Q: How long have you worked at Rice?
A: Almost 10 years. I joined in August of 2015.
Q: What is your favorite part about working for the university?
A: I enjoy the feeling that I am helping to transform the world one interaction at a time. Each day I get the chance to do something that I love and to make Rice excellent.
I enjoy the people I work with, a team of talented and wonderful individuals who are dedicated to helping researchers at Rice be their best and work to solve some of the tricky challenges the world currently faces.
I also enjoy the campus and its beauty. Physically, Rice feels like an oasis of calm in one of the nation’s largest and greatest cities, and I appreciate taking the time to walk campus and appreciate how cozy it feels.
Q: What do you want people to know about living in Houston?
A: Houston is secretly way better than Dallas. Our food is better. Our zoo is better. Our sports teams are better. Fight me.
Q: What do you do in your downtime?
A: Downtime? What’s that? All joking aside, I have a 10-year-old daughter that I love to spend time with before she becomes a teenager and doesn’t want to be anywhere near her parents anymore.
Q: What’s your favorite spot on campus to show someone?
A: Probably my favorite place is the beautiful owl sculpture hidden behind the Student Center near Brochstein Pavilion. It’s peaceful and contemplative. It shows a side of Rice that is sometimes not well seen.
Q: What’s the most exciting time of year for you as it relates to Rice?
A: There are three exciting times each year. The first is the beginning of O-Week when we get to welcome the new Owls to campus. Seeing their enthusiasm and exuberance is a perennial joy.
The second is the end of each spring semester starting with Willy Week, going through Beer Bike and ending at graduation. The excitement of the students is palpable, and it is so enjoyable to see them take flight.
The third is just for me. Each fall after finals, campus gets quiet. The days get shorter and, blessedly, cooler. As much as I like walking around campus normally, the winter evenings are just a special time to walk around Rice.
Q: What’s the one thing that makes Rice special to you?
All of the above. The community. The campus. The students. There isn’t just one thing. I can’t reduce Rice to one thing. It is the gestalt of the institution.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A: On occasion, I happen to be just in the right place at Rice to help make someone’s research work better or make their day easier. When I can facilitate that sort of thing, it feels pretty good.
Q: What are your hobbies and interests outside of work?
A: Playing games, reading, philosophy and swimming.
Q: What advice would you give to new employees?
A: Find a mentor. Listen. Watch how things get done. Sometimes the best ways to get things done are not intuitive and instead depend on who you know in unexpected places around the university.
Q: Share a bit about your background and career journey?
A: I spent almost 20 years as a biomedical researcher. It was my first career, and parts of it I enjoyed very much. During my graduate school (about 10 years into my career), I discovered that science was not going to be my career, but it took me another seven years for me to find my way out to my second career in research administration.
Here at Rice, I transitioned into research compliance, which I have enjoyed very much. I started by working on compliance in biological safety and recombinant DNA and then expanded my role into human subjects research. From there, I transitioned into a broader role, which is what I do now.
Q: What’s your favorite lunch spot or snack?
A: As a Will Rice associate, I really enjoy having lunch in the Commons with Will Rice students.
Q: What’s your secret talent?
A: Being able to go long periods of time with only five hours of sleep per night.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?
A: Spend the time to learn diverse tasks. You don’t know when you’re going to switch your goals and tasks, so spend a little time to learn some new things.
Q: If you could be Sammy The Owl for a day, what would you do?
A: Do I get to have Sammy’s gymnastics and flexibility? Maybe I’d do a couple of flips and then go visit some sick kids at Texas Children’s Hospital.
Q: How would you describe your experience as a Rice employee?
A: Because I spent so long doing biomedical research, Rice was the first place where I worked an actual office job. It’s been a very interesting ride, because I started that job March 1, 2020, about 10 days before Rice closed due to the pandemic. Between March 1 and March 12, my supervisor left to join another company. A year later, my job functions shifted to have new responsibilities, and two years later, they shifted again. It has been a very dynamic and exciting journey, full of growth and development. I hope it keeps being this way for the next 30 years.
Q: Where do you see Rice in 25 years?
A: I think that Rice is poised to be in a really good place 25 years from now. The country as a whole feels like it’s in a transitory period right now, almost a liminal space. In uncertain times, institutions like Rice can leverage their positions and their investments to make tremendous gains. The Momentous plan assembled by the president and the provost have the potential to be wildly successful if they can shepherd us through these interesting times and into more placid days ahead. If they’re successful, Rice may not just be a household name in Texas but in the entire country.
Q: What’s your favorite memory from your time with Rice?
A: There are a lot of good memories, so I’ll just describe one of the earliest favorites. In our first year here, during the first winter break we had here at Rice, I popped into my wife’s lab for a few nights to run a crucially important experiment. It was not like anything either of us had ever done before, but it was super important for our understanding of some of her research. After three nights of working on it, we got the results from the mass spectrometer, and it was beautifully clear and unambiguous. An experiment that worked clean and clear on the first try, when you’ve never done anything like it before, is something that all scientists appreciate.
Q: Describe Rice in four words or less.
A: Responsibility, integrity, community and excellence.