For the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission, BBC World Service invited a live audience to the Baker Institute to record of a panel discussion on the first lunar landing. The program will air around the world as the final episode of the BBC series “13 Minutes to the Moon.”
Rice biologist Scott Solomon offered the BBC’s CrowdScience program his thoughts on what may influence the evolution of future humans. Another interview with Inverse on how humans might evolve after they colonize Mars produced the most provocative headline of any Rice research this year: “Near-Sighted Kids of Martian Colonists Could Find Sex With Earth-Humans Deadly.” Solomon has been cited by more than 1,600 media outlets in the last two months.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a Rice adjunct professor of bioengineering and fellow at the Baker Institute, has become one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of the “anti-vax” movement and an indispensable resource for journalists seeking comment on this growing threat to public health. His latest interview on the subject with the BBC program “The Real Story” aired on more than 1,300 radio stations around the world.
For a list of May and June media stars, please see the last section of this report.
Government Relations
Government Relations heats up as summer begins
In May and June, Government Relations’ activity level remained high with two visits from senior Department of Defense (DOD) research offices. Bindu Nair, acting director of the DOD’s Basic Research Office, toured campus and met with Rice’s Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows and Vice Provost for Research Yousif Shamoo. Phil Perconti, director of the Army Research Laboratory, also visited campus to meet with research faculty and discuss research partnerships.
In mid-June, Government Relations supported Alumni Relations’ annual networking reception for summer interns and alumni in Washington, D.C. We assisted Caroline Levander, vice president for global and digital strategy, as she prepared to discuss higher education innovation with staff from Texas’ congressional delegation members during an event on Capitol Hill.
Government Relations worked the halls of the Texas Capitol until late May and worked closely with our coalition partners and higher education association to advance the cause for Rice’s priorities. The team was successful on many fronts, including renewal of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas on the November ballot, increased funding for the Texas Equalization Grant program, changing the law to encourage more pay for success contracts in Texas and both funding and encouraging the adoption of more open educational resources for Texas students.
University Relations
University Relations celebrates Rice and NASA
Summer 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the 60th anniversary of Rice’s long and beneficial collaboration with NASA. Public Affairs and the University Relations team have been working hard to ensure that the university receives appropriate recognition for its leading role in the race for space.
In May, Rice Stadium was the site of a NASA video shoot that linked Kennedy’s speech to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program, which also provided a reunion opportunity for many of the former NASA employees who helped achieve the goal of landing men on the moon by the end of that decade. NASA’s video will be released in late July as part of the Apollo 11 moon landing anniversary but, until then, you can access a behind-the-scenes video by Rice videographer Brandon Martin.
Public Affairs and Rice Athletics will cap off the summer by participating in the city’s official celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing at Discovery Green July 20. Rice will host an informational booth highlighting the university’s long history with NASA. The main stage attraction will feature a public conversation with Douglas Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities, about his new book, “American Moonshot.” Finally, Rice Athletics will promote the Sept. 14 “Why does Rice play Texas?” football game.
Following the event, the backdrop for Rice’s booth will be reused in Rice Stadium during the 2019 football season. Another booth element — a backdrop that enables visitors to take their photo “in Rice Stadium” alongside Kennedy as he delivers his historic speech — will become part of Public Affairs’ “The Rice Stuff” exhibit in Fondren Library.
Creative Services
Commencement poster
To honor the Class of 2019, Creative Services produced a poster featuring a photo of the Sallyport taken by university photographer Tommy LaVergne. The poster and a letter from President David Leebron were placed in the graduates’ diploma tubes at commencement.
Classical and European Studies brochures
Creative Services designed and edited a series of brochures to highlight four programs offered by the Department of Classical and European Studies. The series was produced for on-campus distribution to increase student awareness of the department’s programs.
Rice Magazine redesign launch
The spring 2019 issue of Rice Magazine debuted the publication’s new design and featured stories about creativity. The cover shows Natasha Bowdoin, an assistant professor in Visual and Dramatic Arts, with her site-specific installation titled “Sideways to the Sun.”
Multicultural Community Relations
Welcoming new alumni
Multicultural Community Relations (MCR) helped organize two receptions to welcome new alumni into the fold. The Association of Rice University Black Alumni held a reception for members of the Black Student Association May 9. The Society of Latino Alumni of Rice and the Hispanic Association for Cultural Enrichment at Rice hosted the sarape stole distribution ceremony May 10. At each event, more than 150 parents, Rice faculty, alumni and staff assembled to celebrate the accomplishments of recent graduates.
Rice community reads at Blackshear Elementary
MCR and members of the Rice community participated in a summer literacy project for the second graders at Blackshear Elementary. The students received a backpack filled with new books and literacy activities from HISD to encourage summer reading. Twenty-six Rice staff members, alumni and students paired with groups of Blackshear students to help them read their new books.
The art of writing well
In partnership with MCR, the Texas Diversity Council hosted its ninth annual college readiness program. In June, about 60 high school students spent an intense week learning about college admission and financial aid. Students also attended workshops on how to write college admission essays. Corporate volunteers and instructors contributed to making this year’s project a success.
Education is the key to success
In May, MCR hosted the final meeting of the K-12 Outreach Council with three speakers who presented information about how to help the communities of Houston. The presenters were Leticia Velazquez, director of operations, Tapia Center; Tom Monaghan, executive director, Houston A+ Challenge; and William Edmond II, assistant director, Rice Multicultural Affairs and sponsor of the Rice Black Male Leadership Initiative. They talked about an elementary school mentoring project, an educational STEM summer camp and an organization that provides community support for public schools.
Marketing and Digital Communications
The 'interwebs' dashboard
Social Media
Engagements
This reflects the number of interactions (likes, shares, comments, clicks, etc.) on a post for May and June: 662,903
Impressions
This reflects the number of times the content was seen by others in May and June: 2,852,473
Followers
This reflects the number of people who follow Rice on all social platforms: 214,860
In May and June, Rice social media channels received more than 2 million impressions and more than 600,000 engagements.
Twitter’s top post was a video of baby owls on campus. The video was viewed more than 13,000 times. Another high-performing post with more than 2,000 engagements was a collection of photos showing Rice-inspired duct tape art made by a recent graduate.
The video of baby owls on campus was also Facebook’s top post. The video reached more than 78,000 people and was viewed more than 34,000 times. The commencement video also had more than 3,000 engagements.
LinkedIn’s top post was a research video about studying ancient ice, which was viewed 4,400 times. The commencement video also performed well in this channel with 5,779 views.
Instagram’s top post was a photo series of the baby owls, which received 28,334 impressions. A photo of Lovett Hall at sunset received more than 2,500 engagements.
Rice.edu
The hero slider received 4,734 clicks in May and June.
The most-clicked slider — 1,208 total — was the video of organ bioprinting. The second most-clicked slider linked to the Unconventional Students at Rice story featuring the Tohme triplets with 925 clicks.
Updated rice.edu and brand websites
In late June, the web development team launched the new brand.rice.edu website and relaunched rice.edu.
All of the brand standards are now housed in a modern website with refreshed elements that better reflect current print and website design. The website will allow the Rice community to better represent the university through its visual identity in the form of a revamped and extended color palette, downloadable logo lockups and other helpful usage guidelines to enhance the brand.
The updated rice.edu site was designed for mobility and modularity with a clean, contemporary design that reflects the essence of the university’s refreshed brand. The Public Affairs and Information Technology offices are partnering to distribute and migrate more than 320 Rice websites from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 over the next year, and have transitioned to a cloud-based hosting service, Acquia.
The two websites are the precursor to redeveloping all the sites across the rice.edu domain and will become the general theme that drives Rice’s web development for years to come. Beyond the clean design, the new theme features a multilevel, highly visual and accessible menu system, modular components (news grid, stories grid, videos, stylized headers and callouts) that can be repurposed to meet the needs of individual schools, departments, centers and other groups across the rice.edu space.
The Google Analytics data below reflects rice.edu’s relaunch from June 28 to July 8. The site received more than 85,000 page views, and visitors spent an average time of 4 minutes on the page. With a 41% bounce rate, the new site is off to a good start and potentially will net more than 4 million page views by this time next year.
Media Stars
Mark Jones is May and June media star
Mark Jones, the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, professor of political science, fellow in political science at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and fellow at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, had the highest number of media mentions — 3,487 — during May and June, mainly for comments about immigration. Below are members of the Rice community who were mentioned in the media 10 or more times during May and June.
Mark Jones
3,487
Scott Solomon
1,645
Vivian Ho
1,576
Kenneth Medlock
1,497
Peter Hotez
1,373
Douglas Brinkley
973
Jordan Miller
637
Utpal Dholakia
258
Katharine Neill Harris
227
Dan Wallach
199
Trei Cruz
189
Stephen Klineberg
153
Matt Canterino
152
Joe Karlgaard
103
James Tour
83
Jacob Robinson
69
Tony Payan
68
Tina Langley
60
Gabriel Collins
57
Jim Krane
56
Matteo Pasquali
49
Peter Rodriguez
43
Jun Lou
42
Antonios Mikos
42
Seth Huston
41
Andrew Dunlap
39
Brent Smith
36
Pulickel Ajayan
35
Ed Emmett
35
Phil Bedient
34
Pratiksha Dongare
33
Zoran Perunovic
33
David Leebron
32
Alessandro Alabastri
31
Hannah Jackson
31
Oara Neumann
31
Justin Cronin
30
Christopher Johns-Krull
30
David Medina
30
Shaurey Vetsa
30
Kaitlyn Xiong
30
Adrian Duhalt
29
Naomi Halas
27
Laurence Yeung
27
Tomasz Tkaczyk
26
Yingying Xu
23
Max Besbris
22
Francisco Monaldi
22
Joyce Beebe
20
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
19
Gang Bao
18
Jason Guo
17
Stephan Link
17
Paul Engel
16
Edison Liang
16
David Alexander
15
Garrett Gayle
15
Kelly Weinersmith
15
Andrew Barron
14
M.M. Rahman
14
Duane Windsor
14
Tony Brown
13
Nitant Gupta
12
Elizabeth Vann
12
Linda Welzenbach
12
Mike Bloomgren
11
Michaela Haet
11
Pavan Raja
11
Boris Yakobson
11
Daniel Cohan
10
Bagrat Grigoryan
10
Erica Ogwumike
10
Justin Tang
10
Allison Thacker
10
The chart below shows Rice’s media mentions since 2007. The red column reflects the number of Rice media mentions so far this year as of June 30.
