As President David Leebron announced this afternoon, Rice University will reopen Tuesday, Sept. 5. Consistent with his message, please remember that some members of the Rice community are coping with devastating property loss. We are continuing to assess their needs and determine how we can help them.

We realize with the recently announced school closings, many Rice community members will be dealing with childcare issues. We are actively working to provide on-campus child care solutions for next week. More on that soon.

Many of you are probably wondering about your paychecks since the university has been closed this week. Here's what you need to know:

• The semimonthly payroll (SM) for faculty and exempt staff has been run for the period ending Aug. 31. New employees who did not sign up for direct deposit may pick up their payment cards on Sept. 5 in the Payroll Office.
• The biweekly non-exempt payroll (B2) for the period starting Aug. 20 and ending Sept. 2 will be run without requiring staff to submit timesheets online via web time entry. We will use the estimated time to pay all non-exempt employees and student workers. Any differences between the estimated paid and the actual hours due to overtime, emergency pay, paid time off, etc., will be adjusted in the subsequent payments. Full-time non-exempt employees will be paid 80 hours, and those who are less than 1.0 full-time employees will be paid proportionately. Student-workers who have active jobs will be paid 15 hours for the two weeks.
• For more details, go to http://professor.rice.edu/Template_Controller.aspx?id=2147484630

Today we began calling faculty, staff and off-campus students who have not responded to the needs-assessment survey. We know many of these people might not have access to the internet, so we're reaching out to see if we can learn more about their situation and needs.

We have had a terrific response to the Rice Harvey Action Team (R-HAT). Our students are out in the community volunteering to help members of the Rice community and other Houstonians recover from the storm. If you need a volunteer team or know someone who does, send an email to helphouston@rice.edu.

A number of you have expressed concern about the chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, that has been making headlines. Some chemicals in storage containers reacted after the containers lost refrigeration. The reaction caused a fire in the containers, but there were no explosions. The plant is more than 30 miles from campus, so Rice was not in danger.

Status updates:

• The Rec Center will be open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday. The pool will be open Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Rec Center will be closed on Labor Day. A Rice ID is required for entry.
• Fondren Library will be open noon to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday. The library will be closed Labor Day. A Rice ID is required for entry.
• The city of Houston's curfew remains in effect from midnight through 5 a.m.

Starting tomorrow, we will send only one update per day.

It’s been a hard week. There are more hard weeks ahead of us. But the true strength of Rice is that we will get through them together.

As always, please send questions or concerns to cmtcomment@rice.edu.

Marie Lynn Miranda
Provost

Kevin Kirby
Vice President for Administration
Chair of the Crisis Management Team