Bryson will head new planning department
Rice’s largest department, Facilities and Engineering, has been fused with Project Management and Planning to create a single campus planning and service organization.
Barbara White Bryson, currently the director of Project Management and Planning, will head the new department as associate vice president for Facilities, Engineering, and Planning.
Vice President for Finance and Administration Dean Currie, who made the changes and appointed Bryson, said the shift is actually a return to a previous arrangement.
In 2000, Currie said, the Facilities and Engineering Department was split from Project Management and Planning, where Bryson led the efforts of $250 million worth of construction and renovation. The projects included the construction of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, the Humanities Building and three residential colleges, as well as the renovation of Rayzor and Herring Halls.
“When [Associate Vice President for Facilities and Engineering] Bill Mack stepped down, I decided to put those two [departments] back together,” Currie said.
Bryson said she thinks the restructuring will make the department’s operations more efficient.
“We have less major construction going on, and much more infrastructure-, maintenance- and renovation-oriented work going on,” Bryson said. “It makes more sense now to fully integrate the departments.”
Bryson said the department is also shifting efforts into the pre-design phase for a collaborative research center with the Texas Medical Center, which would be located at the corner of University Blvd. and Main St.
“We hope to have [the pre-design] finished early next year, for the board to make a decision of whether to proceed or not,” Bryson said. “It would be wonderful if we could finish that project within the next four years.”
Currie said Bryson’s promotion puts her in the national spotlight.
“There are not a lot of organizations in the country who have a woman leading this set of activities,” he said. “[Bryson] came up through the ranks and earned the right to run it, and it was a great opportunity to put a woman in a leadership role in the university.”
Bryson will supervise three positions newly created in the reorganization: Russell Price will be the new assistant vice president for Facilities; Doug Tomlinson will serve as the new assistant vice president for Engineering and will also oversee the organization’s business office and John Posch will be the new director of Project Management.
Currie said all three assistants were promoted from within.
“We have four fantastic internal people, and there was a chance to give each a chance to grow,” he said.
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