Default | NEWS

12/5/2008

Matthews' accomplishments lauded after decade as dean

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Kathleen Matthews' exit this month as dean of natural sciences is giving many in Rice's administration and in the Wiess School of Natural Sciences a rare opportunity to reflect upon the accomplishments of one of Rice's great leaders.

"Kathy bleeds blue and gray," Rice President David Leebron told a large crowd at a late November reception in Matthews' honor. "We tend to reserve that kind of comment for someone who went to Rice, but nobody -- nobody -- has been more devoted to Rice and its success than Kathy."

	KATHLEEN MATTHEWS

Matthews joined Rice in 1972, just as the Biochemistry Department was established. Her longtime colleague and friend John Olson, who joined the department the same year, said it was clear from the beginning that Matthews was a leader who "would eventually be in charge and effect major changes."

Matthews was tapped to chair the department in 1987. In that role, she oversaw the expansion of the department's curriculum to include cell and developmental biology, she helped found the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, and she played an important role in the building of George R. Brown Hall. Matthews also worked beyond Rice's hedges by helping found both the Keck Center for Computational Biology and the Gulf Coast Consortium (GCC).

The multi-institutional GCC, which grew out of the Keck Center, brings together six of Houston's premier research institutions -- Rice, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Houston. Olson said that the plan Matthews helped develop in launching GCC has been mimicked across the country and today serves as a model for Rice's ongoing collaborations with Texas Medical Center institutions.

"Her strategy has always been to get good ideas implemented without worrying about who got credit for them," said Olson, the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. "Thus, many of the programs she helped found are associated with other people's names, and in many cases rightly so, but it was usually Kathy who got them going with her organizational skills, persistence and political acumen."

When Matthews became dean in 1998, she also brought a unique style of personal leadership to the Wiess School. For starters, she asked for one-on-one meetings with each faculty member in the school.

"The meeting had to be in your office, not hers," said Vicki Colvin, the Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry, who was a junior faculty member at the time. "She wanted to know what people were working on and what their plans were, and she would not let people get out of it. Some tried, but she persisted in the way that only Kathy can."

James Kinsey, Matthews' predecessor as dean of the Wiess School, said Matthews has been enormously successful.

"In terms of the terrific people who have been hired, funding levels or any other metric, it has been a very good decade," said Kinsey, the D.R. Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor Emeritus of Science. Kinsey said Matthews succeeded, in part, because she was a good listener who was absolutely fair and impartial.

Similar sentiments were echoed by many longtime friends and colleagues. Former Rice Provost Neal Lane summed it up this way: "Kathy can parallel process more different tasks, challenges, even crises, than anyone else I know … but while doing all of these things, she makes every individual feel that their particular problem is the most important thing that she has to do on a given day."

Lane, who now serves as the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and senior fellow in science and technology policy at Rice's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, said Matthews' dedication to nurturing and mentoring students and junior faculty is particularly noteworthy. One example of the close ties she maintains with former students played out at homecoming when Matthews introduced one of her former graduate students, record-setting astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was on campus to provide a visual and oral tour of her time as commander of the international space station.

Given Matthews' reputation as a "people person," it's no surprise that she focuses mostly on the human element in describing her most cherished accomplishments as dean.

"Moving departments toward fulfilling their own goals and aspirations has been the most exciting and interesting part of this job," she said. "My fondest memories are meeting the young faculty that we recruited. Having one of these outstanding young folks choose Rice is one of those 'high' times that makes all the effort worthwhile. And when they earn honors and awards, that's one of the best moments."

Matthews said she won't miss the least desirable parts of the job, like delivering bad news to chairs and faculty members, but she will miss "the daily interaction with the people who are the Wiess School of Natural Sciences."

Matthews also cited the recent approval for construction of a new physics building as a high point, one that fulfills a long-held goal from her first year as dean. Rice Provost Eugene Levy, who chaired the external advisory committee that recommended the new physics building during his tenure as dean of science at the University of Arizona, said, "It's very hard to encapsulate all of her accomplishments into just a few words. There are few people on this campus or any other campus that I have been on who are more knowledgeable about the university, more sensible in judgment or more selfless in approach."

In honor of Matthews' dedication to the Wiess School, her family and friends established the Kathleen Shive Matthews Fund in December 2006.

"During her tenure, Kathy has been a tireless advocate for her faculty, staff and students, often finding creative ways to make important projects happen despite budgetary constraints," said Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development. "This fund will serve as a dean's discretionary fund, allowing future deans to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities and leverage the Wiess School's budget to the fullest."

Even in the waning days of her tenure as dean, Matthews remains focused and productive. She's conducting an administrative review of the laboratory renovation process. That and a few other administrative programs will carry over into the spring, but she's also beginning to think about the new research agenda for biobased solar energy capture, which she hopes to more fully develop during a yearlong sabbatical during the 2009-2010 academic year. She will remain Rice's Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

Olson, for one, said he sees a silver lining in her departure from the dean's office.

"I am looking forward to her rejoining the regular faculty on the third floor of Keck Hall," he said. "We both came to Rice as naïve, 28-year-old assistant professors. We were a product of the 1960s, and we were the rebellious young faculty pushing for change and causing trouble for our chair and deans. I think that it's time for us to do that again, this time pushing the young people that we hired."