In a colorful show of creativity and campus spirit, Rice's 11 residential colleges have come together to create a unified O-Week T-shirt design — a collaboration that reflects both school pride and the strength of Rice’s student communities.
According to a new report from Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, nearly 40% of local households experienced moderate to high food insecurity in the past year - that’s nearly three times the national average.
At each of the university’s 11 residential colleges, Rice football players and Athletics staff carried trunks, mini-fridges and laundry baskets up two, three and even four flights of stairs.
As a continuation of Rice’s Office of Student Success Initiatives’ O-Week, the Student Center will host Weeks of Welcome Aug. 23-Sept. 6 at various locations on campus. The program will combine academic, educational, developmental and social programming for both undergraduate and graduate students to provide a solid foundation for new and returning students as they transition or return to Rice.
Rice’s Office of Student Success Initiatives hosted a prematriculation program for incoming Rice freshman and their families Aug. 14-16 as a leadup to O-Week. Named Owl Access, the initiative is led and supported by current students to welcome freshmen who move in early to Rice, providing a comfortable adjustment period and easing them into college life.
Rice’s largest engineering and student rocketry club, Rice Eclipse, soared to new heights this summer, taking top honors in the 30,000-foot Student Researched and Developed Hybrid Division at the 2025 International Rocket Engineering Competition.
Rice demonstrated its commitment to campus and community safety with the recent relocation of a crosswalk signal. Rice worked with the surrounding neighbors and the city of Houston to transfer a high-intensity activated crosswalk signal previously located on Sunset Boulevard in front of Congregation Emanu El to Rice Boulevard at Gate 23 near First Christian Church — an area that experiences substantially more foot traffic.
Rice’s campus was buzzing this summer as students in the Rice Emerging Scholars Program wrapped up six weeks of challenging courses, hands-on projects and community-building. The end-of-program events and presentations marked the culmination of a summer designed to prepare incoming first-year students — particularly those from under-resourced high schools — for the pace, depth and rigor of STEM majors at Rice.
The Rice School of Architecture is proud to announce the opening of Iwan Baan: The Notational Surface, an exhibition by acclaimed Dutch photographer Iwan Baan, launching Sept. 3.
Rice has once again earned national recognition in The Princeton Review’s annual Best Colleges rankings, placing in the top 10 in four categories for 2026.
Rice anthropologists featured in an international exhibition launched in connection with the United Nations’ International Year of Glacier Preservation.
Incoming graduate students trickled in from across the country and around the world this week, rolling carts and hauling boxes into Rice’s graduate housing as they prepared to begin the fall semester.