PBS

PBS’ Roadtrip Nation team to visit Rice

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

Working with the Rice Career Services Center (CSC), the Roadtrip Nation team will park its signature big, green RV in front of Rice Memorial Center (RMC) April 5 to encourage Rice students to apply to join one of their sponsored trips for the PBS documentary “Roadtrip Nation: Destination Unknown” or to take their own career road trips and discover their own personal life paths.

The CSC is sponsoring an afternoon cookout on campus to welcome the Roadtrip Nation team. An information workshop will be presented in the RMC at 7 p.m.

The team will only visit two universities in Texas — Rice and The University of Texas–Austin.

The Behind the Wheel program selects student teams from universities across the country to hit the road each summer to interview industry leaders across the country. Roadtrip Nation is on the road with the students to film the journey. Interviews and experiences from the road trips are then shared in books and documentaries, creating a for-students-by-students social movement that exposes the next generation to all the different ways to build their lives.

Roadtrip Nation was started when some recent college graduates decided to take a road trip to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. They bought an old run-down RV, painted it neon green and hit the road for three months to explore how other individuals found their roads in life. Along the way, they interviewed more than 80 people, including a lobsterman in Maine, the scientist who decoded the human genome, the director of Saturday Night Live, the stylist for Madonna and Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz. All of the leaders shared where they were in their 20s and how they resisted pressures of conformity to find their roads in life.

For more information about Roadtrip Nation, visit <www.roadtripnation.com>.