Centennial video series: The Rice master plan

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Centennial video series: The Rice master plan
Rice University’s weekly centennial videos run through Oct. 12 

HOUSTON – (Aug. 2, 2012) – Before the first building for the new Rice Institute could be built, the school’s first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, was dealing with one of his first challenges: How to develop a campus of nearly 300 acres that had five sides? After much analyzing of different plans presented, Lovett settled on a plan by New York and Boston architects Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, which would move the institute forward. Over time Rice has made adjustments to the original planning, but it stayed mostly true to the founders’ vision.

Working with Centennial Historian Melissa Kean, video producer Brandon Martin takes a look at Rice’s land use and master plan. For more information on Rice’s history, visit Kean’s blog at www.ricehistorycorner.com.

To help celebrate the university’s centennial Oct. 12, Rice University is producing weekly videos exploring the school’s unique history.

The video, available on YouTube at http://youtu.be/NSKCwbmw_BA, is also available to media in high quality and without music for editing purposes. For higher-quality video, contact David Ruth, director of national media relations at Rice, at david@rice.edu or 713-348-6327.

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To see other stories in the centennial video series, go to www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60D6D71E71B66B3D&feature=plcp.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for “best value” among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf.