Rice Magazine No. 12

Right BrainRight BrainRight BrainViews Views

A Look at the Arts

The Magazine of Rice University No. 12 | 2012

18 A PLACE FOR ART 20 THE ART OF THE UNIVERSITY 26 ARTISTIC PASSION 28 A NEW STAGE 32 ONE JOURNEYS END IS THE

BEGINNING OF ANOTHER 34 AROUND THE WORLD IN 88 KEYS 36 MOB RULES

7| The UnConvention 8|Looks Matter 9| Better Violins 11|Mothers Worries 14|Asthma App

Contents28

10 And the CAREER Awards just keep on coming.

5 Rice alumna makes TIMEs People Who Mattered list

5 Shepherd School alumna gets Grammy

8 When youre interviewing for a job,

36

looks do matter.

ContentsContentsContents 6 Battling bugs with

rhythm

9 Designing better violins by applying mathematics

11 What worries mothers when their children play outside?

12 The demographics of Islamic terrorist detainees

7 The UnConvention comes to Rice in April.

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

3 FivePrime founder elected to the Rice board

17

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

Owls help HISD kick off sustainability initiative

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

Photo: Tommy LaVergne

Students

Features 18 A Place for Art

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

B y D a v i d W . L e e b r o n

20 The Art of the University To the outside world, Rice has been decidedly left-brained, but one look at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts will change that perception.

B y A l y s o n W a r d

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

B y L e s l i e C o n t r e r a s S c h w a r t z

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


32 One Journeys End Is the Beginning of Another What happens when a professor prods a shy student to expand her artistic scale? Ask photographer Gena Dawn.

B y K e l l y K l a a s m e y e r

34 Around the World in 88 Keys Pianist Kimball Gallagher is out to conquer the world, one small concert at a time.

B y J e s s i c a C . K r a f t

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


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28

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Students 14 If you need an app for asthmatics,

check out mobileSpiro.

15 The Matchbox Gallery hasn t gotten larger, but its still showing great student art.

16 Intern to the world helps launch the Virtual Student Foreign Service.

17 Senior Rowan Canter helps develop a sustainable energy model for HISD.

Arts 40 A lot of people live in model

neighborhoods, but not like the one created by Ana Serrano.

41 One of Rice s newest sculptures, a large bronze owl, presides over the new Hindman Garden.

42 A new piece of artwork by Jaume Plensa draws people inside literally.

Bookshelf 44 Welcome to Houston: 1 million acres

and no zoning.

44 Adrenaline, the latest from thriller writer Jeff Abbott, will get your blood moving.

45 Jeff Kripal boldly goes where few religious studies professors have gone before.

Sports 46 Whats it like behind the scenes in

pro football? Ask Will McClay.

48 Introducing the newest addition to Rice Stadium.

Rice Magazine No. 10 2011 1

Houston, TXHouston, TX 77X

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F O R E W O R D

2 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

This is an auspicious time for the arts at Rice. When I began editing Rice Magazine more than 17 years ago, art had a presence on the Rice campus, but you had to look for it. There were a couple dozen portraits hanging in various buildings, and half a dozen sculptures occupied the quads and other open spaces. Fine arts majors had to share a department with art historians and did not have their own dedicated exhibition space. And the Shepherd School of Music had just built Alice Pratt Brown Hall and was beginning to develop its stellar international reputation. Today, as Rice approaches its centennial, it seems as if Edgar Odell Lovetts dream of the arts taking their rightful place alongside the sciences and letters is nally coming to fruition. Sculptures have cropped up all over campus inside buildings as well as on the grounds. Paintings and photographs now grace the walls of many interiors. And the area just east of Alice Pratt Brown Hall is the site for the new skyspace, a permanent environmental art piece by James Turrell scheduled for completion this spring. In fact, just recently, Rice dedicated a new sculpture by renowned international artist Jaume Plensa.

Rice has become a destination for art lovers, but the artworks that adorn the campus are just the most obvious examples of the arts at Rice. Art majors now have their own department that includes theater and lm in its offerings, and the university boasts four exhibition spaces: Rice Gallery, the Matchbox Gallery, the EMERGEncy Room and the exhibition space in the Rice Media Center. And just as important for the future of the arts at Rice is the establishment of the Rice Public Art Program, which is working to further enhance the campus with thoughtful and intriguing pieces of art.

In this issue, we strive to bring you the breadth and depth of the arts at Rice, rst by taking a look at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, then by surveying a number of other artistic offerings and achievements that are taking place here. Among our features are one on the Rice Theater Program and proles of three young alumni who recently launched artistic careers in the public sphere.

I am as pleased to present this survey of the arts at Rice as I am astounded at the changes that have been wrought

here in the arts and other disciplines since I began editing Rice Magazine. Then, of course, it was titled Sallyport, and it, too, has undergone several transitions over the years. And now it, and I, are preparing for another major change. It is time for me to move on to other projects, and this will be my nal issue as editor of Rice Magazine. I will miss my co-workers and friends on campus, but I will miss even more having the opportunity to showcase the best of this great university to its most ardent fans and supporters. My successor is Lynn Gosnell, former editor of Sombrilla, the magazine of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Please welcome her with as much generosity as you have shown me during my time here.

May you and Rice prosper.

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

Christopher Dow cloud@rice.edu

Rice Magazine

No. 12

Published by the

Ofce of Public Affairs

Linda Thrane, vice president

Editor Christopher Dow

Editorial Director Tracey Rhoades

Creative Director Jeff Cox

Art Director Chuck Thurmon

Editorial Staff B.J. Almond, staff writer Jade Boyd, staff writer

Amy Hodges, staff writer Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor

David Ruth, staff writer Alyson Ward, staff writer

Mike Williams, staff writer

Photographers Tommy LaVergne, photographer

Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer

The Rice University

Board of Trustees

James W. Crownover, chairman; J.J.JD.D. D . Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson;

Keith T. Anderson; Laura Arnold; Subha

Viswanathan Barry; Suzanne Deal Booth;

Robert T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson;

T. Jay Collins; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans;

Douglas Lee Foshee; Lawrence Guffey;

James T. Hackett; John Jaggers; Larry

Kellner; Ralph Parks; Lee H. Rosenthal;

L. E. Simmons; Charles Szalkowski;

Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley;

Lewis Rusty Williams;

Randa Duncan Williams.

Administrative Ofcers David W. Leebron, president; George

McLendon, pro vost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance ; Kevin Kirby,

vice president for Administration; Chris Muoz, vice pres i dent for Enrollment;

Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda

Thrane, vice pres i dent for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and

general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development.

Rice Magazine is published by the Ofce

of Public Affairs of Rice University and

is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff,

graduate students, parents of undergradu

ates and friends of the university.

Editorial Ofces Creative ServicesMS 95

P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TXX 77251-1892 77

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MARCH 2012 RICE UNIVERSITY

ONLINE AT: WWW.ISSUU.COM/RICEUNIVERSITY

SallyportT HROUGH T H E

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

Rusty Williams

Rusty Williams Elected to Rice Board

Lewis T. Rusty Williams, founder of San Francisco-based biotech company FivePrime Therapeutics, has been elected to the Rice University Board of Trustees.

FivePrime Therapeutics specializes in the discovery and development of innovative protein and antibody drugs. Williams serves as the companys executive chairman and president. The 1971 Rice alumnus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Rusty Williams is known for his pioneering work in drug discovery,

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

Williams, who graduated from Rice

ofcer and a member of the board of directors of Chiron Corp. and president of Chiron Technologies, a biopharmaceutical company, where he was instrumental in applying genomics research to its drug research and development. Prior to joining Chiron, Williams was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Francisco.

He also is a co-founder of COR Therapeutics Inc., which before being acquired by a larger company, specialized in therapeutic products for treating and preventing acute and chronic cardiovascular diseases.

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

David Leebron

and his work has led to breakthroughs that are improving health and medical treatment today, said Jim Crownover 65, Rice board chairman. Were very honored that he has agreed to bring his valuable experience to the Rice governing board.

We are thrilled that Rusty is joining our board, as he brings a wealth of experience and accomplishment in higher education, science and innovation, Rice President David Leebron said. Rustys expertise will be especially invaluable as Rice expands its research

with a bachelors degree in chemistry, also has an M.D. and a Ph.D. in physiology, both from Duke University. He completed his residency and a clinical fellowship in cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

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

Before Williams founded FivePrime in 2002, he served as chief scientic

Williams received the Basic Research Prize from the American Heart Association in 1997 the same year he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences section on medical genetics, hematology and oncology for his contributions to the understanding of the process of signal transduction in cells.

Williams also serves on the boards of Juvaris BioTherapeutics, Beckman Coulter Inc. and Berklee College of Music.

B.J. Almond


Rice MBA Ranks in Top 20 Nationally

Rice Universitys Master of Business Administration (MBA) program is among the top 20 full-time MBA programs in the nation, according to new rankings from the Financial Times. In addition, the program at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business is still best in Texas and the Southwest. Last year, the program ranked No. 21. We are pleased with the continued recognition from publications such as Financial Times on the quality of our programs, students and faculty research, said Bill Glick, dean of the Jones School. Considering the increase in application volume, increasing selectivity and ongoing development and recruitment of world-class faculty, I am very happy with the positive momentum in the rankings.

The Rice MBA Full-Time Program provides students with a comprehensive MBA learning experience that combines specialized course work and real-world experience to improve and amplify their strategy, leadership and creative credentials. The program features innovative classes, expert faculty and a diverse group of candidates who often become colleagues for a lifetime. Unlike other rankings, the Financial Times also considers alumni success three years postgraduation. On this metric, Rice MBA alumni rank 16th in salary increase.

Amy Hodges

View the Financial Times rankings: www.f t.com/home/us

For information on Rice MBA programs, visit: business.rice.edu

Rice Among Princeton Reviews Top 5Best-value Private Universities Rice University is one of the countrys top ve best values among private schools for 2012, according to the Princeton Reviews newest rankings.

The rankings are based on data about the quality of academics, cost of attendance and nancial aid, and student opinion surveys collected from 650 colleges and universities. During the past decade, Rice has been among the Princeton Reviews top 10 best values almost every year, and three times it has been the No. 1 best value.

Rices consistently high ranking on the best-value lists by the Princeton Review, Kiplinger and others reects its success at keeping its high-quality education affordable and accessible to talented students from all backgrounds, Rice President David Leebron said. The word value is important here because it encompasses not only our comparatively low tuition, generous student-aid programs and need-blind admission, but also the dedication of our faculty members and their personal engagement with our students made possible by one of the lowest studentfaculty ratios in the country.

The 2012 edition of the Princeton Reviews The Best Value Colleges notes that in addition to Rices terric nancial-aid policy, the university offers a number of merit scholarships. Even for students who receive no nancial assistance, Rice remains one of the best values in higher education. With tuition set thousands of dollars lower than Ivy League and other peer institutions, Rice walks the walk of keeping the highest caliber of education affordable for all.

Rice admits students regardless of their

ability to pay and provides nancial-aid packages that meet 100 percent of students demonstrated need. Since 2009, entering freshmen from families with incomes of up to $80,000 do not have to take out loans, and Rice has limited loans to no more than $10,000 for need-eligible incoming freshmen for their four undergraduate years.

The Princeton Review refers to Rice as one of the top universities of the nation and notes that Rice offers students the opportunity to develop a strong rapport with their professors, and the tier-one research institution offers robust and extensive opportunities for research and internships.

The prole notes that Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life by the Princeton Review three years in a row and is also currently ranked No. 1 for happiest students.

In addition to Rice, the other private schools on the top ve list are Williams College, Swarthmore College, Princeton University and Harvard College. Kiplingers Personal Finance magazine has ranked Rice as its No. 4 best value among private schools four years in a row.

B.J. Almond

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



Her TIME Rice University alumna Virginia Moyer 74, a high-prole professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, was named one of TIME magazines People Who Mattered in its Person of the Year 2011 edition. The magazine cited her work as chairwoman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, rst convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984 and responsible for providing rigorous, independent assessments of a range of clinical preventive services. The panel is considered to be the gold standard for such recommendations and has far-reaching impact on decisions by Medicare, health insurers, clinicians and medical schools.

TIME noted that in October the task force set off shock waves when it recommended healthy men do not need routine screenings for prostate cancer. The ndings followed ve clinical trials that showed the tests, which measure levels of prostate-specic antigen (PSA) in the blood, not only do not save lives overall, but also put patients at risk of harm in the form of needless surgery, impotence and incontinence.

The fact is we considered it extremely carefully, Moyer said. We went over the data with a ne-tooth comb, and our conclusion was that the downsides of screening outweigh any potential benets. I say that carefully because it is not clear that there is any benet.

She noted that biopsies commonly show that what look like cancer cells under a microscope do not behave like cancer and perhaps should not be called cancer. She also said that two-thirds of men age 6585 have cancerous cells in their prostates, and the vast majority of them will never be affected by it in their lifetimes. So nding it out is not going to benet them. Better tests would be most welcome, she said. If we could nd a new biomarker for aggressive prostate cancer, that would be terric.

Moyer said that credit for the recommendation should not be hers alone but belongs to the 16-member panel of health professionals who look at many issues. We have between 70 and 90 topics in our active list, some of which have not been revised in a while, and we have several new topics under way, Moyer said. Another that recently came out was a draft recommendation to counsel young people about exposure to ultraviolet light, to avoid skin cancer. Another had to do with falls and the elderly.

For all of us, our passion is getting the science right, Moyer said. We are not advocates, and that is what most signicantly distinguishes the Preventive Services Task Force from other groups that are interested in prevention. The most important thing is to get it right and not promote preventative activities that might not be benecial. One of the reasons is that they take time away from things we know are bene cial. Mike Williams

Shepherd School Alumna Gets Grammy

Praised in The New Yorker for her fresh, vital portrayal, bringing a luminous tone, a generously supported musical line, a keen sense of verbal nuance and a air for seduction, Cooke has performed at such famed venues as Carnegie Hall and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is the recipient of numerous professional awards and honors.

American mezzo-soprano and Shepherd School of Music alumna Sasha Cooke 04 received the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for her performance as Kitty Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams Doctor Atomic.

Cooke earned a Bachelor of Music from Rices Shepherd School of Music, where she specialized in vocal performance. She also has a masters degree from the Juilliard School.

Amy Hodges

Rice: A Scientific Powerhouse

Rice University has been ranked No. 4 among the worlds top 500 universities for the quality and impact of its scientic publications, according to the Leiden Ranking 2011/2012, a product of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands.

The rankings are based on scientic publication data from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database covering the years 200509 and are normalized for university size.

The rankings depend heavily on the proportion of a universitys presence in top 10 percent publications, dened as those most frequently cited, as well as collaborative indicators. The top-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology had just over a quarter of its publications in top 10 percent publications; Rice had 22.2 percent, fractions of a percentage point behind No. 2 Princeton and No. 3 Harvard.

View the complete rankings: ricemagazine.info/108


Bugs WithRhythm

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

Danielle Goodspeed

BattlingBattlingBattlingBugs With

When you walk past plants, they dont look like theyre doing anything, said Janet Braam, an investigator on the new study, which appeared this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its intriguing to see all of this activity down at the genetic level. Its like watching a besieged fortress go on full alert.

Braam, professor and chair of Rices Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, said scientists have long known that plants have an internal clock that allows them to measure time regardless of light conditions. For example, some plants that track the sun with their leaves during the day are known to reset their leaves at night and move them back toward the east in anticipation of sunrise.

In recent years, scientists have begun to apply powerful genetic tools to the study of plant circadian rhythms. Researchers have found that as many as one-third of the genes in Arabidopsis thaliana a widely studied species in plant biology are activated by the circadian cycle. Rice biochemist Michael Covington found that some of these circadian-regulated genes were also connected to wounding responses.

We wondered whether some of these circadian-regulated genes might allow plants to anticipate attacks from insects, in much the same way that they anticipate the sunrise, said Covington, now at the University of California, Davis.

Danielle Goodspeed, a graduate student in biochemistry and cell biology, designed a clever experiment to answer the question. She used 12-hour light cycles to entrain the circadian clocks of both Arabidopsis plants and cabbage loopers, a type of caterpillar that eats Arabidopsis. Half of the plants

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

were placed with caterpillars on a regular day-night cycle, and the other half were placed with out-of-phase caterpillars whose internal clocks were set to daytime mode during the hours that the plants were in nighttime mode.

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

Wassim Chehab, a Rice faculty fellow in biochemistry and cell biology, helped Goodspeed design a follow-up experiment to understand how plants used their internal clocks to resist insect attacks. Chehab and Goodspeed examined the accumulation of the hormone jasmonate, which plants use to regulate the production of metabolites that interfere with insect digestion.

They found that Arabidopsis uses its circadian clock to increase jasmonate production during the day, when insects like cabbage loopers feed the most. They also found that the plants used their internal clocks to regulate the production of other chemical defenses, including those that protect against bacterial infections.

Jasmonate defenses are employed by virtually all plants, including tomatoes, rice and corn, Chehab said. Understanding how plants regulate these hormones could be important for understanding why some pests are more damaging than others, and it could help suggest new strategies for insect resistance.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and Rice University. Additional co-authors include Amelia Min-Venditti 11.

Jade Boyd

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


Rice Launches Center for College Readiness

Local school district administrators and Rice K12 leaders gathered on campus in September for the launch of the Center for College Readiness, a division of the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Formerly known as Teacher Professional Development, the center was renamed to reect the growing diversity of its K12 outreach programs.

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

For details, visit unconvention.rice.edu

With its rst teacher training in 1995, the Glasscock School began its journey to provide top-level programming to ensure teachers were properly prepared for the classroom experience. The schools Advanced Placement Summer Institute has been offered 17 consecutive years and is now the largest such training in the nation, attracting more than 2,200 AP teachers this past summer.

Over the years, the school has added training for International Baccalaureate teachers as well as programs for administrators, counselors and secondary students. Other programs include extensive

two years. Of those who take remedial courses in their rst year of college, only 1739 percent will earn a degree.

The research is incontrovertible, Gigliotti said. Rigorous course work in high school, such as AP and IB, better prepares students for postsecondary education and helps ensure that more students will successfully complete their university degrees.

The center will continue to offer its current AP and IB programming, she said, adding that Rice is the only institution offering training in both of the two major college-preparatory curricula. The center will offer specic new programming that will focus on closing equity

We have so many ne K12 programs at Rice. With this new role, we look forward to working with them toward our shared

goal of improved education in our community.

training in American history, Chinese-language teaching, a Global Education Certicate program, and customized district work for teachers and administrators focused on building and sustaining successful AP programs.

To date, more than 30,000 educators and students from all 50 states and 37 countries have taken part in the programs. Since 2007, annual enrollments have increased 102 percent, now standing at more than 5,700. This growth and diversity necessitated the name change to Center for College Readiness.

At the launch celebration, Jennifer Gigliotti, executive director of the center, said the programming has and will continue to be centered on innovative strategies and content to increase the college readiness of students.

Only 45 percent of students enrolled in postsecondary education will earn a bachelors degree, Gigliotti said, primarily because many students nd it necessary to take remedial course work in their rst

Mary McIntire

and achievement gaps among students, building a college-going culture, and supporting students as they navigate the path to college.

Also at the launch, George McLendon, Rices Howard R. Hughes Provost and professor of chemistry, announced that through the Center for College Readiness, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies would take a more central role in coordinating K12 outreach efforts throughout the campus.

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

Carol Hopkins

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

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


Looks Do Matter

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

Discrimination Against Facially Stigmatized Applicants in Interviews: An Eye-Tracking and Face-to-Face Investigation, published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology, is one of the rst studies to examine how individuals with facial blemishes fare in job interviews.

When evaluating applicants in an interview setting, its important to remember what they are saying, said Mikki Hebl, Rice professor of psychology and management, who co-authored the paper with University of Houston assistant professor and Rice alum Juan Madera 05. Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them.

The research included two studies, the rst of which involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated interview while their eye activity was tracked. After the interview, they were asked to recall information about the candidate.

When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally directed in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth, Madera said. We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidates interview content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant.

Our research shows if you recall

less information about competent

candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your

overall evaluations of them.

Mikki Hebl

The second study involved face-to-face interviews between candidates who had a facial birthmark and 38 full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing applicants for their current or past staff positions.

Despite the increase in age, experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera said. In fact, the effects of the stigma were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview setting. It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma, Madera said.

Both Hebl and Madera hope the research will raise awareness about this form of workplace discrimination. The bottom line is that how your face looks can signicantly inuence the success of an interview, Hebl said. There have been many studies showing that specic groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further by showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.

The study was funded by Rice University.

Amy Hodges

Watch a video of Professor Hebl talking about the research:

ricemagazine.info/107

www.rice.edu/ricemagazine 8


TurningTurningTurningMath IntoMath IntoMusic

Standing in his ofce beside a white board scrawled with equations, Sean Hardesty lifted a violin to his shoulder and played the opening of the Sibelius Violin Concerto.

His instrument has an angular, asymmetrical body painted black and red and was built of balsa wood and carbon-ber laminates by a boat designer in Maine. In his Duncan Hall ofce, with the door closed, its sound is piercing and precise.

This is an experimental violin, said Hardesty, a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer in computational and applied mathematics (CAAM). Its a work in progress, not a nished product. I think it sounds pretty good.

Hardesty distills sound to its mathematical essentials; he is working to design violins by applying the tools of optimization to shell structure acoustics.

For a decade he has been a regular participant in the acoustics workshops sponsored by the Violin Society of America (VSA) and has built a violin top using a mathematical model he devised and stateof-the-art 3-D printing technology. During a recent VSA gathering at Oberlin College in Ohio, Hardesty played a Stradivarius, often judged the instruments sonic ideal.

He noted that the Stradivarius violin known as The Hammer, which sold at auction for $3.54 million in 2006, was built in 1707, the year Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler was born. You could easily be tempted to believe that violin making is one of those rare elds of human endeavor that has become drastically worse over the last 300 years, he said. But this view undervalues the best contemporary traditional makers and leaves nothing for the future.

Hardesty, like other avant-garde violin designers and builders, intends to challenge the supremacy of the Strad and other traditionally

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

Matthias Heinkenschloss

Sean is working at the intersection of mathematics, music and materials, said Matthias Heinkenschloss, professor and chair of CAAM and Hardestys former Ph.D. thesis adviser. Specically, he is developing mathematical and computational tools to model and ultimately design violins.

For Hardesty, the well-documented relations between music and mathematics have been a living fact since childhood. His family was casually musical. My mother put a violin in my hands when I was 2 or 3 years old, said Hardesty, who began taking lessons at age 5 and continued through high school, when he began thinking about the physics of musical instruments.

I realized in college, he said, that I was more interested in violin physics than in quantum physics.

Hardesty went on to earn his B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and his masters degree and Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics in 2006 and 2010, respectively, from Rice. From 2007 to 2009, Hardesty played viola with the Doctors Orchestra of Houston (now the Texas Medical Center Orchestra), and until 2011, he served as the groups principal violist.

designed instruments. With the violin, there isnt a best sound, he said. It depends entirely on the taste and skill of the player.

Key to the sounds produced by a violin is the resonating top, or soundboard, which turns the energy of the vibrated strings into the instruments distinctive voice. Hardestys task is to turn a players subjective reactions to that sound into the mathematical essentials that produced it.

Every instrument is different, said Hardesty, who would like to customize instruments to the precise tastes of their owners. You always get something, and then you lose something. Most professional players end up making trade-offs, one quality for another.

At the opposite end of the skill spectrum, Hardesty also foresees designing and manufacturing inexpensive but comparably sophisticated violins for students just beginning their studies.

I would really like to make it possible for more people to play the violin and to play it well and produce a good sound, he said. I know how much pleasure Ive derived from making music and listening to it all my life.

Patrick Kurp

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


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

Bridging the Gap

When Amina Qutub turned her attention from the chemistry of oil to the mysteries of the brain, she liked what she saw. An assistant professor of bioengineering, Qutub is working to understand brain processes using methods that bridge the gap between computational biology and clinical application. Her research may lead to new treatments for victims of stroke and neurodegenerative diseases.

Qutubs research has progressed from work to understand the blood-brain barrier to a focus on the way the body responds to hypoxia or lack of oxygen. With her computational background, shes uniquely positioned to look at the way brain cells behave when they lack oxygen, such as after strokes or during neurodegeneration. The goal is to know how cells process information and to learn to direct how they make decisions, especially under stressful conditions like hypoxia.

We want to know what makes cells more responsive so they can be more viable under hypoxic conditions, Qutub said. In the case of a stroke, for instance, we might learn to regrow areas of the brain.

Imagining Better Imaging

How molecules get from here to there in various environments is a fundamental question Rice University chemist Christy Landes would love to answer. Now Landes, the Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator and an assistant professor of chemistry, will get the chance to do so with the help of the National Science Foundation CAREER grant.

Landes and her group will develop stateof-the-art single-molecule spectroscopic techniques to help researchers understand and control the transport of molecules across charged polymer membranes, particularly at water/membrane interfaces. The work has implications for energy and water purication applications.

Its also a departure from the biomolecular research for which Landes is already known. Last year, she imaged protein-binding processes using a unique mathematics tool developed at Rice for a project that advanced research into memory, learning, and the roots of Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases and stroke.

She said the project is perfectly suited for Rice because it involves chemistry, physics, materials science, environmental science and applied mathematics. Im interested in lots of things, Landes said, and I like my students to learn in an interdisciplinary environment.

Mathematics and Mentoring

Danijela Damjanovic liked numbers from an early age, and mathematics felt like a natural choice for a career. It wasnt a conventional choice for a young woman, and often she was the only woman in her classes. Now, she wants to use her CAREER Award to help young women who might want to become mathematicians as well as to support her research and teaching.

Damjanovic studies dynamical systems objects together with their evolution in time. One of the main goals is to understand not only the current state of the objects under consideration, but also past and future behavior, she said. Does a small perturbation of that system mimic the behavior of the simple system? Damjanovic asked. Or, after a perturbation, do new phenomena arise?

Each spring, Damjanovic plans to offer a semester-long extracurricular science course for high school women that lets them work together on problems and projects and gives them a chance to interact with women who have built prominent careers in math and science.



Examining Motherly Fears Neighborhood poverty is likely to make a mother more fearful about letting her children play outdoors, according to a new study by sociologists at Rice University and Stanford University.

Its no secret that children play outdoors less now than in recent decades, and research shows maternal fear as one reason why, said Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Rice assistant professor of sociology. Her paper on the subject, co-authored by Ariela Schachter, a Ph.D. student in sociology at Stanford, appeared in the journal Family Relations. This study addresses reasons why mothers do or do not let their children play outside, Kimbro said.

Kimbro and Schachter theorize that a mothers fear of her child playing outside is a major component of her decisions regarding the childs free playtime. They tested maternal, household and neighborhood characteristics that may be related to maternal fear and discovered the following:

A mothers household economic status, education, employ-ment and physical/mental health all inuence maternal fear.

Perception of a neighborhoods collective efcacy (shared values and goals, social support) is associated with maternal fear. Mothers who believe they live in neighborhoods with shared values and goals are less likely to be fearful of their child playing outdoors, and vice versa.

Poverty and the percentage of blacks in a neighborhood are associated with increased maternal fear.

Its not entirely surprising that poverty aligns with greater maternal fear, Kimbro said. When considering the characteristics associated with many impoverished neighborhoods lack of playgrounds, good sidewalks and the potential for crime it makes sense that mothers might be more fearful.

Kimbro said that, contrary to what one might expect, mothers are more concerned with issues of social support than crime rates. The fear of children playing outside is not completely rational, she said. You might think that a logical response is to keep your child inside when crime rates are higher, but our research shows that factors closer to the mother, such as how she feels about her neighbors, are more likely to inuence her feelings of fear.

Childrens outdoor play is an important indicator of overall healthy development, Kimbro said. Although neighborhood poverty strongly inuences maternal fear, mothers of sound mental health living in impoverished areas are less likely to be fearful of their children playing outside. Our results suggest that efforts to minimize depression among mothers living in poverty could have signicant, positive impacts on parenting behaviors and particularly in the promotion of childrens outdoor play.

The study, Neighborhood Poverty and Maternal Fears of Childrens Outdoor Play, is the third paper to come from Kimbros broader research project exploring the links between neighborhoods and childrens outdoor play using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study.

The research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its national program, Active Living Research. Additional support for the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and a consortium of private foundations.

Amy Hodges

Read the study: ricemagazine.info/112


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

Rachel Tolbert Kimbro

The Demographics of Islamic Terrorist Detainees Sixty percent of people arrested for Islamic terrorist activities between January 2009 and April 2011 were American citizens, according to a new report from Rice Universitys James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The study of 104 people who were arrested included U.S. and non-U.S. citizens living in America or abroad.

The report, Analyzing the Islamic Extremist Phenomenon in the United States: A Study of Recent Activity, was authored by Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow in homeland security and terrorism at the Baker Institute. Jessica Phillips, an intern with the Baker Institutes homeland security and terrorism program, provided research support for the study.

Using data from international and U.S. news reports, general Internet media, public records and ofcial court documents, the researchers set out in November 2010 to analyze information on the status of Islamic extremism in the United States. They also looked at some of the unanswered questions raised by U.S. Rep. Peter Kings Committee on Homeland Security hearing, The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Communitys Response. King, R-N.Y., and chairman of the committee, held the hearing March 10, 2011.

Providing policymakers this data can allow for a factual discussion and diminish rhetoric, Neuhaus Schaan said. Consequently, policy can be crafted to address current and future needs in the face of change and adaptation by those determined to bring harm to the United States.

Information on birthplaces and conversion to Islam was available for 77 of the 104 people arrested. The data revealed that 60 percent of the group was born outside the U.S. Of the 31 U.S.-born persons where religion of origin could be determined, 14 were born into Muslim families and 17 converted to Islam.

Other key ndings from the report include:

Of those for whom birthplace data was available, half were born in the U.S., 22 percent were naturalized citizens and 7 percent were dual citizens.

Of the 104, 5 percent entered the U.S. on a visa.

Of those who converted to Islam, 63 percent had a known prior criminal record.

Of the 14 American converts with a prior criminal history, at least 55 percent had converted to Islam in prison.

Ninety-two percent were male. Sixty-four percent were 30 years old

or younger. Sixty-six percent had traveled or were

in the process of traveling to the Middle East, Somalia, South Asia or the Balkans.

Of the 104, 70 percent had an association or were attempting an association with an internationally recognized terrorist organization; al-Qaida and its associated branches were cited most.

Of the 29 persons with no known association to a group, 11 had been active on terrorist-related chat rooms and websites.

Overall, 38 percent had been involved in this type of Internet activity.

Only 10 of the 104 are what the authors would consider lone wolves; most in the cohort had ties to others in the group or to an organization.

The Internet and prison conversion are the two biggest new trends that policymakers need to look at more closely, Neuhaus Schaan said. Weve seen a major change in how people become associated with extremist groups in the past 20 years, and we need to adapt.

The report concludes that approximately two-thirds of those involved in extremist activity are men under the age of 34, and no single, all-encompassing prole can be made of the analysis group of 104. Neuhaus Schaan said that the Baker Institute will continue to compile data and issue an updated report annually.

David Ruth

Read the report: ricemagazine.info/114


group of California community colleges


Making Connexions Free textbooks might seem like a mirage to most college students and their parents, but the Rice University-based open-education platform Connexions is striving to make them a reality.

AA group of California community colleges A group of California community colleges and open-education advocates have announced a partnership with Connexions and the California-based 20 Million Minds Foundation. The partnership will enable new course materials developed with a $20 million federal stimulus grant to be available free online for any educator to use, modify and tailor for their own needs.

The Central California Community Colleges Committed to Change (C6) Consortium won the federal grant to create a comprehensive turnkey set of course materials for students in allied health and nursing, clean technology, and agricultural occupations. The grant part of the $500 million Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program administered by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education species that all materials must be created under an open-copyright standard known as the Creative Commons Attribution license, or CC BY.

Our streamlined approach makes it faster and easier to develop high-quality CC BY content for high-enrollment courses, said Dean Florez, president of the California-based

20 Million Minds Foundation. Were going to share C6s nationally leading approach with other TAACCCT grantees in Washington. A common standard particularly one that speeds up the process like this one can make us all more effective.

Connexions, founded in 1999, maintains an online repository of more than 20,000 free lessons all created under the CC BY license. Connexions materials are accessed by more than 1 million people each month. The 20 Million Minds Foundation has been an open-source proponent and is set to manage this unique assignment.

By partnering with Connexions, the C6 Consortium is ensuring that its new courses will have a signicant impact both inside and outside of California, said Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of Connexions and Rices Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Through Connexions, students in every U.S. state and in more than 200 countries will be able to download free digital versions of the C6 material on any device, in any format and at any time.

Jade Boyd

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

What Was Rices First Building?

With Rice Universitys 100th birthday rapidly approaching, Centennial Historian Melissa Kean has uncovered a little-known fact: Rices iconic Lovett Hall, one of the most photographed buildings in the city, wasnt actually Rices rst building.

Working with Kean, Rice video producer Brandon Martin set the record straight about Rices rst building, which was a pier-and-beam structure located in downtown Houston. Lovett Hall was the rst building on the campus at 6100 Main St.

To help celebrate the universitys centennial Oct. 12, Rice University is producing weekly videos exploring the schools unique history. The centennial videos run through Oct. 12.

Read Melissa Keans blog: www.ricehistorycorner.com

Watch the video: ricemagazine.info/113

Celebrate Rice in Istanbul

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

Participate in the universitys rst-ever Alumni College abroad, featuring a distinguished panel of speakers from Rice.

Visit the palaces of great empires and battlegrounds that shaped the world.

Browse lively city markets and savor the traditional tastes of Ottoman cuisine.

Take alternative city tours and boat cruises along the Bosphorus Strait.

Dont pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience Istanbul with alumni and friends during this historic year for Rice.

For more information: alumni.rice.edu/istanbulcentennial


14 1414 rice.edu/ricemagazine1414 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

An Android for Asthma Sufferers MobileSpiro, a portable device Rice students designed to measure lung capacity in children with asthma, is winning competitions as well as the hearts of children.

Created by a team of Baker College sophomores Peter Chang and Hasitha Dharmasiri, Lovett College junior Nonso Anyigbo and alumnus Sid Gupta 07 under the auspices of the George R. Brown School of Engineerings Scalable Health Initiative, mobileSpiro is designed to make it simple for asthma sufferers to self-test their lung capacity, as many are required to do daily.

Typically, lung capacity is tested by a spirometer in a doctors ofce. Spirometers are widely used to measure the volume of air inhaled and exhaled, but commercially available devices are expensive, all costing more than $500, according to the Rice team. The team priced component costs for its version at no more than $100 when the parts are manufactured in large quantities, with results almost as accurate as a lab spirometer.

Last spring, the students paired their spirometer with the work of a Rice team that developed a game, Azmo the Dragon, intended to make it fun for children who suffer from asthma to check their lung capacity, as many are required to do daily. The program nished third in the Game Design category at Microsofts high-prole Imagine Cup.

Though the Azmo game ran on Windows Mobile phones, mobileSpiro employs the Android platform for smartphones. The goal

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

is to make mobileSpiro and its associated hardware accessible and easy to use for self-testing and as a remote monitor that lets clinicians keep an eye on their patients between ofce visits.

One component that makes it special is a Bluetooth transmitter that sends results to the Android device for capture and analysis, but the students are equally excited about their open source code.

The thing I love about this project is, rst, its applicability the fact that its really getting out there and a lot of people have expressed an interest, said Chang, a computer science major. Ive always been

141414 rice.edu/ricemagazinewww.rice.edu/ricemagazinerice.edu/ricemagazinewww.rice.edu/ricemagazine

interested in health care and technology, so its rewarding to work on this project and apply what Ive learned in my courses.

Chang said the team spent a lot of time at the beginning getting up to speed on the health care issues involved. The rst stage was looking through the literature and talking to doctors to see what was out there and what problems we could solve by merging or creating technology, he said.

The team found that spirometers typically require a doctor or technician to be present. We developed automated error-detection algorithms to ensure the patient is doing the test correctly, Chang said. Such tests require a patient to breathe as deeply as possible and then exhale with maximum effort. The ideal test would be one continuous cycle, with no coughing, hesitation or other interruption that could skew the results.

What young patients will ultimately experience is a game that will be fun to play, perhaps even with other asthma sufferers over a social network. It also may someday give researchers hooks into a stream of data that could prove valuable in many ways, not only about groups of patients, but also about environmental conditions in a region.

The team presented mobileSpiro at mHealthSys 2011, an international workshop on mobile systems, applications and services

for health care held in Seattle in November. It was among six academic teams to present and seven to demonstrate their devices for judges. They nished second in the paper competition. Chang and Dharmasiri attended the event.

Ashutosh Sabharwal, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the teams faculty mentor, said mobileSpiro is expected to begin clinical trials this spring.

Mike Williams

Watch a video about mobileSpiro: ricemagazine.info/115

Learn more about the Scalable Health Initiative: sh.rice.edu

Students

Thinking Outside the Box Although only the size of a small ofce, Rices appropriately named Matchbox Gallery has already had a substantial impact on the student population.

The only gallery on campus that is managed by students, the space showcases art by Houston-based artists and local students. Matchbox director and Rice senior Elliott SoRelle listed one of his main goals for the space as exposure of interesting works works that are not necessarily by artists from a specic major. Dolly Li, the gallerys assistant director, and I have done as much as we can to reach out to more Rice students who are not art majors, said SoRelle, who also is not, strictly speaking, an artist by trade he is a double major in visual and dramatic arts and biochemistry and cell biology and plans to attend graduate school in biophysics next year. Matchbox Gallery is unique because it

Honestly, there is nothing like Matchbox is student-run the faculty and staff on campus, said Li, a senior majoring in economics and visual and dramatic arts. This is get out of the way as much as possible. the rst art gallery that has had such a close

John Sparagana connection to the student body. Matchbox Gallery located in Sewall Hall,

Room 258, and visible through the courtyard windows is now in its third year of operation. Because student directors change every fall, John Sparagana, professor and chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, said that each year has had a different feel to it as each director brings his or her personality to the table. Matchbox Gallery is unique because it is student-run the faculty and staff get out of the way as much as possible, said Sparagana. Because of this, the student director or directors signicantly inuence the tenor of the exhibition series in a given year. But the initial vision of Matchbox as a small, uid, active space in which a range of types of exhibitions can take place remains the same.

SoRelle agrees that, although he and Li sometimes ask for Sparaganas insight on a show, the student directors have had the chance to truly make the gallery their own. The staff helps out, but most decisions are made by us. Its nice to have autonomy, but we also have help when we need it, said SoRelle.

In fall 2011, SoRelle and Li concentrated on collaborative exhibits, such as their own Repurposed, which was the rst show of the academic year. This innovative exhibition featured recycled materials collected from students and recycling areas around campus to engage the oor space, and recycled photographic works that were removed from their original contexts were joined together in new ways and suspended from the ceiling to engage the air space.

The directors also are proud of the number of people attending exhibit openings. Weve been very happy with the support the Rice community has given us this year. We believe Matchbox is nally getting some of the attention it deserves as a student-run art space, said Li.

One of the perks of the small Matchbox space is the courtyard right outside its French doors. Matchbox has really utilized that area, said Sparagana. At art openings, they have KTRU DJs and refreshments to help make it a social space. Spectators may even watch from the balconies above. Since the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts is spread out, its nice to have a place where students coalesce.

SoRelle said that the gallery directors are interested in collaboration as well as in expanding farther beyond the walls of the gallery. In spring 2012, a Shepherd School music student will conduct her recital in the courtyard. SoRelle and Li are looking for an artist whose work will complement the music.

On pace to feature a total of seven exhibitions this academic year, SoRelle and Li are excited to be growing the program from previous years ve or six exhibits and want to hear new ideas for the space.

Jenny West Rozelle

Learn more: www.matchbox.rice.edu

Dolly Li, the gallerysassistant director, andI have done as much as we can to reach out to

more Rice students who are not art majors.

Elliott SoRelle

director of the Baker Institute. internship at the Baker Institutpast experiences with programstitute taught me the importancdiplomacy and that cultural engagtwo-way street, Sabbagh said. Justudents learn that our countrperiods of trials and conict, I aabout their culture, educational ex

Sabbagh said he is currently wrenewing the lecture series thi

with discussions involving thand their respective embassi

of the undergraduate program, discussed

of space and culture, but when I got their

offi ce of Edward Djerejian, the founding

director of the Baker Institute. My student internship at the Baker Institute and my

past experiences with programs at the institute taught me the importance of public diplomacy and that cultural engagement is a two-way street, Sabbagh said. Just as these students learn that our country has faced

periods of trials and confl ict, I am learning about their culture, educational experiences,

backgrounds and interests. Sabbagh said he is currently working on renewing the lecture series this semester, with discussions involving the students

and their respective embassies.

Franz Brotzen

Rice Intern Helps Introduce the U.S. to Students Around the World Many students around the world are interested in learning about the United States, even if they arent planning to visit. In 2009, the U.S. State Department launched the Virtual Student Foreign Service program as a way to connect people in countries across the globe without the cost or the safety issues of travel.

encouraged more professing than Im ordinarily comfortable with, he said. The Q-and-A that followed the lecture, though, was as dynamic as any classroom. It was a great pleasure to eld questions based on the lecture in particular (a recapitulation of Earl Lewis ne work on Jim Crow Norfolk) and on black life in the United States in general. Im grateful to Marc for the opportunity and for his initiative.

Sabbaghs internship was with the U.S. Embassy in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. But the e-lectures were also webcast to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. About 60 university students from the three countries participated in the weekly lectures.

My favorite part of every presentation was seeing the questions from the students appear on the screen in our Web room one

As an eIntern for the program, Rice junior Marc Sabbagh created and coordinated the schedule for an eight-part lecture series aimed at students in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The lectures featured professors from Rice, the University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M University and other U.S. colleges explaining elements of American history.

I believe it provided a unique opportunity for these students to essentially sit in on a college classroom lecture, even though they were participating miles away, Sabbagh said. Students learned about specic periods of conict in U.S. history and had the chance to ask questions and discuss these topics in depth with the professors.

Two of the e-lectures were delivered by Rice historians. Alexander Byrd, associate professor of history and director of the undergraduate program, discussed

Allen Matusow, academic affairs director at Rices James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History, spoke on the U.S. labor movement in the 1930s.

It was a strange experience, staring at a screen that showed only my picture and

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

Marc Sabbagh

lecturing to unseen students in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia about the Great Depression, Matusow said. I didnt know if anything I said got beyond the barriers of space and culture, but when I got their


African-American life in the Jim Crow South through the lens of Norfolk, Va.; and

questions, I knew they had heard me and understood. That was gratifying.

Byrd agreed that the format of talking into a computer was a little disconcert-ing. Not being able to see my students

16 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine(L R) Allen Matusow, Marc Sabbagh and Alexander Byrd

after the other and seeing the professors respond enthusiastically to the students input and questions, Sabbagh said.

Sabbagh also works as an intern for the ofce of Edward Djerejian, the founding

My student e and my

s at the in-e of public ement is a st as these

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orking on s semester, e students es.

Franz Brotzen

Sustainability InitiativeSustainability InitiativeOwls Help HISD Kick Off

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

Students

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) recently kicked off a new sustainability initiative, thanks to help from some Rice Owls.

Senior Rowan Canter spent the last months of 2011 as a Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) fellow. During his fellowship, he worked directly with HISD to develop a sustainable energy model for the Green School Challenge, a school competition designed to promote long-term behavioral changes, create awareness, reduce energy consumption and water usage, and increase single-stream recycling of waste.

Canter became involved with the project thanks to Bob Stein, the Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science and faculty director of the CCE. The project was a natural t for Canter, who is majoring in political science and environmental policy studies with a minor in sustainability. I went to Professor Stein and told him I wanted to do some political science research for the summer, and I told him my interest was in sustainability, he said. Luckily, hed just gotten this request and passed it on to me.

Canter then submitted a proposal to the CCE and was accepted to work on the project. Rowan was an ideal student to work with, Stein said. Not only did he have the analytic, computational, oral and written skills needed to undertake this project, but he really has a dramatic interest in this.

We believe that taking simple steps in the way we operate

our schools will result in signicant

savings for the district savings that can be used to further

improve our schools. Gavin Dillingham

Stein also lauded Canters work ethic. He did an extensive amount of research and showed the tenacity and persistence to get the information he needed, Stein said. He really began to appreciate what the administrators, teachers and students confronted by engaging in this type of sustainable behavior.

Over the course of the project, Canter worked under the supervision of Gavin Dillingham, HISDs energy manager and a 2004 Rice alum. Together, they worked to develop the model by evaluating a number of variables of buildings throughout the district to predict what their energy consumption should be. The model is the rst of its kind for the HISD, developed specically for the regions climate.

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

Stephanie Post, executive director of the CCE, said this endeavor has been a perfect example of the types of experiences they try to coordinate for students. This is exactly the kind of outcome we envision for these projects, she said. The result is something tangible the partner can use and a wonderful experience for the students.

Amy Hodges


for

B Y D A V I D W . L E E B R O N

On reading the speech that President Edgar Odell Lovett gave on The Meaning of the New Institution a century ago this coming October, one of the surprising things to me is the emphasis on art and beauty.

Surprising for three possible reasons. First, Lovett himself had been a professor of astronomy and math

ematics and was of a fairly practical bent. Second, as he himself acknowledged, Rice began with an emphasis on science and engineering because, in Lovetts view, thats what Houston needed then. And nally, certainly through its rst half century or more, the Rice Institute became known primarily for its strength in those elds.

But Lovetts insistence on the importance of the arts is pervasive. At the end of his remarks, he devoted himself to the spirit of the university and spoke of the tripartite division of letters (or literature), science and art. He wrote:

Led by an instinct for knowledge, an instinct for harmony, an instinct for law, that [human] spirit has brought the twentieth century its most precious possessions: the love of reason, the love of art, the love of freedom.

In the following sentence, Lovett proclaims that the man has not arisen to say to us which [of science, letters or art] is the greatest of the three. And in the penultimate paragraph of his speech:

Under her ancient promise, may Pallas Athena preside over these academic groves and guide men by the spirit of science and the spirit of art and the spirit of service in their search for the great, and the lovely, and the new, for solutions of the universe in terms of the good, the beautiful, and the true!

One cannot in a short essay capture the importance of the arts to the university. For some, the arts represent different and complementary ways of understanding and thinking than the sciences. Lovett said, for example, that science progresses by inquiry, art under inspiration. Others have drawn additional contrasts. The early 20th-century artist Georges Braque noted, Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. And the 19th-century French physiologist Claude Bernard saw a fundamental difference between art and science: Art is I; science is we.

And yet others have seen a complementarity or even an identity in the ways of thinking in art and science. Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, stated, The kind of creative process that generates on the one hand poetry ... is also that which operates in the context of science. Others have stressed the importance of beauty in both science and art. In a similar vein, Buckminster Fuller wrote: When Im working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have nished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

And so, perhaps nowhere more than Rice, should we draw the connection between art and beauty on the one hand and scientic creativity and insight on the other. It was reportedly an inspiration from Fullers geodesic dome structure that in part led Robert Curl, Richard Smalley and Harold Kroto to propose a nearly identical structure for carbon 60 and thus laid the foundations for nanotechnology. The structures of nature are also the structures of art that is to say, human imagination, inspiration and creativity. Jean Cocteau asserted, Art is science made clear. A sense of aesthetics underlies physics and mathematics just as much as it underlies art.

A Place


A Place

for

Art at Rice, however, was not to be a mere adjunct to other instruction. On the eve of the institutes opening ceremonies, a dinner was held in the residential hall. There were toasts and speakers and a speaker on each of the fundamental disciplines. Rices architect, Ralph Adams Cram, spoke on the subject of art:

Art becomes, not an accessory, but an essential, and as such it must be made an integral portion of every scheme of higher education. A college ... cannot do without the best of every art in its material form, and in the cultural inuences it brings to bear upon those committed to its charge, nor can it play its full part in their training and the development of their character unless, out of the history of art, it builds a philosophy of art that is not for the embellishment of the specialist, but for all.

Lovett and Cram understood, at a very profound level, that the purpose of the university is to foster our humanity. Art is one of the fundamental forms of human expression, communication and understanding.

Our responsibility at universities, in teaching the problem-solvers of the future, is to foster the greatest possible creativity and imagination in our students, and to imbue in them an appreciation for the human spirit. This cannot be achieved without some appreciation of art. We do that through multiple

pathways: through the public art on the campus that has grown so dramatically in recent years, through personal creativity by participation in our visual arts program, by encouraging engagement with our nearby museums through the Passport to Houston, by studying art under our wide-ranging art history faculty and even just by interacting daily with other students who may be more artistically inclined.

Lovetts ambitions for the arts at Rice reached even further, and he noted in his opening address the planned future location for a School of Fine Arts to the left of Founders Court. Although Lovett did not write specically about campus art, he stressed the importance of the physical campus and its beauty, whether in its trees, paths or buildings. It is altogether tting that this fall Lovett will get his own piece of art, a statue by sculptor Bruce Wolfe, to be located in front of Keck Hall.

On the side of Lovett Hall are marble tablets celebrating the different disciplines. The tablet for art is below the head of Leonardo da Vinci, and on it is inscribed an apparent variation on a quote attributed to the ancient Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (and quoted by Robert Kennedy on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination): The chief function of art is to make gentle the life of the world. Each of us may have a different denition of what constitutes art and what its function ought to be. But we can agree with Lovett that it lies, indispensably, in the core spirit of the university.


From top: Geoff Winningham and Karin Broker

From top: Geoff Winningham and Karin Broker

T H E A R T O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

BY ALYSON WARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOMMY LAVERGNE

To the outside world, Rice has always been decidedly left-brained. Its a university best known for work done in a lab, not at an easel or in a studio. But the Department of

Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA) may eventually give science and engineering some competition by raising its profile, expanding its on-campus presence and making substantial contributions to the arts in Houston.


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

Each spring, the Mavis C. Pitman Fellowship gives a handful of students the funding to create a group art exhibition from scratch: They create a body of work, then curate, display

and promote it. In the process, fellows get a glimpse of art careers from every angle.

Newer opportunities give students the same sort of career experience. The Matchbox Gallery, a small exhibit space that opened in 2009, showcases student art. This gallery, just off the Sewall Hall courtyard, belongs to the students; they ll, curate and manage it. (See story about the Matchbox Gallery, Page 15.) And last fall, an exhibit on the Rice Media Centers second oor displayed students work from Professor of Visual Arts Karin Brokers intermediate drawing class.

The class which Broker called an exhibition lab had six members, all women. Together they named the exhibit Girls on Top because the class met on the top oor of Sewall Hall and their work was shown on the upper level of the Rice Media Center. Their roughly 4-by-5-foot drawings were hung throughout the second oor, with fresh work rotating in throughout the semester. The students were given limited time to produce each work, a process that required competence and efciency, and the

warts-and-all exhibit rotation revealed their development as artists.

Art at Rice stretches beyond the campus, too: VADA is reaching out to build partnerships with patrons and organizations throughout Houston. Its such an interesting art scene in Houston, Sparagana said. We feel like part of our mission is to bring that art scene onto campus and also place our students out there in the community.

Students also benet from a collaborative teaching partnership with the Museum

VADA also is beginning to offer exhibitions and programming that draw people to the campus from Greater Houston.

A number of successful VADA lm series, including an Iranian lm festival last spring and a Mexican lm festival in the fall, have brought in a variety of audiences. Last November, the Festival of Contemporary Films From India introduced viewers to a half-dozen lms that fall outside both the Indian art house and Bollywood traditions. And later the same month, Chilean direc

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

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

John Sparagana

tor Patricio Guzmn attended screenings of three of his lms on campus, engaging in discussions with the audiences afterward. A partnership with HoustonPBS/Channel 8 draws in a more general lm audience; each month, the HoustonPBS Community Cinema Series offers free screenings of independent lms scheduled to air on PBS.

But the attractions go beyond lm. Last February, VADA along with Rices Humanities Research Center, the Ofce of the Dean of Humanities and the Rice Public


Art Program helped bring part of the Black List Project, a photo exhibit that featured prominent African-Americans, to campus. And a little more than a year ago, VADA teamed with the HERE Project (Houston Enriches Rice Education) to offer a quilt exhibition that explored the roles and experiences of women.

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

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

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

Albert Oehlen and Christopher Wool and the intersection of music and art.

In fall 2012, a Media Center exhibit will remind us all of VADAs roots: The exhibit will commemorate the early years of the famed Menil Collection, when John and Dominique de Menils assemblage of artwork was stored and displayed at

fourth oor a small space devoted to work from emerging Houston-area artists. Twice a semester, a new artist arrives to show his or her work, offer a public lecture and critique art students work.

Whenever possible, we try to piggyback on Rice Gallery exhibition openings, said Christopher Sperandio, the assistant professor of visual and dramatic arts who created the EMERGEncy Room. They already do a great job of bringing the Houston arts community to campus. The entire department has embraced the goal of bringing more art lovers to Rice.

Rice and known as the Rice Collection. Its good timing for a commemorative show because, as Rice celebrates its centennial, the Menil Collection will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its Renzo Piano-designed museum just a few blocks away.

We thought it would be a good moment to bring those two things together, Sparagana said. After all, the de Menils brought art to Rice. They nanced the universitys early art programming and built the Rice Media Center. That building, with its open oor space and a loft for faculty ofces, was designed to be a temporary home on campus for art, photography and lm.

More than 40 years later, its still in use. Today, VADA classes are taught in three

buildings Sewall Hall, Hamman Hall and the Rice Media Center that are distant enough to discourage interaction among far-ung students and faculty. A new facility has been a dream for years among art faculty and students. That dream might soon become reality. The university is considering a new visual and performing arts building that could accommodate the entire department, from studio space to a performance hall.

Rice President David Leebron, in his October State of the University speech, called for Rice to increase our commitment to the arts and he announced that funding has been set aside for preliminary studies on a new art building.

Another possibility for the future: a Master of Fine Arts program, which would

allow the art department to become a conservatory.

There is a need for a really exceptional Master of Fine Arts program in

Texas, Sparagana said, and the circumstances are right for that to happen here.

Those possibilities are at least a few years away, but VADA is laying the groundwork now to make Rice a real arts center.

Already, the Rice Public Art Program has boosted the prole of art on campus. It is opening peoples eyes to what art can do for the university in terms of its international reputation, Sparagana said. Now VADA with new gallery space, strong partnerships and the potential for future growth is poised to raise its prole.

Were looking at a owering of the arts at Rice.


Brian Huberman When Brian Huberman arrived at Rice to teach lmmaking in 1975, no one knew that students would soon have video cameras built into their cell phones and that anyone with a camera would

be able to post videos on YouTube for the world to discover. I used to joke: Well, youll make better home movies if you take my program, Huberman said. But students today

arrive with an unprecedented level of media literacy and comfort with the camera. Now the goal, he said, is to cut through the great cacophony of media noise and teach the discipline and rigor real lmmaking requires. Huberman, an associate professor of lmmaking, has a clear view about what he wants his students to achieve in their own

work: to create lm that burrows beneath the surface, that reveals the experience of life, not an idealized or scripted version of that

Karin Broker In some ways, Karin Broker has come full circle. In 1980, fresh out of graduate school, she was hired to teach drawing at Rice, but over the years she gave up those drawing courses to teach printmaking and other skills. Now Broker has returned: For the past couple of semesters, the visual arts professor has made room in her schedule for advanced and intermediate drawing.

I decided this is a new chapter for me at Rice, Broker said. And just as she returns to the drawing lab, Broker has made it into something new. Last fall, she turned her intermediate drawing course into an exhibition lab. Students displayed their work all semester in the Rice Media Center. As the weeks went by, the exhibit evolved; new drawings replaced the old ones, revealing how each students skills had developed.

experience. That means pushing his students to challenge their own beliefs

and understandings. In my classes I want them to suffer a bit, he said. I want them to stretch.

Filmmaking is a pure art for Huberman, a simple act of collecting truth and presenting it correctly. Every time I go out there with that bag and that camera, there better be a reason, he said. I better nd something. Otherwise, what would be the point of going?

And that something, he believes, can change the mind behind the camera. Youre drawn to a subject, and youll have opinions about it, he said. But if youre not willing to be completely reversed in those feelings by the end of it, then youre not ready to make that lm.

When not teaching, Huberman is deep in his own work, juggling a handful of projects at all times. He has devoted much of his documentary career to exploring the mysteries and myths of the American

In her own work, Broker shows a remarkable diversity. She makes prints, creates assemblages using found objects and bits of jewelry and produces enormous drawings with a Cont crayon on sheets of Formica.

I think of art as kind of a full-body contact sport, Broker said. I make large drawings, I get dirty, Im moving, Im energized, Im physically kind of dancing with the piece that Im making.

Rice Magazine No. 12

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