William Marsh Rice University (commonly known as Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art) is a private coeducational research university located in Houston, Texas, United States. Its campus is located near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center.
The student body consists of over 3,000 undergraduate, 897 post-graduate, and 1,247 doctoral students, and awarded 1,448 degrees in 2007. The university employs 611 full-time faculty and 396 part-time or adjunct faculty members in 2007. Rice has a very high level of research activity and had $77.2 million in sponsored research funding in 2007. Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, and space science. Rice was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1985. The university is organized into eight schools offering 40 undergraduate degree programs, 51 masters programs, and 29 doctoral programs.
Rice opened in 1912 as a coeducational institution with free tuition. The university was founded several years after the murder of its namesake, the prominent Houston businessman William Marsh Rice, who left a $4.6 million ($111 million in current dollars) funding endowment in his will. It is listed as one of thirty Hidden Ivies and as one of Newsweek’s “New Ivies”. (more…)