News Briefs

Walking groups offer healthy midday break

With the weather cooling down, Rice’s lunchtime walking groups have resumed, offering staff and faculty the opportunity to “Get Looped at Lunch.”

The groups make fitness more fun by encouraging employees to escape from their desks and enjoy good company and conversation while getting some fresh air and exercise.

There is a group walking every day of the workweek, weather permitting, and employees can join in as frequently as they like.

Those who want to walk at their own pace for 30-40 minutes can join the groups meeting at noon Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at Allen Center and Tuesdays and Thursdays at Anne and Charles Duncan Hall.

Serious walkers can try the Jones School group, which meets at 11:45 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at the corner between Janice and Robert McNair Hall and Rice Memorial Center. This group walks the entire 3-mile outer loop in a fast-paced
45 minutes.

There’s even a group that meets after work at 5:15 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays on the inner loop outside the Allen Center for a walk lasting 30-40 minutes.

For more details, see the flier on the Staff Advisory Committee Web site, <www.ruf.rice.edu/~stafadv/index.shtml>, or contact Julia Tang at <ejtang@rice.edu>.

Get Looped at Lunch is sponsored by the Staff Advisory Committee, with groups organized by the Employee Activities Subcommittee.

Faculty art exhibit opens Nov. 9

The Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts will celebrate the opening of “AT WORK:@play,” the 2006 Rice University faculty art exhibition, at a Nov. 9 reception at 6 p.m. in the Visual Arts Main Gallery, Rice Media Center.

Artwork by visual and dramatic arts faculty will be on view in the gallery Nov. 9 through Dec. 10.

Participants in the exhibition are Mequitta Ahuja, adjunct Core Fellow lecturer; Karin Broker, professor and department chair; Paul Hester, artist teacher; Brian Huberman, associate professor; Darra Keeton, associate professor; Nickolas Kersulis, adjunct Core Fellow lecturer; Basilios Poulos, professor; Trish Rigdon, lecturer and director of the Rice Theatre Program; Matthew Schlief, lecturer; George Smith, professor; John Sparagana, associate professor; Jeff Williams, adjunct Core Fellow lecturer; Paige Willson, lecturer in theatre; and Geoff Winningham, professor. The exhibition is curated by John Devine.

For more information, visit <http://arts.rice.edu>.

This weekend’s film

Rice Cinema will screen the Houston premiere of “Excellent Cadavers” at 8 p.m. Nov. 3-5.

The film by Marco Turco documents the war waged by two Italian judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, against the entrenched power of the Sicilian Mafia — a war that eventually cost them their lives. Beginning in the 1980s, the two brought hundreds of criminals to trial; in 1992, they themselves were murdered.

The film is based on Alexander Stille’s 1995 book and uses extraordinary pictures by Sicilian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia that capture the violence in the streets.

General admission to Rice Cinema is $6. Faculty, staff, full-time students with a college ID and senior citizens can receive $1 off the admission price when they show an ID at the door.

Free symphony recital set for Nov. 4

Larry Rachleff, the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Orchestra Conducting, will lead the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra in its Nov. 4 performance of works by Strauss, Cosma and Brahms.

The performance, which begins at 8 p.m. in Stude Concert Hall, Alice Pratt Brown Hall, will feature the “Overture to ‘Die Fledermaus’”; “Euphonium Concerto,” with soloist Michael Brown and conductor Thomas Hong; and “Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98.”

Admission is free and no tickets are required. For information, call the Shepherd School of Music Concert Office at 713-348-8000.