Fall 2017

Eyeing the challenges and promise of tomorrow

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 18:31:15 +0000

Eyeing the challenges and promise of tomorrow Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/05/2017 - 12:31

James W.C. White

As a new academic year begins in the College of Arts and Sciences, change is on the horizon. Provost Russell Moore has asked me to serve as interim dean for the next year, and the top agenda item is a multi-year discussion about the future of learning and discovery at the �鶹��Ƶ.

James W.C. White

Titled “Rethinking the university: the futures of learning and discovery,” the conversation will occur both within the college itself and throughout the university and is designed to identify our deepest aspirations in research, teaching, learning and service, and begin building the roadmaps to realize those aspirations. Our faculty, staff and students will play key roles in driving these conversations, and alumni will also have the opportunity to contribute. To learn more, please see Provost Moore and CFO Fox’s Q&A on the process in the most recent edition of CU Boulder Today as well as a website outlining additional information.

I am pleased to report that our conversation begins from a place of profound strength and notable accomplishment. Many of the awards our faculty have earned are well-known—the Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes and MacArthur “Genius” Awards. Many other honors, numbering in the hundreds, further underscore our faculty’s quality. Our students also generate considerable pride. Each year, another impressive group of students arrives, eager to absorb and apply knowledge in their personal, professional and civic lives.

From its beginning in 1892, the College of Arts and Sciences embraced a clear mission: to offer a higher education to Colorado citizens and others. Former University of Colorado President James H. Baker, who also served as de facto dean at the college’s inception, said the university’s mission was to take “young men from the mines, the ranges and ranches, young men and women from the homes of honest toil, and offer them the greatest blessing the state can bestow upon its children.” Though we might scoff at the antiquated language here, the “blessing” to which President Baker referred remains so today: a liberal-arts education that empowers our graduates to serve their communities, the state of Colorado, the nation and the world.

Our own community and A&S’s place in it have also changed dramatically. In 1892, a mere 55 students enrolled in the college, and the whole university sat on a largely barren hill overlooking Boulder. Today, some 16,500 students are in the College of Arts and Sciences; the campus is anything but barren; and the once-agrarian West is a cog in the global economy. Through the years, the college has preserved its commitment to a diverse and relevant curriculum, while adjusting its strategies to meet the needs of the day.

So, as we launch a vital discussion about tomorrow, it is important to acknowledge the many triumphs of yesterday along with the significant strengths of today. I would be remiss if I did not thank Steven R. Leigh, who served with distinction as dean of the college for the past five years. I also want to thank Provost Moore for his confidence in me to lead the College of Arts and Sciences during this important time.

As you may know, I am a professor of geological sciences and the founding chair of environmental studies. I am eager to undertake this new role with a commitment to listening, to boldly imagining where the college can go and to employing maximum creativity, flexibility and energy to draw the roadmap to get us there.

We are in this together, and I want to emphasize my commitment to open and transparent communication. I look forward to meeting with students, faculty and staff to hear your visions for a college once again facing new horizons, but doing so confident in all that we have achieved and all that we might achieve in the future.

James W.C. White is interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

From the interim dean: As a new academic year begins, change is on the horizon.

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Two new certificate options launched at CU Boulder

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 10:21:43 +0000

Two new certificate options launched at CU Boulder Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/05/2017 - 04:21

Kyle Houseworth

Certificates in social innovation and care, health and resilience aim to help students help others

Two new certificate programs at the �鶹��Ƶ—one in social innovation and the other in care, health and resilience—are available to students now, thanks to the efforts of Don Grant, a professor of sociology.

The new programs can benefit students regardless of major, he said, noting that one value of a university education is its versatility.

According to Grant, the certificate programs address topics often overlooked by social scientists but critical to students’ future employment. Because of this, he devised programs to better equip students to tackle these fundamental, professional concerns.

The Undergraduate Certificate in Social Innovation prepares students to work in fields where the objective is to help society's most vulnerable and disadvantaged people. The program teaches students how to design and execute evidence-based strategies to improve human welfare.

This certificate advances CU Boulder’s strategic imperative to be the top university for innovation, Grant said.

“Boulder is considered to be one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial cities in the country,” and the Certificate in Social Innovation puts students in contact with local innovation experts who will serve as mentors and develop students’ skills as professional problem-solvers, he said.

Because the certificate is open to all majors, students will consider ideas from many disciplines and backgrounds, and that openness aims to foster sustainable solutions.

Thinking on your feet is an advantage in today’s job market, and students trained in social innovation will be well-rounded and capable job candidates, Grant said.

The Undergraduate Certificate in Care, Health, and Resilience aims to prepare undergraduates to work in the “helping” professions—nursing, medicine, counseling, teaching, community services, ministry, emergency management and related fields—by addressing the human dimensions of modern care.

The certificate advances another university imperative, to “positively impact humanity,” Grant said.

“Today’s students are more motivated than ever to help the disadvantaged, and the Undergraduate Certificate in Care, Health, and Resilience prepares future health-care professionals to treat their clients holistically,” Grant said.

Through internships, students will learn the emotional, social and organizational challenges of working in modern care bureaucracies. He said those challenges are not addressed in classes that focus solely on the technical aspects of service.

This certificate complements but does not compete with the existing Undergraduate Certificate in Public Health, he said. Care providers must understand the human impacts of their work, and through internships at local hospitals like the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, Grant believes students will better appreciate the work they do and the lives they nurture and save.

Both programs emphasize how instead of what to think, reflecting a goal of a liberal-arts education and targeting students whose career goals range from politics to nursing.

Certificates in social innovation and care, health and resilience aim to help students help others.

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Re-imagining Wharton in modern-day Houston

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 09:59:47 +0000

Re-imagining Wharton in modern-day Houston Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/04/2017 - 03:59

Craig Levinsky

Five questions for English alumna and author Yvonne Georgina Puig

Yvonne Georgina Puig, originally from Houston, received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from the �鶹��Ƶ in 2004. Her debut novel, A Wife of Noble Character, was published in hardcover by Henry Holt & Co in 2016, and in paperback with St. Martin’s Griffin earlier this summer.

She’s obsessed with Edith Wharton, whose work The House of Mirthprovided inspiration for A Wife of Noble Character. She stresses that she’s not a Wharton expert, like others she met at Wharton’s home in Lenox, Mass., while working on her new novel. Recently, she discussed A Wife of Noble Character with the College of Arts and Sciences from her home in Santa Monica, Calif., where she lives with her husband.

You’ve been busy since graduating from CU Boulder. What have you been up to?

After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles and interned with Variety Magazine. It was a fun job to have right after college, and to move to L.A. from Boulder, because it’s so different. It was very unfamiliar. I was as an editorial assistant, so, I would just help with the general editorial part of making the magazine. But they had me covering events after work. So once or twice a week, at night, they’d send me to cover these parties for the events page. I also wrote some longer pieces that have been archived online.

But the editors would say, “Go here and cover this party for the opening of this thing, or that thing.” So that was really fun because I got to learn about the city and how to get around, and it forced me out of my comfort zone to go up to people like Steve Martin and say, “Hi, I’m Yvonne. I’m from Variety. Can I ask you about your movie?” which was terrifying and something I’d never done before. I got to meet some pretty amazing people. Francis Ford Coppola was one. I got to interview Barbara Walters for a longer piece, which was awesome. There were so many… Another neat interview was Janusz Kamiński, the cinematographer on a number of Spielberg’s films.

It’s funny that I’m remembering all this now. The actress who was in all the Bergman films, Liv Ullman… The funny thing about this at the time is that I didn’t even know how amazing it was to talk to these people, because I was 22, and didn’t fully appreciate it. It’s only now that I’m like, “Oh my gosh! I got to talk to Liv Ullman.” But at the time, I didn’t get it. But you know, that’s life. It was a really neat thing that I got to do at that time in my life.

Then I went to USC for grad school for writing, and I stayed on there, teaching composition for about seven years. I loved it. And along the way I did a lot of freelance writing. I recently had the opportunity to write on a documentary film, Given, about a family of surfers traveling the world. I loved doing that because the film is told from a child's perspective, my favorite perspective to re-live and imagine.

And now we have A Wife of Noble Character, which we know was inspired by Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. As a writer, what does Wharton mean to you?

I love that she could have lived an easy life but chose not to. She was born wealthy and had independent means her whole life. She did everything the hard way, and she learned so much, and was brave when she could have taken things easy. She did so many other things aside from writing some of the greatest novels ever. She joined the front during World War II and set up tuberculosis hospitals for soldiers and orphanages for children fleeing Belgium. She was a really brave person. She could have been a complete lady of leisure, but she had a zest for life and insatiable curiosity. I love that about her.

I had the opportunity to work as a writer-in-residence at her home, The Mount in Lenox, Mass. She actually built it and designed it from the ground up. She was also a brilliant architect and landscape designer, too. It’s a very quirky house. She could have made herself a grand mansion with a huge entrance, and from the outside it looks like a grand mansion, but when you go inside, the way she designed it is very private and eccentric and creative. I didn’t sleep in the house, but I and two other novelists stayed right around the corner from it for two weeks and wrote in the house every day, which was just one of the best experiences of my life, to write in the room where Edith Wharton wrote. She famously wrote in bed, with pages spilling to the floor.

Would you call A Wife of Noble Character an adaptation or an homage to The House of Mirth? What about that work, in particular, called to you?

I would say A Wife of Noble Character is a reimagining of The House of Mirth, because they both differ in significant ways. I first read The House of Mirth in 2008. I just loved the story so much. I really wanted to reimagine it in Houston. I can’t explain it. It was sort of cosmic. I just had to do it. It's one of my favorite novels. As a love story, it breaks my heart. It’s set in turn of the century New York, and obviously the strictures on women at the time were intense then and very different today, but the culture Wharton describes reminded me of where I grew up in Texas. I felt some striking similarities in terms of expectations for marriage. So that resonated with me, because in The House of Mirth, Lily Bart feels she needs a husband in order to be complete. It’s complicated. She’s in search of a rich husband and believes she can’t survive without one, and she can’t, actually. It’s a tragic love story.

So, The House of Mirth was my starting point. I wanted to place my story in Houston and imagine these social pressures, which are different but still somewhat similar, and envision how they might play out today. The protagonist in my story, Vivienne, has a similar conflict to Lily’s. She’s from a wealthy family, but they've lost a lot of their money. They’re not quite wealthy anymore. She grew up believing she would just marry rich, but she isn’t in love with a rich man. She has to reconcile these parts of herself, who she thought she was and what she needed, with who she actually is without destroying herself along the way, which is what happens to Lily Bart.

I just work where I can, as often as I can. I’m definitely a creative hermit."

She’s kind of realizing that she can’t love the man she falls in love with unless she changes, which is why I call A Wife of Noble Character a love story about losing your life in order to gain it. It’s about a woman who learns, at times against her will, to let go of her identity and shed all those things she thinks she needs in order to be happy. It’s as if she can’t have this man she loves unless she’s willing to not need him. But that’s what scares her the most. It’s a riches-to-rags story set in modern-day Houston.

Would you mind speaking a bit about your process? Did you discuss your work with anyone while writing it? Was finding a publisher quick and easy, or was it so painstaking at times, you didn’t know if you’d ever see it in print?

The book took about four years to write, but I wasn't working every day during that time. We live in a city apartment here in Santa Monica. I've learned I can’t be precious about it. I have a little nook that I work in. Sometimes I go to a coffee shop. Sometimes I write at the beach. When I was teaching, I’d go to the library. I just work where I can, as often as I can. I’m definitely a creative hermit. I don't show anyone anything until it's ready. I get too distracted by opinions. I see a work-in-progress as a sort of fragile baby—it needs protection in order to grow and become what it is.

Finding a publisher happened quickly, but it was also painstaking. Reminds me of the Hemingway line, "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

Many people reading this will be writers, either teachers who write or students just starting out. Do you have any advice to give them?

This is always a tough question to answer, because I'm still figuring it out myself. Publication doesn't necessarily change this reality, although it was a major relief. Writing for so many years without knowing whether your book will ever see the light of day is hard. I'd say don't give up, really don't, and be willing to make sacrifices if necessary. But also, don't wrap your entire identity in publication as an end.

Anne Lamott said it best, “I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”

Speaking of teachers, though, I’d suggest recognizing those who support you and your work and adopting them as mentors, if they’re up for it. The great Sidney Goldfarb was my thesis advisor, and he is still a dear friend. He introduced me to so many authors who changed my life. Lee Krauth was on my thesis committee and one of my favorite professors. Both Sidney and Lee nurtured my confidence as a writer and believed in me when I wasn't sure of myself. I'll always be grateful for their wisdom and generosity.

English alumna Yvonne Georgina Puig talks about her debut novel, A Wife of Noble Character.

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Newly minted professors of distinction to be celebrated

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 23:05:37 +0000

Newly minted professors of distinction to be celebrated Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/01/2017 - 17:05

In Sept. 21 event, professors of art and art history, classics, geography and linguistics will give public lectures on their areas of expertise

Three members of the �鶹��Ƶ faculty have been named 2017 Professors of Distinction by the College of Arts and Sciences in recognition of their exceptional service, teaching and research.

The new professors of distinction are Mark Amerika of art and art history, Martha Palmer of linguistics and Mark C. Serreze of geography.

This revered title is reserved for scholars and artists of national and international acclaim whose college peers also recognize as exceptionally talented teachers and colleagues. Honorees of this award hold this title for the remainder of their careers in the College of Arts and Sciences at CU Boulder.

The trio will be honored on Thursday, Sept. 21, at 3:30 p.m., in the Old Main Chapel on campus. At the free and public event, each will give a 20-minute public presentation based on his or her research or scholarly work.

Additionally, Carole Newlands of classics, who was named professor of distinction in 2015 but was unable to deliver her lecture that year, will give join the 2017 honorees and deliver her lecture on Sept. 21.

From left to right, Amerika, Palmer, Serreze and Newlands.

A reception in the CU Heritage Center Museum on the third floor of Old Main will follow the presentations.

Amerika’s artwork has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Whitney Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and the Walker Art Center. He will speak on “The Artist as Fictional Persona.”

Palmer is a professor of linguistics and the Helen & Hubert Croft Professor of Engineering in the Computer Science Department. She is also an Institute of Cognitive Science faculty fellow, a co-director of CLEAR and an Association of Computational Linguistics fellow. Her lecture is titled “Capturing Meaning.”

Serreze is a professor of geography, a fellow of the CU Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and director of the CIRES National Snow and Ice Data Center. He specializes in Arctic climate research, including atmosphere-sea ice interactions, synoptic climatology, boundary layer problems, numerical weather prediction and climate change. He will speak about “Shifting Priorities: A Personal Journey.”

Newlands has been a professor of classics at CU Boulder since 2009. Prior to that, she was an assistant professor at Cornell University, an associate professor at UCLA and a full professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, serving four years as the department chair. Her lecture is titled “Confronting the Classics: Ovid in the Caribbean.”

For a full listing of previously named professors of distinction, click here.

In Sept. 21 event professors of art and art history, classics, geography and linguistics will deliver lectures on their areas of expertise.

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Environmental-studies undergrads publish graduate-level research

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 21:50:34 +0000

Environmental-studies undergrads publish graduate-level research Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/01/2017 - 15:50

Jeff Thomas

‘It’s not really on the radar for incoming students and parents, but there is that opportunity, and it can make a big difference for our students,’ says Professor Daniel Doak

Professor Daniel Doak wasn’t surprised when the research of his recent undergraduate student Rachel Irons was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, last spring. After all, the �鶹��Ƶ environmental studies professor had been mentoring her for some time.

Undergraduate research can help students gain skills and launch careers, but many students matriculate without knowing about the option. Doak, who holds CU Boulder’s Colorado Chair of Environmental Studies, emphasizes the value of undergraduate research both for the students and for the university.

April Goebl, a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology, Daniel Doak, professor of environmental studies, and Megan Peterson, a post-doctoral researcher in Doak's lab, take a moment on Niwot Ridge at the Mountain Research Station. At top of the page, Peterson joins students Eliza Hall and Grace Kendziorski on the ridge. Photos courtesy of Daniel Doak.

“There are some undergraduate students who absolutely are at the same level as our graduate students,” said Doak, who has led a half-dozen undergraduate students along the road to publishing. “And I think that’s a really neat thing about working here at CU. It’s not really on the radar for incoming students and parents, but there is that opportunity, and it can make a big difference for our students.”

Doak said he currently has about five undergraduate students — working directly or in association with him — who will probably be able to publish their current research in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

CU environmental studies majors Ellen Waddle and Grace Kendziorski are working on Doak’s moss campion study on Niwot Ridge at CU’s Mountain Research Center, funded by CU’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, along with Elijah Hall, from Juniata College in Pennsylvania, and Lucas Piedrahita, from Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

Also, Emily Valencia is a senior thesis student who worked in Kenya with Doak’s PhD student, Allison Louthan. Valencia is studying how the loss of large mammals, and subsequent change in plant habitats, can affect pollinators.

“A great thing about CU is the availability of grants that can help undergraduates do excellent work and eventually publish,” Doak said. “You can’t put in the time for hundreds, or even dozens, of students at a time, but there will be quite a few who are inquisitive and dedicated enough to pursue their research that far.”

Publishing their research is obviously beneficial to students anticipating graduate school, but Doak said the advantages go beyond the obvious.

Publishing teaches a great deal about writing and communication that transfer to many fields, and it is tangible evidence of their skills and work ethic that are important contributions to their resumes.”

“It is a lesson in the process of how science tries to sort out truth from conjecture and how the work they did can contribute to this process,” he said. “Publishing teaches a great deal about writing and communication that transfer to many fields, and it is tangible evidence of their skills and work ethic that are important contributions to their resumes.”

The dedication to publish is often the biggest challenge for undergraduates, Doak said. For instance, Irons worked on the published version of her senior thesis for two years after graduating, three years after she finished her fieldwork in Alaska.

“I think I knew from very early on that she would publish,” Doak said about the article, for which he was a co-author. The research showed nesting swallows in sub-arctic areas were more prone to lay their eggs according to changing precipitation or wind, rather than just rising temperatures.

“She had conceived this idea of what she wanted to do, and was already working with people in Alaska (Department of) Fish and Game,” Doak said. “But I knew of some interesting work being done by Alex Rose (a researcher in CU’s Science �鶹��Ƶy and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research), and together we conceived that she (Irons) could do an interesting set of new analyses — a complete and compelling analysis.”

That scenario is typical of undergraduates publishing their work, Doak said. While they are often extremely enthusiastic about their studies, they often don’t see where that research might fall into other sets of inquiry. And they’ll probably need some help in statistics and writing, as well, Doak added.

“I didn’t do any field work in Rachel’s study. I was there to help her work through the statistics and writing,” Doak said. The professor has been working on a 17-year climate change study of moss campion and alpine bistort, which encompasses alpine and arctic environs from New Mexico to Alaska.

“Because I am in the field so much, a lot of working with students really falls on my post-doc, Megan Peterson,” Doak said. “She’s been critical to the success of some of these undergraduate students — she’s really enthusiastic and communicates extremely well with the students.”

But the experience has been quite rewarding for Doak, as well, extending his interaction with recent graduates well past the time they left the university.

“She (Irons) has done some really diverse things after finishing at CU — she’s into worked on organic farms, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. You get to see these adventurous days of their lives,” Doak said.

“It’s fun to see creative and motivated people like Rachel doing things that are well beyond the one aspect of their lives I’m usually associated with.”

Some undergraduate students "absolutely are at the same level as our graduate students," professor says.

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Depression-era shortstop catches good fortune, passes it on

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 19:05:56 +0000

Depression-era shortstop catches good fortune, passes it on Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 13:05

Clint Talbott

And for 72 years, Martin and Gloria Trotsky have been generously grateful to CU Boulder

Martin Trotsky in the early 1940s. Photo courtesy of CU archives.

Martin Trotsky came to the �鶹��Ƶ to play baseball and earn a college degree. He knew so little about where he was heading, he thought Boulder was home to Boulder Dam, now called Hoover Dam. He had yet to develop a fondness, let alone loyalty, to the university.

That was 1938. He was 20. During his first year, when he was subsisting on $15 a month, spaghetti and skim milk, he considered dropping out and returning home to the East Coast.

But here he found kindness from CU Boulder’s baseball coach and its chief dietician, who helped him survive his freshman year. Here he played shortstop on a CU baseball team that won 25 consecutive games between 1940 and 1942. And here he met Gloria, his wife of 72 years.

Martin and Gloria supported the university each and every year since 1942—the year he graduated. Today, Martin is 99, Gloria is 95, and their devotion to each other, and CU Boulder, seems only to have grown.

“After 75 years of contributions, we still feel honored to be graduates of the university, and we learned a lot there, both academically and socially,” Martin Trotsky said recently. “We feel very, very close to the university, and I hope the university feels close to both of us.”

Paul Levitt, a professor emeritus of English whose writing program Martin and Gloria Trotsky have long supported, said the feeling is mutual, calling the couple “wonderful people” who are “enormously generous.”

A child of the Great Depression, Trotsky grew up in New Haven, Conn., and hoped to attend his hometown institution, Yale University. But at $450 a year, the cost was an “economic impossibility.”

After graduating high school in 1935, he played semi-pro baseball for three years, making $2 or $3 a game, until his athletic skills caught the eye of CU Boulder Coach Harry Carlson, who invited Martin Trotsky and two of his chums to CU.

Coach Carlson told the young men to come with $200 each, and “he’d see that we got through school, as long as we made our grades,” Martin Trotsky noted.

Once here, however, the students found it tough going. Each had a job through the National Youth Administration, a New Deal program, that paid $15 a month.

“It was a far cry from what we expected, and at one point early in my freshman year, I thought seriously about transferring to another school, because it was very difficult to get along [financially],” Martin Trotsky recalled.

Nonetheless, the young men invited Carlson and former CU football standout Kayo Lam to dinner at their apartment. Carlson and Lam were served “our normal course of spaghetti and skim milk.”

Gloria and Martin Trotsky in a recent photograph. Photo courtesy of Gloria and Martin Trotsky.

Skim milk was 10 cents a gallon, and spaghetti was cheap. “So, we had a lot of skim milk, and we ate a lot of spaghetti”—with no sauce.

A few days after the dinner, Carlson told Trotsky to speak to Bly Curtis, CU’s chief dietician and director of the women’s dormitory of the time, now called Sewall Hall. Curtis told Trotsky to “get a large pot” to take to the women’s dorm, which gave the young men the dorm kitchen’s leftovers.

“It was like manna from heaven,” Martin Trotsky said.

Levitt emphasizes the deeply positive effect of Carlson and Curtis, which continues to this day: “He adores both of them. He has good reason to adore both of them.”

Carlson admired Martin Trotsky as well. In 1946, he told The Denver Post, “No one who ever played shortstop at CU compared to Marty Trotsky, who scintillated in that position in 1941 and 1942.”

Martin Trotsky posed with a baseball at his Denver home in 2011, when he was 93. Trotsky played baseball and basketball for CU. He was a shortstop that was on the team that won 25 games in a row. Photo credit: The Denver Post/Getty Images

During his sophomore year, the baseball team began its 25-game winning streak. Fortune smiled in other areas as well:

The young players from Connecticut got a pay increase to $20 a month. Martin Trotsky was pledged to a fraternity, which gave him room and board in exchange for a few odd jobs: “hashing” (chopping food) in the kitchen, stoking the furnace, cutting the lawn and shoveling snow from the sidewalks.

And Gloria met Martin in his junior year, 1941. After he completed his service in the U.S. Marine Corps, they married in December 1944. “It’s been a real romance for 72 years,” Martin Trotsky said.

Martin graduated with a degree from the business school, and Gloria Trotsky earned a bachelor’s in music education.

They settled in Denver, where he became a successful businessman and where the couple still lives. They have two children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

“As I improved my economic situation, well, then my contributions to the university grew, and we’re very happy to be able to pay back to a school that was so important to both Gloria and me,” he said.

Among the many initiatives they have supported are the Gloria and Martin Trotsky Music Scholarship Fund and the Martin and Gloria Trotsky Writing Scholarship Fund. The Trotskys’ support for the latter fund, administered by Levitt, came about after Martin Trotsky heard Levitt give a presentation in the 1980s about the undergraduate-writing program, which was then being launched.

“We’ve been very fortunate to live this long, and we’ve been very fortunate to be able to support the university in a fashion that we felt was very satisfactory for both ourselves and the university,” he said. “We weren’t million-dollar givers, but we were givers every year.”

Skim milk was 10 cents a gallon, and spaghetti was cheap. “So, we had a lot of skim milk, and we ate a lot of spaghetti”—with no sauce.

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La-la landings

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 18:44:01 +0000

La-la landings Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 12:44

Clay Bonnyman Evans

A cast of CU Boulder alumni are making their mark on Hollywood

Here’s a little story about a little Hollywood movie, and a bigger story about how several CU Boulder alums have forged Hollywood careers.

Back in 2014, a guy named Devon Avery was shadowing a director on the hit CBS television series NCIS. Avery asked actor Brian Dietzen, who has played Dr. Jimmy Palmer on the show since 2004 and is a �鶹��Ƶ alumnus (Theatre, ’00), if he’d be willing to help him make a short science-fiction comedy film he’d written, One-Minute Time Machine.

Brian Dietzen

“In Hollywood,” Dietzen says, “the answer is always, ‘Yes, let’s do it. We’ll suss out details later.’”

After reading the script, Dietzen asked Avery if he could “bring in a friend,” Sean Crouch, also a CU alumni (Theatre, ’96), who had been working as a writer, producer and “show runner,” or the head honcho, for such shows as NUMB3RS, Veronica Mars and Unforgettable.

“I told him (Sean) was good at science fiction,” Dietzen says. “He was cool about it.”

Dietzen soon made another request: Would Avery mind if they brought in his and Sean’s friend Erinn Hayes (CU Boulder, Theatre, ’98)? Again, he agreed. Three Buffs onboard.

Soon, the all-CU cast and screenwriter were joined by numerous professional crew members from NCIS. The team shot the film in a single day for a mere $800. It went into post-production and, eventually, made its debut online.

At once comic, romantic and thought provoking, the six-minute film about two strangers in a park trying to make use of the time-travel gadget became a viral sensation, and Crouch’s screenplay went on to win Best of the Fest at the 2015 Love Your Shorts Film Festival, an annual showcase of short films from around the world.

“It was so much fun,” Hayes says. “You never know with things like that how it’s going to turn out, but they did a great job. It’s really funny.”

And, of course, the three friends got a kick out of working together.

Sean and Juliana Powels Crouch.

Not that they’re strangers out there in La-La-Land: They and their spouses—two of whom, Annie Haas Parnell and Juliana Powels Crouch, are also CU theatre grads, and a third, Kelly Scoby Dietzen, earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from CU—still socialize frequently, and meet up with another CU alum: Chris Parnell (Theatre, ’98). Parnell went on from CU to earn a master’s degree from Florida State University’s prestigious Asolo Conservatory and in July was named co-president of Sony Pictures Television.

“We all still hang out and support one another. None of this is done in vacuum, and none of us can individually claim success,” Dietzen says. “We were really lifted up by a system [at CU] that helped to nurture and foster a creative environment working with other people.”

That kind of teamwork, support and camaraderie reflects the culture and ethic these and other Hollywood success stories say they experienced while studying and treading the boards at CU Boulder.

To outsiders, Hollywood often evokes glitz and glamor, stars and celebrities, riches and romance. But finding success in the film business is a much grittier proposition than the public often realizes, requiring persistence, hard work and, often, the humility and toughness to labor in obscurity, even poverty, sometimes for years.

Only the persistent survive

Eme Ikwuakor (Theatre,’08) found acting success in Colorado after graduation, most notably in the science-fiction film Ink, which was named Best Colorado Film of 2009 by the Denver Film Critics Society.

With that project sparkling up his resume, he decided it was time to take the plunge and head to Los Angeles, where he took a job as a server and began to audition. But his best-laid plans did not exactly pan out right away.

“I don’t think I got paid for a single thing that first year,” says the actor, currently starring in ABC’s new science-fiction series, Inhumans, which debuts in September.

Eme Ikwuakor in a promotional photo. At the top of the page, he is at left in an image from Inhumans, which premiers in September 2017.

After writing, producing and acting in Chance, a short film about a guy who dreams and fantasizes away his only opportunity to talk to a woman he’d like to meet, Ikwuakor saw himself at a crossroads. He knew he hadn’t fully committed to achieving his dream of acting success, but was afraid to take a leap of faith.

But, having suffered a heart attack at age 21 while at CU and endured hundreds of racist taunts during his youth, the former Buffalo track-and-field recruit also recognized that he had already faced much bigger challenges in life.

“Three weeks later, I quit my day job. I had no money, no savings; I don’t think I could even pay the rent in that moment,” he says. “But I got three jobs in the first month, and now 95 percent of my income is from acting.”

While at CU Boulder, Ikwuakor joined the Interactive Theater Project, which presented art and theater as an avenue to social change. Life at CU began to teach him that the experiences with racism that he faced while growing up were not universal.

“Going to Boulder and starting in the CU theater program made me realize that not everybody thinks that way. I had this huge kind of awakening,” Ikwuakor says.

Social justice has remained a major focus of his career and life ever since. Last winter, Ikwuakor accompanied military veterans to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota.

Of course, all the hard work in the world doesn’t guarantee success. Talent does come into the picture, and in Hollywood, when the going gets tough—as it so often does—only the persistent survive.

‘Pick yourself up, keep going’

Erinn Hayes grew up performing in Marin County and confesses that she chose CU Boulder because she “wanted to get out of California and snowboard. I was lucky enough to stumble into a prestigious acting program.”

Erinn Hayes

Following graduation and a brief stint working in the Bay Area, she overcame her northern-California doubts about SoCal and moved to Los Angeles, in part to be with her boyfriend (now husband), Jack Hayes. She had booked a few commercials and was taking improv classes, just scraping by. Then she took a gig performing part-improvised soap-opera scenes at Disneyland’s California Adventure Park.

“The experience of working there with those performers taught me more about improv than the classes I was taking,” Hayes says.

She then landed a role in a show with the short-lived PAX TV network, only to see the project collapse. But the casting director liked her work and hooked her up with a top talent manager, David Sweeney, with whom she still works. Eventually, she was getting roles in such shows as Desperate Housewives, New Girl and Parks and Recreation. Recently, she was surprised to be let go from her regular role on CBS’ Kevin Can Wait after 24 episodes.

“To have that come up after 24 episodes came as quite a shock,” Hayes says. “Hollywood can be so weird, but you have to learn all these lessons. You have to learn to pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and keep going.”

Hayes is now in New York filming an Amazon series, The Dangerous Book for Boys.

A second chance and a job

Studio-executive Parnell, who grew up in Las Vegas and on Florida’s Space Coast before moving to Boulder and graduating from Fairview High School. After graduate school, he went to L.A. and began taking low-level jobs in the industry.

He spent five grueling years working as an assistant to two Hollywood bigshots, television producer Sarah Timberman and agent Adam Berkowitz (“Loved and feared, Adam is one of the real heavy-hitter TV agents” at Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, Parnell says) before landing his first major gig.

Chris Parnell

He bombed his first interview with the agent. But he’d worked so hard for Timberman that she called Berkowitz and insisted he give Parnell a second chance. The agent did, and Parnell got the job.

“I spent two of the hardest years of my life working for him,” Parnell says. “But it was like grad school all over again, in the business of show business. Answering the phone for five years and listening to Sarah and Adam, I learned how to read a contract, how television packaging works, and the real machinations of business dealings and how television really works.”

Eventually, Parnell says, “the whole floor at CAA” called on his behalf and he got an “early executive position” with Columbia Tristar, now Sony Pictures Television. He’s now spent 12 years with the studio, and has been a key contributor to the success of such major hits as Breaking Bad, Outlander and Preacher.

Parnell’s career offers a fascinating glimpse into the vital role that personal connections can play in Hollywood.

Both he and Crouch, who is now an executive producer and show-runner for Fox’s The Exorcist, proudly fly their “geek” flags, having been science-fiction and comic fans all the way back to childhood (they recently served together on a panel at San Diego’s immensely popular Comic Con, “Inside the Writer’s Room”).

“My early life was shaped by living on the edge of the space program” in Florida, says Parnell, who as a sixth grader watched with horrified classmates as the Challenger shuttle exploded in the sky above his school. “So, it’s no surprise that I turned into a total geek.”

Way back in 1995, while at CU, Crouch—whose first job was behind the counter at Denver’s Top Notch comics—handed him a copy of a dark, gritty Preacher comic.

“I thought it was one of the coolest … things I’d ever read,” Parnell says. “One of these days,” he told himself, “I’d love to do that” as a film or TV series.

Once in a top position at Sony, Parnell tracked the rights. Eventually he helped get the ball rolling on a new AMC series based on the comic, co-produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

But wait! There’s more!

All the way back in 1996, Parnell shared the stage with a New York actor, Sam Catlin, in Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF). In the ensuing decades, Catlin had gone on to become a writer and co-producer for the wildly successful AMC series, Breaking Bad.

“Sam is so subversive,” Parnell says. “He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever had a chance to work with.”

So, he connected his old CSF colleague—who had a deal with Sony thanks to his work on Breaking Bad—to the producers, and Catlin is now executive producer and show-runner for Preacher.

Connections

Connections to CU can also catalyze a successful career in Hollywood. Consider Gabrielle Miles Hill (Theatre,’09), who has worked as an animation producer for Dreamworks, Paramount and Mattel, Inc. (where she produced a lucrative series of DVDs based on the company’s famous Barbie doll) and now works as an adult animation producer for Seth Green’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

Hill grew up dancing and acting in Los Angeles and originally came to CU to study musical theater. Eventually, she decided to pursue a double major in journalism and theater. The summer after her freshman year, while working as a tour guide at Universal Studios, she inquired about possible future internships with the studio.

“They said, ‘We’re looking for an intern in the IT department immediately—when can you start?’” she recalls.

Gabrielle Miles Hill.

But there was a hitch: she could only take the internship if she received college credit, and she hadn’t set up anything like that. She called then-department chair Bud Coleman in a semi-panic, and he worked swiftly to establish some requirements, including a paper, so she could take the job for credit.

That turned out to be the first of a string of top-notch industry internships, including stints with NBC, Walden Media and even living in London and working on the set of the reality show Big Brother.

“Bud Coleman was absolutely instrumental in my film career,” says Hill, who is married to David Hill (CU Boulder, Theatre, ’08), a post-production coordinator with NBCUniversal Media who also has worked at Fox, ABC, CBS and TVLand.

Despite her success, Hill, too, has endured the slings and arrows of capricious Hollywood fortune. She was thrilled to be working on major new animation projects for Dreamworks and Paramount when, due to changes at the top, both were canceled.

“Projects can be so fickle,” she says. “From one day to the next, all your funding can go away, or the studio can turn around, and the project’s dead.”

But, Hill says, the experience she gained working on major projects for major studios only burnished her resume, and her skills. At Stoopid Buddy she’s worked on irreverent adult animated series such as Hot Streets, a new animated comedy about two FBI agents who keep stumbling upon supernatural situations, for Adult Swim, an adult-oriented programming block on Cartoon Network.

“It’s its own kind of fun,” she says. “But it’s light years away from Barbie!”

Coleman is not the only CU Boulder faculty member who has influenced some of CU’s Hollywood success stories. Others mentioned include Associate Professor Emerita Lee Potts, Senior Instructor Lynn Nichols and former faculty member Sean Kelly, who is now at Roosevelt University.

If you see 14-hour days as normal, you are a step ahead of your competitors.”

“Sean Kelly said he’d never seen a ballet dancer finish his or her training and go sit on the couch and wait for calls,” says Dietzen, who forced himself to spend at least 40 hours a week working on his career and craft when he first arrived in Hollywood, whether or not he was working.

While part of CU’s BFA acting program, Dietzen attended classes every day, did scene study in the late afternoon and early evening, rehearsed until perhaps 11 p.m., then went home to complete homework.

“We were pulling 15- and 16-hour days all the time. Coming out of that program, you viewed that as normal,” Dietzen says. “Out here (in Hollywood), there comes a time when there’s a dude who looks just like me, is the same age and has the same training, and a lot of times the X-factor isn’t necessarily who is a better-looking guy, but who’s going to bust their butt more. If you see 14-hour days as normal, you are a step ahead of your competitors.”

And while big-name stars might be able to get away with being prima donnas or treating people “beneath” them with contempt— think “Batman” actor Christian Bale’s infamous, expletive-laden excoriation of a crew member, caught on camera in 2009—Kelly constantly taught his students to be decent people.

“My general tip to people who want to work (in Hollywood) is, ‘Don’t be a dick,’” Dietzen says. “Be an easy person to work with. Because another huge consideration is always, ‘Can I spend 14 hours a day on set with this person?’ Sometimes ‘fit’ isn’t as important as being a good human.

“People in Colorado like Bud Coleman and Sean Kelly really shaped that viewpoint in my life,” Dietzen says, “and I’m eternally grateful to them.”

Here’s a little story about a little Hollywood movie, and a bigger story about how several CU Boulder alums have forged Hollywood careers.

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CU Boulder lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 16:52:29 +0000

CU Boulder lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 10:52

Jeff Thomas

Postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students to increase their knowledge of demography and genetics in one of the first programs of its kind

Jason Boardman has made headlines studying the interactions between people’s genes and their environment, finding, for instance, that social factors trump genetic forces in forging friendships.

Now, the �鶹��Ƶ sociologist is helping to launch an advanced training program, one of the first of its kind in the nation, to train young scholars in this cross-disciplinary field.

The National Institute on Aging has awarded Professor Boardman, from CU Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), and Professor Michael Stallings from CU Boulder’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG), $595,666 over three years, to create a formal training program in the area.

Boardman was a tenure-track assistant professor in sociology at the �鶹��Ƶ in 2005 when he decided to expand his research in social demography, or the statistical study of human populations, to include behavioral and statistical genetics.

Jason Boardman

“Essentially, I had to take graduate level studies in these areas,” Boardman said. “I didn’t have much of a background in many of those fields, so I was raising my hand a lot.”

Boardman decided to look at the intersection and interaction between social factors — such as where one lives or works or whom one socializes with — and genetic factors as both influence complex health behaviors, such as smoking. He has published on this topic extensively, and beginning next year, like-minded post- and pre-doctoral students will be able to as well in the new training program.

Boardman’s genetic research has previously been supported by a five-year award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the National Institutes of Health. This grant allowed Boardman to maintain his position as a faculty member but spend nearly half of his time studying genetics with researchers at IBG.

Leaders of both IBS and IBG hailed the award:

“This is a tangible vote of support at the national level for the successful collaboration between IBS and IBG,” John K. Hewitt, director of IBG, said. “It reaffirms the value of our efforts to develop innovative interdisciplinary graduate and postdoctoral training programs.”

This training program will enable the next generation of scholars to tackle complex public-health issues such as increasing rates of obesity, individual differences in stress sensitivity, and complex and comorbid substance-use disorders with innovative and cutting-edge approaches.”

"This new grant demonstrates the leadership that Jason has achieved in connecting social and behavioral science with a deep understanding of genetics, something that draws on the outstanding expertise of the two institutes and amplifies our ability to train the next generation of researchers," Myron P. Gutmann, director of IBS, added.

Demography and genetics postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students will be annually funded by the grant over three years to increase their respective knowledge of demography and genetics —demographers will study behavioral genetics, and behavioral geneticists will study demography.

Three postdoctoral researchers, two of whom received support from NIH, have recently taken similar paths at the two research institutes, and have all been involved with innovative research projects, leading to tenure-track positions at leading universities.

Benjamin Domingue is now an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. During his time as a postdoctoral researcher with Boardman, he was supported by several funding mechanisms in an ad-hoc manner. The goal of this new program at CU Boulder is to replicate the training that Domingue received but in a more formal manner.

Brooke Huibregtse, the first postdoctoral researcher appointed to the training program, said she is excited about the opportunity to integrate new approaches with her formal training in psychology.

“Investigating genetic risk factors is only one side of the coin; it is important to also consider the social context in which complex health behaviors develop,” she said.

While there are now numerous research articles expanding on the study of the interaction between genes and environment, there is not a permanent training program today, according to Boardman. Reviewers noted that the strength of research from both the IBS and IBG, as well as researchers from CU Denver, was a significant factor in the decision to locate such a program at CU.

“This is an important indication that reviewers and NIH see this as the place to go to receive this very unique training,” Boardman said. “This training program will enable the next generation of scholars to tackle complex public-health issues such as increasing rates of obesity, individual differences in stress sensitivity, and complex and comorbid substance-use disorders with innovative and cutting-edge approaches.”

According to the proposal, IBS faculty members have expertise in areas that could not easily be duplicated by other research institutes, including the intersection of people’s genetics and their environment and its role in health outcomes, patterns of HIV/AIDS in Africa and healthy adolescent development.

“IBG has an incredibly strong and international reputation in research on genetic factors linked to different behaviors across the life course,” Boardman said. IBG “hosts annual workshops on twin modeling and advanced statistical genetics that are among the most popular courses on this topic in the country. Indeed, following a comprehensive external evaluation of IBG, one reviewer commented that IBG is, ‘a world leader that is unique in its extensive combination of human and animal model research studies of human behavioral variation.’”

Boardman said faculty members are still determining whether to offer an academic certificate for the program. Meanwhile, the interaction between IBS and IBG researchers continues to lead to interesting studies, including “wet lab” scientists such as IBG’s Tom Johnson, who studies molecular behavioral genetics using worms and mice.

“It’s amazing what comes up when we’re all together talking about this,” Boardman said.

Postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students to increase their knowledge of demography and genetics in one of the first programs of its kind.

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Center for Asian Studies to implement Southeast Asian Studies track

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 16:41:56 +0000

Center for Asian Studies to implement Southeast Asian Studies track Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 10:41

Craig Levinsky

Students and faculty alike have new opportunities to engage with Southeast Asia

Southeastern Asia significantly influences world politics, economics and culture, and students at the �鶹��Ƶ will soon enjoy more options to learn about the region.

CU Boulder’s Center for Asian Studies (CAS) is beginning its second year of a federally funded grant project to build a new Southeast Asian Studies (SEA) track for its curricular offerings and programming. Project Director Tim Oakes and Co-Director Danielle Rocheleau Salaz plan to further develop a suite of language courses, content courses, and study abroad opportunities for both faculty and students.

The two-year project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages program.

Oakes, a geography professor, directs the center. Salaz is executive director.

Danielle Salaz, executive director of CU Boulder's Center for Asian Studies. Photo by Craig Levinsky. At top of page, image of Bangkok courtesy of Pixabay.

Salaz said the center aims to put Asia “at the center of our students’ studies, so that we’re not just examining Asia from a U.S. perspective and how it impacts foreign policy, but looking at Asia on its own terms and tying together different forces and countries within the continent.”

A student may receive a major or minor degree in Asian studies. But the curriculum requires collaboration from nearly 120 faculty in outside departments who have expertise in Asian content areas, allowing the center to offer a wide range of courses to its student population. The departments offering the most courses (or cross-listed courses) in the Asian studies curriculum are religious studies, Asian languages and civilizations, geography, anthropology and history.

The Center for Asian Studies’ relationships with these departments is reciprocal. The center hosts roughly 40 campus events annually, and many permanent full-time faculty have been placed in departments across the university through “hiring lines” created by CAS grant projects such as this one.

The Southeast Asia Studies area has faculty strengths in Indonesia, but lacks the “curriculum and language component to really call ourselves a complete pan-Asian center,” Salaz said. So, this project is “focused on bolstering the Southeast Asian studies component” of the center.

In addition to Indonesia, the specific territory designated as Southeast Asia includes Burma, Laos, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

“Southeast Asia is in the news,” said Salaz. “It’s an active part of the world. We want to make sure we’re arming our students with knowledge about it so that when they graduate they can go out and be successful beyond the borders of campus.”

The CAS grant project has three primary goals. First, it aims to expand the center’s course offerings. To that end, CAS created a course in Southeast Asian environmental politics and hired Instructor Michael Dwyer, who holds a doctorate in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, to the Department of Geography.

As a sub-initiative funded by the project, CAS holds a course-development grant competition to make resources available to faculty interested in developing SEA content for either a new or existing course.

This summer, Chris Hammons of anthropology and Japanese scholar and professor of history Miriam Kingsberg Kadia were both awarded such grants. Hammons created a course in Indonesian state-craft and population protest and resistance, while Kadia developed one on World War II in Southeast Asia, which will examine how Southeast Asian conditions affected Japan, the United States and the war.

The development grants are “a way for us to encourage faculty who have expertise in Asia but might not teach a class about SEA to think about how they can add to the curriculum,” said Salaz.

The second goal of the grant is to establish Directed Independent Language Study (DILS) courses in Southeast Asian languages. DILS is an online teaching model for language instruction first developed at Yale and brought to CU by Mark Knowles, director of CU Boulder’s Anderson Language Technology Center.

The college has offered courses in Tibetan, Nepalese and other languages using DILS. The center’s pilot DILS course will be in Indonesian and taught by Fransiska Turangan, instructor at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif.

Online instruction is an effective way to offer less-frequently taught languages, Salaz said. “Nobody can consistently support having an instructor teach a class with three or four students under the traditional classroom model.”

DILS is a proven method, she said. “It’ll be synchronous, so the students and instructor will be online at the same time.” Next year, the center plans to offer Burmese or Lao, using the same format.

The final grant goal is to expand study-abroad participation for undergraduates studying Southeast Asian languages and cultures. This initiative details a newly formed exchange program with a Southeast Asia-based university, as well as a faculty-led global seminar in Southeast Asia, to enhance student options in the region. To build the initiative, CAS is offering undergraduate study-abroad scholarships and faculty grants to develop new global seminars in Southeast Asian studies.

“We understand that immersing yourself in a culture and place is significant in understanding anything about it,” said Salaz. CU Boulder has sent an average of seven students a year to Southeast Asia through existing study-abroad programs using outside providers and student-exchange relationships.

“It’s not nothing, but we can bolster that,” Salaz said. This fall, the center will send four students to Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam, all with scholarships funded from the grant.

Although the center requires that majors take courses in a foreign language, its aim is not to steer students who might be interested in Asia down only one path — such as contemporary issues, traditional issues or on art or politics. Clearly, it’s within the center’s mission to encourage students to be active global contributors.

“Whether going with a faculty member to Indonesia or taking a DILS class and learning the language while here,” said Salaz, “we want to make sure that students realize that international engagement is not an unreachable goal, and that whatever they can do while they’re on campus will help situate them for success in their careers and in the future. It just helps to ensure that we have globally engaged and knowledgeable citizens making the right choices on an individual basis and on a national and global scale, as well.”

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Trace arsenic linked with deteriorating health among American Indian elders

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 15:39:46 +0000

Trace arsenic linked with deteriorating health among American Indian elders Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/25/2017 - 09:39

Cay Leytham-Powell

Low levels of inorganic arsenic, thought to be safe, might be harming American Indian communities in the western United States, according to new CU Boulder research.

Long-term exposure to low levels of inorganic arsenic, or the "poison of kings," through drinking water is linked with deteriorating motor skills and neurological processing speed of American Indian elders, according to new research by Clint Carroll, an assistant professor in ethnic studies at the �鶹��Ƶ, and a nationwide team of scientists.

This research builds on an existing body of findings, and is the first of its kind looking at both the impact of arsenic on this specific underserved and under-represented segment of the population and the effects on neuropsychological health, which, Carroll asserts, have large-scale cultural implications.

Clint Carroll, an assistant professor in the ethnic studies department, studies indigenous governance and environmental perspectives. Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado.

"When you think about who are the sources of traditional knowledge or of ancestral knowledge, elders are the subset of the population who contain a lot of this generational knowledge and language," Carroll, who is also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, said. "And so, that knowledge is often conveyed through the language, and so when you’ve got impacts on neuropsychological health from this long-term, low-level exposure to arsenic, it raises concerns, at least in my mind, about the transmission of that knowledge to future generations."

"What is implicated is the cultural element of things — cultural transmission, knowledge transmission."

Arsenic is a naturally occurring mineral that can exist in food, water, soil and air in either an organic or inorganic form. Inorganic arsenic, when compared to its organic counterpart, is much more toxic and was once a common poison, as it gives off no smell or taste and can exist in the body with little to no side effect for years.

Inorganic arsenic is created in a variety of ways, such as through volcanic eruptions, the erosion of arsenic-containing rocks, runoff from mining (including gold mining), and the use of arsenic-containing pesticides — all of which disproportionally taint the drinking water of the western United States.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water from the tap, the mineral can still leach into ground water from naturally occurring and man-made sources, significantly affecting those (such as rural American Indian communities in the western United States) who rely on well water for their drinking water.

To study the effect of this exposure, the authors analyzed data collected via the Strong Heart Study and the Strong Heart Stroke Study. For more than 20 years, these two studies gathered data on thousands of American Indians in three regions: the American Southwest (or, an area near Phoenix), the Central Plains (or, the southwestern area of Oklahoma), and the Northern Plains (or, western and central North and South Dakota).

The Strong Heart Study data, which served as the baseline information, was collected in three different chunks (1989-91, 1993-94 and 1998-99) and included objective measurements regarding participants' health. Of these metrics, which included everything from familial history to BMI measurements, inorganic arsenic levels in the body were measured from the urine samples.

What is implicated is the cultural element of things — cultural transmission, knowledge transmission."

This information was then statistically combined with additional data collected between 2009 and 2013 (the Strong Heart Stroke Study), examining the surviving Strong Heart Study participants' vascular and structural brain disease risk factors. These data included, among other tests, a neuropsychological test that measured cognitive functioning, mental processing speed, verbal fluency and memory and fine motor skills (such as the tapping of a finger).

Altogether, the new study found one statistically significant conclusion: low level inorganic arsenic exposure in American Indian populations, over long periods of time, correlates with decreasing fine motor functioning and processing speed in elders.

These results, while dramatic, may not be quite the cause of alarm that they appear. Rather than immediate action, Carroll hopes they instead spark a conversation.

"The message is not to not drink the water or to go and buy bottled water," Carroll said. Instead, he hopes to raise awareness of risks "that are disproportionately shouldered by communities in rural areas — especially in the West — and, so, looking into ways that water can be made safer for these communities."

Montezuma Well, seen in the title image (which is from Ken Lund/Flickr), is one such naturally occurring pool located near Rimrock, Ariz., that contains high levels of arsenic that can leach into ground water.

Low levels of inorganic arsenic, thought safe, might be harming American Indian communities in the western United States.

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