Editor’s Note: Winter 2025
Learn about an innovative field school, a maverick thinker, AI in fashion and Rice's next stage of growth.
Winter 2025
By Lynn Gosnell
It’s a week before Rice’s holiday break, and over here at Rice Magazine HQ, a talented team of editors, writers and graphic designers is chasing a deadline as if this issue were its final exam, research paper and class presentation rolled into one. Forget grades* — we’re truly excited to share these stories with you, our readers. Here’s a preview.
A vibrant illustrated cover is followed by an iconic view of Lovett Hall, which introduces Rice’s new strategic plan, Momentous: Personalized Scale for Global Impact. This thoughtful plan has a breadth and depth unlike anything we’ve seen before. We break it down on Page 26.
Throughout the magazine, you’ll find a variety of timely news along with stories of discovery and research within our Sallyport and Wisdom departments. For example, did you know? Rice’s lauded engineering school is now the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing. And a historic gift establishes the Virani Undergraduate School of Business within Rice Business. Also in this issue, we mark a handful of milestone anniversaries across campus — and several are just golden.
In our additional features, we introduce you to three accomplished, inspiring Rice alumni who are differently and deeply engaged in the world. Andy Karsner’s peripatetic career centers on energy and technology — and diplomacy. Journalist Russell Gold joined Karsner on a walk around Lady Bird Lake in Austin for this interview.
Historian Jobie Hill earned two degrees at Rice before pursuing historic preservation. Her nonprofit, Saving Slave Houses, finds and documents the built environment and collected stories from homes of the enslaved. We sent a writer and photographer to Hill’s innovative field school last summer in Virginia.
As a student in the early 2000s, Houstonian Deanne Nguyen was already interested in fashion. Today, as head of atelier at a fashion house that incorporates AI pattern-making software into its design process, she’s on the cutting edge of fashion and technology. Read about Nguyen’s delightful reconnection with her alma mater at Rice’s Global Paris Center.
Owlmanac’s collected classnotes and profiles share news about the happenings of classmates and peers. These stories can take us by surprise — as was the case when a writer tipped us off to Austin-based musician Lisa Pankratz, a first-call drummer, whose profile kicks off this section. We can’t wait for you to read this and all our stories.
*However, awards and recognition are always welcome. Write to us at ricemagazine@rice.edu.