Online only: SA minutes

10/28/10 7:00pm

The following items were noted at the most recent meeting of the Student Association on Oct. 25.President David Leebron presented to the SA on university finances, expansion of the student body and initiatives for the future.

Leebron said Rice has recently accomplished another goal of the Vision for the Second Century: increasing the matriculating body of undergraduates by 30 percent since 2004, to 949 students.

There have been three major expansion periods in university history: the 1920s, soon after the university was founded; the 1960s and the 2000s. The matriculating student body is projected to peak at 950 incoming freshmen in the foreseeable future. This increase in class size has been made possible in part by the rising number of applications, which increased by 150 percent from 2004 to 12,393 applications in 2010. The admittance rate in 2010 was 21 percent and the yield rate of student acceptances was 36 percent.

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Major reasons for expansion include building a more national and international student body without reducing the percentage of students from Texas and creating a larger alumni network. The effort has been successful so far, and the numbers of international and African-American students have risen in particular. At present, no racial majority exists at Rice, and geographically, Texan students are projected to stay between 40 and 45 percent of each class.

The administration anticipated the challenges of expansion and is looking for solutions to address shrinking facilities for introductory classes in six areas, including the natural sciences, math and psychology. Expansion of the Counseling Center facilities and services, as well as increased international student support, are priorities to accommodate larger class sizes.

The undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio has changed very little over the past six years. In fact, the student-to-faculty ratio is not motivated by size of the student body, but by the range of curricula offered.

Undergraduate housing capacity increased from 70 percent in 2004 to 80.5 percent in 2010. Leebron said housing capacity is projected to decrease to a stable 74 percent, but gave a personal prediction of close to 80 percent in the coming years.

Expansion creates more opportunities for student contribution. Leebron mentioned the Zerow House, BioBeer, the salad spinner centrifuge and the low-cost portable microscope, which were all student successes that received national media attention. Leebron congratulated the SA and the Graduate Student Association for their organization of a research mixer, which he described as a standard of what the V2C desires to achieve.

Financially, Leebron said the university is stable despite the 18 percent loss in endowment in 2008 from $4.6 billion to $3.7 billion. The past fiscal year has seen an increase by 10 percent - several percentage points above projections - meaning that there will be no departmental budget cuts this year.

The budget for the 2010-2011 school year is $489.4 million, 60 percent of which will go to salaries and benefits. Research revenues are up 12 percent, to $98.5 million, and although tuition covers only 17 percent of university expenses, it continues to grow - due in part to class expansion - to the benefit of financial aid, currently the fastest growing component of school expenses. Fundraising has been on an upward trend thanks to the Rice Centennial campaign, and the university has already raised $667 million of the $1 billion goal in campaign commitments.

The East Servery and Brockman Hall for Physics will be completed January 2011 and plans for a Turrell "skyspace" and a building for the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies are in the works.

Leebron spoke of three V2C initiatives. First, there will be an increased focus on bioscience and human health, including not just the hard sciences, but other, interdisciplinary areas in the humanities and social sciences, such as medical ethics and health economics. The second initiative involves an increased focus on energy and the environment. The third initiative focuses on the expansion and improvement of international strategies such as the currently strengthening Latin American studies program.

A more inclusive PowerPoint presentation than the one used to present to the SA can be accessed on the president's Web page: http://professor.rice.edu/professor/Office_of_the_President.asp.

Leebron said that student input would always have an impact in administration decisions, even if that impact were not evident. He pointed to the retraction of Brochstein Pavilion's earlier closing hours this semester as a decision motivated by student protest.

The SA will next meet at 9 p.m. in the Farnsworth Pavilion on Nov. 1 to resume SA business as usual.

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