Mission and Values

We share values that are essential to our success as a healthy community. Those values guide our decisions and behaviors and shape Rice’s culture.

The Rice Mission Statement

Rice University aspires to groundbreaking research and unsurpassed education for the betterment of our world. We fulfill this mission by cultivating curiosity to advance discovery, fostering connections to enhance collaboration, and empowering diverse leaders in an inclusive learning community that promotes excellence and student success through a culture of care.

Rice Values

Rice faculty, staff and students share values that are essential to our success as a healthy community. Those values guide our decisions and behaviors and shape Rice’s culture. They come through in the way we treat each other and the welcome we extend to our visitors. These values can be recalled simply by our name — RICE — Responsibility, Integrity, Community and Excellence.

RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is something fundamental to a mission-driven academic community. We  take responsibility for making Rice better, and also for our own happiness and success. We take responsibility for our actions and words, and understand how they may impact our friends and colleagues. We especially take responsibility for our mistakes. That way we can learn from them and even translate failure into success.

INTEGRITY

Integrity is one of the strongest threads in Rice’s cultural fabric. In the classroom, office, lab, field of play, in our residential colleges and in our community engagement, we are guided by our commitment to honesty and doing what’s right.  This value is embodied in the notion of Rice’s honor and our Honor Code. We accept nothing less than complete academic and research integrity.

COMMUNITY

Our success as a community depends first and foremost on our respect for each other, and how we reflect that respect in our everyday interactions. That is especially important as we learn from and build friendships with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures. The Rice community cares about each member. We hope that individual acts add up to the culture of caring that we espouse. Our shorthand way of expressing this to others in need of some assistance: HCIH — How can I help?  As part of our values, we extend hospitality and help to every member of our community.

EXCELLENCE

Excellence for Rice, means that we are never satisfied with a good result, because we can always find ways to do even better. “When I arrived at Rice for the first time ... I was struck by the beauty of the campus and the quality of the education, research and community service it produced. But I was surrounded by people — trustees, alumni, faculty members, students, staff — who believed that Rice could be better. I am proud to be part of a community that constantly strives to become better.” — David Leebron