Student Senate Meeting
February 17, 2016 – 8:00 pm, Farnsworth Pavilion
I. Call to Order --8:04pm
II. Roll Call
III. Approval of Minutes--approved
IV. President Leebron - Guest Speaker
A. I’ve done this every year with a pretty dense powerpoint with numbers, graphs, bar charts, but I’m not going to do that today. I only have a couple of bar charts. What I want to talk to you about is things you’re interested in
B. I aspire to irrelevance. I want to have great people at the university around me so it seems like I’m irrelevant. I have two jobs:
1. not to screw up the things that make Rice a great place. Sometimes those things are obvious, sometimes they’re not. I had lunch at Martel today, and one of the things that makes Rice great is that we’re not in competition with each other. That’s fundamental to what makes Rice great. i don’t know exactly why that is, but it’s my job to make sure that it doesn’t get messed up.
About two years ago, faculty looked at grade inflation, but in the end decided not to do anything about it. I think that was a good thing--college system contributes to that. I was walking across campus today and looked up around the campus. After 12 years, I’m still astonished by how beautiful Rice is. If we build new buildings, we have to make sure it doesn’t take away from the beauty that is Rice.
2. my other job is to evaluate what do we need to do better deliver to you an education that is better than what it was 50, 30, and 10 years ago. people expect the whole package when they come to this university: great environment, great education, great community.
Student tuition only supports 14% of Rice’s budget. How much is supported by endowment? more than half (w/o H&D, other things)
About our educational aspirations: Showed the Rice value proposition student survey results from 2014. Does not include digital education. Should we care about Rice’s presence in the digital space externally? yes, it has potential to bring more resources to you and it can spread our reputation without growing our size.
A lot of our strengths and challenges have to do with our size.
How do we punch above our weight? I love Tirrell and the 45,90,180. These symbolize the need as a university to operate at that big level. We came to a small university, but we expect an education as good or better than you could get at a bigger university.
We’re working on a system that will connect undergrads to alumni
We’re engaged in fundraising for student initiatives 9mentorship and career guidance, leadership, scholarships, etc.)
People are always impressed with you, the students, as a whole. Rice’s students has won 5 of the top five scholarships in the past couple of years, which is an example of Rice punching above its weight.
Student value placed on in-classroom experiences has gone down, but that doesn’t mean classroom isn’t valuable.
At Rice, we try to keep our tuition somewhat lower than our peers, but we try to keep our value high.
We’re focused on the education we deliver in all its dimensions. We have to look outside the classroom as well to improve education. We’re very close to building the Moody Center Arts Building and hopefully a Rice University Music and Performing Arts Center. The arts play a fundamental role in the undergrad experience.
I was blown away by the student performance in my Christmas card this year. “Building, Supporting, and Celebrating a Diverse Community”
first thing is to build a diverse community, then we have to figure out how to support that.
My goal is to have a community where all students feel welcome. I went on college tours with my son two summers ago, and it was a good way to see how we’re different from other schools. What bothered me was that a lot of schools kept talking about “fit” at a school. It’s not your job to fit into a school, it’s the school’s job to fit to you.
Third thing is that the diversity of our student body is so diverse. My job is to figure out how to celebrate that.
(Went over bar chart) We think there is a value to having a Texas identity.
Capital Projects under construction, projects under construction, and planning underway.
We’re not so concerned with rankings that we let it trump our values.
effect of financial markets on Rice.
Challenges:
-responding to changing student interests; we’ve seen shifts in what students want to study.
-hard to rapidly respond to these changes
-increasingly competitive environment
-public perceptions of the value of higher education
-what gets left out of that is not just are you going to havea job, but are you going to take joy out of participating in cultural things, in your community
Questions and Rumors to dispel:
-no, we are not selling the MOB
-no, there are no plans for building a new college
-no, Donal trump is not running for SA President
-no, rice is not acquiringUT in resopnse to their land acquisition in Houston
Question: Any concerns about how UT acquisition will impact Rice. Not so much. the makeup of our student body is 42% from Texas, with 25% from Houston area, which is very competitive . We want to focus on our relationship with Houston and the Medical Center. After I moved here, I began to describe it as a small university in a big city that’s treated like a big university in a small city.
→ important that we maintain that kind of position. money from donors, keeping up our reputation
important for schools across Houston to feel they have access to Rice.
if Houston had a reputation as an education city like Boston or philadelphia, it would help us. We are too small to be arrogant, so we have to collaborate with our city (medical center, art district, etc.)
Question: Rice is trying to grow our involvement in research: how will that benefit Rice students?
we’re in the process of creating some sort of structure for teaching and research faculty
people are eager to have students do research, not only at Rice, but in the medical center.
this is something we have to be very careful about. I don’t want to wreck the relationships with people that we have with our faculty. There are advantages to having small classes and big classes.
Question: What would faculty like to see students do to make Rice better?
What’s really important is that we hear your ideas and concerns. Let us know what your ideas are and what we can make better. Something that is very important to our students is that we have a significant amount of control and responsibility for our environment. One of the reasons we have the happiest students in the country is because we have control over our environment. We have to make sure to keep students healthy and safe on campus. Students often have low cost ideas that can make big improvements.
Advice: get to know administrators across university. They enjoy being in an educational environment.
Coffeehouse history. Administration gave up a lounge space to build coffeehouse, which has become an institution here at Rice.
Question: When you toured other universities, did you notice anything that you thought we could do?
I came back with some ideas about tours and information sessions. No, we do everything better. Sometimes you see a facility, like an arts facility and say, “I wish we had that”. (We will, with the new Moody Center). I’m so glad we don’t have any fraternities or sororities here at Rice. I’ll give that question more though.
Question: There have been discussions in the past about collaboration with Baylor Med School and the TMC.
We recently signed an agreement with Baylor. We tried combining institutions with them a number of years ago, but that didn’t work.
We and the Texas Medical Center have similar interests, especially in entrepreneurial interests. If we’re going to remain competitive and not have a medical school, we need to maintain a good relationship with medical center.
Question: Balance between intellectual freedom and safe spaces on campus?
need to produce more heat than light. I have a very robust commitment to freedom of speech, but that’s very different from making sure students have places to talk to each other. There’s a lot of value in making sure we have conversations about the environment we’re in.
With the evolving classroom environment, are there plans in the future to renovate classroom spaces? Yes. However, some classrooms can’t be turned into a different style of room. We have to make sure to adapt, though.
Question: how does restructuring of economics department affect Rice? I think it’s been very beneficial to Rice.
Quality of faculty is what reputation of university is built on.
Thanks for having me and thanks for being involved in leadership of university.
V. Aish and Dorin presenting on CUC
A. talking about credit hour subcommittee. A lot of peer institution students are taking less credit hours. came up with a couple of proposals:
B. limit new students to 17 hours.
1. nothing would change in regards to credit hours required
C. limit returning undergraduates to 18
D. limit petition to 21 hours
E. in the first week, you will be allowed to go over limit (up to 20) to “shop”, but then you’ll have to drop after that.
F.
G. How many freshman go over 17 hours in their first semester? not a lot.
H. Other institutions have students average 4 courses, sometimes 5
I. Email: at29 or dna5 with questions
VI. Campus Clubs Resolution Presentation
VII. Thresher Presentation--tabled
VIII. Voting on STRIVE Legislation--Passed
IX. Reinstate McMurtry President--tabled
X. Announcements
A. Nominations for Banquet due
B. Sai: 100 Years of SA Committee
XI. Adjournment--9:18pm