Our mission is to provide outstanding education and research training at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral while advancing our research programs. We have state-of-the-art research facilities housed in modern, attractive laboratories. In addition, within a two-hour drive of the campus are many federal, state, and private refuges, parks, experimental stations, and preserves available for field research. Habitats include southeastern coastal plain forests; coastal prairies; fresh, brackish, and saline marshes; estuaries; and near-shore marine environments.

Faculty members also do research in other areas of the United States including Arizona (Holland), Louisiana (Siemann), Florida (Siemann), Georgia (Siemann) and Hawaii (Siemann) and in Mexico (Holland), Italy (Strassmann and Queller), Venezuela (Strassmann and Queller), and China (Sass and Siemann). We have a national and international body of faculty and students, including individuals from throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Germany, Italy, Britain, and China. Rice provides opportunities to travel to and work in tropical field sites through the Organization for Tropical Studies and other programs.