Newsletter mailed to students’ families

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

An important audience for Rice was better served this week when the first issue of Rice Parents & Families made its debut in mailboxes around the world.

Families of all current Rice undergraduates and incoming freshmen are the target for the six-page, full-color newsletter, which features student-life highlights from the past year, a summary of commencement speaker David Brooks’ message to seniors, a feature on Rice’s food serveries and their award-winning chefs, important upcoming events and dates, a variety of other articles and a welcome letter from Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson.

”This newsletter is about celebrating beginnings,” Hutchinson wrote. ”Here’s to your students making the most of their educations.”

Rice’s Office of Public Affairs produced the newsletter for the Office of the Dean of Undergraduates with support from the Office of Resource Development.

”Parents and families are a vital audience with a natural interest in the place that teaches and cares for their children,” said Vice President for Public Affairs Linda Thrane, who spearheaded the project. ”Our goal is to provide a regular source of information to help them better understand what’s going on in the lives of their students and also to feel like a part of the university.”

Rice Marketing Director Bill Courtney led the team that produced the newsletter. ”By starting the newsletter and establishing a website I hope that we have helped fill an information gap and make for happier moms, dads and other family members and friends,” he said.

An accompanying ”parents” gateway was added to the navigation bar of www.rice.edu to make it easier to find answers to common questions about events, services and opportunities on campus. By visiting parentscontact.rice.edu, family members can provide their preferred contact information, including email address to ensure that they receive important updates — and digital issues of Rice Parents & Families in the future.

”This will save trees and provide convenient access to our online resources,” Courtney said.

Families who do not receive the newsletter by mail can download it by going to www.parents.rice.edu and clicking on Parents and Families Newsletter. The next issue will be published in September.

The first issue includes a save-the-date reminder about Rice’s Centennial Celebration, Oct. 10-14, 2012.