New exhibit online! Rice Presidents and Provosts!

Dr. Neal Lane, Rice University Provost, 1986-1993

Rice Presidents and Provosts exhibit online!

The president of Rice University is the chief executive officer, handling the top level direction of the university in collaboration with (and reporting to) the Board of Trustees. The provost of Rice University is the chief academic officer, reporting to the president.

Over the years, Rice has always had a president (with one notably bumpy transition) and sometimes has had a president who was also the provost. In several situations, provosts served officially as vice-president or acting president.

Presidents and provosts at Rice have significantly shaped the landscape of the university with their dreams and goals – read on to learn what each has been known for at Rice!

Early Rice yearbooks now online!

The Rice Institute (later Rice University) opened in the Fall of 1912. Rice University’s yearbook, The Campanile, was first published in 1916, by the seniors of the first graduating class. Another important publication, the Rice Thresher (student newspaper), also began publication that year, in January of 1916.

From the very beginning the yearbook featured portraits of students and faculty, societies and clubs, athletics, major campus events and festivities, as well as advertisements from the community.

The first twenty yearbooks are now online as full text searchable pdf files.

Other viewing and download options such as online page turning view and Kindle downloads are also available on the Internet Archive, at http://www.archive.org/details/riceuniversity.

This project was made possible by funding from the Fondren Library and collaboration between the library’s Center for Digital Scholarship and the Woodson Research Center.

Due to privacy concerns, there are no current plans to digitize later years of The Campanile. A full run of the yearbooks is available at the Fondren Library. Enjoy!

Campanile, 1928

Exhibit: The Life and Work of Architect William Ward Watkin

William Ward Watkin, Supervising Architect, Rice University

New exhibit online & in Fondren Library!

As part of the Rice University Centennial celebration, the Woodson Research Center at the Fondren Library is mounting two exhibits profiling the architectural and academic career of William Ward Watkin and his profound effect on the development of Rice University and the city of Houston. The Life and Work of Architect William Ward Watkin is now available online, and the companion exhibit “William Ward Watkin: A Life in Images” can be found at the Woodson Research Center, 1st floor of the Fondren Library. The exhibits feature Watkin’s work at Rice, buildings and residences designed for his private practice, publications, and a profile of his eldest daughter, Ray Watkin Strange, and her support of her father’s legacy.

Watkin’s life

Born in 1886, Watkin grew up in Pennsylvania and graduated number one in his class in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. After a year spent taking the Grand Tour in Europe and absorbing its architectural legacy, Watkin joined the Boston office of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, then one of the most prominent architectural firms in the United States. At the time of Watkin’s employment, 1909, Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson had received the commission to produce a campus plan and to design the initial buildings of the Rice Institute in Houston, Texas. Watkin worked on the development of both the campus plan and the building plan in the Boston office, creating graceful adaptations of Neo-Byzantine architectural vernacular for the Institute; when construction was to begin in the summer of 1910 Watkin was sent to Houston to serve as the firm’s representative supervisor (see examples of Watkin’s work at the Rice Institute).

Rice Institute master plan, ca. 1911

Watkin at the Rice Institute

As supervising architect he worked closely with Dr. Edgar Odell Lovett, President of the Rice Institute, and was offered a faculty appointment in Architectural Engineering at the Institute. Watkin became the first Chairman of the Rice Architecture Department, and began accepting independent commissions. He developed a thriving private practice in Houston and other Texas communities, designing buildings for educational institutions and other public spaces, commercial ventures, and residences (see examples of Watkin’s contributions to the community).

Resources

• Full archive online of William Ward Watkin architectural records
• Finding aid to the William Ward Watkin papers, 1903-1956, MS 352 is available at http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/finding-aids/manuscripts/0352
• Finding aid to the William Ward Watkin family papers, 1899-1999, MS 508http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/finding-aids/manuscripts/0508
• Finding aid to the Ray Watkin Strange research materials, 1917-1985, MS 465http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/finding-aids/manuscripts/0465

The original materials which these digitized versions represent are held by Rice University, Fondren Library, Woodson Research Center.

Rice Commencement programs & ephemera since 1916 online

Rice Commencement seating map, 1990.

A fascinating view of commencement at Rice over the years  - and the size and shape of each graduating class since 1916 -  is now available online.

Fondren Library is pleased to announce that Rice Commencement programs and ephemera such as invitations to Senior Banquets, Baccalaureate Services,  lists of graduates, types of degrees, brief class histories and newsclippings from Houston and Texas newspapers are becoming available online in full text searchable PDF format.

The programs detail the order of events for commencement at the Rice Institute and later Rice University, including location and dates of events, speakers’ names and subjects and songs sung.

From the 1980s forward, the commencement programs include historical background on commencement at Rice, such as this excerpt from the 1990 program:

“Rice Institute’s first graduation exercises were held on Sunday and Monday, June 11 and 12, 1916. The Baccalaureate on Sunday included a sermon and the singing of Latin and English hymns. At Commencement, which followed on Monday, Dr. David Starr Jordan, Chancellor Emeritus of Stan ford University, addressed the
thirty-six candidates for degrees and their families on the subject “Is War Eternal?” That same June, President Woodrow Wilson, longtime friend and former Princeton colleague of Rice President Edgar Odell Lovett, was working for a negotiated settlement to hostilities in Europe. Ten months later, the United States officially entered World War I.

Since that first graduation the ceremonies have been held, at different times, in the Academic Quadrangle, in the courtyard of the Chemistry laboratories, in the Rice gymnasium, and in local high schools and churches.  In 1960, when the grounds in front of Lovett Hall were converted from a parking lot to lawns, Commencement was moved to the lawn east of Lovett Hall. In 1986 President George Rupp returned the ceremony to the Academic Quadrangle, where the first Commencement was held.”

The Sallyport tradition of students walking in through the Sallyport as freshman and not passing back through the Sallyport until their graduation day is believed to have begun in the late 1980s, after commencement was was moved back inside the academic quad. With the quad being full of seating for the ceremony, the front lawn of Lovett Hall makes a natural gathering and celebrating place on that day, with students processing out through the Sallyport and symbolically beginning their path as graduates.