Matthews, Wise to receive ARA's Gold Medal at 2023 Laureates Awards
At the Association of Rice Alumni’s 2023 Laureates Awards ceremony May 4, the group will bestow its highest honor — the Gold Medal Award — to Kathleen Shive Matthews and Scott W. Wise. The annual ceremony also honored several prominent alumni with the Distinguished Alumni Award and several members of the Rice community with the Meritorious Service Award.
Moody X-Fest ’23 celebrates the launch of the Moody Experience at Rice
Rice University Owls gathered in celebration of the Moody Foundation’s historic $100 million gift to the campus. More than 1,000 students flooded Tudor Fieldhouse April 7 for Moody X-Fest ’23, the signature event of the inaugural Moody Experience celebrations.
Rice mourns Arthur Few, former professor and college magister
Rice University alumnus and professor emeritus Arthur Allen Few Jr. died Dec. 3, 2022, at his home in Gold Hill, Colorado, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and related medical issues. He was 83.
Rice University provost, trustee recognized by Houston Woman Magazine
Rice University’s top brass is represented in Houston Woman Magazine’s 50 Most Influential Women of 2022 list. Among the honorees are Provost Amy Dittmar and Board of Trustees member Claudia Gee Vassar, as well as seven others with Rice connections.
Rice mourns loss of trailblazing history chair, former dean Katherine Fischer Drew
Katherine Fischer Drew ’44 ’45, the esteemed Rice history chair, former acting dean of humanities and social sciences and the first woman ever hired as a tenure-track faculty member by the university, died March 19 at the age of 99.
Ocean warming intensifies viral outbreaks within corals
A groundbreaking three-year study has found evidence that ocean warming can trigger outbreaks of viruses that attack the symbiotic algae inside corals.
Rice University EMS receives legacy donation
The late Shelley Pennington ’78 was an active member and recent president of the Pennington First Aid Squad, so when it closed its doors earlier this year, the organization looked for other places to responsibly donate its resources. The connection resulted in a $180,000 donation to Rice University Emergency Medical Services.
Rice mourns professor emeritus and avid supporter Sam Davis
Sam H. Davis Jr. ’52 ’53, a professor emeritus of chemical engineering and former director of the Office of Continuing Studies, died on Christmas Day at age 92. A celebration of his life is tentatively planned for Saturday, March 25, at Rice’s Anderson-Clarke Center.
Rice Owls win big at Grammy Awards
Rice historian Doug Brinkley and alumna Germaine Franco took home the gold at the 65th annual Grammy Awards Feb. 5 in Los Angeles.
Rice’s Jamie Padgett wins Texas academy’s O’Donnell Award
Rice University structural engineer Jamie Padgett has received the 2023 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Engineering from The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas.
Inner ear has a need for speed
Rice bioengineers and applied physicists, together with and colleagues at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago, have unlocked the mechanism of the fastest synapses in the human body. A previously hidden mechanism in the inner ear that helps mammals balance via the fastest-known signal in the brain, and researchers from Rice University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago have modeled a hidden mechanism in the inner ear that helps mammals balance via the fastest-known signal in the brain.
People, papers and presentations for Dec. 19, 2022
Minjae Kim, assistant professor of management in organizational behavior at the Jones Graduate School of Business, was ranked one of 2022’s 50 best undergraduate business professors by Poets and Quants.
Rice alumna, astronaut Shannon Walker honored as namesake of new library
Houston city leaders broke ground Oct. 14 on the Dr. Shannon Walker Neighborhood Library, named after the three-time Rice graduate and NASA astronaut who has flown two missions aboard the International Space Station.
Owl Together 2022 — celebrating Rice’s past with an eye to the future
This year’s Owl Together festivities kicked off with the annual Rice Faculty Keynote Lecture Oct. 28. Douglas Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities and author of “American Moonshot,” spoke to alumni in Tudor Fieldhouse about John F. Kennedy and the race to space of the 1960s, just a few weeks after the 60th anniversary of JFK’s famous speech at Rice Stadium in 1962.
