Virtual tour added to attract prospective students

By Catherine Bratic     8/21/08 7:00pm

While students were gone for the summer, visitors flocked to Rice through the latest addition to the Rice Web site: a virtual tour of the university designed to present the brighter sides of campus to alumni and prospective students.The tour, which was put online July 11, features 360-degree views of 16 sites at Rice and in the surrounding area, from the Sallyport entrance at Lovett Hall to the middle of a baseball game at Reckling Park. The tour also features a shot of Rice Village to give new students a glimpse of life beyond the hedges. Visitors can drag the image around to get a complete picture of the sites.

"We hope that this will be a window into Rice," Director of Administration Sabrina Hassumani said.

The office of public affairs first conceived the idea for the project a year ago when it planned to create a video tour of campus. A virtual picture tour, however, was decided upon because the format was more interactive, Hassumani said. She said the video tour is forthcoming, and students can also expect additional virtual tours in the future.

---

---

"Once classes are back in session, we'd like to shoot some additional images, as well as re-shoot many of the campus locations like the quad during a class change to give a more complete impression of campus life," Director of University Relations Greg Marshall said.

Photography company Virtually There shot images of the sites over the summer with a $6,000 budget. The 16 chosen sites were felt to be the most iconic areas of Rice, Marshall said.

Each picture in the tour is accompanied by descriptive text which is meant to highlight Rice's features as well as its connection to the Houston community. The Founder's Court image, for example, contains links to the Houston City Guide as well as to the Museum District's Web page.

"We hope this will attract prospective students to come visit, and give a good sense of what the campus looks like to those who are not immediately able to visit," Hassumani said. "We wanted to get the message across that Houston is a really cool place and Rice has a really beautiful campus."

So far, the tour has proven to be popular, Hassumani said. As of Aug. 1, the virtual tour page was the most popular posted story on the www.rice.edu Web site, earning three times as many views as any other story ever has. It was ranked the number 11 most-visited page on the Web site, Hassumani said.

Martel College freshman Jordan Schermerhorn said the tour is convenient for interested prospective students, though she said the virtual images were misleading compared to what she saw when she arrived on campus.

"The tour is a good introduction to Rice, especially for those who can't visit," Schermerhorn said. "They didn't show the colleges or construction, which are important, but overall it's a thumbs-up.

---