Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities, was a sought-after commentator regarding the indictment of former President Donald Trump by a Manhattan grand jury in late March. His analysis led to more than 3,300 media mentions, mainly for interviews with NPR’s “Morning Edition” and the BBC World Service.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, continues to be a go-to expert for developments in the region and related geopolitical trends. He shared his expertise in four different Associated Press stories over the past two months, with one article about Saudi Arabian oil cuts garnering more than 600 media hits.
A range of leading Rice experts provided analysis and commentary on the state of Texas’ takeover of the Houston Independent School District in mid-March. Among those consulted were the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Ruth López Turley and Erin Baumgartner, political scientists Mark Jones and Bob Stein, and President’s Distinguished Fellow Ruth Simmons. The engagement led to a total of 230 media hits, including opinion pieces and broadcast interviews.
For a full list of March and April media stars,
please see the last section of this report.
Government Relations
President DeRoches’ trip to Austin
In March, Government Relations was increasingly active in Austin, with the 88th Texas Legislature in full swing. The primary effort focused around planning and supporting President DesRoches’ two-day trip to Austin. Working with our state government consultants in Austin and Rice’s Development and Alumni Relations office, we crafted an agenda worthy of President DesRoches’ first trip to the state capital, including meetings with Gov. Greg Abbott, Commissioner of Higher Education Harrison Keller and several important committee chairs and representatives. We also helped arrange a conversation over afternoon coffee between President DesRoches and several Rice Owls who are interning in the Texas Legislature this session.
Cruz and Fletcher visits to Rice
While most of April was spent continuing the advancement of Rice’s legislative priorities in Austin, we also helped organize some federal engagement opportunities in Houston. On April 3, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, visited the Ion in Midtown, taking time to meet with President DesRoches and university leadership and participating in a Houston innovation economy roundtable we organized in partnership with the Ion team. On April 5, Rice hosted Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-TX, for a fireside chat and question-and-answer session with the Rice community. Fletcher spent over 90 minutes meeting with President DesRoches and Rice students, faculty and staff. More than 50 members of the Rice community participated in the live, in-person forum.
University Relations
Sammy rides again!
Each year, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo raises and donates thousands of scholarship dollars to colleges and universities all across the state of Texas, including Rice. In addition to working with the staff council and the High Order of Owl Tailgating Society to organize a campus-wide “Go Texan Day” salute to the start of the annual rodeo celebration, the University Relations Office also arranged for students, alumni and employees of Rice to purchase tickets in a specially designated Rice seating section for “Rice Night at the Rodeo” March 5 and for Sammy the Owl to participate in the Grand Entry parade that preceded the rodeo competition that evening.
Creative Services
Owlmanac: Spring 2023
The spring issue of the alumni newsletter, Owlmanac, featured the latest news from Rice alumni, promoted the Rice Alumni Traveling Owls program and listed the 2023 ARA Laureates. Creative Services printed 52,145 copies and mailed 51,895 copies to Rice alumni.
Rice Staff Appreciation
This brochure listed staff celebrating 5 to 40 years of service and staff recognized by the Rice Board of Trustees in calendar year 2022. There were 350 brochures printed and distributed for the Rice Staff Appreciation event Friday, April 21.
Center for Teaching Excellence
A commemorative publication was produced for the Center for Teaching Excellence to highlight the university awards.
Rice Magazine: Spring 2023
In April, we printed, mailed or distributed more than 60,000 print copies of the spring issue to alumni, friends, faculty and staff and uploaded an online issue featuring extended stories and videos. Our cover feature, “Record Enthusiasm,” turned the spotlight on KTRU Rice Radio and its hidden archive — a trove of DJ-penned music reviews. A Q&A with physician Von Nguyen ’97 delved into the relationships among AI, climate change and public health. For a portrait of enduring Rice friendship, we spoke to the accomplished women of “Crew Phi Crew.” Research, student life and alumni news rounded out the issue.
Multicultural Community Relations
Supporting the communities of Rice and Houston
On March 4, Multicultural Community Relations (MCR) partnered with the Development and Alumni Relations office and Rice’s Multicultural Center to support the Black Student Association (BSA) in presenting its annual Black Excellence Gala. President Reginald DesRoches welcomed guests at the elegant dinner, which was held in the Grand Hall of the Rice Memorial Center. Rice alumnus and chief marketing and strategy officer for the Houston Rockets Julian Duncan ’99 was the keynote speaker. The BSA awarded Jan West ’73, MCR assistant director, the Distinguished Alumni Award for her support of the Black student community at Rice. More than 300 students, alumni, faculty and staff attended the event. On April 13, MCR Director David Medina ’83 represented Rice at the annual gala for Chinquapin Preparatory School, a nonprofit college preparatory boarding school for low-income students from the Houston area.
Rice Latinx community honored at Los Búhos baseball game
On the beautiful Sunday afternoon of April 16, Rice’s Athletics department and MCR collaborated to honor the Latinx community at the Los Búhos baseball game. Rice alumni Sofia Adrogué ’88 and Fernanda Pierre ’14 and city council member Robert Gallegos threw the first pitch. Mariachi Luna Llena performed the national anthem, and the Rice Salseros danced between innings. Throughout the game, members of Rice’s Hispanic community were recognized, including Vice President for Enrollment Yvonne Romero Da Silva, as well as several Hispanic student organizations.
Stereotypes in video games
The community dialogue luncheon hosted April 21 by MCR featured Carlos Kelly, a postdoctoral fellow in Latinx studies at Rice. Kelly gave an informative talk about the negative portrayal of the Latinx community in video games and engaged guests in a discussion about the topic, citing some of the research from his upcoming book, “Ready Player Juan: Latinx Masculinities and Stereotypes in Video Games.” Luncheon guests included representatives from the city of Houston’s department of education, the Japanese American Citizens League, Houston Television and the office of the consulate general of Spain, among others.
Marketing and Digital Communications
Marketing
U.S. News Peer Influencer Campaign — Spring 2023
Purpose: to brand Rice and influence peer assessment voting by university presidents, provosts and admission officers
Spring buy runs February–May ’23
Digital: Two ad versions posted per month February–May for Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, NPR
February start for boosted posts and paid social advertising; will run through May
All ads promote/link to unconventional.rice.edu
March digital
April digital
Rice.edu + Subdomains
With the onset of Google Analytics 4, we will be showcasing all traffic across Rice-branded Drupal websites, starting with a comparison of the first four months (January through April) of 2023. Below are the results of that comparison.
March/April vs. January/February Page views: 3,604,338 vs. 4,288,944 (-15.96%) Average engagement time:1m 33s vs. 1m 38s (-4.49%) Event count:10,711,426 vs. 12,496,825 (-14.29%)
There are many factors involved in how GA4 tracks, from GDPR/CCPA compliance to event tracking (such as clicking a button) to general page views.
As of April 30, Public Affairs and the Office of Information Technology have successfully launched 303 Drupal 9 websites. On March 7, the Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Research in Texas website (https://achptx.rice.edu) launched its new website about the work of learning about the history of African Americans in Texas. On April 13, the AI Powered Renewable Energy Workshop website (https://aihouston.rice.edu/ai-powered-renewable-energy-workshop) launched in the Rice-branded Drupal theme.
The two departments are collaborating on an additional 31 new websites that have come into the Rice-branded theme. Some of the websites currently under development are:
Adrian Lenardic Lab
Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems (CoFES)
Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL)
Curriculum Management (Office of the Registrar)
Energy and Environment Initiative
Environmental Science
Frances Anne Moody-Dahlberg Gateway Program
Geofluids Lab | Helge Gonnermann
Inauguration of Reginald DesRoches Book – Online Edition
Innovation at Rice (VP of Innovation)
Office of Faculty Development (OFD)
Organization & Workforce Laboratory (OWL)
Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies
The Chemistry of Art
Social media
Impressions: the number of times the content was seen. Total Audience: the number of people who follow or like the main Rice accounts. Engagements: the number of interactions (likes, loves, shares, comments, clicks, etc.) on a post.
Social media channel overview for March and April:
Total net audience growth: 7,456 followers
Total impressions: 5,051,029
Total engagements: 232,946
Engagement rate per impression: 4.6%
Post link clicks: 18,751
Total audience across platforms: 281,549
Performance summary overview:
Impressions were up significantly at 46% for the period of March–April as compared to the previous reporting period. Engagements increased by 15.5%, published posts increased by 41% and audience grew slightly by 2.2%. Video views increased by 114.8% overall across all platforms, leading us to believe that the audience overall is more engaged with the content being shared.
Twitter:
Total followers: 47,039 Gained: 1.7% Engagement rate per impression: 2.5% Total published posts: 83 Top post: Synthetic biologists begin project to create “genetically encoded antibiotics.” Second highest: OEDK video – Team OR Lights, which built a tunable lighting system for better lighting for surgeons.
Facebook:
Total fans: 65,589 Gained: 1.1% Engagement rate per impression: 4.6% Total published posts: 100 Top post: Beer Bike 2023; a collection of pictures from the event. Second highest: Pre-Beer Bike 2023, filling water balloons in preparation for the event.
LinkedIn:
Total followers: 116,214 Gained: 1.9% Engagement rate per impression: 4% Total published posts: 89 Top post: Rice Magazine feature about CounterCommon Beerworks & Kitchen. Second highest: Rice professor Danielle King as a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award.
Instagram:
Total followers: 52,707 Gained: 1.9% Engagement rate per impression: 5.1% Total published posts: 106 Top post: Beer Bike 2023 Second highest: Beauty shot of the Houston area.
Media Stars
Douglas Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities, had the highest number of media mentions — 3,387 — during March and April, mainly for comments about the indictment of former President Donald Trump. Below are members of the Rice community who were mentioned in the media 10 or more times between March and April.
Douglas Brinkley
3,387
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
1,880
Mark Finley
1,479
Katharine Neill Harris
1,068
Anna Mikulska
616
Anastasiya Zavyalova
438
Ruth López Turley
435
Mark Jones
396
Jim Krane
360
Francisco Monaldi
248
Vicky Yao
160
Tony Payan
133
Daniel Preston
102
Jeffrey Fleisher
100
Kavya Sahni
80
Jing Zhou
76
Daniel Cohan
68
Adrienne Correa
68
Lauren Howe-Kerr
64
Omid Veiseh
62
Kevin McHugh
56
Tyler Graf
53
Muhammad Rahman
51
Reginald DesRoches
50
Anna Rhodes
50
Julia Szabo
50
Gary Hale
49
Nathan Jones
49
Bob Stein
49
James Tour
41
David Zhang
36
Wei Meng
35
Bing Deng
34
Pengcheng Dai
33
Satish Nagarajaiah
33
Kevin Wyss
33
Yi Cheng
32
Lucas Eddy
32
Vivian Ho
32
Patrick Hartigan
31
Michael Wong
31
Elora Shehabuddin
30
Ruth Simmons
30
Vanessa Garlepp
27
Charlie Gorton
27
Chris Heuser
27
Fadeel Khan
27
Ahalya Lettenberger
27
Jim Blackburn
26
Antonios Mikos
23
Amy Dittmar
21
Sandra McKay
20
Boris Yakobson
20
Ming Yi
20
Jun-Jie Zhang
19
Mike Bloomgren
16
Stephen Klineberg
16
Jacob Robinson
16
Ashesh Chattopadhyay
14
Abby Dowse
14
Qiyi Fang
14
Yifei Guan
14
Yannie Guo
14
Pedram Hassanzadeh
14
Loren Hopkins
14
Jun Lou
14
Scott Pera
14
Lauren Stadler
14
Alex Byrd
13
Andrei Mitrofan
13
Andriy Nevidomskyy
13
Sarah Park
13
Ramamoorthy Ramesh
13
Christian Schreib
13
Kelly Xu
13
Tong Chen
12
Bin Gao
12
Chien-Lung Huang
12
Moramay López-Alonso
12
Emilia Morosan
12
Jerzy Szablowski
12
Gary Woods
12
David Trevas
11
Chase Brown
10
Paul Cherukuri
10
John Diamond
10
Ken Medlock
10
The chart below shows Rice’s media mentions since 2007. The green column reflects the number of mentions through April 30, 2023.
