Faculty

Nancy Gisbrecht Bailey

Nancy Gisbrecht Bailey received her undergraduate degree in music from the University of Redlands (California) and a Masters and Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Southern California. Her research areas are Richard Wagner and French music of the late 19th century. She teaches for the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Rice University Continuing Studies, and does pre-performance lectures for the Houston Symphony and Houston Grand Opera.

David E. Brauer

David Brauer is head of the History of Art Department of the Glassell School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is a native of Scotland. He was educated in England at the Sir Christopher Wren School and St. Martin’s School of Art from which he received his degree. After extensive travel in Europe, Russia, Turkey, and North Africa, Mr. Brauer returned to England where he worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, and taught at the North Oxfordshire College of Art and Technology. Since moving to Houston, he has curated numerous art exhibits: Houston Art in Norway in 1982; Artists’ Progress: Seven Houston Artists 1943-1993 in 1993; Landscape without Figures in 1994; and Images from Space, 1995; Charles Schorre 1925-1996: A Retrospective, 1997, which opened at the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi and traveled to several Texas museums; and he co-curated a Pop Art exhibition at the Menil Collection in 2001. He has guest lectured at Columbia University, University of Notre Dame, and the University of Texas at Austin, the San Antonio Art Museum, the World Business Council’s conference in Brussels, and the Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado.

Terrence Doody

Terrence Doody received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1970 and joined the faculty of Rice University where he is now a professor in the Department of English and teaches courses in modernism, the novel, and contemporary literature. His publications include Confession and Community in the Novel (Louisiana State University Press, 1980) and Among Other Things: A Description of the Novel (LSU Press, 1998) as well as recent essays on Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, architectural theory, and the poets Eavan Boland and Robert Hass. He is the recipient of grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a five-time winner of a George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching. In 1997 he was also voted the Outstanding Associate of Lovett College. He has taught for many years in Rice's program of Continuing Studies and at the Women's Institute of Houston since 1973.

Susan Fruit

Susan Fruit ASID, CGR is an award winning interior designer and certified graduate remodeling contractor with 35 years of professional design experience. She has designed homes in Texas, California, Florida and in South America and her work has been published in numerous design magazines. Her interior design and home remodeling company, Susan Fruit Interiors, has won several prestigious home renovation awards as well as the Better Business Bureau’s Pinnacle Award of Excellence for outstanding customer service. In addition, Susan is a frequent speaker at interior design conventions and trade shows and she teaches interior design and home remodeling courses to the public throughout the year.

Barry A. Greenlaw

Barry Greenlaw is a private consultant, appraiser and lecturer specializing in the decorative and fine arts of England and America. He received his undergraduate degree from Bates College and his master's degree from the University of Delaware as a Winterthur Fellow. Before coming to Houston in 1974 as Curator of the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, he served as Curator of Furniture and Assistant Director of Collections at Colonial Williamsburg. For three years he was a dealer in antique maps and prints. Mr. Greenlaw has lectured throughout the United States and has taught at several institutions including the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to the publication of numerous articles, he is the author of New England Furniture at Williamsburg.

Liz M. Weiman

Liz M. Weiman received her bachelor’s degree in English from Boston University and has worked as a journalist, editor, graphic designer, computer instructor, and in the healing arts. She has served as a fiction reviewer for the Houston Chronicle and other national newspapers, as associate editor of Ultra Magazine, and as senior editor of Southwest Art Magazine. Ms. Weiman has written instruction and technical manuals for Hewlett-Packard, and as founder of the Computer Communications Software Training Center, she continues to teach software programs to the public. She maintains her own lively website of Internet links, Liz's Links. She also specializes in several facets of the healing arts and is a Healing Touch Provider and Energy Worker; and she continues to study therapeutic massage, ancient Eastern philosophy, Reiki, and Chinese ways to self-healing and health, including the practice of Chi-Gong.

Susan Briggs Wright

Susan Briggs Wright holds a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University and a M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York where she became a producer at WOR-Radio and TV.  In Houston, she covered consumer affairs, medicine and courts for KPRC Channel 2.  She was a Houston Business Journal columnist, a journalism instructor at the University of Houston, and anchor/managing producer at KUHT-TV.  Ms. Wright was a partner in Meyer, Griffin & Wright Public Relations and also directed communications at a technology services company and a community college district.  In addition to her numerous journalistic columns, articles and broadcasts, and her work in marketing and public relations, she has guided and edited three self-publishing projects:   From There to Here, her mother’s memoir/history of four Norwegian-American families, Life and Times of a Trucking Pioneer, her father’s memoirs published posthumously, and a small collection of stories about a Portuguese Water Dog.