Provost's plan goes forward

By Ellen Liu     2/3/11 6:00pm

Provost George McLendon chose three task forces last semester to carry out the Rice Initiatives by determining the university's academic focus for the coming years. The task forces ended last semester by writing three white papers - documents that summarized their work thus far and laid foundations for the next phase of their project. This next phase included a call for greater student input and collaboration with the faculty members of the task forces.When McLendon helped form the Biosciences and Human Health, Energy and the Environment and International Strategy task forces, he said he gave them the collective mission of identifying areas across the university where Rice could achieve preeminence and be one of the top places in the world for research and education. The task forces polled Rice's faculty to determine what interdisciplinary themes they thought were most important and then narrowed those ideas down to a few areas that each group then highlighted in their white papers.

"All we were trying to do was see if there was a 'there' there; if Rice could really imagine strategies in which it could become preeminent in one segment of energy, for example, or biosciences and human health," McLendon, who also served as a co-chair of the Energy and the Environment task force, said.

According to McLendon, one of the things they wanted was a process which cut across every department but was still small enough for the task forces to actually have conversations. Consequently, McLendon said he chose one representative per department and some members of the faculty senate to serve on the task forces. He said he was surprised to find that the groups chose to focus quickly on strategies of transition into a future.

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McLendon's task force focused on Transdisciplinary Scholarship, Innovative Research and Technology, Effective Conversations Among Diverse Stakeholders, and Balanced Information in energy and the environment.

According to McLendon, more than 80 percent of the energy consumed today comes from hydrocarbons in the ground. He said people needed to find more efficient ways to utilize this energy in order to progress toward a better, more utopian future.

"It is our collective hope that in some future, we will discover some very different methods of creating and harnessing and distributing energy in ways that are inexpensive and globally sustainable and consistent with the best principles of social justice," McLendon said.

The International Strategy task force, co-chaired by Associate Professor of History Carol Quillen, concentrated on Materials, Appropriate Health Solutions, Global Urban Futures, and Latin America.

"International is a strategy for achieving something else," Quillen said, "So we asked, 'What are the research areas in which Rice is strong where international collaboration is either essential or dramatically enhances our ability to have impact?'"

Yousif Shamoo, a co-chair of the Biosciences and Human Health task force, said that his committee included faculty from the Bioengineering, Biochemistry and Cell Biology Departments and the Schools of Social Sciences and Music. According to Shamoo, his task force decided to focus on six main themes in their white paper: Regenerative and Restorative Medicine; Tools for Affordable Healthcare: The Road to Better Health and Wellness; Physical Systems and Synthetic Biology; Health Informatics; Mind and Brain; and Society, Culture and Medicine.

Shamoo said his committee had chosen themes that could foster collaboration with, rather than competition against, the Texas Medical Center. According to Shamoo, Rice didn't want to claim that they would become the center of cancer research with MD Anderson right across the street.

"You've got thousands of PhDs over there at the Med Center," Shamoo said. "But our department of biochemistry just has 20 faculty and bioengineering only has 20 faculty. We are dwarfed by their size."

According to McLendon and Quillen, the next step for the Rice Initiatives involves opening discussion up to students. Accordingly, a student committee has been created that will collaborate with faculty on how to continue with the Rice Initiatives. The committee includes one faculty co-chair and three student representatives for each task force.

Quillen said the Rice Initiatives project would remain faculty-driven but that student input was required to develop curricular innovations to meet student needs and focus the task forces' ideas in a more concrete way.

Committee member Ben Chou said he had served on multiple committees in the past that had not, in his opinion, been effective enough, but he felt confident that this one would be effective because McLendon seemed willing to listen to and consider student opinions. However, he expressed concern about students losing commitment for the committee throughout the semester.

"I hope none of us lose passion and interest in doing this because we want tangible results," Chou, a Martel College sophomore, said. "Still, since we have the provost and vice provost on our side to work with us, I'm not too worried about things getting done."

Chou said the main objectives of the student committee were to publicize what they're doing through working with student groups to get the word out about projects and solicit ideas.

"We don't want to leave any students out when discussing the future of Rice," Chou said.

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