Rice Magazine | Winter 2023

The Journey Has Begun

Not a cloud was in the sky Oct. 22, 2022, as Rice celebrated the latest chapter in its storied 110-year history with the investiture of Reginald DesRoches as the school’s eighth president. It was a thrilling day, full of joyful emotion and wise words from members of Rice’s faculty, staff and student body. Rice Board of Trustees chairman Robert T. Ladd ’78 welcomed the representatives of over 150 colleges, universities and learned societies who bore witness to the day’s historic events. “The nation is calling for leadership, and this university has answered,” said keynote speaker Ruth Simmons, one of DesRoches’ closest mentors. After receiving his presidential robe and medal, DesRoches addressed the crowd in the Academic Quadrangle. Read or watch the full speech online at president.rice.edu.

COVER PHOTO BY GUSTAVO

Above: Robert T. Ladd, chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, presents a formal summons calling Reginald DesRoches to his investiture as Rice’s eighth president at the Wiess President’s House. Below, left: Ruth Simmons, trustee emerita, gave formal remarks at the ceremony. Below, right: Rice Chorale and Shepherd School of Music Brass Ensemble perform “Alleluia.”

Above: President DesRoches speaks to faculty, staff, students and guests during his inaugural address as the university’s president. Below: Delegates from all 11 residential colleges and more than 150 colleges and universities attended the investiture held in the Academic Quadrangle.

“Presidents, like engineers, do not do their work alone. I will need the help of all of you — your ideas, your support, your hard work and your dedication — as we build a better university that helps build a better world.”

— Reginald DesRoches, Oct. 22, 2o22

CONTENTS

The Journey Has Begun

Rice celebrated the investiture and inauguration of Reginald DesRoches, the university’s eighth president.

26

The Kids Are All Right

Residential college life is rebuilding after the pandemic with old and new traditions.

32 The Chronicler

with Rice.

Photographer Tommy LaVergne puts down his camera after 30 years

DEPARTMENTS

Sallyport 9

Mechanical keyboards, Archi Market, Rice Bikes, Syllabus, graduate student stats, BeReal app captures moments

Wisdom 17

Rice Architecture Paris, Paul Cherukuri, Bob Curl, Kinder Institute, reducing energy waste, MacArthur Fellowship

Alumni 43

Suite business, Classnotes sampler, Houston brews, a spy novel and a new CD that’s over the moon

Last Look 50

John “Grungy” Gladu trumpets across Rice Stadium, celebrating 50 years as a MOB musician.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTOS BY GUSTAVO RASKOSKY, CHANDRA RAMSURRUN, JEFF FITLOW

Wisdom, wisecracks, superb Owl puns: We want to hear your thoughts. Please send your feedback, constructive criticism or thoughtful appreciation to ricemagazine@rice.edu — or surprise us with a letter or postcard.

Letter to the Editor

A Rice Moment

The other night I was having trouble falling asleep, and my mind went back to my Rice experiences 50 years ago. I thought: “How did Rice shape my thinking? What were the most valuable experiences I had at Rice?” I took a Russian history course taught by Professor Gale Stokes.* After all these years, I clearly remember one assignment, which was to read two biographies of Russian writer Alexander Herzen. Our assignment was to write a 10-page paper contrasting the biographies. How were the authors’ portrayals similar, how different? Did two different pictures of Herzen emerge? I did a lot of walking around campus, a bit overwhelmed until I finally had the idea to focus on how each author presented one small episode in Herzen’s life. One writer saw Herzen in an active role — making decisions, determining paths and outcomes; the second writer saw Herzen as more reactive and passive. This unlocked the paper and the challenge for me, and the paper flowed. What an assignment! It challenged me to read, ponder, detect critical differences and write. A Rice moment that helped shape the way I’ve thought ever since. Thanks again for your always interesting publication.

— JERRY BRODKEY ’74 (HANSZEN)

*Gale Stokes was the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor Emeritus of History and dean of humanities. He died in 2012.

TOP 5

We love our magazine in print, and we also love it online, where our stories are easily shareable. Here are the top-read online stories from Rice Magazine’s Fall 2022 issue, according to Google Analytics. 1. “Pleased to Meet You, President DesRoches”

“Fresh Faces, New Spaces”

“We Choose to Return to the Moon”

“By the Numbers: Class of 2026” 5. “Who’s Behind Wikipedia?”

If you missed any of these stories, go to magazine.rice.edu to catch up.

RICE MAGAZINE

Winter 2023

PUBLISHER

Office of Public Affairs

Linda Thrane, vice president

EDITOR

Lynn Gosnell

ART DIRECTOR Alese Pickering

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

Lisa Yelenick

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Tracey Rhoades

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jenny West Rozelle ’00

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Jeff Fitlow

Gustavo Raskosky

VIDEOGRAPHER

Brandon Martin

CONTRIBUTORS

Jade Boyd, Sam Byrd, Schaefer Edwards ’13, Rachel Fairbank, Sam Island, Jennifer Latson, Tommy LaVergne, Delphine Lee, Amy McCaig, Laura Furr Mericas, Doug Miller, Paddy Mills, Katie Mulligan, Israel G. Vargas, Mike Williams

INTERNS

Emma Korsmo ’24 Mabel Tang ’23

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

© January 2023, Rice University

Alexander Herzen

THE RICE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Robert T. Ladd, chair; Elle Anderson; Bart Broadman; D. Mark Durcan; Michol L. Ecklund; Wanda English Gass; Terrence Gee; George Y. Gonzalez; James T. Hackett; Patti Lipoma Kraft; Holli Ladhani; Lynn A. Lednicky; Elle Moody; Brandy Hays Morrison; Asuka Nakahara; Brian Patterson; Byron Pope; David Rhodes; Gloria Meckel Tarpley; Jeremy Thigpen; Claudia Gee Vassar; James Whitehurst; Lori Rudge Whitten; Randa Duncan Williams; Michael Yuen.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS

Reginald DesRoches, president; Amy Dittmar, provost; Paul Cherukuri, vice president for Innovation; Kathi Dantley Warren, vice president for Development and Alumni Relations; Kelly Fox, vice president for Finance and Administration; Caroline Levander, vice president for Global and Digital Strategy; Paul Padley, vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer; Yvonne Romero Da Silva, vice president for Enrollment; Omar A. Syed, vice president and general counsel; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs.

POSTMASTER

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

EDITORIAL OFFICES

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

MIDYEAR MILESTONES

ACROSS CAMPUS, WE ARE striding into familiar routines and activities while marking milestones with intention and purpose. In our winter issue, we capture some of the transitions that signify moments of rebuilding and change.

The voices of our college magisters and student leaders take center stage in this issue via “The Kids Are All Right,” our feature that explores the lasting impact of the pandemic’s challenges to our residential college system — and how campus leaders are thoughtfully rebuilding in the midst of impending growth. Freelance writer Laura Furr Mericas learned about some of the creative ways magisters devised to keep their culture and connections alive — activities like outdoor exhibits of student photography, intimate group dinners and masked-up karaoke nights. “The residential college system meant that we were all in it together. And I think that that’s what allowed us to get through it,” says senior Kirsty Leech, Wiess College president. That the pandemic transformed the college system — in ways both positive and deeply challenging — is undeniable.

The Oct. 22, 2022, inauguration of Reginald “Reggie” DesRoches marked a joyous milestone in Rice’s 110-year history. Our opening photo spread teases a more complete picture of the day online. And speaking of milestones, our friend and colleague Tommy LaVergne has put down his camera

after 30 years documenting life at Rice. We included a minute selection of his decades of photographs and diverse assignments in these pages — with more images online.

In other news: Our departments shine a light on campus life (Rice Bikes, BeReal and First-year Writing Intensive Seminar); research and teaching news (celebrating Kiese Laymon’s MacArthur Fellowship, exploring an active volcano, honoring the legendary Robert Curl ’54 and transforming the energy economy); and profiles of always interesting Rice alumni following their passions.

Your feedback is valuable and welcomed. Please share your comments, criticisms and certainly your appreciations with me at lynn.gosnell@rice.edu.

“The residential college system meant that we were all in it together. And I think that that’s what allowed us to get through it,” says senior Kirsty Leech, Wiess College president.

A FOCUS ON OUR FUTURE

A HALLMARK OF ALL RICE presidents is their vision for the future of the university.

The original vision of our founders was that Rice would be a full range university with undergraduate, graduate and professional schools. And throughout each chapter of Rice’s history, the visions of our great leaders have shown us where we are headed, what we aspire to become and where we will focus our efforts.

Edgar Odell Lovett, our first president, had bold ambitions for Rice as a premier research university, noting, “Faculty must be involved in research because the best person to lead the learner from the unknown to the known is the individual who is continually leading themselves from the unknown to the known.” He further stated, “The privileges of research are necessarily related to the pleasures of learning.”

Most, if not all, of the visions brought forth by subsequent Rice University presidents were similar and focused on growing the university’s research

enterprise, commitment to undergraduate education, hiring world-renowned faculty, expanding our programming and international reach, and enhancing the overall college experience through capital improvements and preservation of our residential college system.

My vision for Rice aligns with these noble goals. As I said during my inaugural speech in October, Rice will in the coming years significantly increase its visibility and impact as a premier research university. We will have graduate programs of the same distinction as our undergraduate programs, all the while strengthen-

A 15-member strategic planning committee will lead the process and ensure that we gather diverse perspectives. The end result of this yearlong effort will be a thorough strategic plan that articulates Rice’s vision for the next 10 years. The plan will define how the university will focus its resources to realize the vision, outline metrics that will allow Rice to measure progress against our strategic goals and propose strategies to achieve those goals.

Laying out the how and making sure we have the accurate why is extremely important to Rice’s future success. Your input, buy-in and support is too. As Gen. Colin Powell put it, “Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.”

ing what Rice is well known for — an unparalleled undergraduate education. This university will be grounded in all we do by the values of diversity, equity and inclusion, a place known for its culture of care, tolerance and understanding.

Refining these goals and determining how to best accomplish them will be a process that evolves over time based on feedback from the Rice community and those invested in the university. In January, the university will launch a strategic planning process to formally collect feedback from all sectors of our community, including faculty, students, staff, alumni and board of trustees members.

I look forward to hearing your ideas on where Rice should be headed over the next decade. I encourage you to think big on all fronts, explore how we can build on our strengths and forge courageous new paths.

Rice is an exceptional institution with brilliant faculty, ambitious students, strong leaders and an unmatched staff. In addition to providing a top-notch education to our students, we contribute meaningful and impactful research, scholarship and creative pursuits to the betterment of society. But I believe we can do even more, and we will now chart this course together.

I look forward to hearing your ideas on where Rice should be headed over the next decade. I encourage you to think big on all fronts, explore how we can build on our strengths and forge courageous new paths.

Mechanical Keyboards

BY EMMA KORSMO ’24

AS A COMPUTER science and math

major, Phillip Tran ’25 spends at least eight hours a day using his keyboard: completing assignments, playing games with friends or as he admits, “unironically going on typing test websites to practice my typing skills.”

Tran wants all of those hours to be as enjoyable as possible — so when he’s running around campus, he uses a pre-built Logitech MX Keys Mini keyboard that is “very minimal.” At home, he’ll often switch to his own custom-built keyboard, which holds blank keys and makes “a beautiful ‘thonk’ sound.”

Tran’s fascination with both computers and mechanical keyboards started in his early teens. “When I was 13, I wanted to build a computer to play games. I saved all my money from birthdays and Christmas then bought all the individual parts,” he said. For Tran, building that first custom computer was not unlike putting together Legos.

Mechanical keyboards have exploded in popularity recently, partly as a result of Autonomous

Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos, which show people typing on different boards that sound aesthetically pleasing to the ear. Because of a switch used underneath the keycaps that registers which key is being pressed, custom or homemade keyboards sound and feel very different from the average keyboard.

By his senior year of high school, Tran wanted to try building his own mechanical keyboard. “I started from zero, going on Reddit forums and watching YouTube videos.”

Many steps go into this hobby, from soldering switches to picking out keycaps. “When you’re first looking at the parts and trying to determine what you want, how you want it to sound and feel, it’s really exciting. You get to customize every single part however you want and see it all come together.”

Tran’s best advice for novice keyboard builders? “Don’t be a broke college student,” he said jokingly. Building custom keyboards can be time-consuming and expensive ($200–$600).

“For the amount of time I spend on my keyboard,” said Tran, “it’s worth it.”

KEY TERMS

Beginner terms for future keyboard enthusiasts

PCB: a printed circuit board, aka “the brains of the keyboard,” which connects the user’s inputs to the output on the computer

Keycaps: covers for the top of switches; a main element for aesthetic customization Plate: a holder for keyboard switches that attaches to the PCB; different plate materials

(aluminum, brass, etc.) change the sound produced

Switches: covered up by the keycaps; communicates with the computer through the PCB and affects the sound and feel of typing

Case: a frame for holding all the individual components together sturdily

Art and Commerce

Architecture students created a market to sell their creations and raise funds for stocking the students’ kitchen.

CROCHETED STUFFED animals, photography prints and handmade jewelry are all on display and for sale at Archi Market in Anderson Hall. First held Oct. 17, Archi Market now is a monthly market organized by the Rice Architecture Society where students can sell art, jewelry, clothes and more.

Archi Market coordinators Charlotte Cohen ’23, Valerie Elizondo ’24, Katherine Hui ’23 and Amber Wang ’24 said that they first started the marketplace as a fundraising effort to restock the architecture students’ kitchen.

“The idea of the Archi Market was partly born out of necessity because we saw the lack of access to healthy food for architecture students who might miss mealtimes because of long work periods,” said Elizondo. “It’s a good way to fundraise while also bringing people into Anderson Hall and sharing our art, hobbies and talents with the whole Rice community.”

Liliana Abramson ’24 sold tote bags, clay polymer earrings and prints at the November market. Abramson is taking a printmaking class this semester, where she found a passion for making linoleum prints. “In high school, I made and sold jewelry on Etsy. I missed the ability to create and share my creations with other people outside of my classes and immediate friends,” she said.

Joseph Hsu ’23, Peyton Chiang ’23, Theo Vadot ’23 and Jeff Xia ’23 sold custom ashtrays cast out of concrete. Their main motivation for making these trays was to use their creative side and work physically with something they cast, which is a process that they may not have the chance to do very often in

school. “This was our first foray into making something that could be massproduced and delving into the casting process,” said Hsu. “Selling them was just an added bonus, but most of it was for our own experimentation.”

In the future, the coordinators plan to continue holding Archi Markets every month and potentially expanding the market beyond the galleries to host a wider variety of sellers.

“Our main goals for the Archi Market are to connect the broader university to Anderson Hall, to showcase and support student art and talents, and to provide a space that can help elevate student entrepreneurship,” said Hui. “We hope to bring together the Rice community to share and support student creativity while also having fun meeting other vendors and attendees.”

— MABEL TANG ’23

SPACES

Rice Bikes

A well-equipped garage next to the MultiCultural Center is the place to pedal (or to push) for bike maintenance and repair.

BY JEFF FITLOW

FLAT TIRE? LOOSE BRAKES?

Rusty chain? Rice Bikes, a popular student-run business, provides services to fix these problems and many others for the campus — and Houston — cycling community. “We stay pretty busy,” says senior Diego Casanova, Rice Bikes’ general manager. “Every shift will typically have three appointments scheduled and several walk-ins.” The business employs 27 mechanics who work at least two shifts a week, and each shift is between two and three hours.

Given the number of bikes on campus, the shop fills a huge need. The cavernous interior and entry are chock-full of commuter and road bikes in various stages of maintenance or repair. Flat tires are the most common repair requested; but adjustments to derailleurs, brakes and chains keep the mechanics busy. The business prides itself on the students’ mechanical knowledge and enthusiasm. Every now and then, someone will wheel in something more unconventional — unicycles, tricycles and even the occasional pedal trolley. “Our mechanics are equipped to handle the full spectrum of repairs, and typically do, on a day-to-day basis,” Casanova adds. Rice Bikes also provides reasonably priced rental bikes by the semester or year.

In addition to keeping the riding community rolling, Rice Bikes engages the community in awareness about bike safety and opportunities to participate in group rides for charity.

— LYNN GOSNELL

PHOTO

From left: Rice Bikes staff includes Diego Casanova ’23 (general manager), Charlotte Gidley ’24 (personnel manager) and Josh Schaffer ’24 (operations manager)

Faith and Fright

FWIS 175 Horror and Religion in Popular Culture

DEPARTMENT First-Year Writing Intensive Seminar DESCRIPTION

Through an in-depth look at how religion is entangled with horror and simultaneously produced within culture, we will see how they use similar languages and how each possesses the narrative potential to transform our lives and culture.

IN THIS COURSE, De’Anna Daniels, a Ph.D. candidate in religion, introduces students to horror and religion and how they mutually manifest each other. The course content derives from Daniels’ dissertation, which examines the entanglements between Black religion and horror in popular culture. Daniels’ religious background also inspired her to study this intersection.

“I was raised deeply religious,” said Daniels, who holds graduate degrees in divinity and theology. “I was [also] really scared of watching horror films, and I was trying to figure out why. I realized that built into the fabric of Christian education and faith formation, horror was always the backdrop. Our understanding of the scripture and of apocalyptic literature is deeply grounded in our spiritual understanding of what is monstrous and

what is evil.”

Students watch several films in class, including “Get Out,” “Umma” and “Hereditary.” They also write their own fictional horror stories, which range from slasher horror to Gothic slow burners and retellings of biblical narratives.

“They get to see horror through traditional lenses, but also through grief, lineage and legacy,” said Daniels. “You have to identify not just where the source of the horror is, but where the source of religion and humaneness is.”

Caroline Snider ’26 took this class after taking theology classes in high school, where she also learned about the world around her through the lens of religion. “I like pointing out the cracks of religion or their lurking monsters. I feel like horror movies are a very accessible mainstream entertainment

source, and I love taking mundane things and looking way too much into them.”

Class discussion lends itself to issues of race and culture, especially in Black horror, a genre grounded in being perpetually seen as the monster. “It reconfigures how you think of God and humanity. What if white supremacy is actually the monster? It makes you think through these questions in larger, more expansive ways,” said Daniels.

Ultimately, Daniels hopes that students gain the confidence in their ability to find themes on their own and articulate them to their peers. “I’m invested in them staking their own claim. They’re creating legacies with their own words. And I think that’s the most valuable skill.”

PHOTO BY JEFF FITLOW

RICE RISES

BY THE NUMBERS

Welcome, Grad Students

The entering class of Rice graduate students was larger than the number of new undergraduates.

1,272 new graduate students 302 doctoral students 961

master’s students 1 artist diploma student (Shepherd School of Music) 1 certificate student (School of Continuing Studies)

Source: Office of the Registrar

8

academic schools in order of number of new student enrollments

George R. Brown School of Engineering

Jones Graduate School of Business

Wiess School of Natural Sciences

School of Social Sciences

Shepherd School of Music

School of Humanities

School of Architecture

Glasscock School of Continuing Studies

Top 10

(of 91 countries represented by international graduate students) China  India Taiwan Mexico South Korea Canada Nigeria Iran

Turkey  Vietnam

Rice has risen to No. 15 among the nation’s top universities ranked in the latest edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” guidebook. The U.S. News rankings are one of the most closely watched indicators of academic excellence among the nation’s institutions of higher education, and among 300 colleges and universities, Rice has been regularly rated among the nation’s top 20 universities since first appearing on the list in 1988. “It’s a testament to the outstanding education our faculty provides to our students every day of the academic year,” said President Reginald DesRoches.“We’re especially proud that Rice students are getting a great education for one of the best values in the nation.”

— DOUG MILLER

TRENDS

Candid Camera

A trending social media app encourages less scrolling and more real time.

HOW MANY TIMES have you aimlessly scrolled through Instagram or spent 30 minutes editing the perfect picture? Today’s generations are no strangers to social media, but should we be putting a little more distance between ourselves and the manufactured glamour represented on social media sites? A popular new app offers an alternative.

BeReal, a social media platform released in 2020, aims to promote authenticity via candid posts. Once a day at a random time, the BeReal app sends a prompt that gives subscribers two minutes to take a picture with the front and back camera and then share the post with friends. Participants can retake pictures within the two minutes, but the number of retakes are displayed along with the post. To prevent lurking and incessant scrolling, users are not allowed to see their friends’ images until they post their own.

Time recently reported that global downloads of the app have reached 22.8 million, with 55% of the app’s users in the 16–24 age group, according to data.ai. A big draw for Rice students is the “same time, different place” character of the app.

“I love seeing where my friends are, whether they’re studying in Chaus [Rice Coffeehouse], taking a trip to Rice Village or hanging out in dorm rooms,” says Elysia Wu ’23. “BeReal makes me feel closer to the people I love by reminding me in real time that we’re all just a couple hundred meters apart from one another.”

BeReal encourages users to post as they are. “I feel more connected to my friends, like we are interacting in a meaningful way, compared to Instagram where the photos are staged,” says Zac Ambrose ’25. “Seeing what your friends are up to in real time is a very refreshing take on today’s forms of social media.” BeReal allows you to be your authentic self, with no poses or filters required.

— EMMA KORSMO ’24

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

INNOVATION IN THE LAB, THE FIELD AND THE CLASSROOM

BY MIKE WILLIAMS

PHOTO BY CHANDRA RAMSURRUN

RICE’S FIRST international campus, Rice School of Architecture Paris (RSAP), has plenty to celebrate this year. Over two decades, the campus has hosted more than 400 students, giving them comprehensive insight and opportunity for exposure to the built environment of the City of Lights.

“Successful study abroad programs don’t happen in a vacuum; they require sharp vision and deep knowledge of language and culture to create a successful student experience,” said Igor Marjanović, the William Ward Watkin Dean of Rice Architecture.

That RSAP came to be in one of the world’s most vibrant cities is due to good planning and some dogged legwork. It could have been RSA-somewhere else. In the beginning, it was.

“This grew out of some of our earlier

attempts at having a foreign study program,” said John Casbarian, the founding director of RSAP and Rice’s Harry K. and Albert K. Smith Professor of Architecture. “In the mid-’90s I would take students to Nice, France, Houston’s sister city, for 10 days to explore urban issues there, but students really wanted a semesterlong experience.” Strategizing with then-dean Lars Lerup led to a several-yearslong collaborative program with another institution that brought students to Vico Morcote, a village outside Lugano,

Switzerland.

“It was difficult to recruit students because even though it’s one of the most idyllic places in the world, [Vico Morcote] is very isolated and didn’t offer any kind of urban experience,” Casbarian recalled. “I told Lars, ‘We need to start our own.’”

In early 2002, Casbarian got to work. “The moment we got approval in March 2002, I wrote

Left: The fall 2022 Rice Architecture Paris class, from left to right: adjunct senior studio critic Nicholas Gilliland, Rae Atkinson, Lorraine Kung, Christopher Sanders, Deandra Smith, resident director Garry White, Isabelle Ndoumy-Kouakou, Xueyuan Wang, Harish Krishnamoorthy, Justin Fan, Nathaniel Leazer and Wenyi Zheng

to the students and said, ‘Look, I don’t have any details yet, but we’re starting this program in the fall. I can’t tell you where exactly in Paris, but who of you wants to go?’ I got 10 pioneering students who jumped at the opportunity.” After a year in a converted ceramic factory on the outskirts of Paris, Casbarian found RSAP’s current location in the 12th arrondissement, an authentic Parisian neighborhood near the Viaduc des Arts and rich in its artisanal history. Today, up to 10 graduate or fifth-year undergraduate architecture students from Rice and occasionally other institutions attend RSAP for a semester. Next year, they’ll be joined by students studying at the Rice Global Paris Center

While a semester at RSAP encompasses studio work, history, theory, technology, and French culture and language, both coursework and downtime adventures reinforce the Paris experience, according to alumni.

Anna Fritz ’20, now an associate at Karamuk Kuo, the Swiss firm that designed Rice Architecture’s upcoming William T. Cannady Hall, arrived in Paris in 2021 as the pandemic wound down. “Paris and the preceptorship program were definitely two elements that attracted me to Rice,” she said. “As an architect, we primarily deal with space, and what really matters is being able to visit buildings and be in the spaces you learn and talk about. That had a stronger impact on me than I thought it would. The density of historically significant buildings along with trends that started in Paris, like its early modernist buildings, make it stand out.”

“What’s unique about the program is that while faculty from Houston visit, we also have local faculty from Paris and other parts of Europe,” Marjanović said. “We’re not just flying in Rice students to study in a bubble. We’re connecting them to architects, historians and engineers to create a hub of conversations and collaborations.”

— MIKE WILLIAMS

We’re not just flying in Rice students to study in a bubble. We’re connecting them to architects, historians and engineers to create a hub of conversations and collaborations.

The Builder

AST SUMMER, PAUL CHERUKURI ’07 — physicist, chemist and medtech entrepreneur — was named Rice’s first vice president of innovation, a position created by President DesRoches. The mission of the new office is to translate breakthrough discoveries into inventions for societal benefit, with the primary areas of focus currently being energy and health. While Cherukuri is new to this role, he is neither a stranger to Rice nor to Houston. His long association with the Texas Medical Center and stints at Rice — as a Ph.D. student, researcher and executive director of the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering — are integral to his unique experiences and enthusiasm for raising Rice’s profile in the innovation ecosystem. “We’re going to make mind-blowing inventions that help people live

better, healthier lives. It’s beyond a privilege to do this,” he said. We recently sat down with Cherukuri to learn more about the path that led him to this role.

An immigrant childhood leads to Houston …

I was born in India, and my family came [to the U.S.] when I was about a year old. We — my mother, Suseelamma; father, Theodore; and my older brother, Thomas — landed in New York City, as many of us did back in the 1970s — because there was a physician and nursing shortage. I grew up in a thriving community in Brooklyn where physicians and nurses who came over from India worked, and “aunties” took care of each other’s kids. My younger brother, Peter, was born in New York.

When my father got a fellowship to train under Denton Cooley as a heart surgeon at the Texas Heart Institute, we came here to Houston. I was about 7 or 8 years old. Sometimes, my father would take us to see open heart surgeries and animal experiments related to artificial hearts, using mechanical pumps they were putting in cows. I loved seeing that!

… and then to West Virginia

Because my father grew up in a very tiny village in India, he wanted to serve people in an underprivileged community in America. We moved to an Appalachian town on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky. Even though I didn’t have

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Paul Cherukuri in his own words

INTERVIEW BY LYNN GOSNELL

access to good math and science classes in the hills, I loved to build things and tinker. I was very fortunate that my parents tolerated my insanity growing up because I would try to build some really crazy tech. One of these things was a rocket belt, like the one James Bond flew in “Thunderball.”

Medical school with a side of entrepreneurship

When it was time to go to college, I enrolled at the University of Kentucky to study physics — I wanted to earn a Ph.D. eventually, but my parents wanted me to go to med school. “You’re Indian, you need a good job, go to med school,” they said. I went to med school in Trinidad but still did research every summer with my undergraduate mentor at UK. We were working on a technology to monitor glucose for diabetes patients using a kind of watch device that was way ahead of its time.

An unexpected return to Houston

Texas Heart got wind of our work and its relation to cardiovascular disease and asked me to attend a medical meeting in Washington, D.C., to meet with cardiologist Jim Willerson [also president of the University of Texas Health Science Center of Houston]. At the meeting, Dr. Willerson invited me to come to Houston to start a company, but I wanted to finish medical school, so I turned down his offer. The meeting was on Sept. 11, 2001. I drove past the Pentagon still smoldering from

Looking back a decade from now, I’d like the world to see just how special Rice University really is by the people we’ve taught and the new ideas and technology we’ve made.

the attack. A few days later, Texas Heart called me again to come work on a DOD project for trauma relief, and I really wanted to help our military, so I said yes and hit pause on medical school.

‘Be

a real doctor.’

Shortly after I arrived in Houston, Willerson introduced me to Rick Smalley. He was a brilliant thinker and tech entrepreneur. Finally found someone that really got me. I planned on transferring to UT Health to finish med school but then Smalley said, ‘You know, Paul, why don’t you quit medical school and be a real doctor?’ Smalley said that

if I joined his lab, he’d make the group half biotech and half nanotech. I just couldn’t refuse his offer, so I quit med school and became his student. Smalley took a chance on me, but sadly, it was only about a year and a half that I was officially his student, before he died of cancer in 2005. But he totally changed my life for the better.

Forming an unbreakable bond

I graduated under Bruce Weisman, my final thesis adviser, and another wonderful mentor. It was also in Weisman’s lab that I met my wife, Tonya, and she’s also a physical chemist and scary

smart. She’s the vice president of a company that spun out of Rice called Applied NanoFluorescence, which designs and manufactures spectrometers. We have two children, Adam, 12, and John, 9. Our wedding reception was held on campus at the RMC. Jim Tour, another mentor at Rice, presided over the ceremony. I thought it would be really cool to have a chemist help form an unbreakable bond. We even had a nanotube-shaped cake, and all the tables were numbered after fundamental particles in physics. We really nerded out.

What is innovation?

Innovation has always been part of Rice’s research and educational enterprise, but what Reggie wanted to do in creating this office was amplify innovation in all its forms. Innovation is at the heart of what Rice does through the scholarly works of our faculty and students — books, music, art, research and inventions. Looking back a decade from now, I’d like the world to see just how special Rice University really is by the people we’ve taught and the new ideas and technology we’ve made. So, a big part of my mission is to provide the support for our faculty and students to develop and even commercialize their innovative discoveries for the betterment of our world.

Read more about Cherukuri’s own innovative research at magazine.rice.edu.

EARTH SCIENCE

Hot Science

On Cordón Caulle, a volcano high up in the Chilean wilderness, researchers document an evolving landscape.

TWO WEEKS SHROUDED in ash and steam served as the “experience of a lifetime” for Rice Ph.D. student and volcanologist Patrick Phelps. Phelps, armed with burning questions that could only be answered by a real volcano, was able to take his research abroad after being awarded an Expanding Horizons Fellowship, made possible by Walter Loewenstern ’58.

Phelps, along with his research partners, were dropped off by helicopter near the smoldering caldera of Cordón Caulle, an active volcano located in the south-central Andes. The

site was chosen because no other place could provide near real-time knowledge about the types of large, explosive eruptions the volcano is known for. Its 2011 eruption was one of the largest of the 21st century.

“This specific type of eruption hasn’t happened in recent human memory, where we could actually walk on the volcano and see just how this type of system has evolved over 10 years,” Phelps said. “We really wanted to take some samples and assess where this volcano is going to be in the next 10 years.”

The opportunity to be on-site included two weeks of tent camping without access to showers or real bathrooms, 4 a.m. wake-ups — and ubiquitous dust, steam and heat. The team cobbled together a group shelter on a massive lava field with a tarp and some paracord, rocks and sticks. Their individual tents would serve as their only protection against the elements, which included falling ash and snow.

The team learned that in this geothermal environment some rocks were hot enough to use for cooking meals.

Acutely aware that their feet might puncture the lava field’s fragile crust, Phelps and his team worked carefully to measure temperatures, ash layers and gas emissions to create a “snapshot” of the volcano’s present state. They used a drone equipped with a thermal-imaging tool and another equipped with a regular camera to assist their efforts. Phelps recalled, “There were otherworldly cracks and crevices, some extending down to what seemed like the bowels of the Earth, emitting noxious gases that had to be measured without falling in.

“Every night I went to sleep not knowing if the slumbering beast would awaken, but I couldn’t let that bother me for want of a good night’s rest. Many people spend their entire lives within the shadow of an active volcano never considering the hazard,” Phelps said.

— JADE BOYD

Patrick Phelps at the caldera of Chile’s Cordón Caulle volcano in March 2022.

IN MEMORIAM

Remembering Robert Curl

Bob Curl, a chemist, nanotech pioneer and alumnus, was a beloved faculty member for 64 years.

NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING chemist Robert Curl, an internationally acclaimed scientist and nanotechnology pioneer whose 64-year career at Rice University made him one of the institution’s most beloved and respected figures, died July 3 in Houston at 88.

Curl, University Professor Emeritus and the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, spent most of his life at Rice. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from what was then the Rice Institute in 1954 and returned as an assistant professor in 1958 after his Ph.D. studies at the University of California, Berkeley and a brief postdoctoral stint at Harvard.

Curl was a physical chemist who used lasers, microwave radiation and other tools to study the structure of molecules and how they react. He, Rice’s late Richard Smalley and Britain’s Harold Kroto shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of carbon-60, or “buckminsterfullerene,” a closed cage structure of 60 carbon atoms in the form of a soccer ball measuring about 1 billionth of a meter, or a nanometer, in diameter.

“The ‘buckyball’ discovery laid the foundation for Rice’s current leadership

role in materials research,” said Tom Killian, dean of Rice’s Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “This fundamental research established a new field of organic chemistry and provided key inspiration for the ensuing rapid growth in the study of nanoparticles and nanomaterials and the emergence of nanotechnology.”

While in an undergraduate chemistry course, Curl learned about Kenneth Pitzer’s discovery of barriers to internal rotation about single bonds and decided to go to the University of California, Berkeley to work with

Pitzer. Pitzer, who would become Rice’s third president in 1961, was Curl’s Ph.D. adviser and helped him get a postdoctoral position studying microwave spectroscopy with E. Bright Wilson at Harvard in 1957. Curl continued his studies after he was recruited to Rice as an assistant professor the following year. He would go on to spend most of his career studying the spectra, structures and kinetics of free radicals and other substances via spectroscopy.

“He would never have called himself a nanotechnologist,” said James

PHOTO BY VOLKER STEGER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

PHOTO BY BRANDON MARTIN

Heath ’88, president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and the principal graduate student involved with the buckyball discovery.

“You’ve got physical chemistry, where people work on various levels of quantitation,” Heath said. “And then you’ve got spectroscopy, which is the most quantitative aspect of physical chemistry. And that is really what Bob loved.”

Despite retiring in 2012, Curl continued to work and was regularly

He was an extraordinary colleague, and despite his talent and his acclaim with the Nobel Prize, he was unfailingly modest and generous to other people with his time and attention. I think of him as the soul of our department. He made everybody around him better.

seen on campus. Rice chemist Bruce Weisman described Curl as a constant presence at seminars through the most recent semester. “It’s really remarkable because these are not big events, with famous people speaking,” Weisman said. “These are part of our graduate program where students get to talk about their research, mostly to other students. Bob, despite having been retired for a long time and having no obligation to do this, would come just to satisfy his curiosity about what was going on, and also help the students.

THE KINDER INSTITUTE

INCLUSIVE PROSPERITY

A generous grant will expand the work of the Kinder Institute.

A $50 MILLION GRANT from the Kinder Foundation will empower Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research as it focuses on a bold vision for “inclusive prosperity” — ensuring that everyone can contribute to Houston’s success and share in its opportunities. The new grant is in addition to the approximately $30 million previously given by the Kinder Foundation to Rice on behalf of the Kinder Institute and to facilitate the building where it is housed.

Ruth López Turley, director of the Kinder Institute, called the endowment grant “a gift to all of Houston” as the institute works to improve lives through data, research, engagement and action.

“Inclusive prosperity doesn’t just happen spontaneously,” she said. “It requires an explicit effort informed by research.”

The contribution not only ensures the institute’s longevity, but also equips it to work with partners regardless of whether they can afford to pay for research, Turley said. It also allows the institute to respond to community research needs quickly during times of crisis.

Rich Kinder, chairman of the Kinder Foundation, said, “[We] can do more to inform and more directly address the challenges faced by [Houston] communities, particularly in the areas of housing, education, economic mobility and health.” Under Turley’s leadership, the Kinder Institute will focus its efforts on surveys in these areas with the initiatives organized under its existing research centers. New centers will be established to focus on other urban issues while collaborating with external partners.

“The Kinder Institute has done a remarkable job in supporting Houston and cities across the Sun Belt with its transformative work,” President Reginald DesRoches said, “and thanks to the Kinder Foundation’s continued support, they’re only getting started.”

— AMY MCCAIG

“He was an extraordinary colleague, and despite his talent and his acclaim with the Nobel Prize, he was unfailingly modest and generous to other people with his time and attention,” Weisman said. “I think of him as the soul of our department. He made everybody around him better.”

— JADE BOYD

INNOVATION

Transforming the Energy Economy

Two Rice professors recognized for developing light-powered catalysts that reduce energy waste.

IN OCTOBER, Rice professors

Naomi Halas and Peter Nordlander were honored with the 2022 Eni Energy Transition Award in a ceremony hosted by Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Rome. Halas — a chemist, physicist and engineer — and Nordlander — a theoretical and computational physicist — were recognized for leading the development of an entirely new type of commercially viable photocatalyst that only needs the power of light to make the hydrogen economy a reality.

Chemical reactions require energy. Throughout its history, the chemical industry has supplied energy to chemical reactions in the form of heat and pressure. For this reason, the modern

chemical industry is one of the major consumers of fossil fuels. Catalysts — materials that speed up chemical reactions without themselves reacting — are universally used to reduce the amount of energy needed in industrial chemical reactions. However, even with the best thermally driven catalysts, the high temperatures required for industrial processes consume a vast amount of energy.

The researchers and their teams have worked to develop innovative photocatalysts that can drive the same reactions without a heat source. Instead, they draw the necessary energy from solid-state light sources and illuminate the chemical reaction directly. This

results in record-high efficiencies for chemical reactions. The potential benefits of this process, Halas has noted, include remediating carbon dioxide in the environment by eliminating the use of fossil fuels to drive reactions and making inexpensive hydrogen fuel for the transportation sector. “If we could really control chemistry, we’d have a more sustainable planet,” she said

in a 2018 Rice Magazine story. Their invention has been licensed by Syzygy Plasmonics, a Houston-based startup company with more than 70 employees, which is using Halas’ and Nordlander’s antenna-reactor photocatalysts with LED illumination to make sustainable green hydrogen and other chemicals.

Sponsored by Eni, a global multibillion-dollar energy company headquartered in Rome, the awards are premier honors for scientific research in energy and the environment. The Energy Transition Award, one of three main Eni Award prizes, recognizes the best innovations for decarbonizing the world’s energy system. The researchers received a 200,000-euro prize and gold medallions commemorating the award.

— JADE BOYD

Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, director of the Smalley-Curl Institute, and a professor of chemistry, bioengineering, physics and astronomy, and of materials science and nanoengineering. Nordlander is the Wiess Chair in Physics and Astronomy and professor of electrical and computer engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering.

The Energy Transition Award, one of three main Eni Award prizes, recognizes the best innovations for decarbonizing the world’s energy system.

PHOTOS BY JEFF FITLOW

Genius

Writer and professor Kiese Laymon is awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

ACCLAIMED AUTHOR and Rice professor Kiese Laymon has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, the prestigious honor popularly known as the “genius grant.” A Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi, Laymon’s work bears witness to the forms of violence that mark the Black experience. His writing across multiple forms — including essays, memoirs and fiction — is rooted in his perspective as a Black Southern man.

“I’m not big into awards and recognition, but this one feels special,” Laymon said of the fellowship. “Revision and Mississippi did this. I’m just thankful. Some really incredible people thought my work was OK. That’s a big deal to me.”

His first two books, the novel “Long Division” and the essay collection “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America,” were origi-

nally published in 2013. Years later, he acquired the rights to both works and published revised editions in 2020 and 2021. Laymon’s bestselling “Heavy: An American Memoir” was published in 2018 and was also named one of Time magazine’s 25 Greatest Works of the Black Renaissance, as well as one of The New York Times’ 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair and ESPN.com, among other publications.

Laymon has taught creative writing at Rice since he joined the School of Humanities in January 2022 as the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of Creative Writing and English. Laymon earned his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a Master of

Fine Arts from Indiana University. Before joining Rice, he was a member of the faculty at Vassar College and the University of Mississippi. In his native Mississippi, Laymon founded the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, which seeks to inspire youth and their parents to read, write and share their life stories.

“I’m really happy that this happened while I’m at Rice,” Laymon said. “The MacArthur means a ton to my Jackson family, especially now. I hope it might mean a lot to Rice and Houston.”

Awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation since 1981, the grants are typically received by upwards of 20 people each year who have shown exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits. Each of the 2022 MacArthur Fellows will receive an $800,000 stipend, bestowed with no conditions, that awardees can use as they see fit.

Laymon said he plans to use some of the grant money “to work on artful connections between middle school students in Houston and Jackson.” He added, “I’m really thankful my mama encouraged me to keep making daring — or she would say, ‘excellent’ — art, no matter what.”

— SCHAEFER EDWARDS

AWARDS

I’m really happy that this happened while I’m at Rice. The MacArthur means a ton to my Jackson family, especially now. I hope it might mean a lot to Rice and Houston.

PHOTO

Residentialcollegelifeis rebuilding afterthepandemic,butnot withoutAbitofreinvention.

byLaura Furr Mericas Illustration by Sam Island

In fall 2021, as Rice University was preparing to welcome students back to campus under strict COVID-19 guidelines, Luis Duno-Gottberg was busy stringing a 50-foot metal wire across the Baker College’s outer commons.

“I didn’t know how to do that,” he admits today. “I was on the ladder trying to tighten this very long wire. Eventually I was able to tense the wire and was able to hang all these photos.”

Duno-Gottberg, professor of modern and classical literatures and cultures and co-magister of Baker College (along with his wife, Angela Duno), was creating an openair art exhibit. He’d tasked his Baker students to depict their pandemic experiences in a photo. What he received back were a dozen or so frames of open landscapes, hands making bread and crafts, and views taken from behind a window looking at the outside world.

It didn’t take long for the photos to gain attention. Rice students and faculty were spotted congregating around the exhibit from a distance. Even Houstonians from outside the Rice bubble — a colloquialism that had never carried as much meaning as it did then — gravitated toward the hanging art. “This is the kind of thing that you can do in the [residential] college: transform a crisis into a teaching moment, a good opportunity for reflection,” Duno-Gottberg says. “There wasn’t any grade about it to be earned.”

Throughout the pandemic, Rice’s magisters and residential college systems found creative ways like this to

keep their culture and connections alive, albeit under tight restraints.

Eden King ’01, the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Psychological Sciences and magister at Duncan College, instituted outdoor Taco Tuesday dinners with groups of six to eight students. Brown College magister B.J. Fregly, a professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas scholar in cancer research, adopted Jun Jun the Labrador with his wife and co-magister, Shirley, helping the couple connect with students on their evening walks around campus.

Masked up, outdoor and alcohol-free karaoke, complete with microphone sanitizing, replaced Martel’s annual holiday party. And more intimate film screenings and trivia nights took hold.

Talk to students and many will tell you it was their residential colleges, even under restraints, that bolstered them through the longest and most isolating days of the pandemic.

“The residential college system meant that we were all in it together. And I think that that’s what allowed us to get through it,” says Kirsty Leech, a senior studying political science and sociology who’s currently serving as Wiess College’s student president.

Still, many at Rice will also tell you that the pandemic left the residential colleges fundamentally changed. In some cases, the changes have been for

Above: Luis Duno-Gottberg hosts a wine and cheese tasting for seniors at the Baker College Magister’s House.

the better, opening faculty and students’ eyes to issues on campus that once floated under the radar and also driving more students to get involved. In other cases, the changes at times threatened “the essence of college life as we understand it,” Duno-Gottberg says.

This academic year, as life on campus is starting to look more like it once did for most Rice alumni, students and the university’s magisters are grappling with those changes and considering not only how to restore the culture at the residential colleges, but also reinvent it for a post-pandemic student body.

“My wife and I as magisters are the only two people here at Brown who have ever seen an actual Bacchanalia [public party] in person. We have all the cultural historical knowledge at this point, and I’m sure other colleges have similar situations,” Fregly explains. “If there are things about a college that students want to change culturewise, this is the time to do it.”

Personal Pride

Fast forward to August 2022 for Rice’s cherished O-Week, and there was a reinvigorated energy on campus.

“I’ve been going to matriculation for a long time. And I could tell as soon as I walked into Tudor Fieldhouse, it was different,” Bridget Gorman, dean of undergraduates and a professor of sociology, recalls. Students were highfiving with Rice faculty and one another, marching to their places with pride and cheering on each of the event’s speakers with ardor. “Everyone across the board felt like it was a very joyous class,” she says.

King, who met her husband and co-magister Winston Liaw ’01 during their O-Week in 1998, agrees there’s a level of joy and gratitude on campus. On move-in day this August, she was able to engage with students and their families faceto-face for the first time in her magister tenure — much in the same way she remembered being welcomed to Will Rice College in the late nineties as a student.

“It was really fun to be able to just meet everybody,” she says. “And we didn’t even wear masks. We got to have this conversation with parents of the students when they dropped them off in a way we really hadn’t [during the pandemic].”

Fregly says that sentiment has continued to show throughout the semester. In his fifth year as a magister, he says it’s a “wonderful” class to be going out on.

“We’re just amazed at our freshman class. They’re extremely engaged and very involved in the college and want to interact with each other and with us,” he says. “Students seem to have a lot of optimism about us coming out of the pandemic. I taught in-person for the first time [in a long time] last spring ... it was the funnest class I’ve ever taught.”

Dining in the commons has resumed in full force as well, as has in-person teaching and public parties. Broadly speaking, the rhythms of residential life have resumed — in many cases with even more vigor.

Casley Matthews, a senior studying social policy analysis and health sciences who’s serving as the president

Below L-R: Nathan Powell, Ankit Patel, Devika Jhaveri, Casley Matthews and Esha Ghai study over lunch in the Martel Commons.

of Martel College, says she’s seen a heightened interest in student government. “It’s easy to get complacent when you’re used to what you have,” she says. “Pre-COVID, there were always a few people doing a lot for the college, and we certainly always saw that. But now there are just more people getting engaged in different areas of college life than ever before.”

For the first time during Matthews’ college experience, she says Martel was able to fill all 125 positions in its student government committees, and the college saw more applications than ever before.

“There’s a real interest in being able to partake in what makes life at Rice so unique,” she continues. “And then [there’s an] understanding that it does take a collective effort and quite a few people with a lot of different perspectives to make college life as fulfilling as possible.”

Culture of Care

Today on campus those different perspectives are playing a key role in rebuilding the residential colleges’ culture.

Socially speaking, the pandemic sparked an interest and showed the members of student government the need for more inclusive events. While public parties are back, trivia competitions that blossomed during the pandemic are still going strong, as are board game nights, s’mores events and the like for those less interested in the party scene. The more intimate dinners and gatherings with magisters have continued as well.

“The more people we can have that feel like they belong and feel like they have a place at the college means a better college and a stronger college for the rest of us,” Matthews says. More profoundly, the pandemic opened magisters’ eyes to deeper socioeconomic and mental health challenges in their student populations.

“The prior needs of the students were of young people growing and confronting academic challenges. All of that continues, but new needs emerged when the pandemic affected households,” Duno-Gottberg explains. “Some families lost jobs, some families experienced loss as in death. So those things generated needs for psychological and economic support.”

Amid the pandemic, magisters were tasked with helping more and more students access funds for books and supplies and even gaining access to the internet. Of course, once students returned to campus, they were also tasked with implementing ever-changing COVID19 policies and supporting students during what Fregly describes as a “fragile” time.

The silver lining from that difficult period is that now those types of issues are factored into decisions made on campus more often, students and faculty say.

“The conversations surrounding financial insecurity have definitely come to the forefront and have not left, which is something that I am very proud of,” Leech says. “Rice is at least trying to take active steps to make

sure that our communities and our residential colleges are a financially inclusive space.” Leech notes that her student government at Wiess has focused on promoting the college’s accessibility portal, which continues to help subsidize items like supplies and clothes and even fees for campus events. The university also supports a campuswide portal for similar needs.

“There are a lot of conversations about how we can continue to expand those portals and the resources available to support students on campus,” she adds.

There’s also a new openness to supporting those struggling with mental health issues. “Students have had, as has everyone, some real mental health challenges as a result of the stressors of the last two years,” King says. “And I think there has been very little stigma around seeking help.”

lot more patience.

Students agree. “The pandemic was really tough, and we all learned the importance of checking in with one another and being there for each other,” Matthews says. “Emerging from that, we’re offering others a lot more grace and a lot more patience.”

In Flux

Looking ahead, some at Rice wonder if the changing needs of the students coupled with the increased enrollment at Rice will continue to further change the residential college system.

“The pandemic as a public health experience, and also social experience, is totally contrary to the essence of the colleges. So, what we experienced was something that could destroy the college life because we couldn’t be present,” Duno-Gottberg says.

For the better part of three years, magisters were constantly in what Dean Gorman describes as “crisis management” — isolating students from one another, managing infections and constantly being concerned with logistical issues.

“Now I think the concern is are we going to get to the place where … we’re actually having proactive input into the direction of the college,” Fregly explains. “Part of our role is supposed to be overseeing the academic intellectual life for the college. Well, we haven’t been able to do hardly any of that for the last three years.” At the same time, Rice continues to increase its undergraduate population,

The pandemic was really tough, and we all learned the importance of checking in with one another and being there for each other. Emerging from that, we’re offering others a lot more grace and a

making some worry that the unique connection between students, magisters and faculty at Rice will weaken.

“I think we’re kind of past the influence of COVID, but now we’re seeing the possibility of one or two new colleges, and those are bigger shifts I think that are waiting for us,” King says. The university announced last year that it intended to increase its undergraduate enrollment by 20% by 2025, which adds to a growth of 80% in undergraduate enrollment over the last two decades.

A new residential college is slated to open by fall 2025. In the meantime, the existing 11 residential colleges have taken on the current influx of students.

King, who remembers being drawn to Rice because of how everyone seemed to know each other’s name on campus, believes that if the colleges continue to include more and more students that the culture at Rice will feel less tightknit.

“There’s a sense of connectedness that may be risked with growth, but there are also good reasons for the growth,” she says.

Above: The Brown College Executive Committee student government (and Jun Jun) meets in the magister’s house.

There’s also the issue of magisters having enough bandwidth to make connections and care for colleges of 400-plus students. And with housing levels at the colleges remaining the same, some students have been pushed off campus, which Fregly says

“is all affecting our ability to rebuild our culture.”

“For the residential colleges to continue to thrive, some additional investments are probably going to need to be made, like somehow increasing the number of core team members to keep up with the increasing population of students,” he adds. Still, Fregly and others believe that with a continued, thoughtful commitment, the residential college system will still thrive.

“We’re very consciously thinking about what traditions and what things from the past we want to recuperate and what things we want to reinvent. And we’re in that process of rebuilding community with one principle that says, ‘We love the college system, we see value in it, and that the value of this system depends on participation of students,’” Duno-Gottberg says. “So where are we going? We’re rebuilding community with those principles, but are also open to new possibilities.”

And though it may be more difficult for King to learn all 460 of her undergraduates’ names than it was for her magister at Will Rice to learn 300 names two decades ago, she still maintains an optimistic view.

While looking out the window of her office onto an inflatable dragon for Duncan’s Harry Potter-themed college night — which her students set up at 7:30 that morning, mimosas and waffles in hand — she had a message for her fellow alumni.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “The kids are doing all right.” ◆

The CHRONICLER

Photographer Tommy LaVergne puts down his camera and reflects on more than 30 years of documenting life at Rice.

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY TOMMY LAVERGNE

Dec. 8, 2017: A sunrise shot provides a rare view of Lovett Hall dusted in snow.

Jan. 16, 2018: An ice storm glazed Edgar Odell Lovett’s statue in front of Keck Hall.

THE FIRST TIME I WAS ON CAMPUS was Nov. 17, 1973. My big brother took me and my buddy John to see the Aggies beat up on the Owls. Things didn’t happen quite the way we had hoped. Rice’s quarterback, Tommy Kramer ’77, had a great game, the Owls ran a kickoff back to go ahead late in the fourth quarter, and the Aggies went home to College Station with a shocking defeat. Not to mention, or forget, the MOB had the most notable halftime performance of their entire existence. I was either too young to understand it or was sent to the concession stand while it was taking place. I do recall there were several people in maroon who were visibly upset.

The second time I was on the campus of Rice was early spring

1987. I recall seeing the ivy-covered wall at Entrance 1 and the grandeur of stately Lovett Hall. I don’t think I had ever seen a building so beautiful, and I still feel the same way today. I was there to drop off my portfolio for the new position of staff photographer.

Fast forward 35 years, and all I can say is that I got a lot more out of Rice than they got from me. Within a year and a half of starting, I would be on assignment in Europe. Within three years, I would find myself in front of the leaders of the free world. I would meet and become friends with two professors who would go on to be selected for a Nobel Prize in 1996. That same year, I would travel to Mexico and camp with the Tarahumara. In 2003, I would be witness to the first athletic national championship at Rice when the Owls beat the Stanford Cardinal at the College

World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, to name a few highlights.

I’ve watched the campus grow to twice the size it was 35 years ago. I can’t stand anywhere on campus and not see something that hasn’t been added during my time there.

Unquestionably, and of the greatest magnitude, is the fact that what made my small window of time at Rice so glorious would be the people. To the faculty, students, student athletes, coaches, administrators, trustees, alumni, custodians, groundskeepers and co-workers, I will forever be indebted.

On my very last day, Sept. 2, 2022, an old friend hugged my neck and told me how lucky Rice was to have had me for so long. Though that made me very happy and proud to hear, after I had time to reflect, no statement could be more opposite. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart! Go Owls!

Aug. 17, 2015:

July 12, 2012:

April 5, 1995:

New students enthusiastically participated in an O-Week powder paint fight.

James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace at sunset looking northwest

Elton John’s “Face to Face” tour with Billy Joel is a reminder of Rice Stadium’s concert venue days.

Summer 1992: “That’s a good deal, but I’m the real deal.” A Burger King commercial brought Evander Holyfield to campus for a production shoot inside the old gym (Autry Court). Watch the commercial at magazine.rice.edu.

July 2, 1988: A behind-the-stage shot at Rice Stadium of the “Monsters of Rock Tour,” with Eddie Van Halen on stage

July 14, 2015: Rice historian John Boles ’65 lectured on the Corps of Discovery during a Rice Alumni Traveling Owls trip that retraced the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Montana’s big sky as reflected in the Clark Canyon Reservoir. Camp Fortunate, where the explorers met the Shoshone tribe, is beneath the water.

July 1996: On assignment in the Sierra Madre mountains in Chihuahua, Mexico, with Rice linguist James Copeland and writer David Medina. Copeland was researching the language of the Tarahumara.

March 25, 2017: Capturing the long jump, one of many photos taken of Rice athletes over the years

Feb. 15, 2013: Joyce Pounds Hardy ’45 (aka the Bubblegum Lady), who collaborated with LaVergne on a book, “Roads to Forgotten Texas.” “She had a way of making everyone feel welcome and warm,” he said.

June 23, 2003: In Omaha, Nebraska, a celebratory dogpile after Rice baseball’s College World Series win over the Stanford Cardinal

Right: Photographer Tommy LaVergne on the sidelines at Rice Stadium

April 16, 2016: A rose-breasted grosbeak, indigo bunting and painted bunting, photographed at High Island, Texas. LaVergne and his family have all taken up the birding habit due to the influence of Rice geologist and birder extraordinaire Cin-Ty Lee. ◆

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

A Room of Mom’s Own

MBA grad Abbey Donnell founded a business to support nursing mothers in the workplace.

BY RACHEL FAIRBANK

IIN THE YEARS leading up to her MBA at Rice, Abbey Donnell ’17, founder of the company Work & Mother, watched as many classmates, co-workers and clients struggled with returning to an office after having children. “I wasn’t a mom yet, but I knew I wanted to be, so I just sat back and listened and thought, ‘This sounds terrible,’” Donnell said. These observations led to the creation of a company that designs and operates lactation suites for commercial clients.

How did your MBA studies impact the founding of Work & Mother?

I actively worked on the idea for Work & Mother during my classes. Every time I was learning more about starting companies and growing companies, I was thinking about it through this lens. In 2019, when I was 39 weeks pregnant and launching the first location, I pitched the concept at one of the Lilie Lab events — the H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge — and won in the alumni category. I remember they told me that if

In 2019, when I was 39 weeks pregnant and launching the first location, I pitched the concept at one of the Lilie Lab events — the H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge — and won in the alumni category.

I was going to participate, to have someone on standby who could deliver the pitch on my behalf, if need be.

How did the concept develop?

I used the idea for Work & Mother as a case study for one of my entrepreneurship classes. At the time, this sharedspace, outsourced, fully managed approach was reflective of what was happening in the real estate industry, with the rise of coworking spaces and shared amenities. The advantage of this model is that it serves an entire building.

Did COVID-19 impact your business plans?

When the pandemic first hit, we had to close our doors, but with the return to the office, after the initial days of the pandemic, there was and is a heightened focus on health, wellness and sanitation in the workplace. With flex work schedules, if the mom is only coming in once or twice a week, it makes less sense to have a fully dedicated, robust offering in every single office, but legally they still have to provide something.

What do these lactation suites look like?

We like to describe these rooms as spa-like, but professional. Every private room has everything a mom needs, including a hospital-grade pump, cleaning and sanitizing supplies, fridge, lockers and milk storage bags. This means that when moms leave for work in the morning, they can truly just leave for work. They don’t have to worry about packing these big bags with all the parts and making sure they have everything. They can just show up.

CLASSNOTES

Photography, Indonesian Coffee and Music

Excerpts from Owlmanac

1970s

“My major accomplishment this spring was finishing and publishing my second novel: ‘By the Light of Uranium Glass.’ It takes place during the Space Age of the 1950s and 1960s, the hard war and depression days of the 1930s and 1940s, and also focuses on the emergence of television.” — Contributed by William H. Boyd ’76 (Baker: BA)

1990s

1950s

Judith Brown ’58 (BA) is still living in South Natick, Massachusetts, and has been an animal photographer since retirement. Some of her work at the Unity Farm Sanctuary may be seen [online]. She has written a book, “Weatherbury Farm,” which may be purchased via contribution to an animal rights group or sanctuary.

— Contributed by class recorder Jim Greenwood ’58 (BA)

1970s

Susan Ammerman ’71 (Brown) is raising a 20-year flock of critically endangered NavajoChurro sheep in New Mexico. Churros are a Southwest-adapted landrace raised for meat, drought resistance and wool, which is used in Navajo rugs, tapestries and utility items.

— Contributed by class recorder Ann Patton Greene ’71 (Brown: BA)

“We now enter our seventh year of living in Indonesia where we run a coffee processing and export company. … Our lives play out in a landscape of rice paddies, volcanoes and the frequent sounds of the call to prayer. … We spent this winter visiting America so that we could catch up with our oldest kids and extended family, and so that our younger kids could learn things like what a mailbox is and how barbecue should taste.”

— Contributed by Renda Razgaitis Kiper ’97 (Brown: BA) 2000s

Angelique Poteat ’08 (Wiess: BMus) is excited to share that she will be the artistin-residence for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra for their 2022–2023 season. “Residency duties include being an educator … in addition to composing a piece for the SSO to open their season.” — Contributed by class recorder Emily Reagan ’08 (Will Rice: BA)

2000s

“I started an environmentally focused funeral home in 2018. This year, we’ll be focused on bringing water-based cremation to Texas and legalizing the process in the next legislative session in 2023.”

— Contributed by Eric Neuhaus ’08 (Baker: BS)

To submit a Classnote to Owlmanac, contact your class recorder or log on to the Rice Portal at riceconnect.rice.edu and click “Submit a Classnote.”

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Engineering a Dream

Continuing a legacy, Rice alums open Bellaire brewpub.

IN 2005, DENNIS RHEE ’07 AND Jaime Robles ’06 were just a couple of Rice Owls coordinating Brown College’s O-Week and working toward engineering degrees. It might surprise some to learn the two former engineers are now the proprietors of a buzzy new brewpub in Bellaire, Texas. But to hear it from them, their experiences at Rice were the perfect prep for opening CounterCommon Beerworks & Kitchen.

Coordinating O-Week “was definitely one of those things that puts you in a leadership role,” Robles said. “You’re running an entire operation, and you’re responsible for the 70 to 100 new students coming in. You’re setting

the tone and the culture.”

CounterCommon’s doors opened to the public in summer 2022, but the idea had been percolating in the back of the two friends’ minds for over a decade, inspired by their desire to create a comfy neighborhood hangout modeled after the brewpubs they’d grown to love on visits to cities like Portland, Oregon; Denver; San Diego; and Munich.

“This has always been a dream of ours,” Rhee said. “We joked about this in college — ‘Maybe we’ll open a brewery one day ...’”

Inspired to become homebrewers by fellow Brown denizen Dan Erchick ’07 — namesake of CounterCommon’s “Thanks A Lot, Erchick” pale ale — Rhee and Robles started making craft brews together with him and other friends after graduation. At the time, both Robles and Rhee were working oil and gas jobs in Houston. Robles moved up the corporate ranks for 15 years, homebrewing in his spare time.

Rhee had grown disillusioned with his industry job, so when he met Saint Arnold Brewing Company owner

and founder Brock Wagner ’87 on a pub crawl, he asked Wagner if the brewery was hiring any engineers. (They weren’t.) Undeterred, Rhee decided to hone his brewing bona fides at the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago and later in Munich at the Doemens Academy. In 2010, Rhee did land a job brewing at Saint Arnold, before leaving to focus on making CounterCommon a reality. Robles helped out on a part-time basis until 2020. Their other partners include Minh Nguyen from famed Cafe TH and Tanushri Tarafder Nguyen ’17.

The brews at CounterCommon harken back to the German-style lagers Rhee grew to love during his time at brewing school in Germany, with a couple of well-balanced IPAs on offer as well. Their recipes were designed to create sessionable beers, aka relatively low-alcohol beverages that leave you eager for a refill or two — “the beers we like to drink ourselves,” Rhee said. The food menu is a Houston-friendly mix of Asian and Latin American-inspired fare, taking notes from both Rhee’s Korean heritage and Robles’ Mexican roots. For example, a take on Tex-Mex queso, called “K-So,” is a Korean twist with gochujang glaze; “Common fries” are loaded with chopped kimchi and a lime-tinged Sriracha mayo.

Robles and Rhee are proud that their brewpub is the latest outgrowth from the Saint Arnold family tree, a behemoth from whose branches have sprung beloved Houston area watering holes Eureka Heights Brewing Company, Southern Star Brewing Company, Brash Brewing and more.

“We stuck with our passion,” Robles said. “Sometimes those far-fetched dreams and college quips are the ones that keep you motivated and wanting more.”

This has always been a dream of ours. We joked about this in college — ‘Maybe we’ll open a brewery one day ...’

Q&A

Living Lies

A Novel of the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

James Lawler ’73 BookBaby, 2021

IN JAMES LAWLER’S DEBUT NOVEL, a CIA officer struggles to convince the agency that a double agent is undermining a nuclear weapons agreement between the U.S. and Iran. In the gritty, dangerous world of covert nuclear intelligence, millions of lives are on the line — and it’s a world Lawler knows well as a retired senior CIA operations officer. We asked Lawler how his intelligence career informs his novels, “Living Lies” and “In the Twinkling of an Eye” (BookBaby, 2022), as well as his forthcoming book, “The Traitor’s Tale.”

They say to write what you know, and espionage is what I know about. I spent the last two-thirds of my 25 years in the CIA battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — not just nuclear weapons, but also biological and, to a lesser extent, chemical weapons. That’s a big focus for my first two novels — that and the sacred commitment that the CIA makes to its human assets. When we recruit somebody, we promise to protect them from harm. When I recruited spies, I was basically asking them to commit treason — to betray their country. In both of my first two novels, the CIA officer who recruits someone goes to hell and back to get them out of trouble. We owe them that. They’re putting their lives on the line for us.

How does being a novelist compare to being a CIA officer?

It’s a lot less pressure, but I work better under pressure. If there’s no pressure, you can keep putting it off. Deadlines in the CIA mean: You’ll be dead if you don’t meet this.

Tell us about your forthcoming novel, “The Traitor’s Tale.”

It’s loosely based on something that really happened about 20 years ago. A CIA officer was accused of espionage — of being a mole for the Russians. It turned out the real mole was an FBI agent who knew a lot of the same people. The CIA officer was ultimately exonerated, but it ruined this guy’s life, and a few years later he had a heart attack and died. For the novel, I came up with a character who is accused of being a traitor and almost everyone treats him like a leper. Eventually he’s exonerated, but he’s so bitter that he vows, “Well, now I am going to do it.” Now they’ve created a monster.

— JENNIFER LATSON

Read an extended version of this interview at magazine.rice.edu.

How has your experience as an intelligence officer shaped your writing?

Now Reading

Constructing Risk Disaster, Development, and the Built Environment

Stephen O. Bender ’74 Berghahn Books,

2021

IN 1992, HURRICANE ANDREW devastated much of Florida, wiping out homes, businesses and infrastructure. The destruction was compounded by the absence of a uniform, statewide building code and lax enforcement of the existing building standards. But the conflicting agendas of stakeholders — including landowners, builders, real estate agents and local government officials — thwarted efforts to create a statewide code for

an entire decade before the Florida Building Code was finally adopted in 2002.

It can be hard to determine who should take ownership of efforts to mitigate risk from natural disasters, architect Stephen O. Bender writes in “Constructing Risk.”

Thinking With Maps

Understanding the World Through Spatialization Bertram C. Bruce ’68 Rowman & Littlefield, 2021

— J.L.

But as climate change increases the likelihood of calamities such as Andrew, the stakes are rising for communities everywhere. Given the urgent need for risk reduction and preparedness, as opposed to reactive disaster relief, public and private institutions are increasingly being called upon to collaborate on measures that could prevent the worst outcomes for a given population. As Bender illustrates, those measures can include better building codes as well as land use management, development strategies and social policies that combat poverty and corruption.

MAPS PROVIDE much more than the answer to the question, “Where do I turn?” In “Thinking With Maps,” Bertram C. Bruce, professor emeritus in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, argues that maps provide context that can help us understand our lived experience, expanding our capacity to think about and participate in the world. But many people have limited map literacy, including the growing number of us who rely on our phones to tell us where to turn without bothering to look at the map itself. By treating maps as an afterthought, we’re missing out on a wealth of information and the ability to make connections across space and time. Bruce recommends that we not only start paying attention to maps but also try making them ourselves. Maps, he reminds us, can be visual representations of many things besides geographic areas, and they can be a powerful aid to memory and information processing. “A map also tells a story, which the listener can enter into,” Bruce writes. “This can be the seed for all sorts of learning.” — J.L.

Now Listening

MoonStrike

album include Anabel Ramirez Detrick (violin), Whitney Bullock ’07 (viola) and Matthew Dudzik ’04 (cello).

“The three works on ‘MoonStrike’ wove together nicely because of their storytelling aspects. The title track is most obvious with the narrator, astronaut John Herrington, relaying American Indian moon legends as set by the composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. The musical DNA of Jennifer Higdon’s ‘In the Shadow of the Mountain’ is based on her ‘Cold Mountain’ opera as well as her childhood in the Appalachian Mountains. Jalbert’s ‘L’esprit du nord’ is inspired by the composer’s French Canadian heritage, relating the stories and folk music of his ancestors,” Detrick said.

APOLLO CHAMBER PLAYERS, founded by violinist Matthew Detrick ’03, recently released its sixth studio album, “MoonStrike.” It features the works of Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning Jennifer Higdon, Chickasaw classical composer and pianist Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and composer and professor Pierre Jalbert of the Shepherd School of Music. In addition to Detrick, Apollo performers on this

The story of Apollo Chamber Players began in Detrick’s home state of Pennsylvania when, in elementary school, he became fascinated with space and wanted to attend space camp. As an adult, he chose Rice to earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Shepherd School, fittingly located in the heart of Space City.

— SAM BYRD

Read an extended version of this story at magazine.rice.edu.

MUSIC

Apollo Chamber Players Azica Records, 2022

LAST LOOK

PHOTO BY JEFF FITLOW

10.29.2022 // John “Grungy” Gladu trumpets across Rice Stadium, celebrating 50 years as a MOB musician.

Stepping Up for Rice Baseball

The Bixby Family Head Baseball Coach Endowment

Betty Bixby has always loved baseball. For her, watching a game is the perfect way to spend a summer day, and seeing the Owls win the College World Series in 2003 is a treasured memory.

Recently, Betty and her husband, Bob, the Noah Harding Professor Emeritus of Computational and Applied Mathematics, funded the Bixby Family Head Baseball Coach Endowment, which supports Coach José Cruz Jr.

“We felt very strongly that José was the start of a new era in Rice baseball, and it was paramount to do something that would have the largest possible impact,” Betty explained. “We decided the coaching endowment would do just that.”

To read more about the Bixby endowment, visit riceowls.co/Bixby-BB-Coach.

Coaching endowments provide foundational support for Rice Athletics, helping student athletes and teams reach their full potential. To learn more, contact Ginny Jones, executive director of development, at 713-348-2096 or gbjones@rice.edu.

Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Permit #7549 Houston, Texas

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

Remembering Larry Rachleff

LARRY RACHLEFF, THE LONGTIME CONDUCTOR of the Rice Shepherd School of Music symphony and chamber orchestras, died Aug. 8 after a long battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 67.

“Those of us lucky enough to have followed his baton from the stage will remember Larry as a once-in-a-generation musician and educator of the highest caliber,” said Matthew Loden, the Lynette S. Autrey Dean of Music.

A ubiquitous presence at the Shepherd School, Rachleff, the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Orchestral Conducting, had an immeasurable impact on the lives and careers of countless musicians. At Rice since 1991, Rachleff was revered as a dynamic, exacting maestro who expected — and elicited — the very best performance standards from his students and helped bring the Shepherd School to world-class standing.

Rachleff was a familiar face at a number of prestigious music festivals and was highly sought after as a masterclass instructor. An enthusiastic advocate of public school music education, Rachleff conducted all-state orchestras and festivals in virtually every state in the U.S. and throughout Europe and Canada.

The Shepherd School honored Rachleff at the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra opening performance for the 2022–2023 season Sept. 30.

ON THE WEB magazine.rice.edu

VIDEO Keyboard Wizard

Computer science and math major Phillip Tran ’25 explains the process of creating mechanical keyboards in a companion video to this issue’s “I’m a Nerd About” story. After building his own custom PC when he was 13, Tran kept looking for ways to customize his gaming setup. He came across a Reddit community about mechanical keyboards and decided to learn to build his own. “These sound beautiful. They look beautiful,” Tran said .

MUSIC Lunar Stories

In 2019, the Apollo Chamber Players debuted “MoonStrike,” a collection of stories and music inspired by American Indian, French Canadian and Appalachian folk legends and traditions; in 2022, the group, led by Matthew Detrick ’03, released a full recording on CD. Learn more about this performance and watch a video of the making of “MoonStrike.”

PHOTOGRAPHY

The Chronicler

We extended former Rice photographer Tommy LaVergne’s photo essay online with more of his favorite images and stories, including photos of writer John Graves ’42 and former Secretary of State James Baker III as well as additional images from the archives of Rice Magazine.