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Leebron
reflects on Rice’s growth, achievements during State of the University address

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

In his sixth annual State of the University address Oct. 21,
President David Leebron cited multiple reasons why Rice University is
“strong”:  dedication to
its mission and values, quality of its faculty and students, improvements to
campus facilities and the loyal support of alumni and friends.

“That we are strong does not mean we do not face
risks,” he said. “During the last two years we have seen that
difficult decisions may divide us and financial limitations may challenge us.
But while the last two years have been unusually challenging, at the same time
they have been years of vibrancy, accomplishment and growth.”

	TOMMY LAVERGNE
	In his sixth annual State of the University address Oct. 21, President David Leebron cited multiple reasons why Rice University is “strong”:  dedication to its mission and values, quality of its faculty and students, improvements to campus facilities and the loyal support of alumni and friends.

Introduced by Faculty Senate Speaker Susan McIntosh in
McMurtry Auditorium, Leebron described the progress toward achieving the goals
of the Vision for the Second Century.

Rice has made substantial contributions to the Houston
community in multiple ways, both through service and knowledge, including the
new Institute for Urban Research and Rice’s historic and new initiatives with
NASA. “And even though we don’t have a medical school, we’re becoming a
center of cancer research,” Leebron said.

Rice has experienced an increasing international presence,
he said, and cited as an example a visit to China last May by a delegation of
faculty members to explore new opportunities in the humanities, and the hiring
of several new faculty members with expertise in Latin America.

Leebron cited a “steady increase” in tenure and
tenure-track faculty to 537 at Rice this fall — an increase of 56 since fall
2004.  While the increase in the
diversity of the student body has been dramatic, he said, Rice is making
“steady but slow progress” on faculty diversity and pointed to
encouraging hires in the last three years of African-American and
Hispanic-American faculty members.

Rice continues to excel in its research endeavors, he said.
Faculty members continue to publish their research papers in leading journals,
and sponsored research is up 37 percent since 2008. Times Higher Education
ranked Rice No. 1 in materials science based on the number of citations of
research papers from January 1999 through October 2009 — yet another example
of the high quality of work produced by Rice faculty, Leebron said.  He highlighted awards received by
professors from a variety of departments to demonstrate Rice’s scholarly
achievement, and noted the substantial number of books that had been published
by humanities and social science faculty. (See the SOU presentation link
below.)

On the student front, Rice’s 30 percent expansion of the undergraduate student
body is nearly complete, and there were a record 12,393 applicants this year.

Sustained success in enrolling African-American and
Hispanic-American students has resulted in an entering student body in which no
ethnicity is in a majority, Leebron said. Enrollment of students from outside
Texas and from foreign countries has increased. “We have more Texans than
ever before but a smaller percentage of Texans than ever before,” Leebron
said. A doubling of the number of Pell Grant recipients over the past five
years indicates the socioeconomic diversity of the student body is also
increasing, he said.  Doctoral
student enrollment this fall was 222.

A number of Rice students have garnered national media
attention for their research, such as the ZEROW HOUSE and a salad-spinner blood
centrifuge. This reflects the caliber of students and their faculty mentors
along with the research opportunities afforded by an education at Rice, he
said.

On the financial front, Leebron said that the outlook is
improving after the economic downturn of the past few years that impacted the
endowment and fundraising.

The audited figure on the endowment as of June 30, 2010, is
expected by the end of the month, and Leebron expects the return to be about 10
percent. That’s important to Rice since the endowment accounts for about 45
percent of the total operating budget, he noted.

The Centennial Campaign is about two-thirds of the way
toward its $1 billion goal, with $667 million raised. Gifts to the Rice Annual
Fund decreased during the last fiscal year, but Leebron said he is hopeful that
yearly donations to the fund will still be doubled, from $4 million in 2004 to
more than $8 million by the end of the campaign in 2013.

Leebron included images of new works of art on campus and
emphasized the role art plays in creating a stimulating and beautiful
environment.  He noted that
virtually all art on campus is funded by philanthropy.

As Rice completes $800 million in construction projects with
only a couple more  projects in the
planning phase, Leebron looked ahead to the university’s newly identified
initiatives: bioscience and human health, energy and the environment, and
international strategies. Teams of faculty members are now working to explore
opportunities for Rice to excel in these areas, he said. 

Leebron began the presentation by noting that the state of
the university cannot be measured just by the quantitative statistics in his
slides. “The university is about a certain kind of spirit — the spirit of
inquiry and discovery, of community, collaboration and connections, of
different people pursuing different inquiries but yet having something in
common,” he said. “We cannot ignore the numbers that help us measure
achievements and performance … but we have to navigate between the numbers and
the spirit, between the traditions we hold dear and the opportunities we face.

Leebron’s presentation is posted at http://professor.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Professor/Office_of_the_President/SOU102110.pdf.