Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Taking the Honors
grant. The book, written by Princeton University president Bill Bowen,
declared that not enough young scholars were going into academic careers
and prophesied that, by the end of the 1990s, there would not be enough
new-generation Ph.D.s to fill university positions across the country.
Bowen’s prediction was wrong, of course, but it had a positive effect
anyway. The Ford Foundation wanted to encourage young scholars to
seriously consider academic careers, and it funded a Rice program to do
just that.
Indeed, preparing undergraduates for lives dedicated to research,
scholarship, and teaching was the original, and now somewhat lessened,
emphasis at RUSP. In addition to introducing the students to the world of
research, it also prepared them, via weekly seminars on various topics, for
possible academic life.
Seminar topics included items such as how to apply to graduate school,
how to really use the library, women in academia, and intellectual property
law.
In fact, RUSP students still attend similar seminars, but the accent is now
less on recruiting the next generation of university professors. “It’s not to
persuade anyone,” says another faculty coordinator, Jim Pomerantz,
professor of psychology and director of Rice’s Neurosciences Program.
“It’s to help them figure out early on” if they’re interested in academic
careers or not. “Most RUSP students are at least going to graduate or
professional school,” he says.
In addition to teaching the orientation classes,
the faculty coordinators—Kinsey, Pomerantz,
and Don Johnson, the J.S. Abercrombie
Professor in Electrical and Computer
Engineering and Statistics—also fill in the
students on “life in the academy,” as
Pomerantz puts it, based on their own richly
varied experiences. Kinsey taught at MIT for years and, from 1977 to 1982,
was head of the chemistry department there. He also has served for many
years as dean of natural sciences at Rice. Pomerantz served as provost at
Brown University. “I’m just a Rice faculty member,” Johnson says
unassumingly. “Just chairman of the department.”
Most of the students have little idea of what a professor does outside of
classroom and office hours. “It’s an eye-opener to them to learn how
demanding teaching is,” Pomerantz says.
These days, guest speakers who prepare the undergraduates for concerns
not directly related to their academic focus seem to make the greatest
impression on the faculty coordinators and students alike. For example, one
speaker addresses venture capital issues for students whose projects have
economic potential. Faculty from Rice’s Cain Project in Engineering and
Professional Communications present well-received sessions each year on
developing professional identity through effective communication. The
Cain Project’s Linda Driskill and Tracy Volz enjoy working with RUSP
students. “They will need excellent communication skills to become leaders
in their fields,” Volz says. “If they pursue academic careers, these students
will eventually have to write grants to fund their research, and then they’ll
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