Rice & NASA

https://news.rice.edu/2019/02/27/no-university-is-more-synonymous-with-nasa-than-rice/

Weirdly, in a unfortunate stroke of irony, NASA does not heavily recruit at Rice. They do occasionally reach out to various organizations associated with Rice (e.g., career center, respective engineering organizations) to advertise some programs and opportunities, but they never come to Rice’s career expos. A big culprit is likely because the primary internship program (i.e., Pathways) at Johnson Space Center (JSC), which also happens to be JSC’s primary funnel to recruit full-time employees, is a co-op program that requires participants to take a couple of semesters off and work full-time at JSC. However, Rice does not have a co-op program and highly discourages students from taking semesters off before they graduate. There are certainly ways around this obstacle, and I know people who have successfully participated in the Pathways program, but that’s a considerable amount of legwork just to place a candidate to be eligible to apply for the program, let alone to evaluate the candidate among other applicants, obtain security clearance for the candidate, etc. With this in mind, it certainly does make sense on NASA’s end to recruit at a different institution that requires less work to obtain qualified candidates.

I have had lecturers who are full-time employees at NASA and professors who work in conjunction with NASA. I’ve even done a project sponsored by NASA employees. But NASA won’t send a single recruiter to a Rice career expo and Rice won’t loosen up co-op eligibility. I don’t know whom I should point my finger to blame, or if there even is someone worthy of blame. Nonetheless, considering the relationship between Rice and NASA, one strong enough to cause Douglas Brinkley to proclaim that “if not for Rice University, the Johnson Space Center would not exist in Houston,” you would think at least one of the parties would work and try to increase NASA’s hiring rate of Rice students.

If you feel a minor policy change can make it even easier then approach administration at Rice and NASA, Student organisations, Rice Alumni, Rice Thresher and Houston Chronicle with letters, articles and petitions.

It took 1.5 years, multiple Thresher articles, multiple Alumni petitions/assistance, multiple discussions with faculty, and several correspondences to the President, Provost, and other administrative bodies just to increase the faculty in an engineering department by a couple of professors, which was an action that was already years overdue (e.g., due to retirements) and affected each student at one of the most popular majors at Rice. I have my doubts that any change to a longstanding co-op policy, which would affect 4-year graduation rates and perhaps substantially dampen Rice’s image on institution ranking organizations (e.g., U.S. news), just to help a handful of ambitious students would be considered minor. Believe us, we have tried, not quite to the extent that you have mentioned, but to the extent such that we understand there is a plurality of politics and back patting that goes on behind the scenes, which causes Rice’s administrative body to dig their heels into even the tiniest foothold such that there is a deceptively high standard of persuasion to budge them on any proposed changes of policy.

Okay, rant over. Back on topic, the point is that while I do agree that, on paper, Rice and NASA have a highly profiled relationship, I believe that such a relationship is more of a companionship. Whereas, a school such as UH Clear Lake that’s located 5 minutes away from NASA might have more of a working or business relationship with NASA, even if simply because of convenience of distance. I don’t deny that Rice and NASA have a strong partnership, but I am not entirely convinced that the relationship is worthy enough to link Rice synonymously or equivalently with NASA.

Rice has a four-year graduation rate of 83%. This is incredibly high, one of the highest in the country. Perhaps they don’t want to jeopardize this. If so, it’s a bit selfish in my opinion.

ETA: Just noticed you mentioned this above. Redundant comment.

If it can effect school’s ranking, graduation rates etc then its understandable why they wouldn’t want to disadvantage everyone to advantage few but for sure ones who want to be rocket scientist can come up with ways to circumvent these things and find creative solutions.

Rice owned that land where it all started and Rice was also first college to offer a space science program to its students. JFK gave his famous speech at Rice.

http://ricehistoricalsociety.org/images/cornerstones/wrc04747.pdf

Fourteen US astronauts are Rice graduates.

https://rsi.rice.edu/histor/

This places Rice roughly in the top 9 or ten universities in the country based on that metric (at least based on 2016 figures, which seen to be most readily available online).

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/slideshows/12-colleges-that-have-produced-the-most-astronauts

Rice"s space science and planetary science programs contribute to this figure, and it’s impressive given that Rice does not offer an aeronautical engineering program, unlike Stanford, GT, etc.

Most schools on this list are military academies (obviously favoured) and some are enormous schools like UT( at least 10-12 times bigger than Rice). It’s not an apple to apple comparison. If you consider Rice’s size, their numbers are very good, for example comparable or higher than all Ivies. If you consider not having an aeronautical engineering major or no encouragement to skip semesters or delay graduation for pathway, their numbers are truly phenomenal.

@ChiGuy123 I noticed from another thread that you were rejected from Rice in regular admission then again as freshman transfer and finally got to transfer to Rice after sophomore. As a result of that you took extra year to graduate, may be that was the reason Rice didn’t encourage you to take another year off. It’s great that overall things worked out for you. It shows your dedication and commitment.

I never tried applying to NASA or for any other co-op program, primarily because, as you insinuated, I transferred and didn’t want to delay my graduation any further. I’m speaking on behalf of my peers.

First, Rice does not have a co-op program at all, which, by default, means that students will have to find their own co-op opportunities (e.g., attending career fairs at other universities). Second, the ones who are able to find their co-op opportunities have to find a loophole in Rice’s policy to take time off. I actually don’t know all the details, but I think one such student had to declare medical leave or a circumstance necessitating temporary withdrawal. The point is, not having a co-op program already puts some students behind because we have to work harder than students at schools that have co-op programs just to find co-ops. Furthermore, discouraging us from even participating in co-op programs means we also have time the co-op opportunities well and play a game with the administration to even be able to accept an offered opportunity.

Obviously, if you work hard enough, you can participate in a co-op, no matter where you go to school. Rice students tend to find a way to get what they want…in a good way.

I would like to hear more about it from Rice parents, students and alumni. What are the pros and cons of current system and what have you done or would like to do to enhance it?