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William Marsh Rice University (commonly known as Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art) is a private research university located in Houston, Texas, United States. The campus is located near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center.
Rice enrolled 3,001 undergraduate, 897 post-graduate, and 1,247 doctoral students and awarded 1,448 degrees in 2007.
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Encyclopedia
William Marsh Rice University (commonly known as Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art) is a private research university located in Houston, Texas, United States. The campus is located near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center.
Rice enrolled 3,001 undergraduate, 897 post-graduate, and 1,247 doctoral students and awarded 1,448 degrees in 2007. The university is organized into eight schools offering 40 undergraduate degree programs, 51 masters programs, and 29 doctoral programs.
The university employs 611 full-time faculty and 396 part-time or adjunct faculty members in 2007. Rice has a very high level of research activity and had $77.2 million in sponsored research funding in 2007. Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, and space science. Rice was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1985.
History
Rice University was founded by William Marsh Rice, in 1891 and was originally named The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art.
Before the Rice Institute could be opened, there were challenges to be endured. William Marsh Rice, 84 and living alone in New York, was poisoned by his valet in 1900. On discovery that Rice's will had been changed to leave the bulk of his estate to a lawyer "friend," Albert T. Patrick, Mr. Rice's lawyers and the New York district attorney uncovered evidence proving Patrick had conspired with Rice's valet to prepare the false will, leading to Patrick's murder conviction in 1901. Legal challenges to William Rice's will continued through 1904, when the Rice Institute finally received a $4.6 million ($ million in current dollars) funding endowment. By the time the Institute opened in 1912, its endowment had grown to almost $10 million ($ million), the seventh largest university endowment in the country at the time.
Edgar Odell Lovett of Princeton was selected as the first president of the Rice Institute. Lovett undertook extensive research before formalizing plans for the new Institute, including visits to 78 institutions of higher learning across the world in 1908 and 1909. The cornerstone was laid for the first campus building, now Lovett Hall, in 1911. In 1912, course work began. Rice was unusual for that time in admitting both male and female students. The first class consisted of 48 men and 29 women. The student body voted to adopt an Honor System in 1916; Rice's first commencement exercises were held the same year.
In 1930, the founder's memorial statue, a landmark to the campus, was dedicated. The residential college system was adopted in 1957.
In 1959, the Rice Institute Computer went online. 1960 saw Rice Institute formally renamed William Marsh Rice University. Rice acted as a temporary intermediary in the transfer of land between Humble Oil and Refining Company and NASA, for the creation of NASA's Manned Space Flight Center (now called Johnson Space Center) in 1962. President John F. Kennedy then made a speech at Rice Stadium announcing that the United States intended to reach the moon before the end of the decade of the 1960s, and "to become the world's leading space-faring nation." The relationship of NASA with Rice University and the city of Houston has remained strong to the present day.
The original charter of Rice Institute dictated that the university admit and educate, tuition-free, "the white inhabitants of Houston, and the state of Texas." In 1963, the governing board of Rice University filed a lawsuit to allow Rice to modify its charter to admit students of all races and to charge tuition. They had explicitly not admitted African-Americans in the past. Rice won its case, and charged tuition for the first time in 1965. In the same year, Rice launched a $33 million ($ million) development campaign. $43 million ($ million) was raised by its conclusion in 1970. In 1974, two new schools were founded at Rice, the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and the Shepherd School of Music. The Brown Foundation Challenge, a fund-raising program designed to encourage annual gifts, launched in 1976, ending in 1996 having raised $185 million ($ million). The Rice School of Social Sciences was founded in 1979.
On-campus housing was exclusively for men for the first forty years. Jones College was the first women's residence on the Rice campus, followed by Brown. According to legend, the women's colleges were purposefully situated at the opposite end of campus from the existing men's colleges as a way of preserving campus propriety. Individual colleges became coeducation between 1973 and 1987. The path linking the north colleges to the center of campus was known as "Virgin's Walk." However, Virgin's Walk, along with the majority of the green space on the North side of the campus, was destroyed in 2007 by the construction of McMurtry and Duncan Colleges.
The Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations was held at Rice in 1990. In 1993, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy was created. In 1997, the Edyth Bates Old Grand Organ and Recital Hall and the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, renamed in 2005 for the late Nobel Prize winner and Rice professor Richard E. Smalley, were dedicated at Rice. In 1999, the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology was created. The Rice Owls baseball team was ranked #1 in the nation for the first time in that year (1999), holding the top spot for eight weeks. In 2003, the Owls won their first national championship in baseball, which was the first for the university in any team sport, beating Southwest Missouri State in the opening game and then the University of Texas and Stanford University twice each en route to the title.
President David Leebron issued a ten point plan titled "Vision for the Second Century" outlining plans to increase research funding, strengthen existing programs, and increase collaboration.
Campus
The Rice campus is a heavily-wooded tract of land adjoining Hermann Park, the Texas Medical Center, and a neighborhood commercial center called the Rice Village. Hermann Park includes the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Houston Zoo, Miller Outdoor Theatre and an 18-hole municipal golf course. Reliant Park, home of Reliant Stadium and the Astrodome, is two miles (3 km) south of the campus. Among the dozen or so museums in the Museum District is the Rice University Art Gallery, open during the school year. Easy access to downtown's theater and nightlife district and to Reliant Park is provided by the Houston METRORail system, with a station adjacent to the campus's main gate. The campus recently joined the Zipcar program with two vehicles to increase the transportation options for students and staff that need that currently don't utilize a vehicle.
Several interdisciplinary research institutes, schools and think tanks are located on the Rice campus, including the Rice School of Architecture, Shepherd School of Music, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice Quantum Institute, the Rice Engineering Design and Development Institute, the Rice Design Alliance, the Computer and Information Technology Institute, the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology.
The campus consists of a number of quadrangles, and features buildings designed in an eclectic Mediterranean style by Ralph Adams Cram of the Boston architectural firm of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson. The campus is peppered with newer constructions by architects such as Cesar Pelli and Michael Graves. The Academic Quad, anchored by a statue of founder William Marsh Rice, includes Cram's masterpiece, Lovett Hall; Fondren Library; and buildings for physics, architecture, arts and the humanities. A trinity of sculptures by Michael Heizer, collectively entitled 45 Degrees, 90 Degrees, 180 Degrees, dominates The Engineering Quad, which houses the departments of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry and computer science. Undergraduates are housed in the nine residential colleges (Baker, Brown, Hanszen, Jones, Lovett, Martel, Sid Richardson, Wiess, and Will Rice). The tenth and eleventh residential colleges, McMurtry and Duncan, are currently under construction.
The on-campus football facility, Rice Stadium, opened in 1950 with a capacity of 70,000 seats. After improvements in 2006, the stadium is currently configured to seat 47,000 for football but can readily be reconfigured to its original capacity of 70,000, more than the total number of Rice alumni, living and deceased.. The stadium was the site of Super Bowl VIII and a speech by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 in which he challenged the nation to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. The speech, "Why the Moon" is available on the . In addition to Rice Stadium and Reckling Park, on-campus facilities include Autry Court (basketball, volleyball); the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium (track and field, soccer) and the Jake Hess Tennis Stadium (tennis).
Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum
The university and Houston Independent School District jointly established The Rice School (La Escuela Rice), a kindergarten through 8th grade public magnet school in Houston. The school opened in August 1994. Through Cy-Fair ISD Rice University offers a credit course based summer school for grades 8 through 12. They also have skills based classes during the summer in the Rice Summer School.
Administration and organization
Rice University is chartered as a non-profit organization and is owned and governed by a privately-appointed board of trustees. The board consists of a maximum of 25 voting members who serve four year terms and is currently chaired by James W. Crownover. The trustees serve without compensation and a simple majority of trustees must reside in Texas, including at least 4 within the greater Houston area. The board of trustees delegates its power by appointing a President to serve as the chief executive of the university. David W. Leebron was appointed President in 2004 and succeeded Malcom Gillis who served since 1993. The provost, six vice presidents, and other university officials report to the President. The President is advised by a University Council composed of the Provost, eight members of the Faculty Council, two staff members, one graduate student, and two undergraduate students. The President presides over a Faculty Council which has the authority to alter curricular requirements, establish new degree programs, and approve candidates for degrees. Rice University possesses an endowment of $4.7 billion (as of 2007).
The university is organized into eight schools: School of Architecture, George R. Brown School of Engineering, School of Humanities, Shepherd School of Music, Wiess School of Natural Sciences, School of Social Sciences, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Faculty members of each of the 62 departments elect chairs to represent the department to each School's dean and the deans report to the Provost who serves as the chief officer for academic affairs.
Residential colleges
In 1957, Rice University implemented a residential college system, as proposed by the university's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett. The existing residences known as North, South, West, and Wiess Halls became Baker, Will Rice, Hanszen, and Wiess Colleges, respectively.
There are currently nine residential colleges, with six (Baker, Hanszen, Lovett, Sid Richardson, Wiess, and Will Rice) on the south side of campus and three (Brown, Jones, and Martel) on the north. Each college except Sid Richardson College is organized around its own small quadrangle.
Although each college is composed of a full cross-section of students at Rice, each college over time has developed its own personality and traditions to varying degrees. When students become undergraduates they are assigned to a residential college randomly, although "legacy" exceptions are made for students whose siblings or other close relatives have attended Rice. Students generally remain members of the college that they are assigned to for the duration of their undergraduate careers, even if they live off-campus. Students are guaranteed on-campus housing for freshman year and two of the next three years; each college has its own system for determining allocation of the remaining spaces. Students develop strong loyalties to their college and maintain friendly rivalry with other colleges, especially during events such as Beer Bike and O-Week. Colleges keep their rivalries alive by performing "jacks," or pranks, on each other, especially during O-Week (Orientation Week) and "Willy Week". During Matriculation, Commencement, and other formal academic ceremonies, the colleges process in the order in which they were established.
Academics
Rice is a medium-sized, highly residential research university. The majority of enrollments are in the full-time, four-year undergraduate program emphasizing arts & sciences and professions. There is a high graduate coexistence with the comprehensive graduate program and a very high level of research activity. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as well as the professional accreditation agencies for engineering, management, and architecture.
Through its eight schools, Rice offers 40 undergraduate degree programs, 51 masters programs, and 29 doctoral programs. Undergraduate tuition for the 2008-2009 school year was $29,960.
Student body
Rice enrolled 3,001 undergraduates, 897 post-graduate, and 1,247 doctoral students and awarded 1,448 degrees in 2007. Women make up 48% of the undergraduate body and 35% of the professional and post-graduate student body. 51% of undergraduates and 49% of post-graduates hail from Texas but the student body also represented all 50 states, the District of Columbia, two U.S. Territories, and 83 foreign countries.
8,968 applications for undergraduate admission were received for the class of 2011 (Fall 2007), 2,251 were admitted (25%), and 742 enrolled (33%). 83% graduated in the top 10% of their high school class, and the inter-quartile range for Scholastic Achievement Test was 640-750 for verbal and 670-780 for math. 97% of freshmen re-enrolled the subsequent year and 77% of students graduate in 4 years and 90% graduate in 6 years.
With an estimated total expenses of $41,775, Rice awarded $34.1 million in financial aid for 2007-2008 and 2,139 (71.2%) of undergraduates received some sort of aid.
Honor code
The Rice honor code plays a central role in academic affairs. Nearly all Rice exams are unproctored and professors give timed, closed-book exams that students take home and complete at their own convenience. Potential infractions are reported to the student Honor Council, elected by popular vote. The penalty structure is established every year by Council consensus; typically, penalties have ranged from a letter of reprimand to an 'F' in the course and a two semester suspension. During the Orientation Week, students must take and pass a test demonstrating that they understand the Honor Code's requirements. After that time, students affirm their commitment by writing On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.
Rankings
Rice's undergraduate program was ranked 17th among "National Universities" by U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) in its 2009 edition and 41st nationally by Forbes Magazine in 2008. USNWR also ranked the Jones Graduate School of Management 40th and the Brown School of Engineering 35th. The Princeton Review ranked Rice 2nd for "Best Quality of Life", 2nd for "Lots of Race/Class Interaction", 15th for "Happiest Students", and 4th for "Best Value" in its 2009 edition. Rice was ranked 26th among national universities by The Washington Monthly in 2006, 78th internationally by The Times Higher Education Supplement in 2008, 97th internationally (54th nationally) by the Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2008, 41st among research universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance in 2007.
Research centers and resources
Rice is noted for its pioneer applied science programs in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, and space science.
- Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (SINST) - the nation's first nanotechnology center
- Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) - promotes the discovery and development of nanomaterials that enable new medical and environmental technologies
- Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) - provides a resource for education and research breakthroughs and advances in the broad, multidisciplinary field of nanophotonics
- Rice Quantum Institute - organization dedicated to research and higher education in areas relating to quantum phenomena
- Rice Space Institute - fosters programs in all areas of space research
- Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB) - facilitates the translation of interdisciplinary research and education in biosciences and bioengineering
- Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology - dedicated to the advancement of applied interdisciplinary research in the areas of computation and information technology
- Baker Institute for Public Policy - one of the leading nonpartisan public policy think tanks in the country
- Connexions - an open-content library of course materials developed by Rice University
- Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship - supports entrepreneurs and early-stage technology ventures in Houston and Texas through education, collaboration, and research
- Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE)
Student life and traditions
Rice is known for its atypical residential structure and its rich history of exuberant and quirky traditions. Student organizations at Rice are also no different in some sense; they provide unrestricted creative or social outlets typically not available at small universities.
"Jack" is a term for a prank such as replacing campus maps, stacking another college's furniture, or other elaborate pranks. The most notorious and legendary jack in Rice history was the turning of William Marsh Rice's statue in the Academic Quadrangle on April 12, 1988. After several months of detailed planning, a group of students succeeded in lifting the bronze statue (using a hoist mounted on an A-frame), rotating it 180 degrees, and setting it back down undamaged on its stone pedestal.
The Baker 13 is a tradition in which students run around campus wearing nothing but shoes and shaving cream at 10 p.m. on the 13th and the 26th or 31st of every month. The event, long sponsored by Baker College, usually attracts a small number of students, but on both Halloween night and the last relevant day of the school year both attract large numbers of revelers.
Wiess College throws an annual themed Halloween party called Night of Decadence (NOD) that not only draws students across campus, but also young alumni, students from other universities, and other Houston citizens. While themes in the 1970s and 1980s were historical and/or apocalyptic in nature (e.g. The Fall of Rome, Caligula, Armageddon, Animal Farm, The Trojan War), by the 1990s the themes were generally sexual puns, often based on movie titles (e.g. James Bondage, Lust in Space), with sexually themed decorations.
Beer Bike is a combination intramural bicycle race and drinking competition dating back to 1957. Ten riders and ten chuggers make up a team. Elaborate rules include details such as a prohibition of "bulky or wet clothing articles designed to absorb beer/water or prevent spilled beer/water from being seen" and regulations for chug can design. Each residential college as well as the Graduate Student Association participates with a men's team, a women's team, and alumni (co-ed) team. Each leg of the race is a relay in which a team's "chugger" must chug 24 ounces of beer or water for the men's division and 12 ounces for women before the team's "rider" may begin to ride. Willy Week is a term coined in the 1990s to refer to the week preceding Beer-Bike, a time of general energy and excitement on campus. Jacks are especially common during Willy Week; some examples in the past include removing showerheads and encasing the Hanszen guardian.
Rice Coffeehouse
Rice Coffeehouse finds its beginnings in Hanzen College, where students would serve coffee in the Weenie Loft - a study room in the old section's fourth floor. Later, the coffee house moved to the Hanszen basement to accommodate more student patrons. That coffeehouse became known as Bread and Pomegranates. Due to flooding, an unfortunate effect of 1) it's location in the basement and 2) the Houston climate, this coffee house closed. Demand for an on-campus Coffeehouse grew and in 1990, the Rice Coffeehouse was founded.
The Rice Coffeehouse is a not-for-profit student-run organization serving Rice University and the greater Houston community. Over the past few years, it has introduced fair-trade and organic coffee and loose-leaf teas.
Coffeehouse baristas are referred to as K.O.C.'s, or Keepers of the Coffee. Rice Coffeehouse has also adopted an unofficial mascot, the squirrel, which can be found on t-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers stuck on laptops across campus. The logo pays tribute to Rice's unusually plump and frighteningly tame squirrel population.
Valhalla
Valhalla is a non-profit graduate student pub located under Keck Hall which serves as the social nexus for graduate student life at Rice. It provides the graduate student community and the Rice community as a whole with a family-friendly place to unwind and relax after a long work day, and a comfortable place for graduate students to relax and relate on the woes of graduate research. Additionally, Valhalla plays a pivotal role in many campus traditions including the Baker 13 and Beer Bike.
It was founded in 1970, but did not get an alcohol license until 1971. The management and all shifts are staffed by graduate students, faculty, staff, and other volunteers, which helps keep prices affordable for the target graduate student clientele. The pub's patrons have expanded beyond graduate students and other members of the local community in recent years, and the pub has become a regular on the annual "Best of Houston" published by the Houston Press, being named the "Best Place to Meet Single Women" in 2004 due to the frequency of intelligent conversation and smart, single women.
Willy's Pub
Willy's Pub is Rice's undergraduate pub run by students located in the basement of the Rice Memorial Center. It opened on April 11, 1975, with Rice President Norman Hackerman pouring the first beer. The name was chosen by students in tribute to the university's founder, William Marsh Rice. After the drinking age in Texas was raised in 1986, the pub entered a period of financial difficulties and in April 1995, was destroyed in a fire. The space was gutted and renovated and remains open.
Campus media
Rice has a weekly student-run newspaper (The Rice Thresher), radio station (KTRU-FM), and campus-wide television network (RTV5). All three are based out of the RMC student center. In addition, Rice hosts several student magazines dedicated to a range of different topics; in fact, the spring semester of 2008 saw the birth of two such magazines, a literary sex journal called Open and an undergraduate science research magazine entitled Catalyst.
The Rice Thresher is published every Friday and is ranked by Princeton Review as one of the top campus newspapers nationally for student readership. It is distributed around campus, at Kahn's Deli in the Rice Village and at the House of Pies, and has a website on the College Publisher network. The Thresher has a small, dedicated staff and is known for its coverage of campus news, open submission opinion page, and the satirical Backpage, which has often been the center of controversy. The newspaper has won several awards at Associated Collegiate Press conferences.
KTRU (pronounced "kay-true") is the student-run, 50,000 watt radio station. Though most DJs are students, anyone is allowed to apply. It is known for playing genres and artists of music and sound unavailable on other radio stations in Houston, and often, the US. The station takes requests over the phone or online. In 2000 and 2006, KTRU won Houston Press' Best Radio Station in Houston. In 2003, Rice alum and active KTRU DJ DL's hip-hip show won Houston Press' Best Hip-hop Radio Show.
RTV5 is a student run television network available as channel 5 on campus. RTV5 was created initially as Rice Broadcast Television in 1997; RBT began to broadcast the following year in 1998, and aired its first live show across campus in 1999. It experienced much growth and exposure over the years with successful programs like "Drinking with Phil", a weekly news show, and extensive live coverage in December 2000 of the shut down of KTRU by the administration.
In spring 2001, the Rice undergraduate community voted in the general elections to support RBT as a blanket tax organization, effectively providing a yearly income of $10,000 to purchase new equipment and provide the campus with a variety of new programming. In the spring of 2005, RBT members decided the station need a new image and a new name: Rice Television 5.
The station has recently set about revitalizing its staff roster and campus image; one of RTV5's most popular shows is the 24 hour show, where a camera and couch placed in the RMC stay on air for 24 hours. One such show is held in fall and another in spring, usually during a weekend allocated for visits by prospective students.
RTV5 has a video on demand site at rtv5.rice.edu.
The Rice Review, also known as R2, is a yearly student-run literary journal at Rice University that publishes prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction written by undergraduate students, as well as interviews. The journal was founded in 2004 by creative writing professor and author Justin Cronin.
Published since 1983, The University Blue, also known as UBlue, is Rice's student run literary arts magazine. It previously released an issue every spring, containing original, creative work produced by all members of the Rice Community. This includes students as well as faculty, staff, associates and alumni. It is funded by a blanket tax of the student body. However, as of spring 2009 UBlue has not been published in three years, leading to some confusion among current students as to whether it exists.
The Rice Standard is an independent, regularly published campus magazine, which usually arrives on newsstands three times a semester. It has traditionally printed a wide array of different content, running from analyses of current events and philosophical pieces to personal essays, short fiction and poetry. Recent issues have included satirical features as well. The Standard has recently come under fire from some corners of campus for receiving funding from politically-motivated media organizations, but the magazine itself typically does not print political content and even discourages submissions on the subject.
Open, a brand-new magazine dedicated to "literary sex content," predictably caused a stir on campus with its initial publication in spring 2008. A mixture of essays, editorials, stories and artistic photography brought Open attention both on campus and in the Houston Chronicle. Current plans are for the magazine to be published once yearly.
Athletics
Rice participates in NCAA Division I athletics and is part of Conference USA. Rice was a member of the Western Athletic Conference before joining Conference USA in 2005. Rice is the second-smallest school, measured by undergraduate enrollment, competing in NCAA D-IA football.
The Rice baseball team won the 2003 College World Series, defeating Stanford and is Rice's only national championship in a team sport. The victory made Rice University the smallest school in 51 years to win a national championship at the highest collegiate level of the sport. The Rice baseball team has played on campus at Reckling Park since the 2000 season. As of 2008, the baseball team has won 12 consecutive conference championships in three different conferences: the final championship of the defunct Southwest Conference, all nine championships while a member of the Western Athletic Conference, and three more championships in its first three years as a member of Conference USA. More recently, Rice's baseball team has finished third in both the 2006 and 2007 College World Series tournaments. Rice now has made six appearances to Omaha for the CWS. In 2004, Rice became the first school ever to have three players selected in the first eight picks of the MLB draft when Philip Humber, Jeff Niemann and Wade Townsend were selected third, fourth, and eighth, respectively. In 2007, Joe Savery was selected as the 19th overall pick.
In 2006, the football team qualified for its first bowl game since 1961, ending the second-longest bowl drought in the country at the time. On December 22, 2006, Rice played in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl in New Orleans, Louisiana, against the Sun Belt Conference champion, Troy. The Owls lost 41-17. The bowl appearance came after Rice had a 14-game losing streak from 2004-05 and went 1-10 in 2005. The streak followed an internally authorized 2003 McKinsey report that stated football, alone, was responsible for a $4 million deficit in 2002. Tensions remain high between the athletic department and faculty, as a few professors who chose to voice their opinion were in favor of abandoning the football program. Hired in January 2006, new head coach Todd Graham sparked the "Rice Renaissance," the revival of the Owl football program, before he moved on to Tulsa in January 2007 despite having signed a contract less than 72 hours before leaving. David Bailiff replaced Graham and inherits a team poised to continue the success enjoyed in 2006. Sophomore wide receiver Jarett Dillard set an NCAA record in 2006 by catching a touchdown pass in 13 consecutive games and takes a 15-game overall streak into the 2007 season. Rice Stadium also serves as the performance venue for the university's Marching Owl Band, or "MOB." Despite its name, the MOB is a scatter band which focuses on performing humorous skits and routines rather than traditional formation marching.
In 2008, the football team posted a 9-3 regular season, capping off the year with a 38-14 victory over Western Michigan University in the Texas Bowl. The win over Western Michigan marked the Owls' first bowl win in 45 years.
Rice Owls men's basketball won 10 conference titles in the former Southwest Conference (1918, 1935*, 1940, 1942*, 1943*, 1944*, 1945, 1949*, 1954*, 1970; * denotes shared title). Most recently, guard Morris Almond was drafted in the first round of the 2007 NBA Draft by the Utah Jazz. Rice recently named former Cal Bears head coach Ben Braun as head basketball coach to succeed Willis Wilson, fired after Rice finished the 2007-2008 season with a winless (0-16) conference record and overall record of 3-27.
Rice has been very successful in women's sports in recent years. In 2004-05, Rice sent its women's volleyball, soccer, and basketball teams to their respective NCAA tournaments. In 2005-06, the women's soccer, basketball, and tennis teams advanced, with five individuals competing in track and field. In 2006-07, the Rice women's basketball team made the NCAA tournament, while again five Rice track and field athletes received individual NCAA berths. In 2008, the women's volleyball team again made the NCAA tournament.
Rice's mascot is Sammy the Owl. In previous decades, the university kept several live owls on campus in front of Lovett College, but this policy has been discontinued.
Rice also has a 12-member coed cheerleading squad and an all-female dance team, both of which perform at football and basketball games throughout the year.
Alumni, faculty and presidents
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