Rice University | News & Media

7/25/1996 12:07:00 AM

Rice Matches Brown Foundation Challenge

Photo caption: From left, Ron Sass, Linda McNeil, Kathryn Costello, Judith Brown and, at right, Maconda Brown-O'Connor look on as Joe Nelson of Houston Endowment presents the $100,000 capping donation to meet the Brown Foundation challenge grant. Photo by Tomy LaVergne.

By David Kaplan
Rice News Staff

Tens of thousands of Houston-area students have benefited from a series of school reform projects developed during the past six years by the Rice University Center for Education, which is funded, in large part, by the Brown Foundation.

The latest Brown Foundation challenge grant of $814,500, which was just matched by Rice, marks a significant new phase in the life of the center.

Totaling $1.5 million-the combined sum of the Brown Foundation grant and the Rice challenge match-it will enable the center to develop an infrastructure, do more research, publish, and strengthen its existing projects.

The Center for Education will continue to be "lean" and still be "heavily centered on teacher/student contact, but now we can coordinate all our efforts and have a base," said Linda McNeil, the center's co-director.

"The new grant has provided a glue to hold all these projects together," McNeil said. "It will help the center become a major force for school reform for Texas and beyond."

Co-director Ron Sass said, "By pulling these projects together, the whole can become more than the sum of its parts."

Already, more than 800 teachers have participated in a variety of center projects, which in a typical year reach 65,000 local students, many of whom are disadvantaged. The center is designed to serve as a catalyst for school reform by increasing teachers' knowledge and their access to teaching resources. The projects cover subjects such as reading, writing, math and science. The Center for Education was established in 1988 with initial funding from the Brown Foundation.

Houston Endowment gave the Center for Education several gifts, including the capping grant, and was instrumental in meeting the match. Houston Endowment president Joe Nelson says his philanthropic organization is impressed by the center's creative and technologically savvy approaches to problem-solving.

"The biggest crisis facing the country today is the condition of public schools," Nelson said. "The Center for Education is focused on so many wonderful, hands-on ways of improving the quality of education. We think they're making a real difference."

Brown Foundation trustee Maconda Brown O'Connor believes the key to the center's success has been its willingness to journey into the real world of Houston-area classrooms:

"When you stand back and look at the current state of public education, the problems can seem overwhelming," O'Connor said. "But what the Center for Education does is break things down in very specific ways that allow Rice educators to train teachers in their classrooms, and suddenly everything becomes very do-able."

Dean of the School of Humanities Judith Brown believes Rice's Center for Education is poised to become a leading player in the school reform movement.

"The center's innovative research on effective ways to teach should have a very broad effect, both locally and nationally," Brown said. "Rice, like all universities, has a major stake in public education."

Vice President for University Advancement Kathryn Costello notes that there is a need for systemic core improvements in education and the Center for Education epitomizes that effort.

"The center would not have achieved so much without the Brown Foundation challenge grant," Costello said."This is one of the greatest things about the Brown Foundation. They invest in Rice in a way that encourages other donors."

In addition to Houston Endowment, philanthropic groups that came forward to meet the Brown Foundation challenge are: Enron, the Fondren Foundation, the Clayton Fund, the Hobby Family Foundation, PanEnergy Corp, Houston Lighting and Power, the Lowe Foundation, the Powell Foundation, UPS of America, and Hank and Demaris Hudspeth.