Dear Rice Community,
Welcome back, everyone! I hope you all are settled in and ready to start classes today. It is so nice to see the campus abuzz with activity again.
I’ve enjoyed meeting many of our new faculty and students, and visiting with those who are returning to Rice. Based on what I have heard — and the energy I saw during O-Week — I get the sense everyone is excited to start Rice University’s 111th academic year. We have a lot to look forward to and celebrate.
For starters, Rice’s undergraduate class of 2026 is one of the largest and most selective ever with 1,210 new Owls representing only 8% of the 31,442 who applied to Rice. The class has no single ethnic or racial majority — 32% are from underrepresented minority groups and another 14% are international students, representing 55 nationalities, making the class of 2026 the most internationally diverse ever at Rice.
On the graduate side, we welcomed 1,406 superb graduate students — 321 doctoral, 1,083 masters, one diploma, and one certificate. Our new graduate students are citizens of 63 countries. Within the domestic cohort, 33% of the doctoral students and 28% of the masters students are members of underrepresented minority groups.
Our faculty, which is also growing, is becoming more reflective of our diverse community as well. We have 41 new tenure track faculty joining Rice this year. Of that group, approximately 40% are women and 20% are underrepresented minorities. They join the last two classes of new faculty members, who were among the most diverse ever.
The staff members at Rice also are key to the university’s success and are among the most hardworking and committed group of individuals I have ever worked with. I express my deepest gratitude and appreciation for their tireless efforts to support the mission and vision of the university through good times and bad, especially during the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic.
Our greatest asset is our people and the ideas they bring to the table to carry out Rice’s mission to provide top notch undergraduate and graduate education, produce pathbreaking research and contribute to the betterment of our world. Goals such as these and achieving excellence in everything we do cannot be accomplished without our dedicated staff, innovative faculty and a visionary leadership team.
Since becoming president of the university about a month and a half ago, I’ve spent much of my time assembling that team. I have announced several new members of the university’s administrative staff and am thrilled with the talent we have been able to recruit to Rice and the collaborative spirit and energy they all bring to their roles.
The new members of the leadership team include: Provost Amy Dittmar, Vice President for Research Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Vice President for Finance and Administration Kelly Fox, Vice President for Innovation Paul Cherukuri and General Counsel Omar Syed. You can learn more about them here.
Other new leaders include Elaine Howard Ecklund, director of the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance; Stefanie Johnson, director of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders; Ambassador David Satterfield, director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy; and Ruth López Turley, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
I look forward to working with the new and existing members of the administration, as well as faculty, staff and students across campus, in planning for the future of our great university. I also look forward to continuing the listening tour I started shortly after my announcement as president. My goal is to meet as many staff, faculty and students as possible to hear about their hopes, concerns and aspirations for Rice.
Together, we can embrace opportunities to build on the mission, culture and accomplishments as our university becomes stronger and more impactful.
Have a wonderful semester!
Warm regards,
President Reginald DesRoches