The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 84, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, November 1, 1996 Page: 1 of 20
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'U.S. News' rankings under fire
Angattque Sly
News Editor
named
tfiinew Computational Erijtfncerlng Building wiii
Pmyian Malt, In jionor of Ch^i^lHinfanfbelow),
this year after serving 14 yeton* asj-chairnian of the
Governors. The building opefis today with a reception [open to
students.
In addition to heia« «:BM jor dontll^ilRjftfeg
building, Duncan's accomplishments as
bourd chair include increasing the university's
endowment from $434 million to $1.7 bil-
lion and adding nine buildings to the campus
since 1983, two of which are currently under
construction. Duncan received his B.S. in
Chemical Engineering from Rice in 1947.
His career included posts as varied as presi-
dent of Coca-Cola Foods (1964-67) and the
second U.S. secretary ®f "energy (1979-81).
FOR MORE ON THE BUILDING, SEE PAGES 10-11.
'Die Student Association voted
Monday to include Rice in an un-
precedented effort to reform the way
U.S. News and World Report ranks
colleges and universities. The For-
get U.^: News Coalition, which in-
cludes such universities as Yale,
Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Duke and
the University of California at Ber-
keley, was created at Stanford Uni-
versity this October by students who
noticed that theij* university's ad-
ministration was implementing
some policies for the sole purpose of
improving their U.S. News ranking.
In one statement from the
Stanford chapter of FUNC, students
wrote, "Most glaringly, there has
been a new program introduced
called the Stanford Fund. This pro-
gram pays student groups to solicit
donations from alumni not so much
to raise money (Stanford already
raises more money than almost any
other school) but to increase the
percentage of alumni who give.
"When students work for the
Stanford Fund, they are informed
that Stanford ranks a mere 26th in
U.S. News' 'percentage of alumni
who give' and that by soliciting do-
nations, we will be able to return to
number one."
According to Rice's Vice Presi-
dent for llniversity45\dvancement
Kathryn Costello, "Rice is in the for-
tunate position that while the uni-
versity is always pleased to be rec-
ognized ... (Rice's rankingl is not a
factor that has driven us to make
decisions. The president, provosts
and faculty make their decisions on
what we think are the right things to
do. {The rankings] don't drive our
decisions, nor should they."
Fluctuations in ranking also in-
vite criticism. For example, two years
ago, Johns Hopkins University was
ranked 22nd in the "best national
university" category. The next year,
it was 10th, and this year, Hopkins
was placed 15th.
"It is ridiculous to think that the
quality of any university could fluc-
tuate so much from year to yeat
SEE RANKINGS PAGE 7:
SA groups continue campus reform
Feiisa Yang
News Eetiloi
At the Student Association Sen-
ate meeting on Monday, SA Presi-
dent Maryana Iskander revisited the
goals and issues brought up during
the SA retreat Sept. 13-15. The up-
date showed that many of the objec-
tives have been accomplished, and
others are in the Works.
Introductory physics
One of the issues of greatest con-
cern which was brought up at the
on
image
Feiisa Vang
News Editor
A recently published image analy-
sis on prospective applicants to Rice
sparked a minor controversy on the
Texas Journal pages of the Wall Street
Journal. An article by WSJ staff re-
porter Erin Allday incited protest
from university officials, represen-
tatives of Maguire Associates (who
conducted the study) and a member
of the reading audience.
Maguire Associates is a research
group based in Concord, Mass., that
specializes in academia. Rice com-
missioned them to conduct the sur-
vey in order to understand why a
prospective student might or might
not apply to Rice. The study was
conducted on high school students
drawn from Rice's database of in-
quirers. Surveys were mailed to
3,000 ofthe prospectives, and nearly
500 were interviewed by telephone.
The results were published in two
volumes, the first issued in January
and the«;econd in March.
Aliday's Jun<**12 story, entitled
"Rice May Be a 'Best Buy,' but Study
Says Students Aren't Sold on the
School," focused on the supposed
difficulties Rice is facing in getting
accepted students to matriculate
"Although the school "has been
touted by several national rankings
as a bargain, top students aren't be-
ing lured by the low*tuition," Allday
wrote
Allday goes on to cite what she
calls "four major sore points" identi-
fied by the Maguire report: "Rice
doesn't have the cachet of an Ivy
League school; it focuses too much
on the hard sciences; Houston has a
reputation as a bad place to live
among prospective students; and
many of them say the school is sim-
ply too far from home."
According to Allday, the effects
of these concerns is a drop in per-
centage of accepted students who
matriculated: 38 percent in 1995,
down from 50 percent in 1991. She
compared the figures to both the
Massachusetts Institute ofTechnol-
ogy and Stanford University, who
matriculate 56 percent and 61 per-
SEE JOURNAL PAGE 8
retreat concerned the quality of in-
troductory physics courses.
The SA has established working
ties with the Physics Department,
namely Department Chair Marjorie
Corcoran. This week, students cur-
rently enrolled in the introductory
classes will receive mid-semester
evaluations to nil out.
In addition, all students who have
taken an introductory physicscourse
will receive an evaluation via cam-
pus mail.
Hans/.en College President Tara
Miller, who is on the committee,
said that Corcoran was "very helpful
and realized that this was a serious
problem."
The committee hopes to garner
feedback from the students and
present the information, along with
possible changes, to the Committee
on Undergraduate Education.
Fondren Library
The SA is Still working with Vice
Provost and University Librarian
Charles Henry on establishing a dia-
logue regarding Fondren Library.
Although little lias been done as of
yet, they have made some headway
in establishing a 24-hour facility at
the library.
Teaching evaluations
Another committee has been
working on improving professor
evaluations,
At the retreat, one of the propos-
al#' that was drafted was to have
professors sit in on each other's
classes in order to learn and assess
each other.
According to SA committee mem-
ber Elaine Ho, however, Political
Science Professor and Head of the
Committee on Teaching John
Ambler and Dean of Social Sciences
Bob Stein were not optimistic about
this idea?
Instead, the committee is work-
ing to implement an idea to allow
students to evaluate professors at*
the middle of the semester, in hopes
that professors can respond to the
feedback immediately, rather than
wait until the following semester,
A pilot project for next semester
is being developed. Ten classes will
be used for the test run, and stu-
dents will be asked to provide teach-
SEE REFORM PAGE 9:
SA changes system to avoid additional commencement hassles
Maya Balakrishnan
Stuff Writer
The process for finding a com-
mencement speaker has been re-
cently altered by the Student Asso-
ciation Senate. The growing con-
cern over the commencement
speaker ifcsue in the past two years
served as an impetus to investigate
the current process and to find a
solution this year.
Last week, concerned students
met with President Malcolm Gillis
and came up with a proposal for
Improving the speaker selection pro-
cess. According to the proposal, the
process will begin! wo years before
each commencement, which will
minimize the risk that the speakers
chosen will have prior engagements.
In September, a five-member
committee will meet; by January,
the group will have developed a short
list of potential speakers consisting
of six internationally or nationally-
known individuals, three regionally-
known speakers and one speaker
from the Rice community.
The SA will appoint three of the
committee members, the Graduate
Student Association will appoint one.
and the final committee member will
be chosen.from Rice faculty.
These new changes will stream
line the process considerably and
will lessen the burden on students
ill the committee, according to SA
President Maryana Iskander.
"They can come up with a cre-
ative list of names without having to
put out numerous polls to the stu-
dents," Iskander said.
After the class has rankgd the 10
potential speakers, the list will be
handed over to Gilfis, who will begin
contacting the candidates. This sys-
tern leaves adequate time in the sec-
ond year forconfiriningthe speaker.
Rice has not always had a com-
mencement speaker. Until 1992,
Rice has relied on internal speakers;
it has only been in the recent past
that the university has acquired re-
nowned national
speakers such as
former Secre-
tary of State
James A.
Baker III
and former
President
PAGES
new
Transco Tower, a Houston land-
mark and 1996Homecoming King,
is located at 2800 Post Oak Boule-
vard mar tl)e Galleria.
It it die tallest skyscraper in
-the U.S. not in a downtown area
and the third tallest building in
Houston. On weekdays, 8 a.m. - 6
p.m., an observation area on level
51 is open to the public.
The Tkmhtr did contact
TrsHseo but ho reipsnie
This year's Homecoming
Queen, Richard Smalley, is a Rice
Chemistry professor whose most
recent honor was the Nobel Prize in
Last year, Smalley sported a
snow-white beard and mustache;
this year, he shows the world how
"clean cut" is done.
Dan Colbert, a postdoctoral fel-
low In Smalley's lab, said, "It's a
little bit bewildering ~ I mean, do
you guys always do this? Has a
woman everbeentfueen^^We!!,
I'm sure Dr. Smalley will take this
in good spirit."
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Beard, Marty & Rao, Vivek. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 84, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, November 1, 1996, newspaper, November 1, 1996; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246551/m1/1/?q=%22%22~1: accessed June 22, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.