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The Rice Thresher
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by Chase Danford thresher staff
Psychology Associate Professor Mickey Quiñones and his wife Karin Dudziak, a graduate student in the Psychology Department, will take the reins next semester starting by moving into Baker House in January. Sociology Professor Katherine Donato and her husband Dr. Dan Kalb will begin their five-year term at Wiess July 1. Quiñones and Dudziak are currently faculty associates at Baker, where Quiñones is the social sciences divisional adviser. Quiñones has taught at Rice and been a Baker associate since 1993. Though the couple said they had considered applying for a mastership before, they said this was the first time it felt right. "We thought about doing it two years ago when Baker [was looking for new masters], but it wasn't a good time in our lives," Dudziak said. "It's something we've had on the back burner, and then when Baker opened up now, we felt that this was just a really good time in our lives, and we were already affiliated with Baker. It was a very natural progression. "Some great advice we heard is that when it's supposed to be fun and not work, that's when you're ready," she said. "And we feel it's going to be fun for us, and not something we have to just drudge through." The couple said they are planning to make up for missing the first semester of this year. "We really want to try to be proactive in getting to know the freshmen that we might have missed out on this fall," Dudziak said. "That's one of our goals - to try to catch up with the people we don't know as well as we would like to." Quiñones and Dudziak will replace interim Masters Arthur and Joan Few, who took the positions this summer when Linguistics Professor Jim Copeland and his wife Chris had to step down from the mastership after one year because of his health concerns. The Fews served as Baker masters from 1994-'99 and are also currently Martel College masters. Quiñones said he and Dudziak are looking forward to their new responsibilities, and they hope to bring continuity to the Baker mastership. "I think Baker needs - more than anything else right now - some stability," Quiñones said. "There's been some turnover with masters for unfortunate reasons. We hope that we can provide a happy and supportive and stable environment for years to come." Baker masters search committee chair Kevin Askew, a Baker junior, said he thinks all the students are pleased with the selection. "I know the committee is excited," he said. "I can't say enough about Mickey and Karin, and I think they're going to be great masters. They've been around Baker for a long time, and they've been active associates, so I think a lot of people already know them." While Quiñones and Dudziak have been affiliated with Baker for some years, the new Wiess masters, Donato and Kalb, are new to Rice. They are currently interim associates at Will Rice College. This is Donato's first year teaching at Rice after leaving her post as graduate director of the sociology department at Louisiana State University. Kalb teaches at the University of Texas Health Science Center and has his own clinical practice. Donato and Kalb have two daughters, a six-year-old named Marlo and a four-year-old named Stella Rose. Donato said she thinks their children will benefit from campus life, with students acting like an extension of their family. "I think they're at an age when they will be able to reap benefits from having 19- and 20-year-old siblings around." Even though they are new to Rice, Donato does not foresee any problems adjusting to a mastership, and said their inexperience could actually help. "We're new to Rice, but we've spent a lot of time at Wiess," Donato said. "The students have educated me. I think actually being new to Rice could offer me some new opportunities to see things slightly differently or to realize opportunities that have not been realized before." Donato said she and her husband considered applying for a mastership even before she began working at the university.
Donato and Kalb will replace Wiess Masters John and Paula Hutchinson, who finish their seven-year stint in June. They stayed two years longer than the traditional masters' term. Masters search committee chair Amy Schindler, a Wiess junior, said everyone is eager to involve the Donatos in the college. "We've just been blown away by how perfect they are for Wiess," she said. "Everything's been really positive. Everyone's eager to meet them and start introducing them to Wiess. ... It's nice when it finally happens." The search committees chose the masters in just over two months instead of the usual four or five months allotted to select new masters because Baker needed new masters by January. Wiess decided to put its search on a faster timetable to match the other search process. "This was an unusual year," Schindler said. "It started out with our goal to choose by February. In the past, the announcement hasn't been made until March or April. Because of Baker's special circumstances, their search was accelerated. Because there were candidates that overlapped, Wiess needed to match Baker in timeframe." Neither committee expressed problems with having concurrent searches, and Askew said the committees were able to work together to achieve their own individual goals. "It actually worked out really well because we tried to coordinate with each other, and Dr. Camacho really facilitated that, so even though we shared some of the same candidates we were in constant communication," Askew said. "I think we're both happy with the choices we've made, so it worked out nicely."
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