24 | Talking Oil • 28 | Earthquake Watch • 36 | When They Get Ambitious • 40 | From MOB to High-Tech

IKE
“MY PRIDE IN THIS UNIVERSITY
HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER.”
—President David Leebron

14 THE LITTLE NETWORK THAT COULD

17 PAPER, PLASTIC OR NANO?
44 TAKING BOWS AT THE KENNEDY CENTER
50 COURTING THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

Rice Magazine • No 1 • 2008 1

Contents
19

10 How can you possibly 13 Rice makes the Best

see grains of sand orbit- Places to Work ranking
ing distant stars? Ask for the third year in a
astronomer Christopher row.
Johns-Krull.

16 Fill ’er up with

buckyballs!
Introducing new
high-pressure storage
for hydrogen. 14 A low-cost wireless net-
work developed at Rice
20 Buckytubes and bones has become a valuable
resource for sociologists,
form a fast-growing
medical researchers and
partnership.
anthropologists studying
neighborhood dynamics.
15 New Rice trustee Lee
Rosenthal is judged to
be among the best.

21 Researchers are put- 13 Astronaut Peggy

ting the pressure on Whitson ’86 loves
cartilage. breaking things in
11 A chemist makes a space.
remarkable archaeological
discovery.
17 Gobbling spilled oil on
demand: Meet the nano- 12 Biomedical research
baton sac. gets a boost.

On the cover: View of Hurricane Ike from the International Space Station.

Features
3 Hurricane Ike
From making sure students were safe to
organizing community relief efforts, Rice
weathered Hurricane Ike with resilience and
compassion.
24 Lynn Laverty Elsenhans
Lynn Laverty Elsenhans ’78, the new CEO and
president of Sunoco, reflects on global energy
concerns, the challenges facing women in the
corporate world — and her favorite university.
By Christopher Dow
28 Cracking Quakes and Other Earthy
Matters
We might not be able to prevent earthquakes,
but decoding the signals that precede them
could minimize loss of life and property
damage. Rice Earth scientists are cracking the
code.
By Jade Boyd and Christopher Dow
32 Historic Building
With “green” roofs cropping up on new Rice
buildings, the Recreation Center rising next to
the Rice Memorial Center and “The ‘John and
Anne’ Grove” enticing strollers with its cooling
shade, the campus is looking better than ever.
By Merin Porter
36 Green as Grassroots
A student-led initiative to lessen the
environmental footprint of the campus is
producing tangible results for Rice.
By Merin Porter
40 The Entrepreneur Next Door
High-tech entrepreneur David Zumwalt ’81
brings his touch for success to the University
of the Virgin Islands Research and Technology
Park, where he helps provide opportunities
for the region’s rising business and technology
stars.
By Merin Porter
Students
23 Looking for an alternative to
the traditional office? Look no
further than Caroline Collective.
Arts
42 From the Summer Window
Series to the student art show,
the Rice Gallery showcases the
old and the new.
46 If there is a way for a composer
to write music for walking on
cloud nine, Kurt Stallmann will
probably find it.
47 Summer music camp fills the
3 air with ... well, the sound of
music.
Bookshelf
48 If you think that architecture
students just design buildings,
you might be surprised by “The
Things They’ve Done.”
49 April DeConick was intrigued
32 by National Geographic’s
translation of the Gospel of
Judas — until she read the
original for herself.
Sports
50 No matter what the outcome,
you know these outstanding
student–athletes worked hard
to earn Rice’s seventh trip to
36 the College World Series.
52 Class act Cole St. Clair ’08
receives the 2008 CLASS
Award.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 1
 Rice Magazine
Fall 2008, Vol. 65, No. 1

Published by the
Office of Public Affairs
WELCOME TO OUR NEW LOOK Linda Thrane, vice president

As Rice University takes bold

Editor
Christopher Dow

strides to achieve its Vision

Editorial Director
Tracey Rhoades

for the Second Century plan

Creative Director
Jeff Cox

to grow the institution in size,

Art Director
Chuck Thurmon

impact and reputation, it

Editorial Staff
Merin Porter, staff writer
Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor

deserves a flagship publication Photographers

Tommy LaVergne, photographer

worthy of its aspirations.

Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer

The Rice University Board

of Trustees
In that spirit, we’ve spent much of the last year looking at what we’ve been doing right with James W. Crownover, chairman; J. D.
Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith
this magazine, what needs improvement and what we can do without. Now, with the dust T. Anderson; Teveia Rose Barnes; Alfredo
of renovation finally settling, we’re pleased to unveil the new Rice Magazine. Brener; Vicki Whamond Bretthauer; Robert
T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson; Robert L.
The process of charting a fresh course for the magazine was made possible, in large Clarke; Bruce W. Dunlevie; Lynn Laverty
part, by our recent readership survey. Many of our decisions were based on your sugges- Elsenhans; Douglas Lee Foshee; Susanne
tions and comments, and we sincerely thank you for your valuable time and input. Morris Glasscock; Robert R. Maxfield; M.
Kenneth Oshman; Jeffery O. Rose; Lee H.
The first thing you probably noticed — aside from the magazine’s dimensions — was Rosenthal; Hector Ruiz; Marc Shapiro; L.
the absence of the name “Sallyport” on the masthead. The overwhelming number of E. Simmons; Robert B. Tudor III; James S.
responses to the question concerning the name indicated that it had limited recognition Turley.

outside of the university community and did not adequately communicate the magazine’s Administrative Officers
affiliation with Rice. This is a critical point since the purpose of the magazine is to help fur- David W. Leebron, president
president; Eugene Levy,
vost; Kathy Collins, vice president
provost
ther Rice’s mission and reputation as the university expands its influence beyond Houston for Finance; Kevin Kirby, vice president for
and Texas. Administration; Chris Muñoz, vice president
We’ve adopted the simple but evocative name, Rice Magazine, to better achieve iden- Enrollment; Linda Thrane, vice president
for Enrollment
for Public Affairs; Scott W. Wise, vice president
tification with the university we represent. At the same time, we felt that “Sallyport” is a for Investments and treasurer; Richard A.
time-honored, symbolic name, and it will live on in a major Zansitis, general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein,
department, “Through the Sallyport,” where you can read vice president for Resource Development.

campus news and articles on people and research.

Rice Magazine is published by the Office of
You’ll find a number of changes inside, as well. While Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent
we’ve kept many of the basic bones that made Sallyport to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate
such a durable publication, we’ve trimmed the fat, toned the students, parents of undergraduates and
friends of the university.
muscle and given the magazine a face-lift. We’re making the
magazine a lot more fun to read, as well. Shorter, livelier Editorial Offices
features will allow us to increase our coverage of the kinds Creative Services–MS 95
P.O. Box 1892
of teaching, research, engagement and international impact that have long characterized Houston, T
TXX 77251-1892
Rice. And because there’s just too much going on at Rice to adequately cover in a quarterly Fax: 713-348-6751
magazine, we’ll leave you with lots of Web resources so you can delve more deeply into E-mail: ricemagazine@rice.edu
topics that strike your fancy. Postmaster
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is our excitement at presenting all the great Send address changes to:
people, discoveries and resources that make Rice one of the best universities anywhere. Nor Rice University
Development Services–MS 80
has our commitment to our readers — alumni and many others who share an affinity with P.O. Box 1892
Rice. So, without further ado, I invite you into the pages of the new Rice Magazine. ... Houston, TX 77251-1892
© OCT. 2 0 0 8 RICE UNIVE RSIT Y

Christopher Dow
cloud@rice.edu

2 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 HURRICANE Ike

Stop the Presses! Actually, we didn’t have much choice. Just as our newly designed Rice Magazine was hit-
ting the presses, a big fellow named Ike strode across the Houston area and stopped them for us. Now that we’re up
and running again, we’ve added a special section to let you know how Rice fared during and after the storm. In short,
very well, thanks to thoughtful planning before the storm, quick action throughout and helpful responses — both on
campus and in the wider community — in its aftermath. But see for yourself.

For more in-depth coverage of Hurricane Ike and Rice, visit:

›› › media.rice.edu/media/20081.asp

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 3

 O W L S I N T H E S T O R M BY D AV I D W. L E E B R O N

People and institutions often are defined by how they respond to crises.
For more than four years, I have had the privilege of being
part of the extraordinary Rice community, and my pride in this
university has never been greater than during the week af-
ter Hurricane Ike as I watched my colleagues and associates
respond to both the threat and the aftermath of the storm.

Baker Institute Director Ed Djerejian’s
important new book is titled “Danger
and Opportunity.” He takes this title
from the Chinese word for crisis, which
is composed of two characters — one
derived from the character for danger
and the other from the character for op-
portunity. In short, the word embodies
the idea that in each crisis lurks both
danger and opportunity.
That has surely been our experi-
in the last day or so before it made
landfall, veered northward and largely
spared the Houston area from serious
damage. We learned a lot from that
experience and implemented changes to
our procedures.
In the days before Ike and even
during the storm, the Rice Crisis
Management Team met regularly via
conference call to review every aspect
of preparation, action and response.
news media.
Once the winds subsided on
Saturday, we immediately began to
assess damage, clean up and make
repairs to prepare for a speedy return to
normalcy. This was especially important
in light of the large number of students
living on our campus who were eager
to return to classes.
While recognizing that the campus
had been spared major damage, we

In the days before Ike and even during the storm, the Rice Crisis Management Team met regularly
via conference call to review every aspect of preparation, action and response.
ence with Hurricane Ike. Make no We went into high gear on Thursday also understood that much of the city
mistake: For Houston and certainly and Friday to batten down the campus, had suffered substantial losses, and
for Galveston and nearby shore areas, set up special shelters for our students millions of people were without power.
this was a once-in-a-quarter-century and lay in food and water supplies. Water pressure throughout the city had
hurricane (we certainly hope!) in terms Ping and I walked the campus to meet dropped, creating sanitary threats. Trees
of its strength, its size and directness with students, who were cheerful and were down, gasoline was in short sup-
of the hit. The last hurricane that was patient as they faced the prospect of ply and transportation was challenging.
similar to Ike, both in force and loca- being crowded into shelters for the The response of our community to
tion, was Alicia in 1983. night. Throughout, we communicated all this was nothing less than amaz-
Literally years of preparation at with parents and others through e-mail ing — a case study in both resilience
Rice paid off. In 2005, we were fully and postings on the Web, in part to and compassion. Everyone pitched
prepared for Hurricane Rita, which, counteract the hyperbolic reports in the in. Our students stood side by side

4 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

with our Facilities, Engineering and
Planning crews to clean up tree debris
that blanketed the roads and blocked
walkways on campus. Our construction
crews redeployed to open up roadways
and repair water and wind damage. Our
Housing and Dining staff found and
prepared fresh food for people sheltered
on campus.
While we got Rice back on its feet
in just a few days, many in our com-
The response of our community to all this was nothing less than amazing – a case study in
both resilience and compassion. Everyone pitched in.
munity — students, faculty and staff
— still lived under difficult conditions.
We did our best to accommodate those
circumstances, from canceling tests
to setting up day camps for children
whose schools remained closed. We cre-
ated emergency loans for staff members
in need, handed out ice and opened
up showers and laundry facilities on
campus. If people needed time to deal
with repairs, flexibility was the rule.
We also turned our attention to our
battered city. Volunteers began lining
up to help almost before the storm had
subsided. Hundreds of students and
staff helped sort and pack food at the
Houston Food Bank and organized
collections of supplies and money.
They joined crews cleaning up parks
and hard-hit neighborhoods. Several
members of our basketball team helped
remove debris in Galveston, which was
seriously damaged by the storm.
When hospitals in the Texas Medical
Center lost their helicopter landing
pads, we opened up our bicycle track in
the parking lot of Rice Stadium to allow
them to land. Our neighbors clapped
and cheered as the helicopters released
their injured passengers and ambulanc-
es whisked them away for care. We also
delayed the opening of the Oshman
Engineering Design Kitchen for a week
so disaster-assistance medical teams
could use it as a triage center to handle
HURRICANE Ike
overflow injuries from hospital emer-
gency rooms.
And, throughout, we never forgot
that we are a community of learning
and research. As the storm approached,
Jerry Dickens, professor of earth science
and master of Martel College, gave a
lecture to the students on hurricanes.
Before and after the storm, Rice faculty
members served as resources for the
media and others on a range of issues
regarding the weather and related
topics.
Most of all, Rice emerged from
Ike with a reaffirmation that we are a
community that cares: We care about
each other, we care about our neighbors
and we care about the world beyond.
That is a big part of what makes Rice so
special, and what makes the work we
do so important.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 5
 Rice Gets Back to Business
After a challenging weekend, Rice’s Vice President
for Administration Kevin Kirby felt confident the uni-
versity had passed the test posed by Hurricane Ike, the
most serious storm the campus has seen in decades.

“It’s a judgment call as to what we call ‘normal-

cy,’ but I think we’ll be there by Monday,” he said
a few days after the hurricane, looking at blue
skies through the windows in his Allen Center
office. “We don’t have any building we can’t use,
though we had damage to almost every build-
ing,” he said. “Most of the problems are with
windows and roofs — nothing that would keep
us from operating or using the buildings.”
Several construction projects, including the
new Rice Children’s Campus on Chaucer Drive
and the Collaborative Research Center at the cor-
ner of Main Street and University Boulevard, suf-
fered minor damage that was expected to only
minimally delay their completion.
“The biggest challenge to all the construc-
tion is that the labor force was significantly re-
duced in the week post-Ike,” said Barbara White
Bryson, vice president for Facilities, Engineering
and Planning (FE&P).
The “R” Room at Rice Stadium sustained
some damage, but other athletic facilities came
through the storm fine. “Rice Stadium has been
standing since 1951, and it’s not going any-
where,” said Athletics Director Chris Del Conte,
who added that the baseball stadium and Autry
Court, which is nearing the completion of its
renovation, also are in good shape.
Bryson said it will take some time to fix the
“R” Room, as six windows facing the football
stadium were blown out by Ike, and the inte-
rior sustained substantial water damage. It was
among the initial buildings to get attention from
FE&P cleanup crews.
“Our first-response tasks were to maintain
infrastructure, address life-safety issues, board
up windows where they were broken and clean
up the largest water-intrusion areas,” Bryson
said. “We had water in a few basements, most
seriously over at Brown College. Those kinds of
things had to be attended to right away. Happily,
we kept power to most of the campus all the way
through the event.”
On a scale of one to 10, she said, Ike probably
was a three for Rice in overall impact. “But it’s
the kind of event,” Bryson said, “that we end up
dealing with for weeks and months in an effort
to get everybody back to normal operations.”

—Mike Williams

6 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 HURRICANE Ike

Rice Students Ride Out Ike

When Will Rice College freshman Hannah Thalenberg
decided to attend Rice last year, she never thought her
first month on campus would be so exciting.
“My mom in Atlanta knew I was safe at Rice during Hurricane Ike,
and my dad in Brazil was ecstatic,” Thalenberg said. “My dad said
that our Polish ancestors could never have imagined a Thalenberg
riding out a hurricane. I’m first-generation!”
To pass the time, Thalenberg said, about a half-dozen students
made cookies with Paula Krisko, a master at Will Rice, while others
played games, watched movies or read.
Excitement appeared to be the sentiment of most Rice un-
dergraduate students hunkered down in their respective colleges.
Most said Rice was well-prepared with water, food and shelter.
“Rice is the safest place in Houston to be,” said Annie Kuntz, Sid
Richardson College sophomore. She is from Houston and decided to
stay on campus rather than return to her parents’ home on the north
side. “You know Rice is going to have power, being so close to the
Texas Medical Center.”
For Jones freshman Brianna Mulrooney of New Jersey, this
wasn’t her first brush with a hurricane. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd
dumped 15 inches of rain on the upper East Coast, killing 57 people.
“This hurricane was very much like Floyd,” said Mulrooney, who,
along with Kuntz and many others at Rice, donated blood to a Gulf
Coast Regional Blood Center that was set up in Farnsworth Pavilion.
Making the best of it was the mantra of the day.
An unconfirmed but widely spread report said certain Martel
College students were flying kites during the tropical storm-force
winds that preceded the hurricane. Also unconfirmed are reports that
the Martel kites had special messages written on them for Jones
College residents.
“Most of us were having a good time and making the best of the
situation,” said Brown College senior June Hu of Katy, Texas. “We saw
Shepherd School students practicing a quartet in the Rice Memorial
Center, so it put us in the mood to watch the movie ‘Titanic.’”
Both Hu and Brown senior Kevin Liu commented on the eerie
sounds of Hurricane Ike. “We couldn’t see what was going on out-
side, but we could hear it,” said Liu, of San Antonio, Texas.
Like all other undergraduate Rice students, Hu and Liu left their
rooms to take shelter in hallways or other interior areas within build-
ings and away from glass when the actual storm hit campus. “We
were in the hallways from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.,” Liu said, “and I don’t
think most of us slept much.”
While undergraduate students stayed at their colleges, graduate
students who lived in Rice housing or mandatory evacuation zones
were sheltered at Janice and Robert McNair Hall and Rice Memorial
Center until Monday. Rice officials had to inspect and secure the
apartment buildings, due to downed power lines and 15-pound roof
tiles that were a potential threat.
“It was frustrating because we really wanted to get back to our
apartments Saturday to have access to our clothing, food and other
items,” said Andrew Staupe, a Shepherd School of Music graduate
student from Minnesota. “At the same time, we knew that they
wanted to make sure it was safe for us to go back.”
—David Ruth

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 7

 Alumni Go Long to Keep Rice Water Pumping
It’s not often that you see football players
turn into water boys, but it may be the most
important play these two former Owls ever
made for Rice.
It started when the city lost its pumping station at Trinity
River, which feeds the water treatment plants in Houston.
When water pressure started to drop on campus, Rice
turned to its backup well, but the pump motor burned out
during an electrical surge.
“It was never a drinking-water issue — we had plenty
of bottled water,” said Kevin Kirby, vice president for admin-
istration. “We needed water for sanitary reasons, for toilets
and showers. We needed water for the boilers so we could From Design Kitchen to Medical Triage Center
produce steam and hot water for cooking and cleaning. And
we needed water to run the air-conditioning system — the It may have happened by chance rather than design, but Rice’s newly
chillers and the cooling tower. After the safety of our stu- completed Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, with its quiet, climate-
dents and employees, water pressure turned out to be our controlled atmosphere, proved to be the perfect location for an emergency
biggest concern during this whole storm.” medical triage center. The center was organized through a collabora-
Enter Rice Athletics Director Chris Del Conte. “I was tive effort among Rice and Memorial Hermann, St. Luke’s, Ben Taub and
in a conference call with the Crisis Management Team, Methodist hospitals. About 70 physicians, assistant physicians, nurses and
and one of the things that came up was the well,” he said. paramedics who came from the Houston area and as far away as New Jersey,
“We needed a massive motor. My first thought was that Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida treated about 250 patients a day,
trying to get water must be like trying to get oil, and we most suffering from low-acuity ailments such as bruises, bumps and rashes
have a lot of former students working in the oil industry. or needing further information about resources.
If anybody knows how to get something from 1,600 feet —Jessica Stark
underground, it would be those guys.” Learn more about the Rice triage center by visiting:
Del Conte put in a phone call to former football play- › › › tinyurl.com/4m69 v y
ers John Huff ’69 and Jay Collins ’68 of Oceaneering
International Inc., a Houston company that supplies prod-
ucts to the offshore oil and gas industries. Collins succeed-
ed Huff as president and CEO of the company in 2006.
The former Owls had a 2,500-pound motor as-
sembly in Tennessee, and they wasted no time in mak-
ing arrangements to get it to Rice. Two members of the
Rice University Police Department, Jim Baylor and Niraj
Rajbhandari, were dispatched to meet the delivery truck
halfway, in Morgan City, La., to escort it to campus. It was
installed soon after it arrived.
—Mike Williams

Photos: Matt Dunaway

Disaster Day Camp

Instrument shop worker Terry Phillips, left, and supervisor Carl Riedel
stand with the pump motor that was shipped from Tennessee to Rice by
former Rice football players John Huff and Jay Collins of Oceaneering
International Inc.
With power out across much of the Houston area in the wake of Hurricane
Ike, Rice coaches and student–athletes offered sports day camps for the
children of Rice faculty and staff whose schools were closed.
Images from the camps can be viewed at:
› › › tinyurl.com/4 4tely

8 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 HURRICANE Ike

Parents Respond to President’s Messages

“We continue to be impressed with Rice’s emergency

readiness — actually, we are impressed with everything
about Rice and its leadership.”
—Margaret Swartz

Before, during and after Hurricane Ike, Rice President David Leebron made it a priority to post
notices on the university’s Web site to describe the conditions on campus and reassure stu-
dents’ parents that their sons and daughters were safe. His efforts were rewarded with a
number of grateful e-mail responses from parents. Here is a sampling:

“My daughter is a freshman and 1,650 miles away
from home. Your reassuring e-mails and the timely
Web site updates, as well as the reports from my
daughter regarding all the precautions taken, were
extremely comforting. The sense of community
eased the anxieties both on campus and off.”
—Susan Corkett
“Although I wanted my daughter to come home
to Austin as Ike approached, she chose to stay
on campus. Between the Rice Web site, your
reassuring e-mail messages and cryptic text mes-
sages from my daughter, I knew during the whole
weekend that she was safe and well cared for. In
retrospect, I’m glad she stayed on campus as she
had the opportunity to have a positive growing ex-
perience during the hurricane and got to see how a
community can work together to protect itself and
do the right thing.”
—Denise C. Fischer
“We know that Rice cares about its students’ well-
being more than it does about the university’s rank-
ing, performance and achievement. We appreciate
all the devotion you put into the campus.”
—David and Fen Wang
“ If our children are
remarkable it is, in part,
because they have
received a remark-
able education at Rice
University, both inside
and outside the class-
room. Thank you for
keeping them safe and
for instilling in them the
importance of coming
to the aid of those less
fortunate.”
— Marci Waters and C. J. Steuernagel
“My wife and I have many friends, family members
and colleagues in the Houston area. Of all of them,
our daughter — the Rice student — was the one
about whom we had the least worries.”
—Steve Altchuler
“We want to thank you and the entire Rice commu-
nity for ensuring the safety and well-being of all Rice
students during this past weekend. Even though our
son is living off campus this year, it was so comforting
to know that he and his roommates were welcome
and expected back at Jones during the storm.”
—Ann and Louis Gilbert
“We live thousands of miles from Houston in the
small country of Serbia. You can only imagine our
anxiety as this terrible natural disaster stormed
through your city and state. I had no way of com-
municating with my son, and the only bright lights
in that long night were the constant updates on the
Rice University Web site. Your letters calmed me, a
helpless mother so far away from her child. Thank
you and all the other people at Rice who remained
with our children and helped them unconditionally
throughout the storm and its aftermath.”
—Zorica Nakic and Boban Zivojinovic

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 9

 Imagine trying to glean useful information from pro-
cesses that take millions of years or from objects so far
away they can’t be seen. Welcome to the world — or,
rather, the universe — of the astronomer. Sometimes,
though, ingenuity can help bridge even interstellar dis-

The
tances and shed light on the unknown.
“Precisely how and when planets form is an open

Universe
question,” said Rice astronomer Christopher Johns-
Krull. “One theory is that the disc-shaped clouds

in a Grain
of dust around newly formed stars condense into
microscopic grains of sand that eventually clump into

of Sand
pebbles, boulders and whole planets.”
Johns-Krull is a member of an international team
that analyzed a binary star system using data collected
during the past 12 years from a dozen observatories
around the world. The team’s findings may help
explain how Earthlike planets form.
The researchers looked at a pair of stars called
KH-15D in the Cone Nebula (image at left). The stars
are about 2,400 light-years from Earth, and they are
only about 3 million years old, compared to the sun’s
4.5 billion years. But the stars’ youth wasn’t their only
important feature.
“We were attracted to this system because it ap-
pears bright and dim at different times, which is odd,”
Johns-Krull said. This hinted at a situation that might
allow the researchers to directly observe processes
taking place near the stars, which normally is dif-
ficult because glare from a star obscures its nearby
region. Until now, astronomers have used infrared
heat signals, instead of direct observation, to identify
microscopic dust particles around distant stars, but the
method isn’t precise enough to tell astronomers just
how big the particles become and how closely they
orbit their star. KH-15D offered a solution.
The researchers found that the Earth has a nearly
edge-on view of KH-15D. From this perspective, the
disc of dust surrounding the system blocks one of the
stars from view, but its twin has an eccentric orbit that
causes it to rise above the disc at regular intervals.
When it rises above the disc, its light reflects off the
dust, allowing the researchers to take photometric
and spectrographic readings to determine the dust’s
composition and chemical makeup.
“One theory is that the The results were the first measured evidence of
disc-shaped clouds small, sandy particles orbiting a newborn solar system
of dust around newly at about the same distance as the Earth orbits the sun.
formed stars condense The research was funded by NASA and the Keck
into microscopic grains Foundation, and the report was published online in
of sand that eventually the journal Nature.
clump into pebbles, —Jade Boyd
boulders and whole
planets.” Nature article:
› › › tinyurl.com/ 5ojsv f
—Christopher Johns-Krull
Animation of KH-15D:
› › › tinyurl.com/6c5aaf

10 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE Sallyport
Ron Parry’s favorite destination has a name:
It’s called “the middle of nowhere.” Nothing makes
the full-time Rice chemistry professor and part-
time environmental activist happier than wandering
through uncharted wilderness areas. “I don’t really
think of it as taking a vacation,” he said. “It’s more
like ‘revisiting reality.’”
Parry has been exploring those places “least overrun
with human artifacts” since the 1960s, but his passion
for wilderness areas really began in his early teens. “I
grew up in Los Angeles, and we had a big yard with
lots of plants and foliage,” he said. “I became fasci-
nated by the interplay between science and the natural
world.”
As he grew older, the self-proclaimed desert rat
explored England during his postdoctoral fellowship
and spent some time in Costa Rica, but he developed
a particular affinity for the rugged terrain and arid
environment of the American Southwest. He spends
plenty of time in Arizona and Nevada, but, like a
true adventurer, he also loves the lure of unexplored
territory. He takes the bait as often as possible, usually
during a semester or midterm break.
In choosing where to go, Parry finds a sufficiently
intriguing “vacant area on the map” and heads out.
These days, he avoids heavy equipment and backpacks
and prefers to use his car as a base camp.
Parry has become deft at packing his gear, which
usually includes a sleeping bag, food and water, a tent,
first aid materials, clothing, a hat, sunscreen, wildlife
guidebooks, maps and “something interesting to read.”
He got lost once in a little-known section of the Grand

A Place
Canyon and found his way out — dangerously dehydrat-
ed — a day and half later, so he carries a global position-
ing system now, too. Parry’s trips usually last for nine or

in the Sun
10 days, mostly because it takes him “about three days to
slow down.” He also travels alone for the most part.
“The key is to pay attention,” he said, “and that’s
usually easier to do when you’re by yourself.”
Parry may walk 10 miles in a day, but he’s not
walking to log distance. Rather, he walks to satisfy his
curiosity as he watches the unspoiled world unfold
in its daily dance around him. Sometimes, the world
surprises him, as it did during a recent trip to 120,000
acres of Arizona wilderness.
Parry was resting next to a spring when he spotted
something astonishing. The hillside next to him was
covered in Native American artwork — drawings of
horses, birds and other animals, of humans and deities
and cultural symbols. The petroglyphs hadn’t been
charted in any guidebook, and that was fine with him:
Less publicity means fewer opportunities for vandalism
and exploitation.
While discoveries like these are exciting, they aren’t
the only reasons Parry traverses the unknown.
“What I get from these trips is mostly intangible,”
Parry said. “It provides perspective, and it allows me to
disconnect the electronic umbilical cord. That’s satisfy-
ing in its own right.”
—Merin Porter

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 11

 Gift Boosts
Biomedical
Research
Pictured from left are Virginia and L. E. Simmons of the Virginia and L.E. Simmons Family Foundation; David Leebron, president of Rice University;
Mark Wallace, president and CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital; and Ron Girotto, president and CEO of the Methodist Hospital System.
“The health of nations is more important than
the wealth of nations,” wrote philosopher and
historian Will Durant. That may be, but mod-
ern biomedical research often takes substan-
tial financial backing — the kind Rice recently
received from the Virginia and L.E. Simmons
Family Foundation.
The $3 million, five-year gift will enable
Rice University, Texas Children’s Hospital
and the Methodist Hospital Research
Institute to work together on biomedical
research aimed at discovering new ways
to treat disease and benefit the health of
both children and adults.
“The future of biomedical research
will involve skills and knowledge that
draw from highly specialized and
premier institutions,” said L. E. Simmons,
president of the Simmons Family
Foundation and a trustee of all three of
these Texas Medical Center institutions.
“In the end, it will be people working
together who will make the discoveries
that change people’s lives. We want to
help make it happen.”
The fund is intended to assist
researchers who have new ideas,
junior researchers who do not yet have
funding and experienced researchers
who might not otherwise collaborate
with the other institutions. Ideally,
the projects supported by the fund
will develop into successful research
12 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
commitments this city has ever made
toward breakthrough research that will
help people throughout the world.”
Simmons is president and founder
of SCF Partners, an investment firm that
provides management expertise to en-
ergy service companies. He also is presi-
dent of L.E. Simmons and Associates, a
private equity fund manager and general
partner of SCF. He serves as chairman
of Oil States International Inc., a leading
global provider of specialty products
and services to oil and gas drilling and
production companies. Virginia Simmons
programs that can be sustained by is vice president of the Simmons Family
the National Institutes of Health, the Foundation, which supports religion, art
National Science Foundation and other and culture organizations, education,
sources of competitive funding. and youth and medical associations.
—B.J. Almond
“The future of biomedical research will in-
volve skills and knowledge that draw from
highly specialized and premier institutions.
In the end, it will be the people working
together who will make the discoveries
that change people’s lives. We want to help
make it happen.” —L. E. Simmons
Simmons said he is excited about
each of the three institutions’ commit-
ment to research. “Collectively, they are Learn more:
spending nearly a billion dollars on facil- › › › www.rice.edu/go?id= 0 01
ities, equipment and resources to begin
new biomedical research,” he said. “It
may well be one of the most important
 THROUGH THE Sallyport
Dog Days
When Colleen Dutton, director of
compensation and employee relations for
Rice’s Office of Human Resources, went
to look for her copy of the latest Rice
a great place to learn is also a great place to work? Magazine, she found her 2-year-old terrier/
Chihuahua, Macy, already relaxing with it
Rice’s reputation as a first-rate educational institution has again on the sofa.
been complemented by its reputation as a great place to work.
For the third year in a row, Rice made the Houston Business
Journal’s list of “Houston’s Best Places to Work” in the category
of businesses with more than 500 employees. The winners were
determined by responses of employees who completed an on-
line survey measuring a variety of attributes associated with
employee satisfaction and involvement with the workplace.

High-Flying Records
Rice faculty member and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson ’86 has broken a few
things during her two stints aboard the International Space Station, but nobody is
complaining. Whitson, who served as the space station’s first-ever science officer
her previous time aloft, broke the gender barrier this past spring as the station’s
first female commander. She also broke the record for cumulative time in space
for a U.S. astronaut, topping Mike Foale’s previous record of 374 days by two
days. In addition, Whitson performed five spacewalks during the most recent
expedition, for a total of six career spacewalks encompassing 32 hours, 36
minutes. It’s an out-of-this-world accomplishment that puts her 20th on the
all-time list — the highest ranking by a female astronaut.

Cyber Sleuth
The set of letters written by Jefferson Davis, president
of the Confederacy, looked innocuous enough on the
auction house Web site. But Lynda Crist immediately
smelled a rat.
Crist, editor of Rice’s Jefferson Davis Papers project,
knew the documents, worth $15,000, actually belonged
to Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., because
she had microfilmed them for inclusion in one of the
project’s volumes. Among the items were letters and
notes written by Davis and his wife, Varina, dated from
1847 to 1898. The documents had gone missing in
1994.
After Crist notified Transylvania University of her
find, the university contacted the auction house and the
police. Eugene Zollman, a Jefferson Davis impersonator
who researched documents to make his impressions
more authentic, was charged with theft of major
artwork.

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 13

 Next-Gen Wireless
When Rice computer scientist Edward Knightly and his graduate stu-
dent Joseph Camp began to design and build an experimental wire-
less network in 2003, they thought they were working on a model
of how broadband wireless Internet might one day be provided to
whole cities. Little did they know how far their network would reach.
The network they built, centered in East Houston’s working-class
Pecan Park neighborhood, uses a new technology that is more
efficient and less costly to operate than the Wi-Fi gear currently
used in homes and businesses.
“We are supporting more than 4,000 users in three square
kilometers with a fully programmable custom wireless network,”
said Knightly. “This allows us to dem-
onstrate our research advances at an
operational scale.”
The project has drawn the atten-
tion of the National Science Foundation,
which recently awarded $1.5 million to
a Rice-led research team for the expan-
sion of the network and the design
and testing of experimental mobile
systems — and something else: health-
monitoring devices. Collaborating on the
five-year project are researchers from the
Methodist Hospital Research Institute, the
nonprofit Technology For All (TFA) and
the University of Houston’s Abramson
Center for the Future of Health.
The researchers will examine how patients with chronic
diseases can use next-generation wireless networks, cell phones
and health sensors to participate in their own medical treatment.
Using sensors, patients with congestive heart failure, asthma or
metabolic syndrome will be able to painlessly and noninvasively
take stock of several key aspects of their health status on a
daily basis. For example, an early design, called Blue Box, can
compare current readings with a patient’s history and provide im-
mediate, user-friendly feedback. By taking medical readings ev-
ery day, rather than only during physician visits or crises, doctors
14 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
may be able to manage chronic conditions more effectively.
Lin Zhong, a Rice assistant professor in electrical and comput-
er engineering, is examining another of the network’s unrealized
potentials by laying the foundation for long-term field studies in
the community.
“My group is interested in how mobile devices like cell
phones can provide IT access to under-
served communities,” Zhong said, “par-
ticularly when they are coupled with
low-cost wireless broadband networks.”
TFA President and CEO Will Reed
said that when his organization first
joined the project, he had no idea that
it would lead medical researchers,
anthropologists and other researchers
to take such a keen interest in Pecan
Park. “The community isn’t the kind of
well-to-do neighborhood where this
type of technology typically would be
Edward Knightly and Joseph Camp rolled out,” he said. “As a result, people
are knocking down our door to find out
how our residents are using the network, what they think of it
and how it’s affecting them.”
—Jade Boyd
Learn more:
› › › www.rice.edu/go?id=002
› › › www.techforall.org/tfa_wireless.html

“The community isn’t the kind of well-to-do
neighborhood where this type of technology
typically would be rolled out. As a result,
people are knocking down our door to find out
how our residents are using the network, what
they think of it and how it’s affecting them.”
—Will Reed
THROUGH THE Sallyport
U.S. District Judge Rosenthal Joins
Rice Board of Trustees
U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal has been elected to the
Rice University Board of Trustees. She has served the Houston
division of the Southern District of Texas since 1992.
“Lee Rosenthal has outstanding experience in public service, the high-
est stature as a jurist and savvy judgment,” said Jim Crownover ’65,
chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees. “Her insight and experience will
richly benefit the university and everyone we serve.”
In addition to presiding over a busy docket, Rosenthal chairs the
Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure,
to which she was appointed in 2007
by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. The
committee supervises the rule-making
process in the federal courts and over-
sees and coordinates the work of the
Advisory Committees on the Federal
Rules of Evidence and of Civil, Criminal,
Bankruptcy and Appellate Procedure.
Prior to 2007, Rosenthal was a member,
then chair, of the Judicial Conference
Advisory Committee on the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure. Chief Justice Judge Lee H. Rosenthal
William Rehnquist appointed Rosenthal
to that committee in 1996 and as chair in 2003. Under Rosenthal’s
leadership, the discovery rules were amended to address the impact of
changes in information technology in 2006. In 2007, the entire set of civil
rules was edited to be clearer and simpler without changing substantive
meaning. The work clarifying and simplifying the rules used in the trial
courts won the committee the 2007 “Reform in Law” Award from the
Burton Awards for Legal Achievement, an award issued with the Library
of Congress and the Law Library of Congress.
“We are truly fortunate to have Judge Rosenthal as the newest
member of our board,” said Rice President David Leebron. “She has a
reputation of being a thoughtful, dedicated and decisive leader, and she
is widely known as one of the most outstanding judges in the country.
Her experience and judgment will be invaluable to Rice as we continue
to pursue our high ambitions as an international research university.”
The Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists se-
lected Rosenthal as trial judge of the year in 2000 and 2006. She has
received the Houston Bar Association’s highest bar-poll evaluation for
judges three times — in 1999, 2005 and 2007.
Rosenthal is a member of the board of editors for the Manual for
Complex Litigation, published by the Federal Judicial Center. She is a
member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and was recently elected to
its council. She serves as an adviser for the ALI’s Aggregate Litigation
Project and Rules of Transnational Civil Procedure Project.
Rosenthal has several connections to Rice. Her mother, Ferne
Hyman, was assistant university librarian at Fondren Library until her
retirement in 1999. Her father, Harold M. Hyman, is the William P. Hobby
Professor Emeritus of History at Rice. Her husband, Gary Rosenthal, is a
member of Leebron’s President’s Advisory Board.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 15
 NANO NEWS

Today, the hunt is on in earnest for viable alternative fuels to power

automobiles. One of the most promising is hydrogen, which is so clean-
Tiny burning and abundant that the U.S. Department of Energy has devoted
Buckyballs more than $1 billion to developing technologies for hydrogen-powered
automobiles. But there is a snag. Because hydrogen is the lightest ele-
Squeeze ment in the universe, it is very difficult to store in bulk. It is estimated
Hydrogen that a hydrogen-powered car with the range of a gasoline-powered car
Like Giant would require a storage system that could hold the element at densities
greater than those found in pure liquid hydrogen. That’s a pretty strong
Jupiter container, but Rice materials scientists may have found it, and it’s a lot
smaller than expected. Buckyball small.

Materials scientists at “Based on our calculations, it ap-
Rice University have pears that some buckyballs are
made the surprising dis- capable of holding volumes of hy-
covery that buckyballs drogen so dense as to be almost
are so strong they can metallic,” said lead researcher
hold volumes of hydro- Boris Yakobson, professor of
gen nearly as dense as mechanical engineering and ma-
those at the center of terials science at Rice. “It
Jupiter. appears they can hold
about 8 percent of
their weight in hy-
drogen at room
temperature,
which is consid-
erably better than
th e fe d e ra l ta r-
get of 6 percent.”
In layman’s terms,
that’s nearly as dense
as the pressures at the
center of Jupiter.
Yakobson said scientists have
long argued the merits of stor-
ing hydrogen in tiny molecular
containers like buckyballs, and
experiments have shown that it’s
possible to store small volumes
of hydrogen inside buckyballs.
The new research by Yakobson
and former postdoctoral research-
ers Olga Pupysheva and Amir
Farajian offers the first method of
precisely calculating how much hy-
drogen a buckyball can hold before
breaking.
“Bonds between carbon atoms
are among the strongest chemical
bonds in nature,” Yakobson said.
“These bonds are what make diamond
the hardest known substance, and our
research showed that it takes an enor-
mous amount of internal pressure to
deform and break the carbon-carbon
bonds in a fullerene.”
If a feasible way to produce hy-
drogen-filled buckyballs is
developed, Yakobson said, it
might be possible to store
them as a powder.
“They will likely
assemble into weak mo-
lecular crystals or form
a thin powder,” he said.
“They might find use in
their whole form or be
punctured under certain
conditions to release pure
hydrogen for fuel cells or oth-
er types of engines.”
The research, which was support-
ed by the Office of Naval Research and
the U.S. Department of Energy, ap-
peared on the cover of the American
Chemical Society’s journal Nano
Letters.
—Jade Boyd
LEARN MORE:
›› › tinyurl.com/55emea

16 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Paper, Plastic or Nano?
What do you do when you have a mess? You bag it up
and throw it away. But some messes — such as an oil
spill — can’t be disposed of so easily. Or maybe they can.
Meet nanobatons: multisegmented nano-
wires that are made by connecting two
nanomaterials with different properties.
Mechanical engineering and materials sci-
entist Pulickel Ajayan and his colleagues
were working with one combination
— carbon nanotubes that they fused to
short segments of gold — when they no-
ticed something peculiar. The nanobatons
spontaneously assembled by the tens of
millions into spherical sacs as large as
BB pellets around droplets of oil in wa-
ter. Even better, the researchers found that
ultraviolet light and magnetic fields could
be used to flip the nanoparticles, causing
the bags to instantly turn inside out and
release their cargo.
Ajayan says that by adding various oth-
er segments — like sections of nickel or
other materials — the researchers can cre-
ate truly multifunctional nanostructures.
“The core of the nanotechnology revolu-
tion lies in designing inorganic nanopar-
ticles that can self-assemble into larger
structures like a ‘smart dust’ that performs
different functions in the world — for ex-
ample, cleaning up pollution,” Ajayan said.
“Our approach brings the concept of self-
assembling, functional nanomaterials one
THROUGH THE
step closer to reality.”
The tendency of nanobatons to as-
semble in water-oil mixtures derives from
basic chemistry. The gold end of the wire
In a development that
could lead to new tech-
nologies for cleaning up
oil spills and polluted
groundwater, scientists
at Rice University have
shown how tiny, stick-
shaped particles of metal
and carbon can trap
oil droplets in water by
spontaneously assem-
bling into bag-like sacs.
is water-loving, or hydrophilic, while the
carbon end is water-averse, or hydropho-
bic. Ajayan, graduate student Fung Suong
Ou and postdoctoral researcher Shaijumon
Manikoth demonstrated that oil droplets
Sallyport
suspended in water became encapsu-
lated because of the structures’ tendency
to align their carbon ends facing the oil.
By reversing the conditions — suspending
water droplets in oil — the team was able
to coax the gold ends to face inward and
encase the water.
“For oil droplets suspended in water,
the spheres give off a light yellow color
because of the exposed gold ends,” Ou
said. “With water droplets, we observe a
dark sphere due to the protruding black
nanotubes.”
The team is preparing to test whether
chemical modifications to the nanobatons
could result in spheres that can not only
capture but also break down oily chemi-
cals. Another option would be to attach
drugs whose release can be controlled
with an external stimulus.
The research, which was supported by
Rice University, Applied Materials Inc. and
the New York State Foundation for Science,
Technology and Innovation, was published
online in the American Chemical Society’s
journal Nano Letters.
—Jade Boyd
L E A R N M O R E :
› › › tinyurl.com/5b3n9j
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 17
 “Dan has the combination of research,
teaching and management skills that will
help Rice take another giant step forward
in the natural sciences arena.”
—David Leebron

Dan Carson

Carson Appointed Dean of Natural Sciences

Dan Carson, currently the Trustees Distinguished Professor and chair of the
Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware, has been
appointed dean of Rice University’s Wiess School of Natural Sciences.

He will succeed Kathy Matthews when she relinquishes the Since becoming department chair in 1998, Carson has
position Dec. 31 after serving as dean for 10 years. Matthews recruited 17 faculty members and developed a robust research
will continue to do research as Rice’s Stewart Memorial program, with external research funding increasing from
Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. $1.5 million to $10 million. His comprehensive revision of
“I am thrilled to welcome the graduate program has
a gifted scientist like Dan resulted in four times as
Carson to Rice’s leadership many graduate students as
team,” said President David “We have developed a culture of mutual respect the department enrolled 10
Leebron. “Following in Kathy here. The faculty and staff feel that they can years ago. He also has built
Matthews’ footsteps is a express their views, that they will be heard and collaborations with other
daunting task, but Dan has biomedical research institu-
the combination of research, that things will happen.” tions in the region as well as
teaching and management —Dan Carson with the university’s College
skills that will help Rice take of Engineering.
another giant step forward Carson, who also will
in the natural sciences arena. We look to Dan to continue to serve as a professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice,
drive the research that has made Rice a leader across a broad is a reproductive biologist. His research interests focus on
range of endeavors and that will make a difference for our the molecular basis by which mammalian embryos implant
students, our university, our city and the world.” into the uterine wall. His work earned him a prestigious
At the University of Delaware in Newark, Carson manages National Institutes of Health MERIT Award in 2002.
a department with 40 faculty members, 1,000 undergraduate Carson’s wife, Mary C. Farach-Carson, is a professor of
majors, 80 graduate students and 24 support staff. Scientist biological sciences and materials sciences at the University of
magazine recently named the University of Delaware one of Delaware. She has been appointed associate vice provost for
the top places to work in life sciences. research at Rice. The Carsons have four children, the youngest
“We have developed a culture of mutual respect here,” of whom will finish high school next year.
Carson said. “The faculty and staff feel that they can
express their views, that they will be heard and that things —B.J. Almond
will happen.”
F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N :
› › › www.rice.edu/go?id=008

18 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE Sallyport
Space Medicine Webcast from Mt. Everest
The International Space Medicine Summit II, held at the James A. Baker
III Institute for Public Policy, featured panels on space medicine, human
performance and solar radiation risks for lunar operations. A highlight
was a live videoconference from 17,550 feet on Mount Everest with
Dr. Christian Otto, expedition medical lead for the Canadian Mount
Everest Medical Operations Expedition 2008. The expedition’s mission
is to prepare for emergency medical management on long-duration
space missions.

VIEW THE WEBCAST HERE :

› › › www.rice.edu/go?id= 004

Chip Off the Old Block Parochial Bacterial Viruses

Rice University computer engineers have created a way to design
integrated circuits that contain many individual selves. The chips
can assume different identities, depending on the user’s needs.
The new method enables programmers to strategically reconfigure
application-specific integrated circuits while preserving advantages
such as speed and low power. The chips could be used for en-
hanced device security, content provisioning, application metering,
device optimization and many other design tasks.
Biologists examining ecosystems similar to those that
existed on Earth more than 3 billion years ago have made
a surprising discovery: Viruses that infect bacteria are
sometimes parochial and unrelated to their counterparts
in other regions of the globe.
L E A R N M O R E :
› › › www.rice.edu/go?id= 007

L E A R N M O R E :

››› www.rice.edu/go?id= 005

Single-Molecule Sensing
Many of us have difficulty finding our car keys in the morning,
so trying to sense a single molecule sounds daunting, no matter
what time of day. But don’t try telling that to a group of research-
ers at Rice’s Quantum Magnetism Laboratory and Laboratory for
Nanophotonics.

L E A R N M O R E :

››› www.rice.edu/go?id= 00 3

Chipping Away at Chip Pirates

Pirated microchips — chips stolen from legitimate factories
or made from stolen blueprints — account for billions of dol-
lars in annual losses to chipmakers. But a series of techniques
developed at Rice could stop pirates by locking chips with a
unique ID tag that can be activated only by the patent-holder
— making knockoffs and stolen chips worthless.

L E A R N M O R E :

› › › www.rice.edu/go?id= 006

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 19

 TISSUE ENGINEERING

SPOTLIGHT ON TISSUE ENGINEERING

Replacing or repairing damaged or diseased tissue

with healthy tissue is one of bioengineering’s goals.
The results are even better if the healthy tissue is
grown from the patient’s own body because that
minimizes the risk of rejection. Discoveries by Rice
bioengineers may help point the way.

“Previous research has shown that carbon nanotubes give added strength
to polymer scaffolds, but this is the first study to examine the
performance of these materials in an animal model.”
—Antonios Mikos

Secret Ingredient Aids Bone Growth nanotubes. Nanotubes usually are a thou-
sand times longer than they are wide, but
the researchers used shorter segments that
For much of his career, bioengineer Antonios Mikos has worked with porous, bio- have fared well in prior cytocompatibility
degradable materials called scaffolds, which act as patterns and support for the re- studies.
growth of bone tissue. With the right chemical and physical cues, bone cells adjacent While there was no notable difference
to the scaffold can be coaxed into producing new bone. As the bone grows over the in performance of the two materials at four
scaffold, the scaffold degrades, leaving nothing but the new bone. weeks, the nanotube composites exhibited
up to threefold greater bone ingrowth after
12 weeks. And surprisingly, at 12 weeks,
“Ideally, a scaffold should be highly porous, the composites contained about two-thirds
nontoxic and biodegradable, yet strong as much bone tissue as nearby native
enough to bear the structural load of the bone, while the straight PPF contained
bone that will eventually replace it,” said only about one-fifth as much.
Mikos, who is director of Rice’s Center for Mikos said the results indicate that the
Excellence in Tissue Engineering. He’s also composites may go beyond being passive
the lead researcher for a breakthrough study guides and take an active role in promoting
that found that the growing bone can be en- bone growth. The researchers don’t know
hanced by sprinkling stick-like nanoparticles why this is, though Mikos postulated that
throughout the scaffolding material. changes in surface chemistry, strength or
“Previous research has shown that other factors might be responsible. The team
carbon nanotubes give added strength to is conducting further studies to find out.
polymer scaffolds,” Mikos said, “but this is The research was funded by the
the first study to examine the performance National Institutes of Health, the National
of these materials in an animal model.” Science Foundation, the Welch Foundation
The researchers implanted two kinds and Rice’s J. Evans-Attwell Postdoctoral
of scaffolds into rabbits. One type was Fellows Program.
made of a biodegradable plastic called —B.J. Almond
poly(propylene fumarate) (PPF), which has
performed well in previous experiments. L E A R N M O R E :

The second was made of 99.5 percent › › › tinyurl.com/5fwcly

PPF and 0.5 percent single-walled carbon

20 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 THROUGH THE Sallyport

The
Pressure
Is On
”

Rice University graduate student Benjamin Elder displays a disk of

cartilage that was grown using a new high-pressure technique.

Think of the body’s most important structural element. Bones, right? Not so fast. approach of using unnaturally high pres-
Cartilage, the stuff between the bones, is pretty important, too, since it acts as both sure stemmed from insights gained dur-
a lubricant and a shock absorber during joint movement. Unfortunately, this damage- ing years of previous experiments.
prone tissue can’t heal itself, and injured cartilage often serves as the focal point for “By combining high pressure and
growth factors,” Elder said, “we were
arthritis formation.
able to more than triple the biomechani-
cal properties of the cartilage. We’re not
Cartilage’s stiffness, strength and other Medicine under Rice and Baylor’s Medical sure why they reinforce one another, but
mechanical properties derive not from Scientist Training Program. we do not get the same results when we
living cartilage cells but from the densely In the study, Elder took samples of apply them independently.”
woven matrix of collagen and proteogly- cartilage from calves’ knees, dissolved the The process results in an engineered
can that surrounds them. This extracel- ECM and isolated the living cartilage cells, cartilage with properties nearly identical
lular matrix (ECM) is produced during or chondrocytes. The chondrocytes were to that of native cartilage. Even better,
cartilage development in children, but used to create tissue-engineered cartilage, the new method, which requires no stem
this ability lapses in adulthood. Tissue which was then placed in a chemical bath cells, holds promise for growing tissues
engineers have long sought a means of growth factors and sealed inside soft to repair bladders, blood vessels, kidneys,
of growing new cartilage that can be plastic containers. The containers were heart valves, bones and more. So far,
transplanted into adults, but unfortu- placed inside a pressure chamber and the process has yet to be tested in live
nately, cartilage is difficult to engineer, squeezed for an hour a day at pressures animals, and Athanasiou cautions that it
in part because it has no natural healing equivalent to those at half a mile beneath will be several years before the process is
processes to mimic. the ocean’s surface. ready for clinical testing in humans.
Rice bioengineer Kyriacos Athanasiou, “Our knees are filled with fluid, and —Jade Boyd
whose Musculoskeletal Bioengineering when we walk or run, the hydrostatic
Laboratory has focused on cartilage for pressure on the cartilage cells in the knee L E A R N M O R E :
more than 10 years, might have found a approaches the pressures we used in our › › › tinyurl.com/4u57pt
way around that by applying a little pres- experiments,” Elder said. “But in daily
sure. Actually, a lot of pressure. The new activities, these pressures are fleeting, just
findings are based on three years of data a second or so at a time.”
collected by graduate student Benjamin Most of the prevailing strategies in
Elder, who is simultaneously earning a tissue engineering attempt to reproduce
doctorate in bioengineering at Rice and the conditions that cells experience in the
a medical degree at Baylor College of body. Athanasiou said the unconventional

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 21

A New Catalyst for Students
Rice undergrads are well known for their brains and work ethic, and at Rice, they have plenty of
opportunities to work side by side with researchers and graduate students in laboratories across campus.
Can a student-produced science journal be far behind? Meet Catalyst: Rice Undergraduate Science
Review, dedicated to highlighting and encouraging the undergraduate research experience at Rice.

For a Q&A with Catalyst’s founders, visit:

› ›› www.rice.edu/go?id=009
Catalyst on the Web:
› ›› catalyst.rice.edu
To inquire about receiving copies of Catalyst, e-mail:
› ›› catalyst@rice.edu

Catalyst editors, from left:

Yohan Moon, Patricia Bacalao, Ye Jin Kang,
Lisa Sun and David Ouyang.

The Class of 2008

Rice’s 95th graduating class included 732 undergraduates,
22 undergraduate professionals and 686 graduate students.
The largest number of doctoral degrees — 186 — were
conferred, and a number of students graduated with multi-
ple degrees, bringing the total number of degrees awarded
to 1,490.

22 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Students

CC
Caroline Collective Debuts in the Museum District
Imagine a cafelike collaborative space for developers, writers and independents looking for an alternative to
the traditional working office. Rice University graduate students Ned Dodington and Matthew Wettergreen did
and, this summer, they launched Houston’s first creative coworking space.

Located at 4820 Caroline St. and dubbed Caroline Collective, technical communities. As the global marketplace continues to
the coworking space is Houston’s first, although similar opera- free professionals from a physical location, more and more peo-
tions already are successful in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Paris, ple work either as “digital nomads” or from their home offices.
Vancouver, Milan and Buenos Aires. However, many professionals still desire the amenities an office

“The coworking movement strives to combine the relaxed working environment of the home office with a dynamic social atmosphere.”
—Ned Dodington

“The coworking movement strives to combine the relaxed
working environment of the home office with a dynamic social
atmosphere,” Dodington said. “The model encourages the free
flow of projects and ideas and is founded on the belief that work-
ing together is working smarter.”
Dodington and Wettergreen’s idea to create a coworking
space in Houston met with interest from the city’s creative and
can provide, like conference rooms, networking opportunities,
collegial conversations and free Wi-Fi.
With the help and support of business partners and Wulfe
Urban developers Jeff Kaplan and Adam Brackman, Wettergreen
and Dodington secured a 6,000-square-foot space in Houston’s
eclectic Museum District, making Caroline Collective one of the
largest coworking spaces worldwide to date.
—Jessica Stark

For more information on Caroline Collective, visit:

› › › carolinecollective.cc

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 23

LynnElsenhans

24 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

You’d think that Lynn Laverty Elsenhans ’78 might be
ready to retire after serving at nearly every executive
level in Royal Dutch Shell during her 28-year career
there. But Elsenhans isn’t the retiring sort. Beginning
this summer, she’s taking on fresh challenges as CEO
and president of Sunoco — and as the first woman
to lead a major oil company.
It seems like every one of Elsenhans’ experiences has led her
to this destination. Her father spent his career in a variety of re-
search and marketing jobs for Exxon USA, and his work kept the
family moving between metropolitan New York and Houston. All
the moving taught Elsenhans to be adaptable, and her exposure
to various high school curricula helped balance her academic
strengths. When it came time to investigate colleges, she was
immediately attracted to Rice because of its reputation in math,
engineering and the sciences.
Elsenhans embraced every aspect of life at Rice. She played
on the school’s first women’s intercollegiate basketball team;
she was in the Marching Owl Band; she was elected to student
government; she was the sports editor for The Thresher; and she
was a student representative on the Examinations and Standings
Committee. Yet somehow, she still managed to find time to excel
in school and become social in a way she’d never been. “For me,
it was the total experience, both inside and outside the class-
room,” she said. “It was absolutely excellent for me.”
There also were glimmers of the kind of success she would
later achieve. “People listened carefully when she spoke,” said
Ronald Stebbings, who was master of Jones College when
Elsenhans was there. “She gathered her thoughts and had some-
thing useful to say.”
After leaving Rice, Elsenhans went straight to Harvard
Business School. By the time she finished, she was more than
ready to make the leap into the work world. “It sounds corny, but
it really mattered to me to work for something that made a differ-
ence,” she said. “I couldn’t think of anything that had more of an
impact on our society than energy.”
During her tenure at Shell, Elsenhans steadily increased
her authority and responsibility. After starting her career at the
company’s U.S. headquarters in Houston and then moving to the
By Christopher Dow • Photographs by Tommy LaVergne
nearby Deer Park refinery, she had assignments in virtually every
aspect of the company’s downstream business. In 1999, she was
made president and CEO of Shell Oil Products East, based in
Singapore. Since then, she has served co-currently as president of
Shell Oil Company and president and CEO of Shell Oil Products
U.S. and, most recently, as executive vice president of global
manufacturing for Royal Dutch Shell.
It’s an enviable career trajectory made even more remarkable
by the fact that it occurred in an environment that has not always
been encouraging to women. “When I first started, there weren’t
many women in the industry, and women’s credibility was very
much questioned,” Elsenhans said. Much has changed since the
early 1980s, thanks, at least in part, to Elsenhans’ success. As she
rose in the corporate hierarchy, she made a concerted effort to
pave the way for women who followed by mentoring them and
helping establish women’s networking opportunities within Shell.
This year, however, Elsenhans hit a ceiling that was geo-
graphic rather than glass. The only place left to go within Shell
was to the company’s European headquarters, and for family
reasons, she and her husband, John ’74, wanted to remain in
the United States. Facing retirement, even if she wasn’t ready to
retire, she was asked to take the helm of Sunoco.
“It’s a really good fit for me,” Elsenhans said. “I worked for
28 years in the downstream part of the oil business — oil and
chemical products — and that’s what Sunoco does.” It also was
good from a personal standpoint because the company’s head-
quarters are in Philadelphia, which allows the Elsenhanses to
remain close to John’s mother, who lives in the Northeast.
Elsenhans assumed her new role in August, but she gra-
ciously took a little time to talk to Rice Magazine about energy,
women in the corporate world, leadership and, of course, her
favorite university.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 25
 Lynn Elsenhans
QA
Rice Magazine: Energy is one of the most
important issues of our day. What is your projec-
tion for the oil and gas industry in the mid- to long
term?
Lynn Elsenhans: We’re all concerned about
the price of energy, particularly gasoline, be-
ing driven up by high oil prices. A lot of people
don’t recognize that downstream oil companies
like Sunoco do refining but not drilling and don’t
benefit from the high price of oil. They’ve been
put in a bind, too. Energy usage typically follows
economic activity, and because the economy is
sluggish and product prices are high, people are
changing their behavior in the way they drive
and heat their homes. Product demand has been
down dramatically. At the same time, supplies
are getting quite loose because of ethanol and
other biofuels mandates. We also have refinery
expansions coming on-stream. All of those fac-
tors really squeeze the margin for downstream
producers like Sunoco and make it quite difficult
to make money. That surprises most people,
who think that oil companies are making tons of
money. The companies that produce oil and gas
are making a lot of money, but the downstream
companies aren’t.
There are really two pieces to the down-
stream oil industry. One is the manufacture of oil
products, such as gasoline and other fuels. Right
now, nearby, non-OPEC sources of supply, such
as those in Mexico, are not producing as much
as in the recent past, at a time when demand for
crude in developing economies is soaring. That’s
part of the reason the price of crude oil is go-
ing up. In the short to medium term, there will
be tremendous pressure on product prices to go
up even if the economic environment is not par-
ticularly good for the companies that make those
products. That will tend to lessen the amount
of investment in that part of the business. Over
26 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
&
time, as the economy improves, we may, in fact,
see a shortfall of product, giving us the double
whammy of high crude oil prices plus tightness
of product creating a tremendous increase in the
price of the products. There will be a fair amount
of volatility, but that volatility will be around a
generally high price, so I don’t foresee consumer
prices coming down in any dramatic way.
The other piece of the industry makes petro-
chemicals: base chemical feedstocks for plastics
and other chemical products. I don’t see a very
good picture in this part of the business for
North American producers unless they are the
most competitive and efficient producers. In the
past, the industry depended on exporting chemi-
cal products, but the new capacity being built in
the Asia–Pacific region, where the big demand
for the products is, will push those exports back
into the U.S. I predict that some refineries and
petrochemical facilities will need to shut down.
That’s a tough call for those businesses, and it’s a
tough outcome for the communities where those
plants are located.
Rice Magazine: What challenge are you
least looking forward to as Sunoco’s president and
CEO?
Lynn Elsenhans: I’m not looking forward
to dealing with those politicians who are looking
to paint the industry as villains. Sometimes I get
the impression that, for political reasons — mean-
ing what they perceive it takes to get re-elected
— they don’t really want to understand what our
country’s energy challenges are and don’t have the
will to do the kinds of things that need to be done
for sound energy policy. It can be frustrating to try
to get our story out, and that’s compounded by
considerable distrust of the industry and almost a
tuning out of what the industry has to say.
Rice Magazine: What are the issues that
politicians may be unwilling to face?
Lynn Elsenhans: The first one has to do
with energy conservation, which is a combination
of better energy efficiency and changes in behav-
ior in the way people use the products. While
some of that happens naturally as the prices go
up, there clearly are ways to encourage people
to use energy more efficiently. But as a nation,
we haven’t invested enough in new technologies
that will make energy usage far more efficient
than it is now.
The second has to do with supply. Biofuels
are part of the answer, but they aren’t a complete
solution, and they make sense only if they are
not driving up the cost of food. Sunoco doesn’t
drill for oil and gas, but for those companies that
do, there needs to be more access. That includes
drilling in wildlife preserves, in Alaska and off-
shore. I don’t understand why we would deprive
ourselves of a secure supply based here in this
country and continue to depend on parts of the
world that aren’t necessarily friendly to our coun-
try. The industry knows how to produce oil and
gas in a very responsible way with a minimum
footprint on the environment, and as a country,
we have to let them do that.
Rice Magazine: Can America eventually do
without foreign oil?
Lynn Elsenhans: In a word, no. Our appetite
for oil is well beyond our ability to produce it from
supplies just from the United States, or even from
North America as a whole. In the very long term,
we might become less dependent than we are
today as other forms of energy come on-stream.
Biofuels are a part of a mix that will help extend
the life of liquid fuels, but there’s only so much cel-
lulose and waste plant matter that you’re going to
 “One of the hardest lessons for me to learn
as a leader was the need to give up being right.
If you’re always advocating your position,
you aren’t being open to the ideas of others.”
be able to turn into fuel without affecting the food
supply and impacting the CO2 balance through de-
forestation. There’s been a lot of talk about hydro-
gen and hydrogen fuel cells, but that has its own
problems. Where do we get the hydrogen? A main
solution will be electrification. Predominantly, in
the large scale, it’ll have to be nuclear generated.
Wind and solar are great, but they’re not going to
be enough to make a significant difference, though
they’re part of the mix.
Rice Magazine: When you started in the
industry, it was unheard of for a woman to reach
the level of president and CEO. Is the glass ceiling
being broken or just cracked?
Lynn Elsenhans: Women in all kinds of
fields have opportunities for leadership that
didn’t exist when I started working. In the
energy industry, I cannot think of a role that
women don’t participate in, so I think the op-
portunities are out there. The numbers would
suggest, however, that it’s still difficult for
women to get to the highest levels, and one of
the difficulties is in the ways people interrelate.
Research shows that women leaders tend to
be either competent or liked, but rarely both,
and that’s a double bind. People don’t tend to
trust people they don’t like, and it’s very hard
in business to lead if there isn’t mutual trust
and respect. It’s also difficult to go forward in
a company if you’re not considered competent.
As society gets more comfortable with the no-
tion that women can be tough when there’s a
reason to get tough, as well as taking the more
traditional supportive role, it will tend to make
it easier for women to have top jobs and break
that glass ceiling. There have been inroads, but
I don’t think we’re there yet.
—Lynn Elsenhans
Rice Magazine: What are the qualities of
effective leadership?
Lynn Elsenhans: The critical thing I tell
people is to be yourself. Authenticity is incred-
ibly important, and if you’re trying to be some-
one you’re not, people see that, and it’s the kiss
of death. Being self-aware also is important.
Understanding the impact you have on others
and being open to feedback. One of the hardest
lessons for me to learn as a leader was the need
to give up being right. If you’re always advocating
your position, you aren’t being open to the ideas
of others. Beyond that, a leader has to be more
positive than negative and have a vision for the fu-
ture and a belief that things can be better. People
need a reason to believe and hope, and they will
not follow a leader who doesn’t have the view that
tomorrow will be better than today.
Rice Magazine: Some people define suc-
cess by how far they rise and how much money
they make. How do you define success?
Lynn Elsenhans: How much of a difference
I can make to people’s lives. On the personal side,
it’s: Who loves you? Who do you love?
Rice Magazine: You’ve lived in a lot of
countries and traveled extensively. What are some
of your favorite places and why?
Lynn Elsenhans: I really like Indonesia.
The Indonesian people are incredibly friendly, wel-
coming and gentle, and the colors, music and art
are quite interesting and exciting. Bali really is a
magical place. Another place that I think is magi-
cal is the Rajasthan region in India. It’s where the
Taj Mahal is, and it’s the area of India where the
Mughal Empire had trade routes from Pakistan
down into India. Again, the food, colors and art are
fantastic, and the Taj is just amazing. And I love
Italy. There’s probably no place in Italy I’ve been
that I didn’t think was just fabulous.
Rice Magazine: You’re a member of the
Rice Board of Trustees, and you’re also a major
contributor to scholarship funds as well as to the
rebuilding of Autry Court. Why is this phenomenal
level of service to the university important to you?
Lynn Elsenhans: I have a tremendous pas-
sion and deep love for Rice. I had a fantastic experi-
ence here as a student. It prepared me extremely well
and is a part of my success. I still have relationships
with many of the people I met here. A way for me
to give back to Rice is to contribute my time and my
money. I was fortunate enough to be asked to be a
trustee, and I’ve really enjoyed it. The Rice Board is a
tremendous group of dedicated and capable people.
In terms of my personal giving, I try to stay tuned
to what the university needs, and one of the things
we’re trying to do is expand undergraduate enroll-
ment while maintaining the exceptional quality of the
students. A big part of our ability to attract students
is scholarships, so that’s one of my concentrations.
Also, I was approached by Athletics Director Chris
Del Conte to give to Autry Court. I was convinced
because I believe that having students of high aca-
demic achievement who have the ability and drive to
compete in Division I is one of the things that sets
Rice apart.
I’ve participated in sports throughout my life,
and it’s a big part of who I am. In fact, one thing I tell
anyone — women, especially — who is interested in
going into business and being in leadership is to play a
team sport. You learn a lot about yourself and what it
means to interrelate with people and to work toward
a common objective at the highest levels when you
play on a good sports team. Being able to give toward
the women’s basketball locker room in Autry was a
small way for me to help keep that alive at Rice.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 27
28 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 g
By Jade Boyd and Christopher Dow

Crackin
AND OTHER EARTHY MATTERS

The past few years have witnessed a number of devastating earthquakes,

such as the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in 2004 that generated
tsunamis as high as 100 feet, shook the planet by as much as 1 centimeter
and triggered other earthquakes as far away as Alaska. That earthquake and
others — more recently, several that hit China — have caused billions of
dollars in damage and widespread loss of life. While most occurred in Asia,
few places are immune. Tremblors have been felt in the United States — not
just in expected locales such as California and Alaska, but also in the Midwest.

We may not be able to control cataclysmic earth events, but understanding

them can lead to prediction that could minimize their impacts. Rice Earth
scientists and others have made some headway toward deciphering how
and why earthquakes and volcanic activity take place, and one may just have
found a way to predict when a quake is imminent.

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 29

 Continental Staying Power
Continents seem so substantial that it’s
easy to forget they’re simply big chunks
of rock floating around on the Earth’s
viscous mantle. The movement can lead
to earthquakes, but other processes
also are at work. Geologists know, for
example, that continents have come and
gone during the Earth’s 4.5 billion years.
As of now, however, there are more
theories than hard data about some of
the key processes that govern continents’
lives.
One thing we do know is that con-
tinents ride higher than oceans. This is
partly because the Earth’s crust is thicker
beneath continents than it is beneath
oceans. It also is the result of the conti-
nents losing their magnesium and calcium
to the oceans, leaving behind lighter,
silicon-rich rock that is buoyed up by the
denser rock beneath the Earth’s crust.
Rice geologist Cin-Ty Lee always
assumed that processes deep within
the Earth accounted for most of the
magnesium loss. One of these pro-
The research team wanted to better understand the differences
between the Earth and Venus and establish the potential range
of conditions that could exist on Earth-like planets in the solar
system and elsewhere in the universe. The findings may explain
why Venus evolved differently from Earth.
cesses is delamination, in which dense,
magnesium-rich magma wells up beneath
continent-feeding volcanoes then ulti-
mately sinks back into the Earth’s interior.
Lee already had learned from previous
research that about 40 percent of the
magnesium in basaltic magma was lost
to delamination, but a bit of laboratory
serendipity made him take a closer look.
In measuring the lithium content
of the granitic rocks, Lee noticed that
lithium tends to behave like magnesium,
and he realized he could use lithium as
a proxy to find out how much magne-
sium continents had lost due to chemical
weathering. He was surprised to find that
chemical weathering alone accounted for
20 percent of the magnesium loss.
30 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
“Weathering occurs in just the top
few meters or so of the Earth’s crust, and
it’s driven by the hydrosphere, the water
that moves between the air, land and
oceans,” Lee said. “It appears that our
planet has continents because we have an
active hydrosphere — if we want to find
a hydrosphere on distant planets, perhaps
we should look for continents.”
Too Hot to Move
The planet Venus provides evidence for
Lee’s hypothesis. Venus’ surface, which
shows no outward signs of tectonic
activity, is bone dry. It also is heavily
scarred with volcanoes. Scientists have
long believed that Venus’ crust, lacking
water to help lubricate tectonic plate
boundaries, is too rigid for active plate
tectonics. But Rice Earth scientist Adrian
Lenardic thinks something else might be
at work there.
Conventional wisdom holds that plate
tectonics is both stable and self-correcting
and that the stresses generated by a
flowing mantle help keep tectonic plates
in motion. But that view relies on the as-
sumption that excess heat from a planet’s
mantle can efficiently escape through the
crust. Lenardic has recently completed a
study that suggests a planet’s mantle can
become less viscous if it heats up. In fact,
prolonged heating of a planet’s crust via
rising atmospheric temperatures can shut
down plate tectonics and cause a planet’s
crust to lock in place.
“The heat required is far more than
anything we expect from human-induced
climate change,” Lenardic said, “but
things like volcanic activity and changes
in the sun’s luminosity could lead to this
level of heating. Our goal was to establish
an upper limit of naturally generated
climate variation beyond which the entire
solid planet would respond.”
Lenardic said the research team
wanted to better understand the differ-
ences between the Earth and Venus and
establish the potential range of conditions
that could exist on Earth-like planets in
the solar system and elsewhere in the
universe. The findings may explain why
Venus evolved differently from Earth.
The two planets are close in size and
geological makeup, but Venus’ carbon
dioxide–rich atmosphere is almost 100
times more dense than the Earth’s and
acts like a blanket. As a result, Venus’
surface temperature is hotter than that of
even Mercury, which is only half as far
from the sun.
The team discovered that Earth’s
plate tectonics could become unstable
if the surface temperature rose by 100
degrees Fahrenheit or more for a few
million years.
“The time period and the rise in
temperatures, while drastic for humans,
are not unreasonable on a geologic
scale, particularly compared to what
scientists previously thought would be
required to affect a planet’s geodynam-
ics,” Lenardic said.
One of the most significant findings
in the new study is that the atmospheric
heating needed to shut down plate tec-
tonics is considerably less than the critical
temperature beyond which free water
could exist on Earth’s surface.
“The water doesn’t have to boil away
for irrevocable heating to occur,” Lenardic
said. “The cycle of heating can be kicked
off long before that happens.”
The researchers also found that a
spike in volcanic activity could accom-
pany the initial locking of the tectonic
plates. This might explain the large per-
centage of volcanic plains that are present
on Venus.
Targeting a Tsunami Zone
Volcanoes generally seem innocuous
compared with the devastating shakings
that emanate from subduction zones —
places where one tectonic plate slides
beneath another and recycles back into
the Earth’s molten mantle.
Earthquakes often occur in
subduction zones when plates that
normally move smoothly across one
another lock, causing stress to build.
When the lock breaks and the plates
jolt past each other, the sudden re-
lease causes the earth to shake. If the
shock occurs beneath the sea floor, it
can create a tsunami.
One infamous subduction zone, the
Nankai Trough, located on the floor of
the Pacific Ocean about 100 miles from
Kobe, Japan, has been responsible for
numerous earthquakes and tsunamis and
likely will cause more.
The morphology of the Nankai
Trough interests Rice Earth scientist Dale
Sawyer, who was part of an international
team that spent eight weeks aboard the
new scientific drilling vessel Chikyu col-
lecting data on a particularly troublesome
zone deep beneath the trough.
“Earthquakes don’t nucleate just
anywhere,” Sawyer said. “While the slip
zone for quakes in this region may be
hundreds of kilometers long and tens
of kilometers deep, the initiation point
of the big quakes is often just 5 to 6
kilometers below the seafloor. We want to
know why.”
The drilling done by Sawyer and
colleagues marked the beginning of
a massive project dubbed the Nankai
Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment.
The project is organized by the Integrated
Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), an
international scientific research program
dedicated to advancing scientific under-
standing of the Earth by monitoring and
sampling subseafloor environments. In
addition to drilling across the fault in the
Nankai Trough, the scientists also hope
to sample the rocks and fluids inside the
fault, and they want to place instruments
within the fault zone to monitor activity
and conditions leading up to the next
great earthquake.
Sawyer said scientists with IODP
plan to return to the Nankai Trough each
year through 2012, with the ultimate
goal of drilling a six-kilometer-deep well
to explore the region where the quakes
originate. If they succeed, the well will be
more than three times deeper than previ-
ous wells drilled by scientific drill ships,
and it will provide the first direct data
from this geological region.
Seeking Seismic Signs
Rice seismologist Fenglin Niu and his
colleaques have used a similar well in
California to uncover information that
could change quake prediction forever.
The famed San Andreas fault runs
through San Francisco and around Los
Angeles, and about halfway between the
cities lies the town of Parkfield, where the
U.S. Geological Survey has been collect-
ing seismic data for almost 40 years. Niu
and his colleagues set up shop there, at
the San Andreas Fault Observatory at
Depth, a deep well seismologists use to
make direct measurements of the fault.
“Almost everything we know about
the deep interior structure of the Earth
comes from seismic waves, the elas-
Changes in the rock structure are critical for predicting earth-
quakes. When rocks are compressed, the stress forces air out
of tiny cracks, causing seismic waves to travel slightly faster
through the rock. Detecting stress changes before an earthquake
has been the Holy Grail of earthquake seismology.
tic waves of energy that are released
during earthquakes,” said Niu, whose
work has earned a prestigious Early
CAREER Development Award from the
National Science Foundation’s EarthScope
Program.
Today’s state-of-the-art earthquake
warning systems give only a few seconds’
warning before a quake strikes. These
systems detect P-waves, the fastest-
moving seismic waves released during
a quake. Like a flash of lightning that
arrives before a clap of thunder, P-waves
precede slower-moving but more destruc-
tive waves.
In an attempt to obtain readings that
would give warning much further in
advance of the event itself, Niu and his
colleagues employed precision instru-
ments built by collaborators at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
These sensors can measure the minute
changes in the time — sometimes just
tens of billionths of a second — that it
takes seismic waves to travel through
the rock along a fi xed pathway beneath
Parkfield. The instruments are so sensi-
tive that, although they were more than
half a mile below ground, they could
measure fluctuations in air pressure at
the Earth’s surface.
Changes in the rock structure are
critical for predicting earthquakes. When
rocks are compressed, the stress forces
air out of tiny cracks, causing seismic
waves to travel slightly faster through the
rock. Detecting stress changes before an
earthquake has been the Holy Grail of
earthquake seismology. Only recently,
however, has technology improved suf-
ficiently to make the necessary precision
and reliability possible.
In analyzing the data from the new
sensors, Niu and his colleagues found
that a distinct change occurred in the
rock before each of the minor Parkfield-
area earthquakes during the test period.
A measurable change preceded a magni-
tude 3 quake by 10 hours. This was the
largest local event during the observation
period. A smaller but closer magnitude 1
temblor five days later was preceded by a
signal about two hours before the quake.
“We’re working with colleagues in
China and Japan on follow-up studies to
determine whether this physical response
can be measured in other seismically
active regions,” Niu said. “Provided the
effect is pervasive, we still need to learn
more about the timing of the signals if
we are to reliably use them to warn of
impending quakes.”
The study’s other co-authors
include Paul Silver of the Carnegie
Institution for Science’s Department of
Terrestrial Magnetism, Rice graduate
student Xin Cheng and LBNL scien-
tists Tom Daley and Ernest Majer. The
research was supported by the National
Science Foundation, Rice, the Carnegie
Institution and LBNL, and it appeared in
the journal Nature.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 31
 HistoricBuilding
With its largest-ever freshman class and the continuation of its green-friendly building campaign,
Rice University is making history in more ways than one. “The ‘John and Anne’ Grove” spreads its
peaceful beauty near the south colleges, vegetated roofs are sprouting up across campus, and the
new 103,000-square-foot David and Barbara Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center is taking shape.
Across campus, the excitement is building.

32 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
A Grovey Kind of Love
It may have culminated this summer with a revitalized
green space near the south colleges, but it started with
romance. In April 2006, a million-dollar gift from John ’63
and Anne d’Olier Mullen ’64 through the Goldman Sachs
Philanthropy Fund financed the beautification of the
quadrangle bordered by Rice’s inner loop on the north,
Sid Richardson College on the south, Baker and Will Rice
Colleges on the east, and Hanszen College on the west.
Filled with formal rows of cedar elm and live oak trees
and appropriately called “The ‘John and Anne’ Grove,”
it is where the Mullens met and where their friendship
evolved into true love.
“I first noticed Anne when she walked out of the grove into the
Hanszen quad in fall 1960,” John said. “We soon became close
friends, and one of our favorite places to talk was up in the
branches of Rice’s majestic oaks. This gift is to all the other Johns
and Annes who will meet on the Rice campus and form enduring
friendships.”
Over the years, the grove began to suffer from poor drain-
age and mosquitoes, and students gradually began seeking other
places to gather.
“This is an area that has been underdeveloped and a little bit
ignored,” said Facilities, Engineering and Planning (FE&P) Project
Manager Larry Vossler, “so the Mullens wanted to do something
to give back.”
During the renovation, FE&P tackled the grove’s problem of
standing water by installing new drains. They also replaced the
concrete sidewalks with decomposed granite paths, which now
extend down the center of “The ‘John and Anne’ Grove” and along
its edges. FE&P chose to use the permeable granite material to
help safeguard the health of the existing trees, some of which
were planted in the 1930s.
“With the age and beauty of the Grove, we wanted to do ev-
erything possible to ensure that the trees continue to flourish,”
Vossler said. “Decomposed granite is better for the trees’ roots,
since it lets air and water get through.”
Over the years, a few of the original trees had become diseased
and were removed. FE&P replaced them with six cedar elms and
four live oaks — in addition to planting a number of crepe myrtles
alongside Will Rice and Hanszen Colleges — and the pervious
paths will benefit them as well. St. Augustine grass was planted on
either side of the center path.
Seating has not yet been placed in the area, but FE&P has
turned to south college residents for input regarding their prefer-
ences. No decisions have been made, but the students are leaning
toward picnic tables or benches with backs in hopes of using the
grove as a peaceful place to eat, study or converse with friends.
“Our goal was to turn ‘ The “John and Anne” Grove’ into a
more accessible oasis for relaxation and recreation,” said Vossler.
“I’d say we’re there.”

—Merin Porter

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 33

 Building for a Healthy
Mind and Healthy Body
Rice University students already are adept in the gym-
nastics of the mind: Soon they’ll have a new place to
master the athletic pursuits of the body.
Scheduled to open in August 2009, the David and Barbara
Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center will offer state-of-the-
art workout and health facilities and will house everything
from competitive swimming and billiards to nutritional coun-
seling and meditative classroom space. Rice broke ground
on the two-story, 103,000-square-foot building on April 22.
Upon its completion, the Rice Wellness Center will relo-
cate from its current location next to Brown College. The
Recreation and Wellness Center’s $41 million price tag will
be funded solely through philanthropy. “We are particularly
grateful to David and Barbara Gibbs for making the lead gift
for this historic project,” said President David Leebron. “We
also want to thank Ralph O’Connor and Carl Isgren for their
generous gifts.”

34 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
Taking the Heat
As rooftop gardens grow, energy usage shrinks
Most roofs are built to keep water out, but the green roof
slated for several new Rice buildings will actually drink
it in. That’s because the roof — which recently debuted
over the South Plant’s electrical room and will also be
added to Duncan College, the Collaborative Research
Center and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen — is
actually a garden.
The roof employs low-maintenance vegetation that is planted in a
special growing medium, which sits on layers of drainage and aera-
tion material, insulation, roofing membrane and structural support.
The vegetated roof’s exceptional insulating powers will help reduce
the buildings’ energy consumption, minimize storm-water runoff,
limit damage from hailstorms and provide a habitat for songbirds
and other native animals and insects.
“As vegetated green roofs cover our buildings, we’ll reduce our en-
ergy consumption, our flooding and even the outdoor temperatures in
summertime,” said Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson. “At the
same time, we’ll have helped restore ecosystems disrupted by human
development. That’s a future I think we can all get excited about.”
The landscape of today’s green roofs varies from utilitarian
stretches of grass to elaborate elevated parks, and Rice is experi-
menting with different plant species to determine which perform best
in Houston’s scorching rooftop environment. The lessons learned atop
Rice’s newest buildings will help others in the Houston area choose
optimal plantings for their vegetated roofs, which is exactly what
Johnson is anticipating.
“My hope is that when someone flies over Houston in an airplane
10 years from now, they’ll be able to look down at all the native land-
scape on our rooftops and wonder where all the buildings went.”
—Merin Porter and Susann Glenn
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 35
 RSGBI
Green as Grassroots
 The Rice Student Green Building Initiative may have started small,
but it has big plans for sustainable construction on campus.
By Merin Porter

An odd thing happened in autumn 2006:

Despite the changing weather and the natu-
ral push toward dormancy, something green
grew. It was a tiny seed of an idea planted
in the fertile soil of junior Stephanie Squibb’s
mind. It grew along with Rice University’s
Vision for the Second Century plan for a mil-
lion square feet of new campus construction,
until finally, it flourished into the Rice Student
Green Building Initiative (RSGBI), a conscien-
tious campus club that gives students the op-
portunity to help build grassroots awareness
of and interest in environmentally friendly
building techniques.
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 37
 [ Stephanie Squibb • Niki vonHedemann • Sabina Bharwani
“When you take three young
women like these and give them
a fairly simple project, they find
ways to increase the scope of the
project. They get ambitious.”
“As an architecture student, I have been progressively interested
in environmental and sustainable issues,” said Squibb. Her focus
on “green” architecture began when she was a student in the
spring 2006 Environmental Studies class co-taught by Director
of Sustainability Richard Johnson and Professor Paul Harcombe,
who has since retired. As part of a team assigned to research
green options for a Jones College restroom renovation project
scheduled for that summer, Squibb and classmates Niki vonHe-
demann ’08 and Sabina Bharwani ’07 explored the Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating
System, a U.S. Green Building Council program that provides a
benchmark for the design, construction and operation of envi-
ronmentally friendly buildings.
What these incredibly bright students did next came as no
surprise to Johnson.
“When you take three young women like these and give
them a fairly simple project,” he said, “they find ways to increase
the scope of the project. They get ambitious.”
The women compiled their research into a PowerPoint
presentation and began showing it to friends, as well as to the
presidents of Rice’s residential colleges. Before long, they were
showing it to Rice’s college masters, too.
“They attended a meeting of all the college masters and got
them to recommend that the new residential colleges, which at
that point were just dreams, be ‘green’ buildings,” said Johnson.
Recognizing that the grassroots effort had legs, he and Harcombe
invited Associate Vice President of Facilities, Engineering and
Planning (FE&P) Barbara White Bryson and Vice President for
Administration Kevin Kirby to attend the students’ final class
presentation on green building. After the presentation, something
special happened: Bryson and Kirby stood up and announced to
the class that Rice would build not only the new residential col-
leges according to LEED standards, but all other future campus
structures as well.
“Of course, that’s not the kind of decision you just pull out
of a hat, so clearly they had been talking about this already,”
said Johnson. “But what Stephanie, Niki and Sabina were able
38 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
]
—Richard Johnson
to do is build grassroots awareness and support among Rice
students and those faculty members serving as college masters,
who were very important in helping decide what was planned
for the new colleges.”
Expertise on Tap
Despite the larger scope of the LEED initiative, Squibb, vonHe-
demann and Bharwani hadn’t forgotten about the Jones College
restroom renovation project. Johnson and Harcombe connected
the students with FE&P Project Manager Ken Thompson, who
asked for the students’ input regarding new faucets. His criteria
were that the faucets have a single handle and input line and
be well made, ADA compliant and within the price range of
$125 and $130. As a result of the students’ recommendation,
Thompson chose a more efficient faucet than the one originally
under consideration — reducing Jones College’s water usage by
around 175,000 gallons per year and saving the university ap-
proximately $1,200 annually.
“The purpose of this project was to minimize the lifetime
ecological footprints of the products and replacements in as
many ways as possible,” Squibb said, adding that the students
also suggested that the old sinks and fixtures be reused or re-
cycled instead of being thrown away. As a result, the sinks were
donated to a local Habitat for Humanity supply store, and the
metal fixtures were recycled as scrap.
Squibb calls her experiences eye-opening.
“I began to recognize the level of student interest in green
building and the potential opportunities for connecting students
with green building efforts and education on campus,” she said.
“I felt that a student group on campus that embraced that focus
and was acknowledged by the Student Association would be
beneficial.”
Squibb decided to complete independent study courses on
sustainable building practices throughout her senior year, during
which Johnson and Harcombe encouraged her to pursue her
idea of organizing the RSGBI. The club held its first meeting in
 “I feel that sustainable issues surround us at all levels.
The RSGBI allows students to be involved in these
decisions and encourages them to help shape the future.”
December 2006, and Squibb offered an introduction to the 10 or
so students who attended.
“I explained that the group was a great way to learn about
sustainable issues, network with architects and engineers within
the community and become more involved with design decisions
made about the buildings on campus,” Squibb said. She also
discussed ways in which the organization would allow students
to be involved in sustainable issues. These included education
through guest speakers and organized tours, engagement and
input during the design process of new buildings and selected
renovations, and implementation by providing labor
and other assistance to support the campus’s green
building goals.
Ideas Into Action
The club held three meetings in spring 2007, further
developing its mission statement, electing officers and
creating a Listserv that quickly gained nearly 70 sub-
scribers. Squibb, who received her bachelor of arts in
architecture that semester, knew she would be pursuing
a bachelor of architecture degree at Rice. Since she would
be completing her architectural preceptorship in New York at
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the club elected Alex Tseng as its
president for 2007–08.
“Alex has been absolutely great for taking ideas and turning
them into actions,” said Squibb, whose plan for a LEED training
program Tseng executed. More than 40 students from architec-
ture, engineering and even ecological and evolutionary biology
attended the first set of classes, which were taught in spring
2008 by Rice alumnus and LEED-accredited professional Guyton
Durnin ’06.
“We started the LEED Certification Class mainly to raise
student awareness in sustainability issues and to allow those
students who want to gain more knowledge in sustainable design
to become professionally accredited,” said Tseng, adding that
the U.S. Green Building Council generously provided the class’s
—Stephanie Squibb
training materials. The students who took and passed the LEED
for New Construction Professional Accreditation exam before
the end of the semester enjoyed the financial support of Rice’s
schools of architecture and engineering, the director of sustain-
ability and local architecture firms. This support covered half of
the $300 exam fee for each student who passed the exam. Tseng
noted that several students have expressed interest in taking the
class next year, which not only means that it will need additional
sources of funding, but also indicates that its popularity isn’t
likely to dwindle.
Among the other projects that RSGBI has fostered
are the Green Dorm Initiative, which encourages stu-
dents to adopt sustainable lifestyles in their dorms;
the Advocacy Task Force, which helps the club stay
connected with other campus environmental organi-
zations; a lecture series that brings architects involved
in sustainable design to campus for the benefit of
club members; and site visits to green buildings in
the Houston area.
Today, seven RSGBI board members help admin-
istrate and coordinate “green” events, and 150 members
benefit from their efforts. Despite the fact that the club was
started with the Vision for the Second Century’s construction
efforts in mind, Tseng says that it will still be here long after the
last construction worker has left campus.
“The RSGBI has a special status as an organization that seeks
to work from the inside out,” Tseng said. “We want to cultivate
advocates among the Rice student body who will be equipped
to guide future development at Rice and to encourage others to
participate.”
Squibb agreed. “I realize this is a pivotal time with all the
current construction, but I feel that sustainable issues surround
us at all levels,” she said. “The RSGBI allows students to be
involved in these decisions and encourages them to help shape
the future.”
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 39
 By Merin Porter

The Entrepreneur Next Door

Rice alum David Zumwalt may have a penchant for
making history, but his keen sense of humor and
passion for family have kept the former MOB member
as down-to-earth as ever.

People still talk about it today: a human “cockroach” so enor- persistence, leadership, an appreciation for de-
layed gratification — and diplomacy.
mous, so irreverent that it crawled into the Rice history books “Untangling roommate incompatibilities,
and has nested there to this day. It made its debut on Texas grappling with multicultural and religious issues,
testing the limits of on-campus capacity, and the
A&M University’s Kyle Field on Oct. 25, 1980, the same day inevitable privacy concerns that arise in a co-ed
the Owls beat the Aggies 10–6, when the Rice Marching Owl college all served up very useful skills for later ap-
plication,” he said.
Band (MOB) — which prides itself on never actually march- He also credits some of his favorite Rice fac-
ing — gave onlookers a halftime show to remember. It wasn’t ulty and staff members with helping him develop
personally and professionally. Physics professor
the first time David Zumwalt ’81, a former MOB member who Harold Rorschach, who made Rice history as the
helped pull off the stunt, made history — but it was certainly first nonresident associate of Jones College when
one of the most memorable. it still housed only women, was, Zumwalt said, “an
outstanding and approachable Rice professor, es-
pecially for wide-eyed and disoriented freshmen.”
“I was a Drum Minor in the MOB my senior year, His fascination with telecommunications, Through Professor Patricia Reiff’s instruction, he
pregame announcer and a part of the scriptwrit- technology and software began in the late 1970s, discovered a passion for astronomy and space
ing team,” said Zumwalt, a Baker College mem- while he was pursuing his bachelor of science in science, and Baker College master Jeff Kurtzman
ber and fellow who serves as executive director electrical engineering at Rice. Zumwalt appren- reignited Zumwalt’s love for music. History profes-
of the University of the Virgin Islands Research ticed with Southwestern Bell when the company sor Charles Garside brought out his very best man-
and Technology Park (RTPark). Orchestrating the was planning and rolling out electronic switching ners, and Zumwalt said he still uses sociologist
insectile spectacle taught him some lessons he in its north Texas offices, and he became fasci- Bill Martin’s “days behind for the undergraduate”
still relies on. “Challenges such as designing and nated with the upcoming divestiture of AT&T and equation. (“Who knew sociology had equations?”)
executing a halftime show both Rice and Aggie the imminent deregulation of the industry. He remembers other Rice faculty and staff
partisans find entertaining, while ‘desecrating’ members with fondness, too: political science pro-
Kyle Field with a cockroach and leaving the field to Path to the Future fessor Gilbert “Doc C” Cuthbertson, who taught
a standing ovation, are no less complex than most Zumwalt’s favorite class at Rice; Bert Roth, the
any in business life.” Competitive telecommunications was in its in- “archetypical and original” director of the MOB;
It’s a claim Zumwalt is well qualified to fancy when Zumwalt graduated from Rice and and faculty resident associate Maria Leal, who
make, since he has founded and directed several joined Compucon Inc. The company actively sup- liked the way he sang in the shower — although
technology and communications companies over ported the development of terrestrial microwave Zumwalt said he didn’t realize his voice was
the past two decades. The most notable among and satellite communications networks — and it carrying.
these is CNet Inc., a software services business also supported Zumwalt’s nascent entrepreneurial While these Rice friends helped him discover
that merged with publicly traded, multinational ambitions. He left the company to form CNet with and develop latent passions and interests, it may
Glenayre Technologies in 1997. (Glenayre later fellow alumnus Scott Greenwell ’82, and the two have been Zumwalt’s freshman chemistry class
sold the CNet name to the well-known media “faced all the struggles, panics, stresses and joys that most affected his future path. Fresh out of high
company that now holds it.) Zumwalt also served of growing that business over an 11-year period in school and with a straight-A record, he planned to
in founding and executive positions for technology a dynamic environment.” take the world of elements and electrons by storm
and telephony companies such as Privacy Inc., Go- To succeed in the chancy venture, Zumwalt — until he earned a 30 on his first chem test.
Comm Inc. and Exceleron Software Inc. drew on the life skills he honed at Rice: patience, “That did plenty to make me rethink my career

40 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
aspirations, not to mention my opinion of my
scholastic aptitude,” he said. “Rice quickly demon-
strated to me that achievement and excellence are
in abundance, and there’s always someone more
talented and gifted, more committed and hard
working, or just plain smarter than you.”
Zumwalt said that while his time at Rice im-
proved his discipline and focus, it also softened
some of his competitive drives. Since then, he’s
learned that even the best-laid plans sometimes
sink under the tumultuous waves of market condi-
tions, capital restraints and simple bad luck. But
Zumwalt also has learned to measure success
in language that doesn’t include “big houses” or
“bank accounts.” His yardstick for success com-
prises two words: “Always try.”
“I have learned that a very thin line separates
failure from success, so how we live and how we
handle failure say much about how we handle suc-
cess. There are any number of ways to keep score,
but I believe success is less an outcome and more
a way of living.”
That’s one reason why, in 2005, Zumwalt
agreed to the challenge of nurturing the fledgling
RTPark. After more than two decades of entrepre-
neurship, he was ready for something new.
“When I was approached with the opportu-
nity to apply my past experiences to the greater
challenge of economic development in a commer-
cially crucial but financially stressed region, I found
it hard to resist,” he said. “I also sensed this was
something I had been called to do.”
The Challenges of Economic Development
The RTPark was born in 2002 out of the U.S. Virgin
Island’s search for untapped resources that could
provide opportunities for the region’s outstanding
businesspeople. Agriculture and tourism had been
the major pillars of the local economy, but those
sectors offered few opportunities for the island’s
rising young business and technology stars.
“The result was a ‘brain drain’ from the
Caribbean basin, as many of the region’s outstanding
talents relocated to the mainland to pursue better
opportunities. This robbed the Caribbean of many
gifted leaders who might otherwise be contributing
more directly to the future of these islands.”
When key decision makers from govern-
ment, academia and commercial enterprise came
together to search for a potential panacea to the
USVI’s commercial woes, they quickly found it in
the islands’ role as a significant switching center
for subsea fiber networks.
“The USVI is home to one of the very largest
concentrations of bandwidth in the hemisphere,
and a significant amount of Internet and voice
traffic is carried through our switching facilities,”
Zumwalt said. “In a way, the USVI is to global
data what Memphis is to the delivery of overnight
packages.”
“Many tilt at windmills
as they work hard to
shape careers and
families to match their
dreams and expecta-
tions. Life, however,
molds us on its own
timetable and in many
unexpected ways.”
—David Zumwalt
To capitalize on this bandwidth, the islands’
local leaders worked together to “design an engine
that could focus the region’s many assets to foster
a vital, growing and globally competitive new
technology sector in the economy.” The resulting
RTPark provides a physical hub for technology-
centered businesses interested in establishing
operations in the area. It leverages the islands’
fiber connectivity and encourages workforce
development through strategic partnerships and
significant local tax incentives.
Although the park conducted much of its early
work behind the scenes — organizing capital re-
sources, identifying prospective partners and hon-
ing its business model, among other things — its
recent progress has won it a place in the sun.
“In 2007, we secured a breakthrough agree-
ment with Global Crossing to provide data center
solutions for tenants and partners — to which
we’ve added key alliances for telecommunications
and managed services — and we are negotiating
with strategic partners for e-commerce transac-
tion processing capabilities,” Zumwalt said. “We
currently have a television station as a tenant,
with additional tenants and partners on the way.”
Another Path to the Future
While Zumwalt is happy about his successes as
head of the RTPark, they are not his proudest ac-
complishments. That distinction falls to his third-
and fifth-graders, Emerson and Maggie, and to his
wife, Emmy ’85. (Zumwalt does, however, admit to
being proud of “the rather unusual distinction” of
appearing in Playboy magazine: “April 1981, page
15, in the huge pink bunny suit, related to a MOB
halftime show.”)
The importance of family is a consistent
theme in Zumwalt’s story. He sold CNet in 1997
in pursuit of a schedule that was more conducive
to a strong family life. One of his favorite places is
a Singaporean hotel where he and Emmy learned
their first child was on the way. And, most days, he
drops his kids off at school on the way to work and
is home again in time for dinner. If he must work at
home in the evenings, he waits until Maggie and
Emerson have gone to bed.
Zumwalt says his wife and children “continu-
ally inspire me, in the words of Jack Nicholson,
to ‘try to be a better man.’” He also credits his
father and fellow alumnus Gary Zumwalt ’57 and
his mother and grandfather with being highly
influential.
“They passed on many qualities for which I
am profoundly thankful: my father’s temperament,
patience and sense of fairness; my mother’s per-
sistence, faith and strength in the face of adver-
sity; and my paternal grandfather’s quintessential
example of what every man truly aspires to be —
a humble, loving father, grounded in faith, who led
an exemplary career and actively sought ways to
be of service to others.”
While Zumwalt strives for that kind of excel-
lence, he’s not afraid to let go of the wheel, either
— and he encourages Rice students to do the
same.
“Many tilt at windmills as they work hard to
shape careers and families to match their dreams
and expectations,” he said. “Life, however, molds
us on its own timetable and in many unexpected
ways. Don’t be afraid to let it shape you.”
Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 41
 Amanda Wallace was awarded the Rice University Art Gallery Director’s Choice award.

Launch into New Space in the gallery during the opening. “There
was a huge attendance, and not everyone
could see the speakers, so we brought in
Student shows are nothing new for Nancy Hixon. After almost 30 years with the a 12-foot ladder,” Davenport said. Each
Blaffer Gallery, the art museum of the University of Houston, she’s seen and installed professor giving an award would climb
enough student art to fill the Louvre. But that doesn’t mean Hixon isn’t excited every up to look out over the crowd.
time she works with students. “I find it interesting to learn what they’re reading, who The “ladder podium” became a
they’re studying with and what artists they’re influenced by,” Hixon said. “I want to tradition and was used until a few years
see where they take their work.” ago when the student award ceremony
was moved to the Department of Visual
and Dramatic Arts’ new quarters in the
Hixon served as the juror for “LAUNCH: In her statement about the work, Rice Media Center. Beginning next year,
Rice Student Art Exhibition 45.” “Nancy Wallace wrote, “When you are away at the student art exhibition will be held
is one of the most respected arts profes- college, you are absent from the many there — a fresh start signaled by this
sionals in Houston and she has so much moments experienced by your family. year’s exhibition title, “LAUNCH.”
experience working with students,” said You also miss the changes that have “It has been fun to organize the
Rice Gallery Director Kim Davenport. taken place in areas that were once student art exhibitions over the past 13
“Working closely with such a gifted familiar to you. These photographs are years,” Davenport said. “However, we

“The Media Center is the place on campus where art is being made every day, where the art
students gather and where the department’s identity and sense of community lie.”
—Kim Davenport

curator and having the opportunity to
recognize outstanding creative students
are some of the great rewards for the
gallery staff.”
One of those outstanding stu-
dents was Amanda Wallace, who
was awarded the Rice University Art
Gallery Director’s Choice award for
“Back Home,” a series of photographs
she took of friends, family and the
neighborhood where she grew up.
Accompanying each photograph was
a small story about the person or
place depicted.
the beginning of a way of representing
these two experiences.”
“LAUNCH” also was something of
a special occasion for the Rice Gallery
staff and one of many turning points in
the gallery’s long history.
“When I came to Rice, the student
show looked very different than it did this
year,” Davenport said. “In the past, visual
arts faculty selected works from all classes
and among all years of study, which were
hung in the gallery salon style.”
The lively visual cacophony was com-
plemented by the awards ceremony held
realize the need for students to reclaim
the sense of ownership they had for
the show when the art department was
located in Sewall Hall, right up the stairs
from the gallery. The Media Center is
the place on campus where art is being
made every day, where the art students
gather and where the department’s
identity and sense of community lie. It’s
exciting to think about this change rein-
forcing the vitality of the arts at Rice.”
—Kelly Klaasmeyer

42 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Arts

When artist Mark Fox decided

to move from Cincinnati, Ohio, to
New York City, he knew he had
a problem. His 6,000-square-foot
studio in Cincinnati was full of

Memories
stuff, but his new space in New
York was only 400 square feet. He

from
realized he’d have to get rid of a lot
of what he owned, but somehow,
he just couldn’t bring himself to

Dust
eliminate everything entirely. So
he drew it all.

“Dust,” Fox’s Summer Window installa-

tion for Rice Gallery, was filled with black
ink drawings of almost all the items Fox
once owned, such as a vacuum cleaner,
Christmas lights, C-clamps, a stuffed liz-
ard, a toy horse, desk chairs, a ladder, a
giant fan and even a stray corncob holder.
He cut the drawings into the shapes of the
objects, painted their backs fluorescent
green and mounted them on wires that ex-
tended from a wall constructed just behind
the gallery window.
“All my prior work was about manipu-
lation and about how people move or con-
trol things, collect things,” Fox explained.
“Now, I was being denied movement
by the things I owned; the things kind of
owned me in a way.”
The massed images seemed to float
and swirl in space like the vortex of a tor-
nado — sparse in the center with dense
clusters at the edges, as if some force was
sucking all of Fox’s possessions into oblivi-
on. The luminous green paint on the backs
of the drawings reflected against the wall
behind them, creating the ominous atmo-
spheric effect he saw as a boy when he
witnessed a tornado’s destructive funnel
cloud.
“After I drew things, there was an as-
sessing process,” Fox said. “The stories
behind the objects I owned came back as
I drew them.”
In the end, Fox may have jettisoned a
dumpsterful of stuff, but he got to keep his
memories in images that produced a fan-
tastic installation.
—Kelly Klaasmeyer

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 43

 Trio Destino: Rachael Young, bassoon; Hilary Abigana, flute; and Amy Chung, clarinet.

For the fifth year in a row, musicians from

Rice University took center stage at one of the
best-known venues in the country: the John
F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in
Washington, D.C.
Eight students from The Shepherd School of Music
participated in the Kennedy Center’s Conservatory
Project, which was designed to introduce audiences to
the top young musical artists from the nation’s leading
undergraduate and graduate conservatories, colleges
and universities. Students from The Shepherd School,
which was one of the project’s founding participants,
have been selected to perform every year since the
program’s inception in 2004.
“This year was one of our
strongest concerts yet,” said
Gary Smith, associate dean of
music. “The opportunity for
our extraordinary musicians to
play at the Kennedy Center —
the national face of performing
arts — is rewarding and in-
valuable for them and for The
Shepherd School.”

Return
This year’s participants Sadie Turner, harpist
were Trio Destino (graduate
students Hilary Abigana, flute; Amy Chung, clarinet;

to the
and Rachael Young, bassoon), harpist Sadie Turner ’08,
and the Jasper String Quartet (graduate students John

Kennedy
Freivogel, violin; Sae Niwa, violin; Sam Quintal, viola;
and Rachel Henderson, cello). In the spring, the Jasper
String Quartet won the Grand Prize and Audience
Prize at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition

Center
and the Grand Prize at the Coleman Chamber Music
Competition. This fall, they are studying with the
Tokyo String Quartet at Yale University.
Other participating schools were Northwestern
University School of Music, Eastman School of Music at
the University of Rochester, Berklee College of Music
and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

—Jessica Stark

Photography: David Long

44 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Arts

“The opportunity for our extraordinary musicians to play at the Kennedy Center –
the national face of performing arts – is rewarding and invaluable for them
and for The Shepherd School.”
—Gary Smith

Sam Quintal, viola; Rachel Henderson, cello; Sae Niwa, violin; and John Freivogel, violin

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 45

 Shepherd School’s Stallmann Earns
Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
If there is a way for a composer to write music for walking on cloud nine,
Kurt Stallmann will probably find it. And for good reason. Stallmann, the
Lynette S. Autrey Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at
The Shepherd School of Music, recently was awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship, which placed him among an elite group of professionals
who have demonstrated stellar achievement and exceptional promise
for future accomplishment.

A piece for cloud nine might have to wait a
while, however. Stallmann hopes to spend
2009 producing creative works that use
electronic and computer-generated sounds
in concert with live instruments and in
live performances. He’s also considering
forming a new ensemble to explore musi-
cal dialogue using computers and acoustic
instruments.
“One thing that will remain very impor-
tant to me,” Stallmann said, “is interdisci-
plinary work involving other mediums —
video, dance, light, movement.”
‘Breaking Earth’
Stallmann’s multidisciplinary work incor-
porating performance, fixed and interactive
electronics, and visual elements has earned
him the attention of a number of national
organizations and foundations. Meet the
Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA
program commissioned his latest exhibi-
tion, “Breaking Earth.” For that innovative
work, Stallmann collaborated with film-
maker Alfred Guzzetti to create a palette of
images, spaces and sounds.
The installation, which ran last spring at
Houston’s DiverseWorks Art Space, featured
five screens of projected high-definition
video and multiple channels of audio. At
first, sounds and images were recognizable
items from the natural world, like woods,
sea, wind, streams and stone. Elements
then slowly shifted into one another and
transformed into an abstracted landscape of
consciousness.
“We set out to blur the lines of reality
around the things we hear and see every
day,” Stallmann said. “We really hope this
become more aware of the world around
them — experiencing the familiar, everyday
world as something vivid and fresh — and
consequently re-engaging and reconnect-
ing them with their surroundings.”
“Breaking Earth” built on Stallmann’s
history of pioneering works. He devotes his
energy to the synthesis and connection of
the many mediums available to composers
today and creates works for acoustic group-
ings, acoustic/electronics groupings with
interactive elements, environmental sounds
and purely synthetic sounds.
Passing It On
Another of Stallmann’s passions — perhaps
his greatest — is teaching.
“I urge my students to look inside
themselves to find out what it is they want
to contribute to the artistic landscape as it
exists in the world today,” Stallmann said.
“That requires a knowledge of what is out
there to begin with and an understanding
of how the past has led to the present.”
Stallmann hopes to be able to pass on
to students his knowledge of that land-
scape — the very landscape his work is
significantly impacting. He said that while
connections and talent are important, they
can take a person only so far.
“Hard work completes talent,” Stallmann
said. “This is something that most people
don’t understand. It takes a lot of courage
and determination to commit oneself to
very personal ideas.”
Stallmann’s ideas earned him the honor
of presenting his piece “SONA — Sounds of
Houston: Wind, Rain, Trains” as the closing
work of the 2008 Society for Electroacoustic
National Conference. The organization is
devoted to music that involves electronic
and digital generation of sound materials
for performance. This year, he was also pre-
sented with a SEAMUS President’s Award
for his contributions to the organization.
The Shepherd School Influence
Given Stallmann’s incredible talent and cut-
ting-edge vision, it’s likely that he will be
remembered as a hero and mentor to many.
He already is helping artists and musicians
of the next generation leave their marks on
the world.
“One thing we try to encourage at The
Shepherd School is the development of the
creative imagination and a sense of artistic
responsibility — learning to commit one-
self to seeing ideas through to completion,”
Stallmann said. “Students have to become
convinced that their ideas and the quality of
their ideas are important. Without that con-
viction, it is hard to invest the many hours
of work necessary to bring those ideas into
the world.”
Stallmann credited The Shepherd
School and its administration for fostering
an environment so conducive to artistic de-
velopment and collaboration.
“Our students are wonderful and the en-
vironment is very stimulating. Dean Robert
Yekovich is an accomplished creative art-
ist himself, so the support offered by the
administration is outstanding,” Stallmann
said. “Rarely have I seen a school where
colleagues are more supportive of one an-
other and where there is such a genuine
sense of teamwork.”
—Jessica Stark

work has the effect of motivating people to Music in the United States (SEAMUS)

46 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Arts

The Sound of Summer Music

Summertime is camp time at Rice, where summer pro-
A Scholarship
grams range from the academic and scientific to the Recipient’s
athletic and recreational — and include one offering
that fills the air with the sound of music.
Journey Abroad
The music camps were created by Rachel Buchman, a lecturer in music and
head of The Shepherd School of Music’s Young Children’s Division. Buchman
wanted to encourage children ages 2 through 9 to explore music through sing-
ing, rhythm games, creative movement, improvisation, musical storytelling,
and the building and playing of percussion
instruments.
“I come from years Throughout the weeklong camps, the
of conservatory children develop their innate musicianship
and understand music through joyful experi-
training, so I know ence. And the kids aren’t the only ones who
that the serious benefit. Current and former Shepherd School
elements of music students who lead the weeklong camps often
discover that the experience rekindles the
making can often spark that first led them to music. For Tyler Barth ’08, studying in Asia was an
get exaggerated. “I come from years of conservatory train- opportunity for constant discovery, both in
It is nice to be ing, so I know that the serious elements of the classroom and beyond.
music making can often get exaggerated,”
reminded of why said Juliette Javaheri ’05, who was among While dining out with one of his teachers in Japan,
we are all here in the camp’s seven teachers. “It is nice to be Barth offered to pay for their meals, but his teacher
reminded of why we are all here in the first
the first place — to place — to have some fun.”
pointed to a sign written in Japanese. “It was an old
phrase that meant the older give to the younger,”
have some fun.” Javaheri first began working with The Barth said. “She said she would pay for me to do these
—Juliette Javaheri Shepherd School’s Young Children’s Division things now, but later I would also have to give to the
in 2006 when Buchman asked her to observe young. I realized that’s how scholarships work.”
some classes.
“Rachel’s enthusiastic approach to music is contagious,” Javaheri said. “She With scholarship support, Barth was able to spend
is always reminding us that the kids are here in the summer to have fun. two summers and an academic semester abroad in
And boy, do they have a good time. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find Asia. After his freshman year, he participated in Rice’s
another group of kids getting so fired up by a piece of classical music — NanoJapan program, and as a junior, he studied at
sharing with one another their thoughts and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
feelings about a selected recording or live (HKUST) and took part in a summer program at
performance.” National Taiwan University. Recently he received the
Buchman has spent more than 25 years “The camps are Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship, which will allow
teaching music to young people, from open to everyone him to return to HKUST to study computer science, a
toddlers to doctoral students in the U.S.,
Germany, England and Israel. Researching
— not just Rice field which he hopes to pursue in graduate school.

the connections between children and mu- people — so they Looking back, Barth believes that studying abroad was
sic, she found that singing encourages brain keep me plugged a critical component of his Rice education. With finan-
and language development and is one of
the most essential educational activities a
in to community cial support, he was able not only to attend Rice, but
also to extend his undergraduate education overseas.
parent can do with a child. needs.”
While the summer programs build on —Rachel Buchman
her research interests, they also offer her a
way to stay connected to the Houston com-
munity and her students.
“The camps are open to everyone — not just Rice people — so they keep
me plugged in to community needs,” Buchman said. “They’ve become a won-
derful way for me to keep in touch with Shepherd School alumni and for them Rice University • Office of Development–MS 81
to come back to Rice to share their marvelous energy and creativity with the P.O. Box 1892 • Houston, TX 77251–1892
children of Houston.” 713-348-4600 • www.giving.rice.edu
—Jessica Stark

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 47

 ‘The Things They’ve Done’
When Professor of Architecture William Cannady talks about his former students, it sounds
like he’s talking about his own children. He recounts memories of them as “kids” while at Rice
and tells stories of their school projects. But most of all, he speaks of their accomplishments.
Cannady’s new book, “The Things
They’ve Done,” is in that same vein. It
offers a brief history of the Rice School
of Architecture (RSA) from 1912 to
2007 and profi les the heralded ca-
reers of 68 alumni who attended Rice
between 1964 and 1998.
Cannady began by making a list of
the many students he had taught at Rice
since early 1964. Senior faculty added
more names to the list, and recommenda-
tions from alumni yielded others.
“There were many students who
“You can see that what you taught
them has affected them and, in
many cases, shaped their careers.”
stood out as undergraduate and graduate
students whom we knew had excelled
in the professional realm,” Cannady said.
“There are other alumni who should have
been included, but either we didn’t have
their contact information or they chose
not to respond.”
The key to the selection process was
based on identifying a diversity of
occupations and locations around
the world. The profiled alumni
studied under seven administra-
tions of the school starting in
1964, when Cannady started
teaching at RSA, and
pursued about 25 different
career paths. They represent
approximately 5 percent of RSA’s
graduates.
Cannady asked each alum to
write a short narrative on something
memorable about their time at Rice. The
48 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
narratives express a connection to the
campus, classmates, faculty and activities
at Rice and, according to Cannady, are
the most interesting part of the book.
“Themes started to develop among
students who were in school during the
same period of time,” Cannady said. “You
can see that what you taught them has
affected them and, in many cases, shaped
their careers. That wasn’t a surprise to me
but was a reassurance that the time faculty
spend conceiving, developing and deliver-
ing curriculum matters in the long run.”
— William Cannady
For example, William Caudill, director
of RSA from 1961 to 1969, had a pragmat-
ic and team approach to design. Under
his leadership, faculty members devised
studio projects that explored planning
and real estate development and exposed
students to engineers, photographers and
artists. Alumni in the “Caudill era” include
three real estate developers, a commercial
photographer, an urban designer and two
public officials, in addition to practicing
architects and designers.
Jack Mitchell, dean from 1978 to 1989,
and his faculty affected the paths of
many RSA alumni who chose to go into
academia and hold faculty positions at
architecture schools around the
world. The 1997 Association
of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture annual meeting of
105 schools included RSA alumni
holding leadership positions on 11
different campuses.
“This book demonstrates the
many careers that a Rice student can
develop through the study of architec-
ture,” Cannady said. “The traditional and
not-so-traditional career paths.”
Along with architects and designers,
RSA has turned out artists, photographers,
teachers, deans, government officials, real
estate developers, corporate executives,
spacecraft designers, urban designers,
authors and even an actor/producer.
—Jessica Stark

Translation and the Word
“Judas is a frightening
If you thought that Judas’ betrayal of
Jesus was firmly established long ago,
last year’s National Geographic trans-
lation of the Coptic Gospel of Judas
might have given you pause. The trans-
lation caused a sensation because it
portrayed Judas not as a villain but as
ON THE Bookshelf
“It appears to have something to
do with our collective guilt about
anti-Semitism and our need to reform
character. For Christians, the relationship between Jews and
Christians following World War II,” she
he is the one who had it said. “Judas is a frightening character.
all and yet betrayed God For Christians, he is the one who
had it all and yet betrayed God to his
to his death for a few death for a few dollars. For Jews, he is
dollars. For Jews, he is terrifying, the man whom Christians
associated with the Jewish people,
terrifying, the man whom whose story was used against them for

a friend of Jesus who acted on Jesus’ Christians associated with centuries.”

request to betray him.
Like most religious studies scholars,
April DeConick, the Isla Carroll and
Percy Turner Professor of Religious
Studies at Rice, was instantly
intrigued. Not content to simply
read the translation, she obtained
a copy of the original to read for
herself, and that’s when she began to
have doubts about the accuracy of the
National Geographic team’s work. Her
doubts were serious enough that she
undertook her own translation, which
confi rmed for her that the National
Geographic’s version was in error
and led her to write her own book on
the subject, “The Thirteenth Apostle:
What the Gospel of Judas Really Says”
(Continuum, 2007).
DeConick said many scholars and
writers have been inspired by the
But DeConick contends that the
the Jewish people, whose Gospel of Judas is not about a “good”
story was used against Judas or even a “poor old” Judas. It
is a gospel parody about a “demon”
them for centuries. ” Judas written by a group of Gnostic
—April DeConick Christians who lived in the second
century.
“Once I started translating the
Gospel of Judas and began to see the
types of translation choices that the
National Geographic team had made, I
was startled and concerned,” DeConick
said. “The text very clearly called Judas
a ‘demon.’”
DeConick’s book has ignited a
fresh round of fierce debate on the
subject, but that’s something she was
prepared for.
“The fi nding of this gospel has
been called one of the most impor-
tant archaeological discoveries in
the past 60 years,” she said. “It’s
important that we get this right.”
— Christopher Dow

National Geographic version.

“Esalen: America “Border Ransom,” “Literature-Based “Breaking Free: How to “Science Without
and the Religion by Pat Carr ’54 (TCU Activities for Integrating Work at Home with the Laws: Model Systems,
of No Religion,” Press, 2006) Mathematics with Perfect Small Business Cases, Exemplary
by Jeffrey J. Kripal, Other Content Areas,” Opportunity,” by Brian Narratives,” edited by
J. Newton Rayzor by Robin A. Ward, clinical Armstrong ’05 (Lulu, 2007) Angela N. H. Creager ’85,
Professor in Religious assistant professor for Elizabeth Lunbeck and
Studies (University of the Rice University School M. Norton Wise (Duke
Chicago Press, 2007) Mathematics Project University Press, 2007)
(Allyn & Bacon, 2008)

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 49

 WORDS AND PHOTO BY TOMMY LAVERGNE

If you love Rice baseball as much as I do,

it doesn’t get much better than going to
Omaha for the College World Series. No
matter what the outcome, you know the
team worked hard to get this far, and
this year was no exception. With the
program’s seventh trip to the CWS since
1997, and third consecutive trip, the Owls
registered another sensational season.

Rice won at least 42 games for the 14th-straight

year on the way to another Conference USA
regular-season championship, and the team
members garnered a number of individual
awards for their performance on the field and
in the classroom. Rice had a sky-high rating
power index from the NCAA, which allowed the
team to showcase the renovated Reckling Park
to record crowds for the Regional and Super
Regional rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
And for the 2009 season, Head Coach Wayne
Graham and his staff will return a host of tal-
ented young players and are bringing in one of
the top recruiting classes in the nation.
There’s a sad part to the term “next sea-
son,” because a lot of these fine young men

Omaha
will move on. Some have graduated, and some
might live out their dreams by taking a chance
in the pro ranks. But no matter where they go
or what they do, the character of these ball-
players will never cease to amaze me.

For complete coverage of the 2008 College World

Series, including a photo gallery, visit:
››› tinyurl.com/ 5ahlza

50 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
 Sports

2008

Rice Magazine • No. 1 • 2008 51

 AAwarded
Class Act
Rice’s Cole St. Clair earns top honors for all-around excellence

Rice University pitcher Cole St. Clair ’08, who returned for his senior year
after being drafted by Major League Baseball and helped lead the Owls
into this year’s College World Series (CWS), has been selected as the
winner of the 2008 Lowe’s Senior Celebrating Loyalty and Achievement
for Staying in School (CLASS) Award in the baseball division. The award,
“I am honored to receive this chosen by a nationwide vote of coaches, media and fans, is presented
prestigious award with annually to college baseball’s outstanding NCAA Division I senior
student–athlete.
such a rich history. I
know that a lot of The nation’s premier tribute to college seniors, the CLASS Award
identifies personal qualities that define a complete student–athlete,
effort was expended such as good character and excellence in the classroom, in the
community and on the field.
in the voting process “I am honored to receive this prestigious award with such a
by the dedicated Rice rich history,” St. Clair said. “I know that a lot of effort was expended
in the voting process by the dedicated Rice fans and my friends and
fans and my friends family, and I truly appreciate their efforts.”
Since moving to the bullpen full time in March, St. Clair became
and family, and I truly one of the nation’s most dominating closers, posting a Conference USA-
leading 10 wins with a 2.09 earned run average in 21 relief appearances.
appreciate their efforts.” During that span, he held opposing hitters to a .204 batting average. His
—Cole St. Clair strong performance down the stretch played a big role in Rice winning
its Super Regional and earning its third consecutive trip to Omaha for the
prestigious CWS.
St. Clair, an economics major at Rice with a 3.22 GPA, received his
bachelor’s degree May 10. His classroom achievements include becoming
a three-time Conference USA Commissioner’s Honor Roll member. He was
also named the recipient of the 2008 Bob Quin Award, given to the senior
Rice student–athlete who best exemplifies leadership and academic and ath-
More information about St. Clair, Rice baseball letic excellence.
and other Owls athletic teams can be found at: In the community, St. Clair has raised money for a local Houston neighbor-
››› www.riceowls.com hood center to sponsor a family for Christmas. He also assisted with the base-
ball team’s clothing drive for the Star of Hope Foundation in Houston. While in
Omaha, he visited with and gave advice to several young men from the Omaha
School for Boys, a residential group home for at-risk school-age boys.

52 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine
“Our great experiences
at Rice were burned in
our memories, and I
know the same thing
is going on now.
That’s what I want to
help facilitate.”
—Clint Johnson

Honoring the Past, Creating Opportunity in the Present

As a professor with more than 30 years of teaching experience at the University
of Central Arkansas, Clint Johnson ’64 knows the value and importance of
undergraduate research. In memory of his aunt, Elizabeth Johnson Duncan,
who made his graduate education possible, and in honor of the Rice professors
who influenced his career as an educator, Johnson has created the Elizabeth
Johnson Duncan Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Research through a charita-
ble remainder unitrust. To read more about Johnson’s gift to the university and
the experiences that inspired it, please visit www.giving.rice.edu/giftplanning.

To learn more about this fund or about making charitable gifts to Rice through your estate,
please contact the Office of Gift Planning for gift illustrations and calculations tailored to your situation.

Phone: 713-348-4624 • E-mail: giftplan@rice.edu • Web site: www.giving.rice.edu/giftplanning

 Nonprofit Organization
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit #7549
Houston, Texas
Creative Services–MS 95
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77251-1892

Rice University President David

W. Leebron and University
Representative Y. Ping Sun stand
in front of National Stadium after
attending the opening ceremo-
nies for the Beijing Olympics.
They were in Beijing as special
guests of the Chinese Minister
of Education, who issued only 12
such invitations worldwide, and
just two in the United States.