We are pleased to introduce the 2019 Rice Athletics Strategic Plan, which will act as our guide for the coming five years. The plan is the product of months of work and input from over 1,300 Rice constituents. Interviews with more than 70 individuals — spanning coaches, athletics staff, student-athletes, donors and fans — were supplemented by a survey yielding over 1,250 responses. We are thankful to all our constituents who invested their valuable time to help shape the future of Rice Athletics. We also want to thank the Boston Consulting Group for their partnership throughout the planning process.

While there are many great accomplishments to celebrate over the past five years, we realize there are many areas for us to improve if we want to realize our potential and achieve a place of broadly recognized excellence and distinction. First, we need to achieve more consistent competitive success, particularly in football, basketball and baseball, which will enable us to generate more resources to support our whole department. Second, we need additional strategic investment in our facilities, focusing first on our football stadium. Third, we need even more growth in our fan and support base and our self-generated revenue, both transactional and philanthropic. Finally, we must continue to improve our student-athlete experience, so we can attract, retain and ultimately graduate the best student-athletes in the world. With this assessment in mind, we now move forward to our 2019 strategic plan, which can be downloaded here and is organized into four parts:

VISION

To be the institution of choice for elite student-athletes who become champions at Rice and beyond.

MISSION

Rice Athletics provides an incubator for student-athletes who crave competitive success and lessons in leadership, teamwork and grit on their path to becoming self-actualizing, proud alumni.

CORE VALUES

We embrace the Rice values of Responsibility, Integrity, Community and Excellence. In athletics, we also seek to embody three complementary core values: Grit, Curiosity and Teamwork.

STRATEGIC PRIORITIES, GOALS AND INITIATIVES

To achieve our mission and vision, we will focus on three strategic priorities: Promote academic, professional and personal development. Improve athletic competitiveness. Raise the prominence of the Rice Athletics brand. We have defined 10 goals and accompanying initiatives to support these priorities. Each strategic priority also details concrete metrics for how we will measure success. We hope to meet these metrics by 2023, upon completion of the term of our plan. Realizing the fast pace of change in college athletics though, we will take time annually to review the appropriateness of our initiatives and metrics. If we successfully accomplish our goals, we will be well-positioned for alignment with peer NCAA Division I FBS institutions as college athletics evolves. Click the Vision for Victory button below to learn full details of our strategic plan, including detailed goals, initiatives, and metrics. Finally, realizing success in our strategic plan will require support of the whole Rice family, we’re asking for your help, both in the form of resources and time! If you would like to learn more about supporting our plan financially or with your time, please click the Help Achieve our Goals button below.

VISION FOR VICTORY (2019-2023) Strategic Plan HELP ACHIEVE OUR GOALS (Volunteer to Help) SUPPORT CHAMPIONS (Donate to Athletics)