Ronald L. Sass

1932 - 2024

Ronald L. Sass
05/26/1932 - 01/09/2024
Ronald L. Sass (Ron) passed on January 9, 2024, in Houston, Texas, at the age of 91. He enjoyed a distinguished career in academics, an engaging second career as a consultant and expert witness, and a busy retirement involving travel, piano, art, philosophy, and, of course, more teaching, environmental law cases, and advocacy. Sass contributed to international efforts by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to reduce the rate of climate change and was recognized by IPCC when it and Former Vice President Al Gore jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Dr. Sass was a Rice University faculty member, researcher, and pioneer in greenhouse gas emissions. He began a career at Rice in 1958 that spanned a remarkable 66 years. Sass served under seven of Rice's eight presidents and, throughout his career, helped build the early foundations of the university, championed students, and led initiatives in Houston and Conroe ISDs. He pursued research interests in chemistry, biology and biogeochemistry, saying that he "liked to change topics every ten years or so." Sass's research included topics in X-ray crystallography, skeletal and cardiac muscle structure, and greenhouse gas emissions in rice agriculture.
Dr. Sass retired from Rice University in 2007, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice University and Fellow in Global Climate Change at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy. After co-founding Rice's Center for Education in 1988, he joined The Glasscock School's Masters of Liberal Studies (MLS) program in the Center for Education as a faculty member and capstone advisor. Sass continued to help build Rice by leading the establishment of the Association of Retired Rice University Faculty in 2016 and serving as its Founding Chair.
Sass's kind nature and generosity combined with a keen intellect, natural diplomacy, and sort of stubborn practicality. He wanted to make the world a better place. Ron was an Iowa boy. He put his values into action through teaching, institutional building, problem solving, and advocating for people and the environment. He was wide open to experience. Wide open to curiosity. Wide open to people.
Dr. Sass was at Rice amid turbulent periods, during times of great growth and innovation, and for the university's centennial celebration. Sass was there for key moments-escorting President John F. Kennedy into Rice Stadium for the famous "moon speech" in 1962, writing machine-language programs for Rice's first supercomputer, and giving a speech urging integration in the 1960s. Sass said the 60s included his "best and worst times" at Rice. "My worst time was when, after a speech urging integration, I was told by the Ku Klux Klan to get out of town-or die," he recalled. "That was also one of my proudest moments because I was there to help Rice integrate, and I didn't get out of town or die."
Born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1932, Sass earned bachelor's and doctoral degrees in chemistry from Augustana College in Illinois and the University of Southern California, respectively. He joined Rice from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York after winning a postdoctoral fellowship from the Atomic Energy Commission. Sass planned to become a master carpenter like his grandfather. A serious accident at a state construction site altered his plans. During a summer job when he was 16, Sass began roughhousing with other boys and irreparably damaged his right hand. He claimed, "The cement mixer on that job changed the entire course of my life."
Dr. Sass's most enjoyable roles at Rice were with students. As faculty magister at Hanszen College, he lived beside the student residential college and dedicated his energies to developing students' cultural and intellectual interests. While at Hanszen, Sass championed student-led efforts that created the first versions of two enduring student-run campus features: the Rice radio station KTRU and Rice coffeehouse.
Sass's natural curiosity and commitment to education touched countless Rice students, middle and high school students, international students, and informal learners who might happen to ask him an offhand question. He never missed a teaching moment. Sass won the university's highest teaching award three of the first four times it was given, being was the first teacher at Rice to be retired from the competition. He touched their lives in lasting ways. His students recalled that Dr. Sass opened their minds to different ways of seeing and thinking. He encouraged them to follow their bliss.
Early in his retirement, Sass founded Environmental Consulting Services. He consulted for the Environmental Protection Agency and advised the United Nations Development Programme Interregional Research Program on methane emission from rice fields in Asia. As an expert witness for state and federal law cases, he made principal contributions to successful federal and state legal cases that included protection of the endangered Whooping Cranes in Texas, management of sea level rise in Louisiana marshes, and remediation of flooding and toxic waste along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Dr. Sass continued to research, write, and consult until the end of his life. He enjoyed playing the piano, watercolor painting, reading, traveling, cooking, sports, and lively conversations with family, friends, and strangers. He is survived by his wife, Cylette; cousin, Janet E. Camp; daughters, Denise Kayser and Andria Varsos; stepsons, Hartley and Dennis Clay, and Travis, Bryant, and Will Chambers; and 24 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
A Celebration of Life for Ron Sass will be held on Thursday, November 14, 2024, at 5:30 p.m., in Rice University's Cohen House.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial gifts be designated to the Ronald L. Sass Memorial Fund supporting the Harris Gully Natural Area, Weiss School of Natural Sciences at Rice University. Harris Gully Natural Area is a recently restored natural microhabitat on Rice campus, where students work and study. Gifts will help assure that the gully is fully restored and kept undeveloped as the next step in making this natural treasure available to the Rice and Houston communities well into the future.
Gifts to the Ronald L. Sass Memorial Fund may be made online at, https://riceconnect.rice.edu/donation/sass. Gifts by mail may be made using the mail-in steps on this site.