Joyce Bald
My name is Joyce and I am the Hanszen College Coordinator. I have been running the college office for 14 and a half years, but have been at Rice for 22 years. I am a native Texan and attended the Bradford School of Business. I am married to my high school sweetheart and we have 3 adult sons, and 2 grandchildren. Officially, I assist the Magisters with the administration of Hanszen. Unofficially, I am the daytime RA, mail guru, answerer of questions, and holder of all keys to Hanszen. Students are the heart of Hanszen and should not hesitate to come to me anytime to ask for life advice, rant about a class, figure out how to approach a difficult situation, or to gain a different perspective to any issue. My office hours will vary depending on the happenings at Hanszen, but you can usually catch me during normal business hours. While you are in the Hanszen office you can:
- Pick up your packages from home
- Borrow a room key (if you are locked out)
- Send or receive a fax
- Make copies
- Buy a stamp
- Get a band-aid or an aspirin (or other RHA supplies)
- Sleep on the comfy couch (this happens more often than you might think)
- or just take a break and hang out
Fabiola López-Durán and Carlos Pelayo Martínez
Fabiola López-Durán and Carlos Pelayo Martínez, Magisters of Hanszen College, are thrilled to welcome you to the Hanszen community! They look forward to assisting you to succeed in your academic career at Rice University and to make the most out of living in Houston—one of the largest and more fascinating cities in the country. They are here to foster the intellectual and social life of the residential college and to accompany you in your own personal journey during your years at Rice.
Fabiola and Carlos are both Venezuelans but from opposite sides of the country. They met in Caracas, when Carlos was just moving back after spending five years working in agriculture in the rice fields of the countryside and Fabiola was just setting up her home in the Venezuelan capital after coming back from graduate school in Italy and France.
Fabiola, Associate Professor of art and architectural history in the Department of Art History, was originally trained as an architect and as a museum professional in Venezuela and Europe. After a decade teaching at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, working at the National Museum of Fine Arts, and conducting diverse interdisciplinary museum projects in Europe and Latin America, Fabiola decided to come back to school in 2002 to pursue a Ph.D. in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), a bastion of science and technology education, which considers the arts and humanities as essential for both educating great scientists and engineers and for sustaining an extraordinary capacity for innovation. Perhaps, that is the reason behind the interdisciplinary nature of her research and her commitment to teaching from interdisciplinary perspectives, identifying connections between fields that are often treated as compartmentalized phenomena within specific disciplines. Prior to joining the Rice University faculty, she was the 2009-2011 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the Department of History of Art at the University of California-Berkeley, where she developed a profound interest in political ecology and environmental issues. She also has a long trajectory extending her intellectual reach into new areas of investigation and collaboration with contemporary artists and architects from around the world.
Carlos was trained in business at the Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela, and has over 25 years of management experience in a variety of industries including agriculture, biotechnology, international trade, and adventure tourism. He also has a long record volunteering in non-profit organizations from his work at La Cocina, a kitchen incubator in San Francisco that helps low-income food entrepreneurs (mostly immigrant women) to formalize their businesses, to his work for many months after hurricane Harvey with the Red Cross in Houston. Currently, Carlos found a passion for woodworking and video production. Carlos feels at home in the skills he learned in his youth, when learned craft along with mathematics and sciences as equal parts of the curriculum, materializing the intimate relation that exists between problem finding and solving, technique and expression, work and play. “I am a producer,” he said, “and an outdoor enthusiast,” who enjoys creating and implementing administrative processes and procedures, designing and producing objects and furniture, and organizing hike, bike and kayak excursions to the most fascinating places, including the Amazon in Brazil and the Santa Elena Canyon in West Texas.
They are both passionate about Houston and its surroundings, and both are also very active in the cultural life of the city. Fabiola collaborates on a regular basis with the various cultural institutions in the city, from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to the Sicardi-Ayers-Bacino Art Gallery, and Carlos is a member of an art collective called Tarraya and collaborates with TransArt Foundation for Art and Anthropology and other institutions. He is the technical director of LASSER-Houston—a broadcast program of MIT’s journal Leonardo, whose first two iterations in Houston were hosted by TransArt. Both enjoy the vibrant life of the city and cannot wait to share their favorite places with the new Hanszenites! They will love to take you in their gastronomy itineraries to food markets and small restaurants of the various ethnic groups that make this great city, to the cultural events in which they participate, and to extraordinary natural sites in this large state—from Pedernales River to the Big Bend.
They are thrilled to welcome each of you to Hanszen, to Rice, and to Houston!
Bryn and Neal Dugre
Hey Hanszen! We are Bryn and Neal Dugre and we are thrilled to be your RAs! This is our first year as RAs and we’re excited to learn all the Hanszen traditions alongside you. We met the first few weeks of college at our alma mater, Elon University. We’ve been married for 10 years, have been Houstonians for six and have a two-year-old daughter, Georgina.
Bryn grew up in rural Virginia and is a bona fide debutante. Send any etiquette questions her way. At Elon she majored in two English concentrations: Creative Writing and Literature. Her passion for English contributes to her love of reading and her Instagram captions. Bryn has been the Operations Administrator in the Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences (EEPS) department at Rice for four years, working with the chair on special projects and as event planner extraordinaire for all EEPS department events. She listens to a lot of podcasts and is currently working her way through Armchair Expert and Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell me. You’ll likely see her walking around campus with headphones trying to catch the latest episode.
Neal also hails from the East Coast: Massachusetts (the best of all the commonwealths, however much Bryn would beg to differ). Neal is an Assistant Professor of Early American History at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on U.S. history, American Indian history, and all aspects of the colonial period. Unsurprisingly, his research focuses on seventeenth-century New England, which is to say that he knows more than you will ever want to know about the puritans. Whereas most normal children grow up watching cartoons or sports, Neal grew up watching cooking shows on his local PBS station. The silver-lining of this unusual upbringing is that he is now an excellent cook and baker, skills you will no doubt benefit from during your time at Hanszen.
Georgina loves dogs, from afar, and will spot them wherever she goes. She’s learning an appreciation for pools and splashpads, and loves to read books and sing. You will probably see her running around the quad or commons, and letting you know there’s a squirrel or bird over there. Ooh look, there’s another one!
We look forward to hosting weekly study breaks and plan to make lots of goodies to feed hungry Hanszenites. We live in Old Section, apartment 105. Please stop by and say hello. We can’t wait to meet you!
- Bryn and Neal Dugre, Hanszen RAs
Lebena Varghese and Nick Bourgeois
Hello Hanszenites! We are one set of the RAs and we are thrilled to have you as part of the Hanszen family. Lebena and Nick met in Houston. Charlie is their naughty dog son whose saving grace is his cute little face.
Lebena is from Abu Dhabi and received her undergraduate degree from Christ College in Bangalore, India; M.S. from University of Manchester; and PhD from University of Northern Illinois. She is a research manager at the Baker Institute of Public Policy and is an absolute foodie. She loves to cook and is looking forward to sharing her culinary creations (both savory and sweet) with you.
Nick’s family moved around quite a bit but they eventually settled in Baytown, Texas. He received an undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University and a M.A. from University of California, Merced. Nick is an archeologist at an archeological consulting firm and likes to spend his free time camping, caving, and all things outdoors. Nick has promised to at least organize a few study breaks that involves biking and taking Hanszenties beyond the hedges of Rice.
As a couple they enjoy going to Rocket games and the local theatres to watch plays. Traveling is a shared interest of theirs and being foodies comes with the territory. They have a few recommendations for you be it microbreweries or restaurants in Houston. They are ardent fans of superhero movies- DC or Marvel doesn’t matter, all of them are avengers to them! They would like to invite you to their study breaks which is an ideal time for all Hanszenties to leave work behind and socialize.
- Lebena Varghese and Nick Bourgeois, Hanszen RAs
