“We
are an outward-looking university.
Continuing education is one of the main aspects
of our outreach and has been for a long time.”
— Malcolm Gillis
It’s Thursday evening, and visitors
to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston take an elevator to a classroom
on the second floor of the Beck Building. “Are you here
for the Rice class?” a museum staff member asks, and she
guides them to the lecture on Japanese photography.
Meanwhile, at a community college in Montgomery
County, a group of business professionals meets to discuss the
intricacies of legislation dealing with employee health and safety.
Another Rice class has begun.
On the Rice campus, adults arriving from work greet their instructors
in Spanish or French or Arabic. Others settle in for a lecture
by a Rice physics professor or prepare for an instructor’s
critique of their writing.
Rice University is about to enter the lives of hundreds of Houstonians,
as it does nearly every weekday evening in the fall and spring.
These students have come to the School of Continuing Studies to
further their education, but they also will gain a personal impression
of the university they may have glimpsed only while driving down
Main Street.
For countless business and community leaders, teachers, and intellectually
curious individuals, Continuing Studies is Rice. “Continuing
Studies has made friends for Rice at all levels of the community,”
notes Dean Mary McIntire. “We have a tremendous impact on
the way the public views Rice.”
This year, the school is celebrating the 35th anniversary of its
first course. Although the school has undergone major changes
in its curriculum, its mission has remained the same since 1968:
to offer the community educational opportunities that reflect
the excellence of Rice University.
From its modest beginning as a provider of engineering short courses,
the School of Continuing Studies has come to represent Rice in
nearly every segment of the Houston community. An annual conference
on nonprofit board leadership draws influential community and
corporate leaders. Human resource managers from business, government,
healthcare, and education attend classes to stay up-to-date in
their fields. School districts around the country send teachers
to learn how to lead Advanced Placement courses for college-bound
students.
Rice has forged ties with the symphony, the ballet, the city’s
major museums, and professional associations through Continuing
Studies’s joint educational ventures with these organizations.
More importantly, the school connects the university with the
general public. Any staff member at Continuing Studies will tell
you that class participants rarely distinguish between Rice and
its continuing education program. “Why doesn’t Rice
offer . . ?” and “Thank you, Rice, for your class
on . . . ” are typical comments on course evaluations.
Why is Rice in the continuing education business? Community service
and community goodwill rank high on the list of reasons. “We
are an outward-looking university,” says President Malcolm
Gillis. “Continuing education is one of the main aspects
of our outreach and has been for a long time. In fact, for a long
time, continuing education was our only outreach program, and
the example it has set has led to numerous other programs, many
of which have been immensely successful.”
Gillis points to another important aspect of Rice’s mission,
one that Continuing Studies is uniquely qualified to fulfill in
the community—interdisciplinary studies. “There is
an increasing disconnect between the world of science and engineering
and the world of humanities and social sciences that we at Rice
work very hard to avoid,” says Gillis. “We try to
repair this disconnect.” For Continuing Studies, this means
bringing together scholars from inside and outside of Rice for
a multidisciplinary approach to timely subjects such as the uses
of nanotechnology, medical ethics, the future of neuroscience,
or concerns raised by genetic research.
