President gives first State of U. talk

President gives first State of U. talk

BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News staff

Emphasizing the importance of strategic decision-making that will seize the opportunities for Rice’s future and addressing many of the questions raised by the Call to Conversation, President David W. Leebron delivered his first annual “State of the University” address Sept. 7.

Speaking to a capacity crowd of faculty in McMurtry Auditorium, President Leebron stressed the importance of recruiting and retaining faculty. He emphasized the need to build a diverse faculty and student body as an essential element of Rice’s future success. “We must recognize the diversity of our faculty and student body as a university-wide value of great importance that must be taken into account in decisions reaching down to departmental levels,” he said.

Marjorie Corcoran, professor of physics and astronomy and speaker of the Faculty Senate, introduced the address, which is prescribed under the new Faculty Senate structure.  She praised President Leebron for encouraging students and faculty “to start thinking differently about Rice and its relationship to the broader community.

“This is a remarkable opportunity for all of us to step back, reflect, think about where we have been, where we are now, where we are going and where we want to go,” she said.  “This is not just an opportunity.  We also have a responsibility to give some deep thought to these issues and take part in the conversation.”

President Leebron began by briefly touching on the destruction in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities by Hurricane Katrina and mentioning some of Rice’s efforts to help, including the offer to enroll Tulane’s Houston-area students as visiting students, honoring any of the students’ need-based aid and remitting to Tulane any tuition Rice collects. 

“We were one of the very first universities to offer any assistance at all, and our assistance in absolute terms, but especially in relation to our size, is among the largest offered,” he said.

He thanked everyone in the Rice community who has worked to assist the displaced residents of New Orleans and other devastated areas, praising all of the volunteer efforts of students, faculty and staff, and announced that Rice will provide up to eight hours per month of release time from regularly scheduled work during the next three months for hurricane-related volunteer work.  He asked that the departments make accommodations to assist displaced graduate students and faculty.

Measuring the State of the University

Posing the question of how best to measure the state of the university, President Leebron mentioned a variety of benchmarks.  He discussed financial measurements, including Rice’s endowment, which had a market value of $3.6 billion as of June 30, and the operating reserves in last year’s budget, which allowed Rice to address some of its urgent capital needs.

He also outlined other important measurements, including faculty recruitment and retention – “among our top priorities and our biggest challenges.”  Last fiscal year, Rice recruited three new deans and 30 tenured or tenure-track faculty, of which 38 percent are women.

“Although we have lost some valuable colleagues to competitive forces, our recruiting and retention efforts have, on the whole, been successful,” he said.  “But we must remain focused as we find many of our most productive colleagues receiving generous and enticing offers from other institutions – not only from around the country, but from around the world.”

Enrollment is another way Rice measures itself, and the president reported that the university has had an upward trend line for the past decade, with the two highest application totals in history the last two years.  Efforts to increase Rice’s appeal outside Texas and to enhance its geographic diversity appear to have been successful, he said.  Last year, 54 percent of entering students came from Texas, and this year 53 percent came from outside the state.  Applications from outside of Texas increased last year, while applications within the state declined slightly.

“I believe the competition for students from Texas is going to intensify in the years ahead – both from institutions within and outside of Texas — and we must be prepared to respond,” he said. The president hopes to maintain the number of Texas students entering Rice, while any growth in the undergraduate student body would probably come largely from outside the state, eventually resulting perhaps in roughly 40 percent of students coming from Texas.

The most important measure of the state of the university, the president said, is “the contribution we make in teaching and research, and the contributions we make to our larger society.” Noting the high level of faculty productivity, he said, “We remain at the forefront of some of the most important research areas of our time, and our students report that by and large our teaching is effective and inspiring.”

Areas of Progress for Rice

President Leebron reviewed several areas where Rice made progress last year.  They include:

• Reorganizing undergraduate education under a new dean
He praised Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman’s work to enhance the student experience and promote undergraduate research.

“Robin has sent important messages to the students about the types of experiences we want them to have at Rice,” he said.  “Over the last year, we have been able to effect change in the undergraduate culture that is having positive benefits for all our students across the campus. Robin also has begun sending a strong message about the importance of research in the undergraduate experience, a goal we shall build upon in the years to come.”

• Increasing student diversity

“Because we believe that the education we offer is extraordinary, it is important that we make that education available to diverse segments of our society,” he said.  “Our commitment to diversity is reflected in our incoming class, which this year, for example, has the highest percentage of Hispanic students in Rice’s history.”

• Addressing students’ financial needs

“Although we have increased our tuition, we have also increased our scholarship aid and, in particular, made the decision that we would no longer require students from families making less than $30,000 per year to take any of their financial aid in the form of loans,” he said.  “In the years ahead, we must spend, and therefore raise, more resources to support scholarships for students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.”

• Engagement with Houston and the Quality Enhancement Plan

The Passport to Houston, the initial effort to incorporate the City of Houston into the research and educational experience of Rice undergraduates, had measurable success, with the number of Metro light rail boardings going from nearly zero before the program started to 46,000 in the spring semester.  As part of Rice’s Quality Enhancement Plan, the Dean of Undergraduates will be developing a community-based research initiative to bring engagement with Houston more fully into the curricular offerings.

This is just the beginning, President Leebron said, reporting that a Web site that has been collecting all significant university commitments in the greater Houston community will be launched in the next few weeks.  Other initiatives include a pilot program to facilitate parking for community participants in K-12 outreach programs and the refocusing of admissions materials, including a successful new video, to demonstrate why Houston can be an asset to the students choosing to attend Rice.

• Financial support for graduate students

The president said that in addition to the caliber of faculty and programs, financial support is critical in attracting the best graduate students.  He reported that in this year’s budget, Rice added funds to raise average stipends to at least $15,000 in the schools of Humanities and Social Sciences, which for many students meant a 15 percent increase in their stipends.  Rice also increased medical insurance subsidies from a maximum of $1,000 to $1,355, with additional subsidies for married students and married students with children.

Looking ahead

Turning to the future, President Leebron highlighted faculty diversity and family support for faculty, saying diversity “increases intellectual vitality of education, scholarship and community life in a university.” 

President Leebron also stated his commitment to having “a more robust work-life support infrastructure in place to assist new faculty” and said he plans to dedicate a Rice staff member to assist with family support services, including relocation and child care. He also mentioned that in several construction projects, Rice planners are considering how those projects can best be used to support those with families.

In another category of faculty support, the president said that Rice will create a travel fund for faculty willing to pursue opportunities for significant research relationships with selected universities in other countries, especially in China and Latin America, as well as a university-wide faculty committee to focus on issues of international relations. On the university’s capital needs, an estimate of over $600 million in project costs has been identified over the next
10 years. Upcoming potential projects include the Collaborative Research Center; construction of a new social sciences and continuing studies building; renovation of the third floor of the biology building; the reconfiguration of the quad in back of Fondren Library, including a pavilion café attached to the library; renovation of Rice Memorial Center; and a recreational facility diagonally opposite that.  In addition, if the student body is expanded, he said, Rice will need two new residential colleges.

He announced that under the leadership of Provost Eugene Levy, Rice is replacing the information technology network and is working on a data backup facility.  Together with upgrades to the administrative system, these improvements will potentially cost $40 million over the next couple of years.

All of these projects will require Rice to replenish its financial resources.  As part of that, President Leebron called for doubling of the Annual Fund by 2011.

President Leebron said he has heard from all segments of the Rice community in response to his Call to Conversation, and “the overwhelming sense one gets is that there is a great reservoir of devotion to Rice, thoughtfulness about the challenges we face and optimism about what we are capable of achieving.

“We have hard choices to make, but we have to seize the opportunities available.  I hope as we move forward that we will do so as a community committed to achieving a greater Rice.”