The Rice School of Architecture is an accredited design school offering educational and professional experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The School of Architecture has 135 undergraduates, 89 graduate students and 21 faculty members. The School of Architecture is housed in Anderson Hall where students have access to an advanced computer visualization and research laboratory, a fully equipped model shop, and a photography laboratory.

Rice architecture students admitted to the Bachelor of Architecture program are able to refine their design skills through the Preceptorship Program, which assigns qualified students to work for a year with leading architectural firms in the U.S. and abroad. Rice upper-level graduate and fifth-year Bachelor of Architecture students have the opportunity to study abroad through the Rice School of Architecture Paris. This program offers advanced urban design with lectures and seminars on history, theory and technology.

Achievements of Rice architecture faculty include exhibits in Houston, Pittsburgh, and Cambridge; acquisition of designed objects by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and noted built projects, architecture and design commissions.

School of Humanities students at Rice choose from 12 academic departments including art history, classics, English and foreign languages, history, kinesiology, linguistics, philosophy, religious studies, and visual arts. Several interdisciplinary majors are also available, such as studies in women and gender, Asian studies, ancient Mediterranean civilizations, and medieval studies. The School is home to three national journals, Studies in English Literature, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of Feminist Economics. The School of Humanities has 541 undergraduates, 171 graduates and 176 faculty members. The Humanities Building opened in 2000.

Rice humanities faculty have been named the Carnegie National Professor of the Year and the Carnegie Texas Professor of the Year. In addition, faculty in the school have been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Jones School offers the MBA degree, the MBA for Executives degree, and joint MBA/ME and MBA/MD degrees and a full schedule of noncredit executive education and customized courses for business and industry. The Jones School's Action Learning Project offers student teams on-site consultation with host companies to solve specific problems. The required second-year entrepreneurship course, along with other practical, learning-based electives provides additional opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience.

The Jones School has 494 graduate students and 62 faculty members. The school is housed in the 167,000-square-foot Jones Graduate School building. This state-of-the-art building includes a business information center, a data resources center, and a 450-seat auditorium.

The Shepherd School of Music offers a Bachelor of Music in bassoon, cello, clarinet, composition, double bass, flute, harp, horn, music history, oboe, organ, percussion, piano, theory, trombone, trumpet, tuba, viola, violin, and voice. It has 128 undergraduates, 165 graduate students, and 51 faculty members.

The Shepherd School is housed in the Alice Pratt Brown Hall. Alice Pratt Brown Hall has numerous private studios, practice rooms, rehearsal halls, recording and electronic music studios, and is home to Stude Concert Hall, Duncan Recital Hall and the Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall. These performance halls welcome more than 80,000 music lovers to nearly 300 concerts and recitals annually.

The six departments within the Wiess School consist of biochemistry and cell biology, chemistry, earth science, ecology and evolutionary biology, mathematics, and physics and astronomy. The Wiess School has 695 undergraduates, 359 graduate students and 141 faculty members. Wiess School professors, Richard Smalley and Robert Curl, received the Nobel Prize in 1996 for their pioneering research in the field of nanotechnology. This discovery holds promise for developing super-strong yet lightweight materials, semiconductors, new drug delivery systems, superconductors, and much more.

Interdisciplinary institutes and centers associated with the Wiess School are the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, W.M. Keck Center for Computational Biology, Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Rice Quantum Institute, Gulf Coast Consortia and Rice Space Institute. These efforts may encompass other institutions like Baylor College of Medicine, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, NASA, University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Texas Medical Branch, and the University of Houston as well as a number of corporations.

The School of Natural Sciences is housed in the renovated Howard Keck Hall. The 102,230 square feet of renovation include new research laboratories for molecular biophysics and bioengineering and a nuclear magnetic resonance suite as well as teaching and administrative space.

The School of Social Sciences, housed on both the second floor of Baker Hall and in Sewall Hall, includes the departments of Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. The school has 664 undergraduates, 124 graduate students and 72 faculty members. Interdisciplinary programs associated with the School of Social Sciences include cognitive science, managerial studies, and policy studies.

Social Sciences faculty have been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.

The School of Continuing Studies is located in the Speros P. Martel Center for Continuing Studies. Established in 1967, Continuing Studies offers more than 250 courses annually in arts, humanities, sciences, foreign languages, communication skills, information technology, and personal and professional development. The Foreign Language Program offers courses in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. The School has nearly 10,000 enrollments each year including 2,100 language program enrollments. Students from 41 countries enrolled in the English as a Second Language Program this past year.

SCS also offers professional development for teachers and finance managers. The teacher professional development programs include the Rice University Advanced Placement Summer Institute for teachers of Advanced Placement courses, workshops for teachers of gifted and talented students, and a new program for International Baccalaureate teachers at the high school level. Continuing Studies financial service education programs include the Certified Financial Planner™ Certification Education Program and exam prep courses for Chartered Financial Analysts®, Certified Treasury Professionals, and Certified Management Accountants.

Beginning in the fall of 2005, the SCS will offer a Master of Liberal Studies program designed for working adults interested in furthering their formal education in the liberal arts.

SCS also administers Rice's for-credit Summer School program, which enrolls approximately 200 students in more than 50 courses annually.