In an email to staff yesterday, Dean Gorman said that Rice has let go of Adjaye Associates, the architecture firm in charge of designing the new student center, and reset the RMC rebuild project.
Our primary goal at the Thresher has been — and will always be — to serve as a watchdog for the student body, to inform, to entertain and to criticize. As we begin our term as editors in chief, we remain dedicated to our central tenets, but we understand how much we have yet to learn.
Tommy McClelland will join Rice as its newest athletic director, following Joe Karlgaard’s departure in July. McClelland, currently the deputy athletic director at Vanderbilt, will start Aug. 14, according to President Reggie DesRoches’ July 30 announcement.
David Adjaye, the founder and principal of the firm designing Rice’s new student center, has been accused of sexual misconduct by three former employees. The Financial Times reported on July 3 that the allegations “range from sexual assault to harassment.” Rice chose Adjaye Associates to design the new student center in November 2020. The Moody Foundation has donated $100 million to support the project.
Athletic Director Joe Karlgaard will be departing Rice at the end of July, according to an email sent by President Reggie DesRoches on June 20. Karlgaard will assume a new position as CEO of GSV Summit LLC, a privately-owned investment company. “Joe Karlgaard has led and benefited our athletics programs across several periods of exceptional growth and challenge, including, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic,” DesRoches wrote.
John Dobelman, a professor in the statistics department, passed away May 9 at the age of 65 after battling cancer intermittently for 25 years. In addition to being a professor, Dobelman was the founding director of the professional masters program in the statistics department and the associate director of the Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems.
Rice intends to build two new residential colleges with an accompanying servery, President Reggie DesRoches and Vice President for Finance and Administration Kelly Fox announced in an email sent May 19. The old Sid Richardson College building will be demolished as part of this project. One of the new colleges will take its place, and the other will be positioned closer to Wiess College.
Dave Farina of the YouTube channel ProfessorDaveExplains came to Rice to debate organic chemistry professor James Tour on the topic of abiogenesis, the scientific theory that life on Earth originated from non-living compounds. The debate occurred May 19 in a full Keck Hall, with up to 2,800 viewers watching the event livestreamed on YouTube.
María Trinidad “Triny” Carranza, Cocinera III en el Cohen House, falleció el 7 de mayo a la edad de 50 años. La hija de Carranza dijo que la causa de la muerte de Triny fue complicaciones de los coágulos de sangre. Criada en la ciudad de Chihuahua, México, Triny visitó Houston a los veinte años y decidió quedarse después de conocer a su futuro esposo, Salvador Carranza, en el mismo departamento en el que ella se hospedaba. Una vez establecida, comenzó a trabajar en la industria culinaria en la que, según su esposo, estaba enamorada.
María Trinidad “Triny” Carranza, cook III at the Cohen House, passed away May 7 at the age of 50. Carranza’s daughter said Triny’s cause of death was complications from blood clots. Hailing from the city of Chihuahua, Mexico, Triny visited Houston in her early twenties and chose to stay after meeting her future husband, Salvador Carranza, in the same apartment complex. Once settled, she began working in the cooking industry that, according to her husband, she was in love with.
Rice held its 110th Convocation ceremony on Saturday, May 6 at Rice Stadium. The graduating class of 2023 walked under the Sallyport prior to convening in the stadium. This year’s commencement ceremony marked the first year that all graduation proceedings, including the commencement speech, were condensed into one day. It also marked the conferral of Rice’s first-ever posthumous degree, awarded to Kamryn Sanamo, a Martel College senior who died in January from brain cancer.
The “Israel at 75” conference hosted by the Baker Institute on April 27 explored the 75 years since Israel’s founding, including the relationship between Israel and the U.S. and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The speakers included former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Salam Fayyad, former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak and multiple current and former U.S. State Department officials.
Israel is a special place and arguably the most misunderstood in the world. We will be celebrating Israel’s 75th birthday at Rice, commemorating the occasion with a conference hosted by the Baker Institute on April 27, 2023. It is important to understand that the Jewish connection to the land of Israel goes back thousands of years. Jews were always in this land before Israel was created. As I prepare to graduate, having founded a Students Supporting Israel chapter at Rice, I want students to be informed about Israel and Palestine. There are many people who spew misinformation and will not want to listen to facts because of the false narrative they love to believe.
Makoto Shinkai clearly has a specialty — the “Your Name” and “Weathering With You” director is often said to make the same movie over and over again. It’s true that the three most recent entries in his filmography have all been fantastical, coming-of-age melodramas centered around some sort of ecological disaster, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Audiences know what they’re getting with a Shinkai film: gorgeously-rendered anime vistas, strong female leads and an emotionally-charged storyline guaranteed to make viewers feel something. While it doesn’t reach the poignancy of “Your Name,” Shinkai’s newest film “Suzume” is one of the highlights in his œuvre.
After an incredibly successful debut year in 2022, IVE released their debut album “I’ve IVE” to the excitement of fans around the world. Last year, IVE put out two single albums, which are shorter, two to three track projects within K-pop. The sampling of Gloria Gaynor’s classic track “I Will Survive” in “After LIKE” and the moodier sound of “LOVE DIVE” show two distinct sides of the group that are expanded upon in their debut full-length release.
“Renfield” is a 2023 comedy-horror film centering Nicolas Cage as Dracula and Nicolas Hoult as Renfield, Dracula’s loyal assistant. My comments on this movie should be prefaced by an acknowledgment of my bias; I absolutely adore Nicolas Cage as an actor. I could watch Mr. Cage do nothing but down an entire Subway Italian without him uttering a word and I would be absolutely enthralled, clinging to the edge of my seat. The subtle facial expressions, the charming yet hungry eyes, and the absolute Adonis of a body that Nicolas Cage possesses could make any film connoisseur faint at just a glimpse. Even taking into consideration my love for Cage’s acting in both his amazing and amazingly terrible works, “Renfield” is another absolute banger of a movie on nearly every level.
In Houston for the summer? The Thresher has you covered.
As the weather heats up and requires more tank tops to be worn and long hair to be thrown into ponytails, you might be realizing that more people have tattoos and piercings than you first thought. Whether this has now made you want your first ear piercing or third tattoo, the vital first step is figuring out where to get it done. Now that I have a few ear piercings my dad probably doesn’t like and a fresh new tattoo, I feel almost obligated to give you this list of shops to get your own body modifications done in Houston, if only so you can be as cool as me.
Wiess Tabletop Theatre’s spring production, “Fun Home,” will run April 21 through 23 at 8 p.m. in Wiess College commons. The Broadway show is a Tony award-winning production based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.” It was the first show on Broadway to feature a lesbian protagonist, Alison Bechdel, played by three different actors at three different ages.
Cindy Sheng’s biggest passion is for design, whether it’s creating a campus-wide organization, building ways to form connections with new people or her aspirations to develop products through user interface and user experience design avenues.
