Rice and Constructor University: A shared history

Good evening.

It is a great privilege to join you in celebrating 25 years of Constructor University.

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the wonderful leadership you have here at Constructor University, including President and Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov. I enjoyed meeting with you and other members of the university administration and faculty earlier today.

The strength of any university rests on the people who lead it, teach in it and advance its mission every day. Constructor’s success over the past 25 years is a testament to the talent, dedication and vision of its leadership, faculty, staff, and students.

Anniversaries like this give us an opportunity not only to look back at what has been accomplished, but also to remember how institutions begin — the ideas, the relationships and sometimes even the moments of chance that set something much larger in motion.

And the story of Constructor University is, in many ways, a story about ideas traveling across borders — and eventually coming full circle.

The Lovett Factor
More than a century ago, before Rice University opened its doors, our founding president, Edgar Odell Lovett, traveled extensively through Europe, Asia, and beyond to study the world’s great universities.
Germany figured prominently in that journey.

Lovett was particularly influenced by the German tradition of bringing teaching and research together — the idea that universities should not simply transmit knowledge, but create it, and that students should learn in close proximity to discovery.

He brought those ideas home to Houston. They became part of the foundation of Rice University.
Nearly 90 years later, some of those ideas made their way back across the Atlantic.
And remarkably, it began with a relationship between two mathematicians.

The story of two mathematicians
Heinz-Otto Peitgen at the University of Bremen knew Rice mathematician Ronny Wells. In 1997, Heinz-Otto contacted Ronny with what must have sounded like an extraordinary question: Bremen had a campus, resources and an ambition to create something new. Might Rice be interested?

Ronny brought the idea to Rice President Malcolm Gillis and Provost David Auston.
And things moved quickly.

That part of the story has always struck me because it reminds us how much of institutional history begins this way.
Not with a strategic plan.

Not with a committee report.

But with people who know one another, trust one another and are willing to entertain a possibility that, at first, may seem improbable.

Chance created the opportunity.

But what happened next was not chance at all.

Rice and its partners in Bremen made a deliberate decision to think boldly about what a new university could be.
The original idea might have resulted in something like a Rice branch campus in Germany.

Instead, David Auston offered what Malcolm Gillis later called the “enabling vision” for the entire project: Do not simply reproduce Rice in Bremen. Build an independent university — one that could draw from the best traditions of American, German and European higher education while developing an identity entirely its own.

Creating something unique
I think there was a great deal of wisdom in that decision.

The ambition was not to export an institution.

It was to exchange ideas.

Rice brought lessons from its own experience: the value of independent governance; close relationships between faculty and students; residential education; the integration of teaching and research; disciplinary excellence combined with intellectual breadth; and the belief that a relatively small university could nevertheless have an impact far beyond its size.

Bremen brought its own intellectual traditions, extraordinary scholars and civic leaders, a commitment to research and an eagerness to experiment with a new model for higher education in Germany.

Together, people on both sides of the Atlantic began to imagine something distinctive: a private, international, residential research university, teaching primarily in English, bringing together talented students and faculty from around the world.
And importantly, they imagined an institution that would not force students or scholars into narrow intellectual lanes.
Science and engineering would be central, but so would the humanities and social sciences.

Research would matter deeply, but so would teaching.

Students would learn in classrooms and laboratories, but also from one another — by living in an international community where different cultures, perspectives and experiences were part of the education itself.

Those ideas feel remarkably contemporary today.

An international university
At Rice, we talk often about the importance of working across fields and disciplines because the challenges before us do not arrive neatly organized by academic department or field of study.

Climate change is not simply a science OR engineering program.

Artificial intelligence is not simply a computer science problem.

Human health and medicine cannot be understood through biology and chemistry alone.

The great questions of our time demand scientific knowledge, technological innovation, ethical reasoning, historical understanding, creativity and an appreciation for the societies in which those discoveries will ultimately be used.

That same belief — that disciplines become more powerful when they are connected — was embedded in the vision for this university from the beginning.

So was another idea that has become even more important over the past 25 years: that universities must be genuinely international.

Not simply international in the sense that students possess different passports.
International in outlook.

International in collaboration.
International in the questions we ask and in the people with whom we seek answers.

That aspiration took on extraordinary significance when this university welcomed its first students in 2001.

Those students came from dozens of countries to live and learn together at a moment when the world was being reminded, painfully, of the consequences of division.

To build an institution around international understanding, intellectual exchange and common purpose was — and remains — an important statement about what universities can contribute to society.

Rice’s role
Rice is very proud to have played a role in those beginnings.

We are proud of Ronny Wells and the many Rice faculty members, administrators and trustees who devoted their time and expertise to this project.

We are proud of Malcolm Gillis, David Auston and others who were willing to place Rice’s institutional reputation behind an idea that had no guarantee of succeeding.

And we are proud that the goal was always for this university ultimately to stand on its own.

That, perhaps, is one of the most meaningful parts of the story.

Rice did not come to Bremen to create another Rice.

It came to help create a university that would become distinctly its own.

And 25 years later, here you are.

The name has changed.

Leaders have changed.

The university has confronted challenges, adapted and evolved.

But the fundamental idea has endured: that an international research university can bring exceptionally talented people together, give them the freedom to cross boundaries — intellectual, disciplinary and geographic — and create knowledge that makes a difference in the world.

On behalf of Rice University, congratulations to the entire Constructor University community on 25 remarkable years.
We are honored to be part of your history.

We are proud of what you have built.

We look forward to strengthening our relationship.

And we look forward to seeing what Constructor University builds next.

Thank you.