[SA EVP] August Faculty Senate Recap

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SA External Vice President

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Aug 30, 2023, 1:21:17 PMAug 30
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Happy Wednesday, Owls!

On August 23rd, I attended the Rice Faculty Senate! Here is a quick recap of some of the topics that were covered:
  • Current Working Groups
    • Admissions
    • Non-Tenure Track
  • Message from President DesRoches
    • About 1200 students enrolled for the Class of 2027 --> new goal moving forward!
      • The Class of 2027 is a diverse class with 1/3 of them being underrepresented students
    • Replaced 9 Vice Presidents and have conducted 65 tenure track searches (largest number of searches in Rice history!)
    • Rice is working on new research investments in the following areas:
      • Medical Humanities
      • Rice Sustainability
      • Rice Advanced Materials Institute
    • Plan to announce new institutes and centers in the coming weeks 
    • Updates on new facilities
      • Engineering and Science Building is OPEN, and students can use Tetra in the new Cafe there!
      • Continue work on the expansion of the Architecture Building
      • Planning to expand the Jones Building/VADA 
      • Old Sid demolition underworks --> will be replaced with 2 new colleges by 2025-ish
        • The addition of 2 new colleges will get Rice back to the norm of having 400 students per college
        • The goal is to get to 4,800 students by the Fall of 2024
    • Enhancing Student Success Resources
      • Growing the RESP and RISE programs
      • Creating a centralized tutoring service at Rice
  • Strategic Planning Process Updates from Provost Dittmar
    • Undergraduates are incredibly important, so Rice wants to make sure we have support to be successful by working on these things:
      • Student and faculty diversity
      • Developing more well-rounded students
      • Students with target disabilities
      • Increasing academic support (centralized tutoring service)
    • Research 
      • Enhancing global processes with research and increasing research opportunities abroad
      • More basic and translational research 
      • Creating a national lab partnership

Let me know if you have any questions about any topics the faculty discussed, and I would be more than happy to expand on them for you :)

Best,


  
Crystal Unegbu (she/her)
External Vice President

Rice University Student Association
w: sa.rice.edu e: 
sa...@rice.edu
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