Clone of Fondren Fellows Outcomes and Highlights

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The Fondren Fellows program empowers Rice students to lead meaningful and high-impact projects that enhance research, preserve history, and support community knowledge. This page showcases the results of their work, including awards, media recognition, and lasting contributions to the Rice community.

Although Fondren Fellows (FF) projects vary in scope and format, they all demonstrate the knowledge and skills that students can develop in collaboration with mentors. Some projects focus on mapping historical events, while others create digital collections documenting particular communities. Other projects investigate ways to improve library services or collections, or they enrich the library's training in data literacy.

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Current Projects

Fondren Fellows Projects for the 2025–26 Academic Year

Building a History of Industrial Accidents and Disasters in Houston
A digital archive documenting Houston’s major industrial disasters and their long-term impact.
Who Owned Freedmen’s Town?: Tracking Deeds from 1867 to 1936
Investigating the ownership history of Freedmen’s Town properties to uncover displacement patterns.
Teaching Qualitative Data Analysis Research Tools
Designing a teaching toolkit for NVivo and other QDA platforms to support student researchers.
Computing Cultural Heritage: White House Scientists Archive
Processing digital and print documents to preserve stories of underrepresented scientists.
The Red Book of Houston
Digitizing and sharing the 1915 directory of Black professionals in Houston.
Olivewood Cemetery Mapping Project
Using GIS to uncover and map historic Black burial sites in Olivewood Cemetery.
Readers’ Marks: Tracing the Past in Rare Books
Exploring annotations and markings in rare books to reveal historic reader engagement.
Enhancing Teaching with AI
Creating teaching guides and policies to support ethical AI use in academic settings.
65 Years of SEL: A Research Archive Project
Building a historical record of the Science and Engineering Library’s evolution and legacy.
Open Data, Open Knowledge
Developing tools that make Rice’s data resources more open and AI-literate.
Analysis of Medical Humanities Resources at Fondren
Evaluating collections and services that support medical humanities research at Fondren.

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Past Project Archives

Creosote Contamination Archive
Outcome: Digital collection uploaded to Woodson Research Center; Presented at FF Showcase.
Fellow(s): Catherine Cook
View more project information here
Energy Consumption Trends at Rice
Outcome: Spreadsheet analysis; Presented at FF Showcase.
Fellow(s): Jadyn Bray-Boyce
View more project information here
Slave Ship Voyage Pairings
Outcome: Identified 100–200 new voyage IDs; Work to be featured on slavevoyages.org.
Fellow(s): Sean Weeks
50 Years of Science at Rice
Outcome: Two long-form articles; digital showcase; Presented at NSURS.
Fellow(s): Magdalena Whelley
View more project information here
Rice Pedagogical Research Collection
Outcome: Database creation; Trend analysis; Presented at CTE event.
Fellow(s): Lucy Hu
View more project information here
Biographies from Digital Archives
Outcome: 6 biographies written; Presented at Rice Humanities Day.
Fellow(s): Jae’la Solomon
View more project information here
Teaching Text Analysis with Python
Outcome: Created two courses; Developed a Fondren LibGuide.
Fellow(s): Melissa Mar
View more project information here
LLM Integrated Archive System
Outcome: Backend system created; Prototype built with SQL & NoSQL.
Fellow(s): Yujie Xu
View more project information here
Rice Engineering History Reports
Outcome: 16 research reports completed; Presented at FF Flash Talks.
Fellow(s): Lexi Xu
Comics Without Borders Presentation
Outcome: Presentation and comic included in published anthology.
Fellow(s): Sofia Adams-Giron
View more project information here
Oral History and Article Publication
Outcome: 7 interviews; 2 articles published (2 more planned).
Fellow(s): Sage Lee

Fondren Fellows Highlights

Rice Research Repository

We encourage Fellows to upload their completed projects, materials, and presentations to the Rice Research Repository (R-3). The Fondren Fellows Collection is available here.

Fondren Fellows Projects in the News

  • Andrew Bell, “‘A succinct review of American history’: Storied political campaign button collection donated to Rice,” Rice News (October 22, 2024)
  • “Meet the 2024 TDL Awards Recipients.” Dr. Sidney Lu and Fondren Fellows Loïc Duggal and Hoang Nguyen won the Texas Digital Library's Trailblazer Award for developing the History of the Japanese Farmers in Texas digital exhibition.
  • Patrick Michels, “New Markers Remember Enslaved People Brought to Texas by Sea,” Texas Monthly (April 18, 2024)
  • Brandi Smith, “Beyond names and dates: ‘The Red Book’ comes alive thanks to Rice student research,” Rice News (May 8, 2024)
  • Brandi Smith, “Rice student art showcased at 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice,” Rice News (May 7, 2024)
  • Brandi Smith, “Visualizing catastrophe: Rice professor explores natural disasters through photography,” Rice News (April 18, 2024)