Faculty

A Campus Commitment to Impacting Climate Change

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

A Campus Commitment to Impacting Climate Change Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

Philip P. DiStefano

As the Coloradan pivots to examine the ways in which the university is addressing pressing issues of our time, we need alumni, now as much as ever, to understand and engage in the powerful research and education happening every day at CU Boulder. The fall issue of the magazine examined racism and anti-racism on and around campus through the personal stories of students and your fellow alumni. This issue, we’re tackling climate change.

Why climate change? It’s simple: One of the core missions of our university is to positively impact humanity, and humanity faces the existential crisis of a warming planet caused by human beings. It is essential that we do everything in our power across the university with the resources available to us to be part of the solution. Anything less would be a disservice to our history, our future and to all those who call themselves Buffs.

It’s important to reflect on this even — especially — when the world seems to be distracted by the news of the day.

At CU, internationally recognized climate scientists are utilizing the most compelling resources available to create solutions to complex interlocking and overlapping problems. We are one of the top research universities in the world for geoscience and climate science.

We have deep partnerships with a host of federal labs right in our backyard addressing this crisis, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. We are in a unique position to address this generational emergency and it is incumbent on us to do so.

We are leading by example — building one of the most sustainable campuses in the country — perhaps the world — and we are also working on the human side of the problem, impacting behavior through work at the new Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change. In short, we are a global leader in climate change research and education. The way forward to a more sustainable future runs right through CU Boulder.

The current Coloradan highlights some of the most fascinating people at CU and the problems they’re addressing. It’s also an unambiguous statement of CU’s commitment to reverse the damage being done to our planet. No matter the political or policy headwinds, CU will continue to do what it has always done and tackle the most difficult challenges of the day.

Philip P. DiStefano is the 11th chancellor of CU Boulder.

Photo by Glenn Asakaw.

An essay by CU Boulder Chancellor Philip P. Distefano. One of the core missions of our university is to positively impact humanity, and humanity faces the existential crisis of a warming planet caused by human beings.

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What’s in My Phone: Stefanie K. Johnson

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

What’s in My Phone: Stefanie K. Johnson Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

Stefanie K. Johnson

Stefanie K. Johnson is an associate professor at Leeds and director of the CU Boulder Center for Leadership. She is an expert on leadership, inclusion and mitigating bias in the workplace. Her book Inclusify, released by HarperCollins in June, hit the Wall Street Journal National Bestseller List in its first week on the market.

iPhone Insights

Model: iPhone XS with a credit card case
Most-Used Apps: Outlook Email, Text Messages, Find my iPhone
Most-Used Emoji: (awkward-stressed face)

How soon after waking up do you look at your phone?

It’s usually the first thing I look at after hugging the kids, feeding my cats breakfast and drinking a glass of water.

Last person you called:

One of my former PhD students, now a University of Memphis professor, to talk about a study we are doing on whether sexual harassment exists in the time of COVID. Spoiler — it does.

Duration of longest call last week:

An hour.

Location of last selfie:

My kids’ playroom at home. My son Kyle and I dressed up as pirates and took photos of ourselves. Apparently pirate is not a good look for me.

What’s the main thing you use your phone for?

Mostly email. If I kept my email open while I worked, I would do nothing but email. So, I try to do it on my phone when I am taking a break or done with work for the day.

Lock screen or background image?

A picture of my kids and I on the beach last January in Cozumel, Mexico.

How many hours were you on your phone last week?

One hour and 46 minutes per day.

Stefanie K. Johnson is an associate professor at Leeds and director of the CU Boulder Center for Leadership. She is an expert on leadership, inclusion and mitigating bias in the workplace. Her book Inclusify, released by HarperCollins in June, hit the Wall Street Journal National Bestseller List in its first week on the market.

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10 Fun Facts about CU Faculty and Staff Leaders

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 19:14:24 +0000

10 Fun Facts about CU Faculty and Staff Leaders Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/25/2021 - 12:14

Grace Dearnley

Phillip DiStefano (second from left), Russell Moore (third from left) and other faculty attending a 2018 CU commencement ceremony.

You might know them by name or email, or maybe they’ve taught you in class. Our leaders at CU often do it all, from running programs and departments, inspiring students both in and out of the classroom and even finding time for some unexpected hobbies on the side. Here are 10 fun facts about some of CU’s faculty and staff leaders.

1. Mark Kennedy, CU President

Fun Fact: From 2001–07, Kennedy served in the U.S. House of Representatives, first for Minnesota’s Second Congressional District and then for its Sixth Congressional District.

2. Phillip P. DiStefano, CU Boulder Chancellor

Fun Fact: DiStefano was a first-generation college student, attending Ohio State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. He then went on to earn a master’s degree from West Virginia University before returning to Ohio State University to earn his Doctorate.

3. Akirah Bradley, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

Fun Fact: Bradley has sailed as a staff member on three voyages of Semester at Sea, a study abroad program based out of a traveling cruise ship.

4. Russell L. Moore, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

Fun Fact: Moore is an adjunct professor in cardiology at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

5. Sharon Matusik, Dean, Leeds School of Business

Fun Fact: Matusik was once a visiting professor at Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) in Santiago, Chile.

6. John Davis, Dean, College of Music

Fun Fact: While serving as assistant director of jazz studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Davis was also the festival coordinator for the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival for six years, the nation’s largest event of its kind.

7. Lori Bergen, Dean, College of Media, Communication and Information

Fun Fact: Bergen is a former Miss Kansas and semi-finalist in the Miss America Pageant. She won a preliminary talent award for the classic fiddle tune “Orange Blossom Special.”

8. Kathy Schultz, Dean, School of Education

Fun Fact: Before her deanship at Mills College, Shultz climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with her family.

9. Keith Molenaar, Interim Dean, College of Engineering and Applied Science

Fun Fact: Molenaar worked on the Panama Canal expansion project, which took place between 2009 and 2016.

10. Robert McDonald, Dean, University Libraries, Senior Vice Provost of Online Education

Fun Fact: While studying for a master’s in music at the University of Georgia, McDonald sang in the Men’s Glee Club and the Concert Choir.

(Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado)

Our leaders at CU often do it all, from running programs and departments, inspiring students both in and out of the classroom and even finding time for some unexpected hobbies on the side. Here are 10 fun facts about some of CU’s faculty and staff leaders.

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Reverberations of a Stroke: A Memoir

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 17:37:51 +0000

Reverberations of a Stroke: A Memoir Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/06/2019 - 10:37

by Karl Gustafson (APMath, Fin'58)
(Springer International Publishing, 65 pages; 2019)

Buy the Book

In the early morning hours of Feb. 1, 2016, Karl Gustafson became instinctively aware that something catastrophic was happening inside him. A severe headache that had persisted for days had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and a clear inner voice ordered him to obtain immediate help. With determined effort, he tapped out the digits “9-1-1” on his phone―bringing an ambulance to his door quickly and saving his life. Emergency Room doctors would soon learn that Professor Gustafson, a renowned American mathematician, had suffered a deep brain hemorrhage, and that the situation was dire. By the time his condition was diagnosed, blood had pooled into all four ventricles of Gustafson’s brain and he was comatose.

Against all odds and surprising everyone, the author emerged from a near-death state to go on to what he calls his “Second Life”. This is the story of his miraculous journey of recovery, an inspirational tale of grit and determination, in his own words.

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Our Viking-Cowboy YouTube Star

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Our Viking-Cowboy YouTube Star Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 00:00

Ula Chrobak

Jackson Crawford, director of CU’s Nordic Studies program, studies and translates Old Norse, a language spoken by medieval Scandinavians. Here the native Coloradan talks Vikings, videos and his contribution to the Disney animated film Frozen.

What is the context of the literature you study?

The stuff that I'm looking at is roughly 1,000 years old. The poems of The Poetic Edda, about the Norse gods and heroes, were probably composed around the 900s and passed down orally. Then in Iceland in the 1200s, there was a big antiquarian interest and a lot of their oral poetry and sagas were written down.

Tell me about Vikings.

During the Viking age, about AD 800 to 1100, Scandinavians were making a killing off of raiding and pillaging the richer lands south of them. It’s a hyper martial society with a family-based morality, so you can rob and kill people you’re not related to. As far as physical image goes, Vikings didn’t really wear horned helmets. But they did fight with axes. Also, they were actually quite clean. In the Scandinavian days of the week, Saturday is called bath day. A bath a week doesn't sound fantastic to us, but by medieval standards they were very clean.

Why did you translate The Poetic Edda and The Saga of the Volsungs?

The other translations were so hard to read. Previous translators were too fixed on the word order in Old Norse, which makes really awkward sentences in English. They also wanted it to sound old — it’s like “thou art.” Very Shakespearean. In my translations, I’m willing to mix around the word order and put it in normal English. Apparently it struck a chord. For two years in a row, my translation of The Poetic Edda is pretty often the number-one best seller in European literature on Amazon. It sold 10,000 copies in 2017.

What led you to launch your YouTube channel?

In 2016, I was an adjunct professor in California making $1,600 a month while paying $1,200 a month in rent. I had to do something else to make ends meet. When I started the videos, I was just sitting in my office, but I noticed that when I went back home to Wyoming and Colorado and made videos outdoors those were a lot more popular. So I decided to make all of them outdoors. It’s become my brand. I’m the guy who talks about Norse mythology in the mountains with a cowboy hat on.

How much time goes into your videos?

�鶹��Ƶ six hours per video, and I try to put out two videos a week.

Have you always dressed in cowboy/Western style?

Yes. I grew up in Clear Creek Canyon. My grandfather was old-school Western, and I just picked up his style.

What do you hope your impact will be with the YouTube videos?

There’s a lot of information about Norse mythology and Norse language on the web, but most of it is terrible. There are people with three or four times more followers than me who are basically making stuff up. What I’m trying to do is say ‘This is what we actually see in ink and calfskin.’ The community around my videos has been overwhelmingly positive and appreciative of the fact that I tell them what we know and I don’t start making up things to fill in the holes.

Do you see parallels in American Western and medieval Scandinavian cultures?

Old Norse sagas always have a frontier edge to them. They’re so much like Westerns. People were living far apart, relying on themselves and their small family. It’s the same attitude, like ‘Back when men were men and the wilderness was still untamed.’ If someone challenges your honor, you fight them with an axe in the sagas, with a gun in the Westerns.

I heard you were a consultant for the Disney movie Frozen.

The creative team wanted to give Frozen that old Scandinavian feel. I wrote the runes [ancient alphabet letters] in a book you see at the beginning. There’s also a scene with spoken Old Norse — that voice is the actor imitating me.

In our print edition, this story appears under the title "Our Viking Cowboy." Condensed and edited.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

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Blowing the Doors Off the Microbial World

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Blowing the Doors Off the Microbial World Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

CU's Norm Pace isn't intimidated by the darkness of remote caves, or the vastness of the microbial universe. He's mastered both.

Norm Pace can still remember what it smelled like in that first cave.

The year was 1957. The place, Monroe County, Indiana.

The boy, a precocious 14-year-old who had talked his way into the local caving club’s expedition to the newly discovered Monroe Cave.

After ducking through a hidden entrance, climbing down 20 feet and slithering on his belly for a quarter-mile, young Pace stood up to behold a room full of 40-foot rock formations coated in a white crystalline substance known as “moon milk.”

“It smelled wet, mucky and alien in there,” said Pace, now a CU distinguished professor emeritus of molecular, cellular and developmental biology. “It was clear that this was not a world like the one I was used to.”

Pace has since discovered and mapped some of the largest and most dangerous caves on the planet, a hobby that has required him to traverse deep underground lakes in a wetsuit and scuba gear, rappel down waterfalls and narrowly escape death.

Among cavers, he is a legend.

But he is best known for his exploration of a different once-alien terrain: The world of microbes.

A recent National Academy of Science honoree for his “pioneering work on methods for delineating the diversity of life on Earth,” Pace is credited with developing gene sequencing tools that have made it possible to identify virtually all microorganisms, wherever they live — remote caves, ocean floors, inside our own bodies. The current boom in microbiome research (the study of the myriad bugs living in, on and around us) wouldn’t have been possible without him, colleagues say. And thanks in part to his work, the microbial “tree of life” as we know it is rapidly filling in.

“Microbiology is going through a Golden Age right now, and it is largely because of Norm,” said Hazel Barton, a University of Akron scientist who once worked in Pace’s lab. “He revolutionized the field.”

A Renaissance in Science

When I meet Pace at his CU office, he greets me with a cold fist bump. He bumps fists with everyone: After decades of studying microorganisms, he knows too well what’s on people’s fingers. His fist is cold. Though it’s November and already dark, he rode his bike to meet me.

At age 76, he has started riding again, not long after surgery to remove several brain tumors and starting a new immunotherapy for Stage 4 melanoma.

He is in clinical remission. He thanks science.

“There is an incredible renaissance occurring in science right now,” he said. “The fact that I am even sitting here talking to you right now is evidence of that.”

Another scientific renaissance was underway during Pace’s rural Indiana childhood.

After his parents bought him a microscope kit, he spent hours poring over the strange rods and spheres. At 15, after building his own chemistry lab, he ruptured his ear drum and shattered the surrounding bones in a mishap with a batch of silver fulminate.

“Still can’t hear out of it,” he said.

The only way to study microorganisms was to grow them in petri dishes. Pace would find a better way.

Pace’s formal entrée into science came in 1957, after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite. The U.S. government took note of the competition and launched two-week camps to engage kids in science. Pace was brought to Indiana University, where he met a molecular biologist. He was hooked.

“We didn’t know a whole lot about the natural microbial world,” he said.

Insects dominated textbooks then. Microorganisms appeared only in the contexts of “disease and rot,” he said. And the only way a scientist could study a microorganism was to grow it in a petri dish and observe its physical traits under a microscope.

This was problematic, because only a miniscule fraction of microbes will actually survive in a lab.

“If you couldn’t culture it, you couldn’t identify it,” he said.

Pace would find a better way.

Filling in the Tree of Life

He attended Indiana University and the University of Illinois before ultimately making his way to CU in 1999.

For years he studied ribosomal RNA, the molecules that form the protein-making machinery of cells. His friend Carl Woese taught him that by comparing rRNA between organisms, one could infer a lot about how they evolved and the relationship between them.

Pace ran with the idea:

What if, rather than trying to grow a patch of some unknown microorganism in a lab to study it, you just sucked a bit of RNA from it in its environment, sequenced the genes, and compared them to those of other known organisms already plotted on the tree of life?

It was all about measuring the difference, or distance, between things, he said — kind of like mapping a cave. Pace first tried it with some mysterious pink filaments he and students scooped from a bubbling cauldron in Yellowstone National Park.

The resulting paper, published in 1984 in Science, made history, marking the first time anyone identified an organism by sequencing its genes.

Biologists now had a way to study microbes that wouldn’t grow in labs.

“We went from not recognizing 99.9 percent of the microbes out there to having the ability to identify everything,” said Akron’s Barton.

Since then, Pace has used genetic sequencing to discover communities of bacteria from the New York City subway, household showerheads and inside the intestines of a Russian surgeonfish (where he discovered the world’s largest bacterium, Epulopiscium fishelsoni).

Scientists worldwide have followed.

In the mid 1980s, all known bacteria fit into about a dozen groups, or phyla. Today, there are about 150. Entire conferences are dedicated to the microbes living in our gut.

How many species are there?

“How many stars are in the sky?” said Pace. “It’s one of those wonderful unknowables.”

Mapping the Unknown

The same could be said for the world’s caves, which, thanks to Pace’s hobby, we also understand better now.

Because GPS is hard to use underground, mapping a cave requires old-fashioned exploration: “You have to physically move through it and measure angles and distances,” said Barton, a fellow caver.

For Pace, this has made for great adventures.

Photo courtesy Norm Pace

At Colorado’s Spring Cave, he had to don full scuba gear, wear it as he scaled a waterfall, then drop into an underground river and swim, the water lit only with a headlamp, for 300 feet.

In a cave near Grenoble, France, he broke ribs when his backpack slipped, smashing him against a rock wall.

During one harrowing expedition through a Mexican cave, he was making his way down a wall near a frigid waterfall when the clip holding his rope popped open, hurtling him downward into the torrent until the rope caught him 30 feet below. He dangled upside down for minutes, cold water rushing over his head, before freeing himself. His fellow cavers thought he was dead.

“I actually went through the mental process of dying,” said Pace, who led his last cave expedition in 2016. “That was interesting.”

Mortality called again in 2017, when he had a seizure while preparing for a lecture. “When I heard Stage 4 melanoma, I figured, ‘F#$@, I’m outta here’” he said.

But after 18 months on the immunotherapy drug Keytruda, he’s reinventing himself.

He recently remarried his former wife, Bernadette, a professional trapeze artist, he’s on the lecture circuit, and though he’s closed his lab, he teaches occasionally.

His protégés describe him as intimidatingly smart, at times cantankerous and extraordinarily generous.

“I am where I am today because of him,” said Colorado School of Mines professor John Spear.

Each year, around Nobel Prize season, former students cross their fingers and whisper Pace’s name.

He’s humbled, but not holding his breath.

After he’s gone, he has just one wish:

“I want to be remembered as the guy who blew the door off the microbial world.”

Comment on this story? Email editor@colorado.edu.

CU's Norm Pace isn't intimidated by the darkness of remote caves, or the vastness of the microbial universe. He's mastered both.

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More than Just Mountains

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 22:33:40 +0000

More than Just Mountains Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/08/2018 - 15:33

By Craig Jones

(University of California Press, 359 pages; 2017)

Buy the Book

Craig Jones's book The Mountains That Remade America (2017, University of California Press) reflects on the Sierra Nevada range and how the mountains have changed the way Americans live. The book combines geology and history to show how the particular forces and conditions that created the Sierra Nevada have influenced daily life in the United States, both in the past and into the present day. Jones is a professor in the Geological Sciences Department at CU and is affiliated with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

Craig Jones's book The Mountains That Remade America (2017, University of California Press) reflects on the Sierra Nevada range and how the mountains have changed the way Americans live.

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CU Law Prof Nominated for U.S. Supreme Court

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 15:56:38 +0000

CU Law Prof Nominated for U.S. Supreme Court Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/01/2017 - 08:56

Only one Coloradan has served on the U.S. Supreme Court, CU Boulder alumnus Byron White (Econ'38). One of his proteges may now get the chance: Visiting Colorado Law professor Neil Gorsuch.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night nominated Gorsuch for the seat that became vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died last February.

Currently a judge on the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, Gorsuch, 49, lives in unincorporated Boulder County. Both of his parents attended Colorado Law and he has been a visiting professor there since 2008, typically teaching one course per semester, usually ethics or antitrust law. Gorsuch is a graduate of Columbia, Harvard and Oxford Universities.

He served as a clerk for Justice White after White stepped down from the Supreme Court in 1993. White died in 2002.

CU alumnus Wiley B. Rutledge (Law'22) also served on the U.S. Supreme Court, from 1943-49.

For more about Gorsuch, see:

CU Boulder statement;

Denver Post overview;

New York Times profile;

Daily Camera piece, which includes a handy bio-box.

Photo courtesy Colorado Law

Only one Coloradan has served on the U.S. Supreme Court, CU Boulder alumnus Byron White (Econ'38). One of his proteges may now get the chance: Visiting Colorado Law professor Neil Gorsuch.

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Regents Most Diverse Board in History

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Regents Most Diverse Board in History Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 03/01/2009 - 00:00

Joe Neguse (Econ,PolSci’05)

In November Colorado voters elected two first-generation Americans — also among the youngest ever elected — to serve on the CU Board of Regents, making it the most diverse board ever. Monisha Merchant, 31, of Lakewood defeated incumbent Republican Pat Hayes to become the first person of Asian descent on the board. Merchant, the daughter of Indian parents, represents the 7th Congressional District.

And voters in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes Boulder, elected Joe Neguse (Econ,PolSci’05), 25, a former student tri-executive and current CU law student. Neguse’s parents emigrated from the East African nation of Eritrea. He’s the first black regent since Rachel Noel in 1988.

The two Democrats will join Republican regent Tom Lucero (Phil,PolSci’94), a Hispanic, who’s served on the board since 1999.

In a third race, Republican Jim Geddes of Sedalia won to represent the 6th Congressional District in Arapahoe County, leaving the board with a 5-4 Republican majority, down from a 6-3 majority.

Nine regents serve staggered six-year terms without pay. They make policy and set tuition and budgets for the university’s three campuses and meet about eight times a year in various parts of the state.

<p>In November Colorado voters elected two first-generation Americans — also among the youngest ever elected — to serve on the CU Board of Regents, making it the most diverse board ever. </p>

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