A Vision

Emerging from the Call to Conversation

—David W. Leebron
President, Rice University

During the Call to Conversation process that began late last spring, I had the opportunity to speak with thousands of people in all segments of the Rice community—faculty, students, staff, alumni, parents, and supporters—as well as other people in Houston and beyond who have an interest in the future of Rice. We discussed the fundamental issues and important questions that face Rice as it moves toward its centennial in 2012. The comments and ideas that came in during the feedback period have significantly informed our thinking and planning, and we extend our thanks to the many participants in the process and to the Rice Board of Trustees, who endorsed the resulting vision at its December 15 meeting.

A more complete exposition of the initial outcomes of the Call to Conversation can be found at www.rice.edu/c2c. And, of course, we will be in continuing communication as we build and execute a strategy to fulfill the vision. Here, I am excited to present the following brief overview of Rice’s goals and priorities for the decade to come. It starts with a new one-paragraph mission statement for our university and follows with 10 major steps we must take to carry out that mission. I look forward to your help in this important effort.

As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to pathbreaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this mission by cultivating a diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders across the spectrum of human endeavor.

We must take the following steps in furtherance of this mission:

We must visibly and substantially increase our commitment to our research mission and raise our research and scholarship profile.

We especially must focus on departments and disciplines in strategically selected areas where we have an opportunity to achieve nationally and internationally recognized levels of distinction and achievement. Success in this endeavor will require significant investments in and improvements to our research support, physical facilities, and information technology infrastructure.

We must provide a holistic undergraduate experience that equips our students with the knowledge, the skills, and the values to make a distinctive impact in the world.

This requires that we reexamine the undergraduate curriculum as well as focus on enhanced research opportunities, training in communication skills, and leadership development for our students.

We must strengthen our graduate and postdoctoral programs to attract and recruit high-caliber students and young researchers.

Greater attention must be paid to competitive financial support, appropriate teaching opportunities, and attractive campus amenities that will contribute to a stronger sense of community among our graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Our doctoral programs are central to our ambition as a research university, and we must achieve greater recognition of the quality of our doctoral students and the success they attain.

We must aggressively foster collaborative relationships with other institutions to leverage our resources.

This is particularly important in light of our comparatively small size. Our geographic location offers excellent opportunities, and we are especially well situated to develop substantial strategic relationships with the other members of the Texas Medical Center. We also can expand our teaching and research achievements in the arts in part through effective partnerships with the cultural institutions of the Museum District.

We must invest in a select number of interdisciplinary endeavors that will enable us to leverage our own strengths as well as the strengths of potential collaborators.

These interdisciplinary endeavors should include some efforts to which we already have made substantial commitments and new areas that will emerge as we develop our strategic research vision for the future.

We must continue to invest in our professional schools in architecture, management, and music, as well as the Baker Institute for Public Policy and seek ways to integrate their successes into the broader university.

We also must seize opportunities for bold new endeavors when they arise, but we should not fund new schools out of the general resources of the university.

We must grow the size of the university to more fully realize our ambition as an institution of national and international distinction that attracts the very best students and researchers from around the globe.

Growth will enable us to develop a more dynamic and diverse campus environment, increase our faculty in strategic areas, improve our services, enhance the employment opportunities for our students, more effectively use our infrastructure, and build a more vibrant national and international alumni base. This growth must be carefully planned and occur in ways that preserve the distinctive features of our culture and campus, provide an undergraduate educational experience characterized by meaningful direct interactions with faculty and participation in residential life in the colleges, and maintain and enhance the extraordinary quality and diversity of our student body. Our undergraduate student body should become more national and international, reflecting our status as a premier research university. In light of these considerations, Rice’s undergraduate enrollment should be expanded to approximately 3,800 students within the next decade.

We must become an international university with a more significant orientation toward Asia and Latin America than now characterizes our commitments.

The great universities of the 21st century inevitably will be global universities, and although we are comparatively small, that ought not be seen as an obstacle to our global reach. We should begin by increasing the number of international students in our undergraduate student body; develop research, student exchange, and other relationships with distinguished universities and policy institutes around the world; and foster the international learning (both here at Rice and around the world) of our faculty, staff, and students.

We must provide the spaces and facilities that will cultivate greater dynamism and vibrancy on the campus and foster our sense of community.

To achieve this, we must provide more attractive campuswide amenities, including a new recreational facility, a reconfiguration of the Rice Memorial Center to house a more substantial dining facility, and enhancement of outdoor spaces with a special focus on the Central Quadrangle—the area bounded by Fondren Library, the Rice Memorial Center, and Herring Hall. We should make a greater commitment to incorporate art into the campus landscape and interior public spaces.

We must engage fully with the city of Houston—learning from it and contributing to it—as a successful partnership with our home city is an essential part of our future.

We should do so by continuing to integrate Houston into the educational experience of our students, by emphasizing selective areas of research especially important to the city (notably energy and urban studies), by making tangible contributions to improve our city (particularly K–12 education and environmental quality), and by continuing to provide innovative educational and cultural resources to the broader Houston population.

“Rice is in a state of transition. It is in a transition from good to better. Facing extraordinary opportunity, the institution is about to become braver, stronger, sounder, more beautiful.”

—Edgar Odell Lovett at his final commencement in 1946