The George R. Brown School of Engineering, which ranks No. 29 nationally (up from No. 33 last year), has four programs or specialties in the top 25: bioengineering (tied for No. 10, up from No. 12), civil engineering (tied for No. 20, up from No. 27), computer engineering (tied for No. 22, up from No. 23) and environmental engineering (tied for No. 14, up from No. 15).

Other Rice Engineering programs rank in the top 30: chemical engineering (tied for No. 26), electrical engineering (tied for No. 27), materials science (tied for No. 28) and mechanical engineering (tied for No. 26, up from No. 29).

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, which ranks No. 25 nationally, has four programs in the top 25: entrepreneurship (tied for No. 10, up from No. 11), management (tied for No. 25), full-time MBA (No. 25), and the professional MBA program that U.S. News ranks in its part-time MBA category (tied for No. 17).

These rankings are among the nation’s most closely watched annual surveys of academic excellence. U.S. News evaluates universities across six major disciplines — business, education, engineering, law, medicine and nursing — and publishes the results to help inform prospective students.

The Best Graduate Schools rankings are based on expert opinions and statistical indicators measuring the quality of faculty, research and students. The data came from statistical surveys of more than 2,125 programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 23,000 academics and professionals in fall 2020 and early 2021.

For more information on the rankings, go to the U.S. News Best Graduate Schools website.

Rice University’s Board of Trustees has approved a plan to enlarge its undergraduate student body by 20% to 4,800 by the fall of 2025.

The university will open a 12th residential college and expand the number of students living on campus by about one-third to 3,525. Although decisions on graduate student enrollment are more decentralized, Rice’s current population of roughly 3,500 degree-seeking graduate students is also expected to grow, bringing Rice’s total enrollment to approximately 9,000 by fall 2025.

This expansion will follow a roughly 35% increase in undergraduate enrollment between fall 2005 and 2013, as well as enlargement in graduate programs. With the newly announced expansion in enrollment, Rice’s student body will have grown by about 80% over two decades.

“Rice’s extraordinary applicant pool has grown dramatically despite the challenges posed by the pandemic,” President David Leebron said.

“With the previous expansion we greatly increased our national and international student applications, enrolment and visibility. We also dramatically increased diversity on our campus, and we were able to extend the benefits of a Rice education to many more students. As before, we must undertake this expansion carefully in order to assure that we retain the best aspects of Rice culture, student experience and sense of community.”

Higher enrollment will help Rice not only continue developing a more diverse and dynamic environment on campus, but also add more faculty members strategically recruited for specific objectives in teaching and research.

“The Board of Trustees strongly supports the expansion of the student body as a strategic imperative. Expanding the student body now will also expand Rice’s future alumni base across the nation and around the world,” said Robert Ladd, chair of the Rice Board of Trustees. “Welcoming more students to the Rice campus today will have an impact on the university for generations to come.”

Demand for a Rice education is high. The number of students applying to Rice has grown about 75% over the last four years, and especially after the university’s 2018 launch of the Rice Investment, a financial aid program that significantly expanded support for domestic students from families with incomes up to $200,000. In 2004, Rice received about 11 applications for every entering student; by 2020, the ratio had grown to roughly 28 applicants for every student opening. Almost 30,000 students applied for fall 2021, an increase of 26% from the previous year.

Under the university’s plan, the total number of degree-seeking undergraduates will scale up annually for five years, from just over 4,000 in fall 2020 to 4,800 in fall 2025. The full-time instructional faculty is expected to increase by nearly 50 by fall 2025. Rice’s undergraduate student-faculty ratio would remain roughly the same — about six faculty members for every undergraduate student.

An expanded student body will be accommodated by new construction on the campus, including a new engineering building, a new building for the visual and dramatic arts, an additional residential college and an expanded student center. In the first quarter of next year, the university will break ground on a new student center that will largely replace the Rice Memorial Center (RMC) familiar to generations of Rice students and alumni. Designed by the international architecture firm Adjaye Associates, the architects behind the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Rice’s new three-story, 80,000-square-foot student center will incorporate all of the RMC’s current functions, a multicultural center and a plethora of gathering and event spaces.

As the student body grows, so will Rice’s research capabilities. Despite the unusual circumstances imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the university has recently announced a series of major new initiatives as its external research funding has significantly increased.

The Welch Institute at Rice University, a sweeping strategic partnership launched in September 2020, will accelerate the discovery, design and manufacture of the next generation of basic materials. The $100 million commitment from the Robert E. Welch Foundation constitutes the largest single gift in Rice University’s history. The new materials developed at this institute could literally transform the world.

Carbon Hub, inaugurated in February 2020 with a $10 million commitment from Shell, is working with industry partners to create an energy future with zero carbon emissions. Instead of burning hydrocarbons and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, hydrocarbons will be split to create clean-burning hydrogen fuel. Instead of carbon residue becoming a gas polluting the air, it will become a solid material that can be used to make everything from buildings to cars to household appliances. Carbon Hub will direct $100 million of basic science and engineering on an array of technologies, several of which have already been proven in the lab.

The Rice University National Security Research Accelerator laboratories, opened in October 2020, will accelerate the discovery and development of technologies for both military and civilian applications. The partnership with the Army Futures Command and the Army Research Laboratory represents a new model for collaborative research on critical technologies to enhance national security.

The new students will also be able to take advantage of another recently approved initiative. Rice’s top-ranked Jones Graduate School of Business will provide the faculty and administer the curriculum for the university’s first undergraduate major in business, which will be offered beginning this fall. Current freshmen and incoming undergraduates will be eligible.

Owl Have You Know

Season 1, Episode 17

Dr. Tom Kolditz, founding Director of the Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University, joins host David Droogleever. Tom explains why institutions of higher education don't necessarily deliver on their leadership development promises and what the Doerr Institute is doing to change that.

Subscribe to Owl Have You Know on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business is expanding its operations management program due to increased demand from students and industry. The school has also recruited Tolga Tezcan, a leading scholar in business analytics and operations management.

Successful business operations strategies are the foundation for growing and distributing a company’s products, services and profits in a post-pandemic world, school leaders said.

Joining Rice Business from the London School of Business, Tezcan has conducted extensive research on designing and managing service systems in customer service and healthcare systems. He has been published in Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Annals of Applied Probability and other academic journals.

Tezcan and Amit Pazgal, the Friedkin Chair in Management and professor of marketing and operations management at Rice Business, will be the first two faculty in the new operations group, with three additional faculty expected to be hired in the next year to further expand the areas of focus.

Pazgal is the academic director of operations management, a leadership role in operations management curriculum design across all Rice Business programs. His research has been published in leading marketing, management, operations and economic journals.

“Our operational management faculty aim to deliver a deeper understanding of a company’s competencies rather than a technical engineering view of operations,” said Jeff Fleming, deputy dean of academic affairs at JGSB. “Tolga and Amit’s work will elevate Rice Business’ current offerings and pave the way for innovation in an expanding industry.”

Owl Have You Know

Season 1, Episode 16

Pranika Sinha ’04, managing director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Organizational Development at Greystone, joins host David Droogleever. She talks about what stops her from hitting the snooze button in the morning, how a sense of belonging factors into diversity and inclusion, and what unconscious bias is and how to recognize it.

Subscribe to Owl Have You Know on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Increased internet-access spending by Texas public schools improved academic performance but also led to more disciplinary problems among students, a study of 9,000 schools conducted by a research team from Rice, Texas A&M University and the University of Notre Dame shows.

Whether students benefit from increased internet access in public schools has been an open question, according to the researchers. For example, some parents and policy advocates contend it increases children’s access to obscene or harmful content and disciplinary problems. Others believe it promotes personalized learning and higher student engagement.

To address these policy questions, the research team created a multiyear dataset (2000-14) of 1,243 school districts representing more than 9,000 Texas public schools. The team measured internet-access spending, 11 academic performance indicators and 47 types of school disciplinary problems. It used econometric techniques to develop causal estimates linking internet-access spending to academic performance and disciplinary problems. Using student earning, the researchers calculated the economic impact of increased annual internet spending.

To date, this is the largest and most comprehensive study linking school internet-access spending to academic and disciplinary outcomes, the researchers said.

The team found that increased school district internet spending is associated with not only improved graduation rates, but also higher numbers of students meeting SAT/ACT criterion and completing advanced courses. It also led to an improvement in commended performance in math, reading, writing and social studies. Interestingly, the researchers noted these improvements were stronger for students who lived in counties with greater internet access (as measured by the number of broadband providers).

On the flip side, increased school district internet spending also led to higher rates of disciplinary problems at schools, they said.

The team also calculated how much economic benefit a school district’s internet access will bring students during their lifetimes. It found that a $600,000 increase in annual internet-access spending produces a financial gain of approximately $820,000 to $1.8 million per school district, together with losses from disciplinary problems totaling $25,800 to $53,440.

In other words, investments in internet access are well worth the costs.

“We are proud that Texas public schools can serve as a live learning case for understanding education policy,” said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Investments in internet access provide clear and meaningful academic benefits. Yet, schools need to implement policies to address increased disciplinary issues such as cyberbullying.

“K-12 education has transformed into virtual learning due to COVID-19,” he continued. “Our research conclusions apply to a setting where physical learning is supplemented by internet access.”

However, Mittal cautioned that these benefits cannot be expected to hold if physical learning is completely supplanted by internet-based learning.

The paper, “Investigating the Academic Performance and Disciplinary Consequences of School District Internet Access Spending,” which appeared in the February issue of the Journal of Marketing Research, was co-authored by professors Shrihari Sridhar of Texas A&M and Yixing Chen of Notre Dame. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243720964130.