For Elena Mujica, the taste of victory has strong notes of strawberry pavlova and tres leches cake.
With a cake carefully balanced in each hand, she headed to the picnic tables outside Valhalla, Rice University’s graduate student pub, to celebrate her GEM Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) honorable mention with friends and labmates. She was one of about 100 graduate students to be recognized at Take the Cake, an annual event hosted by the dean of graduate and postdoctoral studies.
The premise is simple: Each graduate student is awarded one cake of their choosing for every major external fellowship worth $5,000 or more. For Mujica, a first-year doctoral student in systems, synthetic and physical biology, that meant two cakes. “It feels good that my hands are so full,” Mujica says.
In the span of less than an hour, Dean Seiichi Matsuda and the graduate and postdoctoral studies staff doled out 102 cakes from two local bakeries amounting to an estimated two to three million calories. Hauling that many cakes at once is no small feat: The order was so large that one of the bakeries needed to rent a moving truck to deliver the goods.
The payoff is worth it. “It turns an individual win into a community win,” said Matsuda. That was the appeal for Damien Cooper and Macallister Davis, who study the chemistry of Earth-abundant metals in the lab of Samantha Yruegas, assistant professor of chemistry and a Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator.
“The best part is having your whole lab here,” said Davis, a New Orleans native who ordered a red velvet cake to celebrate her NSF GRFP award. Cooper chose a vanilla cake. A photo booth, customized stickers, string lights and brisk weather added to the festive mood.
Intentional support
Take the Cake is another way Rice cares for its graduate students, says Jose Hernandez, a first-year bioengineering doctoral student from Oswego, Illinois, who chose a berry chantilly cake in recognition of his GEM Fellowship, which supports him as he researches the link between the metabolism and mechanics of cancer cells.
“This definitely goes beyond what a lot of schools do,” Hernandez said. “It goes back to the recurring theme of intentional support.”
Hernandez also found support through the Latin American Graduate Student Association, Latinx Grads and the Pathways Program, which provides first-year doctoral students an extended orientation to Rice, its resources and the Houston area. He said he was drawn to Rice because of its diverse, inclusive students at every level: the lab, the school and the university.
Hernandez also said he was pleased to receive the Dean’s Prize, a financial award offered to exceptional prospective students, after getting his Rice acceptance letter.
“Especially being a first-generation student, that made me feel comfortable jumping in,” Hernandez said.
It takes a community
Since Take the Cake began eight years ago, more graduate students have been applying for major awards because the fun event gives students a greater awareness of the awards available to them, Matsuda said.
His office also launched a coaching program that pairs students with those who have won or applied to many major fellowships. While the program historically has been STEM-oriented, Randi McInerney, the program administrator, has been working to broaden its focus and expertise to social sciences and the humanities.
“Students often rely on rich networks of support when applying to these major fellowships, and that supportive community becomes apparent when celebrating over cake,” said McInerney, who earned a doctorate in English from Rice in 2023. “We are fortunate to have so many major fellowship winners at Rice. Our team of coaches is fantastic and eager to pay it forward and mentor other students.”
Central to that community are advisers like Danielle King, associate professor of psychological sciences, and Caroline Ajo-Franklin, professor of biosciences and director of the Rice Synthetic Biology Institute, who came to cheer on their students.
Ajo-Franklin is the thesis adviser to two students, Robyn Alba and Esther Jimenez, who received the NSF GRFP award and the NSF INTERN award, respectively. Jimenez’s award allowed her to expand her skill set while interning at a Houston company. Alba studies bacteria that make electrical currents in the hopes of engineering it to detect toxins. Her parents visited from Dallas for the occasion.
“I have gone to Take the Cake the last two years to celebrate friends of mine,” Alba said. “Everyone loves cake, and it’s fun to set some time aside and celebrate and have good community.”