Students present results of research projects at Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium
(04/22/11 12:00am)
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The sale of KTRU's tower, license and frequency to KUHF at the University of Houston has been approved, as announced by the Federal Communications Commission last Friday. The administration told KTRU students on Wednesday that their programming will be discontinued at 6 a.m. on April 28, and the sale will be closed on May 3.
Rice suspended student participation in study-abroad and exchange programs in Japan until further notice, Assistant Dean for Student Judicial Programs Donald Ostdiek announced. This decision affects the summer plans of three students who signed up for Japanese programs administered by Rice International Programs.
The Rice Memorial Center will replace 13th Street and Smoothie King with a convenience store during the summer, former Student Association President Selim Sheikh announced in Monday's SA meeting.
WHAT A two-day program including tours of the campus, sitting in on classes, information sessions and panels, student-led activities and staying overnight in one of the residential colleges.
President David Leebron announced during his semiannual Town Hall meeting on Feb. 22 that no more across-the-board reductions were expected for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. However, he said the university would still maintain a tight budget.
Students matriculating at Rice in the 2011-2012 school year will face an annual tuition increase of $1,780 more than last year bringing the total price of attendance to $47,821. Rice announced this 5.4 percent rise last Monday and concluded that the tuition cost specifically will be $34,900. Its growth rate has fluctuated slightly over recent years; last year, the tuition went up 5.3 percent from 2009, and between 2008 and 2009, there was a 5 percent price increase.
Rice Information Technology stated that it will probably be keeping its annual survey open for two more weeks after falling short of desired response levels. To gather feedback on the campus's technology resources and usage from undergraduate and graduate students, staff and faculty, IT has conducted this survey for almost six years and incorporated incentives to motivate more responses.Carlyn Chatfield, the manager of IT communication, said that the survey was created through Rice's Inquisite software. IT published the link through Twitter, Facebook and a Thresher ad. It also sent three or four e-mail messages to students, faculty and staff members and through college and employee mailing lists. In addition, fliers were distributed to be posted in common gathering areas.
Students, alumni, faculty and staff explored space at a panel discussion about human spaceflight in the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy on Tuesday, Feb. 15. The presentation, titled "U.S. Human Spaceflight: Continuity and Stability," discussed NASA's future plans, including the possible commercialization of space travel, and featured prominent speakers from the aeronautics industry. It was sponsored by the Baker Institute's Space Policy Program - a regular sponsor of such space-related events.
Following the alcohol policy forum four weeks ago, Student Association representatives introduced a proposal at the SA meeting last Monday to create a committee called the "Drinking Task Force." This group's responsibilities include collecting student opinion on the current alcohol policy and suggesting possible improvements.Hanszen College Senator Spencer Boucher said that he, SA External Vice President Carl Nelson, Jones College Senator Steven Boswell and Will Rice College Senator Renee Dudley wrote the proposal after seeing how successful the SA's alcohol forum was because they wanted to move forward with the alcohol policy discussion while student awareness of the issue was high.
Provost George McLendon chose three task forces last semester to carry out the Rice Initiatives by determining the university's academic focus for the coming years. The task forces ended last semester by writing three white papers - documents that summarized their work thus far and laid foundations for the next phase of their project. This next phase included a call for greater student input and collaboration with the faculty members of the task forces.When McLendon helped form the Biosciences and Human Health, Energy and the Environment and International Strategy task forces, he said he gave them the collective mission of identifying areas across the university where Rice could achieve preeminence and be one of the top places in the world for research and education. The task forces polled Rice's faculty to determine what interdisciplinary themes they thought were most important and then narrowed those ideas down to a few areas that each group then highlighted in their white papers.
Students and faculty across campus started reporting issues with Internet connectivity last Monday night around 9 p.m. A computer bug had caused the firewall to go down. The lagging network was especially apparent when browsing graphically intensive websites such as Facebook and YouTube. After troubleshooting, Information Technology determined that the firewall needed to be rebooted in order to fix the problem.Networking Manager Dylan Jacob said websites would take a long time to load, if at all.
Closing the residential colleges for the second year in a row in an effort to save money, Housing and Dining once again offered alternative winter housing for the 23 days of the break the colleges were closed, this time at a Holiday Inn, to any students who could not go home. Twenty-seven students, both international and regular, utilized this option. H&D estimated that utility savings alone were around $40,000. In addition, Rice did not subsidize the hotel stay this year, increasing expected savings.
This semester, Rice Emergency Medical Services saw a significant increase in the number of calls for help they received. According to REMS Captain Hashim Zaidi, this increase included alcohol-related episodes and general incidents across the board. Representatives of REMS and RUPD said that certain aspects of this rise have raised concerns about Rice's alcohol culture and their own resources.According to Zaidi, a Will Rice College senior, the number of intoxication incidents has grown, from public parties to crawls to private parties, and REMS Senior Lieutenant Amir Nikahd said that most of the calls occurred on weekends. REMS Lieutenant Wilhelm Kienast said that there was a 15 percent increase in calls this academic year, and Zaidi attributed the increase in call volume to a variety of causes, from the larger student body to more on-campus visitors to the popularity of Four Lokos, caffeinated alcoholic beverages that received attention in the media for causing the hospitalization of multiple college students.
What can a sociology major taking 12 hours each semester do when she graduates? If her name is Maryana Iskander (Wiess '97), she can rack up a long list of scholarships and take on a series of influential leadership roles, including working with federal judges, advising President David Leebron and acting as chief operating officer of Planned Parenthood. Iskander visited campus Nov. 18 to discuss the role leadership has played in her life and the importance of education. Students, staff and faculty members attended her presentation in Herring Hall, which was sponsored by Leadership Rice and the Program for the Study of Leadership.
More than 1,000 fifth- through eighth-grade girls gathered on campus Nov. 6 for the Rice Space Institute's annual Sally Ride Science Festival, an event geared toward helping young female students explore and gain a deeper understanding of science. The fair was jointly hosted by science education company Sally Ride Science and professional services organization Deloitte, and featured astronaut Wendy Lawrence as a keynote speaker, discovery workshops for both children and adults and a street fair. The festival had a registration fee of $20, though some companies sponsored scholarships so that more girls could attend. Keynote speakers from previous years have included the astronauts Sally Ride, Eileen Collins, Peggy Whitson and Ellen Ochoa.
Rice students, faculty and alumni headed to the polls on Nov. 2 to cast their ballots for the midterm election. Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., 400 people went to the Miner Lounge in the Rice Memorial Center and voted for national, state and county officials.Election Judge Cindy Dinh helped plan and oversee the entire process and said she was extremely pleased with Tuesday's turnout. Dinh, a McMurtry College senior, said that, according to a previous election judge, only about 100 students had come to the polls a few years ago. Dinh said any eligible voter who uses his residential college address can vote on campus, but usually not many people participate during midterm elections.
Housing and Dining is conducting a campus-wide survey of the overall quality of its eating establishments. The survey was opened to all students, faculty, and staff members on Oct. 25 and will be available online until Nov. 24. The survey is part of an annual national assessment of college cuisine that is administered by the National Association of College and University Food Services. NACUFS is a food services organization that includes over 1000 university members organized by region. Rice is in the Southern Region and will be compared to colleges both regionally and nationally.
President David Leebron spoke Oct. 12 in his semiannual Town Hall Meeting to an audience of faculty and staff members about the university's past achievements and present challenges, dividing his presentation into what he called the five Cs: Cash, Contributions, Community, Campus and Celebration.Cash
Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics, visited Rice Sept. 23 to speak at the biennial Social Dilemmas Conference, held in the Baker Institute for Public Policy by the School of Social Sciences. The program featured presentations by prominent social speakers on causes and solutions for today's collective issues. Ostrom's lecture was entitled "Cooperating for the Common Good: Challenging Supposed Impossibilities and Panaceas." During her speech, Ostrom addressed the research she had done on the management of common resources. Ostrom said that humans can work together to combat the tragedy of the commons - the belief that people, being self-interested, will deplete a shared resource - and instead ensure resource sustainability. Ostrom's findings contradict the popular belief that this phenomenon is inevitable. Ostrom said that communities which utilize common resources can devise regulatory systems that help prevent resource exhaustion. In fact, she said that when people communicate, they manage natural resources with 92 percent optimality.