Rice University | Spring 2016

The Magazine of Rice University

SPRING 2016

To Be, or Not to Be Dennis Huston

ALSO: An architect explores the science fiction universe, the Rice Thresher turns 100, an alum who can’t stop/won’t stop dancing and a class about monsters.

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The Magazine of Rice University

SPRING 2016

Contents Features

24

Exit, Stage Left Dennis Huston’s perfect casting in plays and in the classroom.

BY TERRENCE DOODY

28

THE ART OF SCIENCE FICTION An architect trades real-world design for fantasy illustration.

BY DAVE SEELEY ’82

36

NO GROWN-UPS ALLOWED The Rice Thresher turns 100, and a former editor recalls the serious fun of student journalism.

BY Lisa Gray ’88

42

NIGHT OWL Hitting the dance floor with an alum who never stops moving.

BY AMANDA SWENNES

Departments S A L LY P O R T 6 News and updates from campus

“Frankly,” a digital illustration that blends photography and drawing, featured in “The Art of Dave Seeley.”

For more of Seeley’s images and insights into his art, see the story on Page 28. courtesy of DAVE S E E L EY

S C O R E B O A R D Sports news and profiles

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A B S T R A C T 15 Findings, research and more A R T S & L E TT E R S Creative ideas and endeavors

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on the web Featured Contributors Terrence Doody

(“Exit, Stage Left”) joined Rice’s English department in 1970 and has since taught courses in modernism, the novel and contemporary literature. An award-winning teacher, he has been instrumental in establishing Rice’s firstyear writing seminars.

John Sullivan

When Rice videographer Brandon Martin first captured Claire O’Malley ’16 on film at Owl Days 2012, she was a high school senior looking to follow in the footsteps of her older sister.

Four years later, O’Malley has forged her own path at Rice, combining majors in studio arts and mechanical engineering, serving as director of the student-run Matchbox Gallery and indulging her “superintense creative impulse” in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen as a product designer. “Students have a lot of jurisdiction over their own path here,” she said. “Out of that there comes a lot of unique opportunity.” To view this and other video profiles from the Class of 2016, go here: ricemagazine.info/324

fol low r ic e unive r si t y

Follow Rice news and more via social media outlets. From Instagram to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more, we document the daily goingson about campus and beyond. To flip through the current Rice Magazine online, check ISSUU.

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I ssu u rice.edu/ricemagazine

flickr flickr.com/photos/ricepublicaffairs/

T WI TTER @RiceMagazine

I NSTAG RAM instagram.com/riceuniversity

r i c e p h oto Co r n e r rice.edu/gallery

YO UTU B E youtube.com/riceuniversity

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Lisa Gray ’88

(“No Grown-ups Allowed”) came to Houston to attend Rice and never thought she’d stay. She edits Gray Matters, a Web magazine for the Houston Chronicle.

Leticia Treviño ’16

(“Noted and Quoted”) graduated this spring with a degree in Hispanic studies and French. Besides being an active Sidizen, Treviño has interned at Rice Magazine for three years, focusing on research, story development and student life. This fall, she will begin her doctoral studies in Hispanic cultures and literature at UCLA.

On t h e c ove r The Association of Rice Alumni’s Classroom Connect attendees were invited to “Lunch With Legends” Feb. 13.

Dennis Huston, the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English, shared stories about Rice then and now, along with John Boles ’65 and Kathleen Matthews.

See story on Page 24.

Photo by Tommy LaVergne

br a ndon m a rt i n

FO UR YE A RS, TWO M AJO RS, O NE CRE ATIVE SCH O L A R

(“Caught Looking”) is a Houston native who gets to watch baseball — a lot of baseball — as assistant communications director for the Rice Owls. He also covers the soccer and swim teams.

foreword

The Magazine of Rice University SPring 2016 Rice Magazine is published four times a year and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, parents of undergraduates and friends of the university.

Published by the Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president Editor

Lynn Gosnell Art Directors

Tanyia Johnson Jeff Cox Creative Services

Jeff Cox senior director Dean Mackey senior graphic designer Jackie Limbaugh graphic designer Tracey Rhoades editorial director Jennifer Latson assistant editor Tommy LaVergne senior university photographer Jeff Fitlow university photographer Jenny Rozelle ’00 proofreader Letty Treviño ’16 intern

A Winning Formula

H

ere’s an equation we live by: Compelling stories married with memorable design (online or in print) equals happy readers. Simple, right?

But getting from idea to print and pixels is a process that’s fraught with surprises and delays — much like a Houstonian’s daily commute. We set a course for work or home only to encounter traffic detours, and up pops a new route on our editorial GPS. This spring’s route included a fond farewell, an epic deluge and a talented team who pitched in.

For the past two-and-a-half years, art director Tanyia Johnson has employed her considerable creative talents (not to mention resourcefulness) to deliver a product that’s beautiful to hold in your hands. Houstonia Magazine noticed too, and this spring, she became their newest art director. We congratulate Tanyia and look forward to seeing her work in that venue.

For this issue, Jeff Cox, our creative services director (and a past winner of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education’s Sibley Award for best alumni magazine) stepped up to complete our design — until an April deluge flooded his neighborhood and home. Like too many Houston residents, Jeff has gamely balanced home restoration, extra-long commutes and flood-related phone calls. He completed the design and production of this issue with assistance by veteran design staffers Dean Mackey and Jackie Limbaugh.

Our issue arrives to your home a couple of weeks later than planned, but here it is — chock-full of stories that shine a light on teaching excellence, student journalism, research and discovery — and you, our alumni. As always, we welcome your feedback at ricemagazine@rice.edu.

tommy l av er g ne

Contributing Staff

Jade Boyd, Jeff Falk, Amy McCaig, Brandon Martin, David Medina, Jana Olson, John Sullivan, Mike Williams

Lynn Gosnell lynn.gosnell@rice.edu

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letters r e a d e r r e sp onse

The Rice University Board of Trustees

TO THE EDITOR

I beg to differ with the author of the ring story (Winter 2016, Page 48) on the subject of the style of Rice rings. My high school math teacher, H. Lel Red, was a member of the Rice class of 1916. Her Rice ring had a lovely bas-relief owl’s head [and not a seal]. I understand from her nephew, a member of my high school graduating class, that Miss Red’s ring is now in the Rice archives.

Miss Red was also my father’s high school math teacher (Sam Houston High School class of 1929), and he remembered her with as much affection as I do. I would love to see a photograph of that ring.

Miss Red’s fifth-period class had a number of future Rice graduates in 1955–1957, including Earl Van Zandt, Charles and Charlene Prescott, Wendy Rainbow Germani, Judith Helmle Shaw, Bill Middleton, Gene Marshall, John Wolf, Mike Bowen and Carlos Hamilton.

Unlike many teachers today, she followed us throughout high school, teaching algebra, plane and solid geometry, and trigonometry. She allowed the few students who could afford them to use calculators in math class and believed that our children would be using calculators in elementary school — a radical idea in 1957.

Robert B. Tudor III, chairman; Edward B. “Teddy” Adams Jr.; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; Keith T. Anderson; Doyle Arnold; Nancy Packer Carlson; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Mark Dankberg; Doug Foshee; Lawrence Guffey; Patti Kraft; Charles Landgraf; R. Ralph Parks; David Rhodes; Lee H. Rosenthal; Ruth Simmons; Jeffery Smisek; Amy Sutton; Gloria Meckel Tarpley; Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Guillermo Treviño; Randa Duncan Williams; Huda Zoghbi.

Administrative Officers

Selected Survey Results: Rice Magazine Winter 2016

David W. Leebron, president; Marie Lynn Miranda, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Klara Jelinkova, vice president for IT and chief information officer; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Caroline Levander, vice president of Strategic Initiatives and Digital Education; Chris Muñoz, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Development and Alumni Relations.

Most-read feature

“Lost at Sea: How ‘boat people’ fleeing the aftermath of the Vietnam War

discovered safe haven in Houston — and how their stories found a home at Rice.”

Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 Phone: 713-348-6768 ricemagazine@rice.edu

— JUdy Cole Talkington ’61

In September 2001, my husband, Pat Jones ’55, and I spent a few nights in a hidden hotel on a cliff in Santorini, Greece. One morning we had breakfast on the terrace, which was separated from the adjoining terrace by a low wall. A young couple sat down to breakfast on the other side of the wall. As we greeted each other, I noticed they wore Rice rings. It was a serendipitous encounter.

The second story is about Pat, who graduated with honors as a mechanical engineer. All his life he refused to wear rings. But when he was age 79 and suffering with dementia, he began wearing his Rice ring, which he never removed. When he died in March 2015, our son, a civil/transportation planning engineer, removed it from Pat’s finger and is now its keeper. I still wear mine, as do Pat’s sister, Angela, and her husband, Hugh Miller ’57.

This ring is beautiful, unusual and well-earned.

— Barbara veyon Jones ’56

Editorial Offices

timed

“I lived 26 years in Houston and never knew that’s why we had so many Vietnamese immigrants! I’m very glad to learn about that, and it’s very welltimed considering the Syrian refugee crisis.”

Most-read department Abstract

81 percent of survey takers agreed or strongly agreed with this statement: Reading Rice Magazine helps me stay connected to Rice University.

Have a comment, criticism or story idea? Write to us at ricemagazine@rice.edu.

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Postmaster

Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 ©May 2016 Rice University

president’s note Davi d W. L e e b r on

The Forever Business

N elly M a rloew

We are in a time when skepticism about higher education is widespread.

One area that has sparked steady criticism over the last decade is how universities spend their endowments. Most recently, the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee sent burdensome requests to Rice and the 55 other private universities with endowments exceeding $1 billion asking detailed questions on how we invest and spend our endowment.

We received similar requests eight years ago, motivated by the view that universities were spending too little out of their endowments. This most recent request was spurred by lawmakers who believe that universities should be using their endowments to fund more scholarships or otherwise reduce the price of tuition. Those are noble goals, but greater endowment spending is not the solution, and these views reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about the proper role of a university endowment and its prudent management.

Yet we hear such sentiments from many quarters. Recently, the Thresher penned an editorial that suggested we should simply dig into the endowment to deal with some challenges arising from increasing enrollment in mechanical engineering. I occasionally hear from strong supporters of various programs that we should take money out of the endowment to build new facilities.

You even hear questions from alumni about why they should donate to Rice when we have an endowment of more than $5 billion.

I have sometimes replied that if Rice is so rich, why do we often feel so poor? The answer is the breadth of our endeavor on what is in many respects a narrow resource base as a result of our comparatively small size. It is the endowment that funds our foundational commitment to making our education accessible to any student who is admitted, regardless of his or her family’s financial circumstances. We spend about half of the annual endowment distribution on financial aid. The endowment supports about 38 percent of our total budget and nearly 60 percent of our core budget, which excludes research grants, parking, and housing and dining. I have been moved to quip that there is only one rule that applies to every part of Rice, and that is that everything must lose money. It is the endowment that makes our endeavor financially possible.

If the endowment is necessary to sustain the core functions of the

university, the question then becomes how to balance the needs of the present against the needs of the future. Our board of trustees adopted a prudent policy that sets a spending guideline of between 4.5 and 5.5 percent of the three-year moving average of the endowment value, with an absolute maximum of 6.5 percent. Over the last decade, the percentage of spending of the three-year average has ranged between 5.17 and 5.71 percent, while the spending rate measured against the current year beginning valuation has been between 4.3 and 6.1 percent.

In the past, some in Congress have suggested that universities, like foundations, should be required to spend 5 percent of their endowment value each year. This reflects a profound confusion about the difference between the operation of a grantmaking foundation and an operating enterprise such as university. It would be disastrous if we had to adjust our spending each year to that year’s endowment value. Such a policy would result in wild annual swings, including, for example, a more than 20 percent reduction in endowment support in the 2009–10 academic year.

Instead, on average, our endowment spending, apart from increases related to additional gifts, generally grows 2 to 4 percent each year — although in the five years following the market collapse of 2008, the average annual increase in endowment spending was approximately zero. Prudent spending in years of high returns sustains us through years of low returns.

Our chief investment officer, Allison Kendrick Thacker ’96, likes to say she is in the “forever” investment business. That is, having recently marked our Centennial Celebration, our aspiration is to endure, like our older brethren, for centuries to come.

That means we must take into account not merely inflation, but the expanding nature of the university enterprise both in teaching and research. Much of this expansion has been and must be funded by the gifts of generous supporters, but occasionally we must draw on our endowment earnings as well to assure that our core endeavors remain strong. The growth of our endeavor in recent years — including new leadership, internship and entrepreneurship programs; an urban research institute and Asian studies; and the renewal and expansion of our facilities for physics, art, student well-being and athletics — has depended, for the most part, on philanthropy.

With so many pressures on higher education and on the families of our students, it is easy to understand the desire to spend more, to take from the future for the benefit of the present. But as I wrote to the congressional committees: “In so many aspects of American life we have mortgaged the future for the benefit of the present. We must not do that to our institutions of higher education.”

If we are to continue building a university, in Edgar Odell Lovett’s words, for “your children, and your children’s children and their children,” we must assure that the endowment’s value remains sufficient to sustain and grow that endeavor. We are indeed in the forever business, and that thought must both sustain our passion and guide our prudence.

“In so many aspects of American life we have mortgaged the future for the benefit of the present. We must not do that to our institutions of higher education.”

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SALLYPORT

A

News and Update s from Campus

The Art of Spring

s an architecture student, sophomore Rachel Kim is learning to observe and analyze the world around her.

This applies not only to the built environment, but also to the natural world. “A lot of

architecture students are interested in the visual arts,” Kim said. “It’s why many of us go into architecture.” This spring, Kim enrolled in Beginning Drawing (ARTS 225), taught by artist Joshua Bernstein, a lecturer in the Department of

around campus. University photographer Tommy LaVergne captured this photo of Kim, who was sitting on a bench near the Cohen House sundial, drawing a sprawling live oak tree. Holding a pencil at arm’s length, she said, “ensures that we have consistent measurements as we draw the initial contours of the object.”

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Tommy l av er g ne

Visual and Dramatic Arts. The class emphasized learning to draw from direct observation both in the studio and

sa llyport

t r a d i t ions | W i ll Rice C olle ge

t op five

The Crab Nebula Defense

Student Life Hacks

W

ill Rice College’s Beer Bike teams have had a good run

go shoot some balloons at Lovett,’” he said.

in recent years. Will Rice is the only

fights — this was advanced combat involving sur-

college to have simultaneously won the men’s, wom-

gical tubing that could launch projectiles across

en’s and graduate students’ contests, and to have

quads. Eventually, Atkinson said, the balloons

done so five times. In case the other colleges hadn’t

caused roof tile damage, and the practice was

noticed, the residents of Will Rice (which

These were not just your basic water balloon

banned.

modestly bills itself as “the College of

For many Will Ricers the game room is

Gods and Goddesses”) began parad-

a second home — and a place to nurture

ing around campus three years ago with

their competitive spirits. Foosball compe-

brooms. The Phoenix Raids, as they are

titions, in particular, have spawned such

known, are designed to “educate other

creatively named tactics as the “French

colleges on how to properly sweep,” said

guillotine shot” and the “Crab Nebula de-

Veronica Rae Saron ’14.

fense.” But perhaps the most archetypal

Indeed, Will Rice’s competitiveness runs deep.

is the “Doc shot,” in honor of Gilbert “Doc C” Cuth-

Edward “Neely” Atkinson ’75, a freshman at Will

bertson, the legendary resident associate who has

Rice in 1971 and currently a senior lecturer of statis-

graced Will Rice for more than 50 years. “He has

tics, recalled water balloon fights with adjacent col-

touched generations of Will Ricers,” said Derek

leges as “a year-round activity.” The fights were not

Brown ’16.

particularly organized. “It was more, ‘I’m bored. Let’s

— F ra n z B rot z e n ’80

We asked students to share their favorite life hacks* for getting through the day — or a semester — at Rice.

1

on a Kindle or e-reader. Knocks out homework and exercise all at once.

2

Get eight hours of sleep a night.

3

Eat Cheetos with chopsticks. It helps keep fingers and keyboards clean.

4

Be ready for anything Rice throws

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Do your assigned reading at the Rec Center

You’ll get even more work done, because you won’t be a zombie.

at you by carrying these two things: an umbrella and a flash drive.

Set reminders on your phone for EVERYTHING.

*Life hack: A tool or technique that makes some aspect of one’s life easier or more efficient.

Gilbert “Doc C” Cuthbertson plays foosball with a student in the Will Rice game room.

— Letty Treviño ’16

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sa llypo rt | Unco nvent io na l wisdo m

THE HISTORIAN Alex Byrd ’90 knows Rice better than a lot of professors. Coming to the university from Houston’s historically black Jack Yates High School, Byrd wasn’t sure how he’d fit in when he matriculated in 1986. Three decades later, the history professor is a Rice institution in his own right; Dean of Humanities Nicolas Shumway once called him “the complete package: a great teacher, great student adviser and a really superb scholar.” He’s currently wrapping up his fifth year as the master of Wiess College. “I’ve been a Rice student or a Rice faculty member longer than I’ve been almost anything else. Both my children were born while I was a resident associate at Baker College. I have a dear attachment to this place.”

ACADEMIC INSPIRATION When I took that class in Civil Rights history, it was clear to me that I was taking it to get an idea about how black history spoke to the opportunities that were available in America. It was a story about black struggle and ultimately 8

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Adam Cruft

info@adamcruft.com phone 07849353381 72 Darenth Park Avenue Dartford, Kent DA2 6LX illustration: http://www.adamcruft.com twitter: https://twitter.com/adamcruft

about black revolution and success. That was the overarching theme: the way that AfricanAmerican history had turned American history toward justice.

For me, that was quite an inspiring story. And so, even the darkest aspects of black history that I study and teach have followed that arc. This may be less the case moving forward. In the 21st century, the things left undone from the black freedom struggle are so unrelentingly present that I don’t know what story arc has survived or remained. And that’s one of the things I am trying to figure out.

THE PERSONAL IS PROFESSORIAL I have only ever researched topics that I have felt strongly about. My first book was about black migration in the late 18th century, and I felt really connected to

a da m cru f t

A BUDDING HISTORIAN I had history professors who made a mark on me starting as early as my first year at Rice.

There was a visiting professor here named Julius Scott who taught a class on the history of the Civil Rights Movement. That was the first history class I took. So there were people who were role models for me before I knew I wanted to be a historian. John Boles ’65 wrote a particularly encouraging remark on a paper of mine, which said, “You should think about history as a career.” So I did.

sa llyport

that as it spoke to the emigrant experience of African slaves, but it also spoke to the black migrant presence in an age that was critical to the origins of American society and politics. Now I am interested in how desegregation and neighborhood changes have affected education in the urban South.

That is something I am very personally interested in. I have children who are in school in the urban South, and I see and feel acutely the success associated with desegregation, but also the failures.

HISTORY’S LATEST CHAPTER We are in an age of tremendous opportunity in African-American history, but the challenge is the separation,

The advice that worked best for me is, ‘If you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else, then you should probably be a college professor.’ or the potential separation, between AfricanAmericans who have access to real educational, career and economic opportunities and those who have very limited access. I think we are in an age of inequality that has a potential to swing one of two ways.

We can continue to exacerbate that inequality or we can attempt to address it.

BEING A LEADER IN RESIDENTIAL COLLEGES I spent a good deal of time at Wiess thinking about how to use the masters house as a classroom, and thinking about what type of classroom it could be.

We have done a series of African-American studies classes in the college that involve six to nine undergraduate

students but also two graduate students.

I still teach physically out in the university.

But it’s the college courses, and the integration of graduate training and undergraduate teaching in the college courses, that have been most special.

SPOTTING FUTURE HISTORIANS When I see someone

who I think might be particularly good in this field, I try to capture them. I don’t know how successful I am, but I tell them, “Maybe you should consider an academic career.” The advice that worked best for me is, “If you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else, then you should probably be a college professor.”

LEAVING WIESS It is bittersweet.

I think five years is a perfect amount of time [to serve as a college master]. You need new ideas and fresh perspectives in the colleges. There are lots of things I’ll miss about it, but it will also be part of my experiences moving on and will continue to affect everything I do in the university.

— Sukhada Tatke

Teaching at Wilson House

During the final two years of his term as master of Wiess College, Alex Byrd convened a series of college courses at Wilson House (the Wiess masters house), each focused on various issues in African-American studies. “The opportunity to offer these courses in a residential college setting, with the kind of continuity and familiarity afforded by the college context, has been a highlight of my teaching career,” he said. Byrd recommends the following books from each course: • • • •

“Notes of a Native Son,” by James Baldwin “Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California,” by Emily E. Straus “Americanah,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison

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sa llypo rt | sylla bus

BIOC/HUMA 368

Monster: Conceiving and Misconceiving the Monstrous in Fiction and Art, in Medicine and the Biosciences (Spring 2016) Department: BioSciences and Humanities Description Monsters are products not just of nature but also of human conception. They wander forth out of evolution, out of language, out of brain physiology and social disjunction. It is this variety of the monstrous — and its traces in the domains of art and bioscience, fiction and medicine — that we endeavor to capture this semester.

Book Covers: Readings included Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents” and Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Middlesex.”

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Multidisciplinary Monster Mash

I

t’s the Jekyll and Hyde of the Rice course catalog: one class that embodies two seemingly opposite characters.

Monster, co-taught by professors Deborah Harter and Michael Gustin, combines biosciences and the humanities in the first Rice course ever cross-listed in both disciplines. The professors alternate lesson plans on cultural archetypes of monstrosity, touching on topics like genetic mutations, disorders of the brain and body, disability and artificial intelligence. Gustin teaches the science (for example, the neuroanatomy of psychopaths) while Harter teaches corresponding fiction and films (for psychopathy, “The Silence of the Lambs”).

course highlights Most provocative insight In one lecture, Gustin told students they all had “a little psychopath inside,” according to Selina Chen, a sophomore studying math and science. “He said we may need a little of that to survive and compete,” she explained. That point, coupled with a close reading of Jekyll and Hyde, inspired one of Chen’s essays: “Dr. Jekyll can’t accept that Mr. Hyde is a part of himself. I compared that to the inner conflict we all face, and how, whenever there’s something I’ve done that I’m not proud of, I try to externalize it.”

Toughest challenge Teaching such a diverse group of students has posed a challenge for the professors.

They’ve had to adjust to each other as well, and often butt heads, albeit respectfully.

“We’ve both evolved as teachers,” Gustin said. “I’ve had to become familiar with a literature that I was aware of but maybe not well versed in.”

“In my mind,” Harter said, “our students couldn’t possibly understand interdisciplinarity better than they do as they watch the two of us both support and question each other in regular battles of warm intellectual exchange.”

Ric e M aga z i n e | s p ri ng 2 0 1 6

Most monstrous monsters After studying the social response to lepers, Giancarlo Latta was struck by the way people tended to conflate physical illness with moral contamination, jumbling their fear of leprosy with a fear of the people afflicted by it. Latta, a junior majoring in violin performance, noted a parallel with the way gay men were treated in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Discussing Latta’s paper, Gustin said that history reveals a universal impulse to identify people who are different and to “out” them, segregating them from the mainstream. The stigmatized groups have varied through the ages, but the outing has remained a constant — and its effects have proved more dangerous than any epidemic.

Biggest takeaway While the class offers an introduction to some of nature’s strangest aberrations — the genetic mutation, for example, that turns the ordinary whippet into a hypermuscular monster dog — it’s less a lineup of hideous creatures than an examination of the way people from different cultures and historical eras have labeled others as fearful and sought to marginalize them. As Harter explained, it’s a way to learn more about who we are by what we’re afraid of.

— Jennifer Latson

sallyport | writ i ng h om e

Xin chào tù’ Hà Nôi!

[Greetings from Hanoi] Nick Thorpe ’15

I

t’s been almost a year since the hot and humid June day when I arrived in Hanoi for a stint as a Luce Scholar. After two months of intensive Vietnamese language study, I began work as a policy researcher for a local environmental NGO. I research the environmental implications that trade deals, such as the TransPacific Partnership, would have on a highly biodiverse country like Vietnam.

A highlight of my time has been living with a wonderful homestay family, cô Mai and chú Việt. Not only has living with them been great practice for my Vietnamese, but it also has provided insight into cultural traditions such as Vietnamese New Year (Tết) and ancestor worship. Plus, cô Mai makes the best fried spring rolls (nem rán) I have ever had and has introduced me to so many delicious foods — expanding my concept of Vietnamese food beyond a bowl of phở.

While endless construction projects line my commute to work (via my Yamaha Nouvo motorbike), there is an undeniable charm to Vietnam’s capital city, with its tree-lined streets and peaceful lakes; toddlers riding on the backs of motorbikes in sunglasses, helmets and adorable outfits; and the look of utter surprise by locals when I speak to them in Vietnamese. Every day brings new and unexpected experiences — whether drinking rice wine and going to karaoke with coworkers or dodging herds of cows and water buffaloes in the countryside.

There have also been some low points, like missing home during the holidays or sitting in a meeting and not being able to follow what was being said. Another Rice alum living in Hanoi reminds me that I am adjusting to a new country, culture, language and work environment while transitioning from college — and nothing about that is easy.

I’m looking forward to some upcoming adventures — motorbiking in Vietnam’s northern mountains near the Chinese border and spending time with my family when they come to visit during the summer.

Vietnam has opened my eyes to what it means to live and work abroad, to experience a new culture and to discuss global issues. It has been nothing short of a transformative experience.

E hrin M acksey

Are you a young alum living outside the u.S.?

Write us a letter and tell us about your day-to-day experiences: ricemagazine@rice.edu

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sallypo rt | NOTED + QUOTED

“The relationship is either one of students in higher education that are involved in athletics, or it is an employee–employer relationship where this athlete is involved in the entertainment industry. College sport has always been in that developmental model; this is part of education.”

— NCAA President Mark Emmert, in a public conversation on campus with President David Leebron, April 1, and quoted in the Rice Thresher.

seal the deal Introduction to Engineering design students created a fishrewarding device for sea lions at the Houston Zoo. See video at ricemagazine.info/326

“The greatest experiences were not those where your blackness stood out but those where your blackness melded and you were enjoying just a college experience. That was really, really great.”

— Ronald Arceneaux ’74, speaking at “Reflections of the Past, Promises for the Future,” an event celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the desegregation of Rice University, held Feb. 18. Arceneaux came to Rice from New Orleans on a football scholarship in 1969.

400

the big

12

It’s been 400 years since Shakespeare’s death in 1616. Fondren Library has several rare editions of Shakespeare’s works, including this 1903 compilation of sonnets and poems.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/327

“Vote for us, because a new arm and a leg shouldn’t cost ... an arm and a leg.”

— Anne Wilkes Tucker, 2016 Campbell Lecture Series speaker. Tucker is curator emerita of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

— Blake Teipel, a Ph.D. student in engineering at Texas A&M University, pitching TriFusion Devices during the 2016 Rice Business Plan Competition. The team beat out 41 other competitors with its 3-D printed prosthetics.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/325

Watch TriFusion’s elevator pitch: ricemagazine.info/328

Ric e M aga z i n e | s p ri ng 2 0 1 6

J e f f f i t low

“Even if desired, they could not study the enigmatic smile, the curl of her hair, the tones and fold of her gown … all of which da Vinci painted with minute consideration.

Are they aware of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius in other disciplines besides art? I think they primarily care that the painting is famous and that they can photograph it, or, even better, can frame themselves in the painting in a selfie.”

Sports News and Profile s

I

C A UGHT Loo k i n g

tommy l av er g ne

t became something of a distraction at Reckling Park this season. Every time John Duplantier ’17 was scheduled to pitch, a parade of scouts lined up for the best seats. With Major League Baseball’s draft looming, representatives from big league teams around the country wanted a good look at the fireball pitcher.

Even more distracting than their seat selection was the synchronized scouting routine they performed during games. In unrehearsed unison, they brandished radar guns like the ones used in highway patrol, repurposed to track pitching speed. The “Reckling Park speed trap” reinforced what their trained eyes had already told them: Duplantier has the strength, aptitude and confidence to pitch professionally, and maybe even at the elite level in the major leagues.

Duplantier’s two variations on a fastball could reach 95 mph, lighting up the radar guns like a speeding Maserati. The scouts also liked — and opposing hitters seemed to hate — his curve ball,

a slower but sneakier pitch. Earlier this year, that combination earned him the National Pitcher of the Week award for striking out 14 batters in a single game.

Duplantier’s talent didn’t come easily, however. The Katy, Texas, native notes that he put in a great deal of hard work to come this far.

“Rice has helped me get better, no question,” Duplantier said.

“When I got on campus, the coaches made it pretty simple. They said, ‘If you want to pitch, then throw strikes.’ My freshman year I didn’t throw a lot of strikes, so I didn’t pitch a lot.” continued on Page 14 s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 13

s core b oa rd

Caught Lo oki ng,

continued

day i n t h e l i fe | Evan Karakolis

Evan Karakolis Sport

Men’s Track and Field

— John Sullivan

Hometown

Scarborough, Ontario College

Baker

Major

Mechanical Engineering Coach

Academic All-American Evan Karakolis is the Owls’ top javelin thrower. He owns the Rice record for a distance of 72.76 meters. We asked Evan to describe a typical day.

Jon Warren

Mondays

7 a.m.

Power breakfast: Instant oatmeal, coffee, vitamins and supplements Omegawave reading (to measure recovery from the previous day’s workout)

8 a.m.

Ab exercises and a quick stretching routine before taking the METRORail to campus

9 a.m.

Classes start

Noon

Grab lunch at Baker, watch ESPN More classes

Skype with Canadian coach; together, they watch videos of his throws and discuss technique and prep

3:15 p.m.

8 p.m.

4 p.m.

Catch a Toronto Raptors or Toronto Blue Jays game, depending on the season

1 p.m.

Hit the training room for stretching or massage therapy Javelin practice — throwing, sprinting and plyometrics, which are jumps and bounds “to help you become more explosive”

5 p.m.

Track practice 14

Ric e M aga z i n e | s p ri ng 2 0 1 6

7:30 p.m.

Study in the Baker computer room

Late night Catch some zzzzzs!

Tommy L aVer g ne

And while Duplantier now is one of the brightest stars of college baseball, he almost didn’t play baseball at all.

Right before he signed on at Rice, he was offered a chance to play college football as a quarterback at Yale.

“All the way through my senior year of high school I had considered myself a football player who also played baseball,” he said. “Playing football at Yale was close to happening.”

The allure of Rice baseball won out in the end, however. “I think it took more than one outing on the diamond for me to get Rice’s attention,” he said.

“But once the coaches told me they were interested, I knew that was it.”

Now the major leagues are interested, too. But while the scouts may have been a nuisance to fans this season, Duplantier doesn’t even notice them once he gets on the mound.

“Once the national anthem is played I kind of go in my zone,” he said. “I can hear Coach Graham for sure. Also, no matter how many people there are at the game, or how crazy our fans get, I can always hear my mom.”

Findings, Re search and more

THE R O SS ICE SHELF ’ S HIST O RIC LESS O NS

• The Ross Ice Shelf, almost as large as France, is the world’s largest ice shelf.

• Scientists, including Rice oceanographer John Anderson, believe the ice shelf broke apart about 5,000 years ago.

P hoto C ourt esy o f L a uren S i mk i ns

• How ice sheets and shelves responded to historic atmospheric and ocean warming informs scientists about present-day conditions.

In a new study that provides clues about how Antarctica’s Ross reveals that a floating ice shelf formed in the sea as the grounded ice Ice Shelf might respond to a warming climate, U.S. and Japanese sheet retreated. Sophisticated carbon dating of seafloor sediments oceanographers detailed the breakup of a 100,000-square-mile showed that the ice shelf later broke apart, in dramatic fashion. “The section of the shelf after the last ice age. A recent study in Proceedings really big breakup began around 3,000 B.C.,” Anderson said. “We of the National Academy of Sciences proposed that the ice sheet believe it was similar, in many respects, to the breakup of the Larsen retreated from the Ross Sea and was replaced by a floating B Ice Shelf in 2002. The Larsen is far smaller than the ice shelf that broke apart during the Bronze Age. The paper Ross Ice Shelf, but satellite imagery that year showed the Oceanography was co-authored by Rice oceanographer John Anderson, Larsen dramatically breaking apart in just a few weeks. postdoctoral research associate Lauren Simkins, graduate student We believe the large breakup of the Ross Ice Shelf occurred at roughly Lindsay Prothro and their colleagues at the University of Tokyo. this same pace, but the area involved was so much larger — about In western Antarctica, the Ross Sea is characterized by a the size of the state of Colorado — that it took several centuries to continental shelf that extends nearly 1,000 miles from the coast complete.” Video: ricemagazine.info/329

— Jade Boyd to depths of roughly 3,500 feet. Anderson said the geologic record

s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 15

a bstract

facult y b ooks

The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained

by Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal (TarcherPerigee, 2016)

S

trieber’s 1987 bestseller “Communion” made him “the poster boy for alien abduction,” according to Texas Monthly.

It also started a conversation on unexplained experiences that he continues here with co-author Jeffrey Kripal, the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion at Rice.

That conversation is not without controversy, as Kripal acknowledges in an opening chapter that calls the book “an apocalypse of thought.”

Rather than attempting to prove the reality of alien encounters, “The Super Natural” endeavors instead to explore and understand those phenomena that occupy the extreme margins of human experience — what Kripal calls “the wild, fantastic stuff that shouts, glows and zaps.”

— J.L.

Strand of Jewels: My Teachers’ Essential Guidance on Dzogchen

Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America

Khetsun Sangpo, a renowned scholar of the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, refused for decades to discuss Dzogchen — the path to primordial awakening that is one of the school’s central teachings — with anyone who hadn’t already completed the “foundational practices,” according to Klein, a Rice religion professor who is herself a Buddhist lama. But his desire to make Buddhism more inclusive won out, and ultimately he authorized Klein to translate this text from the Tibetan, along with his oral commentary on the teachings. The book is unique for its deep interweaving of the poetic, effortless character of traditional Dzogchen with scholarship that anchors it in a wide array of seminal texts from across the Indian and Tibetan traditions. Although Khetsun Sangpo died in 2009, many of his insights live on in this book, which, Klein explains in her introduction, is “meant to inspire and nourish lifelong practice.”

— J.L.

The historical record on Franklin D. Roosevelt is mixed. He’s remembered both as the New Deal reformer who helped pull the United States out of the Great Depression and, less fondly, as the wartime president who interned more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. In his new book, Rice History Professor Douglas Brinkley makes a case for adding another accomplishment to the plus column by recognizing Roosevelt’s unsung role as a great conservationist. Under FDR’s watch, Brinkley said, 3 billion trees were planted and crucial landscapes were saved, from the Okefenokee Swamp to the Olympic Mountains, making him the most preservation-minded of all the presidents but one — his distant relative, Theodore Roosevelt. Brinkley is well aware of the comparison; he published a biography of Teddy Roosevelt, “The Wilderness Warrior,” in 2009.

— J.L.

by Khetsun Sangpo; translated by Anne C. Klein (Snow Lion, 2016)

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by Douglas Brinkley (Harper, 2016)

a bst ract

Psychology

A toxic couple

• Depression and inflammation feed off one another, with many negative health consequences.

• When inflammation co-occurs with depression, treating the two in tandem can improve the chances of recovery.

Chronic inflammation in the bloodstream can “fan the flames” of depression, much like throwing gasoline on a fire, according to research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study, from researchers at Rice and Ohio State University, reviewed 200 existing papers on depression and inflammation.

“In the health area of psychology at Rice, we’re very focused on the intersection of health, behavior, psychology and medicine,” said Christopher Fagundes, an assistant professor of psychology and co-author of the paper. “One thing that we’re particularly interested in is how stress affects the immune system, which in turn affects diseases and mental health outcomes, the focus of this paper.”

The authors found that in addition to being linked to numerous physical health issues, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, systemic inflammation is linked to mental health issues such as depression. Among

patients suffering from clinical depression, concentrations of two inflammatory markers, CRP and IL-6, were elevated by up to 50 percent.

Researchers are finding that systemic inflammation is “the root of all physical and mental diseases,” Fagundes said. “Stress, as well as poor diet and bad health behaviors, enhances inflammation.”

The review also found that depression caused by chronic inflammation is resistant to traditional therapy methods, but can be treated with activities such as yoga, meditation, diet, NSAIDS (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and exercise.

Video: ricemagazine.info/330 — Amy McCaig Photography

FotoFest at Rice

• Rice hosted five FotoFest exhibitions this year.

• Two exhibitions were sponsored by the Rice Center for Energy and Environmen- tal Research in the Human Sciences.

• These photos were displayed in three solar-powered containers near the Moody Center for the Arts site.

By hosting five exhibitions this year, Rice has become an integral part of Houston’s FotoFest, a citywide exhibition of photography and mixed media arts. The 2016 biennial explored the theme “Changing Circumstances: Looking at the Future of the Planet.”

Two of the exhibitions, in particular, were made possible by an energetic partnership of students, faculty and alumni. “Another Storm Is Coming” featured photographs and video by artist Judy Natal, while “Dear Climate” included the work of four artists: Marina Zurkow, Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl and Oliver Kellhammer.

These exhibitions were displayed in and around three reconfigured solar-powered containers on a patch of land between Tudor Fieldhouse and the Moody Center for the Arts construction site. Rice Building Workshop students built ramps, mounted artwork and created signs for the temporary art galleries, which were donated by alumnus Joe Meppelink ’00 of MetaLab and Joey Romano, the president of Mobile Grid.

Both exhibitions were commissioned by Rice’s Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/331 — Jeff Falk

s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 17

abstract

ENGINEERING

A hand for hand-makers

• Senior engineering students developed a way to test the strength of 3-D printed prosthetics.

• Such prosthetics can be made more efficient, especially for use by children.

Engineering

Powerful magnet will lessen pain •

•

•

Engineering students developed a less- invasive ureteral stent removal system.

Their design team, Rice Outstenting, worked with Texas Children’s Hospital.

The device has won several prizes, which will lead to further development.

A simple device created by engineering students may shield young children from much of the pain of having a stent removed after a urinary tract procedure.

Their invention, the Ureteral Stent Electromagnetic Removal Bead, is part of a stent inserted into the ureter, the duct that allows urine to pass from the kidney to the bladder. The stent keeps the passageway open after a pyeloplasty procedure to remove an obstruction.

Removing the stent after four weeks of healing typically involves inserting an endoscope into the urethra and bladder to locate the stent and pull it, an invasive procedure for which children are placed under anesthesia.

The students were asked by Chester Koh, M.D., at Texas Children’s Hospital to find a way to simplify this procedure, which is currently performed on more than 2,000 pediatric patients nationwide each year. They came up with the combination of a small, coated bead of highly magnetic neodymium and a powerful electromagnet.

The bead can pass safely through the urethra as the magnet pulls it out of the body, followed by the stent.

The advantages are clear: There’s less pain and it costs two-thirds less than the standard procedure because it doesn’t require anesthesia and can be completed in minutes rather than hours.

Video: ricemagazine.info/332 — Mike Williams

The Rice student engineering team calling itself Carpal Diem has developed a testing system to validate how well 3-D printed hands allow the wearer, typically a child born without a fully formed hand, to pick up and manipulate small objects.

The team’s device consists of a motorized wrist-and-palm assembly that can move up to 60 degrees in either direction, a set of objects (a cylinder, a sphere and a rectangular prism) with embedded force sensors and a control program with a graphic user interface. Sensors in the object send feedback on force strength and distribution to a computer.

“If a kid has to put in five pounds of force to only get one pound of grip, that’s a lot of lost efficiency because of how these hands are designed,” said Rachel Sterling, one of the engineers. “Until we reach a force efficiency of 100 percent, the hands aren’t going to be useful.”

Sterling, along with bioengineering majors Nicolette Chamberlain-Simon and Michaela Dimoff, electrical and computer engineering major Nirali Desai and mechanical engineering major Amber Wang, Wang began began strategizing even before they returned to Rice for their senior year. They hope to put the first prototype of the testing device and a detailed protocol for its use into the hands of their mentor, Gloria Gogola, a pediatric hand surgeon at Shriners Hospital for Children-Houston.

Video: ricemagazine.info/333 — Jeff Falk

J e f f F i t low

Sensors in objects read the force applied by a 3-D printed hand.

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a bst ract

BUSINESS

Safer surgery in a box

• One-third of surgery patients in developing countries develop infections.

• Few surgeons in these settings have access to an autoclave used to sterilize instruments.

• The Sterile Box uses sunlight to power an autoclave anywhere in the world.

It looks like — and is — a standard shipping container, but it can help minimize the risk of infection for patients undergoing surgery anywhere in the world.

Douglas Schuler, associate professor of business and public policy in Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, mentored the team of students who designed the box, which houses all the equipment necessary to safely prepare surgical instruments, including a water system for decontamination and a solar-powered autoclave for steam sterilization.

In an article published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, the team noted that about one-third of patients in low-resource settings suffer surgical-site infections — a number nine times higher than in developed countries. These infections are frequently the result of reusing medical instruments that carry traces of microorganisms or biological material from previous patients.

Schuler and his students have been working to sterilize instruments with sunlight for years. Their first design used a mobile A-frame solar-thermal device that focused sunlight to heat a stand-alone autoclave. But the team decided to design a more comprehensive platform in which instruments could be processed day and night. They added solar panels and electrical storage to the container, as well as water distribution from two tanks, one on the ground that has a hand pump to move water to a 50-gallon tank on the roof.

“We tried to really think hard about social context,” Schuler said. “We laid out the elements to minimize human error and water and energy requirements to the extent that we can.”

The next step will be to test the Sterile Box in a clinical setting. Schuler is working with the Baylor College of Medicine to

incorporate the box into the planned 2017 deployment, in Malawi, of its Smart Pod, a mobile surgical suite also to be housed in a modified shipping container.

Video: ricemagazine.info/334 — Mike Williams

CHEMISTRY

A new twist on an old drink • • •

Shrubs, or drinkable vinegars, are an age-old way to preserve fruit.

Fruit mixed with sugar ferments into alcohol, then becomes vinegar.

The trick is maintaining the right bacteria levels; too much alcohol early in the process kills off the bacteria and halts fermentation.

Chris Shepherd, the James Beard award-winning chef who owns the Houston restaurant Underbelly, partnered with Rice students studying practical chemistry and microbiology to help his restaurant refine its approach to turning what would otherwise be wasted produce into a fermented mixer that gives drinks a flavorful kick: drinking vinegars called shrubs.

“We buy as much (local produce) as we possibly can, but to do that we have to be able to use it in different ways,” Shepherd said.

The chef and Rice lecturers Sandra Bishnoi and Michelle Gilbertson put students to work on the problem over the spring semester. Their task was to quantify chemical processes and identify the microbes present in the production of vinegars and, in turn, shrubs, from produce that can’t be used fresh.

The restaurant was already monitoring acid levels during fermentation based on previous work with Lesa Tran, the Wiess Instructor of Chemistry and a self-professed foodie who got Shepherd involved in a chemistry of cooking class in 2014. The tricky part that remained was to quantify what happens as produce ferments first into alcohol, then into vinegar, Bishnoi said.

The freshmen were grateful for the chance to work on a project with a real-world application. “It might not have been as beneficial for Chef Chris as we luckily had it turn out to be,” Gilbertson said. “Of course, there was a problem to solve in the first place. That’s why they came to us. If the process had been going swimmingly, there would have been no reason for us to look at it.”

Video: ricemagazine.info/335 — Mike Williams

s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 19

abstract

Public Policy

Zika threat

• Zika will affect an estimated 3 to 4 million people in the Americas in 2016.

• One in five carriers will develop mild symptoms.

• It is classified as a neglected tropical disease.

The Zika virus has become widespread in the United States, Mexico and the rest of the Americas and requires investments in research and treatment, according to tropical disease experts at Rice’s Baker Institute. The latest outbreak, which began in Brazil in 2015, has spread to 26 countries, including the U.S. Classified as a neglected tropical disease (NTD), Zika is spread mostly through mosquitoes, much like dengue fever and the West Nile virus. While the virus may produce mild symptoms, recent news accounts of Guillain-Barré syndrome and microcephaly, which may be associated with Zika, illustrate the urgency of treatment and prevention. These outbreaks are a reminder that “global health and NTDs can affect local health,” wrote Jennifer Herricks, a postdoctoral fellow in disease and poverty at both the Baker Institute and Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, and Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy, in a recent public policy brief.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/336 Engineering

College savings

• OpenStax, a Rice-founded nonprofit publisher, produces free college textbooks.

• In 2015, OpenStax textbook adoptions more than doubled.

Free textbooks from Rice-based publisher OpenStax are now in use at one in five degree-granting U.S. colleges and universities and have saved college students $39 million in the 2015–16 academic year, according to Richard Baraniuk, founder and director of OpenStax and Rice’s Victor

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Free textbooks from Rice-based publisher OpenStax saved college students $39 million in 2015–2016.

E. Cameron Professor of Engineering.

“The number of instructors adopting our textbooks increased by more than 100 percent in 2015, and OpenStax college books are in use in 2,500 courses this academic year,” Baraniuk said. “Those numbers speak volumes about the demand for affordable, high-quality textbooks, and they confirm what we’ve long known: Scalability is the key to changing textbook economics.”

OpenStax uses philanthropic grants to produce peer-reviewed textbooks that are free online and low-cost in print. It launched in 2012 with the goal of publishing free textbooks for the nation’s 25 most-attended college courses and is on track to meet its goal of saving students $500 million by 2020.

Learn more: ricemagazine.info/337 — Jade Boyd Architecture

Building solar •

•

More than 150 Rice students will compete in the 2017 Solar Decathlon.

In 2009, Rice’s ZeRow House took eighth place in the competition.

Rice students plan to design and build a house for the 2017 Solar Decathlon, a Department of Energy-sponsored competition to advance the art and tech-nology of environmentally

friendly dwellings. Rice’s team is one of 16 international college teams invited to the biennial competition in October 2017 in Denver. They will compete for $2 million in prize money.

Caroline Brigham, a junior architecture student, and Travis Kwee, a sophomore engineering student, are leading the effort under the auspices of the Rice Building Workshop. Their proposal, dubbed the Bi-Cycle House, would incorporate sustainable practices that include netzero energy use, near-zero water use and even a design for the building’s eventual deconstruction. About 150 students are participating.

“Our goal is to not only use recycled building materials, but also materials that will be able to be repurposed, reused, recycled or somehow released back into the environment in a safe way,” Kwee said.

Part of their job will be to raise funds for design, construction and transportation to the competition site. This will be the second time Rice has competed in the Solar Decathlon.

A 2009 entry, the ZeRow House, finished in eighth place. It is now located in Houston’s Third Ward as an artist’s residence at Project Row Houses.

Read more: ricemagazine.info/338 — Mike Williams

a bst ract

si x d e gr e e s | C ody Mart i n

Six Degrees of Valhalla is inspired by Stanley Milgram’s experiments in social networks; actor Kevin Bacon’s eponymous parlor game; the stellar academic genealogies of Rice graduate students, alumni and faculty; and the enduring awesomeness of Valhalla, Rice’s graduate student pub.

Ball’s research focuses on transition-metal (metals in the middle of the periodic table, like rhodium) complexes in biological and medicinal chemistry. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford under Barry Trost (b. 1941).

Trost’s group develops the tools to create complex and biologically active molecules from simple precursors.

While at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Trost also trained postdoc Gary Molander (b. 1953).

Molander and his students at the University of Pennsylvania developed new strategies for the catalytic synthesis of organic compounds to improve reaction rates. Molander earned his Ph.D. at Purdue under Herbert Brown (1912–2004).

Cody M arti n Graduate Student Department of Chemistry

Martin uses carbon and metal compounds to study proteins associated with leukemia in the research lab of Zachary Ball (b. 1976), associate professor of chemistry at Rice.

1

4

2

5

3

6

Brown earned the 1979 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on organoboranes.

During World War II, Brown worked to produce sodium borohydride in cooperation with Hermann Irving Schlesinger (1882–1960).

Schlesinger earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1905 and soon after spent two years at the University of Berlin working for Walther Nernst (1864–1941).

Nernst won the 1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his contribution to the Nernst-Simon statement of the third law of thermodynamics.

s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 21

Scene

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Common Ground Photo by Jeff Fitlow

R

ice’s graduate students have a new place to relax and socialize, thanks to a renovation adjacent to Keck Hall. The Graduate Student Outdoor Commons features picnic tables and benches; barbecue grills; an ADAaccessible stage; and improved access, pavers and pathways. Strings of festoon lights crisscross the parklike space, giving it a warm and inviting glow.

The renovation, more than two years in planning, also addressed the quad’s poor drainage and propensity to flood, in effect reclaiming the live oak-shaded area for use.

“The grad students are really excited,” said Lynn Fahey, a doctoral student in sociology who headed up the Graduate Student Association (GSA) this past year. “This gives us greater visibility.” Fahey has worked to help bring the project to fruition on behalf of Rice’s 2,700 graduate students. The GSA will use the space for monthly picnics and special events. In February, for example, an international culture night sponsored by the GSA drew almost 1,000 attendees.

“We spent some time with the GSA learning what they wanted,” said Larry Vossler ’02, senior project manager with Rice’s Facilities Engineering and Planning office. One of the goals, he said, was to have better seating outside of Valhalla. Construction on the $680,000 project began last November, and the finishing touches are underway this spring. Andrew Albers ’99, a landscape architect (and RSA lecturer) with the Office of James Burnett, came up with the design. “Grad school is stressful,” said Fahey. “It’s nice to have a space dedicated to leisure and social interaction.”

— L.G. s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 23

Exit, Stage Left

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T

he day I came to Rice to interview for a job teaching literature, in December 1969, a group of senior English majors took me to Sammy’s and promised to “tell me the truth.” They said I would like Dennis Huston a lot. True.

The following August, when I was visiting my parents in Wheaton, Ill., I heard a couple of guys talking about Yale, took a chance, and asked them of they had ever heard of a Dennis Huston, who had taught English there. “Oh, yeah, man. Great teacher.”

True, too.

Later that month, when I pulled into a campus parking lot for the first time, there by chance were Dennis and his family, who adopted me and my family, too. Right away, words Dennis became my teaching Terrence Doody teacher.

We discussed designing a syllabus. How to define writing assignments and how to pace them throughout the semester. The utility of exams. Grading standards for a student body with high achievements and high standards for themselves — students, in other words, who’d never gotten a B before. Policies for late papers and extensions. How much to write in the margins, and the point at which too many suggestions become demoralizing. Which kind of papers can be improved by rewriting, and which cannot. The immeasurable advantage of discussing a paper face-to-face (“Can you read my handwriting?”). And, maybe most importantly, how to get these very smart people to talk in class.

Some lessons, however, came inadvertently. In spring 1971, Dennis and I were in a Baker Shakespeare production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He was cast as Bottom the Weaver, who believes in the power of the theater as avidly as any character in Shakespeare does

and is, therefore, one of Shakespeare’s greatest advocates.

Perfect casting.

In the two weeks before opening night, rehearsals ran very late — sometimes until 1:30 or 2 a.m. One morning, after neither one of us had had time to prepare for our 9 a.m. class, I was at his office when he said, “It’ll be OK. I taught it last year and have notes.”

His notes amounted to three words on an index card. I am sure he upped the volume that morning and the class worked, but I promised myself that the first time I taught anything new from then on, I’d write a lecture so complete that I wouldn’t have to worry.

You can’t always be as smart as you want to be, but you can be prepared. What photos can’t be learned, however, Tommy LaVergne even from a teacher like Dennis, is the depth and quality of his generosity. All good teachers are certain they have something valuable to give others, and what often measures the value of that gift is the joy they take in what they know.

I’ve never known anyone as intense in the classroom as Dennis is. No one fills the room with more compelling energy. And no one on the planet has spent more time grading papers than he has for the whole of his teaching life — because it is important to him that every aspect of every essay by every student, from the commas to the argument’s conceptualization, be as good as possible.

A good five-page paper takes about 10 minutes to read carefully, but it takes much longer to figure out the intention hidden in a not-so-good paper and then to make that intention clear to the writer. This is a Sisyphean task, because all the work it takes to improve the student’s first paper doesn’t guarantee a thing about the second. Still, the more papers the student writes, the better the

After years of teaching students — and colleagues — Dennis Huston is bowing out.

Terrence Doody celebrates the way Huston’s singular (loud) voice exemplified the best of Rice.

s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 25

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts ...”

Dennis Huston commands the classroom stage during a spring semester course.

chances are that the writing will improve. And nothing is as important in anyone’s education as learning to write well.

One of Dennis’ rewards, therefore, has been the chance to write even more letters of recommendation for all of those students who now write better themselves.

He has been known to complain about this a bit. At the same time, he says in every one of these performances that so-and-so is the “most brilliant student I have ever, ever had.” He has a couple of these most brilliant students every year, so by now he must have had well over a hundred of them. The hyperbole is his way of saying out loud how much he loves them and has loved teaching them all.

Teaching is a profession and a vocation. These are neither mutually exclusive nor necessarily antagonistic categories. But there is much more professional reward attached to publishing a paper than there is to grading one.

There is also a real but more permeable distinction between saying “I teach literature” and “I teach students.” I’d say Dennis has always taught students first. He

D

has taught them with great fervor and success to read Shakespeare; to judge the movies made from the plays; to read Homer, Chaucer and Milton; and to write better papers. It is then for the students to decide, usually much later, whether the reading or the writing has been more important.

Dennis has won many, many teaching prizes, including the George R. Brown Superior Teaching Award (four times), the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor of the Year award and the Nicholas Salgo Teaching Prize. In 1989, when Dennis was named Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, there was a faculty reception for him in the RMC. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” I thought, and felt that every one of us had been elevated ourselves that day, because we were now colleagues of the best teacher in America. It was also a very anxious moment, because now we had to get better.

Terrence Doody is the Allison Sarofim Distinguished Teaching Professor and a professor of English at Rice, where has taught courses in fiction and narrative theory since 1970.

ennis Huston, one of Rice’s most beloved teachers, retired this month. He is the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English at Rice, where he has taught a wide range of courses since 1969, including Shakespeare, film and drama. He received his B.A. at Wesleyan University and earned a master’s and Ph.D. at Yale University. Huston has won numerous George R. Brown teaching prizes, and in 1989 was named the nation’s “Professor of the Year,” an honor which earned him an invitation to the White House. “A course with Dennis is not simply a course that ends at a certain time,” said Nicolas Shumway, dean of humanities at Rice. “It is the beginning of a dialogue that lasts a lifetime.”

An accomplished thespian, Huston has acted in many Rice productions of Shakespearean and modern plays. In addition, as a guest lecturer, Huston has taught outside the hedges at Rice alumni gatherings across the country, at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies and for the Teaching Company.

Huston has written and edited numerous publications, including “Shakespeare’s Comedies of Play” (1981) and “Classics of the Renaissance Theater: Seven English Plays” (1969). He has been active in campus life and served as master of Hanszen College — twice (1978–1982 and 1992–1998). Huston has two children and two stepchildren. He is married to Lisa Bryan Huston. See a video about Huston’s teaching legacy: ricemagazine.info/339 26

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The Best (and worst)

of the Bard We asked Dennis Huston for his opinions on the highlights — and lowlights — of Shakespearean drama. Here are the short answers; watch Huston expand on these choices and more: ricemagazine.info/340

Favorite comedy: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Favorite tragedy: “Hamlet”

Least favorite play:

“Titus Andronicus” — though a great movie by Julie Taymor

Favorite character:

Nick Bottom, from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Most misunderstood character:

Sir Toby Belch, from “Twelfth Night” (He’s not funny, he’s mean.)

Most misunderstood line:

“Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

(It means, “Why are you Romeo?” not “Where are you, Romeo?”)

Favorite couple:

Beatrice and Benedick, who woo with sarcasm and insults in “Much Ado About Nothing”

Favorite sexual innuendo:

“… I’ll fear no other thing/so sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring,” from “The Merchant of Venice”

Favorite insult:

“poisonous, bunch-backed toad,” from “Richard III”

Best Shakespearean film adaptation: Richard Loncraine’s 1995 “Richard III”

Worst film adaptation: Too many bad ones to name

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words Adapted from “Star Wars,” a chapter in the book “The Art of Dave Seeley” (Insight Editions, 2015) images Courtesy of Dave Seeley Background image: “Mecha” 28

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the art of

Dave Seeley ’82 walked away from an award-winning career in architecture to explore the unknown — by imagining and drawing worlds of

science fiction and fantasy.

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Dave Seeley ’82 has always been an artist — and a self-described science fiction fanboy. In his recent collection, “The Art of Dave Seeley,” he calls himself a lifelong “image junkie,” a collector of everything from airbrushed album covers to comic books, from fine art to fashion magazines to fantasy illustrations.

In elementary school, he impressed his classmates by filling notebooks with elaborate colored-pencil monsters. But he didn’t think “strong students” majored in art, so when he got to Rice, he applied himself to the more professional subject of architecture.

Even here, however, surrounded by what Seeley called “the exotic cowboy culture of Houston,” he couldn’t stay away from comic book stores or the Montrose art shops that featured the kinds of airbrushed pop art he had grown up admiring.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in architecture, with a minor in art and art history, then a Bachelor of Architecture degree, he left Rice to practice architecture in his native Boston. There, he writes, “I reconnected with a beautiful and brilliant college classmate who’d come to Harvard for law school” — Linda Bosse ’83. Early on in “a romance that’s lasted 27 years,” Bosse recognized that Seeley needed more art in his life.

“One year, as a Christmas gift, she called my bluff and signed me up for a bronze-casting class,” Seeley recalled. “It was there that I realized my art-making itch needed some serious scratching.”

Seeley was as good at designing buildings as he had been at drawing monsters. He was the lead designer on several building projects that won national awards. But, as he’d begun to realize, his heart wasn’t quite in it. In the mid-1990s, following a prestigious architecture fellowship that financed a five-month, around-theworld trip for Seeley and his wife, he made a daring leap from the structured world of architecture into the realm of fantasy, beginning his second career as a professional illustrator with commissions for a series of role-playing and collectible card games.

Soon he was designing book jackets for science fiction and fantasy novels — including for one of the best-known and bestloved franchises of the genre: “Star Wars.” It was a homecoming of sorts for Seeley, who’d dreamed since the ’70s of seeing the view from inside the Millennium Falcon. Now, as an artist, he had the chance to explore that view by creating it. He describes the thrill of this opportunity in his book, in a chapter called “Star Wars,” which we’ve excerpted in the following pages.

— Jennifer Latson ­

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“Virga”

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“Star Wars: Rogue Leader” 32

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“The Burning of Kashyyyk”

“Star Wars: Crosscurrent”

Star Wars I can still feel the guttural rumble from back in 1977, when that glorious Star Destroyer cruised into view, leaving a profound impression on my teenage brain. I’d never seen anything to compare, and I was instantly hooked. The worlds, the pace, the characters, the drama — all seared into my psyche. “Star Wars” was the first time I’d been able to immerse myself in a science fiction paradigm and take it entirely seriously. No nod and a wink, no farce. No suspension of disbelief.

“Star Wars” shaped my interest and defined an aesthetic direction.

Dave Stevenson at Del Rey Books was the art director in charge of commissioning “Star Wars” novel jackets. I’d cold-called Dave early in my art career and somehow managed to get connected to him. Even more surprising, he knew my work already, and he was able to give me advice on how to evolve it in order to be considered for book jacket commissions. After a couple of years with Shannon Associates, I picked up the

phone and left Dave a message about coming in to see him. A short while later he phoned back, saying, “Sure, come on in, I’ve got a job for you.”

Wow. And that was the start of my work on “Star Wars.”

My first jacket was for a novel called “Rebel Dream” by Aaron Allston, featuring Wedge Antilles in the cockpit of his X-wing fighter.

[Editor’s Note: The character Wedge Antilles was a starfighter pilot who fought against the Galactic Empire. He and Luke Skywalker were the only survivors after the battle that destroyed the Death Star.]

I began researching Wedge and X-wings and was surprised to find that, in certain areas, neither had a very clear visual definition. The relatively few images of Wedge (played by actor Denis Lawson) in the Lucasfilm photo archives looked very different from shot to shot. The character appeared in relatively few frames in the film and was usually helmeted. The X-wing

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I can still feel the guttural rumble from back in 1977, when that glorious Star Destroyer cruised into view, leaving a profound impression on my teenage brain.

I’d never seen anything to compare, and I was instantly hooked. The worlds, the pace, the characters, the drama — all seared into my psyche. “Star Wars” was the first time I’d been able to immerse myself in a science fiction paradigm and take it entirely seriously. No nod and a wink, no farce. No suspension of disbelief. “Star Wars” shaped my interest and defined an aesthetic direction.

Dave Stevenson at Del Rey Books was the art director in charge of commissioning “Star Wars” novel jackets. I’d cold-called Dave early in my art career and somehow managed to get connected to him.

Even more surprising, he knew my work already, and he was able to give me advice on how to evolve it in order to be considered for book jacket commissions. After a couple of years with Shannon Associates, I picked up the phone and left Dave a message about coming in to see him. A short while later he phoned back, saying, “Sure, come on in, I’ve got a job for you.” Wow. And that was the start of my work on “Star Wars.”

My first jacket was for a novel called “Rebel Dream” by Aaron Allston, featuring Wedge Antilles in the cockpit of his X-wing fighter. [Editor’s Note: The character Wedge Antilles was a starfighter pilot who fought against the Galactic Empire. He and Luke Skywalker were the only survivors after the battle that destroyed the Death Star.]

I began researching Wedge and X-wings and was surprised to find that, in certain areas, neither had a very clear visual definition. The relatively few images of Wedge (played by actor Denis Lawson) in the Lucasfilm photo archives looked very different from shot to shot. The character appeared in relatively few frames in the film and was usually helmeted. The X-wing exterior was featured heavily in the film, but views within the cockpit were most always front-on.

So what did it look like off to one side? I was able to invent some aspects of control panels, and I also used Department of Defense photos of real fighter plane cockpits for ideas of what to show. It seemed important to expand on what we already knew about Wedge and his X-wing, and I was eager to add to the “Star Wars” canon.

When I was commissioned to create the cover for the second book in Aaron’s duology, titled “Rebel Stand,” I chose to create a view from inside the Millennium Falcon that we hadn’t seen in the films. At this time, 3-D software was still in a fledgling state

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and not yet the tool that I’d choose for this kind of thing. Instead, I worked with a plastic model kit of the Falcon and invented my own crazy interior perspective, with a view out to the ship’s nose. That was a view that we hadn’t ever seen in the films.

Lucasfilm hosts a periodic convention called Star Wars Celebration. As part of the show, they offer their artists a license to create an image of their own choosing and make 250 large prints to sell at the convention. I accepted an invitation to Celebration IV in Los Angeles, during the 30th anniversary of “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” After

“The Battle of Coruscant”

the Han and Leia piece, I’d illustrated several new characters from the Expanded Universe novels, but I couldn’t resist the chance to create a classic character from the original trilogy. I went back and forth a bit at the outset, but in the end, I decided it had to be Luke.

For me, the coolest aspect of Luke in the movies was his incarnation as an ace fighter pilot. I decided to show Luke in the period following the conclusion of “Return of the Jedi,” when he and his Rogue Squadron of X-wing fighters take on the job of rooting out the entrenched Empire from the galaxy.

Prior to the convention, I emailed the finished image, called “Rogue Leader,” to Dave Stevenson, thinking that he should have first crack at it, given that he was the reason I was working in the “Star Wars” universe in the first place. Dave immediately emailed me back saying he thought he might have the perfect book for it, which later turned out to be “Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor.”

When Lucasfilm announced it as the cover image, fans on the message boards seemed pretty stoked, except for those who were disappointed that the villain of the book, Lord Shadowspawn, wouldn’t be on the cover. I picked up the phone and gave Dave another s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 35

100 of the Thresher Years

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O ne Cen t u ry

3 , 0 50 I s s u e s

No Grown-ups Allowed.

Former editor Lisa Gray ’88 remembers what it was like to ask questions, break stories and chase deadlines for the Rice Thresher in the late 1980s and reveals why “clickbait” is the online equivalent of misclass.

In 1986, when I was editor of the Thresher, the tears came around 4 a.m. every Thursday. That was after the cheerful scrum of staff — reporters, section editors, copy editors, typesetters and old-school, X-ACTO-knife-wielding layout people — had drifted away from the office, one by one.

It was then that my coffee wore off, and my blood sugar ran low. And it was then when I always despaired of finishing by deadline.

Besides me, the only one left would be David Schnur ’88, the news editor.

And he’d be safely down the hall, laying out the news pages on a Mac that belonged to KTRU, the Rice radio station. I don’t think David ever caught me crying. I didn’t want him to catch me crying.

T

hat’s a true story. But it’s not the whole story.

Journalists, when we’re feeling righteous, like to tell stories, especially the kind that emphasize suffering.

We say that our job is to speak truth to power — which is true — but we say it gravely, as if that’s an oppressive duty, a burden we lug for the sake of the greater good.

But here’s what I learned at the Thresher: Most of the time, journalism

is a blast. As a reporter, you’re supposed to ask nosy questions, go to new places, call up experts and make them explain things. When you write editorials, you’re supposed to thunder grandly about “How the World Ought to Be.” At the Thresher, we knew the news before everyone else did. We lived at the center of the world.

Sometimes we took ourselves seriously. We broke real stories — faculty scandals, campus controversies, a student’s murder. Up in the office, we were wonky, debating, say, the details of a curriculum-reform proposal or the ethics of using an anonymous source. The purposeful, high-minded bits were part of the fun: “Can you believe how important this is, and that we get to decide?”

The 4 a.m. tears, the phototypesetting chemicals I inhaled, the tutorials I missed because they conflicted with production nights: When people asked me about the

Thresher, I talked about the burdens — oppressive duty! greater good! — because I was afraid to jinx the thing.

A

t most universities, the student newspaper is a paraprofessional outfit, an outgrowth of a journalism or communications school. Young minds are molded, contests are entered, boards offer guidance. But Rice didn’t sully itself with those preprofessional majors. While I was at Rice, the Thresher was purely student-run. It was a thing we did for fun and also for exceedingly small amounts of money.

It was a distraction from our studies, a tree house with a “No Grown-ups Allowed” sign.

We operated like a pirate ship.

Working at the Thresher felt like a caper — a thing we couldn’t believe we were getting away with. And that was especially true when people tried to stop us. Rice’s public relations office would ask us not to run a story that put

Top photo: The Thresher’s first crop of editors, pictured in the 1916 Campanile, included editor-in-chief William M. Standish ’16, seated in the bottom row, fourth from the left. Bottom photo: The 2016 Thresher staff recreates their predecessors’ portrait from a century earlier. L–R (standing) Juan Saldana ’18, Mitch Mackowiak ’17, Miles Kruppa ’16, Walden Pemantle ’18 and Andrew “Drew” Keller ’18; L–R (sitting) Carrie Jiang ’17, Joseph “Joey” McGlone ’18, Yasna Haghdoost ’17, Riley Robertson ’18, Samantha “Sam” Ding ’18 and Andrew Grottkau ’19. s p r i n g 2 0 1 6 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 37

100 Years of the Thresher

The 1987 Thresher staff demonstrate their obedience to posted instructions in the new Student Center lounges. Editor Lisa Gray ’88 is seated in the front row, behind a bottle of contraband soda. the university in a bad light. A professor would declare that an editorial stance was dead wrong. A dean would remind us that Rice gave us our rent-free office and phone, then suggest that we shut down the Backpage, the jokey, smutty section that students read first.

Back in the tree house, we pirates would argue among ourselves about the correct course of action. Should we let the Backpage die? When it was good, it was hilarious in a subversive way. But when it was bad, it was appalling: sexist, homophobic, just plain dumb. Could an editor make it consistently good? (Edited

by Spencer Greene ’88, it entered a good phase.)

But here’s the thing: We were utterly convinced that all the decisions were ours. They didn’t belong to the university administration, or to the student senate, or even to the 38

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We didn’t always get everything right. But we tried. The victories and the defeats were ours. readers who loved jokes about hamsters and electrical tape.

We didn’t always get everything right. But we tried. The victories and the defeats were ours.

I

am still a journalist. That’s saying something now, all these years after the Internet began laying waste to newspapers’ business model. For the last decade — the industry’s darkest hour, the era of layoffs and bankruptcies and uncertainty about whether

journalism will survive — I’ve worked at the Houston Chronicle. These days, I run a website there.

I suspect that the Thresher prepared me for the industry’s chaos better than even the best journalism school could have: I don’t expect grown-ups to have an answer. Just like at the Thresher, there are never enough people to do the job we want, never enough money, never enough time. Clickbait is the online equivalent of the misclass: The question is still how to make the worst stuff good.

And I still long to lure readers to the high-minded, vitamin-laden articles.

The tears come; the tears go. I try not to let anyone in the newsroom see them.

And most of the time, the job is a blast.

I live at the center of the world. And I can’t believe that I still get away with it.

Recalling the good, the bad and the ugly: More reflections from Thresher editors

I

wrote an editorial when the new stadium was announced. I said we needed a new library — the old one was in the admin building and was maybe 600 square feet. We didn’t have a faculty adviser, but as I recall, the dean wrote a letter to the editor pointing out that Brown & Root was building the stadium for free. Rice was playing Southwest Conference teams and most had a fair number of alumni in Houston. In fact, Rice won the Southwest Conference in 1948. Still, I couldn’t see that we needed a 70,000-seat stadium when the student body was around 2,500. We paid zero tuition back then and an athletic fee of around $18, as I recall.

What I never thought about was that the Browns were generous donors to other fundraising drives at Rice. And good old Ken Reed insulted them for their generosity.

— Ken Reed ’51

Managing editor: 1948–1949

A

fter learning that the administration had been quietly discouraging student organizations from bringing in controversial speakers, including civil rights leaders, the Thresher launched an editorial campaign against what we called a “speaker ban.”

We didn’t buy the claim that “bad” publicity might adversely affect the university’s court case seeking to nullify the whites-only clause in its charter.

Meanwhile, Dean of Students S.W. Higginbotham developed an alleged concern that the faculty adviser’s name was not printed in every issue of the paper. On the claim that I had not responded to his written and telephonic requests (which I had not received) to discuss this issue, the dean trumped up a charge of “flouting the authority of the university” and placed me on disciplinary probation, which also ousted me as editor.

The dean’s action precipitated a demonstration by 500 students and a petition signed by more than 1,000 — firsts in Rice history. President Pitzer overruled the case’s appeal. However,

I loved going into the office on ‘Whursdays’ (the name given to Thresher deadline night when Wednesday and Thursday blurred into one very long sleep-deprived day).

— Molly Chiu ’14

things did change: Six months later, Dean Higginbotham was replaced, and a committee was appointed to draw up rules governing disciplinary actions.

— Hugh Rice Kelly ’65

Editor-in-chief: 1964

T

he Thresher in the mid-1970s was all about camaraderie and creativity. We were self-taught and self-governed, more or less. Without course requirements or faculty supervision, we gave ourselves permission to play and to write, and we had fun doing it together. We published two issues a week. Altogether, we gave a dozen or more students a chance to earn some pocket money doing production work. We covered the campus and the city beyond the hedges. We reported on controversies and sometimes created our own. (President Hackerman accused us of tapping his phone.)

All that really matters, though, are the people who made it possible. Your sleepless nights, your ability to turn out another six column inches, your Mardi Gras road trip to New Orleans, your 1 a.m. meals at Las Cazuelas, your Mick Jagger impersonations, your trips to the printer, doing layout on the printer’s lunchroom table, and your forbearance of the occasional trashiness made all the difference, and made my two years as editor of the Thresher memorable.

— Gary Brewton ’76

Editor: 1974–76

and METRORail. Today, in everything I do — urban planning, serving on the METRO board, teaching at Rice — what I learned at the Thresher is as important as what I learned in class. Actually, I wouldn’t be doing any of what I do without those late hours at the Thresher.

— Christof Spieler ’97

Staff writer and editor: 1993–1999

Y

ou might imagine the most satisfying part of working for the Thresher is seeing your hard work in print. That part is pretty great, but for me, working with my fellow editorial staff members to put together a paper we could be proud of was what made it worthwhile.

I loved going into the office on ‘Whursdays’ (the name given to Thresher deadline night when Wednesday and Thursday blurred into one very long sleep-deprived day). I made great friends and found my footing as a journalist in the Thresher newsroom.

— Molly Chiu ’14

Managing editor: 2013–2014

I

’ve learned to appreciate the diversity of opinions on the staff and on campus while balancing the responsibility of the paper as an independent authority. I’ve learned that I’m going to have to work hard for the trust of my readers as a professional journalist.

— Miles Kruppa ’16

Editor-in-chief: 2014–2015

I

spent a lot of my life at the Thresher office for 5 1/2 years. It lowered my GPA, and I was OK with that. I wrote, edited, photographed and designed. I was able to write about architecture, and I did full spreads about downtown Houston

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100 Years of the Thresher

A Voice for Students The Rice Thresher did more than document a constantly growing campus, comment on student social mores, wade into institutional conflicts and analyze athletic rivalries. It also provided a lens on how Rice students viewed, reacted to and participated in some of the past century’s major events.

We’ve drawn from a few of them — and added a little campus color, too.

1908: Edgar Odell Lovett was named Rice’s first president.

1916: The Thresher debuted Jan. 15, 1916, as a “fortnightly publication.”

Willliam M. Standish, editorin-chief, noted that it was about time, too. “Three years in our history have gone by without a means of voicing the opinions of the students.”

1917: The paper reported that Rice’s male students had begun training in military science and tactics “in the present national emergency.” Ads in the paper became increasingly oriented toward military clothing.

1918: Rice humor: “Mary had a little lamp, ‘Twas filled with kerosene; One day the lamp exploded — Since then she’s not benzine.”

1926: T.R. “Theodore” Stubbs ’26 may have been the first — but not the last — editor removed from office. (His offense: publishing a serialized suggestive story called “Cold Feet,” set in an offcampus apartment.)

1931: A headline soberly intoned, “Seniors not sure of next year’s jobs since Depression.”

1920: The paper reported that Elizabeth Kalb ’16 dedicated a copy of “Jailed for Freedom,” a book about the campaign for women’s suffrage, to “the Girls of Rice.” Kalb took part in pickets and demonstrations and was arrested in January 1919.

The 19th Amendment was ratified Aug. 18, 1920.

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1939: A front-page article reported that Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was reviewed via a Rice public lecture. The speaker warned that the book’s ideas might provoke “a world war greater than the last one.”

1943: Rice was on war footing, as stories like “NROTC Will Be Called To Active Duty” attested.

1946: President William Houston succeeded Lovett.

1947: Assistant editor Brady B. Tyson ’49 wrote an editorial asking students to share their thoughts on “the Negro question,” stating, “I believe that segregation is morally wrong, but that it is deeply rooted in the prejudices of the people of Texas, and I consider the people of Texas the salt of the earth in spite of this.”

1950s: Cigarette ads featuring celebrities, coeds and catchy phrases (“Get the honest taste of a Lucky Strike”) supported Thresher production throughout the decade.

1951: In a column, editor Bill Hobby ’53 reported that Time magazine had characterized their generation as the “Silent Generation,” meaning grave, fatalistic, conventional and securityminded, among other adjectives.

1957: The first issue of the year announces the death (over the summer) of founding president Edgar Odell Lovett under the headline “Rice Loses One of Its Best Friends.”

1957: The last issue of the year noted that Baker College had won the first annual “Inter-College Bicycle Race.” The residential college system was just getting established.

1960: There were mixed reactions to the renaming of the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art to William

Marsh Rice University.

Senior class president Harry Reasoner ’60 said, “Unless it is necessary, it is regrettable.”

1964: The Thresher followed the legal battle between Rice trustees and Rice alumni over changing the Rice charter to allow changes in tuition and the integration of the university.

1968: On the editorial page, a solemn dispatch, “Requiem in Atlanta,” recounted student Jon Glazier’s ’72 trip to Atlanta to join mourners for Martin Luther King Jr., whose body lay in state at Spelman College.

1961: President Kenneth Pitzer succeeded Houston.

1963: On Dec. 4, President Pitzer reflected on a national tragedy.

“As we recover from our shock and grief over the tragic murder of President Kennedy and the subsequent violence in Dallas, let us not fail to examine our own world and ourselves.”

1969: Dennis Bahler ’69 produced the Rice Daily Thresher to document the faculty and student protests of William Masterson’s appointment as the new university president following Pitzer’s resignation.

1973: The Thresher published an extended postmortem on the MOB’s “Salute to Texas A&M” halftime show, which enraged the Aggies, necessitating a police escort into the stadium tunnels and exit via food service trucks some hours later.

1978: A front-page story on Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Wilson ’57 noted that the Big Bang theory genius was known for repairing friends’ and neighbors’ radios and TVs in his spare time.

1985: President George Rupp succeeded Hackerman.

1988: In an April 15 article by editor Lisa Gray ’88, the Thresher recounted the aftermath of the Willy statue prank and helpfully included a schematic of the engineering feat. See it here:

was washed down with vinegar. The same evening, the handrails at Sid were Crisco-ed, and the decorations at Lovett and Brown were watered and painted over.”

1993: President Malcolm Gillis succeeded Rupp.

1996: The Rice Republicans and the Rice Democrats offered dueling op-eds before the presidential election.

One supported Bob Dole for president; the other attacked the Defense of Marriage Act. The comic “Doonesbury” ran on three full pages.

broken window incident and offered this comment: “To all Baker 13 runners: It is possible to be both naked and intelligent at the same time.”

2011: The Thresher published a special “centennial countdown” edition in October. An editorial noted, “Rice remains a top-tier research university, a consistently ranked best-value school and a launchpad for student initiatives.”

2016: The Rice Thresher turned 100 and published a commemorative issue: ricemagazine.info/342

2001: President Malcolm Gillis was quoted in the aftermath of 9/11.

“Don’t waste your precious energy trying to understand. Something this evil is beyond human comprehension.”

ricemagazine.info/341.

2004: An extended article examined the McKinsey report on Rice Athletics’ NCAA participation. Rice had been presented with a range of options for remaining in D1-A or changing to other NCAA levels. In August, the Thresher reported the board’s decision to stick with NCAA D1-A.

1963: Paul “Prophet” Burka ’63, the only sports editor in history to fail PT 100 three consecutive years, earned a well-deserved reputation on campus by the time his sixth-straight football forecast proved inaccurate; he spent each column explaining away the previous one.

1970: Norman Hackerman became president.

1970: The first issue of the academic year featured an editorial headlined “You cannot silence a generation.”

1992: In an article headlined “Jacks Enliven O-Week,” Hanszen College master Dennis Huston urged students to show more creativity and less destructiveness. Example of the latter: “Sunday night before the freshmen arrived, Jones commons

Sources: “Making Their Marks,” by Greg Khan ’90, Sallyport, April/May 1993; Rice University Woodson Research Center Digital Scholarship Archive; University of North Texas’ “Portal to Texas History”

2004: President David Leebron succeeded Gillis.

2008: On Nov. 7, the front page announced a bold new $1 billion Centennial Campaign, which concluded — successfully — in 2012. An editorial in the same issue noted the Baker 13/Fondren Library

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night owl The Daily Dance

O

story by Amanda Swennes | photo by Jeff Fitlow n Jan. 1, 2014, José Figueroa ’90 resolved to dance to live music every single day for a year. He accomplished that feat — and kept dancing.

In fact, he’s showing no sign of slowing down, so we sent freelancer Amanda Swennes on assignment to find out why.

To say that José Figueroa loves to move would be an understatement. For the past two years, the teacher, runner and former Marching Owl Band (MOB) member has gone dancing to live music — every day. And he wants you to join him.

On day No. 739, I met up with Figueroa at The Big Easy Social and Pleasure Club, a blues and zydeco club near Rice Village, where the owner has a rule — the dance floor is for dancing. Figueroa considers it his mission to help enforce that policy.

“People are here, but they’re not out there dancing,” he shouted at me over the sound of a blaring saxophone. A few couples — and, strikingly, one dancer on Rollerblades — hit the dance floor now and again, but for the most part everyone was sitting back with their drinks and dates, just listening. The empty dance floor was driving Figueroa nuts.

“People get too uptight about the steps or worry that people are looking at them,” he said, right before asking me to dance. That’s exactly what I was thinking as he led me onto the empty dance floor: I don’t know how to dance! All these people are watching us, and I’m going to look ridiculous.

Blues harmonica player Paul Oscher, on set that night, played what felt like the longest song of my life, riffing on chords and getting lost in the music.

Thankfully, my dance partner was patient and nonjudgmental.

“You have to learn to be flexible and dance to the music you’re hearing — you have to feel it,” Figueroa said. I nodded politely while the voice in my head repeated: Left, right, left, right. Oh goodness, he’s spinning me again.

When the song ended, and we got back to our table, I asked Figueroa what kept him motivated.

“I want to create community,” he said, “to bring dancers to musicians and vice versa. You don’t have to go to Austin for live music. There’s a vibrant live music scene right here in Houston.”

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Now his 2014 New Year’s resolution is a daily routine. That first year, Figueroa set up a Facebook page, “Dance to Live Music 365,” to both document his challenge and let other people in the Houston area know where they could find live music every day. In 2016, the challenge is less about him dancing every day and more about getting people to join him in supporting musicians and the venues that host them.

During the week, Figueroa also tries to incorporate his commitment to dancing and live music at his day job as a special education teacher at Channelview High School, east of Houston.

Drawing on his experience as a five-year member of the MOB, Figueroa said he sometimes brings his flügelhorn to class and plays for his students. He’ll also have them sing along to songs like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which has a simple melody and which he said can increase his students’ confidence.

“Many of my students are intellectually disabled and, although they’re teenagers, are at the reading level of a 5- or 6-year-old. Common words like ‘over,’ ‘the,’ ‘fly’ or ‘high’ are simple for normal learners to recognize, but for my students they take repetition and relearning,” he said.

Not every special education teacher uses music or dancing in the classroom, but for Figueroa they’re just extra tools in his teaching toolbox.

After work and on the weekends, you’ll find Figueroa dancing. On day No. 700, he danced at seven different venues. “It took me five hours,” he said. “And it was a Tuesday! Yes, I was able to find at least seven different places in Houston playing live music on a Tuesday night. And I am not talking about karaoke!”

And the personal benefits? “I feel like dancing to live music has made me a more confident dancer.

I’m not out there trying to do anything fancy or show off something I learned in a class or workshop.

I’m just about connecting and making conversation and having fun.”

— Amanda Swennes

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creative ideas and endeavors

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Ju s t A d d A rt n April, 15 students from Advanced Sculpture (ARTS 465), a class that focuses on advanced construction skills, welding, carpentry, mold-making and sewing, took the plunge, showcasing their work in an art exhibition in the former rec center pool housed in Autry Court (officially the Field House). The pool, which opened in 1951, was drained and closed in 2009 when the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center opened. “When I arrived at Rice last year, I read an article that had a picture of the old pool,” said Lisa Lapinski, an assistant professor of visual and dramatic arts and

the course’s instructor. “I immediately thought it would make a great location for an art show because of the natural light, unusual angles, and the beautiful blue-tiled walls and floor.” Visitors climbed down the ladder, four at a time, to see the students’ work, which included a tapestry, photographs and sculptures displayed at the bottom and along the sides of the shallow end of the pool. “The mas-

the studio.” For the 80-plus who saw the one-day show, it was a final lap. The space will soon be renovated to provide locker facilities for the men’s and women’s track team and women’s soccer.

— Tracey Rhoades

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J e f f F i t low

sive space gave me a new angle for my art,” said Huidi Xiang, a Duncan College junior. “The work was really different from that in

arts & Lett ers

DOCTORS OF MUSIC Rice students take the healing sounds of music into hospital rooms On a quiet floor of Methodist Hospital, where doctors and nurses spoke in hushed tones, a group of Rice students came prepared to make music — with keyboards, violins and voices.

Hesitantly knocking at doors, one of the students peeked inside a patient’s room and asked: “Would you like to listen to some music?” Within moments, the hospital room transformed into an unexpected concert venue.

After listening to sophomore Haley Kurisk sing Bruno Mars’ “Count on Me,” a patient recovering from multiple hip surgeries responded, “My feet made me want to dance.”

The students belong to the Rice MusicMDs club, which was the brainchild of Varun Bansal, a junior studying biochemistry and cell biology.

Following the death of his grandmother, Bansal, along with his sister, cofounded MusicMDs, a national nonprofit. Rice is one of several chapters.

“We used to play her music in her last days. She said she preferred it to therapy dogs,” Bansal said. The grandchildren soon proved that this was not just a grandmother’s affectionate pat on the back. In fall 2009, eager to bring music therapy to others, they started their outreach.

When Bansal came to Rice, he was happy to discover the school’s close proximity to the medical center. He soon began seeking out volunteer musicians. There are now 19 “music MDs” from various departments, two of whom are students at the Shepherd School of Music. Every member has to undergo volunteer training at the hospital. Bansal helps recruit participants, who now perform at Texas Children’s Hospital in addition to Methodist.

On one visit, after sophomore Natasha Mehta finished serenading a patient with “Hallelujah,” the elderly woman said, “If I could, I would give you a standing ovation.” She added tearfully, “Don’t ever feel shy to spread your talents to the world.”

Patients are not the only ones who are moved by these young musicians.

Patient care assistants, nurses and sometimes doctors stop to listen, encourage and applaud. Such is the impact of their work that one patient, who was unresponsive and apparently asleep throughout the concert, managed to open her eyes as it ended and whisper “More music?”

To learn more: www.musicmds.org — Sukhada Tatke

Rice MusicMDs play for a patient at Methodist Hospital.

Spotlight:

Gabriela Lena Frank Grammy-winning composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank ’94 earned a B.M. and M.M. from the Shepherd School of Music before earning a doctorate from the University of Michigan. She is widely known for infusing the western classical canon with folklore influences and the sounds of Latin American instruments, inspired by her studies and a Peruvian, Chinese and Lithuanian Jewish heritage.

PBS has documented her work with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, her collaboration with the Ecuadoran group the Orchestra of Andean Instruments and, most recently, an ambitious project that brought together Ecuadorian pan flute players with classical musicians at the University of Michigan. A member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and a freelance composer, Frank teaches, composes, performs and travels widely. But you don’t have to travel far to see her — her work as the Houston Symphony’s composer-in-residence premieres in 2017.

See ricemagazine.info/343

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arts & lett er s

Author Q&A “Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died” by Jim Bernhard ’59 (Skyhorse Publishing, 2015)

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ome authors’ deaths merit more than footnotes. There are the suicides of Plath, Woolf and Hemingway, as well as some that are equal parts bizarre and tragic, such as the mysterious demise of Edgar Allan Poe at age 40, days after he was found deliriously wandering the streets of Baltimore and wearing someone else’s shabby clothes. Playwright, actor and writer Jim Bernhard delves into these deaths and more than 100 others, paying homage to some of literature’s largest lions and chronicling an array of attitudes toward mortality — from fear to bold irreverence.

What drew you to this topic?

What do you think really happened to Poe?

I’m an actor, and a few years ago I was doing a play called “Underneath the Lintel” in which I had this speech: “Do you know how Aeschylus died, that towering playwright of ancient Greece?

Apparently eagles pick up turtles and carry them aloft until they find a suitable rock to drop them on, to crack them open. One day, an eagle thought Aeschylus’ bald head was a rock. Exit Aeschylus.”

That got me thinking about whether other authors have died in interesting ways. Indeed there were some unusual causes of death, such as the toothpick in a martini that killed Sherwood Anderson, or Molière’s fatal attack while playing a hypochondriac in one of his own plays or Tennessee Williams’ choking on a bottle cap.

No medical records survive, and his obituaries blamed “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation.” Medical experts have attributed Poe’s death to a range of causes, including delirium tremens, epilepsy, diabetes, rabies, mercury poisoning, suicide and assault. One of the most convincing theories is that Poe was grabbed by political thugs, drugged and used to cast illegal votes at multiple polling places before he was beaten and left to die.

The book spans centuries of literary history, from ancient Greece to the modern era. When was the worst time to be an author, in terms of staying alive?

It would seem that, ironically, authors in the classical age lived longer than modern authors do, even though the longevity of the general population is much greater today. Sophocles died at 91, Euripides in his late 70s and Plato at 81. The average age of the classical writers in my book at the time of their death was about 70, compared to 65 for those in the 20th and 21st centuries. Reasons for this may be the stress of modern life and the excessive reliance of many writers on alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Of course, there are exceptions, like the nonsmoking, vegetarian teetotaler George Bernard Shaw, who died in 1950 at the age of 94.

What’s the most surprising thing you learned while researching these authors and their deaths?

I think most of us feel a bit as William Saroyan did when he said, “Everybody has got to die, but I always thought an exception would be made in my case.” Although we don’t like to recognize our own mortality, the big surprise is the realization that death actually is inevitable and universal.

Do you have a favorite anecdote from the collection?

Jim Bernhard ’59 Read more about “Final Chapters” at Jim Bernhard’s author page on Amazon.com.

One of the most bizarre is the story that circulated at the time of Thomas Hardy’s death. He had wished to be buried in Dorset, where he was born, but his executor thought he should be interred in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. As a compromise, Hardy’s heart was removed, to be buried in Dorset, and the rest of his remains were to be cremated and buried in the Abbey. According to the story, Hardy’s heart was stored in a biscuit tin in the garden overnight, where the family cat found the heart and ate it. When the undertaker realized what had happened, he killed the cat and buried it in Hardy’s grave. The Hardy estate heartily denies this story!

What can we learn about an author — or anyone — from the way he or she died?

I think you can learn much more from what authors wrote about their expectations of death than the manner in which they actually died. Just one example is Mark Twain’s irreverent bravado. “I do not fear death,” he wrote. “I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Which author did you think had the best attitude toward his or her mortality?

I like to quote Marcus Aurelius, who wrote, “Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it, like all else. Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”

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arts & lett ers

on t h e b oo ksh e l f

O’Nights

by Cecily Parks ’99 (Alice James Books, 2015) Wilderness and wildness play central roles in Parks’ latest poetry collection, “O’Nights,” which the Southern Humanities Review calls “a multilayered love poem both to a person and to the earth.” The poet’s tendency to find inspiration in nature is well documented: Her first book, “Field Folly Snow” (2008) was described by its publisher as a collection of “meditations on the natural world.” She’s also the editor of “The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses,” published in March, an anthology of nature-themed poetry that spans centuries, from the titular poem by William Blake to contemporary reflections on the environmental crisis.

Parks teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Texas State University.

A Beautiful Apocalypse

by Jordan Myska Allen ’08 (Life Fiction, 2015) It’s been two years since flesh-eating zombies brought civilization to its knees, creating a grim dystopia in which small groups of fiercely self-protective survivors must fight to cobble together a future for themselves — and for humanity.

Against this backdrop, Allen’s debut novel focuses on three scrappy friends who discover that saving humankind will require them to focus more deeply on their own humanity. Allen, who earned a degree in religious studies at Rice, toured the country with a funk band for four years before writing the book, which draws on his passion for a form of meditation centered on interpersonal connection.

The First Order

by Jeff Abbott ’85 (Grand Central Publishing, 2016) Terrorists and corrupt ex-KGB officials aren’t the only wild cards in the mix for the CIA agent hero of this thriller. In this fifth installment of Abbott’s best-selling Sam Capra series, Capra must do battle for — and against — his own brother, who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. His surprise reemergence raises more questions than it answers, one of which boils down to: Will Capra do whatever it takes to save him, or does the greater good require him to sacrifice his own kin? Abbott, who earned a degree in history and English at Rice, is the New York Times best-selling author of numerous mysteries and suspense novels. He lives in Austin with his wife and two sons.

FREESTYLE RAP “Drop the beat,” said President Barack Obama, launching a unique Rose Garden performance with Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit musical “Hamilton.”

Sitting behind his drum set under the White House’s portico, Master Gunnery Sgt. Chris Rose ’91, combo section commander of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, did exactly that. With a strike to the hi-hat, Rose launched Miranda into one of his famous freestyle raps, prompted by cue cards held up by the president himself.

“He’s throwing up some words, I’m getting to say some freestyling that you never heard,” Miranda rapped. Starting with “constitution” and ending with “opportunity,” Miranda’s one-and-a-half-minute performance video has been viewed by millions.

Rose, who has two degrees from the Shepherd School of Music, joined the Marine band in 1997. This performance offered something different, in addition to a taste of fame. “I’d never been the solitary musician on a White House commitment,” said Rose, whose duties include touring with the band every fall, as well as playing for parades, ceremonies and diplomatic events. “It’s an honor to be there,” Rose said.

Video: ricemagazine.info/344

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FAMILY ALBUM

Trailblazing Athletes

by David medina ’83

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tahlé Vincent ’72 was among the first African-Americans to play football at Rice and the first black quarterback in the Southwest Conference. Despite his many accomplishments as a student– athlete, he was ready to quit in his junior year after injuring his arm.

But then he started receiving a barrage of congratulatory letters from teachers, athletes and administrators from around the state. He was especially touched by one from an athlete who praised him for making it “cool to be a good student and a good athlete.”

That letter convinced Vincent to stay at Rice. “I realized it was not just about me,” he said. And thanks to that letter, Vincent now encourages his fellow alumni to extend a hand to current athletes. “It’s hard to be a student at Rice, and it’s doubly hard to be a student–athlete.”

Vincent spoke April 1 at a dinner in honor of 15 black alumni who were among the first to compete in a sport at Rice. The event was part of a yearlong celebration, “Celebrating 50 Years of Black Undergraduate Life at Rice,” organized by the President’s Office, the Association of Rice University Black Alumni (ARUBA), the Office of Alumni Relations, Rice Athletics and the Office of Public Affairs.

In addition to Vincent, the honorees were as follows: Rodrigo Barnes ’73, the first African-American to be named to the All-Southwest Conference defensive team and who was later drafted by the Dallas Cowboys.

Willis Wilson ’82, the first African-American head coach at Rice. As the basketball coach from 1992 to 2008, he led his team to an appearance in the National Invitation Tournament and was named District 9 Coach of the Year.

Joseph Callier ’77, head of the “R” Association when the Hubert E. Bray Scholar–Athlete Award was created to honor the male and female athletes with the top grade point average.

Darryl “Doc” King ’79, who won three consecutive Southwest Conference championships in the high hurdles, earned All-American honors and was the first African-American track and field athlete inducted into the Rice Athletic Hall of Fame.

Leila Freeman ’79, a sprinter who ran the 100-meter and 55-meter dash on the women’s track team.

Denise Bostick ’80, who played volleyball and was known as an outstanding hitter.

Goya Qualls ’82, the first player on the women’s basketball team to receive a full scholarship. She was team captain, an MVP and a recordsetting rebounder.

Wanna Hadnott ’84, who lettered all four years as a member of the women’s tennis team and served as the team’s co-captain. She reached top-20 status in the country in 1983.

Don Freeman ’89, who attended Rice on a tennis scholarship.

Merritt Robinson ’90, a three-year letterman in football and baseball.

Raffi Belizaire ’05, a forward on the varsity soccer team in her sophomore year. She also threw the shot put and hammer for the women’s track and field team.

Lauren Lewis ’13, who joined the women’s swim team as a walk-on and competed in the 100-yard breaststroke, the 200-yard breaststroke and the 50-yard freestyle. She was on the C-USA Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll for three consecutive years.

For a complete schedule of events for “Celebrating 50 Years of Black Undergraduate Life at Rice,” visit http://alumni.rice.edu/events/50-years-of-black-undergraduate-life.

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Stahlé Vincent ’72

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Lasting Advice Photo by Jeff Fitlow

On May 13–14, Rice sent its 103rd batch of graduates into the world. Although the number of graduates has increased dramatically over the past century and the challenges facing them have changed considerably, some parts of Commencement have remained a constant — like encouraging grads to use their immense talents to make the world a better place. Rice’s second president, the physicist William V. Houston, had this advice for the school’s 322 graduates in 1951: “Develop individual curiosity, a sense of adventure for the turn of the road ahead, and the courage to take whatever path a deep faith says is right. Develop courage to live with gusto the days we have, to love with fidelity and grace, to die but once, and to be consistently and quietly ourselves.

On that narrow margin of individuality, that precious difference, that diversity, that strength, the fate of the coming century depends.”