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UNCAN COLLEGE, RICE’S NEWEST RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE, opened in 2009, but that doesn’t mean it’s too young to have established a few traditions. Named for Ann and Charles Duncan ’49, the five-story, 324-bed college earned a LEED Gold certification for its eco-friendly design. The college’s opening coincided with Baker College’s major architectural overhaul, during which Baker students were housed at Duncan. When the Bakerites left, they took their amenities with them, including a Ping-Pong table, recalls Drayton Thomas ’14. (“It was theirs,” he acknowledged.) Then-freshmen Zack Carlins and Evan Austin, wanting to play Ping-Pong late one Wednesday night in 2010, got creative. They moved some tables from the game theory classroom into the quad and collected rolls of toilet paper in a pillowcase from around the college to serve as an impromptu net. Justin Winikoff ’14 brought a guitar. Others followed. Soon, the party was moved to Mondays at midnight. Flyers were posted inviting all Duncaroos to Monday Night Lights, and a tradition was born. Eventually, Monday Night Lights shifted to once a month at 10 p.m. “It is part of the O-Week schedule and is one of the first things new students get to see about Duncan,” Winikoff said. “MNL is among the most inclusive events we have at Duncan and was a great study break and opportunity to catch up with friends and make new ones.” Incoming freshmen can be an imaginative lot. Thomas credits Becca Hamm Conard ’14 and
TA N Y I A J O H N S O N | D U N C A N C O L L EG E
a bin of things in front of you, you’re going to want to play with them. MIXING FORMAL AND INFORMAL LEARNING I think the definition of formal education is shifting right now. Where we need to be in the future is a learning environment that is much more open and active and includes things like low-fidelity prototyping as a method of instruction. One of the successes of the OEDK is the layout — it promotes peer-to-peer learning, social learning, etc. If you observe someone in the room doing
Josh Chartier ’14 with devising a variation of “capture the flag” in fall 2010. Students armed with NERF guns prowled through the halls of Duncan in a game that came to be known as Donnybrook. “Now, it’s often held during oneof the nights of Willy Week, and the last one I was there for (March 2014) had well over 50 students participating,” Thomas said. Students at Duncan have little chance of staying dry on their birthdays. “On a Duncaroo’s birthday, he or she is thrown/lowered into the Dunc Tank (water feature outside of Duncan’s Commons) by his or her friends while they sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” explained Lidija Wilhelms ’14, who served as secretary and later vice president in the Duncan government. “This dunc-ing happens regardless of the weather and time of year,” she added. Some birthday celebrants are understandably hesitant to take part in this tradition. Wilhelms cited cases of students who ran, deleted their birthdates from their Facebook pages or even purposefully stayed away from campus on their special day. But, she said, almost all are eventually dunc-ed. Their reward — such as it is — is for the drenched birthday person to hug everyone who was involved in the dunking to share the “Dunc love.” —Franz Brotzen
something you want to learn, you just ask. Design education has formal models and methods of instruction, but the execution and practice of design has embedded informal learning within it. There’s always going to be a place for formal and informal education. But “the classroom” might look different — it might be students presenting to teachers or games being played that teach the concepts of engineering design process. Or, the classroom might not have walls anymore — it might be a trip to the zoo.
ON PUZZLES THAT ARE “CHEWY” I particularly like “chewy” puzzles. These are puzzles that can be extremely frustrating at the very beginning, but reward the player by spending a little bit of time thinking about it. They are excruciatingly difficult when you first see them and require a paradigm shift in order to attack them. PLAYING TO LEARN The best case for informal learning is play. Play is nothing more than a safe place to fail. —Interview by Jana Olson ’15 S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 | R i c e M a g a z i n e 9