Bloomberg’s message to Rice graduates: ‘Honesty matters’
Rice’s commencement was featured in Rice News, on rice.edu, on social media and in photos and a video, from which “NBC Nightly News” selected scenes for its graduation roundup. Michael Bloomberg’s commencement speech was cited by numerous media, including an Associated Press story that appeared in more than 500 outlets.
The hiring of Matt Bragga as Rice’s new head baseball coach appeared on the front of the sports section in the Houston Chronicle and in more than 10 other media outlets.
New Mars discoveries advance case for possible life
An expert alert about Rice geologist Kirsten Siebach’s availability to comment on NASA’s Curiosity rover’s discovery of organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock on Mars resulted in an Associated Press story that appeared in The New York Times and more than 800 other media outlets.
For a list of media stars for March-April and May-June,
please see the last section of this report.
Government Relations
Activity continues on many fronts as Government Relations touts Rice in
Austin and D.C.
Throughout May and June, Government Relations continued a series of strategic meetings in Washington, D.C., Austin and on campus. That included a visit by state Rep. John Zerwas, who toured the lab of K.C. Nicolaou, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry at Rice. Zerwas learned how funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas helped bring Nicolaou to Rice. Zerwas also heard about the recently announced K.C. Nicolaou Research Accelerator, a joint research collaboration with AbbVie.
Government Relations helped arrange meetings and gain buy-in from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and the Texas Veterans Commission for the School of Social Sciences’ Texas Policy Lab. Government Relations also carried out a series of Capitol Hill meetings with staff from key leadership offices and members of the Texas delegation. The trip included meetings with staff for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, along with Reps. Pete Olson, Randy Weber and Ted Poe.
With ongoing interim session hearings for the Texas Legislature as well as appropriations and legislative caucus activity in D.C., Government Relations will continue promoting Rice’s research interests and the participation of Rice experts in hearings and briefings.
University Relations
For the 11th year in a row, Public Affairs has collaborated with campus and alumni LGBTQIA+ organizations to assure an organized presence for Rice at Houston’s annual Pride Parade. An estimated 500,000 people lined the streets of downtown Houston June 23 to cheer 150 parade entries, including the university’s parade contingent of nearly 100 Rice alumni, students, staff, faculty, family and friends.
The theme for this year’s Houston Pride celebration, “Your story, your pride,” provided a perfect opportunity to promote the work of Rice’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, which has been training Rice undergraduates to collect oral histories of Houston’s LGBTQIA+ community since 2007. Many of the more than 140 oral histories that have been collected are archived at the Woodson Research Center, and several are featured on rice.edu/pride.
Creative Services
Creative Services produced the save-the-date postcard for the De Lange Conference XI, which will be held at Rice Dec. 4-5. The conference will bring together biologists, engineers, medical researchers, policy scholars and others to discuss the future of bioelectronics.
To honor the Class of 2018, Creative Services produced a stunning poster that accompanied a letter from President David Leebron. The poster and letter were rolled into each graduate’s diploma tube at commencement.
Creative Services reprinted 500 T-shirts for Rice’s Medieval Studies program. The T-shirts were distributed to faculty, students and staff to promote the visibility of the program around campus and beyond.
Multicultural Community Relations
Energy leaders meet at Rice
The World Energy Cities Partnership held its annual board meeting May 1 in the Founder's Room in Lovett Hall. President Leebron welcomed the group, which included mayors and representatives from 20 cities from around the world. Multicultural Community Relations (MCR) was instrumental in organizing the meeting. MCR also helped the Association of Chinese American Professionals organize the Diversity Summit, which took place May 4 in Sugar Land. At the invitation of MCR, staff members from the Glasscock School, the Jones School and Admissions joined more than 400 people at the conference.
Rice volunteers share the love of reading
Nearly 40 volunteers from Rice, the University of Houston and the Mayor’s Hispanic Advisory Board spent the morning of May 21 reading to students from Blackshear Elementary as part of the school’s Literacy Day. MCR organized the event and collected books and cash contributions, which resulted in a donation of 500 books and healthy snacks – one for every student at the school. The Houston Area Urban League generously donated more than 200 books. Teachers, staff and the principal of Blackshear also received gifts of appreciation from Rice.
Paving the way to college and beyond
MCR hosted the annual Texas Diversity Council Summer Youth Program, a weeklong conference that offers college readiness workshops to low-income high school students. The program, which is free of charge, offered sessions on leadership, careers, the admission and financial aid process and preparing for the College Board exams. Students were also given a campus tour. Students who participated in the camp for four consecutive summers were awarded a $1,000 scholarship by the Texas Diversity Council.
Marketing and Digital Communications
The 'interwebs' dashboard
Engagements
This number reflects how many people were potentially reached through Rice websites and social media during May and June: 302,281
Impressions
This number reflects people who have read or been exposed to Rice via web efforts in May and June: 5,707,508
Followers
This number reflects people who have actively shared Rice web and social media content during May and June: 187,224
In May and June, Rice social media channels received more than 5 million impressions and more than 300,000 engagements. The overall social media engagement rate for May and June was 5.2 percent. During the month of June, the engagement was strong for Facebook with 62.2 percent.
The most engaging story in May was the announcement of the Baker Institute’s 25th anniversary gala guest of honor, former President Barack Obama. The story received more than 34,857 impressions and 2,807 engagements on Facebook.
The feature on the Young Owls Leadership Program was the most engaging story in June with more than 9,362 engagements and 6,048 impressions on Facebook.
The rice.edu hero slider received 19,127 clicks in May and June. During these two months, the slider featured commencement imagery, the Moody Center for the Arts, the new campus garden and an introduction to Rice baseball’s new head coach.
May’s most-clicked slider was a video about unconventional student Kaysie Tam with 2,596 clicks. June’s most-clicked slider was a feature on Rice’s participation in the 2018 Houston Pride Parade with 671 clicks.
Paid media strategy
The paid media plan closed out fiscal year 2018 with more than 53 million impressions — up over the past year driven by a diversified plan that included radio, print, web and digital display. New placements included American Public Media as well as an extension of our digital display through June.
Overall, the new Unconventional Wisdom ads that focused on outstanding faculty leaders were well-received. There was a marked improvement to our click-through rates in comparison with previous ads. Traffic to unconventional.rice.edu increased along with the time spent on the page and the average number of pages per session.
In fiscal year 2019, we will continue to highlight Rice’s faculty and research — emphasizing how their work is forward-looking and impacting the world.
Media Stars for March-April and May-June
Mark Jones, the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, professor of political science, fellow in political science at the Baker Institute and fellow at the Kinder Institute, had the highest number of media mentions — 1,901 — during March and April, mainly for comments on primary elections. Below are the Rice experts who were mentioned in the media 10 or more times during March-April.
Mark Jones
1,901
Bob Stein
789
Douglas Brinkley
373
Calvin Anderson
262
Scott Pera
160
Ako Adams
156
Bishop Mency
156
Najja Hunter
155
William Martin
149
Angela Minas
142
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
135
Yael Hochberg
117
Pulickel Ajayan
103
J.T. Trauber
96
Jeffrey Hartgerink
88
Wyatt Imus
71
J.T. Ibe
70
Connor Cashaw
68
Carl Caldwell
63
David Leebron
63
James Tour
58
Dan Wallach
51
Richard Baraniuk
47
Ashok Veeraraghavan
47
Erika de la Garza
46
Ming Tang
45
Peter Godber
43
Caleb McDaniel
42
Antonia Sebastian
42
Utpal Dholakia
40
Francisco Monaldi
39
Rouzbeh Shahsavari
38
Jacob Robinson
37
Chandra Sekhar Tiwary
37
Bill Fulton
36
Ed Egan
34
Peter Rossky
33
Nicole Carrejo
32
Lena Simine
32
Lei Tao
32
Shuo Zhao
32
Junichiro Kono
30
Cin-Ty Lee
28
Tom Miller
26
Boris Yakobson
25
Mohamad Kabbani
23
Ashutosh Sabharwal
23
Mike Bloomgren
22
Suzanne Deal Booth
19
Melissa Marschall
19
Pedro Alvarez
18
Edward Djerejian
18
Tom Killian
18
Stephen Klineberg
18
Rafael Verduzco
18
Aydin Babakhani
17
Bo Chen
17
Dan Cohan
17
Wayne Graham
17
Vivian Ho
17
Aditya Mohite
17
Steve Murdock
17
Hsinhan “Dave” Tsai
17
Matt Canterino
16
Erica Ogwumike
16
Jeremy David
15
Nicole Iademarco
15
Theresa Sonka
15
Sarah Bengston
14
Emmanuel Esukpa
14
Weilu Gao
14
Timothy Morton
14
Scott Solomon
14
Luke Armstrong
13
Aaron Cephus
13
Xinwei Li
13
Tony Payan
13
Moshe Vardi
12
Sibani Lisa Biswal
11
Di Du
11
Eduardo Salas
11
David Zhang
11
Hajo Adam
10
Graysen Schantz
10
Kyle Shelton
10
Ping Song
10
Kirsten Siebach, assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, had the highest number of media mentions — 1,741 — during May and June, mainly for comments on NASA’s Curiosity rover finding organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock on Mars. Below are the Rice experts who were mentioned in the media 10 or more times during May-June.
