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12 •
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6 •
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16 • 40 | Magical Grottos

The Magazine of Rice University • No. 7 | 2010

Back
ack With
22 HIP-HOP IS HERE
24 HUMAN(ITIES) INTERACTION
a Bang An O-Week Tradition
28 HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
30 THE HOUSE THAT JESS BUILT
32 ATTAINING SUSTAINABILITY
36 FROM INSTITUTE TO UNIVERSITY
Contents
17

3 Leading biochemist 5 Latin American

George McLendon expert Nicolas
joins Rice as the Shumway is named
university’s new dean of the School
provost. of Humanities.

8 Gulf Coast residents

dread hurricanes for 10
good reasons, and
there are more good
reasons not to become
complacent.

12 All hail Valhalla!

6 There’s one way

that food can help
fight childhood
obesity.
9 A popular forage and
turf grass may be Sick of waiting in checkout lines? Your wait may soon be over.
hiding a dark secret.

11 Once again, Rice is

named a Best Place 7 What role do
to Work. private foun-
dations have
12 iPhone owners are in supporting
the beneficiaries religion? More
of a new app from than you might
Rice Information think.
Technology.

On the cover: Smiling faces and excitement filled the campus as Rice welcomed
the Class of 2014, its largest, most diverse freshman class ever.

Features
18 Writing Reality
Religious Studies Professor Jeffrey Kripal
contemplates the intersection of consciousness
and the material world, wherein the
boundaries of both are breached to reveal a
realm of mystery.
By Christopher Dow
22 Hip-Hop Is HERE
When most people think of hip-hop, Rice
University is not the first place that comes to
mind. Maybe it should be.
By Jenny West Rozelle
24 Human(ities) Interaction
The Humanities Research Center has become
one of Rice’s most far-reaching scholarly
enterprises.
By Christopher Dow
28 Home Is Where the Heart Is
How does one define love? Is it a roaring
flame? A passing fancy? Or an adventure that
unfolds over time? For Joe and Ann Hightower,
it’s making a haven for those in need.
By Mike Williams
30 The House That Jess Built
In its 60 years, the awesome Rice Stadium has
had its fair share of lively history.
By David Kaplan
32 Attaining Sustainability
Rice is not only talking the sustainability talk,
it’s walking the walk and making green strides
along the way.
B y Tr a c e y R h o a d e s
36 From Institute to University
Rice historian John Boles traces the recasting
of Rice from an institute to a full-fledged
university.
By John Boles
Students
Students
14 For a budding scientist, this has to
be the greatest payoff ever to a
summer job.
15 Two students’ spin on a culinary
device advances medicine in
18 underdeveloped countries.
15 She saw seashells, but not by the
seashore.
16 Baby Bubbles is one of the latest
lifesaving devices invented by Rice
students.
17 The Rice Thresher wins two top-10
awards.
22 Arts
38 The sign in the foyer of the Texas
Children’s Hospital reads, “Heal
Sick Children.” Sometimes that
takes a little soothing music.
40 Magical grottos graced Rice Gallery
for its Summer Window Series.
41 Rice’s newest art gallery may be
small, but it’s sparking big interest.
24
Bookshelf
42 It’s not often that a father gives his
daughter a postapocalyptic world
filled with bloodthirsty vampires.
44 What does it mean to think beyond
humanism?
44 He’s one the best trial lawyers in the
country, and he has a few tips for
young attorneys.
45 Poetry collection for young people
30 encourages a balanced life that
melds fun with work, hearty doses
of scampishness and honesty.
45 A lot of hats will protect you from
the sun, but few are as iconic as
the American sunbonnet.
Sports
46 When Anthony Rendon was
selected 2010 College Player of the
Year, it confirmed what many Rice
fans already suspected.
48 Tennis anyone?
32
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 1
 F O R E W O R D

Rice Magazine
No. 7
The Human Equation Published by the
Office of Public Affairs
From its inception, Rice University has been known for its excellence in the sciences and engineer- Linda Thrane, vice president
ing. But through the years, Rice has built on that reputation with many other distinguished disci- Editor
plines and programs: the Shepherd School of Music, the School of Social Sciences, the James A. Christopher Dow
Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the School of Architecture, to name just a few. This issue of
Rice Magazine celebrates the School of Humanities. Editorial Director
Tracey Rhoades
Rice’s School of Humanities was formalized in 1959, but its roots go back to William Marsh
Creative Director
Rice’s charter, which provided for the establishment of an “institute for the advancement of Jeff Cox
literature, science and art.” Our first dean of humanities was William H. Masterson, and this
summer we welcomed the school’s newest dean, Latin American expert Nicolas Shumway, Art Director
Chuck Thurmon
whom you can read about in this issue.
Led by a world-class faculty, the School of Humanities offers programs in disciplines tradi- Editorial Staff
tionally associated with the humanities — art, classical studies, literature, history, philosophy, B.J. Almond, staff writer
Jade Boyd, staff writer
languages and religion — but in recent years humanists have been pushing disciplinary bound- Franz Brotzen, staff writer
aries to explore in all its ramifications what it means to be human. Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor
The sheer range of Rice’s humanists is exemplified in two of our features, both of which David Ruth, staff writer
concern the work of religious studies faculty members. For those of us who have an image Jessica Stark, staff writer
Mike Williams, staff writer
of such scholars spending their time delving into dusty manuscripts in the Vatican Library,
Anthony Pinn’s research into hip-hop culture in Houston and Jeffrey Kripal’s studies of the Photographers
nature of reality as revealed through paranormal experiences are as surprisingly unconventional Tommy LaVergne, photographer
Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer
as they are strikingly dissimilar.
We also look into the inception, development and activities of the Humanities Research The Rice University
Center. By bringing scientists, engineers, musicians and social scientists together with research- Board of Trustees
James W. Crownover, chairman; J.D. Bucky
ers in the humanities, the HRC has become one of Rice’s most far-reaching scholarly enterprises Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith T.
— and one that consistently reaches outside the hedges to a wide audience both in Houston Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha Viswanathan
and internationally. Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth; Robert T.
Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson; Douglas Lee
There are many more pieces on humanities at Rice in these pages, but learning what it Foshee; Susanne Morris Glasscock; James T.
means to be human need not be directly related to specific disciplines, only to uplifting ex- Hackett; Larry Kellner; Robert R. Maxfield;
amples of heartfelt human interaction. For a touching example, M. Kenneth Oshman; Jeffery O. Rose;
Lee H. Rosenthal; Hector de J. Ruiz; L. E.
be sure to read about the Hospitality Apartments, a project con- Simmons; Charles Szalkowski; Robert B.
ceived by Joe and Ann Hightower that provides free housing Tudor III; James S. Turley; Randa Duncan
to low-income patients at the Texas Medical Center. And on a Williams.
similar note, you’re sure to enjoy the story about the musical
Administrative Officers
outreach efforts of the Shepherd School’s Michael P. Hammond David W. Leebron, president; George
Preparatory Program. McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice
Rice’s Centennial Celebration is in sight, and we continue pr esident for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice
president for Administration; Ron Long,
our coverage of historic Rice milestones with several articles, interim vice president for Investments and
not the least of which are a profile of Rice Stadium on its 60th anniversary and an essay by John treasur er; Chris Muñoz, vice president for
Boles, noted Rice historian, on the change in name from the Rice Institute to Rice University. Enrollment; Linda Thrane, vice presi dent
for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice
And for the Rice warrior in you, there is a piece on Valhalla’s 40th anniversary, with a link to a president and general counsel; Darrow
slide show of the celebration. Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource
Surveying these stories and the many others in this issue, it is clear that the Vision for the Development.
Second Century — the 10-point plan for the university’s future initiated by President David
Leebron’s Call to Conversation in 2005 — has augmented the span of ambition and imagination Rice Magazine is published by the Office of
Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent
established at the founding of Rice as an “institute for the advancement of literature, science to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate
and art.” By providing fertile ground for the health of Rice’s environment of discovery, learning students, parents of undergraduates and
and experience, it enriches our humanity, and it helps us produce Rice’s distinctive product: friends of the university.
unconventional wisdom. Editorial Offices
Creative Services–MS 95
Explore the humanities at Rice: humanities.rice.edu. P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TTX
X 77251-1892
Fax: 713-348-6757
E-mail: ricemagazine@rice.edu
Christopher Dow
cloud@rice.edu Postmaster
Send address changes to:
Rice University
Development Services–MS 80
P.O. Box 1892
Corrections Houston, TX 77251-1892
In the story “Global Reach” in our last issue, the name of the country Colombia was misspelled Columbia. Our apologies.
© AUGUST 2 010 RICE UNIVE RSITY
The photos for the feature “Music in the Aria” were taken by Ted Washington.

2 rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE Sallyport

McLendon Appointed Rice

University Provost
George McLendon, a leading biochemist and former
dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at
Duke University in North Carolina, has been named
provost of Rice University. The Texas native took
over his new post July 1.

McLendon succeeds Eugene Levy, who had served as

provost since 2000. Levy will take a one-year sabbatical
before returning to Rice to teach in the Department of
Physics and Astronomy and to serve as senior fellow for
science policy and education at Rice’s James A. Baker III
Institute for Public Policy.
“George McLendon has a stellar reputation as a sci-
entist, entrepreneur, academic leader and intellectual,
and we are thrilled that he has joined Rice as our new
provost,” President David Leebron said. “Gene Levy cre-
ated a wonderful legacy in his decade as provost, and
I am confident that George will continue to move Rice

“
along its trajectory to become one of the best research
universities in the world.”
McLendon, a professor of chemistry and biochem-
istry, has served as dean of the faculty of Arts and
Sciences as well as dean of Trinity College since 2008.
Trinity is Duke’s liberal arts college and has 635 faculty
members in 36 departments and programs. McLendon
was first named dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences
As a native Texan,
in 2004. Prior to his career at Duke, he served as chair
of Princeton University’s Department of Chemistry from I also am happy to
1996 to 2004. He also taught and served in several lead-
ership roles at the University of Rochester from 1976 to
1995.
be returning home.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, McLendon earned his
Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas
I look forward to
at El Paso in 1972 and his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry
from Texas A&M in 1976. He is widely recognized and working with many
published in the field of chemistry and biochemistry and
won the 1990 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry from stakeholders to
the American Chemistry Society as well as Guggenheim
and Sloan research fellowships.
His current research focuses on the diagnosis and
advance Rice to even
greater prominence

”
treatment of cancer, stroke and other diseases. He has
founded several biotechnology startup companies, in-
cluding TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, which works on
cancer diagnosis and therapeutics. among the country’s
“I am excited to be joining Rice as the next provost —
the opportunity of working both with President Leebron
and a terrific slate of deans is compelling,” McLendon
best universities.
said. “As a native Texan, I also am happy to be returning
home. I look forward to working with many stakeholders —George McLendon
to advance Rice to even greater prominence among the
country’s best universities.”
—Linda Thrane

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 3

 Rice Elects Four New Trustees
Rice has strengthened the business, social justice and legal expertise on
its board of trustees with the election of four new members, which brings
the number of Rice trustees to 24. Their four-year term began July 1.
Laura Arnold
Laura Arnold co-founded the Laura and
John Arnold Foundation, which invests
in innovative strategies to address the
country’s most significant social justice
issues, including poverty and educa-
tion. Previously, she was executive vice
president and general counsel of Cobalt
International Energy in Houston — a
position she held until late 2006. Prior
to that, she was a mergers and acquisi-
tions attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen
& Katz in New York City.
A member of the New York State
Bar Association, Arnold has a J.D.
from Yale Law School and an M.Phil. in
European studies from the University of
Cambridge. She graduated magna cum
laude from Harvard College with a B.A.
in government. After law school, Arnold
clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers in
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit.
She is an adjunct professor of
management at Rice’s Jesse H. Jones
Graduate School of Business and a
member of the national board of direc-
tors for Teach For America. She also
chairs the Civil Service Commission
of the City of Houston and serves as a
trustee of the Baylor College of Medicine
and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
4 rice.edu/ricemagazine
James T. Hackett
James T. Hackett is chairman and CEO
of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., one of the
world’s largest independent oil and gas
exploration and production companies.
Previously he had been president and
chief operating officer of Devon Energy
Corp. following its merger with Ocean
Energy, of which he had served as chair-
man, president and CEO. Ocean Energy
itself was the result of a merger with
Seagull Energy Corp., where Hackett
had been chairman, president and CEO
as well. He has held high-level positions
at Duke Energy and PanEnergy and also
has energy experience in engineer-
ing, finance and marketing with NGC,
Burlington Resources and Amoco Oil Co.
Hackett has a B.S. from the University
of Illinois and an MBA from Harvard
University. He is an adjunct professor of
management at Rice’s Jones School.
Currently chairman of the board
of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
and chairman of America’s Natural Gas
Alliance, Hackett also serves as a direc-
tor of Fluor Corp. and Halliburton and
as a board member of the American
Petroleum Institute, the National
Petroleum Council and other industry
associations. He is vice chairman of the
board of Baylor College of Medicine and
the former chairman and now a member
of the Houston Grand Opera’s board.
Larry Kellner
Larry Kellner assumed his new role as
president of Emerald Creek Group, a
Houston-based private equity firm, earlier
this year after stepping down as chairman
and CEO of Continental Airlines — a po-
sition he held since December 2004. He
joined the airline in 1995 as chief financial
officer and was elected president of the
company and to the board of directors in
May 2001. He became president and chief
operating officer in 2003.
His pre-Continental career included
positions as executive vice president
and chief financial officer of American
Savings Bank and as executive vice
president and chief financial officer of
The Koll Company, a private real estate
investment and construction firm.
Kellner graduated magna cum
laude with a B.S. in business admin-
istration from the University of South
Carolina, which honored him with its
Distinguished Alumni Award in 1998.
He is vice chairman of the Greater
Houston Partnership and serves on
the board of directors for Marriott
International and on the development
board of the University of Texas Health
Science Center at Houston. Kellner also
is a member of the board of directors
for the Methodist Hospital, YMCA of
Greater Houston and the Spring Branch
Education Foundation.
By B.J. Almond
Charles Szalkowski
Charles Szalkowski ’70, ’71, a senior
partner and general counsel of Baker
Botts L.L.P., has represented public and
venture-backed companies and their in-
vestment bankers and investors for more
than 30 years. He counsels private eq-
uity funds, hedge funds and institutional
investors, including large insurance com-
panies, Rice and other universities, and
other endowments. He has been general
counsel of Baker Botts since late 2005.
A former president of the
Association of Rice Alumni (ARA) board,
Szalkowski has served as a committee
or board member with numerous depart-
ments, schools and organizations of Rice
University. Most recently, he served
on the Humanities Research Center
advisory board, as a judge for the Rice
University Business Plan Competition
and as a member of the Rice Alliance
for Technology and Entrepreneurship
advisory board. He chaired the Rice
University Fund Council and has helped
raise money for the Rice Annual Fund
and various capital campaigns, and
he was recognized in 1995 for his ef-
forts on Rice’s behalf with the National
Philanthropy Day volunteer award. He
received a Meritorious Service Award
from the ARA in May.

“Rice will benefit greatly from Nick’s expertise in
Latin America as the university advances its initiative
in building relationships and programs across the Americas.”
Shumway Named Dean of Humanities
Nicolas Shumway, former chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, has been appointed dean of humani-
ties at Rice University, effective July 1.
He succeeded Allen Matusow, who served as
interim dean since July 1, 2009, when Gary
Wihl stepped down to become dean of the
faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington
University in St. Louis. Matusow will continue
to serve on the faculty as the William Gaines
Twyman Professor of History.
Shumway, who was the Tomás Rivera
Regents Professor of Spanish at UT, also was
chair of the Program in Latin American Studies
at Yale University and has served as a visiting
professor in Argentina and Brazil.
“Nicolas Shumway has a demonstrated
record of success of building innovative pro-
grams of the highest quality,” President David
Leebron said. “Rice will benefit greatly from
Nick’s expertise in Latin America as the univer-
sity advances its initiative in building relation-
ships and programs across the Americas.”
As dean, Shumway is responsible for 12
departments, four centers and four interde-
partmental programs involving the study of
literature, history, philosophy, the arts, lan-
guages and religion.
“Rice is a wonderful school,” Shumway
said. “It combines great accomplishments with
great potential. It’s hard not to be seduced by
such a university.”
Shumway has been involved with foreign-
language education and international studies
throughout his 35-year career. “I hope to help
Rice develop even deeper relations with the
international aspects of the city of Houston,”
he said.
THROUGH THE
—David Leebron
“Rice is a wonderful
school. It combines great
accomplishments with
great potential. It’s hard
not to be seduced by such
a university.”
—Nicolas Shumway
Sallyport
His scholarship explores Latin American
history and culture with particular empha-
sis on Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. He
also studies advocacy and politics in the
foreign-language classroom, ideologies of
Hispanism, Latin-American writers and
studies in Spanish–American literature.
Shumway joined UT’s Department of
Spanish and Portuguese in 1993. He was
graduate adviser and chair of graduate ad-
missions during 1994 and 1995. He served
as director of UT’s Teresa Lozano Long
Institute of Latin American Studies from
1995 until 2006, when he was appointed
department chair.
While at UT, Shumway was awarded
Fulbright honors twice. As a Fulbright
Professor, he taught at Universidade de São
Paulo in spring 2000. In 2004, he received a
five-year appointment as a Fulbright Senior
Specialist in American Studies.
Prior to UT, Shumway served on the
faculty of Yale University from 1978 to
1993 and occupied several administrative
positions there. In addition, he has served
on the executive council of the Modern
Language Association, the largest profes-
sional association in humanities. He is the
author of “The Invention of Argentina,”
which the New York Times Book Review
cited as a “notable book of the year.” The
book also received honorable mention for
the Bryce Wood Book Award given by
the Latin American Studies Association.
Shumway said the book appeals to both an
academic and a general audience and con-
tinues to sell well in both Argentina and the
United States.
—B.J. Almond
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 5
 As the nation debates the rise of childhood obesity,
a new study by Rachel Tolbert Kimbro ’01, assistant
professor of sociology and a Rice Scholar at the
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, finds that
subsidized meals at school or day care have beneficial
effects on children’s weight.
The study, titled “Federal Food Policy and Childhood Obesity: A Solution
or Part of the Problem?,” found that federal food programs were more
likely to help solve the childhood obesity epidemic than serve as a
source of the problem. The article appeared in the national policy jour-
nal Health Affairs.
“Although it is counterintuitive that increasing access to school food is a way to prevent obe-
sity,” wrote Kimbro and her co-author, University of Houston Assistant Professor of Political
Science Elizabeth Rigby, “we found that young, low-income children who participate in the
National School Lunch or Child and Adult Care Food programs have a reduced risk of obesity at
age 5. And we know that early childhood weight problems are a key predictor of obesity later
in childhood. Of course, school meals will do the most to prevent obesity when they consist of

School
healthy foods of high nutritional value and when they are available to the children who need
them most.”

Lunches
In the study, Kimbro and Rigby looked into the
relationship between food assistance and body

Fight
mass index (BMI) for low-income, young children
who are a primary target population for federal food
programs as well as for efforts to prevent childhood

Childhood obesity. With roughly one-third of all children in the

U.S. overweight and an estimated 16 percent obese,

Obesity efforts to evaluate such programs have increasing

Read the abstract:
› ›› ricemagazine.info/ 57
importance.
Some food assistance programs began as a way
to alleviate hunger rather than prevent obesity, so
Kimbro and Rigby focused on children between the ages of 3 and 5 who receive benefits from a
variety of federal programs. They examined the effect of each type of assistance on the children’s
weight and controlled for simultaneous participation in other programs.
The results of the study, Kimbro and Rigby wrote, demonstrated that “participation in fed-
eral food assistance programs can affect the BMI of young children.” But those effects vary
according to the type of program or programs the children participate in as well as “the food
environment in which these programs are experienced.”
In particular, the study found that food assistance programs that subsidize meals were
more effective at combating childhood obesity than programs that provide financial assistance
to purchase food. Therefore, they recommended “increasing outreach to child care providers
not participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program, providing schoolwide presumptive
eligibility for Title I schools (schools with large low-income populations) and instituting summer
food programs for school children and their families.” Kimbro and Rigby also urged all federal
food assistance programs to increase the nutritional value of the food they provide.
Finally, the researchers underscored the importance of geography. Variations in food prices
among cities can hamper efforts to control childhood obesity. Policymakers “need to take seri-
ously this important role of local context, in which the same federal program, with the same
federal guidelines and benefit plans, can have a different effect in some parts of the country
compared with others.”
Kimbro and Rigby plan to follow the children in the study as they grow older to monitor the
relationship between food assistance and their weight trajectories.
—Franz Brotzen

6 rice.edu/ricemagazine

The Role of Private Foundations
in Supporting Religion
Although millions of Americans make individual contributions weekly
at their places of worship, a new study by a Rice University sociologist
finds that private foundations have a disproportionate influence on the
religious sector — despite the fact that their contributions constitute
only a fraction of all philanthropy to religion.
Private foundations are influential in religion “because of their insti-
tutional independence, financial resources and unique ability to redi-
rect energies within an institutional field,” wrote co-authors D. Michael
Lindsay, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice, and sociologist
Robert Wuthnow, director of the Center for the Study of Religion at
Princeton, in “Financing Faith: Religion and Strategic Philanthropy.”
Published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, it is the first
major study of foundation giving to religion.
The authors examined all grants between 1999 and 2003 reported
by private foundations to the Foundation Center, which maintains the
most comprehensive database on U.S. grants and grantmakers. They
chose that five-year window because it represents a time that included
both significant economic expansion (1999–2000) and retraction (2001)
in the U.S. economy. During that period, the Lilly Endowment Inc. was
by far the biggest donor to religious organizations. It awarded 1,473
grants totaling more than $677 million. In second place was the Arthur
S. DeMoss Foundation, with more than $94 million in contributions.
The Lilly Endowment “has infused hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars into the religious sector with a strong preference to developing the
leadership capabilities of pastors and church staff members. Over the
last decade, the endowment has allocated nearly $500 million to various
programs across the country with the goal of recruiting, training and
sustaining high-caliber ministry professionals.” This kind of directed
giving has real impact, according to the study.
Federal tax policy has played a significant role in affecting religious
philanthropy, Lindsay and Wuthnow found. The Tax Reform Act of
1969 both defined “private foundations” and regulated their activities.
Since then, federal legislation has shaped philan-
thropic giving by delineating a number of chari-
table giving vehicles, including donor-advised
funds and supporting organizations.
The authors reached several major con-
clusions, one of which is that private foun-
dations have significant, strategic resources
that allow them to set agendas in the religious
sector, even though foundation giving is
only 5 percent of all religious giving.
Second, social conditions such as
rising secularism, religious plural-
ism and globalization pose signifi-
cant challenges for the religious
sector. And finally, foundation
giving may very well reshape
the religious sector in the years
ahead.
The study was supported by
the Aspen Institute, with logisti-
cal support from the Center for
Civil Society at the University of
California, Los Angeles.
—Franz Brotzen
D. Michael Lindsay
THROUGH THE Sallyport
Brains and Bronze
What do former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
and former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan have in com-
mon with Rice University’s founding president? Soon,
they all will have been immortalized in bronze by noted
American sculptor Bruce Wolfe.
Rice recently commissioned a nearly 8-foot bronze statue of Edgar
Odell Lovett that will be placed in front of Keck Hall, where Lovett gave
his last speech as Rice’s president. The university is seeking support
from the Rice community to fulfill its plans for the
statue and hopes to unveil it during Rice’s Centennial
Celebration in 2012.
“Rice is the outgrowth of the vision, direction
and leadership of one man: Edgar Odell Lovett,”
said John Boles ’65, the William Pettus Hobby
Professor of History. “His ambitions for Rice
and years of dedicated service shaped the
entire university, and his influence perme-
ates Rice even today.”
The Wortham Foundation, whose founder,
Gus Wortham, was a Rice trustee from 1946 to
1962, provided a $300,000 challenge grant to
cover almost half the statue’s cost. Rice must
raise the remaining $400,000 from its alum-
ni, faculty, staff, students and friends.
“The Rice Art Committee unani-
mously selected Wolfe for his remark-
able skill in creating dynamic likenesses,”
said trustee emeritus Raymond Brochstein
’55, who chairs the committee. He noted
that the Lovett statue will be a valuable
contribution to Rice’s campus.
“Lovett believed that Rice should play
a significant role in advancing the arts in
Houston,” Brochstein said. “Because of its
artistic, historical and sentimental value,
the Lovett statue will be a centerpiece of
the collection of diverse, site-specific instal-
lations that the Rice Public Art Program is
building to enliven the campus.”
Gifts to the Lovett statue count toward
the Centennial Campaign, Rice’s $1 billion
fundraising strategy to launch Rice into its
second century. Donors pledging $5,000 or
more will be recognized on a plaque placed
on the monument.
To donate, visit rice.edu/centennialcampaign or mail your
gift to Rice University, Lovett Statue Fund–MS 83, P.O.
Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892. For more information,
contact Sam Lasseter, Rice’s senior philanthropic adviser,
at lasseter@rice.edu or 713-348-4387.
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 7
 An analysis from experts at the Rice University-based Severe
Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters

SSPEEDy
Warning
(SSPEED) Center sounds a cautionary note for residents of the
upper Gulf Coast: Even a moderately powerful hurricane could
endanger tens of thousands of lives in the Houston/Galveston
region and cripple the Houston Ship Channel.

“There are warning signs across the board,” said SSPEED Center Director Phil
Bedient, Rice’s Herman Brown Professor of Engineering and a co-author of
the new report. “Ike was a Category 2 hurricane, and it caused $30 billion in
damage. Had that same storm struck 30 miles farther south, it could easily
have caused $100 billion in damage. Had it struck that location as a Category
4 storm, like Carla, the results would have been catastrophic.”
The report was the result of SSPEED’s ongoing two-year study commis-
sioned in 2009 by the nonprofit Houston Endowment Inc. SSPEED Center
has assembled a team of more than a dozen leading experts from Rice,
the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, the University of
Houston, Texas Southern University and several other institutions to examine
flood risks, evacuation readiness, industrial vulnerability, and both structural
and nonstructural approaches for mitigating storm impact.
SSPEED’s report indicated that:
Existing dikes and levees along the Houston Ship
Channel were barely adequate during Hurricane Ike and
would not protect all refineries from the storm surge of a
more powerful hurricane or even an Ike-like Category 2 hur-
ricane striking farther south.
More than 65 percent of water-crossing bridges in the
Galveston Bay area may be especially vulnerable to damage
from a powerful hurricane like Katrina.
Highway infrastructure to evacuate the 1 million resi-
dents living in evacuation zones today is inadequate, and
500,000 more are expected to move into these zones by
2035.
There is a “major disconnect” between the level of coast-
al flooding that would be caused by a major hurricane and
the 100-year floodplains that flood insurance is based on.
Phil Bedient Bedient said one need look no further than the Houston
Ship Channel to get a clear sense of the region’s vulnerabil-
ity. The ship channel is home to one of the nation’s busiest
ports and about one-quarter of U.S. refineries. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates
that a one-month closure of the port of Houston would cost the national
economy $60 billion.
Despite this, government regulations require dikes and levees that can
protect ship channel facilities against only a 100-year flood, which is 14 to 15
Existing dikes and levees feet. Results from supercomputer models done at the University of Texas at
along the Houston Austin indicate that Ike could have caused a 20- to 25-foot storm surge along
the ship channel if it had struck about 30 miles farther south.
Ship Channel were “There are dozens of communities along the coast, and each is unique
barely adequate during in some way,” said Rice’s Jim Blackburn, professor in the practice of environ-
Hurricane Ike and would mental law and co-author of the new report. “We are attempting to identify
the most cost-effective and environmentally acceptable methods of providing
not protect all refineries a basic level of protection, including both structural barriers like the Ike Dike
from the storm surge and other dike solutions, and nonstructural approaches that take advantage of
of a more powerful natural features such as barrier islands and storm-surge storage in wetlands.”
Blackburn said SSPEED’s goal is to propose policy options to decision
hurricane or even an Ike- makers at the state, local and federal level with an unbiased assessment of the
like Category 2 hurricane economic and environmental costs and benefits of all approaches so that an
striking farther south. informed decision on the future of the region can be made.
“Make no mistake about it,” Blackburn said. “The solutions that are chosen
to deal with this flood-surge problem will determine the landscape of the
future for the upper Texas coast.”
—Jade Boyd

8 rice.edu/ricemagazine

Grass, Fungus
Combination
Affects Ecology
The popular forage and turf grass called
tall fescue covers a vast amount of the
U.S. — an area that’s estimated to be
larger than Virginia and Maryland com-
bined. But a new study by ecologists at
Rice and Indiana Universities suggests
there is more to fescue than meets the eye.
Results of the six-year study, which are avail-
able online in the Journal of Applied Ecology,
show that a symbiotic fungus living inside
fescue can have far-reaching effects on plant,
animal and insect communities.
Tall fescue is hardy, low-maintenance and
stays green year-round, which makes it a fa-
vorite for home lawns, golf courses and high-
way rights-of-way across the U.S. But the grass,
which is native to Europe and North Africa,
also can have negative impacts. In addition
to being highly invasive in North America, it
can sicken livestock because it is home to a
symbiotic fungus called Neotyphodium coe-
nophialum. The fungus and fescue have a
mutually beneficial relationship. The fungus
lives inside the plant, where it gets shelter and
food, and in return, it laces the plant’s leaves
with toxic alkaloids that are a turnoff to some
plant-eating animals.
In 2002, study co-authors Jennifer
Rudgers, Rice’s James H. and Deborah T.
Godwin Assistant Professor of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology, and Indiana University
at Bloomington ecologist Keith Clay stud-
ied fescue planted in 42 grassland plots,
each about 1,000 square feet, at the Indiana
University Research and Teaching Preserve
north of Bloomington. The researchers used
two varieties of fescue called Georgia-5 and
Jesup, and two varieties of the fungus — one
that produces alkaloids that are toxic to mam-
mals and one that lacks these alkaloids. In ad-
dition, some plots were planted with grass that
did not have a fungus.
THROUGH THE
“Competition and environ-
ment have traditionally been
seen as the driving forces
for community dynamics, so
it’s significant to see that the
composition and diversity
of a plant community can be
affected by changing a few
genes in an invisible fungus
inside one species of grass.”
—Jennifer Rudgers
Sallyport
Over the next six years, the team exam-
ined the plots and, in randomly selected ar-
eas, counted individual flowers, cataloged the
number and species of every plant and even
counted the number of stems of grass that had
been gnawed by plant-eating voles.
The investigation offered specific results
for conservation managers: Jesup with either
fungus works best for maintaining a fescue
monoculture; and if a symbiotic fungus is de-
sirable, the combination of Georgia-5 and the
fungus that lacks animal-toxic alkaloids sup-
ports maximum plant diversity and minimal
invasiveness. The study also suggested that
the ecological effects of plant–microbe sym-
biosis aren’t easy to predict. For example, the
researchers found that voles were less likely
to eat fescue that contained either fungus, in-
cluding the variety that lacks mammal-toxic
alkaloids.
“That indicates that plant–microbe sym-
bioses have complex ecological effects. It sig-
nals the need for more investigations of the
long-term effects of cooperative symbiosis,”
said Clay, professor of biology and director of
the Indiana University Research and Teaching
Preserve.
“Competition and environment have tra-
ditionally been seen as the driving forces for
community dynamics, so it’s significant to see
that the composition and diversity of a plant
community can be affected by changing a
few genes in an invisible fungus inside one
species of grass,” Rudgers said. “This suggests
that cooperative microorganisms should not
be overlooked as significant contributors to
ecological diversity.”
Indiana University undergraduate Susan
Fischer also co-authored the study. The re-
search was sponsored by the National Science
Foundation and the Indiana University
Research and Teaching Preserve.
—Jade Boyd
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 9
 Forget the
Checkout Line
Long lines at store checkouts could be history if a new technology
created in part at Rice University comes to pass.
Rice researchers, in collaboration with a team led by Gyou-jin Cho at on just about everything you can buy. His team is working on tags that
Sunchon National University in Korea, have come up with an inexpen- would hold a larger amount of information, while Tour’s lab continues
to support the project in an advisory role and occasionally hosts Cho’s
sive, printable transmitter that can be invisibly embedded in packag- students. Tour said Rice owns half of the patent, still pending, on which
ing. It would allow a customer to walk a cart full of groceries or other all of the technology is based. “Gyou-jin has carried the brunt of this,
goods past a scanner on the way out of the store, and the scanner would and it’s his sole project,” Tour said. “We are advisers, and we still send
read price information on all items in the cart, total it up and charge him the single-walled carbon nanotubes produced at Rice.”
There are several hurdles to commercialization. First, the device must
the customer’s account — all while adjusting the store’s inventory. be reduced to the size of a bar code — about a third the size of the one
The technology, reported in the March issue of the journal IEEE reported in the paper. Second, its range must increase. “Right now, the
Transactions on Electron Devices, is based on a carbon-nanotube-in- practical distance to have it ring up all the items in your shopping cart
fused ink for ink-jet printers first de- is a meter,” Tour said. “But the ul-
veloped in the Rice lab of James Tour, timate would be to get a response
the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of “Right now, the practical distance to have it ring up back from every item in your store:
Chemistry as well as a professor of what’s on the shelves, their dates,
mechanical engineering and materi-
all the items in your shopping cart is a meter. But everything. At 300 meters, you’re
als science and of computer science. the ultimate would be to get a response back from set — you have real-time informa-
The ink is used to make thin-film tion on every item in a warehouse.
transistors, a key element in radio- every item in your store: what’s on the shelves, If something falls behind a shelf,
frequency identification (RFID) tags their dates, everything.” you know about it. If a product is
that can be printed on paper or —James Tour about to expire, you know to move
plastic. Printable RFIDs are practical it to the front or to the bargain bin.”
because they’re passive. The tags power up when hit by radio waves at Tour allayed concerns about the fate of nanotubes in packaging.
the right frequency and return the information they contain. “The amount of nanotubes in an RFID tag is probably less than a pico-
“We are becoming a society where RFID is a key player,” said Cho, gram,” he said. “You can produce one trillion of them from a gram of
a professor of printed electronics engineering at Sunchon, who expects nanotubes — a miniscule amount. Our HiPco reactor produces a gram
the technology to mature in five years. Cho and his team are developing of nanotubes an hour, and that would be enough to handle every item
the electronics as well as the roll-to-roll printing process that, he said, in every Walmart.”
will bring the cost of printing the tags down to a penny apiece and Co-authors of the paper include Rice graduate student Ashley
make them ubiquitous. Leonard ’08; Minhun Jung, Jinsoo Noh and Gwangyong Lee of Sunchon
RFID came into being in the 1970s and has been widely adopted by National University; and Jaeyoung Kim, Namsoo Lim, Chaemin Lim,
the U.S. Department of Defense and industry to track shipping contain- Junseok Kim, Kyunghwan Jung and Hwiwon Kang of the Printed
ers as they make their way around the world. The tiny transmitters also Electronics Research Center, Paru Corp., Sunchon, Korea.
are used for many other applications, such as identifying and tracking —Mike Williams
products and farm animals. They’re in passports, library books and de-
vices that let drivers pass through tollbooths without digging for change. Read the paper:
To date, RFID tags have largely been silicon-based, and paper or ›› › ricemagazine.info/58
plastic tags printed as part of a package would cut costs dramatically.
Cho expects his development to replace the bar codes now festooned

10 rice.edu/ricemagazine

Rice Remains Among Nation’s
Top 20 Best Colleges
For the seventh year in a row, Rice University ranked No. 17 in U.S.
News & World Report’s guide to America’s best colleges. In the 2011
edition of “Best Colleges,” Rice tied with Vanderbilt University for 17th
among 262 schools classified as national universities.
In addition to placing among the nation’s top 20 schools, Rice is among
28 national universities identified as “Up-and-Comers” — schools that col-
lege administrators nominated as having recently made the most prom-
ising and innovative changes in the areas of academics, faculty, student
life, campus or facilities.
Rice is No. 16 on the “Great Schools, Great Prices” list — best-value
schools selected on the basis of academic quality and the net cost of
attendance for a student who receives the average level of need-based
financial aid. On the list of schools demonstrating economic diversity
— determined by the percentage of undergraduates receiving federal
Pell grants, which are awarded to low-income students — Rice scored
11 percent in a six-way tie for 13th place.
Among the best engineering programs whose highest degree is a
doctorate, Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering is in a three-
way tie for No. 19 with UCLA and the University of Maryland at College
Park. Two engineering specialties highlighted in the rankings are bio-
medical engineering, which moved up to No. 6 from No. 9 last year, and
electrical engineering, which moved up to No. 13 from No. 19.
See the complete U.S. News & World Report rankings:
›› › usnews.com / colleges
Rice Day 2010
The Countdown Begins
20
0
This year, Rice Day, Oct. 12, is doubly special.
Not only is it the anniversary of the university’s formal dedication
and the perfect day to wear your Rice-branded apparel, it also begins
the countdown to Rice’s Centennial
Celebration in 2012. Special events will
be announced throughout the year, so
keep posted by visiting the Centennial
Celebration website at centennial.
rice.edu. And be sure to visit rice.edu/
aboutrice to brush up on your Rice knowledge so that you can tell
your friends and colleagues why Rice is one of the world’s leading
universities.
THROUGH THE Sallyport
Happy News
It’s no news to us that Rice is a happy place, but the Daily Beast
makes it official. The news and opinion website has ranked Rice
No. 4 on its list of America’s 100 happiest colleges. The rankings
were based mostly on information gathered from College Prowler,
an online college guide created by students, and U.S. News and
World Report.
The criteria included student rankings of dormitories, party op-
tions for their campus and town, the average graduate indebted-
ness, the average freshman retention rate, school food, the number
of student clubs and organizations, and the number of daylight
hours that are sunny.
The top three spots were taken by Claremont McKenna College,
Harvard University and Pomona College. The 2010 edition of the
Princeton Review’s “The Best 371 Colleges” ranks Rice No. 1 for
best quality of life and No. 8 for happiest students.
See the complete list of the Daily Beast’s 100 happiest colleges:
›› › ricemagazine.info/63
Who Knew:
›› › ricewhoknew.info/4
Rice Named Best Place
to Work Fifth Year in a Row
Rice’s reputation as a first-rate educational institution has again
been complemented by its reputation as a great place to work.
For the fifth year in a row, Rice made the Houston Business
Journal’s (HBJ) list of “Houston’s Best Places to Work,” where it
ranked in the top 10 in the category of businesses with more than
500 employees.
“With this award we take five,” said Mary Cronin, associate
vice president for human resources. “At the core of this wonderful
institution are the faculty and staff who make Rice a great place
to learn and a great place to work.”
In recognition of five consecutive years of making the grade,
the university also was honored with a 2010 Burnett Staffing
Summit Award.
Who Knew:
›› › ricewhoknew.info/5
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 11

Only App-ropriate
iPhone owners around campus are
the beneficiaries of a new app thanks
to Rice Information Technology staff-
ers Chris Boyd and Hailey Hinson.
On their own time, Boyd and
Hinson went to town on the app,
which features guides to courses,
dining, library services, athletics and
loads of other information about
Rice, including the Thresher and
Rice News. A running calendar of
events, a comprehensive directory
and a map that shows the positions
of campus shuttles have proved
popular with users of the app.
Ratings for the free app, which
has the university’s blessing, have
been favorable, and Boyd contin-
ues to refine it. He hopes it will
see wide acceptance and lead to
versions for other mobile devices,
including Android-based phones
and, eventually, Apple’s new iPad.
—Mike Williams
Find the app at the App Store, iTunes or here:
›› › iphone.rice.edu
12 rice.edu/ricemagazine
Recreation Center
Takes the Silver
The Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation
and Wellness Center has been recognized
by the U.S. Green Building Council as hav-
ing achieved silver certification under the
Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) rating system, an internation-
ally recognized green standard for build-
ings. The Recreation Center is the third Rice
building to earn a LEED certification — and
the largest to date. Factors that contributed
to the LEED silver rating include a focus on
energy and water efficiency, extensive natu-
ral lighting, use of healthy building materi-
als and the recycling of more than 2 million
pounds of construction waste.
Who Knew: ›› › ricewhoknew.info/6
All Hail Valhalla
Valhalla, the popular Rice graduate student and
faculty hangout celebrated its 40th anniversary May 7.
Patrons and staff gathered to enjoy food and beverages, a live band, a Slip ’n
Slide, a bounce house and a dunk tank. There also was a pie booth where
guests could throw pies at a former manager. The event was sponsored by
Valhalla and Rice’s Centennial Celebration.
View a slideshow of the Valhalla birthday party: ›› › ricemagazine.info/64
 THROUGH THE Sallyport

Triple Owl
Flies High “So much of our training focuses
When Shannon Walker ’87 blasted off June 16 for a six-month stint aboard the on the systems and how to
International Space Station (ISS), she knew that keeping in touch with her husband operate the station but not on
and fellow astronaut, Andy Thomas, would be a lot easier than when he spent 130 days the day-to-day life — how to
aboard Mir in 1998. Back then, they had to rely on ham radio and an occasional e-mail, slow down and really enjoy the
but these days, he can check on her simply by turning on NASA TV. And the rest of the experience.” —Shannon Walker
world can tune in as well or log on to her blog to catch the latest space flight news.

Walker is a flight engineer on the crew
of Expedition 24, which launched in two
groups from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan. She also serves as co-pilot for
the Soyuz spacecraft that lifted her, astronaut
Doug Wheelock, and cosmonaut and pilot
Fyodor Yurchikhin into orbit. The first trio
departed April 2.
This is Walker’s first flight, and while she
won’t be the first Rice alum to achieve orbit,
she will be the first triple Owl, having earned
her bachelor’s in physics and her master’s and
doctorate in space science at Rice. She also is
also has been heavily involved in solving ISS
problems from the ground during her years at
Mission Control in Houston and at the Russian
control center.
“I know so much on the engineering side
and not so much on the operations side,”
Walker said. “I know how the control centers
work. I know how to problem solve. I know
who’s involved in working on the problems
and can make a decision, and that’s a big com-
fort factor. I have absolute confidence in the
people on the ground, having known them for
so many years.”
Walker and Thomas, who live in Seabrook,
Texas, try to avoid talking shop at home, but
Thomas did offer Walker hints on the prac-
ticalities of living in space. “So much of our
training focuses on the systems and how to
operate the station but not on the day-to-day
life — how to slow down and really enjoy the
experience,” Walker said. “He wanted to make
sure I enjoy it and not just focus on work the
whole time, as I am wont to do.”
Two items that have special meaning for
Walker went up with her aboard the Soyuz.
One is a plaque for Rice that will be installed

The Expedition 24 crew will celebrate the record for the longest continuous manned presence in
space — a mark previously held by a crew on Mir, which was occupied for just under 10 years.

the first Houston-born astronaut. A graduate of
Westbury High School, she became fascinated
with space travel as a child and never wavered
from her goal of going there someday.
The Expedition 24 crew will celebrate the
record for the longest continuous manned pres-
ence in space — a mark previously held by a
crew on Mir, which was occupied for just under
10 years. She also will be present when the first
commercial spacecraft, the SpaceX Dragon, will
rendezvous — but not dock — with the station.
The Dragon is NASA’s choice to lift cargo to the
ISS after the shuttle program ends, and while it
will be capable of carrying crews into orbit, no
manned missions have been set.
Walker’s duties onboard the ISS include
operation of the robotic arm, her specialty
since early in her association with NASA. She
Walker will take part in materials science
experiments and in ongoing work to under-
stand how the body reacts in space. “But the
one I’m particularly excited about that does
somewhat relate to my training at Rice is the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer,” she said. “One
module of that will study the secrets of the
universe by looking at cosmic rays and trying
to understand information about antimatter
and dark matter.”
Walker places high value on what she
brought to NASA from Rice. “Rice is a top-
notch engineering and science school,” she
said. “The education there — just the general
broad-based education I got in the sciences —
helped me get to where I need to be, because
this is what NASA’s all about — science and
engineering.”
in Rice’s Brockman Hall for Physics when con-
struction is complete next year. She also took
a watch owned by Amelia Earhart on behalf
of the Ninety-Nines, Inc., the international or-
ganization of women pilots of which Earhart
was the first president. “To me it represents
how far women have come in the field of avia-
tion,” she said, “and how far we can go.”
—Mike Williams
Read Shannon Walker’s blog from space:
›› › blogs.chron.com/inorbit
Who Knew:
›› › ricewhoknew.info / 8

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 13

A Life-Altering
Experience By Mike Williams
For a budding scientist, this has to be the greatest payoff ever to a summer job.
Just a few weeks after receiving his diploma,
Thomas Segall-Shapiro ’10 earned something
else that was pretty great: co-authorship of
what may be the most significant scientific pa-
per of the 21st century so far. He is one of 24
authors of the paper published online by the
journal Science that announced the creation
of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically
synthesized genome — billed in the press as
the creation of synthetic life.
The native of Chevy Chase, Md., spent his
last two summers in the Maryland lab of the
J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), founded by
the entrepreneurial scientist who in the 1990s
challenged the federal government in a race to
decode the human genome. Their success was
announced jointly in 2001.
Venter’s group assembled and implanted a
synthesized genome into a mycoplasma capri-
colum and replaced the cell’s original DNA.
The new genome successfully “rebooted” the
cell, took over its operation and reproduced
normally. Imbedded in the genome are “wa-
termarks” that contain the names of people,
famous quotes and, according to the authors,
a website address.
The paper was widely discussed in the
days after its debut, with some scientists claim-
ing the project is a step toward discovering the
origin of life itself. President Barack Obama
14 rice.edu/ricemagazine
“This is great for
incoming freshmen to
see. Thomas was able
to get involved in a
synthetic biology project
during his freshman year
through participation in
the iGEM competition.
Because he got involved
in research so early, he
was in a great position
to make a contribution to
this cutting-edge project
during his internship
at JCVI.”
—Jonathan Silberg
immediately ordered a study of the research
and its implications.
Segall-Shapiro is no stranger to no-
toriety. He was part of Rice’s Bio-Beer
team that, in 2008, won a gold medal in
the International Genetically Engineered
Machine (iGEM) competition and earned
worldwide media attention for its process
to brew beer with resveratrol, a naturally
occurring health supplement.
Though the young scientist agreed that
the new paper would look good on his
resume as he prepared for graduate stud-
ies in synthetic biology at the University of
California at Berkeley, he also said, “It’s kind
of intimidating.” He noted that another recent
paper, on which he was the second of three
authors, dealt more specifically with the type
of error-correction research he did at JCVI.
“I’ll be able to say, ‘I knew him when,’”
said Segall-Shapiro’s mentor, Jonathan Silberg,
a Rice assistant professor of biochemistry and
cell biology. “This is great for incoming fresh-
men to see. Thomas was able to get involved
in a synthetic biology project during his fresh-
man year through participation in the iGEM
competition. Because he got involved in re-
search so early, he was in a great position to
make a contribution to this cutting-edge proj-
ect during his internship at JCVI.”
 Students

Buried Shells Are No Treasure
She saw seashells, but not by the seashore. In fact,
they were quite far away, and they were skewing her
study of the environmental impact of Houston’s rivers.
Graduate student Fanwei Zeng and her mentor, Carrie Masiello, an as-
sistant professor of Earth science, set out to fill a gap in the data about
how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere by rivers planetwide.
The current estimate is 1 billion tons per year — about the same amount
those rivers deliver to the ocean, where various organisms put it to use in
their life cycles. It’s a vital balancing act because plant growth naturally
compensates for rivers’ release of CO2.
Data on river CO2 for the tropics comes from a 2005 study of the Amazon
River that Masiello participated in. Other research groups have generated
data in temperate regions. But the global picture remains incomplete without
data from the subtropics, and Zeng and Masiello thought that Houston was a
good place to start gathering it. “We looked at Buffalo Bayou as an example
of a completely urbanized watershed, while Spring Creek is primarily rural,”
Masiello said. “We wanted to contrast those two ecosystems.”
Spring Creek, which runs mostly through areas north and west of
metro Houston, produced numbers in line with what Masiello had antici-
pated from the Amazon study. Buffalo Bayou, in the heart of Houston, is
similar to Spring Creek in the amount of CO2 released, but the data from
it contained a strange anomaly. Radiocarbon dating of CO2 in Buffalo
Bayou water samples showed that some of its carbon was almost 5,000
years old.
“We knew from the isotope data that there was carbonate input to
Buffalo Bayou similar to what might be released by limestone, a sedi-
mentary rock composed of shells and other organic material compacted
over millennia,” Zeng said. “But there are no limestone formations in this
region that might account for the bizarre readings.”
Then she and Masiello looked down.
“It took us almost six months to figure out what was going on,”
Masiello said. “We finally noticed all the shells in the ground and won-
dered where they came from.”
The simple answer is Galveston Bay. As far back as the 19th century,
contractors dredged the bay for oyster shells, crushed them and mixed
them with concrete or used them for roadbeds. The practice was out-
lawed in the 1970s.
“Shell roads built in the early 20th century are buried under the sur-
face, and they’re slowly decomposing,” Masiello said. “Urban acid rain
falls on the shells and dissolves them, releasing pools of CO2 that move
into the groundwater. On a rainy day, that CO2 gets swept out of the soil
and pushed into the river. So when we date CO2 in Buffalo Bayou, it’s
extremely old because it’s carrying the age of these fossil shells.”
Since Spring Creek doesn’t suffer from leaching from buried shells,
it gave the researchers data on subtropical rivers that they can plug into
the global carbon cycle model. But Buffalo Bayou was another matter.
“Buffalo Bayou doesn’t tell us anything about ecosystem carbon resi-
dence time,” Masiello said. “But it was a surprising new find about the
way human activities affect the ecosystems around us.”
The study was reported in the online journal Biogeochemistry.
The researchers did their radiocarbon dating at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and the study was backed
by the Texas Water Resources Institute through a grant supported by the
U.S. Geological Survey and the National Institutes for Water Resources.

—Mike Williams

The assignment for the Introduc-

tion to Bioengineering and World
Health class was difficult: develop
a way to medically separate blood
in remote rural areas where elec-
trically powered centrifuges are
rare at best. But sociology major
Lila Kerr (right) and political sci-
ence major Lauren Theis (left),
both minoring in global health
technologies, had a simple, dura-
ble and inexpensive solution. Their
device, created from a revamped
salad spinner, was dubbed the

The Little
Sally Centrifuge in honor of the

Spinner
Sallyport in Lovett Hall. The two
students field-tested prototypes
during the summer through Rice’s
Beyond Traditional Borders pro-

That Could gram — Kerr in Ecuador and Theis

in Swaziland — and a third team
took one to Malawi.

Who Knew: ›› › ricewhoknew.info / 9

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 15


Turn on the
Baby Bubble
Machine
“Baby Bubbles” had a lot riding on it: a share of more than $1
million in prizes offered by the Rice Business Plan Competition,
the world’s richest business plan competition. But as the Rice
infantAIR team members took the floor to present their new
continuous positive-airway pressure device for aiding infants’
breathing, they knew they’d already met their most important
judges: the stakeholders in Rwanda who would use the device.
“Visiting the neonatal wings of several hospitals and seeing infants who
were clearly having difficulty breathing was a very sobering experi-
ence,” said Jocelyn Brown ’10, the team’s undergraduate engineer. “The
design team and business team had always been excited about our
product, but seeing the need in person made me realize the huge re-
sponsibility we had in trying to implement the device. At that point, our
course grades didn’t really matter — we had a much larger motivation
for designing and commercializing the device.”
The infantAIR team was part of a unique global health technology
commercialization class offered in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of
Business and taught by Marc Epstein, distinguished research professor
of management. Other teams in the class were Life Packs Inc., whose
product is a suite of medical backpacks; SmartDrip, whose product is
an intravenous-therapy drip monitor; and Easy-Dose, whose product is
a clamp to regulate dosing for oral syringes.
The medical technologies were developed by undergraduate stu-
dents involved in Rice 360º: Institute for Global Health Technologies,
which is led by the BioScience Research Collaborative’s Rebecca
Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering
and founder of the Beyond Traditional Borders initiative. The teams
were advised by Epstein and Maria Oden, professor in the practice of
engineering and director of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.
16 rice.edu/ricemagazine
Counterclockwise, left to right:
Michael Pandya, Jocelyn Brown,
Katie Schnelle, Haruka Maruyama
and Joseph Chang
This is the second consecutive year four teams made up of four Rice
MBAs have traveled to Rwanda with faculty members to commercial-
ize their innovative health technologies, but it is the first year that Rice
360º undergraduates joined each team as technical advisers. “Working
directly with the undergraduates — the inventors of the devices — was
helpful,” said Will Pike, an MBA student on the infantAIR team. “Jocelyn
was amazing. She fit into our group perfectly, and her technical ex-
pertise was complementary to our understanding of business. She was
probably our best presenter.”
The teams learned a lot from the Rwanda businesspeople they
were working with. “We met with some of the highest officials in every
institution related to health care there,” said Vani Rajendran ’10, the
engineering undergraduate for the Life Packs Inc. team. “Going to the
country was essential in helping us understand the need for our prod-
ucts while also getting a sense of how easy or difficult it would be to
implement the technologies.”
For the infantAIR team, that task will be a little easier thanks to its
success in the business plan competition, which netted it about $11,750,
including first prize for Best Social Venture.
—Jessica Stark
Watch a video of the trip to Rwanda:
›› › ricemagazine.info/62
Read a blog about the experience:
›› › ricembasinafrica.blogspot.com
Learn more about Rice 360º: Institute for Global Health Technologies:
›› › rice360.rice.edu
 Students

Thresher Wins Two Top-10 Awards

The Rice Thresher won its first Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) award for the
paper’s website and nabbed its sixth consecutive Best of Show award for the
print edition at the spring National College Journalism Convention in Phoenix.
Martel junior Anna Wilde, editor-in-chief Lunar New Year celebration, coverage of the
of the Thresher, and Martel junior Dave Student Association presidential debates and
Rosales, Thresher multimedia editor, were a preview of the 2010 Rice baseball season. In
among some 450 student journalists from the small-school website category for Best of
approximately 80 colleges and universities Show, the Thresher placed eighth.
who attended the convention. Including this year’s honors, the Thresher
In the Best of Show competition for has placed in the top 10 in the ACP’s Best of
weekly newspapers produced at four- Show category for weekly college newspapers
year universities, the competition allowed six times: two first-place awards (2005 and
students to submit one issue from their 2007), two third-place awards (2006 and 2009)
publication. The Thresher was awarded and two sixth-place awards (2008 and 2010).
sixth place for its Feb. 19 issue, which fea- The Thresher has also won a third-place
tured the Vietnamese Student Association’s award for Newspaper of the Year (2001).

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 17

18 rice.edu/ricemagazine
 BY CHRISTOPHER DOW

Have you had a paranormal experience? If so, you’re not alone.

Approximately 70 percent of respondents to recent surveys by
the Gallup Organization, the National Science Foundation, Eastern
Virginia Medical School and the University of Central Oklahoma,
among many others, say they have had an experience that might
be considered impossible.
A pure materialist might declare that all these peo- “I’m just doing what I was trained to do: study-
ple are deluded or are simply experiencing anoma- ing people’s extreme religious experiences,” Kripal
lous brain states that have produced a semblance of said. “People usually think that the study of religion
an altered reality. But therein lies the crux: What is is just about studying encounters with the sacred in
reality? And is consciousness equivalent to neural the distant past, but people have these experiences
activity in the brain, or is it something else? every day, every hour, every minute all around us,
“I think this subject is close to a lot of people’s and they’re often framed as the paranormal. That’s
hearts,” said Jeffrey J. Kripal, the J. Newton Rayzor why the subtitle of the book is ‘The Paranormal and
Professor in Religious Studies. “But we don’t talk the Sacred,’ because I think this is what the sacred
about it.” That lack of discussion is why he wrote looks like in our own era and our own culture.”
“Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and The other element that fascinated him was that,
the Sacred” (University of Chicago Press, 2010). while he has studied Christian and Hindu mysti-
This fascinating and thought-provoking book is cism for 25 years, he’d never heard of any of the
not about whether particular paranormal experi- four authors whose work he covers in the book,
ences are true or false. For Kripal, that’s not the even though their ideas are foundational for re-
pertinent question. Instead, the book is a contem- search into phenomena that have a strong mystical
plation on the intersection of consciousness and connotation.
the material world, wherein the boundaries of both “It was strange and somehow troubling that I’d
are breached to reveal a third or middle realm that never heard of these four gifted authors because
appears to participate in both mind and matter, that means the field has essentially excluded this
subject and object, at the same time. Call it a phi- whole area and focused on more traditional or
losophy of mind based on the paradoxes of real- orthodox religious experiences that are certainly
world paranormal experiences. legitimate enough but that are safely distant in both
One might wonder why a professor of religious time and space,” he said, “Why would we only
studies engages in research on paranormal phenom- study fantastic beings descending from the sky in
ena given that the subject is taboo not only for most 1st-century Palestine or 16th-century Italy but not
organized religions but also within the academe. here and now? If we really want to understand peo-
For Kripal, it’s a logical extension of the research ple’s religious experiences, our own experiences,
he did for his previous book, “Esalen: America and as wild and unbelievable as they appear, are just
the Religion of No Religion” (University of Chicago as important as those of any other time and place.
Press, 2007), for which he interviewed many people Indeed, in many ways, they are more important,
who had these kinds of experiences or who had since our access to them is much more direct, nu-
spent years studying them. anced and reliable.”

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 19

 “Paranormal
experiences
can be
understood
as ‘living
texts’ or
uncanny
stories that
are about
meaning.”
—Jeffrey Kripal

”The Impossible”
Kripal calls the general topic of the paranor-
mal “the impossible” in part because most in-
tellectuals consider these events to be literally
impossible. But he stresses that what is pos-
sible and impossible is relative to cultures and
time periods. “The history of science is filled
with impossible things becoming possible, and
the history of religion is very similar,” he said.
“‘Impossible’ things happen to people all the
time. I don’t call the experiences impossible;
I call these writers ‘authors of the impossible.’
They’re authoring — and authorizing — these
impossibilities in the sense that they’re making
them possible — making them understand-
able — and they’re giving people tools to take
them seriously.”
Our culture, he says, has two principal
venues in which the paranormal is publicly
discussed. One is what he calls the Larry King
Live or the History Channel stream, where a
believer or experiencer faces a skeptic, and
they cancel each other out like matter and an-
timatter. The second is the route taken by sci-
ence fiction, fantasy and comic superheroes.
“There’s this huge hole between those two
that I’m trying to plug into and say these expe-
riences aren’t pure fantasies, although they’re
the source of a lot of fantasies,” Kripal said.
“I’m trying to suggest that they can’t be ac-
cepted or dismissed in the way the believer or
the skeptic do, that they contain both trick and
truth, and that it would serve us well to think
more paradoxically about them. Basically, I’m
encouraging a form of thought that is both–
and, not either–or.”
Kripal breaks “the impossible” into two
major categories. One contains the spiritual
and mystical — which is what his earlier books
are about — and the other the psychical, oc-
cult and paranormal. The first category has
deep roots in the history of religion, while the
other is linked to 19th- and early 20th-century
science. “Researchers into these phenomena
use scientific or parascientific language to talk
about them,” he said. “They reject, for exam-
ple, the term ‘supernatural’ because they think
these events are natural, but we just don’t have
models to explain them. Every culture em-
ploys the scientific understanding of the world
of its place and time, whether it’s accurate or
not, and modern people who express their
experiences of the sacred in paranormal terms
are doing the same thing. They’re not doing
science, though. They’re doing religion with
scientific terms and categories.”
The problem with that, he said, is that
paranormal experiences are not necessar-
ily amenable to scientific analysis. “I’m using
the tools of the humanities to look at a set of
extreme religious experiences that have been
looked at with other methods, but not very
successfully,” he said. “I definitely don’t want
to be heard as being antiscience. I want to be
heard saying that the humanities have some-
thing really important and really interesting
to offer here. Paranormal experiences can be
understood as ‘living texts’ or uncanny stories
that are about meaning.”
Kripal said that when the experiments of
laboratory parapsychologists are successful,
they produce a very tiny statistical anomaly.
The reason the anomaly is small is precisely be-
cause it’s measured in a laboratory. “Whatever
paranormal events are,” he said, “they did not
evolve so that a bored sophomore can look
at playing cards and try to send an abstract
shape to another bored sophomore. They are
about and mean something else.”
Instead, paranormal experiences validate
the viewpoint that reality is neither subjective
nor objective, but both. “These sorts of experi-
ences are clearly subjective in that the brain is
doing whatever it’s doing and culture is doing
whatever it’s doing”, he said. “But things are
happening out there in the physical environ-
ment that are not reducible to brain states, and
we have no way of explaining them with our
present materialist or subjectivist models.”
The Authors
The four authors whose work Kripal covers,
however, have made an attempt to put together
a way of looking at reality that is both subjective
and objective. They are Frederic W. H. Myers, a
19th-century Cambridge classicist who helped
found the Society for Psychical Research;
Charles Fort, the early 20th-century collector
of odd phenomena whose name gave us the
word Fortean; Jacques Vallée, a scientist who
had a hand in developing the first computer-
based map of Mars and creating ARPANET, the
precursor to the Internet, and who worked on
Project Blue Book, the U.S. government inves-
tigation of UFO data; and Bertrand Méheust, a
sociologist and philosopher who has written
about the study of psychical and paranormal
phenomena, mostly among elite intellectuals
in 19th-century Europe.
“Frankly, there’s a lot of nonsense and bad
scholarship in the study of the paranormal,”

20 rice.edu/ricemagazine
Kripal said. “A lot of paranormal phenomena
are fraudulent, and often people misconstrue
or over-read whatever it is they’re experi-
encing. But there also is ground for the true
believer, because that true believer has been
through a dramatic religious or quasi-religious
experience that he or she knows happened.”
Kripal doesn’t think that either of those
two viewpoints are ultimately persuasive for
someone who’s neither an experiencer nor
a materialist. The middle space between the
two is much more creative, allowing agree-
ment that the person really had an experience
but also agreeing that the content of that expe-
rience functions in a symbolic or metaphorical
way. They are not literally true, but they also
are not false. Instead, they signal or signify
something that we are having a difficult time
reading because we are not yet deep or subtle
enough readers. “That’s the method of the
study of religion,” he said. “We don’t believe,
but we don’t dismiss. These four authors im-
pressed me the most as sitting in that space in
sophisticated and subtle ways.”
The Filter Thesis
One of the main problems with literal accep-
tance, Kripal said, is that our experiences and
perceptions of the world are always filtered. “I
think that 99.9 percent of cognitive and senso-
ry function is brain,” he said, “but I don’t think
that consciousness can be completely reduced
to brain function, although that goes against
the orthodox neuroscientific view.”
The “filter thesis,” which goes back to
Myers and his associates, suggests that con-
sciousness is filtered or transmitted by the
brain, not produced by it, and that conscious-
ness is not confined by space or time. This is
why people can have a precognitive dream
or a telepathic cognition. Consciousness, then,
is not restricted to the brain but is essentially
everywhere. When people have these types
of paranormal cognitions, whatever is pour-
ing through the intuitive, symbol-making right
brain is getting immediately translated by the
left brain, with its linguistic, cultural and linear
processing. “To take that translation as what’s
truly out there is a serious error,” Kripal said,
“but it’s also an error to say there’s nothing
out there. Méheust has spent decades with
this stuff, and he does think there’s an X out
there, but the older he gets, the more he’s con-
vinced that the filter through which it passes
is really thick. You get into all sorts of trouble
by accepting what the filter tells you because
that which is filtered is never exactly the same
thing as reality. Consciousness is essentially
my X that is ‘out there’ — and ‘in here’ — but
that always appears to me as something else,
as something filtered, as something encul-
tured and languaged.”
The hypothesis under which Kripal works
basically says that paranormal phenomena
are, in essence, living symbols produced by
a superconsciousness of which we are a part
in order to assist us in creating our own story-
selves. And for him, the self is finally a story
— that is, a string of memories put together to
form a narrative or personal novel, as it were.
“Paranormal events are not arranged through
cause but work like texts through metaphor
and meaning,” he said. “They suggest that the
world isn’t just made of numbers, but it’s also
made of words and stories.”
The idea that the paranormal assists in
“writing us” is difficult for most people to ac-
cept. “Being religious and being written often
are more or less the same thing,” Kripal said.
“Many people want their beliefs written for
them, and they don’t want to question them
The hypothesis under which Kripal works basically
says that paranormal phenomena are, in essence,
living symbols produced by a superconsciousness of
which we are a part in order to assist us in creat-
ing our own stories.
or the world.” Eventually, though, there enters
the realization that we’re being written by our
religions and cultures, and that idea intro-
duces the truly radical notion of what Kripal
calls “authorization,” where we choose to par-
ticipate in the writing. “A paranormal event
suggests that we are engaging in that process
over generations and centuries, and that we
are writing ourselves in some profound way,”
he said. “Not individually, though. This is
where I think the New Age makes a mistake.
I don’t think individuals can create their own
universe. But cultures can. Disciplines can.
And centuries can.”
Filming “the Impossible”
All this is pretty heady stuff for a book, so it
might seem to be a paranormal experience in
itself that “Authors of the Impossible” is be-
ing made into a film. After the publication of
“Esalen,” Kripal’s daughter kept coming home
from a friend’s house and saying her friend’s
father was wondering when the book was
coming out in paperback. Kripal got together
with the friend’s father, Scott Jones, owner of
XL Films, a company specializing in corpo-
rate films. Jones wanted to do a project that
was a little more interesting than a corporate
film, but Kripal had to tell him that “Esalen”
had already been optioned by a film company
in Los Angeles. Then Kripal told him about
“Authors of the Impossible,” which was still in
manuscript form at the time.
“When I read ‘Authors of the Impossible,’
I knew immediately that I wanted to make a
film based on it,” Jones said. “The book is so
powerful and ultimately convincing because
of its broad historical perspective and Jeff’s
subtle, sophisticated, and paradoxical way of
thinking about such things.”
Jones immediately optioned the book.
“What ultimately sealed the deal for me was
that the sheer weight of the stories as they pile
up — together with the striking patterns that
they begin to form — makes it difficult to es-
cape the conclusion that something very real
and very strange is going on,” he said. “If Jeff
is even partially correct, he’s pointing toward
much more than just a new way of thinking.
He’s pointing toward a new way of being.”
“We’re all really excited,” Kripal said.
“We’re trying to make a high-quality docu-
mentary, not just another bad TV episode or
cheesy film on the paranormal. Most of all, we
want to do something provocative, meaning-
ful, helpful and, above all, beautiful.”
The film is in the early stages of produc-
tion, so it has yet to take final form. Or forms.
“It could be anything from a television pro-
gram to a feature film,” Kripal said. “We’re
looking at various distribution channels. We’re
making something to hit the mainstream, but
in the end, we’ll probably also edit a version
for classroom use.”
Along with the film, there is another work
in progress for Kripal: a follow-up volume
titled “The Secret Life of Superpowers.” In it,
he examines authors and artists in popular
culture who have written explicitly about their
own paranormal experiences as the secret of
their creativity and art. “They use these ex-
periences to create art and fantasy that has
punch because it resonates with the impos-
sible experiences of readers and viewers,”
Kripal said. “Science-fiction and fantasy are so
popular because they reflect our own unusual
experiences.”
Kripal doesn’t believe that there is an ade-
quate theory for the paranormal, but he thinks
that if we begin taking very seriously people
who have had these sorts of extreme experi-
ences without buying into the mythical and
cultural frames in which they are expressed,
we have a really good start. “If we approach
these events as profoundly meaningful stories
— essentially as mystical experiences coded
in sci-fi language,” he said, “we’re well down
the road to understanding them and making
the impossible possible.”
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 21

Rice University is not the first place that comes to mind during a conversa-
tion about hip-hop culture. But that may soon change — and, for at least
one night last spring, it already did. Big names from the Houston music
scene converged on campus the evening of March 23, 2010, for five panel
discussions about hip-hop, past and present.
he Houston Enriches Rice Education
(HERE) Project — led by Founding
Director Anthony Pinn, the
Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of
Humanities and professor of religious studies
— organized the event, titled “Celebrating 25
Years of Hip-hop in Houston.” “This anniver-
sary,” Pinn said, “was a prime opportunity to
bring people to campus and have a conversa-
tion concerning what hip-hop has meant to
Houston and to acknowledge the debt that we
owe to cultural developments that have taken
place across the city.”
Since the HERE Project was founded in
2007, its goal has been to advance Rice’s rela-
tionship with the larger Houston community.
HERE also works to enhance faculty research
and undergraduate and graduate education
by augmenting available research materials
and bringing visiting lecturers and noteworthy
speakers to the campus. The hip-hop panels
accomplished all these goals — and more.
Keck Hall’s full house of university students,
staff and faculty listened as the panelists, in-
cluding such celebrities as Willie D, Bun B,
22 rice.edu/ricemagazine
www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Slim Thug and Choice, discussed topics that
ranged from “The Early Days of Houston Hip-
hop: 1985–1989” to “Where Do We Go From
Here? 2006–Present.” The panelists acknowl-
edged the hard work and struggle that went
into making Houston a formidable community
on the hip-hop scene — a difficult road that
paved the way for the popularity of the genre
today. “We had to start from scratch,” rapper
Choice said. “Everything we did, we earned.”
Bun B discussed the inspiration he
found in Texas rappers in the early 1990s.
“I can sit here all day and talk about the
things I’ve done,” the rap artist said, “but
it would mean nothing without the people
who came before me.”
The artists also encouraged the audience
to look to the future of hip-hop and focus on
love of the music. “The only thing that needs
to change,” MC Wicked Cricket said, “is we
need to respect each other.”
A common theme for the event emerged
as artists paid homage to the influence of
James “J.” Prince, founder of Houston’s Rap-
A-Lot Records, as well as to the record label
itself. The evening culminated in the presenta-
tion of the first HERE Project Legacy Award,
which was given to Prince in appreciation of
BY JENNY WEST ROZELLE
his extensive work in the Houston commu-
nity. Prince’s community efforts have includ-
ed building a recreation center in Houston’s
Fifth Ward and making yearly donations of
Christmas toys and school supplies to under-
privileged children. He even helps pay for the
funerals of people in the Fifth Ward whose
families can’t afford the cost.
By funding other record labels, Prince
has helped struggling artists get on their
feet. “There would be no Southern rap with-
out him,” said Aundrea Matthews, the HERE
Project’s assistant project coordinator and a
graduate student in Rice’s religious studies
department.
Prince also has worked to educate the
community about HIV/AIDS. To promote a
healthy lifestyle, he created and markets his
own line of condoms, Strapped Condoms,
which he often gives away at events. He is
a co-sponsor of one of the largest HIV/
AIDS testing events, where more than 15,000
Houstonians are tested every year. Everyone
who gets tested is given a free ticket to a hip-
hop concert that takes place during the multi-
day affair. Prince has been recognized for his
community work, including accolades from
former Houston Mayor Bill White.
Ronda Prince, J. Prince’s sister, presented
the Legacy Award, saying, “James Prince is
one who does not just talk the talk, he walks
the walk. He leads by example for many of us.
I see this man doing every day what a lot of
people will not do.”

The idea for the celebration was generated by
Matthews and HERE Project Coordinator Maya
Reine in connection with Pinn’s Religion and
Hip-Hop Culture in America course. Matthews
took the lead in securing the class’s guest
speakers, and through those conversations the
details of the event took shape.
The course, which explores the reli-
gious dimensions of the hip-hop musical
genre, “gives students a way of thinking
about religion beyond the usual suspects
— churches, synagogues, mosques,” Pinn
said, “and gives them an opportunity to
think about the ways in which religious
images and questions are embedded in
our cultural interactions in very general
ways.” Students examine many aspects of
hip-hop, including its aesthetics — what
people wear, graffiti art and dance — as
well as rap music as the language of hip-
hop. Pinn also teaches his students about
the historical development of rap and how
it fits into the larger continuum of music.
Once the class members have an un-
derstanding of the history, they begin to
focus on the ways in which artists engage
religion in the various types of rap mu-
sic. They discuss artists who have an ex-
plicit religious commitment, such as Sunni
Muslims or members of Christian churches,
and those artists’ personal relationships to
their faith communities and how that gets
expressed in their music. Because some
artists use their songs to critique religious
institutions, the class examines how that
gets played out in their music as well.
Pinn emphasizes the Houston scene
in particular. “We want to give students
a sense of how this happens within the
context of the city they’ll live in for at least
four years,” he said. “In terms of guest
speakers, we want folks who not only are
involved in the industry, but who think
about what they are doing on a larger
level.” In spring 2011, Pinn will co-teach
the class with Bun B, who was a popular
and informative guest speaker during past
iterations of the course.
Pinn developed his interest in the rela-
tionship between religion and hip-hop at
an early age. “I grew up listening to it, so
I had a personal interest in the music. As I
moved into the study of religion, it seemed
clear to me that it wasn’t just preachers
who commented on the religious lives of
folks. There was a generation of people
for whom there was this alternative way
of understanding the world and living in
it. That had deep religious meaning and
consequence.” The course offers students
a way of critically engaging this informa-
tion — information that matters to them
both academically and personally.
During the fall 2009 course, Pinn,
Matthews and Reine realized that the 25th
anniversary of hip-hop in Houston was tak-
ing place in March. It seemed the perfect
time to make an effort to further educate
the entire Rice community about Houston’s
hip-hop culture and to integrate Rice with
that culture. “We decided to do something
that’s a bit larger than the confi nes of the
course to get more people involved,” said
Pinn. “It was also a way to get the larger
Houston community to begin thinking dif-
ferently about Rice.”
Another goal of the evening’s panels was
to initiate an expansive dialogue — outside
of the classroom — about the intellectual
and historical aspects of hip-hop and how it
emerged in the community. The HERE team
hopes to use this information to build an
archive for Rice’s Woodson Research Center
that would chronicle the history of hip-hop in
Houston and in the South. Once completed,
the research would be available to people
worldwide through Woodson’s website.
“What I hope is that the archive will even-
tually influence how we teach, what we teach
and how we do research,” said Pinn. “My goal
is to have undergraduates and graduate stu-
dents doing course work that requires them to
make use of this material and, in that way, to
get an education that is sensitive to their local
situation — that they are in Houston and what
they’re learning ought to have some sort of
impact on and relationship to the city.”
But Pinn’s plans for the archive are even
bigger than the impact it could have on Rice
academics. “This archive will make Rice and
Houston a major destination for researchers.
If we are able to grow the component on hip-
hop culture, it would quickly rival Harvard’s
hip-hop archive and will attract scholars from
across the country. That benefits Houston, it
benefits Rice and it benefits scholarship.”
Know More: ›› › here.rice.edu
Who Knew: ›› › ricewhoknew.info/7
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 23
Human (ities
Interaction
B y
)
C h r i s t o p h e r D o w
When Rice anthropologist Michael Fischer founded Rice’s Center for the
Study of Cultures in 1987, he was seeking to create a bridge between
historians and anthropologists. But time proved that the venture had a
vitality that went beyond interdepartmental collaboration. Known since
2006 as the Humanities Research Center (HRC), it has significantly
expanded its collaborative ties to include almost every school at Rice,
making it one of the university’s most far-reaching scholarly enterprises.

The
Humanities Research Center bills itself as “an agent of intellectual integration
within and beyond the School of Humanities.” “What we want to capture with
that phrase is the very diverse ways in which we create a kind of quickening
environment across the university,” said the center’s current director, Caroline Levander,
professor of English and holder of the Carlson Chair in the School of Humanities. “Despite
Rice’s small size, there’s a tendency for the different areas to be very targeted in thinking
about their intellectual boundaries and for there to be less transinstitutional conversation
and collaboration than there might be. The center plays a very important role in helping
create a broader intellectual flow across the university.”
Melissa Bailar, who graduated from Rice in 1997 with a B.A. in French studies and
stayed to earn a Ph.D. in French studies in 2005, started working as a graduate student
assistant for the HRC in 2001 under then-director Werner Kelber, a professor of religious
studies. Now the HRC’s associate director, Bailar oversees the center’s day-to-day opera-
tions and some of the programs.
“When I started, we had one postdoctoral researcher,” Bailar said. “We now have inter-
nal faculty, external faculty, three postdocs, dissertation fellows and undergraduate fellows.
We’ve always been involved with cross-disciplinary faculty workshops and conferences, but
we’ve extended bridges to many other areas beyond the social sciences, such as the Wiess
School of Natural Sciences, the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Shepherd
School of Music and the School of Architecture. We have many strong and growing ties
beyond the university as well.”

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 25

 New Directions
Much of that expansion is a result of
the efforts of Levander, who took the
reins in 2006. She oversees all of the
major and minor initiatives and repre-
sents the center to constituencies with-
in and outside of Rice. Two of the first
elements to change when she came on
board were the center’s name and its
general focus. “I asked for an outside
review of the center — the first it had
had,” Levander said. “The review pro-
vided the occasion to have faculty and
graduate students think collectively
about what the center was doing, what
its aspirations should be and how it
connected or didn’t connect with other
centers, not only on the Rice campus,
but across the country.”
Levander invited three consultants
to evaluate the center. All of the con-
sultants were directors at peer humani-
ties centers at other institutions: the
Harry Ransom Center at the University
of Texas at Austin, the Center for the
Humanities at Washington University
and the Franke Institute for the
Humanities at the University of
Chicago. One of the main things to
emerge from the review was the idea
that the ambition that faculty had for
the center was much more represented
by the term “humanities center” than
by “cultural center.”
“Humanities centers have been
popular interdisciplinary think tanks
and test beds across the country and
internationally over the last 20 years,”
Levander said. “So the shift in title was
really to acknowledge the center’s role
as part of the transinstitutional human-
ities climate.”
The name change was more than
cosmetic. It also indicated an increase
in aspiration. One new initiative was
the External Faculty Fellows program,
which began about four years ago. The
program, which Bailar said has pro-
duced some great long-term relation-
ships, invites up to four external faculty
fellows to Rice each year. This year,
there were more than 100 applications
for the slots.
“The function is not to recruit fac-
ulty for hire but to bring temporary
invigoration to the university,” Bailar
said. “We look for people engaged
in research that might fulfill specific
needs or whose work doesn’t fit
into established categories.” While
many of these scholars don’t fit
comfortably within traditional de-
partments, they create sparks across
26 rice.edu/ricemagazine
“The HRC is the kind of center that
can facilitate not only faculty inter-
est, but also outreach to the Houston
community and public interest in big
visions. All of this helps raise the
profile of Rice humanities nationally
and internationally.”
—Caroline Levander
departments in exciting ways.
The center’s Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellows program, funded by the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is an-
other initiative that saw growth under
Levander’s leadership, going from one
to three positions. “Postdocs have been
in the center for a number of years, but
they have had less of a role in the hu-
manities than in the sciences,” Levander
said. “We bring in the postdocs who
work in emerging areas, such as Latin
American studies or visual culture, to
spur scholarly community and activity
in key interdisciplinary areas.”
In addition to teaching courses, post-
docs take part in active conversations
that are happening among faculty
across disciplines. One recent HRC
postdoc was a digital humanities spe-
cialist who was instrumental in cam-
pus discussions on digital humanities
and interdisciplinary programming.
Currently, the center would like to bring
in someone with a focus on medical
humanities, an area that engages Rice
faculty from religious studies, philoso-
phy and English as well as people from
the Texas Medical Center.
Student Perspectives
Students also have become a major
focus for the HRC. “Back when I first
started, we were really only about fac-
ulty research, and we did nothing with
students,” Bailar said. “Now, we have
graduate and undergraduate fellows.”
One important student initiative
is the Andrew W. Mellon Research
Seminars, also funded by the Mellon
Foundation. This collaboration be-
tween Rice’s best graduate students
and faculty is intended to increase the
involvement of graduate students in the
center. “The Mellon Seminar program
provides a model for a new generation
of scholars in residence,” Levander said.
“The foundation was very interested in
starting the pilot program at the HRC
because of Rice’s quality, its small
graduate programs and the caliber of
faculty research.”
More recently, the HRC established
the Undergraduate Fellowship Program.
There had been no undergraduate in-
volvement in the center when Levander
became director, and she considered
that a missed opportunity. “A number
of undergraduate students are not only
doing really excellent work in their
disciplines,” Levander said, “but they’re
also interested in connecting what
they’re doing in a department or a ma-
jor to a larger humanities fabric.”
HRC undergraduate fellows have a
lecture series called Big Questions and
Future Directions of Humanities, but
more important, the fellowship pro-
gram provides undergraduates with the
opportunity to connect with faculty and
take part in research. This year, thanks
to requests by undergraduate fellows,
the center instituted a summer intern-
ship for 10 undergraduates who want to
be involved in ongoing faculty research
projects. Students also can assist faculty
in organizing academic events such as
conferences and symposia.
Beyond the Hedges
One of the most exciting of those events
was last fall’s Emerging Disciplines sym-
posium, co-sponsored by the HRC and
the Council on Library and Information
Resources and funded by the Mellon
Foundation. The symposium’s six
speakers, who addressed topics rang-
ing from cultural economy to digital
humanities to music and neuroscience,
drew a standing-room-only audience
from Rice and the larger Houston com-
munity. It also generated a lot of out-
side interest in the HRC.
“The HRC is the kind of center that
can facilitate not only faculty interest,
but also outreach to the Houston com-
munity and public interest in big vi-
sions,” Levander said. “All of this helps
raise the profile of Rice humanities na-
tionally and internationally.” The event
was so successful that the center is
considering hosting another in the near
future, and Rice University Press has
published a book containing polished
versions of the talks.
HRC symposia and lecture series
often become opportunities for hu-
manists to reach out to the broader
Houston community and beyond. A
couple of years ago, the center hosted
“Houston and Katrina,” a public event
that featured Mayor Bill White and
other Houston leaders as well high-pro-
file scholars. “That drew a nice range
of Houstonians onto the campus,”
Levander said, “so we have a number
of those kinds of collaborations going
on with Houston.”
The HRC also extends its outreach
to Houston public schools through its
Public Humanities Initiative, which
takes Rice faculty to classrooms to
speak about what they do — how,
for example, religious studies scholars
think about their subject or how literary
studies scholars read and write about
literature.
In 2011, the HRC and the Houston
Museum of Natural Science will co-host
a traveling exhibit from the Library of
Congress titled “Discovering the Civil
War.” “This is going to be a big draw
with a very synthetic learning envi-
ronment,” Levander said. “We’ll be in
charge of programming, but we’re also
thinking about ways to bring those
visitors from the museum to the Rice
campus through public art installations
and lectures.”
“When I started, we had one postdoc-
toral researcher. We now have inter-
nal faculty, external faculty, three
postdocs, dissertation fellows and
undergraduate fellows. We have many
strong and growing ties beyond the
university as well.”
—Melissa Bailar
Filling Niches
In addition to conferences and sympo-
sia, there are ongoing collaborations
between humanities faculty and those
in disciplines not usually seen in the
company of humanists. One, for ex-
ample, is Technology, Cognition and
Culture, a speaker series co-sponsored
by the HRC, Fondren Library and the
Ken Kennedy Institute for Information
Technology. The series features speak-
ers who address humanities sorts of
questions using technologies develop-
ing out of the engineering department
or, vice versa, approaching engineering
by asking more humanistic types of
questions.
Sometimes these collaborations
blossom into full-fledged programs of
their own. A case in point is a feminist
reading group that originated in the
center in the 1980s. The group then
became the Program for the Study of
Women and Gender Studies, which
in turn morphed into the Center for
the Study of Women, Gender and
Sexuality. Two other examples are HRC
workshops in Asian studies and African
studies. The former became the Chao
Center for Asian Studies, and the latter
is now one of Rice’s new interdisciplin-
ary minors.
“These examples highlight how im-
portant the center is in generating new
kinds of institutional infrastructure that
doesn’t happen within departments,”
Levander said. “Departments are very
much about hiring top-notch faculty to
teach and do research within a particu-
lar department’s requirements, but the
HRC is a rich and malleable place for
cross-departmental and cross-institu-
tional ventures to take shape.”
Levander’s efforts have not gone
unnoticed. In the last five years, the
HRC has become a hot center known
nationally and internationally for do-
ing innovative, collaborative work.
“We’re known for being intellectually
entrepreneurial and very ambitious,”
Levander said. “We’ve gone through
a rapid growth phase, so a lot of our
programs are new, and there’s consid-
erable energy that comes from doing
a lot of innovative work in a relatively
short period of time.”
Levander would like to see the cen-
ter continue to raise Rice’s profile as an
international focal point for humanistic
inquiry. “In some ways, humanities
broadly asks what it mean to be hu-
man in a global era, and what global
humanism might look like,” she said.
“Those are important questions that
we’re asking with ever more energy,
and humanities centers are where those
conversations happen. Houston — a
gateway city to the Americas — is a
very propitious location from which the
HRC can take a leadership role in ask-
ing those questions. It’s not hyperbole
to say that the HRC is a real jewel in
Rice’s crown, and I want it to continue
to have luster.”
Learn more about the HRC:
›› › culture.rice.edu
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 27
Home Is Where the Heart Is
How does one define love? Is it a roaring flame? A passing fancy?
Or an adventure that unfolds over time?
That last description would be a pretty good way to characterize
what Joe and Ann ’80 Hightower share. The Rice professor
emeritus of chemical and biomolecular engineering and his
wife of nearly 30 years have followed an extraordinary path
and touched thousands of lives along the way.
BY MIKE WILLIAMS

28 rice.edu/ricemagazine
F
or 42 years, since about the time
he started at Rice, Joe has been the
steady hand at the helm of Hospitality
Apartments, a Houston institution he
co-founded that gives people of slender means
a free place to stay while being treated, often
for cancer, at facilities in the Texas Medical
Center (TMC).
The Hightowers and a large volunteer staff
have welcomed approximately 6,350 families
from 49 states (all but Rhode Island) and 64
countries and given aid and comfort to fami-
lies facing the most difficult challenges of their
lives. Patients may occupy an apartment for up
to three months while undergoing treatment.
There’s never a shortage of need for
Hospitality’s services. Joe estimated the apart-
ments have been filled “99-plus percent of
the time” over the years. “You could probably
have four projects this big in Houston and just
barely meet the demand,” Ann said. “And then
you would uncover another layer of need.”
To many, Hospitality Apartments are a
critical link to the care they desperately need.
“They’re not posh,” Ann explains,
“but they’re perfectly nice and to-
tally functional, with linens, dishes,
a stove and oven, a microwave,
TVs and access to free laundry.”
Volunteers — many of them
from the Rice community —
maintain the buildings, transport
patients to clinics, keep the office
running and perform dozens of
other tasks that ease the burdens
of resident patients, who occasion-
ally are children. Too often their
tales end in sorrow, but success
stories are legion. Joe displayed a
picture of a young man from El
Paso, Texas, in a cap and gown at
his college commencement. “He
was 2 when he stayed here, and he
wasn’t expected to live,” Joe said.
“Every year since, his granddad
has sent me an update.”
It’s a remarkable story made even more
remarkable by the fact that the Hospitality
Apartments nonprofit has never applied for or
received money from any government agency.
Instead, the organization relies on personal
fundraising efforts by the Hightowers and
friends and the generosity of Houston congre-
gations, private foundations and hundreds of
individual contributors. It has no debt, pays no
salaries and operates each apartment for less
than $10 a day.
Joe was new to Houston in 1968 when
the need for such a facility presented itself. “I
started attending the Bering Drive Church of
Christ, which was fairly new and had several
young professionals with small children,” he
said. “We had bull sessions occasionally on
weekends. The group was half activists and
half philosophers.”
Joe was one of the activists. “I asked the
leaders of the church if they had programs we
could get involved in,” he recalls, “and they
said they wanted us to come up with some
ideas. One of the philosophers suggested that
there might be needs in the medical center
for food, transportation or housing. Housing
seemed to click.”
One of the other members of the congrega-
tion owned an old Army barracks that sat alone
on three lots just across Braes Bayou from the
TMC. The new tax-exempt foundation arranged
Volunteers — many of them from the Rice community — maintain the buildings,
transport patients to clinics, keep the office running and perform dozens of other
tasks that ease the burdens of resident patients, who occasionally are children.
loans to buy the building for $500 and the land
for $49,500. “The barracks had four small, fur-
nished apartments,” Joe said, “and they literally
were held together by paint.”
“Paint and love,” Ann said.
Over the years, the foundation purchased
adjacent parcels of land and erected more
buildings. “There’d be a lull of a year or two,”
Ann said, “and then Joe would get antsy and
think, ‘I wonder who owns that lot?’ He’d track
down the owner, tell the story and figure out
a way to get them to sell him the property.”
MD Anderson bought the original apartments
five years ago to facilitate a planned expan-
sion, and the Hospitality Apartments built a
new 42-unit complex 50 yards to the west on
Bertner Avenue.
When Ann met Joe, he was well into his
career at Rice and had built a reputation as
an expert in catalysis, the process by which
certain substances can be used to facilitate
chemical reactions. He’s noted for his early
work on exhaust control systems that are now
part of every vehicle on the road and earned
the American Chemical Society’s George A.
Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum
Chemistry in 1973.
Ann was a 30-something graduate student
in the same department, but they really met
only when they learned they were born on
the same day 10 years apart.
“We knew each other for the four years
it took me to get my master’s degree, and we
got married the day after I graduated,” said
Ann, who enjoyed a long career as a chemical
engineer at Exxon. Since retirement, she has
volunteered at The Branch School in Houston,
where she has served as president of the board
and has taught nature studies and science.
Joe was, in Ann’s words, “a perpetual mo-
tion machine” until he suffered a mild stroke
in 2005 that slowed him, just a bit. “When I
married him and realized what it was going
to be like,” Ann said, “there were times I won-
dered if I was going to be able to keep up. He
was so busy. He needed less sleep
than I did, and he got more done
during the day.”
Joe continues to teach laborato-
ry experiments for undergraduate
and graduate students at Rice and,
with Ann, sponsors the Ann and
Joe Hightower Superior Award in
Chemical Engineering, the highest
academic award given by the de-
partment to a graduating student.
And on top of it all, for years,
Joe answered calls to the apart-
ments at all hours of the day and
night. “He was basically responsi-
ble for the entire day-to-day opera-
tion,” Ann said. “From Hurricane
Alicia to somebody getting mad at
a neighbor for making too much
noise, Joe would hop in the car or
on his bicycle, go over and fix it.”
Now, two larger apartments at the new
complex are reserved for resident managers
who handle daily operations while their fam-
ily members are in treatment at TMC. They
often stay longer than the three-month limit in
return for their services.
Even with the extra help, the couple
remains committed to the Hospitality
Apartments — a fact the city recognized when
it declared Feb. 15, 2007, as “Joe W. Hightower
Day” in Houston. But maybe the best indica-
tion is the bread.
Joe is the baker of a delicious sourdough
that is another of his pride and joys. “I stopped
baking when I married Joe,” Ann said. “There
was no point. There was no way my bread was
going to be anywhere near as good as his.”
Every new guest at the apartments receives
a loaf on the day he or she arrives. What could
be more loving than a friendly home filled
with the odor of freshly baked bread?
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 29
 By David Kaplan

In its 60 years, Rice Stadium has acquired a lively history. It has been the site of
major sporting events, concerts and John F. Kennedy's announcement of the United
States moon mission. It also hid MOB members on the run from enraged Aggies.

W
hen Rice Stadium, which was briefly known as Houston Staduim, was completed in September
1950, it was an awesome double–decker — a unique feature in those days. If it looked big
from the outside, just wait until you walked inside and saw 40,000 more seats below ground
level. Today, Rice Stadium still makes a fine impression with its stately grace and passageways filled
with breeze and light. There’s a splendid view from every seat, and getting in and out is a snap.
It remains a model stadium, and with its 70,000-seat capacity, it was the city’s largest until Reliant
Stadium, completed in 2002, exceeded it in capacity by 1,500 seats. That last number is ironic be-
cause that was approximately the enrollment of Rice in 1949, when Rice Stadium was conceived.
It might seem odd that Rice would build such a gigantic facility, but Sept. 30, 1950, season opener against Santa Clara University.
the world was a very different place then for Houston sports fans. Facing this hair-raising challenge was a building team com-
In those days, college football ruled, and the Rice Owls, coached by prised almost entirely of Rice graduates. They included architects
the legendary Jess Neely, were legendary themselves — they had Hermon Lloyd ’31 and William B. Morgan ’27 of the firm Lloyd
just won the Cotton Bowl and were ranked fifth nationally. & Morgan and Milton McGinty and Bradford McGinty ’46 of the
At the time, Rice was playing in the 37,000-seat campus stadium McGinty Partnership. Walter P. Moore ’27 was structural engi-
at Main Street and University Boulevard, but the arena was much too neer, and from the mechanical and electrical engineering firm
small for the big games. According to Rice Stadium architect Milton Lockwood & Andrews came Mason Lockwood ’27. Herbert Allen
McGinty ’27, Neely liked the idea of a new stadium with 70,000 ’29 oversaw the project.
seats, and local movers and shakers felt that a booming, postwar Construction began in November 1949 and continued almost
town like Houston needed something on a grand scale. Urged by nonstop using two crews that worked alternate 10-hour shifts. Brown
Neely and others and buoyed by the success of the ’49 Owls, the & Root put up large viewing stands on Rice and University boule-
Rice Board of Governors decided to strike while the iron was hot vards, and people would stop by after work to watch the construc-
and voted to build a new campus stadium. tion. But as with the sport of football, the construction didn’t always
Fabulous news came immediately from Rice trustee George go as planned. During excavation, construction crews ran into a vein
R. Brown, who announced that his Brown & Root construc- of water-bearing sand 20 feet below the surface at the northeast cor-
tion company would build the stadium at cost: $3,295,000. Rice ner of the site. To prevent possible flooding of the arena, they had to
Stadium’s planners gave themselves the almost impossibly short build a clay cutoff dam to channel the flow into conduits.
deadline of only two months to design the facility and a mere As the weeks and months passed, the suspense mounted.
nine months to build it. They wanted to finish in time for Rice’s Would the crews finish on time, or would Rice and Santa Clara

30 rice.edu/ricemagazine
players have to sidestep construction workers? A nervous Rice Besides being graceful and offering a fine view, Rice Stadium
President William V. Houston stopped by the site twice a day to possesses one other extremely important characteristic: It has
seek reassurance. When asked if the stadium would actually be good hiding places. This was a feature that the MOB, Rice’s sa-
ready for the season opener, George R. Brown reportedly replied, tirical marching band, found vitally necessary on Nov. 17, 1973.
“Is it a day or night game?” The MOB so angered the Aggies during the halftime show that,
And just like any exciting game, it all came down to the wire. after the game, Aggie students and alumni waited to pounce on
Three days before game time, workmen were still pouring con- MOB members. The band first hid in the stadium tunnel then
crete; just one day before the game, the last seats were installed; moved to a space under the “R” Room and remained there for
and only hours before kickoff, electricians completed work on the two hours until the incensed Aggies finally dispersed.
scoreboard. But all of that was invisible Rice Stadium also has been the
to the opening game’s 68,000 spectators, site of numerous nonathletic events.
who were dazzled. Rave reviews for the The most historic occurred on Sept.
stadium poured in. The June 1952 issue 12, 1962, when President John F.
of Architectural Forum declared that Rice Kennedy announced plans for the
Stadium “is so well thought out it [is] United States moon mission. JFK
capable of absorbing and discharging a knew his audience well: “Why, some
great number of people at the amazing say, the moon? ” he asked rhetori-
speed of 7,000 per minute.” cally. “Why climb the highest moun-
The beauty of Rice Stadium — both tain? Why does Rice play Texas? ”
in form and function — can be attrib- The stadium also has hosted several
uted to a number of key decisions by rock concerts over the years, includ-
its creators. They decided to drop the ing performances by Pink Floyd, the
lower stands below ground level not Eagles, Elton John, Billy Joel and
only to save on construction costs, but George Strait. The most memorable,
also to make it easier for spectators to though, may have been the first:
climb to upper-level seats. The upper the 1988 “Monsters of Rock” heavy
stands were given a concave shape to President Kennedy delivers his space exploration address in metal extravaganza.
improve the view for spectators at each Rice Stadium Sept. 12, 1962. Rice Stadium hasn’t really
end and to add a graceful touch. The changed much since 1951, but there
main concourse extending around the field was based on a similar have been some renovations. The wooden benches were re-
feature of the stadium in Berlin where the 1936 Summer Olympics placed with aluminum, the end zone seating was eliminated,
had taken place. And there was no track field surrounding the and the stadium’s south end has seen the addition of the John
football field, so spectators could be close to the action. L. Cox Fitness Center and the Owl Club. The Owl Club was de-
In its early days, the stadium drew huge crowds. The average at- signed by Jack McGinty ’57, son of Milton, and the locker room
tendance the first year was almost 52,000, and offices by his brother, Milton
and in 1958, the average was more than
57,000. In ’61, ’62 and ’64, there were
Celebrate the Memories If You Dare! McGinty Jr. ’70, which means that
four McGinty family members — all
individual crowds of 73,000. These sta- Rice grads — have made architec-
dium records were made possible by the Football fans at Rice’s Sept. 25 game against tural contributions to Rice Stadium.
addition of temporary bleachers on the Baylor University will be treated to a special In 2006, Field Turf, a system that
concourses above the end zones. The combines elements of traditional natu-
’61 game was against Louisiana State
halftime show by Rice’s infamous MOB. The ral grass fields with the benefits of a
University, and the other two games performance will celebrate memories shared synthetic surface, replaced the old
featured the University of Texas. The in historic Rice Stadium while offering a few carpet-style surface. In addition, a new
most recent crowd of 70,000 was in 1970 scoreboard complex was constructed
against UT. Attendance began to drop new decorating ideas. above the north end zone. Rising 60
substantially in the mid-1960s, a trend feet above the north concourse, the
that coincided with the rise in popularity Daktronics scoreboard features a video
of pro football. screen that measures 20 feet high by 35 feet
The stadium has wide. Fans can now view in-game entertain-
been home to many ment and information along with video
great Rice games over highlights and features.
the years. Some say At 60, Rice Stadium has aged well, and
the two most exhila- it remains a wonderful place for football
rating were the Owls’ — to date, more than 10,000,000 fans
1957 upset of No. 1-ranked have watched Owls football there. “It was
Texas A&M in front of 72,000 the last great stadium built on a college cam-
fans and Rice’s 1994 thrilling, pus,” noted sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz
rain-drenched 19–17 victory over once said. “It was world-class when they
Texas after 28 straight years built it in the ’50s, and it still is.”
without beating the Longhorns.

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 31

Attaining Sustainability
BY TRACEY RHOADES
In 1995, former Rice President Malcolm Gillis signed the Talloires Declaration,
a 10-point action plan developed by the Association of University Leaders for
a Sustainable Future. His signature represented the university’s commitment
to environmental education and to becoming an environmentally responsible
institution. Now, more than 10 years later, Rice is not only talking the
sustainability talk, it’s walking the walk and making green strides along the way.
Prior to the signing of the declaration, Rice, not unlike many other uni-
versities across the country, didn’t have a dedicated sustainability effort
in place. The university’s first “official” recycling program was begun
in 1972 by student Duane Marks ’74, who used a university vehicle
to pick up glass and cans across campus. When Marks graduated, his
grassroots recycling campaign was not recycled.
Student recycling efforts were intermittent after that. In the 1980s,
the student-run Recycling Club was formed, and glass, cans and
newspapers were collected from residential colleges, Willy’s Pub and
Valhalla. Facilities and Engineering provided an electric cart for the
students to use, and materials were taken to a small shed near the Rice
Media Center, where they were bundled, washed and crushed before
being delivered to a recycling facility. In 1995, Facilities and Engineering
took over the operation and increased coverage to include aca-
demic and administrative departments. Designated recycling
bins were put in place, and recyclables were expanded to
include white paper and cardboard.
Beginning in fall 1998, the Environmental Programs
Steering Committee, funded by the President’s Office, spon-
sored the university’s first environmental intern — Ryan
McMullan ’98 — who evaluated recycling and disposal prac-
tices across campus. By 2000, disposal and recycling services
were consolidated and services for reducing and reusing mate-
rials were incorporated, which marked the creation of the Rice
Integrated Waste Management Services, a partnership between
the departments of Facilities Engineering and Planning (for-
merly Facilities and Engineering) and Housing and Dining.
This consolidation marked the beginning of a more
cohesive approach to sustainability efforts across campus,
and in 2004, the university named Richard Johnson as its
first director of sustainability. Johnson, a 1992 Rice grad-
uate with a B.S. in civil engineering, was charged with
assessing the state of Rice’s environ-
mental practices and ultimately en-
suring that the university could meet
the needs of coming generations. It was
a tall order for even the most seasoned of
environmental crusaders, but Johnson came
fully charged and had the help of a game plan
— the Rice University Sustainability Policy — to
help stoke the sustainability fire.
32 rice.edu/ricemagazine
With a number of initiatives already in place, such as water conser-
vation, a composting pilot project and campuswide recycling, as well
as several centers and institutes with a strong focus on energy and the
environment, Johnson had a solid foundation on which to build.
“When I started, I found considerable support for my work and for
sustainability initiatives across campus,” Johnson said, “but the change over
the past six years has been dramatic. The types of conversations and initia-
tives now under way would not have been possible six years ago.” Johnson
admitted that the topic of sustainability can be challenging for universities
because it requires a high degree of interdepartmental research and collabo-
ration. But Johnson found that the connection between Rice’s curriculum
and the campus is unique. “Students in general are more interested, and
now there are so many ways for them to engage.”
While today’s curriculum includes a more robust offering of
courses across all disciplines directly related to sustainability, the
university began offering a sampling of such courses in the late
1990s. Topics ranged from an independent study that analyzed
the campus composting system to a class that quantified Rice’s
carbon dioxide output to conducting an environmental audit of
Rice and then creating recommendations based on the results.
These courses gave Johnson a starting point from
which to begin expanding Rice’s sustainability ef-
forts. Stepping into the classroom, Johnson
was able to educate and engage his main
constituents — the students. One of his
courses traces its roots back to one of the
initial classes taught in the 1990s.
“The student projects from those
classes are at the origin of many of Rice’s
environmental success stories,” Johnson
said. “Our next step in the academic
sphere needs to be a holistic assessment
of Rice’s strengths, weaknesses and op-
portunities regarding sustainability edu-
cation and research and then matching
that assessment with what Rice’s aca-
demic peers are doing in order to under-
stand how best to move forward.”
Richard Johnson
 Students

Duncan College, Rice’s 11th residential college,

is one of the most environmentally sustainable buildings
ever built in Houston and received Rice’s
first LEED-Gold rating for new construction.

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 33

Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Conscientious Construction
2006 was a momentous year for Rice. The Rice Board of Trustees
adopted the Vision for the Second Century, promoting as one of
its 10 points the addition of spaces and facilities across campus.
Building began in earnest in 2007, but prior to breaking ground on
several buildings, Rice committed to constructing all new buildings
to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. These standards en-
compass a series of guidelines for the design, construction and op-
eration of buildings, including specific building materials, energy
efficiency, water usage and the recycling of construction waste.
This commitment ensured that all new structures and updates to
existing facilities would be built “green” and, as a result, achieve
some level of LEED certification.
To date, eight buildings have been built to achieve LEED cer-
tification guidelines: the BioScience Research Collaborative, Rice
Children’s Campus, the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and
Wellness Center, Brockman Hall for Physics, McMurtry and Duncan
colleges, and the new wings of Baker and Will Rice colleges. Both
the Children’s Campus and the Rec Center have already achieved
LEED-Silver, and a ninth structure, the Oshman Engineering
Design Kitchen (formerly campus’ Central Kitchen) was Rice’s first
renovated building to be awarded a Gold rating by the council.
Duncan College, Rice’s 11th residential college, is one of the
most environmentally sustainable buildings ever built in Houston
and recently achieved Rice’s first LEED-Gold rating for new con-
struction. Featuring a green roof with low-maintenance plants to
reduce heating and cooling needs, smart controls to automatically
shut off air conditioners and prefabricated bathrooms that reduced
on-site construction waste, Duncan, along with other campus
initiatives, contributed to Rice being named the top environmen-
tal performer among universities in the state of Texas. That’s an
achievement worthy of shouting from the rooftop — the green one.
34 rice.edu/ricemagazine
Cleaning Green
While Rice has made sound environmental decisions about its
outdoor environment over the last several years, one of the uni-
versity’s greatest environmental success stories is often over-
looked — the green cleaning program.
Over the past decade or two, Eusebio Franco, Facilities Engineering
and Planning’s (FE&P) director of custodial and grounds, and his
team of custodians have adopted a new way to clean. Using hot
water, steam and EnvirOx, a general purpose cleaner consisting
of hydrogen peroxide, citrus oil and a biodegradable surfactant,
custodians have eliminated the need for special glass, toilet bowl
or surface cleaners. In addition, cleaning personnel no longer use
string mops, which actually spread dirt instead of eradicating it.
Instead, they use microfiber mop heads that can be laundered and
reused.
“Our custodians tend to stay for decades,” said Johnson, “so
they are not only creating a healthier indoor environment for occu-
pants, they are no longer exposing themselves to harsh chemicals
every day.”
But incorporating these green solutions was just scratching the
shiny surface. Franco wanted his team to understand the “whys” of
cleaning as opposed to the “hows,” so in the mid-1990s, he adopted
Cleanology, a 16-step educational program that teaches custodians
the science of cleaning. The program enables custodians to achieve
different certification levels with the ultimate goal of becoming a
registered cleanologist who handles workspaces without supervi-
sor intervention.
Johnson believes that this approach has a strong social sus-
tainability component to it as well. “The turnover rate for FE&P
custodians is very low in comparison to the profession as a whole,”
Johnson said. “Mr. Franco has created a culture of continuous im-
provement in the workplace for both employer and employee, with
sustainability and health at its core.”
 Greening the Colleges from the Grassroots university measures that have contributed toward a reduction in
residential college utility usage by 5 percent. In dollars, that’s a
Rice’s EcoRep program is backed by some of the greenest stu- savings of $170,000 — more than $10K per college.
dents — students who see red if their peers aren’t paying heed With the addition of Duncan and McMurtry Colleges — build-
to Mother Nature. ings that meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards —
Rice students now have structures that support a sustainable life-
style. To capitalize on these new environmentally friendly spaces
What began as a pilot program in fall 2006 with only one college and more directly address student practices within these buildings,
and a single student representative has evolved into a full-blown the EcoReps turned up the heat in November 2009 with the launch
sustainability movement that now encompasses all 11 residential of the Green Dorm Initiative (GDI).
colleges and employs a team of EcoReps — students who are The GDI, the first program of
guided by the ambitious mission to reduce the university’s envi- its kind, was based on the LEED
ronmental footprint. “EcoReps are like entre- program’s point system for certify-
Initiated by the departments of FE&P and Housing and Dining,
the program grew — greener and greener — when an Envision preneurs in a sense. They ing buildings with gold, silver or
bronze status. After an initial evalu-
Grant provided the necessary funds to support projects focused
on sustainability. The Office of Sustainability added support for have a network of fellow ation, participants were given a pre-
liminary certification based on their
EcoRep salaries, while Housing and Dining allocated “green funds”
for each residential college. Less than two years later, the program
EcoReps and access to answers. They were then asked to
keep a log for two weeks to track
went from one to nine EcoReps, with two more EcoReps represent-
ing Duncan and McMurtry Colleges debuting in fall 2010.
resources, so there is a how many times they did laundry,

lot of opportunity to be
how long they showered, what tem-
“The idea for the program came from the Greening of the perature they kept their rooms and
Campus conference held at Ball State University in 2005,” said
Johnson. “Other universities had had success with the program, successful. Plus, I give so forth. At the end of the two-week
period, participants were surveyed
and it seemed like a good match for us given our residential col-
lege system.”
them considerable space again to gauge improvement in their
habits.
Johnson, who oversees the program and employs one student
per college, recruits EcoReps in the spring so that they hit the
to take an idea and put Rebecca Sagastegui, lead
EcoRep who helped get the GDI
ground running in the fall when the semester begins. While all it into action in their off the ground, said, “We have not
conservation ideas are encouraged, the program thus far has seen
several initiatives come to fruition, including utility reduction, recy- respective colleges.” yet attempted to quantify the results
of the initial program in terms of en-
cling and environmental education. —Richard Johnson vironmental impact, but in the end,
“EcoReps are like entrepreneurs in a sense,” Johnson said. all colleges participated and 120
“They have a network of fellow EcoReps and access to resources, certifications were issued — 24 gold, 65 silver and 31 bronze.” With
so there is a lot of opportunity to be successful. Plus, I give them some modifications, the program will be implemented again this fall.
considerable space to take an idea and put it into action in their “We want students who are self-starters, and fortunately we
respective colleges.” have many creative students full of ideas on how to green their col-
So far, that philosophy has worked, with energy efficiency at leges,” Johnson affirmed. “And with green funds and the support
the top of the savings grid. Since the program’s inception, EcoReps of the sustainability office, college budgets and various student-
have gone door-to-door and replaced more than a thousand in- oriented grants, we can usually find a way to take an energetic
candescent light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent student’s idea and turn it into a success story.”
light bulbs. That simple step was just one of several student and

BioScience Research Center Rice Children’s Campus

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 35

 From Institute
BY J O H N B O L E S

On July 1, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the name change

of the Rice Institute to Rice University. Why did that change occur?

W
hen William Marsh Rice and six of his close associ- At that time, most colleges and universities were primarily teaching
ates wrote out the charter of incorporation in May 1891 institutions, with little attention on the part of either faculty or students
establishing the William Marsh Rice Institute for the to fundamental research. In academic circles, the word “institute” had
Advancement of Literature, Science and Art, the word come to mean an organization devoted to research, which Lovett felt
“institute” was apparently chosen for its generic meaning of an organi- was the lifeblood of the emerging universities that he had observed
zation for the promotion of a cause, although the precise nature of the on his round-the-world trip. In his address titled “The Meaning of the
institute so formed was unclear. Perhaps in recognition of that lack of New Institution,” delivered Oct. 12, 1912, at the conclusion of the formal
clarity, the charter provided that the trustees could retitle the institu- opening ceremonies, Lovett was specific: “The educational programme
tion and have it “known by such name as [they] may in their judgment of liberal and technical learning now being developed may justify the
select.” The trustees apparently did not reconsider the name, and when designation ‘institute’ as representing the functions of a teaching uni-
Rice’s first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, versity of learning, and, at least in some of
arrived from Princeton, he emphatically af- its departments, those of the more recent
firmed that name because he had bold am- research institutions founded in this coun-
bitions for the new institution. In academic circles, the word “institute” try and abroad.”
The Rice charter is a vague document in Here and elsewhere, as in the wording
many ways, and it was unclear to the trust- had come to mean an organization devoted of the Rice diploma, Lovett often described
ees after the death of Mr. Rice in 1900 pre- to research, which Lovett felt was the life- Rice as a university, but the technical name
cisely what should be the shape of his insti- institute telegraphed the importance of
tute, for the charter called for “maintaining blood of the emerging universities that he research.
scientific collections; collections of chemi- As the Rice Institute matured, it added
had observed on his round-the-world trip.
cal and philosophical apparatus … artistic new departments, new majors and new
models, drawings, pictures and statues”; the programs, especially after World War II,
establishment of a library open to the pub- when two significant spurts of building and
lic; and the “establishment and maintenance growth of the graduate programs broad-
of a polytechnic school,” presumably at the secondary level. Nowhere ened Rice’s academic purpose. This growth spread beyond several
were the words “college” or “university” mentioned. departments in the natural sciences and especially strengthened the
Once Lovett assumed the presidency, he infused a purpose and humanities and social sciences. By the 1950s, the word “institute” was
vision into the charter that focused on the institute becoming a mostly associated with research programs in technical fields, and the
major university complete with a distinguished faculty, a handsome word “university” had come to mean institutions of higher education
campus, talented students and a program that combined a strong with undergraduate and graduate training at the doctoral level in a wide
commitment to research and scholarship with a dedication to teach- variety of fields, selected professional schools, and a strong commitment
ing. Research was a key element. to research. In other words, as Rice had evolved since 1912 and the

36 rice.edu/ricemagazine
to University
meaning of “university” had changed, it became evident to the trustees
that “institute” was now a limiting term and not an accurate descriptor
of the institution.
Meeting in special session in December 1959, the trustees identi-
fied a number of ways that the original name Rice Institute was no
longer appropriate: for many people it suggested too narrow a focus,
perhaps even one not having an academic purpose (was its purpose
to promote the cultivation and consumption of
an edible grain?), that could mislead prospec-
tive faculty, students and even foundations
about the nature of Rice. It also limited the
ability to bring attention to new programs in
the humanities particularly and to attract the
best graduate students, and it compromised
fundraising because of its perceived limitations
in offerings. Finally, it complicated the ability John Boles
to develop within the institution new research
initiatives that more properly deserved the title
“institute” — prescient of the later develop- After gauging the overwhelmingly positive re-
ment of many institutes within the university. sponse of students, faculty and alumni, which con-
For those reasons, the trustees an- firmed its original judgment, the board of trustees
nounced in the January 1960 issue of the decided in March to go forward, and on April 6, 1960,
alumni magazine, Sallyport, that they the trustees approved and filed with the secretary of
were considering a name change from the state in Austin the proposed name change, to take ef-
William Marsh Rice Institute to the William fect July 1, 1960. The new name accurately described
Marsh Rice University. The executive board the university that Rice had become in the almost
of the Association of Rice Alumni had been 50 years since it opened for classes — the real uni-
informed of the discussions under way and versity that Edgar Odell Lovett had envisioned and
approved the name change. Sallyport maga- described in his foundational address, “The Meaning
Dedication plaque inside Lovett Hall's Sallyport
zine sketched the history of the university of the New Institution.”
and documented Lovett’s constant use of
the term “university,” and it published endorsements by the presi-
dent of the alumni association and by trustee H. Malcolm Lovett, —John Boles is the William P. Hobby Professor of History and author of
who recalled how often he had heard his father refer to Rice as “University Builder: Edgar Odell Lovett and the Founding of the Rice Institute”
a university and how certain he was that the founding presi- and “A University So Conceived: A Brief History of Rice.”
dent, were he still alive, would approve of the change. The Rice
Thresher supported the name change in a Jan. 16, 1960, editorial.

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 37

 Conversing with
M usic
The sign in the foyer of the Texas Children’s Hospital
reads, “Heal Sick Children,” but on this particular
morning, the healing isn’t medical. Instead, it’s in
the soothing notes of George Frideric Handel’s
“Passacaille” played by a chamber music quartet.
Young patients — some in wheelchairs, some in their parents’
arms — pause to listen to the music, and they’re obviously en-
chanted. One boy waves his hands in the air as if conducting an
orchestra, and a girl, listening to the violin, says, “It’s singing.” A
2-year-old boy with a heart condition sits with his father on the
couches across from the musicians. Mesmerized by the music,
he cries out in delight. His father smiles and says, “He didn’t re-
alize it was being played by real people.”
The real people in the quartet are volunteers from the chamber
music outreach group of the Michael P. Hammond Preparatory
Program at Rice’s Shepherd School of Music: String Performance
Outreach Coordinator Rose van der Werff on violin and gradu-
ate students Emily Herdeman ’10 on violin, Morgen Johnson ’10
on cello and Amy Mason on violin. The group
plays at nursing homes, hospitals and schools
in an effort to bring a little joy to those who
need it most. “It’s wonderful to
As the last notes of “Passacaille” fade, watch the faces
the performers pick up the pace with Louis
Chauvin’s “Heliotrope Bouquet,” an upbeat of the people
ragtime piece. who walk by.
“It’s wonderful to watch the faces of the
people who walk by,” said Lauren McLaughlin, Every single one
volunteer coordinator at Texas Children’s lights up when
Hospital. “Every single one lights up when
they hear the music, and you can see a sense they hear the
of joy and calm wash over their entire being. music, and you
After they hear the group, they tell others they
must go and listen. It’s simply beautiful.” can see a sense
This sense of well-being created by music of joy and calm
is something that the musicians strive to foster
in children, and the outreach performances wash over their
are just the tip of the iceberg. The main thrust entire being.”
of the Hammond Preparatory Program is
noncredit private instruction in composition,
theory, woodwinds, harp, piano, voice and
strings for students in grade school through
high school. In 2009–10, more than 30 students were selected
to participate — enough to support 11 chamber music groups.
Auditions are held at the beginning of the school year, and the
classes are taught by Shepherd School graduate students. The
38 rice.edu/ricemagazine
By Leslie Contreras Schwartz
program is funded through scholarship money from the Brown
Foundation.
“The advantages of music study through our program are many
and include exposure to concerts, music theory, monthly recit-
als, chamber music experiences and top-notch instruction,” said
Virginia Nance, director of the Hammond Preparatory Program and
lecturer in music. “All those involved in the program take great
pride in this work and great joy in bringing the love of music to
young people.”
The involvement of children who are younger than average in
such programs makes the program unique among similar efforts
around the country. “Playing chamber music at this age is unusual
to begin with,” van der Werff said. “Also, the more voices you have,
the harder it is to fit them together.”
Johnson, who graduated in May, worked
with a group that included high school-aged
students as well as students as young as 8
years old. She tells her students that chamber
music can be compared to the architecture of
a house. “Each instrument has its own special
role,” she said. “The cello is the foundation,
the floor. It needs to be strong and stable for
the other instruments to play comfortably. The
inner voices, the viola and second violin, are
the walls, windows and curtains. They help
make the house a home. And the first violin
is the roof.”
The most challenging part of teaching
young students in a chamber group, however,
is encouraging them to have a musical conver-
sation with one another. “We have to instill the
idea that they’re not playing as an individual
but as part of greater whole,” Mason said. This
lesson is taught through careful explanation of
musical techniques and communication styles.
—Lauren McLaughlin At the last chamber music practice session
of the school year, for example, Mason taught
a trio consisting of Bennett Johnson, 12, on
violin; Brendan Egolf, 10, also on violin; and Devin Gu, 12, on
piano. The trio practiced “Springtime” by Ignaz Pleyel, and after
they played the piece, Mason told them, “I want a nice full beautiful
sound. I want it nice and strong, not shy.”

The trio played the piece again and again until Mason finally
stopped them. “Are you acknowledging the piano’s presence?” she
asked Brendan.
“It’s hard,” Brendan said.
“Does that mean you shouldn’t do it?” she asked gently. She
then showed him how to use body language to communicate ac-
knowledgement of the other instruments.
“What are you trying to say to each other?” she asked. “I want
you to actually have a conversation: a question and an answer.” She
then explained how the piano is “the person who always keeps on
talking” while the violinists respond.
In a room across the hall in Alice Pratt Brown Hall, a second
“Our hope is that students who walk through our doors take with them a lifetime love for music
and will continue to enjoy playing and participating in musical activities for years to come.”
group practiced “Trio Sonata No. 1” by Giuseppe Tartini under the
eye of Herdeman. Like Mason, Herdeman emphasized the impor-
tance of listening to one another as an essential part of the chamber
music experience.
“Be sure to keep matching parts of the bow,” she told the stu-
dents: Lauren Huang, 12, on violin; Ethan Le, 12, also on violin; and
Kevin Le, 10, on cello. “It’s risky to be too fast,” she said when they
finished the four-minute piece. “It might be good to sing a part in
your head. Pick a tempo that feels good, and watch Lauren’s bow.”
After the students gave the piece another try, Herdeman told
them to use speed and pressure to make up for forte and add a little
bit of weight. The graduate student instructors’ musical sophistica-
tion and their use of these sorts of technical issues are elements
that Ethan and Kevin’s father, Hung Le, likes about the Hammond
Left to right:
Emily Herdeman,
Amy Mason,
Morgen Johnson
and Rose van der
Werff
Preparatory Program. His sons have been in the program for four
years.
“It’s nice for them to play with other kids,” Le said. “It develops
a different set of skills than regular orchestra playing. There is a
back and forth. I think they’re able to listen better. It improves their
intonation and tempo.”
Brendan’s parents, Thomas and Regine Egolf, agreed. “The
chamber music group gives young children a team setting and
tunes them into the performance of the team,” Thomas said. Regine
appreciates the fact that her son gains experience in playing not
only in a chamber group, but also in a concert hall. “You don’t get
those kinds of experiences in private lessons in a studio,” she said.
—Virginia Nance
While musical communication can be difficult to teach to
younger students, Herdeman said, it can be taught through concrete
instruction. And the ideas imparted by musical communication can
carry over after the class is finished. “The students can learn im-
portant lessons from music and apply them to other aspects of their
lives,” she said. “I really try to cultivate their confidence to have
opinions and encourage positive communication.”
“Our hope,” Nance said, “is that students who walk through our
doors take with them a lifetime love for music and will continue to
enjoy playing and participating in musical activities for years to come.”
Learn more about the Michael P. Hammond Preparatory Program:
› › › music.rice.edu/preparatory
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 39
 Magical Grottos
When New York artist Andrea Dezsö
was growing up in Romania during
the 1970s and 1980s, travel outside
the country was not possible. And
for Dezsö and her ethnic Hungarian
family, it was difficult to travel even
within the country. These were the
years of Communism, Ceauşescu
and the Cold War, and books be-
came her means of mental escape.
Today, Dezsö is known for her own
“tunnel books”: boxlike objects in
which she layers delicate, intricately cut
paper forms to create dimensional, nar-
rative scenes. Rice Gallery Director Kim
Davenport and assistant curator Joshua
Fischer fi rst saw Dezsö’s intimate 6-by-
3-by-7-inch books in a group show at
New York’s Museum of Arts and Design.
Completely enamored by the work,
Davenport and Fischer asked the art-
ist if she would be interested in doing
something on a larger scale.
Dezsö was game, and the resulting
Rice Gallery installation, “Sometimes
in My Dreams I Fly,” was as hauntingly
lovely as her other work, despite being
44 feet long by 15 feet high. Using the
same techniques she employs to create
her books, Dezsö constructed miniature
worlds behind the expansive glass wall
of Rice Gallery.
Dezsö selectively blacked out the glass
wall of the gallery with paint, leaving
“windows” to reveal her environments.
40 rice.edu/ricemagazine
Dezsö selectively blacked
out the glass wall of the
gallery with paint, leaving
“windows” to reveal her
environments. The artist
spaced out rows of foam
board walls behind each
window and cut out ever-
decreasing openings into
them, producing a grotto-
like effect.
The artist spaced out rows of foam board
walls behind each window and cut out
ever-decreasing openings into them,
producing a grottolike effect. She then
drew scores of different figures and
structures, laser-cut their paper silhou-
ettes and attached them to various layers
of the board.
In these glowing, multilayered
scenes, fanciful creatures cavor ted
among exotic flora and otherworldly
architecture. Figures were caught in the
act of climbing, swimming or falling. A
multi-armed humanoid perched on an
outcropping while a cluster of dendrite-
like figures tumbled beneath. Strange
structures like water tower/spaceship
hybrids rose from the ground, a row of
“power line” stanchions receded into
the distance and giant, decorative gears
were poised to rotate for some unknown
purpose. Each cave glowed with gradat-
ed color — emerald greens, deep blues,
rich purpley reds.
Dezsö’s work is akin to the time-
honored tradition of set design, and
with “Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly,”
she combined simple materials — board,
paper and light — to create a vision that
was absolute magic.
—Kelly Klaasmeyer
See more images of Andrea Dezsö's installation:
›› › ricemagazine.info/ 55
Video excerpts from the opening gallery talk:
›› › ricemagazine.info/ 5 6

Small Room,
Big
Ideas
Rice’s newest art space may be only the size of an average bedroom, but
the interest it’s sparking across campus is larger than its name implies.
Matchbox Gallery, the creation of
Christopher Sperandio, assistant professor
of visual and dramatic arts and head of the
studio art program, is Rice’s first student-run
gallery. “Not having a student-run exhibi-
tion space was a clear lack in our program,”
Sperandio said. “It was very obvious to me
that such a space, properly run, would in-
vigorate the visual arts on campus.”
The mission of the gallery is to provide
a unique opportunity for motivated students
to direct, curate and manage a flexible exhi-
bition space for young artists while engag-
ing the arts at Rice with the greater Houston
community. The gallery — which is located
in Sewall Hall and opens onto the Sewall
sculpture courtyard — welcomed its first
exhibition Sept. 29, 2009, with then-junior
Erin Rouse’s ’11 “To Uncle Buddy, with love.”
“Erin’s installation kicked off the
Matchbox idea really well,” said Logan
Beck, a visual and dramatic arts senior and
the gallery’s founding director. “She filled
the space with balloons and streamers, and
it ended up looking like the remnants of a
party that you weren’t invited to. That open-
ing was interesting because people would
ask where the art was, and I’d just point to
the little black room filled with balloons. It
altered their expectations and their percep-
tion of what art can be.”
The success of that first installation has
led to six other exhibitions in the fledgling
gallery, with more to come. “Giving a gallery
space to our students to run has resulted in
an exciting series of exhibitions attended
by the general university population and
those from ‘outside the hedges,’” said Brian
Huberman, chair of the Department of
Visual and Dramatic Arts and associate pro-
fessor of visual arts. “A new face has been
given to the visual and dramatic arts — one
that states that the making of art is alive and
well on campus and, in the words of com-
poser Edgar Varèse, ‘refuses to die.’”
The mission of the gallery is to provide a unique opportunity for motivated students
to direct, curate and manage a flexible exhibition space for young artists while
engaging the arts at Rice with the greater Houston community.
The first show of the spring semester was
Nico Gardner’s ’10 “Intersections: Houston.”
Gardner, a Rice senior at the time of the ex-
hibition, built a rough map of Houston using
wire and then hung string in varying lengths
from the wire. The length of the string cor-
responded to the frequency with which he
drove on that street. Afterward, he projected
two videos that he filmed while driving
those streets onto the string, which created
a beautiful, ghostly effect. Other exhibi-
tions have utilized equally varied mediums,
from tiny drawings hung on the walls with
magnets to LCD picture frames that slowly
morphed images, causing the pixels that
made up each image to interact.
“I think the strength of the space is in its
small size and the fact that there is room for
people to hang out in the courtyard,” Beck
Arts
Next at
Rice
Gallery
Rome Prize winner
Sarah Oppenheimer,
known for her
aesthetically sleek and
perceptually startling
installations, will
alter the Rice Gallery
space with a hollow,
winglike form that will
span nearly 60 feet,
dramatically bisecting
the gallery as it rises
from the floor and
pierces the building
exterior.
said. “The space can be filled fairly easily by
a young and budget-conscious artist. It is a
place for experimentation that one doesn’t
find anyplace outside of the university.”
In October 2009, Matchbox won a
$2,500 Leadership Rice Envision Grant,
which has helped fund structural improve-
ments to the gallery space. The Envision
Grant program provides start-up funding
for projects that have a positive impact on
Rice and the community. Matchbox also
is supported by the Department of Visual
and Dramatic Arts and the Rice Public Art
Program. The gallery, for which Rouse was
named director for the 2010–11 academic
year, is exploring opportunities for addi-
tional private funding for renovations and
operating costs.
“Matchbox has been embraced by the
faculty and students as a vital part of our
program,” said Sperandio. “The credit of its
success, however, is due to Logan Beck as
well as to the individual artists who’ve ex-
hibited. At its heart, this is a student initia-
tive. The faculty and staff have been very
respectful of the students’ desires, and in
return, the students have done a terrific job
of making and installing work that’s exciting
to be around. We hope that Matchbox will
continue for a long, long time.”
—Jenny West Rozelle
Learn more: ›› › mtchbx.com
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 41
 Postapocalypse
The
According to Cronin
By Jessica Stark
It’s not often that a father gives his daughter a
postapocalyptic world filled with bloodthirsty
vampires, but to be fair, she gave him the idea.
“She wanted me to write a book about a girl who
saves the world, so that’s what I did,” Professor
of English Justin Cronin said of his latest creation
and this summer’s hottest book, “The Passage.”
“Simply put, though, I would not have written
the book had I not moved to Houston. Some of
that has to do with Rice and some of it has to do
with the kind of place that this city is — the way
you interact with it and the real variety of people
you get to know here.”
“The Passage” — the first volume of a tril-
ogy — chronicles the journey of an orphan girl as
she becomes the 13th subject in a covert govern-
ment experiment that has gone terribly awry and
spawned a viral epidemic that transforms ordinary
men and women into vampire-like creatures. One
hundred years after the outbreak, the girl is only a
teenager and wanders into a threadbare colony of
human survivors on a decimated North American
continent. Together she and a group of survivors
embark on a mission to save humankind.
Billed as an epic tale of love and loyalty, friend-
ship and sacrifice, set against a devastated world,
“The Passage” does not conform to any genre. It’s
equal parts horror and coming of age, love and
war, and science fiction and history.
“It’s all these things, but it’s also a Western,”
Cronin said. “It has two runaway trains, guns and
ghost towns, and an almost-covered wagon. It’s a
story of the pioneering sensibility and going West
— a story of America.”
42 rice.edu/ricemagazine
Going West
Cronin knows what it’s like to go West. After 22
Billed as an epic years of living within the boundary of the Northeast
Amtrak corridor, where “what was between New
tale of love and York and Boston was planet Earth, and everything
loyalty, friendship else was a poor imitation of reality,” he took a job
teaching high school in Hawaii. His next adventure
and sacrifice, was touring through Europe. And then he embarked
on a life in California.
set against a “I drove across the country for the first time
when I went to California, and in a sense, I never
devastated world, returned,” he said. “By accident or design or both, I
am a member of the tribe that leaves home.”
“The Passage” He said he spent the past 25 years of his life
does not conform trying to pry himself loose from New England pro-
vincialism to experience more of the country. That
to any genre. It’s has paid dividends in his writing. Everything in “The
Passage” is based on something real. He has driven
equal parts horror every mile mentioned in the book, and some of the
locations are based on places he’s known particu-
and coming of larly well, like Houston.
“I’m writing a book about real places,” he said.
age, love and “It’s not some mythical America that I’m using. It’s
war, and science the real one. So places have names. Highways have
route numbers.”
fiction and Cronin said that Houston will become even more
prominent in the second installment of the trilogy
history. and that after a main character’s initial ambivalence
to Texas, it turns out that it’s Texas that saves the
world.

Three Parts
From the beginning, Cronin knew that the
story his daughter inspired him to write would
be a long one. He imagined it as a very large
novel broken into three parts. “It’s the old-
est story structure known to man,” he said.
“Beginning, middle, end. Childhood, adult-
hood, old age.” Only he aimed for each book
to be a satisfying contained object that can set
its own terms and not simply a continuation
of the story.
Cronin himself seems divided into three
parts: the family man, the teacher and the
writer. And he credits Rice University with al-
lowing him the opportunity to live out each of
those characters fully. “I owe a great personal
debt to Rice,” he said, “because it came along
just when I needed it.”
Cronin had been carrying a heavy teach-
ing load at a small college in Philadelphia and
didn’t have much in the way of time off. He
spent many nights staying up until 3 a.m. to
make time for fiction writing and his assign-
ments as a “writer for hire.” He recalls a mo-
ment in the midst of scrambling like crazy for
every dime when he realized he was serving a
death sentence of sorts.
“I realized I wasn’t going to be able to
keep doing that forever,” he said. “Because
I wasn’t going to stop being a dad, and I
couldn’t stop being a teacher, the thing that
would have to take the hit was the fiction. And
then Rice came along and said, ‘Here’s how
you balance it.’”
Encouraging Student Writers
Cronin had time to write again, but he also
made time for Rice’s creative writing pro-
gram development. Working with then-Dean
of Humanities Gary Wihl, Cronin helped the
school establish several new writing-related
positions and programs, including a position
that brings a new visiting writer to Rice each
year. Wihl, Cronin and Professor of English
Susan Wood created the Parks Fellowship in
2004, which annually brings a new writer-
in-residence from the prestigious Graduate
Program in Creative Writing at the University
of Houston to Rice to teach for a year.
The following year, Cronin helped his stu-
dents establish the literary magazine R2: The
Rice Review as a way to help young writers
get their work out into the world and learn the
process of getting published.
“It’s the hardest thing in the world to
publish your first story,” he said. “That is a
mountain to climb. And nothing compares
to it. There’s no day quite like that one. My
first publication — that was the day I became
somebody else.”
ON THE Bookshelf
Whether “The Passage” changes Cronin 15 pages, and you will find yourself captivat-
remains to be seen. He is still a family man, ed; read 30, and you will find yourself taken
first and foremost, still a teacher and still a prisoner and reading late into the night. It had
writer. Though his teaching has taken a back- the vividness that only epic works of fantasy
seat the past few years so he could fulfill his and imagination can achieve. Read this book
publishing responsibilities, he remains stead- and the ordinary world disappears.”
fast in his commitment to Rice, building the With such success on the horizon, Cronin’s
creative writing program and helping young world might never be ordinary again, but he
writers. hopes that some normalcy will return and that
“This whole experience has impacted my someday he can get back to teaching.
view of a number of things, but not of how “I love the time I have spent with Rice stu-
you learn how to do this,” he said. “Because dents,” Cronin said. “They’re energetic, great
of the new destination, the path I went down self-starters and wonderful learners with all
has suddenly changed a bit, but that doesn’t the virtues of youth.”
mean I started from a different place. What I He is quietly rooting for another Rice con-
think about writing and learning to write has nection, too.
not changed at all.” “I hope my kids go there. Rice is a rare
While Cronin hopes that his success with place with brilliant faculty who are the best
“The Passage” inspires his students, he also in their fields actually teaching small classes.
fears it could give young writers a false sense And it’s a small community in a big, culturally
of security on a road filled with detours and rich and diverse city. I have yet to find a better
potholes. thing going.”
“Writing has always been an impractical
career choice in the sense of why you choose Read “The Story Behind ‘The Passage’” by Justin Cronin:
a career,” he said. “It’s a cobbled together ›› › ricemagazine.info/ 5 3
existence, an improvisational existence. And
success makes that look easy. Like it didn’t “The Passage” website:
take 25 years. Like someone waved a wand
›› › enterthepassage.com
and, alakazaam, you’re a star.”
YouTube interview with Justin Cronin:
Building the Buzz
›› › ricemagazine.info/ 54
About the same time that Cronin was pro-
moted to full professor at Rice in 2007, “The
Passage” received major buzz when it was
purchased by Random House’s Ballantine
Books after a heated auction between a
number of publishers. The book sale was im-
mediately followed by a Hollywood auction
won with a seven-figure offer by Fox 2000
for Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions. “The
Passage” will be adapted for the big screen
by John Logan, whose writing credits include
“Gladiator,” “The Aviator” and “Sweeney
Todd.”
The book auction and Hollywood atten-
tion generated so much excitement that the
New York Times wrote a half-page feature on
Cronin’s success. In January, the Wall Street
Journal named “The Passage” one of the
top books being published in 2010.
Amazon.com editors listed “The
Passage” as a top pick for June
2010.
Even famed author Stephen
King weighed in on Cronin’s
work. “Every so often a novel-
reader’s novel comes along: an
enthralling, entertaining story
wedded to simple, supple prose,
both informed by tremendous
imagination,” King said. “Read
Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 43
Beyond Humanism
Jones gives a pithy
What does it mean to think beyond hu- summary of what
manism? Is it possible to craft a mode
of philosophy, ethics and interpretation he has learned not
that rejects the classic humanist divi-
sions of self and other, mind and body, just about trying
society and nature, human and animal, cases, but also
or organic and technological? Can a new
kind of humanities — posthumanities — about how to be
respond to the redefinition of humanity’s
place in which the “human” is but one the most effective
life form among many?
In “What Is Posthumanism?” (University
lawyer possible.
of Minnesota Press, 2010), Cary Wolfe,
the Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie
The key is
Professor of English, explores how criti-
cal thought, along with cultural practice,
understanding and
has reacted to this radical repositioning.
One of the founding figures in the field of
communicating
animal studies and posthumanist theory,
Wolfe distinguishes posthumanism from
with people.
transhumanism — the biotechnological
enhancement of human beings — as he

Lessons for Lawyers

ranges across fields as diverse as bioeth-
ics, cognitive science, animal ethics, and
gender and disability studies to develop
a posthumanist approach to understand-
ing ourselves and the world. Then, us-
ing posthumanist analyses of such di-
verse works as the writings of Temple
Grandin, the poetry of Wallace Stevens,
Lars von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark,” the
architecture of Diller Scofidio +Renfro,
and David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “My
Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” he shows
how this philosophical sensibility can
transform art and culture.
—Christopher Dow
When Perry Mason takes on a new case, he has Della Street
jot down a few notes and sends Paul Drake out to ask some
questions. After looking thoughtful and voicing a couple of well-
chosen phrases, he unmasks the real culprit during a tricky
cross-examination that proves things aren’t always what they
seem. But according to Frank G. Jones ’63, neither are television
and cinematic courtroom dramas.
Jones should know. For more than 40 years, a reputation and doing the best job for the
he has been an attorney with the Houston law client. He also talks about job stress, gaining
firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP. In that time, he experience in the courtroom, deciding what
has tried more than 100 jury cases and rep- sort of — and how much — evidence is perti-
resented a wide range of clients from diverse nent, and how to approach depositions strate-
industries. Among his many professional asso- gically. Voire dire, the process of questioning
ciations and accolades, he has served as chair prospective jurors to determine their back-
of the Houston Bar Foundation and has been grounds and biases before selecting them to
named in “Best Lawyers in America,” “Who’s decide the fate of your client, occupies one of
Who Legal USA” and Super Lawyers maga- the book’s longest chapters. The book winds
zine. Now, in “Lessons from the Courtroom” up with discussions of final arguments and
(Kaplan Publishing, 2009), he gives a pithy settling a case.
summary of what he has learned not just Personably written and filled with exam-
about trying cases, but also about how to be ples and practical advice, “Lessons from the
the most effective lawyer possible. The key Courtroom” should interest any young attor-
is understanding and communicating with ney who wishes to become a more efficient
people. and effective client advocate.
Along the way, he stresses that honesty and
high standards are vital in both maintaining —Christopher Dow

44 rice.edu/ricemagazine
 ON THE Bookshelf

More Mischief The Sunbonnet

In a follow-up to his 2006 “Animal Mischief,” Rob Jackson
’83 charms once again with more impish high jinks in
“Weekend Mischief” (Wordsong, 2010). This collection of
poems geared for children ages 7 to 9 follows the es-
capades of a boy confronting the joys, frustrations and
mysteries of growing up. Written as paeans to youthful
imagination and the excitement of discovery, the poems
show the protagonist coming to terms with the realities
of life, such as how to deal with boredom, why things
are as they are and why it is necessary to accomplish
chores like homework. Instead of being preachy, though,
the poems serve more as a vehicle to help young people
learn to lead a balanced life that melds fun with work
and scampishness with honesty. The poems are color-
fully and amusingly illustrated by Mark Beech.
—Christopher Dow
A lot of hats will protect you from the sun, but few are as
iconic as the American sunbonnet.
Pervasive and fashionable throughout westward expansion in the United
States, the sunbonnet endures as work dress in some regions and else-
where on quilts, dolls and children’s clothing. Costume historian Rebecca
Jumper Matheson ’97 wondered why this particular working-dress acces-
sory persisted long after it passed out of 19th-century fashion, and her
research culminated in “The Sunbonnet:
An American Icon in Texas” (Texas Tech
University Press, 2009). In it, she surveys
the history of the sunbonnet, details
materials and methods of construction,
and delves into what the sunbonnet
reveals about American fashion, cul-
ture and ideas.
Enlivened by oral histories,
numerous archival photos and
sunbonnet patterns, “The
Sunbonnet” is a valuable re-
source for scholars as well
as collectors, re-enactors
and anyone else drawn
to this emblematic
American headwear.

—Christopher Dow

“People of the
Dream: Multiracial
Congregations in the
United States,” by Michael
O. Emerson, the Allyn and
Gladys Cline Professor of
Sociology at Rice, with
Rodney M. Woo (Princeton
University Press, 2008)
“The Faery Taile “Bodies of Knowledge:
Project: Book The Medicalization of
One,” by Christopher Reproduction in Greece,”
Kastensmidt ’95 by Eugenia Georges,
and Jim C. Hines professor and chair of the
(CatsCurious Press, Department of Anthropology
2008) at Rice (Vanderbilt
University Press, 2008)
“Under God: George “The Multidimensional
Washington and the Data Modeling
Question of Church Toolkit: Making Your
and State,” by Tara Business Intelligence
Branum Ross ’94 and Applications Smart with
Joseph C. Smith Jr. Oracle OLAP,” by John
(Spence Publishing Paredes ’79 (OLAP World
Company, 2008) Press, 2009)

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 45

 By David D. Medina • Photography by Tommy LaVergne
Rendon
Enters the
Pantheon of
Rice Baseball
Greats
Being selected the 2010 College Player of the Year by Baseball
America magazine and winning the Dick Howser Trophy —
the Heisman Trophy of college baseball — confirmed what
many Rice fans suspected: Anthony Rendon is one of the
greatest players to put on a Rice uniform — in the same league
as former Owl stars Jose Cruz Jr. ’96 and Lance Berkman ’98.
“What makes Anthony really good,” Rice baseball coach Wayne
Graham said, “is that his whole game is sound. His hitting and
defense are sound, and he’s a quiet leader. He doesn’t do a lot of
shouting, but he says things that are correct.”
The unassuming Rendon doesn’t like to shout off the field ei-
ther, especially about his accomplishments. For a player to win so
many accolades after only two years of playing college baseball
is unusual, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to him. In fact,
Rendon, who is known for being a genuine, happy person who
always seems to play with a smile, can’t even tell you how many
awards he’s won this year.
“I really enjoy the awards a lot but I don’t pay much atten-
tion to that because I don’t want to get big-headed,” he explained.
“Sometimes when I come up here to hit, someone will say, ‘Hey,
congratulations.’ And I say for what? And they’ll say, ‘Well, you won
this and that award.’”
But even if he can’t name them all, the awards are many and
highly impressive. Rendon is the second player in the country to be
named Baseball America’s Freshman of the Year and then College
Player of the Year as a sophomore. The only other player to accom-
plish that feat is Robin Ventura of Oklahoma State University, who
went on to have a stellar professional baseball career after receiving
the awards in 1986 and 1987.
Also, Rendon is only the second player in Conference USA
46 rice.edu/ricemagazine
history to be named Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons.
Rendon has been selected as an All-American by a host of pub-
lications and was named the District VII Player of the Year by
the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. Rendon was
named C-USA Male Athlete of the Year and was honored by Mayor
Annise Parker ’78 with “Anthony Rendon Day” in Houston. In ad-
dition to being selected to play on the USA Baseball Collegiate
National Team during its annual international goodwill tour, he
also was named to the 2009–10 Conference USA Commissioner’s
Honor Roll, which is reserved for student–athletes who compile a
GPA of 3.0 or better. Unfortunately, during the second game of the
international tour against South Korea, Rendon broke his ankle in
a rundown. His surgery, however, came out better than expected,
and Rendon will be ready to play in the 2011 season.
This stream of awards honor a brilliant season for a player who
put up some incredible statistics. Rendon had a batting average
of .394 with 26 home runs, 85 RBIs, 64 walks, an .801 slugging
percentage and a .530 on-base average. In each of the offensive cat-
egories, Rendon improved from the previous year, and his defense,
which some considered lacking, also got better.
In his freshman year, Rendon had 13 errors, which was
partly due to a shoulder problem that lasted the whole season.
“Some sportswriters said that I couldn’t play third base and that I
couldn’t throw,” Rendon recalled. “I said, ‘all right, now I have to
 RICEOWLS.COM Sports
do something about that?’ I took care of my player when he hit four home runs at Houston’s
arm in the fall, and I only made five errors this George Bush High School. In his junior year,
season. I wanted to show up my critics.”
Working hard to improve himself has been “He brings a joy he transferred to Lamar High School, where he
finished his senior year with eight homers and
a way of life for Rendon ever since he was 3.
That’s when he started playing baseball. His fa- to the game that a batting average of .516.
The Atlanta Braves drafted Rendon in the
ther, Rene Rendon, remembers the first day his
son showed an interest in the game. “We used I hope translates 27th round, but Rendon decided to attend Rice.
“I knew that Coach Graham was here and that
to watch baseball games together, and then
one day he grabbed a stick and started hitting
into pro ball. he had a good track record,” Rendon said. “And
Rice offered an excellent education.” He also
some rocks,” the elder Rendon said. “The next
day I bought him a bat, a ball and a glove.”
I have every wanted to be close to home so that his parents,
Rene and Bridget, could watch him play.
By the time Rendon started playing or-
ganized baseball at five, his father had been
reason to believe At Rice, Rendon, who is majoring in sports
management and is a member of a Bible study
training him for almost two years. His father
continued working with him for years, teach-
that he will be group that includes Lance Berkman, has flour-
ished. He grew to 6 feet, increased his weight to
ing him how to play every position and using good for the 190 pounds and became an even better hitter. In
a chalkboard to go over game situations. Rene
Rendon says that his son was afraid of catch- great institution high school, he said, “Pitchers are so erratic that it’s
more difficult to hit the ball. One pitch might be
ing short hops, so he hit him ground ball after
ground ball until Rendon was no longer afraid of baseball.” coming at your head and the next one is nibbling
the outside corner. In Division I baseball, I knew
of fielding them. strikes were coming and I was going to hit them.”
— Wayne Graham
“We practiced for hours and hours and So what’s left for a player who has won the
he never complained because he loved the highest honor in college baseball?
game,” says Rene. “Omaha. I want to play in the College World
Rendon was so good that he always played Series,” Rendon said. “Rice made it to Omaha the
“up,” or in an age group that was a year or two four years before I got here, and we have failed to
older than he was. Because he was the young- make it the past two years. I’m upset. I’ve heard
est on the team, Rendon was also usually the that Omaha is such a great place.”
smallest one — about a foot shorter than his Whether Rendon gets to Omaha will de-
teammates. It wasn’t until he was 11 that the pend on many factors, but one thing is for sure:
diminutive Rendon surpassed 5 feet. Rendon will go very high in next year’s base-
Right around that time, he met the coach ball draft, maybe as high as No. 1. “He brings
who would mold him into a future star. After a joy to the game that I hope translates into
Little League, Rendon went to play for the Texas pro ball,” said Graham. “I have every reason
Thunder, a 12-year-old select baseball team to believe that he will be good for the great
coached by Willie Ansley, who had been the institution of baseball.”
Houston Astros’ number one draft choice in 1988.
“Coach Willie taught me everything,” said
Rendon. One of the main things Ansley taught
Rendon was to improve his attitude. “When
I was younger, I would always get real mad
if I struck out, and I would throw the helmet
and cry,” Rendon admitted. “Coach Willie ex-
plained to me that you are not supposed to
show your emotions too much on the field.”
In hitting, Ansley advised Rendon to stay
inside the ball and not to pull it. “He told me to
throw my hands first and put the barrel of the
bat to the ball, and good things will happen,”
Rendon said. As for defense, Ansley instructed
Rendon to put his glove down to the ground
early when a ball was approaching. “I used to
be a flipper,” Rendon said. “I would put my
glove down right before the ball came.”
Ansley remembers Rendon as “a little guy
with really quick hands and strong wrists.”
He was impressed with Rendon because the
young player would always hit a fastball. “He
had good pop for his size,” Ansley recalled.
In the summer of his sophomore year in
high school, Rendon grew 5 inches to stand Know More:
5 feet 10 inches and weigh 165 pounds. He › ›› ricewhoknew.info/10
was already showing signs of being a great

Rice Magazine • No. 7 • 2010 47

 Sports RICEOWLS.COM

Owls Capture
C-USA Men’s
Tennis Title

The Rice Owls men’s tennis team ended four years of frustration Tachibana, who was playing on one of the back courts, said he had no trouble
as a pair of sophomores battled back to win three-set matches gauging how the match was progressing. “The environment was amazing,” he said. “I
could hear the crowd cheering, and I knew it was coming down to the end. I kept my
and give Rice the Conference USA men’s tennis title with a 4–3 focus after that second set, and then it all came together so quickly at the end.” As
win over the University of Tulsa at Jake Hess Tennis stadium he readied himself for a match-point serve from Marko Ballok, he heard the roar from
April 25 before a raucous, supportive crowd. Court 3 as Garforth-Bles closed out his match. Within moments, he clinched the title
for the Owls in his third set with a 6–4 win that
Sam Garforth-Bles and Isamu Tachibana delivered the clinching points, with Garforth-
”I’m proud of all our secured a berth for the team in its eighth consecu-
Bles tying the match with a win and Tachibana setting off a celebration with his own
tive NCAA tournament two weeks later.
win just seconds later. The 41st-ranked Owls snapped a four-year losing streak to
players and the Given the rugged schedule he laid out for his
Tulsa in the C-USA title match and a five-year run of losses in their conference finale
Owls, there were times this year when Smarr wor-
while running their record to 14–10. effort they gave, but
ried that his team might not be able to continue the
“It was a great college tennis match,” said head coach Ron Smarr. “This was one
of the largest crowds we’ve had out here since I’ve been at Rice, which really helped.
I especially want to streak. But the challenges of that schedule seemed
to hone the Owls’ competitive edge as they ad-
Don’t think that the crowd doesn’t help. It put the pressure on the guys who were left praise the leader- vanced to the NCAA Men’s Tennis Championships
in the match. I’m proud of all our players and the effort they gave, but I especially want
to praise the leadership of our seniors, Bruno Rosa and Dennis Polyakov. They really
ship of our seniors, in Baylor Tennis Center.
Unfortunately, the tennis team’s run of magical
pulled this team together.” Bruno Rosa and moments came to an end there as the 8th-ranked
After the Owls had fallen behind 3–1, Rosa sparked the crowd with an emotional
straight set win over 35th-ranked Marcelo Arevalo. Rosa continuously energized the Dennis Polyakov. Baylor Bears blanked the Owls 4–0. Despite the
outcome, Smarr was proud of the fight the Owls
crowd with his passing shots and admitted that he played to the crowd to help inspire They really pulled continued to show, even as the contest drew to its
his teammates on the other Hess courts.
“The crowd was great, and I wanted to get them excited and loud so that all my this team together.” inevitable conclusion.
“We fought to the end, but they have three
teammates on the other courts would hear them,” Rosa said. “There’s no doubt it —Ron Smarr great seniors, and they really play well at home,”
helped us. I could not think of a better way to end my last match at Jake Hess than
Smarr said. “We have nothing to feel bad about,
to be celebrating with my teammates and holding the championship trophy.” Rosa, a
especially when you think back to when we were 6–8 and down in the mid-50s in the
two-time All American, closed out his home career by extending his unbeaten streak
rankings. This team has a lot to be proud of. They showed great heart and really grew
in singles to 10 matches.
during the year. We turned those 4–3 losses into wins, and we have a conference
Even though Garforth-Bles lost his first set, he picked up momentum from there.
title to show for it.”
“The crowd was amazing and really pushed me,” he said. “Once I got on a roll, they
—Chuck Pool
were even louder, and it was a lot of fun.” He jumped out to a 3–2 lead in the final
set, but then saw Tulsa’s Philip Stephens break his serve to draw even. However,
Garforth-Bles quickly made amends and broke Stephens in the next game to take a View a slide show of Rice tennis:
lead he would not relinquish. › › › ricemagazine.info/61

48 rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students
Margaret Pack,
surrounded by
the graduate
voice students
selected to study
Italian in Florence,
Italy, through the
Margaret C. Pack
Language Institute
for Singers. “Big things happen at Rice.
You don’t give to Rice
— you invest in it.”
— Howard Leverett

A Gift to Rice Students

That Really Sings
As an aviation machinist’s mate during World War II, Margaret Pack ’50
helped keep U.S. Naval planes humming. Now, she is helping to fine-tune a
different kind of instrument: the voices of Rice’s most talented opera singers.
Pack’s love for opera began at an early age when she first heard
the Metropolitan Opera playing on her family’s radio. Her passion only
deepened throughout her military career, which extended into the Army
Reserve and her successful career with Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil).
Eventually, she struck a chord with Rice’s Shepherd School of Music. With
a portion of her retirement plan assets and other current-use gifts, she
formed the Margaret C. Pack Language Institute for Singers, which will
allow students to travel to Italy for intensive language study this summer
and in the years to come.

[ Creative Giving Tip: Retirement Plan Assets ]

Assets from a traditional IRA, 401(k) or 403(b) often are taxed at high levels when left to
nonspousal heirs. Donating these assets is a tax-wise way to fulfill your testamentary
plans while leaving more tax-efficient assets to family and friends.

To learn more about including the university in your estate or retirement planning and making
a commitment to the Centennial Campaign, please contact the Office of Gift Planning.

Phone: 713-348-4624 • E-mail: giftplan@rice.edu • Website: rice.planyourlegacy.org

 Nonprofit Organization
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit #7549
Houston, Texas
Rice University
Creative Services–MS 95
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Houston, TX 77251-1892

This year, O-Week welcomed nearly 950

freshman students — Rice’s largest incoming
class ever. If they seem happy and excited, it’s
no wonder: The Princeton Review again named
Rice No. 1 nationally for Best Quality of Life
in its “Best 373 Colleges,” a survey based on
responses by 122,000 students at four-year
institutions nationwide. Among the Class of 2014
is the largest number of international students,
who hail from nearly 90 countries. Rice’s diversity
earned it the No. 2 spot in the Lots of Race/Class
Interaction category for the way its students
reach out to others of different backgrounds.

Visit the photo gallery ››› ricemagazine.info/65