The numbers speak for themselves. In Kathleen Canning’s six years as dean of Rice University’s School of Humanities, she has made 50 faculty hires, overseen a faculty of 170, strengthened eight departments and managed 15 centers and programs, including several established under her leadership. But the humanities are about more than numbers: They’re about the human experience, something Canning has embraced and championed.
“Every dean comes in with a vision, some signature program or legacy they want to leave behind,” said assistant dean Anita Norwig, who has worked for seven deans during her 27 years at the School of Humanities. “Kathleen is just a dynamo. She is 100% energy. She’s not just looking at what’s happening right now; she’s always thinking about how to prepare students for what’s changing in the future.”
Canning’s tenure at Rice has been defined by her unwavering commitment to enacting meaningful change and advancing the school’s mission, which she has held on to steadfastly while working under four different provosts. With a deep understanding that “change takes work,” she has led initiatives aimed at enhancing the visibility and impact of the humanities within the university and beyond.
“Kathleen is a person who shows up at every table and says, ‘We demand to be here. You need us. You can’t do the things you want to do unless you take the humanities into account,’” said Fay Yarbrough, associate dean of humanities for faculty and graduate programs and professor of history.
While many universities are reducing resources for humanities disciplines, Rice’s School of Humanities is not just holding steady but thriving.
“That’s surprising to people given how STEM-heavy the university is,” Yarbrough said. “I think it’s Kathleen.”
Canning’s broad-minded approach, called “refreshing” and “impactful” by her colleagues, set a new standard for leadership within the school.
“Rice is so lucky she came because she is such a broad-thinking leader and wonderful person,” Norwig said. “It’s been really transformative for the school to have her as the leader.”
By prioritizing excellence, inclusivity and interdisciplinary collaboration, Canning has transformed the academic landscape at Rice, ensuring that the humanities remain vibrant and integral to the university’s mission.
‘Catalytic and strategic’: Canning’s vision for humanities
Through her leadership, Canning has championed efforts to align departmental standards with national benchmarks, recognizing the importance of positioning Rice’s humanities programs within broader disciplinary conversations.
“I’m trying to get Rice to the highest level we can reach,” Canning said, embracing Rice’s status as an R1 institution where faculty and students are encouraged to engage in scholarly inquiry and innovation. “Our faculty are pursuing cutting-edge research and they bring that research acumen into their teaching and show our students how to become great scholars. We really can compete.”
Canning’s emphasis on accountability and continuous improvement underscores her commitment to maximizing the potential of resources and opportunities entrusted to the school. By prioritizing strategic stewardship over mere management, Canning has ensured that the school remains agile and responsive to the dynamic challenges and opportunities facing higher education today.
“The real work I should be doing is catalytic and strategic,” Canning said.
Working in the dean’s office, Yarbrough said she’s seen the impact Canning has had on the university level, on the school level and on a personal level.
“Before I came into the office, I noticed her candor and honesty about what was happening in terms of the university and her desire to mentor people,” Yarbrough said, noting that Canning stepped up to mentor her soon after coming to Rice.
That individualized attention and Canning’s personal touch also impressed professor of philosophy Elizabeth Brake, whom Canning recruited to come to Rice from Arizona State University.
“When I’ve reached out to the dean over the years, she’s been very responsive and generous with her time in chatting with me,” Brake said.
Brake offered the example of the High School Ethics Bowl she organized for several years, which involved teams from Houston-area high schools competing in debates about ethical dilemmas.
“There’s no reason for the dean to spend her Saturday coming to this, but she did three years in a row,” Brake said, adding that Canning spoke at the event each year about the importance of ethics.
Canning is also viewed as a barrier breaker and bridge builder by many of her colleagues in the humanities.
“I feel like the pool of people I knew exploded in terms of numbers and areas of expertise when Dean Canning arrived,” said Natasha Bowdoin, associate dean of humanities for undergraduate programs and special projects and associate professor in visual and dramatic arts. “All of a sudden, I found myself in thoughtful exchanges with faculty from across the entire School of Humanities in efforts to think through how to better our school and work more collectively.”
Connective humanities: Cultivating interdisciplinary engagement
Canning’s dedication to enhancing Rice’s visibility is evident in her adoption of what she calls “connective humanities.” This strategic initiative is aimed at fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, enhancing the visibility of the humanities and deepening connections within and beyond the university.
“I just said it one day: ‘The humanities at Rice have to be connected to be powerful,’” Canning said. “Connective humanities is turning out to be much more of a vision and brand than I ever thought it would. It isn’t just a slogan. It describes what we do in the humanities at Rice. By now it’s actually become a distinctive characteristic of Rice humanities.”
This vision emphasizes the importance of interconnectedness within the humanities and between humanities and other disciplines. Canning recognized that the power of the humanities lies in their ability to connect diverse perspectives and disciplines to address complex societal challenges. The result is a student with a much broader education.
“We’ve been told by many business and health professionals that what they really need are people with a humanitarian side, which is so often missing,” Norwig said. “They keep telling us, ‘We need humanities students because they think outside the box. They’re not just looking at a specific set of rules or parameters. They’re looking for innovative ways to create new things. They’re more thoughtful and creative.’”
The result of Canning’s connective humanities approach has been a deepening richness and diversity of interdisciplinary connections on campus.
“We bring the human into other disciplines, but there are also connections among humanities disciplines,” Brake said. “For example, connections with history and women and gender studies are important for the kind of work that I do. To study ethics responsibly requires an understanding of our social and political situation.”
Brake pointed to work that she’s done with her brother Matthew, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Rice, to create interdisciplinary courses such as “Engineering Ethics.”
“My brother would give case studies, drawing on his experience in engineering, and I would introduce philosophical and ethical theories,” Brake said. “As an ethicist, there’s just a different perspective on the topics. I consider who’s being affected by this, how are they being affected.”
Another example is Canning’s introduction of Big Questions courses. With different offerings each semester, including “What is home?” and “What is religion?” in fall 2024, the courses encourage students to examine thought-provoking topics through an interdisciplinary lens.
“When you study religion, you really study everything,” said Jeff Kripal, the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion. “You can approach religion from a political science angle, from a historical angle, from a textual angle, from a philosophical angle.”
Exploring multiple perspectives and disciplines has often resulted in Rice students adding a major (or two in some cases).
“If you’re going to the sciences where there’s a strict way of doing things, there also needs to be some creativity to find new innovations and discoveries,” said Siddhant Patil, a Moody fellow and rising senior, who’s pursuing degrees in kinesiology and religion. “My two majors, one being in the sciences, one being in the humanities, tie in very nicely together.”
Another Moody fellow, Sriya Kakarla, earned degrees in health sciences and Spanish and echoed Patil’s feelings about the integration of both fields of study.
“I would encourage other students to pursue a similar path because even though it’s not conventional yet, it should be conventional to study the humanities while pursuing medicine,” Kakarla said. “It’s so important for physicians and for medical students to have this information. It helps balance out your life a lot.”
“We see on the ground how bringing students from across the campus from all different academic backgrounds is a real benefit to the classroom,” Bowdoin said. “The ways in which they learn to think, see and make in humanities-based work benefit all aspects of their education, no matter the field.”
Faculty in Rice’s creative writing program frequently see students from other disciplines enrolling in their courses, which include offerings such as “Nonfiction Nature Writing,” “Graphic Novel” and “Podcasting.”
“Many of our classes are full of students from the sciences and the natural sciences,” said Ian Schimmel, associate teaching professor of English. “That is actually the bulk of our enrollment. What’s exciting is to watch those students interact with the arts for the first time as an undergraduate.”
“A lot of students come from the sciences to take science fiction, for example, because it’s a different kind of application of science, of thinking about what they’re learning in their physics or astronomy classes,” said associate professor of creative writing Lacy Johnson. “Here, they can apply it and translate it in different and creative ways.”
Rice students are inherently creative, said Jacqueline Couti, the Laurence H. Favrot Professor of French Studies and chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Literature and Cultures.
“They need to experiment with creativity in different ways and I think that’s important,” Couti said. “In the humanities, we open space for them where they can experiment.”
‘Excited by the vision’: Centers, programs spur collaborative research
Some of the school’s most prominent spaces opened have been the interdisciplinary centers and programs Canning has nurtured during her tenure to address medical humanities; environmental studies; women, gender and sexuality studies; and politics, law and social thought.
“All of those draw faculty from a variety of departments and are areas where students are really gravitating,” said Kirsten Ostherr, director of the Medical Humanities Program and the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English. “It’s where a lot of energy lies.”
Nana Osei-Opare, who started his position as assistant professor of history in July 2023, said he was drawn to Rice because of its Center for African and African American Studies, a collaboration between the schools of humanities and social sciences that offers curriculum and research opportunities related to Africa and people of African descent in the Americas and beyond.
“I was excited by the vision that Dean Canning has for Rice, and it seemed like a place that was growing and that I could grow with,” Osei-Opare said. “You can go wherever your mind and resources take you.”
He has already taken the initiative to organize a conference with anthropology associate professor Gökçe Günel to be hosted at Rice this fall. It will focus on energy, waste and the environment in West Africa, drawing historians, anthropologists, filmmakers, artists and geographers from all over the world.
“As a newcomer to Rice, it’s been so easy to work across disciplines,” Osei-Opare said. “Everyone’s eager to work together and help each other.”
While bringing different fields of study together has been beneficial for students, Brake added that it has also created new opportunities for faculty.
“I think it’s a really wonderful thing (Canning has) done as dean,” Brake said.
In the case of medical humanities, Canning saw what was a large and under-resourced minor and pooled resources to help it become what it is now: an award-winning and innovative program that is thriving out of student interest.
“It’s been really exciting under Dean Canning that we have had quite a significant expansion in faculty,” said Melissa Bailar, executive director of the Medical Humanities Research Institute, explaining that the program has made two tenure-track faculty hires, brought on two full-time lecturers and hired more staff to support program needs.
‘A real change’: Humanities revolutionizes recruitment
The two tenure-track hires are an example of how Canning’s adoption of connective humanities has also revolutionized the faculty hiring process in the school, again with the focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. They were made with joint appointments in history and philosophy.
“She has really supported the idea of empowering these interdisciplinary programs to propose hires of faculty,” Ostherr said. “They are placed both in departments, because that’s where faculty lines live, and in programs, where we need faculty because we are centers of energy where there’s a lot of activity and a lot of student demand.”
In doing so, Canning has allowed centers and programs that don’t typically have their own faculty to post a position without initially identifying which department the hire will serve.
“You get this pool of applicants that are from all over,” Yarbrough said. “For medical humanities, you get people who are in history, literature, Asian studies and philosophy, for example. This kind of hiring forces you to think about the connections between various units.”
Once a candidate is chosen, leadership assesses which department would be the best fit.
“This is a real change, and it’s not an easy change, but it’s a change that I think is enabling people in a lot of different areas in the school and in the university as a whole to see the difference it makes when you think about faculty from the start as having a connective role,” Ostherr said. “They’re not just in this department by itself. They’re meant to bridge things to enable more kinds of connections to foster deliberately and from the start.”
It’s an approach that Canning has found to be instrumental in attracting new faculty to the School of Humanities.
“How we recruit and what the vision of the school is, beyond the department they’re a finalist for, is really important,” Canning said. “These new hires are amazed that we’re doing all of this. The new faculty we recruit are excited to learn about the vision of the school beyond their future departmental home; this is really important to young scholars, who bring interdisciplinary sensibilities to Rice from their doctoral training.”
By articulating a compelling vision for connective humanities, Canning has appealed to prospective faculty members, including Couti, Brake and Osei-Opare, who are eager to engage in front-line change work and contribute to a collaborative and interdisciplinary academic environment.
“I was really attracted to that and the vision that she had,” Osei-Opare said, adding that he was impressed by Canning’s abundance of energy and enthusiasm. “She really cares about what she’s doing in the humanities.”
That is expressed in recruiting, during which Norwig said Canning invest time and energy to make sure Rice hires the right people. Canning is also known for being very candid — with candidates and with faculty.
“I could see myself working with her because she was very up-front,” Couti said. “She convinced me to come to Rice just by being her. I liked her frankness.”
Couti was one of Canning’s first hires and said she’s seen the extraordinary changes the dean has made.
“She’s hired a lot of new people, a lot of faculty of color,” Couti said. “She has enriched Rice.”
That enrichment extends to existing faculty, whom Canning works to retain, according to Norwig. Through mentorship, candid advice and advocacy, Canning encourages faculty members to assert themselves professionally and seize opportunities for advancement.
“I’m interested in galvanizing those around me: allowing them to be rewarded and inspired,” Canning said. Yarbrough and Norwig said she actively involves faculty in leadership roles, committee assignments and other initiatives.
“She has this human approach, which is great for humanities,” Couti said.
Not content to keep the brilliance of Rice’s School of Humanities confined to its halls, Canning embarked on a national tour to spread the word about the big questions addressed in humanities research. These “Humanities Innovations” events in Palo Alto, California, Washington, D.C., and New York City drew roughly 150 Rice alumni as well as prospective students and their parents.
“The ‘Humanities Innovations’ event in D.C. was pitch perfect,” said Humanities Advisory Board member Rob Quartel, a ’72 graduate. “Everyone I spoke to before and after the presentation was excited. I’ve attended Rice events in the region for over 40 years and 90% of the faces were new to me, which means the humanities brought them in. I would love to see more events like this one!”
Ultimately, Canning’s unwavering dedication to the humanities is an argument for their enduring importance at Rice, in education and for society.