Archives of the Impossible

Fondren Library is the main library of Rice University in Houston, Texas. The library is named for Walter W. Fondren, a co-founder of the Humble Oil & Refining Company, whose family donated $1 million in 1946 for construction of the library. The building was designed by Houston architect John F. Staub and was notable for its open stack arrangement and art deco influence in the architecture. The library was dedicated on November 4, 1949. The library celebrated its 60th birthday in 2009. An addition to the back of the building in 1969, formally known as the Graduate Research Wing, added 99,000 square feet (9,200 m2) of research space including study rooms, stacks space, and space for the library's special collections, the Woodson Research Center (named for Benjamin Woodson). In December 1997, the Hobby Foundation designated $21.4 million specifically for improvements in Fondren Library. This gift allowed for additional space planning including the building in 2004 of the Library Service Center, a high-density offsite shelving facility that houses less-used materials in a climate-controlled environment. In 2005-06, Fondren underwent an extensive renovation creating access through the entire library, a new first-floor Hobby Information commons, and a Rice-only study space on the sixth floor with dynamic views of the campus.

Woodson Research Center is an archive located in Fondren Library at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The Center is named for Benjamin N. Woodson and houses the special collections of Rice University's Fondren Library which includes manuscript collections, rare books, and the Rice University archives. Within the manuscript collections, there are archives focused on specific collecting areas, which include the Houston Asian American Archive, the Houston Folk Music Archive, and the Houston Jewish History Archive.

The School of Humanities at Rice University in Houston, Texas allows students to choose from ten academic departments including art history, classical studies, English, French studies, German studies, Hispanic studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, and visual and dramatic arts. Several interdisciplinary majors are also available, such as foci on women, gender and sexuality; Asian studies; ancient Mediterranean civilizations; and medieval and early modern studies. The school is home to six national journals: SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of Feminist Economics, Papers of Jefferson Davis, the Religious Studies Review, and the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin. The Humanities Building opened in 2000. Members of the Rice humanities faculty have been named the Carnegie National Professor of the Year and the Carnegie Texas Professor of the Year. In addition, faculty in the school have been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1981 33% of Rice students studied foreign languages. In 1986 this increased to 40%. In the northern hemisphere fall of 1986 Rice added the Chinese language to its curriculum. According to Allen Matusow, the dean of humanities, 39 students enrolled in the Chinese classes.

Rice School of Architecture, also referred to as Rice Architecture, is the architecture school of Rice University in Houston, Texas. The graduate and undergraduate programs in architecture foreground design, history/theory, technology, and culture as critical academic subjects. The school maintains an enrollment of just under 200 students. Established in 1912 as the Department of Architecture with Rice University’s founding, the School of Architecture’s faculty consists of about twenty full-time architectural practitioners, historians, and theoreticians.

The campus of Rice University is located on a heavily wooded 290-acre (120-hectare) plot of land on South Main Street in the Museum District of Houston, Texas. It is located east of Rice Village, a retail district, south of Boulevard Oaks and Southampton, west of the Texas Medical Center, and north of Southgate. Founded in 1912, the university has been developed in a relatively uniform Mediterranean Revival style, emphasizing light brick facades, quadrangles, archways, and decorative columns. There are notable exceptions to this style, including examples of brutalism and modern architecture. In recent decades, new buildings have also been constructed outside the original pentagonal campus, but nearly all academic and undergraduate residential facilities are still located there. In addition to academic and administrative buildings, the Rice campus also includes the entirety of the residential college system, parking, recreational fields and facilities, concert halls, theatres, a student center, and sports facilities for the various Rice Owls athletic teams.

The International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) is an international, multi-stakeholder group committed to developing and communicating information regarding potential environmental and health risks of nanotechnology, thereby fostering risk reduction while maximizing societal benefit. ICON is composed of individuals from academia, industry, government and non-governmental organizations from countries of high nanotechnology research and development activity. ICON is a technically driven organization and does not engage in advocacy or commercial activities.

The Wiess School of Natural Sciences is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It comprises the departments of BioSciences (a merging of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology); Chemistry; Earth, Environment and Planetary Sciences; Kinesiology; Mathematics; and Physics and Astronomy. Rice is well known for its groundbreaking research in nanotechnology. As well as undergraduate in instruction, the school also supports a professional science master's program. One of Rice's greatest minds and pioneers of the field was Richard Smalley, the Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Smalley received the Nobel Prize (along with chemist Robert Curl) in 1996 for the discovery buckminsterfullerene, an allotrope of carbon commonly referred to as "buckyballs".

The Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum is an arboretum located throughout the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas, United States. It is open daily without charge. The arboretum was dedicated in 1999 to honor horticulturist Lynn R. Lowrey. At that time five trees were planted just inside Gate 6 of the campus: two white oaks, two fringe trees, and a swamp chestnut oak. The arboretum contains about 4,200 trees and shrubs across the campus, representing 88 species of woody plants in total, with about 100 collected botanical specimens. In addition to native plants of Texas and northeast Mexico, the collection focuses on other major woody plant genera of eastern North America (specifically oaks, elms, ashes, hickories, maples and pines) or plants of particular horticultural interest in the region. Of particular interest was the Pershing Tree, a pecan tree planted in 1920 by General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. The tree has since been struck by lightning. Beyond repair, it was removed. In 2016 Colin Powell planted a pecan tree on campus in Pershing's memory. Because of the management of its trees in the arboretum, Rice earned the status as a "Tree Campus USA" from the Arbor Day Foundation four times since 2012.

The Houston Asian American Archive (HAAA) is a faculty-led, student-run archive with both digital and physical presence at Rice University, for the sole purpose of scholarship. The Archive consists primarily of its oral history collection of over 300 interviews; in addition, it also runs programs such as exhibitions which showcase the archival materials, interactive and creative community projects, podcasts, panels discussions and other events surrounding the topics of Asian and Asian American experiences. The Archive is managed by the Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University. The HAAA archives history, inclusive of lived and living experiences of Pan-Asian, from East, to South, to Southwest and South Asians. In addition to conducting oral histories, the archive also collects memorabilia such as photographs, newspapers, journals, business records as well as recipes and artworks. These artifacts are stored in the Woodson Research Center at Fondren Library.

The George R. Brown School of Engineering is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It contains the departments of Bioengineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Applied Mathematics and Operations Research, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Statistics. Engineering has been part of Rice's curriculum since the university's founding in 1912, but the school was not established as its own unit until 1975.

Rice University, formally William Marsh Rice University, is a private research university in Houston, Texas, United States. It sits on a 300-acre campus adjacent to the Houston Museum District and the Texas Medical Center. Opened in 1912 as the Rice Institute after the murder of its namesake William Marsh Rice, Rice is a research university with an undergraduate focus. It has a 6:1 student-faculty ratio. Rice has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 1985 and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university is organized into eight schools of academic study. Rice competes in 14 NCAA Division I varsity sports and is a part of the American Athletic Conference. Its teams are the Rice Owls. The university's alumni include 26 Marshall Scholars, 12 Rhodes Scholars, 7 Churchill Scholars, and 3 Nobel laureates. The Rice Space Institute has collaborated with the Johnson Space Center for more than 50 years. In business, Rice graduates include CEOs, founders of Fortune 500 companies and four billionaires; in politics, alumni include politicians and cabinet members.

"Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy", also known as the "Baker Institute", is an American think tank housed on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1993, it functions as a center for public policy research. It is named for James A. Baker, III, former United States Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and White House Chief of Staff. It is directed by Ambassador David M. Satterfield and funded mainly by donor contributions, endowments, and research grants.The institute employs scholars and researchers from a variety of backgrounds. Its current research includes centers for different areas: the Center for Energy Studies, the Center for Health and Biosciences, the Center for the Middle East, the Center for Public Finance, the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the Mexico Center. Other programs include Biomedical Research, China Studies, Domestic Health Policy Analysis, Drug Policy, Global Health, International Economics, the Latin America Initiative, Presidential Elections, Religion & Public Policy, Science & Technology Policy, Space Policy, and Women's Rights in the Middle East. The University of Pennsylvania's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program ranked the Baker Institute third among university-affiliated think tanks from 2017 to 2018.Alongside the institute's focus on research, it provides programs for undergraduate and graduate students to engage with the world of policy and organizes events in which political, diplomatic, and community leaders speak on Rice's campus.