Rice Magazine Issue 15

The Magazine of Rice University • No. 15 | 2013

6| At Your Servery • 16| Titanic Belfast • 36| The Apostle of Stoke • 42| Raid the Archive

Rice Magazine

No. 15

Published by the Office of Public Affairs

Linda Thrane, vice president

EditorLynn Gosnell

Creative ServicesJeff Cox, senior director

Tracey Rhoades, editorial directorJenny W. Rozelle ’00, assistant editor

Erick Delgado, associate director of design Dean Mackey, senior graphic designer

Jackie Limbaugh, graphic designerTommy LaVergne, university photographer Jeff Fitlow, asst. university photographer

Contributing StaffJade Boyd, news and media relationsJeff Falk, news and media relations

Amy Hodges, news and media relationsMike Williams, news and media relations

Freelance ContributorsAndrew Clark

David GusakovKelly KlaasmeyerSteven ThomsonCorinne Whiting

The Rice University Board of Trustees

James W. Crownover, chairman;Edward B. “Teddy” Adams Jr.;

J.D. Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith T. Anderson; Laura Arnold;

Subha Viswanathan Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth; Robert T. Brockman; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Lawrence Guffey; James T. Hackett;

John Jaggers; Larry Kellner; R. Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal; Charles Szalkowski;

Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley; Lewis “Rusty” Williams;

Randa Duncan Williams.

Administrative OfficersDavid W. Leebron, president;

George McLendon, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice

president for Administration;Chris Muñoz, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane,

vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel;

Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development.

Rice Magazine is published by the Office of Public Affairs of Rice University and

is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, parents of undergraduates and friends of

the university.

Editorial OfficesCreative Services–MS 95

P.O. Box 1892Houston, TX 77251-1892

Fax: 713-348-6757 Email: [email protected]

©JANUARY 2013 RICE UNIVERSITY

ONLINE AT: WWW.ISSUU.COM/RICEUNIVERSITY

F O R E W O R D

S O M E T H O U G H T S O N S H A D O W A N D L I G H T

Remember No. 100? In the fall issue’s blockbuster feature titled “100 Things We Love About Rice,” we asked you to complete the list by sending your own favorites. And send them you did, via email, handwritten letters and, notably, sheaves of typed pages with photocopies. You also sent a few things emphatically not loved about Rice. Fair enough. We appreciate the time you took to respond to this once-in-a-century list and being a part of our celebration. On Oct. 12, we gathered a new generation who “for this fair day worked and prayed and waited” to witness President David W. Leebron mark Rice’s 100th birthday with a speech that recalled President Edgar Odell Lovett’s inaugural address on the same day, a century before. We have included President Leebron’s speech in its entirety in this issue, a souvenir of a moment in time that perfectly linked our founding aspirations, a century of hard-won achievements and a bold vision for the future. Our pictorial wrap-up begins on Page 22. Later that weekend, this time under starry skies, crowds gathered again in the quad. We watched Rice’s history play out decade-by-decade in an imaginative, jaw-dropping light and sound performance. The show, intriguingly titled the Spectacle, opened with a moment of pure magic as the shadow of an owl in flight swept across the buildings. Curious? Go online (ricemagazine.info/134), then read the behind-the-scenes account of how it all happened by senior media relations specialist (and former rock band lighting designer) Mike Williams. Speaking of centennials, as the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking approached last spring, we received a letter from alumnus Eric Kuhne ’73. Kuhne, whose firm CivicArts is based in London, had helped design a new museum about the Titanic, one that aimed to reclaim Belfast’s shipbuilding heritage and revitalize the city center. At the museum’s entrance, the word Titanic is laser-cut into a 13-foot-high steel sign. The sun also writes the name in shadow on the plaza. We asked Houston native and freelance writer Steven Thomson, who happened to be in London working on an urban studies degree, to write the story. It was a process that led Kuhne to take a few trips down memory lane with his alma mater, even reconnecting with some of his former professors. When Seattle-based freelance writer Corinne Whiting pitched a story last spring about an alumnus who completed a news-making climb in the Sierra Nevada, we jumped, com-missioning a brief profile of Ben Horne ’02. We were delighted to discover that another alumnus, Shay Har-Noy ’04, was also in the group that achieved the first winter ascent of Peter Croft’s Evolution Traverse. Just after Whiting turned in a draft last July, she received frightening news. Horne and another friend, Gil Weiss, were missing while climbing in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca range. A formal search confirmed the worst fears of their families and friends — an avalanche had claimed the lives of these two experienced climbers. Whiting, who is from the same town as the Horne family, continued with the story, which expanded into a feature about remembering a young man whose inspirational light lives on through the stories and memories of loved ones. We hope these stories touch you as they have touched us, and we wish you a happy and healthy 2013.

Lynn Gosnell [email protected]

FeaturesThrough the Sallyport4 Read all about running a servery,

the 100th commencement speaker, Guam’s spider problem, campus drama and other research news.

Sports41 Women’s soccer scores a record

season.

Arts42 The Rice Media Center hosted

“Raid the Archive: The de Menil Years at Rice,” commemorating the centennial as well as the Menil Collection’s 25th anniversary.

43 And the Grammy for best opera recording goes to …

Bookshelf44 Douglas Brinkley’s biography of

Walter Cronkite shares the shelf with an examination of religion and race co-written by sociologist Michael Emerson, Justin Cronin’s

“The Twelve” and a roundup of books by Rice alumni and faculty.

Parting Words46 Can you complete this owlsome

crossword puzzle?

48 Alumnus Glenn Fuller ’50 traveled from Minneapolis to Houston for Rice’s centennial. And then …

Cover: (Top) President Edgar Odell Lovett gives the inaugural address to open the Rice Institute, Oct. 12, 1912. Behind Lovett is the newly dedicated administration building that would one day bear his name. (Bottom) David W. Leebron, Rice’s seventh president, marks the 100th anniversary of Rice University, Oct. 12, 2012, in front of Lovett Hall. Photo by Jeff Fitlow. President Leebron’s address begins on Page 25.

16 Unsinkable City Alumnus Eric Kuhne ’73 is at the helm of

Belfast’s new Titanic museum that showcases the city’s shipbuilding heritage and anchors an ambitious urban redevelopment plan.

B y S t e v e n T h o m s o n

22 Highlights From the

Centennial Celebration Our Centennial Celebration last October was

filled with “the joy of high adventure.” Please enjoy these pictorial highlights and links to the remarkable events and programs that launched Rice into a second century. Read the full text of President David W. Leebron’s

centennial speech.

36 The Apostle of Stoke Alumnus Ben Horne ’02 is remembered with

deep affection by Rice friends and family. Among Horne’s favorite quotes is one by climber Anatoli Boukreev: “Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve; they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”

B y C o r i n n e W h i t i n g

36

16

22

Letters

2 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Editor’s note: We received a smattering of feedback following our last issue of Rice Magazine. Here are some of your comments.

I was quite impressed with your ‘ginormous listicle.’ (Are you sure it is not a lead-in for listerine popsicle?) Super article, seriously. Keep up the good work.

Bob Winship ’52

(Bob Winship recently published an essay on Mark Twain’s autobiography in The Texas Review, a biannual literary journal.)

I enjoyed the last issue of Rice Magazine. It covered many events, etc., which were not around when I attended Rice. It omitted some, such as the following:

■ In 1943, Rice joined a larger number of universities to admit and house Naval cadets. The program was known as V-5 (for aviation cadets) and V-12 (for line officers). This benefited the university, and it introduced many students from out of Texas to Rice.

■ Naval students were required to attend year-round. Rice went with a trimester school year to meet this requirement, which lasted for nine trimesters, resulting in Rice having two graduations in 1946.

Ed Sharp ’49

10 More Things I Loved About Rice

First, I loved your centennial issue. However, many of the items on your list didn’t exist during my time at Rice, from 1950 until 1955. I owe a great deal to Rice, for a fine professional education that allowed me to prosper for almost 40 years as a practicing mechanical engineer, mostly designing large magnets, both resistive and superconducting, at physics research laboratories and one private corporation.

Other faves of our era:■ Bum’s Rush — This was a hallowed blast sponsored by the Rally

Club.■ Freshman/sophomore (hell) week — This was a favored institution

of sophomores, though not perhaps of freshmen who, when caught, were hauled off in the dark and deposited at various lonely and often remote sites, where they were obliged to find their way back by whatever means they could.

■ Paul Cochran’s ’54 iconic yellow 1954 Rice Campanile — It’s a classic! Cochran’s wit is sprinkled throughout as appropriate — or not.

■ Fondren Library — This is where we often studied and sometimes fired spitballs at other students.

■ Women’s literary societies — These were Rice’s equivalent of sororities.

■ Slime parade■ Rice Senior Follies■ Elizabeth Baldwin Literary Society melodrama ■ Kay’s Lounge on Bissonnet■ I have interpreted No. 64 regarding college associates differently.

We bonded closely at Rice, both through classroom association and as my roommates, on the fifth floor of East Hall. I roomed with Kneel Ball ’54, Crayton Walker ’54, John Lyle ’54 and John McClintock ’55 — a dear friend from earlier days. We styled ourselves as ‘apes’ and tended to behave accordingly, especially by ape-walking in the Roost and elsewhere. In fact, some 58 years later, we still convene every two years, most recently at John Lyle’s in Prescott, Ariz.

John Stewart Alcorn ’54

More Things We Love (and in some cases, do not love at all)

Navy initiation, 1943

C.R.L.S. officers, 1957

Rice Magazine • No. 15 • 2013 3

■ KTRU motto: “At 50 watts, less powerful than your average toaster.”■ Steam tunnels — an acquired taste.■ Owls from the chemistry building tower dive-bombing girls on their

way back to Jones.■ The Fondren stacks.■ Beer team practice in my dorm room.■ Before RUPD officers, there were the Pinkies.

Richard Pulley ’68 Will Rice College

Here are some of my favorite features of the Rice experience that I did not see in the current issue:

■ Navy ROTC students in their summer whites.■ Rice University and college decals that fit on the inside of car

windows, not the outside.■ The panoramic views from Sid Rich balconies sweeping across the

Galleria to the downtown skyline and other points east.■ Intimate lunches with favorite faculty members at Cohen House.

Brian Watson ’84Baker College

How could you possibly omit my favorite thing about Rice? The Rice com-munity. When I was there, all the students and all the faculty were interesting people in one way or another, with minds that were going somewhere, much more so than in the world at large. I presume this is still true.

Hugh Brown ’69 Will Rice College

What a great article! However, there was just one thing I was looking for and did not find: ‘Hello, Hamlet!’ by George Greanias ’70, Wiess Tabletop Theater’s first production in 1970. A real Rice tradition, performed every four years.

The only thing I hate about ‘Hello, Hamlet!’ is that I graduated eight years before George matriculated and missed the seminal experiences. However, I was offered the major role of Richard III when ‘Hamlet’ was produced as a fundraiser for the author’s campaign for Houston City Council. The ‘big time,’ as it were. And, as we all agreed, ‘There is nothing like a Dane!’

Barry Moore ’62 Wiess College

In the spirit of things fair and balanced, I would like to see a list of some things unloved about Rice. (Just like the Higgs particle, such a list might exist.)

At the very top of any list of things I didn’t love about Rice would be the oppressive heat and humidity in the new, but unair-conditioned, Will Rice dorm rooms in the late 1950s.

Charles Walpole ’60 Will Rice College

I think you should publish a booklet of this article and supply it to various high schools for recruitment. I plan to take mine to my alma mater.

I recall that when I was a student, there was an intramural sports participation rate of nearly 90 percent. It would make a great addition to No. 23.

Mark H. Friedman ’72

Will Rice College

I’m not sure where this should be ranked in the list, but I believe that student access to professors should be one of the ‘100 Things We Love About Rice.’ My personal example goes back to 1966, when I was an incoming freshman. I wanted to be a physicist, and I was so sure of myself that I was certain I would win a Nobel Prize by the time I was 25.

Well, that didn’t happen. In fact, halfway though the semester, I was flunking Physics 101. After the second quiz, I went to the guy teaching the course, Professor Rorschach. He worked closely with me, giving me one of

his other physics texts from which I was to work problems. In essence, he became my tutor. Ultimately, I passed the course.

What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that my freshman physics course was taught by a full professor who was also chairman of the physics department! He not only taught the class of some 100 students, he took time to help those students understand and learn the material. I am absolutely certain that as a lowly freshman I would not have gotten that kind of access to such a ranked professor at any other school. Whenever I talk about Rice, Professor Rorschach’s name comes up, among others.

And, by the way, I got my B.A. in physics in 1970 and was on the President’s Honor Roll.

Julian A Levy Jr. ’70 Hanszen College

Professor Rorschach, 1968Physics department professors, 1953

Letters PolicyAre you shocked and appalled? Do you beg to differ? Is there more to the story? Good. We celebrate the university as a marketplace of ideas. We want to hear from you. Please send us your note, letter or email, which we will edit for clarity and space considerations. If your letter or note elicits further responses from our readership, we may print those, too. After that, dear readers, you’ll have to take it outside. Our contact information is listed by the editor’s foreword.

The Rice School of Architecture has risen to No. 3 in a national ranking for undergraduate education in the Design Futures Council’s “America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools, 2013,” published by DesignIntelligence. Rice ranked No. 5 in the 2012 edition.

Seven members of the Department of Mathematics have been selected for the inaugural class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The 30,000-member society announced 1,119 fellows from more than 600 institutions Nov. 1. Rice’s new AMS fellows are professors Michael Wolf, David Damanik and John Hempel; associate professor Shelly Harvey; adjunct research professor Michael Field; professor emeritus and research professor John Polking; and the Edgar Odell Lovett Professor of Mathematics William Veech.

Pedro Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded the prestigious Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for excellence in water science research by the National Water Research Institute. “The Clarke Prize is one of the greatest honors I’ve received in my life,” Alvarez said. “It’s an inspiration for generosity, integrity and world affirmation — the idea that the world can be a better place, and we can do something about it by making water safer and more affordable.”

Yildiz Bayazitoglu, the Harry S. Cameron Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been doubly recognized for her distinctive contribu-tions to engineering. Bayazitoglu has received the Society of Women Engineers 2012 Achievement Award, its highest honor. The award is presented annually to a woman who has made an “outstanding con-tribution over a significant period of time in a field of engineering.” She also was elected an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Rice’s 110,000-square-foot Brockman Hall for Physics recently earned Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. Brockman is home to dozens of experimental, theoretical and applied physicists from the departments of Physics and Astronomy and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The building has energy-saving and environmental fea-tures that include an energy-recovery system — the largest in a single air unit in Texas — that saves as much as 30 percent of the energy

needed to cool the building in the summer. Another green innovation is the building’s dehumidification system, which turns Houston’s legendary humidity into an asset by capturing and returning 100,000 gallons of pure, clean water each year to Rice’s Central Plant.

Rice University President David W. Leebron has been appointed to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I board of directors as a representa-tive of Conference USA. His term is effective through Aug. 31, 2016.

Lanny Martin, associate professor of political science, won the 2012 Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize for his book, “Parliaments and Coalitions: The Role of Legislative Institutions in Multiparty Governance,” co-authored with Georg Vanberg of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The American Political Science Association awards the prize annually for the best book on legislative studies.

Rice’s newest residential colleges — Duncan and McMurtry — are among 10 recipients across the

country of the American Institute of Architects’ 2012 Housing Awards for Architecture. The awards recognize the best in housing design and “emphasize the importance of good housing as a necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit and a valuable national resource.” The awards jury comments noted, “The communal spaces were really beautiful, and for a student residence, they act as magnets and seem to be exactly what residential living should be for college.”

A selection of honors, awards and notable achievements of students, faculty and staffBravo!

Brockman Hall for Physics

McMurtry College Commons


SallyportT H R O U G H T H E

We love our football in Texas. And basketball, too. And baseball and soccer and, well, you get the picture. So the results of a new survey on the arts in Houston, conducted by Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, may be surprising. The first Houston Arts Survey revealed that, if given the choice of preserving either the arts or sports, 56 percent of Houstonians would choose the arts, compared with 35 percent who would preserve sports. “The survey participants express broad-based support for invest-ments that will enhance the visibility and quality of the arts in this region, even if it means an increase in taxes,” said Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology and co-director of the Kinder Institute. “The respondents are clear in their belief that the arts are important to Houston, that their

availability and excellence are critical to the area’s quality of life and that arts instruction should be a part of every child’s education.” The study found that Houstonians are more likely than Americans in general to attend live arts performances and that the most important attendance predictors are education, household income and exposure to the arts in childhood. Ethnic background makes no difference at all in at-tendance rates: African-Americans, Latinos and Asians are just as likely as Anglos to report that they attended a live performance in the arts during the preceding 12 months. “The usual suspects — mainly costs, traffic, safety and no time — were among the reasons respondents do not attend arts performances,” Klineberg said.

Americans today are far more likely to access the arts at home through the media than at live performances, but the respondents indicate that viewing or listening to the arts at home is more likely to increase than to decrease their interest in attending live arts performances. “If Houston is to succeed in the 21st centu-ry, it will need to nurture a far more educated work force, improve its overall quality of life and capitalize on its burgeoning ethnic and cultural diversity,” Klineberg said. “The survey findings bode well for the future of our region.” The study was funded by Houston Endowment Inc. and aided by an advisory panel of leading na-tional and local arts experts.

—Lynn Gosnell

Read more: ››› kinder.rice.edu/shea

Cheering for the ArtsNew Kinder Institute survey reveals widespread support for the arts in Harris County

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Male

51%42%

Female

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Never involved withthe arts as a child

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Involved for twoyears or less

53%

36%

Involved for more than two years

63%

27%

“If Houston had to choose between having either excellent music and theater or great sports teams and stadiums, which would you most want to preserve? In other words, which would you miss most — music and theater (56%) or sports teams and stadiums (35%) — if one or the other were to disappear from Houston?”

Music and theater Sports teams and stadiums

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As Housing and Dining gradually opened the four larger serveries (cafeteria-style eater-ies with professional chefs that are attached to two to three colleges each) beginning in 2002, the management and culinary staff in-creased. In 2010, Rice restructured its Housing and Dining staff to include four senior opera-tions managers. Their time is divided between residential housing and dining responsibilities. Bogar oversees the South Servery and Sid, Wiess and Hanszen colleges.

Describe your average day.

I like to view my area as “the resort,” and I’m the manager. I begin my day by walking

through the servery, checking the breakfast service and talking with students and staff. Another key area that I monitor is the work order system for repairs or services requested by residents in the South Colleges. I make sure they are completed and often follow up with the resident via email. I walk different areas of my three col-leges doing visual safety and repair inspec-tions each day. It’s also a good time to interact with the students who might have a particular concern. My average day, free of fire alarms, a broken sprinkler pipe, a college covered in chocolate syrup or a bird flying through the servery, also includes lots of ongoing com-munication via informal meetings or emails

on issues pertaining to special events, college ambiance projects [projects that improve col-lege public spaces], training, inspections or renovation projects.

What are things like behind the scenes in the South Servery?

Very organized. Chef Roger [Elkhouri] and Chef Kyle [Hardwick] run a very efficient, structured kitchen, which eliminates guess-work and increases efficiency. This is very evident in our staff’s satisfaction level. I hope they would all say that they enjoy their work and are constantly learning new things. Our newest venture, the Whoo Deli, a retail deli

How Rice feeds its masses has drastically changed over the years. The Central Kitchen, which used to produce all

meals for the colleges and then transport them to each commons, is now home to the Oshman Engineering Design

Kitchen, where recipes of a different kind are cooked up. Alumni can surely attest to how things were, as can Julie

Bogar, who began working at Rice in 1990 as a residential dining manager, supervising the operations, menus and

ordering for the first eight residential colleges.

Running the Resort

An interview with Julie Bogar


with custom-designed sandwiches managed by Chef Ahmed [Mihabi], is doing very well and is also part of our operation.

How often do you get to interact with the students?

All of the time. Sometimes I eavesdrop a little in the servery when I hear students talking about what they wish they could get, whether it’s a bowl of kiwi or a request for a favorite pie. We are all about customer service. That’s the key to enjoying my job at the resort. I’m also there to make copies for a term paper that’s due in five minutes or to provide props for a costume or help look for a missing pass-port in the trash. I love interacting with the students, as they are so appreciative of even the smallest things.

What’s the weirdest experience you’ve had in the course of your job?

We discovered that a snake and a scorpion were being kept in one of the college rooms, so we notified the students that that was against the housing policies and could result in a fine. The roommates claimed that the crea-tures must have found their way in on their own or were brought by someone else.

How does your job change during the students’ summer break?

It gets even busier, and the days fly by. Most of my time is spent contracting and manag-ing projects in my colleges, such as painting, new furniture, carpeting, remodeling, plumb-ing improvements, etc. I also work with the various summer groups staying in the South Colleges and assist with summer dining.

—Jenny Rozelle ’00

World-renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will give the com-mencement address at Rice University’s 100th graduation ceremony May 11, 2013. Tyson is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. Born and raised in New York City, Tyson was 9 years old the night he saw the Milky Way with “such clarity and maj-esty” at Hayden Planetarium’s sky theater in Manhattan that he knew he had been called to be an astrophysicist. “The study of the universe would be my career, and no force on Earth would stop me,” Tyson wrote in his memoir, “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist.” “I am honored to deliver Rice University’s commence-ment address during a year that commemorates President Kennedy’s famous ‘We Choose to Go to the Moon’ speech given at Rice Stadium a half century ago,” Tyson said. “That speech not only established space exploration as a national goal, but it also forged space exploration as a national identity and secured Rice University and Houston’s Manned Spacecraft Center (later, Johnson Space Center) as the birthplace of that era. My wife, Alice Young ’79, happens to be a graduate of Rice, in physics, and so this trip will also serve as a homecoming for her.” Tyson wrote in his memoir that his life’s commitment is to bring peo-ple closer to the universe, and he has done that by writing books, giving lectures and appearing on television and radio to educate the public about astrophysics.

—Rice News

And the Centennial Commencement Speaker Is …

Neil deGrasse Tyson


Rice’s new Energy and Environment Initiative (E2I) will draw ex-perts from every corner of the university to work with Houston’s energy industry to overcome barriers to the sustainable develop-ment and use of current and alternative forms of energy. Rice Provost George McLendon said E2I is unique among university activities because it recognizes that addressing chal-lenges in energy requires more than just technological solutions. E2I researchers will study energy policy and markets, finance,

and management, as well as the cultural and societal values that underpin and sometimes undermine public discussion about en-ergy and the environment. E2I will be led by a committee chaired by Pedro Alvarez, Rice’s George R. Brown Professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The committee mem-bers are Ken Medlock, the James A. Baker III and Susan G.

Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics at the Baker Institute for Public Policy and adjunct professor in economics; Alan Levander, Rice’s Carey Croneis Professor of Earth Science and director of Rice’s data analysis and visualization cyberinfra-structure (DAVinCI) project; Dominic Boyer, associate professor of anthropology; and William Arnold, professor in the practice of energy management at the Jones School. A national search for a permanent faculty director will begin in 2013. McLendon said Rice will invest about $1 million this fiscal year to start E2I seed-funding programs and establish an in-frastructure to link existing activities across departments and schools. Future investments will be linked to research growth. “This is about building a bridge from today’s fossil fuel econ-omy to an all-of-the-above energy future in which all sources of energy are used in concert,” he said. “Building this bridge is as much a political, economic and social challenge as a technical one.” “One of the most critical global issues of our time is the challenge of meeting the world population’s escalating need for energy and simultaneously safeguarding the environment,” said Rice President David Leebron. “Rice’s location in Houston, the global energy capital, uniquely positions us to serve both our city and our world by offering rich insights and practical but in-novative solutions to this daunting challenge. Not only will we explore issues related to the safe harvesting and use of traditional hydrocarbons, but also advance the next generation of energy sources, from biofuels to solar.”

“One of the most critical global issues of our time is the challenge of meeting the world population’s escalating need for energy and simultaneously safeguarding the environment.” —David W. Leebron

Rice Launches Energy and Environment Initiative

The mission is to engage researchers and scholars from every corner of campus to address the complex challenges of energy in the 21st century.


Move forward. High-five your neighbor. Turn around. Repeat. That’s the winning formula of one of the world’s small-est predators, the soil bacteria Myxococcus xanthus. A new study by scientists at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School shows how M. xanthus uses the formula to spread, engulf and devour other bacteria. Researchers found that simple motions of individual bacteria are amplified within colonies of M. xanthus to form millions-strong waves moving outward in unison. The find-ings answer long-standing questions about how the waves form and the competitive edge they provide M. xanthus. “When the cells at the edge of the colony are moving outward, they are unlikely to encounter another M. xan-thus cell, so they keep moving forward,” said lead author Oleg Igoshin, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice. “When they are traveling the other way, back toward the rest of the colony, they are likely to encounter other cells of their kind, and when they pass beside one of these and touch, they get the signal to turn around.” M. xanthus is an oft-studied model organism in biology, Igoshin said. As a computational biologist, Igoshin spe-cializes in creating mathematical models that accurately describe the behavior of living systems. Such models are useful for understanding the cellular and even genetic ba-sis of emergent phenomena. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The computer modeling was performed on three NSF-funded Rice super-computers — STIC, SUG@R and DAVinCI — that are jointly managed and operated by Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology and Rice’s Information Technology office.

—Jade Boyd

Predatory BacteriaScientists ID a simple formula that allows bacteria to engulf food in waves.

A nanoparticle developed at Rice University and tested in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) may bring great benefits to the emergency treatment of brain-injury victims, even those with mild injuries. Combined polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters (PEG-HCC), already being tested to enhance cancer treatment, are also adept antioxidants. In animal studies, injections of PEG-HCC during initial treatment after an injury helped restore bal-ance to the brain’s vascular system. A PEG-HCC infusion that quickly stabilizes blood flow in the brain would be a significant advance for emergency-care workers and battlefield medics, said Rice chemist and co-author James Tour. “This might be a first line of defense against reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are always overstimulated during a medical trauma, whether that be to an accident victim or an injured soldier,” said Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. “They’re certainly exacerbated when there’s trauma with massive blood loss.” In a traumatic brain injury, cells release an excessive amount of an ROS known as superoxide into the blood. Superoxides are toxic free radicals, molecules with one unpaired elec-tron, that the immune system normally uses to kill invading microorganisms. “There are many facets of brain injury that ultimately deter-mine how much damage there will be,” said Thomas Kent, the paper’s co-author, a BCM professor of neurology and chief of neurology at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. “One is the initial injury, and that’s pretty much done in minutes. But a number of things that happen later often make things worse, and that’s when we can intervene.” In tests, the researchers found PEG-HCC nanoparticles im-mediately and completely quenched superoxide activity and allowed the autoregulatory system to quickly regain its balance. “This is an occasion where a nano-sized package is doing something that no small drug or protein could do, un-derscoring the efficacy of active nano-based drugs,” said Tour. “This is the most remarkably effective thing I’ve ever seen,” Kent said. The research was funded by the Department of Defense’s Mission Connect Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Translational Research Consortium, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

—Mike Williams

Brain InjuriesH EL P F O R


Rice University has established a new doctoral program that encompasses several of the 21st century’s emergent research fields in life sciences. The Ph.D. degree in systems, synthetic and physical biology (SSPB) was approved last fall by Rice’s Faculty Senate and is set to enroll its first students in fall 2013. The SSPB program is a joint venture between the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “Systems, synthetic and physical biology is a new field that combines experimental and theoretical approaches to solve both fundamental and applied problems in the biosciences, biotechnology and medicine,” said Michael Deem, Rice’s John W. Cox Professor of Biochemical and Genetic Engineering and professor of physics and astronomy. Deem will direct the new Ph.D. program.

Read more: ››› sspb.rice.edu/sspb

New Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program Launched

Architectronica, the Rice School of Architecture’s epic public party, drew more than 1,000 students to Anderson Hall the evening of Oct. 13. Designated the official after-party of the centennial’s Spectacle, the event showcased a complex and visually stunning mix of digital media, all designed by RSA student Joshuah Howard ’13. The elaborate production featured a “custom projection-mapping installation that synchronizes to the music to trig-ger specific psycho-emotional effects,” Howard said. DJ Vivas Kumar ’14 presided over four hours of music, an eclectic mix of electronica and original tunes. The crowd favorite, Howard said, was a dub step remix of the “Bill Nye the Science Guy” theme. We asked Howard to answer a few questions about the production.

How did you end up designing the light show for the party?

I have a passion for allowing the digital world to leak out into our own, so when I attended Media Party (the precursor to Architectronica) for the first time in 2009, I began imagining ways to transform the room into a stagelike installation. Over the next two years, I dug deep into the world of audio/visual production on my own time — not just for Architectronica. Eventually I found a combination of programs that was capable of producing what I had in mind.

When did you start working on the show?

The show is in a constant state of development — even during the show I’m changing things around. I wish I had the time to prerecord the audio and video entirely before the event, but that level of production is not the kind of thing I could balance with classes.

What is involved in designing a show of this magnitude?

Lots. First of all there are other RSA officers that take care of RUPD, security, food and drinks. They take care of the logistics and leave the show and advertising to me. The show itself involves heavy amounts of tech and creativity.

How many DJs were there and how did you coordinate with them?

There was just one live DJ — Vivas Kumar — though there are plans to incorporate more Rice DJs in the future. During the performances, Vivas controls the tempo for the whole show, so he’s free to speed up, slow down or even drop the beat entirely. His computer sends a tempo control sig-nal via a LAN cable to mine, which then adjusts all my video triggers, layers sequencing, effects and other parameters according to the incoming tempo. This setup allows for us both to jam out

while keeping the whole show coordinated to the millisecond.

How would you describe the music this year?

Our mission with Architectronica is to provide what the other public parties don’t, which is pretty easy since those parties just puke out top 40s ev-ery weekend. We avoid pop music like the plague unless it’s totally reinvented in a remix.

What was the general reaction from students?

The crowd loved the show. Normally people come to public parties for about 40 minutes and then leave to cool off or get a drink. It was actually im-possible to get any more people into the room for most of the night. Do you see yourself working on light and media as a career?

I want to continue my efforts in augmenting the real world with digital media, but there are count-less ways to do this. I worked with URBANSCREEN (see Page 32) this summer during the development of the Spectacle and plan to go back for another internship this summer. I’m hoping to integrate this knowledge of light and media into my archi-tectural designs, rather than work purely with the elements.

—Lynn Gosnell

Q&A: Architectronica


Rebecca Carrington ’97 doesn’t fit the mold of a typical classically trained and accom-plished cellist. For starters, she combines playing the cello with stand-up musical comedy. During those performances, she refers to her instrument, an 18th-century cello, by the name of Joe.

For more than a decade, Carrington, who is English, has traversed the globe to perform her unique musical-comedy act. She has performed at the venerable Comedy Store in Los Angeles, at numer-ous festivals, and on TV and radio pro-grams. Her performances have taken her on trans-Atlantic cruises and to India, but she plays most frequently in Germany and throughout Europe. Now based in Berlin, Carrington spends more than half the year on the road and has performed up to 170 shows in a year.

“Looking back, I’ve always loved mak-ing people laugh. But it’s much different than it used to be now that I do it for a living,” Carrington said.

It was during her days as a master’s student at the Shepherd School of Music that Carrington discovered her talent for stand-up comedy. It was also at Rice that she started performing in campus cabaret, including an hour-long show she devel-oped for a P.D.Q. Bach evening at the Shepherd School of Music. While on a trip to New York as a student, a friend dared her to try performing at a comedy club.

Carrington accepted and was hooked. Soon she was combin-ing her talents — a thorough grounding in classical music, a love of cabaret and a knack for making others laugh — into a highly entertaining stage act.

“If it wasn’t for going to America, I would have never had the confidence to go into comedy,” said Carrington, who won the uni-versity’s MasterCard Talent American Collegiate Search in 1996.

During her performances, Carrington rattles jokes off with a manic energy, interspersed with cello play-ing and singing. She oscillates between voices, even languages, switching from English to French and German. Her topic

matter is diverse, ranging from the idiosyn-crasies of the world’s different cultures to song parodies.

“I’ve found that in certain areas of the U.S. of A., I only need about three English words per day to express myself,” she be-gins in a bit during a show’s performance. Carrington then proceeds to use a mock-ing, ditzy voice to make fun of a woman in California who prefaced every sentence with “Oh my God.”

“Oh my God, that is such a beautiful piece of furniture!” Carrington says, refer-ring to her cello.

It can get difficult trying to entertain people through two distinctly different mediums, Carrington acknowledged.

“What happens is that you have to come

up with ideas about how to arrange things for two different voices. Not only

are you just playing your cello on stage. You need to prepare jokes to crack, as well.” She relishes

the challenge. Since 2007, Carrington has

been joined onstage by her hus-band, actor and singer Colin Brown.

Her CDs and DVDs feature both her solo work and the duo’s collaboration as Carrington-Brown. When it comes to pro-ducing material, Carrington writes with her husband, whom she met while performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Brown adds a unique dynamic to Carrington’s performance, whether he is rapping along to her cello riffs or adding a monologue of his own. The duo has won a number of awards throughout Europe.

Carrington and Brown will head to New York this year for an entertainment show-case. “We hope to make contacts and to be able to tour in the U.S. That is our goal.”

—Andrew Clark

Andrew Clark is a freelance writer and law student based in Boston, Mass. He can be reached at [email protected].

Watch: ››› rebeccacarrington.com/video.php

OMG! She’s Multitalented.

“Looking back, I’ve always loved making people laugh. But it’s much different than it used to be now that I do it for a living.” —Rebecca Carrington


It sounds like something from a horror mov-ie — a Pacific island infested with venomous tree-lounging snakes and dense thickets of spiderwebs. An island where the sound of birds has fallen silent. Welcome to Guam, where brown tree snakes have done untold damage to the U.S. territory since being ac-cidentally introduced to the island in the late 1940s. The snakes’ lack of natural predators combined with access to abundant food sources, in the form of native bird species and small mammals, has devastated native ecosystems.

The ripple effect of this eco-disaster is the subject of a new study by biologists from Rice University, the University of Washington and the University of Guam. Because many birds consume spiders, compete with spiders for insect prey and use spiderwebs in their nests, Haldre Rogers, a Huxley Research Instructor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice, and her

colleagues are investigating whether the loss of birds led to an increase in the spider pop-ulation on Guam. Huxley fellows are recent Ph.D. recipients who are appointed to teach at Rice for two to three years. “You can’t walk through the jungles on Guam without a stick in your hand to knock down the spiderwebs,” said Rogers, the lead author of the study, which appeared in the journal PLOS ONE last fall. The results are some of the first to ex-amine the indirect impact of the brown tree snake on Guam’s ecosystem. By the 1980s,

10 of 12 native bird species had been wiped out, and the last two live only in small areas protected by intense snake-trapping. Counting spiderwebs on Guam and on nearby islands in the Marianas Islands chain was the first step in the study. Rogers and study co-authors Janneke Hille Ris Lambers and Josh Tewksbury of the University of Washington and Ross Miller of the University

of Guam found that spiders were between two times and 40 times more plentiful on Guam than on neighboring islands. Rogers has extensive experience study-ing the ripple effects of the tree snake inva-sion on Guam. Her first job out of college was to lead the U.S. Geological Survey’s brown tree snake rapid response team, a small group of snake hunters charged with capturing brown tree snakes that manage to get off the island. “When I was [on Guam’s nearby islands] searching for snakes at night, I spent a lot of time thinking about the differences between the forests I was walking through and the forests back on Guam,” said Rogers, recalling her field research. “The spiderwebs were just one difference. The lack of songbirds also make Guam’s forests eerily quiet during the day,” she said. “There isn’t any other place in the world that has lost all of its insect-eating birds,” she said. “There’s no other place you can look to see what happens when birds are removed over an entire landscape.” In future work, she plans to conduct ex-periments on neighboring islands that still have forest birds and compare those results with observations on Guam to determine the exact links between the lost forest birds and the spider population increases. “Ultimately, we aim to untangle the im-pact of bird loss on the entire food web, all the way down to plants,” she said. “For ex-ample, has the loss of birds also led to an in-crease in the number of plant-eating insects? Or can this increase in spiders compensate for the loss of birds?”

—Jade Boyd

Read the journal article: ››› ricemagazine.info/131

Ecologists have found as many as 40 times more spiders in Guam’s remote jungle than are found on nearby islands. In some places, dense spiderwebs fill gaps between trees in the jungle canopy.

Credit: Isaac Chellman

First, Snakes. Now, Spiders.


Jake LaViola ’15 as Tartuffe has a mo-ment with Hayley Jones ’14 as Elmire in the fall production of Molière’s comic masterpiece, “Tartuffe.” The Rice University Theatre Program presented the play at Hamman Hall to rave reviews. “Molière gives us a farce with a scath-ing wit as he roasts religion, hypocrisy and sexual deceit,” said Christina Keefe, director of Rice’s Theatre Program. In addition to LaViola and Jones, the show starred Qingyang Peng ’15 as Orgon, staff member Alice Rhoades as Madame Pernelle, Tasneem Islam ’14 as Mariane and John Hagele ’16 as Damis. Director: Samuel Sparks. Production manager: Matt Schlief. Costume designer: Macy Perrone.

Everything’s Coming Up RosesRice has always been lauded for its beautiful landscaping. Now we have one more site to be proud of — the Puddin Clarke Centennial Garden between Sewall Hall and Lovett Hall. According to David Rodd, university architect in Facilities Engineering and Planning, committee members for Rice’s Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum first proposed the idea for the rose garden as a centennial project because Mary Ellen Lovett, wife of the university’s first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, nurtured roses on campus in Rice’s early days.

When Robert Clarke ’63 heard about the rose garden, he generously volunteered to fund the project. “I thought it was a great idea to make the donation in memory of my wife,” said Clarke. “Although she wasn’t an alum, Puddin was very much a supporter of Rice and involved in a lot of things here. It seemed like a nice way to honor her.” Old Blush roses, a China hybrid, were selected because they were a favorite of the garden’s honoree.

—Jenny Rozelle ’00

Religious fraud! Comedy! Satire!

It’s “Tartuffe.”

Photo credit: Claire Elestwani ’15


14 rice.edu/ricemagazine

NotedandQuoted

“Understanding your complete genome is very key to understanding inheritance. Everyone’s asked the questions: ‘Did I get this trait from my mother or father? Did I give this trait to my children?’ Now we have the tools to start to answer those questions because we can separate the DNA sequence into that from the parental chromosomes. One of the ways we do this … we can sequence a genome from a single sperm cell.”

—J. Craig Venter Oct. 10, 2012, Centennial Lecture Series

“I was the altar boy of journalism. I was a fact-checker. And that in a way is something I’ve done my entire life. What

is true? How can you prove that it’s true? How does it

work? My parents were both scientists. I’ve spent my life trying to find out new things and tell people about them.”

—Esther Dyson Oct. 11, 2012, Centennial Lecture Series

“So when I was running around the world saying, ‘The world is flat! We’re all connected,’ Facebook didn’t exist, Twitter was still a sound, the Cloud was still in the sky, 4G was a parking place, LinkedIn was a prison, applications were what you sent to college and, for most people, Skype was a typo.”

—Thomas Friedman Nov. 12, 2012, as quoted in an article that appeared in the Rice Thresher, Nov. 16, 2012

“As we look to a future of true energy security by exploiting new unconventional fossil sources, augmented by alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and biofuels, the only way forward is through a government science policy that includes basic research support and thoughtful regulation. These are necessary if we are to have the energy security we want and the environmental stewardship we need.”

—Shirley Ann JacksonOct. 11, 2012, Centennial Lecture Series

“History happens, history leaves its traces, and I have to say, I prefer history without preservation.”

“Rice has excelled in ways that even Lovett could not have guessed. I’m talking of course about Rice’s famous come-from-behind victory over heavily favored Colorado in the 1938 Cotton Bowl. It is at least famous in the halls of the Supreme Court, because until then unbeaten Colorado was led by future Supreme Court Justice Byron White. Despite a stellar offensive and defensive performance by White — he threw a touchdown pass, scored on an interception and kicked two extra points — the Owls prevailed by a final score of 28–14. Not even President Lovett could have foreseen that.”

—Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr.“A Conversation With the Chief Justice,” Oct. 17, 2012

—Rem Koolhaas Oct. 11, 2012, Centennial Lecture Series


Remember the primaries? The presidential debates? Doesn’t the election season seem like both half a life ago AND something that took up half our lives? No matter in which political tent one camped for the duration, the 2012 election season was both endless and endlessly frustrating. But at least, as ordinary citizens, we could confine our opinions and insights to our living rooms (and Facebook and Twitter feeds). For many of our distinguished Rice faculty, who were called upon day and

night by the news media to provide topical insight, there was no rest for the weary. The news, after all, is a 24-hour affair. So, here’s a shout out to our hardworking historians, economists, political scientists and more who took the time to explain, correct, analyze and generally provide rational commentary for the American public. They worked from their offices, homes and cars, as well as from the Office of Public Affairs’ television studio in the basement of Allen Center.

Pundit Watch

MarkJones

293

Douglas Brinkley

596

Paul Brace

23

Bob Stein

52

Notable Rice experts who appeared in the media nationally and locally to discuss the elections include Douglas Brinkley, Mark Jones, Paul Brace and Bob Stein. The graph reflects the number of appearances in the media during the months of October and November.

On Oct. 11, 2012, Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and fellow in history at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, interviewed President Barack Obama in the Oval Office at the White House for the Nov. 8 cover story in Rolling Stone magazine. The Obama cover story was Brinkley’s third for Rolling Stone. He also has profiled Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan for the magazine.


Arch i tect E r ic Kuhne ’73 te l l s the

story of Be l fast ’s mar i t ime majesty

wi th the new T i tan ic museum.


City

Left: Architect Eric Kuhne stands in front of a map of the Titanic Quarter, the 185-acre waterfront redevelopment project now underway in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Kuhne’s firm, CivicArts, designed the project’s urban master plan, which combines residential, business, recreational and cultural elements, as well as parks and gardens. Middle: The Titanic Belfast museum is located on the site of the Harland and Wolff shipyard. Right: Kuhne’s early sketches play with images of ice crystals, a central motif in the Titanic Belfast’s design.Opposite: The White Star Line Titanic sets sail from Southampton, England, April 10, 1912. An architectural rendering of the exterior of the Titanic Belfast museum, which opened to the public March 31, 2012.

B Y S T E V E N T H O M S O N • P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F E R I C K U H N E , C I V I C A R T S A N D T H E T I T A N I C B E L F A S T .


Today, following decades of internal political strife and a re-cent crippling double-dip recession, Belfast is poised once again to embrace its heritage as one of the world’s shipbuilding epi-centers. Enter Eric Kuhne ’73, who is leveraging a belief in ar-chitecture as diplomacy to help restore the grandeur of the city’s long-abandoned docks.

Sitting in the library of his firm, CivicArts, in the architectural hub of Clerkenwell in east central London, Kuhne explained the gradual realization of his vision for a 185-acre urban revitaliza-tion of the wrench-shaped peninsula, Queen’s Island — renamed the Titanic Quarter — and its centerpiece, the monumental Titanic Belfast museum. Although the waterfront development will be

years in the making, the museum opened in March 2012, just in time to mark the 100th anniversary of the tragedy. The visceral appeal of the Titanic in the public imagination endures, as evidenced by the museum’s more than 500,000 visitors in its first six months of operation.

“We have worked on buildings all around the world, but nothing has gone viral like this,” Kuhne said.

Drawing upon the water imagery that haunts the Titanic’s history, Kuhne studied the geometric process of ice crystal formation to conceive the museum’s faceted exterior, which resembles at once jutting icebergs and ships’ prows. The façade mimics the scales of the gigantic gantries system of timber and steel scaffolding built for the construction of the Titanic’s massive hull 100 years ago. When viewed from above, the build-ing takes the form of a compass rose.

The building plan also alludes to the trajectory of four centuries of ship-building innovation in Belfast: from timber and sail to iron and steam, fol-lowed by steel and turbine and culminating in aluminum and diesel. Most poignantly, the building’s height matches that of the storied cruise liner, allowing tourists and Belfast locals to consider head-on the optimism and opulence that the Titanic embodied. Even beneath Belfast’s mercurial skies,

the museum’s marine-grade aluminum cladding sparkles. “Most contemporary museums have lost that sense of wonder when you

enter,” Kuhne said. Inside the Titanic Belfast, the hum of the 28,000 build-ers that once occupied the hoists and gangplanks of the Belfast shipyards is restored in an ecclesiastically scaled six-story atrium, crisscrossed by balconies, terraces and overlooks.

Above, nine galleries provide the social context of shipbuilding in Belfast, house a ride through a reconstructed shipyard and detail the con-struction of the RMS Titanic. The project’s monumentality is tempered by documents of individual crew and passengers’ stories, while another gallery offers a critical eye toward the myths and legends that surround the disaster. Hard science finds its place in an exhibit on Robert Ballard’s

1985 Atlantic expedition to record and recover the ship’s ruins, with a special focus on deep-sea microbiology.

The museum, which cost $152 million to build, was funded through a partnership that included Belfast City Council, Belfast Harbour Commissioners, Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Titanic Quarter Limited (a company of Dublin-based Harcourt Developments Ltd.).

“I think it’s a human story,” said Tim Husbands, CEO of Titanic Belfast. “The sinking was a disaster, but the ship itself was a fan-tastic feat of engineering and construction. The Titanic Belfast is about recovering the city’s roots, but it also presents a story that resonates internationally.” No doubt, the museum will far surpass the initial annual target of 425,000 visitors. Almost 70 percent of visitors are from outside of Northern Ireland.

While the consensus is that it’s a crowd pleaser, the Titanic Belfast has faced criticism in the architectural press. It recently garnered a nomination for Building Design magazine’s Carbuncle Cup, a reader-nominated award for the ugliest building complet-ed in the U.K. in the last 12 months. On the plus side, the mu-seum also is a finalist for the International Interior Design of the

For a century following the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the tragedy was nary whispered within the Northern Ireland capital that saw the ship’s design and construction. Even in Great Britain, few are privy to the fact that in the early 20th century, nearly half of the tonnage on the seas took its maiden voyage from Belfast’s ship-yards. When the Titanic embarked in 1912, Belfast laid claim to the largest shipyard in the world. Yet a sense of self-imposed ignominy after the disaster shrouded the city’s pride as a locus of maritime innovation. With the post-World War II growth of deep port container shipping and surge in air travel, the once robust image of Belfast’s shipyards descended into that of a postindustrial wasteland.

Left to right: Inside the Titanic Belfast, massive chains denote the scale of the Titanic and its sister ships. Visitors take in a view of the ship as it now rests on the ocean floor. A cut-out steel sign in front of the museum. Children check out the interior galleries. Opposite: A view from the top-floor balcony of a large compass rose that locates the cardinal directions for visitors. Visitors peruse one of nine galleries featuring interactive exhibits on the museum’s opening day.


Year award at the Leading European Architects Forum. Unfazed, Kuhne remains confident that the building is succeeding at telling the Titanic story to legions of visitors. “It was a huge backhanded compliment,” Kuhne said. “Very English.”

Keep in mind that the museum is merely a cornerstone of the estimated $10 billion–$15 billion Titanic Quarter mixed-use devel-opment that will occupy the Queen’s Island area of Belfast.

“The local authorities thought we were dreaming at the time,” said Pat Doherty, the chairman and founder of Harcourt Developments, recalling the process of acquiring the vast site nine years ago. “It was a clear site almost in the center of the city with the opportunity to do something very special, and Eric has a magi-cal way of doing things.” Kuhne and Doherty worked with myriad government departments, harbor authorities and investors to make way for the development that’s changing the face of Belfast.

Profit-driven inner-city revitalization schemes too often fall vic-tim to blank banality. To break this trend, Kuhne, in his role as the lead concept architect on the project, consulted directly with the very people who had abandoned central Belfast’s blight and violent legacy for surrounding suburban hamlets.

“We interviewed almost 100 people and asked them one simple thing: ‘What would it take for you to come back home?’ And they asked for me to build something like their villages in the center of Belfast,” Kuhne said.

The Titanic Quarter was then conceived around the idea of seven “villages,” each with their own Georgian square, in which courtyard gardens imbue a sense of safety to public space. When complete, the development will complement new condo blocks with an expanded campus of Belfast Metropolitan College and a bevy of retail distrac-tions. Plans are afoot to incubate a new financial center for Europe, and new media is staking a claim via a cluster of budding film industry studios. Strung together by grand boulevards and a new tramline, each of the villages stands no more than two blocks away from the fresh air of water or park space.

“Waterfronts all over Europe and North America are being trans-formed,” Kuhne said, “but none of them has this level of complexity of mixing new economies with housing, parks and gardens.” Northern Ireland still suffers from a shaky real estate market, so the Titanic Quarter developers are thinking long-term, with a projected completion date of 2030 or beyond.

For all of the Titanic Quarter’s beguiling ambition, Kuhne understands the importance of historical context in design.

“Eric always had a humanistic commitment that has allowed him to abstract his project designs in such a striking way,” said former class-mate Stephen Fox ’73, architectural historian and lecturer at the Rice School of Architecture. A dedicated Renaissance man, Kuhne penned a Shakespearean sonnet for the real estate venture to pay homage to the city’s shipbuilding roots:

TITANIC BELFAST:

We were the best who worked these hallowed slips

Bending iron, timber and steel ’to ships

’Neath gantries and cranes with Biblical names

Our sweat, our tears, and sweet salt air did raise

Fleets for trade, exploration and mail,

Liners, warships, and immigrants set sail —

Navigating charts on rhumb-lined seas with

Optimism! Opulence! at Godspeed!

Four centuries measure our balancing

Our will and Nature’s equanimity.

Time once again to lead the charge: Belfast’s

Sons and Daughters sing songs of these shipyards;

Choirs of workers shout across the seas:

Once where we built ships, now we build cities!

This penchant for storytelling through architecture has brought Kuhne’s pedigree from Houston to 32 current projects spanning five continents, all informed by their local context. A new tower complex rising in Kuala Lumpur is ensconced in seven gardens representing the seven civilizations that have characterized Malaysia’s history, while a Buddhist pilgrimage site in Nepal takes its form from the three strands of the pocket of rice that Buddha wore.

Kuhne’s studio walls showcase blueprints for a skyscraper in Kuwait that will top off at 1,001 meters — a nod to the region’s lion-ized collection of folk tales, “1001 Arabian Nights.”

While these projects reach for the sky, the story on the ground of the Titanic Quarter is a narrative with big themes — resilience, rebirth and pride in a lost heritage. Eschewing a focus on urban trauma to honor innovation, the Titanic Belfast museum invites visi-tors to consider the pinnacle of human achievement — as well as hubris — and to launch a new story in Belfast’s history.




Q: Describe the experience of arriving as a freshman to the School of Architecture.

A: I was terrified. I was born in San Antonio and spent the first five years of my life in Texas, so this was a kind of provincial return to the home-land and had all of the dramas associated with it. I’d been working in an engineer and architects’ office in Indiana since I was 14, so I had an ex-posure to the practical side of the field. On the second day I was at Rice, I went to see the director [of the School of Architecture], Anderson Todd. Andy had a stack of School of Architecture stationery cards along with a beautiful fountain pen and old ink well. He said, “Let me tell you about architecture,” and explained the Vitruvian triad: firmness, com-modity and delight. So I said, “Mr. Todd, don’t you think it’s time we reinvent that?” He handed me the pen and I said, “I think an equilateral triangle and those things in balance is good for 2,000 years ago, but

we’re at the threshold of a new mil-lennium. So how about we add a fourth element and turn this into a tetrahedron, including volition and meaning?” He just burst out laugh-ing and said, “You’re just going to be nothing but trouble for four years, aren’t you?”

Q: What were some of the chal-lenges you encountered as a student?

A: I was shocked because I thought I had a good foundation in architecture, but it was just a foundation in construction. I had to get over that conceit of thinking that I knew more than I actually did. Looking back, Rice was hard — really, re-ally hard for me. Elinor Evans, who was the first-year design studio teacher, was constantly getting us to have trust in the

unknown as the safest place to go. Once you get the sense that you can do something that you never dreamed you could, you become intoxicated with discovery and the exploration of design as a way to see the world.

Q: You suggest that the interdisciplinary research behind each of your projects is informed by your varied course choices while at Rice. How so?

A: As it turned out, the classes that had the biggest impact on me were those that weren’t architectural. I took cognitive an-thropology with Stephen Tyler, Tom McEvilley in comparative religions and this calculus professor [Howard Resnikoff] who just was a wizard. He said, “You won’t leave this class until you understand that calculus is poetry.” He would write formulas up on the board and read them as poems. It was just breath-taking. You never think when you’re a student that these con-versations will stick with you for the rest of your life. Those

talks across all topics changed the way I work here in the studio. Rice has sprinkled that magic dust of insatiable curiosity.

Q: Of all of the opportunities that Rice afforded, which had the greatest impact on your education?

A: There was a design competition for an industrial building in Seguin, Texas. I almost didn’t even apply for it, but then I decided to work on it for five hours every day. I would sketch and put it in a booklet and completely forget about it. I didn’t even go to the awards ceremony at the School of Architecture, but on that day, I was walking across campus and one of my classmates walks up to me and says, “Where have you been? Come on!” He dragged me over to the ceremony just as they were announcing that I had been awarded the William Ward Watkin Travel Fellowship. I couldn’t be-lieve I had won it. Andy Todd and Bud Morehead were there, both laughing. It was one of the biggest surprises of my life.

Q: What did you do with the fellowship?

A: I visited some of the most remarkable thinkers on architecture and cities at the time: Jan Gehl invited me to swim in the Baltic Sea, and we discussed the choreography of public spaces. In Austria, I met with [art historian] Hans Sedlmayr, who was writing about the loss of the soul in architecture and cities. Aldo van Eyck invited me to his home, and we sat drawing until we worked out the plans for one of his churches. In Stockholm, Sven Hesselgren lectured me on restoring the pageantry of city life. At the time, some of these men were just beginning to have an impact on the profession. They all just opened their homes to me, and I would sit and have dinner with their families. And so my tour of Europe wasn’t just a tour of buildings; it was a tour of the cutting-edge thinkers of architecture. None of that would have happened without Rice, because these figures’ names were in every class.

Q: In your career to date, what are the main changes you’ve seen in the practice itself of architecture?

A: We’ve experienced an acceleration of drawing tools that has trans-formed the profession as much as the art. When I started at Rice, we used T-squares and Maylines [parallel bars]. What once took 30 people to produce a set of drawings in the ’60s became a team half that size in the ’70s and ’80s with computer-aided design programs. Now, we can produce a set of drawings with five people. Yet, while drawing produc-tion has accelerated, there is still a burning need for architects to draw, to sketch. The fountain pen and the tyranny of the blank white sheet of paper has not been replaced. The freedom and grace of a sketch, linked to the imagination, still outperforms any computer program. Yet once transferred to CAD, we can show our imagination to the world effortlessly. And the sheer quality of decisions made with this breadth of representation is the most profound adjustment to the profession in its history. ■

Steven Thomson is a New York-based writer with a focus on art, architecture and urban-ism. His work has appeared in Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston. He recently completed a graduate degree in urban studies at University College London. He can be reached at [email protected].

Unsinkable City: Six questions for Eric Kuhne

Left: Bird’s-eye panorama of the Titanic Quarter as viewed from the northeast. Inset: Eric Kuhne with his sketchpad.



Highlights from the

Centennial Celebration

During one memorable week in October, Rice gathered its far-flung family — faculty and staff, students present

and students past, community supporters and visitors alike — to commemorate its first century and march boldly

and joyfully into its second. The schedule was as packed as it was varied, filled with festivities and feasts (both

gustatory and intellectual), reunions and homecomings, ritual and rhetoric. Please enjoy these highlights and check

out our centennial website (centennial.rice.edu) for more.

PHOTOS by TOMMY LAVERGNE, JEFF FITLOW and ELI SPECTOR ’14

Wednesday, October

10

Rice Faculty and Staff Reception/ Centennial Lecture Series · Founder’s Court Tent/Tudor FieldhouseRice honored faculty and staff at a lavish reception in the centennial tent. J. Craig Venter, among the first to sequence the human genome, kicked off the lecture series.


World Premiere Concert by Shepherd School Orchestra · Stude Concert HallCommissioned by Rice University in honor of its Centennial Celebration, the concert featured the world premiere of William Bolcom’s “Ninth Symphony.”

Centennial Lecture Series · Tudor FieldhouseRice welcomed (clockwise from left) international angel investor Esther Dyson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President and physicist Shirley Ann Jackson, and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, as well as genomist J. Craig Venter and Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr.

e WATCH THE LECTURES ONLINE: ricemagazine.info/132

Thursday, October

11


Centennial Address

“In the joy of high adventure, in the hope of high achievement, in the faith of high endeavor, for this fair day we have worked and prayed and waited. … [W]e have asked for strength, and with the strength a vision, and with the vision courage. … [T]he Rice Institute, which was to be, in this its modest beginning, now has come to be.”

And with these words, President Edgar Odell Lovett 100 years ago welcomed the first class of 59 women and men and the 10 faculty members of the Rice Institute. Today, we gather to celebrate the realization of that hope, the rewarding of that faith and courage, and the continuation of that joy.

We join today to reflect on a century of adventure and achievement, to honor our founders and forbearers whose vision and hard work resulted in the extraordinary university we know today, and to speak of our vision and ambitions for the future.

Academic Procession and Centennial Address · Academic QuadranglePreceded by an academic procession with representatives of universities from around the world, President David W. Leebron’s keynote address harkened back to that of Edgar Odell Lovett at the formal opening of the Rice Institute in 1912.

e WATCH THE PROCESSION AND KEYNOTE ADDRESS ONLINE: ricemagazine.info/133

Friday, October

12


Our path was set by the confluence of the legacies of three extraordinary men: a great man of commerce, a civic leader and a visionary academic. William Marsh Rice was the quintessential businessman of his time, a man of commercial acumen and philanthropic spirit. In the year 1891, the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art was formally incorporated with a modest initial endowment. After Rice’s untimely death in 1900, the substantial assets that Rice had bequeathed to his institute were rescued by his lawyer and the first chairman of the board of trustees, Capt. James A. Baker. The trustees then began in earnest to define what this new institute would be.

Their vision was reflected in the choice of Rice’s first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, on the recommendation of Princeton’s president, Woodrow Wilson. And let me add how fitting it is, and how grateful we are, that Princeton’s current president, Shirley Tilghman, is with us on the platform today. President Lovett then traveled the world for more than nine months, visiting the great universities, studying both academic programs and architecture.

When Lovett stood on this very spot a cen-tury ago, not far from the edge of a growing city with just 80,000 people, he could take pride at the launch of a new university that aspired to be among the best and set, in his words, no upper limit to its endeavors. As William Ward Watkin, the architect who supervised the con-struction of the first buildings, stated at Lovett’s retirement, out of “the marsh and swamps of this campus,” he built a university of “beauty and fineness.”

Imagine yourselves here as Lovett spoke: Around you was mostly a vast empty plain with four lonely structures. There was the Administration Building, now named Lovett Hall. A bit in the distance was the Mechanical Laboratory and its campanile, and across the campus the residential hall and institute com-mons. Between then and now lies a century of ambition and achievement. All around us we see the architectural embodiment of growing intellectual ambition.

Imagine in your mind’s eye that century of building our campus: first beginning near where you sit and then moving outward to a second quadrangle and then a third quadrangle and then beyond, and even jumping across University Boulevard to where the BioScience Research Collaborative now stands — eventu-ally 80 buildings over the course of a century, creating a campus of architectural distinction and harmony. The architecture is now comple-mented by recent campus art, culminating in our Centennial Pavilion, the Turrell Skyspace, which symbolizes not only our continued commitment to the beauty Lovett emphasized, but also our limitless aspirations. Truly, this is a campus that reflects our commitment to

learning, to discovery, to beauty, to the nurtur-ing of human potential and to a university that was from its foundation envisioned as a gift to the people of Houston.

President Lovett served for another 34 years after the opening, with more than half that time occurring during two world wars and the Great Depression. And still the Rice Institute moved forward, expanding its community and grow-ing its endeavor. As we approached our sec-ond half century, we changed our name from “Institute” to “University” to reflect that growth and broader ambition.

At the time of our semicentennial, Rice, while on a strong trajectory, had not yet achieved its aspiration to be among the great research universities of the world. That was the challenge faced by President Kenneth Pitzer as he was inaugurated in our 50th year. As the new president then put it, he aimed for an insti-tution that resembled Stanford without a medi-cal school to a Westerner and Princeton with girls to an Easterner.

President Pitzer led Rice into five decades of advancement as a research university. We realized that not charging tuition was not about a commitment to price, but a commitment to an ideal of opportunity — that we should be

open to all, regardless of their financial means. That steadfast commitment continues to lie at the core of who we are. And we also sued to remove a stain of racial exclusion that was both fundamentally unfair and deeply inconsistent with our commitment to serving the people of Houston, of Texas and the nation.

As Rice continued its progress toward becoming a more balanced university envis-aged by Lovett, new schools sprouted in the 1970s, including the Shepherd School of Music, the Jones School of Business, what is now

the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, and the creation of separate schools of Social Sciences and the Humanities. Our ascendancy into the top ranks of American higher educa-tion was recognized in 1985 when Rice became one of the 60 elite research universities in the Association of American Universities. Great milestones included the G7 summit in 1990, the establishment of the Baker Institute in 1993 and the awarding of Nobel Prizes to Professors Curl and Smalley in 1996 for the discovery of the buckyball, which opened up new possibili-ties for materials and medicine. And in 2003, the Rice Owls emerged as national champions from the College Baseball World Series. Out of our Sallyport have passed more than 65,000 graduates — 46,000 of whom are the living Rice alumni community of today, a global com-munity that magnifies every day the contribu-tions that we make as a university.

Throughout our first century, we have be-come an ever greater university, driven to pro-vide opportunity for our students and knowl-edge for the world. And here I want to pause and acknowledge the remarkable leaders pres-ent today who guided us to ascending achieve-ment: our past chairmen, Charles Duncan and Bill Barnett, and our current chairman, Jim Crownover, who between them steered this university for the last three decades, and my extraordinary predecessors, Presidents George Rupp and Malcolm Gillis.

WHEN WE LOOK AROUND at the Rice of today, it is very different of course from that of 100 years ago, or 50 years ago or even 10 years ago. We are larger; we are more diverse; we are more engaged with our city; we are more international; and we are more com-mitted than ever to contributing to our world through research and service. The era of the ivory tower is long over. We do not come to the university to shake the cares of society, but to engage those cares in a different way. The university of today is porous, with a constant flow of people and ideas and contributions and relationships.

We are very much the university that Lovett imagined and hoped for, and yet we are in many ways so much more. Today our universi-ty is counted among the very best in the United States. Whereas President Lovett traveled around the world to visit the great universities, today we receive visiting academic leaders from across the globe who wish to study and emu-late Rice’s success.

Much of our first century has been dedi-cated to catching up to our brethren — other leading American universities that in many cases are older, bigger, wealthier. We became more complex, added schools, improved the

This is a campus that reflects our commitment

to learning, to discovery,

to beauty, to the nurturing

of human potential and to a

university that was from its

foundation envisioned as a gift

to the people of Houston.


quality of our student body and faculty, raised our aspirations and grew.

But while we were becoming more com-petitive with other universities and in some ways more like them, we were also becoming quite distinctive. Even with our recent growth, we remain a distinctively small research uni-versity whose aspirations span the range of academic endeavor. Our emphasis on and commitment to undergraduate education are extraordinary. Our sense of being a single com-munity, and the fostering of interdisciplinary re-lationships and conversations, are rare. Our col-lege system, which creates strong communities across the undergraduate classes, has become the envy of others who seek to emulate it. The dedication of our staff to our faculty, students and the university, and our dedication to them, are defining attributes.

As higher education both becomes ever more competitive and faces ever more daunting challenges, we must now lead with confidence in our own values and our own identity, as they have evolved over a century. Our strength as a university lies in part in choosing a different path from others, a different configuration for the university not just of today, but of tomorrow.

Twenty years ago, Clark Kerr, the legend-ary president of the University of California and chancellor of Berkeley, wrote about two com-peting visions of the university — one in which the university is large and highly specialized in its parts, the other in which it is small and has a commonality of interests, or as he put it, “the best of Berkeley and the best of Swarthmore.” He expressed some pessimism that these vi-sions were compatible.

Rice has aspired to be the place where these visions become joined, compatible and synergistic, and we have succeeded. We must draw upon our strengths and turn perceived disadvantages into distinctive advantages. We can be, we must be, a leader in defining what a university can achieve and contribute both in education and knowledge.

Fifty years ago, President Pitzer undertook a substantial expansion of the university. We have now completed the first major expansion of our student body since then. Our 30 percent growth has by almost every measure been a success: We have remained true to our com-mitment to make our education affordable and have attracted an extraordinary and diverse population along every dimension as our ap-plications doubled. We do not intend to grow our undergraduate student body more in the coming decade, because we choose to remain a distinctively small university. Our size fosters an intimate sense of community and the spe-cial relationships between faculty and students that have defined the experience for so many of our graduates.

Our intellectual ambitions, however, are not scaled to our size. We aim for excellence and

impact on a global standard. Thus our path to success, more than most universities, lies in our ability to collaborate with others and thereby leverage our potential. We are too small to be arrogant. We must in a new time find new ways to build deeper and broader relationships with the remarkable institutions that surround us

— the museums, the medical institutions, the Johnson Space Center and the great enterprises of Houston. We must also reach out across the world and build not merely bridges, but strong and deep bonds.

That spirit of collaboration must be fo-cused internally as well as externally. Our suc-cess in areas like nanotechnology is built not upon the endeavors of a single department, but upon the support, engagement and con-nection across a large swath of the university. We must infuse this collaborative spirit deep into our processes and personality if we are to continue our success. Ossified structures that impede our collaborations must be adapted or swept away, and we must be innovative in developing new relationships. Our size is an advantage when it allows us to be both col-laborative in spirit and nimble in action. In the arts, biomedicine, neuroscience and other en-deavors, we have extraordinary potential, but only if we seize the opportunities that exist through deeper engagement.

I believe our university’s personality re-flects not only our history, but also our loca-tion. We have renewed our sense of connection and commitment to our home city of Houston, both as our students experience it and as our researchers contribute to it. Even a century ago, President Lovett realized that Houston partakes of both the warm hospitality of the South and the dynamic and adventurous spirit of the West. Houston is an entrepreneurial city, and we are

an entrepreneurial university. That spirit, which has some of its origins in our early strength in engineering, now finds its place in every corner of our university.

The entrepreneurial imperative incorpo-rates the desire to lead, to create, to innovate and to build. It is reflected in faculty who lead our students abroad to test in the field medi-cal devices they have designed; in the student-taught courses in our colleges; in the policy explorations of our Baker student fellows; in engineering and architecture students getting together to design a house that not only uses zero energy, but is actually affordable; in the creation and dissemination of digital educa-tional materials for both college and now one million K–12 students; in building a research consortium with medical institutions to ad-vance tissue regeneration that will save limbs and lives; in creating a multitude of student or-ganizations, from Engineers Without Borders to our Emergency Medical Service; in the conven-ing of conferences of experts to study biblical texts and to disseminate results; and so much more. We must nurture and support that spirit, both individually and collectively, among both students and faculty. President Lovett spoke of the pleasures of teaching and the privileges of research. But today we must do that and more. An entrepreneurial university empowers our students and embarks them on a life of dif-ference and impact, regardless of their chosen disciplines and professions.

I WANT FOR A MOMENT to speak more broadly about the role of the university and how it ought to define our mission at Rice and our path forward. It has been 2,500 years since the founding of Plato’s Academy, 2,000 years since the founding of the ancient religious universi-ties in India and Egypt, more than 900 since the founding of the University of Bologna, now the oldest university in continuous existence, almost 380 years since the establishment of the first American institution of higher education. The modern research university emerged in the 19th century and set the stage for the explosion of knowledge that universities have produced.

When we look back at the last century, we see knowledge that has emerged from our universities and transformed our world: the fundamental structure of matter, the biological building blocks of life, the electronics that have revolutionized our ability to communicate, con-nect, analyze and understand. The early em-bers of the great ideas of our age, such as uni-versal human rights, were fanned in the great universities. Powerful ideals, such as equality of opportunity, were given content and under-standing by the work done in universities, and our graduates were inspired to pursue them.

Our success in areas like nanotechnology is

built not upon the endeavors

of a single department, but

upon the support, engagement

and connection across a large

swath of the university. We

must infuse this collaborative

spirit deep into our processes

and personality if we are to

continue our success.


There is hardly an aspect of modern life that has not been greatly influenced and enhanced by the work done in universities. Indeed, one former university president declared the univer-sity to be the most significant creation of the second millennium.

And yet, at the beginning of this third mil-lennium, the historic idea of the university is facing both challenge and attack. The very word “university,” coined at the founding of Bologna nine centuries ago, embodies a sense of both oneness and universality — that we are a single entity that encompasses the totality of academic endeavor. As resources are con-strained, there are calls to focus our endeavors, to limit ourselves to what we already do well. Great universities, universities many times our size, are choosing to eliminate scholarly en-deavors, to focus on their specific strengths, to do what is practical.

There is no doubt that we, like they, must focus and be strategic, but I believe we must do so in a different way. We must seize upon those truly important endeavors that require us to bring together participants from across our campus to work together, to understand our world more deeply, and to help solve its problems of today and in the future. Our strength lies significantly in our ability to draw upon and integrate different disciplines and perspectives as we seek to contribute, in pur-suance of our mission, to the betterment of our world. We know that technology alone does not solve problems, but rather science and technology complemented by a compre-hensive understanding of how to achieve in-novation and change in the context of human culture and institutions.

President Lovett spoke of the faith he asked of those assembled at the first matriculation: “They must believe in the value of human rea-son; they must be enthusiastic for their fellow-men. They must believe that it is possible to learn and also that it is possible to teach.”

I believe that universities are built upon an additional faith — a faith in the power of knowledge and discovery and creativity to im-prove the lives of people everywhere and build a better future. That faith must be buttressed by a recognition that universities remain distinc-tive institutions that contribute to our society in ways no other institutions can or do. Our commitment must be to advance the frontiers of knowledge, understanding and creativity and to produce graduates trained and inspired to make great contributions as if the world de-pended upon it, for it surely does.

The challenges of our world lie before us: to address our interconnected global needs for food, energy, water and a safe environment; to improve human health here and around the world; to harness the extraordinary flow of information for our benefit through better un-derstanding and decision-making; to raise the

human spirit through the study of culture and creativity; and to bring peace and prosperity to the peoples of our planet.

These are large and daunting challenges, but that ultimately is what universities are for. Confronted by these challenges, universities must not be bastions of cynicism but citadels of optimism. Optimism, that if we work to under-stand the nature of religious tolerance, we can bring harmony. That if we work to understand conflict between nations, we can bring peace. That if we work to understand the origins of disease, we can bring health. That if we work to understand the sources of famine, we can bring nourishment. That if we work to under-stand the fundamentals of matter and energy, we can bring prosperity and a higher standard of life to people all over our world.

Like other great universities, Rice must be cosmopolitan and international in their truest sense. We embrace a community of faculty, staff and students who come from all over the world. While committed to a strong, support-

ive and deep relationship with our great city, our ambitions to learn and to contribute reach beyond the borders of our state and country. Our commitment is to all humanity, and we seek the advancement of knowledge for their benefit.

And yet, at the same time, we are a distinc-tively American university steeped in American ideals — ideals of human equality and po-tential, of political rights and participation, of free inquiry and free expression, of religious freedom and tolerance, of diversity and inclu-sion, of creativity and innovation, and of the possibilities of hard work and economic op-portunity. These ideals are reflected deeply not merely in the values we convey, but in how we choose to carry out our mission.

Universities have been and remain unusual institutions. We are separate and apart and yet open and engaged. The periphery of our campus, consisting of hedges and vegetation punctured frequently by paths and open gates, incorporates this idea. It is an avowedly porous border, and not a barrier, that both separates us from the surrounding city and yet welcomes those who wish to enjoy our contemplative spaces and intellectual engagements, as it also beckons the Rice community to engage with and contribute to our city.

In our rapidly changing world, and recog-nizing that the knowledge we generate can sometimes be quickly developed to benefit others, universities must change some of their ways and be prepared to act with urgency. That is not something we are traditionally known for; indeed, it is fair to say that we are known for our slowness. But universities at their best are both fast and slow. That slowness, that willingness to put reflection and analysis and deep understanding above achieving quick conclusions or results, is an essential part of our ability to contribute in ways that are differ-ent and important. Our defining commitment to fundamental research — research that over centuries has proven its worth — depends on patience and on that faith that the expansion of understanding leads to unforeseen benefits to mankind.

We take, for example, immense pride in the role that Rice played in putting men into space, but the voyage to the moon did not start with a historic speech in Rice Stadium. It start-ed with Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton. The lesson of putting a man on the moon is not only that a focused and concentrated effort involving government and universities and industry can achieve remark-able progress, but that centuries of inspiring teaching and curiosity-driven discovery can make possible things that could not even have been imagined.

These dichotomies challenge us — to be separate and apart, yet open and engaged. To be fast and yet also to be slow. To embrace an unthrottled cosmopolitanism and still strive to be distinctively American. And yet, these are the attributes that make the modern university a vital and irreplaceable contributor to human society. The ivory tower image of the univer-sity has been replaced by our shimmering bea-con on Main Street, but we must maintain our unusual qualities and commitments if we are to contribute in the century ahead as we have in the past.

We must make no mistake; we are in dis-ruptive times for higher education. Our most basic concept of the university, as a defined space that brings teachers and students into physical proximity, is in the process of being upended. We now have more students regis-tered for Rice online courses than graduates

These dichotomies

challenge us — to be separate and apart, yet

open and engaged. To be

fast and yet also to be slow.

To embrace an unthrottled

cosmopolitanism and still strive

to be distinctively American.


over our entire century. Not since the inven-tion of the printing press has the dissemina-tion of knowledge been so changed as in the last quarter century, and it will change again as much in the decades ahead. These changes have the potential to undermine the sense of community that has been a hallmark of our colleges and universities and of Rice in particu-lar. But if we embrace these changes and de-termine how they can be used to enhance the strengths of the physical university while ex-tending some of its benefits to a virtual global community, Rice will seize a new opportunity to lead as we enter our next century.

We must embark upon a reimagining of university education in ways that take advan-tage of new technologies of learning, while in-creasing our commitment here on our campus to the personal relationship between teacher and student. We must dedicate ourselves anew to our teaching mission and yet be guided by the ancient Confucian understanding of educa-tion: Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will under-stand. More than ever, we will seize the op-portunity to involve our students and be more effective teachers.

As we commemorate the end of our first century today, it is not easy to discern what lies ahead for our second. Think of the circum-stances and undiscerned future as President Lovett spoke a century ago. Mass production of the automobile was a new phenomenon, and the first commercial airplane flight was just over a year away. The sun never set on the British Empire, and World War I lay around the corner. Oil had been discovered in Texas a decade earlier, but no one knew what that would mean for our city or our world. And Houston’s first air conditioning, dare I add, was still a decade away.

We have every reason to expect that the

political, societal and technological changes of the next century will be just as dramatic as the last, if indeed not more so. We cannot now see those changes. What we can commit to and what we can believe in is the power of the university, of Rice University, to make that a better future through teaching and learning and discovering and creating.

A century ago, a group of students, faculty, university staff and citizens of Houston sat just where you sit now to witness the launching of the first institution of higher education in the city of Houston. Rice set forth with a vi-sion of greatness, with a commitment to both importance and excellence, but with little ob-jective reason to think that such a new uni-versity could really join the great universities of America. And yet, this endeavor was begun and sustained with confidence and commit-ment, with optimism and faith, even in the darkest and most difficult of times.

As we enter our second century, we do so with no less confidence, no less commitment, no less optimism and no less willingness to work hard to achieve our highest aspirations. We are already more than Lovett imagined; to-day we embark upon the course that will lead us to be ever so much more than we might even be able to imagine today.

Fifty years ago, President Kennedy said at Rice that we must above all be bold if we’re to achieve the ambition of putting a man on the moon. As we enter our second century and face the opportunities ahead, we must be bold; we must be entrepreneurial; we must be collaborative; we must be fast and slow; we must be international yet distinctively American; we must be the great research university that preserved its dedication to its students; we must be Rice.

—President David W. LeebronOct. 12, 2012

Three Decades of Rice University Executive Leadership · Tudor FieldhouseThis panel discussion included President David W. Leebron, former Rice presidents Malcolm Gillis and George Rupp, Rice Board of Trustees Chairman James Crownover and former Rice Board chairs E. William Barnett and Charles Duncan, and moderator Professor Allen Matusow.


Centennial Picnic · Central Quadrangle A centennial picnic and celebration brought together 5,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni and academic procession delegates.

Saturday, October

13

Edgar Odell Lovett Statue Dedication · Keck HallThe bronze statue of Edgar Odell Lovett, created by sculptor Bruce Wolfe, was formally dedicated Oct. 13. Many of Lovett’s descendants were in attendance, and the statue was unveiled by the founding president’s great-great-grandchildren.


Centennial and Homecoming Football Game · Rice StadiumThe Rice Owls took on the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Roadrunners in the homecoming football game. The Owls won, 34–14 — Rice’s eighth-straight homecoming game victory. The semicentennial class gave a record-breaking $6.7 million class donation at halftime.

Homecoming Game


Inside the Spectacle


A year’s worth of under-the-radar planning went into an unforgettable light and sound show marking Rice’s centennial.

Thorsten Bauer went straight for the heart. As creative director and co-founder of URBANSCREEN, the Germany-based compa-ny that creates and stages description-defying light and sound projections on architectural settings, Bauer led the artists and technicians who brought Lovett, Sewall and Herzstein halls to life for a series of performances dur-ing Rice’s Centennial Celebration. The perfor-mances were billed as “the Spectacle.”

“We wanted to make it an experience for the audience,” he said. “It’s not as much about teaching them as it is about touching them.”

Thousands experienced the awe-inspiring performance over three perfect autumn eve-nings inside Rice’s Academic Quadrangle. The URBANSCREEN team flew to Rice, its first American client, charged with creating an event that would tell the story of the universi-ty’s first century to the extended community of students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors at-tending the extensive series of events the cam-pus hosted during the Centennial Celebration. The artists’ strategy was to let Rice’s distinctive architecture do the talking.

“Our first question was, ‘Who is telling this story?’ We decided the architecture itself is the only living witness to the entire history,” Bauer said. “The images come from the inside of the building to the outside for a few seconds, and then go back.”

For the three-segment production, the team created a three-dimensional video keyed brick-by-brick to the buildings.

“We think of a building as a diva, be-cause it demands so many things,” said Till Botterweck, an URBANSCREEN art director, at a lecture for Rice architecture students the day after the final performance. “This one (Lovett Hall) was even more of a diva.” The ornate building presented many challenges. For one, Bauer said, the team’s original production drawings were based on architectural plans that go back to Rice’s beginnings. When they

came to Rice for the show, they discovered Lovett Hall’s construction crew didn’t always adhere to the plan. “They were a few inches off here, a few inches there, but we were able to adjust,” he said.

From the beginning of the process, the owl served as inspiration. Bauer’s imitation of an owl as he described his ideas during his initial meeting at Rice convinced the Spectacle com-mittee that URBANSCREEN was right for the job, said Molly Hipp Hubbard, university art di-rector and committee co-chair. “We fell in love with them at that moment, because we knew they got it. We knew they would be able to get Rice completely and engage and integrate all the stories.”

The opening of the show featured the sound of insects followed by the image of a giant owl in shadow flying across the fa-çade of the three buildings. The sound of its wings — ultimately, created with a wet towel waved in front of a microphone — grew out of a prairie soundscape. The owl circled and dropped a feather at the Sallyport, where the Rice Institute took root. A fanciful opening rev-elation of the architectural details served as a segue to the main segment, in which the artists bent the architecture to their will as the build-ings revealed the university’s colorful history, with each decade in turn crackling to life.

“This is not like a PowerPoint presenta-tion,” Bauer said of the art form his company refers to as “lumentecture.”

“There are often many things happening at the same time, bubbling up, falling to the surface and disappearing again,” he said. “We created the visuals to reflect the design prin-ciples of the decades they represent.” The sur-round soundscape enticed viewers to look this way and that, ensuring that one could not see everything in a single viewing, and probably not even multiple viewings.

Bauer and the URBANSCREEN team had been stealing in and out of Rice for a year


Rice Design Alliance gala Oct. 14, hundreds of people were still pouring into the quad. “One student came up to Thorsten and asked, ‘What time is the show?’ and he said, ‘I’m sorry, we’re done. We just did the last show.’ And he said she burst into tears,” Hubbard said. “Ten minutes later they decided to run it one more time.”

Editing the images to fit the buildings’ fa-çades took months, with tests viewed in the company’s computers and on a small mock-up of the quad. With a projection that measured, in technical terms, 10,000 pixels wide and 2,000 pixels high, there was plenty of room for Bauer to maneuver as he oversaw the flow of artwork in two and three dimensions, match-ing it to the electronic score that also was com-posed and produced by the company.

“It was the most challenging production for URBANSCREEN so far because of the amount of content, the number of effects, the ratio, the resolution and also because our partners here were very diverse,” he said. “There was no one art director from Rice confronting us; there were many cooks — intellectual cooks. But I liked it, because everybody gave their input, they put things on the table and then they took their hands away. They really trusted us.”

The German crew traveled to Houston for centennial week with only data — 800 gigabytes’ worth — as their cargo. The rest of the gear was leased from Houston-based LD Systems, a lighting-and-sound production company started and still operated by Rice alumnus Rob McKinley ’81. The company built and installed the unique two-stage mask that occluded the Sallyport without blocking traffic, and also provided the 12 20,000-watt projec-tors and the immersive sound system.

Sound was most critical to what Bauer called the show’s epilogue, when history had caught up to the present day. “Our decision was to swap the narration line from the visual

to plan the nearly 20-minute show that not so much told the history of Rice to audience members as folded them inside it. The 270-de-gree projections were a first for the company that has wrapped a number of buildings in fanciful animations, most notably the Sydney Opera House earlier in 2012.

Because details of the performance were to remain a deep, dark secret until the pre-miere the night of the Centennial Gala, Bauer,

Botterweck, art director Max Goergen and producer Manuel Engels often came to campus under aliases. Sometimes they posed as the German cousins of Rice School of Architecture Dean Sarah Whiting, co-chair of the Rice-side production committee, to conduct interviews for their “research project.”

“More than once, people came up and said, ‘Hey, I met your German cousins today!’” Whiting said, laughing. The pressure to keep quiet was even greater on architecture senior Joshuah Howard, whom Whiting sent to intern with URBANSCREEN for a month last sum-mer. “He couldn’t tell anyone what he was doing, even what town in Germany he was in,” Whiting said.

Whiting noted the considerable challenge of “getting everyone excited about something we couldn’t talk about.”

The committee that also included Centennial Director Kathleen Boyd, Senior Project Manager for the BioScience Research Collaborative Kathy Jones and Associate Vice President for Development Kevin Foyle set a baseline of historic events that had to be part of the performance, based on Public Affairs’ centennial banners that line Rice’s Inner Loop. Otherwise, Bauer said, “We collected tons of photos and tons of text, read all the books about the history of Rice and ended up with a huge amount of information that was far more than we could use.”

In fact, Bauer used an astounding 30,000 photos during the five shows and one un-planned encore. Hubbard said that after the final unadvertised performance for the

in the 100-years part to the auditory,” he said of the segment that features the layered voices of dozens of Rice students coming from ev-ery direction. All the while, at first slowly and then in massive waves, bricks of light flow around and about the arches that support the three buildings.

Rather than a visual representation of buildings and plans, Bauer said the finale, rep-resenting the future, “is built out of the wishes, fears and hopes of the students of today.” He conducted 12 hours’ worth of interviews for the collage that concludes the show.

The segment was inspired by a com-ment President David Leebron made early in the process. “He said in one interview, ‘You know, Rice is one of the last refuges of people whose ambition is to change the world,’” Bauer recalled. “As I worked more and more with Rice, I saw this more clearly. This changed me. This kind of inspiration is the fire in this community, and I found that in every interview I did.”

The light may have faded, but the fire remains. “As I left the architecture lecture, I heard two students talking in the quad as the projection tower was coming down,” Hubbard said. “One of them looked at it and said, ‘I can’t believe that it’s gone. I’ll never be able to look at Lovett Hall the same way again.’”

—Mike Williams

The Spectacle · Academic QuadrangleThe Spectacle was conceived for Rice’s centennial and performed under the stars in the Academic Quadrangle. The German artist group URBANSCREEN designed the performance, which was projected onto three of Rice’s historic buildings.

e WATCH THE SPECTACLE ONLINE: ricemagazine.info/134


Wednesday, October

17 Centennial Lecture Series · Tudor FieldhouseChief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. was our final Centennial Lecture Series speaker.

e WATCH THE LECTURES ONLINE: ricemagazine.info/132

“Now when President Lovett spoke 100 years ago, the newspapers in this state and around the nation took due

note that something big was happening in Texas. The New York Times reported that President Lovett had attracted

an array of learning such as has seldom been assembled in the United States. The Dallas Morning News waxed

almost mystically. It observed that President Lovett’s speech coincided with the early evening appearance of both

Jupiter and Venus and suggested that the evening sky was an augury of a bright future for the institute. Not every

newspaper was as perceptive or transcendent. One local journal reported the founding of Rice in the same column

as the news that Congo, the world’s largest circus elephant, was coming to town. But we now know 100 years later

that those who bet on the future greatness of Rice, bet right.”

—Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr.

By Corinne Whiting


The Apostleof Stoke

R E M E M B E R I N G

Ben Horne

’02


LAST SUMMER, BEN HORNE ’02, ALONG WITH HIS FRIEND GIL WEISS, DIED IN A MOUNTAIN CLIMBING ACCIDENT IN THE

CORDILLERA BLANCA RANGE OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES. SINCE THEN, A VAST COMMUNITY OF FAMILY AND FRIENDS HAS

GATHERED IN THE PLACES HORNE LOVED BEST — ON MOUNTAINS AND TRAILS, IN CHURCHES AND PARKS, IN THE HOMES

OF FRIENDS AND FAMILY, AND ON RICE’S CAMPUS — TO REMEMBER AND CELEBRATE A LIFE LIVED WITH UNCOMMON JOY

AND ACCOMPLISHMENT. DURING ONE OF THOSE SERVICES HELD IN SAN DIEGO LAST SUMMER, BEN’S CLOSE FRIEND SKYE

SCHELL ’05 SUMMED UP HIS THOUGHTS: “BEN WAS INSPIRATION. THAT’S WHAT HE WAS TO ALL OF US. HE BROUGHT THE

MESSAGE OF STOKE. SINCE WE’RE HERE IN CHURCH, WE COULD SAY HE WAS AN APOSTLE OF STOKE.”

ONE • FAMILY FOUNDATIONSAt 6 feet 2 inches and approximately 185 pounds, Ben Horne stood tall and strong. His most defining features: a curly blond mop, sparkly blue eyes and an expansive smile. As evidenced by the entries in his blog, Zoom Loco, Horne was a prolific chronicler of his life’s experiences. By way of introduction there, he wrote, “My heroes are Tank Man, Tolstoy and Jesus Christ. I do believe that a better world is coming. My goal is to be the most complete person I can be. Full stop.”

When Horne’s friends and family describe his life, the same adjectives are uttered time and again — inspiring, passionate, authentic. He loved mountains and sunsets. To a great extent, these traits can be traced to Horne’s early years, growing up in a warm and loving family, the oldest of Gary and Chris Horne’s four children. “Ben felt he had the best child-hood experience because he lived in the country as a young kid, on a six-acre farm in south central Pennsylvania, moved to Hawaii and then close to D.C., so that he experienced all the benefits of a rural and suburban life,” Chris said.

Horne learned basic hiking and backpack-ing skills by participating in the Boy Scouts, with great encouragement from Gary. The family often vacationed in the national parks of the American West and enjoyed family nights playing board games. Their religious faith played a large part in the family members’ lives, no doubt motivating Ben, as an adult, to seek out the divine in all he did — from rock climbing to his studies. His Catholic faith served as foundation for his pursuit of peace and conflict resolution in his future career.

To his younger siblings (Eric, 30; Math, 26; and Liz, 22), “Ben was the big brother that all three looked up to,” said Chris Horne. He drove his younger brother Eric to school, loyally attended sporting events, and spent countless hours talking politics and music. He recorded songs with Math and, having always served as a mentor to Liz, shared his love of other cultures with her during a joint trip to Central America.

In one of many eulogies delivered at Horne’s funeral in Virginia last August, Math said, “Ben’s week beats your year. He climbs unclimbable peaks after running inhuman dis-tances only stopping to write, rap, pray or read up on how to start the revolution. He never settles or merely copes. People might say,

wholehearted. Unrelenting. He maintains the light. Persistent. Deliberate. He says it’s his 100 percent raw Lithuanian beef. I call it guts.”

MATH’S EULOGY: ricemagazine.info/135

TWO • WIESSMANBecause of Horne’s love for the mountains and outdoor pursuits, attending a school in Houston seemed a long shot — after all, it is flat. His parents remember that their son was won over by the bucolic tree-canopied cam-pus and diverse student body, and so Horne entered the Class of 2002.

He found a home at Wiess College, where current Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson and his wife, Paula, were then masters. On the academic side, Horne studied economics, math and political science. Soon enough, he made a name for himself as both the life of the party (though his drink of choice was orange juice) and a citizen-philosopher deeply engaged in service.

Between his sophomore and junior years at Rice, Horne hiked the Appalachian Trail end-to-end by himself and at a near-record-setting pace. The experience of solo hiking at such an impressionable age (he turned 20 en route) was transformative, he said. His

journals from that time reveal a maturing and probing mind. In one prophetic passage, he wrote, “The goal of changing things for the better can be reached — the key is to inspire others, to affect other people in little ways, and they in turn will continue to pass it down. When we seek personal glory, we can achieve transient fame; if we seek to better the world, we can contribute to lasting results. If we don’t pass it on, it will fade as memories of us fade.”

At Rice, Horne felt immense pride for his work with KTRU, the student radio station, what he called “one of the greatest things about the university” and a platform for

independent musicians. He was a DJ there for four years, the DJ director his junior year and station manager his senior year. Former sta-tion manager Johnny So ’01 credits Horne with changing the culture of the station, making it more open and accessible to the student body. At the dedication, So said, “Ben immediately stood out — here was a guy that was not only extremely involved in student life at Rice, he was actually popular! That alone was almost a disqualifier for working at KTRU.”

When the 40-year-old station’s tower was sold in 2010 to the University of Houston, Horne, along with a dedicated group of KTRU alumni, opposed the sale. On savektru.org, he wrote, “KTRU is an idea. A philosophy. KTRU is not just a club. It is a cause. KTRU is, even, possibly a religion.” Ultimately the sale of the FM license went through, but the station sur-vives as KTRU-HD radio, available through the Internet and mobile devices. To honor Horne’s advocacy and service, KTRU’s broad-cast studio, located on the second floor of the Rice Memorial Center, was dedicated the Ben Horne Memorial Studio last October.

During Rice’s centennial and reunion week-end (the 10th reunion for the Class of 2002), a group of Horne’s classmates and friends gath-

ered in the Hindman Garden for an informal tribute of words and song. Horne’s parents flew in for this event, which was organized by Lizzie Taishoff Sweigart ’01. In a peaceful grove of giant live oaks, Dean Hutchinson, Liora Danan ’03, Adam Larson ’05, Josh Katz ’01, Josh Hale ’02, Iris Hurtado Wingrove ’02, Saheel Sutaria ’02, So and others took turns sharing stories of their college years.

Sutaria and Wingrove first met Horne dur-ing O-Week. Hale was Horne’s freshman-year roommate. Their voices conjured memories of Freshman One-Act plays and “Hello, Hamlet”; of beach trips, spontaneous road trips, flag football and water-gun fights; of chasing and

“I am sure many stories about Ben have been told these last few weeks, and many more will be told in the years to come. Tell those stories. Ben loved stories.”

—Eric Horne, Aug. 7, 2012, Annandale, Va.

catching squirrels; having philosophical discussions; being recruited to work at the radio station; and attending every kind of cultural celebra-tion on campus.

Danan met Horne when he was working at KTRU and she was the senior news editor at the Thresher. Their long relationship had just begun as Horne graduated college — they lived in four different cities at the same time and traveled to 22 countries together. They got engaged, and though they ended their engagement last fall, the two remained best friends.

At the Rice service, Danan said, “I believe that Ben’s greatest strength, what allowed him to inspire us all, was his willingness to fail. This was a core value for him, a direct reflection of his deep faith. Ben was keenly aware of his own failings and limitations, and he was exceptionally will-ing to fight the inner struggle because he knew it was worth fighting. He believed in humanity precisely because it is broken.”

DEDICATION OF THE BEN HORNE MEMORIAL STUDIO: ricemagazine.info/136

THREE • ASCENDING AND TRAVERSINGAfter Rice, Horne joined the Peace Corps and went to Kyrgyzstan. Already an adept outdoorsman, it was there that he learned the sport of alpine climbing and became “spoiled, climbing some world-class moun-tains,” he said last June. Although he liked soloing, Horne also enjoyed the dynamic of group climbing, which forces participants to overlook fears, egos, personality quirks and bad moods. In such settings, Horne said, “You have one objective. You’re all helping one another with a common goal.” He likened climbing to an ancient practice like hunting. “In the most primal sense,” he said, “you’re tapping into something that humans have been doing for hundreds and thousands of years.”

It was the “mighty Sierra Nevada” that provided a triumphant experi-ence last spring for Horne, Shay Har-Noy ’04 and Konstantin Stoletov. All were part of the loose confederation of climbing enthusiasts called Pullharder, a San Diego-based community of skilled climbers who share their experiences online.

In March, the trio successfully completed the first-ever wintertime ascent of Peter Croft’s Evolution Traverse, a route that involved nine 13,000-foot peaks and the traversing of more than eight miles of the Evolution subrange of the Eastern Sierra. Horne called this “one of the Lower 48’s greatest climbs,” yet it had only previously been completed about 15 times and never outside of prime season. The technical route took seven days from car to car (including one storm day) and involved four days on the actual route with 36 total hours of climbing.

At times, the trio endured winds as high as 90 mph and temperatures as low as -7 F, making for a challenging environment in which to do such technical climbing. In a post-trip blog post, Horne admitted he was “stoked, but … tired.” Yet he also expressed great excitement for having accomplished this feat in his “home range,” at being associated with the route of one of his biggest inspirations (climber and mountaineer Peter Croft) and for the symbolism behind climbing a traverse named Evolution. In an interview last summer about the Evolution climb, Horne emphasized that this accomplishment was mostly personal.

“The most important thing is that your motivation is internal,” Horne said, “If you’re doing something for external recognition, it’s just not as fulfilling. It leads to a strange culture in which [the achievement] becomes about bragging.”

Horne physically held on to pieces of life experiences by way of souvenirs and ticket stubs. He also kept meticulous lists and Excel

spreadsheets that not only helped him prepare for upcoming treks and climbs, but also recorded details of the number of countries he’d trav-eled (53 “real” visits; 62 if you count airport layovers), states he’d visited (49; only South Dakota remained), climbs completed, national parks explored, “bizarre experiences” endured. His page of “Top Ten Sights” reveals no fewer than 26 places, ranging from the Sistine Chapel and Taj Mahal to Havasu Falls and Joshua Tree.

EVOLUTION TRAVERSE TRIP REPORT: ricemagazine.info/137

FOUR • LITTLE THINGSMany remember Horne for the big things — his impressive academic achievements and astounding athletic accomplishments. Not long after the Evolution Traverse conquest and right before he set out for Peru, Horne ran an ultramarathon (100 miles) in less than 24 hours.

“If Ben was going to do something,” Danan said, “he was going to do it all the way.” But it was the everyday things that mattered the most. In a eulogy delivered at his San Diego memorial service, she added, “Ben never wanted to be a superhero because of his physical achieve-ments. In fact, he went out of his way to understate them. If we idealize his achievements, we are misunderstanding Ben.”

While living in San Diego, Horne organized a series of discussion dinners around a potluck meal and an informal roundtable. He invited those representing different backgrounds and beliefs who he thought would benefit most from the conversations; together they covered top-ics from race and the environment to religion. Commented Har-Noy, “Oftentimes you have people who aren’t intellectually honest; they think they’re smart but don’t listen to anybody else. They shut off the willingness to accept someone. Ben fundamentally sought out alterna-tive opinions on how things work.”

Since 2007, Horne had been pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and completing his studies of conflict resolution and mediation. Eli Berman, professor of economics at UCSD, also taught economics at Rice. Horne was one of his students there. When both landed at UCSD, Horne once again studied under Berman, who ultimately served as his dissertation adviser. Horne’s research focused on the role of mediation in international conflict and how third parties can intercede to make peace agreements possible that would not otherwise happen.

“Ben’s interest in this question, as far as I can tell, came from a wonderful place,” Berman said. “He cared deeply about people and believed in mediation among individuals. He also had a deep concern for the human suffering caused by unresolved conflicts. Ben’s research made substantial progress on the theory of mediation, which we hope will be of use to practitioners.” At present, UCSD faculty are working to give recognition to his research and encourage others to continue what Horne started.

FIVE • PERUOn pullharder.org, Horne’s in-progress trip report titled “The Peruvian Chronicles” detailed the first climbs he and Weiss completed in the Cordillera Blanca last July. In the post, he chronicles the weather, the challenges, the lows and the highs in characteristic self-deprecating and humorous fashion. The post is accompanied by an image of a sunset of wondrous beauty. Their next destination was Palcaraju Oeste, where they would attempt (and succeed) in putting up a first-ever ascent of a new route on the mountain’s south face. On July 13, on the way back

“People say that Ben lived many lives’ worth in his 32 years, and not only in terms of the mountains he climbed, places he visited or miles he ran — but also in the number of people he loved, and how deeply he loved them.”

—Anne Chmilewski, Aug. 14, 2012, San Diego



Left to right: Alexei Angelides ‘98, Sarah Pitre ‘01, Horne and Dennis Lee ‘05 in the KTRU studio in 2000; Rice graduation with siblings Matthew and Elizabeth Horne, 2002; Elizabeth and Ben in Guatemala, 2007. Below: Climbing Evolution Traverse with Shay Har-Noy ‘04 and Konstantin Stoletov, March 2012.

Below: Horne and friends Saheel Sutaria ‘02 and Kristen Stecher ’02; Liora Danan ‘03 and Horne, San Miguel, Mexico, 2011.

“ I G R E W U P I N T H E A P P A L A C H I A N S , T H E N L I V E D F O R S P E L L S I N T H E T I E N S H A N ( K Y R G Y Z S T A N ) A N D T H E R O C K I E S . I L O V E M O U N T A I N S A N D M O S T E V E R Y T H I N G A B O U T T H E M . N O W I L I V E B Y T H E S E A I N L A J O L L A , C A L I F O R N I A , W I T H T H E M I G H T Y S I E R R A N E V A D A V E R Y C L O S E B Y . ”

—Ben Horne, zoomloco.wordpress.com

down from the peak, rescuers speculate that the fragile ridge where they were walking simply collapsed.

After Horne and Weiss were reported missing, stunned friends and family watched in disbelief as the search unfolded in real time. Climbing websites and listservs posted up-dates for friends and family. Har-Noy’s company obtained satellite imagery and employed crowd-sourcing techniques to try and find the two. [See sidebar.] On Saturday morning, July 28, Gary Horne received a call from the rescue coordinator. Their bodies had been found at the bottom of the mountain. Accompanied by Danan, the two flew to Peru to bring Ben home.

SIX • M A I N TA I N T H E L I G H TSince Horne’s death, Gary has poured himself into creating maintainthelight.org, a memori-al website dedicated to his son, named for a motto Ben adopted to honor his grandmother. One section pays honor to Horne by linking to dozens of heartfelt eulogies and letters as well as examples of Horne’s prolific writings, photos and academic work.

The second part of the website conveys a mission: How can we who remain here on Earth ‘maintain the light’? On the website, friends commit to living into their strengths and hopes and to do something inspired by Horne. Playing the piano, serving God, connecting with people, viewing sunsets, participating in an Ironman competition, climbing, running, refraining from judgment and simply living life are some of the promises Horne’s friends and family have made. “Ben was deeply affected in his childhood by stories from people who said they had waited until it was too late, for whatever it was that mattered to them,” Danan said. “Ben did not wait. He was always setting goals, always training, in all catego-ries of his life. Ben practiced his religion in the cathedrals of mountains and church pews and backyard BBQs and rock concerts and overcrowded buses in foreign countries.” The site’s content serves as daily inspiration for all those who remain deeply grateful for the example of Horne’s life. Full stop. ■


“The day I found out they found Ben’s body, I was on safari in Malawi. I watched the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever seen that night, sitting in a vast grassland with wild animals around and good friends by my side. It sounds like a lot of Ben’s friends and family felt this way and had a similar experience that night, but I nonetheless felt like he was watching the sunset with me that night, saying goodbye in his own extreme, spectacular, poignant way.”

—Brigitte Zimmerman, maintainthelight.org

“Last year for my birthday, Grandmom sent me a card with a photo of Denali on the front. I climbed Denali for the first time 2 weeks after her death, still grieved. The emotion definitely spurred me to press on. A few years before she sent me a card of a lighthouse with the words ‘Maintain the Light.’ I do believe death is a part of life, and that her light can shine on through us.”

—Ben Horne, June 23, 2011

T O M N O D : P U L L I N G T O G E T H E R

Though they didn’t know each other at Rice, Shay Har-Noy ’04 and Ben Horne ’02 had become acquainted while both were in grad school at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), ultimately forging a strong friendship based on their mutual love of climbing in the Sierra Nevada. Har-Noy earned degrees in economics and electrical and computer engineering at Rice; at UCSD, he earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. His day job is CEO of Tomnod, a young tech company that provides distribution and analysis of current satellite images for a variety of clients.

On July 25, 2012, Har-Noy got an email with a personal and urgent bent — good friends Horne and Gil Weiss, who had been mountain climbing in the Peruvian Andes, were missing. The team reached out to their professional contacts at DigitalGlobe and GeoEye to ask for archival imagery of the mountain.

Tomnod (meaning “big eye” in Mongolian) requested that the next time the satellite passed overhead, it focus on the section of the mountain where Horne and Weiss had been climbing. Within a couple of hours, the team had received and processed the image and put it online, inviting friends and family to help search for clues in the snow patterns.

On the map, images were flagged and marked after several people reached a consensus that they saw the same thing. Within 15 minutes, hopes soared when taggers identified three black dots (on the otherwise white snow) as rescuers headed up the glacier. “I was psyched,” said Har-Noy. “We were in go mode. I was thinking, if these guys are anywhere in this picture, we’re going to find them.” This flurry of excitement pervaded social media as family and friends clung to the possibility that the two were merely injured or stranded. Over the next four hours, more than 800 people logged in to scour small sections of the mountain’s image.

Before a search plane took off for the mountain, Har-Noy sent the air and ground

rescue teams detailed imagery of what they identified as the top four search locations. The ground team had independently arrived at the same conclusion, and the climbers’ bodies were found below their last tracks in

the imagery. “Our efforts to find Ben and Gil really emphasize the power of

timely satellite imagery and our technology in critical situations,” Har-Noy said.

A devastated Pullharder community announced the death of their two dear friends on their website. “These are two of the finest climbers we have ever known … embodying the spirit of the mountains with everything they did. Many of us have had the honor of sharing in their love for the wilderness, and that lives on.”

Shay Har-Noy ’04


SportsR I C E O WLS . C O M

A Winning SeasonRice Soccer Shares C-USA Regular-Season Title

With 11 wins, six losses and three ties, the Rice soccer team scored its best regular sea-son record in program history. The winning season earned the team, under head coach Nicky Adams, a C-USA co-championship title with Colorado College. Rice was elimi-nated in the opening round of the C-USA Tournament.

The Owls debuted a dynamic freshman scoring duo of Lauren Hughes and Holly Hargreaves, who combined for 19 goals during the season. Hargreaves and sopho-more midfielder Quinney Truong were both named First-Team All-Conference USA, and Hargreaves was named C-USA Freshman of the Year.

Hargreaves totaled 10 goals as a starter for all 21 games. She tied for seventh in the nation with six game-winning goals and ranked among the NCAA and C-USA sta-tistical leaders in goals (10), points (23) and shots (76). The rookie scored a Rice record game-winning goal in four-straight games in September.

Truong was fourth on the team in min-utes as a starter in the midfield, playing 92 percent of the team’s total time. The Fort Worth, Texas, standout scored the game-tying goal against Big 12 power Oklahoma and also had a goal on the road at University of Alabama at Birmingham. She assisted on game-winning goals in back-to-back games vs. Sam Houston State and Tulsa while main-taining a .400 shots-on-goal percentage.

Seniors and team captains Julia Barrow and Lauren LaGro were named to the C-USA All-Academic team for success in the class-room and on the soccer field. Barrow has maintained a 3.92 GPA as an English major with a minor in poverty, justice and human capabilities. She led the Owls with four as-sists and rarely came out of a game, playing all 90 or more minutes 13 times.

A three-time C-USA All-Academic honoree who has maintained a 3.87 GPA as a kinesiology major, LaGro started all 21 matches and helped the Owls to a share of the 2012 conference regular-season title. LaGro often was assigned to cover the op-posing team’s top scoring threat. Overall, the Rice backline helped hold opponents to just 11.7 shots per game.

The de Menil years at Rice began in 1969 with the exhibition “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age” at the just-completed Rice Museum. This stunning collection of works from the 15th to the 20th century explored the intersections of art and technology. Among the 200 works were a replica of a da Vinci flying machine, Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car, Jean Tinguely’s ball producing and consuming Rotozaza, and Claes Oldenburg’s giant floppy desk fan. It also was apparently the first exhi-bition to show video art, created by the very young Nam June Paik.

Decades-old exhibitions don’t usually age well. Ideas or works that were cutting-edge or contemporary 40 years ago can seem quaint and dated later on. But “The Machine” was a show many people would be thrilled to see today, and it’s not unique in the repertoire of exhibitions, projects and events that took place at the Rice Media Center and the Rice Museum (dubbed the “Art Barn”). Established by John and Dominique de Menil in 1969 along with Rice’s Institute for the Arts (now the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, Department of Art History and Rice Cinema program),

both venues went on to present an astounding array of groundbreaking exhibitions, films and events.

“Raid the Archive,” on view Oct. 12–Nov. 9 in the Rice Media Center, included exhibition and opening photographs, letters, notes and other ephemera and was accompanied by film screenings and panel discussions. The centen-nial exhibition was curated by John Sparagana, professor of painting and drawing and chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, and Katia Zavistovski, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History. The title is taken from “Raid the Icebox 1 with Andy Warhol,” a 1969 Rice Museum show in which the de Menils asked Andy Warhol to curate an exhi-bition selected from the storage vaults of the Rhode Island School of Design’s museum.

The “Raid the Archive” film series screened “Tinguely In Motion.” Filmed in 1969 for the Rice Institute by Bill Colville, the film captured Jean Tinguely’s time in Houston constructing a sculpture specifically for “The Machine” exhi-

bition. It shows the Swiss artist moving (and dancing) through a Houston junkyard, clad in a pressed white shirt and black blazer,

Experimental exhibitions continue on at Rice ... . And

the de Menils’ involvement and interest in Rice

through the years helped set it all in

motion.

Raid the Archive: The de Menil Years at Rice” commemorated the 100th anniversary of Rice University as well as the Menil Collection’s 25th anniversary.

“Rice’s de Menil Years

Clockwise from left: Installation view of “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age,” Rice Museum, 1969; exhibition poster; Dominique de Menil, 1979. (Photo credits: Hickey-Robertson and Geoff Winningham ’65)

Arts



Students

The Matter of MusicQuick, before this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, check out one of last year’s winners.The winner of the 2012 Grammy for Best Opera Recording is “Doctor Atomic,” a Sony DVD recording of a 2008 pro-duction at the Metropolitan Opera, conducted by Alan Gilbert. Shepherd School alumna Sasha Cooke ’04 starred as Kitty Oppenheimer opposite Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer. The con-temporary opera is by American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. The op-era tells the story of the Manhattan Project scien-tists who created and tested the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. In a New York Times review of the production, critic Anthony Tommasini had plenty of praise for Cooke, writing, “The scenes with Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, sung with aching, wistful intensity by the mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, are beautifully rendered.”

smoking and casually selecting materials for his sculpture. He talks about how much he enjoys it when his sculptures break and have to be repaired, reveling in the chance and chaos of the whole thing. Comments from the artist and his decidedly nonprofessional welder assistant were intercut with commentary from the beleaguered conservator sent along from MOMA to keep the sculptures in working repair. Not only is the film an insight into the artist’s work, it is also an insight into an artistic climate that continues today in Houston, where artists often draw on and collaborate with industry to execute projects.

During the de Menil years, the Media Center brought in the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Sam Peckinpah and Henri Langlois. Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas came into town to screen “THX 1138” as well. For Rice students and the Houston community to have had this kind of access is stunning. In one of many memorable events, Dennis Hopper came in 1983 to speak about a new film, but instead bused the audience out to the Big H Speedway to see him “blow himself up” in the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act — i.e., a chair with dynamite under it. View the video online at timeline.centennial.rice.edu/entry/368/.

Those years were a lively, experimental and provocative time. The de Menils, in supporting and establishing the arts at Rice University, involved a number of students and young people in their endeavors, many of whom, like artist Mel Chin, would go on to become significant contributors to the art world in their own right. The de Menils were also instrumental in bringing in young and influential faculty like William Camfield, the Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor Emeritus of Art History, and Thomas McEvilley, Distinguished Lecturer Emeritus of Art History and critic.

Dominique de Menil would leave the university to establish the Menil Collection, but experi-mental exhibitions continue on at Rice in the site-specific installation program of Rice Gallery; in the art department’s new experimental exhibition spaces EMERGEncy Room and Matchbox Gallery; and in the continuing activities of the Rice Media Center. And the de Menils’ involvement and inter-est in Rice through the years helped set it all in motion. —Kelly Klaasmeyer

Clockwise from top left: Opening night for “Raid the Archive: The de Menil Years at Rice,” Rice University Media Center, 2012; view of “Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz: The Art Show,” Rice Museum, 1984–85; “The Machine” exhibit, Rice Museum, 1969. (Photo credits: Carolyn Van Wingerden, Hickey-Robertson, Geoff Winningham ’65)


Arts


BookshelfO N T H E

“Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions” (New York University Press, 2012) is co-authored by Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and co-director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, and Jason Shelton, an assistant pro-fessor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington.

“We often hear the term ‘the black church,’” Emerson said. “We really wanted to find out, what is the black church? We wanted to know how black Protestants — who comprise 93 percent of black churchgoers — differ from

A new book co-authored by Rice sociologist Michael Emerson assesses racial differences in how black and white Protestants practice their faith.

their white counterparts. We wanted to see if there’s anything unique about how they prac-tice their faith.” Emerson said that while their research, including interviews with numerous black pastors, showed that there are “abso-lutely no differences” between blacks and whites when it comes to the core beliefs (for example, the Apostles’ Creed) of Protestants, it revealed “stunning” differences about how the two groups go about their faith.

“At the very core, in the fundamental beliefs of Christianity — that God exists, for example — black and white Protestants do not differ,” Emerson said. “But on almost

everything else, even the terms they use to describe who God is, they do differ and often dramatically so.”

All of these differences were conceptual-ized by Emerson and Shelton into what they call the five building blocks of the black Protestant faith. The building blocks include:• Experiential: Black Protestant faith is ac-

tive and experiential; it is less concerned with precise doctrinal contours than is white mainline or evangelical Christianity.

• Survival: Their faith is critical to survival and helps individuals cope with suffer-ing associated with everyday trials and tribulations.

• Mystery: Black Protestant faith is mystical and expresses an appreciation for the mys-tery in life; it includes folklore and cultural components driving from the African dias-pora, the consequences of racial inequal-ity in America and non-Christian religions.

• Miraculous: Black Protestant faith is con-fident and comprehensive; the miraculous is ordinary and the ordinary is miraculous.

• Justice: Their faith is committed to social justice and equality for all individuals and groups in society.Emerson noted that all of these differ-

ences remain after accounting for differences in education, income, age, gender and region of residence. These differences were found even when comparing black Protestants to the more zealous arm of white Protestantism, white evangelicals.

Emerson believes that the differences be-tween black and white Protestants are rooted directly in the country’s history of racial discrimination.

“It’s based on personal and communal experiences,” Emerson said. “White Protestant faith has never been about survival, whereas black faith from the start has been. Slavery isn’t here anymore, but that idea of who God is has not changed for African-Americans.”

Emerson said he hopes the book will bring greater understanding to the differences in how white and black Protestants approach religion.

“Ultimately, these religious differences play a substantial role in U.S. life, from iden-tity politics to working for racial justice and reconciliation,” Emerson said. “By going about faith differently, valuing different aspects of the Christian God and having divergent reli-gious histories, black and white Protestants vote overwhelmingly opposite of one another, and often work against each other in efforts toward racial equity and cohesion. For real progress to be made, these groups will need to truly understand one another.”

— Amy Hodges

Rice Sociologist Examines Race, Religion in America

“Ultimately, these religious

differences play a substantial role in U.S. life, from identity politics to working for

racial justice and reconciliation.”

BookshelfO N T H E


Brinkley, a Rice University history professor and fellow at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, wrote the biography with the cooperation of Cronkite’s family. The book examines the newsman’s role in the latter half of the 20th century — from Vietnam and the space missions to reporting to the nation the death of President John F. Kennedy.

Born in 1916, Cronkite grew up in Kansas City, Mo., and Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, where his fa-ther worked as a dentist. He dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin during the Great Depression to take the first in a series of radio jobs in Oklahoma and Missouri.

Cronkite joined United Press International in 1937, and when World War II broke out, he covered battles in Africa and Europe, parachuted with the 101st Airborne into Holland and witnessed the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg Trials. In 1950,

In “Cronkite,” the first full-life biography

of the legendary CBS newsman Walter

Cronkite, author Douglas Brinkley chronicles

the life of one of the most influential news

anchors in television history — a life that

included formative years spent in Houston.

Viral Doom ReturnsJustin Cronin, a distinguished faculty fel-low at Rice University, has followed up his best-seller “The Passage” with “The Twelve,” released last fall. It is the sec-ond book in his postapocalyptic trilogy.

In “The Twelve,” Cronin picks up the story, taking readers on a 592-page jour-ney interweaving characters from “year zero,” when the vampires first escaped from a secret Colorado lab, with flashes forward to 79 and 97 years in the future. The narrative follows bands of survivors as they search for fuel, food and protec-tion and cope with the unthinkable that has devastated civiliza-tion as they knew it. The reader meets Lila, a doctor stricken with posttraumatic stress syndrome, and Kittridge, a war vet-eran and sniper who helps save a band of refugees. A less like-able new character is Horace Guilder, a self-interested, high-level government bureau-crat at the helm when the crisis originally unfolded. Guilder was able to ensure his own escape, but he’s not a figure one would root for. Returning characters include Alicia, an army lieu-tenant and loner, and Amy, a supernatu-ral heroine, who with others continue their hunt for the original 12 “virals.”

—Jeff Falk

“Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro,” by David L. Hill ’90 (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2012). Hill is a pediatrician and father of three who practices medicine in Wilmington, N.C.

“Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health,” by Joseph Dumit ’89, (Duke University Press, 2012). Dumit is director of science and technology studies and professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis.

“From the Stage to the Studio: How Fine Musicians Become Great Teachers,” by Cornelia Watkins and Laurie Scott (Oxford University Press, 2012). Watkins is a lecturer of music in Rice’s Shepherd School of Music. This is her second book about teaching music.

“Exclusions: Practicing Prejudice in French Law and Medicine, 1920–1945,” by Julie Fette (Cornell University Press, 2012). Fette is an associate professor in the Department of French Studies at Rice.

That’s the way it is.”Brinkley Chronicles Cronkite

“ he joined CBS News, where he anchored the Sunday night news and the 1952 presidential conventions and hosted “You Are There,” a show that re-enacted histori-cal events.

Cronkite became the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in 1962. The 1963 assassination of Kennedy inserted Cronkite into the national consciousness, Brinkley said. Other notable moments in his broadcast career included his 1968 declaration that the Vietnam War was “mired in stalemate,” which President Lyndon Johnson thought moved national opinion, and his cov-erage of the moon landings. Cronkite was, in fact, the unofficial voice of the American space program dur-ing its early heyday, a role than garnered him renown

but also some media criticism, Brinkley found. “Walter had so bought into space that any criticism of the moon launch in 1969 was anathema to him,” recalled Bill Plante who, as part of CBS’s coverage of Apollo 11, reported on how some people on the street in New York thought the space agency’s efforts were a waste of money.

Cronkite retired as anchor in 1981 at age 64, widely hailed as the “most trusted man in America.”

Brinkley said the idea for a de-finitive biography was triggered about nine years ago by fellow historian and friend David Halberstam. During a drive with Brinkley to the Louisiana Book Festival, Halberstam remarked

that Cronkite was the most significant journalist of the second half of the 20th century, but no author had ad-equately tackled his life and times. Brinkley has also authored books on Gerald Ford, Teddy Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter.

—Jeff Falk

Across

1 The first freshman ___ parade was in 1921.

6 ___ balloon fight (Beer Bike kickoff)11 Sally___ (with 124 Across)15 Baker Institute’s Edward Djerejian is an

expert on the ___ Spring.19 ___ the Barbarian20 “Doe ___”21 ___ Shawkat of “Arrested Development”22 Plaster ingredient23 “A World ___”24 Young adult novelist Sonya ______25 Altoids come in ______26 Copycat27 Rice’s student-faculty ___ is less than 6:1.28 Quoting Hamlet, after an ORGO exam:

“___ is me.”29 ____ Humperdinck31 Conduit for graffiti and clandestine

exploration35 Descendant of Indo-European speakers36 Studied by comp sci majors37 ___ Tigers40 Eastern potentates43 Accumulate46 It’s between St. Paul and Eau Claire50 1990 Dead album, “Without ___”51 Bryce Canyon locale52 With 66 Across, first Rice president, ____

Lovett 53 ___ Loop55 Gentile56 Sound prefix57 One from Eastern Europe58 Native of Budapest60 Where many Rice students are in the

summer63 F. Scott Fitzgerald was one (abbr.)66 See 52 Across69 With 110 Down, the theme of this issue74 Houston’s METRO runs on these75 Beginning

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Try your luck at this Rice-themed crossword. No cheating!

On My Honor

Answers

76 Wash off again77 What Rice students eat on March 14:____

ice cream 79 Nihilistic art movement82 “___ go Rice!”83 UK Luftwaffe counter86 Psychic Edgar87 ___balls88 “___ go Bragh”89 T-shirt size91 Dining hall semester vouchers93 “Hey you!”95 Pianist studied by students at the Shepherd

School (Hint: Schumann)97 College quads are nice outdoor ____.98 Beatles’ German release “___ Liebt Dich”99 Mythical Scottish beast (var.)101 Baker 13 cover-up109 They’re the best.113 Soy paste114 Come-on115 Texting shorthand for “Ah, that’s clear”116 City of Edvard Munch117 He’s Horrible in the comics.118 Pastrami _____119 President Leebron is on its board.120 Architect van der Rohe121 One of the “45º 90º 180º” rocks is ___.122 Rent out again123 Home of Lady Vols (abbr.)124 See 11 Across125 ___Week126 Juan’s ___ sense

Down

1 Trauma residue2 1950s Yankee pitcher Eddie (“the Junk

Man”)3 Germ ending4 “I just met a girl named ___.”5 Buries6 Had left

7 Column heading8 Mortise partner9 Jolly Green Giant shoe width10 There are four in Monopoly (abbr.)11 ___ de foie gras12 “Unbearable Lightness of Being” actress

Lena13 “Silver Bells” sound14 It hits with a charge.15 Rice opponent of infamous sideline tackle16 Maturing17 McLean’s “___ Pie” (abbr.)18 Ernie’s pal30 Caustic soda32 “__ the season”33 Reading direction (abbr.)34 Defense against the Scud38 Jacques’ “my bad”39 Inherent41 ___ Speedwagon42 With 93 Down, was by the original

Administration Building43 One wanting to make amends44 Tomorrow in Tijuana45 It’s desirable at the track.46 16th-century date47 River of Estella, Spain48 They may be innies.49 Pooh pal51 Top amateur athletics group52 Sports site54 Weathermen’s tool59 Spruces up the bathroom61 Old object62 Tailor’s length64 Mountain bike race format65 Dog and cat, perhaps67 They’re found in trash cans.68 What Will Rice did in the men’s Beer Bike

race last year70 Transport of the future?71 When repeated, Speedy Gonzalez mantra72 Donkey sound73 Where to hear the Red Sox

78 Sailor’s acknowledgment 80 When doubled, flak81 Code of Copenhagen (and others)83 Students love Rice’s new ___ Center.84 ___ Rose85 Boys Town founder Father Ed ___ 87 Heat forward Chris90 ___ urn (Rice diploma text shape)92 Given to some at Rice Commencement93 See 42 Down94 Zones96 “___ the Expert”98 Given to loud nasal exhalations100 Leaf pore102 Famed violin maker103 Watch104 “Love ___ you need.” (Beatles)105 ___ Zellweger106 ___ “The Pearl” (and others)107 Till now108 “___ tall dark stranger”109 Resumed (abbr.)110 See 69 Across111 Actor Baldwin112 Sometimes found at a Rice party: ___ pit117 “Left turn” for Mr. Ed

Crossword by David Gusakov


S L I M E W A T E R P O R T A R A B

C O N A N A D E E R N A L I A N L I M E

A P A R T N S O N E S N T I N S N A P E R

R A T I O N O W O E N N E N G E L B E R T

S T E A M T U N N E L S N N A R Y A N N N

N N N N B I T N N N T A M I L N E M I R S

N A M A S S N M E N O M O N I E N A N E T

U T A H N N E D G A R N I N N E R N G O Y

S O N O N N S L A V N N M A G Y A R N N N

O N A T R I P N N E X P A T N O D E L L N

C E N T E N N I A L C E L E B R A T I O N

N R A I L S N O N S E T N N R E R I N S E

N N N P I E A N D N N D A D A N N L E T S

R A F N C A Y C E N B U C K Y N N E R I N

E X L G N M E A L B O O K S N P S S S T N

C L A R A N A R E A S N N N S I E N N N N

N N N E S S Y N N S H A V I N G C R E A M

C R A C K T E A M N N M I S O N T E A S E

O I G I N O S L O N H A G A R N O N R Y E

N C A A N M I E S N A T I L T N R E L E T

T E N N N A R C H N W I L L Y N S E S T A

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Many voices have told you how wonderful the Rice Centennial Celebration was, I’m sure! But perhaps not many of them drove 1,200 miles to Houston from Minneapolis with their wife, Marlys, and daughter, Brynne, in confidence that it would be totally worthwhile. …

My Rice residence was East Hall — a name unknown to anyone on the Rice campus today. While East Hall was a mystery to them, the name of every other building on the campus was a mystery to us. In getting around the magnificent Rice campus, we were dependent upon bus drivers, police, student volunteers and maps to reach four days of venues on time. Everyone whom we asked for information was cordial, interested and helpful.

The lecture by J. Craig Venter on the cutting edge of his science specialty was won-derful. Too bad we will not be around when “people will have a computer with a little box attached so that when they order a pill online it will show up in their box about 1/5 of a second later.”

The Shepherd School of Music Centennial

Dear President Leebron,


definingMoments

Concert on Thursday was truly magnificent. Jon Kimura Parker on the piano gave me goose bumps; his play was so exciting. The orchestra was as good as any I have ever heard. … We congratulate the Shepherd School staff and their music director Larry Rachleff.

The academic procession and your centennial address was indicative that the academic world and Rice University are thriving and will continue to do so.

My lifetime “R” membership card came in handy at the football game as we Minnesotans were not too thrilled about the idea of sitting out in the Texas sun with no shade for two or three hours. We walked up to the “R” room and I presented my card. Even though we were not on any list of names, they graciously let us in. We enjoyed the game in air-conditioned comfort.

I’m saving the most wonderful thing that happened to us for last.

Certainly the Finale and the Spectacle were super events. But what happened after the Spectacle when people were getting up off the grass was the best event of all: A

young lady just ahead of us turned around. She told us she had graduated from Rice last year. She wondered how we liked the centen-nial events. She wondered where we were from, whether any of us had gone to Rice. When I told her we had driven down from Minnesota, and I had graduated in mechani-cal engineering in 1950, she just lit up. She was so excited that anyone could care enough about Rice to drive down from Minnesota 62 years after their graduation. It comforted her to know that she had gone to a university that warranted love and dedication throughout her life, because other people had felt that way before her. It was one of life’s defining moments for me.

My wife, daughter and I enjoyed every minute of the four days we were on the Rice campus during its Centennial Celebration. We thank you for planning, organizing and executing it so well.

Very sincerely yours,Glenn A. Fuller ’50

B.S., mechanical engineering “R” winner — Baseball (1948, 1949)

An alum shares his family’s experience from Rice’s Centennial Celebration.

A Gift for the Long Run

Phone: 713-348-4624 • Email: [email protected] • Website: www.rice.planyourlegacy.org

[ Deferred Gift Annuities Enhance Your Retirement ]Setting up a deferred gift annuity is a great way to ensure a secure income during your retirement

while supporting Rice. To learn more about this type of gift, please contact the Office of Gift Planning.

For runners in the Boston Marathon, trekking up the 88-foot Heartbreak Hill 20 miles into the race can be like climbing Mount Everest. But when Linda and Bob Shepherd ’70 began heading up the slope April 21, 1997, determination and months of careful planning propelled them up the hill and across the finish line.

The Shepherds are approaching their retirement in a similar way, carefully planning a deferred gift annuity that will help them meet their financial goals while honoring Bob’s mother through the creation of an endowed scholarship. Bob and Linda were among the first in their families to earn college degrees and credit their mothers’ commitment to education with making their achievements possible. “We give to universities to honor our moms,” Bob remarked. “And I give to Rice because I appreciate what Rice did for me.”

Bob, a radiologist who earned a B.A. and M.S. in chemical engineering from Rice, says the solid academic foundation he received as an undergraduate gave him the flexibility to enter any field. Now, by establishing the Lurlene Shepherd Endowed Scholarship, the Shepherds are ensuring that female undergraduates receive an equally strong education. By funding the scholarship with a deferred gift annuity, they also guarantee themselves a steady stream of income for the long run.

The

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Nonprofit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit #7549

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

Owls Beat Air Force in the Armed Forces BowlThe Rice Owls scored 26 unanswered points in the second half of the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl to beat the Air Force

Falcons 33−14 Dec. 29, 2012, at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas. The Owls closed out the year with their fifth

consecutive win and their sixth win in the last seven, completing a remarkable reversal to a season that saw the team start 1−5.

Sophomore wide receiver Jordan Taylor earned the bowl’s MVP award.Watch more: ››› ricemagazine.info/138

Documents

Rice Magazine Issue 15