37 minute read
Wisdom
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE C’est Magnifique!
A semester in Paris inspires an experience of a lifetime.
BY MIKE WILLIAMS
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, 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.”
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 — MIKE WILLIAMS
UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM The Builder
Paul Cherukuri in his own words
INTERVIEW BY LYNN GOSNELL
LAST 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
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 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.
Patrick Phelps at the caldera of Chile’s Cordón Caulle volcano in March 2022.
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
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
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
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.
“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
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
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.
AWARDS 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 originally 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 ’13
are
Residential college life is rebuilding after the pandemic, but not without A bit of reinvention.
by Laura 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.”
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,
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: New students enthusiastically participated in an O-Week powder paint fight.
July 12, 2012: James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace at sunset looking northwest
April 5, 1995: 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 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
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. ◆
