Rice Breaks Ground on New Humanities Building

CONTACT: Dana Durbin

PHONE: (713)
831-4797

E-MAIL:ddurbin@rice.edu

RICE BREAKS GROUND FOR NEW HUMANITIES BUILDING

Rice launched a new humanities
initiative by breaking ground for a building to house many of the departments in
the university’s School of Humanities that have long been scattered across
campus.

The groundbreaking was held at 4:30 p.m. today at the site of
the new building near the south side of Fondren Library on the Rice
campus.

The new building will house the departments of history,
philosophy and religious studies.

“Together with literature and the sciences, these subjects have
been known as the liberal arts, the arts ‘which are fitting for a free human
being, through which one exercises and cultivates excellence and wisdom and
which lead the body and mind to the highest good,'” Judith Brown, dean of the
School of Humanities, said at the groundbreaking. “May faculty and students
cultivate excellence and wisdom in this noble building and may they put it to
use for the highest good.”

Each faculty office will have about 200 linear feet of book
shelf space. In addition, the building will have videoconferencing facilities
and electronic podiums that allow faculty to bring computer-based resources into
the classroom.

The building was designed by Allan Greenberg, a Washington,
D.C., architect. It will be a three-story, 47,000-square-foot structure housing
the office of the dean of humanities, the departments of history, religious
studies and philosophy, as well as several interdisciplinary centers and
programs, such as the Center for the Study of Cultures and the Study of Women
and Gender.

Rice University is a leading American research
university–small, private and highly selective–distinguished by its superior
teaching, commitment to undergraduate education, outstanding graduate and
professional programs, residential college system, collaborative and
interdisciplinary culture, and global perspective.

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