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THE
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
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The Rice School of Architecture is a design school, offering
educational and professional experience of exceptional scope
at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Within a liberal
arts context, Rice architecture students explore traditional
methods of inquiry along with innovative techniques and ideas
now reshaping the profession. Students refine their design skills
in digital studios, in projects set in the ever-changing city
of Houston, and in the Preceptorship Program at premier architecture
firms in the U.S. and abroad.
The School of Architecture faculty are leading practitioners,
critics, and scholars who bring the highest levels of achievement
to Rice classrooms and studios. Recent accomplishments include
major exhibits of work at UC–Berkeley’s University
Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and noted
projects and commissions, such as a master plan for a housing
project in Taipei, Taiwan (under the auspices of the Rice Center
for Urbanism); housing in Shenzen, China; new banking facilities;
educational facilities for experimental teaching; a mass-transit
center; and innovative, low-cost housing. Faculty work has received
numerous national and regional awards and citations from professional
societies and prestigious magazine programs. |
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SCHOOL
OF CONTINUING STUDIES
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The Continuing Studies program was established in 1967. It
was renamed the School of Continuing Studies (SCS) in 1992.
The school’s mission is to broaden the educational opportunities
of the wider community, reflecting the academic excellence of
Rice University. Annually, SCS offers more than 250 continuing
education courses in the humanities, natural and social sciences,
interdisciplinary and cultural studies, current social issues,
creative writing, computers, finance, career development, and
languages.
The school offers the largest selection of noncredit humanities
courses of any college or university in Texas. Professional
and technical programs enable those in certain fields to be
brought up to date on the latest research or on legal and technical
developments in their professions. The SCS Foreign Language
Program offers courses in Spanish, French, German, Italian,
Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. Students from 41 countries
have enrolled in the SCS English as a Second Language Program.
Continuing Studies also offers several ongoing programs of regional
and national stature, including the Advances in Tissue Engineering
seminar and the Rice University Advanced Placement Summer Institute
for high school teachers.
Many other programs are collaborative, involving cosponsors
from the university and from the community. In addition to its
noncredit offerings, SCS administers Rice’s for-credit
summer school program, which enrolls approximately 250 college
students in 30 courses annually. |
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THE
GEORGE R. BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
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The School of Engineering is home to nine premier academic
departments and 820 undergraduates. In recent years, more than
30 percent of first-year engineers have been women, a figure
nearly double the national average. Annual research expenditures
in the school have grown from approximately $8 million in 1988
to more than $26 million in 1998.
The quality of Rice’s engineering students, faculty, teaching,
and research attracts the attention and support of federal and
private sectors, as well as academia throughout the world. Houston—an
international center for the oil and gas industry, the medical
profession, and space exploration—offers a practical laboratory
for students. Students interested in biosciences and bioengineering,
for example, regularly work, take courses, and conduct research
at the Texas Medical Center. In addition, Rice engineering students
work closely with NASA–Johnson Space Center.
Teaching and research in engineering are enlivened by the interdisciplinary
research institutes for molecular physics, computer and information
technology, biosciences and bioengineering, and energy and environmental
systems. The institutes were established with a principal goal
in mind: to foster an environment in which creative, interdisciplinary
research flourishes, where engineers and natural scientists
collaborate to bring a breadth of knowledge and expertise to
bear on important problems. |
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Humanities students at Rice choose from 11 academic departments
that offer some of the finest programs in the nation. The English
department is noted for the work of its faculty in medieval,
Renaissance, Victorian, and modern literature. The history department
includes a program in the history of the American South and
one of the nation’s best faculties in 19th- and 20th-century
cultural history. Students in religious studies and philosophy
departments work with Texas Medical Center professionals in
one of the nation’s top biomedical ethics programs. From
classes in French, German, Slavic, or Hispanic studies to coursework
that explores the classics, education, linguistics, or kinesiology,
the School of Humanities helps to develop critical thinking
and analytical skills.
Faculty in the School of Humanities include fellows of Harvard’s
Program in Ethics and the Professions, the Woodrow Wilson Center,
the Stanford Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation.
Many of the school’s faculty are recipients of outstanding
book awards. Five professors have received the university’s
highest teaching award multiple times; national teaching prizes,
including the Carnegie Foundation National
Professor of the Year Award and the Phi Beta Kappa teaching
award, have gone to the school’s professors. |
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THE
JESSE H. JONES GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
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The Jones School is at the forefront of business education.
While many business schools continue to emphasize theory, Rice
is one of two or three that require students to take their classroom
knowledge into a real business setting, developing crucial leadership
and managerial skills. In the school’s Action Learning
Project, completed toward the end of the first year, student
teams consult full-time with a company to solve a specific problem.
The required second-year entrepreneurship course—one of
the few required courses of its kind in the nation—and
numerous experiential-learning-based electives provide additional
opportunities for students to put their knowledge to work.
Students have an opportunity to work one-on-one with accessible,
involved, and energetic faculty. The faculty believe that current
industry knowledge is as critical as textbooks. All of the instructors
are either academics with significant business experience or
executives with significant classroom experience who teach specialized
elective courses. Faculty members are recognized as leaders
in their fields and in teaching—one was named one the nation’s
two best entrepreneurial instructors by Business Week. Business
Week also ranks Rice among the 10 schools—including Stanford,
Berkeley, and Chicago—best able to balance real-world professionals
and traditional faculty.
Demonstrating the high quality of their education, Jones School
graduates are much sought after. In the January 2000 Financial
Times report, the Jones School tied for first, along with Wharton,
Stanford, Columbia, Kellogg, and Michigan, for grads employed
at three months (100%). Rice M.B.A. grads’ total compensation
offers consistently put the school among the top 20. According
to the Financial Times, based on average “salary today”
(adjusted for salary variation between industry sectors for
graduates of the class of 1996), the Jones School ranks 13th
among American business schools. |
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THE
SHEPHERD SCHOOL OF MUSIC
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In just over 20 years, Rice’s Shepherd School of Music
has become one of the nation’s most prestigious major university-level
music programs. The school has attracted an international student
body and faculty whose impact on the cultural life of Rice and
greater Houston is everywhere apparent. It is housed in an extraordinary
facility: Alice Pratt Brown Hall, a showplace of the entire
university. The $22 million facility represents the heart of
the Shepherd School’s rise to excellence. The grand foyer
invites audiences to enter some of the finest performance spaces
in the city. Its Stude Concert Hall, Duncan Recital Hall, and
Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall enjoy outstanding acoustics and
attract audiences of more than 70,000 music lovers each year.
Farther inside the building, long hallways of practice and chamber
music rooms, recording studios, and faculty studios resonate
with energy.
Shepherd School students take music lessons and core music courses
from some of the most accomplished faculty in the nation and
perform in ensembles with other musicians on the undergraduate,
graduate, and professional levels. |
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THE
WIESS SCHOOL OF NATURAL SCIENCES
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Faculty at the forefronts of their fields in the Wiess School
are exploring natural phenomena from basic particles to the
origin of the universe on scales from nanometers to light years.
Their research projects range from the nature of the earth to
the fundamental properties of living organisms and communities,
from complex mathematical approaches to assembling designed,
functional microstructures. Rice professors are pioneers in
the field of nanotechnology. Nanoscale research holds promise
for developing super-strong yet lightweight materials, semiconductors,
new drug delivery systems, superconductors, and much more.
Students have the opportunity to create and study fullerenes,
the unique compound that won Rice chemists Robert Curl and Richard
Smalley the 1996 Nobel Prize. The interdisciplinary Institute
for Biosciences and Bioengineering, the Keck Center for Computational
Biology, and the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology
provide a novel context for students and faculty to work together
on collaborative projects that also involve such institutions
and corporations as the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, NASA, Proctor
& Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Baylor College of Medicine,
the University of Texas Health Science Center, and the University
of Houston. |
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THE
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
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The School of Social Sciences is Rice’s youngest academic
division yet boasts one of the largest undergraduate enrollments
of all the schools at Rice. The secrets of the division’s
success really are not secrets: diverse, devoted faculty; flexible,
interdisciplinary curricula; multiple opportunities for student
research; and the exciting activities and unlimited promise
of the Baker Institute. With the critical catalyst of talented,
energetic students, these strengths make the social sciences
departments among the brightest lights at Rice.
Students in the School of Social Sciences work closely with
faculty nationally recognized for excellence in teaching and
research. The anthropology faculty leads the fields of cultural
anthropology and archaeology. Rice archaeologists Susan and
Roderick McIntosh have conducted digs over more than two decades
at the ancient city of Jenne-jeno, Mali. In addition, they are
actively involved in international efforts to stop looting of
important archaeological artifacts, and Susan McIntosh was appointed
by President Clinton to the President’s Advisory Committee
on Cultural Property. Economics faculty receive national attention
for their work in oil and energy policy and taxation, and the
National Research Council ranked the political science department
among the nation’s best in faculty quality. The faculty
in cognitive psychology and industrial organization are nationally
acclaimed and regularly reap awards for scholarship and mentoring. |
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