During the month of May, Government Relations continued trips to Austin to advance Rice’s priorities during the home stretch of the Texas Legislature’s regular session. Taking stock of our accomplishments and unfinished business — and the positive relationships we built and maintained along the way — it’s safe to say this was a good, mostly quiet session for Rice and higher education. We made headway on increasing state funding for private university research and successfully advanced legislation for a new research institute, the Brain Institute of Texas, through the state House and a Senate committee. Though it ultimately stalled on the Senate floor, we built a lot of support for the issue along the way. We succeeded as parts of two coalitions: One helped ensure consistent funding levels for the state’s private university student financial aid program, while the other won pandemic liability protections for businesses and universities across the state. We also led a large group of research universities from across Texas in addressing problematic wording in a bill focused on research security and intellectual property theft. By and large, most bills we opposed failed to advance.
 
Meanwhile, as the session concluded in Austin at the end of May, early June found Congress advancing two major pieces of legislation — both of which Rice supported — intended to boost American research and competitiveness. The Senate passed the Endless Frontier Act as the renamed U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness Act, which would authorize $100 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF) over five years and put billions into new programs like regional technology hubs, the university technology center program and innovation institutes, all of which are opportunities for Rice. Shortly thereafter, the House passed the NSF for the Future Act and the Department of Energy (DOE) Science for the Future Act together, both of which would authorize meaningful funding increases for basic research at the NSF and DOE. Rice remains meaningfully involved in advocacy in the House and Seante as they begin negotiations to find a consensus path that can merge their largely aligned, but not coordinated, efforts.

The Welcome Center reopened June 14, 2021, for walk-up visitors and campus tours after being closed for 15 months. Student assistants will lead tours for elementary, middle school and community groups throughout the summer. On June 23, the Welcome Center hosted a group of eighth graders from California for the first in-person campus tour since March 2020. The Welcome Center looks forward to hosting more groups on campus this summer.

University Relations (UR) organized a happy hour for campus LGBTQIA+ members and allies to celebrate Pride month. With Pride Houston delaying their annual parade, which is now planned to take place this fall, UR arranged a Zoom meeting with representatives from six Rice LGBTQIA+ groups to discuss other ways to celebrate Pride month. The happy hour was held in the Graduate Commons outside of Valhalla June 18. Complete with rainbow décor, a Pride flag cupcake display, rainbow fruit skewers and proud Rice community members meeting and mingling, the event was a great success. Public Affairs’ Brandon Martin filmed this video of the event for the Rice YouTube channel.

Creative Services designed and edited a flyer to promote the School of Humanities’ new Big Questions course, titled Why Did So Many Die? The U.S. Response to COVID-19. Big Questions courses invite all Rice students to explore the ways in which humanities inquiry helps us face the major questions of our time.

Since its inception in 2019, The Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice has undertaken numerous initiatives to address their three-part charge. As part of that, 11 lectures and panel discussions were organized in the past year ranging from the history of Texas, to African American culture and politics in Houston in the era of segregation to Black student experiences on Rice’s campus. During the 2020–21 academic year, the task force investigated a wide range of questions in 23 “Doc Talk” webinars, featuring student research and the state of Black life at Rice. In June, two reports were released On the Research About Slavery and On the Founder’s Memorial. Creative Services designed the covers for both reports and promotional materials for the talks and webinars.

As part of a rebrand, Creative Services reworked the conference logo and background visuals for the Ken Kennedy Institute’s fall conference for use in advance promotion and calls for participation in the event. Originally the Data Science conference, the event was renamed the AI and Data Science conference and will take place Oct. 25–27, 2021.

Norie Guthrie, an archivist for Rice’s Woodson Research Center, presented “Mapping ‘The Red Book of Houston’” via Zoom at MCR’s Community Dialogue Luncheon May 20. Using digital mapping, Guthrie led a lively discussion with diverse community leaders and Rice alumni about the accomplishments of Houston’s early Black community. “The Red Book of Houston” is a valuable resource because it presents a slice of the city’s Black community in 1915 and is filled with residential, church, school and business addresses. According to Guthrie, “The Red Book of Houston” is recognized by researchers as unique in its comprehensive and creative celebration of Black life over a century ago.
 

Partnering with the Texas Diversity Council, MCR hosted three virtual workshops from June 21 to June 23 on how to write college admissions essays. The free workshops were designed for rising high school seniors. Parents and guardians were also invited to attend. Another webinar workshop was offered June 24 on the admissions and financial aid process. Staff members from the offices of Admission and Financial Aid provided general information about applying to college and how to seek financial aid and answered questions about Rice’s admissions process.