UWYO Magazine – Vol. 24 No. 1

The Wyoming Migration Initiative informs smart decisions for managing the West’s ungulates. Horses of

Cowboys, cowgirls and horses are synonymous with the state and university.

Serving Students and the State

From working with ranchers to studying contagious diseases, the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources is always innovating.

Bridging the Gap

The Museum of Vertebrates and Wyoming Natural Diversity Database collect important wildlife data for better understanding and decision making.

The Gift of Time

Students, staff and alumni volunteer for animal-related charities at home and abroad. Working

Meet two service dogs who are regulars on the UW campus.

Student Emily Powell pets

Woodstock during the UW Wellness Center’s “kitty cuddle time” where students are able to pet and snuggle with adoptable cats from Laramie Animal Welfare Society as a way to relax and de-stress.

UWyo

Fall 2022 | Volume 24 Number 1

UWYO.EDU/UWYO

The Magazine for Alumni and Friends of the University of Wyoming

University President: Edward Seidel Associate Vice President for Communications and Marketing: Chad Baldwin

Editor: Micaela Myers

Design: Michelle Eberle, Emily Edgar, Brittny Wroblewski, Hallie Davis

Photography: All photos by Ted Brummond and Kyle Spradley unless otherwise noted

Video: Ali Grossman, Mary Jung, Reesie Lane, Kyle Spradley

Contributing Editors: Chad Baldwin, Tamara Linse

Contributing Writers: Riley Box, Sunnie Lew, Michelle Sunset

AlumNews/WyoGrams: Heather Baker, Tamara Linse, Micaela Myers, Emma Petersen

UWyo is published three times per year as a partnership between UW Institutional Marketing and the UW Alumni Association. UWyo is supported by UW Research & Economic Development, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs and the Office of the President. ©2022 by the University of Wyoming. All rights reserved. Excerpts from this magazine may be reprinted with permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the University of Wyoming and copies of reprinted materials are provided to the editor.

UWyo

University of Wyoming

1000 East University Ave., Dept. 3226 Laramie, WY 82071-2000 (307) 766-2379 | uwyomag@uwyo.edu

The University is committed to equal opportunity for all persons in all facets of the University’s operations. All qualified applicants for employment and educational programs, benefits, and services will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, creed, ancestry, political belief or any other applicable category protected by law and University policy.

On the Cover: Cowboy Joe handler Elizabeth Renkert is an agricultural communications and journalism major from Kaycee, Wyo. They are pictured at the Laramie Research and Extension Center. Photo by Emily Edgar.

From the Office of the President

A Renewed Energy on Our Campus

By Ed Seidel

As I write this message for the fall issue of UWyo Magazine, a new group of freshmen has arrived on our beautiful campus for a week of activities before the official start of the fall 2022 semester. In our inaugural Saddle Up program aimed at helping boost student retention, the students are taking part in a variety of activities aimed at preparing them for the challenges of college. Their energy and excitement are contagious.

Just as these students — who help comprise a historically strong first-year UW recruiting class — are embarking on their educational journey with high hopes and aspirations, I couldn’t be more excited for what the new academic year has in store for the University of Wyoming.

With the COVID pandemic largely behind us, we have a sense that the campus is truly coming back to life. And the university community is rallying to fulfill the university’s mission of education, research and service for our state, our nation and the world.

As I have noted in this space before, we are driving the university toward four future directions — UW should become more digital, entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary and inclusive. Sometimes these are called “pillars,” but I’d prefer that we just call them future directions. These are important not only for our institution and state, but, most importantly, for our students. Our students need to learn to have the skills they need to succeed, and to have impact, in a global environment where they will find themselves in the 21st century. These directions all speak to that, and you will find them embedded in the current draft of the university’s

new strategic plan, which we are working to complete this academic year.

At the same time, to move in such directions — expected of 21st century land-grant institutions across the nation — we must rebuild UW’s foundations that have been eroded over a decade of budget cuts, administrative changeover, departures and low morale. Important steps have been taken with the first salary increases in several years, along with the creation of new faculty positions. While the salary increases and faculty positions are aimed largely at addressing critical needs, there are 10 new “investing for growth” faculty positions and associated graduate student support aimed at helping us move forward in strategic growth areas.

In spite of our challenges of the last two years, we did make progress on some new initiatives that should enhance our offerings to students, put us in better position to raise external funds and enhance our impact on our state. These include enhancements to the Office of Research and Economic Development to better support our research and economic development capacity, as well as entirely new programs including the new Wyoming Outdoor Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Initiative, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the School of Computing, all of which will impact every college at UW. The Wyoming Innovation Partnership is proceeding well, aligning all of higher education to advance the state — and for which $55 million has been received or earmarked for these programs and others at UW and community college partners across the state.

A major motivator for much of this work is making the university more able

to bring in external funding from federal agencies, independent foundations, companies and donors. Not only has our UW Foundation had another great year in fundraising, but we also are working hard to make better use of the funds we have, and we are gearing up for new fundraising efforts ranging from arts, humanities and social sciences to traditional areas of fundraising.

Regarding federal funding, there is great news. Congress recently passed the Chips and Science Act that will add very significant, once-in-a-generation funding to federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA and the Department of Commerce, with specific call-outs for dramatically increasing support for rural areas such as Wyoming. It is a tectonic shift in funding vehicles, and we are working hard to be ready for these new opportunities.

With all this as a starting point, I am so looking forward to the new academic year and to working with all UW supporters as we embark on building a strong future for the university and the state.

Ed Seidel is the president of the University of Wyoming

Two educational travel opportunities offer a chance to see the world with UW! Our tours have been organized by faculty and staff who have personal expertise in these locations, giving you unique insight into the history, culture, and contemporary life of every place we visit. Join us!

NEW IN SPRING 2023: Explore and Learn with Cowboys Abroad

Uzbekistan:

March, 2023

At the heart of the historic Silk Road, Uzbekistan offers unparalleled cultural experiences, from architectural treasures at UNESCO world heritage sites to contemporary artists’ studios and extraordinary culinary adventures. Meet local educators in hands-on master classes, and explore the geography and natural world of Uzbekistan.

Scotland:

May, 2023

Explore museums of art, science, and industry, historic houses, monuments & gardens, working tartan mills, distilleries & breweries, canals, coal mines, castles, trains, and ships. Highlights include Abbotsford, the historic home of Sir Walter Scott, the bustling Princes Street in Edinburgh, and Scotland’s beautiful west coast.

For information or to sign up for one of these trips, contact the Global Engagement Office global@uwyo.edu

TH E WYOM ING I NSTITU TE FOR HUMANITIES RESEARCH

The Humanities Research Institute strives to be an engine for producing interdisciplinary research in the humanities; a community for faculty, students, and the public; and a model of democratic education fit for our land-grant university. Please join us!

For an exciting list of activities and programming, visit our Website: uwyo.edu/humanities and our Facebook page: Facebook.com/UWYOWIHR

Dylan Rust & Charlie

Angel (Micaela & Joe Myers)

Bacon (Jennifer Kirk)

Ottis (Mindy Peep)

Emma Kellar & Gemma

Students with Rancus

Wellness Center “kitty cuddle time”

Wellness Center “puppy playdate”

Sable (Stephanie Lownds)

Lucy (Julie Sheldon)

Pumpkin (Emily Edgar)

Gus (Mindy Peep)

Faces

Amanda Byzewski & Rocky

Tessa Wittman & Whiskey

Sonny (Miles Englehart)

Tuck (Hannah Ellis)

Stella Blue (Jason Harper)

Homecoming Parade

Interested in applying? Contact us at sss@uwyo.edu or scan this code > > >

S u c c e s s s t a r t s h e r e .

Interested in applying? Contact us at sss@uwyo.edu. S u c c e s s s t a r t s h e r e .

We’re part of the TRIO family of federal programs founded in 1964. Find out more at uwyo.edu/sss

Student Success Services is 100% federally funded by the U.S. Department of Education at $445,410 annually with a scholarshipcontribution from the University of Wyoming.SSS is in the office of Student Educational Opportunity at the University of Wyoming.

UW FOUNDATION

PRESIDENT BEN BLALOCK RETIRES

Ben Blalock — UW Foundation president and CEO and UW vice president for institutional advancement — retired June 30 following 26 years of service that has transformed philanthropy at UW. In 1996 when he arrived, UW raised around $6 million annually, with an endowment of nearly $40 million. Today, the annual fundraising average is $50 million, and the endowment is approximately $800 million — the largest in the Mountain

West Conference and larger than many institutions with twice or three times the student enrollment. John Stark, UW Foundation senior vice president for development, follows him in this role. Stark has been with the foundation for almost 16 years, and prior to that, he was executive director of the Cowboy Joe Club and associate athletic director.

STUDENTS COMPETE IN SOLAR DECATHLON

This is a rendering of the three-bedroom, two-anda-half-bath home designed by the UW student team.

Work is underway on a zero-energy home designed by UW students in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains southwest of Lander. The team is among 16 that were each awarded $50,000 to proceed with construction as part of the 2023 U.S. Department of Energy 20th annual Solar Decathlon Build Challenge. The team is mentored by Jon Gardzelewski and Anthony “Tony” Denzer with the UW Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management, and the students are collaborating with homebuilders Cory and Morgan Toye of Timshel Construction. The house is scheduled to be completed in February 2023, when it will be instrumented and tested for the final stage of the competition.

NEWS BRIEFS

• The Global Vegetation Project, started in 2020 by the UW Biodiversity Institute, recently published K–12 educational materials on its website. Visit www.gveg.wyobiodiversity.org .

• The College of Engineering and Physical Sciences launched a new biomedical engineering minor program this fall.

• A s part of a new $16K Drone Smart Ranch student project and internship through UW’s interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Science and Technology (GIST) Program, a team of four UW students has been using drone mounted sensors, image processing software and machine learning techniques to identify weed species and explore the use of drones for precise herbicide application and mosquito abatement.

• The College of Education has launched the Wyoming Teacher-Mentor Corps, an innovative new program designed to foster teacher excellence by providing expert support for emerging teachers.

• The School of Energy Resources (SER) has launched an accelerated degree program in collaboration with the College of Law. The Quickstart 3+3 program allows UW students to earn a bachelor’s degree in energy resource management and development and a law degree.

• For her continued efforts against human trafficking in Wyoming and nationwide, Ashleigh Chapman — who has multiple businesses housed in the UW’s IMPACT 307 business incubator — was recently recognized by USA Today as one of its “Women of the Year.”

• Read the full stories and more at www.uwyo.edu/news

RESEARCH UNDER WAY

Name that research

UW Wins $20M Grant to Study Climate-Driven Changes to State’s Water Supply Field Tests of Coal-Derived Soil Amendments Yield Promising Results for Researchers

Researchers Lead Development of Rapid Test for Detecting COVID-19

Researchers Receive Advanced Photon Source Use Award From Argonne National Laboratory

A new COVID-19

BOOKS IN STORE

developed at UW is more sensitive than those currently on the market. The test can be read

process can be applied to manufacturing high-demand solvents and chemicals used in making coal-derived engineered products onsite or simply sold as a commodity product.

The University Store (uwyostore.com) is home to one of the largest selections of books by Wyoming authors and about Wyoming. Titles include Wyoming: A History of the American West by Sam Lightner Jr., Steamboat, Legendary Bucking Horse: His Life, Times, and the Cowboys Who Tried to Tame Him by Candy Vyvey Moulton and Flossie Moulton, and Black 14: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Wyoming Football by Ryan Thorburn.

antigen test

PHOTO CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): UW; RESHAM THAPA; COURTESY PHOTO

Resham Thapa

Wind River

Qian Yang

the world needs more wonder.

Do you want to make a di erence in your community? Help inspire healthy and sustainable living at all ages?

Then you have found your home.

NEW APPOINTMENTS

Jacob Warren, who for nearly a decade has directed the Center for Rural Health and Health Disparities at the Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga., is the new dean of College of Health Sciences.

Scott Beaulier, an economist who has led North Dakota State University’s College of Business since 2016, has been appointed as dean of the UW College of Business.

Penelope Shihab, who has started several successful companies during two decades of biotechnology management and business development, was named director of the new Wyoming Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UW.

Eugene Holubnyak is the latest center of excellence director in the School of Energy Resources, taking the helm in the Hydrogen Energy Research Center (H2ERC).

Wyoming Cowboy basketball standout (1989–92) and hall of famer Reginald Slater joined the UW Foundation board. In addition, Mary Shafer-Malicki was named chair of the board, replacing Tom Botts, who will continue as a member of the board. Doug Stark was elected vice chair, and Lindsay Hooper was elected secretary. All are pre-eminent professionals in their fields.

WATT FOUNDATION GIFT HELPS FIGHT INVASIVE SPECIES

A gift from the Joe and Arlene Watt Foundation of Sheridan, Wyo., will support the Institute for Managing Annual Grasses Invading Natural Ecosystems, or IMAGINE. The $500,000 gift, which was doubled to $1 million with state match funding, creates an excellence fund that supports this UW Sheridan Research and Extension Center initiative. This program provides collaborative applied and fundamental research and hands-on educational opportunities to fight the establishment and proliferation of invasive grasses that can degrade Wyoming lands, which will restore rangelands. These efforts focus on species such as cheatgrass, ventenata and medusahead through fundamental research, community science and creating next-generation partnerships.

RIPPLE GIFT SUPPORT BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY

A gift from Ripple, a leading provider of enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, is establishing a Ripple Blockchain Collaboratory at UW, which will foster innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybersecurity to help transform the finance and technology industries. The collaboratory will be based in the UW Center for Blockchain and Digital Innovation, the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences and the College of Law. This funding will support UW undergraduate and graduate students interested in blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybersecurity as they pursue degrees and launch their careers, ensuring a skilled workforce for Wyoming’s technology future. Additionally, UW will operate an XRPL validator on campus, which performs the vital work of verifying transactions.

The UW School of Pharmacy offers an online master of science in health services administration program that is designed for working professionals and it requires two years of part-time study. Working together, UW can give you the credentials and skills you need to either advance in your current employment or move up into a new and exciting career path in the healthcare arena. We offer both spring and fall admissions. SCAN THE CODE

No.1

By the Numbers

UW Ph.D. candidates Rami Alloush and Moustafa Aly were selected as the first-prize recipients in the Decarbonization Prize, which is sponsored by the School of Energy Resources, the Wyoming Energy Authority and Baker Hughes.

$50K Big12

Six finalists will share $63,000 in prize money after being selected as winners of the UW John P. Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. UplinkRobotics LLC, a manufacturing company that specializes in inspection robotics and drones, was the grand prize winner.

2nd &3rd

At March’s U.S. Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association’s Collegiate National Championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., UW’s men finished second and the women third in the overall team races

Wrestler Stephen Buchanan became the fourth Cowboy in history to win a Big 12 title in March. He and diver Melissa Mirafuentes were also named All-Americans.

16th

Cowgirls basketball made it to the round of 16 in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament in March

YouRgaTewayGLoBaL

Supporting the international students and faculty of today. Preparing leaders for the challenges of tomorrow’s world. Creating life-changing international experiences. Building Wyoming’s global community.

At Home on the Range

By Micaela Myers

University of Wyoming Department of Ecosystem Science and Management Professor Jeffrey Beck grew up surrounded by the West’s sagebrush ecosystem and remembers hearing about sage grouse at a young age.

“There’s something about studying this species that has never left me,” says Beck, who is well known for his greater sage grouse research. “The more I learn, the more I want to learn.”

Beck earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in wildlife and range resources at Brigham Young University and his doctorate in forestry, wildlife and range sciences at the University of Idaho. He has been at UW for the past 15 years, and his lab conducts research on wildlife habitat ecology and restoration ecology, with a focus on restoring habitats in disturbed rangeland systems, particularly sagebrush habitats.

“When we see a scientist who makes a difference, it’s usually because they love what they do,” Beck says. “I’m very interested in the resilience of the sagebrush biome to change.”

Changes come in many forms, including energy and infrastructure development, increased wild horse and raven activity, the expansion of fire and invasive grasses, human activities including hunting and vegetation alteration, and the climate. The sagebrush biome of the West is the sage grouse’s only habitat, and the birds are sensitive to disturbance, making them an important indicator species. Beck also studies ungulates, including pronghorn, mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep and feral horses. Beyond studying the impacts of disturbances on the sagebrush ecosystem, his lab seeks to understand the population processes of wildlife within the context of habitat restoration and to inform conservation practices such as Wyoming’s Sage-Grouse Core Area Strategy.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY BECK FOUND HIS PASSION STUDYING THE WEST’S SAGEBRUSH ECOSYSTEM.

With energy development a big player in the region, Beck and his students are studying sage grouse, ravens and raptors at a wind energy development in Montana and sharp-tailed grouse response to wind energy development in South Dakota. They’re also studying a sage grouse population that winters inside a potential large gas field that is proposed near Pinedale. On the wild horse front, they’ve looked at how horses impact nesting sage grouse, as well as how horses interact with pronghorn including differences in their foraging and movement strategies. One of Beck’s students is currently studying the diet and gut microbiome of wild horses, while another student is studying the subspecies status of sharp-tailed grouse in south-central Wyoming.

Teaching and mentoring are a big part of Beck’s role at UW. He leads the undergraduate rangeland ecology and watershed management degree program and teaches courses within the rangeland discipline. When he’s not teaching or researching, you can find Beck on his small family farm outside of Laramie, where they raise produce, Dexter cattle, chickens and pigs.

Jeffrey Beck with former graduate student Katie Taylor.

PROFESSOR MERAV BENDAVID TACKLES COMPLEX ECOLOGICAL QUESTIONS WITH A MULTIFACETED APPROACH.

Integrative Ecology

By Micaela Myers

Zoology Professor Merav Ben-David was an integrative ecologist long before the term became popular — meaning that she approaches her wildlife and ecological research holistically.

“You can’t understand what’s happening if you have a narrow perspective or study just one species,” she says. “Systems are complicated. You have to look at each question from multiple angles using multiple tools.”

Ben-David earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tel Aviv University and her doctorate at the University of Alaska. She joined the University of Wyoming in 2000. Her research revolves around the interactions among animal behavioral ecology, population dynamics and ecosystem function.

For example, her team just completed a project in Washington’s Olympic National Park in conjunction with the Makah Tribe. The Lake Ozette sockeye salmon has been on the endangered species list for over 30 years, and all efforts to restore it have failed. The tribe wanted to know if river otters were part of the problem.

“We looked at the otters, how they use the landscape, how they feed and what their physiological and energetic needs are,” Ben-David says. “It’s a complicated multifaceted project. It showed that otters have little effect on the fish.”

Ben-David developed her love of animals and nature

growing up on a small farm in Israel.

“You talk to wildlife biologists, and we all love animals — that’s our passion,” she says. She wants her students to also experience that passion and finds that the best way to teach them is hands-on in the field.

“I build my entire Wildlife Ecology and Management class around a research project,” Ben David says. “We study least chipmunks, and every year the class chooses the research question.”

Chipmunks are abundant, easy to catch, hardy and interesting, making them a perfect species for her students to study. They conduct habitat evaluations and trap, mark and measure the chipmunks. Then the students begin to ask questions and narrow in on a topic to study. The students also help write an annual report for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and present the study on campus.

Past classes explored how climate change affects chipmunk abundance, how chipmunk density affects their birth and death rates, whether chipmunks use sagebrush habitat on a temporary basis, and the effects of precipitation on reproductive timing and success, among others.

The course teaches students many valuable skills they’ll need as wildlife biologists and managers.

Ben-David has learned so much from this educational tool that chipmunks are now part of her research portfolio, leading to new questions on brain function, memory and learning that she will explore with her neuroscience colleagues at UW.

She says, “If you start looking at a problem from multiple angles, it opens up a whole new world.”

Powerful Stories

By Micaela Myers

Big game always played an important role in University of Wyoming Associate Professor Kevin Monteith’s life — not just as food on the table but also as inspiration. Observing animals such as mule deer in their natural habitat, Monteith finds them to be majestic, charismatic and fascinating. Among their attributes, deer are highly maternal and invest a great deal in their offspring.

“It’s hard not to be inspired,” he says.

Though initially Monteith hated school, his research starting as an undergraduate inspired him to keep going. He stayed at South Dakota State University for his master’s degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences then earned his doctorate in biological sciences at Idaho State University. In 2015, he came to UW and is based in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the Department of Zoology and Physiology.

“We’re a group of large-mammal ecologists who work on big game species throughout the West,” he says of his research group. “Much of our work seeks to understand long-lasting questions with regard to what drives populations, how they are influenced by change in their environment and what we can do from a management perspective.”

This includes addressing declines in populations. The research group closely follows big game movements, survival and reproduction to uncover their nuanced relationships

with the environment, often through capture, collaring and monitoring animals for multiple years.

“We’ve come to appreciate how intimately connected these animals are with their world,” Monteith says.

Not only does following animals so closely supply valuable data, but it also allows the researchers to tell powerful stories that help connect people to animals and nature. For example, understanding how faithful a mule deer is to her migratory route — to which her entire reproductive cycle is synchronized — and how that is passed across generations gives us a much deeper appreciation for these majestic creatures and their sensitivity to environmental change.

“When we can understand the intimate connections between these animals and their environment, it naturally drives us closer to them,” Monteith says.

Studying big game requires rigorous fieldwork that wouldn’t be possible without the financial and logistical support of state and federal agencies, foundations and nonprofit organizations. It also wouldn’t be possible without UW’s talented graduate students.

“I’m incredibly fortunate to work with a hard-charging, passionate and talented group of people,” Monteith says. “Being able to mentor and work with my team is one of the greatest opportunities I’ve had in my career. I’ve learned a lot from them, and it is a very rewarding experience to watch people grow, ultimately excel, and make great advancements in the field.”

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR KEVIN MONTEITH’S RESEARCH BRINGS THE STORIES OF MULE DEER TO LIFE, HELPING US UNDERSTAND AND APPRECIATE THESE CHARISMATIC CREATURES.

COURTESY IMAGE

PHOTO BY TAYLOR LASHARR

A Passion for Ranching

By Micaela Myers

When 2019 University of Wyoming agricultural business graduate Kaily Patterson-Coonis was 8 years old, her family moved to the Padlock Ranch — headquartered just outside of Ranchester with 450,000 acres stretching across Wyoming and Montana. Her dad worked at the ranch and still does — now as CEO.

“It was really cool to be involved in agriculture from a young age,” Patterson-Coonis says. “I have memories of helping my dad with brandings and moving cattle. In addition to the romantic side of it, I saw the long hours, the hard work and the late nights, like moving cattle on Christmas Eve because the water in that pasture stopped working. I started to develop a passion for agriculture and taking care of animals. I had bottle calves as a kid and would stay up late if they were struggling or get them inside when it rained — doing everything to save their lives.”

The ranch was founded in 1943 by Homer and Mildred Scott. Today, the cow-calf operation produces 10,000 yearlings annually as well as highquality forage feed. Growing up on the ranch, Patterson-Coonis knew she wanted to make agriculture a career. Some of the highlights of her time at UW included meeting a diverse group of people, learning to understanding different perspectives and being an active member of the Wyoming Collegiate Cattle Association.

“We went on some awesome field trips, and I learned a lot through that group,” Patterson-Coonis says. “Learning how to work with a diverse group of people is very important. College also teaches you to want to learn and search out answers. I’m constantly learning, and my job is constantly changing.”

She completed an internship at Padlock Ranch that led to full-time work after graduation. PattersonCoonis runs the ranch’s social media, does data collection and manages the

ALUMNA KAILY PATTERSONCOONIS USES HER AGRICULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS DEGREE TO PROMOTE RANCHING AND THE 450,000-ACRE PADLOCK RANCH.

farm-to-table beef program.

“I love the variety,” she says. “I can work on so many different things in my job. One day I’m collecting data and checking cows, and the next day I’m at the farmers market selling our beef to people.”

Beyond the ranch itself, she wants to help change misconceptions people may have about ranchers.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand how passionate ranchers are about taking care of our land, environment and animals,” PattersonCoonis says. “Cowboys will be out moving cows and doctoring animals in all kinds of crazy weather. It’s really important for us to take care of our pastures, maintain good biodiversity of plant life and take care of our wildlife.”

A Leader in Mapping Migrations

The Wyoming Migration Initiative informs smart decisions for managing the West’s ungulates.

were able to inform the conservation efforts and facilitate solutions to migration barriers, such as roadway overpasses and underpasses, wildlifefriendly fencing and easements on private working lands. WMI focuses on research, outreach and conservation tools — getting the information to the folks who make decisions and fund solutions.

By Micaela Myers

Each fall and spring, we hear the honk of geese and other sounds of migratory birds. We look up at the choreographed flock and take in the beauty of nature calling. Other migrations, however, are not so easy for the animals. The American West is home to several species of migrating ungulates, including mule deer, bighorn sheep, bison, pronghorn, moose, elk, white-tailed deer and mountain goats. While birds also face habitat loss, they can fly right over the barriers ungulates must navigate between winter and summer ranges: fencing, roads and development. These issues pose major threats to the health of big game herds, but there are solutions — thanks in large part to work being done right here at the University of Wyoming.

Puzzle Pieces

Lucky for the ungulates, many folks — from hunters to conservationists — have long been interested in keeping herds healthy and addressing migration barriers. But at first, advances in migration science were not well integrated into on-theground conservation efforts or land management. Enter the Wyoming Migration Initiative (WMI), which is based at UW and now in its 10th year.

“The big epiphany that led to WMI

was that there was all this science being done at UW and all this interest in corridors, but the science and research weren’t informing where the conservation work was being done,” says Lead Scientist Matthew Kauffman of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the Department of Zoology and Physiology.

Through GPS collaring of animals and developing software to map migration routes, WMI and partners

“Wyoming has done cutting-edge research on migrations that’s known nationally and internationally,” Kauffman says. “Our state is home to some of the best-studied migrations. We’ve learned more than many other places on the planet. It’s emerging as an area of research excellence.”

For example, in 2012 the team recorded the longest mule deer migration ever studied, where 1,000 mule deer migrate 10 to 150 miles from winter ranges in the Red Desert to summer ranges in the mountains of northwest Wyoming. That work led to a top 10 list of hazards for wildlife managers and conservationists to focus on.

“The top threat was the Fremont Lake bottleneck, where thousands of animals have to squeeze through a halfmile bottleneck between Pinedale and Fremont Lake,” Kauffman says. “The suburbs are encroaching. Right at the bottleneck, there was a 360-acre parcel of private land for sale and slated for subdivision to be made into lakeside cottages. With a migration map in hand, it became clear that that parcel

Two young bull moose in the Bighorn National Forest show off a wildlife-friendly right-ofway fence along U.S. Route 14.

was critically important for mule deer. The nonprofit Conservation Fund helped raise $2 million to purchase the land. They gave it to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department as a Wildlife Habitat Management Area. They removed the fences that were constraining the mule deer. That parcel is now protected forever for these migratory deer.”

On the outreach side, videos and traveling exhibitions help the public understand the work and the importance of migrations, garnering millions of views online. On social media, WMI provides a migrationtracking program, posting updates on one mule deer’s migration complete with photos from the deer’s tracking camera. In 2018, WMI and the University of Oregon InfoGraphics Lab published Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates, the first statebased book of its kind.

GPS collar studies involve many university, state and federal partners,

Cooperative mule deer migration mapping has helped to guide conservation on the eastern edge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In this photo UW researcher Matt Kauffman (right) plans a mule deer capture operation with Wyoming Game and Fish biologist Bart Kroger (left).

These mule deer on summer range in the Hoback Basin make one of the longest-distance migrations ever documented, some 150 miles across the Green River Basin.

including the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the Monteith Shop in UW’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources (see page 18), Shoshone and Arapaho Fish and Game, and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. “Together we’ve mapped a couple dozen migrations across Wyoming,” Kauffman says. “That data is being used to identify problematic roads and fences.”

Using those maps, conservation groups and state agencies have put tens of millions of dollars toward conserving migration corridors and seasonal ranges.

Finding Solutions

Everyone has a role to play in managing migrations through the public process. While WMI and the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit provide the maps and data analysis, nonprofits and government entities including the U.S. Forest Service, Wyoming Department of Transportation and Wyoming Game and Fish Department — working with private landowners — implement the solutions.

“In the Green River Basin, there are hundreds of miles of fences that have been retrofitted for wildlife and similar projects going on in other parts of the state,” says Associate Research Scientist Gregory Nickerson.

Overpasses and underpasses save not only ungulates but also drivers and the costs associated with accidents. “The

major roadway crossing structures across the state have been led by the Wyoming Department of Transportation working with Wyoming Game and Fish, and to their credit, many of them were built before WMI came along,” Nickerson says. “New migration data is helping to accelerate such projects.”

Wyoming has become such a leader in studying migrations that Kauffman and the USGS corridor mapping team he leads were asked to work with other Western states.

“Now we’re exporting our approach to mapping — and using the maps to identify threats and conversation opportunities — to the rest of the western U.S.,” he says. Volume 1 of Ungulate Migrations of the Western United States was released in 2020, and volume 2 came out in April 2022. This successful partnership with Western states also involves tribal nations, such as the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

“This atlas of ungulate migrations is an incredible resource for anyone who cares about the West’s big-game herds and the challenges they face,” says Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “The Theodore Roosevelt

Conservation Partnership appreciates the commitment demonstrated by the Interior Department, USGS, and numerous Western states and tribes in delineating these crucial corridors.”

Zachary Lowe, executive director of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, adds: “The big-game corridor mapping program is strongly supported by Western fish and wildlife agencies and serves as a model of how empirical science facilitates collaborative landscape-level conservation efforts through state and federal cooperation. I am hard-pressed to think of many other successful landscape conservation efforts that have garnered such broad support from these diverse stakeholders so quickly.”

In the coming year, WMI and the USGS corridor mapping team will collaborate with Western wildlife agencies to complete volumes 3 and 4 of Ungulate Migrations of the Western United States and will work with local partners toward the goal of mapping the most significant ungulate migrations in Wyoming. Long term, WMI aims to keep advancing appreciation for Wyoming’s amazing migrations and providing the science needed to keep herds moving across the American West into the future.

The Trappers Point wildlife overpass on U.S. Route 191 near Pinedale was completed in 2012 by the Wyoming Department of Transportation as part of a larger project that included six underpasses, two overpasses and several miles of wildlife exclusion fencing. The efforts helped drastically reduce mule deer and pronghorn mortalities.

PHOTO BY LEON SCHATZ/GREGORY NICKERSON/WMI

Collaborative Land Management: Assessing Recreation Impacts on Wildlife

The Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to engage in collaborative problem-solving around natural resource challenges. Working directly with land managers, students build the skills they need to become the next generation of creative, inclusive, environmental leaders.

One such project is close to home, at the newly-opened Pilot Hill Recreation and Habitat Management Area east of Laramie. In partnership with key stakeholders, faculty and students at the Haub School are using wildlife cameras to evaluate the impacts of non-motorized recreation on wildlife. The findings, communicated broadly, will inform sound land management decisions that support community goals.

Learn more about our programs at uwyo.edu/haub

horses of Uw

Cowboys, cowgirls and horses are synonymous with the state and university.

By Micaela Myers

No animal-themed issue of the magazine would be complete without a feature devoted to horses. The Cowboy State gave birth to the University of Wyoming Cowboys and Cowgirls, and over 100 years ago, the famous bucking horse symbol — based on a real horse — came to represent both Wyoming and its university. UW’s ties to horses go beyond Steamboat, with a strong rodeo team and multiple horse mascots. Meet them all here.

Steamboat

A bucking horse image first appeared on Wyoming National Guard equipment in France during World War I. It’s believed that Wyoming’s famous bucking horse symbol owes its roots to a 1903 photo of the bronc Steamboat ridden by cowboy Guy Holt, taken at the Albany Country Fair by UW Professor B.C. Buffum. In 1921, UW Athletics Manager Deane Hunton used the image to create a silhouette for UW baseball team uniforms. A bucking horse began to appear on license plates in 1936 and on UW football helmets in the 1960s.

Steamboat earned his name due to a nose injury that caused him to make a whistling noise when he bucked. The black horse with white stockings was known as a ferocious bronc with a signature move: planting his front feet and kicking his hind legs sky high. Sports Illustrated featured him in 1970, and his likeness appears on nearly 600 million U.S. quarters.

“Wyoming Cowboy” statue at the Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center.

Rodeo Team

The rodeo tradition is alive and well at UW. The team’s achievements include six-time College National Finals Rodeo champions and ’19, ’20 and ’21 Central Rocky Mountain Region men’s and women’s champions. The team is based at the 47,500-square-foot indoor Hansen Arena, where team members have access to over 100 head of practice stock and a boarding facility for their horses.

“It’s an amazing team environment,” says elementary education junior Lily Van Ness of Steamboat Springs, Colo. “We all cheer for one another. We all push each other to be better.”

Van Ness keeps two horses at Hansen and competes in barrel racing and breakaway roping, the latter of which she took up just last year.

“I roped the dummy till my hands bled,” she says. “It became my favorite thing. The entire team got behind me.”

Van Ness didn’t grow up in a horse family but traded lessons for barn work.

“I bought my first barrel horse when I was 14 and started going to high school rodeos,” she says. She became a two-time state finalist in barrel racing and pole bending. Van Ness came to UW with her barrel horse Dan, a 9-yearold appendix quarter horse gelding.

“He’s the coolest barrel horse I’ve swung my leg over,” she says.

Last year, Van Ness purchased a young quarter horse mare that teammate Austin Hurlburt helped her train for roping.

“She eats cows for breakfast,” Van Ness says. “She loves to chase cows.”

Having horses at school and being a student-athlete come with challenges.

“You have workouts at 5 a.m., then go feed your horses, then to classes, then practice, then study hall, then you feed your horses again,” she says. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love having my horses here and being on the rodeo team. I think I speak for every kid on the team when I say our horses are family.”

Hurlburt, a spring agricultural communications graduate from Norfolk, Neb., competed in steer wrestling, team roping and tie down roping. He qualified for the College National Finals Rodeo and earned a championship in tie-down roping in the Central Rocky Mountain Region. Next, he hopes to make the top 50 in world standings.

“I grew up around horses on a small family farm,” Hurlburt says. “My dad worked at a feed yard, and I was always going to work with him and riding a lot of different horses.”

He competed in high school and then joined the Laramie County Community College rodeo team before transferring to UW. Both Hurlburt and Van Ness praise the three coaches: Head Coach Beau Clark, Women’s Coach Casey Rae Reimler and Rough Stock Coach Tyler Corrington.

Hurlburt cared for 11 horses at the Hansen — six of his own and four others he helped train. His personal horses include his roping horse General Lee, a 9-year-old quarter horse, and his steer wrestling horse Blue Moon, a 12-year-old grade horse.

“I think something that’s unique about rodeo is that it doesn’t matter what event you’re in, the camaraderie and friendship between all the competitors is unreal,” he says. “Someone is always willing to lend a helping hand.”

Cowboy Joe handler Elizabeth Renkert is an agricultural communications and journalism major from Kaycee, Wyo.

PHOTO BY EMILY EDGAR

UW rodeo team member Lily Van Ness competes in barrel racing and breakaway roping.

PHOTO BY TK210 PHOTOGRAPHY

PHOTO

Cowboy Joe Pony

UW’s best-known horse mascot is the feisty Shetland pony Cowboy Joe. He first came on the scene when War Memorial Stadium opened in the fall of 1950. Over the years, all five ponies who have served as Cowboy Joe have been donated by the Farthing family of Cheyenne. Cowboy Joe is a fixture at football games, parades and other events.

When the 10-year-old pony isn’t galloping across the end zone to celebrate a Cowboys’ touchdown or taking part in his many other public-facing events, Cowboy Joe likes hanging out with his best friends, the Haflinger wagon team Pistol and Pete. The little dude hates standing still and fireworks, but he loves kids and a good scratch behind the ears. When he hears the Western Thunder Marching Band launch into “Ragtime Cowboy Joe,” he gets excited and knows it’s his time to shine.

War Paint

About six years ago, a new horse came on the scene: a flashy paint charging across the field at the start of each football game. The starring role first went to the paint horse Hawk, but he recently retired, replaced by the 4-year-old paint horse/percheron cross named War Paint. Both are owned by the Romsa family, and Lane Romsa loves the adrenaline rush of riding in the games.

War Paint lives near the Laramie River and even has his own padded stall. When it’s not football season, you can find him moving cattle or riding in parades. Although just a youngster, War Paint is naturally calmer than his predecessor. But when he gets on the field, he pulls out the flash and loves being the center of attention.

Pistol and Pete

Not all horses play football. To celebrate the 125th anniversary of agriculture extension at UW in 2016, a team of haflinger horses named Pistol and Pete was purchased to pull the historic sheep wagon and serve as mascots. That team has since retired. The current Pistol, age 7, and Pete, age 6, travel the state to the various agriculture experiment stations and events. Their home base is the Laramie extension center, where they pull a hay wagon to feed the livestock and teach students how to drive a team.

“We really feel like UW has something special going on with our equine ambassadors and mascots,” says Laramie Research and Extension Center Assistant Manager Elias Hutchinson. “Our traditions and events would not be the same without them.”

Cowboy Joe pony.

The Laramie Research and Extension Center is home to a flock of over 400 ewes.

UW alumna Katie Shockley leads Pistol and Pete, the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources haflinger team, at the Laramie Research and Extension Center.

Wyoming producers operate some of the largest farms and ranches in the U.S., and the state’s agriculture is an important sector that continues to grow. The University of Wyoming College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources, home to UW Extension, plays a key role in serving producers and educating the next generation of leaders. Here, we highlight a few new and existing programs that exemplify that work.

Big on Beef Production

“The beef industry has a prominent history in Wyoming, and it’s the largest component of Wyoming agriculture,” says Assistant Professor and Extension Beef Specialist Shelby Rosasco. “The beef industry in the state is very diverse, and the producers are very passionate.”

UW Extension leads outreach education with offices in 23 counties and on the Wind River Reservation. In addition to her teaching and research, Rosasco works with producers and Extension educators across the state.

“Our goals through Extension are to help ranchers and producers be sustainable,” she says. This includes working with them one-on-one,

providing educational opportunities, such as webinars, seminars and publications.

“We try to do research that’s focused on serving the beef industry and producers — research that will positively impact their operations or answer concerns they have,” Rosasco says.

Her personal research focuses on strategies to improve cattle reproduction and fertility, including studying nutrition’s impact. Other UW beef researchers include Laramie Research and Extension Director Scott Lake, the center’s Assistant Farm Manager Benjamin Hollinger, meat science Assistant Professor Cody Gifford, animal genetics Assistant Professor Hannah Hollinger and reproductive physiology Assistant Professor Jeremy Block. Their research looks at a variety of issues, including the gut microbiome, embryo transfer, reproduction and high-altitude disease.

Extension is also educating the next generation of ranchers at the weeklong summer Wyoming Ranch Camp, and Rosasco believes UW students — many of whom go on to work at ranches across the state — make a huge positive impact on the Wyoming beef industry.

Sheep Specialist Whit Stewart describes Wyoming as the wine country of wool for the state’s outstanding reputation and extensive production in this area.

“We’re fourth in the U.S. in sheep numbers, third in breeding sheep numbers and first overall in total value of wool we produce,” he says. “That gives us a special reputation in lamb and wool production. We have our own regional brand of fine wool and meat sheep breeds that thrive in Wyoming’s rugged landscape. All of that combined makes us a major player in the sheep industry. The country looks to us for sheep industry research, education and outreach.”

In addition to teaching and research, Stewart works directly with sheep producers in the state. Similar to the beef program, research focuses on addressing producer issues and needs.

“I consider us a really grassrootsdriven research and outreach program,” he says. “What makes us unique is we have our on-campus research done with our flock here at the Laramie Research and Extension Center, but we also have the state as our lab.”

A recent study of mineral deficiencies in winter grazing involved

Steve Paisley, director of the James C. Hageman Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Lingle, gives a field day presentation.

28 ranches around the state and is giving producers tools to fine-tune their flocks’ nutritional management. An ongoing benchmarking study of the cost of production and levels of production will help producers keep their costs in line during this time of rising inflation. At the center, research is looking at areas including udder and maternity health, lamb quality, nutrition and how sheep grazing can be used for fire suppression and to control noxious plants such as larkspur, which is poisonous to cattle. In addition to Stewart, faculty on these projects include Assistant Professor of Animal Genetics Hannah Hollinger, meat science Assistant Professor Cody Gifford and Rangeland Extension Specialist and Associate Professor of Rangeland Management Derek Scasta. In addition, the sheep program works with collaborators nationally and internationally to answer complex problems sheep producers face.

“Those faculty, combined with our graduate and undergraduate students, really are what make it work,” Stewart

says, adding that UW students are often recruited from the sheep program prior to graduation — “We’re giving them great experiences to hit the ground running when they enter the workforce.”

UW’s flock includes over 400 ewes. The sheep program recently became the first operation to reach Level III (certified) status in the American Sheep Industry Association’s American Wool Assurance Program, leading the way for Wyoming producers to also become certified. Graduate student Courtney Newman, of Fort Collins, Colo., was instrumental in the certification process and the sheep program’s partnership with UW’s Center for Blockchain and Digital Innovation.

As part of the Wyoming Wool Initiative, wool from the center’s flock is sent to the Mountain Meadow Wool mill in Buffalo. The resulting custom blankets have a QR code tag that uses blockchain technology for authenticity and traceability and to show the purchaser production

information. Proceeds help fund sheep industry marketing and manufacturing innovations in Wyoming while training the next generation of sheep industry professionals.

Ranch Management and Agriculture Leadership Program Education must change with the times. Future ranch managers, wildland and recreation professionals, and other leaders in agricultural need a diverse range of skills. In response to these workforce needs, UW launched the new Ranch Management and Agriculture Leadership Program with a $1.5 million gift from Farm Credit Services of America doubled by the state of Wyoming. The program targets UW students as well as those already working in the industry with professional development and certification, as well as a future

Brown and gold thread is knit into the 2022 “Wyoming Gold” Wool Initiative blanket at Mountain Meadow Wool mill in Buffalo.

bachelor’s degree and postbaccalaureate offerings. Each level incorporates workforce development, practical experiences, research-based technical knowledge and real-world problemsolving through interactions with industry leaders.

To start things off, the professional development offerings were combined with a class for UW students this past winter that included events in Sheridan, Casper, Riverton, Laramie

and Evanston. Students participated via video call so they could interact with the live audience.

“We had live presentations and panel discussions on various topics, including leadership, beef production and markets, cooperative efforts to address complicated natural resource issues, habitat and nutrition considerations,” says UW Extension Director and Associate Dean Kelly Crane, who is also interim director of the program. “It’s been a resounding success. Our students who took the seminar really enjoyed it. Two said it was the most impactful class they had at the university, with the chance to interact with practitioners around the state.”

The professionals, such as agency

leaders and ranchers, were likewise impressed by the students.

The Ranch Management and Agriculture Leadership Program will leverage partnerships on campus with the College of Business, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Initiative. While other universities offer ranch management programs, UW’s will focus on issues unique to the region.

“It’s more than growing cows and making money,” Crane says. “Most large ranches in this region balance endangered species, public and private lands intermixing, amenity values, hunting, tourism, and oil and gas development. Our program will teach students how to balance all those.”

The undergraduate degree is rolling out this year, and a center will be established in the future along with graduate offerings. An advisory board of professionals will help guide the programming. Networking and connections with ranch managers and agency leaders will be key.

Crane says, “We’re really going to try to use the expertise we have in this state to help educate our students.”

State-of-the-Art Lab

Earlier this year, UW unveiled its new Biocontainment Facility, a biosafety level 3 laboratory (BSL-3) designed for the safe study of animal bacteria, viruses and toxins that must be contained due to their potential for use as bioterrorism agents.

“I think what’s important about this particular facility is that it really opens up avenues of scientific investigation we have not been able to achieve thus far,” says veterinary sciences Assistant Professor Elizabeth Case, the facility’s director. “In the state of Wyoming, we will be able to directly address concerns of infectious disease that affect animals,

both domestic and wild, and human health as well.”

Examples of diseases researchers will study include brucellosis and Q fever, which cause spontaneous abortion in wildlife and livestock; Yersinia pestis, which causes black plague; and tularemia, which resembles the plague. In addition to infecting animals, these diseases can make humans sick or even cause death.

“In order to safely diagnose infections and also do research to come up with new tools or interventions, we need a lab that lets us work safely with these agents,” Case says.

Safety infrastructure includes filters to trap any airborne organisms, a wastewater disinfection system, an autoclave for sterilizing solid waste, an incinerator large enough to incinerate two adult bison at the same time, a crane for moving carcasses, and a system that can disinfect the entire facility. This level of facility requires stringent security measures and government oversight by the Centers for Disease Control and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“In the facility, we have two lab spaces designed to work with cell culture, bacterial culture and molecular experiments,” Case says. “Then we have an additional lab that has a class 3 biosafety cabinet, which is a box with gloves you put your hands in to work with the samples. The research we have planned immediately is to take some of those wild strains we have accumulated and start culturing them so we can sequence their DNA and compare the strains. Right now we’re getting a brucellosis sequencing program off the ground.”

In addition to serving the state and responding to outbreaks, the lab will enable these new realms of research.

UW Extension Director Kelly Crane speaks during a session of the 2022 Ranch Management & Agriculture Leadership Program seminar series.

Bridging the gap

THE MUSEUM OF VERTEBRATES AND WYOMING NATURAL DIVERSITY DATABASE COLLECT IMPORTANT WILDLIFE DATA FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING AND DECISION MAKING.

Woodhouse’s toad (WYNDD)

WYNDD zoologist Ian Abernethy holding a live-captured deer mouse.

Colorado butterfly plant in southeastern Wyoming. (WYNDD)

By Micaela Myers

In a large room in the University of Wyoming Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center, a snowy owl spreads its wings, and a ruddy duck sleeps peacefully. They, along with thousands of other specimens of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and fish, are part of the UW Museum of Vertebrates. Each carries a tag noting where and when it was found, some dating back to the 1800s when the collection began.

Museum of Vertebrates

The UW Museum of Vertebrates aims to document and understand regional and global biodiversity. Toward this mission, it acquires and investigates vertebrate specimens — animals with internal back bones — to advance academic knowledge and public appreciation of the natural world.

Staff Curator Elizabeth Wommack works with organizations around the country, as well as private citizens, to grow the collection, which currently includes about 4,000 birds, 6,500 mammals, 2,000 fish and 400 amphibians. Students, staff and volunteers — along with a colony of flesh-eating beetles — help carefully process the specimens. Skins, skeletons, eggs and nests are kept in the dry collections room, and a wet collections area preserves whole animals. The museum is a member of Arctos, a digital database software and collection management system that allows interested parties — such as researchers and wildlife managers — worldwide access to collections, complete with various media like recordings of bird song and papers.

At UW, the collections are used by researchers and students. Albatross are a family of pelagic birds with the

Elizabeth Wommack, staff curator and collections manager at UW’s Museum of Vertebrates, examines round skins of an American mink and western spotted skunk. A skeleton mount of a coyote is in the foreground.

sapsuckers — whose hybrid zone is shifting due to climate change. Wommack and a group of students are studying the after-effects of the Mullen Fire on local wildlife. Even the art department uses specimens as models for artwork. The library is also helping the museum create 3D models of the skulls of birds and mammals.

“Wyoming is one of the few places there are megafauna left,” she says. “I think it’s important we keep that record here.”

Wyoming Natural Diversity Database

The Wyoming Natural Diversity Database (WYNDD) is also devoted to gathering and developing biological information but with a special focus on species of conservation concern and natural vegetation communities. It operates as a service and research unit of the university and is a member of the Natural Heritage Network of similar programs. Each of the 50 U.S. states and most Canadian provinces house a network program that cooperates in a group known as NatureServe.

“We’re a biological survey for Wyoming,” says Director Gary Beauvais. “We’re a little like Extension, except we deal with issues of native plants and animals and their conservation. Our mission is to develop the best scientific information possible on native plants and animals in the state and then distribute that data to anyone who needs it across the spectrum of potential partners — from natural resource developers, consultants and managers all the way to natural resource conservationists.”

WYNDD has four areas of focus — botany, vertebrate zoology, invertebrate zoology and ecology — plus the database itself. In the vertebrate program, the unit focuses on practical applied research on the rarer species of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals in the state. For example, Wyoming is home to 18 species of bats, eight of which are susceptible to a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome that has caused millions of bat deaths in North America. WYNDD is working with Wyoming Game and Fish Department to develop a strategic plan to combat the disease.

However, it’s invertebrates — a group that includes insects, mollusks and crustaceans — that are now being most frequently petitioned for listing under Endangered Species Act. Therefore, WYNDD-collected information on invertebrates is desperately needed by federal and state agencies. For example, the western glacier stonefly was believed to only exist in Glacier National Park in Montana and was listed as threatened under the act. However, WYNDD located the insect in Grand Teton National Park and, recently, in the Wind River, Absaroka and Beartooth mountains.

The state also comes to WYNDD for information when a plant is petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act — like the recently petitioned thickleaf bladderpod in northern Wyoming. Meanwhile, the ecology program focuses on habitat-level issues, often pursuing projects that map unique habitats such as sand dunes and wetlands.

Lastly, WYNDD’s information systems and services group maintains the database and web tools that allow partners to access their information.

“At last count, we have 430 organizations as partners,” Beauvais says. “They submit about 12,000 data requests a year.”

These requests may come from private consultants hired by industry or from federal and state agencies that need the information for management or development. WYNDD is home to 11 full-time employees and also employs students as field technicians to assist the team’s scientists. WYNDD was first developed in 1979 and came under the UW Office of Research and Economic Development in 1998. It’s overseen by advisory committee made up of representatives from partner groups.

The role of units such as WYNDD and the Museum of Vertebrates is to bridge the gap between science and those who make the decisions about managing habitats.

Beauvais says: “We exist to produce and distribute information under the philosophy that good decisions on Wyoming’s natural resources will be made when everyone involved has access to the best information possible.”

Wyoming Natural Diversity Database Director Gary Beauvais scans samples with Ben Legler of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium.

PHOTO BY ALI GROSSMAN

The Gift of Time

Students, staff and alumni volunteer for animal-related charities at home and abroad.

By Micaela Myers

Since I was in high school, I’ve been volunteering with animal-related nonprofits, most recently joining the board of the Wyoming Coalition for Animal Protection. I knew many other University of Wyoming faculty, staff, students and alumni share my passion for helping animals. Here, we highlight a few of these individuals, though there are hundreds more doing great work in their communities.

Laramie Animal Welfare Society

Many UW students, alumni and staff members volunteer with Laramie Animal Welfare Society (LAWS), a nonprofit with a mission to enhance the welfare of animals in Albany County, primarily through a trap, neuter and return feral cat program, a foster and adoption program, and funding of medical care, including spay and neuter for animals at the Laramie Animal Shelter.

“This work has become very important to me over the past few years,” says nursing junior Emily Mangus of Lovell, Wyo. “Taking care of animals that can’t take care of themselves, and that would be in a much worse situation if not for LAWS, is really fulfilling and motivates me. I find it relaxing, and I love being able to spend time with the kittens and puppies.”

Mangus fosters cats and kittens and takes shifts at the LAWS facility. She wants other students to know that it’s

totally possible to be a full-time student and volunteer, and that all expenses are covered for fosters.

“It’s amazing seeing success stories and watching these cats and other animals find their forever homes,” she says. “LAWS is completely volunteer based, so it’s great seeing the community come together with donations in order to help these animals.”

Gisele Knopf, an assistive technology program specialist with the Wyoming Assistive Technology Resources on campus, also volunteers and fosters for LAWS.

“I have fostered about 45 cats/kittens in my 2.5 years,” she says, adding that dogs are also available to foster. “Opening up to fostering cats and kittens who have been neglected has given me a sense of contributing to their future. My cats also play a part in socializing these kittens as well as other family members. It is very rewarding to see them get adopted.”

A cat naps at Laramie Animal Welfare Society’s office, waiting for adoption.

PHOTO BY REESIE LANE

Cheyenne Animal Shelter

Britney Tennant earned her bachelor’s degree (animal science and zoology and physiology ’04) and her master’s degree (reproductive biology ’06) from UW. She founded the nonprofit Black Dog Animal Rescue in her hometown of Cheyenne in 2008 and took on the role of CEO of the Cheyenne Animal Shelter last year, continuing her lifelong dedication to animal welfare.

“Animals are something that’s always spoken to my heart,” she says. “I’m convinced animals play a really critical role in our understanding of our humanity. Understanding that relationship with animals has always been important to me.”

At UW, she was a member of The Wildlife Society, and a professor connected her with a wolf sanctuary.

“It snowballed from there,” she says. “I volunteered with the Laramie Raptor Refuge, worked at the state vet lab and volunteered with Game and Fish. That’s one of the great things about UW is that it’s so connected. If you’re paying attention, you can really find an outlet for all of your passions.”

PHOTO BY JANELLE ROSE PHOTOGRAPHY

At UW, she also learned critical skills such as how to sift through information, work well with others and make good working relationships. Black Dog was formed one relationship at a time, Tennant says. With the nonprofit well established, she was eager to make a further difference as CEO of the Cheyenne Animal Shelter.

“Shelters are critical to the infrastructure of the community and the community’s success, so it was important to me as someone who is civically minded to think about the future of the shelter and see it thrive,” Tennant says. “Our big goal is to become the premier animal shelter in Wyoming. We want to model best practices for the industry and be an education and resource center not just for the community but also for other institutions.”

Mountain Shadows Equine Revival

A Passion for Good A Passion for Good

By Riley Box

Animals deserve love, respect and kindness, as they have been partners to human beings since the beginning of time. This point is ever present in the life of Micaela Myers, editor of UWyo Magazine at UW. Myers began volunteering at a therapeutic riding facility in high school and from there went on to volunteer with pit bull rescues and other animal nonprofits.

Locally, Myers helps provide animal food for those in need in our community and serves on the board for the Wyoming Coalition for Animal Protection (WYCAP). When it comes to animal protection laws in the United States, Wyoming ranks in the bottom five. WYCAP is working to change this statistic through education, advocacy and improved legislation.

During her time at WYCAP, the nonprofit assisted Wyoming Against Gas Chambers in its efforts to encourage the city of Green River to stop using gas chambers to kill shelter animals and instead adopt more human euthanasia methods. WYCAP members also conducted a letter writing campaign this summer that helped take a local dog abuse incident from a misdemeanor to a felony. Myers serves on several of WYCAP’s committees, including fundraising, legislation and quarterly newsletter.

In her lifetime, Myers hopes to see a reduction in animal abuse and unnecessary euthanasia. She hopes her volunteer work will provide even the smallest difference in the world.

This horse rescue depends on volunteers who are members of the UW community to rehabilitate and train horses coming from dire situations. Master’s student Jessica Evans is one of these volunteers. When it came time to design her program goals, her volunteer experience played a major role. Scan the QR code or watch online at bit.ly/mountain-shadows-equine to learn more!

COURTESY PHOTO

This past summer, two UW students headed to Namibia to work with the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), thanks to funding from a generous donor to the Global Engagement Office and various UW departments.

For zoology and physiology Ph.D. student Kathan Bandyopadhyay of Kolkata, India, the opportunity is a continuation of many years of wildlife research. After cheetahs’ extermination there in the 1950s, they were reintroduced in India this fall. Bandyopadhyay’s UW research — under the supervision of Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources Dean John Koprowski and Wildlife Institute of India Dean Y.V. Jhala — looks at density estimation, niche partitioning and movement dynamics of several carnivores.

“My Ph.D. dovetails with the cheetah reintroduction project to understand the cascading effect of this first intercontinental mammal translocation,” he says. “This project is extremely crucial because it will not only contribute to the global ecology and genetics of cheetah but also a knock-on effect to protect the carnivore guild of grassland ecosystem. At CCF, I am working on two different projects: one in spatial tactics of release of cheetahs and the other on measuring carrying capacity of cheetahs and other large carnivores in CCF properties.”

After graduation, Bandyopadhyay hopes to contribute his

Cheetah Conservation Fund

expertise to manage the carnivore populations of Wyoming as well as promoting carnivore conservation in other parts of the world.

Undergraduate Lindsay Buckhout of Richland, Mich., a senior majoring in zoology and environment and natural resources with a minor in honors, also spent the summer with the CCF. There, she worked with the Livestock Guarding Dog Team and in the education department.

“The livestock dogs are Anatolian shepherds, and CCF raised them to be loaned to local farms in order to protect goats and sheep from predators. Just having a dog from CCF guarding your herd lowers predator kills on livestock by 80100 percent. It works well as a conservation method because the dogs deter cheetahs from hunting livestock, and in turn the farmers don’t feel the need to kill cheetahs in order to protect their herd,” she says. “For the education team, I help lead tours and talks on the importance of cheetah conservation. I am also working to quantify the effectiveness of CCF’s education plan. Education is the key to conservation!”

Cheetahs have long been Buckhout’s favorite animal and inspired her to choose conservation as a career path. Prior to CCF, she participated in a research initiative in the Iwokrama Rainforest Reserve in Guyana.

A male cheetah at Namibia’s Cheetah Conservation Fund.

PHOTO BY KATHAN BANDYOPADHYAY

By Micaela Myers

There are more than 500,000 service dogs currently working in the United States, including several on the University of Wyoming Laramie campus. These dogs are trained to do specific tasks for people with disabilities. Through their hard work, service dogs help give their handlers increased independence, comfort and safety. Here we introduce you to two service dogs and their handlers.

Shelby and Olana

Shelby Kappler graduated from UW in 2018 with degrees in international studies and Spanish, as well as minors in disability studies and anthropology. She now works at UW as an assistive technology program specialist at the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities, helping connect Wyoming students with print disabilities to alternative-format materials.

Meet two service dogs who are regulars on the UW campus.

“I have a visual impairment myself,” Kappler says. “Olana is my guide dog. She is a 6-year-old yellow lab. She was raised and trained by Guiding Eyes for the Blind in New York, and we graduated training as a guide dog team in 2018. Many service dog organizations and trainers charge thousands of dollars for a fully trained dog. However, there are several guide dog organizations that offer their dogs completely free to eligible individuals. Guiding Eyes is a nonprofit and

Alumna Shelby Kappler with her service dog, Olana. Kappler works at UW’s Wyoming Institute for Disabilities.

PHOTO BY ANONYM, INC.

almost entirely donation-based. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to work with this organization and such an incredible dog.”

Olana is loving and caring, with a goofy playful side when she’s not working.

Kappler explains that people with visual impairments often choose between using a white cane or a guide dog.

“Having a dog, I think I’m much more approachable, but it’s still a symbol I have an impairment,” Kappler says. “She’s often a conversation starter. Olana has helped me immensely with my confidence and being able to go out and do things independently. I wanted to hide behind a cane, and I don’t with Olana. That’s been very helpful and powerful for me.”

Olana came with a solid set of skills but has also learned new things, such as the dangers of ice.

“She is trained for intelligent disobedience,” Kappler says. “So if I give her a command to go forward, and there’s an obstacle in the way, she will refuse the command. One thing they don’t teach them in class but Olana has picked up on is

that ice is slippery. So when I walk to and from work in the winter, she’ll stop and let me know if there’s ice.”

Paulina and Alaska

Paulina Gurevich graduated from UW in 2020 with degrees in sociology and honors. She now works in Laramie and plays the French horn in UW’s symphony orchestra. Alaska, a 3-year-old Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix, accompanies her as her service dog.

“I have a psychiatric disability and a seizure disorder,” Gurevich says. “Alaska does seizure alert and response and anxiety alert/behavior interruption. She also does deep pressure stimulation, and she’s in training now to do light guide work.”

Like Olana, Alaska knows when it’s time to work and when it’s time to play.

“She has an on and off switch,” Gurevich says. “At home she’s super goofy. When she’s working she’s very serious, calm and well-behaved.”

Gurevich wrote her honors capstone on housing discrimination. She wants the public to know that pretending a pet dog is a service animal or bringing pets where they are not allowed can be dangerous to those with service animals. And while you can’t touch or distract a service dog without permission, it is OK to ask to pet them.

“She’s a fantastic companion,” Gurevich says. “She’s also very reliable, which helps mitigate my disability and keeps me functioning day to day.”

SERVICE DOG FACTS

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a service animal is a dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability. Service animals are working animals, not pets, and are allowed to accompany their person almost anywhere they need to go.

Service dogs do not need to wear an identifying vest or be registered. Staff in public places may only ask two questions: Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and what work or task has the dog been trained to perform. Staff cannot ask about the person’s disability, require medical documentation, require a special identification card or training documentation for the dog, or ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the work or task. See beta.ada.gov/topics/service-animals for complete guidelines.

Alumna Paulina Gurevich with her service dog, Alaska. Gurevich plays in the UW Symphony Orchestra.

Professor

Discover the di erence at the University of Wyoming’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

6 7. 6 %

OF CEPS GRAD STUDENTS ARE OF A DIVERSE BACKGROUND

*This is based on information from academic year 21/22

OPPORTUNITIES FOR FULLY-FUNDED GRADUATE ASSISTANTSHIPS $

AVERAGE STARTING SALARY FOR CEPS GRADUATES

ACCESS TO STATE-OF-THE-ART LABS TO CONDUCT RESEARCH

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DEPARTMENTS WITH 18 BS, 15 MS, AND 12 PHD PROGRAMS TO CHOOSE YOUR PATH

Dr. Vladimir Alvarado

of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering

A New Future for Coal

UW RESEARCHERS SHOW OFF NUMEROUS COAL-DERIVED BUILDING MATERIALS IN A DEMONSTRATION HOUSE.

By Christine Reed and Micaela Myers

Imagine a house built from coal-derived materials. It’s not an updated tale of the three little pigs, but instead it’s reality at the University of Wyoming — thanks to an innovative student team, a professor and the folks at the School of Energy Resources’ Center for Carbon Capture and Conversion.

Early results show that coal-derived char bricks perform better than traditional clay bricks in many ways — they are lighter, stronger, more fire resistant and more environmentally friendly, and economically they are less expensive to produce. These are exciting features at a time when the costs of building materials are through the roof. A demonstration char-brick house was completed this past spring — along with a second house made of traditional materials so the two can be compared. It’s the first char-brick house to be built in the U.S. After testing, it can be moved as an exhibition.

“The goal of the project is to see how the coalderived building materials, especially char bricks, stand up to different environmental conditions and compare to conventional building materials that are currently used in the market,” says ChooiKim Lau, the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management graduate student leading the project. “Our team will evaluate performance characteristics — such as the mechanical integrity, thermal resistance, light weight, fire resistance, toxicity and electromagnetic radiation tolerance — with comparative durability,

Associate Professor Kam Ng stands in front of the completed coal char-brick house near the UW High Bay Research Facility.

noise resistance, moisture absorption and weathering.” Lau is originally from Alor Setar, Malaysia, and now a resident of Laramie, Wyo. and a U.S. citizen.

Lau is working alongside undergraduate students Noah Scott and Jonathan Scott, both from Cheyenne, Wyo. They work under the direction of Kam Ng, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management within the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

The work is associated with Center for Carbon Capture and Conversion, directed by Richard Horner. The center is dedicated to discovering and advancing new uses coal. In addition to char bricks, researchers at UW have developed a multitude of coalderived building materials including mortar, plaster, flooring materials, roofing materials, insulation materials

and structural units to supplement concrete, timber and steel.

“Our objective is to build a house with the maximum amount of coal in it,” Horner says. “All of the materials that are used in building today we believe we can make from Wyoming coal.”

In the summer of 2021, the team manufactured over 4,000 char bricks in the span of 30 days using basic tools and equipment.

“We made them by hand in a zerowaste method and cured them outside using little energy input — only the natural sun and wind of Laramie,” Lau says. “The porosity and thermal properties of the coal char bricks are such that they have the ability to absorb moisture from inside buildings on humid days and release moisture on dry days, which means that the building is consuming less energy.”

Horner says: “Our objective in the School of Energy Resources is not just to do research but to commercialize these efforts and create new jobs and industries in Wyoming. Currently, coal is a main source of income for the

state, so efforts to keep mines operating will allow us to have a continued revenue stream for our state to invest in education, infrastructure, medical care, emergency services and the overall well-being of Wyoming citizens.”

It will also play a major role in growing Wyoming and creating diversification opportunities in the manufacturing industry, he says.

The team will monitor the performance of coal-derived versus conventional building materials for one year, which will provide a good baseline. The data and results will then be shared with interested industry partners, with the intent of taking the technology to market.

“We hope that our research will highlight the competitive advantages of our coal-derived char bricks to the construction industry and increase the products’ marketability, usage and consumption, further advancing to the next stage of commercialization and production,” Ng says.

“I’m so proud of this project,” Lau adds. “When I’m making these bricks, I feel like I’m creating jobs for the future.”

The UW team researching the performance of coal-derived carbon building materials in comparison with conventional building materials consists of, from left: undergraduate students Jon Scott and Noah Scott, of Cheyenne, and graduate student ChooiKim Lau, of Laramie. They are in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management.

3+3 QUICKSTART

ACCELERATED DEGREE PROGRAM

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE | JURIS DOCTOR

The 3+3 Quickstart program allows UW students to earn a B.S. in Energy Resource Management and Development (ERMD) through the School of Energy Resources and a law degree through the College of Law in 6 years for the combined professional credentials.

Save a full year of studies and tuition to complete both degrees.

Prepare for a career in Professional Land Management, Real Estate, Energy Law, Business Management, Policy, Environmental Law, and Civil Law.

Gain experiential learning and practical training through both programs.

Contact us to get started | seracad@uwyo.edu www.uwyo.edu/ser/academic-programs/

Go to uwyo.edu/because-of-a-teacher to hear stories about the educators who have helped build several distinguished Wyomingites into the people they are today.

You can also submit a short video sharing your story about an influential teacher!

Common Health

A

UW endowed chair is helping to protect the wellness of Wyoming.

By Sunnie Lew

Endowed professorships such as the one held by Riverbend Ranch Chair Kerry Sondgeroth shape the future.

From pronghorn, to bison, to coughing dogs, Dr. Kerry Sondgeroth is uncovering what makes animals sick and protecting the health of Wyoming’s wildlife and its livestock.

Sondgeroth, an associate professor and board-certified veterinary bacteriologist at the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory, was appointed to the Riverbend Ranch Endowed Chair in Wildlife-Livestock Health in 2020. Her work has had a great impact on not only the animals she studies, but also the people of Wyoming.

“We’re all working toward the common goal of better health for all animals,” says Sondgeroth. “We’ve been making an effort to bring people together across the university, the state and the country.”

Endowed positions are critical to the success of the university. Their impact is far-reaching and creates a legacy of excellence that is significant to the state. Gifts made to UW for the endowment of deanships, chairs, professorships and fellowships are valued incentives used in the recruitment and retention of world-class faculty.

Sondgeroth’s endowed position was made possible by Tim Mellon, who donated the Riverbend Ranch west of Laramie to the UW Foundation in 2011, with proceeds of its eventual sale earmarked to establish the Riverbend Ranch Endowed Chair.

“Endowed faculty positions are the difference between a good university and a great university,” says UW Provost and Executive Vice President Kevin Carman. “They allow UW to attract and retain outstanding faculty who are international leaders in their disciplines. As exemplified by Dr. Sondgeroth, the Riverbend Ranch Chair has allowed us to attract a leading scholar in infectious disease who is addressing issues that are important to both the wildlife and citizens of Wyoming.”

Sondgeroth is a remarkable example of how chair holders help shape the future of the state. Her department has been accomplishing things that no other university has done before. Under her leadership, UW has been making a name for itself for work in understanding the diseases that affect Wyoming’s animals.

“The endowment (that funds the Riverbend Ranch Endowed Chair in Wildlife-Livestock Health) has given our students skills that they get to carry with them into their own careers,” Sondgeroth says. “It has provided them travel opportunities, fieldwork and the importance of communicating with stakeholders. Training the next generation of scientists, who are passionate about science, is one of the most impactful things we can do. So, the endowment is key to the future success of our university and state.”

If you are interested in supporting the work and research of Sondgeroth and other UW distinguished faculty, contact the UW Foundation by emailing foundation@uwyo.edu , or calling 307-766-6300.

Kerry Sondgeroth, the Riverbend Ranch Endowed Chair in WildlifeLivestock Health. PHOTO BY AUSTIN JACKSON

Newton and Charlie.

Distinguished Alumni Award Winner JOSEPH LEIMKUHLER

By Micaela Myers

It was a serendipitous encounter that led Joseph Leimkuhler to the University of Wyoming. After earning his undergraduate degree in geology and forestry from the University of Montana in 1981, he went to work as a “mud engineer” on drilling rigs in Wyoming. It was there that he met Jack Evers, the former head of petroleum engineering at UW, when Evers brought students for a tour of a rig in the Snowy Range. Leimkuhler was going to head to law school, but Evers had other ideas. Evers encouraged Leimkuhler to complete the undergraduate engineering coursework needed for graduate school admissions — which he did via correspondence while continuing to work on rigs all over the state. Leimkuhler, his wife Stephanie, and their two kids then moved to Laramie, where Leimkuhler completed his master’s degree in petroleum engineering in 1987. Some of his fondest memories include walking with his young children from married student housing to see basketball and football games and flying paper airplanes off the top deck of War Memorial Stadium.

As for his UW education, he says: “When you left this place, you knew how to run a rig. I had internships working with students from bigger schools like Stanford, USC and Texas A&M, and they all asked me how I knew so much more about the practical side of drilling engineering. It was obvious they did not have Jack Evers as a professor.”

That UW education allowed him to

hit the ground running, working for Shell in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico.

“We were drilling wells at 7,000 feet of water, which was the deepest in the world at the time,” Leimkuhler says. “I was always just thrilled to be doing what I was doing at the time because it was always unique, always a challenge. I managed to progress and eventually lead that organization. Sometimes you wake up and pinch yourself: how did I get here?”

At Shell, he worked his way up to offshore well delivery manager for the Americas. In 2012, Leimkuhler left Shell and joined LLOG Exploration Co., where he served as vice president of drilling, helping grow the company into the largest private oil producer in the U.S. and the fourth largest offshore producer. In 2019, a new challenge came his way — shepherding Beacon Offshore Energy from the ground up as the chief operating officer. Beacon is based in both Houston, Texas, and Covington, La., and currently operates six subsea fields and one drilling rig in

the deep-water Gulf of Mexico and is executing development of Shenandoah, the highest pressure offshore oilfield in the U.S.

Leimkuhler and his wife Stephanie live in Mandeville, La. He serves on several boards and has earned a number of awards, including the American Petroleum Institute Meritorious Service Award, the American Association of Drillings Engineers Lifetime Outstanding Service Award and the UW Eminent Engineer Award. Motivated by the incredible opportunities he believes UW provided him, Leimkuhler has continued to give back, serving on the National Advisory Board for the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences and the Petroleum Engineering Advisory Board. He and Stephanie also support UW with their philanthropy through the Joseph and Stephanie Leimkuhler Petroleum Engineering Dean’s Excellence Fund that goes to undergraduate student scholarships, graduate student stipends, undergraduate student enrichment experiences and faculty awards to those who distinguish themselves in scholarly work, as well as other areas of UW.

Leimkuhler’s advice to current students is to bloom where you are planted, let your passion and curiosity carry you forward, and success will find you. He often speaks to future petroleum engineers at UW, inspiring them to see the industry as playing a key role in the world’s future energy needs and transitions. Engineers, he says, are pivotal to finding solutions, mitigating issues and improving people’s lives.

Distinguished Alumni Award Winner

CARISSA MOFFAT MILLER

By Micaela Myers

Carissa Miller says that receiving a quality education changed the trajectory of her life, and she has devoted her career to making sure kids get the best education possible. In 2018, she was named chief executive officer of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), becoming the first woman to lead the organization in its then-90-year history. CCSSO is a nonpartisan, nationwide, nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education across the country.

“At CCSSO, I work with so many incredible state leaders who are passionate about making sure education is of the highest quality for all kids,” Miller says. “It’s an honor to

work with state leaders and have an impact on the federal level to make sure education for kids is equitable.”

After earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1992, she came to UW in 1995 for her master’s in sociology. Her husband, Clark Miller, is also a UW alum (M.A., history, ’98; J.D., law, ’01). In 2009, Miller earned her doctorate in education from the University of Idaho. After serving as deputy superintendent at the Idaho Department of Education, she joined CCSSO in 2013. She and her family live just outside of Washington, D.C.

Miller advises UW students to keep an open mind because you never know where your career will take you. “My advice is to not think about a career as a linear path but to think about each job or class or degree as building your skills, abilities and experiences. My biggest growth and opportunities came because I was willing to volunteer and take on new projects,” Miller says. “I grew up on a farm and ranch in western Nebraska. Every job was yours. I took that into how I thought about work and my education.”

Miller looks back at her time at UW fondly. “As an employee at UW, I worked in the residence halls,” she says. “I still keep in touch with many of those students. Laughing in the dining hall with them, the relationships, celebrating milestones and then watching their life progress — they’re all such incredible memories.”

Miller also appreciated the small class sizes and her excellent professors and classmates: “My degree helped shape me into a more critical and analytical thinker about data and to better understand the value in relationships among and with people. One of the most important characteristics of a leader is a keen ability to listen and understand other people’s perspectives. I feel like my time at UW and my degree in sociology honed that skill and are a critical part of how I approach my job and life in general today.”

Miller marked her own major non-academic milestone at UW, giving birth to her first child in Laramie about a week before her husband graduated from law school in 2001.

Winning the Distinguished Alumni Award is humbling, Miller says: “I get a little emotional, to be honest. I know so many incredible UW graduates. I’m deeply touched to be included in this esteemed group. I hope that, as an alumna, I can highlight the caliber of the institution, how important UW was to me and how much it invests in its students.”

Distinguished Alumni Award Winner DOUGLAS STARK

By Micaela Myers

Douglas Stark grew up in Riverton, Wyo., and worked in road construction after high school. Like many young people, he decided to attend the University of Wyoming to better his job prospects — a move that paid off. After earning his degree in agricultural business in 1980, he joined Farm Credit Services of America, which provides agricultural credit, risk management

and financial services to farm and ranch operators in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and Wyoming. He culminated a 37-year career there, ultimately serving as president and chief executive officer from 2005 until his retirement in 2017. Under his leadership, the financial cooperative’s assets grew from $9.7 billion to $25.8 billion in 2017, and its annual net income grew

from $144 million to $514 million from 2005 to 2017. He has testified before Congress several times and was instrumental in leading the development of an innovative nationwide trade credit program for agricultural machinery and equipment.

“It was a really rewarding career,” Stark says. “I love the field of agriculture. I loved helping people be able to reach their goals and achieve their dreams. The farmers and ranchers we served were outstanding people.”

Throughout his career and in his retirement, Stark has continued to give back to his alma mater, facilitating collaboration on research and outreach projects between UW and Farm Credit Services of America; co-teaching a leadership class in the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources; and working to help establish the first minor in leadership at UW. He also serves on the Agriculture Dean’s Advisory Board and the UW Foundation Board of Directors. Because of these efforts, he received the Agricultural Outstanding Alumni Award in 2013. His wife, Deniz, is also a UW alum (B.S., ’84, agricultural business), and they live on their ranch north of Shawnee, Wyo.

“I felt UW was a pivotal point in my life and career,” Stark says. “There are so many opportunities if students will look at their college education as that pivotal experience — that platform to propel them into an exciting future. That’s what keeps me motivated and giving back to UW.”

Stark made some of his best friends at UW — friends he’s still in touch with today. He tells students that life after college is like a big room full of doors that open to many possibilities. Your degree gets you into that first big room, but there are many rooms and doors to follow.

“If you’re really pursuing the best of yourself, opportunities are going to come your way,” he says, “sometimes before you think you’re ready. That’s what I found in the course of my career. I had opportunities to advance and do different things. The college education prepares you for that, but there are many opportunities that lie ahead for you.”

For Stark, winning the Distinguished Alumni Award is humbling and a symbol of his ongoing efforts at the university. “It’s quite an honor to win this award,” he says. “I certainly didn’t expect it. It’s very gratifying to see that the things I have done and am doing at the university are appreciated.”

I LOVE THE FIELD OF AGRICULTURE. I LOVED HELPING PEOPLE BE ABLE TO REACH THEIR GOALS AND ACHIEVE THEIR DREAMS. – DOUGLAS STARK

By Micaela Myers

Just after Jim Neiman graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1974 with his degree in range management, the market for his family’s forest product business tanked.

“My dad would say it’s a chicken or feathers business. It’s up and down,” says Neiman, who represents the third generation in the business, which is headquartered in Hulett, Wyo. “We had to work hard to grow our business. It was a matter of survival for quite a while. If you go through that situation, it really builds character and gives you a different outlook on life. It made us learn to do things on our own and learn how to survive.”

Not only did Neiman Enterprises Inc. survive; it thrived under Neiman’s vision as president and CEO. An active member of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the business now includes facilities in Wyoming, South Dakota, Colorado and Oregon that produce products including wood, shavings and pellets. The family also owns Neiman 77 Ranches and affiliated businesses, such as The Golf Club at Devils Tower. Over the years, Neiman Enterprises earned a number of prestigious awards, such as the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Business Ethics and the U.S. Forest Service Stewardship Award. Furthermore, the company’s Montrose facility won the 2015 EDIE Company of the Year award from the Economic Development Council of Colorado.

“It’s an honest industry that’s hardworking,” Neiman says. “There are a lot of good people in our industry focused on how we create healthy

Medallion Service Award Winner JIM D. NEIMAN

forests and how we supply wood to the housing market.”

Neiman enjoys giving back to his country and alma mater. At UW, he served two terms on the Board of Trustees including two years as president, as well as serving on the boards of the Ruckelshaus Institute and Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Currently, he serves on the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources Board, Agriculture Dean’s Advisory Board and Campus Advisory Board. Professionally, he served with the Wyoming Occupational Health and Safety Commission, the Wyoming Economic Development and Stabilization Board, Business Advisory Board for the Kansas City Federal Reserve and the Enhanced Oil Recovery Commission. Currently, Neiman serves with the Hulett Airport Advisory Board, the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, Intermountain Forest Association and the Federal Forest Resource Coalition.

His wife Christy and their two children are also UW graduates. Son Marcus Neiman works with the family companies and is a member of the Wyoming Army National Guard, and daughter Sonja Merryman also works for the family companies in community relations and marketing.

As a student at UW, Neiman fondly remembers the concerts and football games as well as learning to buckle down and study hard.

“I had to make a promise to myself that I wouldn’t have any alcohol Sunday through Thursday,” he says. “That was important to me and a lesson in how to get there.”

In addition to this lesson, his advice to current students is to find businesses they really enjoy and can put their passion into. Helping the next generation find this success is one of the reasons he continues to stay involved with UW.

“My focus is on the students,” he says, adding that it’s important to be a role model. “My spiritual foundation is really the most important thing that leads and guides my decisions.”

Neiman is honored to join the impressive list of UW Medallion Service Award winners. “It’s very humbling,” he says. “You want to pinch yourself and see if it’s real.”

SCAN THIS CODE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT JIM NEIMAN, NEIMAN ENTERPRISES AND HULETT, WYO., OR GO TO BIT.LY/JIM-NEIMAN.

More Than a

Best Friend

Alumna Laura Murray saves dogs and veterans through nonprofit The Rescue for PTSD.

By Tamara Linse

Jeff is a Vietnam-era veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He served as an aerial imagery interpretation specialist. As a result of his service, he suffers from debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, including severe anxiety and sleep disorders. He has

had open-heart surgery and two strokes.

Tuve, pronounced too-vay, is a 70-pound German shepherd. She was adopted in 2017 as a 1-year-old from the Houston City Shelter through the Save-A-Pet Rescue. She quickly won hearts by learning to fetch in less than 20 minutes (which you can witness, along with her training, on YouTube at bit.ly/rescue-ptsd).

Tuve was the first service dog rescued and trained by Houston-based organization The Rescue for PTSD (rescueforptsd.org).

Now Tuve helps Jeff. They were matched in 2018, and Jeff adopted Tuve in 2019. They are perfect for each other. On their second day of transition, Tuve alerted without cue to Jeff’s anxiety and performed deep pressure therapy to calm him. If Jeff falls, Tuve sits with him and barks until someone comes to help. She is by his side and gives him confidence in crowds, making space for him. She helps him sleep — she signals bedtime, keeps watch next to him to allow him to rest, and wakes him if he has a nightmare. She also fetches her

we going to listen to the signs and go ahead and do this now? Do we have to be hit in the head about this?’”

Laura’s mom got her the equivalent of Nonprofits for Dummies for her birthday, and the rest is history.

What began with one dog and one veteran has now expanded, and The Rescue trains as many as it can — the organization has a list of veterans from across the country waiting to be matched with trained service dogs. The organization includes a head trainer, with numerous fosters and volunteers. The needs of the veteran guide the dog’s education, which culminates in a three-day transition training.

In addition to the full training and matching program, The Rescue established a group outreach to impact more veterans and their dogs. Once a month, veterans travel from the Houston region to train their own service dogs. The sessions last four hours and include puppy, beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. The group members have become friends and provide support for one another throughout the month when they are not in class.

“Each of our dogs has a little piece of my heart,” Murray says. It’s hard to transition them to their veteran partner, she says, but it’s also heartwarming. “We keep track of the teams for the life of the dog.”

If you are a veteran or know a veteran suffering with PTSD who might benefit from a service dog, contact The Rescue for PTSD for more information at rescueforptsd.org. If you would like to support or become involved, feel free to contact the organization, which would love to hear from you.

Murray adds, “Veterans do so much for us, and there just isn’t enough done for them when they come home.”

Including that initial match of Jeff and Tuve in 2018, The Rescue has matched 11 pairs of dogs and veterans in the full training program, with five more dogs in training. In addition, 36 teams are in the monthly group training program, with more joining all the time. Thirteen teams have graduated.

“We rescue the dogs, and then the dogs help rescue the veterans,” Murray says. “There is a long waiting list. We are a small organization that is filling a very big need.”

Bolo and his UW handkerchief, leash and collar. Bolo inspired The Rescue for PTSD.

Army veteran Kurt Woods and his service dog, Honor, during their transition weekend.

WYOGRAMS

By Emma Petersen and Heather Baker

Submit career, wedding, birth and obituary news via our online submission form at uwyo.edu/alumni/wyograms, or email us at uwalumni@uwyo.edu. Photos may be sent to uwalumni@uwyo.edu for consideration. *Please note that WyoGram’s with ‘Exp.’ next to a name mean an alumnus or alumna were expected to graduate during the following date.

1970

Kathryn Williams, B.A. ’70, English, published Rhino Dreams: A Novel, which highlights the importance of preserving endangered species’ lives and the horrors of poaching.

Gordon Schaffer, B.S. ’72, business administration, and Joyce Schaffer, *Exp. ’63, were named the Rock Springs Main Street URA Volunteers of the Month in February 2022.

Francis Harkins, B.S. ’74, psychology, retired from Raytheon Technologies in January 2022 after working there for 22 years. Harkins supported numerous programs while working at Raytheon. The latest program was a three-year assignment to Doha, Qatar, supporting a U.S. government deployment. Additionally, Harkins served in the U.S. Air Force for 30 years and retired as a colonel. He currently lives in Bedford, Mass., but plans on moving to the Tampa Bay, Fla., area.

2000

Christopher Wilson, B.S. ’01, molecular biology, was recently appointed chief of cardiology at Renown Medical Group in Reno, Nev. After graduating from UW, Wilson attended the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center School of Medicine and UT Health Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, earning his medical degree and Ph.D. in 2007. Post-graduation, he was accepted to the residency program at Yale New Haven Hospital where he completed his

residency in internal medicine and served one year as chief resident. Following his year as chief resident, he was accepted for a cardiology fellowship at Yale New Haven Hospital. Upon completing his fellowship, Wilson accepted a cardiology position with Renown Hospital where he currently resides with his wife and two children.

Aaron Kruger, B.A. ’04, social studies secondary education, received the Milken Educator Award for his engaging classroom, his collaborative leadership and his whole-child approach. The award provides public recognition and individual financial rewards to recipients that have promising educational career paths in elementary and secondary schools.

Raelynn Meissner, B.S. ’04, architectural engineering, has been promoted to associate at Cushing Terrell. Meissner has been with Cushing Terrell for 17 years and has spent the last 15 of those years focused on sustainable design and highperformance buildings. Her experience includes building energy studies and analysis, LEED building certifications and mechanical design for a variety of systems. Meissner is one of the founding members of Cushing Terrell’s Green Advocacy Council, a green think tank that continues to move sustainable design forward within the firm. She has contributed to more than 30 LEED project certifications. In addition to her LEED certification, she is a GBI Guiding Principles

Compliance Professional and has worked on projects pursuing smart building strategies, the Living Building Challenge and zero-net-energy goals.

Rebecca Junge, B.A. ’12, Exp. ’15, elementary education, received the Milken Educator Award for her innovative teaching strategies and datadriven educational strategies. The award provides public recognition and individual financial rewards to recipients who have promising educational career paths in elementary and secondary schools.

Anniversaries

James S. Neiman and Sally Ann Neiman, dear friends of UW, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on 2/15/2022. Together, they share a lifetime of memories in marriage and work with Neiman Enterprises located in Hulett, Wyo.

Obituaries

James Blaisdell Jr., M.A. ’64, history, 5/24/2021. Blaisdell had been employed by Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank, Farm Credit Services, Banamex and USAID. He was a specialist in agriculture. Survivors include his wife, Iris, two sons and two grandchildren.

Frank Cole, B.S. ’57, civil and construction engineering, 11/29/2021.

Darwin Davidson, M.S. ’67, botany, 2/27/2013. After earning his degree at UW, Davidson went on to earn a Ph.D. from Duke University. He worked in research for Coors Brewery for 20 years,

then for S.S. Steiner Hops Co. Survivors include his wife, Claire (M.Ed. ’66), children and four grandchildren.

Dwight France, B.S. ’70, business administration, 3/22/2022. France caught the flying bug early in life when he learned that whichever brother mowed the lawn got to fly his dad’s Cessna 180. In 1975, he started his very successful air charter service, France Flying Service. He chartered passengers all over the United States and flew nearly 40,000 hours during his long career. In 2011, the Wildlife Society honored him with its Citizen of the Year award. He retired the same year and moved to Encampment, Wyo. France served both the Rawlins Fire Department and Carbon County Fire Department for many years.

On July 7, 1984, Dwight and Candace Carroll (B.S. ’70) were married in Encampment. Their daughter Jane Marie (JD ’11) was born in 1986. France loved UW football games, and he was a lifetime member of the UW Alumni Association and was a

former UWAA board member. Survivors include his wife Candace, daughter Jane (Ross Hinschberger); brother Sherrod (Janet); niece Dawn Meyer (Tim); nephew Copper (Tara); niece Natalie (Jon); his brother and sister-in-law, Dennis and Jana Cook; and four great-nieces. He was preceded in death by his parents and nephew Jon France.

Philip Irwin, B.A. ’54, history, 1/11/2022. After graduation from UW, Irwin attended Stanford Law School, where he graduated first in his class. He joined the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, Calif., and he was dedicated to the firm for his entire 64-year career as one of the firm’s longest-serving partners. Irwin specialized in

tax law and became a partner in 1965. He served as chair of the firm’s tax department from 1985 to 1990 and served for many years as chairman of the USC Tax Institute, one of the top tax seminars in the country. His work in the arena of spin-offs and mergers helped shape the future for an array of corporate icons including Dole, Lockheed Martin, Bank of America and Chase Bank. In 2002, the Los Angeles County Bar Association honored him with the Dana Latham Memorial Award for outstanding contribution to the community and the legal profession in the field of taxation. Survivors include his wife, four children and four grandchildren.

WyoGrams continued on page 63

CITATION: THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING 1988 WYO.

HEBARD LD6268.W86 V.70 1988 PG. 12. UW LIBRARIES

EMMETT CHISUM SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

RETROGRAMS

Discovered and summarized by Jennifer Kirk and Emmett Chisum Special Collections staff

CITATION: THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING 1987 WYO. HEBARD LD6268.W86

V.69 1987 PG. 261. UW LIBRARIES EMMETT CHISUM SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

CITATION: THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING 1983 WYO. HEBARD LD6268.

W86 V.65 1983 PG. 177. UW LIBRARIES EMMETT CHISUM SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

A member of the Cowgirl rodeo team competes in barrel racing. UW Rodeo was a member of the Intercollegiate Rodeo Association in 1988 and still is to this day. The sport of college rodeo was divided into six events for the men and four for the women.

CITATION: THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING 1988 WYO.

HEBARD LD6268.W86 V.71 1989 PG. 91. UW LIBRARIES

EMMETT CHISUM SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Cowboy Joe (Joe III) and his four handlers in 1987. Cowboy Joe is a tradition that started in 1950 when the Farthing family of Cheyenne made a generous donation of a young pony to become Wyoming’s mascot.

UW student Mike Stull and Smokey, his 9-foot python, lived in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house together. The python was captured in the wild, and Stull adopted Smokey because he is quiet, clean and never complains.

An animal science major checks on rams he’s using for an agriculture research project after the College of Agriculture’s expansion.

RETROGRAMS

Discovered and summarized by Nora Plant

Black bears and grizzly bears roam the wilds throughout Wyoming. In Yellowstone National Park, however, bears sometimes venture right up to passing cars. In this image, three American black bear cubs looking for food belly up to a car full of tourists. In 1970, Yellowstone National Park prohibited the feeding of bears to restore bears to their natural diet.

CITATION: UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING, AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER, PHOTOFILE: YELLOWSTONE-WILDLIFE. (NO DATE AVAILABLE.).

Agriculture and ranching play a large part in Wyoming’s history. This image taken by famous Wyoming photographer Charles J. Belden shows how challenging a profession ranching truly is (1908-ca. 1940). Even in a blizzard, the rancher must manage his cattle to ensure their survival and his and his family’s livelihood. But that’s what makes Wyoming “Cowboy and Cowgirl Tough!”

CITATION: UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING, AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER, CHARLES J. BELDEN PHOTOGRAPHS, ACCESSION NUMBER 598, BOX 10, ITEM 904

Lora Webb Nichols was a photographer well-known for taking candid snapshots — mostly in the small town of Encampment, Wyo. Her photos provide an intimate look of day-to-day shenanigans. Pets and animals are a recurring theme in her photographs that make the shenanigans even more special. One of these special moments includes this 1925 image of a child dressing her cat in baby clothing and taking it for a walk.

CITATION: UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING, AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER, LORA WEBB NICHOLS PAPERS, ACCESSION NUMBER 01005, BOX 20, #21435

Raymond “Ray” Maret, B.S. ’54, M.A. ’56, geology, 11/24/2021. Maret joined the Wyoming National Guard. After his first two years at UW, his unit was called to serve in the Korean War. Following his service, Maret returned to UW to complete his undergraduate and graduate education. His career in the oil business took him and his wife Penny to Canada, where they raised their family. Maret served as president of Maret Resources Ltd. He traveled widely and was an avid skier for most of his long life. Survivors include his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews and many friends.

Allen Vander Meulen Jr., professor at UW, 11/22/2021. Vander Meulen was associate professor of economics at UW from 1973–78 and directed the UW-Casper extension program. He retired in 1997 with his wife. Survivors include his wife, children and their spouses, brother, siblings-in-law, numerous cousins, nieces and nephews.

Floyd Murray, B.S. ’53, geology, M.A. ’57, geology, 7/21/2021. Survivors include his wife of 66 years, son, daughter, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

Tammy Needham, B.A. ’87, elementary education, 11/18/2021. Survivors include her brothers, niece and her two fur babies.

Teri Nelson, B.A. ’77, social work, 9/9/2021. Nelson was a member of UW’s Alpha Chi Omega sorority and the Western Thunder Marching Band. She held many positions throughout her life, but her favorite title was grandmother. Survivors include her husband of 43 years, children, grandchildren, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, nieces and dear friends.

Jerry Palen, ’69, economics, 11/25/2021. Survivors include his wife, sons and grandchildren.

Harry Patterson, B.S. ’60, mechanical engineering, 12/2/2021. Survivors include his wife of 71 years, children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

Timothy Patterson, Exp. ’14, 7/12/2021. Survivors include his sons, former wife, mother, sister, nephews, nieces, great-nephews, uncle, aunt, stepsiblings, dear cousin and longtime friend.

Bent Pouttu, B.A. ’64, Spanish, 1/13/2021. Pouttu will be remembered for his adventurous spirit, intellectual curiosity and conversation, sense of humor, and many projects in wood, stone and concrete during his carpentry career that will remain for generations.

Barbara Roach, B.A. ’53, English, 11/8/2021. Survivors include her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

James Rolando, M.A. ’59, physical education, 7/22/2021. Survivors include his wife, sons, grandchildren, sister, nieces and nephews.

Colleen Rolston, B.A. ’70, elementary education, 12/7/2021. After graduating, Rolston spent three years as a Laramie teacher before moving to the Denver area and working in the private sector. In 1976, she and

WYOGRAMS

her family moved to San Mateo, Calif., but they returned to the Denver area in 1983. Rolston and her husband, Bob, spent 22 years in Centennial, Colo., before retiring and returning to Sheridan, Wyo. While there, she spent her time serving on various local boards and volunteering for the local CASA organization and the Museum of the Big Horns. Survivors include her husband, younger brother, three children and two grandchildren.

Emma Jo Spiegelberg, B.A. ’58, economics, M.Ed., educational administration, 9/8/2021.

Spiegelberg, longtime Laramie, Wyo., resident, was instrumental in Laramie High School (LHS) curriculum development and teaching, and later as she became the vice principal. Following her time at LHS, Spiegelberg was appointed principal of McCormick Junior High School, where she worked until her retirement. She was named a Distinguished Alumna of UW in 2008. Spiegelberg made remarkable contributions to education, the UWAA, Ivinson Mansion Museum, the Ivinson Memorial Hospital Foundation and the Cathedral Home, where she sat on the board of directors for 50 years. Survivors include her children and their significant others, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, sisters, nieces, nephews and cousins.

Steven Schultz, B.S. ’82, petroleum engineering, 11/8/2021. Survivors include his wife, children, grandchildren, mother, sister, son-in-law and foster daughter.

Melissa Schwartz, B.A. ’03, English, 11/22/2021. Survivors include her husband, but she

will be remembered by many family members, friends and co-workers for her unwavering compassion, unbending positivity and vibrant personality.

Raymond Short Jr., B.S. ’90, chemical engineering, 9/17/2021. Survivors include his wife, daughters, grandchildren and sister.

Lucinda Sutphin, B.A. ’74, elementary education, and Donald Sutphin, B.S. ’71, biological science secondary education, M.S. ’75, natural science, 10/31/2021. Lifelong residents of Wyoming, Don and Cindy are remembered as beloved schoolteachers and owners of The Auto & Bike Shop in Douglas, Wyo. They are remembered fondly by friends, students, neighbors and business patrons. Don taught biology and chemistry for more than 40 years and will be remembered by his students for his humor and enthusiasm. He served on the Converse County Airport Board and the Casper College Alumni Board. Cindy worked in the high school choir department and kept the books and helped manage the auto shop. Don and Cindy were high school

sweethearts and were married in 1968. The Sutphins loved their children and grandchildren more than anything. They often traveled around the state and beyond for sports events and outdoor activities. The couple of 53 years shared a love for motorcycles and rode thousands of miles together. Don and Cindy are survived by their daughter, grandchildren, Cindy’s father and her sisters.

Thomas Alan Thorson, B.S. ’60, geology, 12/16/20. Thorson led an extraordinary life full of generosity, adventure and compassion toward family, friends and noble causes. He, along with the love of his life Kathleen Ballard, served with many organizations including Rotary International, Wyoming Business Alliance and I-Reach 2. In his career, Thorson was best known as the president of the family business Black Hills Bentonite LLC, which he led for six decades. In the spirit of Thorson’s giving nature, a gift given in memory of Thorson supports UW’s Geology Field Camp, which is now named in his honor.

› UWAA President-Elect of the Board Jane France: Dewey the Llewellyn Setter and Bonnie the kitten getting acquainted. Three happy dogs, Tyce, Corb and Mabel (left to right) enjoying Prexy’s Pasture after the Homecoming Parade.

› UWAA Executive

Assistant Samme

Eisenhauer: Flynn eats treats and meets new friends, and his favorite pastime includes long walks with his parents, Eisenhauer and Seamus Hanover, on UW’s campus. He always has a smile on his face and earns a gold star for every object that he retrieves.

› UWAA Executive Director Jack Tennant: Sweet Charlie poses at the Tennant household, waiting to take an adventure outside. He has been with their family for 10 years!

UWAA Board and Staff

› Maple is a 2-year-old German shepherd and elkhound mix that was adopted just over a year ago by UW alumnus and current UW law student and football player Jackson Marcotte and current UW graduate student Katie Welniak. Maple loves watching Cowboy football and wearing her brown and gold bow!

› UWAA Executive Committee Board Member Gary Cameron: BooBoo, the Black Bear Sheriff of the Wind River Mountain Range near Black Joe Lake, decided to raid this camp site location on three consecutive nights. When BooBoo was caught raiding food hanging in a tree, he growled with an enthusiastic chorus interpreted as “The World Needs More Cowboys, so you boys saddle-up and ride for the brand at 7220 feet, and leave the cookies, sugar cubes, jerky and Wyoming Whiskey behind!”

› UWAA Digital Engagement Strategist Heather Baker: Three “foster fails” from Laramie Animal Welfare Society keep Baker entertained in her time away from the office or alumni events. Gamora, Hunter and Zayda have spunky personalities, and Baker encourages everyone to adopt from local welfare societies!

› UWAA Digital Engagement

Intern Katherine Welniak: Zeus is a 5-year-old golden retriever that belongs to the Welniak family. He has been a Pokes fan since he was adopted and loves sporting his UW Steamboat bandana. He enjoys car rides around Laramie and a good pup cup from any Laramie coffee shop!

› UWAA Board President Terry Moss: All four family dogs throughout Moss’s adult life have been brown and gold. The chocolate lab he had during college, Ceder, lived 17 years. Moss attributes her long life to walks on the Laramie River and to the beer his roommates weaned her with before he met his wife. Anytime someone cracked a cold one, Ceder would come running!

A“Mammoth” Sculpture

mythic land referenced throughout history, philosophy and literature back to the ancient Greeks. The film documents the artist’s journey through regions of Oregon and Russia and invites visitors to consider Quixotic journeys to real or imagined destinations. Throughout the multimodal project, Ginzburg undertakes the roles of archaeologist, historian, explorer and geographer. He incorporates his visage throughout the project, the tangibility of which invites us all to reflect on our own possibilities. These concepts intersect with art and science through Ashnest, as he incorporates mammoth tusk fragments with replicated human bones circling above a mound of ash. This intersection encourages many lines of inquiry, including the trade of geological and anthropological artifacts, reimagining history, and the birth and death cycle of the planet relating to the ideas of journey and destination.

The Art Museum is excited to continue our commitment to working with high-caliber internationally recognized artists. Anton Ginzburg (b. 1974) is a New York-based St. Petersburg-born artist and educator whose practice combines painting, graphic art, moving image and

architectural collaborations. He earned a BFA from Parsons Paris of The New School and his MFA from Bard College at Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts in New York. His work has been shown internationally, including exhibitions at the 54th Venice Biennale, the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Canada, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, White Columns in New York, and the first and second Moscow Biennales. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Dresden Film Festival and New York Film Festival Projections, among others.

The Art Museum is hosting Ginzburg for a residency in Laramie the last week of September 2022. Visit the UW Art Museum’s event page for specific program details:

Anton Ginzburg (Russian, b. 1974), Ashnest, 2011, mammoth tusks, painted polyurethane, iron rods, resin, ash, bronze slag, sand, 170×158 inches.

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

PORTRAIT OF ANTON GINZBURG BY IRIS ESPUNKT

Artist Anton Ginzburg and his work arrive at the UW Art Museum.

Bringing the Past to Life

Studying ancient animals gives insight into early humans and environmental changes.

By Micaela Myers

The life of early hunter-gatherers was no picnic, but imagine the payout of bagging a 10,000-pound wooly mammoth. The earliest inhabitants of Wyoming may have done just that, luring the giant lumbering beasts into a dead end where many spears could fell them. Shortly after humans arrived on the scene, wooly mammoths became extinct. No one knows the exact cause, but professors and students at the University of Wyoming are studying mammoth kill sites in the state to learn more about the relationships between humans and mammoths.

Hunting Mammoths

“We’ve been working on sampling a group of seven mammoths that were hunted approximately 12,000 years ago in the

Big Horn Basin,” says anthropology Assistant Professor Briana Doering. “We’re trying to determine exactly when the mammoths were hunted, what they ate and how far they migrated.”

At the Colby mammoth site near Thermopolis, 12,000-yearold projectile points from early humans were also discovered.

“The mammoth bones may have been cached — stored — for the winter by these Clovis people,” Doering says. They also determined that these early humans returned to the site at least twice for mammoth hunting.

“We don’t have a lot of examples of people hunting mammoths in North America, so this is pretty cool. Wyoming lays claim to this amazing example of human-animal interaction,” Doering says. “Hunting a group of mammoths requires a lot of cooperation. They probably had 10-20 people

Assistant Professor Briana Doering samples one of the mammoths at the Washakie Museum & Cultural Center. PHOTO BY MEGAN REEL

to track the mammoths, corner them and get them into an area where they could take them down.”

Doering’s team included recent master’s student Molly Herron of Littleton, Colo., and recent doctoral graduate Madeline Mackie of Yorba Linda, Calif.

Herron also worked with anthropology professors Robert Kelly and Todd Surovell and Zhaojie Zhang, director of zoology and physiology’s microscopy facility, studying ivory fragments at the 13,000-year-old La Prele mammoth kill site near Douglas. Herron is the first researcher to create a method for identifying ancient weathered and fragmented proboscidean ivory using a tabletop scanning electron microscope. Identifying the ivory was important in establishing how these early people used it and shows they considered it a valuable resource.

“The fact we have these tiny pieces all around the site is evidence that people were likely hammering on ivory tusks to use them as a raw material to make other things,” Herron says. This had not been previously well established or studied in the U.S.

Cutting-Edge Techniques

Other anthropology students are also helping develop cuttingedge research methods, including ZooMS — zoo archaeology by mass spectrometry. Mass spectrometry determines the mass of a molecule, can provide structural information and can identify unknown components of a sample. UW is fortunate to be home to this state-of-the-art equipment. ZooMS was developed by United Kingdom researcher Michael Buckley. It uses collagen as a molecular barcode to identify bone fragments.

“You can extract collagen and use it to identify what the bone belonged to,” explains Sebastian Wetherbee of Keystone, Colo., a recent master’s graduate. “Very few labs in the world use it.” Wetherbee and fellow master’s student McKenna Litynski of Hollywood, Md., have been working through the protocols and refining methods.

“I’m interested in zooarchaeology, which is the study of animal remains at archaeological sites,” Wetherbee says. “Professor Todd Surovell studies ice age hunter-gatherers. He excavated a 12,800-year-old campsite in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains called Barger Gulch. He found a lot of little stone tools and bone, but the bone was incredibly poorly preserved.

Top: Graduate student McKenna Litynski conducts experiments to determine what could cause marks on bones discovered in Bluefish Caves. COURTESY IMAGE

Middle: Assistant Professor Briana Doering and recent graduate student Molly Herron take mammoth bone samples at UW’s Anthropology Museum. COURTESY IMAGE

Bottom: Original excavations at the Colby mammoth site near Thermopolis. PHOTO BY CHARLES REHAR

When you’re studying bones from an archaeological site, you have questions like what were they hunting and how were they impacting their ecosystem, but you can’t say anything about that if you can’t identify the bones.”

In addition to studying the bone fragments at the Barger Gulch site, Litynski hopes to use ZooMS to study the microfauna (small animals) at the La Prele site.

“There’s a debate on whether people in the Pleistocene period were specializing in mammoths or consuming a wide variety of animals, including small rodents,” she says. “I’ll also be using it to construct past environments. For me, ZooMS is important because, with microfauna, it’s really hard to get it down to the species and genus because they don’t have very distinguishing characteristics other than the teeth and the mandibles.”

Litynski is also studying bone from Canada’s Bluefish Caves.

“There’s an enormous question about when people arrived in North America,” Kelly says. “We can all agree they were here at least 13,000 years ago. The question is whether they were here earlier.”

Some believe Bluefish Caves provide evidence of 24,000-year-old human activity because of possible cut marks on the animal bones. However, natural causes for the marks could be from trampling, carnivore damage or rock fall.

“I decided to focus my research on the rock fall aspect,” she says. “I created an experiment to try and test if rocks dropped on bones could mimic stone tool cut marks.”

She dropped limestone on bones, mimicking environments in the cave, then analyzed them under a microscope.

“My results proved that in most cases the rock fall didn’t mimic cut marks,” Litynski says. “I’m currently doubling my sample size. I think it’s a really important project because of the debate on when people came to North America.”

The People’s Collection

The UW Geological Museum moved to its current location on campus in 1956 and is beloved by visitors of all ages. Some of legendary geologist Samuel H. “Doc” Knight’s murals are still on display, and his famous copper-plated Tyrannosaurus rex welcomes all who pass.

“At one time, it was the only full-size T. rex sculpture in the U.S.,” says Geological Museum and Collections Manager Laura Vietti. “Knight deliberately used copper knowing the environment would oxidize it into a metallic dull green that’s very reptilian.”

WATCH A VIDEO “GEOLOGICAL MUSEUM”

BIT.LY/UWYO-GEO-MUSEUM

As visitors walk in, they’re greeted by a large Apatosaurus skeleton. It was the first fully mounted dinosaur in Wyoming. Until the 1990s, the skeleton was mistakenly called Brontosaurus — the result of a mismatched head and body due to a historic mix-up by an early paleontologist in the late 1800s.

Most of UW’s fossil specimens — 1,000 specimens on display and 50,000 in their research collections — belong to the people, Vietti says. UW is a federal and Wyoming state repository, so vertebrate specimens (animals with backbones) found on federal or state lands are sent to the university.

“We ensure those specimens are cared for and stored,” Vietti says. “We make them available to researchers and have a database that is accessible. Students are actively researching a lot of these specimens.”

The museum is working with the library to create 3D models of many specimens. On display, you can see some of the earliest horse fossils in the world and the Knightia fossil fish — the Wyoming state fossil — named after Wilbur Knight, Samuel Knight’s father and a key figure in UW geology. The UW Geological Museum is the oldest museum in the state, providing key opportunities for researchers and the public to learn about Wyoming’s rich geological past.

The UW Geological Museum, left to right: a Pteranodon skeleton, the famous copper-plated Tyrannosaurus rex in front of the museum and the Apatosaurus skeleton inside.

Degrees:

Animals Classroom in the

By Riley Box

Animals aren’t just our mascots or a focus of research. They also feature prominently in several University of Wyoming classes, including Writing Animals taught by Associate Professor Kate Northrop and Sociology of Pets taught by Assistant Professor Jennifer Tabler.

The goal of Writing Animals, taught this semester, is to look at the relationship between humans and

non-human animals through creative writing and research.

“This course is built on the premise that imagining the existence of lives beyond our own is crucial to surviving and thriving,” says Northrop. “It is crucial to health.”

Creative writing encourages this imagination and allows humans to more closely examine our lives with non-human animals. It also helps students investigate why some animals are not treated the same as pets.

“Writing Animals pushed me to explore more about my physical world through writing,” says Sage Walton, a senior accounting major from Fort Collins, Colo., who took the class in 2021. “Northrop does such a lovely job with the discussion of texts, and I highly recommend taking it.”

Sociology of Pets is another popular class at UW that is taught in the spring semester. Sociology is the study of development, structure and functioning of human society. This class offers a unique look at sociology by analyzing why humans treat some animals as friends and family while treating others as commodities. Discussions include animal testing, animals as symbols and animals in the economy.

“This class is important because it helps students think critically about something often taken for granted — our relationship with other animals,” says Tabler. “We take for granted how human-animal relationships differ across time and culture.”

Throughout the semester, students develop a survey regarding people’s attitudes and experiences with animals. Survey questions range from the ethics of hunting to emotional attachments to pets.

“This class changed my whole outlook on animals,” said one student who took the class in the spring semester. “I’ve become more conscious of my actions and how they affect animals.”

Even though both classes encourage new perspectives of the treatment and understanding of animals, the methods and approaches make each course unique.

200+ AREAS OF STUDY LEARN MORE!

FIND YOUR PATH AND START YOUR FUTURE!

UW offers a wide variety of both undergraduate and graduate degrees and majors — including several animal-related fields of study — through seven colleges and mutiple interdisciplinary programs and departments. Start by exploring our programs and majors website. When you’re ready to narrow your options and declare a major, we’ll be here! Our admissions counselors are eager to help you design a unique academic experience for you.

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