Anastasiya Zavyalova’s plans for a sabbatical semester abroad were supposed to begin with some holiday visits. Before starting her sabbatical at the University of Oxford, the associate professor of strategic management would first spend some time in England and then visit her family in Kazakhstan for a New Year’s celebration.

Geopolitical events had other ideas in mind, though. The new year brought a wave of unrest across Kazakhstan, with citizens dissatisfied with government corruption and economic inequality. “I landed in Istanbul for a layover and learned that all the flights to my home country were canceled indefinitely,” Zavyalova says. “I was stranded for 10 days before returning to England. That’s how my sabbatical started.”

When she finally did make it to Oxford, Zavyalova found that current events had caught up with her own research on organizational stigmatization, which examines how organizations respond when outside groups attempt to discredit or negatively judge them. During the previous months, she had been interviewing representatives from nongovernmental organizations that had been cast in a negative light because of Russia’s 2012 “foreign agents” law.

On paper, the law requires any NGO that receives support from outside Russia and engages in political activity to register as a “foreign agent.” In reality, it threatens NGOs, media organizations and private citizens who are critical of the Russian government with both social stigma and legal consequences. The phrase “foreign agent” carries insinuations of espionage that date back to the early decades of the Soviet Union, while the law opens organizations up to financial audits, government scrutiny and even criminal proceedings. Human rights advocates have branded the law as one of many ways the Russian government suppresses dissent and restricts freedom of speech.

As the Russian military gathered at the border with Ukraine in early 2022 and war between the two countries seemed likely, Zavyalova was surprised to see how “unbelievably timely” her research had become.

“I was coding the interviews and relistening to them,” she says. “I’d listen to a couple interviews each day and work on translations. And I was shocked at how much insight those people had about the potential future of Russia.”

She attributes her own insights on the project to being abroad while on sabbatical. Sabbaticals are a time-honored tradition, allowing professors the opportunity to step away from their usual duties in their classrooms and departments and instead focus on their own research interests. But going abroad adds layers to that experience — something that Zavyalova and fellow Rice Business professor Douglas Schuler discovered firsthand earlier this year.

“When you’re on sabbatical in a different country, it’s just you and your thoughts and your research. Being away physically can free up your mind,” Zavyalova says.

Deep Contemplation, New Ideas

Harvard University established the first formal sabbatical leave system in 1880, and other institutions quickly adopted similar programs. Giving professors dedicated time to leave campus in pursuit of new ideas and perspectives was seen not so much as a perk for faculty but as something vital to each institution.

“(Sabbatical) is not merely national, it is international; contact with other institutions, with specialists of other countries, with methods of acquiring and imparting knowledge in vogue elsewhere … is for the real University teacher an intellectual and practical necessity,” Columbia University’s trustees wrote in a 1907 report.

It’s an idea that Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez believes is still vital.

“I always tell people, ‘Your job is really to think hard while you’re on sabbatical,’” he says. “The work of good research that we think of academics doing — deep contemplation, new ideas, trying to break through with something that hasn’t been done before — requires a concentrated period of time to focus on that part of the academic mission.”

Castles and Collegiality

Having a change of scenery helps. Doug Schuler, a professor of business and public policy, traded springtime on the Gulf Coast for the hills of the Rhine River Valley in Germany during his sabbatical at the University of Mannheim. Schuler’s host was Laura Marie Edinger-Schons, the chair of sustainable business at the university. The roots of Schuler’s sabbatical stretch back to 2021, when one of Edinger-Schons’s doctoral students stayed with Schuler while working on a project on corporate activism.

In Germany, academic researchers work closely with private businesses to create and measure sustainability goals, Schuler says. “I’ve never worked closely with companies on that area, and that was something I had hoped to take advantage of in Germany. The European Union is ahead of the U.S. in many of those aspects, and the University of Mannheim was a great place to learn more about it.”

The university’s business department is housed in the Schloss, the German word for a castle, though only a handful of faculty and students were in the building during much of Schuler’s sabbatical because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Russian invasion of Ukraine also changed the direction of Schuler’s sabbatical. While in Germany, he and Edinger-Schons collaborated on an article for The Conversation about how and why international companies like Apple and IKEA severed ties with Russia as the war began.

“We had been thinking about how corporations respond to political and social crises, and here was a major one unfolding during my sabbatical,” Schuler says. Their collaboration revealed key differences of perspective between him and Edinger-Schons. While she viewed the corporate response to Russian aggression as both socially responsible and working in tandem with official government sanctions, Schuler saw the opposite: a slow, tepid response from governments that forced corporations to take the lead.

Since returning to Houston, Schuler is reconsidering his ideas about the relationship between scholars and corporations. “Laura and her doctoral students really see that engaging businesses directly on sustainability issues creates the biggest bang for their buck,” he says. “And with that, corporations can potentially change behaviors in order to make things better. Before, I’d sit more on the sidelines … but I think there’s much more to engaged research with these companies, where you’re a researcher but also an advocate.”

The change in environment helped Schuler wrestle with those ideas. “You’re in this new element, and even daily life, it’s kind of an adventure. It gets you ready to sit down and do your work,” he says.

Productively Uncomfortable

Professors aren’t the only ones at Rice Business who take their scholarship overseas. Study-abroad experiences have been a part of the school’s MBA curriculum for almost five years.

Each year, students participate in a Global Field Experience, visiting other countries, tackling research projects with foreign firms and working on teams with other international students. “The goal is to understand what I call the boundary conditions of knowledge: How do someone’s usual ways of operating succeed in a different environment?” Rodriguez says. “And we know that there is nothing quite as effective as immersing yourself in that new environment.”

It’s something Rodriguez experienced firsthand during a sabbatical in Mexico years ago. Teaching an economics course in another language to a group of students with vastly different perspectives on growth, income and jobs was “productively uncomfortable,” he recalls.

“I saw that I was framing ideas and bringing language to these conversations that wasn’t as useful there as back home,” he says. Those ideas still resonate. Rodriguez traveled to Paris for the grand opening of the Rice University Paris Center in late June. A hub for student programs, independent researchers and international conferences, the center will serve as a satellite location for Rice researchers to work with European partners.

“There’s a different social contract in Europe about work and organizations, and it impacts how people lead and develop organizational strategies. You see your own cultural context better when you can look at it from a different perspective,” he says.

Scholars Without Borders

Zavyalova’s sabbatical at Oxford provided space for deep focus on her research into organizational stigmatization in Russia. She conducted a handful of final interviews for her project as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated. “The questions people asked me changed, the tone of the interviews changed — people began to be very afraid of the repercussions they could face for speaking out,” she says. In February, she submitted a draft of the research paper to the Strategic Management Society for the organization’s upcoming conference in London.

“The sabbatical helped push that paper forward,” she says.

The experience also encapsulated the new reality of international scholarship in a post-pandemic world. Zavyalova used Zoom and messaging apps to talk with sources in Russia only to find herself using those same technologies to attend meetings at Oxford because of pandemic restrictions. She felt connected to both the Oxford and Rice communities, all while pursuing research with an international scope.

“I learned from this sabbatical that it doesn’t matter where you are physically,” she says. “I continued to work on my projects and work with Rice committees, and I always felt like I was a Rice professor. Being physically away from Rice wasn’t an obstacle.”

Zavyalova’s plans for a family visit also eventually came to fruition. Though she didn’t make it to Kazakhstan, her mother and sister joined her in England for a long-awaited reunion. “We finally met halfway,” she says.

The story of modern medicine is often a story of women being relegated to the sidelines. In a system that assumes a male patient as the default, women’s health providers and issues have historically been overlooked, underfunded and stigmatized. This disparity has shaped market forces in a powerful way. Even though women account for 80% of consumer purchasing decisions, according to a Boston Consulting Group study, generations of women have struggled to identify products and services that are designed with their needs in mind.

That trend is changing. In the past decade, a growing number of “FemTech” startups have emerged to offer innovative products, services, research and therapeutic treatments related to contraception, fertility, pelvic and sexual health, maternal health, oncology and overall wellness. Nonprofit organizations have also stepped up to fill in the gaps.

Rice Business alumni are at the forefront of this new wave of innovation, writing a new chapter in health care that draws women off the sidelines and places them front and center.

Building a Movement

For Runsi Sen ’04, personal tragedy ignited a global effort. In 2009, she lost her mother to ovarian cancer only 11 months after diagnosis. Several years later, she founded Ovarcome, a Houston-based ovarian cancer foundation that raises global awareness, funds research in search of a cure and provides financial assistance to ovarian cancer patients across the globe.

Every year, approximately 300,000 women worldwide are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. More than half ultimately succumb to the disease. Those who are fortunate enough to catch it in Stages 1 or 2 have more than a 90% survival rate over five years, but catching it in time is easier said than done. With few screening or early detection options available, early prevention hinges on recognizing vague, nonspecific symptoms as pieces of the same puzzle.

“For decades, people have been calling ovarian cancer a silent disease,” Sen says. “This is a misconception we are working hard to eradicate. It is not silent.”

One of Ovarcome’s greatest achievements is to popularize the acronym “BEACH” to refer to the primary symptoms of ovarian cancer: bloating, early satiety, abdominal/pelvic pain, changes in bowel/bladder habits and heightened fatigue.

Ovarcome has spread the word about early warning signs to more than 2 million followers on social media and thousands more who attend global seminars and events. Reflecting on the impact of Ovarcome, Sen remembers speaking to someone who had shared BEACH with a cousin who was experiencing symptoms. Not long after, her cousin was diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer. Sen can recall dozens of similar stories.

But raising awareness doesn’t end at prevention, she notes. It also involves making patients aware of ongoing clinical trials, connecting them to holistic medical programs that improve survival rates, and facilitating genetic testing. “Our goal is nothing less than to disrupt the status quo by shifting patterns of thinking and helping patients advocate for themselves,” she says.

Changing the Game

Alongside the rise of trailblazing startups and nonprofits that are geared toward women’s health, there is also a growing emphasis on general health issues that disproportionately affect women.

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Joanna Nathan ’19 is preparing to launch a company called Prana Thoracic, which has developed a new surgical tool to diagnose and intervene in lung cancer. When a CT scan spots a suspicious pulmonary nodule, it’s challenging to diagnose without surgery. The smaller the nodule, the more difficult it is to excise and diagnose — like “trying to find a pea in a loaf of bread,” Nathan explains.

In the best-case scenario, a needle can remove enough of it to reach a diagnosis. Often, though, physicians remove the entire wedge of the lung where the nodule is located. While this surgery can save lives, it permanently impairs lung function. The minimally invasive tool developed by Prana Thoracic can “core down” to remove a much smaller portion of lung tissue, leading to an accurate diagnosis without long-term repercussions.

Prana Thoracic’s technology will benefit women in particular, says Nathan. Lung cancer remains the primary cause of cancer in women: more than ovarian, uterine and breast cancer combined. But the original criteria developed for lung cancer screening left women vulnerable. Women are younger than men, on average, when they develop lung cancer, so the recommended screening age of 55 left more women at risk. These guidelines shifted last year, lowering the age to 50 and significantly expanding the population eligible for CT scan screening.

Currently, Nathan is raising a new round of funding to prove the efficacy of its product in human studies. While there is still ground left to cover, Nathan is encouraged by the surge of public and private funding directed toward women’s health. “Over the past decade of working in the health care startup space, I have seen more and more founders and investors who have decided to make women’s health a priority,” she says. In the next decade, she expects to see a slew of new health care technologies and products that address historic gaps and inequities. “It will be exciting to see these innovations come to market and change the game for women’s health. Times are finally changing.”

Empowering Mothers

The status quo is already shifting when it comes to health issues men don’t experience — issues like menstruation, menopause, and of course, pregnancy. Pedro Silva ’12 and Abbey Donnell ’17 both founded companies to serve nursing mothers: a massive share of the population whose needs have historically been overlooked.

In 2019, Silva and his wife, Berkley Luck, co-founded the breast milk freeze-drying company Milkify. Luck came up with the concept for Milkify when a colleague struggled to pump and store breast milk after returning to work from maternity leave. She realized breastfeeding was something of a ticking time bomb: Nursing mothers have to pump often to maintain their supply and store their milk properly, so it doesn’t spoil. Attempting to transport frozen milk only increases the pressure.

With a Ph.D. in molecular biology, Luck was perfectly positioned to reduce the stress of nursing mothers. She realized that by freeze-drying breast milk, she could create a powdered version with the same biological features. In fact, research suggests, freeze drying breast milk preserves nutritional value even more effectively than storing it in a freezer.

Silva and Luck discovered a milk bank overseas that had been freeze-drying breast milk for decades to donate to mothers who need it. By adapting the milk bank’s process and augmenting it with new technology, they created a way for nursing mothers to store breast milk for up to three years with no refrigeration. Their greatest concern was contamination, as infant nutrition leaves no room for error. With safety in mind, they developed a unique process for freeze-drying breast milk in individual bags, which avoids direct contact between the milk and equipment. This packaging process is FDA-compliant and has a patent pending.

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From their manufacturing facility in Houston, the Milkify team has served more than 1,000 nursing moms and processed 100,000 bags of milk over the last year. While Silva and Luck have been successful in expanding their business, they’ve found that potential investors are sometimes skeptical. “Breast milk is still somewhat of a taboo topic,” Silva says. “And it’s often a topic that investors think is too niche to address, because most of them have not had discussions about the difficulties of pumping and storing breast milk. They have no idea how many families struggle with this.”

Silva also fields questions from investors wondering why a man is working to solve a problem with breast milk. “This question assumes that men can’t empathize with the women in their lives, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” he says.

A Universal Need

Abbey Donnell has found that misconceptions fuel many of the challenges of breastfeeding. “People think that because breastfeeding is natural, it comes easily,” she says. “But it’s actually quite difficult. Breastfeeding is both time intensive and tied to a specific schedule, since mothers have a physical need to pump.” Depending on the age of her child, a breastfeeding mother typically needs to pump for about 20 to 30 minutes every two to three hours. When it comes to pumping breast milk throughout the workday, the well-being of both the nursing mother and her baby is at stake.

Even though hourly breastfeeding employees are protected by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in all 50 states, many companies have failed to extend the same protections and courtesies they do for other groups of employees. When many of Donnell’s friends and coworkers began having children, she noticed that no matter where they worked, they struggled to access adequate spaces and resources for breastfeeding. In an office with an open floor plan, she discovered, women are often forced to use conference rooms and bathrooms to pump.

Donnell set out to create what should have existed for her friends. In 2017, she launched a company called Work & Mother, which helps building managers install spaces equipped with private nursing suites for mothers to reserve. Each room contains hospital-grade pumping equipment so users can avoid lugging a separate bag to work every day. “We are helping employers take a major step toward becoming more inclusive and keeping more women in the workforce,” Donnell says.

Work & Mother has installed facilities in Houston, Austin and Dallas, with plans for corporate locations in New York and other major cities. “Our goal is to make mothers’ rooms as common as Starbucks,” Donnell says. “There is such a universal need for what we offer.”

Going Natural

When it comes to supporting women’s health, Caroline Goodner ’92 hasn’t shied away from stigma. She is the founder and CEO of OrganiCare, an Austin-based company that offers all-natural, organic products for common conditions like genital herpes, yeast infections and bacterial vaginosis. She founded the company in 2016 with one partner who has medical device experience and another who contributed technology refined in Italy: a type of oxygenated olive oil that is antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral.

This ingredient was originally used for wound care in Italy, but Goodner and her co-founders recognized its value for recurrent infections. In 2017, they made their first foray into the women’s health sphere with a product called FemiClear, developed to treat yeast infections naturally. In comparison to miconazole, the active ingredient in standard yeast infection treatments, FemiClear kills multiple yeast strains without causing antifungal resistance with frequent use.

Several years later, OrganiCare launched a version of FemiClear to treat genital herpes outbreaks. “One in five women has herpes, but there are few conditions more stigmatized,” says Goodner. While no medication can prevent herpes outbreaks, FemiClear can reduce their length and severity. It can also provide relief for bacterial vaginosis, a common condition that often produces a fishy odor.

“Doctors often address these types of conditions like they don’t really matter, but they can take a real physical and emotional toll,” says Goodner. “We’re doing what we can to help women feel more confident and get back to their fighting selves.”

Asma Ishaq ’02, the CEO of Modere, is similarly committed to offering natural products in the realm of beauty and personal care, health and wellness, and household cleaning. For the growing numbers of consumers seeking to optimize gut health, Modere has developed products like Axis™ TreBiotic to offer a pre-, pro- and post-biotic all in one. For those hoping to improve their skin’s elasticity and increase joint mobility, Modere offers Liquid BioCell®, a next-generation product that mirrors the composition of the body’s own cartilage to allow for better absorption.

With a presence in 44 countries, Modere is one of the fastest growing female-run companies in the world. As her company expands into new markets, Ishaq is looking forward to expanding its offerings as well. “We try to think about our customers’ future, not just present,” she says. “By giving them clean, safe products and tools, we help them live healthier lives in the long run.”

Three years ago, Tim Okabayashi ’05 and Karen Crofton ’10 stood before their peers in the Rice Business Dean’s Suite, using water bottles as mock microphones. Teams of board members, including Okabayashi and Crofton, were taking turns presenting new alumni engagement ideas at the school’s summer board retreat.

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“Karen, thank you for joining me,” Okabayashi said in a booming voice. “What would you think about doing a Rice Business podcast?” The presentation captivated fellow board members. “It absolutely won everyone over,” says Okabayashi, who got the idea after hearing about another school’s successful alumni podcast. “I thought that being able to tell audible stories could be really impactful,” he says, “not only sharing experiences of alumni, but stories that happen from within the walls of the school itself.”

Okabayashi, who works as a well construction analyst at Schlumberger, saw a Rice Business podcast as a mesh of NPR’s “How I Built This” and the podcast produced by the nonprofit StoryCorps. Over the next six months, he and Crofton, who teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, helped brainstorm podcast names —  including “Who Gives a Hoot,” “Disruptor” and “Nest Cast” — sourced guests, and worked with consultants to figure out technology needs and recording and distribution logistics. Ultimately, the Rice Business podcast, “Owl Have You Know,” was born.

COVID could have disrupted its launch. But instead, the pandemic allowed the board to broaden the podcast’s geographical reach. Rather than broadcast from campus, the podcast’s first volunteer hosts —  Christine Dobbyn, ’20, a former TV news broadcaster and now communications consultant, and David Droogleever ’12, who served as a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine officer and now delivers SaaS solutions for the government — figured out how to do it remotely, with guests joining from home.

In October 2020, the podcast’s first episode featured Bethany Andell ’01, president of Savage Brands and then president of the Rice Business Alumni Board, who was interviewed by Droogleever. Andell spoke about her passion for helping the corporate world get back to a place where people trust, respect and love business. 

Droogleever, who also hosts his own podcast, “Soft but Stronger,” came on board after the Rice Business team noticed the professional recording equipment in the background of his screen during a virtual Rice event and asked if he would co-host the podcast. “The school needed a more organic, easy-button way to keep the alumni community connected,” Droogleever says, “and the podcast had so much success its first year.”

Downloads steadily grew. Guests that first year included Scott Noel ’04, who supplies smallholder farmers in Nairobi with financing and training, and Julianne Katz ’21, who left a career in fine arts for a graduate degree in business. Success meant more resources for the podcast, including help from professional engineers and editors.

“We got it to a point where people who do this for a living can now propel it forward,” says Crofton. Adds Dobbyn, “The success has proven there’s an appetite for this. It demonstrates we’ve just scratched the surface of telling the stories of Rice Business alums.”

After two years of sharing inspirational alumni stories, Dobbyn and Droogleever are handing over the reins. The podcast’s incoming volunteer hosts are Maya Pomroy ’22, a former TV news journalist and entrepreneur, and Scott Gale ’19, an executive director at Halliburton Labs, who does voice-over work on the side and recently had an executive credit in a Hollywood film.

“Our challenge is to transition the podcast from what has been a fantastic Rice board experiment to something that has that staying power,” says Gale, who has his own podcast, too, called “Curiosity.”

Pomroy, who also tells the stories of Houston innovators through her company, The Public Lead, looks forward to further shaping “Owl Have You Know” to promote Rice Business to potential students. She’s interested in exploring the possibility of live podcast events and adding an occasional video component to the show. Okabayashi, who lives in the U.K., would also like to see more alumni living abroad featured on the podcast.

Pomroy and Gale are interested in including alumni from a variety of sectors and locations — both in the U.S. and globally. “We want the podcast to represent the cross-section of amazing humans that make up the Rice Business family,” Gale says. “That includes the sectors they work in, the countries they live in, the people they inspire.”

In July, Pomroy interviewed her first guest, Caroline Goodner ’92, co-founder and CEO of OrganiCare, which makes all-natural, organic over-the-counter healthcare products.

“It’s our responsibility to take what the others have done and to move it up the staircase,” says Pomroy. “Most people want to tell their story; you just have to know how to ask the right questions.”

Story Power

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As a young professional in Chicago, Pranika Uppal Sinha ’04 worked as an environmental engineer Monday through Friday. On weekends, she greeted customers as a hostess at a popular, upscale Moroccan restaurant to make extra cash.

She became friendly with a restaurant investor and regular who helped companies with their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The encounter set Sinha, who’s the daughter of Indian immigrants, on a path to help organizations improve their workplace culture and engagement and to make sure employees feel comfortable bringing their full, authentic selves to work.

“In my engineering job, I would get bored and I couldn’t use my creative side,” said Sinha. The regular, H Walker, who’s now the diversity, equity and inclusion officer for Boys & Girls Clubs of America, eventually asked Sinha to join him at his former consulting company. “Literally, it changed my life,” Sinha recalled.

Sinha later decided to pursue an MBA and left Chicago for Rice in the early 2000s. After graduating, she worked in human resources and organizational development for the Memorial Hermann Health System, then oversaw the talent, development and inclusion departments at energy company Oxy. Now, she’s the first head of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Greystone, the New York-based commercial real estate, finance and investment company.

Recently, Sinha discussed her experience while appearing as a guest on the Rice Business alumni podcast, “Owl Have You Know.”

I’m reminded that this is the seventh fall I have introduced myself to new students in their first days as MBAs. It never gets old.

In academia, fall means fresh beginnings — new students, faculty, staff and ideas. While all that change may come with growing pains, the growth that emerges from it is good. And we’ve got growth in spades. In this edition of the Rice Business Magazine, you’ll read stories of beginnings, change and growth that reflect the great things happening in McNair Hall and beyond the hedges.

With 10 new professors, a new deputy dean (whom you will recognize on the facing page), a new board member and a new position of chief business officer, we’re off and running on another ambitious semester. We also have a new editor for the magazine: welcome to Stacie Walker, who joined our marketing team in May. And many thanks to Jennie Latson, our former editor, who has moved on to a new position at Memorial Hermann.

As we continue to adjust to fluctuating work schedules, COVID pivots and the heat in Houston, I’m reminded that this is the seventh fall I have introduced myself to new students in their first days as MBAs. It never gets old. It never loses that first-day-of-school feeling. I love to hear their stories and goals for the future. That was you, once. Remember? We’re building big dreams at Rice Business. I’m so glad you’re a part of it.

— Peter

Interest in undergraduate business education has swelled in recent years, including at Rice Business, where the school’s 15-year-old business minor was growing in popularity year after year. Last year, to meet student demand, the school launched an undergraduate business major — and the demand shows no sign of cooling.

As of this school year, 79 students had declared the undergraduate major and the first class will graduate in 2024. And it’s increasingly popular with incoming students. 

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“This doesn’t factor in students who may or will decide to change their majors at some point. This is going to be huge,” said Alex Butler, the Rice Business finance professor who led the faculty committee to create the new major.

Undergraduate courses are taught by the same faculty as the MBA classes, said Natalia Piqueira, a finance professor and the director of undergraduate business programs.

“We are seeing strong demand for deeper business education from our current and prospective students. Now Rice Business can deliver undergraduates the same high-quality degree programs we have always delivered to MBAs, MAcc and Ph.D. students,” Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez said when the major launched. “We strive to be a forward-thinking business school for the next generation of global leaders.”

Nuts and Bolts

The degree plan, approved in spring 2021, has two concentrations: finance and management. “The structure is very similar to what an MBA looks like, and the program reflects the values of the faculty,” Butler said. “Students have seven core courses that mirror quite closely what our MBA core looks like, and then they do a deep dive into their areas of interest. While imposing the structure of discipline, we want to give students the opportunity to curate their own learning.”

The new program was created by a faculty committee with representatives from marketing, accounting, strategy, finance, organizational behavior and communications. “Most of us on the committee have teaching experience in our undergraduate business minor program that’s been going since 2007-2008, and we started by thinking about what we wanted the major to look like, what we wanted our students to learn, and how we wanted our students to have the flexibility to choose double majors,” said Butler.

The curriculum will give students the tools and the critical thinking skills they need to adapt to any environment, Piqueira said. The business minor, by comparison, includes six classes on the fundamentals of finance, management, leadership and communications.

Emphasis on Critical Thinking

Like other Rice fields of study, the business major is not a pre-professional major. “This is a deeply intellectual major with the same scholarly underpinnings of our other disciplines,” Butler said. “We are staffing courses with professors who are tremendous scholars in their fields, including Yuhang Xing, who has published top articles on derivatives, asset pricing and volatility; and Kevin Crotty, who is one of the up-and-coming scholars on all things asset pricing.”

To gauge and generate interest in the curriculum, Rice Business offers information sessions for prospective undergraduate students each month, and those sessions fill up quickly. “We see a lot of interest from high schools,” Piqueira said. “There is a lot of excitement about the program.”

Learn More about the Undergraduate Business Major

^{The Vanity Fair-inspired photo shoot of new faculty in Gibbs Gallery at McNair Hall included the senior leadership team — Peter Rodriguez, dean; Jing Zhou, deputy dean; and Barbara Ostdiek, senior associate dean. Not pictured; Amy Dittmar, provost and professor of economics and finance.}

^{From left to right: Süleyman Kerimov, Jung Youn Lee, Barbara Ostdiek, Daan van Knippenberg, Peter Rodriguez, Sora Jun, Jing Zhou, Nicola Secomandi, David Zhang, Robert Dittmar, Yiangos Papanastasiou, and Tommy Pan Fang}

Rice Business welcomes a record 10 tenured and tenure-track professors.

Competition is tough at the top of the business school market. Hiring high-caliber faculty to match enrollment growth is one of the biggest challenges we face as a school. The 10 newest faculty members who joined Rice Business as of July meet the challenge and bump our number of tenured and tenure-track professors to 63, an increase of nearly 50% over the last 10 years.

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Former Deputy Dean Jeff Fleming, who was in charge of the hiring, said, “We had great success with faculty recruiting last year, hiring many new Ph.D. graduates who were at the top of their recruiting markets, and attracting several fantastic tenured faculty from other institutions. We look to continue the momentum this year. We still have a lot of needs and recruiting the best faculty in the areas in which we need to grow and compete is a balancing act. Fortunately, Peter’s built a strong foundation for the school as dean and we now have a deep core of outstanding faculty. The school has rapidly become a place where other top faculty want to be.”

Faculty contributions in research, teaching and service are critical to fulfilling our mission, as is creating a supportive atmosphere where faculty are able to pursue their research while engaging with a vibrant business community in Houston. This year’s new faculty range from highly published and tenured to fresh out of Ph.D. programs at Harvard Business School, Stanford, Northwestern and London Business School with research under their belts. Their research spans finance, operations management, organizational behavior, strategy and marketing, and they will be teaching across all programs.
 

“Our programs have seen tremendous growth over the years — including our newest business major for undergraduate students — and we wanted to bring in strong scholars to support that growth,” said Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez.

“We want to hire the best professors from any region and background to teach our students and enhance relationships in Houston and beyond. This group of chaired full professors and first-appointment assistant professors brings a wealth of diverse knowledge, experience and insight to our campus and the city.”

As Jing Zhou steps into her role at the new deputy dean during this sustained period of growth, her perspective still carries the weight of a professor who has been in the classroom at Rice Business since 2003. “There has never been a better time to work and study at Rice Business. We have experienced amazing growth, and this group of new colleagues further adds to our vibrant research enterprise. Our faculty are thought leaders in their fields. Their knowledge will benefit anyone who is interested in becoming an effective leader and making a positive difference.”

While faculty and program growth go hand in hand, so too does accommodating professors and students with a building and staff that fit their needs. Today, all of this is happening simultaneously: more faculty, students and staff, plus a plan to expand McNair Hall. And the dean is ready for it.

“Within about six months when I first arrived, I came to the conclusion that we probably needed to be twice as big as we were to compete with the very best schools on a national stage.” The dean admits that twice as big is simple on paper. Paying for it, implementing it and adapting the school for growth is the hard part. 

“The trick is, you can’t be the best and trade off quality for quantity. It’s much easier to grow without that constraint. We’ve set a high bar. Best students. Best faculty. Rice and Houston are ripe for that.”

Owl Have You Know

Season 3, Episode 1

Caroline joins one of our new Owl Have You Know hosts Maya Pomroy in this episode, and takes us through the genesis of her companies, the importance of a network when launching your business, pivoting to women centric products, and their shared appreciation for Rice Business professor & mentor Al Danto.

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