Looking to improve user experience, Fondren recently redesigned its main website and updated its catalog interface in hopes of facilitating usage of their online services.
Starting next fall, a group of high school students will work in Rice labs alongside current Rice undergraduate students. The Rice Mentorship Initiative will reach out to students from under-served communities to provide opportunities to research with an undergraduate mentor on campus.
The BioScience Research Collaborative has made progress in finding non-Rice tenants to fill the south side of the building since it opened in April 2010.
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.
Vice Provost for Research James Coleman will leave Rice to become Dean of the Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, effective July 15.
Aysha Pollnitz and Stephen Bradshaw will begin their term at Baker College as Resident Associates in the fall. The Thresher talked to them to get more insight on the new RAs.
Nine universities came together at Rice's Dell Butcher Hall for the National Conference on Student-Taught Courses on April 8 and 9, the first conference of its kind. Though all nine universities house a form of student-taught courses, they have formed independently and without much communication between the institutions. The NCSTC was the first chance the universities had to see how other schools developed — or are still developing — a student-taught course program.
The IEEE Computer Society announced on March 24 that Computer Science Professor Moshe Vardi won its 2011 Harry H. Goode Memorial Award, presented to individuals who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the information processing field, for his body of research on logic as a computational tool.
The George R. Brown Forensics Society, better known as the speech and debate team, improved to ninth place this year from 19th last year at the Parliamentary Debate Nationals March 16-19 in Colorado Springs.
Stuck in the library all day but still want to check out cute girls/guys? The dating site pplscroll, launched by Jones College sophomores Gabriel David and Eirik Vaagenes on March 19, allows you to do just that. Still in its beta phase, pplscroll creates a simple way of meeting potential dates solely based on looks, a way David and Vaagenes believe more closely resembles real life.
The Rice Thresher sat down with assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Jamie Padgett to talk about receiving a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant for her project on bridge safety in hazardous conditions. Padgett teaches courses on structural analysis, bridge engineering and extreme events and earthquake engineering.
The following were noted at the most recent meeting of the Student Association on April 11.
During the course of the school year, the Student Association Academics Committee has been working on projects targeting aspects of student academic life, including a transfer student courses database of previously approved courses, the creation of more minors, improving publicity and resources of pre-professional advising resources, revamping the Esther course evaluation system and creating a Syllabi Archive available during registration. The Academics Committee was also involved in communications with IT regarding the move from Rice E-mail to Gmail.
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.
Rice students from the South Colleges can rejoice! No longer will the long walk during Houston's humid nights be necessary for Chick-fil-A sandwiches or Papa John's pizza. Starting in Fall 2011, the Hoot will open a new location at South Servery.
Eighty thousand dollars. That's how much the new Rice Solar Car Team estimates they will spend in their efforts to build an energy-efficient solar car that can sufficiently compete in a race against solar cars from other universities, which have multi-million dollar budgets. They will compete for the first time in Spring 2012 in the Shell Eco-Marathon.
