Rice University

The Rice University School of Architecture is an undergraduate and graduate institution for the built environment at Rice University in Houston,... Texas. Rice's graduate and undergraduate programs in architecture typically maintains an enrollment of around 200 students. Founded in 1912, the faculty consists of twenty architects, historians, and theoreticians, supplemented by visiting scholars and is led by Dean and Professor Sarah Whiting. The school offers five types of degrees: a Bachelor of Arts , a Bachelor of Architecture or B.Arch. , Master of Architecture or M.Arch., Master of Urban Design, and Doctor of Architecture. There was a close relationship between the first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, and William Ward Watkin, who served as the representative of Cram Goodhue and Ferguson, the Boston firm retained to design the campus and the first collection of buildings. Watkin went on to lead the architectural program until his death in 1952. The Architecture school is housed in MD Anderson Hall off the main academic quadrangle of the University.
more

The Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice University offers the Houston community the opportunity to study personal and... professional areas of interest. It is named in honor of an endowment gift from Houstonians Susanne and Melbern Glasscock. Established as the Office of Continuing Studies in December 1967, the school provides a bridge between Rice University and its Houston neighbors. Initially, classes were developed to teach area professionals about advances in their fields. From 1968 to 1972, between 150 and 200 students per year attended technical and business courses. In 1973, courses began to include humanities and subjects of general interest. In spring 1975, language courses began to be offered. In the 1970s and 1980s, Continuing Studies offered several notable courses including “Interpreting America,” a series of classes designed to complement the NBC historical series, America and “Living Texas,” which was featured in the New York Times and Newsweek. By 1992, annual enrollment reached 10,000 with approximately 200 classes plus foreign language classes. “Continuing Studies was indirectly responsible for launching a hit movie.
more

The George R. Brown School of Engineering is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It contains the departments of Bioengineering,... Chemical Engineering and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational and Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Statistics. Engineering has been part of Rice's curriculum since the university's founding in 1912, but the school was not established as its own unit until 1975. In its earliest days, Rice offered courses in chemical, civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. Over the years, the engineering program grew, and in 1975 the George R. Brown School of Engineering was established. Presently, the school comprises eight academic departments and includes fourteen research institutes and centers. More than one fourth of Rice students are engineering majors. Among the more than 100 engineering faculty are six members of the National Academy of Engineering. Virtually all undergraduate courses in engineering are taught by Ph.D. faculty.
more

The Wiess School of Natural Sciences is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It contains the departments of Biochemistry and Cell... Biology, Chemistry, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Earth Science, Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy. Rice is well-known for its groundbreaking research in nanotechnology. One of Rice's greatest minds and pioneers of the field was Richard Smalley, the Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Smalley received the Nobel Prize in 1996 for the discovery buckminsterfullerene, an allotrope of carbon commonly referred to as "buckyballs". Rice has historically been known for its strength in the sciences. Its Department of Space Science was established in 1963. The land on which the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center was built was donated by Rice University. Following this, President John F. Kennedy made a speech at Rice Stadium calling on the United States of America to develop its space program further. Rice is also known for its emphasis on undergraduate education. The Wiess School of Natural sciences offers research experience for its students.
more

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business is one of the academic units of Rice University in Houston, Texas. Named in honor of the late Jesse... Holman Jones, a prominent Houston business and civic leader, the school received its initial funding in 1974 through a major gift from the Houston Endowment Inc., a philanthropic foundation established by Jones and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones. The school offers the following degrees - Master of Business Administration , MBA for Executives, MBA for Professionals, Joint MBA/ME with the George R. Brown School of Engineering, and Joint MD/MBA with Baylor College of Medicine. In addition, the Jones School offers Executive Education which is a full schedule of non-credit executive education and customized courses for business and industry. The Jones School is located in the city of Houston, second to New York in the number of Fortune 500 companies located here. Houston ranks second in employment growth rate and fourth in nominal employment growth among the 10 most populous metro areas in the US. In 2006, the Houston metropolitan area ranked first in Texas and third in the U.S.
more

Robert Floyd Curl, Jr. is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Rice University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for the... discovery of fullerene . Born in Alice, Texas, United States, Curl was the son of a Methodist Minister. He is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas. Curl received a B.A. from Rice Institute in 1954 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1957. Professor Curl's current research interests involve physical chemistry, developing DNA genotyping and sequencing instrumentation, and creating quantum cascade laser-based mid-infrared trace gas monitoring instrumentation. Curl often attended the German table at Hanszen College at Rice University. However, he is more known in the residential college life at Rice University for being the first master of Lovett College.
more

Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer was an American physical and theoretical chemist, educator, and university president. He received his B.S. in 1935 from the... California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937. Upon graduation, he was appointed to the faculty of Berkeley's Chemistry Department and was eventually elevated to professor. From 1951 to 1960, he served as dean of the College of Chemistry. He was the third president of Rice University from 1961 until 1968 and sixth president of Stanford University from 1969 until 1971 when he returned to Berkeley. He retired in 1984, but continued research until his death. He was Director of Research for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1949 to 1951 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. As a scientist he was known for his work on the thermodynamic properties of molecules, and during his long career he won many awards, mostly notably the National Medal of Science and the Priestley Medal. His father, Russell K. Pitzer, founded Pitzer College, one of the seven Claremont Colleges in California. His son, Russell M.
more