Metropolitan Denver Magazine - Fall 2018

>FIGHTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING

> W H AT ’ S A P R O V O S T ?

> F O O D A S A F A M I LY L E G A C Y

FALL 2018

TALE OF WOE

HOW A SHORTAGE OF PILOTS COULD CHANGE FLIGHT AS WE KNOW IT.

First First Look Look In 1972, students lounge on a strip of grass before dashing across the street to the library (hence, the name Roadrunners). Check out today’s view of this campus location on Page 33.

FALL 2018

VOL. 6 NO.2 RED.MSUDENVER.EDU

METROPOLITAN DENVER MAGAZINE PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

HEAD OF THE CLASS Phillip Danielson, Ph.D., graduated from MSU Denver in only two years. Today, he’s a professor of molecular biology at the University of Denver and a star in the field of forensic science. Read his story on Page 28.

8 F E AT U R E

UNDER LOCK AND KEY

Nonprofit for human-trafficking survivors fights to make sure no one is held against their will.

12 16 F E AT U R E

THE CONSUMMATE PROVOST

Vicki Golich, Ph.D., is great at her job.

But what exactly is her job?

02 THE FIRST WORD

21 FOOD AS A FAMILY LEGACY

03 IN YOUR WORDS

24 POWER IN PERSISTENCE

President Janine Davidson, Ph.D., reflects on her first year and the University’s future.

Alumni choose one word to describe their student experience.

04 NEWS

MSU Denver continues to have an impact on and off campus.

ON THE COVER The pilot shortage is in its initial descent.

Learn what caused the crisis, who will feel its impact and how MSU Denver is flying against the head winds on Page 16.

For Jocelyn Bañales, a familyled restaurant is the recipe for success – and amazing mole.

It took Scott Margolis 21 years to graduate from college. Today, he’s a cybersecurity leader at a Big Four accounting firm.

26 TRENDING UP

Following a bold decision to go it alone, Meranda Vieyra’s career is on a steep upward curve.

F E AT U R E

TALE OF WOE

How a shortage of pilots could change flight as we know it.

28 MEET THE MOLECULAR MAN Phillip Danielson, Ph.D., has spent decades pioneering advances in forensic science to help solve crimes.

30 PEOPLE

Alumni share news and notes.

31 PEOPLE IN MEMORY

We remember those who are no longer with us.

32 THE FINAL WORD

Associate Professor Vincent Piturro, Ph.D., talks science fiction, Fellini and a director he considers overrated.

FALL 2018

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FIRSTWORD Looking back, looking forward My first year at Metropolitan State University of Denver has been nothing short of extraordinary. The more I learn about this place, the more I love it.

There have been so many highlights these past 12 months, but I wanted to call out a few.

As I mentioned in the last magazine, I had a chance to testify at the state legislature earlier this year and made the case that MSU Denver is the university best positioned to help Colorado reach its higher-education and economic goals. We will continue making that case in the months ahead, and you can help by joining our Champions program (msudenver.edu/champions).

empowering all employees to be leaders in their own right and ensuring that as many people as possible have a voice in our shared future. As part of this initiative, we launched six advisory councils to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing the institution. These groups will help us be even better at what we do – educating students for success in the workforce and impact in the community.

We’ve also brought some great speakers to campus during the past academic year.

Among those were Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico; Thomas M. Hoenig, Ph.D., former vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp; and Andrew Traver, director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I’m committed to bringing more experts to MSU Denver to share their wisdom and career tips with students.

And finally, I am excited about the headway we’ve made on one of my top initiatives – creating a Classroom to Career Hub. The C2 Hub will significantly expand co-op, internship, practicum, clinical and studentteaching experiences. We know that hands-on learning in real-world settings gives students the skills they need to succeed in the workforce and move up the economic ladder. MSU Denver students who engage in experiential learning have graduation rates as high as 93 percent. We want to create even more of these opportunities for students and provide local companies with a workforce of smart, civic-minded graduates.

I’m very proud of the progress the University has made in implementing a culture of inclusive leadership on campus. This is not just a catchphrase; it’s an initiative aimed at

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention what a joy it has been to meet so many Roadrunners and supporters this year. Between getting to know the campus community and meeting

Metropolitan Denver Magazine is published three times a year by the Metropolitan State University of Denver Office of Marketing and Communications. © 2018 Metropolitan State University of Denver. All rights reserved. Address correspondence to: Metropolitan Denver Magazine, MSU Denver, Office of Marketing and Communications, Campus Box 86, PO Box 173362, Denver, CO 80217-3362. Email: magazine@msudenver.edu.

The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the policies and opinions of Metropolitan State University of Denver nor imply endorsement by its officers or by the MSU Denver Alumni Association. Metropolitan State University of Denver does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation or disability in admissions or access to, or treatment or employment in, its educational programs or activities.

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with alumni and business leaders, I feel a great sense of pride about what we are trying to accomplish as a model urban university.

This issue of Metropolitan Denver Magazine illustrates the work happening at MSU Denver every day. We are tackling big issues such as the commercial-pilot shortage and human trafficking. We are educating successful entrepreneurs, cybersecurity professionals and community-minded academics. We are making a difference in Denver and beyond.

Because that is what Roadrunners do!

We’re going to celebrate these achievements and others during Inauguration week, Sept.

4-7. I’d like to invite you to participate by either coming to an event or watching via livestream at msudenver.edu/inauguration.

The Inauguration is about all of us looking forward to the future together. I hope you will join me.

Sincerely,

Janine Davidson, Ph.D. President

PUBLISHER CATHY LUCAS | EDITOR DAN VACCARO | ART DIRECTOR SCOTT SURINE | PUBLICATION DESIGNER CRAIG KORN | LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER ALYSON MCCLARAN | EDITORIAL ASSISTANT KYLIE HENSON | CONTRIBUTORS JOHN ARNOLD | MARCUS CHAMBERLAND | MARK COX | CLIFF FOSTER | SARAH HUNSINGER | AMANDA MILLER | ELIZABETH MORENO-ROSALES | MICHAEL PARAS | CORY PHARE | MARK STAHL | JULIE STRASHEIM | JESSICA TAVES | MATT WATSON | LYNNE WINTER | MARK WOOLCOTT | EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: DEBORA GILLIARD, PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT | BRIAN GUNTHER, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY AND PROGRAM COORDINATOR | JAMIE HURST, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR STRATEGIC ENGAGEMENT | STEVE KRIZMAN, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS (INTERIM) | TRACI MCBEE ROWE, DIRECTOR OF DONOR RELATIONS AND ADVANCEMENT SPECIAL EVENTS | SAM NG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF METEOROLOGY | KIP WOTKYNS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM

Your WORDS In

We asked you this question on social media:

If you had to pick one word to describe your experience at MSU Denver, what would it be and why?

Scott Taylor | Challenging!

Savannah Peters |

Amazing! A much better teacher-education program than rival schools in the state. I feel genuinely blessed that I was able to go to school here for the three years I did!

Franklin Taylor Atkinson |

Transformational. The professors and fellow students I met changed my life for the better.

Elliot Tracy | Illuminating. My

time there taught me more than just what I learned from my degree. It helped me find my passion.

I miss my time there.

Sclafani Michael | Life-

changing! Transformational.

Met my wife there, got passionate about the next phase of my life and got a good education in the process.

Kailey Cole | Unforgettable! I made memories and friendships while playing softball for MSU Denver that will last a lifetime.

Richard McKearney |

Lynn B Spence | Pride. My

Susanne Brent |

father attended before me.

LaMar Edwards Jr. | Intestinal fortitude! Stay committed to finishing your educational journey. Perseverance wins!

Brooke Wallinger | Unique.

I loved how small my classes were and how much real-world experience my professors had.

I feel like I learned more on this unique campus than I would have at any run-of-the-mill university.

Melovy Melvin | Diverse:

because the true diversity of the school is what I love the most.

Nelum M. | Affordable.

MSU Denver tuition and fees are lower than most schools in Colorado!

Julie Winslow | Valuable. I got a great education and was able to work full time so I graduated with no student loans.

Thank you.

Lupe Gonzalez-Cervantes |

Inspirational. I was inspired to broaden my dreams and goals by the people who surrounded me daily in my classes.

Lloyd McLennan Moore |

Life-changing! Is that one word?

Lindsey McCoy | The BEST!!

Trevor Jacklin | Meaningful Tay Swish | Blessing Liz Castellano | One word isn’t enough! Home! Blessing!

Journey! Will always have MSU Denver in my heart.

Greame De Leon | God’s Plan Sindy J Gonzalez | Awesome David Rodriguez | R O W D Y Janet Maestas | Family

Ted Dyer, MS | Personal. I was on a first-name basis with my instructors. Wonderful experience.

Transcendental! Changed my life forever.

Michael Van Winkle |

Exceptional

Transformational ... made me the writer I am today.

Liz Calahan | Quality. I was at MSU Denver when it was still MSCD and the education I got prepared me for graduate school.

I have a doctoral degree, and my academic success comes from the foundation of my undergrad education.

Shannon D’Laine | Equity Christian Luís Juan | Subarus

(Everywhere)

Christian D. Abeyta | Fulfilling!

Alina Noga | Always-goes-

the-extra-mile! (Referring to professors and how they truly care)

Kyle Backlund | Two words: fortuitous and fortunate.

Misty Dupuis | Worth-it!

It’s one word if I hyphenate it, right? If I could go back and go anywhere, I would honestly still choose MSU Denver. I’m proud to be a Roadrunner alumnus.

MSU Denver’s music program is top-notch.

Note: Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

SHARE YOUR STORY

Everyone has a story to tell, and we want to hear yours! Email us: magazine@msudenver.edu.

THANK YOU TO OUR ROADRUNNERS ATHLETICS SPONSORS

Hotel Partners Hilton Garden Inn Denver Cherry Creek

Holiday Inn Denver Lakewood

Holiday Inn Denver Cherry Creek

SpringHill Suites Denver Downtown

FALL 2018

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News

MSU Denver continues to have an impact on and off campus.

SAVE THE DATE LGBTQ Student Resource Center 25th Anniversary Silver Soirée Thursday, Sept. 13, 6:30-9 p.m.

PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

FORMER FDIC LEADER: DON’T FORGET LESSONS OF THE PAST

Tivoli Turnhalle, Auraria Campus Since its founding in 1992 as Colorado’s first on-campus LGBTQIA support organization, the center has fostered acceptance, understanding and personal growth by offering community education and engagement in addition to

Economics icon Thomas Hoenig, Ph.D., had a clear message to share: Without a thoughtful approach to economic policy, we could be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Hoenig visited Metropolitan State University of Denver on June 20 for an open forum titled “The Economic System and Stability: Changing the Goal.” The recently retired vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City shared the factors he sees affecting the economy in the next 24 months and participated in a wide-ranging conversation facilitated by President Janine Davidson, Ph.D. On monetary policy, Hoenig said the U.S. and the world are essentially establishing a new economic equilibrium in the decade since the financial crisis of 2008, which he characterized as a “zero-interest-rate environment.”

“We put some things in place to create a more accountable capital system, and we retained them,” he said. “But now there is enormous pressure, with things being so good, to back off. We could be doomed to repeat the past.

I hope not.”

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On the investment front, Hoenig echoed a familiar refrain from his time at the FDIC. He cautioned that the rapid rise of consolidation in banking and the perception that banks are “too big to fail” make the economic system more vulnerable. He noted that in 1985 there were 18,000 commercial banks. Today, there are 5,200. He predicted that number would likely be halved in the coming years.

support services.

2018 PRIDE FEST

Hoenig emphasized that dealing with these factors is further complicated by changes to economic policy, such as recent tax cuts and a rising deficit.

Given the variability of these factors and environment, he said, it is hard to predict the country’s economic growth. But he remains hopeful. “I’m an optimist but also a practical individual,” he said. “It will take a lot of thought and care if we are to remain the global leader we are today.”

Hoenig’s forecast for the country’s economic future was not limited to monetary policy, either.

“The economic system is an engine with a lot of moving parts,” he said. “Monetary policy is one, but education is second. If you don’t build for the future in terms of quality of citizens, you have no future.”

Mark your calendar for a funfilled evening of cocktails, food, games and dancing to celebrate this important milestone.

For more information, visit lgbtq-auraria.org.

HAVE YOU READ

? RED ?

On July 10, MSU Denver launched RED, a news site dedicated to telling real stories affecting real people. RED replaces the Insider, the University’s former newsroom, and will shine a brighter spotlight on the top issues in Denver and beyond.

RED features video and articles on topics such as Colorado’s teacher shortage, challenges in cybersecurity and an art exhibit aimed at cleaning up city alleys.

It’s relevant, essential, Denver. RED. VISIT, READ AND SUBSCRIBE at red.msudenver.edu.

WRITE ON: ROADRUNNERS RECOGNIZED AS TOP LITERARY TALENTS It’s almost impossible to get a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. This year, two Roadrunner writers beat the odds.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and Native American studies, and Kali Fajardo-Anstine, a 2009 graduate in English, won fellowships for summer residency at the New Hampshire artists’ colony.

Weiden and Fajardo-Anstine were two of 15 fiction writers selected for the honor. In total, 85 fellowships were awarded to artists working across seven disciplines and representing 18 states and six countries.

“I’m trying to provide a depiction of the myriad humiliations and degradations that indigenous people face every day in their struggle to survive, and I show how Natives are transcending the circumstances of their environment and refusing to be victims,” Weiden said in an April interview in MSU Denver’s newsroom.

“But mainly, I want to write a page-turner that will make people stay up all night reading to find out what happens.”

Fajardo-Anstine, who was featured in Metropolitan Denver Magazine in 2014, said at the time that her stories can be “dark.”

“When you’re Chicana, it means you have historically outlived great violence,” she said. “I come from American Indian, Hispano and Jewish ancestors. Throughout history, these groups have suffered immensely. It’s a disservice to my culture to ignore it.”

Weiden and Fajardo-Anstine join a long list of decorated artists who have been MacDowell Colony fellows.

According to the colony’s website, fellows have won 83 Pulitzer Prizes, 800 Guggenheim Fellowships, 101 Rome Prizes, 30 National Book Awards, 26 Tony Awards, 28 MacArthur Fellowships, nine Grammys, eight Oscars and eight National Medals for the Arts. Among the most well-known alumni are Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather, Leonard Bernstein, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Studs Terkel, Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon.

Both writers’ work is grounded in their personal and cultural experiences.

PHOTO JESSICA TAVES

PHOTO DAVE NELIGH

Weiden’s novel “Winter Counts” is a literary crime thriller in which themes of Native American identity and agency are examined.

Associate Professor David Heska Wanbli Weiden (above) observes the activities at the Denver March Powwow.

Weiden and Kali Fajardo-Anstine (left) were awarded fellowships to the renowned MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire this summer.

News

MAGAZINE STRIKES GOLD WITH PRSA HONOR

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In May, the Public Relations Society of America’s Colorado chapter honored the magazine you’re reading with its Gold Pick award for best magazine. Commence patting.

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“I think this honor speaks to the caliber of talent we have on the Marketing and Communications team,” said Dan Vaccaro, director of executive communications and editor of Metropolitan Denver Magazine. “We competed against some of the top marketing and PR firms in the state, and took home multiple awards. I am very proud of our team.”

RISING STAR: AES BUILDING SHINES WITH PRESTIGIOUS HONOR

In March, the Downtown Denver Partnership named the building, and the initiative that developed it, one of six recipients of the 2017 Downtown Denver Awards. The 25-member jury voted unanimously for the state-of-the-art facility, which opened in summer 2017.

The prestigious annual awards celebrate organizations, events and initiatives that make a positive impact on downtown Denver. Winning projects contribute to creating a unique, vibrant and diverse downtown environment.

“This is a tremendous honor for the University,” said Janine Davidson, Ph.D., president of MSU Denver.

“We are very proud of the AES Building and the work happening inside of it.

We are educating the next generation of professionals for Colorado’s aerospace and advanced-manufacturing industries right in the heart of the city.”

University leaders accepted the award at the 57th Annual Downtown Denver Awards Dinner on April 17. More than 1,000 of Denver’s business and civic leaders attended the black-tie event.

This was MSU Denver’s third Downtown Denver Award in five years. The University’s Regency

Athletic Complex took home the 2015 prize, and its Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center was recognized in 2012.

PHOTO MARK STAHL

Students who learn in the Aerospace and Engineering Sciences Building at Metropolitan State University of Denver may soon have a new assignment – designing and manufacturing a trophy case.

FACULTY MEMBERS MAKE MARK ON LEGISLATIVE SESSION They’re already changing lives on campus. This spring, they made their mark on the Capitol.

Elizabeth Hinde, Ph.D., dean of the School of Education, and Greg Clifton, Ph.D., chair of the Accounting Department, played key roles in influencing legislation that will affect Colorado’s students.

Hinde was instrumental in the passage of three bills in the 2018 Colorado legislative session.

“Students were having their graduation delayed and they were dropping out because it was so hard to get background checks done,” Hinde said. “I thought this would be a slam-dunk, just testify once, and it turned into a big drama. But it was worth it, and our students are going to be so much better off.”

Megan Lawless, Ph.D., director of clinical experiences and partnerships in the School of Education, also testified in support of the bill, and staff members Maggie Thulson and Jordan Brown assisted in gathering data.

Hinde also advocated for two bills aimed at providing resources to combat the teacher shortage.

House Bill 1189 creates a $600,000 grant program in the Department of Education to help expand best practices and strategies of effective teacher-residency programs in Colorado, such as the one at MSU Denver, while House Bill 1332 allocates $2 million for grants to educator-preparation programs to directly address the shortage.

PHOTO MARK STAHL

Senate Bill 229 creates a streamlined process for criminal-history record checks for students in educator-preparation programs so that the state maintains the information and students don’t bear the financial and time burdens of going through separate background checks for every school district they could work in. The bill went through six committees and the objections of vendors who profit from the previous system.

MSU Denver faculty members Greg Clifton, left, and Elizabeth Hinde, right, were awarded MSU Denver Champion Advocate Awards for testifying and advocating for legislation that passed during the 2018 session.

Clifton worked on a bill to prevent academic fraud centered on homework-help sites.

He felt that the pervasive ease of cheating was risking the reputation of the University by releasing underqualified graduates into the workforce. He took his concerns to the dean of the College of Business, the provost, MSU Denver’s legislative team and ultimately all the way to the state Capitol. His efforts paved the way for House Bill 1252, which creates civil penalties for an entity or person who prepares, sells or distributes completed academic assignments or advertises those services in Colorado.

Clifton testified in front of House and Senate committees, recruited students to testify and met with individual legislators and the Black Democratic Legislative Caucus of Colorado.

In May, Hinde and Clifton were honored with the first-ever MSU Denver Champion Advocate Awards for their legislative contributions.

WANT MORE? Keep up to date with MSU Denver news at red.msudenver.edu.

Under lock and

key STORY MATT WATSON

NONPROFIT FOR HUMAN-TRAFFICKING SURVIVORS FIGHTS TO MAKE SURE NO ONE IS HELD AGAINST THEIR WILL.

I

t wasn’t until Mary Landerholm took a college course on human trafficking that she came to a startling realization.

She was a trafficking survivor.

In her mid-20s, Landerholm became vulnerable to trafficking as she battled homelessness and struggled with basic survival needs.

She endured relationships out of necessity and was taken across state lines unwillingly at one point.

After escaping that situation, she found herself living with a couple who were taking in homeless women and exploiting them for labor. When she fled that house with a cross-country bus ticket from her home state of Illinois to Denver to reunite with her mother, she left behind 13 other women like her.

“I had no language or knowledge that this was what I had experienced, because in 1999 we weren’t talking about this in this realm,” says Landerholm, a 2014 Master of Social Work graduate from Metropolitan State University of Denver. “When I encountered law enforcement, I was given a very different description of what my experience was.”

The United States didn’t have a working definition of human trafficking until Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The federal act describes trafficking in two parts: sex trafficking, which commonly makes the news and stokes our worst fears as a society, and labor trafficking, which is essentially modern slavery.

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“When I started to hear concrete examples of what this looked like, I could slot stuff from my life into that. There were elements where I couldn’t leave; there was sleep deprivation, lack of food, physical threats and my own experience with domestic violence,” Landerholm says. “The shame and guilt that I’d just made bad decisions started to fall apart.

“I was sitting in this human-trafficking class, looking up at this presentation and thinking, ‘This is what happened to me.’ My whole entire world had shifted.”

After class, she chased her professor down the hallway to explain what had happened to her.

“I came to Colorado in 2005, about dead, not only from my own trauma but also having been given a different language and knowledge of what had happened to me,” Landerholm says. “I was just trying to move on with my life. I got here, and education was my way of healing in some sense. I knew I wanted to be a social worker, but I had no intentions of working in this. I didn’t even know what ‘this’ was.”

Landerholm has no interest in sitting on the sidelines in the fight against the abuse she experienced. Her “story” is not the end of the story. She works about 60 hours a week actively advocating to stop it.

PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

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As the action-plan manager for the nonprofit Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking, she engages with community stakeholders and leaders to implement anti-trafficking efforts. She’s active in empowering other survivors to share not just their stories but their expertise in combating a crime they know better than anyone else.

As a member of the Training Standards and Curriculum Task Force of the Colorado Human Trafficking Council, established by Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2014, she helps inform training for law enforcement and service providers. She also consults on training for the Human Trafficking Training and Technical Center and the Office of Victims of Crime in Washington.

And as an affiliate faculty member at MSU Denver, she has taught the same human-trafficking course that once reframed her entire life.

The course is cross-listed in several departments – Criminal Justice, Gender and Women’s Studies, Social Work and more – reflecting the interdisciplinary approach needed to grasp a complex crime and combat it in the real world.

“I don’t share my personal experience in my class until the very end, because it changes the way people see me,” Landerholm says. “Being able to teach from not only my own experience but also my academic background and what I’ve learned in the professional realm as a social worker has really positioned me well to be able to deliver this in a way that is different from someone who hasn’t had this experience, in a way that’s very authentic and respectful.”

TRAFFICKING IN COLORADO Colorado’s geography creates unique opportunities for trafficking to occur. Denver has the only international airport in a nearly 800-mile radius. Interstates 25 and 70 intersect in Denver as they crisscross the country, making the city both remote and easy to get to.

Certain large industries in the state are also magnets for trafficking. The agriculture, oil and gas, and construction trades draw large numbers of seasonal or migrant workers, who are often vulnerable to labor trafficking because of a lack of knowledge of local laws. The hospitality and tourism industries are susceptible to sex trafficking perpetrated by tourists and labor trafficking of back-of-the-house employees.

HER WORK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF Colorado’s coordinated anti-trafficking efforts began in 2005, when the U.S. Department of Justice started funding victim services and the training of law enforcement. The Colorado Network to End Human Trafficking, or CoNEHT, was formed as a statewide collaborative of organizations to serve trafficked persons. But the laws in place lacked the enforcement to be effective.

From 2005 to 2014, there were only a handful of trafficking convictions in the state. In 2014, LCHT completed a three-year research effort called The Colorado Project. That helped pave the way for Colorado House Bill 1273, which strengthened anti-trafficking statutes and created the governor’s council on trafficking.

“In 2014, we rewrote these laws with a lot more teeth, a lot more funding and a lot more focus,” Alejano-Steele says. “There have been 93 convictions since 2014. That speaks to the strength of the laws, and our study really contributed to that legislation being passed.”

The council’s 2017 annual report showed that while federal humantrafficking prosecutions have decreased recently, the number of Colorado criminal cases using the 2014 statutes increased for a third straight year. The average state prison sentence for someone convicted of human trafficking is nearly 50 years.

Alejano-Steele has served on five national task forces in addition to the governor’s council. Conversations in Washington inform coordination in Colorado, including in classrooms at MSU Denver and beyond.

The University’s Human Trafficking Academic Response Team works with survivors to consider and complete a college education. HTART is an informal, cross-campus collection of departments and individuals that has worked with more than 70 survivors in the past decade. Many are referred by law enforcement and attend classes while participating in the criminal-justice process, which often takes about two years in trafficking cases.

Denver’s homeless population is also at risk of being exploited.

AnnJanette Alejano-Steele has been an anti-trafficking advocate in Colorado for more than a decade. She co-founded LCHT and created the human-trafficking course at MSU Denver. She came to the University through a joint appointment in psychology and gender studies, has chaired the Department of Social Work and serves as associate dean of the College of Professional Studies.

“I am the person who has expertise in teaching the things no one wants to talk about,” Alejano-Steele says.

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PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

From left: Mary Landerholm, Violet Gorrell and AnnJanette Alejano-Steele, Ph.D.

One of the HTART advisees was a sous chef whose father was being trafficked by a restaurant owner. The father was forced to pick which of his three kids would be trafficked with him. She’s now a dentist. Other survivors have graduated and gone on to work in social work or law enforcement.

“I chose trafficking, this big, broad issue, as part of my scholar program,” Gorrell says. “It started as a spark of curiosity and ended up as a passion.

I know that I want to turn the work that I’m doing into a career. I would love to make it more on the criminal-justice side of things and really connect and home in on my degree.”

“MSU Denver is ideal because when you learn about the demographics of our university, you’re not going to stick out,” Alejano-Steele says.

For those who can’t dedicate their careers to the issue but want to help, the CoNEHT hotline is staffed 24/7, all year long, primarily by volunteers.

The hotline received nearly 400 calls in 2017.

Last fall, the average age of undergraduates was 25, with 42 percent students of color.

The hotline is supervised by LCHT in partnership with Colorado Legal Services and the Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network.

Volunteers go through 65 hours of training, have calls forwarded to the phone of their choice during designated on-call shifts and provide callers with the proper resources and services.

“If you’re a foreign national or if you’re undocumented, we have resources,” she says. “Or if you were trafficked between the ages of 13 to 24 in the sex industry, and you’re 26 now, you won’t stick out here.”

LCHT also offers education presentations to community groups. Program specialist Kara Napolitano says the nonprofit has educated 27,000 people, including first responders, law enforcement, health care workers, child-welfare workers, church groups and school employees.

HOW CAN I HELP That’s the question Violet Gorrell, a 2018 criminal-justice and criminology graduate, considered after reading the book “Runaway Girl”

by Carissa Phelps as a freshman. Phelps’ story of being trafficked as a child was the selection for MSU Denver’s 1 Book/1 Project/2 Transform program.

“Everyone wants to help, but how do you help? Awareness is the biggest thing – educate yourself and your family or community. Invite us into your community, whether that’s a church or a school or wherever, to do a training,” Napolitano says.

Gorrell was a Puksta Scholar, part of a multiyear scholarship program that requires students to work on a civic issue in the community. The more Gorrell learned about human trafficking, the more she got involved in trying to stop it.

Awareness of trafficking means paying attention to who’s working in restaurants, cleaning your office or grooming the slopes during ski season. Landerholm suggests examining your consumer habits, such as finding out who brews your coffee or grows the beans.

She presented on the topic on campus. She took Landerholm’s humantrafficking course, then served as her teaching assistant the next semester. She took a study-abroad trip to the Hague in the Netherlands, where she got to meet U.S. officials working with Europol on international anti-trafficking efforts.

At a fundamental level, combating human trafficking means addressing the problems that incite traffickers and eliminating the vulnerabilities that put people at risk.

“Most people just want to combat the crime at the moment it happens, and we’re trying to say, ‘It’s bigger than that.’ We’re not going to arrest our way out of it,” Landerholm says. “Why do we exploit each other? What are the root causes? If we’re not having conversations around gender inequality, racism and oppression, we won’t ever get at this.”

Gorrell did fundraising and advocacy work for Extended Hands of Hope, an organization that provides emergency relief and long-term shelter to underage sex-trafficking survivors. She volunteered for a year on the statewide CoNEHT human-trafficking hotline, which takes calls from survivors and law-enforcement referrals.

PHOTO MARK WOOLCOTT

PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN FALL 2018

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VICKI GOLICH, PH.D., IS GREAT AT HER JOB. BUT WHAT

The Consummate EXACTLY IS

HER JOB?

STORY DAN VACCARO | PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

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The most common question people ask Vicki Golich, Ph.D., is this: What the heck does a provost do?

And yet, her task list – and title – only scratches the surface of her impact on MSU Denver over the past nine years.

“Somebody recently joked that I could make a bunch of deductions on my taxes and get away with it because nobody has the slightest idea of what a provost is,” she says.

PROVOST AS ENTREPRENEUR

Golich notes that the title was historically used for the person who kept the keys to a jail.

“Not that I’m trying to draw any parallels,” she says, unleashing her trademark laugh.

As chief academic officer, Golich oversees the faculty and staff who deliver the University’s most essential product – education. She helps develop curricula, policies and programs aimed at making sure students have an excellent educational experience. For most of her time at the University, she has also served as the head of student affairs, meaning her reach extended well beyond the classroom.

As a young woman, Golich considered two career paths.

The first was following in her parents’ footsteps into academia. The second was opening a small business – a yarn shop.

Golich loved creating things. She made her own clothes in high school and even her wedding dress. To this day, she can do almost any kind of needlework. She sews, needlepoints and knits.

She imagined sharing that skill with the world as a smallbusiness owner.

And while she may have ultimately opted for a doctorate in international political economy and relations, she held on to her entrepreneurial tendencies, too.

She has an uncanny knack for seeing gaps in a system and developing programs to fill them.

Professor Professional Provost Promoter Producer Protector Provider FALL 2018

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A few years after Golich arrived on campus, for example, she noticed that the University had no program to support students who were emancipated from the foster-care system. Her previous employer, California State University San Marcos, had a similar student body and a large, successful program to support emancipated youth. And that meant MSU Denver students were likely falling through the cracks.

It appears to be working: The program started in 2014 with six students and no full-time leader. Today, it supports 30 students and has a full-time coordinator who was emancipated from the foster-care system herself.

Matthew Kring, director of student support and retention in Roadways, recalls how Golich encouraged leaders in his area to create a proposal for a new program, which became Fostering Success (now known as the Educational and Personal Independence Celebrated Scholars Program).

“A provost could very easily be removed from the issues that affect students,” Kester says. “But not Vicki. Her mind is always on how we can better serve students.”

“This is a very vulnerable population of students,” Kring says. “They need additional support, and our program gives them that. It’s been really important for them to have a place on campus they can call home.”

Wilton Flemon, professor of chemistry, has taught at MSU Denver for the past 50 years. He’s long been an advocate for recruiting and retaining faculty of color.

Kring says Golich continues to support the program at the administrative level, but beyond that, she often donates toiletries and blankets for students.

“The most important thing is that these students know they are not alone,” Golich says. “They are not the only homeless students or emancipated students. I thought that if we could build a cohort, and they could be around other people who they can identify with, then they’d stay in school.”

For Lori Kester, associate vice president for enrollment management, one of Golich’s greatest assets is staying connected to the University’s purpose.

PROVOST AS ADVOCATE

“Our diverse students deserve role models,” he says. And he should know.

As a young man coming up in academia, and attending historically African American colleges, he recalls how seeing faculty of color made him feel like he could become a professor too.

As leader of the Faculty Senate Diversity Committee, he has led initiatives to make the University’s faculty more representative of the student body.

And he has found an ally in Golich.

“We are making good strides in attracting and retaining diverse faculty. But we can do even more – and we will.”

- Vicki Golich, Ph.D.

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“The first time she came to one of our meetings, I could see she was committed to increasing the number of racialminority faculty,” he said. “And she has demonstrated continued interest over the years.”

Flemon says it was Golich who encouraged him and other faculty to develop a program to achieve that goal. And she was always available to answer questions and concerns.

Together, they created the Provost Faculty Senate Minority Postdoctoral Teaching Fellows program.

The program creates a pipeline for academics from diverse backgrounds. Most postdoctoral students can’t work at the same institution where they do their fellowship, but MSU Denver makes an exception. And if they make a good impression and develop as teachers, the University moves them directly into a tenure-track line. Right now, there are two Latino men in the program. The goal is to bring in two new fellows every other year.

“We are making good strides in attracting and retaining diverse faculty,” Golich says. “But we can do even more – and we will.”

Golich has been an advocate for faculty from her first day on campus.

When she arrived in 2009, only three faculty members were on sabbatical. She recalls faculty asking if they should even bother applying.

Golich knew that to be an effective university, faculty needed time to delve deeper into their academic disciplines and saw sabbaticals as an opportunity to let them do so.

In 2013, she asked the Board of Trustees to set aside $500,000 in base funding for sabbaticals. Since faculty can apply once every seven years, that meant there would be enough funding for every faculty member over a sevenyear period.

Golich describes the Board’s approval as a “moment of glory.”

In 2018, 23 faculty members applied for sabbatical and all requests were approved. Applications came from 17 departments.

“We’ve had faculty members write novels, an opera, books and articles as well as study-abroad and curriculum proposals,” Golich says. “That is faculty reaching their full potential!”

PROVOST AS CHAMPION Golich’s accomplishments are myriad and extraordinary – a list could fill every page of this magazine.

She is a frequently published author and recognized expert in pedagogy. She has presented her work at conferences across the globe, has contributed to and edited prestigious academic journals and serves on numerous boards and committees.

the University’s Applied Learning Center, Service Learning Program and Civic Engagement Program, and has played a huge part in developing international learning experiences for students.

Her most recent achievement was winning the William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The honor recognized her dedication to engaging undergraduate students in the democratic process.

Kester says Golich’s acceptance speech highlighted the work everyone else had done.

And that pretty much sums it up – Golich is a champion for the work of others, and that sets her apart as a provost. She sends personal notes to every faculty member who is featured in the news or publishes an article. Every year, she organizes a faculty tenure and promotion celebration. She gives staff the support and guidance they need, without ever micromanaging.

Kester describes Golich as the “best boss I’ve ever had.”

“I don’t know how she does it all, how she stays on top of everything, how she never lets anything fall through the cracks,” Kester says. “She’s been doing this for a long time, and to still bring the energy she brings to work every day, how can you not admire someone like that?”

For President Janine Davidson, Ph.D., her No. 2 defines what it means to be a great provost.

“She is a tremendous leader – smart, humble and funny,” Davidson says. “She gives so much of herself to the University, and she’s a genuine ambassador of our mission.

She’s everything a provost should be and more.”

Her commitment to hands-on, immersive learning experiences is second to none. She had a hand in creating FALL 2018

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TALE OF WOE 16

FALL 2018

HOW A SHORTAGE OF PILOTS COULD CHANGE FLIGHT AS WE KNOW IT. STORY AMANDA MILLER

S

Some students will always just want to be pilots.

Students such as Jonathan Pass, who grew up in Estes Park and started flying as a teen. The economy, the requirements – none of that would’ve stood in his way.

But others are having second thoughts, the result of a tough new national rule, known familiarly as “the 1,500 rule,” that raised the number of flight hours new pilots need to log in the cockpit before getting hired by an airline. It went from 250 hours to 1,500 hours for new first officers (a.k.a. co-pilots).

The pool of pilots was already shrinking, and now the rule instituted in 2013 appears to be stemming students’ desire to fly commercially. That extra flight time adds, essentially, a two-year wait and more than $100,000 in expenses over and above the expectation from just five years ago, according to the Regional Airline Association.

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The smaller airlines that make up the RAA are feeling the pressure.

Their captains are getting wooed away by the major airlines, which can’t fill pilot seats in the conventional way. It’s now hardly possible for pilots to progress along the established – indeed, entrenched – career pipeline, like how Donna Wolfe went from Metropolitan State University of Denver to working as a flight instructor, to a first-officer job with a regional airline, to becoming a 737 pilot at a major airline.

“In today’s scenario, I would never have been able to get hired,” says Wolfe, who’s since added instructor to her duties at the airline.

“I don’t know why we’ve made it so hard to get into the industry.”

Jeffrey Forrest, Ph.D., chair of MSU Denver’s Department of Aviation and Aerospace Science, said he hasn’t experienced the effects on campus yet – students are still signing up – but that could be partly because of the University’s low cost. When Pass chose MSU Denver for his professional flight-officer degree, his total cost was “a fraction” of what he would’ve paid going out of state.

“There’s a significant, 20-year shortage ahead of us with no real solution that’s out there,” Forrest says.

The Federal Aviation Administration declared pilot shortages in the regional airlines this year – “carrier consolidation and new rules on pilot training have left regional carriers saddled with either excess capacity or a lack of pilots,” according to the FAA Aerospace Forecast – and several other organizations are predicting future shortfalls nationally and worldwide.

The University of North Dakota’s U.S. Airline Pilot Supply Forecast, published in 2016, predicts a shortage of more than 14,000 pilots in the U.S. airline fleet by 2026. In terms of hiring, training provider CAE projects 225,000 new airline pilots will be needed worldwide by 2027. Boeing Co. puts the number at 637,000 needed globally by 2036.

Young pilots such as Pass, meanwhile, trust they’ll have no trouble moving into a captain’s job at an airline.

But one robust flight program won’t fill the gap.

MSU Denver announced its newest pilot pipeline in 2018 – a first of its kind. The United Career Path Program, established with United Airlines, is the first formal pathway from a university’s aviation department to a major U.S. airline.

WHAT’S CAUSING IT

Complicating matters even further, like the regional airlines, which historically hired co-pilots with fewer hours, flight schools are having a tough time holding on to instructors.

“Rep. Coffman really wanted to go back and re-examine the facts about why we have a shortage,” Forrest says.

The Government Accountability Office looked at challenges facing aviation schools in a report this year in which nearly all schools surveyed said recruiting and retaining flight instructors was a key challenge. A majority said it was their greatest challenge in producing more pilots.

Forrest has been advising the staff of U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) on the pilot shortage this year.

A few circumstances factor in.

For one, numbers of all pilots ages 20 to 59 with private, commercial or Airline Transport Pilot licenses were down 20.6 percent, or a rate of 33 fewer a day, from 2009 to 2017, according to the FAA. Add to that a wave of forthcoming retirements – the industry hires cyclically, depending on the economy, and makes pilots retire by age 65.

Then there’s the 1,500 rule, known formally as the First Officer Qualifications Rule, part of the congressional response to a 2009 crash in New York state that killed 49. It mandates that new airline first officers have to earn the FAA’s Airline Transport Pilot certificate, just as captains must.

A survey by the University of North Dakota asked 800 students at 49 flight-training schools whether they were influenced by the rule. A third of respondents said they had thought twice about becoming commercial pilots because of it, and 8 percent said they’d decided against an airline career. Only 17 percent had never planned an airline career to begin with. The survey didn’t account for students who might have ruled out aviation altogether, the RAA points out.

“It really hurt a lot of things, particularly rural communities,” Forrest says.

Twenty airports lost service from 2013 to 2017, according to an RAA analysis, which also contends that while costing students more, the 1,500 rule doesn’t, in fact, make airline pilots safer.

“Pilots now spend up to two years after graduating building flight hours in aircraft that bear no resemblance to the technologically advanced jets used by today’s regional airlines,” said the RAA’s Pilot Workforce and Training Solutions report from May. The report notes that pilots adding hours after graduation are “typically flying in fair weather and in uncontrolled airspace.”

WHAT IT MEANS FOR PILOTS

Pass, the young pilot with just over three years of regional airline experience, has about 2,500 flight hours. He’s a Republic Airline first officer flying with a captain, two flight attendants and about 70 passengers in Republic’s fleet of Embraer 170/175 regional jets.

He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and flies about 85 hours a month – “pretty normal,” he says – about 15 days on and 15 days off. The schedule could take him anywhere in the country.

Even while piling on expenses in terms of flight hours, new pilots who get their ATP certificate can expect it to begin paying off right away, with starting salaries at regional airlines around $60,000, according to the RAA. And overall, airline pilots’ pay has been going up fast – adding to the burden on smaller airlines, which can’t pay as much. The median annual salary for an airline pilot was $127,820 in 2016, according to the Department of Labor, up more than $10,000 from the year before.

The military is also facing a shortage that it attributes to civilian demand – to the allure of the big airlines. That was part of why Coffman, the U.S. representative from Colorado who is also a member of the House Armed Services Committee, was keeping tabs on the shortage.

The airlines are “able to offer a sweeter deal in terms of quality of work life and, more importantly, pay,” says MSU Denver’s Forrest.

But for those who can’t afford 1,500 hours of flight time, prospects are dim. The new rule is “so unrealistic that you’re kind of excluding people who aren’t rich,” says Wolfe, who graduated from MSU Denver with her bachelor’s in 2003.

The RAA concurs: “The added cost of getting additional flight hours boosted the price tag for becoming a commercial airline pilot to about $200,000. … It is becoming financially impossible for all but the wealthiest students to become pilots.”

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KEEPING COSTS DOWN IN COLORADO

With no relief from the 1,500 rule in sight – “The public doesn’t buy (reducing the requirement),” Forrest says. “They don’t understand the process” – the best thing the University may be able to do to get more pilots in the pipeline could be to help keep costs down.

On average, flight training ranges from about $50,000 to $80,000.

Combining it with tuition often exceeds $100,000, the GAO report found, and costs vary widely: “For example, one 4-year private for-profit collegiate aviation school lists estimated annual undergraduate tuition of nearly $36,000, not including room and board or flight training costs.”

Even in lower-cost programs, the GAO’s investigation describes a “financing challenge” for some students – the fact that federal student aid won’t cover both a college degree and training, so many students have to turn to private loans.

“Not all students have the means to do so,” according to the GAO, “as private lenders may require a co-signer with good credit and a minimum income level.”

One approach the report suggests to help save students money is taking shape at MSU Denver now – making it easier to transfer credits from a pilot-degree track at a two-year school.

The University’s new Aviation Academic and Flight Training Partnership with Colorado Northwestern Community College allows students from CNCC’s associate degree in aviation technology to transfer course credit into one of MSU Denver’s bachelor’s degrees.

The two schools will jointly offer flight training as well, both from the “beautiful little airport” in Rangely, as Forrest describes it; and in metro Denver, from Front Range Airport out on the plains east of Aurora.

CNCC offers FAA-approved flight training as part of its associate degree. The agreement called for CNCC to have aircraft in position at Front Range Airport in time for fall 2018.

Forrest thinks students who take advantage of the option could save 15 percent to 20 percent on flight training and that it could serve as a model for cooperating with more community colleges.

The department is also working on getting the partnership certified by the FAA, which is an avenue for lowering students’ required flight time. If approved, the requirement for grads of the MSU Denver program to earn an ATP certificate with restricted privileges could eventually be as low as 1,000 hours.

PARTNERING WITH AIRLINES

Pass, the pilot now at Republic Airline, connected with his first job as a professional pilot through a University partnership with the former Great Lakes Airlines, now considered a casualty of the 20

FALL 2018

contraction in regional airlines. It made news by closing this past spring.

Still, “I was very fortunate,” Pass says, to go right to work for an airline. “A lot of people in my same boat were not that fortunate.”

Wolfe, the 737 pilot and instructor at a major airline, got to zip through the conventional flight-instructor phase of a pilot’s early career thanks to an internship she’d had during college, when that airline called her back in.

MSU Denver announced its newest pilot pipeline in 2018 – a first of its kind. The United Career Path Program, established with United Airlines, is the first formal pathway from a university’s aviation department to a major U.S. airline.

It doesn’t guarantee students a job but gets them on track for an opportunity if they meet a checklist of requirements, and they’ll be eligible for mentoring and coaching along the way.

MSU Denver takes part in pipeline programs with regional carriers as well, including Envoy Air’s Pilot Pipeline Program, Republic Airline’s Flight Time Initiative, SkyWest Airlines’ Pilot Cadet Program, ExpressJet Airlines’ Airline Pilot Pathway Program and Mesa Airlines’ Certified Flight Instructor Cadet Program.

MORE WAYS TO FLY – AND LEARN

Before he even started at MSU Denver, Pass already had his private-pilot certificate. While he was still a student, he worked at MSU Denver’s World Indoor Airport – another “excellent opportunity” where he “made a lot of good connections.” Plus he added informationtechnology experience to his resume.

His classmates, meanwhile, competed on MSU Denver’s Precision Flight Team while they trained. (The team competes in basic flight skills such as navigation and landing.) Now a new club is taking off. In 2017, the Aerobatics and Glider Club (pictured in flight) won the national collegiate championship despite being less than 2 years old.

Having surpassed 1,500 hours, Pass is naturally looking ahead to working for a big airline someday. He has his eye on Southwest.

“It’s a fun environment, and it’s somewhere that values their employees,” Pass says – “an everybody’s-in-it-together-type mentality.”

Meanwhile, Forrest has been mulling over ideas for how to spur hiring of pilots with fewer than 1,500 hours – such as promoting air-charter and air-taxi businesses – “to bolster that area of the industry and see if we don’t actually increase the demand,” he muses.

“Because that side of the industry doesn’t require the 1,500-hour rule to get into the game.”

FOR JOCELYN BAÑALES, A FAMILY-LED RESTAURANT IS THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS – AND AMAZING MOLE. STORY CORY PHARE

| PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

FOOD AS A FAMILY LEGACY FALL 2018

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It’s happy hour at the newly opened Necio Latin Eatery when the mountainous ahumado tinga nachos arrive. The smoked, shredded chicken has bite from the adobo’s chipotle chiles, tempered by Oaxacan cheese, flavorful pico de gallo and poblano creme sauce.

Tortilla chips, from Sunnyside neighbor Pochitos, give a light crunch – and make a compelling case to forbid lesser establishments from calling cardboard slathered in hand-pumped neon dreck “nachos.”

Gas stations and ballparks nationwide, you’re on notice.

What makes food good? For Jocelyn Bañales and Necio, it’s a family affair.

The 2018 hospitality, tourism and events graduate of Metropolitan State University of Denver manages all aspects of the back of the house for her restaurant. Nestled in Denver’s 22

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Sunnyside neighborhood, Necio is five blocks from her childhood home – fitting, as her culinary curiosities began early.

The family’s annual trips to Mexico to visit Bañales’ grandmother further cemented a love of food.

“Mom and Dad met each other working in a restaurant, so in a way, food has always brought our family together,” she says. “They would always cook traditional meals for us from scratch. I grew up in the kitchen with my family and fell in love with the flavors, spices and recipes.”

“We could always count on Mama Luz’s signature mole with rice and beans upon our arrival,” Bañales says. “The recipes she’s passed down, along with those Mom and Dad have created and shared, are so important to us; they help us serve and feed our community.

Necio continues this shared familial experience: Her father, Jose Angel Sr., brings 28 years of hospitality experience to the role of executive chef, combining flavors from his hometown of Durango, Mexico, with the traditional Guatemalan dishes of Bañales’ mother, Angela. Brother and executive chef Jose Angel Jr. keeps a cool head leading the kitchen as the orders rush in from the bustling dining room and terraced patio, where sister Lisa seats and helps serve diners. And elder brother Marvin Alexander has jumped into the accounting and administrative side of the business.

“Food has become our family legacy.”

It’s a good sign when restaurant staffers give recommendations with unflinching confidence.

That was the case for the main entree: chicken mole enchiladas, which the server endorses without hesitation. Queso frescodusted black beans and fluffy Spanish rice adorned with avocado flank rolled tortillas as vehicles for succulent marinated meat.

The Bañales family in the kitchen at Necio Latin Eatery. From left: sister Lisa, mother Angela, brother Jose Angel Jr. and father Jose Angel Sr.

Make no mistake about it, though – the star of this show is the mole chile meco. Bañales’ recipe from her grandmother calls for an extended soak of the chipotle peppers before they’re fried with onions and garlic for that special touch.

“Everybody has a dream,” says chef Jackson Lamb, professor of restaurant management.

“What we do is take people who have such a dream and help them put it onto paper to see how it works.”

The way that plate arrives matters too.

This includes doing research for a detailed demographic and competitive analysis of the neighborhood to evaluate patronage and sustainability. The class dives deep into further conceptual outlines, including such items as countertops, tablecloths, silverware, china and interior design.

“It’s about the taste and flavor, about catching our customers’ eyes with the presentation,” Bañales says. “We want to attract folks from the area and get them to spread the word. It’s good for the neighborhood, and for business.”

Lamb also notes the solid approach of launching Necio with the already-successful side-by-side meal-planning storefront for My Vision Nutrition, co-founded by Bañales’ brother.

She credits a large part of her comprehensive approach to a Concept Development for Restaurants class she took at MSU Denver.

It’s more than good; it’s smart. And for Bañales, it’s a real-world success story set to take flight like the quetzal – the brightly colored national bird of Guatemala – depicted on Necio signage, also a product of her concept class.

The result? A crema fresca-drizzled, smoky-sweet delight that will insist you clean your plate.

“I learned a lot from that class and from MSU Denver,” she says. “I’m combining what I studied with what I know in the kitchen.

“It’s going to be a lot of long days and hard work – but I got this.”

Any second thoughts about being too full to finish with an order of churros vanishes when they arrive. Dusted with cinnamon and topped with marzipan-infused vanilla ice cream, the tasty torpedoes reward with gooey centers of cajeta that make the raspberry and chocolate dipping sauces seem almost superfluous. Almost.

They’re a specialty sent out by Bañales’ brother, who, like his sister, stops by to ensure the food is good.

And yes – yes, it is.

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IT TOOK SCOTT MARGOLIS 21 YEARS TO GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE. TODAY, HE’S A CYBERSECURITY LEADER AT A BIG FOUR ACCOUNTING FIRM. STORY LYNNE WINTER, ’17

| PHOTO MICHAEL PARAS

When Scott Margolis graduated from Fairview High in Boulder, he did what was expected and headed to college. He had no way of knowing it was the beginning of a journey that would take 21 years.

“I started out at a large university and hated it,” says Margolis, executive director of national advisory cybersecurity, data protection and data privacy at Ernst & Young LLP. “I was disheartened after just one semester sitting in lecture halls, watching a professor through a telescope. It never felt right.”

Margolis transferred into the Aviation Program at Metropolitan State University of Denver the following fall with a planned major in “professional pilot.” While taking a few classes each semester, he worked a full-time job at Stapleton Airport.

After conversations with colleagues, he switched degrees to aviation management.

A required course unexpectedly paved the way for Margolis’ educational epiphany and future career.

“Taking Introduction to Systems Analysis and Design – taught by Dr. Gwynne Larsen – changed my life,” he says. “She was amazing, and the class resonated with me; I found myself.”

Margolis changed his major again – to computer management systems – as his career in the airline industry uprooted him in 1984, putting a pause on his time at MSU Denver. He continued to take classes locally where he could as he moved to Atlanta, Chicago and New York City. Upon returning to Denver in 1993, he picked up where he had left off.

When Margolis took a position with Compuware, which required moving to Dallas in 1999, he found a creative – if exhausting – way to reach his goal.

During his last two semesters, he flew back to Denver every week to attend class.

In spring 2001, Margolis saw his two-decade commitment to education realized when he graduated with a B.S. in computer management systems. “My mom and dad inspired me to keep going, and my wife kept things together at home with the kids while I finished” he says. “My mother was so proud of me that she went to the graduation ceremony to get the program, even though I didn’t walk.”

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Earning his degree has taken Margolis’ career in unanticipated directions. While he was working for Bank of America in 2007, cybersecurity and financial crimes were emerging as threats.

He quickly got up to speed on the roles of risk, compliance and cybersecurity in the financial sector. He and his team would ultimately build the infrastructure and processes necessary to be compliant with global privacy and security standards in less than two years.

Margolis went on to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers and, most recently, Ernst & Young. He credits his education with opening doors. “Earning a diploma from MSU Denver, plus being persistent as hell, got me where I am in my career,” he says. “Experience is great, but Big Four firms require a degree.”

Margolis views MSU Denver’s new B.S. in cybersecurity as an opportunity for the University and its students, as well as for businesses, to benefit from having a skilled workforce. “When I started my degree, the worst thing someone could do was mess up your stack of punch cards,” he says. “Today, it is more sophisticated – from identity theft to fraud. We need smart people who can stop threats.”

As he sees it, the University is stepping in to provide students with the practical ability to solve real-life problems. “The cybersecurity program the school is building supports students in understanding not just the technology but the environment, business, legal and compliance requirements,” he says. “Graduates of the program are going to be well-positioned to protect and defend the technology environments of their employers.”

Margolis credits much of his own success to his experience at MSU Denver.

“To this day, I fall back on what I learned in that first computer class and the many classes thereafter,” he says. “Without those, I would not be able to build processes that clients use to protect and defend their technology infrastructure every day.”

P WER IN PERSISTENCE

TRENDING UP

FOLLOWING A BOLD DECISION TO GO IT ALONE, MERANDA VIEYRA’S CAREER IS ON A STEEP UPWARD CURVE. STORY MARK COX

| PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

One secret to business success is finding a gap in the market.

Here’s the thing, though – finding one of those gaps is a lot harder than it looks. Bankruptcycourt listings are filled with thousands of bright ideas that didn’t quite pan out.

But Meranda Vieyra has a sharper eye than most.

And about seven years ago, the legal-marketing expert – then working for a major Colorado law firm – noticed something very interesting.

“Whenever young lawyers moved on to smaller outfits, I saw that they generally didn’t have many marketing options,” she recalls. “Obviously, most small law firms and solo practitioners can’t afford $100K a year for an in-house marketing director.

But these firms clearly still needed help to promote themselves.”

So two years ago, Vieyra acted on her hunch and launched her company, Denver Legal Marketing, to provide support to smaller law firms. And the novice entrepreneur immediately sensed she might be on to something. “I actually had clients before I’d even printed out my business cards,” she says.

Still, going it alone was scary.

“My first morning as a business owner was intense,” she says. “I felt like I was standing in front of a huge mountain … of work. I had to start everything – logo, brand, messaging – from square one, then network like crazy to get the word out organically.”

But one thing in particular concentrated her focus.

“Believe me, being without a paycheck is a big motivator,” she says. “Luckily, I also had a great business resource in my husband, Gordon, who’s a skilled entrepreneur and helped me from the outset.”

Gordon’s involvement is fitting because Vieyra’s decision to start her kind-of family business was entirely rooted in the business of, well, family.

“When I launched, my oldest daughter was starting elementary school,” she says, “and I knew I’d need more flexibility to be fully present in her school life. Spending time with my family was my biggest inspiration for doing this whole thing.”

Two years on, the proprietor of the only Latinaowned legal marketing company in Colorado has zero regrets. “Having a remote business has brought amazing flexibility to my life,” Vieyra says. “My clients don’t care where I’m based, and I take full advantage of that by working from all over the world. Case in point: I am currently doing this interview from Jaco, Costa Rica.”

Success has also concentrated Vieyra’s focus on the personal goals she’d like to accomplish.

For example, she would love to take her family to live in Barcelona at some point. And she hopes one day to create scholarships at the institutions that helped realize her potential – Metropolitan State University of Denver (she graduated with a degree in Chicano studies and criminal justice in 2010), Adams City High School and Northglenn High School.

She also considers mentoring others important.

She tells young women hoping to follow her entrepreneurial path, “Treat people well – always.”

“Having a personal brand that people can trust really matters as an entrepreneur,” she says.

“Your reputation, whether in person or online, is absolutely worth protecting.”

And Vieyra is living proof that doing the right thing can pay dividends. Last year, she was astonished to find herself included in the Denver Business Journal’s prestigious “40 Under 40” list.

“When I received the email, I just kept reading it over because I couldn’t believe it,” she recalls. “The competition is intense, so it was a huge deal.”

Vieyra took her family to the awards event, where a magical day encapsulated the journey she’s been on these past two years.

“I was explaining to my oldest daughter Itzel what a big occasion it was,” she says, “and told her, ‘This won’t happen again in Mommy’s life.’ ‘Yes it will,’ she shot back. ‘When I win it.’

“That moment, along with walking on stage holding her hand to accept the award, will be forever etched in my mind. It was like a dream come true.”

In 2018, Meranda Vieyra won an MSU DENVER ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 10 UNDER 10 AWARD. FALL 2018

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PHILLIP DANIELSON, PH.D., HAS SPENT DECADES PIONEERING ADVANCES IN FORENSIC SCIENCE TO HELP SOLVE CRIMES – JUST DON’T MENTION A CERTAIN TV SERIES. STORY MARK COX

| PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

Let’s get one thing clear from the outset: Phillip Danielson’s working life is nothing like those “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” shows on TV. “It’s the first thing people ask when they hear what I do,” he says. In fact, the DNA expert – who serves as a professor of molecular biology at the University of Denver – is accomplished across several scientific fields. But it’s always his work in crime-related forensics that grabs people’s attention.

“Basically, my research aims to improve the science behind forensic testing and provide more reliable test results for people in the criminal-justice system,” he says. “My motto is: truth through science. So I’m constantly striving to ensure that what appears before a jury in court is accurate, helpful and scientifically sound.”

Danielson’s career journey wasn’t nearly so straightforward. He graduated a year early from Abraham Lincoln High School in Denver, but being the first in his family to even consider college, had no plan for where to attend. He was recruited to study biology at MSU Denver, and despite working throughout, graduated in 1983 after only two years.

He started his career as a traditional biologist, studying subjects such as molecular evolution and neurobiology. “But when people asked, ‘Why does what you do matter?’ I stumbled a little, to be honest,” he recalls. “The connection between my early work and solving real-life problems was pretty tenuous, and I yearned for something with a more tangible payoff.”

Danielson found his calling almost by accident, when friends in the police department told him of the challenges they were facing in their laboratories. “I listened to their stories,” he says, “and thought, ‘I could help with that.’ And that’s how it started.”

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But what about those TV show comparisons – isn’t his crime-related work even a little glamorous? In a word, no. “I can’t stress how unlike an episode of ‘CSI’ my working life is,” Danielson says. “Lots of my students arrive starry-eyed after seeing forensics shows, and my first job is to break their hearts and tell them the reality is nothing like TV. “For one thing, the U.S. court system is incredibly methodical and lacks drama. Also, those ‘CSI’ guys seem to do an awful lot – visit crime scenes, investigate cases, even chase criminals – where actual forensic analysts generally don’t know all the facts of the cases.

And nor should we; that’s the job of the judge and jury.”

Something else the TV shows don’t tell you: Recent advances in forensic science have led to more uncertainty with test results.

Danielson, who is keenly aware of the irony, explains: “Years ago, we’d find a DNA trace on a handgun that matched a suspect, and that was that. But the increased sensitivity of forensic testing means we’ll now find traces of multiple people and not know who handled the gun last. Even more problematically, if I shake your hand and then pick up the gun, your DNA may also be on the weapon.”

It’s a concern, but Danielson is generally too busy to stop and worry about it.

As a renowned scientific figure, he’s always in demand to consult, work with law-enforcement agencies and speak at conferences.

Which of these many hats does he most enjoy wearing?

“At this point in my career, I actually get the most joy from plain old teaching – whether to my students, professionals, police investigators, lawyers or even social groups,” he says. “There is nothing quite so exciting as getting people excited about knowledge and opening their minds to new possibilities.”

Given such a hectic schedule, does Danielson have an off switch?

“Not really,” he says with a laugh. “But I do love to travel occasionally and visit places off the beaten path, experiencing good food and wines from different regions around the world. My husband and I also collect modern art and have a small collection. After a long day, I find few things more relaxing than sitting with a nice Scotch and contemplating the works on the wall.

That’s where I find peace.”

MEET THE MOLECULAR MAN

People Alumni News + Notes 1975

Jack “Beetle” Bailey (B.S. aviation management, ’75) refers to himself as a “Hangar Bum,” which really just means he tries to spend a majority of his time in “old, musty airplane hangars.” And he has since he was 10 years old. After a distinguished military career, he studied aviation management at MSU Denver and graduated magna cum laude. He went on to a 32-year career as an airline pilot with Frontier and Continental.

All told, he has more than 34,175 hours of flight time. He attributes a great deal of his career success to the knowledge he garnered during his time at the University, where he was a member of the Alpha Eta Rho (AHP) Aviation Fraternity and part of the first AHP flight team. He has volunteered to be a guest speaker to share his “hangar stories” from his 55 years in aviation.

For a full schedule and livestreaming, visit:

msudenver.edu/inauguration

T U E S D AY

S E P T. 4 LUNCH PANEL: DEVELOPING A TALENTED AND DIVERSE LOCAL WORKFORCE 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.

W E D N E S DAYS E P T.

5

BREAKFAST PANEL: THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION 8 – 9:30 a.m.

T H U R S DAY S E P T.

6

CYBERSECURITY PANEL: SECURING THE FUTURE 2 – 3:30 p.m.

F R I D AYS E P T.

Sept. 4 - 7, 2018 msudenver.edu/inauguration

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INVESTITURE CEREMONY 3 p.m.

I N AU G U R ATI O N SO I R ÉE 5 p.m. – Cocktail Reception, 7 p.m. – Dinner

Register: events.msudenver.edu/inauguration

SPONSORS Thank you to our sponsors:

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People In Memory 1978

Dave Woolever (B.S. mechanical engineering technology, ’78) spent the last 13 years of his career at Lockheed Martin and retired last November. He was the lead quality-assurance engineer for structures and mechanisms at the company’s Waterton campus in Littleton.

1984

Betta Ferrendelli (B.A. communications, minor in journalism, ’84) marked her seven-year anniversary in June as a writer and news editor with the O&P EDGE Magazine in Denver, an award-winning publication covering the orthotics and prosthetics industry worldwide. Betta has been an award-winning journalist since 1989, working at newspapers in Denver, Seattle and Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is also an award-winning author of mystery and contemporary fiction.

1986

Gina Doucett (B.A. English, ’86; teacher licensure, ’98) retired this year after 30 years in public education. She began her career as a library paraprofessional at Smoky Hill High School in 1986, then worked as a library para at Columbine High School from 1989 to 1996. She returned to MSU Denver in 1997 to earn her teacher licensure. She taught at Wheat Ridge Middle School and has been on the English department staff at Columbine High School since 1999.

1993

Holly Alden (B.A. behavioral sciences, ’93) was elected to the board of directors of Destination Maternity. She also helped found Skullcandy and Stance Socks.

1999

Peter J. McGahey (B.A. human performance and sport, ’99) will graduate from Minnesota State University, Mankato, in May with a Doctor of Education in educational leadership. His dissertation title is “What Happens Now? Coaching and Leading Following a Student-Athlete Death - A Phenomenological Study.” He is looking forward to mentoring athletes, coaches,

administrators and athletic departments in the future. Currently, he’s serving as the head women’s soccer coach at Central Michigan University.

2001

Eric Williams (B.S. criminal justice and criminology, ’01) was appointed Denver’s deputy director of the Department of Public Safety.

2007

Jessica Burnham (B.A. art, ’07) was appointed director of the Master of Arts in design and innovation program at Southern Methodist University.

2010

Jason Scott Cordova (B.S. aerospace operations, ’10) works as a customer-service agent for Southwest Airlines. He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy.

2013

Ben Patterson (B.A. painting, ’13) is an accomplished full-time artist. He graduated with honors from MSU Denver in 2013.

Since then, he has participated in the Denver Chalk Art Festival and traveled around Pittsburgh, where he lived for three years, to create large chalk drawings for events.

For the past year and a half, he’s been operating out of Hillsboro, Oregon, and is busy with gallery shows across the country, commissions from customers around the world, and sales from his website store.

Ryan Fitt (B.S. chemistry, ’13) graduated in May 2018 with an M.D. from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and will begin a residency in emergency medicine at Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania.

2014

Alfred Rojas (B.A. hospitality, tourism and events, ’14) opened the restaurant Chocklo this past spring.

SHARE YOUR NEWS Email your class notes to magazine@msudenver.edu

1970s

Brenda Haas-Krieger (B.S. biology, ’73) April 2018 Dwight R. VanCleve (B.S. business management, ’71) February 2017

1980s

Margret “Peggi” Grier (B.S. accounting, ’80) April 2018

2000s

Rivena Dillon was a former student at MSU Denver. She died in January 2018.

Brennan Linnet was a senior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in mathematics with a concentration in probability and statistics and a minor in computer science. He died in May 2018 and was awarded an honorary degree in spring 2018.

Jared Lee Saunders was pursuing a Bachelor of Science in computer information systems. He died in February 2018 and received a posthumous degree in spring 2018.

2010s

Scott Edward Kucharski was a student in the Master of Education program with a concentration in elementary education. He worked in the Alumni Relations Call Center and was thought of highly among his peers. He died on July 15, 2018.

Faculty and staff

John Buechner, Ph.D., served as interim president of MSU Denver in 2005. He was chair of the search advisory committee that hired former President Stephen M. Jordan, Ph.D. Buechner’s noteworthy career included serving as president of the University of Colorado Boulder, a member of the Colorado Statehouse and as mayor of Boulder. He died in July 2018.

Robert “Bob” Dalrymple was the head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Technology at MSU Denver from 1976 to 1978. Prior to teaching at the University, he had retired as a full colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers in 1965. He served as a paratroop company commander in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. He died in May 2018 at the age of 100.

Jon Gibson Stanley, Ph.D., spent 40 years teaching at six institutions.

He loved teaching so much that even after he retired, he continued his passion by coming back to teach biology at MSU Denver. During his years as a professor, he published 100 scientific publications and reports, one of which was a book for non-science majors titled “Form and Function: Natural Science in a Technological Society.” He spoke to over 90 peer groups at scientific meetings. He was also a keynote speaker for the International Conference on Genetics in Aquaculture in Galway, Ireland.

His expertise led him to testify before Congress on non-indigenous species invading the Great Lakes. He died in October 2017.

Kathy Rigsby was the former director of the Equity Assistance Center and a recent retiree. She served MSU Denver through the EAC for approximately 7 years. She died in July 2018.

John B. Rushton was a Business Administration professor for 20 years at MSU Denver until his retirement in 1987. He also taught at University of Colorado and Denver Public Schools. He died in September 2017.

Arliss Sunderwirth Webster (B.A. education, ’78) spent more than a decade with MSU Denver in Student Services, Student Life and Extended Campus. She touched the lives of countless students and colleagues before retiring from the University in 2012. She died in July 2018.

the

FINALWORD Film critic and Professor Vincent Piturro talks science fiction, Fellini and a darling (Darjeeling?) director he considers overrated.

W

hen he isn’t hosting a popular science-fiction film festival or writing a movie column, Vincent Piturro, Ph.D., teaches film at MSU Denver.

Metropolitan Denver Magazine caught up with Piturro to discuss how he discovered film, his favorite flicks and why he wishes people would stop eating in theaters.

Tell me about the science-fiction film festival you host.

The series – which is a collaboration between MSU Denver, Denver Film Society and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science – is in its eighth year this summer. For each screening, we get a scientist in the field depicted to talk about the science in the film or lack thereof. The festival gets more popular every year. We added a sixth film this summer and expect to sell out every event, including the IMAX theater at the museum.

Is science fiction an area of interest for you personally?

Science fiction is something I’ve been interested in since I was a student. It talks about contemporaneous issues but places them in the future. That gives us a bit of distance, so it’s not preaching about how terrible our world is. But it’s saying this is how horrible our world could be. So be careful.

Tell me about MSU Denver’s Film and Media Studies Program (formerly Cinema Studies).

The program has been around for 10 years.

We offer a minor and are based in the English Department. I was the first full-time 32

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hire in cinema studies in 2010. When I started, we had three classes. This fall, we’ll have 13. We recently added more TV studies because there is so much great content now.

We’re eventually going to add other media as well, such as YouTube productions.

Why study film and television?

That’s a question that comes up a lot because there are very few jobs in film unless you go into production, which we don’t teach. But I always say I don’t teach film; I teach critical thinking, writing, reading, research, the ability to communicate, the ability to work out issues and problems creatively, intellectually, but also logically. So yes, you get to watch films, but the skills you get are applicable to any field. Film can also open you up to a world that many people don’t have access to, and that is a multicultural, multiethnic, global perspective.

What cool projects are you working on lately?

I’m teaching a three-session intensive course based around the Denver Film Festival this fall. We’ll meet the weekend before and two weekends during, and the content of the class will come directly from the festival. We’ll watch a selection of films, and meet with directors, actors, producers and screenwriters. This is the first time I’ve done anything like this, and I think it’s the first time the Denver Film Society has too.

STORY DAN VACCARO | PHOTO ALYSON MCCLARAN

Tell me about your movie-review column.

I’ve written a monthly column for a community newspaper in Denver called the Front Porch for five years. I focus on film and TV shows that are not reviewed as much – independent, foreign, documentary and local films. The goal is to give people access to art they might not get otherwise.

Favorite movie?

That’s an easy one for me: “8½” by Fellini.

Movie everyone loves that you don’t?

Anything that plays at the multiplex (laughs). This is going to make readers mad – but mostly anything by Wes Anderson.

I’m not a huge fan. I find his films a bit thin, formulaic and overdone.

First movie you remember seeing?

Strange as it may sound, and parenting experts might go crazy at this, but it’s probably “The Godfather.” My father was a huge fan. Another early one was “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

How do you feel about food at movies?

I can’t stand it. It’s loud. Maybe I’m old-fashioned and need to lighten up, but I like to be very intensely engaged with the film, and that brings you out of it.

READ: Piturro’s column at frontporchne.com or search for him on Facebook.

The Auraria Campus has seen a lot of changes since 1972. Check out a vintage version of the same shot on the inner front cover of this magazine. Some notable changes include public art, more lighting and seating, bigger trees, a new entrance to the library and more skyline encroaching above it. What will this spot look like in another 46 years? Stay tuned.

PHOTO ELIZABETH MORENO-ROSALES

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DON’T MISS FALL ALUMNI WEEKEND OCT. 5-7, 2018 Schedule of Events: Friday, Oct. 5 – Roadrunner Casino Night, 6 p.m., Denver Field House Friday, Oct. 5 – Roadrunners Softball Alumnae Game, 6 p.m., Regency Athletic Complex Saturday, Oct. 6 – Roadrunners 5K, 10 a.m., Washington Park Saturday, Oct. 6 – T heater performance of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” 7:30 p.m., Eugenia Rawls Courtyard Theatre (includes pre-show social at Degree Restaurant) Sunday, Oct. 7 – Men’s soccer vs. CSU-Pueblo, 1 p.m., Regency Athletic Complex For more info or to register: msudenver.edu/alumni/events/fallalumniweekend