Leadership Rice Summer Interns Earn Real-Life Experiences

CONTACT: Michael Cinelli

PHONE:
(713) 831-4794

LEADERSHIP RICE SUMMER INTERNS EARN REAL-LIFE
EXPERIENCES

Air quality in Houston is a matter of
deep concern for Michael Ford, a Rice University junior completing an internship
at the law firm of Blackburn and Carter. Ford spent the summer working on the
Houston Air Excellence and Leadership project, which is designed to provide a
blueprint to improve the city’s air quality.

Ford is just one of 19 Rice students who gained this type of real-life
experience through Leadership Rice, a 2-year-old program aimed at encouraging
university students to develop leadership skills in government, business and
nonprofit organizations.

Summer internships complement classroom and on-campus experiences to further
prepare students “for positions of trust in public service, for commanding
careers in the affairs of the world,” as Rice’s first president, Edgar Odell
Lovett, stated as the challenge facing the university at opening ceremonies in
1912.

Leadership Rice took shape two years ago as the brainchild of Rice’s Vice
President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho. From the start, the program
enjoyed broad faculty support, with particular guidance from John Hutchinson,
associate professor of chemistry, and a core of other teachers from many
academic disciplines. Currently, the program reports to David Auston, provost
and chief academic officer of the university.

A full-time director of Leadership Rice, Rebecca Stern, joined the program at
the beginning of July.

Leadership Rice was conceived as a program to help Rice undergraduates
develop their skills in order to more effectively generate and manage positive
change in today’s world. One purpose of the program is to provide students with
a heightened awareness of the critical local and national issues that
contemporary leaders encounter daily. The program is also designed to bring
students face-to-face with many of the ethical and moral dilemmas associated
with modern civic and business leadership.

Students learn through classroom lectures, discussions and internships with
mentors from the worlds of government, business and nonprofit organizations. The
program is divided into three parts to allow for both academic and practical
experiences over the course of a full year. Students spend two semesters in the
classroom and work as interns during the summer.

Since its inception, Leadership Rice has enjoyed a groundswell of support
from the Houston corporate and nonprofit communities. Major gifts have been
received from Hershel and Hilda Rich, and Compaq Computer Corp., with generous
support from Houston International Protocol Alliance, Young Audiences of
Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, and more than a dozen other individual and
corporate sponsors. As the program becomes better known, it is hoped that
internship opportunities will multiply and that community support for Leadership
Rice will continue to expand throughout Houston and beyond.

“We are delighted with the community response to Leadership Rice and with the
enthusiasm with which so many local businesses and organizations have welcomed
our student interns,” Auston said. “Leadership Rice stands foursquare in the
long-standing tradition at Rice of preparing students for a life of community
service.

“We see Leadership Rice and its internship program as a win-win situation for
everyone involved: Our students gain invaluable, practical experience in coming
to terms with real-life leadership choices in the workplace, and employers gain
the use of these energetic and bright young people during the period of their
internship. We have been very pleased indeed with the results of this program so
far and see a bright future for it in the years ahead.”

This summer interns worked at wide variety of organizations including Compaq,
the Holocaust Museum in Houston, and Texas Children’s Hospital. The students did
not simply fill clerical positions but handled challenging assignments that
required all of their skills.

For example, Claire Carman, a Rice senior, is now working for the Houston
Area Women’s Center, where she is creating a visionary strategic plan to look at
the possibility of combining the center’s three facilities into one campus.

“She is interviewing staff, investigating the worth of the land and examining
emotional and security issues of the move,” said Ellen Cohen, executive director
of the Houston Area Women’s Center. “Leadership Rice is an excellent program
that other universities should emulate.”

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