Rice social sciences school to get new home

Construction starts soon on building for college whose enrollment, reputation are on the rise

Rice University students studying the social sciences attend classes and meet with their professors in various buildings across their 300-acre campus.

But that will change late in 2019 when the School of Social Sciences will have a building of its own for the first time.

“This is absolutely transformational,” said Antonio Merlo, dean of the college. “This is going to be a major investment into raising the profile of the School of Social Sciences.”

Construction will start next month on the four-story, 73,000-square-foot building, which is scheduled to open prior to the spring 2020 semester.

The space will be home to the school’s sociology and economics departments, the dean’s office, sociology lab space and the Texas Policy Lab. It will also house the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance and the Houston Education Research Consortium, which is part of both the School of Social Sciences and the Kinder Institute.

The building will include classrooms, seminar and conference rooms, undergraduate and graduate student lounges and a multipurpose space that can hold nearly 300 people for guest lectures and other events.

The exterior will feature cast stone, marble and the St. Joe brick recognizable in Rice’s architecture, with windows on the south and west sides. A prominent staircase will overlook an interior courtyard.

Departments within the social sciences school have seen their rankings rise in recent years, and overall enrollment has increased to 1,200 undergraduates from about 900 in 2014, Merlo said. About 300 graduate students are also enrolled.

New programs have helped elevate the school’s reputation.

A master of energy economics program was introduced in 2015. A new major in social policy analysis, which focuses on such issues as homelessness, access to health care and criminal justice, was launched last year.

“All those things make the opening of the new building perfectly timed with the increased reputation of the school,” Merlo said.

The building will be constructed on the former site of an intramural sports field at the corner of College Way and Alumni Drive, just south of Baker Hall and east of Tudor Fieldhouse.

It will be named the Patricia Lipoma Kraft and Jonathan A. Kraft Hall for Social Sciences after the lead donors for the $38 million project.

Rice alumna Patti Kraft is a member of the university’s board of trustees. She and her husband live in the Boston area, where she owns Bellezza Home & Garden, a specialty retailer.

Jonathan Kraft is president of The Kraft Group, a family holding company involved in multiple business, including the New England Patriots, of which he is also president.

The Kinder Foundation and Milton Boniuk also provided financial support for the building, as did the Cullen Foundation and more than 35 individual donors.

Tellepsen Builders is the general contractor for the building project, and Rogers Partners designed the facility, which will have more areas for collaboration. It was also designed to attain national standards of energy efficiency.

By bringing together the School of Social Sciences and the Kinder Institute, the new building will help foster community within the school and build connections across the campus and with the city, Rice President David Leebron said in a statement.

“This is a critical investment in the increasing reputation of the School of Social Sciences for both education and impactful research,” he said.