More than 100 members of the Rice community gathered at Brockman Hall for Opera Sept. 15 to welcome a slate of the university’s newest leadership team members: Stephen Bayer, vice president for development and alumni relations; Melinda Spaulding Chevalier, vice president for public affairs; and Tommy McClelland, vice president and director of athletics.
Stephen Bayer, a seasoned fundraiser with over 22 years of leadership experience in higher education, has been named vice president for development and alumni relations at Rice University, effective Sept. 26.
President Reginald DesRoches joined family members and friends of the late Rice Trustee Emeritus Ralph O’Connor’s family for a dinner and early preview of the landmark new science and engineering building named in his honor.
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.
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.
James Hurley will join Rice’s Office of Development and Alumni Relations (DAR) as its assistant vice president of alumni relations. He will assume his new role Aug. 1.
At the Association of Rice Alumni’s 2022 Laureates Awards ceremony May 7, the group bestowed its highest honor — the Gold Medal Award — to Rice Architecture’s John Casbarian ’69 ’72 and Janice Doty ’60. Rice President David Leebron and wife Y. Ping Sun were also awarded the ARA’s Gold Medal for their 18 years of service to the university.
The Moody Fund for Student Opportunity will finance a dozen newly created Rice endowments, providing students with an extensive array of enhanced educational opportunities financed by a $50 million commitment from the Moody Foundation.
Ana María Martínez, professor of voice, and Kathi Dantley Warren, vice president for development and alumni relations (DAR), have been named to Houston Woman Magazine’s annual list of Houston’s 50 Most Influential Women of 2020-21.