Rice community toasts Miranda at packed reception

As guests packed into Cohen House June 26 to give their best wishes to outgoing Provost Marie Lynn Miranda, they were greeted with a spread of fine foods including puff pastry-wrapped brie, fresh-baked cookies and a glossy chocolate ganache cake selected for the afternoon by Miranda herself — a favorite from the Cohen House kitchen.

The Rice community filled the Cohen House to toast Marie Lynn Miranda June 26. (Photos by Jeff Fitlow)

The event was both a birthday celebration for Miranda and a chance for the Rice community to toast her before she steps down at the end of June. Miranda plans to take a sabbatical during the 2019-20 academic year before returning to her faculty position as a professor in the Department of Statistics.

Rice President David Leebron sent a video of well-wishes from his trip to Germany, which played on a screen above the crowd, and Patti Kraft ’87 — the namesake of the Patricia Lipoma Kraft and Jonathan A. Kraft Hall for Social Sciences currently under construction — flew in from Boston to fete Miranda, whom Kraft has worked closely with on a variety of projects.

“We wish you not only a great birthday but also want to thank you for your extraordinary service as provost of Rice University,” said Leebron, who listed many of Miranda’s accomplishments over the last four years, from improved faculty diversity to increased research funding. “Rice University owes you a great debt of gratitude.”

“It’s so joyful to have the opportunity to really get to know people from all over campus and hear their ideas and their visions,” Miranda said.

Both Leebron and Kraft lauded Miranda for her leadership abilities and unwavering calm in the face of crisis, citing in particular her comportment during Hurricane Harvey. The  sentiment was echoed by others who stepped up to the podium, including Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business; Fred Higgs, vice provost for academic affairs; and Anita Norwig, assistant dean of Rice’s School of Humanities.

“We’ve benefited enormously from your vision,” said Seiichi Matsuda, dean of graduate and postdoctoral studies. “That ability to sense the thing that’s coming, whether it’s a good thing or a dangerous thing, has been of enormous value to us.”

In the aftermath of Harvey, Miranda helped organize campus efforts to find and help Rice faculty, staff and students in need and later went on to establish the Hurricane Harvey Registry, which surveys survivors to help design intervention programs and help officials refine their responses to future disasters.

Miranda’s chief of staff, Jana Callan, spoke of working in the provost’s office as surrounding herself “with good people.” Often, she said, people who hadn’t met Miranda would ask Callan what it was like to work for her.

“If I have to describe her, she is a person of the highest integrity and there is no doubt in that,” said Callan. “She is someone who holds herself and others to the highest standards. She’s an amazing problem-solver and she is a woman of resilience.”

Miranda took the podium last and thanked her husband Christopher, who was standing in the crowd, along with her staff in the provost’s office and her research team at the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, an initiative she founded and plans to return to following her sabbatical.

Miranda also shared some of the lessons she’s learned along the way.

“If you just keep remembering: see people — really see them — find connections and support people, then things go well and it’s so joyful to have the opportunity to really get to know people from all over campus and hear their ideas and their visions,” she said.

Finally, and fittingly for the event, Miranda shared her three ingredients for the perfect birthday party.

“You need love, you need laughter and the third thing you need on a birthday is a really good cake,” she said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Know that I will carry all of you in my heart, and let’s have some cake.”