Browse objectives

Attract an academically excellent, diverse, passionate, and curious undergraduate student body.

• Maintain a leading market position in a changing domestic and global market with challenges to the value of higher education and in the political landscape.
• Ensure a robust pipeline of leading worldwide scholars to Rice’s seven undergraduate schools with academically excellent and diverse backgrounds, perspectives, interests, and views through a strategic enrollment approach.
• Enhance relationships with community colleges and provide more access by increasing the number of transfer students.
• Expand outreach in key geographical regions to ensure broad interest in Rice in Texas, nationally, and internationally.

Enhance academic experiences and student supports to ensure students develop the academic and personal skills to be a leader in their field.

• Ensure Rice graduates will be well-rounded individuals who are prepared to advance and lead industry and societal change.
• Advance Rice’s undergraduate experience to develop global citizens who strive to advance the collective good through their scholarship, career, and life.
• Guarantee all Rice students are a part of an inclusive, healthy, thriving, engaged, and diverse community, and each student is empowered by a sense of belonging to flourish and succeed.
• Develop a first-year experience to assist students in navigating college and exploring their interests to help them select their major and better determine what they hope to achieve as they proceed from matriculation to graduation.
• Ensure support and coordination to enhance cross-disciplinary majors, minors, and courses.
• Elevate student learning across the breadth of the curriculum by facilitating a review of the general education program and implementing recommended reforms, with the goal of strengthening learning outcomes for students and educating students with a broader-based approach that draws on the highly curious nature of the Rice student that complements the deep expertise and academic rigor characteristic of the Rice student.
  • Provide a broad liberal arts foundation for all students drawing on their curiosities and interest in deep knowledge to develop core competencies while integrating interdisciplinary approaches to solving challenges and leading change.
  • Develop students’ expertise in data and analysis, research methods, and technological advances through coursework, research, and innovations in creative practice, drawing on the close connection between students and faculty.
  • Increase opportunities for students to learn and apply skills of critical reflection and expression through writing and the arts to enhance the learning impact of academic and co-curricular experiences.
• Provide faculty with increased opportunities for training and support for innovative pedagogical approaches, including effective use of new digital and disruptive technologies, like AI, to enhance the student residential learning experience.
• Establish a central tutoring center that is connected to the academic schools and accessible to all so that every student can succeed in their chosen field of study.
• Ensure all students have the support to succeed by creating inclusive classrooms and transforming foundational STEM courses guided by careful research and study.

Expand opportunities to learn and lead through co-curricular venues that connect learning to real-world problems solved by collaborative teams, including undergraduate research, global experiences, entrepreneurship and innovation activities, and robust civic engagement projects.

• Maintain Rice’s commitment to ensuring that every undergraduate student has opportunities to make meaningful connections and learn formally and informally from our top-tier faculty through research, advising, and mentorship of projects.
• Offer pathways to students to closely collaborate with faculty and other students on interdisciplinary projects, ensuring all students have multiple opportunities to work closely and deeply with faculty.
• Enhance the number of options for global experiences, including semester-long study abroad, faculty-led shorter courses, international internships and projects, and other opportunities to ensure every student in every major has a selection of meaningful global engagement experiences. Simultaneously, we will increase financial support so that more students can participate in a global experience while at Rice.
• Bolster student leadership development to unite students’ experiences in a cohesive and immersive set of leadership experiences.
• Support student career readiness both for their post-college and future career trajectory.
• Enhance the offerings and learning opportunities available through the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) to ensure more students gain entrepreneurial skills and the entrepreneurial mindset to prepare them lead as entrepreneurs and innovators.

Build more opportunities for community building and engagement through our colleges, affinity groups, and student support services, continuing to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment.

• Maintain Rice’s unwavering commitment to the residential college system, ensuring that every student has a community through their college to navigate the complexities of college life and develop friendships, while fostering a sense of inclusion and belonging for all students.
• Develop unique cohort experiences for affinity groups that complement the residential college system.
• Enhance alumni-student interactions to provide students with early insights into academic areas of interest and careers, while offering additional mentoring for students.
• Ensure every student will have access to the full Rice experience by providing robust financial support and wrap-around services to remove barriers for students with targeted vulnerabilities, including first-generation and under-resourced students.
• Enhance health services on campus to provide a holistic approach, ensuring mental health access and health services facilities that meet the needs of a growing and

Ensure competitive athletic excellence that enriches campus culture.

• Enhance opportunities for female student-athletes, including adding new women’s sports programs.
• Strategically invest in Rice Athletics to ensure competitive excellence.
• Increase student, campus, and community engagement with Rice’s sports teams, emphasizing the game day experience.
• Attract and retain the most talented student-athletes with a strong focus on gender equity.
• Develop and enhance athletic facilities to provide support for athletes and improved spectator experience.
• Increase faculty and staff involvement and engagement in athletic events and with student-athletes.
• Provide support for student-athletes to excel on and off the field and elevate Rice’s image as a university where student-athletes can excel in academics while being competitive at a D1 university.