to learn in an interdisciplinary environment.”

Danijela Damjanovic liked numbers from an early age, and mathematics felt like a natural choice for a career. It wasn’t a conventional choice for a young woman, and often she was the only woman in her classes. Now, she wants to use her CAREER Award to help young women who might want to become mathemati cians as well as to support her research and teaching. Damjanovic studies dynamical sys tems — objects together with their evolu tion in time. “One of the main goals is to understand not only the current state of the objects under consideration, but also past and future behavior,” she said. “Does a small perturbation of that system mimic the behavior of the simple system?” Damjanovic asked. “Or, after a perturba tion, do new phenomena arise?” Each spring, Damjanovic plans to offer a semester-long extracurricular science course for high school women that lets them work together on prob lems and projects and gives them a chance to interact with women who have built prominent careers in math and science.

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGH THE

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Examining Motherly Fears Neighborhood poverty is likely to make a mother more fearful about letting her children play outdoors, according to a new study by sociologists at Rice University and Stanford University. “It’s no secret that children play outdoors less now than in recent decades, and research shows maternal fear as one reason why,” said Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Rice assistant professor of sociology. Her paper on the subject, co-authored by Ariela Schachter, a Ph.D. student in sociology at Stanford, appeared in the journal Family Relations. “This study addresses reasons why mothers do or do not let their children play outside,” Kimbro said. Kimbro and Schachter theorize that a mother’s fear of her child playing outside is a major component of her decisions re garding the child’s free playtime. They tested maternal, household and neighborhood characteristics that may be related to maternal fear and discovered the following: • A mother’s household economic status, education, employment and physical/mental health all influence maternal fear. • Perception of a neighborhood’s collective efficacy (shared values and goals, social support) is associated with maternal fear. Mothers who believe they live in neighborhoods with shared values and goals are less likely to be fearful of their child playing outdoors, and vice versa. • Poverty and the percentage of blacks in a neighborhood are associated with increased maternal fear. “It’s not entirely surprising that poverty aligns with greater maternal fear,” Kimbro said. “When considering the characteris tics associated with many impoverished neighborhoods — lack of playgrounds, good sidewalks and the potential for crime — it makes sense that mothers might be more fearful.” Kimbro said that, contrary to what one might expect, mothers are more concerned with issues of social support than crime rates. “The fear of children playing outside is not completely rational,” she said. “You might think that a logical response is to keep your child inside when crime rates are higher, but our research shows that factors closer to the mother, such as how she feels about her neighbors, are more likely to influence her feelings of fear. “Children’s outdoor play is an important indicator of overall healthy development,” Kimbro said. Although neighborhood pov erty strongly influences maternal fear, mothers of sound mental health living in impoverished areas are less likely to be fearful of their children playing outside. Our results suggest that efforts to minimize depression among mothers living in poverty could have significant, positive impacts on parenting behaviors and particu larly in the promotion of children’s outdoor play.” The study, “Neighborhood Poverty and Maternal Fears of Children’s Outdoor Play,” is the third paper to come from Kimbro’s broader research project exploring the links between neighbor hoods and children’s outdoor play using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. The research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its national program, Active Living Research. Additional support for the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and a consor tium of private foundations.

“You might think that a logical response is to keep your child inside when crime rates are higher, but our research shows that factors closer to the mother, such as how she feels about her neighbors, are more likely to inﬂuence her feelings of fear.” — Rachel Tolbert Kimbro

—Amy Hodges

Read the study: ››› ricemagazine.info/112

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The Demographics of Islamic Terrorist Detainees

Sixty percent of people arrested for Islamic terrorist activities between January 2009 and April 2011 were American citizens, according to a new report from Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The study of 104 people who were arrested included U.S. and non-U.S. citizens living in America or abroad. The report, “Analyzing the Islamic Extremist Phenomenon in the United States: A Study of Recent Activity,” was authored by Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow in homeland security and terrorism at the Baker Institute. Jessica Phillips, an intern with the Baker Institute’s homeland security and terrorism program, provided re search support for the study. Using data from international and U.S. news reports, general Internet media, pub lic records and ofﬁcial court documents, the researchers set out in November 2010 to analyze information on the status of Islamic extremism in the United States. They also looked at some of the unanswered questions raised by U.S. Rep. Peter King’s Committee on Homeland Security hearing, “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Community’s Response.” King, R-N.Y., and chairman of the committee, held the hearing March 10, 2011. “Providing policymakers this data can allow for a factual discussion and di minish rhetoric,” Neuhaus Schaan said. “Consequently, policy can be crafted to ad dress current and future needs in the face of change and adaptation by those determined to bring harm to the United States.” Information on birthplaces and conver sion to Islam was available for 77 of the 104 people arrested. The data revealed that 60 percent of the group was born outside the U.S. Of the 31 U.S.-born persons where reli gion of origin could be determined, 14 were born into Muslim families and 17 converted to Islam.

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Other key ﬁndings from the report include: • Of those for whom birthplace data was available, half were born in the U.S., 22 percent were naturalized citi zens and 7 percent were dual citizens. • Of the 104, 5 percent entered the U.S. on a visa. • Of those who converted to Islam, 63 percent had a known prior criminal record. • Of the 14 American converts with a prior criminal history, at least 55 per cent had converted to Islam in prison. • Ninety-two percent were male. • Sixty-four percent were 30 years old or younger. • Sixty-six percent had traveled or were in the process of traveling to the Middle East, Somalia, South Asia or the Balkans. • Of the 104, 70 percent had an as sociation or were attempting an association with an internationally recognized terrorist organization; al-Qaida and its associated branches were cited most.

• Of the 29 persons with no known association to a group, 11 had been active on terrorist-related chat rooms and websites. • Overall, 38 percent had been involved in this type of Internet activity. • Only 10 of the 104 are what the au thors would consider “lone wolves”; most in the cohort had ties to others in the group or to an organization. “The Internet and prison conversion are the two biggest new trends that policymak ers need to look at more closely,” Neuhaus Schaan said. “We’ve seen a major change in how people become associated with ex tremist groups in the past 20 years, and we need to adapt.” The report concludes that approximately two-thirds of those involved in extremist activity are men under the age of 34, and no single, all-encompassing proﬁle can be made of the analysis group of 104. Neuhaus Schaan said that the Baker Institute will con tinue to compile data and issue an updated report annually. —David Ruth

Read the report: ›› › ricemagazine.info/114

THROUGH THE

What Was Rice’s First Building?

Making Connexions Free textbooks might seem like a mirage to most college students and their parents, but the Rice University-based open-education platform Connexions is striving to make them a reality. A group of California community colleges and open-education advocates have an nounced a partnership with Connexions and the California-based 20 Million Minds Foundation. The partnership will enable new course materials developed with a $20 million federal stimulus grant to be available free online for any educator to use, modify and tailor for their own needs. The Central California Community Colleges Committed to Change (C6) Consortium won the federal grant to create a comprehensive “turnkey” set of course mate rials for students in allied health and nursing, clean technology, and agricultural occupa tions. The grant — part of the $500 million Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program administered by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education — speciﬁes that all materials must be created under an open-copyright standard known as the Creative Commons’ Attribution license, or CC BY. “Our streamlined approach makes it fast er and easier to develop high-quality CC BY content for high-enrollment courses,” said Dean Florez, president of the California-based

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20 Million Minds Foundation. “We’re going to share C6’s nationally leading approach with other TAACCCT grantees in Washington. A common standard — particularly one that speeds up the process like this one — can make us all more effective.” Connexions, founded in 1999, maintains an online repository of more than 20,000 free lessons — all created under the CC BY license. Connexions’ materials are accessed by more than 1 million people each month. The 20 Million Minds Foundation has been an open-source proponent and is set to man age this unique assignment. “By partnering with Connexions, the C6 Consortium is ensuring that its new courses will have a signiﬁcant impact both inside and outside of California,” said Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of Connexions and Rice’s Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Through Connexions, students in every U.S. state and in more than 200 countries will be able to download free digital versions of the C6 material on any device, in any for mat and at any time.”

Connexions, founded in 1999, maintains an online repository of more than 20,000 free lessons — all created under the CC BY license. Connexions’ materials are accessed by more than 1 million people each month.

—Jade Boyd

With Rice University’s 100th birthday rapidly ap proaching, Centennial Historian Melissa Kean has uncovered a little-known fact: Rice’s iconic Lovett Hall, one of the most photographed buildings in the city, wasn’t actually Rice’s first building. Working with Kean, Rice video producer Brandon Martin set the record straight about Rice’s first building, which was a pier-and-beam structure located in downtown Houston. Lovett Hall was the first building on the campus at 6100 Main St. To help celebrate the university’s centen nial Oct. 12, Rice University is producing weekly videos exploring the school’s unique history. The centennial videos run through Oct. 12. Read Melissa Kean’s blog: ›› › www.ricehistorycorner.com Watch the video: ›› › ricemagazine.info/113

Celebrate Rice in Istanbul To shape his vision for Rice, Edgar Odell Lovett journeyed as far as Constantinople, known today as Istanbul, Turkey. On June 8–10, you can relive Lovett’s historic voyage and continue his spirit of exploration. We invite you to join us for Celebrate Rice — Istanbul, an exciting weekend of cultural immersion and education that serves as a prelude to the Centennial Celebration in October. •

Participate in the university’s ﬁrst-ever Alumni College abroad, featuring a distinguished panel of speakers from Rice.

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Visit the palaces of great empires and battle grounds that shaped the world.

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Browse lively city markets and savor the tradi tional tastes of Ottoman cuisine.

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Take alternative city tours and boat cruises along the Bosphorus Strait.

Don’t pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience Istanbul with alumni and friends during this historic year for Rice. For more information: ›› › alumni.rice.edu/istanbulcentennial

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An Android for Asthma Sufferers MobileSpiro, a portable device Rice students designed to measure lung capacity in children with asthma, is winning competitions as well as the hearts of children. Created by a team of Baker College sophomores Peter Chang and Hasitha Dharmasiri, Lovett College junior Nonso Anyigbo and alumnus Sid Gupta ’07 under the auspices of the George R. Brown School of Engineering’s Scalable Health Initiative, mobileSpiro is designed to make it simple for asthma sufferers to self-test their lung capacity, as many are required to do daily. Typically, lung capacity is tested by a spirometer in a doctor’s office. Spirometers are widely used to measure the volume of air inhaled and exhaled, but commercially available devices are ex pensive, all costing more than $500, according to the Rice team. The team priced component costs for its version at no more than $100 when the parts are manufactured in large quantities, with results almost as accurate as a lab spirometer. Last spring, the students paired their spirometer with the work of a Rice team that developed a game, “Azmo the Dragon,” in tended to make it fun for children who suffer from asthma to check their lung capacity, as many are required to do daily. The program finished third in the Game Design category at Microsoft’s highprofile Imagine Cup. Though the Azmo game ran on Windows Mobile phones, mo bileSpiro employs the Android platform for smartphones. The goal

interested in health care and technology, so it’s rewarding to work on this project and apply what I’ve learned in my courses.” Chang said the team spent a lot of time at the beginning getting up to speed on the health care issues involved. “The ﬁrst stage was looking through the literature and talking to doctors to see what was out there and what problems we could solve by merging or creating technology,” he said. The team found that spirometers typically require a doctor or technician to be present. “We developed automated error-detection algorithms to ensure the patient is doing the test correctly,” Chang said. Such tests require a patient to breathe as deeply as possible and then exhale with maximum effort. The ideal test would be one continuous cycle, with no coughing, hesitation or other interruption that could skew the results. What young patients will ultimately experience is a game that will be fun to play, perhaps even with other asthma sufferers over a social network. It also may someday give researchers hooks into a stream of data that could prove valuable in many ways, not only about groups of patients, but also about environmental conditions in a region. The team presented mobileSpiro at mHealthSys 2011, an inter national workshop on mobile systems, applications and services for health care held in Seattle in November. It was among six academic teams to present and seven to demonstrate their devices for judges. They ﬁnished second in the paper competition. Chang and Dharmasiri attended the event. Ashutosh Sabharwal, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the team’s faculty mentor, said mobileSpiro is ex pected to begin clinical trials this spring. —Mike Williams

Watch a video about mobileSpiro: ›› › ricemagazine.info/115

Learn more about the Scalable Health Initiative: ›› › sh.rice.edu

From left, Hasitha Dharmasiri and Peter Chang with Gaurav Patel, Wireless Open-Access Research Platform project manager and mobileSpiro mentor

is to make mobileSpiro and its associated hardware accessible and easy to use for self-testing and as a remote monitor that lets clini cians keep an eye on their patients between ofﬁce visits. One component that makes it special is a Bluetooth transmitter that sends results to the Android device for capture and analysis, but the students are equally excited about their open source code. “The thing I love about this project is, ﬁrst, its applicability — the fact that it’s really getting out there and a lot of people have expressed an interest,” said Chang, a computer science major. “I’ve always been

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Students

Thinking Outside the Box Although only the size of a small office, Rice’s appropriately named Matchbox Gallery has already had a substantial impact on the student population. The only gallery on campus that is managed by students, the space showcases art by Houston-based artists and local students. Matchbox director and Rice senior Elliott SoRelle listed one of his main goals for the space as exposure of interesting works — works that are not necessarily by artists from a specific major. “Dolly Li, the gallery’s assistant director, and I have done as much as we can to reach out to more Rice students who are not art majors,” said SoRelle, who also is not, strictly speak ing, an artist by trade — he is a double major in visual and dramatic arts and biochemistry and cell biology and plans to attend graduate school in biophysics next year. “Matchbox Gallery is unique because it “Honestly, there is nothing like Matchbox is student-run — the faculty and staff on campus,” said Li, a senior majoring in eco get out of the way as much as possible.” nomics and visual and dramatic arts. “This is the first art gallery that has had such a close — John Sparagana connection to the student body.” Matchbox Gallery — located in Sewall Hall, Room 258, and visible through the courtyard windows — is now in its third year of opera tion. Because student directors change every fall, John Sparagana, professor and chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, said that each year has had a different feel to it as each director brings his or her personality to the table. “Matchbox Gallery is unique because it is student-run — the faculty and staff get out of the way as much as possible,” said Sparagana. “Because of this, the student director or directors significantly influence the tenor of the exhibition series in a given year. But the initial vision of Matchbox as a small, fluid, active space in which a range of types of exhibitions can take place remains the same.” SoRelle agrees that, although he and Li sometimes ask for Sparagana’s insight on a show, the student directors have had the chance to truly make the gallery their own. “The staff helps out, but most decisions are made by us. It’s nice to have autonomy, but we also have help when we need it,” said SoRelle. In fall 2011, SoRelle and Li concentrated on collaborative exhibits, such as their own “Repurposed,” which was the first show of the academic year. This in novative exhibition featured recycled materials collected from students and recy cling areas around campus to engage the floor space, and recycled photographic works that were removed from their original contexts were joined together in new ways and suspended from the ceiling to engage the air space. The directors also are proud of the number of people attending exhibit open ings. “We’ve been very happy with the support the Rice community has given us this year. We believe Matchbox is finally getting some of the attention it deserves as a student-run art space,” said Li. One of the perks of the small Matchbox space is the courtyard right outside its French doors. “Matchbox has really utilized that area,” said Sparagana. At art open ings, they have KTRU DJs and refreshments to help make it a social space. Spectators may even watch from the balconies above. “Since the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts is spread out, it’s nice to have a place where students coalesce.” SoRelle said that the gallery directors are interested in collaboration as well as in expanding farther beyond the walls of the gallery. In spring 2012, a Shepherd School music student will conduct her recital in the courtyard. SoRelle and Li are looking for an artist whose work will complement the music. On pace to feature a total of seven exhibitions this academic year, SoRelle and Li are excited to be growing the program from previous years’ five or six exhibits and want to hear new ideas for the space. —Jenny West Rozelle

Learn more: ›› › www.matchbox.rice.edu

“Dolly Li, the gallery’s assistant director, and I have done as much as we can to reach out to more Rice students who are not art majors.” — Elliott SoRelle

Rice Intern Helps Introduce the U.S. to Students Around the World Many students around the world are interested in learning about the United States, even if they aren’t planning to visit. In 2009, the U.S. State Department launched the Virtual Student Foreign Service program as a way to connect people in countries across the globe without the cost or the safety issues of travel. As an eIntern for the program, Rice junior Marc Sabbagh created and coordinated the schedule for an eight-part lecture series aimed at students in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The lectures featured professors from Rice, the University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M University and other U.S. colleg es explaining elements of American history. “I believe it provided a unique oppor tunity for these students to essentially ‘sit in’ on a college classroom lecture, even though they were participating miles away,” Sabbagh said. “Students learned about spe ciﬁc periods of conﬂict in U.S. history and had the chance to ask questions and discuss these topics in depth with the professors.” Two of the e-lectures were delivered by Rice historians. Alexander Byrd, as sociate professor of history and director of the undergraduate program, discussed African-American life in the Jim Crow South through the lens of Norfolk, Va.; and

Allen Matusow, academic affairs director at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History, spoke on the U.S. la bor movement in the 1930s. “It was a strange experience, staring at a screen that showed only my picture and

encouraged more professing than I’m or dinarily comfortable with,” he said. “The Q-and-A that followed the lecture, though, was as dynamic as any classroom. It was a great pleasure to ﬁeld questions based on the lecture in particular (a recapitulation of Earl Lewis’ ﬁne work on Jim Crow Norfolk) and on black life in the United States in gen eral. I’m grateful to Marc for the opportunity and for his initiative.” Sabbagh’s internship was with the U.S. Embassy in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. But the e-lectures were also webcast to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. About 60 university students from the three countries participated in the weekly lectures. “My favorite part of every presentation was seeing the questions from the students appear on the screen in our Web room one

“My favorite part of every presentation was seeing the questions from the students appear on the screen in our Web room one after the other and seeing the professors respond enthusiastically to the students’ input and questions.” —Marc Sabbagh

lecturing to unseen students in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia about the Great Depression,” Matusow said. “I didn’t know if anything I said got beyond the barriers of space and culture, but when I got their questions, I knew they had heard me and understood. That was gratifying.” Byrd agreed that the format of talking into a computer was a little disconcerting. “Not being able to see ‘my students’

after the other and seeing the professors re spond enthusiastically to the students’ input and questions,” Sabbagh said. Sabbagh also works as an intern for the office of Edward Djerejian, the founding ofﬁce director of the Baker Institute. “My “My student internship at the Baker Institute Institute and my past experiences with programs programs at the institute taught me the importance importance of public diplomacy and that cultural engagement engagement is a two-way street,” Sabbagh said. “Just “Just as these students learn that our country country has faced periods of trials and confl conﬂict, ict, I am am learning about their culture, educational experiences, experiences, backgrounds and interests.” Sabbagh said he is currently working working on renewing the lecture series this this semester, with discussions involving the the students and their respective embassies. embassies. — Franz Brotzen —Franz

(L– R) Allen Matusow, Marc Sabbagh and Alexander Byrd 16

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Students

(L– R) Gavin Dillingham, Rowan Canter and Bob Stein

Owls Help HISD Kick Off Sustainability Initiative

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) recently kicked off a new sustainability initiative, thanks to help from some Rice Owls. Senior Rowan Canter spent the last months of 2011 as a Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) fellow. During his fellowship, he worked directly with HISD to develop a sus tainable energy model for the Green School Challenge, a school competition designed to promote long-term behavioral changes, cre ate awareness, reduce energy consumption and water usage, and increase single-stream recycling of waste. Canter became involved with the project thanks to Bob Stein, the Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science and faculty di rector of the CCE. The project was a natural ﬁt for Canter, who is majoring in political sci ence and environmental policy studies with a minor in sustainability. “I went to Professor Stein and told him I wanted to do some po litical science research for the summer, and I told him my interest was in sustainability,” he said. “Luckily, he’d just gotten this request and passed it on to me.” Canter then submitted a proposal to the CCE and was accepted to work on the proj ect. “Rowan was an ideal student to work with,” Stein said. “Not only did he have the analytic, computational, oral and written skills needed to undertake this project, but he really has a dramatic interest in this.”

“We believe that taking simple steps in the way we operate our schools will result in signiﬁcant savings for the district — savings that can be used to further improve our schools.” —Gavin Dillingham

Stein also lauded Canter’s work ethic. “He did an extensive amount of research and showed the tenacity and persistence to get the information he needed,” Stein said. “He really began to appreciate what the administrators, teachers and students confronted by engaging in this type of sus tainable behavior.” Over the course of the project, Canter worked under the supervision of Gavin Dillingham, HISD’s energy manager and a 2004 Rice alum. Together, they worked to develop the model by evaluating a number of variables of buildings throughout the dis trict to predict what their energy consump tion should be. The model is the first of its kind for the HISD, developed specifically for the region’s climate. “We believe that taking simple steps in the way we operate our schools will result in significant savings for the district — sav ings that can be used to further improve our schools,” Dillingham said. Stephanie Post, executive director of the CCE, said this endeavor has been a perfect example of the types of experiences they try to coordinate for students. “This is exactly the kind of outcome we envision for these projects,” she said. “The result is something tangible the partner can use and a wonder ful experience for the students.” —Amy Hodges

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No. 12

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B Y

DAVID

LEEBRON

On reading the speech that President Edgar Odell Lovett gave on “The Meaning of the New Institution” a century ago this coming October, one of the surprising things to me is the emphasis on art and beauty. Surprising for three possible reasons. First, Lovett himself had been a professor of astronomy and math ematics and was of a fairly practical bent. Second, as he himself acknowledged, Rice began with an emphasis on science and engineering because, in Lovett’s view, that’s what Houston needed then. And finally, certainly through its first half century or more, the Rice Institute became known primarily for its strength in those fields. But Lovett’s insistence on the importance of the arts is pervasive. At the end of his remarks, he devoted himself to the “spirit” of the university and spoke of the tripartite division of letters (or literature), science and art. He wrote: Led by an instinct for knowledge, an instinct for harmony, an in stinct for law, that [human] spirit has brought the twentieth century its most precious possessions: the love of reason, the love of art, the love of freedom. In the following sentence, Lovett proclaims that “the man has not arisen to say to us which [of science, letters or art] is the greatest of the three.” And in the penultimate paragraph of his speech: Under her ancient promise, may Pallas Athena preside over these academic groves and guide men by the spirit of science and the spirit of art and the spirit of service in their search for the great, and the lovely, and the new, for solutions of the universe in terms of the good, the beautiful, and the true! One cannot in a short essay capture the importance of the arts to the university. For some, the arts represent different and complementary ways of understanding and thinking than the sciences. Lovett said, for example, that “science progresses by inquiry, art under inspiration.” Others have drawn ad ditional contrasts. The early 20th-century artist Georges Braque noted, “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.” And the 19th-century French physiologist Claude Bernard saw a fundamental difference between art and science: “Art is I; science is we.” And yet others have seen a complementarity — or even an identity — in the ways of thinking in art and science. Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, stated, “The kind of creative process that generates on the one hand poetry ... is also that which operates in the context of science.” Others have stressed the importance of beauty in both science and art. In a similar vein, Buckminster Fuller wrote: “When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” And so, perhaps nowhere more than Rice, should we draw the connection between art and beauty on the one hand and scientific creativity and insight on the other. It was reportedly an inspiration from Fuller’s geodesic dome structure that in part led Robert Curl, Richard Smalley and Harold Kroto to propose a nearly identical structure for carbon 60 and thus laid the foundations for nano technology. The structures of nature are also the structures of art — that is to say, human imagination, inspiration and creativity. Jean Cocteau asserted, “Art is science made clear.” A sense of aesthetics underlies physics and mathematics just as much as it underlies art.

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A Place

Art at Rice, however, was not to be a mere adjunct to other instruction. On the eve of the institute’s opening ceremonies, a dinner was held in the residential hall. There were toasts and speakers and a speaker on each of the fundamental disciplines. Rice’s architect, Ralph Adams Cram, spoke on the subject of art: Art becomes, not an accessory, but an essential, and as such it must be made an integral portion of every scheme of higher education. A college ... cannot do without the best of every art in its material form, and in the cultural inﬂuences it brings to bear upon those committed to its charge, nor can it play its full part in their training and the development of their character un less, out of the history of art, it builds a philosophy of art that is not for the embellishment of the specialist, but for all. Lovett and Cram understood, at a very profound level, that the purpose of the university is to foster our humanity. Art is one of the fundamental forms of human expression, communication and understanding. Our responsibility at universities, in teaching the problem-solvers of the future, is to foster the greatest possible creativity and imagination in our stu dents, and to imbue in them an appreciation for the human spirit. This cannot be achieved without some appreciation of art. We do that through multiple

for pathways: through the public art on the campus that has grown so dra matically in recent years, through personal creativity by participation in our visual arts program, by encouraging engagement with our nearby museums through the Passport to Houston, by studying art under our wide-ranging art history faculty and even just by interacting daily with other students who may be more artistically inclined. Lovett’s ambitions for the arts at Rice reached even further, and he noted in his opening address the planned future location for a School of Fine Arts to the left of Founder’s Court. Although Lovett did not write specifically about campus art, he stressed the importance of the physical campus and its beauty, whether in its trees, paths or buildings. It is altogether fitting that this fall Lovett will get his own piece of art, a statue by sculptor Bruce Wolfe, to be located in front of Keck Hall. On the side of Lovett Hall are marble tablets celebrating the different disciplines. The tablet for art is below the head of Leonardo da Vinci, and on it is inscribed an apparent variation on a quote attributed to the ancient Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (and quoted by Robert Kennedy on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination): “The chief function of art is to make gentle the life of the world.” Each of us may have a different definition of what constitutes art and what its function ought to be. But we can agree with Lovett that it lies, indispensably, in the core spirit of the university.

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From top: Geoff Winningham and Karin Broker

T H E

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P H OTO G R A P H Y BY TO M MY L AV ERG N E

To the outside world, Rice has always been decidedly left-brained. It’s a university best known for work done in a lab, not at an easel or in a studio. But the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA) may eventually give science and engineering some competition by raising its profile, expanding its oncampus presence and making substantial contributions to the arts in Houston.

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John Sparagana, professor of painting and drawing and VADA department chair, believes it is prime time for art students and faculty. “We’re just exploding in terms of activity on campus,” Sparagana said, “and with interactions with other institu tions around town.” More than ever, VADA programs offer students the chance to sample the life of a working artist. Art majors still develop their skills and learn how to produce solid work. But at the same time, they learn what it is to become an artist in the 21st century — and they get a taste of what it takes to launch a career.

ach spring, the Mavis C. Pitman Fellowship gives a handful of students the funding to create a group art exhibition from scratch: They create a body of work, then curate, display and promote it. In the process, fellows get a glimpse of art careers from every angle. Newer opportunities give students the same sort of career experience. The Matchbox Gallery, a small exhibit space that opened in 2009, showcases student art. This gallery, just off the Sewall Hall courtyard, belongs to the students; they fill, curate and manage it. (See story about the Matchbox Gallery, Page 15.) And last fall, an exhibit on the Rice Media Center’s second floor displayed students’ work from Professor of Visual Arts Karin Broker’s intermediate drawing class. The class — which Broker called an “exhibition lab” — had six members, all women. Together they named the exhibit “Girls on Top” because the class met on the top floor of Sewall Hall and their work was shown on the upper level of the Rice Media Center. Their roughly 4-by-5-foot drawings were hung throughout the second floor, with fresh work rotating in throughout the semester. The students were given limited time to produce each work, a process that required competence and efficiency, and the

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warts-and-all exhibit rotation revealed their development as artists. Art at Rice stretches beyond the cam pus, too: VADA is reaching out to build partnerships with patrons and organizations throughout Houston. “It’s such an interesting art scene in Houston,” Sparagana said. “We feel like part of our mission is to bring that art scene onto campus and also place our students out there in the community.” Students also beneﬁt from a collabora tive teaching partnership with the Museum

VADA also is beginning to offer exhibitions and programming that draw people to the campus from Greater Houston. A number of successful VADA film se ries, including an Iranian film festival last spring and a Mexican film festival in the fall, have brought in a variety of audiences. Last November, the Festival of Contemporary Films From India introduced viewers to a half-dozen films that fall outside both the Indian art house and Bollywood traditions. And later the same month, Chilean direc

“It’s such an interesting art scene in Houston. We feel like part of our mission is to bring that art scene onto campus and also place our students out there in the community.” — John Sparagana

of Fine Arts, Houston. The museum se lects artists for one-year residencies in the esteemed Core Program, which attracts outstanding young artists on the verge of launching their careers. While they are com pleting their residencies, Core fellows teach several Rice art classes. Students get to learn from artists with varied backgrounds and stellar skills — and now, Sparagana said, they’re beginning to work with Core fel lows on their projects, including the Project Row Houses effort in Houston’s Third Ward.

tor Patricio Guzmán attended screenings of three of his films on campus, engaging in discussions with the audiences afterward. A partnership with HoustonPBS/Channel 8 draws in a more general film audience; each month, the HoustonPBS Community Cinema Series offers free screenings of inde pendent films scheduled to air on PBS. But the attractions go beyond film. Last February, VADA — along with Rice’s Humanities Research Center, the Office of the Dean of Humanities and the Rice Public

Art Program — helped bring part of the Black List Project, a photo exhibit that fea tured prominent African-Americans, to cam pus. And a little more than a year ago, VADA teamed with the HERE Project (Houston Enriches Rice Education) to offer a quilt ex hibition that explored the roles and experi ences of women.

“We’re also becoming more focused about the exhibitions in the Media Center,” Sparagana said. The Rice Media Center has a bright, wood-ﬂoored open space at its core that holds a rotating schedule of exhibits. Last fall, the Media Center’s main gallery was ﬁlled with posters and album covers that examined the work of two painters —

Visitors can ﬁnd plenty of art in Sewall Hall, even besides the Rice Art Gallery and the Matchbox Gallery. The newest addition is the EMERGEncy Room Gallery on Sewall’s fourth ﬂoor — a small space devoted to work from emerging Houston-area artists.

Attracting art lovers to campus is a mat ter of making art on campus more visible to Rice and the larger community alike, Sparagana said. VADA has ramped up its art exhibits, expanding its gallery space — there’s simply more to see now on campus. Visitors can ﬁnd plenty of art in Sewall Hall, even besides the Rice Art Gallery and the Matchbox Gallery. The newest addition is the EMERGEncy Room Gallery on Sewall’s

fourth ﬂoor — a small space devoted to work from emerging Houston-area artists. Twice a semester, a new artist arrives to show his or her work, offer a public lecture and critique art students’ work. “Whenever possible, we try to pig gyback on Rice Gallery exhibition openings,” said Christopher Sperandio, the assistant professor of visual and dra matic arts who created the EMERGEncy Room. “They already do a great job of bringing the Houston arts community to campus.” The entire department has embraced the goal of bringing more art lovers to Rice.

Albert Oehlen and Christopher Wool — and the intersection of music and art. In fall 2012, a Media Center exhibit will remind us all of VADA’s roots: The exhibit will commemorate the ear ly years of the famed Menil Collection, when John and Dominique de Menil’s as semblage of artwork was stored and displayed at

Rice and known as the Rice Collection. It’s good timing for a commemorative show be cause, as Rice celebrates its centennial, the Menil Collection will celebrate the 25th anni versary of its Renzo Piano-designed museum just a few blocks away. “We thought it would be a good mo ment to bring those two things together,” Sparagana said. After all, the de Menils brought art to Rice. They financed the uni versity’s early art programming and built the Rice Media Center. That building, with its open floor space and a loft for faculty of fices, was designed to be a temporary home on campus for art, photography and film.

More than 40 years later, it’s still in use. Today, VADA classes are taught in three buildings — Sewall Hall, Hamman Hall and the Rice Media Center — that are distant enough to discourage interaction among farﬂung students and faculty. A new facility has been a dream for years among art faculty and students. That dream might soon be come reality. The university is considering a new visual and performing arts building that could accommodate the entire department, from studio space to a performance hall. Rice President David Leebron, in his October State of the University speech, called for Rice to “increase our commitment to the arts” — and he announced that fund ing has been set aside for preliminary stud ies on a new art building. Another possibility for the future: a Master of Fine Arts program, which would

allow the art department to become a conservatory. “There is a need for a really ex ceptional Master of Fine Arts program in Texas,” Sparagana said, “and the circum stances are right for that to happen here.” Those possibilities are at least a few years away, but VADA is laying the ground work now to make Rice a real arts center. Already, the Rice Public Art Program has boosted the profile of art on campus. “It is opening people’s eyes to what art can do for the university in terms of its international reputation,” Sparagana said. Now VADA — with new gallery space, strong partnerships and the potential for future growth — is poised to raise its profile. “We’re looking at a flowering of the arts at Rice.”

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Brian Huberman When Brian Huberman arrived at Rice to teach filmmaking in 1975, no one knew that students would soon have video cameras built into their cell phones and that anyone with a camera would be able to post videos on YouTube for the world to discover. “I used to joke: ‘Well, you’ll make better home movies if you take my program,’” Huberman said. But students today arrive with an unprecedented level of media literacy and comfort with the camera. Now the goal, he said, is to cut through the “great cacophony” of media noise and teach the discipline and rigor real filmmaking requires. Huberman, an associate professor of filmmaking, has a clear view about what he wants his students to achieve in their own work: to create film that burrows beneath the surface, that reveals “the experience of life,” not an idealized or scripted version of that experience. That means pushing his students to challenge their own beliefs and understandings. “In my classes I want them to suffer a bit,” he said. “I want them to stretch.” Filmmaking is a pure art for Huberman, a simple act of collecting In some ways, Karin Broker has come full circle. In 1980, fresh out truth and presenting it correctly. “Every time I go out there with that of graduate school, she was hired to teach drawing at Rice, but over bag and that camera, there better be a reason,” he said. “I better find the years she gave up those drawing courses to teach printmaking something. Otherwise, what would be the point of going?” and other skills. Now Broker has returned: For the past couple of And that something, he believes, can change the mind behind the semesters, the visual arts professor has made room in her schedule camera. “You’re drawn to a subject, and you’ll have opinions about it,” for advanced and intermediate drawing. he said. “But if you’re not willing to be completely reversed in those “I decided this is a new chapter for me at Rice,” Broker said. feelings by the end of it, then you’re not ready to make that film.” And just as she returns to the drawing lab, Broker has made it When not teaching, Huberman is deep in his own work, juggling into something new. Last fall, she turned her intermediate draw a handful of projects at all times. He has devoted much of his docu ing course into an “exhibition lab.” Students displayed their work mentary career to exploring the mysteries and myths of the American all semester in the Rice Media Center. As the weeks went by, the frontier. He’s wrapping up a 10-year exhibit evolved; new drawings replaced the old ones, revealing project called “Alligator-Horses,” a how each student’s skills had developed. look at the time of transition that In her own work, Broker shows a remarkable diversity. She makes prints, creates assemblages was 1830s America. For another using found objects and bits of jewelry and produces enormous drawings with a Conté crayon on documentary, “Geronimo’s Country,” sheets of Formica. Huberman is following a Vietnam “I think of art as kind of a full-body contact sport,” Broker said. “I make large drawings, I get dirty, veteran as he traces the Apache trails I’m moving, I’m energized, I’m physically kind of dancing with the piece that I’m making.” in New Mexico and northern Mexico. This spring, Broker will move into a new home studio she and her husband have built on their Teaching, Huberman believes, farm in Magnolia. She hopes it’ll give her room for her biggest drawings and provide a quiet space goes hand in hand with his own where she can work uninterrupted, surrounded by her dogs, cats and horses. work. Teaching classes, he said, It took Broker, a Pennsylvania native, many years to warm up to Houston. But now she believes creates “a little hub of discourse she has found the perfect place to work as an artist. “Houston is the last Wild West for art and art lov amongst like-minded souls” that ers,” she said. “People here are excited about looking at art. They don’t feeds the spirit. have strict parameters for what art should be — they’re willing to look “Not that we all share identical approaches to things,” he said, at anything. They embrace art in this city. It’s like Paris in the 1920s.” “but there is this shared excitement. I think a good class with a few In her classroom, Broker encourages the same boldness. She interested souls in it can really keep the air clear and make the whole prods her quiet students, urging the women, especially, to be less thing seem worthwhile.” “nice” and to speak up in the classroom and in their work. It’s as important to her as teaching them how to draw. “I may be teaching them a skill,” Broker said, “but I’m teaching them how to think, in a major way.”

Karin Broker

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Geoff Winningham Geoff Winningham’s work resides at the intersection of words and images. “The essence of what I do is bringing pictures and words together into books,” said the photography professor, who graduated from Rice in 1965 and has taught at Rice since 1969. “I never exactly set out to do that; it’s just what I’ve always done. That’s the way my work finds its final form.” Winningham’s work has found its way into book after book since 1971, chronicling — among other subjects — Texas high school football, professional wrestling, Mexican culture, and the Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico. Along the way, he has become a real presence in the photography world; his photographs can be found in the collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and museums across Texas and the United States. In fact, Winningham’s latest project is a book. “It’s the first thing I’ve done that isn’t in Texas or Mexico,” he said. For this one, he’s revisiting photographs he took on commission of small-town John Sparagana has spent a decade turning found images into art. buildings in Arkansas in the early 1980s. He uses fashion photography, news photos and magazine pages, “Many of the buildings are gone — burned down, blown away stripping away each one’s role as an information source and turning or just neglected to the point of destruction,” Winningham said. it into something altogether new. But he has found people who, 30 years later, remember those Sparagana, professor and chair of the Department of Visual and buildings, and he’s publishing the old photographs with their Dramatic Arts, created the first of these pieces in the hours after 9/11; stories of a lost time and place. “I have a very strong love of that day, he went to his studio and cast shadows on magazine cov place,” Winningham said. “Whenever I find a subject that I really ers, adding an undefined murkiness that lent an ominous sense of feel I can sink my teeth into, it’s very much a place. I think that foreboding. “It felt to me like an analogy of the feeling I had — and I sense of place has only grown think a lot of people had — around 9/11,” he said. “This was basically and intensified in my work over revisiting those found images, but with a darkness that had entered.” the years.” About the same time, Sparagana found another way of expressing the same concept. A J.Crew cata Another investment in place: log, after days in his backpack, was wrinkled and folded — the perfect images on the page would never Since 2007, Winningham has be undamaged again. “Just the distress of this perfect cover tells of the potential for the flesh to age, for been taking groups of his Rice ideals to become tarnished, for one to become disillusioned,” he said. “All those possibilities contained students to Mexico each year to in this thing that we feel is completely under control.” teach some basic photography Soon after, Sparagana began to break down pages even more, distressing them to the point that the skills to children in the town of glossy paper felt organic, like cloth. He fatigued the paper so its words and photographs blurred, then Mineral de Pozos. Winningham sliced and remixed multiple versions of the same image, stacking and layering the images. The result, he and his students give the kids said, was “like an abstract painting, but with text and images.” inexpensive cameras and teach Sparagana continues to experiment with words and image. He now them how to capture their world on film. “We told them, ‘Show introduces abstractions. A recent work, for instance, features images of us your town, and let’s make pictures of it,’” Winningham said. protesting crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It’s layered with a Malevich “I’m not sure anybody’s ever had a better project, and those kids abstraction from 1917 that has become an icon of revolution in art. continue to astound us.” Sparagana has been teaching at Rice for 20 years and commuting At Rice, Winningham has started teaching a photography between Houston and Chicago, where his family lives. He has built bookmaking class that lets each student do what Winningham a thriving career in both cities — his work was featured in a solo does: build a book full of words and photographs, blending the exhibition at a Chicago gallery last year and in another at the Bryan two to make a piece of art people can hold in their hands. Miller Gallery in Houston. And last summer, Sparagana’s exposure “I feel like I have this wonderful dual career in terms of teach expanded to another continent when his work was featured at a ing and photographing,” he said. “I get so much pleasure out of contemporary art showroom in Berlin. teaching, I can’t say that I enjoy it less than I do my own work.” Sparagana’s daughter, Marina, is a junior at Rice majoring in reli gious studies and English. Having her on campus, he said, has broad ened his vision. No longer just a faculty member, Sparagana said he now has “a heart connection” with the university. “It’s made me all the more invested in what goes on here.”

John Sparagana

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passion

Music artist looks back at Rice to remember musical roots

Artistic

by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

Rice undergraduates who also are budding artists often have to perform a delicate jug gling act between art and studies. Whether the student is a writer, painter, architect or musician, there are hours of intense concentration on artistic pursuits paired with the rigors of studying for major and nonmajor classes. What makes Rice stand out among universities, students and alumni say, is the fact that Rice allows room for it all — from pursuing passions inside and outside a major to providing the outlets to explore them.

rtists are not necessarily limited to the traditionally creative majors in the humanities such as music, English or art; in fact, students can be found pursuing the arts while enrolled in a diverse array of majors, from engineering to manage rial studies. The atmosphere at Rice, which promotes cre ativity as well as academic rigor, results in the well-rounded graduate that Rice prides itself on: engineers who can play guitar and musicians who can build robots. For music artist Amy McCarley ’98, the exceptional environment at Rice is what led her to her current success in Huntsville, Ala. McCarley, a NASA contracts specialist by day, dedicates her nights and weekends to performing as a singer and musician. In March 2011, she released her self-titled debut CD in the U.S. and has since been marketing and promoting the album in the U.S. and Europe. McCarley recalls that as a Rice student the environment was ideal for learning economics, her chosen major, and garnering the skills and courage to pursue music seriously. “Most of my economics professors were aware of my dream to write and perform music and would express interest in my progress,” she said. In addition to taking classes in her major, McCarley took music for nonmajors and guitar lessons with instructor Terry Gaschen. In her spare time, she recorded music on her first four-track recorder in her dorm room at Will Rice and played privately for friends. “Terry made music fun and played a big part in encouraging me,” McCarley said. “Rice really gave me the courage to try to do what I wanted to do,” she said. “And with a degree in economics as a spring board, I’ve been able to support myself with income outside of music.” At her day job at NASA’s Office of Strategic Analysis and Communications in Huntsville, McCarley sifts through numbers and spreadsheets and analyzes data. But outside the office, she does an other kind of analysis. A self-described folk and Americana musician, McCarley said her efforts “provide insights” to her audience as she “tries to communicate with them.” It’s a different kind of service, she said, but similar to her day job in its creative component. “As a NASA contracts specialist, I get excited at creating something in Excel that allows me to solve a problem, and I get celebrated for that achievement,” she said. “In music, I generalize the common experience for an audience. It’s the creative aspect that is the parallel between the two.” Managing both occupations can take coordination and can be de manding. McCarley works overtime to make up for time she takes off for shows, and she comes in to her day job early Monday morning even if she’s had little sleep after late-night gigs. From her Rice experience, McCarley also gained the ability to take initiative. As a shy undergraduate, McCarley initially was too frightened to perform in front of crowds. She recalled that Gaschen told her to “just try performing at least three times,” and the rest would follow. During her junior year, she saw an advertisement in the Houston Chronicle for an open mic gig. Despite her shyness, she responded to the ad and played her first show at the Mausoleum, a wine bar in Montrose. After that, everything fell into place. The passion for music performance followed McCarley to Alabama as she ventured into her contracts career. She decided to pursue music

seriously, first by playing for friends and recording demos. “Something in my mind told me that I could cultivate this passion on my own,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed making music — expressing myself that way and dealing with things to find some kind of truth.” For a decade, McCarley performed locally and across the region until she went on a short hiatus to dedicate her time to writing and producing. Determined to record, mix and perform all the parts alone, she also built a studio in her suburban home. Over a period of a couple of years, she did the grunt work of sound-proofing her home studio, building a drum riser and panels, and acquiring professional music equipment. The reason McCarley wanted to play all the instruments herself on the album, as well as record and mix it herself, was for creative control. “It’s unusual for a woman to do all this herself,” she said. “But I knew what I was going for — what was in my head.” A professional mastering engineer in Nashville added finishing touches to the recording. The result is a mixture of ballads and up-tempo rock songs that is gaining ground in the southeastern U.S. With the help of an agent, McCarley’s music has received considerable Americana radio play in Europe as well. Besides juggling a full-time day job and a music career, McCarley also is taking charge of the marketing of her debut album in the U.S. In addition to playing shows across the Southeast — including popular venues in Nashville and Birmingham — she puts together her own press kits and marketing, which, she said, takes a lot of leg work. But above all, McCarley remembers the essential reasons she was drawn to music: for the expression of emotions and to connect with an audience. “I like to celebrate experiences, hold them up to the light,” she said. “I’m hoping to find an audience that has been through similar experiences.” McCarley grew up in rural Arkansas and began writing lyrics in childhood. She learned to play guitar from her father, and when her mother sang around the house, McCarley would join in. Her musical roots are as diverse as the Southern Baptist hymns she heard every week at church, her grandfather’s Johnny Cash records, and 1970s and ’80s rock and country music. Her writing skills sharpened at Rice when she took a creative writing class with Max Apple, now the Gladys Louise Fox Professor Emeritus of English. His workshops were “helpful to build confidence,” she said, because she had to put down her thoughts and expose them to a classroom of fellow students. Now, McCarley said, lyrics come to her “urgently.” “I realize,” she said, “that my songs are written in over whelming emotional moments.” Song samples from McCarley’s album can be heard at www. amymccarley.com. The album, which is available on iTunes, relies heavily on simply stated lyrics and is notable for its stripped-down, striking sound. McCarley said she stays true to her own personal experiences when writing and never tries to guess what people want to hear. “You take things as they come and see if there’s interest to support what you’re doing as an artist,” she said. “It’s the only way to do it and still feel alive.” McCarley is currently writing for a new album and continues to play frequent shows in the Southeast. She plans to tour Europe this spring.

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A New ANew As the Rice theater program comes into its own, students â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and audiences â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have more options than ever before.

By Alyson Ward • Photography by Jeff Fitlow and Tommy LaVergne

Stage

Stage St

Stage but now it was after 10 p.m. on a weeknight, and they became college students again. The 21-member cast of “Macbeth” wound up their dress rehearsal, left the stage, then soon re-emerged in street clothes, faces scrubbed clean of makeup. They plopped down in front rows of the 500-seat theater in Hamman Hall and faced their director, Christina Keefe.

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“How do you guys feel about tonight?”

asked Keefe, who also is director of the Rice Theater Program and a visual and dramatic arts lecturer. “Did you discover some things?” She then offered a quick critique — “You’re accelerating really well in that scene now. … You need to belt out that last line” — but the show was quite polished already. After the critique, the cast ﬁltered out into the night, toward homework and sleep. “Macbeth” was the major fall production for the theater division of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. It was Shakespeare’s play, alright, but instead of being set in medieval Scotland, it was set in a hypothetical contemporary world being rebuilt after nucle ar annihilation. With sets inspired by the video game “Fallout,” the stage was strewn with 1950s-style billboards, signs and scrap metal, all fading and repurposed by a society starting over. Setting “Macbeth” in a postapocalyptic world, Keefe said, was one way to make Shakespeare accessible and appealing to a young cast and audience. “This whole idea of what would happen if time stopped in the 1950s?” she said. “What kind of society would be formed? What do you have left? What do you have to live on? The students were totally jazzed by that.” It’s one of the ways Keefe is keeping theater on campus relevant, even exciting. That bold approach — a willingness to do some things that aren’t tried and true — makes theater at Rice a must-attend. It also makes students who are majoring in architecture, chemistry or physics want to join in. The “Macbeth” cast included students who have done theater for years — one had performed with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. — and a few who just wanted to see how it feels to be on stage and who started rehearsals by asking, “Where’s stage right?” In 2006, Rice moved theater classes from the English depart ment and grouped them with visual art and ﬁlm classes to form the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA). Now students

“Our goal has been to create really strong human beings who are interested in creating art in their lives.” — Christina Keefe

who declare art as their major can choose from three tracks — stu dio art, ﬁlm or theater — and are funneled through the department with a concentration in the track of their choice. Theater students can get a solid foundation in acting, voice and movement, direct

“You’ll see people who study at Rice and become professionals in the theater world. Some do community theater. And there are people who do theater at Rice and never touch it again, but they gained some valuable skills.” —Joseph Lockett

ing, lighting and set design — every aspect of putting on a show. Theater students usually have a broad range of interests. “Rice students have this right-brain, left-brain thing going on,” Keefe said. “They’ve got this very organized, analytical side, and then this other side that is very creative. And the two meet.” That’s why her theater students tend to double-major in sub jects such as engineering or physics. And they go off in different directions, depending on their interests and ambitions. One recent graduate had a clear idea of what she wanted to do. “It will only be a matter of time before she runs her own theater,” Keefe said. Other graduates have gone directly into MFA programs, then moved to New York to launch their acting careers. Students have done intern ships at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater to learn dramaturgy or tech design. Another student, who’ll graduate this year, is interested in voice pedagogy. “If they say to us, ‘This is what I love, this is what I want to do,’” Keefe said, “then our goal is to find them a training program that will be the best fit for them.” Keefe strives to push her students on to other things, helping them find the right path that will lead them to a life of art and the ater — whether it’s on the stage, behind the scenes or in the audi ence. “Our goal,” she said, “has been to create really strong human beings who are interested in creating art in their lives.” The department will help students find their niche in the the ater world — or learn how to fit theater into their lives at the level they want it, said Joseph “Chepe” Lockett ’91, a Baker College 30 30

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community associate who has been involved with Rice theater since his undergraduate years. “You’ll see people who study at Rice and become professionals in the theater world,” Lockett said. “Some do community theater. And there are people who do theater at Rice and never touch it again, but they gained some valuable skills.” Rice offers an unusual number of opportunities for the ater, even beyond the VADA productions. The Rice Players have been around since the 1920s, when the group started as the Rice Dramatic Society. This extracurricular, student-run group was the main thing going in Rice theater until VADA was instituted. And, of course, there’s a long tradition of theater groups in the residen tial colleges. Baker Shakespeare has been performing the Bard’s plays since 1970, for instance, and at Wiess College, Wiess Tabletop Theatre regularly takes on such ambitious material as “Aida” and “West Side Story.” Quality usually depends on resources. “There are groups that have the budget and history to put on a show that is really aiming at professional quality,” Lockett said. “And then, certainly, you have theater that’s just ‘Gosh, let’s get together and put on a show.’” Lockett is fond of both, and he has been involved with pro ductions at every level. “Rice has a long tradition,” he said, “of treating undergraduate theater as an important part of a liberal arts education.” Keefe — who has taught at Lehigh, Duke and other universi ties — said the sheer number of theater opportunities makes Rice different. “I’ve never had so much theater that I was competing with,” she said. After all, there often are concurrent productions on campus that all need good cast members. She tries to encourage students to get involved with their colleges, Rice Players and VADA productions. Wiess senior T.J. Burleson, a theater and linguistics major, has acted in and directed shows at all levels, but he got his start with Wiess productions during his freshman year. “Everyone does at least one show at Wiess,” Burleson said, whether it’s a one-act play or the spring musical. And sometimes those students decide they like theater and show up to audition for VADA or Rice Players productions. “Everyone really can do everything,” said Burleson, who

assistant directed “Macbeth” and is directing the Rice Players’ spring production. “It’s really great to see all these people involved with theater at a university that’s not necessarily a performing arts university.” That broad appeal helps Keefe in her effort to raise the profile of theater at Rice and to bring in audiences. “I’m pushing for greater visibility, on campus and outside in the community,” she said. VADA does outreach to local high school and middle school students, for example, and Keefe sends flyers about each produc tion to schools. And last year, she arranged a partnership with Houston’s Generations theater company. Generations presented “Spring Awakening” at Hamman Hall, and three Rice students spent the summer working at Generations. The partnership will continue this summer, giving theater students excellent experience in the field. “It’s a great opportunity to keep the hall busy and keep people coming to campus,” she said. “People who come to those shows will ask, ‘What else is happening?’” And there are plenty of things happening. The spring semes ter will bring contemporary fare to Hamman Hall: VADA presents “The Drunken City” in February, while the Rice Players present “The Baltimore Waltz” in March and April. In between, the Actors From the London Stage will visit Rice to do workshops with theater students and talk about their craft in classes all over campus. The London Stage group comes to Rice every couple of years, thanks to underwriting from the Alan and Shirley Grob Fund for Shakespeare in Performance, and when the troupe is in Houston, Keefe works to include local high school students, giving AP English students a chance to talk Shakespeare with the actors. In an age of so many distractions — electronic and otherwise — Keefe said she wants to figure out “how we move forward, how we keep theater vital and how we keep it accessible to younger audiences.” A postapocalyptic “Macbeth” is, of course, only part of that equation. Students with broad interests who are eager to perform, plenty of variety on stage and constant outreach to the community are all working together to push Rice theater into the spotlight. “We are definitely moving toward a strong presence on campus and a strong presence in the community,” Keefe said. “And that’s what I’m looking for.”

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In her senior year at Rice University, Gena Dawn Rabinowitz’s photography professor, Geoff Winningham ’65, suggested she apply for Rice’s Mary Ellen Hale Lovett Traveling Fellowship. Rabinowitz ’04 was an art and art history major with a minor in anthropology. She had grown up in Los Angeles and decided to propose a photography trip along the coast of California, cap turing coastal communities. But after she told Winningham her idea, he said, “Think bigger!”

One Journey’s End Is the Beginning of Another By Kelly Klaasmeyer

hen Rabinowitz, who now goes by Gena Dawn, chose Rice, she wanted a university that offered other fields of study as well. At the very beginning of her studies at Rice, Winningham had presented a slideshow to her class containing images of Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico. “That’s what really got me interested in studying anthropology — the rituals and spiritual components of different cultures.” Art and anthropology fed into each other in her Rice experience, and that symbiosis gave her a new idea. The night before the applica tion was due, Dawn reworked everything. She ended up proposing a three-week trip to Europe to visit various museums as well as the stu dios of artists like Cezanne, Monet and Van Gogh, which she would document with sketches, paintings and photographs. Dawn was awarded the fellowship, and at first, she was elated. Then she panicked. She had never traveled abroad alone and had led a sheltered upbringing. What had she been thinking? How was she going to manage all this by herself? Rice had been an especially supportive environment for Dawn, who lost her father in her senior year of high school. “The small size of Rice and the tight community of the college system really helped support me,” she said, “especially that first year of school.” Rice also taught her to take risks and be her own person. “I realized I had the

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resources to take those risks and be successful at them,” she said. “The fellowship forced me to take a step back and trust the decision and the support of my teachers. I had to be really proactive in ﬁguring out how I was going to get there and what I was going to do once I got there.” She found that she easily rose to the occasion. “It was an incred ible experience,” she said. “I didn’t think at the time that making such a trip would be so signiﬁcant in my life course, but it helped me

1,000 books. The project was fully funded in May 2011, and the book will be published this spring. The book, “The Rainbow’s Journey: An Adventure in Asia,” melds Dawn’s love of teaching with her vibrant and culturally intriguing photographs. “It tells the story of a rainbow on a colorful exploration of Asia, a continent saturated in cultural and spiritual beauty,” she said, “and teaches that we all share the colors of the rainbow.” Kane’s rhyming text leads young readers through the vivid pages of Dawn’s photographs, which immerse them in sumptuous visuals from other

Rice, I developed a lot of conﬁdence “inThrough my artistic abilities and my abilities to make things happen. Rice helped me believe in myself.” — Gena Dawn

realize that I wanted to make travel a significant part of my life.” When she returned from Europe, Dawn moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and took a job as an elementary and middle school art teacher. After five years of teaching, however, an opportunity arose for her to spend an entire school year shooting photographs throughout South and Southeast Asia. But taking that trip would basically mean quitting her job and spending 10 months traveling to places she had never been. It was an opportunity Dawn likely would not have seized were it not for the experiences Rice provided her. Although the deci sion was scary and difficult, she embraced the challenge. Dawn’s trip was not only a visual exploration of the cultures of South and Southeast Asia, but an intellectual one as well. She accumu lated a host of new experiences, among them working on a mural in Thailand and teaching art to boys at a home for juvenile delinquents in rural India. And she took thousands of amazing photographs, satu rated with the rich colors of the landscape, art, architecture and cul tural objects of the regions she visited. While in India, Dawn hatched the idea of creating a children’s book based on her photographs. Her fiancée and traveling partner, Brad Kane, would write the text. Working in Bali, they put the book together over a two-month period. Filled with determination, Dawn launched a project through Kickstarter, an online pledge system for funding creative projects, to fund the production and distribution of

cultures. The “red” page combines photos of a monk in ruby robes, the gold-embroidered hem of a scarlet sari, a crimson flower, a temple interior and jars of reddish pigments. The “violet” page includes im ages of patterned fabric, stacked purple bracelets, tasseled umbrellas, plant stalks and a lavender sunset. “Green” has images of lily pads, a slender snake, a carved wooden mask and verdant terraced fields. Now returned to teaching and working as a professional pho tographer, Dawn spends her free time promoting and marketing the book. It’s a whole new area of risk, but she is prepared for that. “I am such a different person now than I was during my senior year of high school,” she said, explaining that she had never been encouraged to take risks growing up. “When I told people I was taking this trip to Asia,” she said, “they just couldn’t believe it. I was the person who, in high school, wouldn’t drive on the freeways and was nervous and worried about things.” Her trip through Asia, she said, was about pushing and challeng ing herself in uncomfortable situations and seeing how she could grow from those. “Through Rice, I developed a lot of confidence in my artistic abilities and my abilities to make things happen. Rice helped me believe in myself.” “The Rainbow’s Journey: An Adventure in Asia” is available at www.therainbowsjourney.com.

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BY JESSICA C. KRAFT

Around the World in 88 Keys

In an intimate Manhattan apartment, Kimball Gallagher ’02 sits at a grand piano in front of a small, informal audience holding champagne flutes. Before launching into Chopin’s First Ballade, he tells the audience about his recent travels. “I just got back from Afghanistan, where I had a great time teaching at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul,” he said. “The house concert there was a unique experi ence. It was the first time I ever performed Chopin with six armed guards at the door.” Looking over at his host, he asked, “You’ve arranged for the armed guards tonight, right?” The audience laughed, and Gallagher played the first notes, leading his listeners into a masterful performance. Gallagher is currently in the middle of an unusual 88-concert international tour — one stop for each of the 88 piano keys — that has taken him across the United States, Europe and Asia, including Afghanistan, Mongolia, Turkey and Tunisia. Launched at Carnegie Hall in March 2008, the tour is set to gain more momentum through 2012, as he travels back to several of these spots and adds Egypt, Israel and India to his passport. Gallagher plans to complete the tour with a cap stone celebration concert back at Carnegie Hall in 2013. As a Juilliard-trained classical pianist, Gallagher is attempting to revive the Romantic-era tradition of house concerts, or salons. Though he has played many impressive venues, Gallagher finds more inspiration from interacting with audiences and building lasting relationships with his concert hosts. His first opportunity to perform at a private home came about during his junior year at Rice, where he studied piano privately with Jeanne Kierman Fischer, an artist teacher of piano and col laborative skills at the Shepherd School of Music. “That first house concert was really where he found his calling,” she said. Gallagher agreed. “I realized I could have more of an impact in an intimate setting,” he said. “At a house concert, you can talk to people one-on-one. They can tell you how they were affected by the performance, and you can answer their questions.” He argues that much of classical piano music literature was writ ten explicitly for small venues, making the home a more natural fit for certain compositions. “The piano used to be much more of a focal point for social life, and many more people had piano skills,” he said. “Liszt would write opera transcriptions that people could play in their homes, and Schubert held Schubertiades, which were home concerts celebrating his works.” Economics is the other reason Gallagher pursues concerts in houses instead of halls. At a time when traditional classical performance op portunities are declining, audiences are aging and only top stars get signed by record companies, he sees private residences as an untapped resource. “If you look at the sheer number of houses with pianos,” he said, “there is actually a lack of musicians playing in them.” His house-concert advocacy has led to invitations to teach and coach

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his own brand of entrepreneurial thinking. At a recent Manhattan School of Music presentation, Gallagher warned students not to get trapped in the old negative thinking about professional music opportunities. “These days, you’re used to thinking that music is an extremely competitive ﬁeld with excellent musicians a dime a dozen,” he said.

“But you have to believe that you have a unique combination of quali ties, and as time goes by, you will use these qualities to create special experiences for audiences.” Yet setting up such special experiences is not easy, and the effort and time involved in creating the relationships with hosts, not to men tion arranging travel and lodging, is a signiﬁcant investment. But these parts of the “job” are exciting for Gallagher, whose outgoing personality opens a lot of doors. “We musicians have been trained to sit back and let other people work on logistics,” he said, “but there are a lot of beneﬁts when artists set up their own events, so this is a new model for our careers.” What the new model means for Gallagher is that he has to be part impresario, part entrepreneur and part salesman, in addition to offering a worldclass musical experience.

opportunities for the students, encouraging some to apply for American scholarships and fundraising for others to attend American music camps. He has also continued to work with a few young Tunisian musi cians from his Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, giving lessons over Skype. “They have no composition courses at the music schools in Tunisia, so I’ve been teaching that,” he said, “and also setting up relationships for them with other composition teachers.” Souhayl Guesmi is one of the students who has benefited from Gallagher’s efforts. Growing up in the small town of Jendouba, outside of Tunis, he wasn’t able to find a piano teacher for years. “The local con servatory at that time couldn’t afford a professional piano teacher,” he said. “I was losing time, but I loved the piano and I wanted to progress, whatever it took.” Now Guesmi studies composition once a week over Skype with Simon Fink, Gallagher’s friend and a professor at Missouri Western State University. When Tunisia erupted in revolution last January, many of Gallagher’s students were greatly affected by the tumult. “For three weeks, I didn’t go to school,” said 16-year-old Senda Zayati, who has been working on an album of original songs with Gallagher and was one of the students he helped to send to American music camp. “I could barely sleep be cause we were so afraid of what was happening.” But by summer, the Jasmine Revolution had calmed down, a new interim government was installed, and many of the students returned to the camp, newly inspired. Among the many unantici pated cultural effects of the revolution was increased support for classical music institutions. This came about partially through the appointment of Interim Finance Minister Jalloul Ayed. He previously served as CEO of a prominent Moroccan bank and also com posed classical symphonies that were performed by the national orchestras of Tunisia and Morocco. In addition to steering the Tunisian economy back to recovery, Ayed worked with the Ministry of Culture to beef up funding for the Tunis conservatory and increase support for the national orchestra’s musi cians, which had been in decline during the previous regime. Gallagher met Ayed through a mutual acquain tance and was excited to play his compositions in Tunisia. In October 2011, Ayed invited Gallagher to perform for government officials, influential bankers and other elites. Suddenly Gallagher found himself in a new, political context. “At a house concert, you can talk to people one-on-one. “I don’t intend to be political,” he said. “But here They can tell you how they were affected by the performance, I was, playing for all of these people who were shap and you can answer their questions.” ing Tunisia’s new direction,” he said. “Mostly, I want — Kimball Gallagher to bolster Tunisian musicians. I want to show support and engagement with the artists and encourage them to assert themselves and take chances.” He’s been able to do that a lot lately. To celebrate the first anniversary of the Jasmine Revolution, Gallagher played several Some of his other international concert opportunities arose from of Ayed’s compositions at the Kennedy Center with rising star Tunisian working with the nonprofit organization Cultures in Harmony, which violinist Nidhal Jebali. The concert was webcast so that thousands of was started by William Harvey, his Juilliard classmate. Since 2005, Tunisians could view the performance. The audience appeared delight Cultures in Harmony has brought world-class musicians to 13 coun ed when, for one of his final pieces, Gallagher set a laptop on the grand tries to inspire and collaborate with young performers. Over the past piano to play his prelude “hot off the press” in honor of Tunisia. six years, Gallagher has been a deputy director for their workshop in Two days later, the globe-trotting pianist was on a jet headed for Tunisia. As a resident artist, he teaches workshops, offers private lessons Kabul, which was just a short stopover on his way to play a set of house and performs concerts at an annual summer music camp. The aim of concerts in India. the camp is to give music students of all socioeconomic backgrounds What’s the next stop? access to high-quality instruments and the opportunity to learn from If you have a piano, he will travel. top performers. “There’s so much talent in Tunisia,” Gallagher said. “But many of these students just don’t have the resources to advance their musical training.” To this end, Gallagher has tapped his own social network to create Follow Kimball Gallagher’s 88-concert tour: ›› ›www.pianokey.net He also composes. As a gift to each concert host, Gallagher cre ates a personalized piano prelude using a compositional system to spell out musical notes that match their names. Concert host Wendie Grossman loved her prelude. “I was so impressed with the wonderful tone that Kimball can evoke from the piano,” she said. She was dazzled by Gallagher’s “rare combination of engaging personality, savvy entre preneurship and artistry,” she said. She was also impressed at how he created opportunities to perform. “He once told me how he met someone on a train and started talk ing, and that person knew someone who had a foundation in a poor foreign country. Before long, Kimball was over there playing a concert for them to raise money. That’s how he makes his contacts and follows through,” she said. It’s true that Gallagher is always eager to connect to another patron, making serendipitous meetings like the one on the train part of his busi ness plan. (Disclosure: Gallagher performed at my wedding in 2007 and managed to arrange no fewer than three concerts from among our guests.) He’s also comfortable in a wide variety of venues, having played many bare-bones benefits along with performances at the private resi dences of actress Uma Thurman and author Thomas Moore. Veronica Bulgari invited Gallagher to perform at her family villa in Tuscany. “He’s got no bounds,” she said. “He’s bringing classical music to new and remote places and providing this intimate experience with the piano.”

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R MOB

The Marching Owl Band has been poking fun, poking creating creating

controversy

controversy y and making

making football crowds laugh crowds laugh for 40 years.

Rules Rules By Alyson Ward

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2012

It was Labor Day weekend, 2011, and the return of college football. Rice played Texas. Although the Longhorns won the game 34–9, Rice’s band won halftime. The Marching Owl Band — known as the MOB — often uses its time on the ﬁeld to comment on current events and, of course, its rivals, such as the University of Texas and, especially, Texas A&M. With sharp and timely humor, the MOB’s show tackled conference realignment and Texas A&M’s move to the Southeastern Conference. “We congratulate the SEC and the Big 12,” the MOB’s announcer said, “as both confer ences improve their average IQ.” The MOBsters formed an SEC on the ﬁeld, then shifted a bit to make a silent judgment by turning the “S” into a dollar sign: $EC.

was the sort of wry, satirical observation the MOB is known for — and it worked. All weekend, the Web lit up with chatter about the show. Photos of the formation circulated on Facebook and sports blogs nationwide. In a season of hand-wringing over college sports and conference realignment, the MOB — a few dozen smart-alecky kids from Rice — had hit a nerve. The ragtag band of musicians has been tweaking nerves for 40 years now. In their fedoras and shades, the MOB’s gadﬂy members have been pok ing at sensitive issues, lampooning the solemn staidness of higher education and going where audiences think they would never dare. Twenty steep steps underground, in a cluttered basement beneath the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, the MOB writing team meets to plan upcoming shows. A bumper sticker on the band hall door reads: “Sacred Cows Make Divine Hamburger.” Inside, about a dozen MOB members lounge in chairs and on torn-up couches as they edit the next week’s script. They hash out how to properly dramatize a decapitation. The order in which they should list signs of the apocalypse. The proper moment for a “your mom” joke. It was 1971 when the Marching Owl Band stopped marching and became the MOB. Before that, Rice had a conventional band, with formal march ing drills, traditional music and wool uniforms. “It wasn’t an abrupt change, where somebody decided we ought to do scatter shows,” said Guinn Unger ’71. Instead, the MOB evolved over a couple of football seasons. Unger was drum major in fall 1970. That season, the band performed a show that paid tribute to the bands of the Southwest Conference, with bits that copied each band’s signature steps and songs. “The crowd kind of went wild,” Unger said. “We got bigger applause for that than for anything else I can remember.” The parody show was repeated at least once, Unger recalls, and then 38

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some band members started lobbying then-band director Bert Roth to do more nontraditional shows. By the next year, the band’s performances involved more running around than marching, accompanied by a good dose of humor. Of course, Rice didn’t invent the scatter band. In 1970, Ivy League schools such as Dartmouth, Brown and Harvard already had abandoned traditional marching for on-field antics, and other elite schools soon followed. But there was nothing like the MOB in the Southwest Conference, and the band’s new format was a hit. One early show featured a salute to the human stomach. Another one ribbed the University of Texas band for its enormous bass drum. The shows were popular with most Rice fans, and the MOB became a favorite among visiting crowds. Then came the show that put the MOB on the map — and into an epic tangle with the Aggies. It was November 1973 when Texas A&M fans filled Rice Stadium, out numbering the local Owls fans. The MOB launched into what is now called “The Halftime of Infamy,” a show that mocked the traditions Aggies hold sacred. Band members goose-stepped to a German march. They formed a fire hydrant on the field and mocked Aggie mascot Reveille, playing “Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” And they lampooned the Aggie “War Hymn,” beginning to play the sacred song and then sliding into “March of the Wooden Soldiers.” The crowd responded almost immediately, said Bob Hord ’74, who was drum major that year. “When 70,000 people are roaring disapproval,” he said, “it’s pretty palpable.” By the end of halftime, the Aggie fans were angry. They threw seat cush ions and drink cups from the stadium’s top deck, and a brief scuffle erupted on the sideline. At least one MOBster was hit by a flying drink. Police stepped in to calm things down before the beginning of the third quarter. But, as the clock wound down, the Aggies were far from calm. In the game’s last two minutes, a 95-yard run gave Rice the winning touchdown. The stunning win fueled the Aggies’ anger. The crowd wanted to retaliate, and MOB members feared they were in danger. “We got the band down to a tunnel under the stadium,” Hord said, “and waited for the crowd to leave, but they wouldn’t disperse.” A crowd of at least 200 Aggies lingered outside the stadium, yelling threats and waiting for the MOB to come out. The band had to remain hidden for hours, until campus food service trucks were sent to the rescue. Late in the evening, the trucks pulled out of the stadium with MOB members hidden safely inside. Afterward, band director Roth got enough hate mail to fill four photo al bums. “The mothers of Aggie band members called him around the clock,” said John “Grungy” Gladu, a longtime Rice supporter and “adopted” MOBster. “He got his number unlisted, and they got it again. I think he went through three phone numbers.” Two years later, in 1975, the Aggies returned to Rice Stadium. Arthur Harrow ’79 was a freshman and played baritone in the MOB. “There were great concerns for our safety,” he said. “We were getting death threats, and there was some question as to whether we were going to do the show at all.” The MOB presented a halftime show that lampooned Rice and its traditions, something the Aggie crowd liked much better. In 1980, when a controversy brewed at Baylor over students who posed for Playboy’s “Women of the Southwest Conference” issue, MOB members

Students mocked the Baptist university by marching in bunny costumes. “I said, ‘Do you think Playboy would run with this?’” Gladu said. “I called them, and they said ‘Yes, send us pictures.’” So in April 1981, Playboy magazine featured three photos of the MOB. Year after year, though, the University of Texas audiences have always been in on the joke. Fans understood the MOB was there to poke a little fun, and they could appreciate a good jab. In 2007, when a half-dozen members of the Longhorn football team were suspended for various brushes with the law, the MOB traveled to Austin to play at the Rice–Texas halftime. The show was called “Book ’em Horns” and featured burnt orange-clad football players getting chased around the field by the cops. “Don’t forget to buy a program at today’s game,” the MOB announcer quipped. “It includes ... a photo guide to the next episode of ‘America’s Most Wanted.’” At the show’s end, said Jamie Sammis ’10, who was drum major, “UT’s audience gave us a standing ovation.” The MOB also became famous for its really strange cheers. There were three-word cheers, a “primal scream” cheer and a silent cheer. “We did hor rible cheers,” Gladu said. “‘Oatmeal, oatmeal, salt and butter, too / All for the Rice Owls, hold up your shoe.’ And we’d all hold up a shoe.” And the band produced the world’s longest — and possibly geekiest — cheer of all by spelling out the university’s original name — The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art — one ... letter ... at ... a ... time. The end of the Southwest Conference in 1995 was the end of an era for the MOB. Things changed when Rice started playing schools in Hawaii and Wyoming, not Austin and Waco. Audiences got smaller and so did the band. Rice spent a decade in the Western Athletic Conference, then moved to Conference-USA in 2006, starting over with a new group of unfamiliar teams in far-flung locations. The opposing teams often traveled such dis tances that they left their bands at home — which left the MOB without contrast or rivalry. “The loss of the Southwest Conference hurt us a lot,” Gladu said. In the SWC, he said, “we had visiting bands and a familiar group. We knew the audiences we were playing for, and we could target them.” Now, he said, the band has to research what’s happening at the other schools. Even so, the band has found ways to stay sharp and get people talking. In 2007, the MOB made national news with a show that drew loud complaints and even louder cheers. That year, head football coach Todd Graham had left Rice abruptly after a single season to coach at the University of Tulsa. When Rice had a game against Tulsa, the MOB decided to use halftime to express the Rice community’s disappointment. The show was complicate complicatedd and sort of brilliant: It was based on Dante’s “Inferno,” with the band searching searching for Graham in the circles of hell, explaining how his flflaws aws might have landed landed him among the greedy, the false and the traitorous. At last, they found found that Graham had landed in a 10th, more horrible circle of hell: Tulsa. “The whole thing got great great crowd response,” said director Chuck Throckmorton. “When he left, left, there were hard feelings in the whole community, especially the student body, body, and they were expecting us to sort of deliver the response.” But it was a juvenile remark remark at the end that landed the MOB in hot water: In the show’s “walk-off” “walk-off” line — a snarky comment made as the band leaves the fifield — the MOB announcer casually called Graham a vulgar vulgar name. Rice fans loved it, but not everyone was amused. amused. The University of Tulsa fifiled led a complaint with Conference-USA. Conference-USA. The Tulsa fans started a letter-writing letter-writing campaign. Message boards across the Web Web fifilled lled up with angry tirades, and the story story made a splash nationwide. “The ironic ironic thing,” Throckmorton said, “was “was that by complaining, they turned turned it into national news.” In the end, Throckmorton isissued an apology on behalf of the

band, although band members still think it was a statement that needed to be made. Sammis wishes more people had paid attention to the quality of the show — after all, it was one long literary allusion, woven beautifully together with piercing commentary on current events. In fact, some of the MOB’s best work has been just as literary — past scripts are full of well-written and thoughtful commentary that crackles with sharp wit. On the other hand, some shows have just been joyfully silly. A 1973 game against the University of Arkansas, for instance, featured a salute to the banana. MOB members bought 10 crates of bananas, and, as the show ended, band members threw hundreds of bananas into the stands while playing “The Stripper” and beginning to remove their clothes. The crowd — as crowds do — threw the bananas back at the band, and the mushy fruit smeared all over the ﬁeld, wreaking havoc on the second half of the game. “If I want to sum up what being a MOBster is like,” said Keith Goodnight

’86, “the story I tell is that I once stood at Kyle Field at Texas A&M waving a giant screw at the Aggie band while dressed as a Christmas tree.” Every MOBster has a story like this, and their stories blend together in a swirl of madcap memories. Ultimately, said Harrow, the MOB shows why Rice is a different sort of university. “It’s the Rice culture: Intellect is not bad — it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” It’s also a great way to take a break from the pressures of academics and other concerns, he said. “Being able to pick up an instrument and put everything else aside and know we could cut loose and do things that were fun and creative without worrying — it was a good thing.” After four decades, it still is.

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2011

A Model Neighborhood Built from cardboard and brightly painted, Ana Serrano’s “Salon of Beauty” installation at Rice Gallery felt like a cheery model vil lage constructed for a children’s museum — at ﬁrst glance, that is. As you walked down the installation’s “streets,” you saw a “98 Cents” store and a bakery with a quinceañera cake in the win dow. Another building had a sign that read: “Keys While You Wait.” But then you noticed the razor wire along the roof of one building and letters that spelled out “LIQUOR” on the roof of the one next door. Triple X’s adorned the roof of another structure with “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS” painted on its façade. Serrano’s work may be visually charming, but she’s not out to Disney-fy the world around her. Rice Gallery is always on the lookout for great installations from emerging artists, and Serrano’s work came to their attention

salons, check-cashing businesses, clubs and the like. Serrano travels around L.A. photographing what she sees, homing in on choice segments of the urban landscape. The title of her instal lation, “Salon of Beauty,” is taken from a sign Serrano saw in Los Angeles. She found the name strangely poetic and realized it was a direct translation of “salón de belleza,” the Spanish term for beauty salon. Back at her studio, Serrano reinterprets the images from her photographs into cardboard. In “Salon of Beauty,” multicolored cardboard “tiles” covered a cardboard building’s façade or the ﬂoor of a courtyard. Cardboard was fashioned into a washing machine stuck in an alley between two houses. Cardboard be came plant pots, satellite TV dishes, decorative cement blocks, the 3-D letters of a sign, quinceañera cakes and ornamental burglar bars. Among the installation’s rich details, a little handprinted sign in the bakery window read “Sodas $1 Churros $1” and tiny green paper weeds and vines “grew” from cracks in the pavement and walls.

Serrano, a ﬁrst-generation Mexican-American from Los Angeles,

channels the city’s urban neighborhoods into her work, creating compilations of homes,

discount stores, nail salons, check-cashing businesses, clubs and the like.

in a very 21st-century way. Assistant curator Josh Fischer discov ered the 29-year-old artist’s work as a little digital image in an email promoting “Juxtapoz Handmade,” a new book showcasing handmade art and design objects. One of Serrano’s sculptures, a vividly colored cardboard construction of tiny houses clustered favela-like over a hill, was the cover photo. Fischer was impressed by this glimpse and decided to check out Serrano’s website. He showed the work to Rice Gallery director Kim Davenport, and after meeting with Serrano via Skype, they decided to invite her for a site visit. Serrano showed up with one of her small card board buildings as a sample. She checked out the gallery, and the idea of creating a whole neighborhood was hatched. Serrano, a ﬁrst-generation Mexican-American from Los Angeles, channels the city’s urban neighborhoods into her work, creating compilations of homes, discount stores, nail

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Here and there, Serrano enlarged photos of actual front doors or windows and pasted them to the cardboard buildings, insert ing bits of reality. But the artist’s work operated on a number of different levels, and it was the bold colors, shapes, patterns and abstract forms of the installation that dominated. Orange trim around a window radiated against a wall of deep blue, the diago nal and horizontal shapes of “concrete” blocks created dynamic patterns and patches of test colors read like an abstract painting. “Salon of Beauty” was a visually and conceptually engaging work from a very young artist and gave Serrano the opportunity to make her largest and most involved work to date. —Kelly Klaasmeyer

Arts

Rice’s newest owl

has taken up residence just east of the Rice Memorial Center. Geoffrey Dashwood’s bronze sculpture, “Monumental Barn Owl,” is a generous gift of Ralph and Becky O’Connor. Surrounded by limestone benches, the owl presides over the new Milus E. Hindman Garden, a campus beautiﬁcation project also designed to recognize the Rice Legacy Society.

The quiet grove outside of Herring Hall will no longer be taken for granted. It now has art — a spectacular piece designed speciﬁcally for that space by acclaimed Catalan artist Jaume Plensa. It’s called “Mirror” and, according to its visitors, it’s irresistible.

Att the dedication in February, President A David Leebron said the piece reﬂects Rice’s aspirations as a university. He called it “an artwork not designed to sit quietly in the distance, but an artwork designed to at tract people to it, to engage — a sense of conversation.” Made of white, coated marine steel let ters from many alphabets, the two ﬁgures are positioned as if they were in conver sation with one another. Their placement under the trees next to Herring Hall is no coincidence. “I fell completely in love with the trees on this campus,” Plensa said. “My piece is in a certain way an homage to the trees — a conversation between all the branches.” Generosity by Bill ’67 and Stephanie Sick made “Mirror” possible. Sick said he owes much to his alma mater: “for an

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incredible education, a lot of friends and also a brief introduction — about 55 years ago — to the emerging ﬁelds of semicon ductors and computers.” Sick went on to a successful career as an entrepreneur and investor. “Much of what has made my life so productive and satisfying can be traced back to Rice,” he said. Sick recalled that he ﬁrst met Plensa in 2004 when he was working on the art ist’s famous Crown Fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Sick said he is delighted with “Mirror.” “It gives Stephanie and me great pleasure to make this happen,” he said. “I think it’s a beautiful and thoughtprovoking work that will enhance the campus.” Leebron described “Mirror” as a mile stone for Rice, “creating on this campus not

only a sense of art for our students but also a sense of destination for our community and the way in which we engage with the city of Houston.” The dedication of “Mirror” also co incides with Rice’s centennial year, and Plensa said he is extremely proud to be involved. “My piece is a part of that cel ebration,” he said. “Stephanie and Bill Sick are already friends from other projects who decided to offer my piece to Rice University to be part of that beautiful celebration.” Standing next to the sculpture as others explored it, Plensa said, “Every time you ﬁnish a project it’s always a surprise to see what could be the reaction of people in front of it. I’m really pleased that people emotionally, immediately start to interact

with the piece and to really walk inside it.” “It’s a spectacular addition to the cam pus,” Leebron said. “Everyone with whom I’ve spoken has been enthusiastic.” “Mirror” joins several other recent addi tions to the Rice campus by artists includ ing Aurora Robson, Charles Mary Kubricht, Geoffrey Dashwood, James Surls, Leo Villareal and Lino Tagliapietra. Later this spring a skyspace by James Turrell will be dedicated, and this fall a statue of Rice’s ﬁrst president, Edgar Odell Lovett, by Bruce Wolfe will be unveiled. For a map of other artworks, go to: ›› › publicart.rice.edu/map.aspx

Arts “Every time you ﬁnish a project it’s always a surprise to see what could be the reaction of people in front of it. I’m really pleased that people emotionally, immediately start to interact with the piece and to really walk inside it.” — Jaume Plensa

City of the Future Now

The idea of “tough love” can apply to the landscapes and architecture of cities as much as it does to other sorts of human interaction. This is especially true when the city in question is Houston, with its urban sprawl, lack of zon ing and disconnected neighborhoods. In “One Million Acres & No Zoning” (Architectural Association, 2011), Lars Lerup, the Harry K. and Albert K. Smith Professor of Architecture and former dean of the Rice School of Architecture, turns his tough love on Houston. Lerup presents Houston as a test case for 21st-century urbanism and examines how that urbanism contributes to the understanding of unregu lated cities. His approach to the city’s complexities takes into account the many features Houstonians see daily as well as the infrastructure that they don’t. As much a rumination on modern urbanism as it is a critique of the Houston cityscape, “One Million Acres” goes a long way toward show ing how creative transformation has allowed Houston to prosper in an era when many cities have experienced difﬁculties or declined. —Christopher Dow

Adrenaline Rush When young CIA analyst Sam Capra receives a call from his wife urging him to get out of the offi ofﬁce, ce, little does he know that his life is going to take a hard turn to disaster. Seconds after he exits the building, it explodes, and as he picks himself up from the rubble, he sees his wife, her face a mask of terror, being driven away in a dark sedan. From its explosive beginning, “Adrenaline” (Grand Central Publishing, 2011), the latest from thriller writer Jeff Abbott ’85, doesn’t let up. Capra is taken into custody and learns that his wife is a traitor and that he is suspected of being her accomplice. Once he is released, Capra strives to learn the truth, and before long, he ﬁnds himself on the run from just about every law enforcement agency on the planet as well as from the villains who have taken his wife. Believable dialog, interesting twists and turns, exciting action scenes, and nene farious villains make “Adrenaline” a fun page-turner. The book marks a departure for Abbott, whose previous novels have been stand-alones featuring ordinary men and women thrown into extraordinary situations. Not only is the book’s protagonist clever and engaging, he also learns to be a savvy operative. And the book’s open ending promises that Sam Capra will return another day to battle the secret underground organization that turned his life upside down. Abbott is the author of 12 mystery and suspense novels. He is a threethreetime nominee for an Edgar Award and a two-time nominee for an Anthony Anthony Award. His novel, “Panic,” was a Thriller Award nominee for Best Novel, Novel, and he is a winner of both an Agatha Award and a Macavity Award for Best Best First Novel. —Christopher Dow Dow

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ON THE

Bookshelf

Mutants and Mystics

In his latest book, Jeff Kripal boldly goes where few religious studies pro fessors have gone before. In it, he writes about the creators of comic books and science fiction as heirs and producers of modern mystical literature. Kripal, the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies, introduced this idea in his previous book, “Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred.” Now, in “Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal,” he ar gues that much of the recent popular culture of the United States — from the early pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, through the sci-fi novels of Philip K. Dick, to the most recent Marvel Comics blockbuster mov ies — is concerned with what has come come to be called the paranormal. In the opening chapter, Kripal explained his his project as “showing how these modern mythologies can be fruitfully fruitfully read as cultural transformations of real-life paranormal paranormal experiences, and how there is no way to disentangle disentangle the very public pop-cultural products from from the very private paranormal experiexperiences. And that, I want to suggest, is is precisely what makes them fantastic.” fantastic.” “Mutants and Mystics” is a work work of comparative religion set in the modern modern era. Starting with the fifirst rst “Superman” “Superman” comic in 1938, Kripal weaves discussions of of modern mythmaking, enlightenment experiences and autobiographical accounts of extreme religious experiences experiences into a single, overarching “super-story.” Describing the Superman Superman character as a sort of proto-shaman or “crashed alien,” the author author explores the mythical themes of mutation and alienation in the story of the “man of steel.” These concepts, in turn, link Superman to accounts of alien alien visitors that proliferated after World War II and continue into the present. “I think we should be looking very, very closely at these sorts of wild,

untamed experiences,” Kripal said in an interview, “as what I think we are looking at is religion in the making before it becomes religion.” Kripal is adamant that the narratives of these artists and authors contain meaning. “We simply need to stop shaming, humiliating, demonizing and dis missing individuals who come forward with heartfelt descriptions of their own encounters with the impossible,” he said. “We also need to integrate these narratives and experiences into our models of the world, be these advanced in the humanities or the sciences. I am completely completely convinced that the cultural taboos around these things are really quite quite weak and basically insecure. The truth is that the vast majority of thinking thinking individuals are utterly, and rightly, fascinated by these extraordinary extraordinary events.” Kripal wants his new new book to challenge the common assumptions people people make about profound, lifelife changing, often mind-blowing mystical experiences. “We think that the reexperiences. ally good stuff lies safely in the past, ally preferably in another language,” preferably Kripal said. “We think that these Kripal events are always coded in religious events or theological theological terms, that they have nothnoth ing to do do with psychical phenomena, that UFO or alien frames frames automatically translate into ‘fraudulent’ or ‘crazy.’” ‘crazy.’” Kripal suggests that anomalous religious experiexperi ences often are closely linked linked to artistic and literary genius. “Paranormal events often act act and look like living narratives or stories,” he said. “Most simply put, I want to revisit the notion that writing and reading are essentially magical activities.” —Franz Brotzen

”Mutants and Mystics” is the winner of the 2011 PROSE Award for Media and Cultural Studies from the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.

“Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, Abolitionist, Conservationist, and Designer of Central Park,” by Justin Martin ’87 (Da Capo Press, 2011).

“Topsy-Turvy: How the Civil War Turned the World Upside Down for Southern Children,” by Anya Jabour ’95, assistant professor of history at the University of Montana (Ivan R. Dee, 2010).

“Matter in the Floating World: Conversations with Leading Japanese Architects and Designers,” by Blaine Brownell ’98, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011).

“The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: A History of Colonial St. Louis,” by Patricia Cleary ’84, professor of history at California State University at Long Beach (University of Missouri Press, 2011).

“No Right Turn: Conservative Politics in a Liberal America,” by David T. Courtwright ’79, Presidential Professor at the University of North Florida (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Rice Magazine

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No. 12

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2012

Gridiron

Man of the

By Andrew Clark

Football is part of the fabric of growing up in Texas — a rite of passage of sorts, says Will McClay ’89. He should know. A Houston native, McClay has been sur rounded by the game throughout his life. He played high school ball at Marian Christian and later went on to star at cornerback for the Rice Owls. Now, more than two decades after graduating, McClay still spends his waking hours around foot ball in the Lone Star State. But these days, he’s in the Dallas Cowboys front ofﬁce. McClay’s route to the NFL was anything but direct. From the arena ranks to the upstart XFL and back to the arena ranks, McClay has been involved in nearly every style of pro football. Player, director of personnel, general manager, head coach — you name it; McClay has done it. “I grew up in Texas, so it’s been a dream come true to be able to work in professional football with the Cowboys,” said McClay, who is the director of football research for Dallas. “In this state, football is such a key part of life. It’s meant a lot to me to be able to transition from playing football to a front ofﬁce position and to be able to continue working around football in Texas.”

For the past nine years, McClay has been a part of the Cowboys organization. He started his tenure in the scouting department and moved to his current position this season. There are two main com ponents to McClay’s job. On one end, he is charged with studying the Cowboys’ next opponent each week to help them prepare for their next game. He’s also responsible for determining the best players available to add to the team’s roster. It’s a year-round job, said McClay, who added that the workload remains the same whether the Cowboys are playing or not. “The focus just changes,” McClay responded when asked if there were any slower parts to the calendar year. “We are always grading and evaluating.” Staying on the cutting edge of the sport is a crucial part of the job for McClay. And that’s where the role of statistics comes in. As evidenced by Michael Lewis’ best-seller-turned movie, “Moneyball,” baseball teams have tried to gain advantages by using novel statistics for over a decade. In recent years, NBA teams — most prominently the Houston Rockets — have been noted for trying to bring advanced metrics into basketball front offices. These sorts of “sabermetrics” are now be coming a key part of the job. “In recent years, advanced statistics has had considerable impact on football,” McClay said. “At first, it was mainly just with baseball. And then they were used to evaluate basketball players. They are now being used to break down football.” There’s a gamut of novel statistics currently being used by teams. From using metrics to determine when when it’s best to attempt a two-point conversion to fi finding nding new ways ways to look at the impact of turnovers, teams are “trying to put football football into numbers and fi find nd different ways to understand it,” McClay said. said. The Beginning of a Journey Breaking into into the NFL was a topsy-turvy process for McClay, a jour journey that began began after graduating from Rice. After McClay went un undrafted and and received no invites to try out at NFL camps, his future in professional football appeared bleak. However, former Rice assistant professional coach Tim Tim Marcum offered to give McClay a shot with the Arena

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Will McClay McClay and his son, Gabriel

Sports

RICEOWLS.COM

Football League’s Detroit Drive. It was a simple choice for McClay. The answer was yes. McClay went on to spend four seasons with the Drive, playing both offense and defense. His best season was in his last year in 1992, when the Houston native racked up 34 tackles to go along with one interception. While it is still football, arena style is a completely different game. The ﬁeld is half the size. There are fewer players. And it is faster. Much faster. Still, McClay found the transition from traditional football to arena ball to be natural. “It was really an easy adjustment for me,” says McClay. “The game is played on such a fast level and it is really different than college ball or the NFL. For example, in the NFL, quarterbacks get about three seconds to throw a pass. When it comes to arena football, they get a second and a half. It really changes things a lot.” It was with the Drive that McClay got his ﬁrst opportunity to coach on the professional level. He spent nearly two years as an as sistant coach with Detroit, and just a few years later, he would serve a similar role with the Arena League’s Grand Rapids Rampage. But in 2000, McClay had the opportunity to tackle the biggest challenge of his football career: assembling a team in an upstart football league — the XFL. The XFL was created by pro wrestling promoter Vince McMahon as an alternative football league that provided fans with a combination of sports and entertainment. The rules were adjusted to lead to rougher play. Players could put whatever they wanted on the back of their jerseys. In fact, one player simply went by the name “He Hate Me.” McClay became director of player person nel for the XFL’s Orlando Rage. The task was an arduous one. He had to create a team from the ground up in less than a year. “It was a great challenge putting a team together,” says McClay. “We were doing the entire thing from scratch because it was a startup league. That meant drawing on the limited resources that we had. Coaches would use any connections that they had to get players. We would look at people playing over in NFL Europe. It opened a lot of doors for people in just one year.” Though the XFL lasted just one season before closing its doors, McClay’s career was beginning to pick up steam. He was then hired as the assistant director of pro personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars. McClay spent one season there before moving on to the Cowboys, where he has been ever since, wearing a number of hats over the past decade. Launching a Career While McClay has worked in the scouting de partment since joining Dallas, he also was tasked with coaching the Desperados, an arena football league team owned by Cowboys own er Jerry Jones. Originally a defensive coordinator for the Desperados, McClay took the reins of the team in 2004. He was wildly successful with the Desperados, leading them to a 55–28–1 record during his tenure. He was even named Coach of the Year in 2006. Former Desperados quarterback Clint Dolezel said that McClay was just the kind of coach that players dreamed of playing for. “What most players like and want is a coach who is honest and fair,” said Dolezel, who played for the Desperados between 2006 and 2008. “Will is both. What he says is what he will follow up with. It is easy to

follow coaches like Will because he is a players’ coach, meaning he played football, so he understands what the athlete is going through during a football season. He does his best to make sure the players are enjoying what they do and keeping a ﬁrm hand so he’s not run over by the players.” According to Dolezel, who has known McClay for more than 15 years, McClay’s personality and willingness to listen to others is what makes him so successful when it comes to putting a team together. “Will is a great listener and will use outside advice if it is pertinent and sound,” Dolezel said. “He’s a smart guy but doesn’t act like he knows it all, and that is a great quality no matter what profession you are in. Will’s knowledge and passion for the game make him one of my favorite coaches ever to play for. Besides being a great football coach, he is just as good of a human being.”

“Will is a great listener and will use outside advice if it is pertinent and sound. He's a smart guy but doesn't act like he knows it all, and that is a great quality no matter what profession you are in. Will's knowledge and passion for the game make him one of my favorite coaches ever to play for.” — Clint Dolezel

After working in the scouting department and as coach of the Desperados (which folded two years ago), McClay was named director of football research this season. It’s a position that requires intimate knowledge of all aspects of the game. Around the country, more and more schools are adding sport management programs to the curriculum to help the next generation prepare for jobs like the one McClay holds. At Rice, a sport management major was created just three years ago. Though he was a few decades short of being able to pursue the degree, McClay says that programs like the one developed at Rice are invaluable. “I think it’s very important to have sport management programs like that,” said McClay of Rice’s new discipline. “There’s this economic dynamic to professional sports, and sports are constantly chang ing. Programs like these give people the knowledge that they need to be successful in managing a franchise, and it teaches them how to use that knowledge properly.” With his days filled by the game he loves, McClay couldn’t be happier. The 45-year-old father of two said that he would eventually like to serve as a general manager in the NFL. But to be able to spend his waking hours involved with the sport he grew up with, well, that’s something he wouldn’t trade. It is hard to imagine anything else from someone who grew up playing football in Texas.

Rice Magazine

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No. 12

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2012

Sports

RICEOWLS.COM

Rice Trustees Approve New Football Facility The Rice University Board of Trustees has approved a $44.5 million proposal to build a new two-story football facility at the south end of Rice Stadium and to improve the stadium facilities and experi ence. The project is contingent on fundraising. The new 80,000-square-foot structure will house training and locker rooms, the Rice Athletic Hall of Fame, a sports medicine center for all student–athletes, offices for the coaching and support staffs, and a room for news conferences and other meetings. The proposal includes plans to upgrade parts of the stadium by demolishing the structures currently at the south end, including the “R” Room that currently houses the Hall of Fame, replacing restrooms and ticket booths, and building eight suites in the south zone. “We’ve seen the benefits of recent investments in the basket ball, baseball, volleyball and track facilities,” said Jim Crownover ’65, chairman of the Rice board, “and Rice’s football program is in line for similar support from the many alumni and fans who value what this means for the student–ath letes and the university.” “This new facility and the renovations to the south end zone will enhance the historic stadium where President John Kennedy deliv ered his famous speech about going to the moon,” Rice President David Leebron said. “While our Owls fans both on campus and in the community will enjoy these improvements, the main beneficia ries will be our student–athletes, who consistently demonstrate their competitive spirit and leadership both on and off the field. They contribute immensely to our student body and the Rice experience.” The Rice football team has been consistently ranked as one of the nation’s top programs in terms of graduation success, while also earning a pair of bowl berths in the last six years. The Owls have been honored for their graduation rates by the American Football

Coaches Association 22 times in the last 23 years and received the or ganization’s highest honor, the Academic Achievement Award, in 2010. Rick Greenspan, director of athletics, recreation and fitness, noted that Rice Stadium is showing the wear and tear of its 61 years. Previous upgrades to the stadium have included a new playing surface, a new video board and scoreboard, and aluminum benches to replace the wooden bleachers. “The board’s approval of our new football facility reflects Rice’s commitment to Division 1-A athletics as the university enters its sec ond century,” Greenspan said. “Rice Athletics is known for its athletic achievements, academic excellence, successful careers of its graduates, leadership and integri ty. I am confident that our former players who love Rice football, as well as our loyal fans who are dedicated to Rice Athletics, will make the critical investments to continue and enhance the efforts of our young men and women who pursue championships in competition and excellence in the classroom each and every day.” Greenspan said the football proposal is part of a larger vision being developed for Rice Athletics that entails enhancements for oth er sports, including tennis and soccer, and additional scholarships for student–athletes. Rice Stadium opened in 1950 and has been the site of many historic events for the university, the city of Houston and the country. On Sept. 12, 1962, in Rice Stadium, Kennedy issued his historic challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The stadium also has served as the home base for the Bluebonnet Bowl, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University and the NFL’s Houston Oilers. One of only three existing on-campus facilities where a Super Bowl has been held, the stadium hosted Super Bowl VIII Jan. 13, 1974, in which the Miami Dolphins defeated the Minnesota Vikings 24–7. Over the years, more than 10 million fans have watched Rice Owls football in Rice Stadium. —B.J. Almond

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Students

Donated Property Is a Nest Egg for Rice HAVE YOUR FLEDGLINGS LEFT THE NEST, LEAVING YOU WITH A BIGGER HOME THAN YOU NEED? Does your spouse no longer give a hoot about maintaining your vacation home? Have you decided that dealing with rental property is for the birds? If the thought of holding on to your real estate for another year is rufﬂing your feathers, we have a solution for you. Donate your property to Rice University, and we’ll turn it into a nest egg that will generate funds — for you during your lifetime, and eventually for Rice’s priorities, ranging from newly hatched ideas to the long-standing hallmarks of a Rice education. Making a gift of real estate is a great way to provide lasting support to Rice while also securing a reliable income stream for yourself. Besides the satisfaction of making a meaningful contribution to the university, you’ll get an immediate income tax deduction. And you’ll potentially avoid some or all capital gains taxes after the sale as well as the trouble of maintaining the property.

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Banner Year

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As Rice’s Centennial Celebration draws near, the Rice campus is already hanging the decorations. Now on display is a series of 100 banners: one for each year of Rice’s remarkable century of growth. Here are just a few, but be sure to visit the campus for a walking tour of Rice history.