Students evacuated from Louisiana arrive at Rice U.

Rice University
Office of Public Affairs / News & Media Relations

MEDIA ADVISORY

Katharine Shilcutt
713-348-6760
kshilcutt@rice.edu

Students evacuated from Louisiana arrive at Rice U.
Middle and high school students from Duke TIP summer program to stay on campus  

HOUSTON – (July 12, 2019) – Ahead of possible flooding in the Baton Rouge area due to Tropical Storm Barry, 125 middle and high school students enrolled in a summer program at Louisiana State University were evacuated overnight and transported by bus to the campus of Rice University, where they arrived at 4 a.m. Friday.

Rice is one of 13 universities that regularly hosts three-week Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) summer sessions for high-achieving students in grades 7 through 10 along with LSU and 11 other universities. Thanks to the availability of extra housing on campus, Houston’s relative proximity to Baton Rouge and its own ongoing Duke TIP camps with on-site program coordinators, Rice was able to offer its campus as a safe haven for the 125 evacuated students.

Along with the Rice Housing & Dining team, the Duke TIP coordinators have been able to provide all of the accommodations the campers need, from dietary restricted meal plans to academic facilities, enabling the program to proceed without further disruption.

Parents were given the option to retrieve their children from LSU ahead of the move. However, Duke TIP programs are attended by students from across the nation, making the switch to the Rice campus a viable alternative as Tropical Storm Barry churns in the Gulf of Mexico and nears Louisiana.

Unless significant flooding occurs in the Baton Rouge area, the Duke TIP students should be able to return to the LSU campus next week. In the event they’re unable to return, the students will complete their program at Rice.

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This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related information:

Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP): https://tip.duke.edu

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,970 undergraduates and 2,934 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for happiest students by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.