Now in its 26th year, the Women in Leadership Conference has long been one of the defining gatherings at Rice Business. This year, it welcomed more than 600 attendees, fifteen sponsoring companies and endless advice on leadership.
Lipi Gandhi '26
The Women in Leadership Conference has long been one of the defining gatherings at Rice Business. This year, the momentum was unmistakable, with more than 600 attendees filling the venue and tickets selling out in just five weeks. Fifteen companies supported the event through sponsorships across multiple tiers, reinforcing the conference’s reputation as both a professional forum and a community investment.
Now in its 26th year, the conference has matured into something far more enduring than a day of panels. It has become an institution that offers professionals a rare setting for candid conversations about ambition, failure, doubt and growth.
Ideas travel across industries and career stages, linking one generation of leaders to the next, much like the long chain of knowledge that binds readers across time. The result is a gathering that balances practical insight with personal reflection, leaving attendees with something more durable than a list of takeaways. It offers perspective.
What makes the conference particularly distinctive is the way it is built.
The Women in Leadership Conference at Rice is entirely student-led. Each year a new cohort of MBA students inherits the responsibility of building the event from the ground up. This year, 32 students worked across multiple teams under the guidance of seven executive chairs.
Image
Lipi Gandhi (right) poses with Isamar Lopez-Veracruz and Maria Luisa Cesar.
Their work extended well beyond coordinating speakers or managing logistics. They secured sponsorships that support the education of future female leaders and designed the experience with the precision of architects drafting a blueprint — from the tone of the first email to the signage and visual design that guided them through the space; the networking areas where conversations unfolded between sessions; even the swag bags were assembled with the understanding that, weeks later, they would serve as small reminders of the ideas exchanged inside those rooms.
The day began with a keynote from Kathleen Barron, executive vice president and senior advisor to the CEO at Constellation, whose reflections established the tone for the conversations that followed, and it ended with a keynote from Madeline Haydon, founder of nutpods, who left us with introspective questions and the courage to lead.
Here are some insights from the day’s conversations.
1. Leadership rarely follows a straight path.
The conference opened with Kathleen Barron’s keynote, where she spoke about how careers are not linear ladders that must be climbed step by step. They resemble open landscapes, where leaders occasionally pause and reconsider the direction they wish to take.
Image
Melissa Mohr speaks during the "It Wasn’t a Straight Line" panel.
A similar sentiment emerged later in the panel “It Wasn’t a Straight Line.” Panelist Melissa Mohr reflected on how early in her career she assumed each year had to bring advancement. “Your career does not have to be the most important thing every year,” she said.
Together, the speakers reframed career progression as something closer to a series of seasons than a single upward climb.
2. Opportunity often appears before confidence does.
Another theme that surfaced repeatedly was the tension between ambition and readiness.
During “Power in the Crossover,” one panelist offered a simple rule: If you meet every qualification listed for a role, you may already be aiming too low. One panelist, Brooke Grammier, described how she approaches leaders whose roles she hopes to grow into. “I want to do your job one day,” she said. “So teach me how to do it.”
The panel also explored subtler signals of authority. Sadie Rucker, president and founding principal at Horizon International Group, LLC, noted that tone alone can shape how ideas are received. A steady voice in a room often carries more influence than credentials alone.
3. Preparation is the foundation of negotiation.
The session “Negotiate to Yes” turned the conversation toward a practical strategy.
NASA chief science officer Judith Hayes encouraged attendees to keep a written record of accomplishments and positive feedback throughout the year. “Write down what you’ve achieved,” she said. “Otherwise, there is no proof for yourself and others.”
Another speaker emphasized that negotiation rarely begins in the meeting itself. Knowing the relevant data, understanding organizational constraints, and entering the conversation with composure can reshape the outcome.
4. Leadership sometimes means building something new.
Image
Jessica Bolaños speaks with fellow panelists.
One of the most personal moments of the day came during “Unfiltered Resume.” Panelist Jessica Bolaños spoke candidly about experiencing discrimination. Eventually, she stopped searching for organizations where those problems did not exist. Instead, she built one.
By founding her own company, she created the environment she had spent years hoping to find.
5. The future of work will still require human judgment.
The session “AI But Make It Work for You” explored how artificial intelligence is reshaping professional environments. The panelists encouraged attendees to view AI less as a replacement for human work and more as a tool that amplifies productivity. Yet the conversation returned repeatedly to a simple conclusion: the qualities that define leadership remain distinctly human.
Empathy. Judgment. The ability to translate complexity into clarity. Those skills are unlikely to be automated anytime soon. The session ended with laughter when one speaker joked about using AI to generate conversation prompts for discussions with teenagers. Some negotiations, it seems, still require human intuition.
Moving Forward
Across every session, the conversations returned to the same underlying idea. Leadership rarely follows the tidy path people imagine at the start of their careers. It develops through curiosity, resilience, mentorship, and the willingness to adapt as the world changes.
For many attendees, the conference served as a reminder that leadership is not a solo act. It develops within communities willing to share experience, challenge assumptions, and create opportunities for the next generation.
After 26 years, the Women in Leadership Conference continues to do exactly that.
Written by Lipi Gandhi, marketing chair for the 2026 Women in Leadership Conference. Insights collected by marketing committee members Ali Dupnick, Lipi Gandhi and Muskaan Dua.
Rice Business’ Inaugural AI in Healthcare Conference began as just an idea. Here’s how the school’s network of support helped MBA students launch and host a successful conference exploring the future of AI in medicine.
Learn from Rice Business how a part-time MBA fits a full-time career, along with tips for typical weekly workload ranges and practical planning strategies.
Now in its 26th year, the Women in Leadership Conference has long been one of the defining gatherings at Rice Business. This year, it welcomed more than 600 attendees, fifteen sponsoring companies and endless advice on leadership.
Research from Rice Business professors John Barry, Bruce Carlin, and Alan Crane shows how firms use hurdle rates differently in practice than finance theory predicts.
Avery Ruxer Franklin
If you’ve taken a corporate finance class, you’re familiar with the logic behind investment decisions: A project creates value only if it earns more than the firm’s cost of capital.
To put that logic into practice, firms rely on a “hurdle rate” — the minimum return a project must clear to receive approval. If a firm’s hurdle rate is set at 15%, for example, a proposed investment expected to earn 14% may be rejected outright during evaluation.
According to new research, however, firms rarely use hurdle rates as neutral tools for making investment decisions. Rather, these rates are often set well above the cost of capital and play a more active role in how deals are negotiated, shaped and ultimately approved.
A new study published in the Journal of Financial Economics, co-authored by Rice Business professors John Barry, Bruce Carlin and Alan Crane along with Duke professor John Graham, draws a sharp distinction between project evaluation and development — a separation that rarely appears in finance models.
In the finance classroom, costs and returns are often treated as fixed inputs, and the hurdle rate is used to evaluate whether a project is in or out. In practice, however, many investments take shape through negotiation. Prices, terms and even project scope are often still in flux as managers work with suppliers, customers or acquisition targets. In that setting, the hurdle rate is no longer just a screening threshold; it becomes a constraint that shapes the bargaining process.
“The hurdle rate becomes a line in the sand,” Barry said. “Managers can point to it and say, ‘If we can’t clear this, we can’t do the project.’”
Consider a firm developing a new production facility. In a textbook capital budgeting exercise, land, materials and construction are treated as fixed costs, and managers use a hurdle rate to evaluate whether the expected cash flows can justify them. In practice, however, those costs are not a given — they’re negotiated. When managers approach suppliers and landowners with a firmwide hurdle rate in hand, the return threshold becomes a hard constraint; unless prices fall or terms improve, the project will not move forward. The hurdle rate, in other words, shapes the negotiation long before any spreadsheet delivers a final yes or no.
To test this idea systematically, the researchers draw on multiple sources of evidence. Using surveys of chief financial officers, investment outcomes and merger data, they show that elevated hurdle rates are not simply a conservative bias or a deviation from textbook finance. Instead, high hurdle rates function as an internal commitment, shaping how firms negotiate with suppliers, partners and acquisition targets and often improving the firm’s share of value in the deals it pursues.
Taken together, the approach allows the researchers to connect what firms say about their investment rules, how managers act on those rules inside the firm and what outcomes materialize in negotiation.
While much of the academic literature treats elevated hurdle rates as a distortion to be explained, this study, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, focuses on how they function as a strategic commitment with real consequences for bargaining.
“What we teach in finance classes is really only step one,” Barry said. “The next step in being a great finance practitioner is thinking beyond the spreadsheet — not that the models we teach are wrong, but rather how the assumptions and methods we use shape decisions and incentives both within and outside the organization.”
For students, the lesson is not to abandon the textbook framework but to recognize that it is not rigid. Understanding how these analytical tools operate within organizations — and how they guide choices long before a deal is ever signed — is part of what turns financial analysis into effective managerial practice.
This article originally appeared in Rice Business Wisdom and was lightly edited for Rice News.
Rice Business has partnered with Service to School (S2S), a national nonprofit that helps veterans and service members access higher education, adding a new admissions and outreach partner to the school’s growing ecosystem of support for military-affiliated students.
Research by Rice Business professor Tommy Pan Fang shows that two main factors determine the location of hyperscale data centers: access to energy infrastructure and access to low-cost real estate.
When companies break loan terms, boards adjust CEO pay to focus on stabilizing finances.
Based on research by Brian Akins (Rice Business), Jonathan Bitting (Appalachian State), David De Angelis (University of Houston), and Maclean Gaulin (University of Utah)
Key takeaways:
Short-term CEO pay is not always a sign of bad governance. When debt pressure rises, it can serve a practical purpose.
After breaking loan terms, boards shorten how long CEOs have to deliver results and tie pay more closely to near-term financial health.
Bond investors respond as if the company has become less risky, while stock investors show little concern.
Short-term CEO pay tends to draw criticism from investors, governance advocates and academics alike.
The thinking goes: If executives are encouraged to prioritize near-term targets, they may sacrifice long-term value for immediate results. They might rush sales, for example, or fast-track products to meet their numbers.
It’s a valid concern. But it assumes companies operate under stable conditions.
A new study by Brian Akins of Rice Business and his co-authors, published in Contemporary Accounting Research, suggests the story is more complicated. When a company violates the terms of a loan — by taking on too much debt or missing promised earnings — the bank gains leverage and can demand changes, raise interest rates or even require early payment.
When that happens, the board turns its attention from long-term growth to stabilizing the company’s finances. That often means rethinking how the CEO is paid. “This is about more than cost-cutting,” Akins says. “It tells creditors the CEO is focused on keeping the company solvent.”
What happens when a company violates a loan covenant?
To see how boards respond when debt covenants are breached, the researchers looked at 1,268 loan agreements from 186 companies from 2007 through 2018. They used a research design that compares firms that just violated a loan covenant with those that narrowly avoided doing so, allowing them to isolate what changes at the moment of the breach.
By focusing on firms just above and just below the threshold, the study isolates the effect of the violation itself. When firms violated those conditions, boards adjusted CEO pay in consistent ways.
First, they shortened the timeline for earning performance-based compensation. On average, the vesting period shrank by roughly six months — a decline of about 26% to 30% compared with typical incentive structures. That change compresses accountability, making executives feel the consequences of their decisions sooner.
Boards also increased the weight placed on short-term accounting targets, such as annual earnings goals. The share of pay tied to those measures rose by 47% to 87%. In practical terms, that shift ties executive rewards more directly to financial metrics that affect whether the company can meet its debt obligations rather than to longer-term stock performance.
Importantly, total pay did not decline. What changed was the timing and emphasis of those incentives.
“It’s easy to say long-term is always better,” Akins notes. “But when a company is facing pressure from its lenders, shifting the CEO’s focus to immediate results can protect both the company and its investors.”
Do markets see these pay changes as lower risk?
The researchers also looked at how markets reacted when companies disclosed these revised pay structures. If shorter incentive timelines reduce default risk, creditors should respond.
The evidence suggests they did.
Around the time firms disclosed new pay contracts after breaching loan terms, bond prices rose. At the same time, credit default swap (CDS) spreads — a market-based measure of default risk — declined. When CDS spreads fall, it signals that investors see a lower likelihood the company will miss its debt payments.
The effect was strongest for short-term debt. One-year CDS spreads fell by roughly 4%, suggesting that creditors with the most immediate repayment concerns viewed the compensation changes as meaningful.
Equity markets, by contrast, showed little reaction. Stock prices did not decline in response to shorter incentive horizons, suggesting shareholders did not see the shift as harmful to long-term value.
Taken together, the market response suggests the change was not merely symbolic. Bond investors treated the change as a sign of lower repayment risk, while equity investors showed no sign of concern.
Context matters for CEO pay
That response, however, was strongest when default risk was most immediate — when loans were nearing maturity or cash reserves were thin. In those cases, aligning the CEO’s incentives with creditors’ short time horizon appeared to matter most.
The study’s design strengthens that interpretation. By comparing firms that violated loan thresholds with those that narrowly avoided doing so, the researchers isolate the effect of the breach itself rather than broader financial distress. Within that setting, the pattern is consistent: shorter incentive timelines follow covenant violations, and credit markets respond.
That does not mean shorter incentive horizons are always desirable. Under stable conditions, they can encourage the very myopia critics warn about. But when debt pressure rises and lenders gain leverage, shortening the horizon may serve a different purpose — stabilizing the firm and reducing repayment risk.
The debate over CEO pay, in other words, may be less about long-term versus short-term, and more about context. “It’s easy to say long-term is always better,” Akins notes. “But when a company is facing pressure from its lenders, shifting the CEO’s focus to immediate results can protect both the company and its investors.”
At the second annual Innovation and AI Summit, Rice Business faculty led conversational panels on how artificial intelligence will affect digital transformation, finance and human capital.
Avery Ruxer Franklin
As artificial intelligence moves from buzzword to boardroom priority, Houston’s business community is wrestling with a question that has less to do with technology than leadership. At the second annual Innovation and AI Summit, Rice Business faculty led conversational panels on how artificial intelligence will affect digital transformation, finance and human capital.
The summit was a chance for corporate leaders, startup founders and anyone interested in the future of AI in business to learn, connect and be inspired. More than 400 people packed into the Ion, Houston’s innovation hub powered by Rice University, to glean insights from executives at Microsoft, Houston Methodist, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, Dell Technologies and more.
Anup Sharma, managing partner at ASynapse and chief growth officer at ARTIS Magi, welcomed the audience and asked for a show of hands from CEOs and C-suite executives in attendance. More than half raised their hand.
“It is your responsibility to frame the ‘art of the possible,’ because this is no longer a technology capability. It is a leadership transformation, and my view is you have to be the one to create an environment that encourages novel ideas, reduces the fear of retaliation, of failure,” Sharma said. “Because when you start to create that environment and create a bold vision about what this can do for your business, for your nonprofit, that is when the magic starts.”
Image
More than 400 people packed into the Ion, Houston’s innovation hub powered by Rice University, to glean insights from executives at Microsoft, Houston Methodist, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, Dell Technologies and more.
AI’s ability to interact through natural language, he explained, levels the playing field in ways previous technologies never could. “Talent is everywhere in the world, but unfortunately, opportunity is not,” he said, adding that by meeting people where they are with their own language and context, AI has the potential to unlock innovation, expand entrepreneurship, accelerate medical discovery and reshape industries.
So how do leaders manage change? Alex Barretto, senior vice president at Dell Technologies, said that structural change becomes real structure.
“If we think about our companies — it doesn’t matter if it’s a government, a nonprofit, corporate America — we are basically a system with functions and finance, accounting, marketing services,” Barretto said. “It’s a collection of systems. Humans organized in certain ways deliver a certain value. And that system has a fabric, it has a DNA that it operates. We call that thing culture.”
Dr. Evan Collins, innovator-in-residency and chief of the Hand and Upper Extremity Center at Houston Methodist, shared a similar systems-focused approach with health care. “Technology has been and will continue to be central to health care innovations, and AI can be used to provide specialist data to patients who might ordinarily have to wait six months for an available specialist appointment. Ensuring AI uses correct data is important,” he said.
People are an important part of the implementation of AI, too. Marie Myers, executive vice president and CFO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, shared that “reskilling” the organization with structured programs is key.
“You really need to keep your skills fresh and modern,” Myers said. “But you need to equip folks with a host of tools. Now, some of those are personal productivity tools and others are more developing an understanding of workflows and business processes, but we’ve been very intentional about reskilling and education. And I believe that’s probably one of the tools for success for all of us.”
AI has been pitched to take care of tasks that would otherwise be handled by an entry-level employee. However, entry-level roles give young employees an insight into the nuances of business. As some organizations have decided to replace jobs with AI, others have ramped up their learning opportunities for fresh graduates. Myers noted that she has encouraged multiple internship cohorts each year at Hewlett-Packard.
“It’s those young people that are going to learn and drive the change as well,” she said. “They are actually some of the fastest learners in companies, so I think you need to look at it as a change agent role too.”
At Rice, conversations about AI have been happening in classrooms and research labs for years. The university has steadily woven AI into its curriculum — even a major — to ensure students graduate with the skills and perspective to lead in any industry. That commitment spans disciplines. For example, Professor Fred Oswald received support from the National Science Foundation to examine how AI is shaping hiring practices and how it can impact fairness and equity in the process.
The conversation continues this spring at Rice Business. On April 30, business leaders from across industries are invited to a virtual webinar focused on AI’s practical impact — from streamlining decision-making to improving communication and generating real-time, actionable insights. The goal: helping leaders move from curiosity to confident implementation.
And this summer, that hands-on approach deepens. Haiyang Li, the H. Joe Nelson III Professor of Management, will lead “Driving Growth Through AI and Digital Transformation,” an immersive June 1-3 program through Rice Business Executive Education. Designed for executives and senior leaders, the course explores how AI and machine learning can power sustainable growth and guide organizations through digital transformation.
The 2026 Innovation and AI Summit was co-sponsored by Rice Business Executive Education, the Ion, Rice Alliance, MAGI, Aligned Automation and CenterPoint Energy. For future Ion events, visit iondistrict.com/events.
Rice Business has partnered with Service to School (S2S), a national nonprofit that helps veterans and service members access higher education, adding a new admissions and outreach partner to the school’s growing ecosystem of support for military-affiliated students.
Research by Rice Business professor Tommy Pan Fang shows that two main factors determine the location of hyperscale data centers: access to energy infrastructure and access to low-cost real estate.
Former dean Peter Rodriguez reflects on a decade of transformation at Rice Business, sharing the lessons he’s learned guiding a rapidly growing business school, his take on AI and the evolving energy landscape, and details on the school’s new building.
Owl Have You Know
Over the past decade, Rice Business has scaled with intention.
In this conversation, former dean Peter Rodriguez reflects on the strategy behind that momentum — from championing the Online MBA to building one of the nation’s strongest entrepreneurship ecosystems in the heart of Houston. He discusses AI’s impact on business education, the evolving energy landscape, and the leadership lessons that come with guiding a school through rapid transformation, all while shaping the next chapter for Rice Business.
[00:00]Brian Jackson: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Up Next series, where faculty, researchers, and alumni weigh in on the trends currently shaping the world of business.
On today’s episode, I talk with Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business and the key architect behind the school’s most transformative decade. Since becoming dean in 2016, Peter has led Rice Business through a period of extraordinary growth, doubling MBA enrollment, launching the Hybrid and Online MBA programs, helping establish the Virani Undergraduate School of Business, and expanding the alumni network to more than 10,000 strong. Along the way, Rice Business has continued to climb the national rankings and built a reputation for excellence in entrepreneurship, finance, and innovation. And in 2025, Peter was named Poets&Quants Dean of the Year.
In this conversation, we talk about the vision that connects those milestones. We also look ahead to the new Rice Business building opening this year, his perspective on AI in business education, and what he hope remains true about Rice Business as it enters its next chapter.
Dean Peter, it is fantastic to have you join me today on Owl Have You Know. Thank you.
[01:19]Dean Peter Rodriguez: It's my pleasure to be here. Of course. Thank you for having me, Brian.
[01:22]Brian Jackson: Well, I figured I would want to start where really, kind of, our relationship even began, which is the online program. Had it not been for you championing the program and making it a reality, I wouldn't be sitting here today with this microphone in front of me. So, first, I owe you a debt of gratitude and a big thanks.
[01:40]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Well, no, I mean, the gratitude is from me to you. That's wonderful. And just hearing you say that is gratifying. I certainly remember the initial thoughts on the program, how we got here, you know, the big role it played in everything we've been trying to build. And that's a good feeling. That's, kind of, why I'm in this business, is to bring people like you in and through an education like this. So, thank you for acknowledging that. That makes me feel good.
[02:05]Brian Jackson: I think of, like, the avalanche of growth at Rice. That was one of the first accumulations of snow. You've doubled the MBA enrollment. You've grown tenure-track faculty by over 40%. You then launched the hybrid MBA. We've talked about the online MBA and now the undergraduate business major. On top of that all, we have over 10,000 alums from Rice Business. So, you know, all of these milestones. What was that guiding vision that connected them?
[02:34]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Well, they're all tied together, so thank you for mentioning that. That's an awful lot of growth. If there was one overarching theme of the last decade, I think growth is it. And the question is always like, ″Well, why growth?" Or ″Growth for what?" And, of course, clearly we want growth for the good outcomes, and that good outcomes all start with pursuing the mission. We have a mission to create and disseminate knowledge at the vanguard of business and the business disciplines.
And so, that's what we really do. And when I was really looking at the job almost exactly 10 years ago and thinking about where Rice was, and where it needed to be, one of the first conclusions that was easy to draw was that it needed to be about twice as big as it was, at least, you know. And it's not that growth is all good, but why would I say that? And the thinking was, you know, in order to advance that mission, we needed more tenure-track faculty.
And they're the foundation on which more or less everything else proceeds. They pursue both parts of the mission aggressively, the research side, the teaching side. They design the courses. Their quality also bestows a lot of your reputation in the market and amongst peer schools and peer faculties. So, the beginning of any virtuous cycle for growth in national prominence really has to lead to more of them. The rub is, it's hard to double. You know, one of the things people worry about is, ″Well, who's that going to be?"
Are you going to lower quality? Are you going to just throw the door open to admissions? Will you have to lower tuition to a point that you can't really deliver, and this is too costly for you to pursue. All these hurdles are in the way. And so, when I was first having those conversations a decade ago, the thinking was, how would we pursue this growth? Good things were here. I've said it many times, Houston has amazing strategic foundations for a business school. We have so many Fortune 100, 500 companies, great entrepreneurship, a bustling, growing state, very pro-business environment.
It's perfect in that way. Also, Rice is, sort of, perfectly suited in that way. Great reputation, serious academics. But growth is not easy. And so, I remember in that first meeting bringing up online as something I thought we needed to do. You know, the technology could deliver well. I knew if we owned the program, we could make it very high quality, do something special in the market, really take advantage of the opening in Texas, a very big state with lots of great students in it, but everywhere else.
And so, it was a linchpin. You know, the online program was discussed day one. And by two years in, we had it launched, but it was an uphill battle all the way through there. And now we're finishing year eight, and gosh, I think currently we have almost 400 students enrolled right now in that program, it's the biggest piece of our growth.
[05:17]Brian Jackson: So, I mean, folks were skeptical of online and, you know, the quality of the program and I guess the other potential risk with it. How did you approach that, and how did you convince other stakeholders that this was the leap and the one worth taking?
[05:32]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, of course, you begin all conversations with explaining the “why.” I think people listen when they hear the “why.” But everybody who was really critical listened and said, ″Okay, what's the story? How would you do it?” Okay, even if you get comfortable with the broad idea or understanding, yes, that could work here. You know, the devil is, sort of, in the details.
So, “Who delivers it? Who makes the courses? How do we control quality?" Et cetera, et cetera. So, a key was, you know, being really forthright about two things. One of them was who would own the program, and the tenured faculty would own the program. In fact, we had almost all full professors, not quite, but almost all full professors, design and deliver the main courses, design and deliver the entire curriculum, so they could own it.
I knew they were great quality, so they weren't going to mess up on the curriculum or anything like that. And I think if they felt like it's all ours, they could feel comfortable. The second thing was, well, what are we going to do with any resources generated from it? Is it going to reinvest into itself? What do we do? And I said for this and all the growth we have, our primary goal is reinvesting in more tenure-track positions, which we can do.
And, in fact, our partner in delivering the online program, which is 2U, helped us on that end. And so, we got going right away, and people could see the possibilities that, ″Okay, we can make it high quality. We feel comfortable with that." We know that any good that comes of this will come back to the mission. It's not going to be just frivolous things, and we think it's going to be sustainable in that way.
You could continue to invest in the program. You can continue to provide good academic program support, all that. The case was won. And once we had the internal folks convinced, I think the rest of the university came along, too. They were also skeptical, like everybody else, but having the business school say, we are comfortable, we're willing to give it a go, it's all on us, we'll deliver.
You know, the timing was right, and President Leebron, at the time, was a big supporter. I think he wanted to see Rice at least try hard, in online, and we did. And so, we got most of that done in a little over a year. Yeah, we launched July of 2018. It was very exciting.
[07:50]Brian Jackson: And one of the best parts of the online program is that you don't have to have the physical space. You're able to have this virtual campus.
[07:57]Dean Peter Rodriguez: No, you raised a great and an important point, because I think one of the chief concerns was where would we put everyone? What's this going to do to classrooms? Is it going to change the feel of the space? You know, when do we do it? Like, what time of day? All these questions come into the scene. And then you also get questions about capacity. Do we have the capacity to do that? So, the argument was, well, actually, it's even better to do this virtually. We'll have no real threat of the space in that way.
We can provide access, and so people can double up on the weekends, evenings, or daytime if they live locally, which they could. And then when we do our residencies, well, you know, that's, sort of, specialized and we can manage that. We do that anyway. But it also meant that you preserved the feel of the physical campus in a way that gave assurance to everybody who was here. We're not going to flip a switch and change this overnight.
The challenge we have is a lot of people who are interested and qualified and would flourish here at Rice can't match the schedule or don't have the location, and that's just math and logic. Of course, that's true. It's a big state, a big world, and lots of jobs, particularly amongst the most successful people, but just too demanding to let you, one, take off a lot of work, or two, take off significant time in the evening or weekends on a very predictable schedule for two years.
So, yeah, it made good sense. And then my other benefit, which would be we learned a lot about delivering online that we didn't know. People who had maybe done nothing or only dabbled became experts and began to think about it. And I knew that would happen, is that the more they did it, the more they took it seriously, and they learned how to get better, which improved their teaching in every aspect of the school.
[09:41]Brian Jackson: So, then I think about the other growth we had hinted on, which was the undergraduate business major. One of the biggest constraints was the capacity of McNair. Could it really support that type of growth?
[09:52]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Yeah, that's right. Well, when we got to, sort of, the post-COVID environment, I think we'd learned a lot about hybrid delivery. We were hearing, we check our environment every year. More and more people who are professionals wanted access. They wanted something in between online and the programs we have. The hybrid MBA is really a modification of the weekend MBA program that allows you to come once per month, but that was going to add to the weekend, which is starting to get crowded.
Really, McNair Hall was designed for none of that. You know, it was designed for about four sections of a full-time program, maybe, and a couple of sections of EMBA on the weekend. But by the time we get to 2020, you know, when we have the online, and we're starting to think about hybrid, and we have an undergraduate minor, and we're thinking about a major, the building is being used really six nights a week, almost seven days a week, every week of the year.
It's almost completely overloaded, and we know we just can't do it. The math stopped working. So, the prospect of getting an undergraduate major approved, which we did in 2021, meant that we'd have to start thinking about a building. And it was about that time that we started thinking about a building. By the way, all throughout that period, from 2016 to 2021, we renovated parts of the building every year. So, the second floor, which I'm on today, was completely redone. We did the first floor before that. We added a west wing on the first floor.
We were doing everything we could to add more spaces. Renovated 116, which is kind of a special, nice, big flat room. All of these things, but there are just so many tricks you can pull, and then you're just out of building. And so, we started a big push then and finally got that approved. And I don't know if you can hear it now, but there's some drills and mechanized equipment and cranes outside my window today, as there have been for about two years, finishing up a brand new big, great expansion.
[11:48]Brian Jackson: You went, you know, to seek approval for a new building, coming from a place of showing that growth was possible, and actually, it fit for the current market and what folks were looking for.
[11:59]Dean Peter Rodriguez: No, I think that's right. An expansion to McNair had been considered before, I think in 2014. There was a thinking that they might get there, and the board of trustees reached a conclusion, which I would agree with. I believe if I'd seen the data, what I've seen said that, no, they didn't really have capacity constraints at the time that warranted growth. Probably through some rescheduling and other activities, you could manage that. But we demonstrated it in a big way.
You know, by the time we got to 2020 and 2021, even with a large proportion of our students being online, we just couldn't do it anymore. We had the busiest working building on the campus. In fact, if you look from 2016 to today, I'm pretty sure about 60% of the rough growth in all student populations at Rice University has been in the business school. So, that's a great deal of growth. And the university has grown too at the undergraduate space, but we definitely needed the space.
So, the seven new classrooms, the 30-ish to 40-ish new offices, and many other spaces are going to be badly needed. But we demonstrated that, and that made it easier to go to donors, other philanthropists around town, and say we could use your support to do something really good and valuable for Houston, the region, and certainly for the university.
[13:15]Brian Jackson: And so, I mean, having been in McNair, grown all these programs, seen everything. When you thought of the new building, was there a certain part of the design that was a non-negotiable, that you felt was just absolutely needed?
[13:28]Dean Peter Rodriguez: You know, that was an interesting part. Our architects are great. They know how to think through these problems and to ask a lot of questions. And so, I can remember in the interview phase and the proposal phase talking to all these firms. And the question they ask you, which always puts you on the spot a little bit, is like, ″Well, what's your vision?" Et cetera, and, ″How do you think about… What are your values?" You know, ″What is the feel?"
You know, it almost sounds like an emotional design, but it's really trying to evoke, “What are you trying to accomplish? How does this space matter? What messages do you need to deliver? You know, what does it say about the school, about your values, and the like?” And that's a great exercise. I don't think we do it enough, and it certainly wasn't something I did on my own. But the more we did that, we talked about a few things that were important. One was we wanted the building to be a place where people were very happy to come and convene.
Certainly, students, you know, people involved in business at the corporate level, at startups, all the way around. I wanted them to feel like they belonged here, that they could come to Rice. They wanted to be there. This was where the action was. There was energy, innovativeness, excitement, you know, and academic perspective on what growth in business and changes in the business environment meant for the world.
So, all that was boiled down by, you know, better people than me into, you know, a view of a much more open, lit, artistic, modern addition. So, you know, the design of McNair Hall, which is exquisite, it's a Robert A.M. Stern building. It, sort of, has this Spanish design. It's reminiscent of what you see at Baker and other places, needed to be complemented by something that wasn't quite that. You know, it might harken back to a few of those design points, but it'd be bringing much more light. It'd make a lot of space available to people that was unbooked. So, just a lot of places to sit, be quiet, be in a small group, be alone.
No need for special access. We needed food, which is key. I heard that a lot. Food all throughout the day, different types, and great coffee. And, of course, we need the standard things, classrooms, Ph.D. space. So, you know, we threw all that together. And we needed it to fit in this geography we have here, where it didn't invade the Turrell. It fit beneath the viewshed of the building. And, you know, the design reflects that.
And I can't wait for everybody to see it. It's something to see in a two-dimensional image or rendering. I think being in the space is going to make people feel very different, and I think it's going to accomplish those goals.
[16:06]Brian Jackson: So, I mean, we hinted on it, the establishment of Virani Undergraduate School of Business. I mean, that was a huge step. So, what was really your underlying vision for Rice Business at the time when you brought that into the fold?
[16:22]Dean Peter Rodriguez: The Virani School is going to have huge impact. I think the upside for it is limitless. It's going to be fantastic. Thinking about, you know, if you go all the way back where we began our conversation, I was definitely thinking about online, adding more students to the full-time and the other programs. I don't know that I had hybrid on my mind yet, but in general, that growth. You know, we've added graduate certificates in healthcare this year.
We're growing further. But undergrad was always a key piece, and there are just a few reasons for it that really matter. One, it's a very high-demand field for young students and their parents. You know, they're very interested in undergraduate business. We had a minor at Rice, but undergraduate business isn't available everywhere. I would say if you went through your, sort of, U.S. News lists and the top 100 schools, I'd say, you know, 90 to 100 almost all have it, but one to 10, it's maybe three. You know, so there is this scattering of the big Northeast Ivy schools where it just isn't present. Everywhere else it is.
And Rice was, sort of, built in the mold of some of those, plus some liberal arts colleges with which everyone would be familiar. And so, it had this idea of a presence of business, maybe, but not a major. So, my view was, let's make a case for the academic value of a major within this great university, where the major takes up about a third of your credit hours, but two-thirds you spend in the other schools, in engineering, humanities, social sciences, you know, architecture, music, whichever one you want. You could spend your time there.
And the upward value of that, having very well-rounded students who could have explored lots of interest in these younger years, but then get real depth in business and be ready to get that first job, start the career at a place that could be rewarding. And we'd have, one, terrific Rice undergraduates, they’re incredibly bright. Rice has the history and the privilege of being highly selective on who we bring in, really being, you know, choosy on the quality of folks.
And you see it when you meet our undergraduates. And then I thought they would really be able to elevate the university, too, because now you would be able to compete with, and you just tick off the list, well, the University of Pennsylvania, the Wharton School, of course, has a great undergraduate program. Schools like Cornell have a great undergraduate program.
If you went to UT McCombs, or Texas A&M Mays, or SMU Cox in the state, even those schools are overwhelmed with demand from great students, especially in and around Texas. And that's what they're looking for. Some of them we'd be more than happy to have, but I think they looked the other way because I think their concern was maybe we can't get to the same places in terms of career. But we've addressed that, and it's going fantastic.
And I think an interesting anecdote to that is I think the Virani family got interested because we announced that degree program around the time their son, Faraz, was graduating. And I think he really would've preferred to be a major. But I also believe being a Rice undergraduate, he knew firsthand, and maybe better than anyone, that it would really succeed. It was really a good, smart idea, and that, you know, good things would come from it. So, we had a terrific entry point into a conversation with a really philanthropic family who got behind us in a big way at the right time.
[19:45]Brian Jackson: The one thing I think about, and I'm, kind of, like, back to my undergrad [experience]… The big difference now is having AI and having the capability at your fingertips. You know, how are you thinking about that? And, you know, as we send undergrads and then MBAs out into the world, into this new AI-driven world?
[20:04]Dean Peter Rodriguez: It's a topic we think about every day. I don't think I've stopped thinking about it deeply and actively for two years now. You know, I think there's always the feeling that I believe everybody has, which is, gosh, this is hard to keep up with. I can't see around this corner. There are a lot of possibilities everyone's happy to sketch out. It's hard to know what probabilities to put on any of the paths. There's kind of a joke that, you know what? One path is nirvana, and the other path is like the Terminator.
You know, you, sort of, are between these heavenly outcomes where productivity is massive, and wellbeing is great, and the other ones where we're just completely subordinated to this power we've created. I'm less worried than I was a year ago. I see firms adapting in ways that still leverage a lot of human capability, that still value and leverage a lot of human judgment. And, you know, I try not to be unduly optimistic, but I think that's still the path forward.
So, we've got to do a couple of things that are pretty basic. On the basic part of our mission, which is delivering an education, we have to do two things. We have to prepare people to think really critically and to be able to assess them as individuals without this incredible, unprecedented tool. That is to say, ″What can Peter do of his own accord? What does he know?" And then I have to train him very aggressively to make sure that with the tool, he's also highly capable, far more capable to do some things, and as capable as anybody in any university in the country is using the tool.
So, there's, sort of, an almost martial arts mastery. You know, you have to, sort of, like, you know, wax on, wax off. You know, learn these sort of things that are apart from the tool, and then you're, sort of, empowered. That's where we are, is trying to do that. I think going too all in for us risks… And by that I mean training students with AI aggressively at the beginning risks maybe losing some of that. An example might be I'd like you to go through your core finance course, and still have to do, kind of, the hard work.
Not that I'm going to make you do heavy calculations or anything, but I don't want you to ask ChatGPT or pick your GenAI to give you an answer, or to produce the scenarios, or even maybe to make your discounted cash flow files. I might want you to do a little bit of that first, but then I need you to learn you don't have to do almost any of that. You can empower something else, but I need you to be the chef behind the cuisine.
[22:33]Brian Jackson: You want them to be skeptical, and you want to develop their ability to judge the information.
[22:40]Dean Peter Rodriguez: I think that's right. And I think at the end of the day, we do think about the ethics in a very important way, too. Where's the boundary? No matter what is possible. And with agentic AI, I think almost more than you can imagine, it's imaginable. What's the boundary a good leader or manager might want where, you know, someone with a heartbeat is making a decision, or casting a final judgment, or intervening? And I think that's our caution right now for the world, which is, what do we want out of this?
Clearly, we can have a lot of outcomes, and we should probably shape, actively, the ones we'd really prefer. You know, another piece of our thought is we're doing what scientists and academics do, which is to think about the future and imagining and asking, what could AI do? What's it going to do to the shapes of certain industries and the jobs that are produced? What's going to be left, or what will we be moving into?
We've seen thematically at least this type of thing before. Technological change has been disruptive in job markets. This appears to be of an extraordinary scale. It may be an unprecedented scale. Certainly, that feels like it to me. But, you know, we need to think about that and imagine what that means going forward, and be prepared. Because obviously, if you work backwards, we're a professional school. We need to be able to ready people for professions. If some of them are changing, we need to get ready for that.
If some of them are evolving, we have to be ready for that. And if some of them are really going away, we should be ready for that, too. So, that's the other side. But we're at the early stage. I think two years ago, when this was just emerging, everybody, sort of, raced ahead to try to do something or at least say they're doing something.
Now you can see we're all slowing down a little bit, trying to be more thoughtful and cautious. So, I think about it all the time. It's changing, and we have to change with it. We know it's not optional, so we're trying to just stay ahead and do our jobs well.
[24:41]Brian Jackson: I had a discussion with Professor Capuano. And we were talking about, kind of, AI in her class, and she has her students use it. They use it together, but then she'll often find the pitfalls of reading an AI-generated response and not knowing that it was inaccurate or not exactly the truth. And I think she was saying those lessons, you can, kind of, see it calculate, and all of a sudden it's like, ″Okay, you need to go back. You need to know what you're talking about."
[25:08]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Yeah, I think that's right. Well, you can tell that when you're reading exams and things, and it's like any of us who have our own professions, our own expertise. Because you know it, you know when the AI gives you good output. But if you didn't know it, you wouldn't know. And you think that looks highly plausible, or that seems exactly right. And so, there is that issue where the expertise is still needed, and it's not that easy to develop. You know, if you rely, over-rely, on that crutch. So, there's that spacing and that pace. We're trying to deal with that.
You know, I think the other part, frankly, we've talked about, “How do we make sure that exams are taken honestly.” I think most of that is to assure students that their peers are operating on a level playing field. I think that can often be one of the big challenges that unwinds confidence in a program, is when you look and you think, you know, “I want to do this the right way and understand this deeply, but if everybody else in the class is using AI and getting A's, yeah, I have to think about whether or not I can go without it or not.”
So, we need to make sure that everyone feels like it's a level playing field. When we ask you to not use the AI, no one is going to use it. And when we ask you to use it, of course, you use it. And for that, we probably need to think about our processes. Five years ago, we didn't have that kind of a problem. Today, we do. We need to think about it.
[26:29]Brian Jackson: Who knew that being a dean could have so many headwinds and changes come your way?
[26:34]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Not me. I think that it's always interesting and it's always new. There are lots of different challenges. It's still fun. But, yeah, it's the wild west sometimes.
[26:46]Brian Jackson: So, in terms of rankings, Rice Business really performs well nationally, especially in the areas of entrepreneurship and finance. You know, why do you think that is?
[26:55]Dean Peter Rodriguez: You know, it's interesting. Rankings are always, I think, every dean, every academic leader thinks, I don't know where they get some of these, right? It can be, kind of, tough, and there's a great rankings business. A few things tend to shine through, though. I'd say that overall, if you average all rankings together, you start to get more signal than noise. Looking at any one individually, you tend to get more noise than signal. When you look at all of ours together, you know, I think one of the highlights you always see for the business school is entrepreneurship.
And I think there are really two big things I can think of that I'm confident about. One is we had an early start. I think we took entrepreneurship more seriously earlier than most schools, and it's largely because we had some professors here who took it upon themselves. So, Ed Williams and Al Napier maybe did the most in that regard. Certainly, they did more than anybody else, I know of in that regard. But, you know, I don't want to leave anybody out. People like Dennis Murphree and others did a lot, too, to, kind of, get that started and talk about it in an active way, treat it more seriously, give it more attention.
And, you know, they built momentum. So, that's 25-plus years ago. Not that other business schools weren't doing it, but we did it well and have kept up. So, I'll say that, we’ve kept up and done it in smart ways. And people like Brad Burke and Yael Hochberg, who do that today here, have added immeasurably to our success. But the other thing is really Houston. I think being a business school in a major urban area with high growth and high appetite for business means you just are in the environment in a way that is hard to replicate anywhere else.
If you went to Silicon Valley, they would say something similar. People have said that a long time about Stanford. They say, like, you know, ″They're really good at what they do, but so much is the environment itself. How could you not succeed?" That is really important there, and it's super important here. The other thing I always tell people is that Houston loves risk takers. It's part of the environment. It's part of a Texas thing, too. But, you know, it's going to space, drilling out in the Permian Basin or deep in the ocean, you know, putting in an artificial heart, whatever it is.
I think there's a real admiration for trying hard things and picking yourself up if you fail, and not being discouraged because things didn't go right the first time. I think there's a sense of, you know, kind of chest out. We do big hard things here, and we're proud of it. And it doesn't work every time, but we keep going. And so, when people want to engage with Rice in the business school, oftentimes the thing that they want to be most involved with is, ″How can I help somebody start and try something hard and walk them through a difficult process?"
So, it's a great business city, just a super great entrepreneurship city. The last thing I'd say about that is that's also true about the many immigrant populations that are here. I always tell people we know this. Houston's one of the most diverse cities in the country. It's a city of great diversity because it's a city of great opportunity. People can come here. There's no zoning. You can get something cheap, get started. You know, there are downsides to that. But the upside is you get a shot. You know, you get a ticket, and you can get on the ride and see if you can make it work.
And for many people, that chance is all they need. And we see that over and over with entrepreneurs who have come here, you know, who are born here and are drawn here to succeed. So, that environmental feature and a good start with pioneers has made the difference. And that's something we can't lose, really, you know, unless we're really silly and make bad choices, which we're not going to do. But we're fortunate, and that's where that comes from, and that's why it's so strong. I think it's even stronger than recognized sometimes, but that's why we're so good.
[30:42]Brian Jackson: And I think you've nailed it. This environment of Houston itself, that ecosystem, brings out so much opportunity. I think the other thing that Rice Business has tied into it, you know, this integration with LILIE and Rice Alliance to The Ion. So, what made that kind of coordination and growth possible through those?
[31:03]Dean Peter Rodriguez: You know, those are the key elements of our entrepreneurship delivery system, and it's growing still and doing well. On the internal side, you know, I go back. Yael Hochberg comes to us. Great background. She's been everywhere important, you know, Stanford and Northwestern and other places, leading an entrepreneurship program. She was brought in to be the head of the entrepreneurship initiative at Rice University by David Leebron, joined in 2015.
A little bit later, we get LILIE, which is essentially the heart of entrepreneurship education at the university. It delivers all of our credit-bearing courses to the students here, I think, save one or two, and it does just an amazing job. So, it's meant to be exactly what you need, a place that's not just a classroom, but kind of a living community for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, particularly our students who are graduates and undergraduates, and they do a famously good job of that.
Before Lilie, we had the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which performed a lot of those duties and now more focuses as, I think, kind of a platform for the launching and the commercialization of ideas from outside of Rice that connect into Rice or from the laboratories. In some ways, we all play a role in that, and they do. And nowadays, and I think Brad Burke has done a great job there, particularly with the Rice Business Plan Competition. There are many things I could point out.
But if I were to call it one, it'll be the world's largest and richest business plan competition, which is, you know, it's the March Madness of entrepreneurship at colleges and universities. We always get Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, teams from the best universities, and all universities come to compete. It's fantastic. It's unprecedented and great, and that's made a big difference. That team is now running the programming at The Ion, which is a Rice-sponsored space designed to scale that presence into the city and beyond. And that continues to grow.
Even today, you know, we recently added startup garages, if you will, at The Ion through what we call the Nexus. And there are going to be more wet labs and dry labs put out adjacent to The Ion and graduate housing. So, this investment around this entrepreneurship ecosystem is designed to grow Rice and commercialize Rice ideas and IP and original research, and to expand the opportunities of our students. So, you know, we're upping the ante on anybody who wants to try to compete with us for that, and I think that's been terrific for us.
But we work together on all of that. I think this entrepreneurship ecosystem is essentially unmatched. I think it's superb, and we're continuing to do good work and collect good people to do it.
[33:46]Brian Jackson: So, I'm sure when you were interviewing to become the dean of Rice Business, you were in front of a committee sharing your vision, talking about your experience. You know, from sitting there and what you thought the job was going to be to today, 10 years later, tell me what you couldn't have understood before really stepping into this role.
[34:04]Dean Peter Rodriguez: So, I had run programs at a school for about five years, and before that, I had been heavily involved in some other dean work at a dean level. And I could imagine what it meant to design and deliver MBA programs, what it meant to think about business programs in general, and to do most of the inside work. I could do all the inside work. I'd say I knew what it was like to, sort of, run the organization and the key leaders, like the head of the career center, the head of admissions, the head of Exec Ed, the folks who do student programs, tech, all of that.
That's different when you're really in charge, you know, when you're the final say on a lot of that. I think it's the outside work I couldn't quite imagine as much, and I think it was harder to, sort of, see year-by-year challenges. Like, how do you keep momentum? How do you stay ahead? How do you deal with headwinds? And a lot of that's the outside work, too. By the outside, I mean working across the university with other deans and the leadership, namely the provost and the president, and then working in the broader community to raise money for the school.
You know, a big part of the job is philanthropy, but also to be the ambassador of the university and its business school into the corporate environment, into the business environment. That, I think, was a little bit new and different to me, and I've loved it. You know, it's really interesting. But I remember thinking, “What should I do here? What's the call?” But, you know, some of those are, for example, universities school by school tend to be very different. We share a lot in common with peers, but I'm not much like the music school.
And I'm not much like the School of Natural Sciences with labs and heavy reliance on grants and a very different profile and a very different, you know, set of professionals. In some ways, equally interested in academia, highly trained, of course, but different. And so, coming up with and talking about policies, for all of this, matters. And then, of course, there are some trade-offs. If you think about an undergraduate program, that's not a win for everybody in the university, or isn't seen as one.
I think that's a hard thing to think about, you know, when you're just in one school, like mine, or just in somebody else's. We, of course, had different, you know, tough issues, like Hurricane Harvey, and we had the freeze in '21, and we had COVID, which, of course, nobody was thinking about that. And I think that's the part where you get the exigent sort of leader questions, and you're like, ″Okay, what do we do here?" You have a role to play, and you have to do it. The other piece on the outside, on the philanthropic side, I've really enjoyed. It's really the public relations side, maybe put differently.
I love talking about the school. I like being involved in different civic organizations and getting to know people. I think getting to know people and getting to know how they thought about the school from the outside was a great benefit. But I hadn't done enough of that before I got here, so that felt a little bit different for sure. Then there's just the usual stuff. You know, there's people in organizations. Those are always challenging.
So, you learn more about yourself, and you learn how to live your values a little bit better and what you care about. But it's been a lot of fun. I mean, I've learned a lot from it. It's been terrific.
[37:24]Brian Jackson: So, Dean Peter, one of the things that recently I was fortunate enough to do was volunteer and speak to recently admitted students to the Full-Time program. One of those students was, kind of, on the edge in considering an Ivy League East Coast school or Rice Business. His thoughts and concerns were around, kind of, the energy world and looking at a career pivot into commodities. Could you, kind of, speak about Rice's vision in connection to energy, and, you know, are we hedging purely to renewables? Are we split between that and conventional?
[37:58]Dean Peter Rodriguez: That's a good question. I think the presence of energy in the minds of everyone in the world are much larger than they have been only a few years ago. And there's two reasons for that. I think the first reason is one that's been around for a while, would be concern about climate change, a concern about, you know, a transition into renewable sources. How fast should that take place? How do we do it? We've talked about that a lot, and we've committed a lot of resources to understanding that.
But the second, and the one that is, I think, dominating currently, is the massive energy requirements of the data revolution in AI. I think any forward projection for the energy demands of the future has to be all of the above. It isn't because people and governments may not have a preference, but because meeting those demands will require different types of energy sources, because they're not completely substitutable for each other.
And being the energy capital of the world, Houston thinks about all of those. We, of course, have a very longstanding, deep, deeper than anyone else's, you know, as a business school, fossil fuel understanding through companies like Chevron and Exxon are great examples. But also, deep connections to all of the resources dedicated in companies like those and many others in renewable spaces for wind, solar, geothermal, of course, natural gas, and all those other types.
If anyone had an interest in energy, there's no question, you know, this is a slam dunk. You should be at Rice, because we think about it that way. It's not that from the ivory tower, whatever, we're thinking the world should become this. We, one, you know, take the environment as it is and talk about, well, what's the phenomena taking place, and how is it being shaped?
And, of course, we always talk about the pros and cons of each pathway forward. And I was just having a conversation with one of our professors today on this very topic. Rice needs to prepare leaders to be ready for all of those paths forward. And I would bet today that we're going to need a very broad set of energy sources for the future, including, you know, more renewables, more fossil fuels, and everything we haven't yet discovered or produced in sufficient quantity.
[40:08]Brian Jackson: And I think the way your view of the conversation… That's why when you walk the halls of McNair now, you see a mix of companies representing that.
[40:17]Dean Peter Rodriguez: We do. And we have companies that are deep into the renewable space and companies that are hedging, and we have, of course, traditional fossil fuel-based companies.
[40:26]Brian Jackson: So, recently, we celebrated 50 years of Rice Business, and now we have the new building on the horizon. What's next in this chapter for Rice Business?
[40:37]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Well, I don't know where to put us along our overall timeframe, but you could certainly look at the first 50 years as sort of birth through adolescence. I'd say in that 50 years, we didn't quite reach 10,000 alumni, but the statistic I like to give people is in the first 20 or so years, we had fewer than 1,000. So, the easy math is we averaged less than 50 students a year for the first 20 years. We have a relatively small alumni base at our origin and a much larger one today.
So, I think we've really come into our fullness, and I think we're really much more of a national competitor, and we've put into the workforce lots of great leaders. The next 10 and 20 years are going to see us have an unprecedented and high number of leaders of top firms and organizations in traditional firms, you know, corporate America, in startups, in firms that have yet to be created. So, that's incredibly exciting for us and for what our future holds.
I think we're going to see that maturity and that, sort of, full benefit come back to our professional programs at the graduate level in ways that we haven't yet enjoyed. And so, for those schools, you know, traditional East Coast schools that have had alumni bases that are large for 50 years, we'll finally be toe to toe. And I really look forward to that sort of flowering and emergence on the graduate side.
You know, in addition to all the curricular enhancements we'll undertake for those programs, we'll have that, and we'll start to see the undergraduate program really come into national prominence in a way it hasn't yet. You know, when we started, you had to overcome the basics, which is getting students in high school to think, well, I am interested in, say, a finance degree or a marketing degree, but I know Rice doesn't do that, to now think I should consider them alongside everywhere else.
And so, we'll see the Virani School elevate relatively quickly, and we'll see how we fuse these cultures together and bring in even better faculty and more great students. So, the next 10 to 20 years are going to see that. And then I'd make one more prediction, which I think will be true at many places, is I believe, strongly, that we will integrate more deeply with the rest of the university and a lot of our programs..
That you'll see combinations with social sciences, humanities, in the STEM fields, maybe even other universities. I think that's the work ahead for universities, is how we take the best of and give students even more choice and options. So, I think that's really coming soon, and I think we're going to add strength to the university and vice versa.
[43:15]Brian Jackson: It's all so exciting. In anticipation of us talking today, I asked the Alumni Association board if they had any questions they'd want to ask you. And one of our volunteers, Kim Denney, proposed asking, ″As alums, what would you like to see us do to help the school?"
[43:31]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Oh, that's a great question. So, thanks to Kim, and thanks to you for asking Kim's question. The number one thing I always want is for people to stand up and speak up for Rice wherever they are, in the firm you're in, in the community you're in. Make sure people know you're from Rice. Get the swag, wear the swag, put the stickers on, whatever it is, and mention us when the time comes to look for talent or to look for opportunity. We haven't had enough of that.
The other one is: Get involved. I think so many students, there are missing cohorts, missing classmates, where they get involved with each other, maybe or not at all. But we need them more involved in the Alumni Association than they are. We will be a lot stronger when we do that. So, if you haven't, make it a point. Do something. It could be small. Come to a reception, come to a reunion, get back in touch with someone, but be more involved, because that presence builds and it amplifies.
And without it, it doesn't really matter as much, the rest. So, once you get involved, you'll see great opportunities to help our current students, to help yourselves, and to help others by connecting and building this much stronger network. That's such a key factor for business schools and slow scale, low diffusion, low participation, those are the death knells of a great network. We want higher scale, higher participation, high engagement.
And so, all that means is, you know, get involved. You're going to like these people. You liked them before. You'll enjoy it. You'll have a space to come in that you'll like. But, yeah, get more involved and speak up for Rice. Those are my big, big requests.
[45:07]Brian Jackson: Thank you very much, Dean Peter. I really appreciate you joining me today and for the conversation. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the new building and seeing what's ahead.
[45:17]Dean Peter Rodriguez: Thank you, Brian. Thanks to all the alumni. This has been great. I look forward to it, and I can't wait to welcome you to the new space. You'll like it.
[45:26]Brian Jackson: Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Brian Jackson, and Maya Pomroy.
Professor Jonathan Miles discusses why so many talented people struggle to advocate for themselves, what his comic book store taught him about entrepreneurship, and why influence is often misunderstood.
Professor Zhang shares what her research reveals about the leap from functional roles to the C-suite, why taking risks is non-negotiable for career advancement, and how Rice Business Executive Education’s Executive Leadership for Women program is giving women the tools and community to rise.
Professor Yael Hochberg shares the origin story of the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie), the incredible innovation that has come from Lilie over the last 10 years and what the future holds for entrepreneurship education in the age of AI.
For Bodie Gilbert ’26 and team, the Rice Global Field Experience (GFE) project culminated in a go-to-market strategy so impactful it helped land the client in the pages of Forbes Brasil.
Troy Tabner, Associate Director of Communications and Events (CDO)
At Rice Business, we often say “You belong here.” For a group of our MBA students this past summer, “here” meant the high-energy, multilingual headquarters of Cuco Agency in São Paulo, Brazil.
What began as a Global Field Experience (GFE) project culminated in a mountain top professional milestone: creating a go-to-market strategy so impactful it helped land the client, and the Rice consulting team, in the pages of Forbes Brasil.
From Theory to Application
Image
Bodie Gilbert, Spencer Agubulom and Frank Brown working with Cuco Agency.
The GFE is a cornerstone of the Rice MBA, designed to transition students from academic frameworks to real-world execution. For Class of 2026 MBA students Bodie Gilbert, Spencer Agubulom, Belle Pierce, Frank Brown and Brian Pitman, the mission was clear: Lead a consulting team to support Cuco Agency, a premier marketing and immersive events firm, during a pivotal ten-year anniversary and the launch of a new AI-driven product initiative, Atlas.
Cuco, a global leader in experiential marketing known for delivering immersive brand experiences for brands such as Nike, Amazon and Dior, is now expanding into technology and artificial intelligence to scale its impact across the creative economy.
“We weren’t observing from the sidelines,” Gilbert recalls. “We were brought in at a moment where strategy had to translate directly into execution at scale. Our charge was to build a strategy that could survive outside of a PowerPoint presentation. If it didn’t work in the real economy, it didn't belong in the plan.”
The Rice MBA curriculum prepares students to operate in ambiguity without freezing. In São Paulo, that training was put to the test. The team worked late into the night, revising the architecture of a market entry plan line by line.
Image
Rice MBAs presenting to Cuco Agency.
As the team lead, Gilbert focused on shaping decisions, narrowing options and protecting the momentum of a diverse group of consultants. Agubulom served as the operations lead, mapping out process flows, pressure testing the financial structure, and making sure the solution could actually work in practice, not just in theory.
Pierce, the brand and communications lead, focused on bridging strategy and storytelling in a meaningful way — translating their insights into a narrative that was clear, actionable and resonated with the client. Pitman’s role helped Cuco translate their creative vision into a practical growth strategy by thinking through brand experience, product pricing, event technology, artificial intelligence and long-term scale.
Working with Cuco on Atlas was a masterclass in what happens when the right team meets the right founders. When trust is present on both sides, execution accelerates fast.
Frank Brown
MBA Class of 2026
The team represented different industries and professional backgrounds, but the shared Rice framework allowed them to gel quickly into a disciplined, high-performing unit.
“The GFE is a pressure environment by design,” says Gilbert. “It asks whether your frameworks still work when the stakes extend beyond the classroom. That evening in the Cuco office, the work stopped resembling coursework. It became a shared responsibility and a point of pride.”
An International Impact: The Forbes Recognition
The efficacy of the team’s work was validated shortly after their return to Houston. The strategy they developed was implemented, and the resulting AI initiative gained the attention of Forbes Brasil. The publication highlighted the future of the creative economy, specifically noting the collaboration and the Rice acumen that helped shape the brand’s future.
Image
Bodie Gilbert, Class of 2026
For the MBA team, the feature in an internationally acclaimed business publication reframed the entire MBA experience. It served as a public signal that Rice MBAs are not just participants in innovation; they are leaders influencing it on a global scale.
Ready for the Global Market
As these MBA students prepare to graduate this May, this experience serves as a testament to the caliber of talent produced at Rice Business. The ability to move into a multinational firm, navigate a complex cultural ecosystem, and deliver Forbes-level results is exactly what the Rice MBA is designed to do.
“The GFE doesn’t simulate impact — it creates the conditions for it,” Gilbert reflects. “It places students inside real companies with real risk and trusts us to deliver.”
“This project pushed us to balance our ambition with practical execution, which is exactly the kind of real-world strategy experience I hoped to gain from Rice Business,” says Pitman.
Where Will a Rice MBA Take You?
If you’re ready to take your skills to the next level with a rigorous curriculum, international exposure and the opportunity to get hands-on experience, begin your application to the Rice MBA today.
If you’re looking to sharpen your leadership skills, business acumen and network without putting your career on pause, a Rice MBA for working professionals might be just what you need.
For Bodie Gilbert ’26 and team, the Rice Global Field Experience (GFE) project culminated in a go-to-market strategy so impactful it helped land the client in the pages of Forbes Brasil.
Rice Business clubs reflect professional pathways, cultural backgrounds, shared experiences and a variety of hobbies. Continue reading about why MBA clubs and organizations are so important to our community and how to get involved.
Helen Huneycutt
At Rice Business, students grow both inside and outside of the classroom. After a full day of case studies and team projects, many MBA students stick around on campus for one reason: student clubs.
Clubs are where students practice leadership in real time, build friendships across cohorts, and explore industries before they commit to a path. If you’re comparing MBA programs, this matters. Clubs can shape how quickly you find your people, your confidence and your momentum.
Our student organizations reflect a spectrum of interests, including professional pathways, cultural backgrounds, shared experiences and a variety of hobbies. Continue reading about why student clubs and organizations are so important to our community, what is available and how students get involved.
Image
Our Clubs Partio showcases many options for student involvement.
Image
Rice Business club leaders often help run conferences and pitch competitions.
Image
Texas Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference committee members at a Partio.
Image
Members of the Rice Business Women's Organization at WILC.
Image
The Rice Energy Finance Summit is one of many annual student-led conferences.
Image
Rice MBA student leaders at the Veteran's Business Battle.
An MBA moves fast. Clubs give you a structured way to apply what you’re learning while you’re learning it.
Research consistently shows that leadership development accelerates when students engage in experiential learning. Student clubs provide exactly that: hands-on leadership, peer-driven programming and real-world execution.
At Rice Business, clubs can help you:
Prepare professionally with career treks, interview prep, alumni panels and technical workshops
Build leadership skills through officer roles, committee work and event management
Strengthen your network across programs, cohorts and communities
Stay balanced with social, athletic, cultural and hobby-based activities
Clubs transform a two-year MBA into a multidimensional journey — and offer students a reminder that they belong here. While Rice Business club membership availability can vary, the majority of clubs unite members across all MBA cohorts, allowing students to strengthen their network and meet professionals from all walks of life.
Rice Business student organizations, supported by the Office of Academic Programs and Student Experience, reflect the range of interests within the MBA community. You’ll typically see three broad categories.
1. Professional Associations and Student Government
If business school is your pivot point, profession-oriented clubs help you explore that transition with intention. These groups often offer:
Industry-focused interview preparation and recruiting insights
Networking with alumni and corporate partners
Career treks to major business hubs
Peer mentorship between first- and second-year students
Whether you’re pursuing consulting, finance, entrepreneurship, energy, healthcare or technology, Rice MBA professional clubs can provide a clear on-ramp.
Each MBA program also has its own student association for that cohort. These groups build community within that program and serve as a liaison between students and school administrators to support communication and student experience.
2. Social Clubs and Interest-Based Organizations
The Rice MBA experience is rigorous, but our clubs foster space for students to breathe, share passions and create low-pressure connections.
Examples include groups like Global Food Experience Club, Cork & Cask Club, Parents in Business, and Rice PAWS. These clubs make it easier to meet people outside your immediate circle and build friendships that last well beyond graduation.
3. Student Affinity Clubs
Rice Business is proud of its collaborative, inclusive culture. Identity- and affinity-based organizations support students who share lived experiences while also enriching the broader community through programming and dialogue.
These groups may center around:
Cultural heritage
Faith and fellowship
Gender and leadership
Military service
Other shared experiences
Through speaker events, celebrations and mentorship initiatives, affinity clubs help students feel seen and supported while broadening the community’s perspective.
What gave me a sense of belonging is the clubs. Through them, we’re able to take our MBA experience and really make it our own.
Kori Li
Full-Time MBA Alum
What Does Leadership Look Like in a Student Club?
Rice Business clubs are student-run. That means students do the real work that makes programming happen, and they gain the kind of experience employers like to see.
Depending on your role, you might:
Set goals for the year and plan a calendar of events
Manage a budget and work with administrators on logistics
Coordinate speakers, alumni and corporate partners
Market events, recruit members and lead meetings
Run a team and learn how to deliver on deadlines
It’s leadership with stakes that are meaningful, but still a safe place to learn.
Build an MBA Experience That Fits You
When prospective students ask what makes Rice Business distinctive, current students often point to the community. Student clubs are a big reason why.
Through clubs, students explore industries, develop leadership habits, and build friendships that make the Rice MBA experience feel both ambitious and personal. If you want the clearest picture of what that looks like day to day, connect with a current student and ask which clubs shaped their experience most.
Rice Business’ Inaugural AI in Healthcare Conference began as just an idea. Here’s how the school’s network of support helped MBA students launch and host a successful conference exploring the future of AI in medicine.
Learn from Rice Business how a part-time MBA fits a full-time career, along with tips for typical weekly workload ranges and practical planning strategies.
Now in its 26th year, the Women in Leadership Conference has long been one of the defining gatherings at Rice Business. This year, it welcomed more than 600 attendees, fifteen sponsoring companies and endless advice on leadership.
Research from Rice Business professor Tommy Pan Fang shows why some data center facilities cluster in cities for speed and access, while others move to rural regions in search of scale and lower costs.
New research shows that people rely on mental prototypes when discerning racial discrimination in the workplace — and Asian Americans are less likely to fit that template.
New research shows that people rely on mental prototypes when discerning racial discrimination in the workplace — and Asian Americans are less likely to fit that template.
Based on research by Sora Jun (Rice Business), Junfeng Wu (University of Texas, Dallas), and Dejun Tony Kong (University of Colorado)
Key takeaways:
People rely on mental prototypes when deciding whether an incident counts as discrimination.
Asian Americans are less likely to fit observers’ prototypes of racial discrimination targets.
This cognitive mismatch may allow anti-Asian discrimination in the workplace to go unrecognized, hindering allyship toward Asian American employees.
If you were asked to close your eyes and think of a bird, what would you picture? A cardinal? A crow? An owl?
For many people, it’s unlikely a penguin would be the first image that comes to mind, or a flamingo. That’s because most of us picture a “typical” bird in roughly the same way.
We carry mental prototypes for racial discrimination, too. Those mental shortcuts shape how we interpret events in everyday life, including at work. When a promotion is denied or a job offer rescinded for vague reasons, people compare that decision — often unconsciously — to their internal image of what bias looks like and who is most likely to be affected.
New research suggests that because Asian Americans are not widely viewed as prototypical targets of racial discrimination in the United States, bias against them is less likely to be recognized.
A recent survey found that 75% of Asian Americans report experiencing racial discrimination across contexts. Yet formal workplace complaints and charges remain comparatively low. That gap is the focus of a paper published in Organization Science and co-authored by Sora Jun of Rice Business.
If anti-Asian discrimination is prevalent in the workplace, why does it so often go unrecognized by coworkers, managers and institutions? According to the research, one answer lies in who is seen as a typical target of discrimination. That mental shortcut may shape who receives support, and who does not, when bias occurs at work.
How racial hierarchy shapes perceptions of discrimination
The paper draws on scholarship describing a U.S. racial status hierarchy, which places racial groups along a continuum of relative power, resources and social status. Within this framework, Black Americans are often positioned at the lower end of the hierarchy and white Americans at the higher end, with Asian Americans situated in between.
Being positioned “in between” does not imply protection from bias. Indeed, Asian Americans have faced extreme discrimination throughout U.S. history. Instead, it signals a complicated social location shaped by both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, Asian Americans are often seen as competent or academically successful — stereotypes that confer higher status. On the other, they are often typecast as foreign or socially distant. That blend of perceptions makes it harder for observers to place Asian employees neatly into familiar narratives of racial discrimination.
“People rely on mental shortcuts when interpreting events,” Jun explains. “If someone doesn’t fit their image of a typical target of discrimination, outside observers may overlook racial bias as an explanation for what is happening.”
As a result, workplace incidents involving Asian employees may be treated as isolated disputes rather than signals of bias. Instead, they may be framed as personality conflicts, cultural misunderstandings or performance issues. The underlying pattern becomes harder to see, and corrective action becomes less likely.
“If someone doesn’t fit their image of a typical target of discrimination, outside observers may overlook racial bias as an explanation for what is happening.”
How recognition changes workplace decisions
The researchers began by asking a deceptively simple question: When people picture workplace discrimination, who comes to mind?
Across six studies, the authors measure who people picture as a “typical” target of discrimination, then test whether identical workplace scenarios are interpreted differently depending on whether the target is Asian or Black. They also examine downstream consequences, from allyship behaviors to outcomes in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases.
In open-ended questions, participants were far more likely to describe Black employees as targets of discrimination than Asian employees. Even when prompted to imagine an incident, Asian targets appeared far less frequently.
And in a controlled hiring scenario that heavily insinuated discrimination (based on “lack of fit”), professionals evaluated a rejected job candidate whose qualifications and treatment were identical across conditions. The candidates were all described as highly competent and well-suited — the only difference was race. When the applicant was Black, observers were significantly more likely to attribute the rejection to racial discrimination. When the applicant was Asian, the same facts were interpreted as less discriminatory. The gap was not explained by differences in qualifications or context; it traced back to whether the candidate fit the observer’s internal image of who is typically targeted.
The researchers also examined whether the pattern differed across Asian subgroups, including East, South and Southeast Asian candidates. Although these communities have distinct histories and experiences in the United States, the same recognition gap emerged across groups.
The pattern extended beyond judgment to action. In a follow-up experiment, participants who were less likely to interpret the decision as discriminatory were also less inclined to recommend organizational reforms or sign a petition supporting equitable hiring practices.
Finally, the researchers examined a data set containing 578,820 EEOC discrimination charges that were filed during the years 2011–2017. Complaints filed by Asian claimants were less likely to result in favorable outcomes than those filed by Black claimants. Although the legal system involves many factors, the pattern mirrors the experimental findings: when discrimination is less readily recognized, institutional remedies may also be harder to secure.
Why allyship depends on recognition
We tend to assume that allyship is about courage or conviction. But this research suggests it may begin even earlier — at perception.
“Organizations often assume that if discrimination is happening, someone will recognize it,” Jun says. “Our findings suggest that assumption may not always hold.”
If our mental image of discrimination is too narrow, some experiences will fall outside it. Broadening that image does not just change how we think about bias. It can change whether we see it at all.
