So proud of Rice University and of Rice's Jewish Studies Program.

See here.  I'm really glad that this program is thriving and that Dad, Jeff, and I have the opportunity to support its growth!

R.I.P., Malcolm Gillis

So sad to hear about President Gillis's passing.  He served Rice exceedingly well.

An important report on how universities, private business, and the government can work together to improve research.

See here.  And Rice University's own Neal Lane was one of the co-chairs of the report.  (Go, Owls!)

OK, it's throwback MONDAY today.

I was talking about the Rice T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project with some colleagues today and thought I'd share it with all of you.  My favorite test, of course, was the Turing test.

I am so proud of my dad!

See here.  I'm proud of Dad for about a million reasons:  his career as a talented chemist; his wonderful parenting skills (he and Mom were amazing); his love of current events and of the written word; his sense of humor; his ability to try new things and get out of his comfort level.  This link gives you a glimpse about Dad and his background.

BRAVO, DAD!

Yet more on Larry Mitchell's sunny op-ed on why law school is a good idea.

On another blog (Law School Survival Manual), I've spent a bit of time ruminating over just what in Larry Mitchell's op-ed rubbed me the wrong way.  (See here.)  Other folks are saying the same thing, often in better ways (take a gander at the updates to my post for two such examples, and to the postings on Inside the Law School Scam (starting here). 

I guess what frustrates me most is the sense that decanal groupthink is trying to wish away a lot of the problems that face legal education.  There were many, many kudos to the Mitchell op-ed on one of the deans' listservs.  If those kudos had been from the very top law schools, I'd have understood.  Law degrees from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other such schools are likely to be exceptionally good investments.  (After all, I benefit greatly from my degree from Stanford.*)

But when good, but not elite, schools are making their case for law school being a good investment, they can't just trot out the "we train you to think!" and "law is a lifetime career!" arguments.  I don't think that the first of those arguments applies just to law schools (pretty much any good education will train someone to think well).  And I don't think that the "law is a lifetime career" theory works when a law graduate can't get a first law job within a reasonable time.  The "you can use a law degree in other careers" argument is true, of course, but just because someone can use a legal education in other fields doesn't mean that spending six figures to get that degree is always a good idea.

I'm as proud of legal education as every other law dean is,** but I want students to enter law school with their eyes open.  (I also want law schools to provide applicants with accurate data so that they can make good choices about whether to attend law school.)

Data + realistic expectations = good choices.
Assertions + wishful thinking = a disaster in the making.



* Although, to be fair, my degree from Rice is nearer and dearer to my heart, but that's probably true of most folks' feelings about their undergraduate degrees.
** Even though I'm just an interim dean.

JFK at Rice, 50 years ago.

Here.  Go, Rice, and go, NASA. 

Reason number, oh, a million why Rice U. is cool.

See here.  Hat tip to Eric Van Horn.

Rice's 100th entering class.

See here.  Go, Owls! 

My dad was ahead of his time when he taught me math.

Today's op-ed in the New York Times, "How to Fix Our Math Education" (here), argues that students should learn math in context--that teaching them practical applications of math will make the concepts of math stick.  I'm proof of that. 

When I was in high school, my dad realized that, even though I was getting all As, I knew nothing about algebra.  (I went to high school in Texas.  Aside from a very few wonderful teachers, the only real education that I received was the education that Mom and Dad gave me at home.  I still have only the concept of geography that I learned in school:  "Texas" and "other"--and "other" meant "Dallas on up.")  He gave me homework in algebra and more advanced math subjects, as well as science homework.  That homework, which I'm sure frustrated the heck out of Dad, got me into Rice, and Rice got me into my various careers.

So the op-ed is smart.  As is Dad.

Sports trivia question.

Can you name any of the 17 schools with ZERO major NCAA violations in any sport since 1953, when the NCAA started keeping track?

Any of them?

Here's a hint (here), courtesy of yesterday's WSJ.

Stanford's one.
Air Force is one.
Penn State is one.
So's Northwestern.

and...

Rice University is one.

GO, OWLS!

OK, I might be biased, but...

Here's my vote for the best university holiday card ever:  here.  Happy holidays to all, and GO, OWLS!

Rice University: still a bargain.

See here and here.

Larry Temkin changed my life, too.

One of my favorite professors from Rice University, Larry Temkin, now teaches at Rutgers.  The Rutgers home page is featuring a salute to Larry (here) for the next two weeks. Although I hated to see Larry leave Rice, I was happy to see him courted by the best philosophy program in the country.  (Oh, and Harvard courted him, too.)

What made Larry so good, in addition to his obvious desire to get his students excited about using their brains, was his ability to tease out--even from shy folks like me (and yes, I was shy!) a willingness to sink our teeth into difficult material.  He didn't teach down to us, not even once.  And like anyone else who's at the top of his game, his talent made us want to be better students.  He was vibrant in class, engaging outside class, and downright inspiring.  I can still see him bounding into class each day (and "bounding" is the correct word), ready to get the discussion started.  Best of all, he put the lie to the fiction that really great teachers can't be great scholars as well.  He was superb in both arenas, and he made everything look effortless, even though it wasn't effortless at all.  Rutgers is very lucky to have him.

And while I'm thanking Larry for his remarkable contribution to my education, I should thank some other Rice profs as well.  (I owe Bob Weisberg, Tom Jackson, and Jack Friedenthal, among others, thanks for my education at Stanford Law School, too, but that's a post for another time.)

Larry, along with folks like Baruch Brody (here), Dennis Huston (here), David Lane (here), Hank Hudspeth (here), and Harold Hyman (here), kept Rice's promise to provide an excellent undergraduate education.

Baruch Brody did give me a scare during my first semester, though.  I'm from a small town in deep East Texas, and although my parents were from "up north" (New York and Toronto), I had never heard a rich Brooklyn accent before.  I spent the first month of Dr. Brody's lectures wondering what he was saying and hoping that I didn't flunk his course.  After I was able to translate his accent into "Texan," I figured out that I was getting what he was saying, after all.

Dennis Huston taught me that good professors could cuss up a blue streak without shifting our focus away from the material at hand.  I took every course that he taught, and I'm still a member of his unofficial fan club.

David Lane turned me into a statistics geek, to our mutual amazement.  He even let me take some graduate-level courses in statistics while I was an undergrad.  Through him, too, I got to design my honors thesis on the effect of time of day on teaching performance, which is my own personal explanation for why my students fall asleep in class when I teach in the 3-4:30 slot.

Hank Hudspeth, who was kind enough to hire me for my first summer law job, was demanding without being demeaning, and he modeled how a true gentleman behaves.  When I worked for his firm in the summer of (gasp!) 1983, I saw his commitment to professionalism first-hand and began to model my own professional life after his.  I wish I could find his book, A Baker's Dozen of Torts, somewhere, because I lost my copy and I sure loved that book.

Harold Hyman scared me to death at Rice.  He had an imposing presence and a booming voice, and his face reminded me of a real-life Sam the Eagle.  He's also the first person I told about my getting into Stanford, and I remember him coming out from behind his desk to congratulate me.  When Jeff & I came back to Houston in 2000, Harold and Ferne became our fast friends.

All of these folks contributed to my love of learning (which actually started with my mom and dad--there were more books in our house, and more time spent reading them, than I ever noticed in any of my friends' homes).  I owe them big.

Hat tip to Brad Wendel for another great post on morality

Over at Legal Ethics Forum: see here.

BTW, where did Prof. Wendel get his undergraduate degree? Oh, yes: RICE UNIVERSITY.

Happy Rice Day, all you Owls out there....

Well, we're not going to be national champs in college baseball this year....

We just lost to LSU, which means that I hope that LSU takes the whole smash. I am a very sad Owl tonight. On the other hand, has LSU ever done experiments with Twinkies (see here)? I didn't think so....

Congrats to Rice U students Faheem Ahmed and Anish Patel!

Rice University students Faheem Ahmed and Anish Patel won the right to represent mtvU at last night's Academy Awards. BRAVO, Faheem and Anish! For the video that won them that coveted spot, see here.

PLEASE SEND THESE TWO RICE U STUDENTS TO THE OSCARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just watched this video (here), where two Rice University students, Faheem Ahmed and Anish Patel, are finalists to be correspondents for MTV-U at the Oscars on Sunday night. The video cracked me up, and these two Owls deserve to be chosen. Please vote!

Why I'm so proud of Rice University, part n

In an earlier post (here), I bragged about what Rice is doing to help with the global health crisis. If you'd like to see a video of what Rice, through Rebecca Richards-Kortum's program, is doing, click here for more on Rice 360.

Bravo, Rice!

Why the State of Nevada needs a strong higher education system.

I'm heading home to Las Vegas this afternoon, having attended the Winter Board Meeting of the Association of Rice Alumni. This afternoon's meeting included a talk by Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering. She described the many ways in which Rice University professors' research can be used to address global health issues (water-borne diseases, the high costs of getting technology to the medical personnel in developing countries who need them, etc.). Take a look (here) at what Rice's "Beyond Traditional Borders" project is doing all over the world. What makes Rice's program so special (well, among many things) is that undergraduates at Rice are participating in the research and outreach on an international scale (see here). You can read some of the students' blog posts here.

I can't think of a better illustration of why university research is such an integral part of all students' education. The film that we watched in the board meeting illustrated how Rice undergraduates were involved in the research, design, and dissemination of "science that matters." Not only were scientists involved, but also people from the Jones Graduate School of Management, as well as other disciplines, took part in the real-world problem-solving question: how do we get ideas and tools for improving health to communities with no resources at all?

I've had the pleasure of being at two flagship state universities: The Ohio State University and the University of Nebraska. Even at the less-than-flagship-funded University of Houston, faculty members do research that affects on-the-ground, real-life issues. And, of course, we at the Boyd School of Law at UNLV take our research and outreach missions very seriously. The students who take courses at any of these universities from any of the professors conducting this research or creative activity (don't forget the fine arts at all of these schools!) are benefiting from faculty members who are at the top of their game, and the students get to see for themselves what it means to have a life infused with meaning. Trust me: when you get paid to think about issues that are important to you and to convey your knowledge to other people, you have a life with meaning.

Now I'm living in a state in which the governor has proposed a cut amounting to 50% (yes, you read that right: 50%) of the budgets of the two public research universities. With a cut of that magnitude, there's no way to preserve any sort of benefit to the local, state, national, or international community from the research or outreach that we faculty members can do. The basic functions of these two universities will be gutted by these budget cuts, let alone any ability to discover and implement useful new ideas. (Even combining the two universities--an idea proposed by Geoff Schumacher in the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week as a way to navigate the budget cut--would be impossible with a 50% cut.)

Rice University graduates students who become astronauts, novelists, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and teachers. (See here for some examples.) Part of the reason that Rice has such a great track record with its graduates is that it has enough funding to attract the best minds--students, faculty, and staff. I actually don't think it's an exaggeration to say that some of what Rice does can save the world--or at least parts of it.

One of my favorite movies is The Right Stuff, and one of my favorite scenes in that movie explains the politics of the space program this way:

Recruiter: Funding. That's what makes your ships go up. . . . No bucks, no Buck Ro[]gers.

I'm not trying to compare Rice to any of the large public universities with which I've been associated. Rice has a very different mission from other universities and, as you can tell, I'm passionate about Rice. I am as proud of the work that Rice is doing with its Beyond Traditional Borders program as I've been of the fact that President Kennedy announced his goals for the space program at Rice in 1962.

But Nevadans deserve to have its best people working on difficult issues, teaching Nevadan (and non-Nevadan) students, and adding far more to Nevada's economy than any state appropriation "pays for." Unless the governor really thinks that it's more important to keep taxes low than it is to improve the Nevada economy for the future, this blow to higher education is taking away our "Buck Rogers" moments. Do we really want to give up reaching for the stars so soon?