The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 35, Ed. 1 Friday, March 29, 1985 Page: 4 of 20
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OWLOOK/by Steve Mollenkamp
Hamsucker relates harshness of a student-athlete's life
Rice University. It is late, past
eleven. Lights out everywhere.
Many a regular student has long
gone to bed. Quiet across this fine
university's campus. Quiet
through thestained halls of Lovett.
Quiet over open sewage lines.
Quiet above passed-out grad
students scattered around
Valhalla. Quiet save the pitter-patter
of little feet as Sid Richardson creeps
into bed. Yet there is one pair of
feet in Sid Rich that is not pitter-
pattering to bed. These are the feet
of Willard P. Hamsucker,
chemical engineer. His night has
just begun.
Willard is a student-athlete.
"Oh yeah you get that Big Dumb
Jock image," says Hamsucker,
"but 1 for one am not big."
We caught up with Hamsucker,
or "Puttsie," as the guys on the golf
team call him, one night last week
to speak with him of his
experiences as a student-athlete.
"It's tough all right. I've a busy
schedule. Some days you come off
the links so tired, you just want to
hit the sack, but you can't 'cause
you know you've got to beat the
mean and beat the mean big. It's a
living hell sometimes."
But Hamsucker has got what it
takes. It's been a tough year forthe
frosh, from the major facial
injuries received upon punting a
football into his own helmet to the
freak ski lift/snow bunny accident
in Tahoe through the entire Bad
Basketball controversy. Capital-I
Impossible Dream be damned, our
Willard P. Hamsucker has
bounced back with a vengeance.
Hamsucker is a capital-S Survivor.
"(Jolt is my sport," says the
"Masher" as the guys on the golf
team call him. "It's as a much a
part of me as hexane and
methane."
Why does the honor student risk
his scholastic standing by spending
so much time on the green? I asked
him this.
"There's the pride I think all we
golfers feel. When you're out there,
you're not just putting for yourself,
you're putting for Rice University.
It makes choosing a club almost
the biggest decision you've ever
made," Hamsucker boasts.
Anything else?
"No doubt about it, golf's a
resumd booster. Actually, most of
the guys are pre-med or pre-law.
Extracurricular activities (ECA's
we call 'em) take you places a 4.2
can't."
Yet there is a dark side to being
an athlete at Rice.
"Athletes are just not respected
at this school. If I could count the
number of times I've been laughed
at for my checked pants and argyle
socks, I'd probably have done
better in Calc last semester,"
claims "Sand Trapsowski" as the
fellows on the golf team call him.
The season is long and arduous,
says Hamsucker. It's full of
seemingly endless road trips.
"The tournament in Acapulco
was particularly stressful for me,"
says Hamsucker. "1 don't know,
maybe I ate a bad bean or
something. By the eighteenth hole
I think 1 had added six or seven
extra hazards on the course...not
to mention the sunburn."
Nevertheless "Shankman", as he
is referred to by his golfing
colleagues, is a strong supporter of
athletics at Rice.
"No way I could have received
an education like this," the
"Hammer" comments, "Not and
get paid $7000 to do it."
Adds he, "Most importantly, 1
think it takes kids from the country
club and puts them in the class-
room."
As I left Hamsucker that night,
my warm bed and NBA jammies
calling me, the stroker was
planning to spend upwards of 15
minutes working on his swing in
the Richardson third floor lobby.
Then it was time for Thermodyna-
mics.
Willard P. Hamsucker:
Golfer/ChemE. He scores on the
golf course and in the classroom.
Comp 220 replaced as intro class
Great texts examined
Humanities 260, "Great Books
of the West," is a team-taught
course that satisfies the literature
distribution requirement.
Formerly offered as a 300-level
course, it is intended "to enable
students to be familiar with the
great classical texts of the Western
tradition," said English
Department Chairman Alan
Grob.
Students in the course read
works bv a variety of authors.
including Homer, Sophocles,
Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle,
Cicero, Virgil, Saint Paul, and
Saint Augustine.
The course includes around 10
lectures, with the remainder of the
class periods taken up by highly
individualized discussion sections.
Four professors will conduct the
course as a team: Steve Crowell oi
Philosophy, Dennis Huston of
English, Marie-Rose Logan of
French, and Richard Wolin of
History.
CANDACE E. WILLIAMS
Attorney Uw
DIVORCE FAMILY LAW WSUS BUSINESS LAW
520-6500
by Paul Havlak
The Schedule of Courses
Offered for the fall semester 1985
held a surprise for freshmen and'
sophomores intending to major in
computer science. Comp 220, for
years the first Rice computer
course for computer-science and
electrical-engineering majors, has
been replaced by a two-course
sequence, comp 211 and comp 212.
The change is part of a general
reorganization of courses in
computer science. According to
Computer Science Professor
Robert Hood, this reorganization
will increase the number of
"service courses" offered by the
department for students in
engineering and other majors.
As a side effect, the changes will
substantially reduce the number of
computer-science courses double-
and triple-listed in mathematical
sciences and electrical engineering.
The department renamed and
renumbered many courses.
However, the reorganization will
substantially change only two old
courses: comp 220 and comp 321,
both of which include program-
ming theory and practice.
According to Hood, the two
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courses, worth four and five credit
hours respectively, "will be glued
together for nine hours total and
split into three three-credit-hour
courses."
The changes will not affect the
total hours required of computer-
science majors or of electrical-
engineering majors specializing in
computer science and engineering.
Comp 220 and 321 will be phased
out as the new sequence, comp
211, 212, and 310, is phased in.
Starting in the fall, 220 will no
longer be offered, while 211 will be
taught for the first time. In the
spring 1986 semester, 212 will be
introduced and 211 continued.
Finally, 310 will be offered in the
fall of 1986.
According to the schedule,
comp 321 will be offered in the fall
and spring next year. After that, it
will be discontinued. Hood stated.
"We hope that everyone who needs
it will have taken it by then." he
said.
With the phase-in, the number
of students adversely affected by
the changes should be small
enough to handle on a case-by-case
basis.
Comp 320, a course which now
has comp 220 as a prerequisite, will
be changed to require 211 and 212.
A similar course with only 211 as a
prerequisite will probably have to
be created for electrical-
engineering students not in the
computer science specialization.
Hood said.
The department's intention in
making the changes, said Hood, is
to provide a "scaled down" version
of comp 220 in comp 211 for
engineering students.
According to Hood, he and
another Computer Science faculty
member put together the
reorganization proposal, which
then went to the whole department
for preliminary approval. After it
was discussed with the Math
Science and Electrical Engineering
departments, and some fixes were
made, it went back to Computer
Science for final departmental
approval. Some of the changes
may still await approval by the
Provost's Office.
THRESHING IT OUT
continued from page 2
paying people, many of whom had
their hearts set on a specialization
in Bioengineering - with specific
career goals in mind. (We should
admire their decisiveness.) As the
University has reneged on its
commitment to Bioengineering,
the students' alternatives are 1) to
become one of 120 or so EE's and
be lost in a personally unsatisfying
field, or 2) to transfer out of the
University altogether. Neither
choice is very gratifying, to say the
least.
We realize that there may not be
an obvious solution to this
situation, administratively
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speaking, but surely the welfare of
the Rice student, individually as
well as collectively, should be the
primary consideration. We are
such a well endowed institution;
could not a few more professors be
acquired (even temporarily) to
instruct the few Bioengineering
courses and also alleviate the
pressure on the rest of the EE staff?
The very least that should be done,
in all fairness, is to allow the
current freshmen and sophomore
bioengineers to graduate with their
intended majors. It would be such
a waste to have these gifted
individuals reluctantly transfer to
a lesser university. We sincerely
hope that someone in authority
addresses this problem.
Signed, two disenchanted
students and friends of many
displaced bioengineers,
Rick Baker
Marion Wagner
WRC 87
Editor's note: an article on page 1
provides additional information
about the phase-out of the
undergraduate bioengineering
degree plan.
—phh
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The Rice Thresher, March 29, 1985, page 4
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Havlak, Paul. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 35, Ed. 1 Friday, March 29, 1985, newspaper, March 29, 1985; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245597/m1/4/: accessed June 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.