Duncan College sets down roots
Architecture student branches out with creation of crest

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

Martha Cox had to be talked into making art, but the work she created is one for the ages. The Duncan College crest unveiled at the recent dedication of the new building is green and gold and, like the mighty oak upon which it was modeled, built to last.

	ESTEVAN DELGADO AND MARTHA COX

Cox, a Rice School of Architecture senior, was one of the many “ambassadors” who moved from other residential colleges when Duncan opened last year, and one of the relatively few who did not to return to their original colleges — in her case, Lovett — this fall.

Her commitment to stay delighted her friend Estevan Delgado, a member of Duncan’s inaugural class who became the leader of the spirit committee charged with designing a crest to stand alongside those of Rice’s other colleges. The crests are seen in many places: on the flags that fly from Lovett Hall, on the banners carried at commencement and other ceremonies and on all kinds of college-oriented goods.

Delgado, a psychology major, said he recruited Cox to the committee.

“He twisted my arm,” Cox countered, smiling. “But I told him, ‘I can only do this one project because I’m a perfectionist, and once I get started I will want to make it as good as I can.'”

Rice benefactors Anne and Charles ’47 Duncan and their family got their first look at the crest at the dedication when students wore their green-and-gold T-shirts. “Nobody saw it until we started passing out the shirts that day,” Cox said. ”At the dedication, the Duncans wanted to meet us because they were impressed with the design — they even wanted T-shirts!”

Though she doesn’t consider herself a fine artist, Cox was key to the design. Early on, committee members led by Delgado deliberated over the details at periodic meetings that began in January, arguing the fine points while Cox suggested ideas and sat and sketched. “Martha has a really good ability to take direction when others tell her what they’re looking for, and she can produce it on paper in a pretty lifelike way,” Delgado said. “She was great at capturing the committee’s ideas.” Later on, Cox would ask for meetings to show iterations of the design for critique and fresh ideas and then go away and make changes. “This went on for a few months at the end of spring semester and the beginning of fall semester until we had refined the design to something we were very proud of,” she said.

Cox had ideas of her own. The crest shows an owl sitting atop a shield framed by an ancient oak, not unlike ones in Founder’s Court dedicated to the Duncans. Like her college, she said, “the tree embraces everything.”

The shield contains a stylized “D” for Duncan and the sun rising over a structure. “I was all for having the building included,” she said. “I thought it was really important — and this could come from my training as an architect, but I felt the building was a blank canvas upon which everything else was painted.”

The crest also contains a slogan: Classis Et Germanitas. “What it means is ‘We are a team. We are a family,'” Cox said. “We wanted it to be in Latin. It’s traditional, but more importantly, the meaning is not going to change over the next 100 years.”