The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 86, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, August 28, 1998 Page: 5 of 16
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THE KICK THRESHER NEWS FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1998
Burrus looks to develop, enhance
Brown School of Engineering as dean
INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS
by Carter Brooking
TIIKKSIIKK IMHTOKIAI S'l'AKI
Rice chose to stick with one of its
own last April when it named Sidney
Burrus dean of the George R. Brown
School of Engineering.
"I have a history at Rice and know
some of the problems better than
someone else from outside the uni-
versity," Burrus, a professor in the
Electrical and Computer Engineer-
ing Department since 1965, said.
Burrus graduated from Rice in
1957 with a B.S. in Electrical Engi-
neering and received his master's
from Rice in 1960. He then went on
to Stanford University-, where he
received his Ph.D. in 1965.
His new responsibilities include
meeting with the chairs of the nine
engineering departments to decide
the distribution of funds and to de-
termine which areas need new fac-
ulty. He then meets with the other
deans and Provost David Auston
before the final decision is made.
"In these meetings we decide the
direction of the engineering school.
The ultimate goal is to make Rice
better," Burrus said.
One recent topic of discussion
has been the formation of the
Bioengineering Department. "Our
challenge is to put together a de-
partment that can move with this
changing field," he said.
Burrus knows that his interac-
tion with students will be different
from the past. "Basically, my teach-
ing days are over. I'll be interacting
with the different groups through
committee meetings, e-mail, etc."
he said.
- "One of the things that I'm ex-
tremely interested in is to increase
the collaboration between different
groups. For example, have the ap-
plied math group work with people
from [mechanical engineering] or
have [computer science] and [envi-
ronmental engineering] working
together. Because of our smaller
size and loose boundaries on our
groups we are able to do this," he
said.
Actual curriculum changes are a
little more complex, he says. "I hope
to have our curriculum a little bit
more in tune with modern times.
We have to distinguish between here
today and gone tomorrow and here
today and three times bigger tomor-
row."
In today's fast-changing field of
engineering, "We have to teach stu-
dents how to learn, stress things
that won't change, like mathemat-
ics, and focus less on those that will
change," Burrus said.
Burrus has other ideas for the
future, such as increasing involve-
ment of the faculty and students
with high-tech industries like petro-
chemicals, telecommunicationsand
computers.
Burrus also envisions the expan-
sion of undergraduate engineering
students' research projects. 'The
undergraduates at Rice certainly are
capable of doing the research," he
says.
There is a downside to Burrus's
administrative position: handling the
assorted complaints that come to
his office. "Part of the job of dean is
to make Rice a better place. Winn-
ers are not a help," he said.
The most interesting part of
Burrus's new job has been learning
more about the research of the nine
different departments. 'There is a
bigger variety of things going on
than I knew about. I didn't know
[Rice] as well as I thought," he said.
"[There is] some very interest-
ing work going on that is invisible
[to the public]."
Assisting Burrus will be a new
associate dean, Mark Wiesner, from
the Environmental Engineering
Department. Wiesner is currently
investigating possible improve-
ments in the student internship pro-
gram.
Rice petitions court to strike debt clause
by Joel Hardi
THKKSHKR KWTOKIAI. STMT
Rice, forbidden from acquiring
debt by founder William Marsh Rice,
petitioned a Harris County state dis-
trict court Aug. 4 to strike the re-
striction from its charter.
President Malcolm Gillis said the
change is needed so that Rice can
better compete with schools such as
Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and
Yale Universities. And tax-exempt
bonds available to schools since the
1950s help make loans a cheaper
way to finance investment than pay-
ing for it out of the endowment,
according to the petition.
"We've built three buildings dur-
ing my tenure already, and we had
to go out and raise every cent of it,"
Gillis said. "Now, I was proud of
that, but in the future Rice is going
to have to have more options."
Rice previously sued to amend
its charter in 1963 to admit black
students and charge tuition. Other
successful petitions, in 1982 and
earlier this year, altered the struc-
ture of the board of governors. -
Because the interest Rice earns
from its endowment is greater than
the amount it would expect to pay on
debt, paying for a project with an
initial cash outlay costs the univer-
sity more in foregone investment
returns than it would otherwise pay
in interest, according to the petition.
As an example, a $50 million
building, given a 6 percent rate of
interest and a 10 percent rate of
return on investments, costs the
university $90 million more if it is
paid for in cash rather than with a 20-
year loan.
"The 19th century modes of fi-
nancial management devised by Mr.
Rice have become a hindrance," the
petition states. "Given the magni-
tude of the potential savings from
the appropriate use of debt financ-
ing, the charter's prohibition on 'any
lien, encumbrance, debt or mort-
gage' has become a severe impedi-
ment to the trustees' ability to man-
age the endowment and other as-
sets of the university in Rice's best
interests."
The risk of debt is that schools
that accumulate too much of it risk
financial collapse. In recent years,
several small private colleges were
forced to eliminate faculty and pro-
grams, and in somecasesshut down
completely after they became insol-
vent.
Schools such as Harvard, Emory,
Duke and Northwestern Universi-
ties each hold at least $300 million in
debt. Gillis said he plans to make
only limited use of debt financing in
the next five years if the 157th Dis-
trict Court approves the change. The
new colleges will be partially debt-
financed, and the new graduate
apartments, which are exempt be-
cause they are off-campus and in-
come-producing, already are.
Civil Engineering Lecturer Pat
Moore, a former member of the
Board of Governors, said changing
the charter to allow debt financing
should be as much a philosophical
as'an economic decision.
'To what extent did our founder
feel strongly about that?" he said.
"What importance should we place
on that right now?
"I hate to see us wanting to com-
pete with the Ivy League schools
just for reputation purposes," he said.
But Moore also said that just be-
cause the university gains the free-
dom to acquire debt doesn't mean it
will.
The petition employs the doc-
trine of deviation to justify defying
William Marsh Rice's original in-
structions. Although contrary to his
wishes, the change is fundamental
to his overall intent, according to
the petition.
Maintaining the debt prohibition
would substantially impair Rice's
ability to-fulfill another of its
founder's wishes, to be an institu-
tion of the first class, the petition
states. History Professor John Boles
pointed out the precedents for
amending the charter and said the
change was consistent with William
Marsh Rice's ideals.
"I think the original instructions
were about maximizing the money
you have, toward building an educa-
tion institution," he said. 'There is a
precedent to changing the charter
as times change in order to create a
first-rate university."
The Attorney General's Office is
now reviewing the petition to decide
if it will contest the change. Gillis
said he was "respectfully awaiting
their decision."
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Lebanese guerrillas
fire rockets into Israel
Lebanese guerrilla groups Amal
and Hizbollah responded to the as-
sassination of one of their senior
officials by firing Katyusha rockets
into northern Israel Tuesday.
Residents in the northern Israeli
towns of Galilee and Kiryat Shmona
felt the reprisals, a response to the
killing of Hossam al-Amin, a leader
of the military wing of the pro-Syrian
Shi'ite Muslim Amal movement.
He was killed Tuesday when Is-
raeli helicopters fired rockets at and
blew up his car in southern I ^ba-
il on.
The recent attacks have spurred
a national debate in Israel over the
assassinations of senior guerrillas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu is firm in his resolve to
maintain the current Israeli policy.
"We obviously reserve the right to
take continuous action against the
terrorists," he said.
Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak
Mordechai said that the rocket at-
tacks would not deter Israel. He
added that the attacks violated Is-
raeli and Lebanese guerrillas' agree-
ments to not attack civilians.
Israeli military commentators
said Israel might strike back by tar-
geting Lebanon's infrastructure,
such as roads and power plants.
Source: Reuters online, Aug. 26.
Chinese suffer as flood
claims lives, property
Almost one fifth of China's popu-
lation, 223 million people, have been
affected by the worst flooding the
country has seen since 1954.
Chinese officials warned that the
worst was far from over as the Cen-
tral Hubei province braced for more
flooding as a new crest rose along
the Yangtze river.
Over eight million soldiers and
civilians are repairing dikes along
the Yangtze, which isat record-high
levels, and other rivers in the north-
east according to the state-run
Xinhua News Agency.
After more than (50 days of high
water, dikes along the Yangtze have
become soggy and weak. This
prompting President Jiang Zemin to
order 178,000 soldiers to guard dikes
in preparation for the river's sev-
enth flood crest this summer, state
media reported.
The death toll is over 3,000 and
economic losses are approximately
$20 billion to date, the official Xinhua
news agency said Wednesday.
With almost five million houses
destroyed, officials have increased
efforts to relocate people who have
lost homes and are sleeping outside
or in tents to warehouses and homes
in unaffected villages, the China
Daily said.
Source: Reuters Online, Aug. 26.
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Stoler, Brian. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 86, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, August 28, 1998, newspaper, August 28, 1998; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246624/m1/5/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.