| Pushing Moore’s Law

4 •
| Carbon Tax
10 •
| Bull Year
12 •
| Rice Filmmakers
40 • 45 | Van Gogh's Canvas

The Magazine of Rice University • No. 8 | 2010

20 RICE’S PAST AND FUTURE

Rhodes to
22 SCIENCE VS. RELIGION
26 BE COUNTED AND COUNT
28 UNDERSTANDING CITIES OF TOMORROW
32 BETTER HEALTH CARE, LOWER COST
Success
34 THREE NEW INITIATIVES
38 ACADEMIC SUCCESS AND
IMMIGRANT STUDENTS
Contents
7

11 Looking for telltale 3 Heroes come in all

signs of bioterror. shapes and sizes.

13 That letter of recom- 4 If you can’t accept a

mendation might be physical limitation, then
hurting your chances. push its boundaries.

12 It’s been a bull year

00
for the Jesse H. Jones
Graduate School of
Business.
5 Once again, Rice is
7 When it comes to a “Great College to
segregation, sepa- Work For.”
rate is never equal.
9 To live on campus,
or not to live on
10 To meet the United
campus — that’s the
Nations climate chal-
question.
lenge, the U.S. might
do well to institute a
carbon tax.
8 The maternal ancestor
of us all lived 200,000
years ago.

8 The Houston Asian- 21 A festive mood

American Archive is launches the
designed to foster a Centennial
deeper understanding Celebration
of Houston’s immi- countdown
grant history. on Rice
Day.

On the Cover: Ye jin Kang, Rice’s newest Rhodes Scholar, holds up a signed football presented by
Director of Athletics, Recreation and Fitness Rick Greenspan during halftime at the Rice–University
of Alabama at Birmingham game, which Rice won 28–23. See the story on Page 5.
40 Rice film school
Cover photo: Tommy LaVergne

Features
20 Reflections on Rice’s Past and Future
With the launch of the Centennial Celebration,
it’s time to consider where Rice has been and the
course it has charted for the century to come.
By David W. Leebron
22 Science vs. Religion: Is Dialog
Possible?
The divide between science and religion seems to
be growing, but is it? Sociologist Elaine Howard
Ecklund delves into the facts and figures.
By Linda Day
26 Be Counted and Count
When you want to know about the census,
there’s no better source than sociologist Steve
Murdock.
By Christopher Dow
28 Understanding Cities of Tomorrow
Two former centers at Rice merge in a new
institute that aims to bring insight and direction
to urban growth and development.
By Christopher Dow
32 Better Health Care, Lower Cost
A health care economist eyes the efficiency
and effectiveness of the health care system.
By Jessica Stark
34 Provost Appoints Task Forces for
Three New Initiatives
Rice’s new provost, George McLendon, talks
about a strategy that will allow Rice to marshal
its resources to become a recognized leader
in bioscience and health, energy and the
environment, and international strategy.
By Mike Williams
38 Academic Success and Immigrant
Students
How can we increase success among the
increasing number of immigrant students in U.S.
schools? There may be answers.
By Jessica Stark
Students
Students
16 If you can’t get water from the
ground, harvest it from the air.
17 History meets science at a Historic
Texas Cemetery.
18 A summer fellowship program
offers students a Gateway to the
real world.
19 Seeing small never looked so big.
Arts
40 Students don’t come to Rice to
study film. They become filmmakers
because they can’t help it.
42 Somewhere at the intersection of
art and science sits Lina Dib.
44 Scale, spectacle, and tricks of light
and perspective emerge from Rice
Gallery in one elegant plane.
45 Sometimes what lies beneath the
surface of a painting is what gives
the real clues to an artist’s oeuvre.
22
Bookshelf
46 Want statistics on the U.S.
presidency? Look no further.
46 Photos and text chart the coastline
of the western Gulf of Mexico.
47 The Large Hadron Collider won’t
create a black hole or tear the fabric
of space–time, but what it will do is
pretty amazing.
26
47 Who better to edit a collection of
Latino mysteries than a pair of
Latina law enforcement officers
who also are professional writers?
Sports
48 Men’s soccer is kicking up a storm.
38
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 1
 F O R E W O R D

Rice Magazine
No. 8
T H E H U M A N F AC E OF R ESEA RCH

T
Published by the
he contributions made to human knowledge and understanding by research univer- Office of Public Affairs
Linda Thrane, vice president
sities such as Rice is most obvious in the sciences and engineering, which produce
tangible results that impact our lives on a daily basis. At Rice, our scientists and Editor
engineers are exploring the universe from the biological to the cybernetic, from the Christopher Dow
dimensions of the purely physical to the effects of unseen forces, and from nano Editorial Director
to cosmic scales. But perhaps no subject is so profoundly difficult to study and understand as Tracey Rhoades
human beings. Who we are as individuals and how we interact within social, political, economic
Creative Director
and religious aggregates are the domains not of the hard sciences but of the social sciences. Jeff Cox
The Rice School of Social Sciences may be the smallest of the main divisions on campus, but
it serves the largest number of students, with more than a third of Rice undergraduates majoring Art Director
Chuck Thurmon
in one of its departments. Its varied disciplines — anthropology, cognitive sciences, economics,
managerial studies, policy studies, political science, psychology and sociology — not only focus Editorial Staff
on how people think and act as individuals and within society, but also seek to generate work- B.J. Almond, staff writer
able solutions for problems faced by individuals and the global community as a whole. Jade Boyd, staff writer
Franz Brotzen, staff writer
It would seem that a great deal of what social scientists study contains some degree of po- Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor
larization, and maybe that’s what makes the social sciences as intrinsically interesting as they are David Ruth, staff writer
important. Take, for example, the work of sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, who has spent Jessica Stark, staff writer
Mike Williams, staff writer
the last few years examining the divide between science and religion. In “Science vs. Religion,”
we look at her latest findings, which question the popular assumption that scientists are, by and Photographers
large, antireligious. Tommy LaVergne, photographer
Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer
We also look at the work of political scientist Melissa Marschall, who has been researching
ways to promote academic success among the increasing numbers of immigrant and English- The Rice University
language learners in U.S. schools, and at the efforts of health care economist Vivian Ho, who is Board of Trustees
James W. Crownover, chairman; J.D. Bucky
seeking ways to streamline the U.S. health care system and make it more efficient as well as ef- Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith T.
fective. And in this census year, we also talk to sociologist Steve Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha Viswanathan
Murdock about the U.S. Census, which he directed in 2008 and Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth; Robert T.
Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson; Douglas Lee
2009: how it works, who benefits from it, why it’s important to Foshee; Susanne Morris Glasscock; James T.
be counted and why the U.S. Census is a world-class model of Hackett; Larry Kellner; Robert R. Maxfield;
data collection. M. Kenneth Oshman; Jeffery O. Rose;
There are a number of other articles on Rice social sci- Lee H. Rosenthal; Hector de J. Ruiz; L. E.
Simmons; Charles Szalkowski; Robert B.
ences in this issue, but let me highlight the Kinder Institute Tudor III; James S. Turley; Randa Duncan
for Urban Research. An outgrowth of the nearly 30-year-old Williams.
Houston Area Survey and other urban-based institutes at Rice,
Administrative Officers
the Kinder Institute aims to bring insight and direction to urban growth and development by David W. Leebron, president; George
studying major cities in the U.S. and abroad, in addition to Houston. The institute will bring a McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice
wealth of Rice talent — not just from the social sciences but from practically every discipline pr esident for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice
president for Administration; Ron Long,
— to bear on the pressing issues created by the massive growth of urban centers worldwide. interim vice president for Investments and
If you just scratch the surface of research at Rice, you will find a great research university treasur er; Chris Muñoz, vice president for
that aspires to understand our world and our universe. If you explore a little deeper, you’ll find Enrollment; Carol Quillen, vice president
for International and Interdisciplinary
the human face that gives it all meaning. Initiatives; Linda Thrane, vice presi dent
for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice
president and general counsel; Darrow
Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource
Explore the social sciences at Rice: › ›› socialsciences.rice.edu Development.

Rice Magazine is published by the Office of

Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent
to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate
Christopher Dow students, parents of undergraduates and
cloud@rice.edu friends of the university.

Editorial Offices
Creative Services–MS 95
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TTX
X 77251-1892
Fax: 713-348-6757
E-mail: ricemagazine@rice.edu

© D ECEMBER 2 010 RICE UNIVE RSITY

Corrections: Our article “Brains and Bronze” stated incorrectly that John L. Wortham, rather than his son, Gus S. Wortham, was
the founder of the Wortham Foundation. The first director of the Center for the Study of Cultures was Michael Fischer and not David
Nirenberg, as was stated in “Human(ities) Interaction.”

2 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Hero
on the Line
Louise Beraud should have been home, enjoying the rewards of a college
degree. Instead, she was busily patching calls through a telephone switch-
board in wartime France while the building around her burned.
Beraud, who left Rice University after her junior year to attend
Chicago University, had put off her degree to attend to a more im-
portant matter: The War to End All Wars. She was one of nearly 300
American women to join the Army Signal Corps Female Telephone
Operators Unit, which was formed in 1917 when Gen. John Pershing,
commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe, report-
edly ignored orders to keep women (other than nurses) out of the
war and formed the operators unit that became
known as the Hello Girls.
Most of the recruits had been telephone op-
erators, and all were fluent in English and French
so that they could translate messages instantly.
After two weeks of training in communications
and self-defense, they took an enlistment oath and
were told to buy their own uniforms. The first 233
Hello Girls were sent to France in March 1918, and
they quickly proved their worth, working long
hours to keep command posts wired to the front.
Beraud, who became Louise Beraud Griggs
when she later married her wartime love, had
learned French at home. “Her father came over
from France as a master chef,” said Shelley
Gottschalk, Griggs’ granddaughter and wife of
Arthur Gottschalk, professor and chair of compo-
sition and theory at the Shepherd School of Music.
“John Jacob Astor hired him.” Griggs’ parents met
in America and settled in Houston, where Griggs’
Louise Beraud Griggs
father managed the Tejas Club at the Rice Hotel
and catering at the Rice Institute.
Various reports indicate between two and four other Hello Girls
were at the switchboard in an Army barracks in Souilly when the build-
ing caught fire during a shell attack in the Meuse–Argonne Offensive,
a bloody, months-long battle that helped seal Germany’s fate. While
soldiers worked to put out the blaze, Griggs and other operators refused
orders to abandon their posts and kept critical lines of communication
open. For that, they won special citations from the Army.
THROUGH THE Sallyport
“We just kept on working,” Griggs told the Houston Chronicle in
1980. “It wasn’t really a matter of bravery. You just do the thing that’s
right. You don’t think of anything else.”
At the war’s conclusion, Griggs stayed in France for a time and
worked with the YWCA to help resettle families before returning to
Rice to complete her degree in 1920. Although her bravery was never
questioned, she and the other Hello Girls returned to the States to dis-
cover that they had never actually been in the Army
and therefore could not be honorably discharged.
“She said that after the war, something happened in
the Senate, and they were told they weren’t a part
of the U.S. Army,” Gottschalk recalled. “She and the
other women in the Signal Corps had to petition
Congress for their discharge. She wrote those letters
for what must have been 50 years.”
Finally, at the behest of then-President Jimmy
Carter in 1978, Congress passed a law ordering that
the status of “civilian volunteers” with the Armed
Forces in wartime be revisited. In 1980, the year
before she died, Griggs received her honorary dis-
charge and a World War I Victory Medal with a
clasp for France in a ceremony at the Texas Army
National Guard Armory in Houston. This year, on
Nov. 11, Griggs was honored again for her heroic
service in a ceremony at the Rice Memorial Center
as part of Rice’s 2010 Veterans Day observance.
Griggs continued to make use of her aptitude
in French after the war; she taught the language
at Houston Heights High School until her marriage in 1924, said her
daughter, Belle Griggs Johnson. “She never griped,” Johnson said
of her mom. “She made the best of everything. She was a super,
super woman.”
—Mike Williams
View photos from Rice’s 2010 Veterans Day celebration:
›› › ricemagazine.info/ 75
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 3
 Clockwise from left: Rice professors
Douglas Natelson and Lin Zhong, gradu-
ate students Zhengzong Sun and Jun Yao,
and Professor James Tour.
Breaking a Barrier
If you can’t accept a physical limitation, then push its boundaries.
The limitation, in this case, is the physical limits of miniaturization
possible for today’s electronics. If Moore’s Law, which states the
number of devices on a circuit doubles every 18 to 24 months, con-
tinues to hold true, our electronic devices will reach their smallest
— and fastest — state in the very near future.
Now, however, Rice University scientists have created the first two-
terminal memory chips that use only silicon, one of the most common
substances on the planet, in a way that should be easily adaptable to
nanoelectronic manufacturing techniques and promises to extend the
limits of miniaturization.
Last year, researchers in the lab of Rice
Professor James Tour showed how elec-
trical current could repeatedly break and
reconnect 10-nanometer strips of graphite
to create a robust, reliable memory “bit.”
At the time, they didn’t fully understand
why it worked so well, but that recently
changed thanks to a new collaboration by
the Rice labs of professors Tour, Douglas
Natelson and Lin Zhong, and it turns out
that you don’t need the carbon at all.
Jun Yao, a graduate student in Tour’s
lab and primary author of a paper that
appeared in the online edition of Nano A silicon-oxide memory chip in which silicon nanowire forms is testing a silicon-oxide chip with 1,000
Letters, confirmed his breakthrough idea when a charge is sent through the silicon oxide, creating a memory elements that was built in col-
when he sandwiched a layer of silicon ox- two-terminal resistive switch.
ide, an insulator, between semiconducting
sheets of polycrystalline silicon that served as the top and bottom
electrodes. Applying a charge to the electrodes created a conductive
pathway and formed a chain of nanosized silicon crystals. The chain
can be repeatedly broken and reconnected by applying a pulse of
varying voltage. The nanocrystal wires are as small as 5 nanometers
(billionths of a meter) wide, far smaller than circuitry in even the most
advanced computers and electronic devices.
“The beauty is its simplicity,” said Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao
Professor of Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineer-
ing and materials science and of computer science. That simplicity is
key to the technology’s scalability. Silicon oxide switches or memory
locations require only two terminals, not three — as in flash memory
— because the physical process doesn’t require the device to hold
4 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
“I’ve been told by industry profession-
als that if you’re not in the 3-D memory
business in four years, you’re not going
to be in the memory business. This is
perfectly suited for that.”
—James Tour
a charge. “Flash memory is going to hit a brick wall at about 20
nanometers,” Tour said. “But our technique is perfectly suited for sub-
10-nanometer circuits.”
It also means layers of silicon-oxide memory can be stacked in
tiny but capacious three-dimensional arrays. “I’ve been told by in-
dustry professionals that if you’re not in the 3-D memory business in
four years, you’re not going to be in the memory business,” Tour said.
“This is perfectly suited for that.”
Silicon-oxide memory also is compatible with conventional tran-
sistor manufacturing technology. The circuits feature high on-off
ratios, excellent endurance and fast switching — below 100 nano-
seconds — and they will be resistant to ra-
diation, which should make them suitable
for military and NASA applications.
Yao had a hard time convincing his
colleagues that silicon oxide alone could
make a circuit even though it is, according
to Tour, the most-studied material in hu-
man history. “In research, if everyone nods
their heads, then it’s probably not that big,”
Graphic: Jun Yao
Yao said. “But if you do something and ev-
eryone shakes their heads, and then you
prove it, it could be big.”
Austin tech design company PrivaTran
laboration with the Tour lab. The company
is using the technology in several projects
supported by the Army Research Office, National Science Foundation,
Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Navy Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Command Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.
Yao’s co-authors on the paper were Tour; Natelson, a Rice profes-
sor of physics and astronomy; Zhong, assistant professor of electri-
cal and computer engineering; and Zhengzong Sun, then a gradu-
ate student in Tour’s lab. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation,
the Texas Instruments Leadership University Program, the National
Science Foundation, PrivaTran and the Army Research Office SBIR
Program supported the research.
—Mike Williams
Read the paper: ›› › ricemagazine.info/67
 THROUGH THE Sallyport

“I’m looking forward

to making new friends,
embracing a new culture
and immersing myself
in a unique academic
environment.”
—Ye jin Kang

Rice Student Named Rhodes Scholar

A Great College to
Some people see a problem and turn away, too baffled, busy or disinterested to do Work For
anything about it. Then there’s Ye jin Kang. Kang saw the prevalence of tubercu-
losis in Mexico, Honduras and Zambia, which made her committed to fighting the For the second year in a row, the
disease. Now, a Rhodes Scholarship will take her one step closer to her dream of Chronicle of Higher Education has
being a global citizen sensitive to the needs of different cultures. recognized Rice University as one of
its “Great Colleges to Work For.”
The Rice senior, one of 32 Americans and Health. Her abilities as a policymaker also
80 students worldwide to be awarded the received a serious jump start when, as a The Chronicle cited 97 colleges for
prestigious scholarship, will spend two freshman, she founded a student magazine specific best practices and policies,
years at Oxford. “I’m looking forward to called Catalyst: Rice Undergraduate Science such as compensation and benefits,
making new friends,” she said, “embracing and Engineering Review with fellow stu- faculty–administration relations, and
a new culture and immersing myself in a dents and served as editor in chief of the confidence in senior leadership. The
unique academic environment.” first two issues. honorees were determined by the
Kang plans to earn two Master of Science Kang is expected to graduate from Rice Chronicle’s random survey of faculty,
degrees — one in global health science and in May with majors in ecology and evo- administrators and staff and an audit of
demographics and workplace policies
one in global governance and diplomacy. lutionary biology and in policy studies in
and practices from each institution.
The latter prepares students to work with global health, along with a minor in bio-
Rice was honored in eight of the
international and nongovernmental organi- chemistry and cell biology. She attributed
categories among four-year, medium-
zations and private firms that interact with the diversity of her academic interests to sized schools: job satisfaction; teaching
them. Kang’s goals include developing pri- wanting to study disease at the micro and environment; facilities, workspaces and
vate and public partnerships with ministries macro levels. security; compensation and benefits;
of health abroad to improve health care. “Winning this scholarship really was a professional/career development pro-
“Infectious diseases know no political team effort,” Kang said. “I feel so blessed grams; work/life balance; respect and
or geographical boundaries, fuel a cycle of — I couldn’t have gotten this award without appreciation; and supervisor or de-
poverty and hinder economic development,” the support of my professors, committed partment chair relationship. Rice also
Kang said. “That’s why I want to work toward faculty and friends.” was named to the Chronicle’s honor
eradicating disease as a physician–policy- This year also, two Rice seniors were roll, which recognizes the overall top
maker on the international level.” awarded Marshall Scholarships. Anthony 10 colleges that were cited most often
It’s a direction Kang has been moving Austin will pursue a Master of Advanced across all categories.
in for several years. The summer before she Study degree in mathematics at Cambridge —Arie Wilson Passwaters
came to Rice, she was one of two Texas del- University and a Master of Science in pure
egates to the National Youth Science Camp. mathematics at Imperial College London,
Then, while at Rice, she designed and taught and Jingyuan Luo will complete a Master See the survey results:
undergraduate courses on tuberculosis and of Science degree in biomedicine, biosci- › › › ricemagazine.info/66
North Korea. She also served as a clinical in- ence and society at the London School
tern at National Masan Tuberculosis Hospital of Economics and Political Science and a
in South Korea and has done extensive re- Master of Research in stem cell biology at
search on TB at the National Institutes of Imperial College London.

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 5

 Centennial Challenge
to Young Alumni
Young Alumni, Meet Your Match!
Keith Anderson ’83 Charley Landgraf ’75
CCYA Co-Challenger
CCYA Co-Challenger
Rice simply couldn’t be the high-caliber
institution that it is today without the
ongoing support of alumni. With that in
mind, Keith Anderson ’83 and Charley
Landgraf ’75 are challenging young
alumni to join them in supporting the
Rice Annual Fund.
• Give a gift, get a match. If you graduated
from Rice between 2000 and 2010, Keith and
Charley will generously match your Annual
Fund gift 3-to-1 until Dec. 31, 2010.
• Gave last year or the year before? Get a bigger
match! If you made an Annual Fund gift during
the past two years of the challenge, your new
gift will be matched 4-to-1 until Dec. 31, 2010.
• Meet your class goal and help earn up to
$230,000 for Rice. Keith and Charley will
contribute an additional $20,000 for each
class that reaches its goal by June 30, 2011,
and an extra $10,000 in honor of the first class
to hit its goal.
See how your class is stacking up, and then
rise to the challenge by making your gift at:
www.rice.edu/centennialchallenge
6 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Continuing
Expansion
What school at Rice enrolls more students annually than
Rice’s entire undergraduate and graduate student popu-
lations put together?
If you answered the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, you might
be one of the 12,000 people who attend courses each year at one of the largest
continuing education programs in Texas. Founded in 1968, the school has spent
much of its life housed in a “temporary” building while helping others reach their
personal and professional goals, but now the school is eyeing growth of its own.
Key to the expansion is a new building that will be located between Rice
Stadium and campus Entrance 8 at University Boulevard and Stockton Drive.
Construction will be completely funded by philanthropic gifts, and thanks to
generous Centennial Campaign gifts from the school’s namesake and Rice trustee
Susanne M. Glasscock ’62 and her husband, Melbern Glasscock ’61, and others, the
school has raised nearly $9.5 million for the $24 million facility.
The Glasscock School offers noncredit programs in personal development, pro-
fessional development, teacher professional development and languages. In addi-
tion to the thousands of Houstonians who attend classes at the school, more than
4,000 college-preparatory teachers from all over the country attend its professional
development courses, and the English as a Second Language program has attracted
students from more than 100 countries. The school’s Master of Liberal Studies has
grown into the second-largest master’s program at Rice.
For many of its programs, the school collaborates with organizations such as
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Houston Museum of Natural Science; the
Greater Houston Preservation Alliance; the Writers’ League of Texas; the Association
of Fundraising Professionals, Greater Houston Chapter; and HR Houston.
“We see the Glasscock School at the center of Rice’s efforts to engage the broad-
er Houston community,” said Mary McIntire, dean of Continuing Studies. “As the
oldest and possibly best-known educational outreach of the university, the school
has a nearly 45-year-old place in the shared lives of Rice and Houston.”
The new building will allow the Glasscock School to expand the size and scope
of its offerings. Enrollment is expected to increase from 12,000 a year to 15,000, and
e-learning and daytime programs will be added. The three-story, 51,000-square-
foot facility will include 24 classrooms, conference rooms, a language center, an
auditorium, a commons area and a terrace for events.
“This building isn’t just about Continuing Studies and all its programs,” Susanne
Glasscock said. “This is a building where Rice University can greet, involve, engage
and maybe even entertain our neighbors, the city of Houston and the world.”
The Glasscocks have been regular School of Continuing Studies students for
about 30 years. In 2006, the school was officially renamed the Susanne M. Glasscock
School of Continuing Studies in honor of an endowment gift — believed to be the
largest endowment ever for a U.S. university continuing education program — from
the Glasscocks. The new building will be built to the U.S. Green Building Council’s
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.
—Jessica Stark
 THROUGH THE Sallyport

Michael Emerson
discusses segregation in
society during a presen-
tation to the Houston
Association of Hispanic
Media Professionals.

Separate
Is Never Equal
It’s no surprise that people try to get the best houses in the best
neighborhoods they can find. How does it end up they live so
segregated by race?
That’s the question that Michael Emerson asked, and he said he said, African-Americans in Harris County proved less interested
hears two common answers. The fi rst: “It’s not race; it’s class.” in neighborhoods where the percent of Asian residents was on
“In fact, that’s not the answer,” said Emerson, the Allyn and the rise.
Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and co-director of the uni- Why does neighborhood segregation by race matter? The
versity’s new Kinder Institute for Urban Research. “There is a fourfold increase in the national gap between net worth of white
range of incomes within any racial group, and when we look and black families — demonstrated in an “incredibly detailed”
at where people live by income level, they’re still segregated by study of 2,000 families followed over 24 years from 1984 to 2007
race. Segregation by race is substantially greater than segrega- — is telling. The study, Emerson said, “shows most middle-class
tion by income.” Americans generate their wealth
The second answer — “People like to live with people like through their homes, and white
“There is a range neighborhoods, due to higher
themselves” — is somewhat more accurate, he said, but it’s still
not the complete answer. “In current times, many people want of incomes demand, rise in value more than
not to live with certain people — people they think will drive within any racial in other neighborhoods. So it’s
down their property values, raise crime and lower the quality group, and when a big deal where people live.
of local education. They use race to decide these other factors.” We must fi nd ways to stop giv-
we look at where ing benefits along racial lines. As
The 2000 Census showed a distinct separation between black
and white neighborhoods, with Hispanics somewhat more inte- people live by most Americans believe, benefits
grated but still dominating many neighborhoods of their own. income level, should go to people by merit, not
According to the most recent Houston Area Survey, too few are they’re still seg- race.”
committed to diversity. Emerson said he and his
regated by race.
Emerson’s own neighborhood is a good example of what has Kinder Institute colleagues are
befallen not only Houston, but other major cities nationwide. Segregation by anxious to see the results of the
“When I moved there, it was mixed with many racial groups, race is substan- 2010 Census when they become
but now it’s 99 percent black and Hispanic,” said Emerson, who tially greater available next year. He hopes to
is white. “I’m totally convinced we have to live in integrated than segregation fi nd Houston neighborhoods that
neighborhoods, so my family and I choose to do so.” have been integrated for 20 years
A “factorial experiment” of African-Americans, Hispanics
by income.” or more. “We will attempt to un-
and whites, 1,000 each, revealed important results. As expected, —Michael Emerson derstand why they are stably in-
there was sensitivity among all groups to high crime rates and tegrated,” he said, “and what the
low-quality schools, and blacks and whites were more sensitive consequences are, positive and
to home valuation than Hispanics. But what about race? negative, for people who live there.”
Race is less of an issue for Hispanics, at least in Harris “People give all kinds of reasons why it’s okay to have seg-
County. “But for whites,” Emerson said, “you get a different regation and to have inequality by class and race and never
story. They are highly sensitive to percent black and percent actually face it,” he said. “The fact is, the society our children
Hispanic. Even if you take a neighborhood that has low crime, inherit will suffer and the society our grandchildren inherit will
high-quality schools and rising property values, and you say suffer even more if we don’t address racial segregation and the
it’s 30 percent black, in almost every single case, the white re- resulting increasing racial wealth gap.”
spondent will say, ‘Not likely to buy the home.’” Similarly, he —Mike Williams

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 7

 Rice Creates Houston’s First
Asian-American Archive
Last summer, Tracey Lam learned about Houston’s past, but it
wasn’t in a history book. It was through hours-long conversa-
tions with some of Houston’s Chinese-American citizens. Part

Eve
of a new research project of Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Center
for Asian Studies, the oral-history interviews and transcrip-
tions will be fully accessible through the Woodson Research
mitochondrial Center’s Houston Asian American Archive (HAAA).

The HAAA is designed to foster a deeper understanding and

appreciation of Houston’s immigrant history by researching, pre-
serving and sharing the rich background, diverse cultural legacy
and continuing contributions of Asian-Americans to the city.
Mother of All Humans Lived The Chao Center created an internship program to help
200,000 Years Ago build the HAAA and deepen students’ historical and cultural
understanding. The students said that getting to know the peo-
ple behind the stories helped them see Houston — and U.S.
The most robust statistical examination to date of our species’ history — through new eyes.
genetic links to “mitochondrial Eve” — the maternal ancestor “They told stories with such colorful details that I couldn’t
have appreciated by just reading,” said Lam, a Lovett College
of all living humans — confirms that she lived about 200,000 senior who grew up listening to her parents tell stories of their
years ago. The Rice University study was based on a side-by- own immigrant life. The oral histories collected by Lam and four
side comparison of 10 human genetic models that each aim other interns join complete copies of Houston’s first Chinese-
to determine when Eve lived using a very different set of as- language newspaper, records from the publisher’s business,
sumptions about the way humans migrated, expanded and as well as oral histories of the company’s founders. The Chao
Center is working with more organizations to further round out
spread across Earth. the archive and include artifacts focusing on labor and capital.
“Our findings underscore the importance of taking into account the
random nature of population processes like growth and extinction,” —Jessica Stark
said study co-author Marek Kimmel, professor of statistics at Rice.
“Classical, deterministic models, including several that have previously
been applied to the dating of
mitochondrial Eve, do not Rice Remains Among Nation’s
fully account for these ran- Top 5 Best-Value Private Schools
dom processes.” in New Kiplinger Ranking
The quest to date mito-
chondrial Eve (mtEve) is an
For the third year in a row, Rice is No. 4 on the
example of the way scien-
tists probe the genetic past list of best values in private colleges ranked
to learn more about muta- by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.
tion, selection and other ge- The rankings for 2010–11, announced Oct. 28,
netic processes that play key measure academic quality and affordability.
roles in disease. The magazine bases two-thirds of a school’s ranking on
The research, which academic excellence. Princeton, Yale and Caltech were the
resulted from a standing top three schools on the list, and Duke University rounded
collaboration between Rice out the top five.
and Silesian University of “With the lowest sticker price of our top-25 ranked universities,
Technology, is available on- along with generous need-based and merit-based aid,” Kiplinger
line in the journal Theoretical wrote, “Rice lives up to its reputation for affordability.”
Population Biology. It was
supported by grants from the This binary tree shows how all the people —B.J. Almond
Polish Ministry of Science on the bottom row are related to their
and Higher Education and most recent common matrilineal ances- For the complete rankings, visit: ›› › ricemagazine.info/73
the Cancer Prevention and tor. Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent
Research Institute of Texas. common matrilineal ancestor for all living Who Knew: ›› › ricewhoknew.info/14
—Jade Boyd humans.

8 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE Sallyport

four-year and public versus private control.

They found that “for most students in
Academic Benefits of Living On Campus most institutions, the type of residence during
college does not seem to have a significant
effect on first-year academic performance.”
For some minority students, however, they
To live on campus or not to live on campus — found notable differences. “Among black
students, those who live on campus in resi-
that is the question for many college freshmen, dence halls have significantly higher GPAs
than similar students at the same institution
their families and university administrators. One who live off campus with family.” There also

important consideration is how living in a dorm was a similar difference for all students at-
tending liberal arts institutions. “Those who
affects students’ academic success. live on campus also have significantly higher
GPAs than comparable students at the same
institution who live off campus with family.”

A new study by Rice Associate Professor of

Sociology Ruth Lopez Turley titled “College
Residence and Academic Performance: Who
Benefits From Living on Campus?” examined
the issue against the background of previous
research, which identified living on campus
as the single most important environmental
factor influencing academic engagement.
Turley and study co-author Geoffrey Wodtke
sought to reveal more comprehensive infor-
mation by focusing on the academic achieve-
ments of different groups. What they found
suggests that the answer to that question var-
ies by race/ethnicity, gender and a variety of
institutional characteristics. Wodtke, an un-
dergraduate at the University of Wisconsin
when the research was conducted, currently
is a graduate student at the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor.
In an effort to account for these variations,
The researchers first compared the grades of a national sample of the authors pointed out that “the differences
college students living on campus in residence halls, off campus in between those who live on campus and those
who live off campus without family are insig-
private apartments and at home with family and then compared the nificant. This suggests that, for black students
effect of college residence by race/ethnicity and gender. and students attending liberal arts institutions,
living off campus per se does not appear to be
To gain comprehensive data, the authors (54 percent), 28 percent lived off campus leading to lower first-year grades, but rather liv-
expanded previous study samples from pub- with family, 15 percent lived off campus with- ing with family seems to be the culprit.” Turley
lic research universities to a wider range of in- out family and very few lived in other types and Wodtke also noted that students at liberal
stitutions, like liberal arts colleges. “At differ- of residences (3 percent), such as fraternities/ arts schools may have an advantage because
ent types of institutions,” Turley and Wodtke sororities or university-owned off-campus these institutions usually focus on undergradu-
wrote, “the residential experience is likely to housing. By comparison, Rice houses 80 per- ates and have more restrictive admissions than
differ in ways that may produce significant cent of its undergrauate students on campus. larger public universities.
variation in the relationship between student The researchers first compared the Finally, since living on campus is more ex-
residence and academic achievement.” grades of a national sample of college stu- pensive than living off campus with family, the
The study’s analytic sample was centered dents living on campus in residence halls, off authors called for all parties — from high school
on first-year students, 18 to 25 years old, campus in private apartments and at home counselors to parents to university financial aid
whose parents claimed them as dependents with family and then compared the effect administrators — to work to make on-campus
and who were enrolled full time in institu- of college residence by race/ethnicity and living more feasible so students can experience
tions that offered on-campus housing but gender. Finally, they examined whether the the academic benefits.
that did not require fi rst-time students relationship between residence and achieve- —Franz Brotzen
to live on campus. Students attending ment varied across a variety of postsecond-
Rice University were not included in this ary institutions characterized by enrollment Read the study in the journal Urban Education:
study. Most of the sample lived on campus size, research orientation, two-year versus ›› › ricemagazine.info/70

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 9

 Replacing coal
generators with
natural gas, they
believe, “is the
Reducing most economical

CO2 Emissions way to achieve a

target of reducing
carbon dioxide
emissions by 20
percent.”

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last year, production to a system based on natural
gas. The authors said policymakers should
the United States pledged to reduce the 2005 levels of CO2 emissions by 17 encourage this transition, but they doubt
percent by 2020. To help make that happen, two Rice University research- whether natural gas supplies will be ad-
equate to maintain this shift in the long run.
ers are calling on policymakers to encourage the transition from coal-based Development of nuclear and renewable elec-
electricity production to a system based on natural gas through a carbon tax. tricity generation will need to continue at a
rapid pace. Natural gas, however, can be the
Dagobert Brito, the George A. Peterkin emissions by modeling the transition from transition technology to carbon-neutral elec-
Professor of Political Economy, and Robert coal-based electricity generation to a system trical generation.
Curl, the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger based on natural gas. Because coal-based CO2 permits would drastically affect the
Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences and electricity generation accounts for about a economics of coal-based electrical produc-
winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry, third of U.S. CO2 emissions — some 2 bil- tion and could possibly create volatility in
made their recommendation in a paper pub- lion metric tons — Brito and Curl describe the market for electricity. To reduce the risk
lished on the James A. Baker III Institute for it as “the 900-pound gorilla in the room.” of high volatility, the authors back a car-
Public Policy website. Replacing coal generators with natural gas, bon tax to assist the transition from coal to

Because coal-based electricity generation accounts for about a third

of U.S. CO2 emissions — some 2 billion metric tons — Brito and Curl
describe it as “the 900-pound gorilla in the room.”
Brito and Curl argue that there are three they believe, “is the most economical way to natural gas. They also assert that separating
important unresolved questions in the cur- achieve a target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions permitting for the production of
rent debate on the reduction of carbon di- emissions by 20 percent.” electricity from that of transportation would
oxide emissions: First, what is the range of So-called “clean coal” is not the answer, mean that a rise in carbon prices needed to
prices on carbon dioxide emissions that will the authors noted. “Unless or until there is effect a shift to natural gas-based electricity
be necessary to achieve the desired reduc- a technological breakthrough in carbon se- generation would have very little impact on
tions? Second, should electrical generators questration,” they wrote, “replacing existing transportation fuels.
and transport fuels be regulated jointly or coal generation capacity with modern coal
—Franz Brotzen
separately? Third, should the restrictions be generation plants can only reduce total car-
in the form of a quantity limit such as cap bon dioxide by 5 percent.” Read the paper:
and trade or in the form of a carbon tax? In any case, the United States already
›› › ricemagazine.info/69
The authors calculated the cost of CO2 is moving from coal-based electricity

10 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Exposing Telltale Signs of Bioterror
Large-scale outbreaks of illness are never pretty, but these days, one
question may be paramount: Is the outbreak caused by a natural patho-
gen or one that was grown in a lab by terrorists?
Discovering the answer to that question is the aim of a group of Rice
researchers who have won federal support to develop a genomic test
designed to provide homeland security and public health officials
with the tools they need to quickly determine how to respond to an
outbreak. The three-year grant is Rice’s first from the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency (DTRA).
“In a natural outbreak, there are classic rules of epidemiology that
describe how particular types of diseases will spread,” said princi-
pal investigator Yousif Shamoo, associate professor of biochemistry
and cell biology and director of Rice’s Institute of Biosciences and
Bioengineering. “In a man-made outbreak, you may be faced with an
actor who is continuously spreading the disease, or you might have a
Low-temperature
electron micrograph
of a cluster of E. coli
bacteria, magnified
10,000 times.
person who, knowing public health strategy, has engineered strains.”
Shamoo’s lab specializes in studying how the process of evolution
plays out at the molecular level. His group also studies how bacteria
evolve to become drug-resistant. He said the same forces that allow
drug-resistant strains of an organism to outcompete their nondrug-
resistant cousins in a hospital will also allow his team to discern
between pathogens whose origins are in nature or the lab. That will
be possible because of the way bacteria can progress through hun-
dreds of generations in just a few weeks and rapidly adapt to new
conditions.
“Living out in the wild is a pretty rough existence,” Shamoo said.
“By comparison, life in the laboratory is very posh. Lab-grown bac-
teria live in very nice conditions on agar plates eating this very rich
THROUGH THE Sallyport
media. And it’s the same diet every day. Our expectation is that or-
ganisms will lose certain genes that allow them to get nutrition from
the soil or the gut or wherever they came from, simply because they
don’t need them anymore.” In a lab, domesticated strains will out-
compete the wild type, which will disappear from the lab within just
a few generations.
For the DTRA project, Shamoo and his students will gather
wild strains of two common bacteria — Enterococcus faecalis and
Escherichia coli — and domesticate each of them in the lab. Genomic
snapshots will be taken throughout the process, and they’ll be ana-
lyzed for telltale patterns.
“We don’t want to get into the business of trying to catalog the
“The idea is to look for
common sets of responses
to domestication that you
would likely see for any
organism that’s adapting
from living in the wild to
living in the laboratory.”
—Yousif Shamoo
specific changes that take place for thousands of different organisms,”
Shamoo said. “The idea is to look for common sets of responses to
domestication that you would likely see for any organism that’s adapt-
ing from living in the wild to living in the laboratory.”
While E. faecalis and E. coli are each common, well-studied bac-
teria, they also come from opposite ends of their species’ genetic
spectrum. The fundamental differences in their chemical and physi-
cal properties will give the researchers a broad range of genetic pat-
terns associated with domestication.
“If we find something after three years, and we want to expand
the pool to include soil bacteria or other types,” Shamoo said, “we
can do that and see if the patterns repeat.”
—Jade Boyd
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 11
AforBull Year
the Jones School
If the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business was a surfer, it would are ready to build on their business and
leadership skills,” said Lina Bell, director
be riding one heck of a rankings wave. In just four years, the school has of the Rice EMBA program. “We work
moved from an unranked position among entrepreneurship programs diligently to ensure that our students have
into the No. 6 position in the country and No. 1 in Texas as ranked by the an exemplary experience, and this rank-
ing is a positive indication that our efforts
Princeton Review for Entrepreneur magazine. Rice is one of only four are valued.”
schools to achieve a top 10 ranking during both the past two years. Princeton Review also weighed in —
listing the Jones School at No. 6 for Best
T date, the Rice Alliance for Technology
To Professors in “The Best 300 Business
and Entrepreneurship, the university’s flag- Other Recent Jones Schools: 2011 Edition.” In determining the
ship initiative devoted to the support of en-
trepreneurship, has assisted in the launch
School Rankings rankings, Princeton Review collected the
opinions of more than 19,000 students at
of more than 235 companies that have the best AACSB-accredited MBA programs
raised more than half a billion dollars. And in the world. Describing the Jones School
a recent Jones School alumni survey re- • No. 4 for finance (Financial Times) as “prestigious, rigorous and well-round-
vealed that 22 percent of Rice MBA alumni ed,” Princeton Review also noted that Rice
• No. 5 for student assessment of
have started one or more entrepreneurial has a strong focus on the energy industry
career services (The Economist) and close ties to energy firms in Houston,
companies — 76 percent are still in busi-
ness today. • No. 8 among MBA for Professionals and the school’s finance program is known
The entrepreneurship ranking came programs (Businessweek) throughout the South.
on the heels of a survey by the Economist And most recently, Bloomberg Business-
that named the Jones School’s full-time • No. 8 for salary increase (Financial week listed the Jones School a top 30 MBA
MBA program No. 1 in the Southwest, 25th Times) program and tabbed the school as one of
nationally and 41st among 132 schools the top 10 for its intellectual capital and fac-
• No. 9 for accountancy (Financial ulty research. “The fact that student sala-
globally — two points higher than last
year. The survey focused in particular on Times) ries are in the top 20,” said Jeff Fleming,
students’ abilities to pursue new career op- • No. 15 for job placement three senior associate dean for the Jones School,
portunities, expand personal development “provides a market-based measure of what
months after graduation (U.S. News
and educational experiences, increase sala- corporate recruiters think of our program.”
& World Report) “Our mission has been to build a qual-
ries, and network.
A ranking by the Wall Street Journal • No. 16 for faculty research ity curriculum, taught by the best profes-
continued the Jones School’s impetus, productivity (Financial Times) sors and entrepreneurs,” said William
naming the MBA for Executives (EMBA) — Glick, dean of the Jones School and the
an exclusive and rigorous MBA curriculum H.J. Nelson III Professor of Management.
designed for upper-level managers with See the Entrepreneur survey: “We are confident that by adhering to
an average of 10 years’ work experience › ›› www.entrepreneur.com/topcolleges this principle, the school will continue to
— No. 1 in Houston and No. 19 overall in Learn more about the Jones Graduate be recognized not only by those famil-
the U.S. School of Business: iar with the Jones School, but also by the
“We have students from traditional › ›› www.business.rice.edu larger community.”
Houston industries, such as energy and fi- Who Knew: —Reported by Mary Lynn Fernau, Laura
nance, and we also have students from the › ›› www.ricewhoknew.info/11 Hubbard, David Ruth and Jessica Stark

health care, legal and military sectors who

12 rice.edu/ricemagazine
www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Recommendation Letters
May Be Costing Women
Jobs, Promotions
If you’re a woman seeking employment, you might want to take
a closer look at those letters of recommendation you’re send-
ing in with your application and resume. They might be hurting
your chances more than helping them.
A comprehensive study by Rice psychol-
ogy professors Michelle Hebl and Randi
Martin and graduate student Juan Madera,
now an assistant professor at the University
of Houston, shows that qualities mentioned
in recommendation letters for women dif-
fer sharply from those for men, and those
differences may be costing women jobs
and promotions in academia and medicine.
The study was funded by the National
Science Foundation.
The researchers reviewed 624 letters
of recommendation for 194 applicants for
eight junior faculty positions at a U.S. uni-
versity. They found that the letter writers
conformed to traditional gender schemas
when describing candidates. Female can-
didates were described in communal (so-
cial or emotive) terms such as affectionate,
helpful, kind, sympathetic, nurturing, tact-
ful and agreeable, and behaviors such as
helping others, taking direction well and
maintaining relationships were highlight-
ed. Male candidates, on the other hand,
were described in agentic (active or asser-
tive) terms such as confident, aggressive,
ambitious, dominant, forceful, indepen-
dent, daring, outspoken and intellectual,
and writers emphasized behaviors such
as speaking assertively, influencing others
and initiating tasks.
A further aspect of the study involved
rating the strength of the letters, or the like-
lihood the candidate would be hired based
on the letter. The research team removed
names and personal pronouns from the let-
ters and asked faculty members to evaluate
THROUGH THE
Randi Martin
them. The researchers controlled for such
variables as the number of years candi-
dates were in graduate school, the number
of papers they had published, the number
of publications on which they were the
lead author, the number of honors they
received, the number of years of postdoc-
toral education, the position applied for
and the number of courses taught.
Subtle gender discrimination
continues to be rampant. And it’s
important to acknowledge this
because you cannot remediate
discrimination until you are first
aware of it. —Michelle Hebl
“Communal characteristics mediate
the relationship between gender and hir-
ing decisions in academia, which suggests
that gender norm stereotypes can influ-
ence hireability ratings of applicants,” said
Martin, the Elma Schneider Professor of
Psychology. “We found that being com-
munal is not valued in academia, and the
more communal characteristics mentioned,
the lower the evaluation of the candidate.”
A follow-up study funded by the
National Institutes of Health is under way
and includes applicants for faculty and re-
search positions at medical schools. In the
new study, enough applicants and positions
Sallyport
Michelle Hebl
will be included so that the researchers can
use the actual decisions of search commit-
tees to determine the influence of letters’
communal and agentic terms in the hiring
decisions.
The “pipeline shortage of women” in
academia is a well known and researched
phenomenon, but this study is the first of
its kind to examine the recommendation
letter’s role in contributing to the disparity
and evaluate it using inferential statistics
and objective measures. It’s also the first
study to show that gender differences in let-
ters actually affect judgments of hireability.
“This research not only has important
implications for women in academia, but
also for women in management and lead-
ership roles,” said Hebl, professor of psy-
chology and management. “A large body of
research suggests that communality is not
perceived to be congruent with leadership
and managerial jobs.”
The research team also noted that letter
writers included more doubt raisers when
recommending women, using phrases such
as “She might make an excellent leader”
versus what they used for male candidates,
“He is already an established leader.”
“Subtle gender discrimination contin-
ues to be rampant,” Hebl said. “And it’s im-
portant to acknowledge this because you
cannot remediate discrimination until you
are first aware of it. Our and other research
shows that even small differences — and in
our study, the seemingly innocuous choice
of words — can act to create disparity over
time and experiences.”
The study, “Gender and Letters of
Recommendation for Academia: Agentic
and Communal Differences,” was published
in the American Psychological Association’s
Journal of Applied Psychology.
—Jessica Stark
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 13
 Vision Checkup
Four years ago, President David Leebron launched the Vision for the Second
Century (V2C), a 10-point strategy for Rice’s growth and advancement as
one of the premier research universities in the world. Today, as the univer-
sity embarks on the countdown to its centennial, a lot has been accom-
plished under that plan that positions Rice well for its second hundred years.
T
he V2C was the result of an
18-month process, known as the
Call to Conversation, of gathering
information and ideas from across
the Rice community. But it was very much
grounded in founding President Edgar
Odell Lovett’s vision of Rice as a great glob-
al institution of arts, sciences and letters.
As Brockman Hall for Physics nears
completion and the V2C moves from the
student body growth and physical plant
construction phase to the academic en-
hancement phase, this an opportune time
to explore the V2C in action. In this issue
we will cover the first three goals. We can-
not cover every achievement of the past
four years, but we want to highlight some
of the major accomplishments that will
serve Rice, and its many stakeholders, well
into the future. Be sure to look in our up-
coming issues for many of the other ways
that the V2C is enhancing Rice.
Goal 1: We must raise our research
and scholarship profile.
Although Rice is the second-smallest
member of the Association of American
Universities, an organization representing
the nation’s 63 premier research universi-
ties, U.S. News & World Report has ranked
Rice among the top 20 U.S. universities ev-
ery year since it began its rankings in 1988,
and this year, Times Higher Education
magazine placed Rice among the top 50
universities worldwide. In recent years,
Rice has regularly ranked among the top
U.S. research universities in educational
value for its students, faculty scholarly out-
put, invention disclosures and patent port-
folio, U.S. Department of Defense awards,
and salary potential of its alumni.
14 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
A V2C Progress Report
Rankings are creatures of methodol-
ogy and often cause heartburn in academic
organizations. Nonetheless, Rice’s consis-
tently high rankings show that it is gaining
recognition for is research and scholarship,
fostered by an interdisciplinary, entrepre-
neurial culture.
When it comes to cutting-edge science
and engineering, Rice’s contributions have
led to worldwide revolutions in computing,
nanoscale science and engineering, and
most recently, biomedicine and biotech-
nology. The biosciences have been greatly
enhanced by Rice’s many interactions with
researchers at other member institutions of
the Texas Medical Center (TMC) — interac-
tions that will be further cultivated by the
cooperative atmosphere within Rice’s new
BioScience Research Collaborative, the
largest building project in Rice’s history.
This state-of-the-art research facility, locat-
ed at the intersection of Rice and the Texas
Medical Center, will strengthen the link
between these world-renowned institu-
tions and lead to discoveries that will help
reinvent the world of health and medicine.
In the humanities and social sciences,
Rice continues to excel in a number of
disciplines, including history, philosophy,
sociology, anthropology, economics and
political science. We also are home to more
than 40 research centers and institutes and
more than 15 academic journals and book
series, all of which focus international at-
tention on Rice as a center of research and
academic achievement.
Sponsored research revenues are one
of the more important indicators that Rice
is recognized as one of the best research
institutions in the country. Since the incep-
tion of the V2C, sponsored research rev-
enues from industries, foundations, and
BY CHRISTOPHER DOW
• Part 1
federal, state and local governments have
increased from about $78 million to more
than $130 million. Overall, faculty effort for
sponsored projects has gone up approxi-
mately 37 percent since 2008, and proposal
submissions went up 22 percent from 2008
to 2009 and are up an additional 39 percent
to date in 2010.
High-profile research in the sciences
and engineering, of course, comprises the
bulk of sponsored research awards, but re-
searchers in the School of Social Sciences
have brought in record-breaking grants to
study local elections; Houstonians’ atti-
tudes about the arts, education and health
care; and the advanced placement exam
scores as predictors of college success.
Yet another measure of Rice’s grow-
ing research and scholarship profile is the
Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index re-
leased by Academic Analytics, which has
called Rice the most productive research
university in Texas and among the top 10
research universities in the country. And
the Patent Scorecard has named Rice’s pat-
ent portfolio the most impactful among
American research universities.
Soon after the implementation of the
V2C, Rice created the Office of Research,
currently headed by Vice Provost for
Research James Coleman, to oversee the
growth of research at Rice and to manage
the university’s $100,000,000 research en-
terprise. The role of the Office of Research
is to facilitate the ability of Rice’s faculty
to excel at research and to ensure that the
broader Rice community understands the
important role that research, creativity, in-
novation and scholarship play in generat-
ing the intellectual energy that makes Rice
such a special place.

Goal 2: We must equip our students
with the knowledge, skills and val-
ues to make a distinctive impact on
the world.
Rice’s undergraduate students come to
campus well equipped to tackle the chal-
lenges of obtaining a degree in Rice’s
demanding academic environment, and
once here, they continue to excel. But
academic excellence is only the outline
of the portrait of a Rice student. What de-
fi nes and gives life to the features is the
intense interest that Rice students take
in the well-being of the world and the
people living in it.
A perfect example is their exciting —
and excited — participation in Rice 360º:
Institute for Global Health Technologies,
which was established in 2007 by Rebecca
Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore
Professor of Bioengineering and profes-
sor of electrical and computer engineer-
ing, in partnership with the Clinton Global
Initiative. This initiative engages students in
a setting that nurtures awareness of human
needs and provides the means for them to
address those needs in practical ways.
The student-created medical inven-
tions coming out of the Rice 360º program
are too numerous to detail but include a
diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack; a hand-
cranked blood centrifuge; a low-cost,
lightweight portable microscope; and low-
power-consumption incubators and aera-
tors for ill and premature infants. These
devices and others outfit medical provid-
ers with essential equipment designed for
use in remote and underdeveloped regions
of the world. Since its establishment, Rice
360º has been institutionalized at Rice as a
minor in global health technologies.
THROUGH THE
Closer to home, Rice students are
some of the most eager participants in
partnerships with Houston, particularly
through the Center for Civic Engagement,
a direct result of the V2C’s call for in-
creased interaction with the city. The
center coordinates a range of community
activities through Leadership Rice, the
Center for Civic Research and Design and
the Community Involvement Center. Last
year, more than 2,000 students logged
in excess of 21,000 hours of community
service with nearly 200 nonprofit part-
ners throughout Houston and beyond.
They participated in civic research and
design courses, mentored in local K–12
schools, worked in homeless shelters, or-
ganized clothing and food drives, planted
trees, worked in Houston-area museums
and hospitals, and participated in cul-
tural events and activities throughout the
city. For all their unconventional efforts,
they earned Rice a place on the 2009
President’s Higher Education Community
Service Honor Roll, the highest federal
recognition a school can achieve for ser-
vice learning and civic engagement.
Goal 3: We must strengthen our grad-
uate and postdoctoral programs.
Graduate students are key to both re-
search and fostering the entry of new
faculty into higher education, and this
year, Rice has 2,272 of the world’s best.
Demonstrating the university’s dedication
to graduate education, in 2007, Rice ap-
pointed a dean to oversee graduate and
postdoctoral studies and also recently
added Ph.D. programs in sociology and
art history. Both are the only doctoral
programs in their fields in Houston.
Sallyport
In a recent assessment, the National
Research Council, created in 1916 by the
National Academy of Sciences, measured
the quality and effectiveness of more than
5,000 doctoral programs at 212 American
universities. The report did not rank the
programs or schools in numerical order but
instead placed doctoral programs in ranges
that reflected the quality and effectiveness
of the programs based on criteria seen as
most important to faculty, students and
administrators. Rice’s doctoral programs
in history, bioengineering, political sci-
ence, materials science and applied physics
all scored in significantly high percentiles
when compared with similar doctoral pro-
grams elsewhere, and other Rice doctoral
programs also fared well.
To better accommodate students in
graduate programs, Rice has increased
graduate student housing by almost 80
percent under the V2C. The Rice Village
Apartments, located one block west of Rice,
is a 137-unit garden-style complex that pro-
vides affordable, family-friendly housing
for graduate students. The complex, which
augments the 112-unit garden-style Rice
Graduate Apartments just north of campus,
is certified to Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design standards devel-
oped by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Be sure to look in the next issue as we continue
our coverage of the ways that the V2C is help-
ing Rice fulfill the promise of its first 100 years
and grow into a new century of possibilities.
Learn more about the Vision for the Second Century:
› › › www.professor.rice.edu/professor/Vision.asp
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 15
 Out of the
FOG
Some rural Moroccans have to trek
for miles every day because their
arid environment doesn’t provide
enough drinking water. Or does it?

Six Rice students with the James A. Baker III Institute for Public roughly $1,000 to $1,500 to cover materials and maintenance for an
Policy’s Energy Forum spent a month in the Boutmezguida region average 10-year life span, they can provide anywhere from 200 to
of southern Morocco to help with a project that harvests potable 1,000 liters of water per day for a village. The students also looked
into the possibility of harvesting water that accumulated on trees by
water from the fog that envelops parts of the Atlas Mountains. The
spreading tarps on the ground beneath them. The idea stemmed from
students were joined by Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow in energy stud- observing indicators of water accumulation on the vegetation, which
ies at the Baker Institute and associate director of the Rice Energy acts as a natural fog collector.
Program; Ronald Soligo, professor of economics; and Eugenia The Rice students’ mis-
Georges, professor and chair of anthropology. sion included conducting
background research on the
The project, developed by the Dar Si Hmad Foundation in Sidi Ifni,
project, completing the cal-
Morocco, utilizes a polyethylene mesh to capture tiny droplets of
culations for the designs and
water that then drip into collecting tubes that lead to a storage tank at
locations of the nets, and
the bottom of the mountain. The sustainable project could theoreti-
developing the required in-
cally provide clean, safe water for people in the area.
frastructure for a future Rice
Rice’s involvement in the project began this past spring in
group to finish the project
Integrated Approaches to Sustainable Development, a class taught by
next summer. “Determining
Jaffe. “One of the guest lecturers was Jamila Bargach, the founder of
the location to position the
the Dar Si Hmad Foundation,” said Kevin Liu ’10, who now works as
nets will be especially impor-
a research associate at the Energy
tant for maximizing the ef-
“The goal of Forum. “She told us about an op-
portunity to go to Morocco to
ficiency of the nets in regard
to the orientation, frequency
the trip was to work with fog nets in water-poor
areas. The goal of the trip was to
of fog, and wind speed and
expose students expose students to applying sus-
direction,” Liu said. “The re-
gion also could benefit from
tainable techniques learned from
to applying a course to real-world problems in
a comprehensive survey of
natural groundwater patterns
sustainable developing countries.”
Bargach graduated from Rice
created by the fog.”
“The challenges of both
techniques in 1998 with a Ph.D. in cultural
anthropology. She started her
the science and engineering and cultural implementation are large,
learned from a nonprofit foundation to improve
and the predestined conditions of geography and nature are hard to
overcome,” Jaffe wrote on the Baker Institute’s blog in the Houston
course to real- the quality of life for some of the
more impoverished communities
Chronicle. A principal lesson of the Morocco experience, she added,
is that “the solutions to such problems are not global at all. They are
world problems in and around Ifni. In addition to
Liu, other Rice participants were
community-specific and require a deep knowledge of cultural, geo-
in developing junior John Michael Nosek, ju-
graphic and socio-political conditions.”
Liu echoed Jaffe’s conclusion: “Although we may think we know
nior Rebecca Jaffe, senior Marilu
countries.” Corona, junior Alexandra Ernst,
what is best for other countries, it is impossible for us to put ourselves
in their shoes. A comprehensive survey needs to be done before any
— Kevin Liu senior Noemie Levy and Joyce
construction begins so we can get a feel for the situation. If you just
Yao ’10.
go and build without understanding the culture and the relationships
Although the nets cannot supply enough water for a metropolitan
of the locals — and what is socially acceptable — you could do more
area, they can make a real difference for rural families. At a cost of
harm than good.”
—Franz Brotzen

16 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students

History Meets Science at Historic

Texas Cemetery
The physical sciences crossed paths with Texas’ cultural history when a
group of Rice University graduate students took the latest tools of geophysi-
cal science into a remote field at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) to
search for unmarked graves in one of Texas’ few known slave cemeteries.

“They are finding graves that we did not know existed,” said Akel Kahera, associ-
ate professor of architecture at PVAMU and director of the Texas Institute for the
Preservation of History and Culture. “And the beautiful thing about this equipment
is that it can give us a reading of the location of these graves, and then we can do
further research to try to identify who the people are who may have been buried in
these locations.”
This is the third year that Kahera has teamed with the students and instructors
from Rice’s Earth Science 515 course to search for unmarked graves in and around the
Wyatt Chapel Cemetery on the northern portion of the Prairie View campus.
Prairie View, the second-oldest public institution of higher learning in Texas,
was founded in 1876 on 1,000 acres of land that had been part of Alta Vista, one of
Texas’ largest pre-Civil War plantations. Though there are no written records of a
slave burial ground for Alta Vista, oral histories and a few old headstones suggest that
the area around the present-day Wyatt
“The beautiful thing about Chapel Cemetery served as the slave buri-
al ground for both Alta Vista and Liendo,
this equipment is that another large plantation nearby.
it can give us a reading The students use ground-penetrating
radar, GPS and high-tech survey instru-
of the location of these ments to catalog and map suspected
graves. They then use the data to create a
graves, and then we can sophisticated map that PVAMU research-
do further research to try ers can augment with archival and histori-
cal data.
to identify who the peo- One of the course instructors, Dale
ple are who may have Sawyer, professor of Earth science at Rice, Ground-penetrating radar can identify unmarked
said investigating the geology and geog- burial sites. From left, graduate student Becky
been buried in these raphy of the area can help reveal clues Minzoni, postdoctoral research associate Davin
locations.” —Akel Kahera
about the cemetery’s history. “We’re inter-
ested in the geology and the depth of the
Wallace and Professor Dale Sawyer, review radar
results.
clay here to tell us something about where
we expect burials to be,” Sawyer said. A dense layer of clay lies about three feet
below the sand in the area, and because the clay is so difficult to dig by hand, most
burials were no deeper than 2 to 3 feet.
The course’s lead instructor, Davin Wallace, postdoctoral research associate in
Earth science at Rice, said the ground-penetrating radar lets the students see unusual
features down to about 10 feet. While the radar doesn’t give a photographic image
of what’s beneath the surface, a burial returns a signal that is different from features
such as tree roots or buried stumps. When a suspected grave is located, GPS is used
to get a rough fix on the location, and flags are placed for follow-up surveys with
state-of-the-art laser-ranging devices.
Kahera said the work of the Rice team is vitally important in the documentation
of the history of Wyatt Chapel Cemetery. “We love this partnership,” he said, “and I
hope we can continue it.”
Sawyer, Kahera and Wallace all credited Alison Henning, a former lecturer in
Earth science, for much of the program’s success. Henning founded and led the
program at Rice during its first three years.
—Jade Boyd

Watch a video clip of the radar survey:

› ›› ricemagazine.info/72

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 17

 Gateway to the Real World
After spending more than a decade learning spoken and written Chinese, D.C. or Houston under the Summer Fellows
program, the newest of Gateway’s four
Chris Chan thought he was ready for a summer in China. Throughout his life, programs. The program offers stipends for
he had taken many trips to visit family in Hong Kong and kept abreast of hap- social sciences undergraduates who identify
penings in mainland China. He knew he’d face some unexpected challenges unique uncompensated summer internships
as he interned at the World Expo in Shanghai, but he felt fortunate to be trav- in the U.S. or abroad to gain firsthand ex-
perience working full time while they build
eling to a place in which he could assimilate quickly and well. rapport with accomplished alumni and inter-
view leaders to discover the source of inspi-
ration behind their achievements.
For McMurtry College senior Enstin Ye,
the summer fellowship was a glimpse into the
future. “I have had the chance to see every
aspect of inpatient psychiatry patient care:
interacting with patients, attending group
activities and family meetings, and working
on behind-the-scenes social work tasks,” she
said of her internship with Bellevue Hospital
Center in New York. “This has been a truly
eye-opening experience, and I am seriously
considering becoming a psychiatrist.”
Under Gateway’s International Ambassa-
dor program, students receive a stipend, get
guidance in making contacts and conducting
interviews, prepare reports, and make pre-
sentations upon their return.
The Social Sciences Undergraduate
Research Enterprise program funds inde-
pendent research projects for students and
provides course credit. In the past year of
the program, students explored the role of
physicians in genetic testing, studied survey
methods of school bond elections, learned
about subprime mortgages and looked at re-
gional subcultures of the United States.
Chris Chan celebrates his Gateway Summer Fellowship at Mount Hua, one of the five sacred mountains of China.
“As it turned out, the real China was the big-
gest surprise,” Chan said. “So much of my The program offers social sciences majors the opportunity to explore career paths
experience in Shanghai was characterized
by learning and new experiences — from now so they can transition more easily out of academic life. Befitting of its name,
acclimating to an international work envi-
ronment to traveling by myself across China.”
the program acts as a gateway from student life to the real world.
As a summer fellow through the School
of Social Sciences Gateway program, Chan That realization about the real world is The final prong of the Gateway program
spent his summer in Shanghai getting a just what the Gateway Program intends for is the social sciences internship, in which
taste of the real world by interviewing busi- its students. The program offers social sci- students earn course credit while working at
ness and government leaders there. The ences majors the opportunity to explore ca- businesses, hospitals and government agen-
Jones College junior learned from J. P. Lopez reer paths now so they can transition more cies, both in the United States and abroad.
’96, human resources manager at Disney easily out of academic life. Befitting of its Rice students have recently interned with
Publishing; Gregory Pfleger Jr. ’00, a foreign name, the program acts as a gateway from such companies and nonprofits as NBC
service officer; Wang Qun, vice chairman of student life to the real world. Universal, American Civil Liberties Union,
Yum! Brands China; and Jose Villarreal, com- “On the flight back to Houston after Merrill Lynch and the Children’s Assessment
missioner general of USA Pavilion. almost four months abroad, I knew I was Center.
“Every story is unique, and each persona a changed person,” Chan said. “I returned —Jessica Stark
has an individual set of ideals, beliefs and with hopes of sharing my experiences —
advice,” Chan said, “but there was a com- the seeds of creating my own future — and
mon lesson in each story: The world as we eventually, changing the world.” Learn more about the Gateway Program:
know it is shrinking, and the global future is Chan was one of six students who ›› › socialsciencesgateway.rice.edu
bound together.” spent their summers in China, New York,

18 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students

Compact Microscope
a Marvel
A compact microscope invented at Rice University may be small, but its scope is macro.
Andrew Miller ’09,, working with Rice 360º: Institute for Global
Health Technologies, created the 2.5-pound instrument, dubbed the
Global Focus microscope, as his senior design project. His goal was
to make an inexpensive, portable and highly capable microscope
that could be used in clinics in developing countries that have lim-
ited access to lab equipment and lack electricity.

Miller’s first model was built from off-the-
shelf parts and encased in a rugged plastic
shell that he created with a 3-D printer at
Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
(OEDK). Light to power the 1,000-times
magnification microscope comes from a
top-mounted LED flashlight. He has since
replaced the microscope’s plastic casing with
aluminum for better stability.
In tests, the portable, battery-operated
fluorescence microscope, which costs $240,
stacks up nicely against devices that retail
for as much as $40,000 in diagnosing signs
of tuberculosis. Miller and colleagues at
the Methodist Hospital Research Institute
(TMHRI) analyzed samples from 19 patients
suspected of having TB, an infectious dis-
ease that usually attacks the lungs and can
be fatal if not treated. The Global Focus mi-
croscope performed just as well as the lab’s
reference-standard fluorescence microscope.
The team reported similar findings were ob-
tained in 98.4 percent of the samples tested.
The research was published online in the
journal PloS ONE.
The Global Focus microscope won this
year’s Hershel M. Rich Invention Award,
which is presented annually by Rice
way that will ensure its cost remains low
for users in developing countries. He and
Rice have contracted with a medical device
consultant, 3rd Stone Design, to produce 20
microscopes that are currently undergoing
field-tests.
Co-authors of the paper include Rice
alum Gregory Davis ’09; Maria Oden, pro-
fessor in the practice of engineering at Rice
and director of the OEDK; Mark Pierce, a
research scientist and lecturer in bioengi-
neering at Rice; Randall Olsen, a Methodist
Hospital pathologist and TMHRI scien-
tist; and Mohamad Razavi, Abolfazl Fateh,
Morteza Ghazanfari, Farid Abdolrahimi,
Shahin Pourazar and Fatemeh Sakhaee
of the Pasteur Institute of Iran. The pro-
gram was supported by a grant from the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute through
the Precollege and Undergraduate Science
Education Program.
Andrew Miller
—Mike Williams
In tests, the portable,
battery-operated Read the paper:
fluorescence microscope, ›› › ricemagazine.info/71

which costs $240, stacks

Engineering Alumni to a Rice faculty mem-
ber or student who has developed an origi- Learn more about Rice 360º: Institute for Global
nal invention. It was the first undergraduate
project to win the award. up nicely against devices Health Technologies
›› › rice360.rice.edu
Miller, who graduated from Rice with
a degree in bioengineering, works as a that retail for as much as
medical device designer for Thoratec, a San
Francisco company that makes ventricular $40,000 in diagnosing signs Who Knew:
›› › ricewhoknew.info/13
assist devices. Part time, he continues work-
ing to commercialize the microscope in a of tuberculosis.

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 19

 President’s COLUMN

Reflections
By David W. Leebron

on Rice’s Past and Future

On October 12, we officially launched a countdown to Rice University’s 100th
anniversary celebration that will culminate on October 12, 2012. This leads to
two broad questions: What’s the importance of a university centennial, and
what are the principle things that characterize Rice’s near century of history?

In
some ways, the 100-year milestone marks Rice becom-
ing a mature university, even though we are one of
the youngest members of the Association of American
Universities. To put this in some perspective, this past
summer I visited the University of Leipzig shortly after it celebrated
its 600th anniversary. The University of Bologna was founded 922
years ago. Although Rice has changed constantly during its com-
paratively brief history, after nearly a century it also has established
its own strong sense of identity.
We are a small university not because we were founded to be
small (we weren’t) or because we haven’t had time to grow (we
have). Rather, we choose to be comparatively small because that
has become an important part of our identity, distinctiveness and
success. Similarly, our distinctive commitment to undergraduate
education is not a mere reflection of our youth, but an essential
be understandable, such as the end of free tuition in the 1960s.
During our history, we have reached many forks in the road. In
the 1960s and even later, we might have chosen to become primar-
ily a university for science and engineering. That is certainly where
our early strengths lay. But instead, we embarked upon a path to
become an ever more wide-ranging university offering a broad ar-
ray of academic disciplines.
Our School of Social Sciences, and its increasing importance not
only to the university but to the city of Houston, reflects the lasting
impact of that decision. More students today major in the social sci-
ences than in any other school. Our faculty is deeply engaged with
a range of questions that span the local to the international. They
study the details of city life and race relations and build theoreti-
cal models of political systems both here in the United States and
abroad. They seek to understand the workings of ancient societies

Our student body has changed enormously, from one in which nearly all the students were white and from Texas to
one in which there is no majority ethnic or racial group and that hails from all 50 states and more than 80 countries.

and I dare say immutable part of our values — the values that have
taken hold and guided us even as the Rice Institute evolved into the
very different university that is the Rice of today.
And yet, that gelling of identity ought not be taken to mean
we are done changing and growing — and here I do not mean in
the sense of numbers of students. Insofar as a university is about
both the creation and dissemination of knowledge, it can no more
succeed by simply staying the same than can any other enterprise
in our competitive, ever-changing world. So a century mark is a
time to pause, to take note of what we have become, achieved
and contributed, and then to turn our attention to the future and
contemplate how best to achieve our evolving aspirations.
Just try to imagine Rice without the changes of, say, the last
third of a century or so. That would mean no separate School of
Social Sciences, no Jones Graduate School of Business, no Shepherd
School of Music, no Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, no
Department of Bioengineering, and little diversity in our student
body or faculty. Our student body has changed enormously, from
one in which nearly all the students were white and from Texas to
one in which there is no majority ethnic or racial group and that
hails from all 50 states and more than 80 countries. Of course, there
are some things that have changed for which a sense of regret may
as well as the future of our own. Our students pursue their own
research in the social sciences literally all around the globe.
In this issue we announce the formation of the Kinder Institute
for Urban Research, which should help propel to greater achieve-
ment not only the social sciences at Rice, but also multiple other
schools and departments whose professors also work on urban
problems. It will be an invaluable resource for the city of Houston
and, equally, a link between Rice and the great urban centers of
the world. Thirty years of experience in researching the city of
Houston through the Houston Area Survey will now benefit, and
benefit from, the study of other global cities. A century ago Rice
was envisioned to be an intellectual beacon for Houston. I cannot
overstate my gratitude to Rich and Nancy Kinder for their vision
and generosity in making possible this new venture in support of
the vital relationship between our university and its home city.
This is in fact the kind of exciting new enterprise that has char-
acterized 98 years of distinguished history at Rice. I am confident
that many more such advancements lie ahead. So, when we gather
together two years from now for the Centennial Celebration, we
will observe not only the achievements that lie behind us, but the
new heights that are to come.

20 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Town Hall Launches Countdown to 2012 Centennial Celebration

A festive mood complemented President David betterment of our world, and he cited the 25th anniversary of
the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the buckyball at Rice. That
Leebron’s optimistic outlook for the university as remarkable achievement has had an impact on everything from
he assessed Rice’s past, present and future at a cancer treatments to energy to manufacturing and continues to
symbolize Rice’s capacity to change the world. Another example
town hall held on Rice Day — the anniversary of is the Houston Area Survey, the nation’s longest-running in-depth
the university’s formal dedication Oct. 12, 1912. study of any metropolitan area in the United States. Leebron also
noted the extraordinary research contributions of Rice students,
“We’re in good shape,” Leebron said as he focused on Rice’s fi-
whose low-cost portable microscope and salad spinner centrifuge,
nancial situation, contributions to society, community, campus and
for example, enable delivery of better health care to the poorest
upcoming Centennial Celebration, and we’ve reached a point in the
regions of the world.
Vision for the Second Century where we have achieved most of our
Leebron commended the efforts of the Rice Art Committee to
infrastructure and expansion goals.”
increase campus vibrancy and beauty with new art pieces grac-
On the revenue front, Leebron noted that the endowment has
ing the BioScience Research Collaborative, Raymond and Susan
risen in value and that the Centennial Campaign is two-thirds of
Brochstein Pavilion, and other Rice buildings and open spaces.
the way toward its $1 billion goal. (See “Centennial Campaign”
With $800 million in board-approved construction projects
on Page 3.) About one-fourth of the money raised for the cam-
nearly completed, an entering class size that is now 30 percent
paign has gone toward new buildings and the physical plant. “All
larger than in 2004, broader engagement with the city of Houston,
of that construction,” Leebron said, “has been on time and on or
an enhanced research mission and a larger international presence,
under budget.”
Leebron said Rice can take pride in having achieved many of its
Support for the Rice Annual Fund dropped somewhat this year,
V2C goals. He said that Rice will move forward with three new
but Leebron expressed hope that the campaign goal of raising an
initiatives identified by the faculty: bioscience and human health,
annual amount of $8.2 million for the Annual Fund by fiscal year
energy and the environment, and international programs. (See
2013 will be reached. “The Annual Fund is an increasingly impor-
“Provost Appoints Task Forces for Three New Initiatives,” Page ??.)
tant source of revenue,” he said, “because it supports scholarships
“The best is yet to come,” Leebron said, and although he may
and student life.”
have been speaking in general terms about the university’s future,
Although the 30 percent expansion of the undergraduate stu-
he also meant right then, in the here and now. Even before his
dent body and an increase in tuition have yielded an increase in
final words echoed through the hall, the MOB, accompanied by
undergraduate tuition revenue since fiscal year 2005, Rice also in-
cheerleaders and Sammy the Owl, made a surprise appearance on-
creased funding for financial aid when the economic slump created
stage, performing their trademark “Louie, Louie,” to help launch the
more need. “We take a lot of pride in the economic diversity of our
official countdown to the university’s 2012 Centennial Celebration.
students,” Leebron said. “We remain need-blind and committed to
Shepherd School graduate students Alex Pride and Jeff
educational opportunities for students regardless of financial need.”
Northman performed a special trumpet fanfare composed for the
Rice’s revenues did get a boost from sponsored research, which
occasion by Marie Speziale, professor of trumpet and chair of brass,
was up more than 12 percent to $98.5 million in FY10. Stimulus
and the cheerleaders led the audience in a “10, 9, 8 …” countdown
funding accounted for $6.7 million. “This dramatic increase reflects
that ended with “Celebrate Rice!” They then tossed centennial
what our faculty are able to accomplish,” Leebron said, “and what
T-shirts into the crowd, and the MOB took over the stage and had
our research contributes to the world.”
the crowd dancing while blue and gray balloons displaying the
Leebron spoke at length about the contributions that Rice
centennial mark rained from above.
makes to the education of outstanding students and to the

Learn more and see a slideshow of the Centennial Celebration kickoff: › › › ricemagazine.info/68

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 21

 “Belief in
God is a
mistake, an
impoverished
view of
the world.
Science
“If God brought about
our existence for a
purpose, then the
most important kind
of knowledge to
have is knowledge
of God and of what
vs
Faith is a He intends for us. Is
creation in that broad
delusion.” —Richard Dawkins
sense consistent with
Evolutionary biologist and author of “The God Delusion”1
evolution? The answer
is absolutely not.” —Phillip E. Johnson
Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law, Emeritus, the University of California
at Berkeley and author of “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds”2

22 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
vs
Is Dialog Possible?
E
Religion
xtreme views always make the best headlines and sound
bites, and judging by the popular media, the chasm between
science and religion seems broad and deep. Is constructive
dialog possible across the gap? Can we bridge it? Or should we just
leave things as they stand and accept that the differences between
science and religion are impossible to reconcile? That last question
might seem expedient, but it comes at a cost, as Rice Assistant
Professor of Sociology Elaine Howard Ecklund makes clear in her
new book, “Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think.”
BY L I N DA DAY

THE DIALOG IS IN THE DATA

“It’s unfortunate that the extremes on both

Ecklund, who also is director of the
Program on Religion and Public Life at the
Institute for Urban Research, is something
of an academic Clark Kent. Unassuming,
mild mannered, friendly and a person who
laughs easily, she’s not the obvious person
to charge into an often vicious fray that has
divided American society for a century. She
grew up in a conservative religious family
in upstate New York, and she ultimately
found her way to a Ph.D. in sociology. Later,
being “a bit of an entrepreneur,” she cor-
nered a grant to study religion and science,
and that funding became a booster rocket
for her career.
After five years of dogged, systematic
study in a metaphorical research phone
booth, Ecklund has emerged with a fistful
of impeccable data, the desire to help heal a
wound in American life and the SuperCharm
to get it done. She negotiates deftly between
dense scholarly articles and engaging op-
eds, and she talks about science and religion
in a way that informs without inflaming.
That alone may rank with leaping tall build-
ings in a single bound.
sides get the most media play,” Ecklund
said. “The public ends up thinking every-
one who’s a scientist is a rabid atheist. Of
course there certainly are atheists in science,
but I can count on fewer than the fingers
of one hand the number of scientists I’ve
interviewed at top universities who have the
same kind of views Richard Dawkins has.”
On the other hand, scientists often think
that every religious person is a fundamental-
ist completely against science. “I know from
broader studies of religion in American soci-
ety that that’s not the case either,” she said.
“That’s the benefit of doing research — you
get an actual insight into what’s really hap-
pening in a variety of ways, systematically,
rather than just listening to the voices that
pop to the top of our culture.”
Of course, there is a very real ground of
discord; Ecklund notes that about 40 per-
cent of Americans believe that creationist
accounts of Earth origins should be taught
in public schools instead of evolution, and
65 percent think that both should be taught
side by side. In comparison, nearly all of the
scientists she surveyed think that evolution
is the best explanation for development of
life on Earth. But are all of these scientists
“rabid atheists?”

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 23

 In 2005, Ecklund set out to discover
the facts. She surveyed 2,198 randomly
selected science faculty members from 21
top-ranked U.S. research universities. Her
personalized letter, a $15 “guilt incentive”
and determined follow-through induced an
amazing 75 percent response rate. Ecklund
then requested interviews with more than
a third of those 1,646 scientists and con-
nected with 275. “Everything about the
interview process was transformational for
me,” she says. “It turned my own stereo-
types on their heads.”
Forty-nine percent of the scientists in
her survey have some religious affiliation
— mostly Jewish, mainline Protestant or
Catholic. Only 2 percent are Evangelical
Protestant, compared to 28 percent of the
U.S. population. More surprising, only 34
percent state, “I do not believe in God,”
and only a very few of these atheists could
be called “Richard Dawkinsian.”
“The data from talking to scientists
have been so compelling,” Ecklund said.
“Scientists employ religion in a variety of
ways. Even the most secular are thinking
about ethical issues in religious frameworks
and trying to figure out how to engage reli-
gious students in the classroom. And some
“Scientists employ religion in a variety
of ways. Even the most secular are
thinking about ethical issues in religious
frameworks and trying to figure out
how to engage religious students in the
classroom.”
scientists are very religious — in different
ways, probably, than many of the general
public — but very religious. They employ
many kinds of narratives. Some practice re-
ligion in conventional ways, and many are
developing their own sense of spirituality
outside of religious institutions.”
She did find scientists who think that
science is the totality of knowledge and that
if it’s not in science it’s either not real, or it’s
not worth thinking about. “I think that is
an extreme view,” Ecklund said. “There is
a whole range of scientists who think there
are other compelling ideas about the world
and knowledge and meaning that science
doesn’t have any access to, and that these
other ways of looking at the world are al-
most equally as important. You can be a
24 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
—Elaine Howard Ecklund
great scientist with any of those views.”
One of Ecklund’s fascinating discov-
eries is that although many scientists are
religious — in one sense or another —
many of them also buy into the public’s
stereotype that scientists are all atheists.
This often leaves religious scientists stuck
in the closet.
THE COST OF SILENCE
In addition to accepting the stereotype that
all scientists are atheists, scientists also
tend to believe that the public hates and
fears science. “Some religious people do
have very negative views,” Ecklund admit-
ted, “but this is all the more reason that
scientists should figure out ways of having
intelligent dialog with them. If the situa-
tion is as extreme as many of us think it is,
that’s all the more reason to be concerned.”
Ecklund sees the lack of dialog caus-
ing potentially dire consequences for both
education and funding. “I don’t mean to be
too crass and practical,” she said, laughing,
“but if parents worry their kids will lose
their faith if they go into higher education,
and that worry keeps kids away from sci-
ence, that is hugely problematic. We know
from studies that the more science train-
ing kids get, the better they do — better
jobs, better earning prospects, better life
in general. It’s pretty detrimental to kids’
chances if we prevent them from getting a
good science background. So if there are
scientists out there who have found ways to
reconcile science and religion, then a kind
of model should be offered to kids so they
can see it as a good thing to learn science.
For some kids, scientists could provide a
spiritual or religious motivation to learn
more about the world.”
Ecklund pointed out that, in terms of
funding, some areas of science are domi-
nated by government grants, and advance-
ment in these areas can be problematic if
the general public does not support the re-
search. “It’s hugely important to have fund-
ing for basic research,” she said, “because
we’re always discovering things that will
have enormous application and societal
benefit down the road.”
So, given that there is a habitable val-
ley between the stereotypical extremes
and that finding our way into this valley
is extremely important, how do we do it?
How do we create a productive dialog in
place of the rants that currently dominate
the sound bites?
Ecklund would say that the first step is
to shatter the myths that our stereotypes
have created. This is where she trades her
scholar’s hood for SuperCharm’s cape, and
emerges from the academic phone booth to
bring her data to the public.
SHATTERING MYTHS
The last chapter of Ecklund’s book recounts
the myths behind the sound bites; for ex-
ample, religious people may think:
• There are no religious scientists; they’re
all atheists. The reality is that only 34 per-
cent are.
• Atheists are always hostile to religion.
Not true. Even “atheist” scientists may be
intensely spiritual. Many atheists belong
to religious communities, and most have
no desire to denigrate religion or religious
people.
• Science is a major cause of unbelief.
Nope. “Scientists are just fundamentally
One of Ecklund’s fascinating dis-
coveries is that although many sci-
entists are religious — in one sense
or another — many of them also
buy into the public’s stereotype
that scientists are all atheists. This
often leaves religious scientists
stuck in the closet.
inquisitive people,” Ecklund said. “If they
lost their faith, it was much earlier than
the scientific training, often because their
religious communities were just not open
to inquisitive kids. People who care about
kids keeping their faith need to be more
open to asking difficult questions of their
faith.”
• Then, of course, there are myths that
scientists believe:
• Ignore religion, and it will go away.
Ouch. There are 14 times more evangeli-
cals in the general population than among
top scientists, and they are not going away.
More than 50 percent of Americans agree
that “we depend too much on science and
not enough on faith” and that “scientific
research these days doesn’t pay enough
attention to the moral values of society.”
One survey shows that nearly 25 percent of
the American public thinks that scientists
are hostile to religion. Scientists must find
a way to engage this group.
• All religion is fundamentalism, and
fundamentalists are ignorant. Actually, re-
ligious people have as much education as
nonreligious people. Scientists should be
concerned about how the religious back-
grounds of their students affect their atti-
tudes in school.
• All evangelical Christians are against
science. Evangelicalism, sometimes con-
fused with fundamentalism, is not as det-
rimental to gaining scientific knowledge as
many have thought, and evangelicals now
graduate from college at the same rate as
other Americans. Ecklund notes that for-
ward-thinking scientists and educators are
finding ways to address the science–vs.–
religion divide through special programs
for secondary teachers, undergraduates
and graduate students.
THE PUBLIC SCIENCE PROJECT
After myth shattering, what?
“I have an idea that could involve differ-
ent kinds of communicators,” Ecklund said.
“Scientists, humanists, journalists with sci-
ence backgrounds and many others could
come together in something we might call a
Public Science Project. There could be many
kinds of conversations. You can’t just ask
the scientists to solve the problem — they’re
going to say, ‘I have 75 research grants to
write and a lab to run, and you want me to
teach Sunday school?’”
Yet, she argues, we have to cultivate a
broad desire to address the issue, and we
have to think strategically about appropriate
roles that people can play. Scientists who
value religion and spirituality have a special
responsibility to marshal their resources to
help the believing American public under-
stand that religion and science do not have
to be in conflict. Both science and religion
are at stake if any less is done.
Ecklund said that no university she’s vis-
ited compares to Rice in terms of desire to
reach out to the public. “Rice could do this in
a way that others can’t,” she said. “We could
potentially be a model for other universities
and for public discourse in general.”
Notes
1 From Amazon.com: the video promoting Richard
Dawkin’s book “The God Delusion”:
tinyurl.com/2wgraga
2 From Web page “What is Darwinism?”:
tinyurl.com/5cz34t
Science vs. Religion:
What Scientists
Really Think
In “Science vs. Religion: What
Scientists Really Think” (Oxford
University Press, 2010), Elaine Howard
Ecklund has set herself a tough task:
to present an impeccable collection
of revelatory data — the results of
a survey of 1,646 top scientists and
interviews with 275 of them — in a
way that maintains scholarly credibility
while also appealing to the general
public. She certainly succeeds,
opening the doors of dialog about
an issue of vital importance to our
nation’s future. You will find this book
consistently readable, engrossing —
and enlightening. The data is here, and
Ecklund brings it to life by interweaving
scientists’ personal stories, while
her own deep humanism shines
throughout the work.
The book starts by looking at the
real religious lives of scientists: the
voice of science, the voice of faith
and what Ecklund calls “spiritual
entrepreneurship.” She then takes
up the relationship between science,
religion and society: suppression vs.
engagement, “God on the Quad” and
what scientists are doing wrong that
they could be doing right. She closes
with a chapter about shattering myths
and opening paths for dialog.
Appendices and notes cover
the details of the survey/interview
process, and an extensive
bibliography offers additional
resources.
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 25
 Once a decade, the
Be
By Christopher Dow United States Census
Bureau asks all
Counted
Americans to stand
up and be counted.
It’s a task that takes
and
an entire year, and
the accuracy of that
count affects the
Count
lives of everyone in
the country.
If
you want to know about the
U.S. census, there are few who
can tell you more than Steve
Murdock, Rice’s Allyn and
Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and
director of the Hobby Center for the Study
of Texas, which generates objective analy-
sis of key social and public policy issues
that impact Texas and other parts of the
United States.
Aside from knowing interesting tid-
bits about the census, such as the fact that
Thomas Jefferson was the first director of
the Census Bureau and that the census is
the U.S.’s largest peacetime operation in
terms of employment, Murdock under-
stands how the census works, what the
data mean and why the findings are im-
portant. Some of that comes from nearly
four decades of working with census data,
but it also stems from his service as the di-
rector of the U.S. Census Bureau from Jan.
4, 2008, to Jan. 9, 2009. He also has served
as the state demographer for Texas and as
director of the Texas State Data Center.
As director of the Census Bureau,
Murdock was involved in the lead-up to the
2010 census. “When you’re going to count all
Americans — about 134 million households
totaling about 385 million individuals — it’s
a pretty big enterprise,” he said. “In every
place, there are unique issues to deal with.”
For example, the census begins in January
in Alaska because the bureau has to get a
count of the native peoples before the ice
starts to break up and they go out hunting.
This year, the Census Bureau em-
ployed nearly a million people during two
major phases. The first is what’s called the
Master Address File. “The census is really a
26 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
census of households, from which you get
individuals,” Murdock said. “The starting
point is collecting every single address in
America because the addresses are where
the forms are sent.”
When the mapping process is com-
plete, the mailing of the questionnaire
takes place. The next, and even larger
process is called Non-response Follow-up.
“If they’ve sent you a couple of question-
naires without response, they’ll go out and
try to find you,” Murdock said. “They’ll go
to each address up to six times, and if they
still haven’t been able to contact you, they
will go to your neighbors to get as much
information as they can. At a minimum,
they want the numbers of residents, but
some of the other data, such as ages, race
and ethnicity, isn’t always valid since the
neighbors might not know.”
Although the census occurs only once
a decade, the Census Bureau does not re-
main fallow in the intervening time: It em-
ploys 14 to 16 thousand people who collect
data every year, all year long. “The Census
Bureau collects and publishes about 60
percent of all the data published by the fed-
eral government,” Murdock said. “Housing
starts, foreign trade, balance of payment,
information on government agencies such
as Housing and Urban Development and
the National Institutes of Health — all the
data you see on the evening news are col-
lected by the Census Bureau. It’s clearly
the dominant census data collection in the
world, and in fact, people from all over the
world come to the Census Bureau to learn
about our procedures of data collection.”
Longevity might be one reason the
Census Bureau is so successful. “It’s the
oldest continuous census, although there
were censuses before ours in Europe and
England that were sporadic,” Murdock
said. “Our census is mandated by Article
I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which
requires that the census collect data for
all persons residing in the United States.
It doesn’t say anything about citizenship.
So the census has an obligation to count
everybody, and it’s good that it does, be-
cause if it distinguished by status, it would
be much more difficult.”
Indeed, every time the census is done,
there is trepidation among illegal aliens
that the bureau will reveal that they’re here
illegally. To count people who are hesitant
to participate, the Census Bureau employs
people who are from local communities
and can convince holdouts that its safe to
fill out the forms. “It’s one thing to have
somebody come along and say, ‘I’m from
the U.S. Government, trust me,’” Murdock
said. “It’s another thing to have your neigh-
bor come and ask you to cooperate.”
“When you’re going to count all Americans — about 134 million households
totaling about 385 million individuals — it’s a pretty big enterprise.”
And getting counted is important be-
cause each person counted is worth about
$1,400 annually in federal funding to a lo-
cal jurisdiction. “Being counted is not just
a nicety for statisticians,” Murdock said.
“It’s very important for communities in
terms of having the resources they need to
run their governments.”
And governmental agencies aren’t the
only consumers of census data. Users in
the private sector far outnumber those in
the government. The data is employed for
everything from deciding where to site
convenience stores, fast food restaurants
and hospitals to determining what types of
products might do well in different areas.
In 2000, all this counting and follow-up
resulted in an astounding response rate of
99.5 percent. “For most surveys, a 95 per-
cent response rate is considered excellent,”
Murdock said. “For the census, that same
number would be a dismal failure because
those who are missed are not distributed
equally across groups. Historically, mi-
norities — particularly African-Americans
and Hispanics — are likely to be missed.
If you’re at more than 98 percent, that’s a
pretty good census.”
Murdock believes that the current cen-
sus will show a gain in the United States of
26 to 27 million people, of which 5 million
will be non-Hispanic whites and Anglos,
about 13 million Hispanic and the rest
African-American and Asian. “This will
be the most diverse population growth in
our history,” he said. “The Census Bureau
projects that, by 2023, more than half the
children in America will be non-Anglo.
Growth and diversity go hand-in-hand.”
While immigration is responsible for some
of the expansion, two of every three peo-
ple added to the U.S. population are from
natural increases due to birth and death
rates.
Congress is very sensitive to the accu-
racy of the census because it is critical in
apportioning each state’s number of seats
in the House of Representatives. “Texas
will probably see an increase of about 4
million people after the current census and
will get three or four seats in the House,”
“You can basically take
every census question
and you will find
somebody at the bureau
who has spent his or her
professional life on that
question — on how to
ask it, how to answer it,
how to characterize it,
how to place it.”
—Steve Murdock
Murdock said. “It’s a continuation of the
population shifts we saw during the last
century from the Northeast and Midwest to
the South and West. In 1900, 62 percent of
the population lived in the Northeast and
Midwest and 38 percent lived in the South
and West. By 2000, 58 percent lived in the
South and West and 42 percent lived in the
Northeast and Midwest.”
Another reason for the success of
the census is the attention paid to the
—Steve Murdock
questionnaire. Every item on the form
comes from the need to assist some gov-
ernment agency, such as Social Security,
Housing and Urban Development or
highway planning. “You can basically
take every census question,” Murdock
said, “and you will find somebody at the
bureau who has spent his or her profes-
sional life on that question — on how
to ask it, how to answer it, how to char-
acterize it, how to place it.” The Census
Bureau will test not only alternative forms
of the questions and orders of questions,
but also their physical presentation.
“A good example is that, one year,
the question on race was asked before
the question on ethnicity, and the results
showed very clearly that you had more
complete results if you put the question in
the reverse order,” Murdock said. “Every
question is tested as thoroughly as pos-
sible to ensure that we get as complete and
accurate information as possible. As soon
as the current census is done, they’ll test
to see which questions did well because
sometimes a question that does well on
one survey doesn’t do well 10 years later
due to changes in perceptions, cultures
and so forth.”
There is one dominant reason that the
U.S. census stands far above the others,
however. “No other country has a better
census than ours because it is entirely de-
pendent on and enjoys the cooperation
and confidence of the American people,”
Murdock said. “Every census director is
pleased that the public is very cooperative
and understands the importance of being
counted.”
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 27
 Understanding
Tomorrow
Cities of

B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D O W

As America transforms into one of the most urban-

ized nations on Earth, it is more important than ever to
study the phenomenon of urbanization to understand
what makes up the modern city, how it develops
and how best to channel its diverse and sometimes
divergent energies in coherent, purposeful directions.

28 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
T
hat is the premise of Rice’s Kinder
Institute for Urban Research. Cities
have choices as they consider how to
grow into the future, and, to choose
wisely, their leaders need to stay
ahead of the economic and demo-
graphic trends and understand the chang-
ing attitudes and concerns of the public.
“Cities around the world face similar
issues,” said Michael Emerson, institute
co-director and the Allyn and Gladys
Cline Professor of Sociology. “Part of our
goal is to develop comparative studies of
Houston and other cities to see what they
have in common and what things make
them unique.”
He and co-director Stephen Klineberg,
professor of sociology, believe that
Houston, as an emerging global city, is the
ideal laboratory for studying how cities
around the world deal with the multitude
of issues raised by their transitions from
regional or national hubs to centers of in-
ternational importance.
“Houston is about three years ahead
of Texas and about 30 years ahead of the
United States,” Klineberg said. “It’s where
America’s future is taking place today
and where America’s future is going to be
worked out.”
The directors are equally committed to
having Rice recognized as the premier place
in the country to study global urbanism.
The university already combines targeted
research and interdisciplinary cooperation
with its own emerging global reach, par-
ticularly in Asia and Latin America, and the
institute’s programs will be aided further
by Rice’s new Ph.D. program in sociology
— the only such program among Houston
universities.
Genesis
The institute, originally called the
Institute for Urban Research, is the
result of the melding last February
of two centers within the School of
Social Sciences. One was the Urban
Research Center, home to the Houston
Area Survey (HAS), which was created
by Klineberg 30 years ago this com-
ing spring and is the most continuous
in-depth survey of any urban area in
the U.S. The second was the Center on
Race, Religion and Urban Life, founded
by Emerson to study urban issues.
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 29
 “We are huge believers in Rice, a world-
class institution. This is a unique oppor-
tunity to position the Institute for Urban
Research to serve Houston and Rice and
to be a resource for coming generations
of American cities.”
—Rich Kinder
Major ongoing funding from cor-
porations in Houston has enabled the
institute to hire an executive director,
three program directors, and several
undergraduate and graduate student
assistants and to start several research
projects. Outside grants also have come
in to fund specific projects. And now,
a $15 million gift from Houston philan-
thropists Rich and Nancy Kinder will
take the institute’s endeavors to a whole
new level.
“It’s an incredible, transformative
gift,” Klineberg said. “It accelerates
dramatically the timing of the whole
process.”
The gift also gives the institute the
resources to broaden its range of re-
search opportunities. “We can hire a
community liaison full time to go out
into the community,” Emerson said. “We
can hire map makers and demographers
and do whatever it takes to address this
huge project that we’re attempting.”
The Kinders, who founded the
Kinder Foundation to support educa-
tion, urban green space and other qual-
ity-of-life issues, read an editorial in the
Houston Chronicle about the fledgling
institute’s goals and thought their sup-
port could serve as a fulcrum.
“We are huge believers in Rice, a
world-class institution,” said Rich Kinder,
who is chairman and CEO of Kinder
Morgan, one of the largest pipeline trans-
portation and energy storage companies
in North America. “This is a unique op-
portunity to position the Institute for
Urban Research to serve Houston and
Rice and to be a resource for coming
generations of American cities.”
With the Kinders’ gift, the institute
will become its own entity — akin
to the James A. Baker III Institute for
Public Policy — which will span the
School of Social Sciences and the School
of Humanities and draw on faculty in
other disciplines as well.
30 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Programs
So far, the Kinder Institute has developed
research along three major lines: race, reli-
gion and urban life.
“These areas are important because the
larger cities are, the more diverse they be-
come,” Emerson said. “Differences in race
and religion are where we have points of
conflict, but they also provide potential for
our greatest strengths. We’re trying to un-
derstand how we can use social science to
enable groups, in all their diversity, to work
together to minimize conflict and play on
those strengths. If that energy could be har-
nessed here, Houston will be a city like no
city has ever been before.”
A recent study on race, for example, ex-
plored what influences people to chose par-
ticular neighborhoods to live in. “Houston
is a fairly segregated city — although not
the most segregated,” Klineberg said. “It’s
also the most spread out, least-dense city in
America, so we don’t come to know or in-
teract with each other. A lot of stereotypes
and insecurities are based on this lack of
contact, and we want to know how you get
stable, successful interethnic contact.”
Religion is another issue because cit-
ies bring into closer contact practitioners
of religions that traditionally have been
separate. “In the HAS, we’ve seen a tripling
in the percentage of respondents who are
Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist,” Klineberg
said. “Houston was an overwhelmingly
Anglo-Protestant city, and now it’s almost
equally composed of Catholics and people
of other religions.”
Institute researchers have been looking
at the amount of contact across religions,
and there’s amazingly little — even less
than there is across race. “If people are
Christians, they don’t know any Muslims
and don’t want to know any Muslims, and
vice versa,” Emerson said. “If we’re going
to try to live together and work together to
make the city great, it’s inefficient to try to
do it in separate enclaves.”
Because American cities — and
Houston in particular — have become mi-
crocosms of the world, it is more impor-
tant than ever to negotiate issues of race,
ethnicity and religion. But also needed is
knowledge about a whole range of urban
“We really want to know about the
issues to understand what the challenges
and opportunities are in the 21st century
for the people who live in these cities.
That’s where the institute’s focus on urban
life comes in.
“In studying urban areas, we tend to
study the big mass systems, such as infra-
structure, economy and politics,” Emerson
said. “But we often forget about people liv-
ing in communities and trying to navigate
and get to work. What is life like for them?
When we refer to urban life, we’re looking
at people’s daily lived experience.”
These programs are just the beginning.
The directors plan to develop a Visiting
Scholars and Urban Leaders Program. “This
will enable us to bring in top scholars and
accomplished urban leaders,” Emerson
said, “to spend a semester or a year at Rice
to write, work on policy papers, give high-
profile lectures, and provide training and
networking for Rice students and commu-
nity leaders.”
The directors also want to establish
programs on health, poverty and other is-
sues, and to expand the institute’s program
on leadership. ”Who runs cities and makes
it possible for them to function in all their
aspects?” Emerson asked. “How do people
come to know enough to do that? We really
want to know about the leaders — how they
get elected and where they come from. In
this time of tremendous social change and
upheaval, leadership matters more than ever.”
Part of the plan includes exporting the
HAS to other metropolitan areas, such as
New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to
gain comparative data for a major study of
American cities. The directors already have
opened discussions with Emory University
about starting an Atlanta area survey mod-
eled on the HAS.
The institute also has begun efforts to
do comparative studies with cities outside
the U.S. that are, in some ways, similar to
Houston. The first was the Coastal Cities
Project, an effort to do an international re-
search project to examine U.S. coastal cit-
ies and three Chinese cities, all of which
are petroleum-producing centers that must
deal with environmental issues as well as
hurricanes.
“It was a wonderful experience, and
we really want to do something like that
on a broader basis with cities around the
world,” Klineberg said. “Houston has ma-
jor connections to Latin America as well as
to Asia, and comparative analyses of cities
with different traditions but facing similar
challenges can benefit us all.”
leaders — how they get elected
and where they come from. In this
time of tremendous social change and
upheaval, leadership matters more
than ever.” —Michael Emerson
Rich and Nancy Kinder, center, surrounded, from left, by Michael Emerson,
President David Leebron, Chairman of the Rice Board James Crownover,
Mayor Annise Parker and Stephen Klineberg.
Learn more about the Kinder Institute for Urban Research: ›› › kinderinstitute.rice.edu
Engagement
“Houston has major connections to
The Kinder Institute’s directors intend to
use objective, broad social science quan-
titative data collection and analysis to
gain deeper insight into the contemporary
urban experience and, thanks to the re-
sources provided by the Kinders, to share
that insight in ways that improve cities and
urban life.
“The institute includes a strong com-
munity outreach component to ensure that
the research informs and inspires the com-
munities on which it is based,” Emerson
said. “We want people to think of Rice as
a model of how universities can work with
cities so that we become a national and
global leader not only in studying urban
areas, but in being able to work with cities
to lead to better cities.”
One of the most critical issues in cities
is education and closing the achievement
gap, and the institute plans to help create a
Center for Educational Innovation. Another
project, which institute researchers are in
the midst of right now, is a study of the
arts, education and health in Houston.
Funded by the Houston Endowment, this
study will include a new survey that will
be added to the HAS’s repertoire. The
grant also will enable the institute to host
two major national conferences — one on
the arts and the other on education and
health — and spotlight Houston as a place
Latin America as well as to Asia, and
comparative analyses of cities with
different traditions but facing similar
challenges can benefit us all.”
—Stephen Klineberg
where innovative art initiatives and impor-
tant educational reforms are taking place.
“A big commitment with the Kinder gift
is to enhance the visibility of the institute
within the city,” Klineberg said. “We want
to make the study of Houston and an un-
derstanding of the options and choices that
we Houstonians have about the kind of
city that we’re building capture the imagi-
nation of the Houston community.”
Toward this end, the institute is creat-
ing a state-of-the-art interactive website
called “Ask the HAS.” Visitors can send in
questions, and institute staff will research
the answer and provide it within 24 hours.
“Anybody will be able to use it,” Emerson
said, “from individuals at home to govern-
mental entities to overseas users.”
Another intriguing item on the agen-
da is a coffee-table book that celebrates
KINDER I N S T I T U T E
For URBAN RESEARCH
Houston during the past 30 years.
“The book will combine quantitative
research from the HAS with photographs
and qualitative interviews that illustrate
the lived experiences we’ve researched
with the data,” Klineberg said. “It will be
a book that puts together the whole range
of ways of knowing about a city. And Rice
is excited about that because it’s approach-
ing its centennial, and 2011 is the year in
which the university will focus on Rice and
its relationship to Houston.”
Catalyst for Change
The Kinder Institute presents a tremen-
dous opportunity to develop an informed
understanding of the urban changes under
way in Houston and elsewhere that will be
enormously important for helping civic and
community leaders develop policies that
will help navigate those changes success-
fully. And the opportunities for Rice are
no less inspiring, making it a catalyst for a
qualitative change in Houston and the rest
of the country and world.
“Rice is a place where really exciting
research has direct implications and out-
reach to communities,” Klineberg said. “It
also provides a powerful model — maybe
the best there is — of how research uni-
versities can work with cities to enhance
the quality of life in urban America and
elsewhere.”
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 31

Better Health Care,
Lower Cost
As a health economist, Vivian Ho usually thinks about maximizing utility
and reducing costs when walking through a hospital. But that wasn’t the
case in May 2006 when she walked into the neonatal intensive care unit
where her newborn son, Alexander, was being treated.
H
o’s research and professional life took a backseat dur-
ing those 11 long days her infant spent in the hospital,
but the experience gave her a new perspective on the
work she does professionally. She was now the person
going through the hoops of the very health care system she had
spent decades studying. She was now the patient, trying to make
sense of a hospital bill with unintelligible codes and way too many
dollar signs. She was now the mom, trying to understand doctor-
speak amidst the cacophony of bleating monitors, off-key lullabies
and babies’ cries.
Like any first-time mom, Ho had many questions for the doc-
tors and nurses looking after her baby. Most of the time, she asked
about the care he was receiving and his progress and what she
“Costs continue to rise because doctors and hospitals are rewarded for
performing more services, not for improving patient health.”
could do to speed it. But she couldn’t silence the economist in her.
“Alexander needed an expert to feed him, but he didn’t need the
other bells and whistles of the NICU,” said Ho, professor of econom-
ics and the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics.
“As an economist, it got me thinking about the cost-effectiveness of
such treatment. I was paying for around-the-clock care and facilities,
which cost thousands of dollars, but all he needed was an expert to
feed him.”
Ho’s eye for efficiency and effectiveness extends well beyond her
personal experiences with health care. Her research tries to identify
32 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
BY JESSICA STARK
strategies to control cost growth in health care so that people end up
with better-quality health care at a lower cost.
That was one aim of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act, which was signed into law in March. But the majority of the
legislation, which Ho calls “the most significant reform of the U.S.
health care system since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid,” was
devoted to improving access to health insurance through increased
regulation of insurance companies and the provision of subsidies to
aid individuals and families in purchasing health insurance.
That is a good thing, Ho said; however, the legislation neglected
the underlying reason more than 50 million U.S. citizens lack health
care — they’ve been priced out of the market due to health care’s
rising cost.
—Vivian Ho
“As the number of uninsured Americans and private health in-
surance premiums rise simultaneously, many hospitals have argued
that they have had to raise prices for the insured patients in order
to cover the costs of treating uninsured patients,” Ho said. “But our
preliminary analysis suggests that hypothesis is false.”
Ho and her team have looked at hospitals in Texas and found
that they receive reasonable government subsidies to care for the
uninsured, so that cost doesn’t appear to be shifted to a privately
insured patient. Rather, the costs of treating privately insured patients
seem to be rising on their own.
 “Costs continue to rise because doctors and hospitals are rewarded for performing
more services, not for improving patient health,” Ho said. “Our system is set up to
reward specialists performing costly surgeries, not general practitioners taking pre-
ventative measures.”
Studies have shown that Medicare, Medicaid and the private sector richly reward
specialists for performing aggressive and costly surgeries and interventions on patients
who have suffered a heart attack or are at risk of heart disease, whereas general practi-
tioners would actually lose money if they spent the amount of time necessary to advise
and treat the patients to prevent them from developing the disease.
Technology is another cost contributing factor. Most new technologies make treat-
ments more expensive, and as the technologies are introduced into the market, they
get overused, according to Ho. She said that during the last 15 years, Americans have
spent twice as much on technologies to ease lower back pain; however, there has
been no documented improvement in outcomes associated with these treatments.
“As much as a third of our health care costs could be waste,” Ho said. “The thing
is, we trust our doctors too much. We don’t see that they’re human and can have a bad
day at the office just like anyone else. We don’t price shop or compare. If they tell us
we should have a knee surgery, we have it, regardless of the literature and studies that
tell us knee surgeries could be ineffective.”
Ho’s latest research is aimed at finding ways to control costs while delivering high-
quality cancer surgery. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, her team is examin-
ing data from tens of thousands of Medicare patients to identify surgeon or hospital
characteristics that are associated with lower costs and high quality for these complex
cancer operations.
“We know that doctors who perform more operations achieve lower costs per pa-
“We know that doctors who perform more
tient; however, their hospitals do not experience lower average costs,” Ho said. “This operations achieve lower costs per patient;
counterintuitive phenomenon could hold the key to controlling some health care costs.”
Ho’s research team, which includes surgeon Thomas Aloia from The Methodist
however, their hospitals do not experience
Hospital System, are exploring whether economies of scale exist for hospitals perform- lower average costs. This counterintuitive
ing cancer surgeries. Their working hypothesis is that high-volume hospitals provide
higher quality care and lower costs due to fewer surgery-related complications, but phenomenon could hold the key to control-
these cost savings are hidden by the investments that hospitals must make to provide
care. For example, high-volume hospitals may have higher nurse-to-patient ratios,
ling some health care costs.” —Vivian Ho

better-equipped intensive care units, and more advanced preoperative and postopera-
tive monitoring.
Whatever the case, they are hoping their results can guide future Medicare re-
imbursement policies. “If we find that hospitals that perform more cancer surgeries
achieve lower costs and higher quality,” Ho said, “we can set Medicare payments for
cancer surgeries at a low enough level that they discourage high-cost, small facilities
from offering cancer surgery.”
Some might argue that doing so would harm patients in the long run by eliminat-
ing competition and options, but Ho said that’s not the case this time. Such a pricing
strategy would help eliminate the choices that are not in the best interest of patients
or their pocketbooks.
“So much of the delivery of health care has to do with incentives,” she said. “What
economists can do is provide a conceptual framework and statistical analysis on how
to organize. We hope this can help physicians and allow them to serve their primary
responsibility of patient care.”
It’s hard to believe that a researcher so committed to working with and for physi-
cians hadn’t intended to launch a career in health economics, a field that wasn’t even
on the map when she set upon her path of study. She had planned to work in labor
economics.
“Health economics wasn’t a sexy topic,” Ho said. “I knew of a couple of doctoral stu-
dents working in that field, and I couldn’t understand why they would waste their time.”
But a couple of innovative professors changed her tune, and before she knew it,
she was working in a medical school in Montreal, Canada, where she saw many op-
portunities for collaboration between doctors and economists. Today, her interest has
not waned, and she remains committed to finding solutions for issues that plague the
health care system.
“As we get better and more advanced in the field of medicine, we have a more com-
plex health care system that comes with a complex set of problems that we need to face
on the front end,” she said. “We need to change the way we reward our physicians and
hospitals, and we need to come up with better technologies for providing medicine.”
On a bright note, Ho’s son is now fine and, she said, is the light of her life.

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 33

 Provost
Appoints Task

Three New
Forces for

Initiatives By Mike Williams

34 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students

For weeks before starting his new job and during his
first few months at Rice, George McLendon’s self-
assigned role was to listen. Now the university’s

M
new Howard R. Hughes
Provost is talking.
McLendon, a highly regarded research-
er, entrepreneur and administrator who
came to Houston from Duke University,
was in full learning mode as he worked
his way around campus getting to know his new colleagues. What McLendon
learned astonished him as he sought help to define the initiatives that will en-
hance Rice’s international distinction, as envisioned in President David Leebron’s
Vision for the Second Century.
In conversations with 80 or so leading faculty members, department chairs,
college masters, and directors of institutes and centers, McLendon discovered that
most identified three clear paths to greatness. “This kind of process could not hap-
pen at most universities in the country,” he said, “because there wouldn’t be this
level of shared consensus.”
Those initiatives are the focus of a letter McLendon issued to Rice faculty last
month that outlined a broad plan for bioscience and health, energy and the en-
vironment, and international strategy. As a result, three faculty-led task forces are
gearing up to study how Rice can best use its resources to become a recognized
leader in each of those domains.
McLendon brings a wealth of experience and insight to the provost role. He
served as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Duke from 2004 until coming
to Rice and dean of Duke’s Trinity College, which encompasses arts and science,
from 2008 until this year. His recent research has focused on the diagnosis and
treatment of cancer, stroke and other diseases, and he has founded several bio-
technology companies, along the way earning the American Chemical Society’s
prestigious Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry as well as Guggenheim and
Alfred P. Sloan research fellowships.
The Texas native and A&M-trained chemist continued to teach at Duke through-
out his tenure there. Even while interviewing at Rice, he commuted back and forth
from Silicon Valley, where he was introducing Duke students to entrepreneurs and
venture capitalists.
McLendon is settling into his Allen Center office, where his classical guitar has
a place of pride, and he’ll complete the transition when his wife, Terry, who most
recently served as medical director at the Duke-affiliated Person Memorial Hospital,
joins him in the near future. Their two adult children both teach in upstate New York.
McLendon talked with Rice Magazine recently about his repatriation as a Texan,
his introduction to the Rice community and how the university’s new initiatives
came into focus.

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 35

 Rice Magazine: What drew you to Rice?
McLendon: There were a lot of things that were intriguing. One is
I’m a multigeneration Texan. My forebears came here during the
years of the Republic — so I’m “DRT” [Daughters of the Republic
of Texas] on both sides.
I’m very committed to this state, and Rice is, without any ques-
tion, the great university within the state of Texas. I can even say
that as an Aggie. Rice is the great university; A&M is a strong No.
2. There’s also someplace in Austin; I forget its name. [McLendon
earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas at El Paso.]
And there are family considerations — all of my parents and
siblings are within two hours of Houston. But mostly it’s about be-
ing at a great place, in a great state, where I feel my background
can make a difference.
Rice Magazine: Your personal strengths align nicely with a lot of
the research here. Is that an advantage?
McLendon: It’s helpful to understand from different perspectives
what works in certain intellectual disciplines, what’s necessary to
be great beyond being good. So having some personal experience,
I hope, provides credibility with other faculty members with whom
I share teaching and with whom I share research interests.
Rice is not going to be the Princeton of Texas. Rice is going to
be Rice. It’s our pride. It’s our strength. But it’s still helpful to know
how things work in other places and to understand what best prac-
tices are, then to figure out how to modify those in ways that make
sense for our institution.
Rice ultimately has the potential
to be far more impactful because
you can set up a spirit of collabo-
ration. We’ll figure out how to do
that in a way that takes advantage
of Rice’s unique strengths.
—George McLendon
Rice Magazine: Had you spent much time on campus before?
McLendon: I had given a couple of seminars here. I know a lot
of faculty members. I know about places somewhat like us, but I
didn’t know Rice well.
After I arrived in Houston, I had about six weeks before my job
started to have some unencumbered time, just to get to know Rice
better. I wanted to meet people, and the questions I wanted to ask
were pretty simple: I need to know what drives Rice, so tell me
about yourself. Why did you come here? Why do you stay? What’s
exciting about Rice? What’s your department like?
And then I said, “Imagine for a moment, even in a time of lim-
ited resources, that we were to do something really special, where
we could be great. Set aside your departmental hat for a minute,
just put on a Rice hat and tell me what two or three things we
might do that would cut across all schools. Things that your depart-
ment might be excited about participating in but that wouldn’t be
focused on your department, necessarily. Things that would take
advantage of our local and regional strengths, our traditions, our
sense of making the world a better place.
36 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Rice Magazine: If we could do just two or three things, what
should those be?
McLendon: In 80 conversations, you would expect to get somewhere
between 60 and 240 answers. There were 20 or 30 things that got
one vote. There were a dozen that got two votes. The astonishing
thing is there were only three that got more than three votes.
It’s a big deal to think you can make a difference. But it’s also
extraordinary when the chair of English, the chair of sociology, the
chair of civil engineering and the chair of physics all agree on what
your three things should be. I do think the Vision for the Second
Century paved the way for the best possible conversations.
Rice Magazine: Two of them are no surprise, as we’re strong in
energy and the environment and bioscience and health.
McLendon: Those take differential advantage of our strengths.
We’re right next to the Texas Medical Center [TMC], the greatest
medical center on the face of the Earth. It’s kind of obvious that
there’s underutilized intellectual capital and underutilized intellec-
tual collaborative opportunities.
Rice Magazine: And the BioScience Research Collaborative gives
us new paths into the TMC.
McLendon: Absolutely. It’s also true that we’re the energy capital of
the United States, so that makes some sense. You can’t do energy
without doing the environment and vice versa.
Rice Magazine: How did international strategy come
to be one of the three?
McLendon: To be a great university in the 20th
century, you had to have some things, including re-
gional dominance, which Rice has. All great national
universities have a regional flavor. But in the 21st
century, you really have to think of yourself as hav-
ing not only a regional and national mission but a
global mission as well.
I learned two things from listening to faculty.
One, if we’re going to pursue a thoughtful international strategy, it
has to be driven by intellectual priorities. It can’t just be, “We want
to be in Southeast Asia because everybody else is in Southeast
Asia.” That’s not a strategy.
The second is that we have a unique potential opportunity
here. Houston is one of the two gateway cities between North
America and South America. Houston and Miami. That’s it. So we
might have a unique opportunity to make a significant difference
in the world by having a southern-focused strategy.
With these initiatives, we’ve learned there is — and this is un-
precedented in the history of academia — consensus around what
our large-scale, critical global issues should be, where Rice could
be among the national leaders in those conversations.
Rice Magazine: How do you feel about the initiatives?
McLendon: There’s a clear and extraordinary consensus. And in ret-
rospect, I do think there’s some perceived wisdom in those things.
But I didn’t make them up. I just served as a scribe for this process.
And that’s why I’m excited about it.
“I like to have very clearly focused
plans and clear milestones and
to couple resource utilization to
those milestones. But they’re not
going to be set by me. They’re go-
ing to be set by our faculty, by our
students, by the Rice community.
Then I just manage the process.”
Rice Magazine: What happens now?
McLendon: We’re ready to begin a communication with the faculty
that says, “This is what I’ve learned from you.” The next step is to
find out: Are these really the right things? Can we really make a
difference? Can we understand the level of resources, both from
internal allocations and external fundraising, that would be neces-
sary for us to be among the national leaders?
We’re not ready to implement anything. We’re just ready to
have the next level of conversation, so we’re doing that with three
task forces that, roughly, have one person representing each of our
schools. That minimizes the parochialism.
Rice Magazine: Does having a collaborative culture to begin
with help?
McLendon: Rice ultimately has the potential to be far more impact-
ful because you can set up a spirit of collaboration. We’ll figure
out how to do that in a way that takes advantage of Rice’s unique
strengths.
There are very few places where a leading corporation in the
energy sector could have all of those people sitting at the table, not
fighting to be in charge but saying we’re all committed to doing
this together.
Rice Magazine: There’s a natural focal point for bioscience and
health with the BioScience Research Collaborative and a natu-
ral focal point for international strategy at the Baker Institute for
Public Policy, but how do you bring all the energy initiatives un-
der one umbrella?
McLendon: I’m familiar with some of the historic challenges. Since
we’re asking all the schools to find ways to collaborate, the pro-
cesses have to be co-chaired by someone from the provost’s office
and someone whose primary affiliation is within the faculty.
—George McLendon
Rice Magazine: When do you expect to start seeing results?
McLendon: I don’t want to get that far ahead of the process. This is
going to be very open and transparent. There’s going to be feed-
back and input from lots of constituencies, from many faculty, from
students, from alumni, from supporters in the Houston community.
Our job is to find out if we can be great at this.
The first step is to have this collective conversation, guided by a
small-focus task force. They’ll produce a white paper that will say,
“Here’s what we think is possible.” And that will be the source of
additional conversation.
By December, we’ll have a sense of what’s possible, and from
there, we’ll be in conversation with the trustees and others about
what commitments we will be willing to make internally and exter-
nally to seize the promise of that possibility. Then things can start
to happen very fast.
If there is one thing I’d like to communicate, it’s that this isn’t
my initiative. This is an extraordinary, collective zeitgeist of the
faculty. My responsibility is to respond to that zeitgeist and find
out, in ways that are appropriate to Rice’s history and traditions and
ambitions, if we can build things that we’ll all be extraordinarily
proud of.
Rice Magazine: Are you up to the task?
McLendon: For better or worse, I have rapidly gotten this funny
reputation based on my background. People say, “Ah, he’s a startup
guy.” And I am.
I like to have very clearly focused plans and clear milestones
and to couple resource utilization to those milestones. But they’re
not going to be set by me. They’re going to be set by our faculty,
by our students, by the Rice community. Then I just manage the
process.
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 37
Academic Success
B Y J E S S I C A S TA R K

and Immigrant Students

How can we increase student success among the growing number of immigrant and
English-language learners in U.S. schools? Answers may include bolstering the recruit-
ment of minority teachers and administrators or focusing more attention on teacher
training or in-service professional development. So says new research from Rice that
found that schools with minority principals are more likely to feature programs to
increase involvement of immigrant parents in their children’s school and education,
which can increase the likelihood of student success.

P
arent involvement includes a wide range of activities such
as communication between schools and parents, parent
attendance at school events and parent support of learn-
ing that takes place at home. “Minority principals seem
to be taking an active role in addressing the needs of im-
migrant parents,” said Melissa Marschall, the Albert Thomas Associate
Professor of Political Science and author of the study. “In particular,
we see that African-American principals are exercising leadership in
promoting school-based parent-involvement programs in ‘new immi-
grant destinations.’”
Marschall said that finding is somewhat surprising given the
black–white racial context of many new immigrant destinations and
the media’s tendency to focus on conflict and competition between
immigrant and African-American residents in these places. New im-
migrant destinations — such as Durham, N.C.; Cedar Falls,
Iowa; or Ogden, Utah — are cities and communities
characterized by smaller, rapidly growing foreign-born
populations. Established immigrant destinations, such
as New York and Chicago, are cities that have histori-
cally served as primary immigrant gateways.
For the study, Marschall and her co-authors, Paru
Shah of Macalester College and Katharine Donato of
Vanderbilt University, examined parent-involvement
policies for about 1,300 schools throughout the country
and found distinctly different effects for teachers and
principals depending on whether schools were locat-
ed in established or new immigrant destinations.
In particular, Marschall and her co-authors
found that in established destinations, minor-
ity teachers are strongly associated with the
type and magnitude of parent-involvement
programs schools provide, whereas in new
destinations, teacher training and in-service
professional development are most consis-
tently associated with these policies.
This suggests that teachers who do not
share linguistic or racial/ethnic backgrounds
with their students still foster outreach
with immigrant parents when their schools
provide enhanced education, training and
professional development focused on issues of culture, language and
immigration.
The study also shows the strong, positive effect of Title I of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which distributes funding
to schools and school districts with a high percentage of low-income
families.
“The greater the percentage of Title I students, the more school-
based parent programs offered,” Marschall said. “By tying parent-
involvement programs to federal aid, No Child Left Behind creates a
strong incentive for schools to implement policies that explicitly pro-
mote parent involvement — and the data show that this indeed seems
to be happening.”
According to the study, school districts with larger percentages
of minority and non-English-speaking students had a greater number
of policies that involve parents as decision-makers, foster com-
munication with parents regarding students’ academic suc-
cess, provide links to social services and explicitly involve a
diverse group of parents.
Underlying Issues
Marschall is looking at these issues in more detail in
a separate study for her new book, “Immigrants and
Schools,” in which she evaluated survey data for more than
1,600 immigrant parents in six immigrant communities in
New York and Chicago.
The study examined the relationship between im-
migrant parents and schools, but unlike nearly all
research on this topic, Marschall’s study links par-
ent responses to what schools are actually doing.
To date, studies have focused either on schools
or parents and thus have provided only one
side of the story.
“What this study is finding is that just be-
cause a principal says her school is doing x,
y and z,” Marschall said, “it doesn’t mean
that parents know about or understand
the implications of x, y and z.”
She found that some immigrant par-
ents aren’t even aware of the services

38 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

extended to them, such as New York’s parent–coordinator program.
In 2002, the city mandated that its public schools create a parent–co-
ordinator position to ensure that someone in each school is directly
responsible for supporting families. The coordinators are charged
with communicating directly with parents, identifying issues of con-
cern to families and working with school leaders to ensure the issues
are addressed in a timely manner.
“Such programs and policies are a step in the right direction, but
if parents aren’t aware of them, then they’re not effective,” Marschall
said. “There’s always a tendency to just follow the rules and assume
that’s enough. Schools need to monitor and assess the extent to which
these programs and policies are producing the intended effects.”
New York also instituted an interpretation and translation unit
designed to communicate with parents in their language. Survey
data showed that 80 percent of Chinese and 74 percent of Mexican
parents said they rely on interpreters at parent–teacher conferences
and other events.
“While some schools seem to be prioritizing outreach and pro-
gramming for immigrant parents, many are not,” Marschall said. “This
seems to be particularly the case when it comes to homework and
parent involvement in schooling and learning at home.”
Whereas 75 percent of parents surveyed indicated that their child’s
teachers assign homework that requires parent participation, most re-
ported that the school provided very little information, guidance or
support for helping with the homework.
Marschall said that’s particularly concerning given the lack of
English proficiency among immigrant parents and their low level of
educational attainment. Of those parents surveyed, only 3 percent
of Chinese said they speak predominately English at home, and al-
most 25 percent of them said that the school communicates with them
exclusively in English. Mexican immigrants, too, tend to speak their
native language at home — 62 percent report speaking predominately
Spanish — and 57 percent of the Mexican respondents did not have a
high school diploma or its equivalent.
“Nearly all parents expressed interest in helping their children, but
many also felt discouraged and inadequate because the limits of their
own education or English proficiency prevented them from being able
to help,” Marschall said. “In light of this, it appears that schools need to
do more outreach and educational programming for parents.”
In her fieldwork, Marschall also saw many immigrant parents
“There’s always a
tendency to just follow
the rules and assume
that’s enough. Schools
need to monitor and
assess the extent to
which these programs
and policies are
producing the intended
effects.”
—Melissa Marschall
with schedules that prohibited their participation in school events
or parent–teacher conferences. “I don’t think the schools always
understand that many of their parents don’t have a 9-to-5 schedule,”
she said. “They’re small-business and restaurant owners and work-
ers. They’re in a new country where they don’t have an extended
family to help them out.”
Schools expect that parents will let them know about such chal-
lenges, Marschall said, because that’s how American culture is. “If
something is not right or not working, Americans speak up,” she said.
“But in some cultures, people defer to authority and won’t question it.
So they won’t tell a teacher that they can’t understand homework in-
structions, and they won’t tell a principal that a program isn’t working.”
Increasing Heterogeneity
Marschall’s studies of immigrant-parent involvement tie nicely into her
ongoing research on minority involvement in community and gov-
ernment affairs. She is spearheading the Local Elections in America
Project (LEAP) to create a centralized, comprehensive and cost-effec-
tive local-elections database. Her research team will use the LEAP
database as the foundation for a project that focuses on the centrality
of race and ethnicity in local electoral politics.
“The increasing racial and ethnic heterogeneity of the U.S. popula-
tion is most evident at the local level,” Marschall said. “So local elec-
tions provide the best arena for testing a whole range of theories about
minority candidates’ paths to office and the trajectory of their political
careers.”
The study seeks to answer whether the lack of minority represen-
tation in elected offices is due to the defeat of minority candidates or
the absence of minority candidates. Marschall will also look at how a
candidate’s race and ethnicity shapes the competitiveness of municipal
elections and how voter turnout is impacted when a minority candi-
date is on the ballot.
LEAP is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and
is the latest in a notable history of such successes within Rice’s
Department of Political Science. Over the past decade, the department
has placed second in terms of the total number of NSF political science
grants received by any political science department in the country,
regardless of faculty size.
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 39
 From left: Charles Dove, Tish Stringer and Brian Huberman

Lights,
Camera
Action! , By David Theis

During the final meeting of his Film Production class last taught by Huberman. A third partner, film
and video technician Tish Stringer, works
spring, graduating senior Viren Desai felt nervous. Associate with the teachers to instruct Huberman’s
Professor of Visual Arts Brian Huberman was critiquing the students in the use of the filmmaking
equipment and oversees the projection
students’ films, and, as Desai said, “Film is his life, and he booth for Dove’s films.
never minces his words.” After the mandatory classes, students

D
esai’s anxiety was com-
pounded by other factors
as well. Unlike most of his
classmates, he wasn’t a
film major. In fact, his ma-
jor — mathematical economic analysis —
sounds about as far from the arts as you
can get. In addition, his 10-minute film,
“Contemplating a Gun,” has an experi-
mental structure. It appears to track the
hallucinations — or is it the reality? — of
a drug-addled woman seated on a graffiti-
emblazoned toilet. The story goes in a
circle, ending up with the same grim image
with which it started, the woman’s plight
unresolved. According to Desai, some of
his classmates “didn’t think it made sense.”
Then Huberman spoke. “The piece is
ugly, violent, disgusting. And wonderful!”
These words came as a tremendous
validation to Desai, who is attracted to the
arts despite having “a business bent.” “The
class,” he said, “gave me the confidence to
have faith in my own vision for the piece.”
The Rice film program is part of the
Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts,
which formed in 2003 when drama,
film and studio arts separated from the
Department of Art History. Film students
are required to take the Introduction to
Film Criticism course taught by lecturer
Charles Dove, who also programs films at
the Rice Media Center, as well as the docu-
mentary and fiction filmmaking courses
can choose between the film theory or the
filmmaking tracks. If they choose filmmak-
ing, they can take more classes or work in-
dependently to produce their own “special
problems” film.
The Rice Media Center, where the films
are screened and the courses take place,
was founded in 1969 by art patrons Jean
and Dominique de Menil. The de Menils
were more interested in documentary cin-
ema’s capacity for provoking debate — and
even change — than in art for art’s sake,
and they brought French-trained American
filmmaker James Blue to Houston to run
the Media Center and make hard-hitting
documentaries. In 1975, Blue recruited
Huberman from England’s National Film
and Television School. There’s little doubt

40 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

that Huberman’s vision for the film pro-
gram closely matches that of its founders,
and Huberman taught documentary film-
making for many years before fiction film
was added to the curriculum.
“I agree with Jean de Menil that film
should have a strong political agenda,”
Huberman said. He also thinks film should
be a raw, visceral medium, and he has little
tolerance for most of Hollywood’s output,
which he terms “too pretty.” Even so, if a
film student wants to learn Hollywood-
style filmmaking, Rice’s training equips
him or her to do so at the graduate level.
Huberman proudly compares the Rice
program to that of the University of Texas
at Austin, which has 1,000 or so students
and a pipeline to Hollywood. When Rice
and UT students screened their films to-
gether at a recent program, Huberman
said, “The UT films were slick, but devoid
of meaningful content. Ours were full of
content, with passable production values.”
Stringer and Dove share Huberman’s
values. Dove’s programming has moved
away from screening masterpieces by
Bergman and Ozu to showing films —
The Rice Media
Center, where the
films are screened
and the courses
take place, was
founded in 1969
by art patrons Jean
and Dominique de
Menil.
usually documentaries — that inspire
communities to come together and take
action. “That is a far cry from the
cinephile culture screenings
that have little social impact,”
Dove said.
According to Huberman,
who also serves as depart-
ment chair, there now are 15
to 20 film majors at any one
time, and class sizes have
grown in recent years. “The
recent Film Production class,
for example, had 18 students,”
Huberman said, “while a few
years ago, it would have had
only five.”
Rice isn’t the first school that would-
be filmmakers think of, so what draws
students here to become film majors?
“Students don’t come to Rice to study film,”
Dove explained. “They become filmmak-
ers because they can’t help it.”
Recent graduate and film major Dorea
Novaez ’10 is a case in point. She came to
Rice planning to become a lawyer, but her
father’s death during her freshman year
caused her to re-evaluate her priorities, and
she became a visual arts/English double
major. She particularly remembers the doc-
umentary class as “a great learning expe-
rience.” Her documentary subject was an
environmental activist working at cleaning
up Galveston after Hurricane Ike. Novaez
said that while trying to keep up with the
activist, she “learned shooting and editing
on the fly.” For her “special problems” film,
Novaez wrote and shot a 15-minute docu-
mentary, “An Elegy: for the West,” which
very poetically deals with both the western
landscape and the death of her father.
Like other film students, Novaez was
the beneficiary of the film department’s
sophisticated film equipment and facili-
ties, which were upgraded and revamped
a few years ago. According to Stringer,
the Media Center theater is very well
equipped, featuring Dolby sound, the
only “silver screen” in Houston and the
area’s only 70 mm-capable projector. Film
students have access to digital cameras;
professional-grade tripods, lights and
Brian Huberman
Arts
The film program
may be one of Rice’s
best-kept secrets,
but as its graduates
continue to raise its
profile with the qual-
ity of their work, it
might not be a secret
much longer.
sound equipment; and digital editing
suites. In keeping with the program’s
guerrilla style, however, Stringer would
like to push the students in a more “lo-
fi” direction. “Let’s do ‘phone-film’ — film
made with cell phone cameras,” she sug-
gested, “so we don’t get so hung up on
beauty.”
Novaez plans to make a career of film.
She is currently working on a feature be-
ing shot in Houston, and she plans to
pursue the combined MFA/MBA film pro-
gram at NYU. She hopes to follow other
Rice graduates who have made their
marks in film. Among others are pro-
ducer and director Amy Hobby ’86, who
has made several studio films, including
2002’s “Secretary”; Kayvan Mashayekh
’89, who wrote and directed “The Keeper:
The Legend of Omar Khayyam,” starring
Vanessa Redgrave; and Mark Brice ’80,
who won an Emmy for his cinematogra-
phy work on the television series “Carrier.”
Tariq Tapa’s ’03 film “Zero Bridge” pre-
miered at the 2008 Venice Film Festival,
and “August Evening,” a lovely and very
well-reviewed independent 2007 film,
was made by Chris Eska ’98.
Despite the film program’s successes,
its leaders occasionally feel aggrieved at
its relative obscurity. “People some-
times tell me they’re surprised
to hear Rice has a film de-
partment,” Huberman said.
“We’ve been here since
1969.”
The film program may
be one of Rice’s best-kept
secrets, but as its gradu-
ates continue to raise its
profile with the quality of
their work, it might not be
a secret much longer.
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 41
 “Recantorium” by Lina Dib

Everyday Engaging With the

Somewhere at the intersection of art and science sits Lina Dib.

The Rice anthropology Ph.D. candidate makes time for her art in addition to her
By Jenny West Rozelle

studies, often incorporating one into the other. “To me, art and anthropology are not
so different,” said Dib. “Both disciplines are about looking around, looking in, framing
and deframing things, and asking questions. Anthropologists, classically, are known for
venturing to far-off places, encountering strange customs and making them familiar
under the rubric of studying humanness. Art, on the other hand, has been known to take
the familiar and make it strange by the simple act of breaking something up — even a
gesture — into its constituent parts. One can be seen as the complement of the other.”
Encouraged by a professor at Université de Montréal to study anthro- everyday lives with various recording devices, which is what an-
pology as a way to pull together her scientific and artistic interests, thropology has been doing for years, Dib decided to study how
Dib earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees there in 2002 these recording devices were affecting our lives. “I thought this
and 2005, respectively. When it came time to choose a school for her was an interesting moment for my discipline,” she said. “I examine
doctorate, the Montreal, Canada, native was attracted to Rice thanks how memory is invoked, how it informs and how it changes with
to the university’s strong team of professors — professors who, ac- new digital recording technologies. I look at various technological
cording to Dib, changed the meaning of anthropology in the 1980s projects and prototypes that are designed with the goal of improv-
and 1990s and “promoted experimental forms of writing and expres- ing our fragile memories.”
sion that went beyond the traditional borders of the discipline.” Beginning in 2006, Dib came across a network of scientists
Dib’s dissertation topic also pushes the limits of her field. in England who were brought together to form a group called
Fascinated by the fact that now people are documenting their Memories for Life. The group includes engineers, neuroscientists,

42 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

computer scientists and other experts who study
the problem of how we remember, how memo-
ry works and how we deal with overwhelming
amounts of information. She worked intermittently
with the group until 2008, when she moved to
England for a year to research their projects more
in-depth.
While in England, Dib tested Microsoft’s
SenseCam, a camera worn like a badge that takes
pictures based on integrated light, temperature and
accelerometer sensors. It took about 3,000 pictures
a day. Working with neuroscientists, Microsoft
has been testing this device with amnesiacs and
Alzheimer’s patients to see if it helps them better
remember.
“It’s a beautiful project and a sensitive one to
try to give back a sense of normalcy to people who
can’t remember what they did two days ago, let
alone two years ago,” said Dib. “At the same time,
there’s the other extreme, which is normal people
using these tools. What does it mean to have a
prosthetic memory? What if I could remember ev-
erything I had seen or heard and everyone I’ve met?
The irony of the idea of having a perfect memory is
that essentially it renders you catatonic. We cannot
deal with so much. We’re meant to filter.”
Dib also worked on another project with the
team in Sheffield, this time involving sound. To
examine the relationship between memories and
sounds, they gave sound recorders to families and
asked them to collect “sonic souvenirs” of their
holidays. The sound souvenirs included arguments
between kids about what music to play, a narrated
family tea time with the sound of pouring tea and
loud sipping, grandmothers talking, and other
sounds of family members during reunions.
“The sounds these families brought back
were so different and evocative that this research
spawned several publications and creative proj-
ects,” said Dib. “What was really fun was review-
ing the sounds with them — sitting around and
reminiscing. Otherwise it might have been really
abstract.”
Dib’s recent art installation, “Sounds for Stairs,”
a soundscape at Houston’s Box 13 ArtSpace, was
inspired by the sound project. As visitors walked
up the stairs of the gallery, they set off motion sen-
sors that triggered different sounds to play through
speakers hanging directly above: sounds recorded
in or inspired by Houston, such as cicadas, a train,
the Houston Art Car Parade, a helicopter and dogs.
“The idea was to connect sound and place and
sound and memory,” Dib said. “For example, when
I first came to Houston five years ago, someone
said, ‘You have to see the movie “Urban Cowboy”
with John Travolta if you want to know Houston.’
In the installation, one sensor set off a series of
mumbles and a lovers’ quarrel between Bud and
Sissy, the main characters of the movie. The piece
was personal, but also evocative of much more
than my own relationship with the city.”
The sound files were longer than they were
Arts
programmed to play, so they changed a bit over
time. And the trains, dogs and helicopter only
played once in a while. Every 10 minutes a sound
played whether there was someone in the stairs or
not, as if the exhibit had a life of its own. Dib called
the unpredictable piece “playful” — the sounds
evolved as people interacted with the piece, so it
was a different experience for each person.
Although Dib has been a painter since she was
3 years old, she has become more and more at-
tracted to interactive art. Another piece she created
is “Recantorium,” an interactive video and sound
installation that was on display at the Rice Media
Center during FotoFest this past spring. Dib gath-
ered sentimental objects from local Houstonians —
things that people collect or can’t bring themselves
to throw away, such as a beloved teddy bear, an
old baseball bat or antique typewriters. She created
a stop-motion animation of these objects. The pile
grows or the objects begin to disappear based on
the motion of the people in the room.
While in England, Dib test-
ed Microsoft’s SenseCam,
a camera worn like a
badge that takes pictures
based on integrated light,
temperature and accel-
erometer sensors. It took
about 3,000 pictures a day.
“Besides the aesthetic quality of all these color-
ful things thrown together, what struck me were
the narratives about why people hang on to what
someone else might consider junk,” Dib said. “The
stories and memories people shared were very
evocative, and so the voice recordings became a
central part of the installation. They’re so touching,
but more important, everybody can relate to them.
They’re about the everyday.”
It’s the everyday that Dib finds so fascinating
— breaking down the mundane to find the beauty
underneath. But she does this with the realization
that the “everyday” is always changing. “There’s a
critique that’s happened in both art and anthropol-
ogy that I think matters, which is that you can’t
take something and just represent it. You can’t go
out there and say, ‘This is how it is. This is how
these people are.’ Because we’re constantly —
whether as artists or as anthropologists — dealing
with people, and we live in a world of flux.” While
some in her field might find this fact daunting, Dib
wouldn’t have it any other way.
Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 43
 Plane of Light
In a recent exhibit at Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory art museum,
Sarah Oppenheimer created an opening in the floor of an upper gallery that
seemed to be a large chute emptying into a neighboring yard. It was typical
of the artist’s work, which plays with architecture by creating and manipulat-
ing planes and openings that have the power to alter perceptions of space in
ways that are as fascinating as they are disorienting.

In “D-17,” Oppenheimer’s recent installation at Rice Gallery, viewers may

not have experienced anything as extreme as the vertigo instilled by the
Mattress Factory’s chute, but the work’s sheer scale was jaw dropping. The
installation was composed of a tapering 65-foot white aluminum plane
similar in size and shape to the wing of a jet that that seemed to pierce
through two walls of glass. Starting out
small, it went through the transom over
the entrance to Sewall Hall and grew
“D-17” evolved
wider as it spanned the lobby before it over a year and a
appeared to pass, unsupported, through
the gallery’s glass wall to embed itself in
half and employed
the stone floor. structural engineers,
In broad daylight, the sculpture was safety inspectors,
essentially masked from casual pass-
ersby by the reflections in the windows sophisticated
of Sewall Hall, and the tip that stuck out wood and metal
through the transom didn’t look espe-
cially promising. At night, it was a differ-
fabricators, and a
ent story: In the interior lighting, the stark problem-solving
and dramatic form seemed to cut through
the building like a knife.
construction crew
In constructing the piece, Oppen- that included
heimer’s main interest was exploring Rice architecture
how the building’s glass walls gradated
the light that struck the surface of the students.
aluminum plane. A viewer looking
down the work could see the color shift with each pane of glass, but
the work also offered a few of the optical tricks viewers have come to
expect from the artist. A channel in the plane directed sunlight from
the outside to the building’s interior, and from a particular point in the
lobby, one could look into the channel and see a reflection of the cam-
pus beyond. At the same time, a viewer inside the gallery, facing the op-
posite direction, could look down the channel and see exactly the same
view: a little section of nature framed for viewing from different angles.
Although some of Oppenheimer’s installations have evoked vis-
ceral reactions or created what the artist has called “fun house” effects,
Oppenheimer’s approach to her work is far more methodical and scientific
than theatrical. “D-17” evolved over a year and a half and employed struc-
tural engineers, safety inspectors, sophisticated wood and metal fabricators,
and a problem-solving construction crew that included Rice architecture
students. Oppenheimer also held a design workshop in which she worked
with students to analyze the reflectivity of the glass walls as well as the light
conditions in the space.
But to Oppenheimer’s credit, the sheer scale, spectacle and airiness of
“D-17” made light of the technical details, all of which disappeared into the
work’s elegantly angled plane.
Photos: Nash Baker —Kelly Klaasmeyer

44 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 ON THE Bookshelf

Art History
in the Making
It’s hard to believe that the surface of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh And this is where the process gets interesting. Don
Johnson uses a program to lay out the thread-pattern
might be immaterial to art historians, but sometimes it’s what’s under- maps of the paintings as though they were pieces of
neath the paint that gives the real clues to an artist’s oeuvre. a puzzle and tries to match the thread patterns edge
to edge, producing a mosaic of canvases in the order
they would have been cut from a larger bolt. The mo-
Museums and art historians began peering beneath Don Johnson said. “He wanted a particular grade of saics make it easy to see that a particular series of
the surface of paintings soon after the discovery of canvas from a particular dealer. He really liked it, for paintings — the longest has 44 Van Goghs — came
X-rays, most often looking for details of the underly- some reason.” from the same bolt.
ing painting or, in some cases, for evidence of works Johnson uses the software to examine a digi- “If we can reconstruct a bolt or roll,” Don
that had been painted over. But some aspects of tized X-ray of an entire painting. Although the mate- Johnson said, “it would really help in figuring out
what lies beneath a painting’s surface, what painting was done when.”
such as the canvas, are invisible to He has pieced together 31 groups
X-rays. To analyze a canvas, art his- of paintings from the 300 or so he’s
torians have had to count the number analyzed so far. “We think each cor-
of threads by hand, a slow and tedious responds to a different bolt of cloth,”
process that gives little information he said. “The 44-painting one is the
about the fabric’s weave. biggest. There are a couple in the 20
Enter self-described “Van Gogh range, and a whole bunch of pairs,
freak” Don Johnson, Rice’s J.S. which probably means they’re cut from
Abercrombie Professor Emeritus of smaller pieces of canvas. We’ve yet to
Electrical and Computer Engineering, put everything together. That’s what
who is the principal investigator on will happen this coming spring.”
a new National Science Foundation He hopes to analyze more than
grant to assist in the studio practice half of the 864 Van Gogh paintings
project at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh known to exist. Though Rice’s Johnson
Museum. “The museum wants to un- doesn’t expect to get X-rays of the 200
derstand as much as they can about or so paintings in private collections,
Van Gogh’s process,” he explained. he’s very close to getting half of the
“What kind of paints did he use? How 600-odd museum-owned paintings. “I
did he paint?” Don Johnson, Rice’s J.S. Abercrombie Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer
need about five more,” he said, “and I’ll
He and Richard Johnson (no rela- Engineering, shows a portion of a 44-painting mosaic of Van Goghs. On the left are the paint-
be more than halfway on the available
tion), the Geoffrey S.M. Hedrick Senior ings, placed where they were cut from the original bolt of canvas. On the right are the match-
Van Goghs.”
Professor of Engineering at Cornell ing weave patterns created from the X-rays by Johnson’s software, which allows paintings
When the Van Gogh project con-
University, have developed a computer to be aligned edge to edge.
cludes next year, Don Johnson expects
program to analyze aspects of Van to give the Amsterdam museum a com-
Goghs and other paintings that can’t actually be seen rial, like human skin, is invisible to X-rays, X-rays do prehensive archive of data about its collection that
by X-rays but that can be inferred, creating a virtual not pass through the white lead paint applied as a can be shared and compared with other museums.
fingerprint of the structure of a painting. base coat to commercially available artist canvas. Later, the team will apply the same techniques to the
But the software has proved capable of reveal- Rolls of canvas were sold to dealers, who then sold much smaller Delft School collection by Johannes
ing information about the canvas, as well — impor- the rolls or lengths cut from the rolls to artists. Artists Vermeer.
tant in Van Gogh’s case because the canvas can tell then cut what they needed from these bolts, which —Mike Williams
us a lot about not just the artist’s process, but also could be 2 meters high and 100 meters long.
about the timeline in which his works were created. The X-rays show where the lead paint runs
This is possible because Van Gogh was notoriously along the valleys of the weave, revealing the number Who Knew:
picky about his canvas. “Van Gogh was very precise,” of threads per centimeter, vertically and horizontally. ›› › ricewhoknew.info/15

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 45

Book on the Presidency Wins Political
Science Association Award
Looking beyond individual U.S. presidents
to the office itself, “Vital Statistics on
the Presidency,” by Lyn Ragsdale, covers
George Washington’s tenure through the
2008 primary season.
Ragsdale, Rice’s Radoslav A. Tsanoff Chair of
Public Affairs, professor of political science
and dean of the School of Social Sciences,
takes an expansive view of the presidency

Time and Tide

that allows researchers to recognize major
themes across administrations and to reach
overall conclusions about the nature of the
institution and its future. The data — which
detail the expansion of the office, budget

on the Gulf Coast

patterns, public opinion and public appear-
ances, and presidents’ relations with Congress
— are put into context by thoughtful essays
explaining key statistical patterns, making
the book an intriguing and comprehensive
reference to important patterns throughout
the history of the presidency.
The book struck a positive chord with
the American Political Science Association
(APSA), earning it the 2010 Richard E.
Neustadt Award, which is given by the
APSA’s Presidency Research Section for the
best book on the U.S. presidency published
during the previous year. Ragsdale shared
the award with George Edwards and William
Howell, editors of “The Oxford Handbook of
the American Presidency.”
—Franz Brotzen
Once again, Geoff Winningham ’65, Rice pro-
fessor of visual arts, presents a sumptuous and
handsome blending of history, contemporary
narrative and striking photographic images in
“Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea: The
Gulf Coast of Texas & Mexico” (Texas A&M
University Press, 2010).
Beginning at Sabine Pass on the Texas–Louisiana border and ending at Playa Escondida in
the crook of the Bay of Campeche, the book chronicles the early settlement and ongoing life
of the western Gulf Coast as well as the effects of recent events, such as Hurricane Ike.
“I wanted to make a visual record of the natural landscape of the coast at this point in
time,” Winningham wrote. “As far as I knew, no one had photographed the landscape of this
coastline — from the coastal plain of Texas to the mountains of southern Veracruz — in a
continuous and comprehensive way.” But as Winningham worked, he recognized that the
coast’s varied history was as important as its contemporary scenery, and he decided to jux-
tapose the two.
The book’s many luxurious photographs include striking landscapes, detailed close-ups
of natural and man-made objects, street scenes, and portraits of people that both visually
delineate the individuals and give a sense of their inner lives. Three photos of Jerdy’s Barber
Shop in Port Arthur, for example, depict walls completely papered with photographs, posters
and bumper stickers, as if Jerdy’s life was on display. And four photos taken in Veracruz, near
the other end of the journey, show the exhibits of the homegrown El Mini-Zoologío Museo
de Don Pio, which similarly reveal their creator’s interests.
Equally interesting is how the photographs characterize two very different cultures that
not only coexist, but often have melded into an interesting cross-cultural mix. The text is just
as illuminating, providing a rich background that gives even greater depth to the visual nar-
rative. And everywhere is the pervasive water of the Gulf of Mexico, defining the lives of the
people who live along its shore no less than it etches the coast’s physical features.
—Christopher Dow

46 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 ON THE Bookshelf

Atom Smasher Hands Up for an Arresting Anthology

You’d want any anthologist to know writing as well
Humans have come a long way in understanding the as the subject matter of the anthology. Who better to
cosmos, but we have yet to fathom all there is to know edit a collection of Latino mystery stories then, than a
about its basic building blocks: subatomic particles. pair of Latina law enforcement officers who also are
That’s where the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) comes in. While many of professional writers?
us have read about some of the preliminary discoveries being made at
Sarah
arah Cortez ’72, who graduated
the LHC, the highest-energy particle accelerator ever built, most of us
from Rice with degrees in psychol-
probably don’t know much about the
ogy and religious studies and has
collider, how it works or what physi- been a police officer in Texas since
cists hope to learn from it. That’s 1973, is an award-winning poet
where “The Quantum Frontier: The and anthologist as well as a teach-
Large Hadron Collider” (Johns er of creative writing. She joins Liz
Hopkins University Press, 2009) Martínez, a New York state inves-
comes in. tigator and writer, to edit “Hit List:
Author Don Lincoln ’90, a sci- The Best of Latino Mystery” (Arte
entist with the Fermi National Publico Press, 2009), a collection of
Accelerator Laboratory and popu- 17 crime and mystery stories from
lar science writer, explains for veterans as well as newcomers to
nonscientists what the collider the field.
does and what it might teach “We are eager to introduce
about particle physics, includ- readers to a cast of sleuths, mur-
ing uncovering the nature of derers and victims of crime,” Cortez writes in the introduction,
dark matter, finding micro black “who reflect contemporary society’s preoccupations with identity,
holes, identifying extra dimen- with self and territory — both internal and external — and its
sions and revealing the origin concomitant complex allegiances and surprising compromises.”
of mass in the universe. The Ranging from private-eye tales to police procedurals to legal
thrillers, the stories are set in locales as distinct as New York,
book also communicates the
Mexico, California, Texas, Colorado and Puerto Rico, and the char-
excitement that physicists feel
acters who populate them are just as diverse — and as unpredict-
at having this extraordinary
able as the twists that reveal the perpetrators.
tool that will profoundly al- “Hit List” closes with rap sheets of the writers included in
ter our understanding of the the volume.
atom and stimulate scien- —Christopher Dow
tists for decades to come.
—Christopher Dow

“Wednesday Is Indigo
Blue: Discovering the
Brain of Synesthesia,”
by David M. Eagleman ’93
and Richard E. Cytowic
(MIT Press, 2009)
“Hollywood Faith:
Holiness, Prosperity,
and Ambition in a Los
Angeles Church,” by
Gerardo Marti, research
affiliate of the Institute for
Urban Research at Rice
(Rutgers University Press,
2008)
“Fieldwork Is Not What
It Used to Be: Learning
Anthropology’s Method in a
Time of Transition,” edited
by James D. Faubion, professor
of anthropology at Rice, and
George E. Marcus, professor
emeritus of anthropology at Rice
(Cornell University Press, 2009)
“The Captive and the
Gift: Cultural Histories
of Sovereignty in
Russia and the
Caucasus,” by Bruce
Grant ’93 (Cornell
University Press, 2009)
“The Wilderness Warrior:
Theodore Roosevelt and
the Crusade for America,”
by Douglas G. Brinkley, Rice
professor of history and
fellow at the James A. Baker
III Institute for Public Policy
(HarperCollins, 2009)

Rice Magazine • No. 8 • 2010 47

 Sports RICEOWLS.COM

The Sid Richardson College tower contains 224 stairs, and

it is a rarity to find a student willing to run up all of them at
full speed. Rarer still is it to find a group of peers charging
to the top and belting into song upon reaching Sid’s roof
— all in the name of paying for uniforms and travel costs.

Kickin’ It
Up a Notch Such is the case of the Rice men’s club soccer team. This energy-sapping sprint, informally
known as the Sid-a-Thon, has turned a squad that was filled with little more than questions
and noncommittals a few years ago into one of the most successful club teams not just on
campus, but in the entire region.
Composed of 23 students, including three graduate students and six freshmen, the squad
just finished one of its finest campaigns in recent memory. After spending the last few seasons
in a local Houston bracket playing the likes of Houston Community College and University
of Houston–Downtown, the team jumped up to the tougher Louisiana League for the 2010
season. Not only did the squad, known as the Lads, have to deal with the toughest travel
schedule — it was the only group from Texas — but it had to clash with teams from schools
many times the size of Rice.
“In the past, opponents’ school size has been a concern,” said co-captain and senior for-

“We’re such a ward Dan Rist. “But with the talent that we picked up this year, we’re really competing.”
Although the team dropped a pair of tight matches against Louisiana State University and

tight group. If University of Louisiana at Lafayette in the middle of the season, the Lads’ victories were rarely
close. For instance, the squad kicked off the season in September with a dominant 7–0 victory
against the University of New Orleans. And when the team traveled to face Grambling State

you need help University in early October, Rist put his team ahead with a header 30 seconds in, helping lead
his team to a 6–1 road win over one of the top programs in Louisiana.

on anything, you
“I didn’t really see Dan behind all the giants,” said freshman midfielder Alex Suarez, noting
the height of the Grambling State players. “But you knew it was his goal because he was the
one running around without a shirt on.”

can call anyone. In order to finance the season — and the jersey Rist ripped off after his goal — the team
had to resort to multiple fundraising schemes, including a dating site, known as Lads Dating, but

Once you’re
unfortunately none of the guys found an online match. The most successful effort has been the
Sid-a-Thon, which seeks donors to sponsor the runs. If you have both the funds and the time, you
can even dash up the stairs with the team on their next run.

a Lad, you’re The Lads finished the season 4–2–1, and although they narrowly missed the playoffs, that
didn’t seem to dampen the team’s spirit. “I really like the camaraderie on the team,” Suarez
said. “In high school, the seniors were obviously seniors, and the freshmen were low on the

always a Lad.” totem pole. But here all the seniors are great.”
In fact, head coach Gabriel Garcia ’00 said this year’s squad was one of the tightest in the
program’s 30-year history. Garcia, who has now served as head coach for three years, said
—Gabriel Garcia that the team’s spirit rivaled the squads he played on as an undergrad — squads that regularly
took down schools such as the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.
While he said that the current incarnation may not be at that level quite yet, the progress
the players made this year and the sense of team spirit they exhibited give him every reason
to believe that they soon will be. “We’re such a tight group. If you need help on anything, you
can call anyone,” Garcia said. “Once you’re a Lad, you’re always a Lad.”
—Casey Michel

Learn more about the Lads: ›› › www.ricelads.org

48 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students

“We all have obligations

to give back when we can,
and Rice is one of mine.”
— Bob Easton

Joan and Bob Easton ’66

A Legacy of Inspiration
The year was 1962. Rice was celebrating its semicentennial, and at a podium
in Rice Stadium, President John F. Kennedy announced an ambitious plan
to send the first man to the moon. In the audience was Bob Easton ’66, a
freshman who was discovering a new kind of home in Rice.
While Bob was growing up, his family had relocated nearly every year because
of his father’s line of work in the power plant industry. His five years at Rice
provided a newfound stability, and he made the most of it, earning both a
B.A. and B.S. in chemical engineering, serving as Baker College’s treasurer,
producing the first in-college theatre production, managing the Thresher and
developing friendships that have lasted to this day.
“Rice was very good to me and really shaped my life,” he said. Now, as Rice
approaches its centennial in 2012, Bob and his wife, Joan, are helping shape
the life of the university. They established four charitable remainder unitrusts
that will not only benefit Rice in the future, but also provide Bob and Joan
and their siblings with a lifetime of quarterly income payments.

[ Creative Giving Tip: Retirement Plan Assets ]

Establishing a charitable remainder trust is a tax-efficient way to diversify out of highly appreciated
stock while creating an income stream for yourself and fulfilling your philanthropic goals.

To learn more about including the university in your estate or establishing a charitable remainder
trust in support of the Centennial Campaign, please contact the Office of Gift Planning.

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

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

Rice Day!
President David Leebron’s town hall on Rice Day,
Oct. 12, not only marked the official opening of
the university 98 years ago, but also kicked off the
countdown that will culminate in Rice’s Centen-
nial Celebration on Rice Day 2012. As President
Leebron closed his presentation to an attentive
audience, balloons cascaded down to a fanfare
from the MOB, and cheerleaders and Sammy the
Owl took the stage and had the crowd dancing in
the aisles. A student picnic later in the day also
celebrated the Centennial Celebration kickoff.

Visit the photo gallery ››› ricemagazine.info/74