Leebron releases vision statement for Rice’s future

By Amber Obermeyer and David Brown | Thresher Editorial Staff

Undergraduate enrollment will increase 30 percent to 3,800 students, and the change will begin with a markedly larger entering class in 2009. President David Leebron announced the decision — along with nine other major goals — in a two-page vision statement for the university released Thursday.

The Board of Trustees unanimously approved Leebron’s proposal at its December meeting. The board also passed a resolution specifically approving the enrollment increase.

Leebron’s statement, entitled “A Vision for the Second Century,” also lists building a new recreation center, increasing graduate student teaching opportunities and strengthening already-strong departments as top priorities. The vision statement is available online at www.rice.edu/v2c.

The statement comes six months after Leebron released the Call to Conversation, a document posing questions and proposing ideas about Rice’s missions and priorities. Leebron sought feedback through forums for undergraduates, graduate students, alumni, staff members, faculty members, community members and through a Web feedback form that was accessed about 1,450 times.

The Student Association, Graduate Student Association, Faculty Senate, Association of Rice Alumni and Staff Advisory Committee all adopted resolutions endorsing the Call to Conversation.

Board of Trustees Chair Jim Crownover (Hanszen ‘65) said he and the other board members agreed the Call to Conversation was a success.

“We were very pleased with both the Call to Conversation process and the results,” Crownover said. “Because the process was so inclusive of students, faculty members, alumni and community leaders, I think we not only got the best ideas on the table, but we also have a lot of support for the implementation.”

Leebron said he was glad to have the board’s approval and that he looks forward to carrying out the vision statement.

“I was gratified that the Board of Trustees basically said, ‘We’re ready to make some fundamental decisions about our direction,’” Leebron said.

However, Leebron said he intends to continue discussion on the issues in the statement.

“On some levels, this is really an ongoing conversation,” he said. “We’ll keep listening to people. … It will be a little different, but I’ll still have my office hours, and I hope to have more unscheduled, low-key talks at the colleges.”

Vision statement

The vision statement (see box, right) calls for an examination of the undergraduate curriculum, and Leebron said he expects to form a committee with Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman on the matter.

“There have been a lot of conversations about how students should structure their education,” Leebron said. “There’s a question of how desirable it is for students to double and triple major and the alternatives to that. But I think the main themes really have been around the issues of research, communication and leadership.”

The document states Rice should offer graduate students more teaching opportunities to improve recognition of doctoral programs.

However, Leebron said faculty members’ teaching responsibilities will remain the same.

“We think graduate students could offer seminars in their areas of expertise that are completely optional for students and don’t take away anything from the undergraduate experience,” Leebron said. “But in terms of having the basic courses taught by the faculty at Rice, that’s something we certainly plan to maintain.”

The vision statement also calls for improving strong departments.

“We must especially focus on departments and disciplines in strategically selected areas where we have an opportunity to achieve national and international levels of distinction and achievement,” the document states.

Leebron said most of the decisions about which departments to strengthen will be made by the different schools.

“As we undergo this process of both expansion and fundraising, the schools will be expected to identify what their strategic priorities are and how they plan to implement them,” Leebron said.

The document states Rice should not fund new schools out of the university’s general resources. Leebron said a school of the arts and a law school are possibilities, but only if funded by external sources.

“[A new school] is not off the agenda, but we would seek outside resources for those things,” Leebron said. “It would have to be where the university’s interest and the donor’s interest come together in a positive way.”

Leebron said he has not had concrete discussions with any potential donors about either proposed school.

Of the 10 sections of the vision statement, only the one pertaining to Rice’s professional schools in architecture, management and music was not addressed in the Call to Conversation. Leebron said the addition is due to the different focuses of the two documents.

“Unlike the Call to Conversation document, where we said, ‘We’ll kind of exclude these schools because they need to determine their own goals,’ [with] the vision statement we felt we just couldn’t say these schools are off the radar,” Leebron said. “They are the only schools that we’ve specifically mentioned, but we figured that the rest of the document was about the other schools.”

Crownover said he thinks the vision statement is ambitious.

“We set very high aspirations for ourselves,” he said. “I think we will certainly be challenged to meet those aspirations, but I’d rather set high aspirations and struggle to meet them than set lower aspirations that aren’t quite as motivating.”

Next steps

With the vision statement now in place, Leebron said he hopes to have a fundraising plan in place by the end of the semester.

Leebron said he is currently working on a longer document that will give specific information about the 10 points in the vision statement.

“One of the things we hope to do in the final document is include excerpts from some of the input from the Web site,” Leebron said.

Leebron said he expects to be finished with that document in late February and that he anticipates forming committees to address specific parts of the vision statement. A task force dealing with enrollment growth is already in place.

“We have a task force on size, and that group has helped develop some of the detail in our thinking — what it would cost, where some of the colleges will be built,” Leebron said.

In order to increase enrollment to 3,800 undergraduates, Leebron said Rice will begin admitting larger freshman classes beginning with the Class of 2013, which will matriculate in the fall of 2009.

The vision statement calls for 80 percent of undergraduates to be housed on campus, compared to 71 percent currently. Leebron said he expects to reach that level — while increasing the number of undergraduates — by expanding colleges and adding new ones.

“One thing that emerged from the conversations about the growth is the need to really look at some of the older colleges and see what we can do,” Leebron said. “We’re looking at expansion of some of the colleges, and we’re really focused on how can we can improve [them].”

Leebron said students influenced some of his ideas for new colleges.

“We started off almost certain that the new colleges we would build would be south colleges,” Leebron said. “Then we got at least some feedback from the students that they would like to see more balance between north and south. Frankly, it didn’t occur to us, [but] now we are actually developing, in effect, competing plans, and we’ll see how they work out.”

Call to Conversation

Leebron attended an SA forum in September and visited all nine colleges in the fall. Hanszen College held its forum with Leebron at the end of the semester, and Hanszen President Dan Jaqua said he thought both the Hanszen and SA meetings were meaningful.

“At Hanszen, people got to add some things that were concerns of people who don’t really go to SA meetings — but [those concerns] are relevant,” Jaqua said. “And between the SA forum at the beginning [of the semester] and the Hanszen forum at the end, Leebron had definitely heard some relevant things and incorporated them into what he was thinking and talking about.”

Leebron said he was pleased with the number of responses he received both online and in person.

“I didn’t really know at the beginning what this process would look like,” Leebron said. “We had 27,000 lines of text submitted on the Web site. It’s an amazing historic record if nothing else.”

Leebron said he was impressed with the thoughtfulness and detail of the feedback.

“I certainly take away some encouragement about being inclusive at the university — of seeking people’s views,” Leebron said. “Did some people say, ‘No, you can’t grow,’ and some people say, ‘You need to double in size’? Yes, but people engaged constructively.”

After holding forums and reading ideas submitted on the Web site, Leebron worked with his staff in the President’s Office, Provost Eugene Levy, the deans and the vice presidents to create the vision statement.

“It was a collaborative effort but ultimately a document that I take responsibility for,” Leebron said.

Leebron said although ideas in the Vision for the Second Century are similar to those in the Call to Conversation, he did gain insight from the feedback.

“I don’t think there’s much in [the vision statement] that will surprise people, but I hope nonetheless they won’t conclude that the process wasn’t valuable,” he said.

January 20, 2006

The Student Newspaper of Rice University

Leebron releases vision statement for Rice’s future

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