Distinguished alumni recognized

Distinguished
alumni recognized
…………………………………………………………………

BY DAVID THEIS
Special to the Rice News

Each year, the
Association of Rice Alumni bestows the Distinguished Alumni
Award on alumni whose professional or volunteer activities
reflect and forward the high standards and ideals of Rice
University. This year’s recipients will be honored,
along with the Gold Medalists and the Meritorious Service
Award winners, at a dinner May 12 at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Teveia Rose Barnes ’75
When President Clinton called on the legal profession to increase diversity
in its ranks and help minorities advance economically, attorney Teveia Barnes
felt she had to act.
Barnes has been fighting to the keep the doors of opportunity open for all Americans
since the early 1970s, when she was one of the few black students on the Rice
campus.

Of Barnes’
undergraduate days, David Minter, the Bruce and Elizabeth
Dunlevie Professor of English, said, “Although Teveia
was neither aggressive nor confrontational, she showed that
she possessed courage as well as skill and resolve, and
she quickly emerged as a leader.” Barnes needed those
qualities as her law career took her to high-ranking legal
positions, including senior vice president and general counsel
of Bank of America, where she introduced diversity initiatives.

After Clinton’s
1999 remarks, Barnes became director of Lawyers for One
America (LFOA), a coalition of legal organizations that
works to increase minority representation in law firms and
to increase law firms’ pro bono work. “Lawyers
have committed so much time to profit-making that there’s
no time to work pro bono. We have to stop thinking only
of ourselves and think about the world around us,”
said Barnes, who deferred compensation for her work at LFOA
until the program was fully funded.

Within a year
of becoming director, Barnes had helped establish 20 legal
diversity and pro bono programs around the country. Barnes’
LFOA work even led her to address a conference at the United
Nations.

Barnes and her
husband, Alan Sankin, have supported numerous Rice programs.
She currently serves on the Rice Board of Trustees.

Bruce W.
Dunlevie ’79
With a Rice English degree in hand, Bruce W. Dunlevie did something unexpected.
He became one of America’s most important venture capitalists, playing
a key role in the e-commerce revolution that has transformed modern life and
assisting in the births of the Palm Pilot and eBay.

According to
Alan Grob, professor of English, the venture capital firm
Dunlevie co-founded in 1995, Benchmark, is “one of
the great success stories in modern American finance.”
Dunlevie and Benchmark’s accomplishments have even
merited their own book, “eBoys.”

With the help
of Steven Zeff, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting
and professor of managerial studies at the Jesse H. Jones
Graduate School of Management, Dunlevie landed a position
with Arthur Andersen after graduating from Rice. He attended
Stanford Business School and worked at Goldman Sachs before
forming his own computer company and becoming a venture
capitalist at Merrill Pickard, where he helped develop the
Palm Pilot. From there, Dunlevie went on to co-found Benchmark
with Kevin Harvey ’87 and fund the small startup eBay.

Among the contributions
of Dunlevie and his wife, Elizabeth, is an endowed chair
in the English department, currently held by David Minter,
who nominated Dunlevie for the Distinguished Alumni Award
“with both gratitude and conviction that are bone-deep.”

Cynthia Miller
’65
As an American diplomat stationed in Germany before and during reunification,
Cynthia Miller played a “crucial role in the United States’ success
in Germany at a historically unique moment,” said former ambassador to
Germany Robert Kimmitt.

Miller joined
the State Department’s Foreign Service in 1969 and
was put in the middle of historic change with her 1984 posting
to East Germany. Working to overcome the East German citizens’
mistrust of the United States, Miller brought the first
U.S. government-sponsored exhibition to that country, a
series on the history of American cinema that drew record
audiences. She also negotiated a Fulbright academic exchange
program that the East German government had previously resisted.

She received
a Distinguished Presidential Rank Award in 1992 for her
efforts to reach out to the institutions and people of former
East Germany. Under her leadership, the United States opened
a cultural center in Leipzig, East Germany, and she arranged
to have library books from U.S. military bases that were
closing in West Germany donated to East German libraries.
Miller also was key in establishing a foundation that promoted
exchanges between U.S. and German journalists and co-productions
of radio and television programs.

During the early
1990s, Miller was instrumental in explaining the U.S. position
on the Gulf War to a skeptical German audience. In 1994,
Miller was posted to Rome with the rank of career minister,
where she led the U.S. Information Service.

In 1999, Miller
won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public
Diplomacy. She retired in 1998 with the rank of minister,
the highest rank of a career officer.

Vladimir
Rokhlin ’83
Vladimir Rokhlin is “surely the most distinguished mathematician to graduate
from Rice,” said J.E. Dennis Jr., the Noah Harding Professor of Computational
and Applied Mathematics and department chair. His Greengard-Rokhlin fast multipole
method was named one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century.

Rokhlin came
to Rice in the early 1980s after working for four years
as an instructor and mathematician in Lithuania and his
native Russia. He made a powerful impression on his teachers
and fellow students when he worked full time at Exxon Production
Research while he earned his Ph.D.

Rokhlin again
demonstrated his potential for study and work when he took
a research staff position in computer science at Yale. After
only a short time as a researcher, he was made a full-tenured
professor of computer science and mathematics.

According to
Benjamin Dembart, senior technical fellow at Boeing Co.,
Rokhlin’s multipole algorithm (FMM) is a “fast
algorithm for computing the fields induced by a large number
of charges. This method combines the addition theorems of
classical potential theory with modern multiscale analysis
to produce an algorithm that is both elegant and effective.”

Rokhlin has since
moved on to the field of band-limited functions, which,
according to Ronald R. Coifman, the Phillips Professor of
Mathematics at Yale, will make FMM “pale by comparison.”

A noted teacher
at Yale, Rokhlin “has produced a set of students who
are quite diverse with respect to nationality, gender and
area,” Dennis said.

Rokhlin is “an
extraordinary scientist leading one of the most active and
exciting fields of the day,” Coifman said. “Rice
University should be proud to have such an outstanding alumnus.”

E. Brad Thompson
’55
E. Brad Thompson’s undergraduate days seemed to promise great things. Among
other things, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Outstanding Senior, president
of the class of 1955 and a member of the Honor Council. In short, his accomplishments
at Rice were “almost legendary,” recalled J. Bruce Laubach ’55.

The promise
has borne out. Since 1984, Thompson has served as chair
of the Department of Human Biological Chemistry and Genetics
at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston,
where he also is the I.H. Kempner Professor of Human Genetics.
The department ranks 23rd among 105 U.S. medical school
departments of biochemistry in terms of research funding
from the National Institutes of Health. He also helped establish
the Sealy Centers for Molecular Science and Structural Biology.

Thompson, whose
research is in the area of gene expression and steroid hormone
action, extends his influence beyond the ivory tower as
well. At Galveston’s Ball High School, Thompson created
an NIH-sponsored project that allows UTMB graduate students
to serve as mentors for high school students.

Stanley Lemon,
dean of medicine, Department of Microbiology and Immunology
and Internal Medicine, UTMB, said, “Dr. Thompson approaches
each new challenge with the care and authority that is reflective
of his career in academic medicine and his approach to life
in general.”