William W. White Outstanding Seniors are chosen by department faculty to recognize academic merit, professional achievement and service to the college. The Outstanding Graduate award honors the CMCI student with the highest overall GPA in his or her graduating class.

White, a Boulder native, graduated from CU’s School of Journalism in 1933. He was a reporter in Boulder, Denver and New York before becoming the foreign editor of Time from the early 1940s through the mid-1950s, based in London, Brazil and Montreal. At the advice of his friend Edward R. Murrow, who told him “it doesn’t matter what you do, what matters is that you do it where you want to live,” White returned to Boulder, where he started the White and White public relations firm. White and his wife, Connie, established this endowment in 1998.

Meet our graduates and read their stories.

Andrew Schwartz: College of Media, Communication and Information

Andrew's advice to students is to try everything and talk to as many people as you can—especially outside your major. That way, you'll broaden your perspective.

   When it comes to impact and being able to make something I’m proud of, a big part of that is being able to make technology for the people to use it, and make things that people enjoy using and improve their lives. Info places a big emphasis on that."

  Read more 

Lisa An: Department of Critical Media Practice

Lisa started her CU career as a computer science major before switching to media production. She said this was one of the best decisions she ever made because through the program, she discovered a passion for photography.

  "I learned that keeping your work to yourself because of the fear of not being good enough does no good. If you share your work and receive feedback, you are able to improve your craft and obtain opportunities you otherwise never would have been able to.

  Read more 

Elijah Boykoff: Department of Information Science

Going into college, Elijah's goals for himself were to learn as much as he could and make it to the finish line. He says he's made good on those goals, and this award is an exciting bonus.

   Your professors are people just like you. Get to know them—if you are able to resonate with your professors on a deeper level, you will be much more enriched by the knowledge they have to share."

  Read more 

Bianca Perez: Departments of Communication, Media Studies

Bianca is the first CMCI graduate to win outstanding student honors from two different majors. She's now off to a prestigious Ph.D. program.

  "What I have is like a wish coming true. You can work very hard and that can still not be enough, and I’ve seen that happen to people around me my whole life.

  Read more 

Sujei Perla Martinez: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design

For Sujei, a first-generation college student, graduating means she's carving a new path for her family.

   My community helped foster a place for self-discovery and encouraged me to be unapologetically myself while helping me grow within my values and beliefs."

  Read more 

Nic Tamayo: Department of Journalism

Nic's CMCI experience in three words: fulfilling, inspired, treasured.

  "I will take with me the connections I’ve been able to make with people from so many corners of life. They’ve taught me lessons that I may never have learned without their friendship and mentorship.

  Read more 

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By Iris Serrano
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)

“Unpredictable” is how Lisa An describes her college experience. 

  “I learned that keeping your work to yourself because of the fear of not being good enough does no good. If you share your work and receive feedback, you are able to improve your craft and obtain opportunities you otherwise never would have been able to.”
Lisa An

She felt pressured to pursue a computer science major, in preparation for a technical career path, but realized it wasn’t her calling. Eventually, she came across media production and enjoyed the creative freedom that came with it.

“It ended up being one of the best decisions I made,” An said. “I often struggle to find the right words to describe what I'm feeling. With photography, I’m able to create something where the emotion I pour into the piece can speak for itself.”

She carried her curiosity and love for creativity and completed a second major in Art Practices with minors in Art History and Sociology. Now she’s graduating as the William W. White Outstanding Senior for the Department of Critical Media Practices. The White awards are chosen by CMCI faculty and honor students for their academic accomplishments, professional achievements and service to the college.

The award didn’t come without hard work and effort. An has completed countless projects for her media production classes, but the one that stood out most was a book she made compiling her photography and design work. It was, she said, “rewarding to see my creation come to life physically, as well as being a part of the entire process of creating something.”

She has also completed an internship at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, which she said gave her a clearer picture of what to expect in the field after graduation. 

Her path may not have been linear, but she said that journey helped her surround herself with friends who guided her on the way. 
“One thing I’ll miss is the sense of community and support I received from my professors and peers. I could feel that they all genuinely cared for my success and pushed me to produce work that I could be proud of,” An said.

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CMCI students from all departments develop their portfolios through classes, competitions, internships and more.

Here we have collected a variety of student work that highlights their personal and professional passions explored during their academic careers at CU Boulder.

  View the work

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What's the catch?

There’s no getting back the one that got away, but a prototype app designed by a group of recent graduates could help anglers identify the fish they do catch.

COAI (for Colorado A.I.; pronounced “koi”) Fish, designed by Kendall Fronabarger, Ken Vue and Emerson Swan (all InfoSci’23), is especially aimed at those new to the sport who are curious about the fish they’re catching in Colorado’s waters. The app uses a modified machine learning tool that matches photos uploaded by users to a registry of Colorado species built by the students.

Art as activism

CMCI students are encouraged to use their creativity in building projects that allow them to interpret or reflect upon the challenges facing society. Mixed-media work in the last year has focused on topics such as the climate crisis, the plight of refugees and the struggle for gender equality.

Jamie Chihuan (StratComm’23),
“Soon we will all have nowhere to go” 

Citlally Ruedas, strategic communication,
“Homero Gomez” 

Isabella Pao, strategic communication,
“I am a woman, I exist” 

Pablo Aziz, critical media practices,
“Women demand peace and justice”

Sharing student perspectives

Students across CMCI find ways to bring together their personal interests and academic pursuits. Since the college’s founding, we have regularly showcased this diverse collection of student work.

McKenzie Jenkins (StratComm’22), Josh Harman (StratComm’23)

Katya Bollong (StratComm’23)

Hailey Schalk, communication

Olivia Lieberman (CritMedia’23)

Sophie Gould, TEDxCU executive board (Comm’23)

Noya Kinsland, critical media practices

Kelsie Kerr (MediaSt, Film’23)

Kara Wagenknecht (Jour’23)

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By Hannah Stewart (Comm’19)

It’s an early Wednesday morning in July, yet it seems most of Washington, D.C., has already been up for hours.

Riders swarm the Metro on their way to work. Above ground, everyone from power brokers to power couples crowd local coffee shops while runners squeeze in a jog.

Amid the bustle, four students from CU Boulder are headed to their internships, where they are responsible for public relations at The Hill, covering news in real time and managing sound at a multimedia festival.

“This is such a great program because you get professional experience,” said Reede Ottenstein (CritMedia’23). “You’ll feel so much better when you graduate, and you’ll have a better idea of what you want to do.”

Through the support of CMCI in D.C.—a semester-long study abroad-style program in Washington—Ottenstein landed an internship with Capital Fringe. This multiday, multimedia festival was particularly enticing since she focused on sound design as a CMCI student. She even had the chance to work with the audio engineers for the performances.

“In my classes, I was learning sound and audio,” Ottenstein said. “Now that I’ve interned with this festival, I will get to take what I learned and put it in a real-world context.”

Students in this program earn both class and internship credit during a semester or summer session in Washington. In addition to learning from guest speakers—many of whom are program alumni and media professionals—students have the chance to explore the city, both on assignment and for personal enrichment. Along the way, they discover new passions and opportunities for growth while forming close bonds as peers.

“Washington, D.C., is an incredible place to spend a semester,” said Lori Bergen, CMCI founding dean. “The communications, media and information landscape is a laboratory for new ideas about how to inform, influence and inspire people.” 

CMCI students on their D.C. experiences

 "The Hill has been very eye-opening and has shown me what the real world of PR looks like. Connecting with people is something that really holds true to me.

Michael Bass
Intern, The Hill

 “You get to experience a new American city and learn from great professors.

Jenna Gainsboro
Intern, D.C. Witness

CMCI’s partner in delivering the program, the Washington Media Institute, encourages students to develop new skills through practical learning in the field.

For instance, media studies junior Jenna Gainsboro tried her hand at court reporting. An illness in Gainsboro’s youth led to seemingly endless days reading and watching television, inspiring her to pursue a career 
in media. She spent a previous semester writing for a fashion magazine, but with this new opportunity, she wanted something different.

“They pitched me this internship with D.C. Witness in a social justice kind of way,” Gainsboro said. “I appreciate how individualized it is. They really work with you to find 
an internship that will give you the experience you need.”

 “The fact that internships are hand-selected for our students gives them an advantage in getting settled in this exciting city and building professional and personal relationships that will last a lifetime.
—Dean Lori Bergen

That feature helps the program stand out among other experiential-learning opportunities.

“The fact that internships are hand-selected for our students gives them an advantage in getting settled in this exciting city and building professional and personal relationships that will last a lifetime,” Bergen said.

As part of the application process, staff from WMI interview students to assess their career goals, then identify ideal internships for each student. WMI staff also use their Washington networks to bring in guest lecturers and instructors for classes.

“I know that every time I come to class, we’re going to be doing something that might be challenging in the moment, but is still helpful and a good experience for my growth,” said senior Tessa Stigler, a journalism student who interned at Voice of America.

After graduation, she hopes to be a multimedia journalist. Although she’s had an “overwhelmingly positive experience” in her classes in Boulder, she said this program has helped her see new aspects of the media.

“It’s interesting to see how different everybody’s internships are, and the different skills they’re focusing on,” Stigler said. “CMCI in D.C. encourages you to get career minded, feel set up to graduate and know that you can get something afterward.”

CMCI in D.C. is open to all CMCI majors and minors.

This unique, immersive experience allows students to develop skills directly related to their career aspirations, and includes a customized internship tailored to each participant’s career aspirations. Students may apply to be part of the program in any semester.

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By Hannah Stewart (Comm’19)
Art by Jamie Chihuan 

As a child, Jamie Chihuan would go to his grandmother’s house and see paintings of brightly colored desert landscapes and other Incan art. Years later, a high school art class helped him realize he wanted to create paintings of his own.

“The projects we did helped me focus my creativity,” he said. “I thought, ‘What if I become an artist or graphic designer?’”

Chihuan now explores his interest in visual arts by incorporating it into his collegiate studies and internships. Eventually, he hopes to use these experiences to build a creative agency.

Since coming to CU Boulder, Chihuan has created a niche for himself as a strategic communication major minoring in media production. As a multimedia artist, he enjoys finding ways to incorporate his art—largely inspired by his Latino identity and other personal experiences—into professional settings.

“When I first started, I found it very hard as a 19-year-old Mexican kid. People never took me seriously,” he said.

Chihuan explores everything from painting to videography, and his surrealist paintings attract the most attention. In spring 2022, his artwork was displayed at the Museum of Boulder’s Voces Vivas exhibit, which showcases the stories of early Boulder County Latino families.

“Jamie’s painting is intriguing,” community curator Linda Arroyo-Holstrom said. “I embrace the idea that we all have sacred knowledge within us. The painting is like an embrace to our reciprocal relationship with nature and ‘homelands.’”

As a student, Chihuan’s love of art has blossomed into a love of visual communication. Following his passion, Chihuan searched for internship opportunities focused on visual production.

“I really wanted to get into somewhere where I could start doing content creation,” he said.

In March, he began a six-month internship with cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks. He received daily assignments to interview colleagues and create videos for internal teams like sales and marketing. One video he loved creating was a multimedia documentary incorporating animation, footage and archival material.

“I am able to take the documentary practices I have learned at CU and apply them to my process at Palo Alto Networks,” Chihuan said.

Chihuan also applies his training in graphic design and media production to his own passion projects. He sells his art online through a website he calls A Deal in Hell, its name inspired by Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. He plans to grow this company into a creative agency capable of producing a variety of work.

As a Latino in the art and media world, Chihuan has experienced and overcome doubts, but through his work as a content creator, he has found new ways to apply his artistic skills. As he heads toward graduation and his own career, he hopes to inspire others to pursue their own creative passions.

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Portrait of Angel Mollel, whose birth name is Anjela Yohana Koisasi Samanga Mollel, taken by Emerald Kristina Smith () in 2021.

By Tayler Shaw (Jour, Span’21)

Mollel uses her Instagram, , to share images that capture the people and culture of Tanzania. She photographed this Maasai child during her trip in the summer of 2020.

It’s 6:30 a.m. and Angel Mollel is surrounded by sound—chickens clucking, cows mooing and her siblings waking up beside her in a bed shared by six. She cleans the kitchen, puts on a pot of tea, prepares breakfast and heads toward her bright yellow shop in northern Tanzania’s Ormelili village, home to the Maasai tribe.

There, she spends the day selling common Maasai goods such as rice, tea and sugar, as well as school supplies, medicine, cookies and soda. At one point, she sees a young child standing near a fence as the glowing sun lights up the beautiful landscape. She pauses and takes a photo, which friends in Colorado will later see on her Instagram.

While Mollel spends summers with her village in Tanzania, she spends the school year at CU Boulder as a sophomore majoring in media production at CMCI's . Her goal is to develop the skills to professionally document and share authentic stories of underrepresented people and cultures.

“I chose CMCI because I want to film different cultures in Africa, and that’s really the main reason I picked media production,” she says. “I think so many different cultures become lost.”

Visual storytelling, she says, is one of the most powerful and accurate ways of capturing and preserving these stories.

“At least in the future, I want people to be able to understand what the Maasai people were about,” she says.

For the Maasai people, work begins when daylight strikes.

With houses made of mud, roofs made of grass and a limited supply of resources, a huge amount of effort is required to maintain the village’s basic needs. Preparing a meal, for example, can require hours of work and travel, with villagers walking miles to collect firewood, water and supplies.

“Life over here is a bit hard, but everybody’s always smiling through it,” Mollel says, adding that she often hears people laughing and singing throughout the day.

During her trips to Tanzania, Mollel uses videos to share aspects of Maasai culture and life with others.

She describes her village as a place full of color and community, where people dress in vivid clothing and speak Maa, one of 2,000 languages used throughout Africa and 120 spoken in Tanzania, according to the . The Maasai tribe is home to hundreds of thousands of people living throughout southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, along the Great Rift Valley, and Mollel estimates that her village is home to less than 5,000 people.

“Everybody knows everybody. The relationships are super strong, and when somebody's sick, everybody goes and says, ‘Hi, how are you doing?” she says. “So it's very, very community oriented.”

The culture is also very male-oriented. Men in the village can have multiple wives and have the power to hold jobs, control financial resources and make decisions on behalf of the family, Mollel says, leaving many girls with insecurities and limited opportunities for an extensive education.

“It's such a beautiful culture, but being a girl is so hard just because this culture is male-dominated,” she says. “Primary school kind of ends at seventh grade and you have to take a national exam. If you fail, your dad chooses who you marry and that’s the end of your education career. But if you pass, then they’ll continue if they have the money.”

Image of Mollel taken in 2018, showing the close proximity of her village to Mount Kilimanjaro.

The house where Mollel grew up in her village in Tanzania.

Growing up, Mollel and her sister begged their father to allow them to go to an American primary school in another village. It was there that she met Tony Matteroli, a U.S. citizen who was volunteering at the school. 

Tony Matteroli, who adopted Mollel in 2014, poses with Mollel and two of her sisters. 

After meeting Mollel in 2010, Matteroli built a close bond with her and her family during his visits throughout the following year. Eventually, Mollel’s family agreed to let her join Matteroli in the U.S. so she would have access to further educational opportunities. Matteroli adopted Mollel in 2014, adding a second father to her family that already included two mothers and 15 siblings.

While Mollel was excited to discover a new way of life in the U.S., an expired student visa forced her to remain in the country for four years without visiting home.

“The first two years, it wasn't hard because I was so fascinated by the fact that I was in the States,” she says. “I was so fascinated by the little stuff—water being in a house, like actually being inside the house.”

In 2016, she was finally able to exchange Skype calls for an in-person visit to Tanzania. She has returned home nearly every summer since.

While living in the U.S., Mollel often sent money back to her village in Tanzania, and eventually, her friends gave her the idea to do something bigger: launch her own nonprofit.

Intrigued, Mollel approached Matteroli with the idea in 2018. He was immediately on board, and the two began brainstorming logos and a name. One day, Bob Marley’s song “One Love” began playing, and the name suddenly clicked.

Mollel created her organization, , later that year and quickly garnered the support of her friends and community in Brighton, where she lived and attended high school. Two days after launching, the gained about 500 followers. Today, it has over 1,300 likes and has created the support for Mollel to tackle a number of projects aimed at uplifting and empowering people in her own village and beyond.

“1 Love really is dedicated to educating the Maasai people of Tanzania, empowering the Maasai women and just helping the Maasai culture in general,” Mollel says, adding that she hopes the organization offers a sense of love and support to others.

In the span of three years, 1 Love has given Mollel’s community greater access to education, water and food while creating safer living conditions. Recent projects include creating a village shop so people don’t have to walk three miles to the market, sponsoring children’s school tuition and installing a power line that provides residents with electricity.
 

A house built as a result of 1 Love, which aims to create sturdier homes that require less upkeep than traditional Maasai homes.

With donations and Mollel's dedication, 1 Love built a shop that brings resources closer to villagers.

Mollel enjoying her time in Colorado, where she spends the school year studying media production at CMCI.

Each project requires ongoing collaboration with the Maasai people, the local government and donors across the globe, Mollel says, and one of her favorite projects was 1 Love’s first: bringing water to her village. Traditionally, women carried water atop their heads or hauled it by donkey for two to three miles, Mollel says, but through 1 Love, she secured the local government’s permission to split a water pipeline and bring fresh water from Mount Kilimanjaro straight to the village.

“We all grew up carrying water on our heads, so just having water so close to us, it was such a huge thing,” she says.

Next, Mollel plans to create an English-speaking school for the village’s first through seventh graders. She spent her summer collecting information on building costs and exploring the needs of Maasai villagers––a necessary step in any project, she says.

“I don’t want to do anything without involving the village because this school is for them and I want to listen to them and their needs,” she says.

When she returns to CU Boulder this fall, Mollel will continue fundraising for 1 Love while taking classes that she hopes will help her become a photographer and filmmaker. Already putting her goals into practice, she often uses her social media channels to share information about 1 Love and offer a glimpse of life in her village.

In addition to teaching friends in the U.S. about aspects of Maasai culture, she is teaching both men and women in Tanzania about the value that working women can bring to their entire families. She hopes her own example will give other girls a greater sense of confidence.

“Every girl always doubts herself no matter what she does,” Mollel says, explaining that the cultural norms of her village occasionally made her feel like her accomplishments should have been achieved by a man. “I just have so much confidence now because I got to go to the States. And so I don’t even look at myself as less now, because of that opportunity. But if I was still here (in Tanzania), I would still have some sort of doubt.”

Last April, Mollel gained national recognition for her work when she was named in a contest sponsored by . She was also one of six finalists in the national Remarkable Women Contest sponsored by Nexstar Media Group. The contests served as an opportunity for Mollel to reflect on her own accomplishments while continuing to inspire girls around the world to chase dreams of their own.

“I feel like there are so many more remarkable women out there, but I just, I loved it because it's another chance to inspire women––and not just the Maasai women, but just girls in Colorado and the United States and all over the world––that you're not too young to start working on what you want,” she says. “I just loved it because it shows that I'm really helping people and I'm really making change.”

1 Love is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bettering the lives of the Maasai people.

Projects include:

• Sponsoring children’s school tuition
• Bringing water to the village
• Building brick homes
• Creating a village shop
• Installing solar panels
• Providing electricity
• Providing small propane stoves
• Creating cooking huts
• Providing donated laptops to several schools 

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By Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm'18)

  The ICA Loop is a theoretical concept linking (I) information overload, (C) cyberchondria and the (A) attention economy together using relational evidence between the information seekers and COVID-related media.”
Taylor Passios, media production major

The theory is designed to provide comfort to people while helping them recognize their patterns.

The living room was hot, dark, foggy and anxiety inducing. Graffiti covered the mirrors and caution tape stretched across the room.

For media production major Taylor Passios, this nightmare was her reality––one that she created in visceral detail as part of her senior honors thesis project.

A self-proclaimed hypochondriac, Passios conducted extensive research searching for an academic theory naming the anxiety-inducing loop people experience when they Google mundane health symptoms, only to find that the results lead them to believe that they are seriously ill. Without an existing theory to work with, Passios created her own, coining it, the "ICA Loop.”

“The ICA Loop is a theoretical concept linking (I) information overload, (C) cyberchondria and the (A) attention economy together using relational evidence between the information seekers and COVID-related media,” Passios says, adding that the theory is designed to provide comfort to people while helping them recognize their patterns. 

Passios has vivid memories of early-life events that spurred her own hypochondria, she says.

In one instance, she recalls, after eating something she was allergic to, her mom ran into the room saying, “Oh my God, we've got to stab you with an EpiPen.” Later in life, she was diagnosed with several different illnesses, which exacerbated her anxiety around health concerns.

“Even if I get the slightest, you know, just like a symptom that no one would think anything of, I hold onto it and I'll start panicking,” she says. 

Visitors enter the ICA Loop installation via the Information Overload room, where news articles cover the walls and video clips of pandemic news coverage play on repeat. This room represents the over saturation of both accurate news and misinformation.

Next is the Cyberchondria room, where guests spin the Wheel of Fate, guided by a host played by Passios' roommate. As visitors spin the wheel to land on one of its worst-case scenarios, a video of various symptom-based Google searches projects in the background.

Finally, guests enter the Attention Economy room, where they are handed a shopping list of items to search for. Rather than checking out with money, visitors must Google questions found on each item's price tag. Ultimately, their attention serves as ICA Loop currency. 

For visitors, the only way to exit the ICA Loop was by turning off all technology. An actor guarded the top of the stairs to ensure that only those who didn’t buy into the loop were able to leave.

During COVID, Passios noticed that this pattern was exacerbated on a global scale––with people searching for answers in a sea of both information and misinformation posted online.

“Everyone around me, they’re acting the same way I have my entire life,” she says.

In addition to writing her thesis, she wanted to give others a physical sense of this online reality.

Unable to find public space during the pandemic, she turned her own apartment into “a physical interactive installation that represents the theory of the ICA Loop,” she says. To create the installation, Passios removed all of the furniture from the top floor of her apartment, including from her and her roommate’s bedrooms.

The installation was divided into three separate rooms, each designed as an interactive environment that would leave visitors feeling uneasy and anxious. Passios used elements like lighting, heat and a fog machine to evoke a unique emotional response in each of the rooms participants were led through. She even allowed participants to gargle an herb that would change their sense of taste, replicating a symptom of COVID.

“I am taking my personal sanctuary space and turning it into my worst nightmare and living with it,” she says.

Ultimately, Passios says, creating the installation helped her come to terms with who she was.

“I guess that maybe in making the physical installation, I exited the loop myself.”

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Media Production students cluster around a table in CU Boulder’s Museum of Natural History as Emily Braker, the museum’s collections manager, reveals their subjects: a snake in a jar, taxidermied birds, a series of skulls and an array of other specimens dating back to the early 1900s. 

Their task? Take advantage of 2020 technology to reanimate the objects for an assignment in their Introduction to Extended Realities course.

Using a process called photogrammetry, they take more than 100 photos of each chosen object, stitch the images together with modeling software, and produce 3D models that can be integrated into virtual and augmented reality experiences. 

The museum is considering a number of options for the resulting products.

“They can either use them for research––democratizing the research by sending them to remote scientists who wouldn’t have access to the actual artifacts––or for outreach and education,” says Jason Gnerre, CMCI’s media specialist who created the class. “For the latter use, they can embed the model on their website and create their own augmented reality app for showcasing the items.”

The new course has gained so much interest, Gnerre says, that the Department of Critical Media Practices is introducing a new immersive media concentration in fall 2020.

Julie Merten, a junior studying Media Production, said the project allowed her to bridge her interests in art and technology, and helped her develop a more versatile, and marketable, skill set in emerging media. 

“I think VR/AR is an essential part of the future of media,” she says. “We are already seeing it taking off in day-to-day interactions, such as Snapchat/Instagram filters, mobile apps like Pokemon Go and beyond.”

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