Centennial video series: The Rice Chapel

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

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

HOUSTON – (Sept. 13, 2012) – When the Rice Memorial Center was being planned and built in 1957, Rice alumnus and Board of Governors member J. Newton Rayzor was concerned that the new student center should include a nondenominational chapel that everyone in the Rice community could use. Rayzor was particularly interested in making sure the new chapel had a suitable organ. With a generous gift from Rayzor and his wife, the Rice Memorial Chapel was built and opened in 1958. Today, nearly 55 years later, the organ and chapel are undergoing a restoration.

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

The chapel is open daily for interdenominational worship services and is available for “Rice weddings.” The bride or groom must be a current Rice University student, faculty or staff member, alumnus; the child of a current faculty or staff member or alumnus; or formally sponsored by a current faculty or staff member.

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/b9m_McYOOLs, 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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Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

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.