A&S Magazine by Ben Krochmal

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

ARTS & SCIENCES

www.colorado.edu/artsandsciences 1

A LAMP IN THE HANDS OF YOUTH Alexandra Peralta (on the cover) beams as she holds a solar lantern in Peru, where one in five people has no electricity. Peralta is participating in an award-winning young-women’s empowerment program founded and managed by a group of passionate, young CU Boulder alumni. The image of Peralta is both striking and fitting: During each graduation ceremony at CU Boulder, newly minted alumni hear the words of former President George Norlin, who famously noted that the university seal stamped on every diploma depicts a lamp in the hands of youth. The seal’s Greek inscription reads, “Let your light shine.” By helping Peralta and others envision a brighter future, the young alums have advanced the cause of enlightenment. Read more on Page XXX.

Why a print edition now? You are holding the first print edition of Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine. In an increasingly digitized world, you might ask why a magazine that has been published online for nearly eight years is now publishing an apparently anachronistic analog version, with ink, on paper. One reason reflects both the strength and the weakness of the digital age: We are awash in more information than ever, but we struggle to filter it into comprehensible bites. In these pages, we have distilled and underscored some recent highlights in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Here, you will find stories of important research advances and cutting-edge scholarship. You will see profiles of those who support teaching, research and student scholarships; for this help, our college and especially our students are fortunate and grateful. Finally, you may appreciate tales of remarkable graduates, students and faculty members. We hope you enjoy this edition. Please share any feedback at asmag@colorado.edu. Thank you for your continued caring and support.

STEVEN LEIGH

CONTENTS 2 / The Visionaries 5 / By the Numbers 6 / For the Love of Education 9 / Donor News 14 / Sustainability Lab 16 / Alumni News 24 / Kudos

THE VISIONARIES With help from a group of CU Boulder alumni, young women in Peru learn to see a future for themselves BY CLINT TALBOTT Its 3 a.m. on a Sunday, and Katheryne Rosa Barazorda Cuellar is preparing to work in her mother’s soup stall in the small Peruvian town of Anta, near the Inca capital of Cusco. Smart and seemingly indefatigable, she has a quick smile and infectious laugh. Rosa is studying to be a chemical engineer, and she has unmistakable talent and drive. She needs them. Poverty, gender bias, and violence darken the lives of many young Peruvian women, including her. But Rosa is lucky. She has a supportive family and help from a local nonprofit that cares for and provides scholarships for young women. And for the past four years, she’s also gotten the support of Visionaria Peru — a leadership and self-empowerment program in Peru’s Sacred Valley. Young alumni from the University of Colorado Boulder launched the summer program for adolescent girls who dream of career and community service. This is why: In Peru, women suffer higher rates of poverty and unemployment than men. About 50 percent of Peruvian women in the Sacred Valley region, which lies outside Cusco, will suffer severe physical or sexual intimate-partner abuse during their lifetimes, the World Health Organization reports. Peruvians — particularly in rural areas — endure high levels of smoke from cooking over indoor fires. About 4 million of the country’s 30 million residents lack access to clean water.In 2012, CU Boulder alumni who are also Boulder Rotarians forged a plan to help address those problems by working to “empower” local women — specifically in their ability to make and act upon their decisions. That plan yielded a nonprofit called Visionaria Peru. The group’s work is centered in the town of Urubamba, which shares its name with the river that flows past shops, farms, and ramshackle buildings painted with political symbols. Downstream, the river snakes below Machu Picchu and tumbles toward the Amazon River.

THE VISIONARIES

Here, tourists may drop $475 apiece — nearly the mean monthly salary in Peru — to ride a luxury train from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Visitors glide past squalid barrios where grandmothers bathe in ditches, children may breathe toxic indoor stove smoke, and dogs paw through piles of garbage, seeking food. Here, in Urubamba’s La Quinta Eco Hotel, young women gather for a weeklong leadership training institute through Visionaria Peru. The girls — the team calls them visionarias (female visionary, in Spanish) — come from both the bucolic Andes and the noisy city. At the end of the institute, the visionarias form teams and enter one of three “activism tracks”: improved cookstoves, water and sanitation, or solar lighting. The “activism tracks” enable participants to work on sustainable-development projects that they themselves envision and implement. The project started in 2012 when Genevieve Smith (IntAf’11) was in Peru and visited a hogar (home for girls) supported by Peruvian Hearts. There, she and Lindsey Ratliff (EnvSt’12) asked the girls what kind of support they would need as they got older. While the students in Peruvian Hearts’ college-prep program were smart and qualified to attend a university, they lacked confidence and felt discriminated against because of their indigenous, and often troubled, backgrounds. By the end of that day, Smith and Ratliff crafted a project plan to support the girls. Marika Meertens, (EngrPhys’11, Mus’11, MSElEngr’13) a fellow Rotarian with experience at Engineers Without Borders, pitched the Peru project to the Boulder Rotary Club’s New Generations members. Abigale Stangl (EnDes’08, MSInfSys’13), who is now a PhD student at CU Boulder, eagerly joined the team.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The program helped me a lot because I had visions and goals, but I did not feel capable in making decisions....Now I am capable of making decisions and taking risks for my life.â&#x20AC;?

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Each member of the core trio assumed roles reflecting her strength: Smith with planning, Meertens in fundraising (including two grants totaling $55,000 from The Rotary Foundation), Stangl with project evaluation. Visionaria Peru’s implementation team comprises 11 young people, eight of them Rotarians, seven of them CU Boulder alumni. In four years, 55 visionarias have installed 62 cleaner cookstoves, sold 61 water filters and 75 solar lanterns, and addressed 145 students in workshops. Some 1,640 individuals have been touched by this work, Visionaria Peru calculates. Visionarias themselves report positive results in their own lives: 80 percent said participating in Visionaria Peru improved their status in their communities, and 100 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the program improved their capacity to imagine and create change in their lives and the lives of others.

THE VISIONARIES

“The program helped me a lot because I had visions and goals, but I did not feel capable in making decisions,” says one girl in an assessment. “Now I am capable of making decisions and taking risks for my life.” Peruvian Rotarians are preparing to take full control of the project once Rotary funding ends this year. Rosa, meanwhile, believes she will find a good job in chemical engineering with “perseverance and with my sacrifice.” Getting to the university in Cusco is a four-hour trip several times a week, but the time she has put in has borne fruit: She just completed an internship at a top laboratory in Lima, Peru’s capital. She is quick to credit Peruvian Hearts for its steadfast support. And she praises Visionaria Peru, which helps “us to believe more in what we may be able to achieve each day, empower us, and give us strength to achieve our dreams.”

THE NUMBERS As the largest and oldest college at the University of Colorado, the College of Arts and sciences has racked up a few bragging points, including the following:

#1 ranking of geosciences publications and the number of times they are cited by others (Essential Science Indicators). #1 ranking of atomic, molecular and optical physics program since 2006 (US News & World Report). 1 Pulitzer Prize winner, history professor Elizabeth Fenn. #2 ranking of geosciences program (U.S. News & World Report, 2016). 2 National Professors of the Year (Physics Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, 2004, and Physics Professor Steven Pollock, 2013). 4 National Medal of Science Award Winners. 5 Nobel Prize Laureates (four in physics and one in chemistry). 8 MacArthur â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Genius Grantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; winners. Top 10 rankings in ceramics, geology, physical chemistry and quantum physics (US News & World Report, 2016). Top 10 ranking, David Gatten, professor of film studies, listed among the best filmmakers of the new century (Film Comment critics poll, 2010). #15 worldwide ranking for scholarly citations and research impact (Leiden University, 2014) #16 ranking in earth and marine sciences, (QS World University Rankings, 2016) 18 Guggenheim Fellows. 23 members, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 24 members, National Academy of Sciences. 100-plus Fulbright Scholars

FOR THE LOVE OF EDUCATION

From Mexico to CU, Israel and beyond, scholarships help first-generation student attend college, fuel her desire to launch a career helping other students

Statistically speaking, you wouldn’t expect Alma Hinojosa to do a study-abroad program in Israel while studying English at CU-Boulder and working to become a lawyer dedicated to improving the U.S. public-education system. She was born in Durango, Mexico, and reared in Aurora, Colo. She was brought here at age 4 by parents who “every day invest sweat and tears” to give their daughters a shot at the American Dream. Hinojosa’s father has an eighth-grade education, and both parents emphasized that attending college was not up for debate. So she came to the University of Colorado Boulder and applied for scholarships, as her family could not afford the full cost.Thanks to Midge Korczak and other supporters, the Hinojosa family dream is being realized. This year, Hinojosa studied at Tel Aviv University as a Global Opportunity (GO) Scholar. As a Mexican-American, Hinojosa said she wanted to experience another part of the world that is saddled with “stereotypes and sensationalization by the media.” She says studying in Tel Aviv was a “transformative experience that has shattered any preconceived ideas I had of this particular part of the world.” Studying in Tel Aviv, she says, “has allowed me to understand the people, traditions, and culture in a way that cannot be learned through a textbook.” She spoke with Israelis and Palestinians alike in an attempt to better understand a range of perspectives on the conflict.

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Hinojosa is an English major with a minor in leadership studies. She wants to get a law degree with a focus on education policy. Ultimately, she hopes to use the legal system to help improve the American public-education system. As a child, Hinojosa noticed that schools in her neighborhood were “failing local children” and that students like her had to commute to other schools in wealthier neighborhoods to get a better education. She believes public education should help students not only find careers but also encourage them to become lifelong learners and good citizens. As Hinojosa continues her quest, she is palpably thankful to those who help her. “I would like to express how very grateful and honored I feel to know and have the support of Midge Korczak and all the other donors who have made this possible for me.” Being a GO Scholar and studying in Israel was a “privilege,” she says, adding that she is “genuinely and deeply appreciative of the financial support” of her higher education. “This scholarship is the stepping-stone for many students like me who want a study-abroad experience but do not have all the means to be able to make this dream a reality.” Additionally, Hinojosa says, Korczak’s support “has inspired me to help others to give back to the community.” Korczak praises Hinojosa as a fine student and scholar, inquisitive and smart.

“For her sophomore summer abroad, she could have selected a ‘safe’ country to visit but instead chose Israel,” Korczak says. “She thrived there, learning Hebrew, playing goalie for the Tel Aviv University soccer team, and visiting the West Bank with her pastor from Boulder.” Upon her return to Colorado, Hinojosa landed an internship at Ball Aerospace. Following Hinojosa’s successes and observing her enthusiasm gives Korczak “enormous joy and pride.” Korczak explains why she provides scholarships for CU Boulder Latina students: Latinos will be the majority population in the United States within two decades, demographers predict, and an educated Latino population “will be critical to the health and well being of our country.” “The scholarship students I have met prove that my reasons are valid,” Korczak adds. “To a student, they are serious about their education, have realistic goals, work part time all year to supplement their scholarships and still devote time to their families, siblings and community.”

ALMA HINOJOSA

“I couldn’t be happier or prouder with these students.”

TENACIOUS TYKE, 10, TACKLES NATIONAL SPELLING BEE Arts & Sciences sponsors young competitor’s trip to national spelling finals Cameron Keith is a consummate word guy. He’s also 10 years old. Cameron made it to the semifinals in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee and was poised to advance to the finals when he was asked to spell “noncompos.”He paused as he approached the final letters of the word, he used an “a” for the final vowel. For the second year running, Cameron won the Barnes and Noble Boulder Regional Spelling Bee. And for the second time, the CU Boulder College of Arts and Sciences sponsored his trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the national bee.Cameron says participating in spelling bees—a possibly quaint pursuit in the age of Twitter—has taught him a lot. The value of hard work is a paramount lesson, he says. “It’s one thing to hear teachers and your parents tell you that, but it doesn’t really mean anything until you experience it for yourself,” he adds.

Cameron has also learned how to keep calm under pressure and on national TV. “I think that will help me in life.” Cameron’s plan is to keep studying and returning to compete in the national bee as long as he can. He’s got time. Of 285 competitors this year, 267 were one to four years older than he is.

CU TAKES EXHAUSTIVE LOOK AT ATHLETES’ HEALTH In what may be a first-ever exhaustive health study of inter-collegiate student-athletes, a team of CU Boulder researchers will gauge not only athletes’ fitness but also their general well-being. “Certain athletic departments will carry out their own assessments during seasons … or different domains, such as studying concussions,” said Matt McQueen, director of CU Boulder’s Public Health Program. “But I have not seen a study of this depth. We’re saying, ‘Let’s get snapshot of how well these students are doing, and leverage all of that data to generate new hypotheses or perhaps new interventions.’” The two-year, $750,000 study is funded by the Pac-12 Conference. It begins this year. With wide-ranging expertise, CU Boulder is a unique position. One of the team’s researchers, Professor Bill Byrnes in integrative physiology, directs a lab that can measure hydration levels and cardio capacity through comparisons of hemoglobin mass versus hemoglobin concentration. But while much of the data might interest coaches looking to maximize performance, the study is focused on the overall, long-term health of the athletes. “Healthier athletes do tend to be better-performing athletes, but this is not a football study. This is not a track study. A lot of research goes into shaving those seconds off times in those sports,” McQueen said. “This is all about all our student-athletes—male and female. These are athletes competing in the Pac-12, and there’s a lot of pressure on them to perform at an optimal level.

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“We want to aggressively pursue gaps in this area of research, such as overheating in female athletes. We know that muscle fatigue leads to injury, but what can we do to help prevent that?”

THE SHARKIVE The CU Art Museum (CUAM) at the University of Colorado Boulder has launched an initiative to raise $2 million to purchase and manage the Sharkive, a distinguished collection comprising 40 years of printmaking collaborations between renowned artists and Shark’s Ink of Lyons, Colorado. The Bebe & Crosby Kemper Foundation has already committed $750,000 to the campaign, said Walter Dietrich, member and former chairman of the CU Art Museum Advisory Board. The museum is working to raise the remaining $1.25 million in private funds to purchase the collection and maintain it indefinitely. Dietrich and his wife, Sheila Kemper Dietrich, are spearheading the effort. “The Sharkive is a treasure for our entire community,” the Dietrichs said in a statement. “It embodies the strength and vitality of the arts today.”In 1976, master printer Bud Shark and his wife, Barbara, opened Shark’s Lithography in Boulder as a creative destination where more than 160 artists worldwide collaborated and inspired each other. The couple moved the studio to Lyons and renamed it Shark’s Ink in the late 1990s. Artists who have worked with the studio include John Buck, Enrique Chagoya, Red Grooms, Jane Hammond, Robert Kushner, Hung Liu and Betty Woodman. Prints made in collaboration with Shark’s Ink are in private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Library of Congress and Smithsonian in Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. CU Art Museum Director Sandra Firmin said the museum will be a natural steward of the Sharkive collection because of its already rich collection of prints that spans the 16th century to today. The Sharkive covers the printmaking process from beginning to end, including more than 700 signed limited-edition prints and more than 2,000 related materials.

FROM TOP: Jane Hammond (American, b. 1950), My Heavens!, 2004, lithograph and collage, gift of the Artist and Shark’s Ink., CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder, Gift of Polly and Mark Addison to the Polly and Mark Addison Collection, CU Art Museum, 2004.08 Hung Liu (Chinese b. 1948), The Martyr, 2001, lithograph and collage, gift of the Artist and Shark’s Ink., CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder , Gift of Polly and Mark Addison to the Polly and Mark Addison Collection, 2003.29 Manuel Ocampo (Filipino b. 1965), The Compensatory Motif in the Libidinal Economy of a Painter’s Bad Inconscience, 2001, lithograph and chine colle, gift of funds from Polly and Mark Addison to the Polly and Mark Addison Collection, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder, 2003.28

SEEC POSITIONS BOULDER AS GLOBAL HUB FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH A long-awaited $114 million center for scientific collaboration positions the University of Colorado Boulder as a global hub for environmental, energy and sustainability research. The Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC), formally christened in April, will facilitate collaborations among a host of academic and federal research entities. The facility itself comprises two buildings: a new 115,000-square-foot, LEED-certified laboratory building with state-of-the-art analytical instruments and synthesis capabilities and an adjoining refurbished 289,000-square-foot educational facility designed for departmental centers, teaching, programs, collaborative work and community outreach. Brian Daniell, communications instructor emeritus, and his wife, Vicki Bynum, donated $500,000 to establish the Albert A. Bartlett Science Communication Center on the building’s second floor. The center will foster the exchange of information among students and scholars from CU, federal researchers and community members.Bynum chose to name the Communication Center in honor of legendary CU physics professor Albert Bartlett, who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Manhattan Project in 1944 before his 38-year tenure on CU’s faculty. Bartlett warned about the consequences of human overpopulation and the resulting depletion of resources and environmental degradation, giving his famed “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” lecture more than 1,700 times before he passed away in 2013.“The clarity and power of this lecture, and the energy with which he gave it over a period of decades, made him a quintessential science communicator and the archetype for the kind of people that we hope the new center will develop and support,” Daniell said. Professor Al Bartlett would end his lecture on population and the environment this way: “I hope you’ll take what I’ve said very, very seriously. You are important people—you can think. If there was ever a time when the human race needs people who will think, it’s right now and it’s our responsibility as citizens in a democracy to think.” Bartlett was also instrumental in establishing Boulder’s open space policies. As a CU donor, Bartlett inspired a scholarship for CU physics students who aspired to teach in high schools. As a communication instructor, Daniell integrated sustainability issues into his lectures as he became increasingly concerned about climate change. In 2008, he created the Communication Project for Civic and Social Engagement (CASE), providing internship opportunities that enable CU Boulder communication students to serve environmental-sustainability interests in their communities. Daniell envisions the complex of SEEC buildings as a new way to learn—influenced as much by outside forces as by university leaders. “Donations made toward SEEC today will be instrumental in creating a key facet of the university of the future,” Daniell said. SEEC is on the university’s East Campus, near the northwest corner of Foothills Parkway and Colorado Avenue.

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Partners that will collaborate at SEEC include the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department (ATOC); Center of the American West; Colorado School of Mines; Colorado State University (CSU), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES); Environmental Engineering Department; Environmental Studies Department; Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research; Renewable & Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI); federal agencies and contractors, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

WITH PRIVATE BOOST, CU LAUNCHES FINNISH COURSES The Program in Nordic Studies has begun offering Finnish-language courses at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s noteworthy because it’s such a rare language, and we’re offering (the courses) for full credit, which means the courses can satisfy a foreign-language requirement,” says Benjamin Teitlebaum, instructor and head of Nordic studies. The courses are being supported by a Finnish company, Vaisala, which manufactures environmental-measurement instruments and which has offices in Louisville, Colo. Teitlebaum said the partnership promotes Nordic and Finnish culture in Colorado. Tanner Coon, a third-year computer-science major at CU-Boulder, is among the students taking Finnish this year. After graduation, he’d like to work at Google programming Android applications or join a video-gaming company. But Coon is also interested Finland. His grandmother was born there. His parents met while going on missions for their church in Finland. “I just have a lot of ties to Finland, despite never being there myself, so I was excited when I got the opportunity to learn the language.” Coon is among a relatively small group of students in the inaugural year of Finnish courses. About 10 are enrolled, Teitlebaum said.

“For a language like Finnish, we’re actually quite happy about that,” Teitlebaum says. “If experience is a guide, interest and enrollment will grow.” The program introduced Swedish in 2013, and the first Swedish classes were about the same size. Since then, Swedish has become a fully rostered course and is taught in three levels per semester. Teitlebaum identified several reasons underlying student interest in the program. “The Nordic region is often named in the media as being one of the most prosperous, the most secure. It’s also a laboratory for cultural change,” and it has been a destination for migration, Teitlebaum says.

NOTHING PROSAIC ABOUT ‘QUIETLY POOR’ POET Poet Kim Swendson is a collector of sorts, a gatherer of experiences with people she interacts with during the day. Swendson is a senior majoring in English with a focus on creative writing and a minor in Italian at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her interest in connecting with the strangers she meets led to a realization that they aren’t just random passers-by, but rather individuals leading complex lives. “Talking to people is such a wonderful sensation, because you can learn as much as you want about another person just by taking the time,” said Swendson. “It’s like a constant gift. With my poetry, I go out and have experiences and the writing just comes. The writing always just comes, so I go with it.” Her work toward earning a degree in English was validated when she received three scholarship awards from the Department of English: the Alex McGuiggan Scholarship, the Curtis Michael Gimeno Memorial Scholarship and the Jovanovich Imaginative Writing Award. Receiving these scholarships was a lifeline for Swendson, who comes from what she describes as a “quietly poor” family. Born in Boulder and raised in Golden and Nederland, Swendson was one of six children. Outwardly, the family looked presentable in their thrift-store clothes and tidy house, according to Swendson. School was a welcome distraction from worrying about her family’s lack of money, not to mention the stress of wondering how she could ever pay for college.

“We weren’t on food stamps, we weren’t living on the street, but I’d come home from school and worry if there would be enough food. … So getting these scholarships meant a lot. It’s a validation that my words mean something.”

“We weren’t noticeable,” she said about her family’s financial situation.

GEOLOGY BUFF’S WORK SPANS GLOBE, PHILANTHROPY HELPS STUDENTS. Dale Grant’s career and travel have spanned the world—and included jobs in Eastern China and Saudi Arabia—and now his geology training helps quickly alert the world where, how big and how damaging severe earthquakes are. At the University of Colorado Boulder in the 1970s, Grant discovered the great outdoors, and his career “seemingly fell in front of me.” Now, the man who says he’s “always been a Buff” has moved to establish a significant scholarship with his estate for geological sciences students.

In his off time, he went on safari in Kenya, completed two treks in Nepal, traversed 14 countries in Europe, heli-skied in New Zealand and explored much of Asia. Now, he works at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, where he’s served as a geophysicist for a decade and a half. His degree from CU-Boulder became the “means to my career,” Grant notes. CU has always been “my school,” he adds. “There was never anywhere else.”

Grant hopes his scholarship fund helps enable future students to find similarly rewarding careers.After the devastating Big Thompson Flood of 1976, the state highway department needed people with math and science backgrounds to join a survey crew to find the center-line of the decimated highway. Grant, who’d taken time off from school, learned to be a surveyor.

That deep connection is one reason he plans to endow a scholarship fund in geological sciences. “That’s where I’d like to see people study, because it’s something in my heart, something I always enjoyed. And also think it’s the future, because the environment is so trashed right now that if we don’t have people who are knowledgeable and concerned about it, I don’t see any way out of it.”

He returned to CU Boulder and completed his geology degree with a geophysics option in 1979. Within weeks of graduation, he landed a job in geothermal exploration that required a background in surveying. He then joined Geophysical Services Inc., which deployed him to western Oman, then to western China and later to Saudi Arabia.

DALE GRANT

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REMEMBERING PROFESSORS, SUPPORTING STUDENTS Legendary political-science Professor Edward Rozek was born in Poland, fought with the British against the Nazis, immigrated to the United States, went to Harvard, became a conservative icon at CU Boulder and passed away in 2009. He lives on in the newly renovated Ketchum Building. An anonymous donor named a faculty office in Rozek’s name. The gift will support the Ketchum Scholars Fund, which supports social-sciences students. Others have also supported the fund. Kathryn and Curtis Bradley Jr. named an office in honor of Dennis Eckart, professor emeritus of political science. “Dennis Eckart was my favorite undergraduate instructor,” says Curtis Bradley, now the William Van Alstyne Professor of Law at Duke University. “I remember fondly his passion for teaching and his willingness to challenge his students to think critically.”

Bradley says he feels privileged to be able to help commemorate “the significant impact that he had on me and other students.” And Brian Kelly Jr., president of B.K. Development Corp. in California, and his wife, Jennifer, named a political science conference room to commemorate his time at the university. “My time at CU was a great experience. I wanted to help make that possible for other people.” The Ketchum Building has undergone a significant renovation that has made the building Leeds certified and improved the functionality of the space for faculty and students. Rooms are available for naming. The funds raised support the Ketchum Scholars Fund, which will assist in recruiting and retaining top students in the social sciences. For more information, contact Paul Mahon at 303-541-1449.

“The analysis and writing skills that he helped me develop in the honors seminar I took with him were very useful to me when I subsequently went to law school. In addition, the joyful way in which he engaged with his students contributed to my eventual decision to go into teaching myself.”

NEW LAB AIMS TO INCUBATE SUSTAINABILITY EFFORT BY JEFF THOMAS

Well into highly distinguished careers in environmental research and policy, the founders of the Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado (SILC) believe their latest venture will ultimately create on-the-ground results in achieving major social and environmental goals such as poverty alleviation, gender equality and ecological sustainability. “It’s really a decision to have a more concrete impact on these problems of sustainability,” said Jason Neff, a professor in the University of Colorado’s Environmental Studies Program, author of more than 90 scientific publications and faculty director of the lab. “Our long-term goal is to have a space that has successfully facilitated collaboration in both the research and the entrepreneurial space.” Neff and SILC Managing Director Ben Webster, himself an expert in strategic initiatives in environment and sustainability at CU, seek to create a gateway into the university in which entrepreneurs and nonprofits can tap into the university’s vast knowledge of environmental issues and sustainability. Likewise, they hope this gateway will allow university faculty, researchers and students to more easily seek very tangible results. “One of the underlying missions of SILC is acknowledging the international prowess CU-Boulder has in the environmental science space and try to leverage that” into business, policy and conservation practices, Webster said. Webster, who holds a PhD in public policy, has a background in turning science into policy at both the Environmental Protection Agency and a senior professional staff member advising the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure. “One of the key things about SILC is we are on one the few ever academic centers that is not affiliated with an academic unit,” such as engineering, arts & sciences or business, Webster said. “That allows us to engage with the entire campus.” This idea will also be put into action during the 2017 academic year, as SILC will introduce an undergraduate course in environmental entrepreneurship. Webster said. The course will allow a wide range of students who wouldn’t normally see sustainable business as a career option to explore the range of businesses they can work for and have a positive impact on the world.

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Even more rare—perhaps unique in academia—is that SILC is a 6,000-square-foot co-working space that accommodates business, nonprofit and research interests, potentially engaging them in the university in ways that cannot be foreseen. The East Campus lab is in its infancy, with actual operations beginning in the spring semester, but it is already hosting six staff members of ISET International, a nongovernmental organization working to promote social and ecologically sustainable change, primarily in Southeast Asia. University researchers are now planning work with ISET, Neff said, although the lengthy funding cycle in academia precludes any announcements at this time.“We’re still in the setup stage,” Webster said. However, plans are also being made to support graduate-level training by working closely with the Master’s of the Environment program. While coming from very different backgrounds, Webster and Neff began working together several years ago to bring one of the five global Future Earth hubs to Boulder. “We have very different skill sets and that allows us to engage very different communities,” Webster said. Jeff Thomas is Lafayette-based freelance writer and a 1983 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder.

JASON NEFF BEN WEBSTER

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our long-term goal is to have a space that has successfully facilitated collaboration in both the research and the entrepreneurial space.â&#x20AC;?

KIDS WEAVE TALES OF SNAKES AND EAGLES AND BEARS Students in CU-Boulder science-writing class write science-themed books for first graders, who now return the favor Two first graders walk into a class. They open a science book they wrote together. Then they read it aloud to college students, who clap and ask questions. This is no joke. It’s a joint effort of a writing class at the University of Colorado Boulder and a first-grade class at Bear Creek Elementary School.

Long’s students read their books to Briggs’ first graders last spring, and the kids asked to write their own books. This spring, the first graders at Bear Creek Elementary wrote and illustrated their own books. Their assignment:

More on that later. But first, back to the story. It concerns a grizzly bear and a polar bear, both famished after a harsh winter, both eyeing a “luscious elk.” The first-grade girl ticks off the grizzly’s diet, size and top speed—35 mph. The boy narrates a parallel tale about the polar bear—25 mph, if you’re curious. The tension peaks as both animals lunge at the hapless elk.

Framing the assignment as a wild competition prodded the first graders to learn about the animals in their stories. Thereby hangs both a tale and a bit of science.

The grizzly runs faster, so it wins. The fate of the polar bear is left to the readers’ imagination. Daniel Long calls this a “great example of communitybased writing.” He should know. Long, who earned his MA in English literature at CU-Boulder, teaches “Writing on Science and Society” forthe university’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric. A few years ago, one of his students, Allyson Adams, asked to write a science-themed children’s book for her final project. Now all of his students do. If you’re writing children’s books, it’s good to share them with actual children. So Long teamed up with Stephanie Briggs, a first-grade teacher at Boulder’s Bear Creek Elementary School.

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to tell a story based on imaginary contests between two animals— and the assignment was appropriately called “Who Would Win?”

“The first graders incorporated writing strategies they learned during the year: using vivid details, interesting word choices, sound effects and similes,” Briggs notes. “And the kids enjoyed it.”

SCHOLAR IN CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT SAYS IT’S AN ‘EXCITING TIME’ TO HOLD POST Francis Beckwith will serve as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the 2016-17 academic year. He is the fourth person to hold the position. Beckwith earned a PhD in philosophy from Fordham University and a master of juridical studies from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. Beckwith, professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University in Texas, will succeed Brian Domitrovic, whose appointment ends this academic year. When he learned that CU-Boulder sought a visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy, he was immediately drawn to the position, he said. “I was impressed by the effort made by the university leadership to create an environment in which true intellectual diversity can flourish,” Beckwith said, adding that he looks forward to getting to know CU’s students and faculty, in addition to many of the university’s Colorado constituencies. He is scheduled to teach two courses per semester in fall 2016 and spring 2017. In fall, he will teach two courses in philosophy. One is an upper-level class on Thomas Aquinas and the other is an introductory course on “Philosophy and Society.” Additionally, he will be encouraged to foster discussion by hosting public events in the campus community and perhaps around the state.

FRANCIS BECKWITH Beckwith said he plans to continue the tradition of bringing first-rate speakers to campus “who can help advance our public conversations” on important issues of the day. “With a presidential election upon us, an unexpected Supreme Court vacancy changing the year’s political trajectory, and so many public questions with which to wrestle, I cannot imagine a more exciting time to be the Visiting Scholar of Conservative Thought and Policy at the University of Colorado.” Robert Pasnau, professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy, which houses the Conservative Thought and Policy Program, praised Beckwith.

“We’re delighted to have recruited such a worthy successor to the previous three visiting scholars.”

WEREWOLVES OF LONDON, TEXAS Big, wild dogs chased, spooked and cornered Stephen Graham Jones when he was a boy in West Texas. Autobiographical echoes of that, and other episodes, appear in the English professor’s latest horror novel, Mongrels, which recently topped The Denver Post’s bestseller list and which SciFiNow dubs a “brilliant werewolf story that you need to read.” Mongrels is a coming-of-age story about a young man whose family is shunned and constantly moving—because they happen to be werewolves. Fusing pop-culture references, humor and horror, Jones describes one werewolf this way: “His hair was perfect.” By the light of day at CU Boulder, Jones has taught courses on horror genres, including werewolves and zombies, as well as screenwriting and general fiction. But he gets twitchy when he doesn’t write. So he moonlights as a writer. With more than 20 books and a lengthening list of awards to his name, the Texas kid who didn’t think he’d go to college—let alone become an English professor—now enjoys making readers howl.

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

SOLVING THE WORLD’S BIGGEST PROBLEMS, ONE ENTREPRENEUR AT A TIME BY LAURA KRIHO Teju Ravilochan wants to solve the world’s biggest problems, one entrepreneur at a time, and he has helped create a global enterprise to advance that mission. The University of Colorado Boulder graduate is CEO and co-founder of the Unreasonable Institute, a non-profit international training center that provides business programs for early stage entrepreneurs focused on creating positive social and environmental change. The Institute’s bottom-up approach empowers entrepreneurs by providing skills training, access to capital investments and connections to a network of mentors and peers. The goal is to maximize the reach of new businesses whose projects aim to alleviate poverty, improve education, provide access to clean water and slow global warming. Since its inception in 2009, the institute has helped more than 300 businesses in 50 countries succeed through education, mentorship and fundraising totaling more than $100 million, benefiting more than 8 million people.

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Ravilochan, who graduated from CU-Boulder in 2008 with a degree in international affairs, had always been drawn to social justice issues. Several experiences at CU inspired him to adopt a grassroots approach to improve the world. As a freshman, Ravilochan was accepted into the President’s Leadership Class, a four-year experiential-learning program that accepts only about 50 students each year. He says it was his “best academic experience” at CU. He describes the curriculum as focused on “ethics and morality in the world, and also societal issues like sexism, racism and classism.”

“It was the platform of opportunities and experimentation that CU provided for me to travel, to experience people who were different that I was, to meet extraordinary peers that really facilitated me getting to where I am now.”

As a CU undergraduate, Ravilochan was also deeply influenced by traveling to India. With a grant from CU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) , Ravilochan visited NGOs, villages, government agencies and corporations in India that were trying to alleviate poverty. He found many organizations fighting poverty actually created a dependency among the people they were trying to help by simply giving them short-term aid without empowering them to better their lives in the long term.

Ravilochan obtained an internship with Polak, who has since become one of the Unreasonable Institute’s most valued mentors. Ravilochan’s advice to current CU students is to engage in as many activities as they can. “It was the platform of opportunities and experimentation that CU provided for me to travel, to experience people who were different that I was, to meet extraordinary peers that really facilitated me getting to where I am now.”

“I found that the most effective NGOs were treating poor people not as victims who needed to be saved, but as people who could solve their own problems, with a little bit of support, a few connections and a little bit of mentorship,” Ravilochan recalls. When Ravilcohan got to meet author Paul Polak, who gave a talk on campus in 2008, it helped solidify his ideas about the best ways to catalyze social change. In his book, “Out of Poverty,” Polak describes a grassroots approach to poverty eradication that is more effective than traditional top-down programs.

WITHOUT INSTRUMENTS, ALUMS FACE THE MUSIC The a capella group ‘could do a Metallica song, and your grandma would like it’

Inside a sun-drenched Boulder living room-turned rehearsal space, the joyful sound of a band in perfect sync fills the air. Close your eyes, and you can picture it: The percussionist tapping on drums; the bass guitar player rattling the walls; the lead singer carrying the melody as the keyboardist and harmonica player riff off each other. Open your eyes, however, and you see five guys seated around a table — not an instrument in sight. Meet FACE. Since its humble 2001 beginnings in the practice rooms of the College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder, the all-vocal rock group has been dissecting and re-inventing hits by everyone from Pink Floyd and Garth Brooks to Imagine Dragons and Bruno Mars, giving new meaning to the term “a cappella” as it patiently built a local fan base. Now, thanks in part to the hit TV show Glee, the box-office smash Pitch Perfect, and the chart-topping all-vocal band Pentatonix, a cappella is enjoying its day in the sun. And FACE is too. In recent months, FACE has opened for Jon Bon Jovi, Jay Leno, and Culture Club and Boy George, rolled out a live international album, and hired a manager to handle its 120-plus shows a year. Several members have even been able to quit their day jobs.

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FACE was founded by CU alums Ben Lunstad and Joseph DiMasi, who began to recruit fellow singers at CU in the early 2000s. First came Forest Kelly (’02), a biology major and crooner with a gift at hitting bone-rattling bass notes. Then came Mark Megibow, a Northwestern University grad who traded real drums for beat-boxing, and Driver (‘02) who studied anthropology at CU but always had his eye on a career in music. Next came Stephen Ross (‘03) a music-education major whose piercing countertenor voice resembles the high notes on a synthesizer. Lyricist Cody Qualls, who attended CU-Boulder from 1998-2000, was unemployed, was reeling from the break-up of his rock band and singing Christmas Carols on Pearl Street when a band member walked by and coaxed him to join for just one gig. That was 13 years ago. “There’s just something about human voices that is more permeable and accessible to the masses,” says Qualls. “FACE could do a Metallica song, and your grandma would like it.”

“This is the best time ever to be in an a cappella group,” says tenor Ryan Driver, former president of CU’s In the Buff a capella group.

HORSING AROUND IS SERIOUS BUSINESS Liberal-arts majors everywhere tire of the age-old question, “What are you going to do with your degree?” Beth Cross, who graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1986 with a BA in political science, has an answer: Become an entrepreneur. Beth grew up on a thoroughbred horse farm in Pennsylvania. “I always loved and appreciated (equestrianism). The chance to get into the industry from a business standpoint was a wonderful opportunity,” she says.Cross took the skills that she learned as an undergraduate at CU, combined with an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and fulfilled her dream of becoming an entrepreneur in a field she loved. In 1993, she co-founded Ariat International, a niche company that specializes in high performance equestrian footwear. At the time, traditional riding boots were not very comfortable or functional. Cross and her co-founder Pam Parker were the first to apply athletic-shoe technology to riding boots, resulting in a product that had superior performance, comfort and fit.

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By combining outstanding quality with stylish designs, Ariat revolutionized the industry of equestrian riding boots. Ariat boots have become the gold standard in equestrian footwear. Ariat now has retail outlets in more than 30 countries and has expanded to included apparel and accessories. Of her education, she says, “The most important thing I learned at CU was how to think.”

CHOOSING NICARAGUAN NONPROFIT WORK OVER BIG BANKING In 2006, Roman Yavich had accepted an offer to work for an investment bank after graduating from CU-Boulder with degrees in economics (summa cum laude) and business (with high distinction). But he won a Fulbright Fellowship to study the effect of tourism on the Nicaraguan community, economy and environment. Yavich chose philanthropic work in Nicaragua over a potentially lucrative career in New York. “I never looked back,” he adds. After his Fulbright year, Yavich co-founded a non-profit organization called Comunidad Connect, described as a “social enterprise that combines sustainable tourism with bottom-up development work.” Comunidad Connect has worked with local residents and leaders, public institutions and the private sector to identify development priorities to which to attract resources in Nicaragua and from abroad. Since 2007, Comunidad Connect has hosted more than 1,000 volunteers and worked with more than 50 communities that need support. Yavich acknowledges that the world faces daunting challenges, but: “I for one would rather spend my life trying than quitting. I want to dedicate my career to improving my community and helping those who have fewer opportunities than I do.”

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ALUMNUS USES DEGREE TO COMBINE PASSIONS FOR FOOD AND JAPANESE Bridging a gap between two cultures, Ivan ‘Ramen’ Orkin runs successful ramen restaurants in Tokyo and New York Ramen restaurateur, chef and author Ivan Orkin has used his degree in Japanese Language and Literature (’87) almost every day since graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder. Orkin’s path to Colorado, and later Japan, was inspired by a job he took in high school. “I fell in love with Japanese early in life, while working as a dishwasher at a Long Island sushi bar,” Orkin says. “The cooks were very kind. They always fed me all kinds of great stuff.” This was long before sushi was something people typically ate, but Orkin has always been a culinary adventurer. “Food has been important to me my whole life, even though I didn’t grow up in a ‘food’ family. For me, even as a child, eating was very exciting,” he says. In the year that he worked at the sushi bar, Orkin remembers trying raw hearts and liver, and being interested in what everyone was saying: during a rush, Japanese was the lingua franca of the kitchen. Years later, when he was ready to go to school, he picked CU-Boulder for its Japanese language program. “I wasn’t the greatest student, but I just got in my car and went for it,” he says. When he graduated, he moved to Japan, where he taught English for three years. Orkin liked Japan, but he wasn’t satisfied. “I was surrounded by everyone in white-collar jobs, and teaching English wasn’t making me any money,” he says. So in 1993, he moved back to the United States with his Japanese wife and attended the Culinary Institute of America in New York. “I had my Japanese side of my life. I cooked French and American food for 12 years, and then I decided that I missed Japan,” Orkin says. So he and his family moved back to Japan. While his wife worked, Orkin took care of their kids. He soon decided he needed a business of some kind, but he was done working for other people. “Although I was really into eating ramen, when my wife suggested I open a ramen shop restaurant, I thought that was crazy,” Orkin says.

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But as a ramen lover, he knew what kind of ramen he wanted to make. He played around with ramen at home for a while, and in 2007, he opened Ivan Ramen in Tokyo, following soon after with Ivan Ramen Plus. He now runs two more ramen restaurants in New York City, but he still spends lots of time in Tokyo, and he is still excited about Japanese. This set his ramen restaurants apart from others. “I was able to make really good food, I got the right press, and I got on the hot circuit,” he says. In 2013, he published a book about his ramen noodle journey called Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo’s Most Unlikely Noodle Joint. While instant ramen is sometimes considered the go-to for college students, Orkin says he’s never really eaten it, and he can’t make a direct comparison. The kind of ramen Orkin makes is based on Chinese noodles, and it has a long cooking time. The soup can take anywhere from six to 40 hours to cook, depending on the bones and sauce. The meat is also slow-cooked. “It takes a long time to cook, but you eat it very quickly,” Orkin says. He has been able to meld his two passions, Japan and food, and he considers himself lucky. He now runs two more ramen restaurants in New York City, but he still spend lots of time in Tokyo, and he is still excited about Japanese. “I think, dream, and live in Japanese as much as I do in English,” he says. Orkin has remained friends with many Japanese-studies students at CUBoulder. “Language students tend to stick to together, to practice and see language-specific movies together,” he says. Orkin had not been back to Boulder until his son, now a sophomore, started at CU-Boulder. “I didn’t feel CU had changed that much. It still has the same vibe and warm energy. The students and townspeople alike seem excited about being there,” he says. One thing Orkin says definitely has changed: “The restaurants in Boulder have gotten fancier.” Lara Herrington Watson is a CU alumna (’07) and freelance writer who splits her time between Denver and Phoenix.

CLASSICALLY TRAINED ARTIST IS ÜBER-COOL ICON As a classically trained, now expressionist, painter, Lisa Solberg (BFA 2005) never imagined she’d be in an industrial-district studio, recruiting strippers. It’s for a December 2015, exhibition—her largest to date—called Mr. Lee’s Shangri-La, featuring exotic dancers, a greenhouse of golden walls and her paintings. The show will be held at the progressive Los Angeles MAMA Gallery, with a preview at international premier art fair, Art Basel, in Miami Beach, Florida. Her performance installation art, which clearly is not boring, is a natural evolution, Solberg explains. “Art is actually life, and I think most people are yearning for a change in perspective, a jolt of inspiration, a fresh breath of air. I strive to make art that would evoke a similar shock to jumping in an icecold body of water.” Originally from Chicago, Solberg’s life is as eclectic as her work. She skied in the X Games and is photographed often, brush in hand, donning a Michael Jordan jersey for super-hip contemporary art magazines.As a youngster with raw exuberant talent, Solberg felt compelled to sketch on walls and draw on streets with chalk. Today her massive works utilizing broad, sweeping strokes in vibrant, energetic colors sell in a range of $5,000 to $30,000 in galleries from New York to Singapore.

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RISING-STAR SCIENTIST GOT STARTED AT CU BOULDER Disbelief lingers in Allison Cleary’s voice. “It’s all just been amazing,” the University of Colorado Boulder alumna says on winning the grand prize in the 2015 SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists. Cleary, who recently completed a combined MD/PhD program at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, received the award, which includes a cash prize, a trip to Sweden and publication in an esteemed journal, for an essay she wrote about her dissertation research. The essay about the physiology of breast cancer, “Teamwork: the tumor cell edition,” was published in a December edition of the prestigious journal Science. It drew high praise from the publication’s editors. “Allison Cleary’s work was a clear example of a young investigator who became fascinated with a theory that went against the dogma of the field and who designed elegant experiments to determine the reality of the science,” Barbara Jasny, deputy editor of Science, stated in a release. Cleary always knew she wanted to be a physician, but research wasn’t on her mind until someone told her she needed laboratory experience to get into medical school. So Cleary joined Distinguished Professor Leslie Leinwand’s lab in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department early in her undergraduate tenure at CU-Boulder. This was her first foray into science and research. She was immediately hooked, and she graduated from CU-Boulder with a BA in MCDB in 2006.

ALLISON CLEARY “I really liked being able to ask questions that nobody knows t he answer to and then try and find the answer. I thought that was such a cool thing to be able to do.”

Later, she found cancer biology fascinating. “I stay up at night thinking about cancer problems.” One of these cancer-biology problems is figuring out how different populations of cells in a tumor talk to and interact with each other, and how that influences the way the overall tumor behaves. This became the focus of Cleary’s thesis work.

IF CHICKENS WROTE HISTORY... Thomas G. Andrews, associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder, is writing an entire book about people’s relationships with non-human animals, but he can sum up his thoughts in one word: messy. In his 2008 Bancroft Prize-winning book Killing for Coal, Andrews notes that mules were both used and abused by miners, and men kept mice not just as proverbial canaries, but also as pets.

Miners developed mutually beneficial relationship with mice that came underground in hay. Miners often fed and named the mice. “Partly, this was boredom,” Andrews said. “But there was also a symbiosis, because mice were great safety tools.” Like proverbial coal-mine canaries, mice sensed rising concentrations of carbon monoxide. Mice noticed small cracks in rock walls that usually preceded a major collapse.

Now, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Andrews delves further into the issue. His new book, expected out next year, is titled An Animals’ History of the United States. In it he provides examples, like how Native Americans used dogs as hunting companions, beasts of burden and meat, but many Americans view dogs as family members. “As a historian, I’m interested in complexity, and what I’m really interested in is how messy our relationships with animals really are,” Andrews says. Early American miners “constantly had to grapple with an environment that wasn’t of their creation,” Andrews said, adding that in many cases animals helped people navigate and survive unfamiliar environments.

“Paying attention to mice was a good thing,” Andrews said. “Miners had these interesting, cute and very functional relationship with mice.” Mules, on the other hand, were mulish. “They didn’t want to do what miners wanted them to do.” And researching “Killing for Coal,” Andrews said, “got me thinking about animal history.” The idea is to “take a stab” at human-animal relationships over the last 600 years, Andrews said. Because the topic is so large, the book will be selective. “But I want to show how animals have shaped American history, to show how attention to animals can shed new light on historical topics” such as slavery and the treatment of Native Americans.

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CRIMINOLOGIST WHO STUDIES GANGS WINS PRESTIGIOUS NATIONAL AWARD David Pyrooz, assistant professor of sociology at CU Boulder, has won the 2016 Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of criminology by someone who has received his or her graduate degree within five years. By earning the highest honor a junior scholar can receive in the discipline, Pyrooz joins a distinguished list of researchers who are “among the most accomplished in the field of criminology.” Pyrooz is “honored and humbled” by the award, “especially because the past winners cast an awfully long shadow.” Delbert Elliott, director of the Positive Youth Development Program at the Institute of Behavioral Science, as well as founding director of the institute’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence and distinguished professor emeritus of sociology, said Pyrooz himself casts a pretty good shadow. Pyrooz is a “very sharp, talented young criminologist,” Elliott stated. “Getting this award was a major deal. This is a very competitive award for young scholars.” Further, Pyrooz is making “very significant contributions” to the study of criminal gang culture, and is “one of the very few who’s looking at what happens when you get out of a gang,” Elliott said.

Pyrooz graduated with his doctorate in criminology and criminal justice from Arizona State University in 2012. He joined CU Boulder’s faculty last year.Pyrooz’s publication record buttresses Elliott’s assessment. In a study published in 2014, Pyrooz and Gary Sweeten of Arizona State University found that gang membership among youths between 5 and 17 totaled as many as 1 million in 2010 nationally. Although that number is undoubtedly much larger than official law-enforcement statistics estimate, it represents only about 2 percent of the country’s youth population, Pyrooz and Sweeten noted. At the same time, the researchers found that anti-gang interventions aimed at teenagers can arrive too late, given that 1 percent of all American kids identified as gang members by age 10. Additionally, Pyrooz and Sweeten showed that gang membership is more diverse than popularly believed.

DAVID PYROOZ

NOBEL PRIZE HIGHLIGHTS IMPORTANCE OF RUSSIAN STUDIES For Russian-literature experts like Mark Leiderman, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, the awarding of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature to Svetlana Alexievich was no surprise.Alexievich is a Belarusian writer who writes in Russian and is critical of both the Putin regime and the former Soviet Union. The award might have surprised readers in the United States, where Alexievich is not well-known. Leiderman welcomes the spotlight that comes with her Nobel Prize and predicts that Alexievich will be studied in more courses here. He says now is a good time for students and the world to learn more about Russia, and the university has already moved to meet that need.Alexievich writes in Russian, and her work is non-fiction. The Nobel committee cited her for her “polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”Leiderman was born and educated in

Russia and is one of the leading scholars in Russian postmodern literature and culture. He also chairs the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at CU-Boulder. Leiderman was pleased with the award, the first time since 1987 that it has gone to an author who writes in Russian. That year, it was awarded to Joseph Brodsky. Current events in Ukraine—which is locked in a military conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels—make Alexievich an important voice, because she is a “true dissident,” Leiderman says. MARK

LEIDERMAN

CERAMICS GRAD PROGRAM RANKED FIFTH IN THE NATION Professor says high ranking reflects the high quality of the program’s inquisitive students The graduate ceramics program at CU Boulder is ranked fifth in the nation, up from eighth last year, in US News and World Report’s Best Graduate Schools 2017. The ceramics program is one of eight University of Colorado Boulder programs to be ranked in the top 10 graduate specialty programs nationwide, but it is the only one of the CU Boulder group to hail from the arts and humanities. The other seven are in the natural sciences, engineering and education. Kim Dickey, professor of art and art history and director of the ceramics program, is pleased with the ranking, released this spring, but does not take credit for it. The ranking, she emphasizes, reflects the “success of our grads who have gone on to have great careers in the art world as well as in academia.” Those alumni are also the program’s best recruiters. “If we can claim any responsibility, it is that we choose our graduates carefully, and then support them to the best of our ability, giving them a solid foundation from which to take risks, ask tough questions, and work extremely hard in the short time they are here,” Dickey says. And the students seem to thrive here, she adds. “They come here to be challenged, stretch themselves as artists, and take advantage of the many resources this department and university has to offer. They are sponges, ready to soak it all in.”

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Dickey describes ceramics as inherently interdisciplinary, intersecting with architecture, environmental design, the domestic, the decorative, the theatrical—“having applications for forms as diverse as drinking vessels to large-scale sculptural installation to architectural ornamentation to tiles for the Space Shuttle.” Additionally, she notes, almost every civilization throughout history that had access to clay developed a ceramics tradition, meaning it has both a universal quality and enduring fascination.

“And it’s just amazing to work directly with your hands with a material that doesn’t enclose a form already; it’s formless—potential in a lump.” Dickey also extols the value of a graduate education in the arts, which not only requires that students develop “visual language” but also that they devote many hours in critiques with other artists and thinkers. This colloquy hones students’ skills in critical thinking and persuasive argument, she says. “So our grads (and undergrads) come out of the program really conversant about the ideas that compel them and ready to engage in a meaningful exchange on the role the arts have to play in our world.”

THE PAIN OF PARTITION Prof explores gender violence in post-colonial India in Kayden Award-winning book Just six months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as U.S. troops fought al Qaeda and the group’s Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, a brutal anti-Muslim pogrom broke out in the Indian state of Gujarat following a train fire of indeterminate cause. The blaze took the lives of 59 people, mostly Hindu pilgrims, and the next day mobs began to destroy Muslim homes, mosques and businesses. Over several days of violence, between 800 and 2,000 Muslims and some 250 Hindus were killed, and more than 150,000 Muslims were displaced. At least 250 Muslim women and girls were raped and burned alive and children were forced to drink gasoline and set on fire. Some of the violence was accompanied by explicitly religious symbolism — pregnant women, for example, were slit open and shown their fetuses, impaled on weapons associated with the Hindu god Shiva.

For Misri, who came to the United States in 2000 for graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the twin spotlights of the Gujarat pogrom and anti-Muslim sentiment that ignited in the United States illuminated a disturbing trend. The 1947 partition that created Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India following more than three-and-a-half centuries of British colonial rule sparked widespread intra-communal violence. In Beyond Partition: Gender Violence and Representation in Postcolonial India, Misri explores different ways that violence continues to reverberate today. The book recently received CU’s 2016 Eugene M. Kayden Prize for literary studies. The prize committee praised Misri for shedding light “on the tragic issues surrounding both the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, and continued gendered violence against men and women through the caste/religious system still vigorously operating behind the scenes in Indian culture and politics.”

“Some people understood the (pogrom) as mindless violence, and that was perhaps part of it,” says Deepti Misri, assistant professor of women and gender studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But it was also a very clear attempt to stamp the act of violence with the religious iconography of Hinduism.”

Deepti Misri

TV COMEDIAN HELPED INSPIRE AWARD-WINNING CU DANCER You have to thank Carol Burnett for Michelle Ellsworth’s art. At least in part. Ellsworth, associate professor of dance at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been captivated by dance since she was 7, when she first saw the Ernest Flat Dancers on The Carol Burnett Show. In between the show’s segments, jazz-dance sequences functioned as segues. “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh. That’s what I want to do for a living.’” Now her performances both include and transcend dance, and her success has been routinely recognized with awards. She won a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award. The award includes an $80,000 grant aimed to support Ellsworth’s work. Ellsworth is one of 20 artists nationwide to gain this recognition from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which aims to “invest in and celebrate artists” by offering flexible multi-year funding designed to help overcome funding challenges “both unique to the performing arts and to each grantee.”

Michelle Ellsworth Ellsworth was informed someone had nominated her for the award some time ago, but, “I thought my chances were very slim, and I tried to forgot about it.” “I’m profoundly surprised and pleased.” She describes her work as using humor and technology to explore arange of challenging themes including gender, genetics, politics and ecology.

The Doris Duke program supports individual artists in contemporary dance, theatre, jazz and related interdisciplinary work. Ellworth is one of only six dancers to win the Impact Award this year.

acknowledgements, factoids, remaining numbers, etc

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