Renovated Huff House dedicated

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

A “new member” of the Rice campus — Peter and Nancy Huff House — was introduced Dec. 13 during a dedication ceremony for the recently renovated facility that houses the Office of Alumni Affairs and University Events and the Center for Student Professional Development.

	JEFF FITLOW
	At the dedication of the renovated Huff House are (from left) Peter Huff ’59, Nancy Larson Huff, Association of Rice Alumni President Karen Rogers ’68, Rice President David Leebron and trustee Susie Glasscock ’62, who is co-chair of the Centennial Campaign.

Thanks to a two-story enlargement on the southeast corner of the building and the consolidation of three rooms into one, Huff House now features a large room on the first floor to accommodate reunions and other meetings, and a reception area, three new offices and two storage rooms on the second floor. In addition, the adjacent Alice Staub Liddell and Allison’s Butterfly Gardens have been rejuvenated. All of this work was made possible by a multimillion-dollar gift to the Centennial Campaign from alumnus Peter Huff ’59 and his wife, Nancy Larson Huff.

“On behalf of all alumni and future alumni, I want to thank Peter and Nancy for a place for us to gather, a warm, welcoming place, a place that we’ll look forward to celebrating and renewing old friendships,” trustee and alumna Susie Glasscock ’62 said at the ceremony. As co-chair of the Centennial Campaign, Glasscock thanked the Huffs for their “very special and very generous gift to the university” and also for their friendship. “I value that a great deal,” she said.

President David Leebron also thanked the Huffs for their support to make the house a more beautiful public space within the Rice campus.

“Peter and Nancy, you reflect the example we want to set for our graduates in terms of their lifelong connection to the university and support of the university,” Leebron said.

JEFF FITLOW
Nancy and Peter Huff spoke during the dedication ceremony for the recently renovated facility that bears their name.

“We continue to believe that it is important to bring people together, to bring our alumni back to our campus, to bring our alumni together with our students, to bring our alumni together with our ever-changing faculty,” he said. He noted that Huff House’s location near the heart of campus makes the building convenient for students, and through the services offered to help students with their careers, the house connects Rice to the external world.

“This house is a gateway, the connection between the world here at Rice and the world of our alumni,” Leebron said.

He also thanked trustee emeritus Ralph O’Connor, in whose honor the facility was named before it became Huff House. “Ralph always said that if we were going to use [the house] for our connection with our graduates, it should bear the name of one of our distinguished graduates.”

Karen Rogers ’68, president of the Association of Rice Alumni (ARA), commended the renovations done by W.S. Bellows Construction Corp., who also built the original house in 1949, and the work of Ray & Hollington Architects and Rice project manager Joujou Zebdaoui.

The expanded room in Huff House gives the Center for Student Professional Development greater flexibility and space in which to hold instructional sessions for students and information sessions with employers. A media studio offers students a place to practice and record job interviews so they can be critiqued. The renovated Huff House also enables the ARA to accommodate large crowds for reunions, lectures and other events.

“I personally have enjoyed the fact that the alumni board is now able to meet here, which we did for the first time in September,” Rogers said.

The dedication ceremony for the house that has served as the home of five Rice presidents concluded with remarks from the Huffs, who now live in McKinney, Texas.

Peter Huff, who has a B.A. in liberal arts with a concentration in mechanical engineering and a B.S. in mechanical engineering, said he and his wife are “very pleased to have a continuing association” with a famous school like Rice.

“If you travel the world and the country, you’ll figure out that most people have heard of Rice,” he said. “It’s ranked very, very high among various institutions, and it’s certainly something we believe in.”

Nancy added, “We are real proud to be able to do this. Pete has always said Rice is where he learned everything and it made the difference to him and all his success in the world, so it is only fitting that we give back to Rice University.”