Today’s educational experience extends far beyond the classroom. International engagement, civic leadership, athletics, creative endeavors, wellness resources and multicultural programs are as essential to the Rice experience as its renowned classroom instruction. Now, generous funding from the Moody Foundation will ensure that every Rice student has access to this deeply enriching extracurricular experience — the Moody Experience — for generations to come.
ABOUT THE GIFT
In 2021, the Moody Foundation made an extraordinary $100 million commitment to Rice University to build a transformative student center and to create 12 endowments supporting student opportunity and success. With the largest single gift toward the student experience in the University’s history, the Moody Foundation is advancing an already unparalleled student experience to new heights.
ABOUT THE MOODY FOUNDATION
The Moody Foundation was established in 1942 by William Lewis Moody Jr. and his wife Libbie Rice Shearn Moody "to benefit, in perpetuity, present and future generations of Texans." Over the past 75 years, the Foundation has awarded more than $2 billion in the areas of the humanities, arts, religion, education, health, science, community and social events in the state of Texas.
The Moody Foundation has supported Rice University for nearly 60 years, beginning in 1964, when the Foundation established the Frances Moody Newman Endowed Chair in the Humanities. Since its founding, the chair has grown to support faculty positions in both the humanities and mathematics. Today, chairholders include Christian J. Emden, the Frances Moody Newman Chair and professor of German Studies; David Damanik, the Robert L. Moody, Sr. Chair of Mathematics; and Kiese Laymon (pictured left), who is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor and a MacArthur Fellow.
Not long after funding the Frances Moody Newman Chair, the Foundation established the W.M. Moody, Jr. Scholarship in Engineering, which has assisted our most promising young engineers for over five decades. Other grants have supported a wide range of activities, including projects at the Baker Institute of Public Policy and in Rice Athletics.
More recently, in 2013, the Foundation made a significant gift toward the Moody Center for the Arts. The Moody encourages creative thinking and original expression, enriches curricular innovation, and promotes cross-campus and community collaboration through transformative encounters with the arts. Visit moody.rice.edu to explore upcoming events and activities.
