Martel College students win Rice’s inaugural Houston-Centered Policy Challenge

The student-written policy proposals at Rice’s inaugural Houston-Centered Policy (HCP) Challenge, which focused on addressing the flooding challenges faced by Meyerland residents, ranged from a radical reimagining of Brays Bayou to the creation of a neighborhood-specific website. In the end, one team’s straightforward approach to building detention ponds using large plots of land obtained via group buyouts was awarded first place in the Feb. 22 competition at Fondren Library.

The inaugural Houston-Centered Policy Challenge was held Feb. 22 at Fondren Library.

Freshman Connor Rothschild and senior Sapna Suresh, both from Martel College, won a small cash prize and the chance to collaborate with other Houston organizations to help make their policy proposal a reality.

“What we’ve noticed is that current buyouts leave this checkerboard effect, where there’s just spots of green land that aren’t big enough to do anything on, and so one of our biggest questions was, How can we avoid that?” Rothschild said. “The answer is bigger plots of land.”

The decision to award Rothschild and Suresh first place was reached unanimously by a panel of local policy experts that included Ellen Cohen, mayor pro tem and City Council District C representative; Lee Wunsch, past president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston; David Robinson, City Council at-large 2 representative; Bill Fulton, director of Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research; and “flood czar” Stephen Costello, the city of Houston’s chief resilience officer.

The HCP Challenge was organized by Martel College senior David Ratnoff, Duncan College sophomore Meredith McCain, fellow Martel College senior Elisabeth Kalomeris and Libby Vann at Rice’s Center for Civic Leadership.

In his opening remarks to the crowd inside the Kyle Morrow Room, Ratnoff explained their decision to focus on Meyerland for this inaugural policy challenge. “Motivated to engage Rice students, many of whom encountered flooding in the Meyerland community for the first time during Harvey, we structured HCP to provide participants with academic and community voices to equip them to develop well-designed proposals,” he said.

Over the next hour, six interdisciplinary teams of Rice students took the podium for five-minute presentations followed by a round of questions from the panel of experts. At the conclusion, the panel departed to deliberate. “As jurists, we were really impressed,” said Robinson before announcing the winners. “We’re grateful for your hard work.”

Freshman Connor Rothschild and senior Sapna Suresh, both from Martel College, won a small cash prize and seed money to help make their policy proposal a reality.

Rothschild and Suresh were the only two-member team to compete, having met at Martel, where the duo realized they shared a passion for flood design and resiliency. Rothschild is currently enrolled in a Sociology of Disaster course and discovered through conversation that Suresh had taken a disaster-relief course her sophomore year that led to her own interest in the topic.

“I’m a civil environmental engineering major, and he’s a social policy analysis major, so the HCP Challenge was very much an intersection of those two issues,” Suresh said.

“We’re very pleased to hear the judges came to a unanimous decision,” Rothschild said. “That’s what surprised me. It was definitely an awesome experience.”

In addition to crafting a common-sense policy proposal, Rothschild and Suresh were poised and confident in their presentation. Rothschild credits this to years of high school debate, while Suresh credited her four years at Rice — plus the ENGI 120 course she took as a freshman at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.

“That class makes you so good at giving presentations,” said Suresh, “it’s not even funny.”