2026-2027 Fondren Fellows Projects
Implementing a Decision-making Framework for Using AI in Teaching
This project is a continuation and expansion of our 2025-2026 project, “Developing a Framework for Enhancing Teaching with AI.” We will continue to curate literature on the benefits, challenges, and risks of incorporating AI into teaching and will expand the scope to include research on the pros and cons of incorporating AI into learning activities. During this phase, we will also pilot-test the expanded framework within an instructional context.
SlaveVoyages.org
SlaveVoyages is an open-source website providing the public with free access to the world’s largest database of slaving voyages across the globe in addition to details about the people connected with them, enslaved and enslavers. Join our community of researchers and help take this important resource to new heights.
Red Book of Houston
The Red Book of Houston enables us to visualize the space occupied by the African American community in the early nineteenth century in Houston. Students may conduct research on individuals in the Red Book and write extended biographies that will then be added to an online exhibit in the Woodson Research Center’s Digital Collections.
Demystifying Generative AI: Facilitating artificial intelligence literacy through video microtutorials
We aim to create a series of video microtutorials on topics related to generative AI tools and technology, both broadly and more specific to Rice’s interests, to aid in raising the baseline AI literacy of students, faculty, and staff.
Readers’ Marks: tracing the past in Fondren’s rare book collections
This project will investigate the way books in the Woodson Research Center have been used by previous readers/owners. Many of these books have traces of past reading and ownership. Fellows will be tasked with researching these and making information about them available in the library catalog and other venues.
Directories to geoData: Developing a Sanborn-Based Address Locator for Historical GIS
Are you interested in recovering Houston’s history? Fellows will reconstruct the evolution of Houston’s turn-of-the-century social landscape by creating a process to construct a historical geolocator from georeferenced Sanborn maps. You will bridge historical geography and GIS technology, creating a tool to transform historical sources into precisely mapped spatial data.
Preserving Plants Past: Digitally Uncovering Rice’s Hidden Herbarium
This project will reveal one of Rice’s untapped treasures - the herbarium of Dr. Paul Harcombe. Fellows will work to research, design, test, and implement a scalable digitization workflow to capture and share biodiversity data from select plant specimens, allowing researchers at Rice and beyond to interact with this unique collection.
AI-Enhanced Teaching of Text Analysis with Python: Connecting Library Instruction to Industry Documents Archives
Help build a complete AI-enhanced Python text analysis curriculum for non-programmers, covering NLP fundamentals from text pre-processing to topic modeling and text classification. Use real digital archives for meaningful learning. Gain hands-on experience designing accessible instruction that bridges library teaching and campus research.
The White House Scientists Archive
This project will organize, preserve, and carry out research on tens of thousands of records related to the history of U.S. science and technology policy. Fondren Fellows will curate, digitize, and make publicly accessible textual records, oral histories, and audio and visual materials in the White House Scientists Archive, an online collection housed at Rice University’s Woodson Research Center in Fondren Library.
The Ethics Evolution: Assessing and Advancing Research Integrity Training
The Fellow will undertake a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of existing research ethics training at Rice University and selected TMC peer institutions. They will produce a report on the effectiveness of available training and provide recommendations for a Fondren Library/ORI joint educational program.
Exploring Documents, Institutions, and Texts (EDIT)
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, published at Rice for over six decades, functions not only as a scholarly journal but also as an archive of editorial practice and intellectual exchange. Building on successful projects completed by 2025–26 Fondren Fellows, this initiative invites undergraduate researchers to explore SEL’s archival collections in the Woodson Research Center to investigate themes such as scholarly gatekeeping, editorial labor, and institutional publishing history. Fellows will conduct original archival research, develop individual projects, and contribute to public-facing outputs that illuminate how scholarly publishing shapes academic knowledge and professional communities.