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Students lead RCEL 2015 admissions campaign
The 2015 Admissions campaign for the RCEL Engineering Leadership Certificate program began in late February with RCEL student leadership taking the lead in spreading the word about RCEL. Students coordinated with faculty to speak to individual classes about the benefits of RCEL and the certificate program. RCEL college reps spread the word in the colleges, and current students were encouraged to talk to friends and classmates about their own RCEL experiences. Student leadership also organized a Study Break event to further advertise the program.
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Early registration for the certificate program ended in February. Deadline for open registration is March 28, 2015. All interested students are required to complete an application explaining their current leadership experience, why they are interested in RCEL and where they see themselves after Rice.
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Rice University receives NSF grant to become innovation hub
Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have received a three-year, $3.75 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help faculty translate academic research into useful technologies with commercial applications. RCEL is working with the Rice Alliance to recruit and train future teams of potential academic entrepreneurs across the Southwest. The goal is to foster entrepreneurship among faculty and graduate students.
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Rice begins plans for
Leadership Reaction Course on campus
RCEL is spearheading planning for the construction of a Leadership Reaction Course (LRC) on the Rice campus. Adapted from military leadership training, the LRC is a set of physical and leadership challenges designed to teach individual leadership and to build trust. Many universities and corporations have found reaction courses are valuable to the development of young leaders. RCEL students currently use Texas A&M's course as part of ENGI 218, Engineering Leadership Lab. Rice’s goal is to build a course that can be tailored to a variety of participants, from college and high school athletic teams to youth Boy and Girl Scout troops. To make a gift, or for more information, contact Kaz Karwowski at klk5@rice.edu or Sara Lillehaugen Rice at 713-348-3189 or slrice@rice.edu.
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Rice Robotics wins Excellence Award
at South Texas Vex-U Regional
The Rice Robotics Club placed second in the South Texas Vex-U regional competition held on February 21. The team also won the prestigious Excellence Award, which automatically qualified them for the World Championships, which take place in April.
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Karwowski spotlights students and the
changing oil and gas industry in Houston Chronicle
RCEL's Executive Director Kaz Karwowski was interviewed by the Houston Chronicle talking about students and the changing landscape for jobs within the oil and gas industry. Read the article here.
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New to RCEL:
ENGI 615: Leadership Coaching for Engineers
New to RCEL this semester is ENGI 615: Leadership Coaching for Engineers, a professionally-oriented graduate class for early career leaders in engineering. This class focuses on the skills and practices of professional coaching, and developing leadership in engineers and engineering teams. This first-of-its-kind class will also train leadership coaches for RCEL undergraduates. Taught by David Niño and Germaine Porche, the class currently has 15 master's and doctoral engineering students.
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Spring 2015 RCEL Communications program in full swing
RCEL’s Communications program is in full swing for the Spring 2015 semester. So far, Beata Krupa has lectured on professional communication topics in 12 courses across several departments in the School of Engineering. She and a group of graduate and undergraduate peer communication coaches also help individual students prepare for in-class presentations, pitch competitions, and poster sessions. In the Fall 2014 semester, the program worked with almost 300 engineering students. These students participated in more than 700 “communication touch points” – lectures, in-class exercises, and individual coaching sessions. The Spring 2015 semester is going to be equally busy!
RCEL's Jan Hewitt continues her work with engineering graduate students, teaching two sections of ENGI 600, in which students must complete a paper for publication, extended PhD proposal or thesis chapter. Hewitt is co-teaching CAAM 600, along with CAAM professors Tim Warburton and Paul Hand. CAAM 600 is required of all second year Computational and Applied Mathematics master's students and is designed to help them write and defend their Master's thesis. Jan is also assisting ECE 599, which is now required for first-year Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate students and is designed to help them write and defend their PhD proposal.
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Welcome to our new hire!
Germaine Porche, M.S.
Lecturer, Engineering Leadership
Germaine Porche joined RCEL in January 2015 as a lecturer and will co-teach ENGI 615: Leadership Coaching for Engineers. Her 21-years consulting experience is in coaching executives, individuals and groups to deliver high-impact business results. She is president and co-founder of Eagle’s View Consulting, an international coaching and management consultancy. Germaine co-authored COACH ANYONE ABOUT ANYTHING: How to Help People Succeed in Business and Life, listed among Amazon.com’s Top 100 Business Books for 2003; the CD series, Ask The Coaches; the new bestselling humor series, COACHING SOUP for the CARTOON SOUL; and Coach Anyone About Anything: How to Empower Leaders and High Performance Teams.
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RCEL hosts book signing event with Katherine Maxfield
In November, RCEL hosted a book signing event for Katherine Maxfield, author of "Starting Up Silicon Valley: How ROLM Became a Cultural Icon and Fortune 500 Company." More than 75 students, faculty, alumni and former ROLMans (former ROLM employees) attended the event in McMurtry Auditorium to hear the story of four Rice graduates who helped build Silicon Valley. Katherine and her husband, Bob Maxfield (the M in ROLM), sat down with RCEL students prior to the event to discuss ROLM and Bob's experiences with the company and the Valley.
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RCEL challenges VISION students to
"Make it Move"
More than 250 high school students from around the country converged at Rice as part of VISION 2015, an annual program hosted by the Admission Office to recruit underrepresented minority students. RCEL hosted a design challenge called “Make it Move,” an adaptation of a lab offered in the program. The project gave student groups a shoebox full of materials and asked them to make something that moved. The winning design was a car made from a shoe box using a rubber band for propulsion. Winners of the challenge received Rice engineering T-shirts, blankets and flash drives. RCEL students and members of Rice’s National Society of Black Engineers served as coaches and judges for the challenge.
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RCEL sponsors
Undergraduate Elevator Competition
Thirty-eight student teams presented 90-second pitches for their proposed or developed innovations, describing the designs, the problems being solved, their competitive advantages and commercial potential. First place went to Team SharkTank, which is developing safe means of disposing hypodermic needles in the developing world. The event was held Nov. 6 in the Shell Auditorium of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. The event was sponsored by the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and RCEL.
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Inaugural OWLOpen a startup success
Five graduate and four undergraduate teams competed in the 2015 OWLOpen, the first all-Rice student startup competition, held at the BioScience Research Collaborative on Feb. 20. Houston investors and entrepreneurs judged the teams’ 10-minute business plan pitches. The winner of the undergraduate track was Bizongo, earning a $2,500 cash prize, while DexMat Inc. won the graduate track, earning both a $2,500 cash prize and an automatic entry into the 2015 Rice Business Plan Competition. RCEL was a major sponsor of the event along with the Rice Alliance, Rice Launch, and alumni Rachel '83 and Bruce '80 Deskin.
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RCEL student leadership hosts Study Break to promote Engineering Leadership Certificate
As the deadline for certificate program applications drew near, RCEL student leadership hosted a Study Break for engineering students on February 24 in Duncan Hall. More than 50 engineering students took a much needed break from studying for midterms to grab some food and learn more about RCEL and the Engineering Leadership Certificate. Students were challenged to complete the Marshmallow Challenge at the start of the event. "Thank you!" to our seniors/student leaders who organized and ran the event - Matt Lord, Rebecca Lam, Ivan Tanakov, Jade Juzswik, John Robertson-Lopez, Xin Huang and Justice Perez White. |
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Senior leadership hosts weekly RCEL lunch
This semester, RCEL's senior leadership has begun hosting weekly lunches on Fridays in the Duncan College Commons. Current certificate students are encouraged to stop by and talk with the seniors about classes, internships, jobs and just about anything else. Non-RCEL students are also encouraged to stop by to talk and learn about RCEL.
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Ignite 2015 happening now!
Sponsored by RCEL, the Jones Graduate School of Business and the Rice Alliance, this trek across Silicon Valley provides entrepreneurially-minded business and engineering students a chance to meet some of the Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs. RCEL Executive Director Kaz Karwoski is accompanying the students on the trip and RCEL is supporting accepted Rice engineering students by paying up to $300 towards airfare expenses.
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Nominations wanted for 2nd Annual Parks Award
RCEL is now taking nominations for the 2015 Robert H. Parks Jr. Prize for Excellence in Engineering Leadership award. Last year's winner was Allison Garza, a senior graduating with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. In her endorsement letter, Judy Le, director of Leadership Rice, said Garza “embodies excellence” and focuses on “the things she cares about and puts the full weight of her strengths, talents, and energy behind them.”
Graduating seniors must be nominated by a faculty or staff member to be eligible to submit an application. Deadlines for application is April 1 for the $3,500 prize. Eligibility requirements and complete nomination/application information can be found here.
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RCEL student mentors lead team to victory
Seven Rice engineering students took part in Shell’s Viva Technology STEM Showdown on Nov. 7, held at the University of Houston. Members of RCEL and the Rice chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) mentored a team of high school students from the Young Women’s College Prep Academy. The team took home first and second place in the individual group, winning GoPros and iPad Minis. The girls also took first place in the overall school competition earning $5,000 for their school.
For more information:
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RCEL student volunteers put leadership
skills into practice at STEM Workshop
RCEL and NSBE students volunteered and mentors at the World Youth Foundation/100 Black Men of Metropolitan Houston’s STEM Workshop on January 24. The workshop, sponsored by Microsoft, the World Youth Forum, 100 Black Men and ConocoPhilips, was held at Texas Southern University, and was designed to show students what opportunities exist in STEM fields and provide hands-on sessions solving engineering problems.
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Rice STEM Magic Show amazes local elementary school students
In December, RCEL sponsored the R-STEM Magic Show for 5th grade students at Valley West Elementary School in southwest Houston. Rice graduate students Jacob Decklever (mechanical engineering) and Olawale Lawal (materials science) organized and ran the three-hour event showcasing fun ways to use science. Rice student volunteers ran four different stations, including nano-science, build-a-motor, and can crush. Volunteers from the Rice MAHI Lab demonstrated their research on haptic feedback, which was a favorite station for the students. About 120 students attended the event. R-STEM hopes to continue to amaze students at future events.
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Checking in with RCEL Alumni
Brandon Hautt '14
Chemical Engineering
What are you up to?
I'm working for INEOS in La Porte as the unit process engineer for our plant's 20 MW cogeneration facility (and a few other things). I'm currently living in the Heights and my hobbies include avoiding Midtown.
Biggest lesson from RCEL?
99% of people will gladly spend their time sharing information with you if you are a new engineer who is eager to learn.
Contact Brandon
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