Dear colleagues,
As we prepare to welcome faculty and students back to campus, I want to take a moment to recognize the outstanding efforts across our division. From sprucing up the campus grounds to updating classroom technology, your efforts are seen, appreciated, and crucial in supporting Rice’s academic and research mission. I am continually impressed by your collective dedication to excellence.
- Campus Services & Sustainability has been preparing student housing, cultivating new dining experiences with expanded menus and dining options, enhancing off-campus shuttle services, and upgrading parking technology. These improvements help create a better experience and a more welcoming environment for all members of our campus community.
- Real Estate & Facilities has been working diligently to enhance and maintain learning and research spaces vital in supporting Rice’s ambitious goals. Their significant efforts restored the campus after Beryl to ensure our students and faculty have an excellent learning and working environment in time for the start of classes.
- Information Technology has ensured classroom technology is ready for our students and faculty, upgrading hardware, software, and applications to support dynamic learning experiences. They continue to bolster our research technology to scale and enhance research capabilities.
- Budget & Finance's ongoing work to refine our budget model introduces new incentives and aligns our financial strategies with the university’s ambitions in research and academics. This includes funding new positions and programs to support our goals.
- Human Resources has been preparing for the student benefit enrollment period. Played a crucial role in supporting the hiring of new faculty and staff to support our world-class programs.
- Campus Safety has been conducting lab inspections and safety training sessions, ensuring a safe environment for all. Building out spaces in the O’Connor Building will support our research and learning initiatives.
The excitement of welcoming faculty and students back to campus is palpable in the energy on campus. I am proud of what we have accomplished and inspired by what we will achieve with the strategic initiatives that will support Rice’s community, its aspirations, and its vision for the future. This year, that will include progress on several ongoing OF&S initiatives and the launch of some new ones:
- The Campus Land Use Plan will unveil the vision for Rice’s campus, created from the collective feedback of university leaders and stakeholders. This plan will reflect the thoughtful adaptation of our physical space to power Rice’s excellence in education, research, and community engagement.
- The Strategic Sourcing Initiative will implement a methodical and systematic approach to procurement, evaluating and continuously improving how we source and purchase supplies, equipment, and services. This leads to improvements in the cost and quality of goods, something that will ensure Rice’s financial resources are used effectively.
- The Sustainability Initiative will complete work on multi-year plans for sustainability strategy, achieving carbon neutrality, and water conservation.
- Development of the Ion District will foster learning, discovery, innovation, and entrepreneurship by offering space, programming, and community.
- We will build upon the progress made with the Total Rewards Initiative in FY24, continuing to enhance our compensation and benefits programs to support the recruitment and retention of talented faculty and staff.
- Investments in research computing and data infrastructure will set the stage for an expansion of the high-performance computing system and allow the university to double its capacity for data storage. These added resources will help meet the growing computational needs across the Rice research community.
- The safety of our campus will be bolstered by transitioning all door access from keys to card readers, offering the ability to update access to rooms and buildings remotely and quickly.
- The setup and delivery of lab spaces will be streamlined, enabling new faculty to begin work on their research sooner.
With lofty goals on the horizon, I want to thank each of you for your commitment, dedication, and contributions preparing for the upcoming academic year. I am excited to see what we will accomplish this year and the impact we will make together.
All my best,
Kelly