News Release

Houston Endowment donates $6.4 million to Rice U. for new Ph.D. program in sociology

Study of Houston could have implications for other modern cities

Grant and Award Announcement

Rice University

HOUSTON -- (July 11, 2008) - A $6.4 million grant from Houston Endowment to Rice University will fund the establishment of the first Ph.D. program in sociology in Houston. The graduate studies will feature an innovative focus on Houston and urban issues.

As part of the new program, graduate students will study migration and ethnicity, religion, health, culture and a variety of other issues that have implications not only for Houston, but also for other modern cities.

"This support from Houston Endowment will help Rice deepen and broaden its research and understanding of one of the world's most dynamic cities," Rice President David Leebron said. "The widespread challenges and opportunities that come with Houston's growth and economic vitality are also faced by other urban centers around the world.

"Thanks to Houston Endowment, Rice will now partner even more closely with city leaders and residents as we attempt to better understand and address Houston's problems and identify and magnify its strengths. This new Ph.D. program will, because of the global importance of understanding cities, significantly enhance our reputation for research in the social sciences."

Leebron has made closer involvement with the city one of the key objectives of his 10-point plan to guide Rice as the university increases its undergraduate enrollment, accelerates its research and expands its reach both locally and around the world. Rice celebrates its centennial in 2012.

Sociology Department chair Elizabeth Long said the benefits of a "fine-grained" focus on Houston's social environment are not limited geographically. "We are now not just an urbanizing world, but an urban world, and in order to understand contemporary society and its problems and potentials, we must come to grips with the realities of urban life," she said. "Houston is a wonderful research site in which to conduct this important scholarly work."

The Sociology Department's Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life (CORRUL), directed by Michael Emerson, will serve as the catalyst for the graduate studies in sociology. "In a metropolitan area with 6 million people, Rice is well-positioned to establish a doctoral program that integrates academic and public sociology through the exploration of human society in major urban environments," said Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology. "Using Houston as their laboratory, these doctoral students will explore the virtually limitless topics offered by staggering population growth: immigration, health care, race relations, religion, environmental issues, cultural attitudes and education."

The Sociology Department's graduate program will be innovative in several respects.

  • Unlike most graduate programs, Rice's will require every student to be familiar with the entire spectrum of research methods.

  • Rice's mentorship model will be more of an individualized "apprenticeship" than the traditional models used by large programs in the field.

  • The department will put a great deal of emphasis on collaborative work and new approaches to dissemination of ideas, including digital modes of publication and community outreach or "public sociology."

"The Sociology Department has a tradition of having faculty and undergraduate students work in close research collaborations, and that will become a core aspect of the graduate experience in the sociology Ph.D. program," Long said.

CORRUL's existing emphasis on spatial, cultural and organization analyses is a good model of an integrated approach, Emerson said. Examples include:

  • Students spatially map out migration and settlement patterns and observe property values and the amenities available in different parts of the city to learn more about how the living experience varies by location. Collaborations already under way with Rice's Shell Center for Sustainability have begun to produce urban indicators of stability and health based on climate, water quality and air quality.

  • For organizational analysis, students study Houston's infrastructure -- transportation, water, health, education -- along with the economy, architecture and design of neighborhoods to see how everything is integrated.

  • For cultural analysis, students spend time in various neighborhoods to see first-hand what people's work lives, religious lives and social lives are like.

"CORRUL has been using this approach in some of our sociology classes for undergraduates, but we will expand this in a more organized system as part of the graduate curriculum," Emerson said. "A big part of the department's urban research will involve comparative studies with other cities -- what makes them unique or what they have in common. The ultimate goal is to identify social tendencies that are applicable across modern cities."

The graduate research made possible by the Houston Endowment grant will complement other Houston and Texas studies already under way by Rice's sociology faculty, such as Professor Stephen Klineberg's annual Houston Area Survey and extensive research on urban and rural Texas demography by Professor Steve Murdock, who is currently director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

"The Ph.D. in sociology will also add tremendous strength to the social sciences as a whole at Rice," said Lyn Ragsdale, dean of the School of Social Sciences. "Now, each of the social science disciplines will have a Ph.D. program."

The new Ph.D. program must be approved by the Rice Graduate Council and Faculty Senate. The plan calls for admitting the first class of graduate students in 2011.

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