40 | Literary Gold • 9| Science of Shred •

| Oscar’s Red Carpet

18 •
| Light and Space
44

24 (RE) DEFINING A VISION

34 HUNTING RICE HISTORY
36 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US
38 TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

Rice Magazine • No 1 • 2008 1

 16

Contents 7 Not your parents’ career 4 Student applications top

services center the record — twice.

4 A major gift will transform

8 The world’s richest and the way engineers are
largest business plan educated at Rice.
competition is even
better. 5 Kinetic learning is a Wii
bit of fun.
3 Three Rice luminaries
are elected to the 10 It’s enough to make
American Academy of you sweat.
Arts and Sciences.
15 Healing physical problems
14 What is that word? doesn’t automatically
improve the quality of life
15 The award-winning for elderly patients.
journal, positions,
comes to Rice. 9 SciRave mixes a little
science with a lot of
12 Rice researchers shred.
are ratting out
cardiovascular
disease,
osteoporosis and
Alzheimer’s.

6 If a picture is worth a
thousand words, then
Rice’s new image of a
virus’s protective coat is
seriously undervalued.

11 WARP wireless is
whetting the appetites
of communications
technology
heavyweights.

On the cover: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Rice alumnus Larry McMurtry
delivering a recent Friends of Fondren Library Distinguished Guest Lecture

Features
24 Defining and Realizing Vision
The vision with which Edgar Odell Lovett defined
Rice opened the university to possibilities he could
not have dreamed of.
By David W. Leebron
26 Unique Leadership for a Unique Time
James Crownover, chairman of the Rice Board of
Trustees, reflects on his past and the university
that has played such a large role in his life.
By Mike Williams
30 Larry McMurtry: On Rice, Writing and
the Fate of Books
Larry McMurtry is fond of saying that his parents
wanted him to stay on the ranch and herd cattle,
but he wanted to herd words.
By David D. Medina
34 Super Sleuth
A modern-day Nancy Drew, Rice’s centennial
historian Melissa Kean experiences both thrills
and chills in her fearless hunt for Rice history.
By Merin Porter
36 The Countdown Begins
Rice’s 100th birthday is fast approaching. Here’s a
preview of the centennial anniversary celebration
already in the works.
By Mike Williams
38 Taking Care of Business
Executive Education is not only a source of
revenue, but also an important connection
between the university and the practicing
professionals in Houston’s business community.
By Weezie Kerr Mackey
40 Literary Gold
A lot of people dream about finding buried
treasure. Most don’t succeed, but occasionally, a
rare individual actually does make a discovery
worth noting. You can add literary detective Logan
Browning to that list.
By Christopher Dow
Students
18 They came. They filmed. They
conquered.
20 Weightless
21 An undergraduate entrepreneur
finds success in an organic
produce co-op.
22 Pioneering stem cell research to
aid stroke victims gets personal
for a Rice doctoral student.
23 Owl Microfinance student
group honored by Clinton Global
Initiative University
Arts
42 The infamous FEMA trailer is
transformed by art.
43 Developing a master plan for
public art on the Rice campus
44 It’s not unusual to hear artists talk
about the use of light and space.
It’s pretty rare when one’s art
18 consists of light and space.
Bookshelf
46 John Anderson likes to joke that
he studies the Antarctic in the
winter and the Gulf Coast in
the summer, but what he sees
happening along the Texas coast
is no laughing matter.
47 Richard Smith’s friends and
20
colleagues warned him not to
tackle the evolution of the “Yijing.”
47 A neuroscientist uses fictional
vignettes to explore the
possibilities of the afterlife.
Sports
48 Vaulting to new heights.
21
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 1
F O R E W O R D Rice Magazine
Vol. 65, No. 3

Sometimes, momentum is everything. Published by the

Office of Public Affairs
Linda Thrane, vice president
As in, if you don’t keep peddling the bicycle, you will topple Editor
over. Or if you pause to enjoy your lead, you may find your- Christopher Dow

Editorial Director
self bringing up the rear on the homestretch. Rice has always Tracey Rhoades

had the kind of momentum necessary to carry it into the up- Creative Director
Jeff Cox
per echelons of higher education — a momentum that is a Art Director
direct result of the high aspirations set forth by the university’s Chuck Thurmon

Editorial Staff
founding president, Edgar Odell Lovett. B.J. Almond, staff writer
Jade Boyd, staff writer
It has been a century since Lovett traveled around the world to develop those aspirations. Lovett Franz Brotzen, staff writer
visited great universities in England, Europe and Japan to understand what made an exceptional Merin Porter, staff writer
Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor
institution of higher learning. His journey led to two of Rice’s enduring principles: A great university Jessica Stark, staff writer
must be international in scope, and it must be flexible enough to change with the times and take Mike Williams, staff writer
advantage of unforeseeable opportunities. Thus, Lovett endowed Rice with the ability to capitalize
on and significantly contribute to the subsequent century’s monumental advancements in computa- Photographers
Tommy LaVergne, photographer
tion, digital communications and nanoscale science and technology well before the basic tenets of Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer
those fields were even conceived.
With that momentum behind us, we will celebrate, in three years, the university’s most impor- The Rice University Board
tant birthday yet: its centennial. Preliminary preparations already are under way, and you can read of Trustees
James W. Crownover, chair man; J.D.
about them in “The Countdown Begins.” Be sure to read, also, our piece on Melissa Kean, Rice’s Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith
centennial historian. T. Anderson; Subha Barry; Suzanne Deal
After assuming Rice’s helm five years ago, President David Leebron charted a fresh set of des- Booth; Alfredo Brener; Robert T. Brockman;
tinations for Rice with his Vision for the Second Century. While building on Lovett’s original intent Nancy P. Carlson; Robert L. Clarke; Bruce W.
Dunlevie; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Douglas
to keep Rice a great undergraduate university, Leebron’s vision expands the scope of Rice’s gradu- Lee Foshee; Susanne Morris Glasscock;
ate education and deepens and broadens the university’s research Robert R. Maxfield; M. Kenneth Oshman;
mission. Added to the many disciplines in which Rice already ex- Jeffery O. Rose; Lee H. Rosenthal; Hector
cels are newer fields, such as biosciences and biomedicine and the Ruiz; Marc Shapiro; L. E. Simmons; Robert
B. Tudor III; James S. Turley.
study of cultural and religious differences, that will affect, on many
levels, the lives of people around the world. Administrative Officers
This issue of Rice Magazine is filled with stories of advance- David W. Leebron, president; Eugene Levy,
ments and discoveries being made by Rice researchers across the provost; Kathy Collins, vice president
for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice president
board, from the sciences and engineering to the social sciences, for Administration; Chris Muñoz, vice
humanities and professional schools. And read, also, about alumna president for Enrollment; Linda Thrane, vice
Suzanne Deal Booth’s contributions to Rice’s artistic environment; the new university art director, president for Public Affairs; Scott W. Wise,
Molly Hubbard, who will have an active role in bringing more public art to campus; and LouAnn vice president for Investments and treasurer;
Richard A. Zansitis, general counsel; Darrow
Risseeuw, the woman responsible for the interior design of Rice buildings. They help create a cam- Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource
pus environment that allows our community to flourish. Development.
Nowhere is the fact that Rice encourages excellence more evident than in its students and
alumni. Students who stand out in this issue are seniors Faheem Ahmed and Anish Patel, who won Rice Magazine is published by the Office of
the “Oscar Correspondent Contest” sponsored by MTV’s 24-hour college network and the Academy Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and wound up hobnobbing with the stars on the red carpet at to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate
students, parents of undergraduates and
the Academy Awards ceremony. Other standouts are the students who created Owl Microfinance, friends of the university.
recognized recently by former President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative University for
their efforts to help the poor help themselves by starting businesses. And last but not least, be sure to Editorial Offices
read this issue’s profiles of two very different alums whose work has had far-reaching impacts: Rice Creative Services–MS 95
Board of Trustees Chairman James Crownover and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry. P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TTX
X 77251-1892
Momentum and a well-charted course have, indeed, carried Rice far, and the achievements and
Fax: 713-348-6751
influence it has realized during the last century are a fitting commemoration to Lovett’s aspirations. E-mail: ricemagazine@rice.edu
But Rice’s journey is just beginning. The Vision for the Second Century and the Centennial Campaign
provide focus and fuel for our momentum. Enjoy the ride with this issue of Rice Magazine. Postmaster
Send address changes to:
Rice University
Christopher Dow Development Services–MS 80
P.O. Box 1892
cloud@rice.edu Houston, TX 77251-1892
© J ULY 2 0 0 9 RICE UNIVE RSIT Y

“A friend who is also a member told me I can’t miss it.
I’ll never get another chance to see
Kenny Barron, Nelson Mandela and Dustin Hoffman
all in the same place.”
Move Over Bono — Naomi’s Here
Naomi Halas recently found herself searching Wikipedia to learn
about Thomas Pynchon and delighting in the possibility that, some-
where out there, Bono was Googling her.
The Rice University scientist, along with
two Rice alums — philanthropist John
Doerr and economist Karen Davis —
joined the reclusive novelist, the U2 singer
and a host of others renowned in their
fields when they were elected members of
the prestigious American Academy of Arts
and Sciences.
Halas, Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor
in Electrical and Computer Engineering and
professor of chemistry, biochemistry and
bioengineering, is an expert in photon-
ics and plasmonics whose lab deals in
biomedicine, advanced display technology,
solar power and many other applications
that depend on the nanoscale manipulation
of light. Recent breakthroughs have led to
human trials of a novel cancer treatment
and have suggested the possibility of an
invisibility cloak.
She’ll certainly make tracks for
Cambridge, Mass., to be among the
inductees in October. “A friend who is also
a member told me I can’t miss it,” Halas
said. “I’ll never get another chance to see
Kenny Barron, Nelson Mandela and Dustin
Hoffman all in the same place.”
Other marquee names among this year’s
group of 212 new fellows and 19 foreign
honorary members are James Earl Jones,
Marilyn Horne and Emmylou Harris.
Doerr ’73, who earned undergraduate
and master’s degrees in electrical engineer-
ing at Rice, is a venture capitalist with
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers whose
THROUGH THE
Sallyport
— Naomi Halas
Halas wasn’t aware she’d been nomi-
nated to join the academy, and she admitted
she didn’t know the particulars of how
her name rose to the top of the list. “But
certainly the area we work in — nanopar-
ticles and light — has become a hot topic
in nanoscience,” she said. “It has really
exploded in the last year or two. I think that
probably played an important part.”
Halas appreciates the challenge of
keeping pace with her peers, especially
interests as an entrepreneur and philanthro-
pist include innovative green technology, since being named an associate editor of
urban public education, poverty abatement Nano Letters, the most highly cited journal
and the advancement of women as leaders. in nanoscience and nanotechnology. “This
He was an early champion of Google and area has absolutely caught on fire across a
Amazon, among many other companies. bunch of different disciplines because it’s
Doerr, Rice’s commencement speaker very useful,” she said. “So I get to enjoy the
in 2007, and his wife, Ann ’75, recently burden of the success of this field. There’s
donated $15 million through their Beneficus a lot of great new work coming out every
Foundation to establish the Rice Center for single week.”
Engineering Leadership. —Mike Williams
Davis ’65, president of the
Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based
health care think tank, is a former assistant
professor of economics at Rice who earned
both her undergraduate and doctoral
degrees here, the latter in 1969.
Before joining the fund, she chaired
the Department of Health Policy and
Management at the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health, where
she also was a professor of economics.
She was deputy assistant secretary for
health policy in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services from 1977
to 1980, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution and a visiting lecturer at
Harvard. In 1991, Rice recognized her
achievements with its Distinguished
Alumni Award.
Davis returned to Rice last year to
speak at the James A. Baker III Institute
for Public Policy’s “Campaign 2008: The
Issues Considered” event on health care
reform.
Naomi Halas
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 3
 Application Boom
Word is spreading that Rice University
is on the move, and prospective
students are hearing the call. This
year, undergraduate applications
passed the 10,000 mark for the first
time in Rice history and then went on
to officially top 11,000.
Vice President for Enrollment Chris
Muñoz credits Rice’s standing as
one of the best values in educa-
tion for keeping the university as
the top choice for the best students.
“Students know we are taking our
exceptional educational experience
to even higher levels; populating our
campus with great new educational,
residential and recreational build-
ings; and setting our sights on being
one of the best research universities
in the world,” Muñoz said.
Although applications from
$15 Million
Gift to
Redesign
Engineering
Education
John Doerr
Two Rice University alumni with engineering degrees — he a famed venture
capitalist, she an environmental activist — have given their alma mater $15
million to transform the way engineers are educated.
The gift from the Benificus Foundation, a University. His interests as an entrepreneur
private charitable organization set up by and philanthropist extend to innovative
alumni John ’73 and Ann Howland Doerr green technology, urban public education,
’75, will fund the new Rice Center for fighting poverty and the advancement of
Engineering Leadership and raise the bar for women as leaders. Ann Doerr, who earned
engineering educators nationwide. The cen- bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical
ter’s mission is to broaden Rice engineering engineering at Rice, is an environmental
education by incorporating current and activist and a trustee of the New York-based
“Our increasingly complex and global world demands great,
ethical engineering leaders, and you can’t fake integrity.”
—Ann Doerr

residents of Texas, historically Rice’s

strongest constituency, were up 10.5
percent, the most dramatic increases
were from foreign nationals, African-
Americans and non-Texans. The
number of female applicants to Rice
rose 15.2 percent, compared with a
9.8 percent increase for males.
The figures are good news as
Rice prepares to admit its largest
freshman class ever. With two new
residential colleges nearing comple-
tion, the university will have the
capacity to welcome an estimated
900 new undergraduates in 2009, up
from the record 2008 freshman class
of 789.
—Mike Williams
emerging crises facing society and develop-
ing personal leadership skills needed to
solve pressing global problems.
“Our increasingly complex and global
world demands great, ethical engineering
leaders,” Ann Doerr said. “And you can’t
fake integrity.”
“The world’s best engineers are
entrepreneurs and leaders,” added John
Doerr, who was No. 1 this year on Forbes
Magazine’s Midas list of the world’s top 100
tech deal makers. “They’re willing to take
risks. They know innovation matters but
execution is everything. It takes leadership
to change the world.”
Doerr earned undergraduate and
master’s degrees in electrical engineer-
ing from Rice and an MBA from Harvard
Environmental Defense Fund.
The gift brings the Doerrs’ commitment
to the Centennial Campaign to $22.5 million.
A matching component of their donation
could bring an additional $10 million to the
center. Their other recent donations funded
computational cancer research administered
by the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information
Technology and two endowed chairs, one
named for Kennedy’s parents and currently
held by Professor Krishna Palem and one
held by Professor Keith Cooper.
—Mike Williams
Learn more about the Centennial Campaign and
giving to Rice University:
› › › www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign

4 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE
Collecting Data
Is a Wii Bit of Fun
Why are some people fast learners?
Can we teach everybody to be like them? Yes, Wii can.
In a research project recently funded by the National Science Foundation, Rice
professors Marcia O’Malley and Michael Byrne are making use of Nintendo’s
popular Wii video game technology to codify learning systems in ways that
can be used in a range of human endeavors, from sports to surgery.
The project follows up on O’Malley’s “We’re already grabbing motion data
pioneering work that utilized robots to map from the Wiimote.” said O’Malley, “Soon,
out how people learn physical tasks. The we’ll be able to measure a range of motion
study was used to treat stroke victims, but and then turn it into a mathematical model.”
its ultimate goal was to program robots to For the researchers, that’s where the
teach in new ways. games really begin. Their plan is to bring
With the new NSF grant, O’Malley together robotics and virtual reality in a way
and Byrne will spend the next three years that lets people absorb information through
measuring the motions involved in tasks repetition of the motor pathways. Think of
Their plan is to bring together robotics and virtual reality in a way that lets people
absorb information through repetition of the motor pathways.
as mundane as playing paddleball and as hitting a tennis ball. Learning by trial and
complex as flying a fighter jet. To do that, error is fine, but it would be much easier if
having a motion-capture device at hand will a robotic sleeve could tell you exactly where
be invaluable. The device is called an ac- that hitch in your swing is and gently prod
celerometer, but video game fans know it as you to hit the ball correctly.
a Wiimote, the handheld wand that serves O’Malley and Byrne’s research into what
as a wireless interface between player and they term the “cognitive modeling of human
screen. motor skill acquisition” will focus on three
“It’s the only part of the system we types of learners. “There are experts, who
really need,” said O’Malley, director of learn at a slow, steady pace, but they get
there,” O’Malley said. “There are novices,
Rice’s Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces
Laboratory. The researchers will compare who learn at a slow, steady pace, but
data from the Wiimote to that from a more sometimes they never get there. And then
expensive Vicon motion capture system to there are those who start off awful, but
“see how good the Wii really is.” somewhere in the middle of training they
Sallyport
suddenly ‘get it.’ We’re interested in how
these groups of performers differentiate
and if there are inherent characteristics of
movement and control policies that lead to
expertise.”
Here’s where Byrne’s own expertise
comes in. An associate professor of psychol-
ogy who specializes in computer–human
interaction, he’ll analyze feedback on the
range of motion used in performing a task
and figure out precisely where the most
efficient learning happens.
“I work with the sort of mathematical
computational theory of human perfor-
mance that’s never been extended to the
kind of dense motor activity we want to
study,” said Byrne. “We find that some Wii
games have really good learning properties
we can measure, and there also are some
that people don’t seem to get a lot better at.
I can tell you I’m about as bad at Wii golf
now as I was when I started playing it.”
—Mike Williams
Read more about engineering at Rice:
› › › engr.rice.edu
Discover the research being conducted in psychology:
› › › socialsciences.rice.edu
Find out how you can contribute to Rice’s research:
› › › www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 5
 Viral Mug Shot
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Rice University’s pre-
cise new image of a virus’s protective coat is seriously undervalued.
More than three years in the making, the
image contains some 5 million atoms —
each in precisely the right place — and it
could help scientists find better ways to
both fight viral infections and design new
gene therapies.
The stunning image, which debuted in
the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, reveals the structure of a type
of protein coat shared by hundreds of
known viruses containing double-stranded
RNA genomes. Painstakingly created from
hundreds of high-energy X-ray diffraction
images, the image paints the clearest picture
yet of the viruses’ genome-encasing shell,
called a “capsid.”
Capsids come into play because viruses
can reproduce themselves only by invading
a host cell and hijacking its biochemical ma-
chinery. But when they invade, viruses need
to seal off their genetic payload to prevent it
from being destroyed by the cell’s protective
mechanisms.
“When these viruses invade cells, the
capsids get taken inside and never com-
pletely break apart,” said lead researcher
Jane Tao, assistant professor of biochemistry
and cell biology at Rice.
Though there are more than 5,000
6 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
known viruses, including whole families
that are marked by wide variations in ge-
netic payload and other characteristics, most
of them use either a helical or a spherical
capsid.
Jane Tao Junhua Pan
In their attempt to precisely map the
spherical variety, Tao and lead author
Junhua Pan, a postdoctoral research associ-
ate at Rice, first had to create a crystalline
form of the capsid that could be X-rayed.
They chose penicillium stoloniferum virus
F, or PsV-F, a virus that infects the fungus
that makes penicillin. Although PsV-F does
not infect humans, it is similar to others
that do. By analyzing the way the X-rays
scattered when they struck the crystals, the
Painstakingly
created from
hundreds of
high-energy
X-ray diffraction
images, the
image paints the
clearest picture
yet of the
viruses’ genome-
encasing
shell, called a
“capsid.”
team created a precise 3-D image of the
spherical capsid.
Previous studies had shown that spheri-
cal capsids contain dozens of copies of the
capsid protein, or CP, in an interlocking
arrangement. The new research identified
the sphere’s basic building block: a four-
piece arrangement of CP molecules called
a tetramer, which could also be building
blocks for other viruses’ protein coats. By
deciphering both the arrangement and the
basic building block, the research team
hopes to learn more about the capsid-
forming process.
“Because many viruses use this type of
capsid, understanding how it forms could
lead to new approaches for antiviral thera-
pies,” Tao said. “It could also aid researchers
who are trying to create designer viruses
and other tools that can deliver therapeutic
genes into cells.”
The research was supported by the
National Institutes of Health, the USDA,
The Welch Foundation, the Kresge
Science Initiative endowment fund, the
Agouron Foundation and the San Diego
Supercomputer Center.
—Jade Boyd
Learn more:
› › › ricemagazine.info/02
 THROUGH THE
Sallyport

Not Your Parents’ Career Services Center

If Rice’s Career Services Center was the chrysalis, then the butterfly
is the Center for Student Professional Development (CSPD), a dynamic
and interactive learning center designed to enhance Rice students’
knowledge and skills for long-term professional advancement.

Unlike most college career centers, which focus on job placement, the CSPD offers Share Your
resources that help students far beyond their initial employment by focusing on three
core areas: postgraduate planning, employment research and professional communi-
cation. Tailored to meet the needs of Rice students, the center aims to increase student
Rice Memories
understanding of personal strengths, professional
options, pre-employment communication skills, Make a contribution to the
and knowledge of institutions, organizations and rich archival past of Rice
companies. The focus on education and skill University by answering the
building has transformed the CSPD from a col- Fondren Library Woodson
lection of services based on job placement to a
resource and training center that helps students
Research Center’s call for
understand their interests and values and trans- materials on the history of
late that self-knowledge into sound judgments the student experience at
about which industries, fields and graduate pro- Rice University.
grams to choose.
One of the center’s principal resources is its new Web site, which expands the Among the items the center is seeking are
reach of the CSPD and provides students a more streamlined, user-friendly resource that student letters that describe undergradu-
supports their professional development needs. Future versions of the site will include ate and graduate life at Rice — academic
innovative software for job and internship exploration. and extracurricular — along with items
—Jessica Stark such as uniforms, costumes, class rings,
party favors, trophies, photographs and
Learn more about the Center for Student Professional Development: scrapbooks. It also is soliciting memoirs on
››› www.cspd.rice.edu every aspect of the student experience, in-
cluding sports, professors, dorm (and later,
college) life, dances and anything else that
may have helped characterize your time
at Rice. A contribution from Jean Thomas
McCaine ’45 will facilitate the cataloging
of these materials.

To submit collections of letters or other

items, please contact Fondren Library’s
Head of Special Collections Lee Pecht at
713-348-2120 or pecht@rice.edu.

To donate your student memoirs, please

send them to Rice University, Woodson
Research Center–MS 215, P.O. Box 1892,
Houston, TX 77251.

Be sure to include your name, major and

original hometown with your submission,
as well as the dates you attended Rice and
a brief summary of your post-Rice life.

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 7

 Business Plan Competition
Offers a Wealth of Opportunity
The Rice Business Plan Competition,
which has become the world’s richest
and largest business plan competition,
saw a 45 percent increase in entries for
this year’s event in April.
Forty-two teams were chosen from nearly 340
entries submitted from around the globe. The
teams presented their new technology business
plans to more than 200 venture capital investors,
entrepreneurs and business leaders who served
as judges. At stake was a chance to win a share of
more than $800,000 in cash and prizes.
Thirty-six of the teams contended in four cat-
egories — life sciences, information technology,
energy/clean technology and sustainability — and
the other six competed in the area of social entre-
preneurship, a new category this year.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Dynamics team
won the $325,000 grand prize with a marketing
proposal for interactive credit and debit cards.
The team’s next-generation interactive payment
cards use programmable magnetic stripes to com-
municate dynamic information to the 60 million
1970s-era magnetic stripe readers that process
day-to-day payment card transactions.
“We hope this year’s crop of competitors turn
out to be as successful as last year’s,” said Brad
Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance for
Technology and Entrepreneurship. “Through the
mentoring and networking available at the Rice
Business Plan Competition, nearly 70 percent of
last year’s competitors have gone on to success-
fully launch their companies, raise funding and
build their businesses.”
The Rice Business Plan Competition is
hosted by the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of
Business and the Rice Alliance, which was formed
as a strategic partnership between the George R.
Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of
Natural Sciences and the Jones School. FORTUNE
Small Business magazine co-sponsored the com-
petition again this year and featured the winners,
teams and competition in its June 2009 issue and
on CNNMoney.com.
—Mary Lynn Fernau
For a comprehensive list of winners visit:
››› ricemagazine.info/19
8 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Batteries Get
a Boost
Need to store electricity more efficiently? Put it behind bars.
That’s essentially the finding of a
team of Rice University researchers
who have created hybrid carbon-
nanotube/metal-oxide arrays as
electrode material that may improve
the performance of lithium-ion
batteries.
With battery technology high on the list
of priorities in a world demanding electric
cars and gadgets that last longer between
charges, such innovations are key to the
future. Electrochemical capacitors and fuel
cells also would benefit.
The Rice research team, led by
Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and
Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Science and professor of chemistry, is
growing nanotubes that look — and act —
like the coaxial conducting lines used in
cables. The coaxial tubes consist of a man-
ganese oxide shell and a highly conductive
nanotube core.
“The nanotube is highly electrically
conducting and also can absorb lithium,
and the manganese oxide has very high
capacity but poor electrical conductivity,”
said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a Rice
postdoctoral research associate. “When
you combine them, you get something
interesting.”
Pulickel Ajayan, left, and
Sanketh Gowda
That would be the ability to hold a
lot of juice and transmit it efficiently. The
researchers expect the number of charge/
discharge cycles such batteries can handle
will be greatly enhanced, even with a
larger capacity.
“At this point, we’re trying to engineer
and modify the structures to get the best
performance,” said Manikoth Shaijumon,
also a Rice postdoc. The microscopic nano-
tubes, only a few nanometers across, can
be bundled into any number of configura-
tions. Future batteries may be thin and
flexible. “And the whole idea can be trans-
ferred to a large scale as well,” Shaijumon
said. “It is very manufacturable.”
The hybrid nanocables grown in the
Rice-developed process could also elimi-
nate the need for binders — materials used
in current batteries that hold the elements
together but hinder their conductivity.
The project is supported by funding
from the Hartley Family Foundation, and
the findings appear in a paper written
by Reddy, Shaijumon, doctoral student
Sanketh Gowda and Ajayan in the online
version of the American Chemical Society’s
Nano Letters.
—Mike Williams
 THROUGH THE
Sallyport

Science Rocks
at Rice
You wouldn’t expect to hear
the names “James Tour” and
“Guitar Hero” in the same
sentence. Until now.

concepts in young minds.

The much-honored Rice University professor and a team of students have been The compositions are by Bram Barker, a
working away on a set of songs for the popular video game that mixes a little 1999 graduate of Rice’s Shepherd School of
science with a lot of shred. And for those who’d rather move their feet than Music now living and working in Japan, and
their fingers, well, Tour’s got something for them, too. Aidin Ashoori, a Martel College sophomore
and biochemistry major who also writes
music for video games. With undergraduate
T
Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry and body and believes that all work and no students Matt Szalkowski, Gustavo Chagoya
professor of mechanical engineering and play is not necessarily the best way to teach Gazcon, Keenan May and Johnny Li han-
materials science and of computer sci- material that can be abstract at best. dling game programming and Web design,
ence, covers a lot of beats in the world of “Finnish kids are blowing everyone the costs have been relatively low.
nanoscience at Rice, where he developed away, science-wise,” he said. “In Finland, Downloading components for
the first nanocar and recently ushered in a they alternate 20 minutes of instruction with “StepMania” or “Guitar Hero” from the site
breakthrough in graphene that may make 20 minutes of play. There’s a lot to be said gets users a half-dozen or so songs for the

Tour went to eighth- and ninth-grade textbooks, reduced each chapter to about 10 bullet points
and gave it to the composer, who converted the bullet points into lyrics with music.

memory for computers and devices cheap
and plentiful.
His new twist isn’t meant for scientists,
but for scientists-to-be. “SciRave,” developed
through a grant from the National Science
Foundation, aims to work the basics of a
science education into “Guitar Hero” and
“StepMania,” both proven winners in the
world of video games.
Tour, who developed “SciRave” as an
extension of his NanoKids project, wants
“SciRave” (called “SciJam” in its “Guitar
Hero” incarnation) to feed the mind and
for not making a kid who’s bursting with
energy sit in a seat for two hours straight.”
Two sample songs on the “SciRave”
Web site put cellular biology to a funk-
metal track (“All the Pieces”) and a robotic
reading of measurements to a scratch beat
(“SI System”). Tour went to eighth- and
ninth-grade textbooks, reduced each
chapter to about 10 bullet points and gave it
to the composer, who converted the bullet
points into lyrics with music. The repetitive
natures of metal, hip-hop and scratch make
the styles perfect for embedding scientific
games, which can be played on a computer
with or without dedicated controllers. All of
the downloads are free.
The big question among Tour’s col-
leagues is, of course, has he tried out the
dance pad? He admitted he has, sort of. “I
watched my son do the dance pad, and he
was very good. I tried it for about five sec-
onds and said, ‘This isn’t possible for me.’”
—Mike Williams
Visit SciRave:
› › › www.scirave.com

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 9

 Scientists have long known that animals use scent to
communicate. But how much does the human sense
of smell complement the more powerful senses of
sight and hearing?
T find out, Denise Chen, an assistant
To
professor of psychology, used functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look
at how the brains of female volunteers
processed and encoded the smell of sexual
sweat from men. Nineteen healthy female
subjects inhaled olfactory stimuli from four
sources, one of which was sweat gathered
from sexually aroused males. The study
is the first fMRI study of human social
chemosignals.
The results of the experiment indicated
that the brain recognizes chemosensory
communication, including human sexual
sweat, and that several areas of the brain
are involved in processing the emotional
value of the olfactory information. These
include the right fusiform region, the
right orbitofrontal cortex and the right
hypothalamus.
“With the exception of the hypothala-
mus, neither the orbitofrontal cortex nor
10 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
“Our results imply that the
chemosensory information
from natural human sexual
sweat is encoded more
holistically in the brain
rather than specifically for
its sexual quality.”
—Denise Chen
the fusiform region is considered to be
associated with sexual motivation and
behavior,” Chen said. “Our results imply that
the chemosensory information from natural
human sexual sweat is encoded more ho-
listically in the brain rather than specifically
for its sexual quality.”
Humans are evolved to respond to
salient socioemotional information, and just
as distinctive neural mechanisms underlie
the processing of emotions in facial and
vocal expressions, so, too, do mechanisms
for human social chemosignals.
The research, co-authored by Chen
and Wen Zhou, graduate student in the
Department of Psychology, was sup-
ported in part by the National Institutes
of Health and published in the Journal of
Neuroscience.
—Franz Brotzen

Wireless at WARP Speed
Nothing kills innovation like having
to reinvent the wheel, and that’s
especially tr ue for electronics
researchers who had to build every
test system completely from scratch
to assess new high-speed wire-
less technologies.
“It was incredibly frustrating,” said Ashutosh
Sabharwal, director of Rice University’s
Center for Multimedia Communication
(CMC). So, in 2006, CMC set out to change
that by creating a turnkey, open-source
platform that would let wireless researchers
expand their tech menus. Now, the plat-
form — dubbed WARP — is whetting the
appetites of heavyweights like Nokia, MIT,
Toyota, NASA and Ericsson, and it’s already
being used to test everything from low-cost
wireless Internet in rural India to futuristic
“unwired” spacecraft.
WARP stands for “wireless open-access
research platform,” and physically, WARP
is a collection of circuit boards containing
“When you put a new technology into people’s hands,
they’ll inevitably find innovative ways to use it.”
a powerful processor and all the transmit-
ters and other gadgets needed for high-end
wireless communications. What makes
WARP boards so effective is their flexibility.
When researchers need to test several kinds
of radio transmitters, wireless routers and
network access points, all they need to do is
write programs that cause the WARP boards
to act as those devices.
The concept is starting to pay off. At
Rice, CMC Project Manager Patrick Murphy
— the former CMC doctoral student who
developed the original WARP architecture
— is collaborating with graduate students to
use WARP in proof-of-concept technologies
for “cognitive wireless.” The cognitive wire-
less concept stems from the fact that up to
half of the nation’s finite wireless spectrum
is unused at any given time. Sabharwal
THROUGH THE
Sallyport
said researchers have talked for years about
designing smart, “cognitive” networks that
can shift frequencies on the fly, opening up
vast, unused amounts of the spectrum for
consumer use.
Motorola is using the system to test
an entirely new low-cost architecture for
wireless Internet in rural India. It’s the sort
of low-profit-margin project that probably
wouldn’t have gotten beyond the drawing
board if not for WARP. Another early adopt-
er, NASA, is using WARP to look for ways
to save weight, cost and complexity in the
wiring systems for future spacecraft. Several
large wireless companies are using WARP
to test schemes for wireless phone networks
—Ashutosh Sabharwal
that can transfer data up to 100 times faster
than current 3G networks. Toyota is using
WARP to test car-to-car communications
— systems that automotive engineers hope
to use in the future for collision avoidance,
traffic management and more.
Some users are even partially disassem-
bling the boards to add new functions.
“When you put a new technology
into people’s hands, they’ll inevitably find
innovative ways to use it,” Sabharwal said.
“That’s one of the best things about WARP.
It is going to lead to innovations that we
never could have anticipated.”
—Jade Boyd
Learn More:
› ›› ricemagazine.info/11
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 11
12 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE
Sallyport

Rice evolutionary biologist Michael Kohn and his collaborators — Roger

research Price of Baylor College of Medicine and Hans-Joachim Pelz of the Julius
Kuehn Institute in Germany — report they have found that common rats
project at Rice with a genetic mutation have developed a resistance to rat poison, aka
has brought warfarin. That’s good news for the rats, but it comes at a price. The mu-
tation also leaves them susceptible to arterial calcification and, poten-
scientists to the brink tially, osteoporosis, and that’s good news for humans.

of comprehending a In the mutated gene, the researchers found what could be the
long-standing medical link that solves the calcification paradox: the puzzling association
between metabolic bone disease and vascular calcification that
mystery that may has eluded researchers for years. Kohn said a good part of the
link cardiovascular answer lies in the vitamin K cycle, which is known to regulate the
coagulation of blood — clotting. It also is suspected of helping
disease, osteoporosis keep calcium out of the body’s vessels and in its bones, which has

and perhaps even particular ramifications for postmeno-

pausal women for whom loss of bone
Alzheimer’s disease. density is a serious issue.
Warfarin has long served humans as
And for that, we can a medicine called Coumadin, because
thank the rat. it interferes with the vitamin K cycle. In
regulated doses, it thins the blood by
reducing its ability to coagulate, which
helps prevent heart attacks, stroke and
blood clots. In larger doses, it once
excelled as rat poison; rats that ingested
the poison would simply bleed to
death. But the genetic mutation in rats Michael Kohn
effectively blocks that interference.
“I have a feeling the mutation predated the introduction of
warfarin,” said Kohn. “But it was rare because it causes side effects.
It’s not an advantageous mutation unless it’s exposed to warfarin.”
Rats without the mutation died, while those with the muta-
tion multiplied. “These rats, in the absence of poison, suffer from
cardiovascular disease, just like we do,” said Kohn, who added that
the kidneys of rats in the study were “calcified to an extent that is
shocking.”
His hope is that the equivalent gene in humans turns out to be
the key to a number of ills.
“As you look at humans, this calcification of arteries is, I sus-
pect, a very important precondition to thrombosis and stroke,” he
said. “So to find such a strong effect astonished us. We had a tough
time publishing the paper because people might have thought it
was too good to be true, that you can explain the effect to such a
degree by looking at just one gene.”
Kohn and his colleagues have begun a study on osteoporosis
in rats that have the mutation, and early results are promising. “The
prediction is the mutant rats have a lower bone density,” he said. “I
think if we complete and confirm that as well, it would be a major
breakthrough. That means one gene — one mutation — explains
the so-called calcification paradox.”
Finally, he noted, Alzheimer’s patients tend to be vitamin
K-deficient, which opens up avenues for further study. “Could there
be one mutation that explains osteoporosis, arteriosclerosis and
Alzheimer’s?” he wondered. “That would be huge.”
Read the paper in Artery Research: —Mike Williams

› ›› ricemagazine.info/01

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 13

Rice Ranks
Third in
Nanotoxicology
Publications
A new study by researchers
at the University of
California at Santa Barbara
(UCSB) finds that Rice
University ranks third
globally in publications
in the growing field of
nanotoxicology.
The study noted that peer-
reviewed research on the
toxicology of nanomaterials has
grown nearly 600 percent since
2000 and that Rice scholars
have authored 23 papers on the
subject. That’s just a handful
of papers fewer than the entire
University of California system
and just two fewer than the
Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The UCSB study made
significant use of the Virtual
Journal of Nanotechnology
Environment, Health and Safety,
or VJ-Nano EHS, published
by the International Council
on Nanotechnology, an
affiliate of the Rice Center for
Biological and Environmental
Nanotechnology. The virtual
journal is the only repository
that attempts to compile
all published research
on the safety, health and
environmental implications of
nanomaterials.
—Jade Boyd
Read the study in the Journal of
Nanoparticle Research:
› ›› ricemagazine.info/13
Visit ICON’s Virtual Journal of
Nanotechnology Environment,
Health and Safety:
› ›› icon.rice.edu/
virtualjournal.cfm
14 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
What Is That Word ... ?
Ever been frustrated because the word
you’re looking for is eluding you?
Most of us forgive ourselves the occasional
forgetfulness, but for stroke patients suffering
from aphasia, the inability to find the right
word can be frequent and profound. Tatiana
Schnur wants to know why.
When speaking, a person must select
one word from a competing set of words. A
speaker who wants to mention a specific ani-
mal, for example, has to single out “dog” from
“cat,” “horse” and other similar possibilities.
Schnur, an assistant professor of psychology,
wondered whether a particular part of the
brain is necessary for resolving the competi-
tion for choosing the correct word.
She and her colleagues compared brain
images from 16 healthy volunteers and 12
volunteers who suffer from aphasia, a lan-
guage disorder acquired as a result of stroke.
People who have aphasia frequently experi-
ence difficulty with speech. The study cov-
ered two experiments where people named a
series of images and conflict between words
increased as more images were named. In
the first experiment, healthy speakers’ brain
activations were measured using functional
magnetic resonance imaging. The second
experiment mapped performance deficits to
lesion locations in participants with aphasia.
The researchers found that while two
parts of the brain — the left inferior frontal
gyrus (LIFG) and the left temporal cortex —
respond to increased conflict among words
competing for selection during speech, only
the LIFG is necessary to resolve the competi-
tion for successful word production. The LIFG
includes Broca’s area, which is responsible
for aspects of speech production, language
processing and language comprehension.
It is of particular interest to the researchers
because damage to this area may explain
the hesitant, nonfluent speech exhibited by
those described as Broca’s aphasics.
By looking at direct parallels between the
healthy and aphasic volunteers, Schnur and
colleagues coupled location in the brain with
specific speech processes, and they learned
that the ability of aphasic speakers to resolve
competition that arises in the course of lan-
guage processing does appear to depend on
the integrity of the LIFG.
The study, “Localizing interference dur-
ing naming: Convergent neuroimaging and
neuropsychological evidence for the func-
tion of Broca’s area,” was published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. It was funded by the National
Institutes of Health.
—Franz Brotzen
Read the study
› › › ricemagazine.info/06

Healing vs. Quality of Life
Healing an elderly patient’s physical prob-
lems does not automatically improve the
patient’s quality of life.
That’s what Vikas Mittal of Rice’s Jesse H.
Jones Graduate School of Business and co-
researchers at the University of Pittsburgh
learned from a study of residents in two
nonprofit elder-care nursing homes in
western Pennsylvania.
“A lot of people look at the care of
elderly people in terms of clinical outcomes
such as ulcers, depression and pain,” said
Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of
Management. “The conventional think-
“Forty years ago the national focus was on taking care
of children. Now we see more and more people
struggling to care for elderly family members.”
ing has been that if you heal the patient’s
physical condition, their quality of life will
automatically improve. We found that this
isn’t always the case. While there is an
overall connection between physical health
and self-reported quality of life, not every
finding was consistent.”
The researchers interviewed the patients
at six-month intervals over a three-year pe-
riod to determine the association between
changes in clinical health factors and the
patients’ perception of their quality of life.
They found that patients with improved
physical conditions didn’t always feel their
quality of life had improved.
The results show the need for incorpo-
rating psychological factors into evaluating
nursing homes and the care they provide
to the elderly, Mittal said. Currently, the
U.S. government mandates the data used
THROUGH THE
to monitor the health and quality of life in
nursing homes, but all measurements are
based on clinical factors. Consequently,
when evaluating nursing homes for their
elderly relatives, people may not be able to
understand the extent to which their loved
ones could have a high quality of life there.
“The system is completely devoid of
psychological factors,” Mittal said. “This is a
very limiting approach because it treats the
elderly person as a set of symptoms and not
as a whole individual.”
The study also suggests racial and
cultural implications for nursing home
patients, but the sample was too small for
—Vikas Mittal
valid conclusions. The researchers plan
long-term studies with larger sets of patients
across more nursing homes. What they learn
could prove extremely useful, especially in
culturally diverse states.
“Forty years ago the national focus was
on taking care of children,” Mittal said.
“Now we see more and more people strug-
gling to care for elderly family members.
It is critical for us to better understand the
psychological factors that comprise quality
of life for the elderly, as well as physical
health of these individuals, so that we can
provide them with the best possible care.”
Learn more:
› ›› www.ricemagazine.info/14
Read the study in The Gerontologist
› ›› www.ricemagazine.info/15
Sallyport
Journal Takes Top Honors
One of the world’s leading in-
terdisciplinary journals on Asia,
Rice University-based positions:
east asia cultures critique, was
unanimously selected as the win-
ner of the 2008 Council of Editors
of Learned Journals (CELJ) award
for Best Special Issue for “War
Capital Trauma.”
Edited and founded by Tani Barlow,
director of Rice’s Chao Center for
Asian Studies, the publication also
received the prestigious 2005 Best
New Journal award from CELJ.
The special issue explored the
notions of trauma and memory
in relation to societies in Asia in
recent history. Essays ranged from
discussions of ghosts and politics to
analysis of militarized sexual slavery
during Japanese imperialism. It
also included reflections on surviv-
ing Khmer Rouge extermination
camps in Burma, an examination
of the 1997 Asian finance crisis and
a discussion of fantasies about the
atom bomb contained in the manga
“Akira.”
“I am particularly proud of this
award because ‘War Capital Trauma’
seeks to make a historical and
philosophical contribution to thinking
about our own moment,” said Barlow,
who also serves as the T.T. and W.F.
Chao Professor of Asian Studies. “It
is a great honor to receive the Best
Special Issue award from our peers
and to know that scholars and readers
are claiming a stake in this debate
about politics, capital, suffering and
the future.”
—Jessica Stark
Read the introduction to
“War Capital Trauma”:
› › › www.ricemagazine.info/12
For more information about the
Chao Center, visit:
› › › chaocenter.rice.edu
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 15
 Let Your Mind Fly
It was no mere flight of fancy. To commemorate the December
1903 flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright — and in the “spirit of
intellectual mischief” — anonymous students stealthily mount-
ed an overhead display of paper airplanes in the main foyer of
Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. At least that’s what the note
they left said. The note also encouraged passersby to “take a
moment to appreciate being here,” “take on the knowledge of
the ages” and “feed an intellectual curiosity.” No one has
come forward to claim responsibility for this feat, which,
according to Carolie Allgood, school administrator in
the George R. Brown School of Engineering, “took a
good bit of planning and fishing line.”

Owlets
BRC à la Cart
When
hen the BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) begins blaz-
ing new biomedical trails in July, faculty, staff and students travel-
ing to the new center from campus will need a trail of their own.
Fortunately, Rice’s Facilities, Engineering and Planning department
anticipated the need and has constructed a 1,000-foot-long path for
that purpose.
For use by pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers of the university’s
small electric service carts, the path originates near Wiess College,
passes through the storm-water detention basin, and runs between
Ryan Moore, manager of networking for
Main Street and the track stadium. Since university carts are not Network Management, put his ingenuity to work
allowed to cross public thoroughfares, the path ends in a cart to create this family of tiny Lego owlets, which
parking lot at the corner of Main Street and University Boulevard. were displayed in the second floor conference
Pedestrians and bicyclists can then access the BRC via the inter- room of the Mudd Building.
section’s pedestrian crosswalk.

An Advanced Degree of Living

Rice University graduate stu-
dents have a new place to call
home with the opening in January
of the Rice Village Apartments,
located on Shakespeare Street,
one block south of the Rice
Village. The four-story residential
building, totaling 119,000 square
feet, features 237 beds in 137
fully furnished units, a bike room
and dedicated shuttle service to
and from the university.

16 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Barry, Deal Booth Elected Rice Trustees
Rice University alumnae Subha Viswanathan Barry and
Suzanne Deal Booth have been elected to the Rice Board
of Trustees.
“Subha’s experience with integrating diversity
into one of the world’s leading financial com-
panies, and Suzanne’s commitment to pro-
tecting visual and cultural heritage around
the world will give our board special insight
into issues that have become increasingly
important as Rice extends its international
reach and interaction,” board Chairman Jim
Crownover ’65 said. “They are wonderful ad-
ditions to our board.”
President David Leebron
said Barry and Deal Booth
have already benefited Rice in
many ways. “Subha’s interna-
tional expertise and network
were a huge help when Sallie
Keller-McNulty and I made our
visit to India in 2007 to meet
with educational, business and
government leaders,” he said.
“Suzanne’s active involvement
with the Rice Art Committee
has helped expose our stu-
dents to all aspects of art, and
she has also helped Rice build
collaborations with Houston’s
art community and museums
through the Suzanne Deal
Booth Collaborative Arts Fund. Subha Viswanathan Barry
(See story on Page 44–45.)
“Both bring expertise and
experience that will contribute richly to the
objectives we’ve set in our Vision for the
Second Century, extending our international
reach and Houston outreach among them.”
Barry earned a master of business and
public management degree and a master of
accounting degree from Rice’s Jesse H. Jones
Graduate School of Business in 1985 before
joining Merrill Lynch in 1989. There, she has
served as a financial adviser and branch
manager in the private client group and cre-
ated the firm’s Multicultural and Diversified
Business Development group, which helped
establish Merrill Lynch as the pre-eminent
wealth-management firm among diverse
and multicultural markets. She then served
as head of Global Diversity and Inclusion for
Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., with responsibility
for managing and integrating existing and
new diversity efforts across the corpora-
tion worldwide. In 2005, she was appointed
to her current role as managing director at
THROUGH THE
Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Barry serves on the board and the
Corporate Circle advisory committee of the
National Council for Research on Women.
She is a Corporate Council member of the
White House Project and a Hidden Brain
Drain Task Force member. She also serves
on the advisory board for Voice, Hyperion’s
imprint for women.
Suzanne Deal Booth
Barry’s awards include the Women’s
Fund of New Jersey Award for Outstanding
Achievement in Banking and Finance, and
she has been inducted into the YWCA of
the city of New York’s Academy of Woman
Achievers. The National Organization for
Women honored her as one of its 2008
Women of Power and Influence. A three-time
cancer survivor, Barry supports and coaches
newly diagnosed patients with coping strate-
gies and work/life balance.
Barry serves on the Jones School’s
Council of Overseers and has been exten-
sively involved with Rice by attending alum-
ni events in the New York area and Jones
School events on campus. She and her hus-
band, Jim ’84, are Rice Associates and estab-
lished the James and Subha Barry Fellowship
in Business to provide financial assistance
to students at the Jones School. One of their
children — Tara — is an undergraduate in
Rice’s class of 2010.
Sallyport
Native Texan Deal Booth graduated cum
laude from Rice in 1977 with a B.A. in art
history. Through the work-study program
at Rice and her later studies at New York
University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she
received an M.A. degree in art history and
a certificate in art conservation, Deal Booth
benefited from the direct guidance of legend-
ary Houston art collector and philanthropist
Dominique de Menil.
Inspired by de Menil, Deal Booth has
made a career of preserving art and his-
tory. She has worked at such notable insti-
tutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the Menil Collection and, with a grant from
the Smithsonian Institution, at the Museum
of New Mexico. Her postgraduate fellowship,
funded by the Kress Foundation, took her
to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she
restored important 20th-century
paintings. She then moved to
Los Angeles to work at the Getty
Conservation Institute and, later,
as a consultant at the J. Paul
Getty Trust.
Deal Booth and her hus-
band, David, created the Booth
Heritage Foundation, which
provides many cultural activities
and community services, and
founded the Friends of Heritage
Preservation, a nonprofit or-
ganization that responds to
critical preservation needs in
the United States and abroad.
They also established the Booth
Family Rome Prize Fellowship
for Historic Preservation and
Conservation at the American
Academy in Rome. Deal Booth
recently started a publishing
company, Orsini Press, which published
“Venus Rising” by her father, Harry William
Deal.
She serves on boards for the Centre
Pompidou Foundation, the American
Academy in Rome, the Geffen Playhouse,
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the
Institute of Fine Arts at New York University
and the art committee for the University of
Chicago Booth School of Business.
At Rice, in addition to co-chairing the Rice
Art Committee, she serves on the Humanities
Advisory Board and the Art History Advisory
Committee. She has supported lecture series
and museum collaborations and commis-
sioned art pieces, such as the James Turrell
public art installation that will be located by
the Shepherd School of Music. She is a mem-
ber of Rice Associates and the William Marsh
Rice Society.
—B.J. Almond
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 17
Faheem and Anish Go to Hollywood
They came. They filmed. They conquered.
They are Faheem Ahmed ’09 and Anish Patel ’09, who entered the “Oscar
Correspondent Contest” sponsored by MTV’s 24-hour college network
and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The prize was the
chance to hobnob with the stars on the red carpet while serving as special
mtvU correspondents for the Academy Awards ceremony. All they had to do
to win was impress film professionals and a huge, video-savvy audience.
The competition called for teams of two student journalists to submit short videos
explaining why they would make great correspondents for the 81st Academy
Awards. Ten semifinalist teams were selected, and online voters narrowed the list
to three and finally selected Ahmed and Patel as the winners.
The duo knew they’d be up against some tough competition, so they pulled
out their unconventional wisdom to create a two-minute video essay that broke
the mold of typical contest entries in which hopefuls list reasons they should be
chosen. Ahmed suited up in a tuxedo, grabbed a microphone and began inter-
viewing other Rice students, who acted as celebrities.
“Most of it was improv,” Ahmed said. “Anish and I would see someone we
knew on campus, grab them and explain to them quickly what we were doing.
Then we’d come up with a celebrity for them to be and go from there. Everyone
was happy to help.”
The finalists were then asked to do a short follow-up video about people they
were looking forward to meeting at the Oscars. While the other contestants listed
celebrity names, the Rice students used a Bollywood-style dance number to show
their hopes of meeting the cast of “Slumdog Millionaire,” the Oscar-winning film
set in Mumbai, India.
“I can’t wait to ask the directors how they take the written word and turn it
into a motion picture,” Ahmed said before leaving for his assignment. “But we’re
also excited to ask actress Freida Pinto if she’s single — you know, get answers to
the important questions.” Pinto was lead actress in “Slumdog Millionaire.”

18 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students
A trip to the 81st Academy Awards might not be a professional mile-
stone for most premed students, but Ahmed and Patel, both members of
the highly selective Rice University/Baylor College of Medicine Medical
Scholars Program, are anything but conventional. Their love for medicine is
matched perhaps only by their love for entertaining others. Actively involved
in Rice Sketch Comedy and the South Asian Society, both students dream
of going to medical school, practicing medicine and then becoming medical
correspondents.
“This experience gave us a glimpse into how the media influences peo-
ple,” Patel said. “We would like to use that influence to help and entertain
people.”
“I don’t know if I’d say it changed my life,” Ahmed said, “but it definitely
impacted my career path.”
Did they accomplish their objective of meeting the cast of “Slumdog
Millionaire”?
Of course.
“Interviewing them was definitely the most memorable part of the night,”
Patel said. “Their story is incredible. Not just the movie, but also the people
who played those characters. It’s probably the biggest transition ever seen at
the Oscars — from the slums of Mumbai to the red carpet of Hollywood.”
“The kids were my favorite because they were the most genuine and
were so excited to be there,” Ahmed said. “Like us, it was their first time on
the red carpet. They reflected a lot of what we were feeling — that happiness
and excitement, that ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’”
Ahmed and Patel asked the children to show them some dances, but
unfortunately, that didn’t help them win the affections of Freida Pinto.
“I blurted out, ‘I’m in love with you,’” Ahmed recalled. “But then I turned
to Dev Patel [the film’s male lead] and told him I felt the same way about him.
You know, I had to cover my tracks.”
Among others they got to meet were Danny Boyle, Frank Langella, Danny
Glover, Marisa Tomei, Anthony Hopkins, Queen Latifa and Baz Luhrmann.
They also got to interview Oscar winners in the backstage pressroom and
attend the Governor’s Ball.
“It was exciting to see how it feels to be a celebrity,” Patel said, “but
I definitely want to do something behind the camera. My real passion is
writing.”
“I love everything about the camera,” Ahmed said. “Being in front of
it or behind it, I love it. This experience made me realize I can’t discount
my passion for journalism. Instead, I’ll have to find an
entertaining way to do both that and medicine.”
So, could the duo take to the red carpet as Oscar
hopefuls themselves?
“We definitely would want to keep medicine
as our focus, but who’s to say we won’t incor-
porate that in some way to make something
Academy Award–worthy?” Patel said. “Maybe it’s
not probable. But, then again, it wasn’t probable
that two students from Rice — a small private
school without a journalism program — would
win a contest for student journalists.”
—Jessica Stark

See the winning videos:

› › › ricemagazine.info/03

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 19


Finding Your Way When You Don’t Weigh a Thing
Many people resolved to lose weight this year, but
Kathryn “Kate” Montgomery ’09 and her student col-
leagues from six other universities aspired to be weightless.
Montgomery, a bioengineering major, served
as both an investigator and a test subject in an
experiment to examine how a person’s sense
of direction is impacted by lack of gravity
and whether a simple device can improve the
ability to navigate. The students, mentored by
Scott Wood of the National Space Biomedical
Research Institute, planned details of the ex-
periment while working as interns last summer
at the NASA Johnson Space Center.
“We use our sense of gravity as an anchor
to orient ourselves, but in a microgravity
environment, the sense of down isn’t clear,
and that can cause problems when navigat-
ing around a large space craft like the space
station,” said Wood. “The inner ear plays a
role in detecting your orientation relative
to gravity, so some patients with inner-ear
disorders have similar navigation problems.”
The students tested a belt-like device to
determine if it improved navigation ability.
The wide belt contained a series of equally
Kate Montgomery was both researcher and guinea pig in an experiment to learn if a simple tactile device can improve a person’s sense of direction in a weightless environment.
Discover how Rice’s Centennial Campaign is helping prepare Rice students for the world: ››› www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign
20 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
spaced pagerlike vibrators that signaled the
direction of the floor to the wearer. The ex-
periment was conducted in an aircraft that
simulates weightlessness, or microgravity,
by going into steep dives. A chair aboard
the aircraft was fixed in a tilted position
that could be rotated and then locked into
any one of 360 degrees. One student served
as the subject, seated in the chair wearing
sound-canceling earphones and virtual-
reality goggles, and the other students ran
the experiment.
During each microgravity period of the
flight, the subject was turned in the chair
to a random position and shown an image
in their goggles of a location in the plane
— cockpit, rear, or left or right side. Using a
hand controller, the subject then indicated
the direction needed to travel to get to that
area of the plane. During the experiment,
the subjects were randomly tested with and
without the belt’s cues.
The students will analyze the results to
determine if the belt improved a person’s
ability to navigate while in micrograv-
ity. They hope to publish the results of
the study in a scientific journal, but the
immediate benefit of the study will be to
elementary- and middle-school classes in
the students’ hometowns.
“Each of us committed to give pre-
sentations to local schools,” Montgomery
said. “We hope to teach younger students
a little about microgravity and our experi-
ment while showing them that science can
definitely be fun.”
But the belt’s usefulness doesn’t stop
there. It also could be modified for use in
extravehicular activities on the moon — vi-
brators could be programmed to fire in the
direction a crew member needs to go. In
addition, it could become an aid for patients
with neurological disorders experiencing
navigation problems.
The student research was supported by
funds from the National Space Biomedical
Research Institute and the private corpora-
tion Excalibur Almaz and was conducted
through NASA’s Reduced Gravity Student
Flight Opportunities Program.
—Kathy Major
Want an education that is out of this world? Find
out what’s happening in the Rice Department of
Bioengineering:
› › › engr.rice.edu/
 Students

Raw Deals

For Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram,

helping raw foodists feed the habit
is all in a day’s work.

“Thursday’s child has far to go,” says the old nursery rhyme, and Kristina
Carrillo-Bucaram ’09 is proof positive. For the founder and administrator
of the Rawfully Organic produce co-op, Thursdays start at 6 a.m. as she
works with area farms to order and pick up organic fruits and vegetables,
sorts them along with produce from a local distributor, sells them to co-
op members from her home in west Houston and then spends the rest of
the day tying up loose ends and preparing for the following Thursday’s
co-op.
Carrillo-Bucaram does it for love. “I have more than 800 people on my mailing list,
and I fill 60 to 90 orders per week,” she said. “I don’t make one dollar off of it, but
I don’t want to say I do it all for nothing because I’ve met the most amazing people
through the co-op — people who have become like family.”
ate more than 10 pounds of fruits and veggies a day, he told her about his dietary
lifestyle — known as raw foodism — in which participants eat only uncooked
fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Although Carrillo-Bucaram was skeptical about
the wisdom of a hyperglycemic gorging on fruit, she was desperate to feel better
and decided to give it a try.
“After the first day, I felt okay — no vomiting and no migraines,” she said. She
kept up the diet, eventually incorporating raw vegetables, and a week later realized
that her hyperglycemic symptoms had disappeared completely. Now, almost four
years after going raw, Carrillo-Bucaram hasn’t even had a cold.
Getting enough calories eating raw fruits and vegetables requires huge vol-
umes of produce: An entire head of romaine lettuce contains only about 85 calories
and a large banana about 100 calories. To sustain her raw food diet, Carrillo-

Getting enough calories eating raw fruits and vegetables requires huge volumes of produce:
An entire head of romaine lettuce contains only about 85 calories and a large banana about 100 calories.

Bucaram bought organic produce in bulk from local health food stores, but she was
Participants join the co-op for the same reasons she started it in 2008: to enjoy
still spending upwards of $300 per week on groceries.
fresh organic fruits and vegetables without paying retail prices. But for Carrillo-
When she asked a local organic produce distributor about buying from them
Bucaram, it was also a way to economically sustain a lifestyle that just may have
wholesale and learned that their minimum order was 40 cases, she knew it was
saved her life.
time to start thinking big. She gathered 12 foodie friends interested in healthy eat-
While a junior in high school, she began to suffer from crippling dehydration,
ing, and together they split the first order. Word spread, the co-op grew — and the
migraine headaches and vomiting. Diagnosed with hyperglycemia, she was hospi-
rest, as they say, is history.
talized numerous times. Carrillo-Bucaram tried overhauling her diet by cutting out
“I still pay for my own food, but I spend about $80 a week max,” Carrillo-
sugar and fruit and opting instead for chemically sweetened foods but found that
Bucaram said. “There are some weeks when we have so much extra food that
her symptoms only grew worse. She lost so much weight that her classmates be-
I don’t even have to pay, and we can donate surpluses to the Salvation Army,
gan to spread rumors about her “eating disorder,” and she missed so much school
fire stations, underprivileged neighborhoods or local churches. It’s so much fun,
due to hospitalization that she was only one absence away from failing to graduate
and so much good comes out of it. It really is food that loves you back on every
— despite being at the head of her class academically.
single level.”
Then she met a vegetarian at a local health food store. A raw foodist who
—Merin Porter

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 21

 Sometimes the Research
Becomes Personal
When Christy Franco learned she’d be doing pioneering re-
search on using stem cells to help stroke victims recover
neurological function, it was the science that drove her enthu-
siasm. But things turned personal when her father suffered a
debilitating stroke soon after the bioengineering doctoral stu-
dent began her work at the Rice Institute of Biosciences and
Bioengineering.

“For several days my father lost the ability to communicate,” she said.
“He couldn’t speak or even write. You could see his frustration. He
wanted to communicate, but he couldn’t.”
Franco and her family were relieved when her father recovered,
but Franco knows that not all stroke victims are so fortunate. Nor
are sufferers of such brain disorders as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and
Alzheimer’s diseases, and that knowledge now spurs her enthusiasm.
Specialized neural stem cells help make up the body’s central
nervous system during human development. They also can transform
themselves into any type of brain cell and can be used to replace
cells lost to disease or injury.
“Since we know the brain has very limited capacity for self-
renewal and repair after an injury,” Franco said, “the idea is to find
an effective niche to allow neural stem cells to grow and differentiate
in the lab.”
As part of the process, the Dallas native collaborated with
colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine to gather stem cells for
microscopic encapsulation into tiny polymer beads through a unique
emulsion technique. The gelatin-like polymer substance is specially
designed to help regenerate both brain tissue and blood supply. It
is hoped that microencapsulated cells from the niche can be placed
into the damaged brains of stroke patients to provide a source of
neural and vascular cells that may develop and differentiate. The
process could lead to repairing injured tissue and restoring function
in stroke victims or people with other brain diseases.
This summer, Franco flew to the Centre for the Cellular Basis of
Behaviour at King’s College London to share the microencapsulation
technique. It was used there for the first time in trials to inject cells
into the brains of stroke-damaged rats.
“To date, one of the greatest challenges in reconstructing brain
tissue in stroke victims has been to provide structural support to
neural stem cells in a cavity,” said Michel Modo, the Wolfson Lecturer
in Stem Cell Imaging at King’s College London. “What the research
from the Rice team has allowed us to do now is to inject these cells
into this hole with a support structure that potentially could recon-
struct the lost tissue.”
Franco’s research at Rice is supervised by Jennifer West, the
Isabel C. Cameron Professor and chair of the bioengineering depart-
ment. The work is being funded by a three-year, $2.9 million inaugu-
ral Quantum Grant from the National Institutes of Health. Rice and
Research by
Baylor researchers are the recipients and head up an international
graduate student
collaborative effort to push the research.
Christy Franco
Franco is happy to be contributing to the research and plans to
focuses on using
continue working in the field after she earns her doctorate. “I really
stem cells to help
believe in this work,” she said. “And my dad says he’s waiting for me
stroke victims
to come up with a cure for people who’ve suffered strokes.”
recover neurological
function. —Dwight Daniels

22 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students
Clinton Honors Microfinanciers
Small thinking brought a big honor to officers of Owl Microfinance in Centennial Challenge to Young Alumni
February when they were recognized at the Clinton Global Initiative
University for their efforts to help the poor help themselves by start-
ing businesses.

The group began in a bioengineering class taught by Rice 360˚

Director Rebecca Richards-Kortum, where juniors Josh Ozer and
Dillon Eng worked out a training program for microentrepre-
neurs. The students raise money from events, tutoring and private
donations to microfinance projects in Tanzania, the Dominican
Republic, Mexico, China, Cameroon and elsewhere. Along with
vice presidents Tommy Fu ’09 and sophomore Elena White, Ozer
and Eng are working with a Rice alum at a Houston law firm to
incorporate Owl Microfinance, transforming it from a student club
into a nonprofit organization. —Mike Williams
Sandheep Surendran with stacks of concentrated photovoltaic receivers that he designed

[ WHY I GIVE
]
“I want to support an
environment and culture
that I am a product of.”

Sandheep Surendran ’00, who now engineers solar

The officers of Owl Microfinance were honored at the
Clinton Global Initiative University: L–R, standing: Dillon
Eng, Tommy Fu and Elena White ; sitting: Josh Ozer.
technologies, is one of many recent graduates who
have risen to the challenge by making a gift to the
Rice Annual Fund for Student Life and Learning. After
earning a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rice,
Surendran worked in the toy and automotive industry
designing products that he later realized were ulti-
mately destined for the landfill. Concerned by the
environmental and social effects of global warming,
he chose to pursue a new path in clean technology.
Today, he provides solar technology expertise as an
independent consultant with Surya Design and also
develops his own solar solutions.

LEARN MORE

w w w.rice.edu /cen tennialchallenge

See a video of Clinton talking about Owl Microfinance and making the
presentation: ››› ricemagazine.info/05

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 23

 BY DAV I D L E E B R O N

Definingand
Realizing

24 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

An early and abiding image of Rice University is a
photograph of our first president, Edgar Odell Lovett,
articulating his vision for the university before an
international audience of scientists, scholars and
dignitaries at Rice’s opening ceremony on Oct. 12, 1912.
It
is especially powerful
because the aspirations he
put forth were more ambi-
tious and farsighted than an
institution of Rice’s modest
beginnings and size had any
right to expect. After all, Rice matriculated
a mere 59 students that first year, and they
were taught by a faculty of 10 on a campus
that consisted of four buildings. Lovett saw
more: He saw an institution that would
“aspire to university standing of the highest
grade” and that would “assign no upper limit
to its educational endeavor.”
Rice’s founding Board of Trustees shared
that ambition. They could have purchased
30 acres in downtown Houston on which to
build the institute. Rather, they purchased
nearly 300 acres at what was then the consid-
erable distance of three miles from down-
town. They wanted enough land for growth
for Rice to emerge as a leading university
across a broad spectrum of human endeavor.
Early maps actually included sites for a medi-
cal school and a law school.
Some might have called that hubris. In
the northeast, where I come from, we call it
chutzpah. But there is no doubt that Lovett
and the founders had big plans for Rice and
the courage to take the necessary actions,
and even some risks, to realize them. Lovett
took that courage even further when he
embarked, in 1908, on an arduous nine-
month journey to personally survey leading
academic institutions around the world.
He interviewed university presidents and
professors, recruited eminent faculty and
toured facilities in an effort to distill the best
elements of higher education and apply them
to the new institute. Lovett returned to Texas
from that journey just over 100 years ago.
Two things emerged with clarity from his
voyage: his view that Rice should aspire to
be among the best universities of the world,
and that it should take an international
perspective in formulating its ambitions and
measuring its success. The Rice University
we know and esteem today is, in large part,
a product of that journey of discovery.
Each of my predecessors since President
Lovett has contributed to the further
FROM THE
achievement of his vision. Each seized op-
portunities that the times presented. The sig-
nificance of NASA coming to Houston — and
of John F. Kennedy promising, in his famous
speech in Rice Stadium, a manned landing
on the moon by the end of the 1960s — was,
for example, not lost on President Kenneth
Pitzer, who responded to Kennedy’s gesture
by creating, in 1963, the first university space
science department.
Pitzer also notably increased the breadth
of scholarship and research at Rice. To make
the young institute immediately viable, Lovett
had advocated a concentration on science
and engineering, but he also recognized
the need to later strengthen the arts, which
included the humanities and social sciences.
Under Pitzer’s tenure, Rice further developed
the School of Architecture, the Department
of Art and Art History and the Office of
Continuing Studies — now the Susanne M.
Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.
When we herald the 100th anniversary
of Rice’s opening in three years, we will
remember much more than a single event.
Rather, we celebrate all that has flowed
from the founding accomplishment and
the hard work and sustained vision since
then. These include the launching of suc-
cessful interdisciplinary efforts such as the
Rice Quantum Institute, the Chao Center
for Asian Studies and the Center for the
Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality.
The success of the James A. Baker III
President
Institute, The Shepherd School of Music
and the Jesse H. Jones School of Business
is testimony to the capacity of Rice to
think boldly and expand the scope of its
endeavor. We have been bold and yet pru-
dent, and that combination has enabled us
to move our great institution forward in
changing and challenging times.
The Rice that people attended 50 years
ago is not the same Rice of 25 years ago or
the Rice of today. The question that demands
our attention as we celebrate our centennial
is what the Rice of 25, 50 or 100 years from
now will be. Will we have continued on our
historic trajectory toward greater scope and
prominence, or will we have paused and,
in so doing, perhaps fallen behind in the
dynamic and highly competitive landscape of
higher education?
Of course, even as we progress and
adapt, there are things about our beloved
Rice than must endure, and it is equally
critical to our success that we recognize and
sustain those. These include, for example,
the extraordinary quality of our students,
our supportive and collegial atmosphere, the
small classes and the access students have
to their professors, the college system, the
beautiful green campus environment and the
sense of student responsibility that we seek
to nurture. These values and characteristics
of Rice are not obstacles to our progress, but
essential elements of it.
We have earned the right to celebrate
Rice and all we have achieved on the occa-
sion of our centennial. But we will celebrate
not merely by looking back, but rather by
taking from that history a sense of confi-
dence and destiny that informs and shapes
a bold future. Four years ago we launched
the Call to Conversation, which produced the
Vision for the Second Century. Over the next
few years, it is the continuing responsibility
of all of us who care deeply about Rice to
continue the process of defining and real-
izing the vision that will not merely carry on
the legacy of our founding, but will take us
to ever greater achievement.
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 25
Unique

The chairman of the

Rice Board of Trustees reflects
on his past and the university
that has played such a large
role in his life.
By Mike Williams

26 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Jim Crownover ’65 was in the Rice
infirmary suffering
from the flu when he got a lesson that may have been the most last-
ing of his undergraduate days.
“I remember a professor of chemical engineering, Harry Deans,”
said Crownover. “He was young, but he was a bigger-than-life figure,
a real terror. A brilliant guy. He came by the infirmary. I will never
forget that. He just sat there, and we talked — about school and all
sorts of different things. For me, it captured the feeling, which is still
here, of the relationships Rice students have with their professors.”
That incident motivates Crownover to this day. He feels respon-
sible for preserving Rice as a place where those close relationships
can form, because he knows what they’ve meant to him, even as he
guides the university through a period of change and growth.
“I was smart enough to seek people out,” Crownover said recent-
ly as he relaxed with coffee cup in hand in an Allen Center confer-
ence room. “Life is a contact sport — you’ve got to seek people out.
Talk to them. Find out their views. And I learned that here at Rice
because people were so accessible. Even if you didn’t quite know
what you were going to learn, you learned something.”
My simple, simple life
After a career in the contact sport of business consulting, Crownover
came back to Rice, where he’s still learning: He’s even taken a
couple of undergraduate Spanish classes in recent years.
for a Unique Time
A member of the Rice Board of Trustees since 1999, he replaced
Bill Barnett as chairman in 2005. Recently, he was elected by his
fellow trustees to a second term that will run until 2013, which will
take him through Rice’s Centennial celebration and complete his
service to the board.
Crownover characterizes himself as “a very loyal, steady guy.”
“I have a wife of 32 years, I have a clothier of 32 years, I worked
with McKinsey for 30 years. I went from Rice to Stanford, Stanford to
McKinsey and then back to Rice,” he said. “Welcome to my simple,
simple life.”
Simple? Crownover’s friends would disagree. Armed with an
MBA from Stanford (where his daughter, Mary Corwin Crownover,
now studies architecture), he joined the global management consult-
ing firm McKinsey & Co. in 1968, eventually rose to its board of
directors and also served as co-chairman of McKinsey’s worldwide
energy practice.
In the early years, charged with running the Houston-based
southwest office, Crownover found himself trying to gain a foothold
in an energy industry that, he said, deeply mistrusted outsiders.
Thanks to his perseverance and skill, McKinsey survived and thrived
in Houston while many competitors failed.
“Jim became really important in my life when I persuaded him
to go to Texas,” said his former boss, D. Ronald Daniel, who headed
McKinsey in the 1970s and 1980s. “The office kind of went sideways
until I was able to get Jim there, and then McKinsey in Texas really
took off.”
You’re lucky! This is a good deal!
Crownover was thrilled at the prospect of moving back to Texas, but
not his wife, Molly. “When it looked like we were going to move,
Molly was tearful,” he recalled. But Crownover had an ally in her
parents, native Californians who were stationed in Corpus Christi
during World War II. “They said, ‘You’re lucky! This is a good deal!’
They had a tremendous affection for Texas.”
It didn’t take long for both Jim and Molly to become well known
and respected, in part because of their generous contributions of
time and talents to the Houston community. Crownover has served
on the boards of the United Way, Houston Grand Opera and many
other worthy causes.
“The man has a heart bigger than Texas,” said Anna Babin,
president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Houston, which
named Crownover its Volunteer of the Year — twice. “When Jim
Crownover speaks, it’s after much thought and consideration, and
people listen.”
“Jim is able to help people understand the key role we play and
establish great relationships,” added Anne Neeson, United Way’s
vice president of donor relations. “That’s the basis of his approach
to fundraising.”
Neeson considers Crownover her mentor. “I have this little
card in my desk with something I’ve heard him say often. He says
you’ve got to constantly ask yourself, ‘Am I a valued member of a
team in pursuit of a noble purpose?’ I think about that a lot.”
The Stanford Graduate School of Business also appreciates
Crownover’s extensive input and honored him last year with its
John W. Gardner Volunteer Leadership Award. “He’s just phenome-
nal in what he’s done as a volunteer,” said Robert Joss, the school’s
dean. “Helpful and selfless — he’s a terrific guy. The last three
reunions in a row, his class has set fundraising records. And he’s a
real leader of that class.”
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 27
 This one is too big …
At 6 feet 2 inches tall, with sparkling blue eyes and a big smile,
Crownover projects a warmth that tells you something about how he
thrived for so long in the world of business consulting. In conversa-
tion, he doesn’t shy away from topics that can be controversial. He
prefers to deal with them head-on while keeping the Rice board
focused on the long view.
Those issues include the growth
of the campus and expansion of the
undergraduate student body, financial
challenges caused by the struggling
global economy and its effect on Rice’s
endowment, and discussion of a pos-
sible combination with nearby Baylor
College of Medicine. He expects that
the Rice–Baylor issue alone — still in
discussion between the two institu-
tions as of press time — will keep the
board occupied through many hours of
meetings.
“For some issues, we can form an
ad hoc committee and say, ‘Look, you
study this thing and come back with a
recommendation,’” Crownover said. “This one is too big for that. I
want the entire board to get all the information possible.”
Having Baylor as a member of the Rice family “appears to make
a great deal of strategic sense for the university,” he said, although it
would be a complex undertaking that requires a mixture of vision,
courage and prudence. “There are many issues the board has looked
at, but the most difficult questions are: Can we bring all the neces-
sary participants together, and can we make it work financially?”
People told me I had no chance
Crownover deserves considerable credit for bringing David Leebron to
Rice as its seventh president. He led the search committee for a suc-
cessor to retiring President Malcolm Gillis and was the first from Rice
to meet with Leebron, then dean of Columbia Law School.
“People told me I had no chance,” Crownover recalled. “They said,
‘You’re not going to get him to leave New York.’”
But, as he said, you’ve got to go seek people out.
“I had breakfast with David at the Palace Hotel in New York and
met him at 7:30 or 8,” he recalled. “At 11 o’clock, we parted, and I
don’t think either one of us looked at our watches. Just three hours,
locked in.”
“We really hit it off, and my first impression was that Jim was
very engaging,” said Leebron. “Jim is an incredibly thoughtful, dogged
person. Sometimes when you’re talking on the phone you have to ask,
‘Are you still there?’ Because he’s thinking, listening. He’ll often leave a
meeting and call me five minutes later with a question or another idea
because he’s still thinking about it.”
Crownover had an early ally in his campaign to lure Leebron to
Rice in Y. Ping Sun, Leebron’s wife and now university representative.
28 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Jim Crownover addressed an enthusiastic crowd at the campus
Centennial Campaign kick-off celebration. With him, from the left, were
Rice President David Leebron and campaign co-chair Bobby Tudor.
“Partway through the process, I’d given him some advice, and
there was a moment when Ping turned to David and said, ‘Trust
Jim,’” he recalled, pleased to have won her confidence. “That was
important.”
“Jim felt from the beginning,” said Leebron, “that the secret to get-
ting me was getting Ping.”
I just dropped off the face of the Earth
Crownover’s own reconnection with Rice took a while, and there was
a note of frustration in his voice when he said he had no contact with
the university for decades, despite his status as a community leader
in Houston. “Literally, I was not contacted by Rice for more than 20
years, other than maybe a letter,” he said. “I just dropped off the face
of the Earth.”
A series of chance meetings with Rice trustees spurred the quest
to get him more involved, and Crownover quickly found out why. He
recalled the wisdom of a Rice financial officer at his board orientation
in 1999. “The very first words out of his mouth were, ‘The big endow-
ment is good news and bad news.’ I said, ‘I think I understand the
good news, but what’s the bad news?’ He said, ‘Rice always felt like
it had a lot of money. It developed in a way that’s very different from
other universities. It didn’t feel the need to be aggressive.’”
Something needed to change, and Crownover came back to Rice
as great change was brewing. There was a new emphasis on fundrais-
ing that has evolved into the current $1 billion Centennial Campaign,
and the board was evolving as well. Among other things, it had grown
from a two-tiered organization with permanent appointees to a larger
board with fixed terms. As an agent of change in the business world,
Crownover was quite comfortable taking on a new set of challenges
— even though he said it sometimes felt “like building a bridge under
traffic.”
McKinsey’s Daniel understands the challenges business profes-
sionals face in an academic environment — he served as one of the
seven board members of the Harvard Corporation and as the univer-
sity’s treasurer and also has been on the boards of Brandeis, Wesleyan
and Rockefeller universities. He said Crownover is uniquely suited to

his role at Rice. “I’ve had a lot of academic affiliations, and I know
most businesspeople would get in there and say, ‘Why can’t we do
this tomorrow? The hell with the faculty, let’s just do it!’ But Jim is
a gentle soul and has the sensibility to think of Rice as a client and
figure out how to really help and win their trust and confidence,
which he has clearly done.”
“Jim is an incredibly thoughtful, dogged person.
Sometimes when you’re talking on the phone you have to ask,
‘Are you still there?’ Because he’s thinking, listening.”
I’d drink coffee like crazy and do my work
Crownover, a native of Norman, Okla., felt at home at Rice from
the first time he stepped onto the campus with his parents, Maurice
and Nell. “They’re both gone, but they were so proud that I came
to Rice. I hope they know I’m here chairing the board. They’d be
amazed.”
Crownover was a National Merit Scholar. “I was assured I
would be accepted early. I may have applied to Duke and Stanford,
but it was always Rice for me,” said Crownover, who majored in
chemical engineering. “I liked that it had the reputation of being
hard. I wanted to feel like I could live up to the challenge.”
So why didn’t he become a chemical engineer?
“I hated the smell of chemicals,” he said. “I thought I liked the
security of getting to a definitive answer, but the lightbulb went
on when I took an economics course, and I found I enjoyed those
problems. They were open-ended, unstructured and dealt with
people more.”
Rice offered many advantages, said Crownover, who played on
the golf team and whose possession of a car throughout his
undergrad years made him pretty popular. “My other memories
are of great social times,” he said. “Great parties. We’d go to
the San Jacinto Inn sometimes, and on Saturday afternoons, I
would treat myself to a hot fudge sundae in the Village. I re-
member wonderful times studying in the basement of Hanszen.
We had these little carrels, and I’d drink coffee like crazy and
do my work.”
We’re the strange bird in the top 20
Those memories are motivation enough for Crownover to
preserve the qualities he sees as truly unique among American
universities. Beyond that, he feels growth is essential for
Rice to keep its place among the elite institutions of higher
education.
“It’s amazing we’re ranked as high as we are, frankly,
because we’re so small, and we don’t have a medical school or
a law school,” he said. “We’re kind of different and, other than
Caltech, we’re the strange bird in the top 20.”
Crownover said the trustees were well aware that the
status quo was not an option and welcomed Leebron’s Call to
Conversation that led to the development of the Vision for the
Second Century. “It’s not just me — we all have high aspira-
tions for Rice,” he said. “We realize the competition is really
strong, and we’ve got to change.”
He’s particularly excited about the soon-to-open BioScience
Research Collaborative (previously known by its working
name, the Collaborative Research Center), the Barbara and
David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, and the possibili-
ties a combined Rice and Baylor would offer.
“You talk about ‘no upper limit,’” he said. “Right now, we
have some centers of excellence, big and small, and we can
enhance the quality of those centers and create new ones.
Arguably, in two or three decades, Rice can be the best story
of advancement among American universities. That’s not just
pie-in-the-sky. I’ve actually thought this through.”
— D avid Leebron
We’re improving the story
Crownover said Rice was never really static and, over the years, has
grown and evolved.
“There were 1,600 students when I was here, and now there are
more than 3,000,” he said. “Does that mean we’re not small anymore?
It’s a nonissue. There’s nothing I feel more strongly about than the
wisdom of increasing the size of our undergraduate student body.
Not that it’s going to be easy, but it’s the smart thing to do.”
That entails making more people aware of the superior educa-
tional experience and environment Rice offers.
“In the past, we made a fine art of keeping our light under a
bushel, so it’s tremendously important that we’re figuring out how to
convey Rice to the world,” he said. “But we’re improving the story.
I like this tag line of ‘Unconventional Wisdom.’ To me, being an old
Rice guy, that really does capture us.
“Some people have tried to pin me down on what university we
aspire to be like, and I say, ‘We aspire to be unique. One of a kind.’”
Like Crownover himself.
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 29
Herding Words
Larry McMurtry: On Rice,Writing and the Fate of Books
BY DAV I D D. M E D I N A

LARRY MCMURTRY IS FOND OF SAYING THAT HIS PARENTS WANTED HIM TO

STAY AT THE RANCH AND HERD CATTLE, BUT HE WANTED TO HERD WORDS.

B
orn in 1936 in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised outside Archer
City, Larry McMurtry began his literary journey when he was
6 years old. He was living on a cattle ranch deprived of books,
but one day a cousin, on his way to enlist for the Army,
dropped off a box of 19 adventure books. “I picked up one,
and I have been reading ever since,” McMurtry said. “I’d play
hooky from the first grade to read.”
McMurtry’s slow Texas accent belies his sharp, encyclopedic mind. He
can impart obscure information on any number of topics: writers, his-
tory, diseases, comics and manners. That knowledge comes from the
28,000 books stored in his personal library and the one million books
he has handled as an antiquarian bookseller.
“I have been reading for 66 years,” he explained. “That’s a lot of years.”
During that time, the 72-year-old also has contributed his fair share of
writing to the world’s library: 29 novels, two collections of essays, three
memoirs and more than 30 screenplays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for
“Lonesome Dove” and an Oscar for co-writing “Brokeback Mountain.”
“He’s certainly a productive writer,” said Walter Isle, a Rice professor
emeritus of English. Isle has known McMurtry since 1960, when they
both attended Stanford University as English students. “I think he is a
good storyteller. He’s a very good essayist, and he knows a lot about
the American West.”

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 31

 MC M U R TRY H AS PRODUC E D A BODY OF WOR K TH AT, BY A N Y M E AS U R E , I S E X TR AOR DIN A RY.
If he had to pick his best book, he probably would choose “Duane’s Depressed,”
which is part of a series that started with “The Last Picture Show.”
He considers “Lonesome Dove” to be the “Gone with the Wind” of the West.
Intellectual Home
When it was time for McMurtry to go to col-
lege, his mother suggested Midwestern State
University in Wichita Falls.
“My father then had the worst idea of
all, which was that I go to Texas A&M and
become a vet,” McMurtry wrote in his latest
tome, “Books: A Memoir,” which talks about
his passion for books. “I’m not sure why my
father made that suggestion, which, had it
been adopted, would have been a mistake of
epic proportion.”
McMurtry was saved from this fate by the
happy accident of seeing a television program
about Rice, then called the Rice Institute.
“The campus had what I supposed to
be an Oxford-like look,” McMurtry said.
“Actually, the architecture was partly Moorish.
I, of course, had never been to Oxford at the
time, but the program pointed out that the
school was organized on a residential college
system, like the real Oxford.”
McMurtry arrived at Rice in 1954, and
he moved into a garage apartment on South
Boulevard near Shadyside. He had three
roommates, one of whom was Douglas
Milburn, who received a B.A. in 1956, an M.A.
in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1964 in German.
For McMurtry, one of his fondest memo-
ries of Rice was Fondren Library, which,
at the time, contained 600,000 volumes. “I
was, to say the least, thrilled,” McMurtry
wrote in “Books,” “and when I went back
to Rice as a graduate student and later a
professor, I still spent much of my time
wandering around Fondren.”
McMurtry said that he romanticized
Fondren in his book “All My Friends Are
Going to Be Strangers,” in which the
32 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
hero, Danny Deck, sleeps on the couches
of the library.
When McMurtry arrived at Rice, the
university was just beginning to balance
humanities and the sciences.
“It was still, however, an old-
fashioned, Johns Hopkins-type school
with a lot of philology, German, French
and Old English,” he said. “It was taught
by a generation of people like Alan
McKillop, who had studied at Harvard
with William James.”
McMurtry also remembered being
taught by English professors Jackson Cope
and Wilfred Dowden, who died in 1999.
Sumarie Dowden said that her husband
often talked about the young McMurtry.
“Larry was in Wilfred’s freshman
class,” she recalled, “and he said that
Larry was very smart and knew a lot more
about literature than any student his age.”
Dowden encouraged McMurtry to take
a writing class with George Williams ’23.
The class was reserved for upperclass-
men, but McMurtry didn’t stay at Rice long
enough to be eligible for the course.
“I knew I was going to leave
Rice almost from the time I arrived,”
McMurtry admits.
Like many Rice students of the time,
McMurtry fell victim to Math 100. He
would, however, be a part of Rice on two
other occasions: as a graduate student
from 1958 to 1960 and a professor from
1963 to 1969.
Though McMurtry left Rice, he still
thinks fondly of the university. “I began
reading seriously when I was at Rice,” he
explained. “I love Rice and think of it as
my intellectual home.”
Career Choices
McMurtry transferred to North Texas State
College (now University of North Texas) in
Denton, where his interest in writing began
after taking a creative writing class with
English Professor Jim Brown. McMurtry
received his B.A. in 1958 from North Texas
and returned to Rice for graduate studies in
English, earning an M.A. in 1960.
He originally planned to pursue a doc-
torate in English but settled for the master’s.
By then he had finished drafts of his first
two novels, and he used the manuscripts to
enter the Wallace Stegner Fellowship cre-
ative writing program at Stanford University,
where he spent a year.
From California, McMurtry returned
to his home state to teach at Texas
Christian University for a year before
moving back to Rice to teach freshman
English and creative writing. “I had the
ideal teaching job,” McMurtry said. He
had to teach only two classes a semester,
while at TCU, he taught five. “If I had
wanted to remain in academia,” he said,
“I could have stayed at Rice.”
Instead, he decided to write books and
become an antiquarian bookseller.
Writing
McMurtry developed his method of writing
when he was 23. He would get up early
every day, including holidays and week-
ends, and write five pages. As he became
more proficient, he increased the number of
pages to 10.
“Very quickly I came to realize that I
 “I began reading seriously
when I was at Rice.
I love Rice and think of it as
my intellectual home.”
—Larry McMurtry

Like a scribe from

couldn’t write anything short,” he revealed He hopes, however, that he doesn’t have to
in “Books.” “I was neither a poet nor a short write another book of fiction.
story writer.” “Eventually all novelists, if they persist
Like a scribe from the past, McMurtry
continues to use a manual typewriter — a
the past, McMurtry too long, get worse,” he said. “Writing great
fiction involves some combination of energy
Hermes 3000. Unabashedly a dinosaur
in the world of technology, he has never
continues to use a and imagination that cannot be energized or
realized forever.”
used a computer, written an e-mail or done
research using Google. manual typewriter —
New Generations
a Hermes 3000.
“It just takes more time away from
reading and writing,” he said. “The only
way I have managed to improve anything is While McMurtry expressed concern that
by typing it over. I do three drafts, which is the culture of books is coming to an end,
usually enough.” replaced by technology such as Google and
As for research, McMurtry claims he the Kindle, his favorite pastime continues to
doesn’t do any. “My research has been my
be reading.
lifelong reading.” Reading is, in fact, his
“Reading, to me, is the perfect pleasure,”
source of inspiration. “Mostly the reading
he explained. “It’s stable, inexpensive and
fertilizes the writing. Reading is the aquifer
gratifying. It’s everything a culture should be.”
that drips, spongelike, into my fiction.”
If the response to his recent Friends of
By plucking away at his typewriter
Fondren Library Distinguished Guest Lecture
every day, McMurtry has produced a body

Unabashedly a
was any indication, he’s not alone. The over-
of work that, by any measure, is extraor-
flow crowd was clearly filled with lovers of the
dinary. Such an outpouring can produce
written word, both young and old.
unevenness, as he admits in “Books,”
where he offers a humble assessment of dinosaur in the One Rice student said the very first pa-
perback book she read was “The Last Picture
his books: “Most were good, three or four
were indifferent to bad, and two or three
were really good.” If he had to pick his best
world of technology, Show,” and another student told McMurtry,
“It’s tremendous to have you here at Rice. I
book, he probably would choose “Duane’s
Depressed,” which is part of a series that
he has never used remember the copy of ‘Lonesome Dove’ my
grandfather used to read when I was little.”

a computer, written
started with “The Last Picture Show.” He A graduate student dressed in a cowboy hat
considers “Lonesome Dove” to be the and boots said, “I spent eight years on the

an e-mail or done
“Gone with the Wind” of the West. rodeo circuit, and I’ve seen many copies of
Despite his level of output, McMurtry your books on the dashboards of pickups.”
still hammers away on his Hermes. He is For a man who left the ranch to herd
working on the last two books of his mem-
oirs — one about writing and the other
research words and hone his craft at a small Oxford-
like university in Houston, coralling whole
about Hollywood — and his new novel,
“Rhino Ranch,” will be published this June.
using Google. generations of readers the world over is a
pretty good legacy.

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 33

 A modern-day

super
Nancy Drew, Rice’s
centennial historian
Melissa Kean
experiences both
thrills and chills in
her fearless hunt for
Rice history.

By Merin Por ter

For a woman with five degrees, a quick sense of humor and

a limitless supply of fearless curiosity, it takes surprisingly
little to bring Melissa Kean to her knees. Recently it was
the renovation of Autry Court, which laid bare cupboards and
secret rooms filled to the brim with dusty papers, crumbling
boxes and plenty of long-lost gems that enabled Kean to
piece together a Rice Athletics past that had been just as
dim as some of those Autry Court closets.
T
he treasures she retrieved while crawling around the
old building’s are a reflection of Kean’s professional
goals at Rice. As a historian who completed her Rice
dissertation in 2000 on the desegregation of five
Southern, private universities and who recently pub-
lished a book that explores the same theme more deeply, she was
ecstatic to discover reams and reams of papers from the coaches’
offices, from the Committee on Outdoor Sports and from the athletic
director’s office that go all the way back to the 1930s.
As an antiquarian seeking to build the university’s collection
of Rice-related artifacts, Kean was tickled to find another brand of
history in the old gym: the kind that sits in a display case and not
only symbolizes a glorious past, but also hints at a great future.
Nestled in the gymnasium’s forgotten depths, Kean found, among
other glimpses of history, game balls from the Cotton Bowl, ribbons
won by Rice runners in the 1920 Southwest Conference track meet,
programs, trophies and a treasure trove of football-game films.
“For different reasons, I’m interested in both types of finds,”
Kean said. “I’m trying to do things that are related to each other but
are really quite different. One is to be a scholar and the other is to
be a resource for alums and other people at Rice who are interested
in historical things.”
But sleuthing the past and unearthing treasures can be risky. In
the line of duty, Kean has braved everything from paper cuts and
stubbed toes to brown recluse spider bites.
“I’m trying to do things
that are related to
each other but are
Campaign and upcoming centennial anniversary, which will cel-
ebrate the very history that Kean is enriching.
Kean takes the Rice-related items she finds in those offices and
other places to the university archives in Rice’s Woodson Research
Center, where they are either sent through the shredder or enjoy
new life as part of an archival collection. She and the Woodson ar-
chivists determine which — and sometimes the task is more serious
than you might expect.
A case in point are the Masterson papers, which she ranks
among the most important finds she’s ever made. The papers,
which date back to 1969 and reflect the record keeping of Herbert
Allen, then-vice chairman of the Board of Trustees, came to Kean
through Allen’s daughter, Anne Symonds. They chronicle in gritty,
unvarnished detail a dark moment in university history known as
the Masterson Affair, which began when the board appointed a
president without first consulting the faculty and ended less than
a week later when the new president resigned as a result of the
faculty’s uprising.
Kean said the find helped her understand the Masterson Affair
from the trustees’ perspective in a way that wasn’t possible when
all she had to go on was the board’s official minutes. And that’s
the way much of her understanding of Rice’s complex history has
materialized.
“It’s like I’m doing a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces, and ev-
ery once in a while I’ll get one — like the stuff from Anne Symonds
— that enables me to do a whole
corner,” she said. “But every piece
goes somewhere, which is part
of why this job is so joyful. I just
love to see where stuff fits.”
That natural curiosity is only
one of the attributes that makes
Kean a good fit for her job,

really quite different. according to Lee Pecht, certified

archivist and Fondren Library’s
One is to be a scholar head of special collections.
and the other is to “Melissa is inquisitive, incredibly
perceptive, attuned to the gaps
be a resource for in information in the university
Rice alums and other archives — and she knows how

people at Rice who to talk to just about anyone to

are interested in
historical things.”
“You’ve got to be made of pretty stern stuff to manage that,
because it’s dangerous!” said Kean, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Not to mention the older ladies. I spend a lot of time talking with
them about their history at Rice, and they’ll feed you ’til you pop!”
Kean’s job also gives her a front-row view of the idiosyncrasies
and deep devotion of Rice’s faculty and administration throughout
the years. Her insights stem partly from her intimacy with their
papers and artifacts but also come through one of the more difficult
aspects of her job.
“I clean out people’s offices after they’ve died, and sometimes
the things you find in there rip your heart out,” she said. One faculty
member, for example, kept every grade book for every single class
he taught. “That’s very moving to me,” she said, her voice husky with
emotion. “It makes me even more committed to doing the best job I
can as a scholar.”
That job is even more important in light of Rice’s Centennial
learn what she needs.”
Kean’s former Rice history
professor and current colleague
John Boles ’65 also praised her
optimism, sense of humor and
— Melissa Kean
nonstop energy. “She is an inspi-
ration to be around,” he said.
Still, when students ask
Kean how a person gets a job
like hers, she answers in all seriousness that she has no idea. “I
was standing still, and all this stuff just happened to me,” she
said. Her path to the position of centennial historian was laced
with happy accidents: a career as a lawyer that gave way to two
children 12 months apart; a Hebrew class that offered free child
care and resulted in a full scholarship for graduate study in his-
tory at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.; a move to Houston
when she was only four hours from completing her Creighton
master’s; a graduate-level course with Boles that ignited her love
for Southern history; and, through it all, a will to do the best she
could with whatever task fell to her at any given time.
Kean still lives according to that philosophy. And whether it
means unearthing dark secrets, crawling around on all fours in a
dusty gymnasium closet or interviewing older alums and eating
until she pops, she’s happy to do it for the joy she fi nds on her
adventurous hunt for Rice’s history.

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 35

 The
Countdown
Begins
The event is three years away, but
Rice University is already deep
into preparations for its 100th
anniversary, which will include reflection on the
achievements of its first century and anticipation
for the century to come.
With the billion-dollar fundraising effort
known as the Centennial Campaign up and
running, Rice University officials are turning
to a multiyear, campuswide commemoration
culminating Oct. 12, 2012, the anniversary of the
Rice Institute’s formal opening.
Three volunteer co-chairs have been chosen to lead
the Centennial Commission: Rice trustee J.D. Bucky
Allshouse ’71 and trustee emeriti Janice Cornell Doty
’60 and Teveia Rose Barnes ’75.
“We are so very pleased that Bucky, Janice and
Teveia have agreed to serve in these leadership roles dur-
ing this historic time for the university,” said Rice Board of
Trustees Chairman Jim Crownover ’65. “They will provide
important insight and great ideas for making the most of
this once-in-a-century celebration.”
Allshouse is a Houston attorney and member of the
Centennial Campaign cabinet who has been involved with
the Rice community almost continuously since his gradua-
tion. A trustee since 1988, he also served as a board mem-
ber and president of the Association of Rice Alumni and
was president of the Owl Club from 1981 to 1983. Allshouse
36 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
BY MIKE WILLIAMS
and his wife, Cynthia, helped drive the effort and
raise the funds to support the James A. Baker
III Institute for Public Policy and The Shepherd
School of Music.
Doty, of Greenwich, Conn., was for many
years an executive with IBM. She has broad expe-
rience in sales, marketing, product development,
corporate communications, direct marketing and
real estate management. She led the development
of the IBM Gallery of Science and Art in New
York City. When she became a Rice trustee in
1999, she was executive vice president of Harris
McCully Associates, a career management con-
sulting company in New York City. Doty also
served on the executive committee of the
Association of Rice Alumni board.
Barnes is a San Francisco attorney whose
work in diversity programs is legendary. She
founded Lawyers For One America to promote
racial and ethnic diversity in the profession, has
served as general counsel and executive direc-
tor of the Bar Association of San Francisco and
was associate general counsel and senior vice
president of Bank of America. She joined the
ranks of Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was given the Margaret
Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award by the
American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in
 Lovett spent nine months on
a fact-finding mission to 88
institutions of higher learning
in 21 countries, which greatly
informed his vision for Rice.
the Profession in 2004. She is currently a partner in the law firm Foley &
Lardner LLP and practices in the Finance and Financial Institutions and
Bankruptcy and Business Reorganizations groups.
“Bucky, Janice and Teveia are dedicated alumni,” said President
David Leebron. “I have no doubt that with their guidance we will
commemorate this important milestone with as much distinction as
did our founders at the university’s opening nearly a century ago.”
The responsibility of the commission chairs will be “to provide
a public face for the centennial and to set strategic direction for the
Centennial Commission — a soon-to-be-formed representative group
Each year from now through 2012 will feature centennial events with an annual theme based on the university’s history or aspirations.
of Rice’s many constituencies,” said Kathleen Boyd Fossi ’80, who
serves as the director of the centennial effort. Committees were
formed more than five years ago to start the planning process.
Boyd Fossi will be taking advantage of opportunities already in
place to create a series of events leading to the official commemora-
tion in October 2012. “Our plans are to leverage existing initiatives
and events rather than create expensive new ones,” she said.
John Boles ’65, Rice’s William Pettus Hobby Professor of History, is
helping to identify the historic milestones leading up to the centennial.
“The opening convocation in 1912 announced bold ambitions for
the new university and carefully projected its ultimate place in the
highest echelon of world universities,” he said. “The centennial com-
memoration will celebrate that trajectory and help set our sights even
higher for the coming decades.”
Learn more about the centennial anniversary: ›› › w w w. r i c e . e d u / c e n t e n n i a l
Each year from now through 2012 will feature centennial events
with an annual theme based on the university’s history or aspirations.
This year’s theme — “Engaging the World” — recognizes the 100th
anniversary of founding president Edgar Odell Lovett’s trip around
the globe. Lovett spent nine months on a fact-finding mission to 88
institutions of higher learning in 21 countries, which greatly informed
his vision for Rice. This journey of academic exploration, Boles said,
“convinced Lovett that the Rice Institute, from the very beginning,
should aspire to be an international university” — a goal that is still
central to Rice’s mission today.
Events during the year will highlight a number of the universi-
ty’s Vision for the Second Century priorities that have international
themes, among them global health, the Chao Center for Asian Studies
and the Latin American Initiative.
Boyd Fossi has extensive experience to prepare her for the work ahead.
She spent 16 years with Continental Airlines, where she was responsible
for product development and branding and led the creation of its blue-
and-gold identity and “BusinessFirst” international service. Boyd Fossi also
spent 12 years as a consultant to airlines and airports worldwide.
“We will seek involvement campuswide — the departments,
centers, institutes and colleges as well as alumni, friends and com-
munity members — to make sure we cover all of the bases in the
centennial commemoration,” she said. “This is about and for all of
the Rice community.”
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 37
 Taking
Careof
By Weezie Kerr Mackey • Photography by Tommy LaVergne

38 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Brent Smith paused in the
doorway of his office in Janice and Robert McNair Hall to survey
a beloved stomping ground: the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of
Business. “It’s not a position I would have accepted anywhere but
Rice,” he said of his appointment last summer as associate dean for
Executive Education at the Jones School. “It was a unique proposition.”
Smith has been a professor at the Jones School for eight years,
aside from a two-year stint to teach organizational behavior at the
London Business School, where he designed and directed many of
their executive leadership programs. He has taught in the Rice MBA
programs as well as Executive Education, logging more hours teach-
ing leadership courses to high-level executives than any other full-
time faculty member. He not only understands the lay of the land at
the Jones School, but he’s also well aware of Executive Education’s
strong foundation.
EXECUTIVE EDUCATION, ORIGINALLY CALLED THE OFFICE OF EXECUTIVE
Development, was begun in 1978. At the time, it operated in conjunc-
tion with the MBA program and offered nondegree short courses,
seminars and conferences to the Houston business community. Before
long, it had become not only a source of revenue, but also a significant
connection between the new business school and the city’s practic-
ing professionals. Under the leadership of Sal Manzo, the department
grew in its ability to satisfy the needs of the business community by
introducing the MBA for Executives in 1998.
“We saw the impact of our outreach,” former associate dean Wil
Uecker remembered. “It was one of my main objectives to launch that
program.”
Under it’s various directors—Kim Kehoe held the post beginning
in 1989, Harry Wilkerson in 1992, Uecker in 1997, Bill Lee in 2005, and
Smith in 2008—Executive Education has continued to provide direc-
tors, managers, supervisors and senior management the latest industry
knowledge and managerial techniques by combining the talents of
industry experts with world-class faculty and classroom research.
“The Jones School is a resource in the community for companies
to keep current with the best thinking in the business,” Kehoe said,
emphasizing the school’s mission of developing thought leaders.
FROM HIS EXPERIENCE WITH EXECUTIVE PROGRAMS IN EUROPE, ASIA AND
South America, Smith understood the many challenges that executive
education departments face. When the economy thrives, executive
education programs do very well. When the economy suffers, compa-
nies look at executive education as a discretionary expense that can
be cut. Undaunted, Smith set formidable goals for himself and the
department.
“We want a broader engagement of our target audience,” he said.
“We want to take a more active stance in the market and help compa-
nies develop leaders”.
At the heart of his plan is the university’s mission to engage the
city and extend the Jones School’s reach. The first step was to identify
everything the department was doing right, learn how to improve
on it and discover ways to make it resistant to economic turmoil.
Smith recognized that Executive Education could better engage the
corporate Houston community by more closely matching its custom-
ers’ needs with Jones School expertise.
Following that, he reprioritized the open enrollment course offer-
ings to make Executive Education a reliable partner for management
educational opportunities. Then he sought to provide specialized
instruction for the department’s two largest customer bases: up-and-
coming leaders and rising managers.
“We have been talking for some time about the growing cor-
porate talent shortage,” Smith said. “Our program can help orga-
nizations accelerate the development of companies’ most valuable
resources: their people.”
ANALYZING AND FULFILLING THE NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY
resulted in more than 35 different open enrollment classes and
certificate programs over the last year. The department nearly doubled
open enrollment attendance since 2002, and some of the industry-
specific certificate programs in energy and health care became custom
programs — courses designed and expertly tailored to focus on a
particular company’s employees and goals.
Smith’s experience in leadership — the most-requested subject in
the department’s custom programs — was the ideal complement for
the Jones School. From the first custom client, Brown and Root, to col-
laborations with Memorial Hermann and Marathon Oil Corp., custom
programs evolved into a major segment of Executive Education’s work
and became an important opportunity for the faculty to demonstrate
their talents in a more sophisticated way.
Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. (CB&I), an engineering,
procurement and construction company in the energy and natural
resource industries, has been a long-term custom client and contin-
ues to be a vibrant partner. To date, 225 managers from CB&I have
completed tailored programs in executive education at the Jones
School. Their key take away, according to CB&I spokesperson David
Bordages, has been “the benefit of combining academic principles
with CB&I operational practices.”
“We want to
take a more
active stance in
the market and
help companies
develop leaders.”
—Brent Smith
That means faculty and staff worked together to understand
CB&I’s specific business model and markets. They looked at balance
sheets and profit and loss statements. They partnered with their client
to deliver the information and techniques necessary for participants to
carry back to the workplace and put into action.
And relationships with clients didn’t end there.
NCI Building Systems’ former CEO, A.R. Ginn ’62, had been a foot-
ball player at Rice, and although he had to drop out before graduating,
he never forgot the value of that education. With his company flour-
ishing, Ginn tapped Executive Education to create a custom program
for his employees that would tie cutting-edge business acumen back
to NCI operations. Over the next couple of years, 120 NCI employees
attended one-week programs that included sessions in leadership,
strategy, and finance and accounting.
When Ginn retired in 2007 after nearly 50 years in the metal
construction industry, his employees wanted to give him something
profound in return. In his honor, they donated $300,000 to the Jones
School. The A.R. Ginn Fund now supports the undergraduate busi-
ness minor for any use within that program that the school deems
necessary.
For 30 years, companies like CB&I, NCI Building Systems and a
legion of others have benefitted from the Executive Education pro-
gram at the Jones School, but as the NCI story illustrates, learning is a
two-way street. Executive Education has found a wealth of inspiration
from its partners in developing ways to approach lifelong learning.
Brent Smith would have it no other way.
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 39
 A lot of people dream about finding buried treasure.
Most don’t succeed, but occasionally, a rare individual actually does make a
discovery worth noting. You can add Rice’s own Logan Browning to that list.
Browning, a lecturer in English who also serves as editor of the Rice-based
academic journal SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, has uncovered
a previously unpublished story by Walker Percy, the award-winning Southern
writer best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans.

LiteraryGold By Christopher Dow Photography by Tommy LaVergne

T
he discovery came about because of Browning’s association
with The Hopkins Review, a literary quarterly published by
Johns Hopkins University Press. The review had been out of
print for more than 50 years when it was resuscitated by famed
critic John Irwin, the Decker Professor in the Humanities at
Hopkins, who earned his Ph.D. in English at Rice in 1970. The Rice
connection went deeper when Irwin tapped Glenn Blake to serve as
managing editor. Blake earned his undergraduate degree from Rice in
1979 and taught here for a number of years, and it so happened that
he and Browning are good friends.
The two of them frequently talked about The Hopkins Review,
and Browning contributed enough ideas, articles and book reviews
to earn a spot on the masthead as an advisory editor. The first is-
sue of the review contained unpublished pieces by Blake’s mentor,
Donald Barthelme, which set Browning to thinking about his friend
Tom Cowan, whom Browning met while they were undergraduates
at Sewanee: The University of the South. Cowan is the nephew of
Walker Percy, the distinguished author whose novels include “The
Moviegoer” and “Love Among the Ruins.”
Past experience had taught Browning that there might be a good
chance that Percy’s archives held unpublished material. Browning had
served as research assistant to Robert Patten, Rice’s Lynette S. Autrey
Professor in Humanities and publisher and executive editor of SEL,
when he was at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.
“Bob sent me to the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle to root
around in all these old letters and records, and I got to go to the
Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford and its John Johnson
Collection of Printed Ephemera,” Browning said. “After digging around
in all that, I realized that no matter how well a collection has been
cataloged or researched, there’s almost always going to be something
that people haven’t found or that was misfiled.”
One night last year, when Browning was visiting Cowan in New
Orleans, he broached the idea of searching the Percy archives to see if
he could find any material that was previously unpublished.
“I’ll call Aunt Bunt and ask,” Cowan told Browning. Aunt Bunt was
Mary Bernice Percy, Walker Percy’s widow.
After brief discussions with Mrs. Percy and Roy Percy, a nephew
who counsels Mrs. Percy on literary matters, Browning was given
permission to search the archives, which are housed in the Southern
Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Browning spent several days going through the archives, initially
pessimistic that he would find something that was unpublished. His
perseverance paid off, though, and he came away with four possi-
bilities: three short nonfiction prose essays and a 27-page short story
titled, appropriately enough, “A Detective Story.”
The three essays, it turned out, already had appeared in various
small-circulation publications, but there was no trace that “A Detective
Story” had ever been published.
“Finding the story was a wonderful feeling,” Browning said. “Sort
of, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’”
The Hopkins Review editors were equally delighted.
“I kept trying to downplay their expectations,” Browning said. “I
told them not to get too excited until they’d seen it. I sent copies to
them, and within a few hours, they called, saying, ‘It’s fantastic. Let’s
do it.’”
Securing rights consisted primarily of obtaining Mrs. Percy’s
permission.
“She was very kind about it all,” Browning said. “She read the
story, and I had a long telephone interview with her. I learned a lot of
things — not necessarily about the story, but it was fun to talk with
her.”
Browning still worries that the story actually has been published
before. “I remain slightly terrified that the call is going to come in the
middle of the night saying, ‘We published this,’” he said. “More and
more, though, I think we’re safe, but I’m aware that these things can
happen.”
Although detective fiction was popular at the time Percy wrote “A
Detective Story,” Browning said that it isn’t a genre story.
“Percy seems to have had little interest in the detective story, as
such,” Browning said. “You don’t even find it in his favorite reading list
that comes up in his correspondence with friend Shelby Foote or in his
library, much of which is housed at Chapel Hill. I’m not saying that there
aren’t any detective writers in there, but they’re a very small part.”
The story, instead, is sort of a play on the detective genre.

40 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 “The protagonists are detectives only in the sense that they be-
come detectives by deciding to look for this man who tells his wife
he’s going out for cigarettes one evening and doesn’t come back,”
Browning said.
The wife of the vanished man calls a couple — the husband of
which is the story’s narrator — who are good friends to help her find
him, and the search takes them from their small Mississippi Delta
town to Memphis, Tenn.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Cincinnati, Ohio.
“The story reveals a very curious couple’s relationship,” Browning
said. “There are all kinds of hints that they didn’t like each other all
that much or that they were irritated by this or that or curious about
various things about each other. And there is a lot of doubling. It’s clear
that the narrator has imagined doing something like this himself.”
Ultimately, the disappearance is partly solved, but an air of mys-
tery hovers around the conclusion. An air of mystery with its own
doubling also surrounds the story’s composition with relation to its
time frame, stylistic elements and plot. When Browning was talking
to Mrs. Percy about the story’s origin, she thought it might have been
connected to an incident that involved her husband in 1972.
“One day, to Percy’s astonishment, this guy showed up at the
Percy home in Louisiana,” Browning said. “Percy hadn’t seen him
since college, and he told Percy that he’d just left home and not gone
back after telling his wife he was going out for cigarettes.”
Despite the similarities between the incident and the setup of “A
Detective Story,” 1972 seems to Browning to be too late for the story to
have been written. By then, Percy had been a successful novelist for a
decade, and the story exhibits stylistic elements that point to it being
more of a neophyte effort.
“I never felt like I wasn’t reading a Percy story,” Browning said.
“I kept trying to downplay their expectations. I told them not to get too
excited until they’d seen it. I sent copies to them, and within a few
hours, they called, saying, ‘It’s fantastic. Let’s do it.’”
“But I felt there were a few moments that weren’t quite worthy of
Percy at his best, and Mrs. Percy felt the same way. I maintain this
delicate balance between recognizing that it’s not Percy at his absolute
best and feeling very strongly that it’s good and worthy of Percy.”
Internal evidence also points to a composition date earlier than
1972. Scenes in Memphis take place in the Peabody Hotel and the
Chisca Plaza Hotel, both of which are described in their glory days,
although by the early 1970s, the former was a Sheraton and the latter
no longer was open. While it is possible that Percy intentionally set
the story in a previous time frame, that doesn’t jibe with Browning’s
perception of the author’s work.
“Consciously moving the setting back 10 or 15 years doesn’t seem
to be what Percy ever tried to achieve,” Browning said. “It’s certainly
possible, but my overall sense is that that isn’t the case because he
doesn’t try to make anything out of it being set in an earlier time.”
Even though questions remain regarding the story’s genesis, “A
Detective Story” may help scholars better understand Percy and his
work.
“It won’t change the face of Percy scholarship,” Browning said,
“but it does contain motifs and themes that Percy utilized in his more
important work, so you can see that these concerns and interests had
been a part of Percy for a long time. I hope I’m not kidding myself, but
the more I read the story, the more interested I got in it. I really think
it’s a pretty rich place to go to learn more about Percy.”
Read “A Detective Story” and Logan Browning’s comments in The Hopkins Review
› › › ricemagazine.info/18
—Logan Browning
Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 41
Villinski
When New York artist Paul Villinski was preparing for a 2006 exhibition in post-Katrina New To drive home that point, Villinski
Orleans, he wanted to immerse himself in the city and its culture while he created work in created a skeletal mock-up of an unaltered
FEMA trailer inside the gallery that more
response to the devastation. But making art requires space and a host of accoutrements, all of
than achieved his goal of emphasizing the
which were in short supply in New Orleans at the time, so Villinski decided to bring his studio “cagelike” quality of the original trailer
and living quarters with him. space. Visitors could enter it and imagine
what it would be like to live with their kith
and kin — possibly for years — in a space
Villinski’s solution — “Emergency Response of a clear polycarbonate side panel and a that most families wouldn’t be able to stand
Studio” — utilized one of the most notori- geodesic dome the artist built into the roof. for more than a weekend camping trip at
ous symbols of the disaster: the FEMA Fresh air circulated through the open porch, a national park. The artist’s working studio
trailer. He obtained one of the 30-foot Gulf and power was generated through solar was infinitely spacious in comparison.
Streams and set about reworking — and panels and a micro-wind turbine and stored Believing that artists should be
greening — the dreaded trailer’s interior. in eight mammoth batteries. deployed “as part of the mix of disaster
Over a seven-month period, he reconfig- The result, which was parked in front workers, medical personnel, architects and

Villinski created a skeletal mock-up of an unaltered FEMA trailer inside the gallery that more
than achieved his goal of emphasizing the “cagelike” quality of the original trailer space.

ured the space to allow for a studio and
added a drop-down porch. He ripped out
the trailer’s much publicized hazardous and
formaldehyde-laden materials and replaced
them with green materials like reclaimed
wood, bamboo cabinetry, linseed oil lino-
leum tiles and insulation made of recycled
denim. The traditionally dark trailer became
light-filled, even when closed, because
of Sewall Hall as part of Villinski’s recent
Rice Gallery installation, was a functional,
portable and aesthetically pleasing space
that seemed adequate, if tight, for one or
two people. One wonders how in the world
FEMA determined that a family of six could
actually live for an extended period of time
within the confines of the standard-issue
trailer design.
urban planners charged with responding
to, repairing and re-envisioning disaster
sites like New Orleans,” Villinski sees his
Emergency Response Studio as a vehicle —
both literal and figurative — that will allow
artists to embed themselves in and respond
to disaster situations.
—Kelly Klaasmeyer

42 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Arts

A Venue for Art

Building on its commitment to incorporate
art into its landscape and interior public
spaces as part of Rice’s Vision for the Second
Century and the Centennial Campaign, Rice
has appointed Molly Hubbard as university
art director. Hubbard will have an active role
in collaborating with artists and patrons to
create opportunities for public art on the
Rice campus. The collection will create a
more vibrant and dynamic campus and will
more intimately connect Rice with the arts
community in Houston and beyond.
In her newly established role, Hubbard is
charged with developing a master plan for
art on campus and steering Rice’s art com-
mittee, co-chaired by Raymond Brochstein
’55 and Suzanne Deal Booth ’77, to review
artists’ works and proposed projects. She
also will have a role in developing collab-
orative art education programs within Rice
and with other Houston art groups as well as
engaging patrons to support the programs.
Hubbard and the art committee plan to
work with both established and emerging
artists from diverse backgrounds and re-
gions. The commissioned works will be site-
specific and multidimensional in a variety of
media, with a focus on high aesthetic value
and conceptual merit.
“Think of the entire campus as a venue
for art,” Hubbard said. “We will not only make
meaningful contributions to the lives of Rice
students and stakeholders, but also by open-
ing our campus to the Houston community
and visitors, we will become a destination for
the experience and enjoyment of art.”
Hubbard is well-prepared for her new
role at Rice. She has been a member of the
Rice Art Committee for a year and served
P hotos: N ash B aker © nashb aker.c om

as director of special projects for the School

of Humanities for art, film and creative writ-
ing projects. Recently, she was appointed by
Texas Gov. Rick Perry to a six-year term on
the Texas Commission on the Arts. The com-
mission encourages appreciation for fine arts
in Texas and works to drive economic devel-
opment and increase access to the arts.
—Jessica Stark

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 43

Sky
space
It’s not unusual to hear artists talk about the use of
light and space. It’s pretty rare when one’s art con-
sists of light and space. Meet celebrated American
artist James Turrell, who uses some of nature’s most
ephemeral elements to create experiential works of
art, one of which has been commissioned by Rice.

Shown above is Turrell’s Skyspace located in the Draper Courtyard at Pomona College, Claremont, Calif.

Take a tour of the Pomona College Skyspace: ›› › ricemagazine.info/16

44 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Arts
Turrell‘s installation, which inaugurates the new public art
program at Rice, will stand in the green space in front of Alice
Pratt Brown Hall, home of The Shepherd School of Music. The
Rice Art Committee, co-chaired by Raymond Brochstein ’55
and Suzanne Deal Booth ’77, will lead the efforts for the de-
velopment and construction of the project. The design will be
open-air and could include a water element. Just as important
will be the piece’s accessibility: The space was deliberately
selected for the nearby parking and the openness around it, and
the work will be visible from some high-rises around Houston
and the Texas Medical Center.

“I’ve worked in a lot of museums and private collections, and I think

that, in a way, people in the art world have done a disservice to the
field because it’s become too elite and insulated,” said Deal Booth,
whose gift is making the Turrell piece possible. “So I’ve made a big
attempt to bring access to art. Let’s not even call it ‘art.’ Let’s call it
‘interesting spaces.’”
Both art and Rice are ingrained in Deal Booth’s blood. Fresh from
a summer spent in Europe touring museums and studying paintings,
she entered Rice thirsting for all things art: the culture, the history, the
lifestyle. An art history major studying closely with the department’s
four faculty members, Deal Booth found what she was seeking, but
when she met Dominique de Menil, a new hunger emerged.
“She set an example for me of how to get involved with the people
around you,” Deal Booth said. “She set a tone for what I would call
‘high-level philanthropy.’”
Deal Booth got a firsthand look into her mentor’s passion by
working as a student assistant during the time de Menil was involved
at Rice University. Her job was to go through the late John de Menil’s
files and catalog the information from the note cards. The work might
have been dull to some, but Deal Booth loved it because of the art it “I have always been intrigued by
introduced her to and the insight it afforded her into the de Menils’
collecting process. James’ work and his passion to
Deal Booth’s association with Turrell dates back to 1980, when create spaces where ephemeral
she was a graduate student in art history and art conservation at the
Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. During that time, she or even invisible light —
worked as Turrell’s part-time assistant and helped build one of his
first “skyspaces” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. She
as is usually perceptible
later worked with him to install his first retrospective at the Whitney only in our dreams — can be
Museum of American Art.
“I have always been intrigued by James’ work and his passion to experienced.”
create spaces where ephemeral or even invisible light — as is usually —Suzanne Deal Booth
perceptible only in our dreams — can be experienced,” Deal Booth
said. “It is with great joy that I am able to extend this gift to the Rice
community.” lit, outdoor installation, Houston will become the only city where the
For more than three decades, Turrell has used light and in- public can see both types of Turrell’s work.
determinate space to extend and enhance perception. His work “Having a new work by an artist with the stature of James Turrell
has been the subject of more than 140 solo exhibitions world- at Rice will be a profound statement for the university’s intention of
wide since 1967. Since 1972 he has been transforming the Roden creating a public art program with high aesthetic merit,” said Molly
Crater, a natural cinder volcano situated in the Painted Desert Hubbard, Rice’s newly appointed university art director. “Imagine the
in northern Arizona, into a large-scale artwork. Through the experience for the multitudes of viewers who will be drawn to the
medium of light, the piece relates to the surrounding sky, land work, not unlike a pilgrimage site.”
and culture. —Jessica Stark
His permanent installations are on view at the Guggenheim
Museum in New York; the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas; the
Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; and Learn more about Suzanne Deal Booth’s philanthropy to Rice University
the Panza Collection in Varese, Italy, among others. Turrell has two ›› › ricemagazine.info/17
other major projects in Houston, the Quaker Meeting House and “The
Light Inside,” a site-specific, artificially lit, interior installation at the Have an artistic view for Rice? Find out how you can help.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. With the addition of Rice’s naturally ›› › www.rice.edu/centennialcampaign

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 45

 “Along our low gradient Texas and Louisiana
coastlines, an annual rise in relative sea
level of between 1/16 and 1/8 inch per year
results in an average of three feet to five
feet of coastal retreat.”

Evolution of the Upper — both exacerbated by decreasing infusions of river sand due to
up-stream dams.
Texas Coast Equally fascinating is Anderson’s recounting of the geological
history of the upper Texas coast. Did you know that, at the end of
John Anderson likes to joke that he studies the Antarctic in the winter the last Ice Age, the Texas shoreline was located approximately 80
and the upper Gulf Coast in the summer, but what he sees happening miles farther out in the Gulf than it is today? At the time, Galveston
along the Gulf Coast is no laughing matter. Bay was a broad valley carved by the San Jacinto and Trinity rivers
— a valley that was about 170 feet deep. Between 14,000 and 5,000
Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and years ago, the shoreline moved landward as much as 60 feet a year
professor of Earth science, has spent two decades studying the Texas in some locations, flooding the valley, which then filled with sedi-
coastline and continental shelf, and he put what he has learned in ment. Galveston Island didn’t exist until the end of that period, and
“The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast: A Geologist Bolivar Peninsula didn’t form until 2,500 years ago.
Answers Questions About Sand, Storms and Living by Anderson’s projections into the future are a little more
the Sea” (Texas A&M University Press, 2007). In frightening. While the geophysical interactions involved in
this richly illustrated book, he sets out to relative sea level rise are complex
answer fundamental questions about — a combination of rising sea levels
coastal evolution, natural process- and land subsidence — and well
es that affect the coastline and explained in the book, the outlook
how human development can is not rosy. “Along our low gradient
be managed to help preserve it. Texas and Louisiana coastlines,”
Want to know what happens Anderson wrote, “an annual rise in
to the sand that erodes from relative sea level of between 1/16
Texas beaches or if beach erosion and 1/8 inch per year results in an
can be stopped? Can a hurricane average of three feet to five feet of
have positive impacts? How much coastal retreat.” This will subject
development can the coast stand? significant portions of Galveston
How severe is the possibility of Island and much of southern
extensive coastal flooding due to Chambers County, which is below
rising sea levels? five feet in elevation, to flooding in
The answers to these questions the next century or two.
and others might be surprising. Aerial and satellite photos,
Sand, for example, does not erode maps and charts augment
from beaches — some of it is washed Anderson’s text, giving dramatic
down the coast by currents that run evidence that the landscape,
parallel to the shoreline, some collects which we tend to view as eternal,
in tidal deltas or behind man-made is, in fact, more ephemeral than
barriers such as jetties, and some we’d like to admit.
is layered over by river silt. Beaches —Christopher Dow
merely seem like they’re eroding due to
rising sea levels and the second-worst
coastal subsidence in the United States

46 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Mystery of Life After Death
The question of what happens to us after we die has been a
topic of uncertainty and debate for millennia. People argue
over whether death is the end or whether our souls live for-
ever on another plane of existence.
This mystery has engaged the imagination of neuroscientist
and writer David Eagleman ’93, who decided that
there are many more possibilities than we have
begun to fathom.
In “Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives”
(Pantheon, 2009), Eagleman, who also is an as-
sistant professor of psychology at Rice, presents 40
fictional vignettes that describe the purpose of our
existence and what happens after we die. In the
book’s eponymous story, “Sum,” he propos-
es the possibility that similar events in
our lives are reordered and ex-
perienced in groups: We spend
15 months looking for lost items,
then spend the next 18 months
waiting in line before moving on to
a 200-day shower. “Ineffable” posits
that everything that exists also gets an
afterlife, including plays, stores and ses-
sions of Congress. “Mary” hypothesizes
that God’s favorite book is “Frankenstein,”
and he has created a throne in the afterlife
for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In “Prism,”
we are split into our multiple selves at all ages
of our lives and can interact with ourselves
along with everyone else in the afterlife. Other
stories address the personality and substance of
God — and whether all current ideas of God are complete-
ly off the mark — or whether there actually is no afterlife.
None of the 40 stories presents itself as a serious
expectation of what comes after this life. Instead, in thought-
provoking and often humorous ways, they embrace the idea
that the opportunities for our uncertain future are endless.
—Jenny West Rozelle
Bookshelf
Seeking the Oracle
Richard Smith’s friends and colleagues warned him not to tackle the
evolution of the “Yijing.” The topic is too big, they said. Too complicated.
“There is probably no work circulating in the modern world that is at once as instantly
recognized and stupendously misunderstood as the ‘Yijing,’” said Smith, the George and
Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and professor of history at Rice. “Although most
people know that the ‘Yijing’ originated in China, few are aware
of how it evolved, and even Chinese scholars can’t agree on
its basic nature. It’s been described as a book of philosophy, a
historical work, an ancient dictionary, an encyclopedia, an early
scientific treatise and a mathematical model of the universe. To
some, the ‘Yijing’ is a sacred scripture, to others it is a work of
awesome obscurity.”
Smith said his friends’ warnings were valid, calling
the “Yijing” — also known as the “I-Ching” and “Classic of
Changes” — “a black hole within the China field, a dense and
immense space that allows no possibility of escape for anyone
drawn by its powerful pull.” But the “Yijing” also is one of the
most important documents not only in Chinese history but, ar-
guably, in world history as well, and Smith couldn’t resist its
attraction.
The result is “Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the
World: The ‘Yijing’ (‘I-Ching,’ or ‘Classic of Changes’) and Its
Evolution in China” (University of Virginia Press, 2008), the first
full-length work in any Western language on the development
of the “Yijing.” While Smith admitted that his book barely scratches the sur-
face of the “Yijing”’s history, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He collected massive
amounts of research material from nearly everywhere the document has been
— enough, he said, to fill several books.
In addition to exploring the foundations of the “Yijing” itself, “Fathoming the
Cosmos and Ordering the World” provides a rough map of the historical and intellectual
terrain that led to the several stages of its genesis. Smith’s intent is to give readers a
good sense of how scholars and practitioners talked about and used the “Yijing” and to
explore the vast field of interpretive possibilities the text presented to creative minds
over time and across space.
Written for the specialist and nonspecialist alike, “Fathoming the Cosmos and
Ordering the World” can be a daunting read but rewarding for those who are curious
about this ancient and ubiquitous Chinese text.
—Christopher Dow

“The Literary Subversions
of Medieval Women,” by
Jane Chance, the Andrew
W. Mellon Distinguished
Chair and professor of
English and director of the
Medieval Studies Program
and Workshop at Rice
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
“Measuring Vortices:
Architectural
Principles in the Age
of Cybernetics,” by
Christopher Hight, assis-
tant professor of architec-
ture at Rice (Routledge,
2007)
“A Dialogue of Civilizations:
Gulen’s Islamic Ideals and
Humanistic Discourse,” by B.
Jill Carroll, executive director of
the Boniuk Center for the Study
and Advancement of Religious
Tolerance and adjunct associate
professor of religious studies at
Rice (The Light, Inc., 2007)
“Faith in the Halls “Moon Flights,” by
of Power: How Elizabeth Moon ’68 (Night
Evangelicals Joined the Shade Books, 2007)
American Elite,” by D.
Michael Lindsay, assistant
professor of sociology at
Rice (Oxford University
Press, 2007)

Rice Magazine • No. 3 • 2009 47

 Sports
Colwick Goes Up
and Comes
Down in the
Record Books
“This is all happening
very fast, but I am sure
I’ll catch up. I have never
been an All-American
before, so this is all very
new to me. I am just glad
my parents were able to
see me win.”
—Jason Colwick
48 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Rice pole vaulter Jason Colwick
became a two-time NCAA champion on
June 12 after capturing the 2009 NCAA
Outdoor Track and Field title at the
University of Arkansas’ John McDonnell
Field. He cleared 5.70m/18’ 8.25” at the meet
after previously winning the 2009 NCAA
Indoor Track and Field Championships,
held March 13–14 at Texas A&M’s Gilliam
Indoor Track Stadium, with a height of
5.60m/18’ 4.5”.
An upcoming senior, Colwick entered the in-
door championships as the top-ranked vaulter
with a season best of 5.61m/18’ 4.75”. He is
the Owls’ first NCAA indoor pole vault cham-
pion, and their first individual NCAA indoor
champion since Allison Beckford ’03 won the
NCAA Indoor 400 meters in 2002. He also is
the first C-USA product to win an NCAA Men’s
indoor title.
Colwick is the first vaulter in C-USA history
to top 18 feet, which he did three times during
an indoor season that saw him surge past a
crowded field to become the NCAA Champion.
He holds the world’s second and NCAA’s No. 1
mark at 5.72m/18’ 9.25”, set at the 82nd Clyde
Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin in April.
”It was a great night to jump with perfect
weather conditions,” Colwick said of the out-
door meet at Arkansas. With the win there, he
becomes Rice’s first NCAA outdoor champion
since Ryan Harlan won the 2004 decathalon.
In June, Colwick was named South Central
Field Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Track and
Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
He is the third Rice student to win an NCAA
pole vault title overall: Dave Roberts ’73 took
three consecutive titles from 1971 to 1973,
and Fred Hansen ’63 captured the NCAA title
in 1962.
“This is all happening very fast, but I am
sure I’ll catch up,” Colwick commented. “I have
never been an All-American before, so this is
all very new to me. I am just glad my parents
were able to see me win.”
—Chuck Pool Jr.
View a Rice photo gallery
›› › ricemagazine.info/10
 ON THE Bookshelf

“When I was younger,

my mother told me that
I would be married in
Cohen House at Rice. Of
course, protocol says the
girl’s family decides that.”
—Ron Borschow

A Gift to Rice That Is Music to the Ears

Ron Borschow didn’t get married in Cohen House as his mother Hazel Borschow
’28 predicted, but her love for Rice University certainly made an impression on
him. It wasn’t the only thing the enthusiastic alumna passed on to her son. Hazel,
who played the violin and piano, also shared her deep affection for classical music.
Ron recalls coming home from school every afternoon to the sound of Chopin and
Beethoven playing on his mother’s Victrola, and he fondly remembers joining her
on regular trips to the symphony and opera.

Today, Borschow is commemorating his mother’s love of music by establishing the

Borschow Family Endowed Scholarships in violin, piano, cello and voice. He also
plans to endow a need-based scholarship for undergraduate students in honor of
the education his father, Reuben Borschow ’28, received at Rice. Taken together,
these planned gifts will provide a legacy of support for Rice’s Centennial Campaign
and will enable students to create the high caliber of music that has been a joy in
Borschow’s life.

To learn more about this fund or about making charitable gifts to Rice through your estate,
please contact the Office of Gift Planning for gift illustrations and calculations tailored to your situation.

Phone: 713-348-4624 • E-mail: giftplan@rice.edu • Web site: www.giving.rice.edu/giftplanning

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

Internationally acclaimed soprano

Renée Fleming performed to a sell-
out crowd of 700 at the Shepherd
School of Music’s recent gala.
During the first half of the perfor-
mance, Fleming was accompanied
by her longtime friend and musical
collaborator Richard Bado, director
of Rice’s opera studies program,
and during the second half by
the Shepherd School Symphony
Orchestra under the direction of
Larry Rachleff, the Walter Kris
Hubert Professor of Orchestral
conducting. The performance
helped raise a record-breaking
$2.4 million, which will benefit the
opera program, which is gaining
national attention; and increase
endowed scholarships as part of
Rice’s Centennial Campaign.