Rice commencement ceremonies are Friday and Saturday, Pulitzer Prize winner Sheryl WuDunn will give commencement address Saturday

Rice University
Office of Public Affairs / News & Media Relations

MEDIA ADVISORY

B.J. Almond
713-419-9980
balmond@rice.edu

Editor’s note: B-roll from Rice University’s commencement ceremonies will be posted Saturday afternoon at https://rice.box.com/owlgrad16.

Rice commencement ceremonies are Friday and Saturday,
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheryl WuDunn will give commencement address Saturday

HOUSTON — (May 12, 2016) — Rice University’s commencement ceremonies will be held May 13 and 14.

EVENT: Rice University’s 103rd commencement. On Friday night, undergraduate students will cross the stage to receive diploma tubes and be congratulated; the commencement address will be presented Saturday morning and degrees will be conferred to the group as a whole. Students will NOT walk across the stage to receive diplomas Saturday; Friday night is the only photo op for students crossing the stage. Fireworks will light up the sky after Friday night’s ceremony.

DATE: Friday and Saturday, May 13 and 14.

TIME: 7:30 p.m. Friday and 8:30 a.m. Saturday.

SPEAKER: Sheryl WuDunn will deliver the commencement address during the Saturday morning ceremony. Named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Shake the World,” WuDunn became the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize when she and her husband, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, shared the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their coverage of the mass movement for democracy and its subsequent suppression in China. Currently the co-founder of FullSky Capital and a senior managing director for Mid-Market Securities, WuDunn raises capital for men and women entrepreneurs in new media, media technology, health care and social enterprise and advises several growth companies.

LOCATION: Outdoors on Rice’s Academic Quadrangle west of Lovett Hall (rain location: Tudor Fieldhouse), 6100 Main St. Photographers must check in at the Welcome Center in Lovett Hall, Room 103B, to get a black robe required for access to the quadrangle and instructions for where they are allowed to take pictures and video. They must be accompanied by a member of the News and Media Relations team to the area on the quad designated for photographers. The Welcome Center will open at 6:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 a.m. Saturday.

PARKING: News media must use Entrance 27B on Sunset Boulevard (west of Main Street) and park along the right side of the road by the Student Health Center. Press credentials are required for admission through Entrance 27B. For assistance, call 713-419-9980.

CAMPUS MAP: http://www.rice.edu/maps/Rice-University-Color-Campus-Map.pdf. (Look for the red circle with No. 22 for the road where media can park.)

# # #

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 3,910 undergraduates and 2,809 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for best quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Office of News and Media Relations – MS 300, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX 77005