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Dr. Jones, good afternoon. Afternoon. I see that you and I are going for the same, we are expressly not trying to win the Rate

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Your Zoom Room Awards. We're going for, in the opposite direction, both of us. .. That's right.

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...today. We are both settling for the plain white background, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that simplicity. I feel like we have, we also had the same person pick our clothes out today.

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It seems like. Yeah. Yeah. So...

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Matching the mood of the weather, I guess. Yeah. I like this. Plain backgrounds, and I don't want to call our attire boring, but it is, you know, it's straight ahead, right, we're, we're not, we're not messing around.

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Well, we wouldn't want the visuals to distract from excellent historical analysis. Indeed, we're gonna be all business today, and we might as well get started. We wanna welcome all of our guests today. Thanks for joining us here on doc talks.

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I am Alex Byrd, and I'm the co-chair with Caleb McDaniel of the Rice University Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice. Dr. McDaniel is on leave from the doc talks today. He's got a sabbatical, but he'll be back next week.

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And in his stead, we have Dr. Will Jones, who is postdoctoral research associate in slavery, segregation and racial injustice. And you've met him on doc talks before. He is a indispensable part of the work of the task force, and I'm delighted to have him

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with me today, filling in for Caleb, and I'm delighted to have all of you here. Thanks so much, and we'll get started. I'll go first. I hate to go first, but, but I'll go, I'll go first today, and then, and then pass it on

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to Dr. Jones. Today, I'm going to spend some time in the mid '80s. I haven't, this is my second week of not going back too far in time, but want to focus on an area that Dr.

00:03:34.560 - 00:04:01.610

Jones actually knows a lot about and has done tremendous work for the task force on questions related to the history of black faculty at Rice. And I want to start in around the mid '80s today, and I'm doing doc talks a little different, 'cause I'm going to start with one of my questions before I get to the doc.

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I know we generally raise the doc and then ask some questions. I want to raise a question first, and it's a question that we've raised before on this webinar, about historical narrative possibilities. And so I'm interested in how to tell the story, or how to tell the stories, plural, of

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black faculty at the university. And there's a particularly interesting start around the mid '80s, and that's where I'm going to start, I'm gonna start in the mid '80s with Alan Grob and a, some remarks he made in front of the faculty.

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And I wanna go from there. Okay. So I'm gonna get us started, and here we go. I'm also breaking doc talk rules today as usual, I've got many docs and no central one doc, but sometimes that happens.

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So here, here is the starting piece of material. And you see we have the Rice Thresher in front of us, and there are a couple of stories above the fold. The three stories above the fold are, have to do with the faculty discussing the

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introduction of smaller courses at the university. This in the aftermath of President George Rupp, who's president of the university at this time, and some remarks he had made about his intentions to grow the faculty. And so that opens up some opportunities for even smaller introductory classes.

00:06:04.730 - 00:06:36.210

Also on this front page of the Thresher is Mayor Kathy Whitmire, who's addressing the audience in the Rice Memorial Center, discussing infrastructure improvement in the city. Kathy Whitmire is of course the first woman mayor of the city of Houston, and if I might add, the first mayor of my politically conscious life in Houston.

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I couldn't vote, but if I could have voted, then I would have voted for Whitmire. I was pretty close to being able to vote. And then at the top of the page is Alan Grob, who you have heard, doc, doc talk folks who come often, have heard of Professor Grob, a professor, longtime professor in the

00:07:02.870 - 00:07:37.310

English department at the university, and who organized faculty in the '60s and throughout his career to increase the number of black students and faculty at the university, but particularly black students, and was important in organizing faculty on recruiting trips across Texas, and responsible for bringing in a good number of

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the university's first black students. But here in the fall of 1985, Professor Grob is addressing the faculty on the number of, of, the small number of black faculty at the university. And the article goes on to focus on Grob's remarks that there are at this time, in the

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fall of 1985, about 400 faculty members at the university total, but less than 1% of them are black. And they are Robert Jones, professor in the English department; George Smith, a professor of art history, who actually focused on art if, he would have been in the visual and

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dramatic arts department at the time, if they had had one in 1985; and professor of electrical engineering, Fayé Briggs. So that's three, and that raises a question for me that I'll come back to. But the article goes on to address the question of why this is so.

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Why the number is so small, and, and what Rice can do to increase that number. The answers from President Rupp and Professor Grob and Dr. Briggs, who are all quoted in the article, take up points concerning the small number of black faculty throughout the country and the great competition that Rice faces

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for those black faculty. And President Rupp attends especially to that point. Both Dr. Grob and Dr.

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Briggs are quick to dismiss, dismiss maybe too strong of a word, but to dismiss the question of whether Rice is an unwelcoming institution to black faculty. Both Grob and Professor Briggs believe that, that, that it's not a matter of that, that Rice is unwelcoming or necessarily discriminatory in its, in its

00:10:19.590 - 00:10:40.380

hiring practices. So that is, of course, encouraging. Dr. Grob sets out a kind of program, as he would, as someone who had, who had spearheaded the program for recruiting black students at the university, sets, suggests a

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program for recruiting black faculty, and it involves targeting black faculty, but also adjustments to the curriculum that, that black faculty might find attractive, and that might also focus the attention, the searches of the university, to places where black faculty are in, are in greater numbers.

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And I've only said, Dr. Jones, "black faculty" throughout this, but the, the article, quite importantly, uses a couple of different terms, even though the folks quoted are mostly talking about black faculty, a couple of words come into play: "minority" and "diversity." And I

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think that's, that's, those are, those are pretty important terms, because how you assess the situation, how you assess Rice's ongoing success in this matter, whether you're talking about minority professors or faculty diversity or black professors, really affects how you assess the success of the university.

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I feel like I've spent too long on this document, Will, this is just my start, so it doesn't bode well. But I've got, I've got like twelve minutes, so I'm gonna rush now. Now to my question. So hopefully, the stage is set.

00:12:24.150 - 00:12:57.570

So, as I said, you've got three black professors in 1985, and the question, one of the questions for me is, what type of starting point for an analysis of the university's successes and failures in recruiting black faculty might 1985 be? And how might Professor Briggs and Professor Smith and Professor Jones inform that story?

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Is this a, is this a good start? Is it a good place for looking both backwards and forwards? Is it a fulcrum of sorts? And so that's, that's where I want to start today.

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So here is Fayé Briggs. That's a good-looking guy. I'm, I'm glad to meet him. It's a professor.

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It's a very attractive picture. Yeah, it's a, it's a great picture. He is associate professor in the department of electrical engineering. So this is one person who informs our story.

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And then we have Professor Smith, Professor George Smith. I feel like once, I feel like once you compliment one professor, do you have to compliment, I'm sorry for complimenting Dr. Briggs. I'm just gonna fly through the rest, that, just because I don't compliment them

00:14:04.100 - 00:14:25.760

doesn't mean anything. Professor Smith in the department of art history, and then Professor Jones, who I, I'm sorry to say that I didn't--I was right into getting a picture of him, I don't know what happened, why, why, why I don't, I don't have him next.

00:14:25.910 - 00:14:52.610

But, but, so these are the folks, and the question that I, that I'm turning, one of the questions that I'm turning over in my mind is, what types of stories do each of these faculty members' experiences at the university inform about black faculty at Rice? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend the rest of the day on Dr.

00:14:52.610 - 00:15:25.160

Briggs. I'll tell you, some of y'all knows parts of these stories, but I'll just, I'll go ahead and give away parts of the ending now and just say, I won't spend time today on Professor Smith or Professor Jones, but out of these three black faculty from 1985, one of them remains at the university for an extended period of time.

00:15:25.160 - 00:15:51.710

Professor Smith spends his entire career at Rice and is presently professor emeritus at the university. Professor Briggs and Professor Jones have more truncated experiences at the university, and, and quite different experiences at the university, and we'll return to Professor Smith and Professor Jones later.

00:15:51.920 - 00:16:11.630

Before I go on, Wright, one of the most important questions that these three professors I think raises is, are all the professors men, right? Are all, and yes, at this time, all the black professors are men. And that, that raises some questions of its own.

00:16:11.960 - 00:16:32.150

That's, that's, that's worth, that's worth exploring. I'll start by just introducing quickly Dr. Briggs, and we can find him here in the 1983 general announcements. He's on the page that's headed by Dr.

00:16:32.150 - 00:16:56.090

John Boles, and if we scroll down, we see Fayé Briggs. He's associate professor in the department of electrical engineering. We can tell from this--tell me, Will, if I'm reading this wrong, that he's been there, been here since 1982.

00:16:56.690 - 00:17:07.940

So we have a sense of when he showed up. I think that's what that means. Yeah, when I, when I, when I look around at all these other folks, this sounds about right. So if we go to Dr.

00:17:07.940 - 00:17:20.060

Boles, he shows up in '81, I think that's, that's right, from Tulane maybe, is Boles coming from Tulane? I think so, yeah. Yeah. So, and Dr.

00:17:20.180 - 00:17:42.140

Brotzen at the bottom of the page, he's been here since 1954, which sounds right to me. So Fayé Briggs is recently arrived at the, at the university, by '85 he's been here three years. It looks like he may have come, associate, may have come in as an associate professor,

00:17:42.140 - 00:18:11.750

or, or moved into the ranks pretty quickly if he arrived in '82. He's from Bello University in Nigeria. He's got his, his PhD, it looks like, from the University of Illinois, and he's done some work at Stanford for his master's, and his first degree is from

00:18:11.750 - 00:18:33.800

Nigeria. So that's our introduction to him. How do we find out more about him in a hurry? I'm gonna take an approach that doesn't bode well for rich, documentary sources, but we'll see what we can do with it.

00:18:33.800 - 00:19:01.650

So, in his time at the university, he's fairly active in supporting the work of MA students and PhD students at the university. And so he's on, I don't know, maybe eight to twelve master's or PhD committees over this period. And I thought, I thought, Will, we'd just read these theses and see what they tell

00:19:01.650 - 00:19:11.720

us. See what two historians can make of it. Yeah, just see, see what we can make of them. Will, I promise you, we'll rush through, we'll rush through these, I'm sorry.

00:19:12.270 - 00:19:38.460

So here is one of his first committees that he's on. He's the third reader on a master of science degree from James Walkup from 1984. And it's a thesis called, "Message Passing in Buffered Delta Networks," which is something I remember puzzling over when I was in high school, so I'm happy to see it

00:19:38.460 - 00:19:53.880

worked out here. I'm sorry. But what I'm gonna do is, I wanna look at some of the acknowledgements. And I'm gonna read through some of the acknowledgements and see if they, if they

00:19:53.880 - 00:20:18.330

help us any with, with Dr. Briggs. So, you don't tend to get acknowledgements of this length in history PhDs or masters, so that's one of the things that I learned looking through these degrees is, they're pretty short, but here, the sentences where Dr.

00:20:18.330 - 00:20:27.150

Briggs shows up, he also shows up with Dr. Sinclair, Bart Sinclair I think. "I'm also grateful to Dr. J.B. Sinclair and Dr.

00:20:27.210 - 00:20:43.050

F.A Briggs for serving on my thesis committee." That's good enough, right, so that's a decent start. I've only got about eight minutes, so I'm gonna rush. We have the soon to be Dr.

00:20:43.050 - 00:20:59.340

Doshi from 1985. Dr. Briggs is second reader on this. We see Professor Sinclair also on this committee. I guess their, their work is similar.

00:21:00.360 - 00:21:18.240

This one's a little more fulsome. "I also thank Fayé Briggs and Willie " Zwaenepoel," I guess, for serving on my thesis committee on short notice, and for offering a number of constructive comments on the thesis. A little more fulsome.

00:21:18.240 - 00:21:42.720

I might be able to make something of his interaction with students out of of this paragraph. Everyone isn't willing to serve on a thesis committee on short notice. Though many are at Rice, all aren't. Patricia Barry's thesis, Dr.

00:21:42.720 - 00:22:07.170

Briggs is the third reader on this thesis, a very short one, so I won't, won't go into it. He is acknowledged here. In 1988, we get Dr. Johnson's thesis, and we can roll into the acknowledgments here, short, but in

00:22:07.170 - 00:22:27.570

some ways denser than the acknowledgments, and so I'm gonna go ahead and read these, because they, they, this Dr. Johnson has, has, though she has used the appropriate amount of words for EE dissertations, this is full of a little more meaning.

00:22:28.410 - 00:22:46.110

"I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my research advisor, Dr. Fayé A. Briggs." You see that accent thrown over it, written in, right, I wonder, now, now I want to go back and see if the accent has been written in, in the other ones.

00:22:46.110 - 00:23:07.590

I don't know what to make of that if it hasn't. "Thank you for your support, encouraging words, and technical counsel. And she goes on to thank others." Also, the, the remarks to Dr. Burris also seem more pregnant with meaning.

00:23:07.620 - 00:23:29.520

"Moreover, it is with gratitude that I thank Dr. C.S. Burris. Your inspiring words and advice will always be remembered." So I wanna circle all that, right, that, all that looks like it could do with a little more exploration.

00:23:30.480 - 00:23:52.020

I won't go through these two, but there's, there's some more. So, we can get some sense, or some sense of Dr. Briggs as a teacher and researcher, I've seen his interaction, I think, in the acknowledgments, out of some of the work of his students.

00:23:52.290 - 00:24:16.890

By 1988, Dr. Briggs is featured in the Rice Thresher again, in the fall of 1988, on or around about the fourth page of that number, where he is resigning. So he arrives here in '82, by '88 he's leaving.

00:24:18.020 - 00:24:38.520

The headline for this story says, "Briggs resigns to enter private industry." And so we learn here that Dr. Briggs is leaving to go work for Sun Microsystems. Bart Sinclair has really nice things to say about him.

00:24:38.520 - 00:25:01.860

We know from those theses and dissertations that they had collaborated with a number of students. Sidney Buriss is saddened by the loss, but says, because there is so much cooperation between Sun Microsystems and Rice, he is hopeful that students will still continue to have access to Dr.

00:25:01.860 - 00:25:29.310

Briggs, and that, and that he might, he might also return. Again we see, in Dr. Briggs's remarks about what may have fueled his decision to leave, we see some parallels to some of those remarks that he made in the story from 1985, in terms of, that, that he

00:25:29.310 - 00:25:48.390

finds Rice a welcoming atmosphere. "Briggs," the story says, "who is Nigerian, stressed that the lack of minority professors at Rice had no effect on his decision to leave Rice," which raises the question, right, how much had changed between 1985 and 1988?

00:25:50.640 - 00:26:07.950

Not a lot. "It was not at all that I felt that there was prejudice. The color of the skin is not just it. I'm from a different cultural and national background," he said, stressing his roots in,

00:26:07.950 - 00:26:24.420

in Nigeria. Some of his colleagues go on to explain that Dr. Briggs really wanted more space for research, and given the opportunity to set some teaching aside, decided to do that.

00:26:27.060 - 00:26:48.750

So we don't have, these are decent starts, right, these are decent starts, and they raise some interesting questions for me. And one has to do with the quality or efficacy of the reasons regarding the low number of black faculty at the university.

00:26:49.920 - 00:27:05.340

Some other questions that are raised from me, well, I, no, I'll stop there, that's enough of an explanation. And other questions that are raised for me are the efficacy of the types of programs that Dr.

00:27:05.340 - 00:27:26.640

Grob puts forward for attracting black faculty and whether the university takes on programs like that. For folks who have been in the audience before, you know we have spent some time on a Mellon program that Dean Matusow and Dr.

00:27:26.640 - 00:27:50.870

Boles and others spearheaded, that come in the aftermath of Grob's remarks. So by, by 1990, there is a Mellon program. I am at work in the school of humanities, at least, and so I'm curious about the connection between those remarks in 1985 and the programs that exist at the university in

00:27:50.870 - 00:28:15.860

1990, and whether there are connections between them, 'cause it would tell us something about the impact of faculty advocacy. Does it matter when faculty say a thing, right, and want a thing? The question of black internationalism for me, what, what roles do international black

00:28:15.860 - 00:28:47.990

faculty play in the overall presence of black faculty at Rice? And then I just, I want to close by just returning to Sandra K. Johnson's PhD thesis, because we, we're, we're at a moment, right, those of you who, who have been hanging out on campus

00:28:47.990 - 00:29:14.750

for the past week may, may say, "Sandra K. Johnson? that, that sounds familiar." And so I just want to loop us back around to remind us who Dr. Johnson was and is, right, she is the university's first black woman to earn a PhD

00:29:14.780 - 00:29:46.190

in electrical engineering from the university. And we find, she was here on Thursday, and spoke about her experience at the university. And we see here in her remarks that she, she tells us a little bit more about what was meant by what she said in her acknowledgments, that, she underlines how

00:29:46.190 - 00:30:07.430

important Briggs was to bringing her to the university. I didn't, I didn't read the remarks from the Thresher, where he's explaining the importance of black faculty, but in that 1985 article, he makes the point that black faculty are important for the recruitment of black students and the retention of black

00:30:07.430 - 00:30:34.730

students. And Dr. Johnson seems to, not seems to, but confirms that for her it was the, the direct contact from Dr. Briggs that helped, helped to bring her to Rice, because also, Johnson's route to Rice is littered with Rice alumni popping up in kind of surprising parts of her career

00:30:34.730 - 00:30:55.100

that, that end up pointing her toward Rice, and Briggs is the last of those. But also, Sidney Burris's importance to keeping her at the university, that, we see here that Dr. Johnson hits a bump in her life in graduate school, and has to take some time off, and

00:30:55.100 - 00:31:20.050

that Dr. Briggs, but especially Dr. Burris, are important in helping her know that, yeah, that's possible, and we want you to, to take that time, but then we want to work with you to, to return. And so, that's it for me today,

00:31:20.140 - 00:31:28.870

Dr., Dr. Jones. I didn't, I didn't leave you any time to remark, but please take, take some time anyway. Sure.

00:31:28.870 - 00:31:54.250

I know this is an area, you know as much as, no one knows more than you, on the task force, in this area of black faculty recruitment. Yeah, I mean, I think, when I, my initial thought are, when I think about the mid '80s, it's a period at Rice of a lot of, it feels like, just looking at the documents, there's

00:31:54.250 - 00:32:23.240

a lot of change starts to happen, or there's a lot of people who had been arguing and advocating for black faculty and black students at Rice for decades, who get some wins I think in the mid '80s, and part of that, especially with, highlighting 1985, and there's a self study that Rice does, starts doing it in 1983, and then I think the report

00:32:23.240 - 00:32:44.870

comes out in '84 or '85, and so there's a lot of people in charge of committees, part of doing the self study, who had been, you know, people like Grob, people like Davidson, Richard Tapia, who had been advocating for more progressive policies when it came to race at Rice for a long time.

00:32:44.870 - 00:33:07.070

And now, they're in charge of these committees, and they're doing research and things. And so I've just been writing about that time period in a similar document about undergraduate students, and so it's not surprising to me at all that we see that. And I had, I had come across the Briggs, the, the, the article about him leaving

00:33:07.970 - 00:33:31.100

before in '88, and what struck me about that was, that reporter asked questions about black faculty at Rice even though it doesn't necessarily have to be a story about that. It could just be a story about, this professor's leaving. But that reporter goes and talks to Eva Lee, who's the director of affirmative action, the

00:33:31.110 - 00:33:44.330

office at Rice, right. And I think partially that's because in '88, there's, there's another, there's, especially from students, there, you'll see a lot of people questioning about, why aren't there more black faculty here?

00:33:44.330 - 00:34:13.380

To the point where the, one of the first events put on by the Office for Minority Affairs, which was called, "Is There Racism at Rice?" It kind of turned into a forum about black faculty hiring, from the news reports, so, and that was fall of '88. So yeah, that's, those are my, those are my initial, initial thoughts, but it also

00:34:13.770 - 00:34:28.590

dovetails nicely with what I have brought to talk about. What, what are you, what are we, what are you gonna bring for us today? What, what are you gonna dive into? Well, we're going to stay in engineering, not something that I...

00:34:28.590 - 00:34:36.960

That's, that's very Rice. I'm all right with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not something I'm particularly well, well qualified to talk about, except for the

00:34:36.960 - 00:34:59.580

history part of it. But I had, you know, a lot of what I do is I read documents that were old office files. And that's, that's what a lot of what is housed in the Woodson Research Center is, is the, the files and folders of working offices from various departments around Rice.

00:35:00.420 - 00:35:19.950

And then once a person leaves or retires or when that office goes away or whatever, they are hopefully transferred to the Woodson to be reorganized and labeled so that a historian can use them. And oftentimes the easiest way to do that is just to transfer a lot of the stuff over into

00:35:19.950 - 00:35:36.930

archival boxes, and so you get these, if the files were organized in the office, a lot of that organization moves over. And so when I was working on, on the document that you referenced, Dr. Byrd, about faculty hiring and hiring black faculty at Rice, I looked through Dr.

00:35:37.620 - 00:36:00.090

Hackerman, his folders, he was the president of Rice from 1970 to '85, so a long time. And he had, there are folders in there labeled "affirmative action," there are folders in there labeled "equal opportunity employment," so that's where I went to look through, look for information about hiring.

00:36:00.450 - 00:36:19.200

And when I did that, I came across this document that was labeled, it was a proposal and it was labeled, "Texas Southern University, Rice University dual degree program in engineering." And I'll share it. At the time I was like, that's interesting, I'll go back to that later.

00:36:19.200 - 00:36:32.190

And so now I'm at a point where I've gone back to that later. And I'm gonna, there's a, there's a few of these, there's a few copies of this one, of this document. This is a proposal. I'm gonna share this one because it has marginalia.

00:36:33.810 - 00:36:51.240

And so you can see, you can kind of track not just what the document says, but a little bit how it was received. Right, so there's the stamp that this document showed up at the president's office, so Hackerman's office, on October 11th, 1973 .

00:36:52.690 - 00:37:15.710

There's some handwriting at the top, looks like October 16th, so maybe somebody read it then. There's this, we'll read this first paragraph, and I'll try to interpret these marginalia here. But so, this is, one of the things that I do is I'll read the document, but I also pay attention to these handwritten marginalia, 'cause you can also

00:37:16.040 - 00:37:32.450

learn something from that. And because these were documents that were in someone's office and used, you can do that. They do make comments, they do. I have seen one document that was in the hands of multiple people, multiple

00:37:32.630 - 00:37:45.290

administrators at Rice. They all wrote comments on this document with initials. So I know, I know, like, it went to the president's assistant, it went to Dean Gordon, it went to all these people, and they all made their comments on this one

00:37:45.290 - 00:38:11.060

document. But this is a, this is, this is the, the proposal, written by Henry Bourne, who was the chair of I think electrical engineering at Rice. He eventually moves to Georgia Tech and retires there. And he actually has a chair of poetry named after him at Georgia Tech, so he, he was sort

00:38:11.060 - 00:38:21.080

of a renaissance man. And then the, his counterpart at TSU is someone who I don't actually know all that much about, and it's Dr. D.A.A.S. Rao is his name.

00:38:22.370 - 00:38:42.200

And so I'll read this first paragraph, because it sort of outlines what they intend to do with the joint program, what need they think they're, they see that they're meeting. So it says, "It is the general purpose of this program to educate black, Mexican American, and other minority students, to enter the engineering profession.

00:38:43.690 - 00:38:58.300

The low percentage of minority personnel in the scientific and engineering professions is a matter of national concern. A majority of black students, and to some extent Mexican American students, after graduation from high school, gravitate toward traditionally black colleges or

00:38:58.300 - 00:39:10.480

colleges with a large percentage of minority students. For a variety of reasons, many of these students have neither knowledge of nor incentive towards engineering, and very often have not prepared themselves sufficiently in the related sciences and mathematics.

00:39:11.950 - 00:39:27.650

A full-scale engineering program at black institutions must have limitations in terms of cost and staffing." And this next sentence, I think, is, is actually a veiled critique of Rice, but without saying it. "On the other hand, even if they could be recruited, acceptance of these students

00:39:27.650 - 00:39:42.920

directly into the engineering professional program of an institution which is not able to provide the special incentives and preparation appropriate to their background is often unsuccessful. A pre-engineering program at Texas Southern University, coordinated with the professional

00:39:42.920 - 00:40:04.560

engineering program at Rice University, makes use of the unique capabilities of each university and seeks to provide the optimum environment for the minority student." And so it goes on, and it explains what they're going to do. This first paragraph elicited, from somebody who read it, I think it's Norman Hackerman,

00:40:04.560 - 00:40:21.390

an exclamation point and a question mark, which I'm not sure how to interpret. Usually I see that as negative, but, but I don't, it's one of the few marginalia that you're not really sure what it means. My, my, my mother, Dr.

00:40:21.390 - 00:40:41.550

Jones, used to drive with both feet, right, and whenever I see an exclamation point and a question mark, that's what I think of, because what it meant is that sometimes she had her feet on the brake and the gas simultaneously. Sure, yes, right.

00:40:41.550 - 00:41:02.820

So that's, yeah, that's, that's kind of what it conveys to me too. They go on to describe how this is gonna look, how they're going to administer it. There will be a joint committee of TSU professors and Rice professors who oversee it. They talk about the curriculum, they talk about how many years it's gonna take.

00:41:02.820 - 00:41:26.970

The long and short of it is that basically they'll create a pre-engineering program at TSU: students will start at TSU, TSU will be in charge of recruiting students to the program, at TSU they'll take mostly, their courses look more like a well-rounded education. There's a little bit more math and science, but they're also taking history

00:41:26.970 - 00:41:51.750

and English and that sort of stuff. After the third year, they're evaluated, their, their progress at TSU is evaluated by the committee, and then if they are--the committee approves them, then they go to Rice for two years full-time, and there they pick a specific engineering focus, work on

00:41:51.750 - 00:42:13.710

that for two years. So after the, after the, after five years, the students earn a BS degree from TSU in either math, physics, or chemistry, and then they earn a BS degree in their specific field of engineering from Rice.

00:42:17.300 - 00:42:41.880

And you can see, they've, the first draft of this proposal was July 3rd, 1973, and then they continued to revise it until September 28th, 1973, which I imagine is the version that we're looking at here. It was, Hackerman and others involved seemed to like it, and they worked with

00:42:42.810 - 00:43:04.680

Sawyer, who was the president at TSU, to get the, to sort of shepherd it through the process, and the program did start, and I think they accepted their first students in 1975. Later documentation that I have shows that the first, the first class that eventually makes it all the way through is three students, and they graduated in 1980.

00:43:06.750 - 00:43:23.540

Part of what I think made it attractive to Hackerman and Sawyer was that a lot of the funding for it was from oil and gas companies, so they didn't, neither of these universities had to spend a lot of money on this. But it does raise, to me, quite a few questions.

00:43:24.260 - 00:43:44.960

The first one that I think of is what this was like for the students who went through it. Partially because, what it says in here, and I think what happened is, the TSU students, when they move full time to Rice, have the option to live in residential colleges and be a part of the college system.

00:43:46.670 - 00:44:11.690

And so I imagine a lot of, I'm thinking of these questions about what it's like to spend three years at TSU and then basically move across town and spend two years at Rice as part of Rice's college system as a black student, having gone from an HBCU to a mostly white private school, within, while you're still working on the same degree.

00:44:11.690 - 00:44:30.740

Some other things that this program is, comes out at around a time when Rice is really trying to, some people at Rice are trying to increase the number of black students at the school. So we've mentioned Dr. Grob earlier. His committee starts in 1968.

00:44:31.550 - 00:44:55.790

I'm not clear on when the committee, that committee's work stops, but I think it might still be going in 1973, but I'm not sure. But you can see that there are some there is some pessimism about Rice's ability to recruit black students and also financially support them and also Rice's attractiveness

00:44:55.790 - 00:45:14.300

for black students. And I think especially the, this, this sentence, "Even if they," that's black students, "could be recruited, acceptance of these students directly into the engineering professional program of an institution which is not able to provide the special incentives

00:45:14.300 - 00:45:36.250

and preparation appropriate to their background is often unsuccessful." Since this is a program that's supposed to be about Rice and TSU working together, I can only imagine that that sentence is referring to Rice. And so, but also taking the context of the time as well, Rice is not alone as a sort of

00:45:36.500 - 00:46:01.600

as a formerly white only institution that's having a hard time attracting black students. So this is an attempt to solve the problem, right, by, by creating a joint program. And also, you see here that Rice doesn't have any responsibility to recruit students into the program, that's all TSU.

00:46:02.830 - 00:46:20.680

They say that Rice faculty are available to go on visits and things like that, but the work of, say, something like the Grob Committee, is not going to move over into the joint engineering program, that's going to be TSU's responsibility. So yeah, I have a lot of other questions.

00:46:20.680 - 00:46:39.610

I don't know how long the program goes. I don't know, I can, I believe that I can look for, I can find more documentation about it in the school of engineering. I haven't spent a lot of time on that, but we do have records for the school of

00:46:39.610 - 00:46:59.620

engineering in the Woodson, and so I'm sure that if I go there, I can find something about it. The, the records, these records are from Hackerman's archives, and basically there's a, there's a list of, all of, anything that he had to do with other universities, we have, and it's alphabetical.

00:47:00.310 - 00:47:19.510

So when I was looking into this, I went to other universities, and then it's like "T," it's like a file labeled "T," and that's where all the Texas Southern stuff is, and it's full of joint engineering program documentation. So because they change it, they, they add funding to it, there's some documentation

00:47:19.510 - 00:47:36.160

about funding. They change the way it looks after a little while. So after a few years, students start at Rice earlier. There's, there's, there's a form letter to a, to a student about the college system.

00:47:36.160 - 00:47:57.820

So when a student's admitted at Rice, there's a form letter that they sent to them about, "you may have heard we have a college system and you can be a part of it." So, yeah, it's something that I'm, I know how it starts, but I don't know how it ends. And also I just thought of this, I really should have brought this at the beginning,

00:47:57.820 - 00:48:19.570

but at the same time that this is proposed, there's a, not so much joint program, it's more of an exchange program between TSU and Rice, in geoscience and geology. That program is, is not a joint, joint degree program, but moreso that students who are interested in, at TSU, who are interested in geology, can take advanced

00:48:19.570 - 00:48:39.550

classes in geology at Rice. The goal, they tried to get it funded by through various means, the goal there was, the, the two professors involved, one of whom was a, was in the chemistry department at TSU, but he was also a lecturer at Rice, wanted to get a geology department started at

00:48:39.550 - 00:48:55.510

TSU. So that program was more of a sort of attempt to do an on-ramp for a geology department at TSU, and I don't think that program was successful. So those two things are happening around the same time. But yeah, this is, this is, that's what I have right now.

00:48:55.510 - 00:49:30.720

I can answer questions or talk more about it. We'll, we'll, we've got a few comments in the chat, and we'll, as always, take questions. I'll say two things that I found striking, Will, in that sentence that you have as the, that it looks like a lot of work went into, that's saying a lot more

00:49:30.750 - 00:50:02.760

than a, than, than a sentence. I have two responses to that, and one is, I can't help but wondering, I see clearly the veiled critique at Rice, but then I also see, if not necessarily a critique of historically black high schools or the preparation of black students at historically

00:50:02.760 - 00:50:35.110

black high schools, there is something here about preparation appropriate to their background, which I find striking, right, that, that may speak to Rice, but I think it may also speak to a time before Rice, which I find striking because in the history of the university, right, that is also, preparation appropriate

00:50:35.110 - 00:51:00.610

to their background is a, is an idea that, that faculty cast on all Rice students, particularly early Rice students, right, that...I don't know that I'm being clear, but, but one of the things that faculty complain about is that, long before there are black students at Rice, is the quality of Texas high schools and therefore the quality

00:51:00.610 - 00:51:25.850

of some of the students who arrive, and then therefore, the horrible, sometimes horrible, experience of white students from all kinds of Texas high schools who come to Rice to, to fail out of early introductory classes in the math and sciences in not small numbers. And then the work of the faculty to, to try to ameliorate what they see is that poor

00:51:25.850 - 00:51:56.510

preparation. And so what I find striking about remarks like this is the disconnect sometimes between the very history of the foundations of the university, right, and then seeing a similar or same issue years later, but ne'er connection, right, between the two. And that's what race can do, right, that is one of the possibly extraordinary

00:51:58.310 - 00:52:22.670

problems of analysis that race can, can raise. Yeah, I think, I think that's, I sort of glanced over it, probably because I'm used to seeing comments like that, having read all of these documents, but that is, the, this, one of the central questions that faculty, especially at Rice, argue about all the time,

00:52:23.900 - 00:52:39.620

when it comes to, at least with respect to race, post-desegregation is, how what metrics do we use to decide who to admit, what, which minority undergraduate students to admit to Rice? How do we do it?

00:52:39.860 - 00:53:00.020

And a lot of them, in the '60s especially, but even into the '80s, are reluctant to use high school grades, high school GPA because the assumption is that the high schools aren't very good. So they want to use standardized test scores. And also, there's an idea that whomever we admit, they're going to need special

00:53:00.020 - 00:53:24.680

programs, summer programs, an extended course of study, to succeed here. And that's a fraught question and topic that gets talked about, starting in the late '60s, all the way up and probably still today, I don't really know, but, I mean it, so I think that's, that's important that you, that you, that you hit on that.

00:53:24.680 - 00:53:49.130

And it, and it brings up another, another thing, right, when you're talking about what race does, how it creates the, disconnects things that maybe doesn't need to be disconnected, is that there was, until the '80s, Rice never had specific goals or specific ideas about, of an entering class, how many should be students from minority

00:53:49.130 - 00:54:00.050

backgrounds or anything like that? There is regulations, but you can't have quotas, right. But you can have, well, we would like a goal of, say, 10% or something like that, and try to meet it. That doesn't happen until the '80s.

00:54:02.870 - 00:54:27.830

But Rice does have, for a long time, a regional quota, essentially, because, it was, it changed over time, it started, in the '60s, '50s, it was around like 60% of the incoming classes should be from Texas. And over time, it became less and less, but it was still sort of 55% by the, by the '80s.

00:54:28.220 - 00:54:49.880

And advocates for, for admitting more black students to Rice would, would, would look at that, right, they would, they would talk about that a lot. Grob talks about that a lot, right, he says, hey, you've got this regional, you're saying we can't do, we try to get 10% of our, of our entering class are minorities, because it

00:54:49.880 - 00:55:11.090

would lower the standard, it would lower the Rice degree, the, lower the standards by admitting these inferior students, but you're gonna do that with regional quotas? And so, yeah, that's another thing, right, for some people, there is a clear disconnect. You see it in the Thresher, the regional quota is fine, but the racial, racial ones

00:55:11.090 - 00:55:21.010

aren't, "quota's" a fraught word. But you see that too. So in addition to the preparation to succeed at Rice, you also see it in admission standards. Yeah.

00:55:25.950 - 00:55:37.500

For, for me, Will, the, the other point in that, that, that first paragraph is, that's, it's a doozy. But the, the other.... There's a lot of assumptions.

00:55:37.500 - 00:55:57.620

There's a lot going on there, yeah. Well, I wanna go to one other point that I would think is an assumption which, which in the evaluation of the program would then raise for me the question of how long that assumption prevails in the program.

00:55:57.620 - 00:56:18.950

And it's this, it's this, it's this part right here: "For a variety of reasons, many of these students have neither knowledge nor incentive towards engineering." I find that one really interesting. Like, I would have put a question mark there.

00:56:19.940 - 00:56:37.100

yeah, right, really? So I don't, I don't know if that's true. I'd be surprised if it was true, because it is such a, 'cause the assumption that I would bring to the question is that, to the issue, is that, a large number of African American

00:56:37.100 - 00:57:02.780

students are very practically minded and very career minded toward this. So that would be my assumption. And, and so I wouldn't be surprised if, coming out of high school, folks are leaning toward careers in engineering or medicine or degrees that look like jobs.

00:57:04.800 - 00:57:25.800

So I would try to figure out whether my assumption was wrong, if their assumption was wrong. I think a potential problem with their assumption is that if it's wrong, it begins the program in a kind of deficit model that, that, that can be problematic for the building of the program.

00:57:26.910 - 00:57:48.390

Like, I wonder at North Carolina A&T, for example, if, if people are writing memos that, "There are no black students in North Carolina interested in engineering," right? And maybe, maybe there aren't. Like, I would just be surprised if the same thing was prevailing in Prairie View, but.

00:57:48.570 - 00:58:01.230

And it also makes you wonder where, where they, where the people who wrote this got that idea from. Yeah. Is that just something that, that, is that so-called common knowledge in white

00:58:01.230 - 00:58:21.270

engineering circles, you know, or at Rice? I don't know. But, but it does, it does make you wonder, it's not footnoted, right, so we can't, sometimes, sometimes you read proposals that are footnoted, and so you see, you see some assumptions that today we would say, oh, that's problematic, but there's a

00:58:21.270 - 00:58:28.570

footnote there, and it's because the study that it's citing in problematic, right. We don't have that here. We just have sort of... Yeah

00:58:28.570 - 00:58:40.250

This idea is just sort of around, I guess in the, in sort of white engineering circles in the '70s, right. Well, thanks, thanks, Dr. Jones!

00:58:40.250 - 00:59:01.570

We've, we've made it to the end, we've survived and prospered. I survived and you prospered through another doc talk. And I just want to thank you for sitting in for Dr. McDaniel. I wanna thank all of our guests for coming.

00:59:01.590 - 00:59:31.920

I've, I've, I've missed, I wanna end with a remark from one of, a member of the audience, who, who also thinks it's interesting that, that segregated schools are disparaged, since many of the, or it wasn't out of the ordinary, it certainly, it certainly wasn't out of the ordinary for students coming out of those

00:59:31.920 - 00:59:59.280

schools on paper to be, to match some of the criteria that Rice faculty were enamored with. So McCauley, for example, was a National Merit finalist, and so was Freeman, right. So how does it happen that your first two black students are National Merit finalists,

00:59:59.280 - 01:00:22.620

and Dr. Johnson in Math, right, the graduate student, was also a National Merit finalist. So in terms of the origin stories, right, of black students at Rice, it is quite puzzling that all of these folks show up, they're National Merit finalists, but that, that,

01:00:22.620 - 01:00:46.020

that origin story doesn't have a, doesn't, doesn't have a very long half-life, I guess. So, thank you so much, Dr. Jones. Thank you, all of y'all, for coming today. We'll see you next week, same time and place, and Will especially, I wanna thank you

01:00:46.020 - 01:01:00.000

because you've inspired me to go back to one doc. I'm gonna work so hard next week to just have one doc. I'm going back to our roots in doc talk. It's a challenge.

01:01:00.300 - 01:01:09.120

The trick is to find a doc that's multiple pages long. That's what I'm doing. Have a great weekend, Will. All y'all have a great weekend, too.

01:01:09.120 - 01:01:09.840

Bye bye.