Vice President for Global Caroline Levander, Provost Amy Dittmar and President Reginald DesRoches sent the following message to the Rice community in an April 11 email:
Dear Rice Community,
We are writing today to give you an update on the Rice Global Paris Center. There have been many exciting developments since the center was initially announced, including programming that will be launched at the center this summer, opportunities for engagement with the center, renovations to the center’s beautiful, historic home and student housing.
Hotel de La Faye
Rice University’s first universitywide international center, Rice Global Paris occupies 5 Rue St Croix, a historic building known as the Hotel de La Faye, a hôtel particulier built in the early 1500s by Sieur Raoul de La Fay, notary to King Louis XII. Located in the Le Marais, a neighborhood in the historic center of the city famed for its narrow cobblestone streets, cultural institutions, art galleries and sidewalk cafes, the building has a number of renovated meeting rooms, offices, gardens and social spaces. In addition to this property, we have secured additional partner spaces that will support large conferences, meetings and other events as needed.
Programming
This summer’s inaugural activities at the center include several conferences and programs for Rice faculty and students. From economic conferences on kidney allocation and industrial organization to workshops on the ethics of consciousness and metagenomics and a global research summit on the future of spintronics, the Rice Global Paris Center’s programming spans schools and disciplines and is fostering collaboration with premier European institutions. Conference collaborators include faculty from Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris II Assas, CREST-Ecole polytechnique, Science Po and University of Jena, among others.
The Rice Global Paris Center will also host cultural and corporate-sponsored events this summer, including joint events with the Consulate General of France in Houston and the Greater Houston Partnership. These events further the university’s ambition for the center to be a resource for innovative collaborations that spur connections beyond academia.
In addition to these offerings, the center will host various programs for students, including a Maymester and Summer School Intensive. Students can also participate in ODEK iSeed Paris, Rice Business Global Field Experience in Paris and Architecture in Paris. Many of these programs are already full this summer. We have secured student housing that facilitates these programs as well as programs during the academic year.
Please check this full list of Rice Global Paris Center programming for more information: https://global.rice.edu/pariscenter/programs.
To support these programs, we have designated staff in Houston and in Paris. Three rounds of requests for proposals will be announced each year to foster engagement with the center, including a request for proposals to teach summer courses there. Rice Global will send out a call for the second round of programs in the next month. Please contact Caroline Levander at clevande@rice.edu for more information and to share your thoughts on how Rice Global Paris can be used to support the academic programs in your units.
The center is a core element in Rice’s global strategy, which is focused on forming key strategic academic partnerships, recruiting a diverse set of talented graduate students and postdocs, and raising the university’s academic reputation around the world. The center — which expands upon Rice Architecture Paris established in 2002 — will become a focal point for the university’s broad engagement with Europe and beyond.
Relationships with students, faculty and researchers from across the world are important to Rice. These relationships foster a healthy exchange of ideas, opportunities for future cooperation, research collaboration, faculty exchange and student training. In addition, international engagement is a leading criterion for world-class research universities.
The Rice Global Paris Center is an important part of this process and the goals we have for future global engagement and partnership. To learn more about the center, please visit https://global.rice.edu/pariscenter.