The A-Team
The A-Team is made up of our wonderful Magisters and RAs, adult members of our college that support us in making this a great community!
The Magisters
Leonardo & Cassy
We are excited to welcome you to Baker! We (Leonardo and Cassy) are embarking on our first year as your magisters. We look forward to getting to know you and helping you achieve your academic and personal goals during your college experience.
Leonardo was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. He was destined to be a nerd from an early age. When he was three years, he would cry despondently when his elder sister left the house to go to school because he wanted to go to school too. Thus began his long career in school that never really ended. He started at Rice University as a Professor of Civil Engineering in 2006. In his free time, Leonardo reads fiction with his book club, and science- and math-based nonfiction with his colleagues. He aspires to get back into running half-marathons, as well as to do more bird watching around Texas.
As Leonardo will tell anyone within hearing, he met Cassy during a French language class many years ago. Cassy was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She went to law school in Houston and spent several years as a corporate transactional attorney. Cassy is a committed bookworm; her favorite genres recently have been nonfiction about business fraud and bygone shipwrecks. She aspires to write creatively more often and visit every café in Houston. She can be shy at first, but she wants to hear from you!
We have three young daughters who are ages 8, 4 and 2. Yes, they all want you to color with them and to play tag around the green spaces. Together with our girls, we play board games and take weekend trips to AirBnB cabins outside small Texas towns.
We also have three elderly pets. Our dog, Dante, is skittish but can be won over with interesting smells and treats. Our two cats, Gala and Muisca, are weirdos, and we will be impressed if you can find them and even more impressed if you can pet them.
We encourage you to visit our home and share conversations about college, food, music, politics, different cultures, and life in general. We plan to organize many social events such as dinners, board game nights, and TV-watching parties. Let’s make memories together!
The RAs (Residential Associates)
Bobby & Matt
Hello, new Bakerites! We are Matt Patterson and Bobby Beaird, and we’re thrilled to join you in discovering what life at Baker is like as we start our seventh and final year as RAs.
Matt is a Baton Rouge native and Rice graduate (sadly from one of those other colleges, but nobody’s perfect), whereas Bobby attended Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana prior to making his way down to the “big city” of Baton Rouge for grad school in physics at Louisiana State University. (Now you know who to thank for teaching him how to devise PHYS 101/102 exam problems that will ruin your night.) After we both earned PhDs in physics at LSU, we of course realized that we needed to get back to Rice as soon as possible, by 2017 we had both made it here! Bobby is now an Associate Teaching Professor in the physics department, while Matt manages a team of people in Rice’s Office of Technology Transfer that negotiates contracts with for-profit companies interested in funding research or otherwise partnering with Rice to develop new technologies. Fun story – we got married about two weeks before being named RAs at Baker, so the story we like to tell is that we got married and then immediately found we had 300 kids to look out for!
You’ll also meet our dog Penny, a pint- sized Staffordshire Terrier mix whose favorite activities are sleeping and licking things — like a shark, her primary means of interacting with the world is with her mouth — as well as accepting all the ear scratches and belly rubs you have to offer. Somewhat more mysterious is our Siamese cat Lilith, whom we adopted in 2018 when she was a tiny stray kitten living behind the magisters’ house. As you’ll see, her attitude befits her demonic namesake.
When he’s not torturing you with pledge problems, you’ll find Bobby gleefully stabbing students with actual swords as part of the Rice Fencing Club. Matt has historically preferred verbal combat to physical fights, having worked with several LGBTQ advocacy groups in Louisiana to bring change to the state legislature, which was exactly as much fun as it sounds (although compared to the present day, we had it easy in the early 2010s, which is a bit of a sad concept). Both of us are avid cooks and aim to bring a little bit of Louisiana flavor to Baker in our time here. Brace yourselves, because we’ll definitely try to feed you whether you’re hungry or not.
Our primary goal as RAs is to be as present for all of you as we possibly can be — sharing meals, events, good and bad times as a college family. Even as we come to the end of our time here, we are still encountering new people, new challenges, and new things to learn every day – quite a bit like all of you! Come find us in room 212 of Old Wing whenever you need good food, good company, or a fuzzy animal to pet.
Greg
Hello, Baker! Greg Fitch here. I’m your RA in 5th entrance. I’m excited to support your college life and experiences at Baker College!
I’m a software quality assurance automation engineer for Rice's open-education non-profit, OpenStax. Basically I write code to break things for a living and I’m not responsible for what falls apart along the way! Prior to Rice, I worked for the City of Austin, the State of Texas, and assisted with data operations for various political organizations.
I’m a University of Texas grad and pursued political science and computer programming. I also spent a lot of his time cheering at UT sporting events. I became a political staffer after college in Austin and my capabilities with computers are what pushed me into campaign data work.
Beside me I have three cats: Miles Davis is a tuxedo with a personality similar to his namesake, Marie Antonette is the petite princess, and Oberon is a pandemic campus kitty who was born outside Baker Library! Yes, at some point I became a crazy cat parent...
I am a definite foodie and love to try new cuisines. I also spend a lot of time reading, gaming, listening to music and debating current topics.
Come say hi and visit any time...or to see the cats...whatever works!