Dean Q&A: Rice MBA’s Peter Rodriguez

P&Q: You were named dean at Rice in July. Thus far, what have been the two biggest challenges you’ve tackled?  At the same time, what types of progress and accomplishments have you made in these areas?

DR: Being the newest person in the building and the university (to a degree), everyone, of course, is incredibly friendly and welcoming and you dive in quickly. But you’re not part of the history and you don’t know the backgrounds of anyone there. So I think the two things you really want to do is to listen aggressively and quickly and establish your credible processes for making the key decisions. At the onset, there is no choice but to make them. People may not know how to read into what you’re doing or the process you went through. But you do need to manage the newness in a way that allows you to more deeply understand the culture of the place. At the same time, you’re trying to make critical changes as quickly as you can to advance the strategy of the organization. Just grappling with the newness, not always knowing who to call about something like you would in your prior job or even knowing the history of professor X and Y, etc. There are advantages too, but I would say overcoming the newness quickly enough to be effective [was a big challenge] because if you’re really going to make an impact, you have to hit the ground running. There’s just no two ways about it.

The second challenge is related to the first and that’s putting your brand or style of leadership in place. No matter who preceeded you or how good it was, it will always be different in some way. One of the things that we tried to do early was to create some cross-disciplinary teams and some strategy groups that combined staff and faculty in ways that they had not been combined before. The value of that is making sure you have a broad information flow, so people can see and empathize with other areas of the organization and hopefully pick up the low hanging fruit and understand how they can help each other or understand the tradeoffs that the organization as a whole is facing more clearly as a result.

P&Q: Looking at your MBA program, what two or three things are hallmarks of the Rice MBA experience that makes it so distinctive from other two-year MBA programs? How do these unique wrinkles help students prepare for both the current job market and their long-term careers?

PR: I would say, particularly for full-time program, there is something about the scale that tends to influence the way students treat each other and think of themselves. I think that’s key to transformation.

Let me give you an example. With 110-120 students per year, they all know each other. It’s not that they get to know their professors (and vice versa). They get to know all of their classmates. That creates, to me, a greater ownership of the whole experience. I believe they are more thoughtful about including each other because absences are more significant. I believe they are more thoughtful about their own reputation and social capital because everyone will know them. So you’ll have a team experience, but you will probably be on a team with everyone in your class before it is over. Early on, there is a recognition that you will be known and you will know everyone. I think that makes them want to be more inclusive in all that they do, whether it is a weekend event, travel or the clubs that they promote. It also means that they have a small pool of people rely on, so there is this norm of everyone pulling their weight and everyone being more included.

I don’t know where the balance is. It’s a question we often ask: Could we be larger or is this size optimal? I know that what works here so far is that the scale gives a sense of community to the students that I really had not seen before. It is something that may be more particular to groups in the 100 and not those in the 200s and 300s. It’s interesting because it’s not part of the curricular design.

The other I would mention outside of the purely social experience is that within the curriculum design, they have lots of integration with people in the city of Houston built into the curriculum and courses. For example, we have Board Fellows programs where lots of our students are board members for a year for not-for -profits or socially-minded organizations in town. They get a sense of how the community thinks about the shared ownership of the space they live in. They also get a sense of what it’s like to not only be a business person, but someone who has a social life and a place in the broader community beyond what they contribute to these organizations.

There is also this favorably unusual experience where so many people are engaged in the support of the university even if they don’t have a direct affiliation. So many of the business people who spend time and get involved may not be Rice graduates (or have children who are Rice graduates). They just feel this is one of the key institutions in the city and we’re a place where they want to make a contribution to the livelihood of the city in the same way that the museums or performing arts companies do. That’s great for us. It means that we’re part of the broader community and there’s a sense of having to live up into that expectation in a productive way. It means something to be a Rice graduate, especially in Houston. Our students take up that mantel with some pride. They are beyond what we actually control and yet they are so fundamentally important to us.

P&Q: If you had to describe the Rice culture in one or two words, what would they be? (Why?) What are some of the traits and backgrounds of students who fit and flourish at Jones?

PR: The first word that comes to mind, to be completely honest, was scholarly. I think that’s too generic. But I’ll add some breadth to it. The university is very much molded around a very broad academic experience. If you walk out the front doors of the university, you’ll look across and see the Baker Institute for Public Policy. If you could throw a baseball to the right, you’d land somewhere near the Shepherd School of Music, where you have operatic performances and string quartets who are admitted together and play together for four years. You also have the engineering school and natural sciences. It’s a very interesting context in which to live. You gain a complete appreciation of all of the arts and sciences at the university. There is an encouragement, if not an expectation, that to be a Rice grad you should have some interest or a toe in the water in one of them. It would not be enough to be a single discipline expert. There is a sense that you should be more scholarly or worldly in that way.

I think that’s valuable to us. We talk about ‘One campus, one building.’ When we say that here, we mean unlike a lot of other programs, some things are different for us. Our scale is valuable to us. Because of it, we can offer students an experience fully delivered on one campus and in one building. In that building all the connections between faculty, students and staff happen. Each student is known to all other students and that defines the experience here.

The other thing that defines us is boldness. It’s an interesting term that comes from the history of the city and the industry that we’re most associated with. It takes some boldness to venture around the world and tackle the Texas landscape such as drilling for oil in certain places. It is a place where being ambitious and willing to look at and do the hard things is valued. It is an echo, if not a precursor, of a more entrepreneurial spirit that says it is more important to try than to worry about failing a couple of times. You have to be the one who is taking the lead and smart chances. That comes out in the experience. We have a lot of students who see themselves as soon-to-be and current leaders. They want to have a big impact on the world and the companies that they found and lead.

Along with scholarly and bold students, we want students who want to be part of the whole campus in some ways. We definitely look for that. One of the risks of an urban area is that sometimes you can get people who apply and come in and you worry that they may live far away or may not have an easy time getting to campus. We’ve been able to be particularly choosey on that count. Then on the boldness side, I think about impact in admissions. Is their focus sharp enough and their confidence high enough about getting an MBA that they see it as some path to making an impact with their life and career?

That’s important. The MBA is a great degree. It can service people almost wherever they are and wherever they want to work with greater options. But we hope that it is more than just a utility play — insurance against risk. We want them to seek it as a vehicle to a greater goal.