Rice dedicates new Anderson-Clarke Center

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

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Rice dedicates new Anderson-Clarke Center
Glasscock School of Continuing Studies building will benefit Houstonians

HOUSTON – (May 22, 2014) – Rice University’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies today celebrated the dedication of its new home, the D. Kent and Linda C. Anderson and Robert L. and Jean T. Clarke Center.

The center, also known as the Anderson-Clarke Center, is situated on the west side of Rice’s campus at Entrance 8 at Stockton and University Boulevard. The building will benefit Houstonians, who account for most of the school’s nearly 20,000 enrollments in continuing studies each year.

The building’s construction was made possible by a naming gift from Kent and Linda Anderson, Robert Clarke and his late wife, Jean (“Puddin”) and more than 400 other donors.

“This is truly an extraordinary day for us,” said Rice University President David Leebron. “Our founder, William Marsh Rice, envisioned that this university would become something great for Houston. A little over 100 years later, we have put a permanent building on our campus dedicated to the School of Continuing Studies. This is a project of people with a vision for the School of Continuing Studies and sustained that vision for a very long time. I want to thank, in particular, Mel and Susie Glasscock, who have brought not just vision, but heart and passion to the project. I also would like to thank the Anderson and Clarke families.”

Additional speakers at the ceremony included Glasscock School Dean Mary McIntire, Rice Board of Trustees Chair Bobby Tudor, Susie and Mel Glasscock, Kent and Linda Anderson’s son, Clarke Anderson, and Bob Clarke.

“This great building unites Rice and the Houston community,” McIntire said. “It will serve as the heart of continuing education in our broader community. Continuing studies is not a luxury, it is a necessity — in good times and in bad, in small ways and in revolutionary ways. It helps people advance themselves personally and professionally.”

The Anderson-Clarke Center is a three-story, 55,000-square-foot facility that houses 24 state-of-the-art classrooms, conference rooms, a language center, a freestanding auditorium and a commons area and terrace for events. Construction on the $24.2 million facility began in December 2012, and the center was built to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for silver certification.

To preserve the spirit of Rice’s historic buildings, the center’s architects, Overland Partners, used the campus’s original architects’ design of a vertical to horizontal ratio with long, low buildings, a tripart division of windows and an arched entryway.

The center also features an art installation, “In Play,” by Houston-based international artist Joseph Havel, director of the Glassell School of Art. An additional installation by French-American artist Stephen Dean, “Black Ladder,” will be completed later this summer. A student gallery is named in honor of Peter T. Brown, a longtime photography instructor for the Glasscock School as well as an accomplished photographer whose work has been featured in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Menil Collection, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Amon Carter Museum, among others.

The Glasscock School offers personal and professional development classes, online and hybrid courses and certificate programs with additional offerings from the Center for College Readiness, the Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, the Foreign Language program, the English as a Second Language program, the Master of Liberal Studies, the Master of Arts in Teaching and School Literacy and Culture. The Glasscock School attracts students from more than 100 countries. The Anderson-Clarke Center will allow the school to increase its scope and continue to expand its service to Houston and beyond.

For more information on the Glasscock School and the Anderson-Clarke Center, go to www.glasscock.rice.edu.

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Anderson-Clarke Center photo courtesy of Jim Pomerantz.

Follow the Glasscock School via Twitter @GlasscockSchool.

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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 3,920 undergraduates and 2,567 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6.3-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. 2 for “best value” among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go here.