One of America’s most automobile-dependent large cities may be heading into a new era, according to the 31st annual Kinder Houston Area Survey conducted by Rice University. Among the findings in this year’s survey: Houstonians support mass transit, feel better about the economy and say relations between ethnic groups are better than ever.

The survey results were released today at a luncheon hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership and Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research,

Mass transit and a preference for urban living.

A large and growing proportion of Harris County residents emphatically support improvements in mass transit, and majorities are now calling for more opportunities to live within walking distance of shops and workplaces. Fifty-six percent of the respondents in Harris County and 61 percent in surrounding counties said that the development of a much-improved mass transit system is “very important” for the future success of the Houston area. A majority (51 percent) of Harris County residents want more taxpayer money to be spent on improving rail and buses rather than on expanding existing highways.

“The romance with the automobile, which has been the essence of Houston for most of its modern history, is clearly fading,” Klineberg said. “The suburbs are more crowded, gas prices and traffic congestion are soaring, fewer households have children at home, and the lure of urban amenities, both in downtown Houston and in suburban ‘town centers,’ is generating a sea-change in area residents’ living preferences.”

In 1999, 52 percent of Anglos living in the city of Houston said they would someday like to move to suburbs, compared with 26 percent of those in the suburbs who were interested in moving to the city. This year, the figures are reversed: Just 28 percent of city residents said they want to live in the suburbs, but 33 percent of suburbanites are now interested in someday moving to the city.

The economy.

Perspectives on the local economy have improved somewhat over the past year: As the official unemployment rates for Harris County fell from 8.4 percent in February 2011 to 7.3 percent in 2012, the proportion of Harris County residents giving positive ratings (“excellent” or “good”) to job opportunities in the Houston area jumped from 35 percent in 2011 to 48 percent this year. At the same time, however, the respondents feel no better about their personal financial situations. The proportion who said their economic circumstances have been getting better dropped from 42 percent in 2008 to 29 percent in 2011; it was unchanged in this year’s survey (27 percent). Moreover, 32 percent of the respondents with children at home said they had difficulty buying groceries to feed their families during the past year, an all-time high.

“This is a powerful indication of how uneven the economic tides have become, even as the overall economy recovers,” Klineberg said. “The most important political issue of our time will have to do with how to restore the public and private institutions that used to ensure that most Americans could share in the prosperity of the country.”

Area residents are more concerned about the growing inequalities, and they increasingly support government programs to restore a more broad-based prosperity. Fifty-nine percent in this year’s survey agreed that “the government should take action to reduce income differences between rich and poor in America,” up from 45 percent who felt that way in 2010.

Ethnic relations and immigration.

More than ever, Houstonians are optimistic about the region’s burgeoning diversity, and they are less antagonistic in their attitudes toward undocumented immigrants. “Houston is now the most ethnically and culturally diverse metropolitan area in the nation,” Klineberg said. “The surveys indicate a growing acceptance of this remarkable new reality. Moreover, the animosity toward undocumented immigrants seems to be fading, and the achievement of comprehensive immigration reform may be more politically feasible today than it has been in many years.”

In every survey since 1992, area residents have been asked to evaluate the relations among ethnic groups in the Houston area. The proportion saying “excellent” or “good” increased from 21 and 23 percent in the early 1990s to 40 percent in 2000 and 2001 and 42 percent in 2010 and 2011. This year, respondents who gave positive evaluations grew to 49 percent, the highest level ever recorded in the surveys.

Attitudes toward undocumented immigrants have improved significantly. Just 36 percent thought that the influx of undocumented immigrants is a “very serious” problem for the Houston area, down from 47 percent in 2010 and 56 percent in 2008. In addition, 74 percent of Harris County residents, more than ever before in the surveys, now support “granting illegal immigrants a path to legal citizenship if they speak English and have no criminal record.” Fully 82 percent are in favor of “allowing the children of undocumented immigrants to become U.S. citizens, if they have graduated from college or served in the military.”

The Kinder Houston Area Survey.

For the first time in its 31-year history, the 2012 survey included representative samples of adults from the entire 10-county Greater Houston metropolitan area, and that expansion will continue in future years as a reflection of the importance of measuring the full range and distribution of regional attitudes. The interviews were conducted by phone between Feb. 16 and March 27 and reached a scientifically representative sample of 1,610 area residents, including 344 (21 percent) from outside Harris County. Thirty-one percent of all respondents were contacted by cellphone. The Philadelphia-based firm Social Science Research Solutions administered the survey.

Through more than three decades of systematic surveys, this research program has measured the Houston region’s economic and demographic transformations and recorded the way area residents respond to them. No other metropolitan region in the country has been the focus of a research program of this scope. None more clearly exemplifies the trends that are rapidly refashioning the social and political landscape of urban America, Klineberg said.
 

B.J. Almond 
March 23, 2012

Rice University has received a $25 million gift from alumnus Robert Klein to name a new School of Social Sciences building. The Rice Board of Trustees approved the proposal at its March 22 meeting.

The Robert A. Klein Hall for Social Sciences will house the majority of the school’s current academic departments, institutes and centers. It will be built on campus near the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and Jesse H. Jones School of Graduate Business. 

“We are tremendously grateful to Bob Klein for such a visionary and generous gift at a time when the social sciences are growing rapidly in importance both at Rice and in the world,” Rice President David Leebron said. “With a location in close proximity to the Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Jones Graduate School of Business, this new addition to our campus will facilitate collaborative interdisciplinary study and create a policy-oriented corridor at Rice that will further contribute to solutions for the pressing problems of our city, our nation and our planet.”

Klein has a Master of Arts (1975) and a doctorate, summa cum laude (1976), both in economics, from Rice. He also has a Bachelor of Science degree with highest honors in chemical engineering (1969) from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.

He is currently a director of the renewable energy firm Riverbank Power, which develops, constructs and operates hydropower facilities in North and South America. The company’s run-of-river and pumped storage hydropower projects represent the world’s largest hydropower development pipeline.

Since beginning his career in 1969 as a research engineer and later a senior economist with Shell Oil Company in Texas, Klein has held senior management positions in the energy, risk-management and energy-trading industries, including petrochemicals general manager of Vista Chemicals in Houston, senior vice president of commercial and trading for PacifiCorp in Portland, Ore., and group energy risk director for Scottish Power in Glasgow, Scotland. Before joining Riverbank in October 2010, Klein served as chief financial officer and chief commercial officer for Symbiotics Energy LLC, a hydropower developer later acquired by Riverbank.

“I’ve been blessed with good fortune in business and wanted to share that with Rice,” Klein said. His years at Rice were “the richest part of my education,” he said, and he added that he has fond memories of rigorous political and social discussions with his fellow students over coffee at Sammy’s Lounge in the student center. “At Rice I learned how to realize George Bernard Shaw’s philosophy – ‘Imagine what you desire, will what you imagine and create what you will.’”

For the past two years, Klein has served on the School of Social Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board. He said the new building will help “foster interaction among faculty and graduate students and enrich both.”

“I am thrilled to have one of our very own Social Sciences graduates’ names on this building,” said Lyn Ragsdale, dean of the School of Social Sciences. “The building will be a testament to Bob Klein’s remarkable talent and success as well as his courage and unflagging determination in life. He has been an extremely valuable member of our advisory board and understands that Rice cannot be a truly top university without a distinctive facility to accommodate the growth and the importance of the social sciences.”

More than one-third of Rice undergraduates choose a major in one of the social science departments, which include anthropology, economics, political science, psychology and sociology, all of which also offer Ph.D. programs, and the school has conferred the most undergraduate degrees at Rice during the past 10 years. It offers interdisciplinary programs in cognitive sciences, managerial studies and policy studies and houses five research institutes and centers: the Douglas S. Harlan Program in State Elections, Campaigns and Politics; the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas; the Kinder Institute for Urban Research; the Shell Center for Sustainability; and the Social Sciences Research Institute.

Ragsdale, the Radoslav A. Tsanoff Chair of Public Affairs and a professor of political science, said three of the top five majors at Rice are in economics (No. 1), psychology (No. 2) and political science (No. 5). As Rice began the 30 percent expansion of its undergraduate student body in 2006, the number of undergraduate student majors in the School of Social Sciences began to expand as well – from 642 in 2006 to 1,044 in 2012 – a 63 percent increase, Ragsdale said.

Planning for the new building’s design is in progress, and dates for construction will be determined in the near future.

                                                                         # # #

Riverbank Power is privately held and includes among its shareholders BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager with $3.45 trillion in assets under management, and La Caisse de dépôt et Placement du Québec, the pension and insurance fund manager for the province of Québec. La Caisse is Canada’s largest pension plan with $131.6 billion in assets under management and a shareholder in more than 4,000 businesses internationally. Riverbank’s chairman is David Peterson, the former premier of the province of Ontario (1985-1990) and founding chairman of the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club Inc.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://futureowls.rice.edu/images/futureowls/Rice_Brag_Sheet.pdf. 

Policies addressing childhood hunger should target neighborhoods, not individual families, according to new research from Rice University.

Sociologists found that children living in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and in those with high foreign-born populations and non-English speakers are more likely to experience hunger.

“Policymakers should be thinking about targeting whole communities, instead of what is done now, which is offering public aid programs for individual families,” said Rice sociology professor Justin Denney. “Public aid works on a limited basis, reaching approximately 70 percent of eligible individuals. But unfortunately, the remaining 30 percent are unaccounted for.”

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Research on Children, was co-authored by Denney and sociology professor Rachel Tobert Kimbro, co-founders of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Urban Health Program at Rice, and postbaccalaureate fellow Sarita Panchang. They used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative dataset of more than 20,000 kindergarteners in 1998-1999, to examine individual, family and neighborhood characteristics of children who are or are not affected by hunger. In the dataset, the children were clustered according to schools and neighborhoods.

Kimbro said that many of these children facing hunger have foreign-born parents fearful of applying for aid, despite their children’s eligibility as citizens of the U.S., or parents ashamed of applying for public aid. By changing the focus of these policies away from the individual and on to the community, she said, parents might take advantage of community food programs.

“If we have policies targeted at neighborhoods rather than individuals, no one is excluded,” she said.

The authors hope their findings will influence future policies addressing issues of childhood hunger.

“Families are critical for childhood development, but communities and neighborhoods have significant impacts as well, as this study clearly demonstrates,” Kimbro said.

The study was supported by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Urban Health Program at Rice University.
 

Teşekkürler, İstanbul. That is, thank you, Istanbul.

Twenty-four Rice students traveled from Houston and London to Istanbul over their spring break to study the urbanization of the emerging global city. The students, whose majors range from mathematical economic analysis to sociology, are participants in the School of Social Sciences’ Global Urban Lab. The purpose of the program is to permit students to analyze a specific urban issue and determine how today’s emerging global cities handle changing demographics, technologies and politics.

Of these Rice students who met in Istanbul for the week, half flew from Houston and the other half from London, where they are studying abroad for the semester. Both groups are enrolled in political science professor Melissa Marschall’s urban politics course, and the week in Istanbul was meant to serve as the class’s lab component.
 
As a student in Dr. Marschall’s class, I was part of the group that traveled from Houston to Istanbul for a life-altering spring break.

We were housed in Koç University’s Istinye conference facilities, located in the heart of Istanbul and just minutes away from the Bosphorus Strait. Our first full day in Istanbul was dedicated to tourism: We visited Topkapi Palace, home to Ottoman sultans from the 15th to 19th centuries; the Hagia Sophia, with fascinating evidence of both Christianity and Islam in the same building; an ancient underground cistern, once used to store water and waste; and Istiklal Avenue, a crowded pedestrian shopping district. Right away, it was easy to see that Istanbul is not only where two continents meet, but also where two vastly different religions and cultures merge.

After this rich introduction to the city, we met the next morning with the staff of İsmail Ünal, mayor of Beşiktaş, just one of Istanbul’s 39 municipalities. We discussed the elections process, conflict among opposing political parties and the role of women in Turkish politics. We followed this meeting with a visit to the Istanbul Policy Center, where we spoke to political science professor Korel Göymen about the city’s history and politics.

The next day we met with officials from the Istanbul Olympic bid committee to learn about their efforts to host the 2020 games after four previously unsuccessful bids. In the afternoon, we went to Istanbul’s Traffic Control Center, which monitors traffic flow, speed limits, travel times and the city’s transportation patterns. We then traveled to Istanbul’s American Hospital, where we learned about Turkey’s health care system and efforts to address existing health care inequalities.

The following day was devoted to a mini-conference at Koç University and Rice student presentations that critically compared Houston, London and Istanbul on topics such as transportation, public safety, immigration and housing. We visited with Koç undergraduates studying international relations and attended a Turkish folk dancing workshop, following which we demonstrated the “cha-cha slide” and “the wobble” for the Turkish students.

Then came a change of pace at the Fenerbahçe sports club football (soccer) stadium, of which Ali Koç ’89 is the vice-president. Treated as VIPs, we saw the team’s locker room and business lounges, went onto the field, met with top executives and board members and got team jerseys. We were filmed and photographed the entire time. (See the news story here.) Later Koç treated us to a night out at one of Istanbul’s premier lounges, Ulus 29. His generosity was unparalleled, and it was a night none of us will ever forget.

Our celebrity treatment continued during our visit to a public elementary school, where I had expected to learn about Turkey’s education system and the challenges teachers face. But it was much more. The students threw questions at us about pop culture, and they asked about American universities – how long it takes to become a veterinarian, or if you can go to college for soccer. These students start learning English in the fourth grade and dream of coming to the U.S. one day. If I had to pick a favorite memory, it would be our personal interaction with these students. Despite language barriers, it was easy to communicate because children are really the same, no matter where they live. We posed for pictures, signed autographs and shared emails.

Now that we’ve returned to the states, we want to extend a huge “thank you” for this amazing experience to the School of Social Sciences, Associate Dean Ipek Martinez, without whose knowledge of Turkey we would have been lost, and Dr. Melissa Marschall, whose love of urban politics inspired a love of learning in her students. We were able to view a new city not as tourists, but as scholars. We received an insider’s view of Istanbul – its past, present and future – by interacting with politicians, educators and innovators. I’m grateful that I got to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime experience. So thank you, Rice. And thank you, Istanbul.

- Ellie Weeks is Jones College sophomore majoring in sociology.
 

Bilingual immigrants are healthier than immigrants who speak only one language, according to new research from sociologists at Rice University.

The study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that people with strong English and native language proficiencies report better physical and mental health than unilingual immigrants.

“Our research suggests that English proficiency gained at the expense of native-language fluency may not be beneficial for overall health status,” said Rice alumna and Stanford University graduate student Ariela Schachter, who co-authored the research paper with Rice sociology professors Bridget Gorman and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro. “It’s very important for the immigrants to hold on to their native language in addition to learning English.”

The study examined associations between English and native-language proficiency and usage and self-rated health for more than 4,649 U.S. immigrants from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The research showed that the favorable health reported by bilingual immigrants is not impacted by factors such as socioeconomic status, acculturation, family and social support, stress and discrimination and health behaviors. The researchers theorize that the health benefits may be the result of a kind of “cultural flexibility” that allows them to easily integrate with their surroundings while maintaining cultural ties.

“Individuals who maintain native-language fluency while also learning English may be better equipped to retain relationships in their countries of origin and form new ones in the U.S.,” Gorman said. “We believe this can help explain the positive relationship between bilingualism and self-rated health.”

“There are still big questions about why bilingual immigrants are healthier than their unilingual counterparts,” Kimbro said. “We hope our findings will encourage further research of the subject.”

The research was funded by Rice University.
 

Developing nations experiencing economic and social growth might also see growing waistlines among their poorest citizens, according to a new study from Rice University and the University of Colorado.

The researchers found that while growth of developing countries may improve conditions such as malnutrition and infectious disease, it may increase obesity among people with lower socio-economic status.
 
“It’s a troubling finding,” said Rice sociology professor Justin Denney, who co-authored the study with University of Colorado sociology professors Fred Pampel and Patrick Krueger. Their study will appear in the April issue of Social Science & Medicine. The researchers examined data from the World Health Survey, an initiative of the World Health Organization aimed at collecting high-quality health data for people across all regions of the world. The researchers looked at data from 67 of the 70 countries surveyed during 2002 and 2003.

“In many cases, developing nations are still dealing with issues such as hunger and infectious disease, especially among the most disadvantaged segments of their population,” Denney said. “At the same time, they’re dealing with a whole new set of health issues that emerge as they continue to develop.”

The study also showed that people with higher socio-economic status in developing countries are more likely to be obese, whereas people with higher socio-economic status living in developed countries are less likely. Denney said that can be attributed to the different cultural values/norms at play in developing versus developed countries.

“In the developing world, being large comes with its own status and prestige, whereas in the developed world, being large is stigmatized,” he said. “There’s sort of a switching of cultural ideals, and these results are consistent with that.”

Denney said the reasons for increased incidence of obesity among the socio-economically disadvantaged living in developed countries are twofold: There is a lack of education about health issues and a lack of access to high-quality, healthy (and in many cases, more expensive) food.

“Unfortunately, our research suggests that if a country develops to the state of the U.S., in all likelihood you’ll see the same thing that’s happening here in our country,” Denney said. “Obesity is a major problem here in the U.S., but primarily for the most disadvantaged segments of the population.”

Denney hopes the study will promote further research of the worldwide obesity epidemic.

“Social and economic development of a country helps many people, but it also brings these new issues that need consideration, particularly on a global scale,” Denney said. “If we’re going to start thinking about worldwide health policies, it might be beneficial for them to target specific groups of people.”

The study was funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the University of Colorado Population Center.
 

Minority principals and other administrative personnel at elementary and high schools play a key role in implementing policies and practices aimed at engaging immigrant parents of students, according to new research from Rice University, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Vanderbilt University.
 
The researchers examined how schools in districts with immigrant populations are addressing low levels of parent involvement in their children’s education and providing opportunities for engagement and support. The study, which will be published in the March edition of Social Science Quarterly, compared 447 schools in districts that have established immigrant populations with 685 schools in areas that have rapidly expanding immigrant populations. The analysis was based on data from the 2003-04 National Center for Educational Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Surveys.

“A substantial body of research has linked parent involvement to an increasingly wide range of schooling outcomes, including improved student performance and self-esteem, teacher confidence and community relations,” said Melissa Marschall, the Albert Thomas Associate Professor of Political Science at Rice and lead author of the study. “But in many cases, immigrant parents have cultural and language differences that negatively impact their involvement in their child’s schooling and education. With the rapid growth of immigrant populations — from 6 to 20 percent between 1970 and 2000, and estimates suggesting another 30 percent increase by 2015 — parental outreach programs are more important than ever.”

The study found that “cultural brokers” — school personnel with important connections to parents’ racial or ethnic origin group — had a positive impact in school policies and practices in districts with established immigrant populations (Houston, Chicago, New York City and towns near the U.S.-Mexico border). However, at schools in new immigrant destinations, like Cedar Falls, Iowa, or Durham, N.C., such cultural brokers are in much shorter supply. At these schools, though, the study found a positive association between minority principals (African-American) and parental involvement programs, which suggests that these principals are taking an active role in addressing the needs of immigrant and minority parents.

“We believe this research demonstrates that school personnel don’t necessarily have to share the same backgrounds to understand the needs and issues of immigrant parents and students or to make decisions that will benefit them,” Marschall said.

Marschall said she hopes the study will encourage schools and districts to explore ways to engage immigrant populations and provide resources that these groups need to be involved.

“Schools have always counted on parental support, even for tasks as simple as encouraging their children to do homework,” she said. “A lot of schools have targets for minority outreach, but the only way to effectively reach this group is to provide the resources and information that they need. To do this, schools must understand the population they serve. As school demographics change, school outreach programs must evolve,” she said.

The study was co-authored by Paru Shah of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Katharine Donato of Vanderbilt University and was funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
 

Dramatic growth over the past 20 years has made Houston the most ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the country and reduced its segregation, according to a new report from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas.

The report, “Houston Region Grows More Ethnically Diverse, With Small Declines in Segregation,” also found that two Houston suburbs — Pearland and Missouri City — have slightly surpassed Houston as the region’s most diverse cities. The researchers used census data from 1990, 2000 and 2010 to analyze the region’s growth and changes over the past 20 years.

Researchers from the Kinder Institute and Hobby Center used census data from 1990, 2000 and 2010 to analyze the Houston region's growth and changes over the past 20 years.

Houston metro region’s widespread growth and diversity are attributable to a 1965 shift in immigration laws, said report co-author Michael Emerson, co-director of the Kinder Institute and the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology. That year marked a dramatic shift in how visas were granted; the United States began giving the same number of visas to every country in the world. The impact has been the substantial ethnic diversification of the immigration population. Before 1965, the immigration population was predominately from Europe; now it is coming principally from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Emerson said that while the entire country has felt the effects of this transition, the Houston metropolitan region’s position as an “immigrant gateway” has meant that its population in both the city and the metro area has shifted to one where Anglos are now a numerical minority.

“The majority of the Houston metropolitan area’s growth has taken place since 1965, fueled by diverse immigrants and the children they have had since arriving,” Emerson said. “As a result, the degree of diversity has even surpassed the nation’s largest metro area, New York City.”

And Houston’s diversity extends beyond the city itself, according to report co-author Jenifer Bratter, director of the Kinder Institute’s Race Scholars program and an associate professor of sociology.

“Houston is one of a handful of what is known as majority-minority cities, where Anglos represent less than 50 percent of the population,” Bratter said. “And while Houston is one of the country’s most diverse major cities, Pearland and Missouri City are on par with Houston as the area’s most ethnically diverse cities. Pearland and Missouri City are also significantly less segregated than the city of Houston.”

Report co-author Junia Howell, a Rice graduate student in sociology, said the occurrence of more diverse suburbs is rare.

“This is very different from what’s happening in most regions across the U.S.,” she said. “The common assumption is that suburbs are more homogenous than central cities, but places like Missouri City and Pearland are breaking that mold.”

Howell said the smaller levels of segregation in Houston’s outlying areas could be attributed in part to the lack of established segregation patterns, such as those found in Houston and similar large cities across the country.

“Because diversity is increasing across the region, there are these new suburbs being created quickly that lack these traditional patterns,” she said.

Other findings in the report:

• Black-Latino segregation in the region has declined more rapidly than segregation between any other ethnic groups.
• Blacks are most segregated where they represent the largest absolute and relative numbers.
• The smaller the percentage of Anglos in an area, the greater their segregation from other groups.
• Asians live closest to Anglos and continue to be significantly segregated from blacks and Latinos.

The authors hope their study will highlight Houston’s diversity relative to the rest of the country and show how people in the metro region are living amid these population changes. According to Emerson, the extensive diversity of the Houston region offers great potential for moving toward being a world-class city.
 

“Harnessing the burgeoning ethnic diversity of the Houston region is a signature opportunity to lead the nation in the transition to a fully inclusive, unified multi-ethnic region,” he said. “How Houston handles this transition will go far in shaping the vitality of its future.”

P. Wilner Jeanty, a research scientist and demographer for the Kinder Institute, and Mike Cline, a research scientist in the Department of Sociology, were also study co-authors. The Kinder Institute and the Hobby Center funded the research.
 

Hand counting of votes in postelection audit or recount procedures can result in error rates of up to 2 percent, according to a new study from Rice University and Clemson University.

“These procedures are intended as a safeguard against computer and human error, but until recently, no research existed to tell whether these efforts helped or hurt the accuracy of the vote,” said Michael Byrne, associate professor of psychology at Rice.

“Post-Election Auditing: Effects of Election Procedure and Ballot Type on Manual Counting Accuracy, Efficiency and Auditor Satisfaction and Confidence,” will appear in an upcoming issue of the Election Law Journal. In the study, participants simulated two types of group-counting procedures commonly found in U.S. elections.

The first procedure, the “read-and-mark” method, utilizes four election officials who count the ballots sequentially as they are taken from the top of an unsorted stack of ballots. One official speaks aloud the choice on the ballot for the race being tallied. Another official observes each ballot to ensure that the spoken vote corresponds to what was on the ballot and also collates ballots in cross-stacks of 10 ballots. The final two members of the audit team record the tally.

The second procedure, the “sort-and-stack” method, is like the read-and-mark procedure but only counts one race at a time. Unlike the read-and-mark procedure, however, the roles and labor needed for the counting task is not divided among the team members. The team is comprised of three members who each have their own tally sheet.

Based on the processing of the ballots, the researchers found a one-half to 1 percent error rate for the “read and mark” method, and up to a 2 percent error rate for the “sort and stack” method.

Byrne noted that although these error rates may seem insignificant, the margins of error can make all the difference in close elections.

“While an error rate of 1 or 2 percent may seem small, recent elections – like the Iowa caucuses just last month – have had margins of victory small enough that a counting error could play a role,” Byrne said.

The study’s findings show that well-specified manual auditing procedures, as well as division of labor among group counting members, help ensure more accurate and efficient ballot counts.

“Nearly all elections require humans to count ballots by hand, but this task almost always results in human error,” Byrne said. “However, our research findings show that some methods are better at preventing errors than others. And while these methods may not eliminate all errors, they can help reduce confusion and produce a more reliable audit.”

Byrne hopes his research will shed light on the many factors that impact election results on the local, state and national level.

“It is probably impossible to completely eliminate errors in hand counting of ballots,” Byrne said. “However, there are new auditing methods that capitalize on advanced statistical procedures that can help ensure that final election results better match what is actually on the ballots. It is important that we become aware of the limitations of current methods and develop alternative ways to improve the accuracy of election results.”

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Hervé Moulin

Hervé Moulin, the George A. Peterkin Professor of Economics, has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled "ICES: Small: Impartial decision making in distributed systems". The goal of this three year project is to identify different decision mechanisms which would not be affected by conflicts of interest.

Below is the abstract published on the NSF website:

Conflicts of interest pervade collective decision-making among peers. Such conflicts can be modeled as the tension between two distinct components of an agent's evaluation of the final outcome: her selfish interest and her disinterested opinion. When those two orderings are logically separated, sometimes a rule can be designed that aggregates individual opinions while preventing an agent's message having any impact on her selfish welfare. Such a rule is called impartial. This project focuses on two simple problems, the award of an indivisible private good (a prize) and peer ranking, when agents care selfishly only about winning the prize, or their own ranking. There exist fairly simple voting rules where your vote cannot make you win or lose the prize, yet it influences who wins if you do not. It is also possible to design a peer ranking system where an agent has no influence on his own ranking, but contributes to that of his peers. Some of the impartial decision rules to which the project is devoted resemble familiar voting rules such as qualified majorities, or the median vote on a line. One output of the research consists of practical mechanisms as universally applicable as any other voting rule. Another direction is to ask which general patterns of selfish interest versus selfless opinions allow for impartial rules, and which do not. The project contributes to the broad stream of economics research on mechanism design concentrating on the strategic distortions of information revelation.

Peer evaluation is a central institution in business partnerships, academic communities, and virtually any community sharing specialized knowledge. Evaluating specialized work requires knowledge that can only be found among those experts; it cannot be entrusted to an impartial but clueless outside observer. Academics pick some of their own for Nobel prizes, and movie professionals award the Oscars. Peer evaluations are vulnerable to conflicts of interest: a participant may be tempted to corrupt her disinterested opinion (a valuable piece of information to determine the correct decision) to serve her selfish interests, which by contrast are often useless to the group. Some examples of such corruption are easy to avoid: judges in sports competitions should not rank athletes of their own countries, spouses cannot testify for or against each other, etc. More subtle ones, such as the multiplication of fake (favorable or critical) reviews on the Internet can only be avoided by the clever design of the evaluation process. This project aims to construct a handful of decision mechanisms immune to conflicts of interest, applicable directly to the division of money between business partners, the award of a prize among peers, and the ranking of Universities by their own students and alumni. This foundational research has potential for much broader impact in the setting of the Internet, where peer evaluations are ubiquitous- from reputation scores for electronic traders (on EBay or Amazon), to the users of social networks (Epinions, Twitter), and the scoring and ranking systems of web pages by search engines, relying exclusively on the pattern of mutual links between pages.

Randi Martin

Randi Martin, the Elma Schneider Professor of Psychology, delivered the Broadbent Keynote Lecture at the 17th meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology Sept. 30 in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain. The lecture was entitled "Working memory and language processing: An updated multiple-components view."

This is a high honor for Professor Martin, and one that recognizes her significant and substantial contributions to our understanding of language processing and working memory. The list of previous Broadbent Lecturers shows that Professor Martin is in esteemed company.

Broadbent Lecturers:
Donostia-San Sebastian 2011 - Randi Martin
Krakow 2009 - Annette Karmiloff-Smith
Marseille 2007 - C. Bundesen
Leiden 2005 - D.L. Schacter
Granada 2003 - P. Johnson-Laird
Edinburgh 2001 - I. Biederman
Gent 1999 - W.J.M. Levelt
Jerusalem 1998 - A.M. Treisman
Wurzburg 1996 - M.I. Posner
Rome 1995 - W Prinz
Lisbon 1994 - A. Baddeley

BY BJ Almond
Rice News staff

Houston philanthropists Rich and Nancy Kinder today announced a $15 million gift to Rice University to support expanded research in Houston and in major cities around the world by Rice’s Institute for Urban Research. The institute will be renamed the Kinder Institute for Urban Research in their honor.

"Thanks to the vision and generosity of Rich and Nancy Kinder, the Institute for Urban Research has the resources, leadership and academic strength to become the leading center for the study of the changing demographics and broader social issues facing all major urban areas," Rice President David Leebron said. "With this support, we can take another major step toward fulfilling our goal of being fully engaged with our home city of Houston, as well as serve as the locus of an international discussion of emerging urban issues."

Leebron noted that the majority of the world's population now lives in cities, which makes the gift to the institute especially timely.

The gift will support a number of research initiatives, including:

* In March 2011 the institute will conduct the 30th annual Houston Area Survey -- the nation's longest-running study of any metropolitan area's economy, population, life experiences, beliefs and attitudes -- and issue a special report and book on the three decades of research.

* In April and May 2011 the institute plans to conduct the third Houston Area Asian Survey, which will reach a representative sample of 500 Asian-American residents of Harris County who will be given the option of doing interviews in Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean.

* As part of a new multidisciplinary Global Urban Initiatives project, the institute will coordinate a significant transnational research effort in collaboration with colleagues around the world to conduct the equivalent of the Houston Area Survey in cities such as New York, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Mumbai, India. By developing comparable measures of the attitudes and beliefs of urban residents on issues such as immigration, the environment and outlooks on the future, the institute will be able to explore systematically the similarities and differences in the perspectives of Houston-area residents in comparison with other major coastal and global cities.

Rice established the Institute for Urban Research in its School of Social Sciences in February this year by bringing together two existing centers: the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life and the Urban Research Center. Rice sociology professors Stephen Klineberg and Michael Emerson co-direct the institute, whose mission is to conduct scientific research, sponsor educational programs and engage in public outreach that advances understanding of pressing urban issues and fosters the development of more humane and sustainable cities.

The Kinders read an editorial in the Houston Chronicle about the institute's goals and thought their support could serve as a fulcrum.

"Generous, rigorous and committed to excellence and to making a difference are words that best describe Rich and Nancy," said Jim Crownover, chair of the Rice Board of Trustees. "Their goal is to understand and address root causes of problems, and they use their resources and talents to make Houston a better city. Their association with Rice makes Rice a better university."

"We are huge believers in Rice, a world-class institution," said Rich Kinder, who is chairman and CEO of Kinder Morgan, one of the largest pipeline transportation and energy storage companies in North America. "We have tremendous respect for Stephen Klineberg and Michael Emerson and their accomplishments. This is a unique opportunity to position the Institute for Urban Research to serve Houston and Rice and to be a resource for coming generations of American cities."

Rich and Nancy Kinder co-founded the Kinder Foundation to support education, urban green space and other quality-of-life issues.

Klineberg and Emerson call the Kinders' gift "transformative." The goal, they said, is to build the institute into a magnet for talent, a catalyst for civic engagement and an internationally recognized leader both in conducting urban research and in translating its findings into a resource that informs and inspires the communities on which the research is based.

"A major commitment of the Kinder Institute is to provide a permanent home for the Houston Area Survey to ensure that it will continue well into the future," Klineberg said. The institute plans to raise funds to establish an endowed professorship in urban research -- a position that would have the responsibility to continue the survey and help to guide the institute's broader research agenda, he said.

Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology, said the institute also plans to develop a Visiting Scholars and Urban Leaders Program. "This will enable us to bring top scholars and accomplished urban leaders to the Kinder Institute to spend a semester or a year at Rice to write, work on policy papers, give high-profile lectures and provide training and networking for Rice students and community leaders," he said. "We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Kinders for their visionary gift, for making such programs possible."

The institute also plans to develop a state-of-the-art interactive website and engage in a wide range of public presentations and conferences. "Our goal is for these expanded outreach programs to make the Kinder Institute for Urban Research the most reliable and relevant continuing source of knowledge and inspiration for the Greater Houston community," Klineberg said.

Rice Social Sciences Dean Lyn Ragsdale noted that, in addition to training students in modern social research methodologies, the Kinder Institute also will develop interdisciplinary academic programs by bringing together scholars with shared interests.

"The Kinder Institute will add immeasurably to the depth and breadth of our social sciences teaching and research at Rice," she said. "The knowledge and understanding that the Houston Area Survey has contributed to the city of Houston will become the standard for our work across a wide range of social issues facing cities and communities here and around the world."

"We are extremely grateful to the Kinders for both their gift and for their appreciation of the important role played by the growing diversity in our cities and our institutions," Leebron said. "The Kinders have made a tremendous difference in Houston through their philanthropic endeavors and their leadership, and we know that leadership will help our institute succeed at the very highest level."

For more information on the institute, visit http://kinderinstitute.rice.edu.

Endowment grant launches Rice sociology doctorate

Houston Business Journal

05/08/2008

Gorman wins top Brown teaching award

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Bridget Gorman still remembers her first sociology class as an undergrad at Western Washington University. "I had no intention of becoming a sociology major," she recalled, when she took a course in social theory. But the professor, Ed Stephan, was so "funny and creative" that he made a subject often regarded as dry interesting.

	Bridget Gorman, associate professor of sociology, won the 2008 George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Gorman, an associate professor of sociology, said she models her teaching style on Stephan's. It seems to be working. She won the 2008 George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching one year after winning the Nicolas Salgo Distinguished Teaching Award.

Gorman taught Sociology of Drugs and Alcohol this semester for the second time. "I think I've finally gotten the class figured out," she said. She described it as her favorite course to teach because it involves controversial issues like binge drinking, prescription drug abuse and the war on drugs, which spark students' interest.

But Gorman is also excited about next year, when she will offer Research Methods. "It teaches you how to do sociology," she explained. "It's more complicated and involved than students expect." Preparing for the course will be her "big summer project," she laughed.

She may need to channel another earlier professor for inspiration. Mark Hayward taught a graduate course she took at Penn State in statistics and methods with such verve that Gorman likened him to a stand-up comic who was nevertheless able to get to the heart of the subject. Gorman cited Hayward's approach for helping her "find my inner goofball" -- a key element in keeping students' attention -- as well as "not being afraid to say you don't know the answer" to a question asked in class. When this happens, she jots down the question and brings the answer to the next class. "Students like that a lot," she said.

Gorman said she knows it's been a good lecture by the responses she gets afterward. Some pepper her with questions during class, others (she calls them "lurkers") hang out and challenge her later or during office hours. Not all students feel comfortable speaking up in a class as large as Sociology of Drugs and Alcohol, or her other large class, Introduction to Medical Sociology, each with an enrollment of 65, Gorman said, but if they follow up with their questions at some point, she feels she has been successful.

With two of Rice's highest teaching awards under her belt, Gorman suggested each professor should find his or her own personal style and embrace it. "Be confident, relaxed and fair," she said, and "be available" to your students. She has certainly been accessible to Rice students, serving as the undergraduate academic adviser for sociology and as a resident associate at Jones College (although her term at Jones College is coming to an end this summer after four years).

"I didn't see it coming," she said of the Brown Award, which she described as "very cool." It is also timely, she explained, because leaving Jones means she will have to furnish her new townhouse. She plans to use the award money to buy furniture.
 

05/08/2008

Hebl receives Nicolas Salgo Distinguished Teacher Award

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Special to the Rice News

Listen to Michelle “Mikki” Hebl, and you'll know why her students at Rice love her so much they've honored her with this year's Nicolas Salgo Distinguished Teacher Award.
 

	MIKKI HEBL

"On the last day of class, I gave them my standard 'backpack lecture' in which I tell them what I hope they will remember to put in their 'memories-about-college-courses backpack,'" said Hebl, associate professor of psychology and management.

She condensed the high points of her Social Psychology valedictory:

1. Questioning authority is a privilege we have in the U.S. and we should realize research (and history) shows its worth.

2. We are all biased information processors, and we use lots of stereotypes and inflate our self-worth daily. It's normal, and even helpful, though!

3. Students should learn to identify and understand persuasion tactics because they fall prey to them on a daily basis.

4. Situations are very powerful predictors of students' behaviors, so they should consider carefully the situations they enter.

5. Whether male or female, black or white, young or old, we are more similar than different.

6. Social support and identification with 'in groups' is key for good self-esteem and positive life outcomes.

7. Learning about certain social psychological phenomena (for example, bystander intervention) can help reduce their harmful effects. That is, people are actually more likely to help others once they learn that most people avoid helping others!

A Wisconsin native still stinging from Brett Favre's retirement, Hebl was chosen for the award by members of the junior and senior class. The avid marathon runner also shared this year's Charles Duncan Award for accomplishment in scholarship and teaching.

Hebl is an applied social psychologist who specializes in industrial/organizational psychology, particularly the study of “mixed” interactions, or those between stigmatized and nonstigmatized individuals — for example, those who are pregnant, obese, or gay and lesbian. Her ultimate goal is to reduce discrimination, both overt and subtle, against individuals and increase diversity within organizations.

04/02/2008

Rice sociologist urges U.S. senators to lift ban on needle exchanges

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

As local governments try to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, should they be allowed to distribute clean needles to intravenous drug users?

William Martin, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Senior Fellow in Religion and Public Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and professor emeritus of sociology, was part of a panel of experts that went to the U.S. Capitol in early March to argue in favor of lifting a ban on using funds to fight HIV/AIDS for needle-exchange programs.

COURTESY PHOTO

William Martin, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Senior Fellow in Religion and Public Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and professor emeritus of sociology, was part of a panel of experts that went to the U.S. Capitol in March to argue in favor of lifting a ban on using funds to fight HIV/AIDS for needle-exchange programs.

Martin was joined by Mary Jo Iozzio, professor of moral theology at Barry University and a board member of the Society of Christian Ethics; John Johnson, a domestic policy analyst in the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations; the Rev. Michael Bell, senior pastor at Peace Baptist Church in Washington; Charles Thomas, executive director of the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative; and Naomi Long of the Drug Policy Alliance.

The religious background of most of the participants reflects the group's strategy of making a moral argument on providing clean needles to drug users. "The science is not in question," Martin explained. "The point of our visit was to address the moral and religious dimension to show that to exclude using a proven method to reduce HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C because it makes us uncomfortable is morally indefensible."

The panel's specific goal was to convince federal lawmakers to repeal the national ban on states using their share of federal HIV/AIDS prevention money on needle-exchange programs. Martin said much of the opposition to reforming the law stems from the belief that providing needles to drug users is tantamount to condoning illegal drug use. "I think a significant part of that opposition has come from conservative politicians and their religious supporters," he said. By convening a panel made up of experts with a religious background, Martin added, they were "trying to alter the attitudes of religious and social conservatives toward preventing disease among drug users."

Martin has also been involved in efforts to convince the Texas legislature to change state laws on needle exchanges. He pointed to a pilot program in San Antonio as a step in the right direction, but noted that District Attorney Susan Reed has warned that she could prosecute anyone who distributes needles because she considers the act illegal. Martin hopes the full legislature will pass a repeal of the needle-exchange prohibition when it meets next spring.

At the event in Washington, Martin cited studies that show needle-exchange programs do not promote or give tacit approval to drug use. If anything, he argued, they save lives and money by bringing addicts into treatment centers.

“Injecting drug users are social lepers,” Martin said in Washington. While Jesus had nothing to say about needle exchange, “we know how he felt about lepers (even without statistics) and legalistic self-righteousness.”
 

03/21/2008

Gillis appointed to cancer institute panel
 

MALCOLM GILLIS

Malcolm Gillis, University Professor and the Ervin Kenneth Zingler Professor of Economics, was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to an oversight committee of the new Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The institute resulted from the approval of Proposition 15 last fall by Texas voters. The $3 billion bond proposal for cancer research and prevention will allow the institute to distribute up to $300 million in grants each year for 10 years. Public and private institutions in Texas may apply for the grants.

The campaign to win approval of the ballot initiative was launched at Rice Sept. 5 last year by Tour de France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, who spearheaded the cancer initiative. 

Gillis is also a professor of management and former Rice president.

03/19/2008

Editor's Note: The Houston Chronicle featured a story about this research on the front of the Star section March 21.

Rice Anthropology Department joins forces with museum to excavate historic African-American neighborhood

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

The predominantly black Houston neighborhood known as the Fourth Ward is home to one of the only historic districts settled by previously enslaved people that continues to be inhabited by their descendants. Known as Freedmen's Town, the district lies in the shadow of downtown. In recent years, it has attracted the interest of developers, and its old homes are quickly being gobbled up, razed and replaced by townhouses.
 

COURTESY PHOTO

Rice archeologists are working to document life in Freedmen's Town.

But before the land is entirely built over, Rice archeologists are working to document life in Freedmen's Town from the late 1800s onward. Students in Anthropology 362: Archeological Field Techniques are excavating at 1314 Andrews St. in conjunction with the Yates Community Archaeology Project (YCAP), which is sponsored by the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum. It is crucial that the excavations be undertaken as soon as possible. Twenty years ago, there were 530 historic properties in Freedmen's Town, said Susan McIntosh, professor of anthropology, who teaches the class. Now only about 30 remain.
 
"Archaeology brings a new perspective to the historical past," McIntosh said. The students are building a database of material culture over time, she explained, to better understand the unique neighborhood.
 
Written documents always provide a very partial view of the past, McIntosh said. Some are written from a particular perspective, such as diaries, and others, such as marriage certificates and tax records, serve specific purposes.

Material culture, including the fragments of china and bottles that the archeologists have unearthed at the Yates house, provides alternative evidence of the residents' historical experience. Archaeology provides a powerful means to uncover forgotten ways of life, especially for groups that have been marginalized or oppressed historically.

The class has recovered substantial amounts of construction material like nails and masonry, as well as children's toys, china and crockery fragments, buttons and buckles. Nineteenth-century residents of the Fourth Ward usually burned their trash, so backyard "burn pits" and the "drop zone" around them offer rich sources of information for the researchers. Glass bottles and pressed-glass stoppers, as well as animal bones from steak and ham dinners are reflections of a middle-class existence.

"A number of Freedmen's Town inhabitants were educated and skilled professionals," McIntosh explained. "If we have forgotten that fact, the material remains of their lives remind us of their middle-class aspirations."
 
Carol McDavid, executive director of Community Archaeology Research Institute Inc. and co-director of the YCAP, said, "We are happy to be doing the project, and we hope it will offer Dr. McIntosh's students a glimpse of urban African-American archaeology and foster connections in terms of the larger study of the African diaspora worldwide."
 
For her part, McIntosh views the collaboration as an opportunity to connect with the wider Houston community -- one of the goals of Rice's Vision for the Second Century. "We see archeology as a tool for civic engagement," she said, "coming together to deal with issues of how history has been recorded in the past."

03/13/2008

Rice psychology class probes pollution, early development links

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News Staff

As the fifth most-polluted city in the U.S., Houston is a great place to study the effects of pollutants on early childhood development. So when Jim Dannemiller decided to teach Pollution and Psychological Development (PSYC 480) for the first time, he knew he would have a veritable laboratory in which his students could carry out their experiments.

Dannemiller, the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Psychology and director of Rice's Neurosciences Program, said Houston has the heavy industry, vehicle density and proximity to the ocean that account for much of the toxins that affect children, and it also has a research infrastructure that has broad experience investigating those effects. As an example, Dannemiller cited the Pediatric Lead Clinic at Ben Taub General Hospital, and in particular, Winifred Hamilton, director of environmental health at Baylor College of Medicine, who has studied the high levels of lead in the blood of children growing up in Galveston.

JIM DANNEMILLER

Students in the course being taught this spring are reading "Silent Scourge: Children, Pollution, and Why Scientists Disagree" by C.F. Moore. As the title implies, there are different interpretations of how different types and quantities of pollution affect humans as well as the environment. The goals of the course include learning how attitudes, beliefs and values affect policies related to pollution, in addition to learning about some of the ways in which environmental hazards influence psychological functioning and development. The course will be offered again this summer.

Many effects of pollutants are well-known. Mercury poisoning, for instance, causes a reduction in children's learning abilities, delays in walking and talking and a decrease in attention or memory. One method Dannemiller plans to use in the future to study children who have been exposed to pollution prenatally is by measuring visual attention of 2- and 6-month-old babies by eye-movement tests and comparing them to a control group.

The juniors and seniors in the course are looking at five specific sources of pollution: lead, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides and noise.

The main source of lead ingested by Americans used to be gasoline. It was added to boost octane levels, but was gradually eliminated in the 1970s. Lead was also commonly used in house paints and continues to affect children in older dwellings. This pollutant is particularly dangerous because once it is ingested, it remains in a person's system forever. 

PCBs were used to insulate electrical transformers until they were banned 30 years ago because of their high toxicity. Dumping of PCBs in the Hudson River and the Great Lakes led to contamination of fish stocks and still affects the water to this day.

"What it generally takes to get people's attention is an acute poisoning episode," Dannemiller said, pointing to the famous mercury poisoning case in Minamata, Japan, which came to light in 1956. Like PCBs, the mercury was dumped into the water and accumulated in fish and shellfish, which were eaten by people. Thousands were poisoned; hundreds died. The incident caused an uproar and raised awareness of mercury poisoning.

The impact of such serious cases is well-documented, Dannemiller said, but what happens at low levels of contamination? "Is there any safe level?" he asked. Students in PSYC 480 rely on their backgrounds in developmental psychology and statistics to weigh the effects of pollutants when those effects are more subtle.

Dannemiller also encourages students to consider "the social inequities in exposure to these elements," since the poor tend to be more exposed to things like lead paint and PCB-tainted landfills than the rich. "These are questions of social justice," he said.

While some steps have been taken to limit exposure to pollutants like lead and mercury (try finding a mercury-filled thermometer at the drugstore these days), Dannemiller cautioned that new hazards may pose future risks. New technology -- like the government-mandated compact fluorescent light bulbs that contain small amounts of mercury, rather than tungsten found in incandescent bulbs -- could cause problems when people throw away broken bulbs in their trash. And problematic organic compounds like bisphenols, which are used in some plastics, may have physiological consequences.

Teaching PSYC 480 has changed some of Dannemiller's habits. He said he has been made aware of issues like how to get rid of mercury in a responsible way and being conscious of potential pollutants in the food supply. Noting that large predators accumulate more mercury than their smaller prey, he said, "I have changed the types of seafood that I eat."

02/14/2008

Klineberg honored for work on Houston

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News Staff
 
Stephen Klineberg, Rice professor of sociology, will be honored at two separate events that highlight the extent of his involvement in the wider Houston community, as well as the continuing impact of the Houston Area Survey that he and his students have been conducting for 27 years.
 
Blueprint Houston will host a "Tribute to Stephen Klineberg" Feb. 19. Blueprint Houston is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building community support for a planning process that makes improvements to Houston’s quality of life and place.
 
 

STEPHEN KLINEBERG

Speakers at the tribute will include Houston Mayor Bill White; Bob Eury, president of Central Houston, Inc. (a private, nonprofit corporation, formed to lead the planning and implementation of the redevelopment of Houston’s central city area); Ann Hamilton, president of the Houston Endowment; Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses, (a nonprofit organization whose mission is to create community through the celebration of art and African-American history and culture); and Richard Murray, professor of political science at the University of Houston.
 
The second honor comes from AVANCE-Houston, which will hold its Grand Gala 2008 March 28, when the organization celebrates 20 years of sponsoring early childhood and family education programs for at-risk, primarily Hispanic families in Houston. It is planning to honor not only one of the families that have benefited from their programs but also the family of Stephen and Peggy Klineberg. The Klinebergs’ two children, their spouses and five grandchildren will be there as well.
 
Jose Villarreal, executive director of AVANCE-Houston, called Klineberg "a strong proponent of education for all," adding that he "understands its special importance as families assimilate and gain economic and cultural stability in our community." He went on to say Klineberg's "enthusiasm for the bright future of Houston and all its citizens -- Latinos and all others -- is infectious, and his research aids all of us involved in opening the doors to helping all our citizens achieve their greatest potential."
 
Klineberg said that tributes from two such distinct organizations reflect the breadth of the issues explored in the Houston Area Survey. "The study began as a one-time project in a spring semester sociology class in 1982," Klineberg recalled, but it just happened to coincide with the collapse of the oil boom two months later. "That began a time of remarkable transformation in Houston," he said, and the Houston Area Survey has been tracking the changes and the public’s responses to them ever since.

Sociology chair and professor Elizabeth Long pointed out that both tributes "attest to the value and progressive nature" of Klineberg's scholarship, "and the positive way it has influenced civic culture in Houston."
 
"We are indeed profoundly proud of his work," Long added, "which is exemplary of Rice's engagement with the community of which it is a part. We also hope that some members of the Rice community will be able to join in one or both of the celebrations."

The Houston Area Survey fulfills two distinct missions, Klineberg said. It promotes academic sociology, using systematic survey research to analyze the processes of social change, while also encompassing public sociology, which uses the findings to clarify issues of interest and concern to a much wider audience.
 
"We conduct our research for academic reasons -- teaching and scholarship," he said, "but it also has resonance and value to the wider community."

For more on the Blueprint Houston event, go to http://www.blueprinthouston.org.

For tickets and information to the AVANCE-Houston event, contact Sonia Garcia at 713-812-0033, ext. 147, or soniagarcia@avancehouston.org.

Rice political scientist wins NSF CAREER Grant to study policy-public opinion link

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News Staff

Is policymaking in multiparty democracies responsive to citizen preferences during the government's term in office?

Lanny Martin, associate professor of political science, hopes to answer that question through research he will conduct with his National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Grant.

 

LANNY MARTIN

While it may seem to be self-evident that democratically elected governments would pay heed to the public mood, Martin said that in some cases, that doesn't hold. "In most democracies, there is no majority party -- so governments are built on coalitions," he said. "Since many smaller parties must appeal to their bases, they have incentives to not reflect majority opinion."

A good deal of scholarship has looked at this relationship between government policy and public opinion as it has played out in the United States, where small political parties are virtually irrelevant. Martin's research, on the other hand, focuses on parliamentary systems in Europe, many of which feature prominent roles for small parties.

With the NSF grant, Martin will go to Europe next summer, along with two graduate students, to search the archives for legislative data on all changes to economic policy (specifically, tax and welfare issues) that have been proposed and enacted over the past 10 to 20 years. The team will be working in collaboration with students from universities in Europe who are also engaged in legislative research. The project will eventually cover seven European countries over the next four summers.

The countries and the dates of legislation to be studied are Austria (1994-2006), Belgium (1985-2007), Denmark (1982-2005), Germany (1983-2005), Luxembourg (1989-2004), the Netherlands (1981-2006) and Sweden (1994-2006).

When he's finished, Martin hopes to have created the largest cross-national legislative dataset of its kind. Such data are crucial to the project's goal of comparing policies to swings in public opinion. Martin's thesis is that "the degree to which a government party is 'responsive' to the preferences of its target constituency depends on the proximity of elections, the divisions between the party and its parliamentary allies and the likelihood that the party might lose its position in the government."

Martin is one of only five scholars in the United States who have received an NSF CAREER Grant from the political science program. The CAREER program is designed to support "the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization," according to the NSF Web site.

In addition to collecting legislative data, Martin plans to teach an annual practicum course in legislative research for graduate and undergraduate students. He will also host weeklong workshops that bring students at Rice together with students from across the U.S. and Europe who are working on similar questions in comparative legislative research.

"I'm very excited about the opportunity to contribute to our understanding of these fundamental questions in the study of democratic representation," Martin said. "I'm equally excited about the opportunity to work closely with Rice graduate and undergraduate students as they develop their own research ideas in this area."

While Martin is the only Rice political scientist to receive the CAREER grant, three other members of the department received four separate NSF grants: Associate Professor Randolph Stevenson is the primary investigator for "Political Context and Political Knowledge in Modern Democracies," Assistant Professor Royce Carroll is the primary investigator for "Collaborative Research on How Nominations Affect Government Formation" and Associate Professor John Alford is the primary investigator for two collaborative research projects, “Genes and Politics: Providing the Necessary Data" and "Investigating the Genetic Basis of Economic Behavior."

In addition, Robert Stein, the Lena Gohlman Fox professor of political science, will collaborate with Devika Subramanian, professor of computer science, and Leonardo Dueñas-Osorio, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, on a project titled "Independent Response of Complex Urban Infrastructures Subjected to Multiple Hazards."