7

| The UnConvention

| Looks Matter

| Better Violins

11

| Mothers Worries

14

| Asthma App

The Magazine of Rice University

No. 12 | 2012

Right Brain Views

A Look at the Arts
18 20 26 28 32 A PLACE FOR ART THE ART OF THE UNIVERSITY ARTISTIC PASSION A NEW STAGE ONE JOURNEYS END IS THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER 34 AROUND THE WORLD IN 88 KEYS 36 MOB RULES

Contents
28 3 7
FivePrime founder elected to the Rice board The UnConvention comes to Rice in April.

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

6 9

Battling bugs with rhythm Designing better violins by applying mathematics What worries mothers when their children play outside? The demographics of Islamic terrorist detainees

10 5 5 17 7
Owls help HISD kick off sustainability initiative

11

And the CAREER Awards just keep on coming. Rice alumna makes TIMEs People Who Mattered list Shepherd School alumna gets Grammy When youre interviewing for a job, looks do matter.

12

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

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

36

Students

Features

18 A Place for Art

There are good reasons why Edgar Odell Lovett opened Rices doors to art a century ago, and today, art is at the core of Rices spirit.
By David W. Leebron

Students

14 If you need an app for asthmatics, check out mobileSpiro. 15 The Matchbox Gallery hasnt gotten larger, but its still showing great student art. 16 Intern to the world helps launch the Virtual Student Foreign Service. 17 Senior Rowan Canter helps develop a sustainable energy model for HISD.

20 The Art of the University

To the outside world, Rice has been decidedly left-brained, but one look at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts will change that perception.
By Alyson Ward

Arts
40 A lot of people live in model neighborhoods, but not like the one created by Ana Serrano. 41 One of Rices newest sculptures, a large bronze owl, presides over the new Hindman Garden. 42 A new piece of artwork by Jaume Plensa draws people inside literally.

26 Artistic Passion
Rice artists arent limited to the traditionally creative majors, such as studio arts or English. Musician Amy McCarley is forging her own path.
By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

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

Bookshelf
20
44 Welcome to Houston: 1 million acres and no zoning. 44 Adrenaline, the latest from thriller writer Jeff Abbott, will get your blood moving. 45 Jeff Kripal boldly goes where few religious studies professors have gone before.

32 One Journeys End Is the Beginning

of Another
What happens when a professor prods a shy student to expand her artistic scale? Ask photographer Gena Dawn.
By Kelly Klaasmeyer

34 Around the World in 88 Keys

Pianist Kimball Gallagher is out to conquer the world, one small concert at a time.
By Jessica C. Kraft

Sports
28
46 Whats it like behind the scenes in pro football? Ask Will McClay. 48 Introducing the newest addition to Rice Stadium.

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

36

Rice Magazine

No. 10

2011

Rice Magazine No. 12 Published by the

Ofce of Public Affairs
Linda Thrane, vice president
Editor Christopher Dow Editorial Director Tracey Rhoades Creative Director Jeff Cox Art Director Chuck Thurmon Editorial Staff B.J. Almond, staff writer
Jade Boyd, staff writer
Amy Hodges, staff writer
Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor
David Ruth, staff writer
Alyson Ward, staff writer
Mike Williams, staff writer
Photographers Tommy LaVergne, photographer
Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer
The Rice University
Board of Trustees
James W. Crownover, chairman; J.D. JD. .D. Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson;
Keith T. Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha
Viswanathan Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth;
Robert T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson;
T. Jay Collins; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans;
Douglas Lee Foshee; Lawrence Guffey;
James T. Hackett; John Jaggers; Larry
Kellner; Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal;
L. E. Simmons; Charles Szalkowski;
Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley;
Lewis Rusty Williams;
Randa Duncan Williams.
Administrative Ofcers David W. Leebron, president; George McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice pr esident for Finance ; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Chris Muoz, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development. Rice Magazine is published by the Ofce
of Public Affairs of Rice University and
is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff,
graduate students, parents of undergradu ates and friends of the university.
Editorial Ofces Creative ServicesMS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77 X 77251-1892 Fax: 713-348-6757
Email: ricemagazine@rice.edu

MA RCH 2 01 2 RIC E UNIVE RSITY

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

F O R E W O R D

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

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

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGHTHE

Sallyport

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

Rusty Williams Elected to Rice Board

Lewis T. Rusty Williams, founder of San Francisco-based biotech com pany FivePrime Therapeutics, has been elected to the Rice University Board of Trustees.
FivePrime Therapeutics specializes in the discovery and development of in novative protein and antibody drugs. Williams serves as the companys ex ecutive chairman and president. The 1971 Rice alumnus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fel low of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rusty Williams is known for his pioneering work in drug discovery, collaborations with other institutions in the Texas Medical Center. Our growing biomedical and bioscience research is aimed at discovering breakthroughs that will contribute to better health around the world and to the economic vitality of Houston, and Rustys record as an innovator and entrepreneur in that arena will help Rice realize those aspirations. Williams, who graduated from Rice ofcer and a member of the board of directors of Chiron Corp. and president of Chiron Technologies, a biopharma ceutical company, where he was instru mental in applying genomics research to its drug research and development. Prior to joining Chiron, Williams was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute in vestigator at the University of California, San Francisco. He also is a co-founder of COR Therapeutics Inc., which before being acquired by a larger company, special ized in therapeutic products for treating and preventing acute and chronic car diovascular diseases.

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

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

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

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

Rice MBA Ranks in Top 20 Nationally

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

Rice Among Princeton Reviews Top 5 Best-value Private Universities

Rice University is one of the countrys top ve best values among private schools for 2012, according to the Princeton Reviews newest rankings.

The rankings are based on data about the quality of academics, cost of attendance and nancial aid, and student opinion surveys collected from 650 colleges and universi ties. During the past decade, Rice has been among the Princeton Reviews top 10 best values almost every year, and three times it has been the No. 1 best value. Rices consistently high ranking on the best-value lists by the Princeton Review, Kiplinger and others reects its success at keeping its high-quality education affordable and accessible to talented students from all backgrounds, Rice President David Leebron said. The word value is important here because it encompasses not only our com paratively low tuition, generous student-aid programs and need-blind admission, but also the dedication of our faculty members and their personal engagement with our stu dents made possible by one of the lowest studentfaculty ratios in the country. The 2012 edition of the Princeton Reviews The Best Value Colleges notes that in addition to Rices terric nancialaid policy, the university offers a number of merit scholarships. Even for students who receive no nancial assistance, Rice remains one of the best values in higher education. With tuition set thousands of dollars lower than Ivy League and other peer institutions, Rice walks the walk of keeping the highest caliber of education affordable for all. Rice admits students regardless of their ability to pay and provides nancial-aid packages that meet 100 percent of students demonstrated need. Since 2009, entering freshmen from families with incomes of up to $80,000 do not have to take out loans, and Rice has limited loans to no more than $10,000 for need-eligible incoming freshmen for their four undergraduate years. The Princeton Review refers to Rice as one of the top universities of the nation and notes that Rice offers students the op portunity to develop a strong rapport with their professors, and the tier-one research institution offers robust and extensive op portunities for research and internships. The prole notes that Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life by the Princeton Review three years in a row and is also currently ranked No. 1 for happiest students. In addition to Rice, the other private schools on the top ve list are Williams College, Swarthmore College, Princeton University and Harvard College. Kiplingers Personal Finance magazine has ranked Rice as its No. 4 best value among private schools four years in a row.
B.J. Almond

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

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

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGHTHE

Sallyport

Her TIME
Rice University alumna Virginia Moyer 74, a high-prole professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, was named one of TIME magazines People Who Mattered in its Person of the Year 2011 edition.
The magazine cited her work as chairwoman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, rst convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984 and responsible for providing rigorous, independent assess ments of a range of clinical preventive services. The panel is considered to be the gold standard for such recommendations and has far-reaching impact on decisions by Medicare, health insurers, clini cians and medical schools. TIME noted that in October the task force set off shock waves when it recommended healthy men do not need routine screen ings for prostate cancer. The ndings followed ve clinical trials that showed the tests, which measure levels of prostate-specic antigen (PSA) in the blood, not only do not save lives overall, but also put patients at risk of harm in the form of needless surgery, impotence and incontinence. The fact is we considered it extremely carefully, Moyer said. We went over the data with a ne-tooth comb, and our conclusion was that the downsides of screening outweigh any potential benets. I say that carefully because it is not clear that there is any benet. She noted that biopsies commonly show that what look like can cer cells under a microscope do not behave like cancer and perhaps should not be called cancer. She also said that two-thirds of men age 6585 have cancerous cells in their prostates, and the vast majority of them will never be affected by it in their lifetimes. So nding it out is not going to benet them. Better tests would be most welcome, she said. If we could nd a new biomarker for aggressive prostate cancer, that would be terric. Moyer said that credit for the recommendation should not be hers alone but belongs to the 16-mem ber panel of health professionals who look at many issues. We have between 70 and 90 topics in our active list, some of which have not been revised in a while, and we have several new topics under way, Moyer said. Another that recently came out was a draft recommendation to counsel young people about exposure to ultraviolet light, to avoid skin cancer. Another had to do with falls and the elderly. For all of us, our passion is getting the science right, Moyer said. We are not advocates, and that is what most signicantly distinguishes the Preventive Services Task Force from other groups that are interested in prevention. The most important thing is to get it right and not promote preventative activi ties that might not be benecial. One of the reasons is that they take time away from things we know are benecial. Mike Williams

Rice: A Scientific Powerhouse

Rice University has been ranked No. 4 among the worlds top 500 universities for the quality and impact of its scientic publica tions, according to the Leiden Ranking 2011/2012, a product of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands.
The rankings are based on sci entic publication data from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database covering the years 200509 and are normal ized for university size. The rankings depend heav ily on the proportion of a uni versitys presence in top 10 percent publications, dened as those most frequently cited, as well as collaborative indicators. The top-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology had just over a quarter of its publications in top 10 percent publications; Rice had 22.2 percent, fractions of a percentage point behind No. 2 Princeton and No. 3 Harvard. View the complete rankings: ricemagazine.info/108

Shepherd School Alumna Gets Grammy

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

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

Battling Bugs With Rhythm

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

When you walk past plants, they dont look like theyre doing anything, said Janet Braam, an investigator on the new study, which appeared this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its intriguing to see all of this activity down at the genetic level. Its like watching a besieged fortress go on full alert. Braam, professor and chair of Rices Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, said scientists have long known that plants have an internal clock that allows them to measure time regard less of light conditions. For example, some plants that track the sun with their leaves during the day are known to reset their leaves at night and move them back toward the east in anticipa tion of sunrise. In recent years, scientists have be gun to apply powerful genetic tools to the study of plant circadian rhythms. Researchers have found that as many as one-third of the genes in Arabidopsis thaliana a widely studied species in plant biology are activated by the cir cadian cycle. Rice biochemist Michael Covington found that some of these circadian-regulated genes were also connected to wounding responses. We wondered whether some of these circadian-regulated genes might allow plants to anticipate attacks from insects, in much the same way that they anticipate the sunrise, said Covington, now at the University of California, Davis. Danielle Goodspeed, a graduate student in biochemistry and cell biol ogy, designed a clever experiment to answer the question. She used 12-hour light cycles to entrain the circadian clocks of both Arabidopsis plants and cabbage loopers, a type of caterpillar that eats Arabidopsis. Half of the plants

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

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

THROUGHTHE

Sallyport

Rice Launches Center for College Readiness

Local school district administrators and Rice K12 leaders gathered on campus in September for the launch of the Center for College Readiness, a division of the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Formerly known as Teacher Professional Development, the center was renamed to reect the growing diversity of its K12 outreach programs.
With its rst teacher training in 1995, the Glasscock School began its journey to provide top-level programming to en sure teachers were properly prepared for the classroom experience. The schools Advanced Placement Summer Institute has been offered 17 consecutive years and is now the largest such training in the na tion, attracting more than 2,200 AP teach ers this past summer. Over the years, the school has added training for International Baccalaureate teachers as well as programs for admin istrators, counselors and secondary stu dents. Other programs include extensive two years. Of those who take remedial cours es in their rst year of college, only 1739 per cent will earn a degree. The research is incontrovertible, Gigliotti said. Rigorous course work in high school, such as AP and IB, better prepares students for postsecondary education and helps ensure that more students will successfully complete their university degrees. The center will continue to offer its current AP and IB programming, she said, adding that Rice is the only institution offering training in both of the two major college-preparatory cur ricula. The center will offer specic new pro gramming that will focus on closing equity

We have so many ne K12 programs at Rice. With this new role, we look forward to working with them toward our shared goal of improved education in our community.
Mary McIntire

The UnConvention
For 100 years, Rice faculty, researchers and students have believed that anything is possible that drive, devotion and innovative thinking can turn ideas into achievements. We call it unconventional wisdom. Help us celebrate an unconventional cen tury at the UnConvention, a campuswide open house April 1214. Were inviting all of Houston to venture inside the hedges and explore Rice through tours, demonstrations, con certs, lectures, athletic events, art exhibits and more.
For details, visit

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

and achievement gaps among students, build ing a college-going culture, and supporting students as they navigate the path to college. Also at the launch, George McLendon, Rices Howard R. Hughes Provost and profes sor of chemistry, announced that through the Center for College Readiness, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies would take a more central role in coordinating K12 out reach efforts throughout the campus. We have so many ne K12 programs at Rice, said Mary McIntire, dean of Continuing Studies. With this new role, we look forward to working with them toward our shared goal of improved education in our community.
Carol Hopkins

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

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

unconvention.rice.edu

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

Looks Do Matter

People with birthmarks, scars and other facial disgurements are more
likely to receive poor ratings in job interviews, according to a new
study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Houston.

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

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

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

Watch a video of Professor Hebl talking about the research:

ricemagazine.info/107

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGHTHE

Sallyport

Turning Math Into Music

Standing in his ofce beside a white board scrawled with equations, Sean Hardesty lifted a violin to his shoulder and played the opening of the Sibelius Violin Concerto.
His instrument has an angular, asymmetrical body painted black and red and was built of balsa wood and carbon-ber laminates by a boat designer in Maine. In his Duncan Hall ofce, with the door closed, its sound is piercing and precise. This is an experimental violin, said Hardesty, a postdoctoral re search fellow and lecturer in computational and applied mathematics (CAAM). Its a work in progress, not a nished product. I think it sounds pretty good. Hardesty distills sound to its mathematical essentials; he is work ing to design violins by applying the tools of optimization to shell structure acoustics. For a decade he has been a regular participant in the acoustics workshops sponsored by the Violin Society of America (VSA) and has built a violin top using a mathematical model he devised and state of-the-art 3-D printing technology. During a recent VSA gathering at Oberlin College in Ohio, Hardesty played a Stradivarius, often judged the instruments sonic ideal. He noted that the Stradivarius violin known as The Hammer, which sold at auction for $3.54 million in 2006, was built in 1707, the year Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler was born. You could eas ily be tempted to believe that violin making is one of those rare elds of human endeavor that has become drastically worse over the last 300 years, he said. But this view undervalues the best contemporary traditional makers and leaves nothing for the future. Hardesty, like other avant-garde violin designers and builders, in tends to challenge the supremacy of the Strad and other traditionally

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

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

designed instruments. With the violin, there isnt a best sound, he said. It depends entirely on the taste and skill of the player. Key to the sounds produced by a violin is the resonating top, or soundboard, which turns the energy of the vibrated strings into the instruments distinctive voice. Hardestys task is to turn a players subjective reactions to that sound into the mathematical essentials that produced it. Every instrument is different, said Hardesty, who would like to customize instruments to the precise tastes of their owners. You al ways get something, and then you lose something. Most professional players end up making trade-offs, one quality for another. At the opposite end of the skill spectrum, Hardesty also foresees designing and manufacturing inexpensive but comparably sophisti cated violins for students just beginning their studies. I would really like to make it possible for more people to play the violin and to play it well and produce a good sound, he said. I know how much pleasure Ive derived from making music and listening to it all my life.
Patrick Kurp

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

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

Bridging the Gap

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

Imagining Better Imaging

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

Mathematics and Mentoring

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

10

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGHTHE

Sallyport

Examining Motherly Fears

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

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

Read the study: ricemagazine.info/112

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

11

The Demographics of Islamic Terrorist Detainees

Sixty percent of people arrested for Islamic terrorist activities between January 2009 and April 2011 were American citizens, according to a new report from Rice Universitys James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The study of 104 people who were arrested included U.S. and non-U.S. citizens living in America or abroad.
The report, Analyzing the Islamic Extremist Phenomenon in the United States: A Study of Recent Activity, was authored by Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow in homeland security and terrorism at the Baker Institute. Jessica Phillips, an intern with the Baker Institutes homeland security and terrorism program, provided re search support for the study.
Using data from international and U.S. news reports, general Internet media, pub lic records and ofcial court documents, the researchers set out in November 2010 to analyze information on the status of Islamic extremism in the United States. They also looked at some of the unanswered questions raised by U.S. Rep. Peter Kings Committee on Homeland Security hearing, The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Communitys Response. King, R-N.Y., and chairman of the committee, held the hearing March 10, 2011. Providing policymakers this data can allow for a factual discussion and di minish rhetoric, Neuhaus Schaan said. Consequently, policy can be crafted to ad dress current and future needs in the face of change and adaptation by those determined to bring harm to the United States. Information on birthplaces and conver sion to Islam was available for 77 of the 104 people arrested. The data revealed that 60 percent of the group was born outside the U.S. Of the 31 U.S.-born persons where reli gion of origin could be determined, 14 were born into Muslim families and 17 converted to Islam. Other key ndings from the report include: Of those for whom birthplace data was available, half were born in the U.S., 22 percent were naturalized citi zens and 7 percent were dual citizens. Of the 104, 5 percent entered the U.S. on a visa. Of those who converted to Islam, 63 percent had a known prior criminal record. Of the 14 American converts with a prior criminal history, at least 55 per cent had converted to Islam in prison. Ninety-two percent were male. Sixty-four percent were 30 years old or younger. Sixty-six percent had traveled or were in the process of traveling to the Middle East, Somalia, South Asia or the Balkans. Of the 104, 70 percent had an as sociation or were attempting an association with an internationally recognized terrorist organization; al-Qaida and its associated branches were cited most. Of the 29 persons with no known association to a group, 11 had been active on terrorist-related chat rooms and websites. Overall, 38 percent had been involved in this type of Internet activity. Only 10 of the 104 are what the au thors would consider lone wolves; most in the cohort had ties to others in the group or to an organization. The Internet and prison conversion are the two biggest new trends that policymak ers need to look at more closely, Neuhaus Schaan said. Weve seen a major change in how people become associated with ex tremist groups in the past 20 years, and we need to adapt. The report concludes that approximately two-thirds of those involved in extremist activity are men under the age of 34, and no single, all-encompassing prole can be made of the analysis group of 104. Neuhaus Schaan said that the Baker Institute will con tinue to compile data and issue an updated report annually.
David Ruth

Read the report: ricemagazine.info/114

12

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

THROUGHTHE

Sallyport

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

What Was Rices First Building?

With Rice Universitys 100th birthday rapidly ap proaching, Centennial Historian Melissa Kean has uncovered a little-known fact: Rices iconic Lovett Hall, one of the most photographed buildings in the city, wasnt actually Rices rst building. Working with Kean, Rice video producer Brandon Martin set the record straight about Rices rst building, which was a pier-and-beam structure located in downtown Houston. Lovett Hall was the rst building on the campus at 6100 Main St. To help celebrate the universitys centen nial Oct. 12, Rice University is producing weekly videos exploring the schools unique history. The centennial videos run through Oct. 12. Read Melissa Keans blog: www.ricehistorycorner.com Watch the video: ricemagazine.info/113

20 Million Minds Foundation. Were going to share C6s nationally leading approach with other TAACCCT grantees in Washington. A common standard particularly one that speeds up the process like this one can make us all more effective. Connexions, founded in 1999, maintains an online repository of more than 20,000 free lessons all created under the CC BY license. Connexions materials are accessed by more than 1 million people each month. The 20 Million Minds Foundation has been an open-source proponent and is set to man age this unique assignment. By partnering with Connexions, the C6 Consortium is ensuring that its new courses will have a signicant impact both inside and outside of California, said Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of Connexions and Rices Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Through Connexions, students in every U.S. state and in more than 200 countries will be able to download free digital versions of the C6 material on any device, in any for mat and at any time.
Jade Boyd

Celebrate Rice in Istanbul

To shape his vision for Rice, Edgar Odell Lovett journeyed as far as Constantinople, known today as Istanbul, Turkey. On June 810, you can relive Lovetts historic voyage and continue his spirit of exploration. We invite you to join us for Celebrate Rice Istanbul, an exciting weekend of cultural immersion and education that serves as a prelude to the Centennial Celebration in October.

Participate in the universitys rst-ever Alumni College abroad, featuring a distinguished panel of speakers from Rice. Visit the palaces of great empires and battle grounds that shaped the world. Browse lively city markets and savor the tradi tional tastes of Ottoman cuisine. Take alternative city tours and boat cruises along the Bosphorus Strait.

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

Dont pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience Istanbul with alumni and friends during this historic year for Rice. For more information: alumni.rice.edu/istanbulcentennial

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

13

An Android for Asthma Sufferers

MobileSpiro, a portable device Rice students designed to measure lung capacity in children with asthma, is winning competitions as well as the hearts of children.
Created by a team of Baker College sophomores Peter Chang and Hasitha Dharmasiri, Lovett College junior Nonso Anyigbo and alumnus Sid Gupta 07 under the auspices of the George R. Brown School of Engineerings Scalable Health Initiative, mobileSpiro is designed to make it simple for asthma sufferers to self-test their lung capacity, as many are required to do daily. Typically, lung capacity is tested by a spirometer in a doctors ofce. Spirometers are widely used to measure the volume of air inhaled and exhaled, but commercially available devices are ex pensive, all costing more than $500, according to the Rice team. The team priced component costs for its version at no more than $100 when the parts are manufactured in large quantities, with results almost as accurate as a lab spirometer. Last spring, the students paired their spirometer with the work of a Rice team that developed a game, Azmo the Dragon, in tended to make it fun for children who suffer from asthma to check their lung capacity, as many are required to do daily. The program nished third in the Game Design category at Microsofts highprole Imagine Cup. Though the Azmo game ran on Windows Mobile phones, mo bileSpiro employs the Android platform for smartphones. The goal interested in health care and technology, so its rewarding to work on this project and apply what Ive learned in my courses. Chang said the team spent a lot of time at the beginning getting up to speed on the health care issues involved. The rst stage was looking through the literature and talking to doctors to see what was out there and what problems we could solve by merging or creating technology, he said. The team found that spirometers typically require a doctor or technician to be present. We developed automated error-detection algorithms to ensure the patient is doing the test correctly, Chang said. Such tests require a patient to breathe as deeply as possible and then exhale with maximum effort. The ideal test would be one continuous cycle, with no coughing, hesitation or other interruption that could skew the results. What young patients will ultimately experience is a game that will be fun to play, perhaps even with other asthma sufferers over a social network. It also may someday give researchers hooks into a stream of data that could prove valuable in many ways, not only about groups of patients, but also about environmental conditions in a region. The team presented mobileSpiro at mHealthSys 2011, an inter national workshop on mobile systems, applications and services for health care held in Seattle in November. It was among six academic teams to present and seven to demonstrate their devices for judges. They nished second in the paper competition. Chang and Dharmasiri attended the event. Ashutosh Sabharwal, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the teams faculty mentor, said mobileSpiro is ex pected to begin clinical trials this spring.
Mike Williams

Watch a video about mobileSpiro:

ricemagazine.info/115 sh.rice.edu

Learn more about the Scalable Health Initiative:

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

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

14 rice.edu/ricemagazine 14 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Students

Thinking Outside the Box

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

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

Learn more: www.matchbox.rice.edu

Rice Intern Helps Introduce the U.S. to Students Around the World
Many students around the world are interested in learning about the United States, even if they arent planning to visit. In 2009, the U.S. State Department launched the Virtual Student Foreign Service program as a way to connect people in countries across the globe without the cost or the safety issues of travel.
As an eIntern for the program, Rice junior Marc Sabbagh created and coordinated the schedule for an eight-part lecture series aimed at students in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The lectures featured professors from Rice, the University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M University and other U.S. colleg es explaining elements of American history. I believe it provided a unique oppor tunity for these students to essentially sit in on a college classroom lecture, even though they were participating miles away, Sabbagh said. Students learned about spe cic periods of conict in U.S. history and had the chance to ask questions and discuss these topics in depth with the professors. Two of the e-lectures were delivered by Rice historians. Alexander Byrd, as sociate professor of history and director of the undergraduate program, discussed African-American life in the Jim Crow South through the lens of Norfolk, Va.; and Allen Matusow, academic affairs director at Rices James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History, spoke on the U.S. la bor movement in the 1930s. It was a strange experience, staring at a screen that showed only my picture and

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

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

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

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

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

16 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Students

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

Owls Help HISD Kick Off Sustainability Initiative

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

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

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

17

B Y

DAVID

W.

LEEBRON

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

A Place

18

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

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

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

19

From top: Geoff Winningham and Karin Broker

T H E

A R T

O F

T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y
BY A LYS O N WA R D

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

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

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

Were also becoming more focused about the exhibitions in the Media Center, Sparagana said. The Rice Media Center has a bright, wood-oored open space at its core that holds a rotating schedule of exhibits. Last fall, the Media Centers main gallery was lled with posters and album covers that examined the work of two painters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

23

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

Karin Broker

24

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

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

John Sparagana

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

25

by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

passion
Artistic

Music artist looks back at Rice to remember musical roots

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

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

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

27

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

By Alyson Ward Photography by Jeff Fitlow and Tommy LaVergne

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

No. 10 12 12 No. 10

2012 2010 29 2010 29

How do you guys feel about tonight?

asked Keefe, who also is director of the Rice Theater Program and a visual and dramatic arts lecturer. Did you discover some things? She then offered a quick critique Youre accelerating really well in that scene now. You need to belt out that last line but the show was quite polished already. After the critique, the cast ltered out into the night, toward homework and sleep. Macbeth was the major fall production for the theater division of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. It was Shakespeares play, alright, but instead of being set in medieval Scotland, it was set in a hypothetical contemporary world being rebuilt after nucle ar annihilation. With sets inspired by the video game Fallout, the stage was strewn with 1950s-style billboards, signs and scrap metal, all fading and repurposed by a society starting over. Setting Macbeth in a postapocalyptic world, Keefe said, was one way to make Shakespeare accessible and appealing to a young cast and audience. This whole idea of what would happen if time stopped in the 1950s? she said. What kind of society would be formed? What do you have left? What do you have to live on? The students were totally jazzed by that. Its one of the ways Keefe is keeping theater on campus relevant, even exciting. That bold approach a willingness to do some things that arent tried and true makes theater at Rice a must-attend. It also makes students who are majoring in architecture, chemistry or physics want to join in. The Macbeth cast included students who have done theater for years one had performed with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. and a few who just wanted to see how it feels to be on stage and who started rehearsals by asking, Wheres stage right? In 2006, Rice moved theater classes from the English depart ment and grouped them with visual art and lm classes to form the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA). Now students

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

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

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

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

community associate who has been involved with Rice theater since his undergraduate years. Youll see people who study at Rice and become professionals in the theater world, Lockett said. Some do community theater. And there are people who do theater at Rice and never touch it again, but they gained some valuable skills. Rice offers an unusual number of opportunities for the ater, even beyond the VADA productions. The Rice Players have been around since the 1920s, when the group started as the Rice Dramatic Society. This extracurricular, student-run group was the main thing going in Rice theater until VADA was instituted. And, of course, theres a long tradition of theater groups in the residen tial colleges. Baker Shakespeare has been performing the Bards plays since 1970, for instance, and at Wiess College, Wiess Tabletop Theatre regularly takes on such ambitious material as Aida and West Side Story. Quality usually depends on resources. There are groups that have the budget and history to put on a show that is really aiming at professional quality, Lockett said. And then, certainly, you have theater thats just Gosh, lets get together and put on a show. Lockett is fond of both, and he has been involved with pro ductions at every level. Rice has a long tradition, he said, of treating undergraduate theater as an important part of a liberal arts education. Keefe who has taught at Lehigh, Duke and other universi ties said the sheer number of theater opportunities makes Rice different. Ive never had so much theater that I was competing with, she said. After all, there often are concurrent productions on campus that all need good cast members. She tries to encourage students to get involved with their colleges, Rice Players and VADA productions. Wiess senior T.J. Burleson, a theater and linguistics major, has acted in and directed shows at all levels, but he got his start with Wiess productions during his freshman year. Everyone does at least one show at Wiess, Burleson said, whether its a one-act play or the spring musical. And sometimes those students decide they like theater and show up to audition for VADA or Rice Players productions. Everyone really can do everything, said Burleson, who

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

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

31

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

One Journeys End Is the Beginning of Another

By Kelly Klaasmeyer

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

32

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

resources to take those risks and be successful at them, she said. The fellowship forced me to take a step back and trust the decision and the support of my teachers. I had to be really proactive in guring out how I was going to get there and what I was going to do once I got there. She found that she easily rose to the occasion. It was an incred ible experience, she said. I didnt think at the time that making such a trip would be so signicant in my life course, but it helped me

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

Through Rice, I developed a in my artistic abilities and mylot of condence abilities to make things happen. Rice helped me believe in myself.
Gena Dawn

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

cultures. The red page combines photos of a monk in ruby robes, the gold-embroidered hem of a scarlet sari, a crimson ower, a temple interior and jars of reddish pigments. The violet page includes im ages of patterned fabric, stacked purple bracelets, tasseled umbrellas, plant stalks and a lavender sunset. Green has images of lily pads, a slender snake, a carved wooden mask and verdant terraced elds. Now returned to teaching and working as a professional pho tographer, Dawn spends her free time promoting and marketing the book. Its a whole new area of risk, but she is prepared for that. I am such a different person now than I was during my senior year of high school, she said, explaining that she had never been encouraged to take risks growing up. When I told people I was taking this trip to Asia, she said, they just couldnt believe it. I was the person who, in high school, wouldnt drive on the freeways and was nervous and worried about things. Her trip through Asia, she said, was about pushing and challeng ing herself in uncomfortable situations and seeing how she could grow from those. Through Rice, I developed a lot of condence in my artistic abilities and my abilities to make things happen. Rice helped me believe in myself. The Rainbows Journey: An Adventure in Asia is available at www.therainbowsjourney.com.

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

33

BY JESSICA C. KRAFT

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

AroundtheWorldin88Keys
his own brand of entrepreneurial thinking. At a recent Manhattan School of Music presentation, Gallagher warned students not to get trapped in the old negative thinking about professional music opportunities. These days, youre used to thinking that music is an extremely competitive eld with excellent musicians a dime a dozen, he said.

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

34

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

opportunities for the students, encouraging some to apply for American scholarships and fundraising for others to attend American music camps. He has also continued to work with a few young Tunisian musi cians from his Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, giving lessons over Skype. They have no composition courses at the music schools in Tunisia, so Ive been teaching that, he said, and also setting up relationships for them with other composition teachers. Souhayl Guesmi is one of the students who has beneted from Gallaghers efforts. Growing up in the small town of Jendouba, outside of Tunis, he wasnt able to nd a piano teacher for years. The local con servatory at that time couldnt afford a professional piano teacher, he said. I was losing time, but I loved the piano and I wanted to progress, whatever it took. Now Guesmi studies composition once a week over Skype with Simon Fink, Gallaghers friend and a professor at Missouri Western State University. When Tunisia erupted in revolution last January, many of Gallaghers students were greatly affected by the tumult. For three weeks, I didnt go to school, said 16-year-old Senda Zayati, who has been working on an album of original songs with Gallagher and was one of the students he helped to send to American music camp. I could barely sleep be cause we were so afraid of what was happening. But by summer, the Jasmine Revolution had calmed down, a new interim government was installed, and many of the students returned to the camp, newly inspired. Among the many unantici pated cultural effects of the revolution was increased support for classical music institutions. This came about partially through the appointment of Interim Finance Minister Jalloul Ayed. He previously served as CEO of a prominent Moroccan bank and also com posed classical symphonies that were performed by the national orchestras of Tunisia and Morocco. In addition to steering the Tunisian economy back to recovery, Ayed worked with the Ministry of Culture to beef up funding for the Tunis conservatory and increase support for the national orchestras musi cians, which had been in decline during the previous regime. Gallagher met Ayed through a mutual acquain tance and was excited to play his compositions in Tunisia. In October 2011, Ayed invited Gallagher to perform for government ofcials, inuential bankers and other elites. Suddenly Gallagher found himself in a new, political context. At a house concert, you can talk to people one-on-one. I dont intend to be political, he said. But here They can tell you how they were affected by the performance, I was, playing for all of these people who were shap and you can answer their questions. ing Tunisias new direction, he said. Mostly, I want Kimball Gallagher to bolster Tunisian musicians. I want to show support and engagement with the artists and encourage them to assert themselves and take chances. Hes been able to do that a lot lately. To celebrate the rst anniversary of the Jasmine Revolution, Gallagher played several Some of his other international concert opportunities arose from of Ayeds compositions at the Kennedy Center with rising star Tunisian working with the nonprot organization Cultures in Harmony, which violinist Nidhal Jebali. The concert was webcast so that thousands of was started by William Harvey, his Juilliard classmate. Since 2005, Tunisians could view the performance. The audience appeared delight Cultures in Harmony has brought world-class musicians to 13 coun ed when, for one of his nal pieces, Gallagher set a laptop on the grand tries to inspire and collaborate with young performers. Over the past piano to play his prelude hot off the press in honor of Tunisia. six years, Gallagher has been a deputy director for their workshop in Two days later, the globe-trotting pianist was on a jet headed for Tunisia. As a resident artist, he teaches workshops, offers private lessons Kabul, which was just a short stopover on his way to play a set of house and performs concerts at an annual summer music camp. The aim of concerts in India. the camp is to give music students of all socioeconomic backgrounds Whats the next stop? access to high-quality instruments and the opportunity to learn from If you have a piano, he will travel. top performers. Theres so much talent in Tunisia, Gallagher said. But many of these students just dont have the resources to advance their musical training. To this end, Gallagher has tapped his own social network to create Follow Kimball Gallaghers 88-concert tour: www.pianokey.net He also composes. As a gift to each concert host, Gallagher cre ates a personalized piano prelude using a compositional system to spell out musical notes that match their names. Concert host Wendie Grossman loved her prelude. I was so impressed with the wonderful tone that Kimball can evoke from the piano, she said. She was dazzled by Gallaghers rare combination of engaging personality, savvy entre preneurship and artistry, she said. She was also impressed at how he created opportunities to perform. He once told me how he met someone on a train and started talk ing, and that person knew someone who had a foundation in a poor foreign country. Before long, Kimball was over there playing a concert for them to raise money. Thats how he makes his contacts and follows through, she said. Its true that Gallagher is always eager to connect to another patron, making serendipitous meetings like the one on the train part of his busi ness plan. (Disclosure: Gallagher performed at my wedding in 2007 and managed to arrange no fewer than three concerts from among our guests.) Hes also comfortable in a wide variety of venues, having played many bare-bones benets along with performances at the private resi dences of actress Uma Thurman and author Thomas Moore. Veronica Bulgari invited Gallagher to perform at her family villa in Tuscany. Hes got no bounds, she said. Hes bringing classical music to new and remote places and providing this intimate experience with the piano.

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

35

R MOB

Rules Rules
By Alyson Ward
Rice Magazine

The Marching Owl Band has been poking poking fun, creating
creating controversy controversy y
and making making
football crowds laugh crowds laugh for 40 years.

No. 12

2012

37

It was Labor Day weekend, 2011, and the return of college football. Rice played Texas. Although the Longhorns won the game 349, Rices band won halftime. The Marching Owl Band known as the MOB often uses its time on the eld to comment on current events and, of course, its rivals, such as the University of Texas and, especially, Texas A&M. With sharp and timely humor, the MOBs show tackled conference realignment and Texas A&Ms move to the Southeastern Conference. We congratulate the SEC and the Big 12, the MOBs announcer said, as both confer ences improve their average IQ. The MOBsters formed an SEC on the eld, then shifted a bit to make a silent judgment by turning the S into a dollar sign: $EC.
some band members started lobbying then-band director Bert Roth to do more nontraditional shows. By the next year, the bands performances involved more running around than marching, accompanied by a good dose of humor. Of course, Rice didnt invent the scatter band. In 1970, Ivy League schools such as Dartmouth, Brown and Harvard already had abandoned traditional marching for on-eld antics, and other elite schools soon followed. But there was nothing like the MOB in the Southwest Conference, and the bands new format was a hit. One early show featured a salute to the human stomach. Another one ribbed the University of Texas band for its enormous bass drum. The shows were popular with most Rice fans, and the MOB became a favorite among visiting crowds. Then came the show that put the MOB on the map and into an epic tangle with the Aggies. It was November 1973 when Texas A&M fans lled Rice Stadium, out numbering the local Owls fans. The MOB launched into what is now called The Halftime of Infamy, a show that mocked the traditions Aggies hold sacred. Band members goose-stepped to a German march. They formed a re hydrant on the eld and mocked Aggie mascot Reveille, playing Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone? And they lampooned the Aggie War Hymn, beginning to play the sacred song and then sliding into March of the Wooden Soldiers. The crowd responded almost immediately, said Bob Hord 74, who was drum major that year. When 70,000 people are roaring disapproval, he said, its pretty palpable. By the end of halftime, the Aggie fans were angry. They threw seat cush ions and drink cups from the stadiums top deck, and a brief scufe erupted on the sideline. At least one MOBster was hit by a ying drink. Police stepped in to calm things down before the beginning of the third quarter. But, as the clock wound down, the Aggies were far from calm. In the games last two minutes, a 95-yard run gave Rice the winning touchdown. The stunning win fueled the Aggies anger. The crowd wanted to retaliate, and MOB members feared they were in danger. We got the band down to a tunnel under the stadium, Hord said, and waited for the crowd to leave, but they wouldnt disperse. A crowd of at least 200 Aggies lingered outside the stadium, yelling threats and waiting for the MOB to come out. The band had to remain hidden for hours, until campus food service trucks were sent to the rescue. Late in the evening, the trucks pulled out of the stadium with MOB members hidden safely inside. Afterward, band director Roth got enough hate mail to ll four photo al bums. The mothers of Aggie band members called him around the clock, said John Grungy Gladu, a longtime Rice supporter and adopted MOBster. He got his number unlisted, and they got it again. I think he went through three phone numbers. Two years later, in 1975, the Aggies returned to Rice Stadium. Arthur Harrow 79 was a freshman and played baritone in the MOB. There were great concerns for our safety, he said. We were getting death threats, and there was some question as to whether we were going to do the show at all. The MOB presented a halftime show that lampooned Rice and its traditions, something the Aggie crowd liked much better. In 1980, when a controversy brewed at Baylor over students who posed for Playboys Women of the Southwest Conference issue, MOB members

It

was the sort of wry, satirical observation the MOB is known for and it worked. All weekend, the Web lit up with chatter about the show. Photos of the formation circulated on Facebook and sports blogs nationwide. In a season of hand-wringing over college sports and conference realignment, the MOB a few dozen smart-alecky kids from Rice had hit a nerve. The ragtag band of musicians has been tweaking nerves for 40 years now. In their fedoras and shades, the MOBs gady members have been pok ing at sensitive issues, lampooning the solemn staidness of higher education and going where audiences think they would never dare. Twenty steep steps underground, in a cluttered basement beneath the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, the MOB writing team meets to plan upcoming shows. A bumper sticker on the band hall door reads: Sacred Cows Make Divine Hamburger. Inside, about a dozen MOB members lounge in chairs and on torn-up couches as they edit the next weeks script. They hash out how to properly dramatize a decapitation. The order in which they should list signs of the apocalypse. The proper moment for a your mom joke. It was 1971 when the Marching Owl Band stopped marching and became the MOB. Before that, Rice had a conventional band, with formal march ing drills, traditional music and wool uniforms. It wasnt an abrupt change, where somebody decided we ought to do scatter shows, said Guinn Unger 71. Instead, the MOB evolved over a couple of football seasons. Unger was drum major in fall 1970. That season, the band performed a show that paid tribute to the bands of the Southwest Conference, with bits that copied each bands signature steps and songs. The crowd kind of went wild, Unger said. We got bigger applause for that than for anything else I can remember. The parody show was repeated at least once, Unger recalls, and then
38
www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Students
mocked the Baptist university by marching in bunny costumes. I said, Do you think Playboy would run with this? Gladu said. I called them, and they said Yes, send us pictures. So in April 1981, Playboy magazine featured three photos of the MOB. Year after year, though, the University of Texas audiences have always been in on the joke. Fans understood the MOB was there to poke a little fun, and they could appreciate a good jab. In 2007, when a half-dozen members of the Longhorn football team were suspended for various brushes with the law, the MOB traveled to Austin to play at the RiceTexas halftime. The show was called Book em Horns and featured burnt orange-clad football players getting chased around the eld by the cops. Dont forget to buy a program at todays game, the MOB announcer quipped. It includes ... a photo guide to the next episode of Americas Most Wanted. At the shows end, said Jamie Sammis 10, who was drum major, UTs audience gave us a standing ovation. The MOB also became famous for its really strange cheers. There were three-word cheers, a primal scream cheer and a silent cheer. We did hor rible cheers, Gladu said. Oatmeal, oatmeal, salt and butter, too / All for the Rice Owls, hold up your shoe. And wed all hold up a shoe. And the band produced the worlds longest and possibly geekiest cheer of all by spelling out the universitys original name The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art one ... letter ... at ... a ... time. The end of the Southwest Conference in 1995 was the end of an era for the MOB. Things changed when Rice started playing schools in Hawaii and Wyoming, not Austin and Waco. Audiences got smaller and so did the band. Rice spent a decade in the Western Athletic Conference, then moved to Conference-USA in 2006, starting over with a new group of unfamiliar teams in far-ung locations. The opposing teams often traveled such dis tances that they left their bands at home which left the MOB without contrast or rivalry. The loss of the Southwest Conference hurt us a lot, Gladu said. In the SWC, he said, we had visiting bands and a familiar group. We knew the audiences we were playing for, and we could target them. Now, he said, the band has to research whats happening at the other schools. Even so, the band has found ways to stay sharp and get people talking. In 2007, the MOB made national news with a show that drew loud complaints and even louder cheers. That year, head football coach Todd Graham had left Rice abruptly after a single season to coach at the University of Tulsa. When Rice had a game against Tulsa, the MOB decided to use halftime to express the Rice communitys disappointment. The show was complicated and sort of brilliant: It was based on Dantes complicated Inferno, with the band searching for Graham in the circles of hell, explainsearching ing how his aws might have landed him among the greedy, the false and aws landed the traitorous. At last, they found that Graham had landed in a 10th, more found horrible circle of hell: Tulsa. The whole thing got great crowd response, said director Chuck great Throckmorton. When he left, there were hard feelings in the whole comleft, munity, especially the student body, and they were expecting us to body, sort of deliver the response. But it was a juvenile remark at the end that landed the MOB remark in hot water: In the shows walk-off line a snarky comment walk-off made as the band leaves the eld the MOB announcer casually called Graham a vulgar name. Rice fans loved vulgar it, but not everyone was amused. The University of amused. Tulsa led a complaint with Conference-USA. The led Conference-USA. Tulsa fans started a letter-writing campaign. letter-writing Message boards across the Web lled up Web lled with angry tirades, and the story made story a splash nationwide. The ironic ironic thing, Throckmorton said, was was that by complaining, they turned it turned into national news. In the end, Throckmorton isissued an apology on behalf of the band, although band members still think it was a statement that needed to be made. Sammis wishes more people had paid attention to the quality of the show after all, it was one long literary allusion, woven beautifully together with piercing commentary on current events. In fact, some of the MOBs best work has been just as literary past scripts are full of well-written and thoughtful commentary that crackles with sharp wit. On the other hand, some shows have just been joyfully silly. A 1973 game against the University of Arkansas, for instance, featured a salute to the banana. MOB members bought 10 crates of bananas, and, as the show ended, band members threw hundreds of bananas into the stands while playing The Stripper and beginning to remove their clothes. The crowd as crowds do threw the bananas back at the band, and the mushy fruit smeared all over the eld, wreaking havoc on the second half of the game. If I want to sum up what being a MOBster is like, said Keith Goodnight

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

Rice Magazine

No. 11

2011

39

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

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

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

channels the citys urban neighborhoods into her work, creating compilations of homes,
discount stores, nail salons, check-cashing businesses, clubs and the like.

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

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

40

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Arts

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

Rices newest owl

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

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

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

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

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

42

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Arts
Every time you nish a project its always a surprise to see what could be the reaction of people in front of it. Im really pleased that people emotionally, immediately start to interact with the piece and to really walk inside it.
Jaume Plensa

City of the Future Now

The idea of tough love can apply to the landscapes and architecture of cities as much as it does to other sorts of human interaction. This is especially true when the city in question is Houston, with its urban sprawl, lack of zon ing and disconnected neighborhoods. In One Million Acres & No Zoning (Architectural Association, 2011), Lars Lerup, the Harry K. and Albert K. Smith Professor of Architecture and former dean of the Rice School of Architecture, turns his tough love on Houston. Lerup presents Houston as a test case for 21st-century urbanism and examines how that urbanism contributes to the understanding of unregu lated cities. His approach to the citys complexities takes into account the many features Houstonians see daily as well as the infrastructure that they dont. As much a rumination on modern urbanism as it is a critique of the Houston cityscape, One Million Acres goes a long way toward show ing how creative transformation has allowed Houston to prosper in an era when many cities have experienced difculties or declined.
Christopher Dow

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

44

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

ONTHE

Bookshelf

Mutants and Mystics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Right Turn: Conservative Politics in a Liberal America, by David T. Courtwright 79, Presidential Professor at the University of North Florida (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

45

Man of the

Football is part of the fabric of growing up in Texas a rite of passage of sorts, says Will McClay 89. He should know. A Houston native, McClay has been sur rounded by the game throughout his life. He played high school ball at Marian Christian and later went on to star at cornerback for the Rice Owls. Now, more than two decades after graduating, McClay still spends his waking hours around foot ball in the Lone Star State. But these days, hes in the Dallas Cowboys front ofce.
McClays route to the NFL was anything but direct. From the arena ranks to the upstart XFL and back to the arena ranks, McClay has been involved in nearly every style of pro football. Player, director of personnel, general manager, head coach you name it; McClay has done it.
I grew up in Texas, so its been a dream come true to be able to work in professional football with the Cowboys, said McClay, who is the director of football research for Dallas. In this state, football is such a key part of life. Its meant a lot to me to be able to transition from playing football to a front ofce position and to be able to continue working around football in Texas. For the past nine years, McClay has been a part of the Cowboys organization. He started his tenure in the scouting department and moved to his current position this season. There are two main com ponents to McClays job. On one end, he is charged with studying the Cowboys next opponent each week to help them prepare for their next game. Hes also responsible for determining the best players available to add to the teams roster. Its a year-round job, said McClay, who added that the workload remains the same whether the Cowboys are playing or not. The focus just changes, McClay responded when asked if there were any slower parts to the calendar year. We are always grading and evaluating. Staying on the cutting edge of the sport is a crucial part of the job for McClay. And thats where the role of statistics comes in. As evidenced by Michael Lewis best-seller-turned movie, Moneyball, baseball teams have tried to gain advantages by using novel statistics for over a decade. In recent years, NBA teams most prominently the Houston Rockets have been noted for trying to bring advanced metrics into basketball front ofces. These sorts of sabermetrics are now be coming a key part of the job. In recent years, advanced statistics has had considerable impact on football, McClay said. At rst, it was mainly just with baseball. And then they were used to evaluate basketball players. They are now being used to break down football. Theres a gamut of novel statistics currently being used by teams. From using metrics to determine when its best to attempt a two-point conversion to nding when nding new ways to look at the impact of turnovers, teams are trying to ways put football into numbers and nd different ways to understand it, football nd McClay said. said. The Beginning of a Journey Breaking into the NFL was a topsy-turvy process for McClay, a jourinto jour ney that began after graduating from Rice. After McClay went unbegan un drafted and received no invites to try out at NFL camps, his future in and professional professional football appeared bleak. However, former Rice assistant coach Tim Marcum offered to give McClay a shot with the Arena Tim

Gridiron

By Andrew Clark

46

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Will McClay and his son, Gabriel McClay

RICEOWLS.COM

Sports

Football Leagues Detroit Drive. It was a simple choice for McClay. The answer was yes. McClay went on to spend four seasons with the Drive, playing both offense and defense. His best season was in his last year in 1992, when the Houston native racked up 34 tackles to go along with one interception. While it is still football, arena style is a completely different game. The eld is half the size. There are fewer players. And it is faster. Much faster. Still, McClay found the transition from traditional football to arena ball to be natural. It was really an easy adjustment for me, says McClay. The game is played on such a fast level and it is really different than college ball or the NFL. For example, in the NFL, quarterbacks get about three seconds to throw a pass. When it comes to arena football, they get a second and a half. It really changes things a lot. It was with the Drive that McClay got his rst opportunity to coach on the professional level. He spent nearly two years as an as sistant coach with Detroit, and just a few years later, he would serve a similar role with the Arena Leagues Grand Rapids Rampage. But in 2000, McClay had the opportunity to tackle the biggest challenge of his football career: assembling a team in an upstart football league the XFL. The XFL was created by pro wrestling promoter Vince McMahon as an alternative football league that provided fans with a combination of sports and entertainment. The rules were adjusted to lead to rougher play. Players could put whatever they wanted on the back of their jerseys. In fact, one player simply went by the name He Hate Me. McClay became director of player person nel for the XFLs Orlando Rage. The task was an arduous one. He had to create a team from the ground up in less than a year. It was a great challenge putting a team together, says McClay. We were doing the entire thing from scratch because it was a startup league. That meant drawing on the limited resources that we had. Coaches would use any connections that they had to get players. We would look at people playing over in NFL Europe. It opened a lot of doors for people in just one year. Though the XFL lasted just one season before closing its doors, McClays career was beginning to pick up steam. He was then hired as the assistant director of pro personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars. McClay spent one season there before moving on to the Cowboys, where he has been ever since, wearing a number of hats over the past decade. Launching a Career While McClay has worked in the scouting de partment since joining Dallas, he also was tasked with coaching the Desperados, an arena football league team owned by Cowboys own er Jerry Jones. Originally a defensive coordinator for the Desperados, McClay took the reins of the team in 2004. He was wildly successful with the Desperados, leading them to a 55281 record during his tenure. He was even named Coach of the Year in 2006. Former Desperados quarterback Clint Dolezel said that McClay was just the kind of coach that players dreamed of playing for. What most players like and want is a coach who is honest and fair, said Dolezel, who played for the Desperados between 2006 and 2008. Will is both. What he says is what he will follow up with. It is easy to

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

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

After working in the scouting department and as coach of the Desperados (which folded two years ago), McClay was named director of football research this season. Its a position that requires intimate knowledge of all aspects of the game. Around the country, more and more schools are adding sport management programs to the curriculum to help the next generation prepare for jobs like the one McClay holds. At Rice, a sport management major was created just three years ago. Though he was a few decades short of being able to pursue the degree, McClay says that programs like the one developed at Rice are invaluable. I think its very important to have sport management programs like that, said McClay of Rices new discipline. Theres this economic dynamic to professional sports, and sports are constantly chang ing. Programs like these give people the knowledge that they need to be successful in managing a franchise, and it teaches them how to use that knowledge properly. With his days filled by the game he loves, McClay couldnt be happier. The 45-year-old father of two said that he would eventually like to serve as a general manager in the NFL. But to be able to spend his waking hours involved with the sport he grew up with, well, thats something he wouldnt trade. It is hard to imagine anything else from someone who grew up playing football in Texas.

Rice Magazine

No. 12

2012

47

Sports

RICEOWLS.COM

Rice Trustees Approve New Football Facility

The Rice University Board of Trustees has approved a $44.5 million proposal to build a new two-story football facility at the south end of Rice Stadium and to improve the stadium facilities and experi ence. The project is contingent on fundraising.
The new 80,000-square-foot structure will house training and locker rooms, the Rice Athletic Hall of Fame, a sports medicine center for all studentathletes, ofces for the coaching and support staffs, and a room for news conferences and other meetings. The proposal includes plans to upgrade parts of the stadium by demolishing the structures currently at the south end, including the R Room that currently houses the Hall of Fame, replacing restrooms and ticket booths, and building eight suites in the south zone. Weve seen the benets of recent investments in the basket ball, baseball, volleyball and track facilities, said Jim Crownover 65, chairman of the Rice board, and Rices football program is in line for similar support from the many alumni and fans who value what this means for the studentath letes and the university. This new facility and the renovations to the south end zone will enhance the historic stadium where President John Kennedy deliv ered his famous speech about going to the moon, Rice President David Leebron said. While our Owls fans both on campus and in the community will enjoy these improvements, the main benecia ries will be our studentathletes, who consistently demonstrate their competitive spirit and leadership both on and off the eld. They contribute immensely to our student body and the Rice experience. The Rice football team has been consistently ranked as one of the nations top programs in terms of graduation success, while also earning a pair of bowl berths in the last six years. The Owls have been honored for their graduation rates by the American Football Coaches Association 22 times in the last 23 years and received the or ganizations highest honor, the Academic Achievement Award, in 2010. Rick Greenspan, director of athletics, recreation and tness, noted that Rice Stadium is showing the wear and tear of its 61 years. Previous upgrades to the stadium have included a new playing surface, a new video board and scoreboard, and aluminum benches to replace the wooden bleachers. The boards approval of our new football facility reects Rices commitment to Division 1-A athletics as the university enters its sec ond century, Greenspan said. Rice Athletics is known for its athletic achievements, academic excellence, successful careers of its graduates, leadership and integri ty. I am condent that our former players who love Rice football, as well as our loyal fans who are dedicated to Rice Athletics, will make the critical investments to continue and enhance the efforts of our young men and women who pursue championships in competition and excellence in the classroom each and every day. Greenspan said the football proposal is part of a larger vision being developed for Rice Athletics that entails enhancements for oth er sports, including tennis and soccer, and additional scholarships for studentathletes. Rice Stadium opened in 1950 and has been the site of many historic events for the university, the city of Houston and the country. On Sept. 12, 1962, in Rice Stadium, Kennedy issued his historic challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The stadium also has served as the home base for the Bluebonnet Bowl, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University and the NFLs Houston Oilers. One of only three existing on-campus facilities where a Super Bowl has been held, the stadium hosted Super Bowl VIII Jan. 13, 1974, in which the Miami Dolphins defeated the Minnesota Vikings 247. Over the years, more than 10 million fans have watched Rice Owls football in Rice Stadium.
B.J. Almond

48

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Students

Donated Property Is a Nest Egg for Rice

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

Subscribe to the Gift and Estate Planning E-newsletter

Sign up today at www.rice.planyourlegacy.org to receive important updates on tax laws, creative tips for maximizing your philanthropy and inspiring stories about Rices proud supporters.

To learn more about including Rice in your estate plans, please contact the Office of Gift Planning.
Phone: 713-348-4624

Email: giftplan@rice.edu

Website: www.rice.planyourlegacy.org

Rice University Creative ServicesMS 95 P Box 1892 .O. Houston, TX 77251-1892

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

Banner Year

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