Design and control of polymer secondary conformation is a challenging problem. Facially amphiphilic polymers based on rigid but conformationally flexible meta-phenylene ethynylene backbones were prepared and characterized in solution. It was found that these polymers undergo different conformational changes based on the presence or absence of an alkyl side chain when the solvent was changed from DMSO to 90% H2O/DMSO. This report focuses on the architecture without an alkyl substituent, which appears to adopt a helical conformation.