Holding Forth

Feature story for Rhodes Magazine

Fall 2011

It sounds like a pitch for a new reality show: a random group of college students occupying one house for a year, getting to know each other and engaging in their community. But this ensemble has much more purpose, separating their situation from similar roommate situations on college campuses across the country.

This is The Ruka, a team of six like-minded seniors living together and participating in programs and lifestyles to better their community, the environment and themselves. Last year, these women became a group with positive intentions that would leave them with the necessary resources to present in last spring’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Symposium, or URCAS.

“The symposium is an opportunity for students to tell the campus community what they’ve been doing, either in or outside the classroom,” says Dr. Ann Viano, the J. Lester Crain Professor of Physics and chair of the URCAS planning committee.

Throughout campus on a crisp, spring day in April, 180 students held forth on disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, fine arts and natural sciences. In addition, some student presentations dealt with working within the community to improve it and gain a better understanding of the human condition. As they have been since 1996, presentations were given both visually and orally … (read more)