President’s Note

Six years ago, we celebrated the centennial of the opening of Rice University. There was a great deal to celebrate. This included not only all we had achieved over …
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Town Hall meetings to discuss campus issues and challenges, announce university initiatives and goals, and celebrate Rice’s accomplishments, including individual achievements of staff and faculty. This April, Leebron spoke …
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Rick Smalley, one of Rice’s Nobel Prize winners, famously said, “Be a scientist, save the world.” One of the absolute privileges of being president of a research university of …
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Each disaster has its own unique footprint. For a hurricane, it will depend on the exact path of the storm, its strength in terms of wind velocity, its speed …
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“Food, Glorious Food,” a song from the 1960s musical “Oliver!,” somehow remains deeply entrenched in my memory. It still seems incongruously joyous in the context of depicting Dickens’ Victorian …
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AS A LIFELONG TRAVELER to countries around the world, I often provide students with the following advice: “Travel as soon as you have the time and money, because two …
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ONE HUNDRED AND NINE YEARS AGO, on Jan. 18, 1908, Edgar Odell Lovett formally accepted the offer of the Board of Trustees of the William Marsh Rice Institute to …
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One hundred and four years ago, our university began a journey. It began with a grand and ambitious vision — a vision of a great university in Houston. But …
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I AM WRITING THIS COLUMN ON JULY 4th — the 240th anniversary of the formal adoption by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a magnificent document, a …
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We are in a time when skepticism about higher education is widespread. One area that has sparked steady criticism over the last decade is how universities spend their endowments. …
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