Rice University has renamed its football stadium First Community Stadium as part of a 20-year naming rights deal with Houston-based First Community Credit Union, the school announced Thursday.
The stadium, known as Rice Stadium for 76 years, will carry the new name under the agreement. As part of the deal, First Community Credit Union becomes the official financial institution of Rice Athletics.
The change drew coverage from outlets including the Houston Chronicle, Click2Houston, Chron.com, the Houston Business Journal, Sports Business Journal and SB Nation's Underdog Dynasty.
In other Rice news, the university's football team is scheduled to open American Conference play against the University of Texas at San Antonio on Oct. 3 at the newly renamed stadium.
Rice faculty and fellows also appeared across national and international media this week. Mark Finley, a fellow at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy, was quoted by The Washington Post on oil shipments and prices, while John Diamond, also a Baker Institute fellow, discussed the U.S. economy on NPR News.
Rice political science professor Mark Jones was quoted by Newsweek and Bloomberg on Texas polling, and Baker Institute fellow Bill King analyzed Texas political trends and the Paxton Senate race on The Mark Reardon Show. Baker Institute fellows Kristian Coates Ulrichsen and Jim Krane were quoted by Agence France-Presse and Vietnam.vn, respectively, on UK-UAE ties and Iran's position at the Strait of Hormuz.
Locally, Rice's Kinder Institute for Urban Research was cited in reporting on Houston-area school voucher costs and declining SNAP enrollment. Rice sociology professor Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. and Veronica Reyna, associate director of the Center for Civic Leadership, were quoted in Defender coverage of Black voter turnout and voting rights.
In research, Rice scientists developed a soft porous material that selectively transports lithium ions, a finding covered by Interesting Engineering and Tech Xplore. Rice psychological sciences professor Allie Sinclair was quoted on research into how perceptions of immunity shape vaccine decisions.