Students welcome their parents to campus for Families Weekend Activities

Students
welcome parents to campus for Families Weekend activites

…………………………………………………………………

BY DANA BENSON
Rice News Staff

If the faces
around campus seem a little older than normal next week,
don’t be alarmed. Parents and other relatives will
be at Rice Oct. 4-6 for Families Weekend, an annual event
that gives parents the opportunity to interact with their
children and their children’s peers while learning
more about the university and its faculty and staff.

The weekend
is something that both students and parents look forward
to, according to Uri McMillan, a Brown College junior who
is chair of the Families Weekend Committee.

“Students
look forward to Families Weekend to introduce their family
to all the people at the college that they hear so much
about as well as a chance for students to have a respite
from the grind of schoolwork for a while,” McMillan
said. “Not to mention the fact that Families Weekend
means a break from campus food for a couple of days.”

The weekend
includes a full slate of activities and some that parents
are particularly interested in, McMillan noted. A series
of lectures by Rice faculty will be held Friday, Oct. 5,
from 1 to 3 p.m., and many parents are looking forward to
those talks.

Featured speakers
in the Families Weekend Lecture Series are Amy Jaffe, senior
energy adviser at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute
for Public Policy; Alex Byrd, assistant professor of history;
Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational
and Applied Mathematics; Joel Wolfe, associate professor
of history; Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology; and
John Hutchinson, professor of chemistry.

Other seminars
and presentations are scheduled for Friday as well. In the
morning, a series of seminars will address the Career Services
Center, Leadership Rice and the campus group ADVANCE, which
stands for Advocating Diversity and the Need for Cultural
Exchange. Afternoon presentations on information technology
in education will highlight the Symonds II Digital Teaching
Lab, the RENE Research Project and the ConneXions Research
Project.

Along with the
lectures and seminars, Families Weekend will offer plenty
of recreational opportunities for students and their parents,
including the Rice vs. Boise State football game, a Shepherd
School of Music Symphony Orchestra concert, the Rice Players’
presentation of “The Baltimore Waltz” and a Wiess
College production. Parents also can attend college tailgate
(TG) parties with their students.

“The TGs
give parents a chance to interact with their kids, while
at the same time interacting with other students from the
college,” McMillan said.

For more information
about Families Weekend, including a full schedule of events,
visit the Families Weekend Web site at <www.rice.edu/famweek>.