Leebron presides over upbeat spring town hall
With endowment recovering, president looks forward to advancing Rice initiatives, centennial

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

Rice President David Leebron’s spring town hall meeting celebrated an improving financial outlook, with strong recovery in the university’s endowment, and another ”hot” year for student applications.

”Rice is doing very well,” he said, as the university prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2012 and embarks upon a new set of academic initiatives with global ambitions.

	JEFF FITLOW
	Leebron told a packed Grand Hall audience of Rice faculty and staff that, while the budget remains tight, no across-the-board reductions are expected for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Leebron told a packed Grand Hall audience of Rice faculty and staff that, while the budget remains tight, no across-the-board reductions are expected for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Also on the bright side, he said plans include a modest pay raise pool, no increase in Recreation Center fees and continuation of the university’s need-blind admission and scholarship policies.

Fee increases are likely for medical and dental insurance and parking.

Leebron said the university’s endowment, following the general trend of the stock market, has rebounded from a major loss during the two-year economic downturn. “We’ve recovered substantial parts of that loss,” he said. “We’re not completely out of the woods but, at least as we see the world now, the (prior budget) cuts that we have taken put us in a solid position.”

Expectations are that the Centennial Campaign will have raised close to $725 million of its $1 billion goal by the end of the current fiscal year. “I’ll only have about $275 million left to raise — in $100 increments,” he joked.

Global ambitions

Applications to Rice from outside Texas have doubled over the last six years. Rice has received more than 9,000 out-of-state applications for fall 2011 and a record total of 13,795. Foreign applications are five times what they were seven years ago, Leebron said.

JEFF FITLOW
Leebron told the audience that Rice has begun preparations to celebrate its centennial in 2012 and embark upon a new set of academic initiatives with global ambitions.

“The big increases reflect our strategy and the importance of making us a national and international institution,” he said. He said 22 percent of Rice faculty members are foreign nationals, and 34 percent of graduate students and more than 11 percent of the freshman class are from abroad.

“It’s important that we build global research collaborations,” Leebron said. ”It’s critical that we give our students … a global perspective, while at the same time encouraging as many as possible to go abroad and spend as long a time there as possible as part of their Rice studies.

“It’s important as well that we build an alumni base and support around the world. Increasingly, our students and alumni look to us to help them wherever their aspirations might take them.”

Leebron noted that a campus discussion is under way about three academic initiatives – bioscience and health, energy and the environment and international strategy – under the leadership of Provost George McLendon.

“We pride ourselves on being an unmitigated force for good,” Leebron said. “As we seek to identify some of the priorities that will guide us over the next five to 10 years, our choices will enhance educational opportunities, enable us to draw on our strengths and comparative advantage and make a meaningful contribution to solving critical problems.”

Excellence and outreach

Advances by Rice researchers and validation through recent polls and rankings reflect the university’s “non-size-adjusted excellence,” he said. Leebron mentioned last week’s recognition of four Rice chemists named by ISI/Thomson Reuters to a list of the top 100 of the past decade. Naomi Halas, Robert Hauge, James Tour and the late Rick Smalley were cited for the impact factor of their research.

He noted multiple ongoing collaborations with Texas Medical Center institutions, some taking place at the BioScience Research Collaborative, and Rice students recently named the winners of Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. He mentioned several Rice professors who made a splash in the publishing arena over the past year, with Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” and Ussama Makdisi’s “Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations 1820-2001” making the “Best-of-2010” list.

“Every day, I’m struck by the quality of people I am privileged to work with,” he said. ”I’m struck by what everyone here at Rice contributes. And I hope today to begin a broader conversation about our commitments as members of the Rice community. It is these values, and our culture, that ultimately drive our success.”

Members of the community have been remarkably generous in giving their time and employing their talents outside the hedges, and he praised the number and diversity of efforts to engage K-12 education in Houston and beyond. In particular, Leebron expressed his pride at a record-setting year for the campus United Way campaign, which raised a record $190,000 in donations and nearly doubled the number of donors.

Excellence, he said, “is not a skill or an action, but an attitude or a habit, a culture of improving ourselves constantly. A favorite Churchill quote — which will probably cause you some anxiety — is ‘To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.”’

“That is in many ways what we are about,” Leebron said. “Excellence is not something you attain, it is something you are always pursuing and striving after.”

Looking forward

Leebron announced that Jaye Anderton, manager of the Rice Gallery, is this year’s recipient of the Elizabeth Gillis Award for Exemplary Service. He concluded with a campuswide invitation to the March 7 Centennial celebration of the laying of the Lovett Hall cornerstone. The 7 p.m. ceremony will be held in Founder’s Court.

During the Q-and-A session, Leebron responded to queries about online education, preparing the campus for the centennial, maintaining a close-knit campus as the student body grows and the prospects for restoring A1 budgets to their prior levels.

Regarding the latter, Leebron said, “Will we have the resources to continue hiring people that we need, bringing new faculty on or developing new programs? I’m feeling optimistic about that.”

The Town Hall Committee organized the event. Public Affairs provided Rice centennial T-shirts as door prizes for attendees.

To leave feedback on the town hall, go to http://staff.rice.edu/post_event_TownHall_survey.aspx.