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2024 Alumni Engagement Medal Award recipient

Current Job and Employer: Freelance Educational Writer and Editor

Current City: Lyons, Colorado

Background

Sabre Duren earned her BA, MS and PhD from the Â鶹ÊÓƵ (CU) in Environmental Studies and Environmental Engineering, respectively. She is passionate about collaborating with interdisciplinary teams for advancements in environmental science, curriculum development, education, and outreach. Sabre has over 20 years of research experience in monitoring, protecting and restoring natural aquatic ecosystems. She has conducted a number of large-scale water quality and hydrology investigations while engaging partners and stakeholders to work collaboratively to develop successful long-term solutions for the integrity of watersheds.

Sabre also has extensive experience developing and implementing environmental education programs. From 2016 to 2020, she was the Associate Director for the interdisciplinary and interdepartmental Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Program at CU. For over a decade, she has developed pedagogy-based science curricula and taught various K-12 and undergraduate level environmental courses. Throughout the years, Sabre has been a writer and editor at several publishing companies. Working with interdisciplinary teams, she has prepared lesson plans, textbooks, labs, assessment tests, and activities based on Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) three-dimensional learning, project- and place-based storyline methods, and nature of science (NOS). Sabre has also taught several science classes, including CU’s Environmental Engineering Water Quality Laboratory course, CU’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Laboratory course, CU’s Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory (ITLL) engineering curriculum lesson plans and activities piloted to 4th graders in three Boulder County schools, and a course on epidemics at the Alexander Dawson School for 7th-8th grade scholarship recipients from underrepresented schools.Ìý

Contributions to the Environmental Engineering program over the past year

Dr. Duren is currently collaborating with EVEN graduate students interested in the study of acid mine drainage in the Colorado Mineral Belt. This work builds on her doctoral research and addresses the processes controlling the biogeochemistry of rare earth elements, an emerging environmental issue. The recovery of rare earth elements from abandoned mines also represents potential new resources for Colorado.