Special Projects

Engineers Without Borders teams to travel to Central America to assess needs, offer solutions

Putting aside problem sets and final projects, students in Rice's chapter of Engineers Without Borders will travel throughout Central America to serve communities in need this summer. According to its Web site, EWB-USA is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing service to fulfill the basic needs of communities in developing countries. Members of Rice-EWB are working on one of four student-led projects in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. These projects focus on various aspects of helping local communities, from installing water storage tanks to launching educational campaigns about how to sanitize their water.

Women's track places in first at New Mexico meet

Usually, lightning storms and track meets do not mix well. That was not the case this weekend as the women's track team overcame cold and windy conditions, in addition to lightning delays, to take first place at the New Mexico Tailwind Invitational held at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M. Only sprinters, hurdlers, jumpers and weight throwers traveled to New Mexico, as the meet typically boasts strong tail winds - always helpful for sprinters - and fair conditions. The meet showcased the exact opposite, with headwinds both days and stormy weather on Saturday with temperatures in the 40s and 50s, far cooler than the temperatures in which the Owls typically compete.

News in Brief: Rice professor set to blast off to space

Mechanical Engineering Professor Mike Massimino is preparing to fly out of this world. He will be launching into space for the second time on May 12 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. While in space, Massimino will make repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope. Massimino was too busy preparing for the launch to speak with The Rice Thresher, but he is conveying his experiences via his Twitter account at www.twitter. com/Astro_Mike.

DeGraw may be Free, but he definitely isn't falling

With his 2003 debut Chariot and 2008 self-titled follow-up, Gavin DeGraw had successfully, albeit somewhat mockingly, carved out a certain niche for himself. Cashing in on the oozing, over-indulged sappiness of One Tree Hill, the CW drama that initially landed DeGraw on the iPods of teenage girls across the nation, DeGraw found his place as a gospel-voiced piano-man, a lovelorn mixture of Isaac Slade and Lionel Richie, with a hint of Howie Day on the side.But with the March 31 release of DeGraw's third effort, Free, it's safe to say that the 32-year-old has abandoned the niche he has furnished so well. Gone are the over-produced, tinny guitar riffs; gone is the simple piano-and-drums formula; and gone, for the most part, are the Coldplay-esque refrains of unadulterated love, the kind of quixotic stuff that enthralls Madame Bovary and pisses off Chuck Klosterman.

Miley's latest flick is "Best of Both Worlds

Every girl, whether she is six or 60, has at some point in her life dreamed of being a superstar. Be it a pop star, a movie star or a secret agent, the dream of stardom is always the same. While most of us never get to see this dream fulfilled, there is one out there whom we can at least watch: Hannah Montana (a.k.a. Miley Stewart, Miley Cyrus), your regular girl next door secretly living the life of a singer and movie star. It should not come as a surprise then that her new film, Hannah Montana: The Movie, is just the peak of the Hannah Montana craze.

Greek life at Rice

Brown College's annual toga-themed Bacchanalia party was held last Saturday night in the Brown commons, offering stressed-out students a break from their work in the week before finals.

No Thresher until post-graduation

Because of hectic, time-consuming finals schedules, the Thresher will publish the final issue of the spring semester on May 14.

Online Only: Fatal shooting occurs near campus

Metro Police shot and killed a man carrying a knife Tuesday morning just outside of the Rice campus. The police had been following the man after he became involved in an altercation at METRORail's Dryden/TMC station, south of campus. When he took off along the outer loop, Metro Police fatally wounded the man, Rice Director of News and Media Relations B.J. Almond said.A female bystander sustained an arm injury from the shooting, but was treated by Rice EMS and was then transported to Ben Taub Hospital for further treatment.

The State of the University

For the full article with graphs and information about individual department budget cuts, please see this pdf.

Return of Ojala brings Rice series win over ECU

One down, one to go. That's the motto for the Owls this week in regard to their junior starters, as they celebrate the return of Mike Ojala and eagerly anticipate Ryan Berry's arrival back from injury. Ojala, a junior, made his first start since March 20 last Sunday against East Carolina University, throwing the rubber game in a three-game away series and pulling home the win for Rice. Berry, also a junior, is expected back sometime after finals. The Owls (25-9, 9-3 Conference USA), currently ranked first by Rivals.com and second by Baseball America, played a three-game road series against ECU last weekend, who at the time was leading the C-USA standings and is now ranked 23rd nationally.

This week's A&E Cartoon

For a higher resolution version of this week's LAFFS, click on the image above.

The universal language

Tolga Unaldi, here playing the reed flute, traveled from Turkey to share traditional Turkish music with Rice students at Tuesday's Turkish Night, hosted by the Turkish Student Association in the RMC.

Grooving at the Powwow

Participants perform a traditional Native American dance in the Rice Native American Student Association's 11th Annual Powwow March 28. The day-long event is a celebration of Native American culture.

Roberts and Owen spy mediocrity in Duplicity

Clive Owen and Julia Roberts acting in a movie together should be a double dose of fun and adventure. Roberts should be able to pull off starring in an action film, as she is a fabulous actress. Great filming locations such as Rome, New York City and the Bahamas should give a film an exciting sense of place. The collection of these factors should produce a great Hollywood film.But it doesn't always do so, at least in the case of the newly released action-adventure movie Duplicity.

New ESTHER policy in place

To prevent ESTHER from crashing during registration this semester, three changes were made to the registration process. Three registration start times were changed to three 20-minute intervals per day and were applied Monday through Friday. Registration also started at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., and in-progress hours were no longer included in determining a student's eligibility for registration, Registrar David Tenney said. The three time slots were created due to concerns that the load on the system during the first few minutes of registration each day could cause it to crash, Tenney said.

This week's A&E Cartoon

Freshman wins electric car

Move over electric slide; Lovett College freshman Josh Rutenberg, winner of the Miles Revolution Contest, is dancing to the hum of an electric car. The contest, hosted by the Miles Electric Vehicles company, which manufactures fully electric vehicles, awarded a $1,000 scholarship to a student based on which entrant's video, centered on the electric car, received the most views on YouTube. Rutenberg's three-minute video trumped the other 14 competing videos by gaining 20,000 hits by the end of the competition in March. In addition to providing Rutenberg with the scholarship, the company presented a ZX40S electric car to Rice University.

Golf falters to 17th at Morris Intercollegiate

Two weeks ago in Austin, Texas, the golf team played against one of their toughest fields yet, posting a 17th-place finish at the Morris Williams Intercollegiate. Along with the stiff competition, the tournament boasted the University of Texas Golf Club's long course and windy conditions, two factors that combined to produce a disappointing finish for the Owls. The Owls head to Wallace, N.C., to play in the River Landing Intercollegiate, the team's penultimate tournament of the year, hosted by North Carolina State University. The field at River Landing Country Club will include Duke University, the University of Virginia, Wake Forest University and the University of Maryland. Though the Owls do not have a chance of making the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team, they still look to finish strong and possibly earn an automatic bid at the conference tournament.

Streaking offense carries Owls through homestand

Over the last nine-game homestand, the men's baseball team proved it could play without its top two aces, juniors Ryan Berry and Mike Ojala, who are still out with arm troubles. Actually, the Owls (22- 7, 7-2 Conference USA) did more than play: The team went 8-1 and won two weekend series against C-USA rivals, taking two of three from the University of Memphis and swept Tulane University. Those conference series were interspersed with wins over Dallas Baptist University and Sam Houston State University. With this record, Rice is sporting its best start since 2004. The Owls have jumped up in the rankings, as well, with five different polls putting Rice in the top six. Baseball America ranks Rice third, while Rivals.com has them in first. Rice is also holding down second place in the C-USA standings, a game behind East Carolina University.

Inadequate health plan needs greater improvements

Ed. note: This article has been changed from the printed version.In a 2008 study of graduate students on the Rice-subsidized health plan, 97 percent of over 400 respondents were unhappy with the plan coverage and cost. Indeed, a comparison of the plan with other similarly-sized schools in the top 50 US News and World Report rankings shows that our current plan is well behind our competition in almost every way, such as co-pay percentage and out-of-pocket maximum.