Frequently Asked Questions

The Doerr Institute is a large-scale leader development enterprise at Rice University. It is not affiliated with a school or any other institute at Rice. The Doerr Institute is committed to the early development of leader abilities in young people, and unlike other programs, is not focused on experienced students in leader roles—we help develop all students who want to increase their capacity to lead, no matter how young or inexperienced they might be.

The mission of the Institute is to elevate the leadership capacity of Rice students — both undergraduate and graduate — across the university. The Doerr Institute doesn’t adhere to one definition of leadership; rather, our leader developers help students develop their own pragmatic definition of leadership based on two cultures: their culture of origin, and the culture in which they wish to eventually work. This flexibility is key to tailoring development across our fabulously diverse student body. In addition, we are committed to elevating the practice of leadership education and development in higher education.

Most leadership programs reach relatively small numbers of students. We are focused on providing opportunities across the university to all eight schools.

Mentors are people with greater experience than the people they mentor, and so mentoring is a power relationship, usually in alignment with a specific career path. Mentors often give advice and can be excellent for networking and career development.

Coaches establish a supportive relationship, in that the student client holds the power and the coach helps to shape the student's development in a tailored fashion. Coaches almost never give specific advice, instead, they help student clients reach their own conclusions and goals. Coaches are excellent leader developers. We only employ International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified coaches who have specific education, training, ethical standards, and experience developing their clients.  At present we do not use mentors, life coaches, or other untrained advisors.

Research clearly indicates that people who learn to lead with external incentives often stop actively learning when the incentives are no longer in place. Our goal is to create lifelong learners and for students to continue to develop as leaders after graduation. We seek to incentivize students by offering exceptionally high-quality experiences. 

We don't. Our leader developers help students develop their own pragmatic definition of leadership based on two cultures: their culture of origin and the culture in which they wish to eventually work. This flexibility is key to tailoring development across our fabulously diverse student body.

Rice has the most progressive and widely available leader development opportunities among the top 20 schools, both in the United States and globally. Just the fact that every Rice student will be offered tailored leader development by their own professional leadership coach sets Rice apart from every university in the country.

The Doerr Institute has a full-time team researchers whose sole job is to assess our processes and outcomes and to serve as a feedback loop so that we can continuously improve. Every component of our program is assessed, to include each and every professional coaching session. We also offer our metrics team as a service to other organizations on campus who want to learn more about their impact in developing Rice students as leaders.

• Students can sign up for any of our programs at riceleader.org or contact leadership@rice.edu with any questions.
• If you're interested in joining the Doerr Institute as a coach or facilitator, complete an application here.
• If you are a school or organization interested in learning more about our approach and methods for measurement, please see our Leadership Solutions.