Former President George H.W. Bush’s connection to Rice University was frequently cited by media outlets during the week of his memorial services. More than 1,900 stories on Bush’s passing mentioned Rice, including citations in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and CNN, with multiple mentions of President David Leebron's homage to the former president.
Fort Bend County graves shed light on convict-leasing system
The discovery of forgotten graves of African-Americans who died while working in the state’s defunct convict-leasing system in Fort Bend County triggered a wave of media stories quoting Caleb McDaniel, an associate professor of history at Rice. Among the publications citing McDaniel were USA Today, The Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times and Texas Monthly.
Former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett ’71 returning to Rice
After managing the nation’s third-largest county for more than a decade and helping lead the area’s response to Hurricanes Ike and Harvey, former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett ’71 will become a professor in the practice at Rice’s School of Social Sciences. The distinguished alum’s return to campus was a popular story widely and repeatedly reported by local media outlets, including the Houston Chronicle and all television news outlets, as well as a number of radio stations and community newspapers.
For a list of November and December media stars,
please see the last section of this report.
Government Relations
Government Relations wraps up a busy 2018, preps for a busier 2019
Following the November midterm elections, Government Relations dissected the outcomes and adjusted strategy to match new balances of power at every level of government. That included meetings in Austin on behalf of the School of Social Science’s Texas Policy Lab and Rice’s Midtown innovation district with key staff in offices on both sides of the aisle. Government Relations also traveled to Washington, D.C., to welcome newly elected lawmakers and bid farewell to several departing members of the Texas congressional delegation. Among those visited was Rep. Ted Poe, who represented Rice. Poe recently retired after serving seven terms.
In December, Government Relations spent a great deal of time preparing for the start of the 86th Texas Legislature, which started Jan. 8. Hundreds of prefiled bills and resolutions were reviewed and shared across campus. Rice will be engaged on a number of subjects this session, namely advocating in support of funding for the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, the Texas Equalization Grant program and a continued set-aside for open educational resources from the state’s instructional materials allotment. Government Relations also plans to advance legislation on social impact bonds while responding to the debate on bills that address campus sexual assaults and any bills that may impinge on Rice’s private property rights.
University Relations
Revitalizing Rice Village
Rice Village is one of the largest real estate investments in Rice’s endowment portfolio. As a location where community relations, government relations and the university’s long-term investment interests intersect, it has become an important area of focus for the University Relations team.
Close collaboration with area stakeholders, especially through participation on the University Place Super Neighborhood Council and the board of the Rice Village Alliance (RVA), is key to Public Affairs’ engagement effort. University Relations is helping to raise the profile of the village and its merchants in addition to supporting the efforts of Rice Management Co. and Trademark Property Co. as they seek to improve the village and redevelop university assets in the area. Some of University Relations’ contributions include building and maintaining the RVA website; chairing a committee to research, print and distribute the first comprehensive Rice Village guide in more than a decade; and working with the Mayor’s Office of Special Events and Trademark Property to bring the city of Houston’s Sunday Streets celebration to the Village in November.
University Relations is also coordinating closely with Rice Management Co., the city of Houston and other area stakeholders on two major road reconstruction projects that directly impact the village and university-owned properties.
Creative Services
‘Inuksuit’ posters
Creative Services designed and edited a poster for the Humanities Research Center promoting “Inuksuit,” a concert-length work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams. The premiere performance will feature up to 45 percussionists from the Shepherd School of Music and across the U.S., who will play drums, cymbals, gongs, glockenspiels and sirens in Rice’s Live Oak Grove Feb. 16.
Creativity Up Close flyers
Creativity Up Close is an interdisciplinary course offered at the Moody Center for the Arts that explores the science and art of creativity. To promote the course, Creative Services designed and edited flyers for distribution across campus. Creativity Up Close is taught by Anthony Brandt, professor of composition and theory, and features several guest faculty members.
Veterans Day 2018 program
Creative Services designed and edited the program for Rice’s annual Veterans Day celebration, which took place on campus Nov. 12. The ceremony honored more than 100 military veterans among Rice’s faculty, staff and students. Hubert Daugherty, a Rice staff member and veteran of the Vietnam War era, was given special recognition at the event.
Multicultural Community Relations
Women leaders swim with the sharks
More than 100 women from the Houston and Rice communities attended the Oil & Gas Diversity Council’s Women in Leadership Symposium in the Rice Memorial Center Nov. 1. After a warm welcome from Renata Ramos, associate dean of academic affairs at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, other presenters shared their insights on topics ranging from “Leading Millennials” to “How to Swim With Sharks.” Multicultural Community Relations (MCR) hosted the event.
Educators discuss outreach at K-12 council meeting
As part of the K-12 council meeting in November, three educators talked about their efforts to reach various communities around Houston. Adria Baker, associate vice provost for international education, shared Rice’s plans for International Education Week. Sehba Ali, CEO of KIPP Houston Public Schools, talked about new developments with this acclaimed charter school. Graduate students with Rice’s chapter of Fun with Chemistry offered demonstrations and information to promote an interest in science among children in underserved schools.
Mayor’s Hispanic Advisory Board celebrated at Rice
The Mayor’s Hispanic Advisory Board gathered at President Leebron and Y. Ping Sun’s home for a holiday reception Dec. 18. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner spoke eloquently of the need for everyone to work together to move Houston forward. The reception was featured in Houston Style Magazine with an array of photos. MCR facilitated hosting this event at Rice for the sixth year in a row.
Marketing and Digital Communications
The 'interwebs' dashboard
Engagements
This reflects the number of interactions (likes, shares, comments, clicks, etc.) on a post for November and December: 273,153
Impressions
This reflects the number of times the content was seen by others in November and December: 2,123,174
Followers
This reflects the number of people who follow Rice on all social platforms: 197,003
In November and December, Rice social media channels received more than 2 million impressions and more than 200,000 engagements.
November’s top story was about former President Barack Obama’s appearance at the Baker Institute’s 25th anniversary gala. The post reached 27,439 people on Facebook and received 21,138 impressions on LinkedIn.
The most engaging story in December was Chanel Ericsson’s acceptance video. The video was reached by 22,778 people on Facebook and had an engagement rate of 9.7 percent on Twitter.
In December, an impromptu tweet that included four beautiful photos of campus received more than 30,000 impressions.
Rice.edu
The hero slider received 8,996 clicks in November and December. During these two months, the slider featured a Rice Magazine story, Obama and events for International Education Week.
November’s most-clicked slider was the video of stretch solar cells with 772 clicks. December’s most-clicked slider showed a tribute to former President George H.W. Bush and received 1,602 clicks.
The 2018 holiday video was a big hit on rice.edu and social media. The landing page for the holiday card received more than 6,000 views. Overall, the video was viewed more than 30,000 times on various platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and more.
Media Stars
Vivian Ho is November and December media star
Vivian Ho, the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics at the Baker Institute’s Center for Health and Biosciences, had the highest number of media mentions — 2,996 — during November and December, mainly for comments about drug price increases. Below are members of the Rice community who were mentioned in the media 10 or more times during November and December.
Vivian Ho
2,996
James A. Baker III
2,739
Douglas Brinkley
2,344
Mark Jones
2,125
Edward Djerejian
1,218
Jim Krane
986
Larry Dunbar
684
Tony Payan
270
Caleb McDaniel
131
Marie Lynn Miranda
124
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
118
David Leebron
106
Jim Blackburn
98
Tom Kolditz
97
Kenneth Medlock
96
Bob Stein
74
Daniel Cohan
73
Ed Emmett
71
Nicole Lennon
69
Genny Volpe
67
Chris Mullins
61
Quentin Millora-Brown
53
Trey Murphy III
53
Anshumali Shrivastava
51
Vikas Mittal
43
Jim Elliott
42
Grace Morgan
39
Anota Adekunle
38
Christopher Fagundes
36
Obinna Dennar
35
Josh Eyler
35
Peter Rodriguez
33
Rafael Verduzco
33
Eden King
32
John Michael Austin
31
David Gantz
31
Lauren Grigsby
31
Alex Kurkowski
31
Sumit Sarkar
31
Joshua Furman
30
Yvonne Romero Da Silva
30
Jim Kouzes
29
Tae Kouzes
29
David Vassar
29
Carly Graham
28
Loren Raun
28
Pulickel Ajayan
27
Lee Ann Cunningham
27
Jack Fox
25
Gang Bao
22
Mike Bloomgren
20
Naomi Halas
20
Diana Chirinos
18
Haibao Zhu
18
Dan Wallach
17
Peter Hotez
16
Rodrigo Salvatierra
16
Richard Gordon
15
Andrea Isella
15
James Tour
15
Joff Silberg
13
Haotian Wang
13
Daniel Woodworth
13
Han Xiao
13
George Bennett
12
Jorge Wu Mok
11
Zhiqi Hu
10
Robert Martin
10
Changxu Sun
10
Tanguy Terlier
10
Rice University’s media exposure continues to grow. For the first time in history, during 2018 Rice earned more than 100,000 citations by print, broadcast, trade and social media outlets in a single year. The 115,631 media hits represents an increase of 16 percent over the previous year and is more than thirteen times the number of citations when tracking began in 2007.