2008 Winter: University Of Denver Magazine

Winter 2008

U N I V E R S I T Y

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MAGAZINE

N I V E R S I T Y A G A Z I N E

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UN I V ER S I T Y O F MAGAZINE

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE

Saving Seph

Contents

Office of the Chancellor

Features

24 Million Dollar Man

Dear Readers:

Donald Sturm (LLB ’58) is an expert at making money—and

These days, a conversation about college athletics is bound to conjure up a variety of images. Surely one of these is associated with the purity of sport—the whole notion of young men and women of exceptional talent developing their gifts, working hard to be the best that they can be, competing solely for the love of it. That’s an image deeply rooted in our humanity, bound to our common drive for excellence and belief in possibility. It fits well with the whole notion of personal growth as a core element of the college experience.

giving it away.

By Richard Chapman

28 Back to School

Baby boomers have become the new ‘seniors’ on campus.

There is another image, though, that arises all too often. This is an image in which big-time college athletics is inextricably linked to big money, big media, flexible integrity and glitz. Far too many Americans might say that these things are simply the accoutrements, perhaps even the prerequisites, of success in college sports.

By Doug McPherson

32 Saving Seph

Faith fuels alumna Lori Ware in her battle to save her son’s life.

Over the course of the last 10 years since DU returned to NCAA Division I athletics, our Pioneer athletes have shown that that assumption is completely false. Our teams compete, and win, at the highest levels of competition. This past year, they won the NCAA championship in skiing (our 19th), participated in 12 NCAA championship tournaments and won seven conference titles out of 17 varsity sports. One student-athlete won two individual NCAA championships, 13 students-athletes were named All-Americans, one was an Olympian, and eight of our coaches won conference coach of the year honors. Our Pioneers won the Directors Cup as the best division I–AAA athletics program in America and were ranked in the top 25 among all 331 Division I programs by Sports Illustrated.

By Janalee Card Chmel

38 Education Reimagined

The Marsico Initiative has transformed DU’s undergraduate arts and sciences curriculum.

By Tamara Chapman

Departments

At the same time, our student-athletes posted a cumulative grade point average of 3.29 and a graduation rate of 92 percent (if one takes into account those students who transferred to other institutions). Thirteen were named academic All-Americans, and more than 100 (about a third of the total) made the Dean’s List at DU, an achievement that requires a GPA of at least 3.75. As a group, Pioneer athletes participate in a host of outreach and service projects every year, including helping to move our new first-year students into the residence halls on Labor Day each fall. These young men and women serve as role models for their fellow students and for countless kids in the community who follow Pioneer sports.

44 Editor’s Note 45 Letters 47 DU Update



Our athletics programs at DU have very high integrity, in keeping with our larger institutional culture. We’ve not had a major NCAA rules infraction. That’s because our sports programs are focused on the development and well-being of the individual student, as an athlete and a person. All of this is what collegiate athletics is really supposed to be about—the purity of sport and the nobility of competition, the discipline of the athletes a reflection of an overall inner strength that leads to success in academics and, ultimately, to lives of purpose and significance. Here at DU, we’re proving that the fundamental idea is still valid, that it’s still possible to compete and win at the highest levels with high-integrity programs and athletes who are as serious about their studies as they are about competing on the field. I hope that you are as proud of our Pioneers as I am.

08 News  Nagel Hall opening 11 Academics  Community service 14 Q&A  Peg Bradley-Doppes 16 Sports  Water polo 19 Research  Death penalty 21 People Ultra runner 22 Views  Buchtel Tower

43 Alumni Connections Online only at www.du.edu/magazine: Arts  Music recording curriculum History  Town of South Denver

news

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events

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sports

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community

Office of the Chancellor Mary Reed Building | 2199 S. University Blvd. | Denver, CO 80208 | 303.871.2111 | Fax 303.871.4101 | www.du.edu/chancellor

2 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

On the cover and this page: Seph Ware. By Wayne Armstrong. Story on page 32.



University of Denver Magazine Update 3

U N I V E R S I T Y

Editor’s Note

O F

w w w. d u . e d u / m a g a z i n e U N I V E R S I T Y O F Volume 9, Number 2 M A G A Z I N E

UN I V ER S I T Y O F MAGAZINE

Working for the University of Denver Magazine, I’m constantly reminded of how remarkable our DU family is. Of course, the students, faculty and staff on campus are tremendous, but it’s the alumni who most amaze me. In this job, I meet or hear from alumni nearly every day. They send class notes and share

UNIVERSITY

MAGAZINE Publisher

Managing Editor

Chelsey Baker-Hauck (BA ’96) Assistant Managing Editor

Christine Cole (MPS ’07) Associate Editor

Tamara Chapman Editors

of family members and fellow Pioneers. I’ve formed

Richard Chapman Brenda Gillen (MLS ’06) Kathryn Mayer (BA ’07)

look forward to hearing their updates and feedback.

Editorial Assistant

Most of the news alumni share eventually winds up

Samantha Stewart (’08)

in the pages of the University of Denver Magazine or in

Creative/Brand Strategist

our online news publication DU Today (www.du.edu/today). The backgrounds of our alumni are as diverse as their life callings. They are following their passions and living lives of meaning and purpose. Their stories recharge me. You’ll read about some of those remarkable, inspirational alumni in this issue, including solar energy pioneer George Lof (page 57), 94-year-old dynamo Marion Downs (page 44), benefactor and trustee Donald Sturm (page 24) and Ryan Greenawalt, national board director of the Log Cabin Republicans (page 56). You’ll also read about alumna Lori Ware (page 32), whose son, Seph, is pictured on our cover. He has a fatal form of muscular dystrophy, and Lori is in the fight of her life to save him. I had the great pleasure of meeting Lori and Seph when they visited campus in August. Seph’s gigantic spirit and Lori’s love, faith and passion have moved all of us who have worked on that article. I find myself thinking of them often and praying for their family. I hope that the stories in this issue leave you feeling inspired, informed,

OF

Carol Farnsworth

memories and bits of nostalgia. They forward news friendships with those who call or write regularly and

Michael Richmond

Letters

MAGAZINE

Jim Good

Gender identity

What pleasure I receive from receiving and reading the University of Denver Magazine. I received my MBA in 1961; so much has happened to the University in the past 47 years. It is great to be kept current on the growth of the University and all of the accomplishments being acknowledged by others. The fall 2008 issue was very enjoyable, particularly the story on Josef Korbel. The school he headed was still growing when I was a student, but it had already developed a reputation for excellence.

I was reading the letters written in response to the new gender identity clause that was put into effect on DU’s campus [Letters, fall 2008]. It’s interesting that students are considered deviant when in fact they are trying to make the world a more equal and just place for all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. It might be considered PC to say “transgendered,” but to provide a safe place for individuals to use the restroom—or feel comfortable in their own skin—on a college campus is not deviant, but actually humane and decent. Students today live in a world that is changing, and with that change comes education. Today’s modern movement is for equality for the GLBTIQ community, when back in the ’60s and ’70s the movement was for race and gender equality. It’s admirable that DU is a campus where individuals can be themselves and not have to worry about hiding who they really are like so many individuals have had to do in the past. I applaud DU for its effort to make its campus a safe environment for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender expression. You might be joining the “Eastern and California universities” in their move for equality, but really you are standing up for humanity and the decency, concern and compassion that should be shown to all. And by the way, I am a straight female who is proud of what my University has done for the equality movement.

C. Russell Nickel (BSBA ’59, MBA ’61) Lacey, Wash.

Art Director

Craig Korn, VeggieGraphics Contributors

Jordan Ames (BA ’02) • Wayne Armstrong • Jim Berscheidt • Dave Brendsel • Janalee Card Chmel (MLS ’97) • Kristal Griffith • Jeff Haessler • Linda McConnell • Doug McPherson • Jeff Nishinaka • Marc Piscotty • Sarah Satterwhite • Chase Squires • Janna Widdifield • Carrie Wigglesworth

I am very happy to be receiving the DU magazine; it is a wonderful magazine and reminds me of my youth and the wonderful time we spent at DU. It has been about 60 years since I was a DU student in the mechanical engineering department’s temporary wood building. We were, at the time, about 50 Iraqi students sent by our government. All of us had a wonderful academic and social education, which helped us in working in Iraq at very high levels. None of us (as I remember) entered the Saddam Ba’ath Party, and none of us had criminal records (as was usual for some others during the Saddam regime). All of us believed in democracy, human rights and social well-being. I am not a politician, but I can’t forget (with the majority of the people of Iraq) the great help of the U.S.; without it, we could not be rid of the worst dictator in the history of the world. Saddam’s regime was dangerous not only for Iraq but also for the rest of the world. I hope and dream to visit our beautiful DU and Denver again some day. My best regards to our dear teachers and fellow graduate friends.

Editorial Board

Chelsey Baker-Hauck, publications director • Jim Berscheidt, associate vice chancellor for university communications • Thomas Douglis (BA ’86) • Carol Farnsworth, vice chancellor for university communications • Sarah Satterwhite, senior director of development/special assistant to the vice chancellor • Amber Scott (MA ’02) • Grace Stanton (PhD ’79), executive director of creative/brand strategy • Laura Stevens (BA ’69), director of parent relations

entertained and connected to your DU family. Please keep the stories coming. Printed on 10% PCW recycled paper

Chelsey Baker-Hauck Managing Editor

Connections

The University of Denver Magazine (USPS 022-177) is published quarterly—fall, winter, spring and summer—by the University of Denver, University Communications, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208. The University of Denver (Colorado Seminary) is an Equal Opportunity Institution. Periodicals postage paid at Denver, CO. Postmaster: Send address changes to University of Denver Magazine, University of Denver, University Advancement, 2190 E. Asbury Ave., Denver, CO 80208.

Hamdi Touqmatchi (BS ’52) Amman, Jordan



4 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



Lauren Johnston (MSW ’07) Denver

Dr. Cherrington, who headed the International Relations Department and the Social Science Foundation hired Dr. Korbel and laid the groundwork upon which the Graduate School of International Studies, now the Korbel School, was constructed. One of the founders of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNESCO), Dr. Cherrington was a prominent internationalist of the World War II era. He was an advocate of collective security, the fostering of international organizations, the maximum use of diplomacy in the settlement of disputes, and the building of international partnerships as a keystone of America’s world role. In today’s terms, Dr. Cherrington would, I believe, be among the advocates of soft-power and collective arrangements vis-à-vis the more unilateral use of military power that has characterized so much of our recent foreign policy. As such, he would most likely disagree quite strongly with Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the school’s most prominent graduate whom Dr. Korbel mentored, as to many of the policies she advocated or supported as national security adviser and secretary of state. But Dr. Cherrington would honor her service, be proud of the recognition she and other graduates have brought to DU, and be especially gratified by the development of the international studies program and the standing of the Korbel School as one of the great international education programs in America. He was a gracious gentleman and devoted to the University. Allan Howerton (BA ’48, MA ’51) Alexandria, Va.

Ben Cherrington As a 1948 graduate majoring in international relations, I was pleased to note the recognition given to Ben Cherrington in the tribute to Dr. Josef Korbel [“Remembering Joe”] in the fall 2008 issue of the magazine.

Send letters to the editor to: Chelsey BakerHauck, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208. Or, e-mail [email protected]. Please include your full name and mailing address with all submissions. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

University of Denver Magazine Letters 5

9 Wind energy 10 Alumni symposium 13 Arts calendar 15 Athletics archive 17 Education dean 18 Library grant 20 Fall harvest 23 Investment course



Feng Li, Getty Images

Bring some Pioneer spirit to your holidays

On Sept. 12, DU alumna Allison Jones (pictured) clinched a silver medal in the women’s cycling time trials at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games with a time of 44:42.88. Jones entered the race ranked third in the world. In addition to taking home a silver, Jones (BSME ’07) placed sixth in the 500K time trial in the velodrome, marking a personal best. Beijing was her fourth visit to the Paralympics, where she also competes as a skier.

6 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



University of Denver Magazine Update 7

Top News

DU’s newest residence hall opens

U.S.News & World Report ranks DU in nation’s top 100

By Jordan Ames

Wayne Armstrong



8 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

U.S.News & World Report’s annual college rankings for undergraduate education, released in August, again placed the University of Denver among the nation’s top 100 universities. DU ranked 89th, tied with the University of California-Riverside, the University of Kansas, the University of NebraskaLincoln and the University of Vermont. DU’s ranking is based on its Carnegie Foundation category as a doctoral/research university with high research activity. U.S.News & World Report collects data on as many as 15 indicators of academic quality within each category. DU ranked high for its freshman retention rate (88 percent), its acceptance rate (74 percent) and its percentage of full-time faculty (75 percent). Universities ranked by U.S.News & World Report include 262 national public and private universities that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees. The magazine weighs 75 percent of a school’s ranking by objective criteria and 25 percent on a school’s academic reputation as determined by a survey of university administrators. —Dave Brendsel

University purchases wind energy credits In September, the University purchased wind credits from Florida Power & Light Energy, the nation’s top wind project developer. The “green power” purchase is like a carbon credit. By buying Renewable Energy Certificates, DU can offset its total electricity usage and support the development and increased production of wind power. The new commitment is for 15 million kilowatt hours of wind power during each of the next two years. DU uses about 48 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually, so the wind credits will offset about 31 percent of the University’s consumption. A kilowatt hour is the amount of electricity ten 100-watt light bulbs use in one hour. The purchase is a joint partnership between the University and its students, who each contribute about $6 of their quarterly student fees to buy wind energy credits. The total annual cost of the purchase is about $75,000. Prior to the expiration of the wind-energy contract on July 31, students decided to reduce their commitment to the program so they could support energy-efficient lighting. In response, Chancellor Robert Coombe agreed to make up the funding so DU could continue the wind program at the original level. The new green power purchase is being made through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership, which “supports the development of new, renewable energy in the United States.” —Richard Chapman



Harold Beier Dressed in his everpresent crimson and gold apparel, Harold Beier (BA liberal arts ’47) is the very picture of Pioneer pride. Members of the campus community also know him as DU hockey’s biggest fan. Although he retired 21 years ago, Beier has spent his golden years hard at work. Despite the endless hours he spends on the computer as the archivist for the DU Hockey Alumni Association, Beier will be the first to tell you that the years have been better than gold. They’ve been crimson and gold. Since varsity hockey’s inaugural year in 1949, Beier has dedicated himself to the program by hosting numerous breakfasts, luncheons and post-tournament receptions and founding the Hockey Alumni Association. Beier says necessity prompted him to create the association. He believed that in order to perpetuate the characteristic spirit of DU hockey, former coaches, players and staff had to stay involved. “It helps players to know alumni are involved and behind them and rooting for them,” Beier says. A sports fan through and through, Beier not only understands the importance of community for a sports program, he also understands the importance of camaraderie for an athlete’s development. In 1967, when then head coach Murray Armstrong asked Beier if he would house a player, Beier responded, “No Murray. I won’t take just one, I’ll take two or three.” Beier also understands the importance of preserving the program’s history. In 2001, Beier donated a roomful of hockey memorabilia to the DU Archives. In 2005, Beier received DU’s Randolph P. McDonough Award for service to alumni. And in 2006, the athletic department recognized Beier for his invaluable service to DU hockey by installing him as a special inductee into the University’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Although Beier no longer houses hockey players, he and his siblings provide support to the program through the Beier Family Endowed Hockey Scholarship. Hockey’s biggest fan, however, has endowed far more than money. By working tirelessly to keep hockey alumni interested and involved in their alma mater, Beier has helped to create a legacy of camaraderie that will continue to benefit the program for seasons to come.

Wayne Armstrong

After

19 months of construction and anticipation, Nagel Hall opened Aug. 21. The 150,000-square-foot, five-story, 356-bed facility provides much-needed space and modernizes the University’s housing stock. Nagel Hall’s first three floors house sophomores in four-person suites with two bedrooms and a shared bathroom. The fourth and fifth floors have apartment units for juniors and seniors. Each fully furnished apartment includes a kitchen, living room and four single bedrooms. Upper floors feature expansive views of the mountains, Denver skyline and DU campus. The building was designed to encourage upperclassmen to remain on campus, says Mike Furno, associate director of housing operations. “Having a mixture of sophomores, juniors and seniors together helps diversify the campus,” Furno says. “Upperclassmen have experience and a maturity and academic focus that contributes a richness to the campus community.” DU Trustee Ralph Nagel and his wife, Trish, contributed $4 million to spearhead the nearly $40 million project. Ralph, an accomplished artist, contributed works from his collection to be displayed throughout the building. At his request, a residential room with studio space has been designed for an artistin-residence program being developed in cooperation with the School of Art and Art History. To lessen the structure’s environmental impact, architects incorporated an energyefficient heating and cooling system, operable windows, a copper roof made of 90 percent recycled materials, low-water-use faucets, dual-flush toilets, and low-VOC paint and carpet glues. The University’s signature structural masonry, which is designed to last well beyond 100 years, was created from regionally sourced bricks. The project’s general contractor, GH Phipps Construction, recycled the construction debris, diverting up to 75 percent from landfills. The University has submitted the project to the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. University Architect Mark Rodgers took care to design a building that not only fits into the surrounding landscape, but also serves as an open, central point of activity on campus. “Nagel Hall is meant to be a building like Grand Central Station—a crossing point of campus,” he says. “It’s designed to be much more than a place where people sleep.” In addition to students, Nagel Hall also houses academic research space, offices and classrooms for the Department of Psychology and classrooms for the Center for Teaching and Learning. “So much learning happens in between class,” Rodgers says. “A university is built around the premise that better, more effective learning happens when students, faculty and staff interact.”

Volunteer Spotlight

—Samantha Stewart

University of Denver Magazine Update 9

Academics

Alumni reconnect with University at second annual symposium

EMBA

2007–08 campus coffee statistics 9,261 Pounds of coffee beans used

8

Espresso machines

333,396

12-ounce cups of coffee sold

$516,763 Coffee sales revenue

10

Campus coffee shops

Compiled by Nori Yamashita, general manager of Sodexo at DU Linda McConnell

—Samantha Stewart

By Doug McPherson

DU by the Numbers Wayne Armstrong

“We like to think the success of the University is measured by the success of our alumni,” Chancellor Robert Coombe told the multigenerational capacity crowd at DU’s second annual Alumni Symposium Oct. 3–4. “We really need to be an asset to you throughout your life.” The symposium is one way DU is trying to do that. The free event provides an opportunity for alumni to exchange and explore ideas, intellectually reconnecting The Alumni Symposium featured a session on the steel drum. From left: with the University through percussion major Michael Van Wirt, Diana Talamas (attd. 1988–89 keynote lectures and facultyand 1995–96) and Arlene Sibrell (BA ’50, MA ’64). led courses. Nearly 200 symposium participants attended five class sessions, choosing from 33 lecture topics. “Hard Choices for America” featured former Colorado Govs. Dick Lamm and Bill Owens—Lamm is a professor and Owens is a senior fellow at DU—who shared their opinions on the difficulties facing the nation. Other topics included Motown, trauma psychology, Chinese nationalism and privacy issues. “I used to feel disconnected from the University,” said Anita Khaldy (BA ’86), but this weekend changed that.”

Blending business and compassion

Latino Center presents report to Congress DU’s Latino Center presented a report on the state of Latinos in the United States to members of Congress on Sept. 23. The report calls for comprehensive immigration reform and the establishment of a presidential commission on Latino issues. The report, authored by the DU Latino Center for Community Engagement and Scholarship and sponsored by Fundación Azteca America, was released Sept. 15. It includes detailed policy recommendations for the incoming administration and members of Congress. Maria Salazar, lead author of the report and a professor at DU’s Morgridge College of Education, says the most compelling recommendation is the need for various Latino organizations nationwide to collaborate on important Latino issues, funneled through a presidential commission. A united effort, she says, would ensure a strong Latino voice in the new administration. Additional recommendations include: increasing access to quality education, health care and economic services; investing in Latino community development as a means of promoting self sufficiency; increasing linguistically and culturally relevant practices in education, health care, economic access, immigration reform and political engagement; enacting federal legislation to protect Latinos against discriminatory and predatory practices; and advancing comprehensive and humane immigration reform. The report found that Latino communities want to be self-sufficient and contribute to U.S. society. However, Latinos face major challenges in accessing education, health care and economic services. The lack of immigration reform widens disparities and limits progress. DU’s Latino Center completed exhaustive research on Latino issues through community forums and consultation with several local, state and national Latino groups. >> Read more and download the report at www.du.edu/today. —Dave Brendsel



10 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



could stand for Executives Making Bold Achievements. That’s exactly what two students in DU’s Daniels College of Business Executive MBA (EMBA) program are doing: boldly sharing their business acumen with women in India who desperately need the help. The story starts in 1996 when Katie Kramer visited India and saw firsthand a Dalit village, home for women who are deemed outcasts from society. “I was so touched by what I saw—the profound poverty—that it changed my life and influenced my career choice to enter the nonprofit sector, and it fed my deep desire to help other people,” says Kramer, an EMBA student and vice president and assistant executive director of the Boettcher Foundation, a Denver nonprofit. Fast-forward 11 years. Kramer enters DU’s EMBA program and meets fellow student Flo Mostaccero, who had gotten involved with Women with a Cause, a nonprofit that teaches sewing and business skills to Dalit women so they can sell what they make and earn a living. “Funny how life comes full circle sometimes,” Kramer says. Kramer and Mostaccero joined forces as part of the EMBA’s community service component and unleashed a flurry of help for Women with a Cause. They developed a marketing feasibility study, an inventory tracking system, clothing tags, statistical analyses on merchandise pricing, consumer research, a sales plan and a customer relationship management system. They also helped organize an event with EMBA volunteers from DU that raised nearly $100,000 to help build a sewing center in India. Now they’re recruiting other EMBA students to improve the organization’s financial systems and Internet sales. “Katie and Flo have helped in more ways than I ever imagined,” says Susan Kiely, CEO and founder of Women with a Cause. “They’ve done so much.” Mostaccero—president of Pearl Development Co., an oil and gas engineering firm—says she got involved because of her “personal need to help other women.” Katie Kramer (left) and Flo Mostaccero “I’m a chemical engineer by degree and have always worked in male-dominated industries and professions … but have always felt a strong need to connect and give back to women,” she says. “When I heard about Women with a Cause [and] … women helping women to help themselves, it just seemed [to] fit exactly with my passions.” Mostaccero has never been to India but hopes to go with Kiely next year. Kramer says she’s been involved in nonprofits her entire career and that helping Women with a Cause was “the perfect intersection for my interests … partnering with a business to help women become economically self-sufficient. “I love the business model—it teaches the women in India a trade so they can support themselves and their families,” Kramer says. “They’re taking their earnings and educating their children and providing loans to the men in the village to help them become self-sufficient, too. Talk about a positive cycle.” Kramer credits Mostaccero for “the perfect tagline” that captures the spirit of Women with a Cause: “Teach a Woman to Sew and a Village Blossoms.” “Being a part of something that’s creating positive change is so fun and empowering,” Kramer says. “Flo and I are both thankful for this opportunity.” >>www.womenwithacause.com >>www.daniels.du.edu University of Denver Magazine Update 11

December 4 The Nutcracker, International Youth Ballet.

DU’s facilities management department is living up to the University’s “Pioneer” spirit by installing what’s believed to be the first compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicle refueling station on a Colorado university campus. The natural gas “pump,” a fueling station for a growing fleet of maintenance and other vehicles that run on natural gas, offers DU a cleaner and less-expensive way of powering vehicles. Unlike building a gasoline station, which requires a storage tank, the natural gas station draws from the underground pipes that crisscross the city already. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s list of CNG fueling stations nationwide, DU is the first university campus in Colorado to build a station. Allan Wilson, DU’s director of building services, introduced drivers to the station in September. Building on a $180,000 grant from the Denver-based Strategic Environmental Project Pipeline Foundation—a nonprofit dedicated to a cleaner environment and clean energy—DU converted a dozen campus vehicles to natural gas, although the vehicles can still run on gasoline when needed. The University has gone on to convert three more vehicles on its own—at a cost of about $12,000 each—and is planning to convert at least two more. Since 2007, burning natural gas instead of gasoline has kept more than 9.5 tons of carbon out of the atmosphere and cut fuel costs by at least $12,000, Wilson says. With the new pump station, which draws gas off existing lines and compresses it in a holding tank for rapid dispensing, DU departments can run vehicles at the equivalent of paying $1.05 a gallon for gasoline.

13 The Playground, Lamont artist in residence.

5 Granny Dances to a Holiday Drum, Cleo

7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. 19 Post-News Pen & Podium Series: Carl Hiassen. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. String and wind chamber ensembles. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 21 Bourbon Street Brass, Denver Brass. 7:30 p.m. Additional performance Feb. 22 at 2:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. 22 Organist Gerhard Weinberger. 3 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. String and wind chamber ensembles. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 23 Carl Roth and Mark Patterson, bassoon and trombone. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 24 Lamont guitar ensembles. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 25 The Climb, Lamont faculty jazz combo. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 26 The Three Penny Opera. DU theater and music school production. 7 p.m. Additional performances Feb. 27 and 28 and March 5, 6 and 7 at 7 p.m; Feb. 28 and March 7 at 2 p.m. Byron Theatre. 28 David Dorfman Dance, underground. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

January 8 Paul Soldner exhibition. Through Feb. 22.

Myhren Gallery. 9 “Flo’s Underground” jazz combos. 5 p.m. every Friday through March 6. The Iznaola Transcriptions. Ricardo Iznaola Jubilee Concert. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 18 Flutist Leone Buyse. 3 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 28 Cellist Richard Slavich and friends. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 29 The Playground, Lamont artist in residence. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 30 Lamont wind ensemble. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. 31 Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

The University of Denver Presents

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet and a panel of education experts discussing K–12 reform from their points of view Feb. 9, 2009, 7 p.m.

June Swaner Gates Concert Hall Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave. America’s education system faces many challenges. Some critics contend that our public school system needs a radical overhaul, while others recommend incremental reform. Virtually everyone agrees that there are more questions than answers in this important policy arena. Join the discussion as the University of Denver’s 2008–2009 Bridges to the Future series, which is free and open to the public, looks at the future of education in our complex society.

February 4 “Jazz Night,” Lamont jazz ensembles. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

6 Violinist Linda Wang with pianist Alice

RSVP at www.du.edu/bridges after 1/5/09. For those without Internet access, please call 303.871.2357. Free parking is available in the Newman Center garage.



12 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Rybak. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall.

11 Guitarist Leonardo Lozano. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall.



Hamilton Recital Hall.

7:30 p.m. Additional performances Dec. 5 at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 6 at 12:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble. 7:30 p.m. Additional performances Dec. 6, 12, 13, 19 and 20 at 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 2 p.m. Byron Theatre. 6 Solstice Celebration, Turtle Island Quartet. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. 13 Midwinter Song—Christmas Around the World, Sound of the Rockies. 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. 14 Holiday carillon concert. 3 p.m. Williams Carillon. 16 Christmas Around the World, Lori Line and her pop chamber orchestra. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. 21 O Holy Night, Denver Brass. 2:30 p.m., Gates Concert Hall. 31 Countdown with the Denver Brass. 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

—Chase Squires

12 Lamont Symphony Orchestra. 7:30 p.m. Noon. Hamilton Recital Hall.

14 Either/Orchestra with Ethiopian guests.

March 2 “Jazz Night,” Lamont jazz ensembles. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

3 The Playground, Lamont artist in residence. Noon. Hamilton Recital Hall.

Lamont percussion ensemble. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

4 Men’s and women’s choirs. 7:30 p.m. Gates Concert Hall.

5 Transforming Traditions: Contemporary

Chinese Art from the Logan Collection. Through April 26. Myhren Gallery. 6 Bach: The Four Lute Suites. Ricardo Iznaola Jubilee Concert. 7:30 p.m. Hamilton Recital Hall. 8 Lamont chorale and wind ensemble. 4 p.m. Gates Concert Hall. For ticketing and other information, including a full listing of campus events, visit www.du.edu/calendar.

Planting project adds trees to campus The University of Denver campus is getting a little greener in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Daniels College of Business. The Daniels Centennial Trees project aims to plant 100 different trees across campus by April 2009. The college is soliciting donations to cover the cost of the trees and to endow a Daniels Centennial Scholarship. The project grew out of a desire to celebrate the college’s history, create a fund to help students in the future and to support Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s Tree by Tree initiative. Hickenlooper’s plan aims to plant one million trees in the Denver metropolitan area in the next 20 years. The first campus tree—a “baby blueeyes” spruce—was planted in June in honor of Daniels Dean Emeritus Bruce Hutton. Sixtythree other trees have since been planted. Each tree is being marked with an arboretum inventory tag designating it as a gift of the Daniels College of Business. The scholarship will be awarded on April 25, 2009, at an event capping the yearlong anniversary celebration. Planned activities include a five-mile run/3K walk, an alumni barbecue and the planting of the 100th tree. For more information or to donate to the Daniels Centennial Fund, e-mail [email protected].

iStock

Jeff Haessler

DU installs natural gas pump on campus

Winter Arts Calendar

—Jordan Ames

University of Denver Magazine Update 13

Q&A

Athletics Vice Chancellor Peg Bradley-Doppes on athletic success

Program gives parents a night off

Interview by Doug McPherson

Wayne Armstrong

A

Q A

What factors have contributed to DU’s athletic success?

We have implemented a pretty significant strategic plan that started three years ago. We have worked at fully funding all 17 of our programs. The philosophy of that was if we can fund our programs to the NCAA limit—that is where all of our competition is—we would become more successful and therefore, more visible and have the ability to raise more money. We’ve been able to do that.



14 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Q A

What do you expect the coming year to bring in terms of athletics?

I envision the same type of success and even greater. I think there is such a momentum here—such an incredible sense of energy and passion—that there was no sense or feeling of, “Oh, we’ve reached it.” It was “This is incredible.” And if this is incredible, can you imagine how truly great we can be when we have everything hitting on all cylinders? I think we are just getting started. We are a work in progress. We are much harsher on ourselves than anyone else has to be so that, for us, it’s wonderful to see the hard work of the coaches and of the staff and the student-athletes be realized. We strive to become the No. 1 basketball program in the Rocky Mountain region, to maintain our national success in hockey and to overall have an extremely successful broad-based program. But as we go forward, we continue not to worry about the outcome. We worry about the process—recruiting and retaining the top talented students and staff, making sure we are doing things the right way, making sure we graduate our studentathletes. It is important to remember that this is the seventh consecutive year that we’ve won the Sun Belt academics trophy. Many of our programs are ranked nationally in their team GPAs, so they are national All-American teams. We’re doing it the right way, not just winning, but winning and graduating very bright young men and women.

A free child care program at DU allows parents of children with special needs to enjoy a night out without the kids. “Night Owls” is held at the University’s Fisher Early Learning Center on the first Friday of each month. The program is staffed by trained volunteers, who are matched one-on-one with a child. Nine events have been held since the service began in April, and more than 100 children from 52 families have participated. Children with moderate to severe special needs—from infants to 12-year-olds— and their siblings are eligible to participate. For more information on participating or volunteering, e-mail nightowls@ du.edu.

The Outrigger Hotel and Resort family expanded with a new partnership between the Hawaiian hotel chain and the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management (HRTM) at DU’s Daniels College of Business. Richard “Doc” Kelley, Outrigger Enterprises Group’s board chair and a DU trustee, dedicated the Richard Kelley/Outrigger Reservations Laboratory on the DU campus in June. The laboratory in the HRTM building will allow up to six student interns at a time to work paid part-time shifts. They’ll take phone, Web and fax inquiries from Outrigger customers and group booking agents. The students will be paid for their time, and their work hours will count toward HRTM’s 1,000-hour work requirement. The partnership is one of two agreements between Outrigger and university hospitality programs, and the only such arrangement on the U.S. mainland. Outrigger’s customer contact center fields 3,000 inbound phone calls, 1,000 faxes and several hundred Internet customer chats each day through a Web-based system.

—Jim Berscheidt

—Jordan Ames

Pioneers Top 10

Most common cars on campus 1.

Subaru

2.

Toyota

3.

Honda

4.

BMW

5.

Audi

6.

Volvo

7.

Jeep

8.

Mercedes

9.

Ford

10. Chevy Compiled by DU parking enforcement officers Chris Meyer, Josh Mason, Kleo Pomeroy and Jeff Jeffers



Athletics teams up with library to preserve historic photos DU’s library and athletics department are teaming up to tackle a huge archival project: digitizing thousands of sports-related photos, videos, electronic media broadcasts, press releases, statistics, rosters and other documents. The goal is to organize, archive and preserve the items, some of which go back to the late 19th century. One photo is of the 1891 DU sailing club. Some 150,000 athletics and recreation photos, along with hundreds of historical documents and electronic media elements in various formats, will be vetted over the coming months. All digitized items will go into a single system searchable by team, sport, year or individual. The project will be ongoing. The effort also will include displaying historical photographs in the Ritchie Center concourse and offices, on electronic scoreboards and in DU print publications. Those with historical athletic material or those who may be able to help identify and date items can contact University Archivist Steve Fisher at 303-871-2328 or [email protected]. —Doug McPherson

University of Denver Magazine Update 15

DU Archives

I would be the first one to say that athletics is not the most important thing about a university at any level. However, it’s the most visible. I would look at the national exposure from this past year’s success in a very positive light. We have 17 programs, and 12 of those programs went to the NCAA tournaments. We have eight coaches of the year, six conference championships. We have been able to demonstrate leadership at the conference level, at the regional level and, certainly, at the NCAA level. I think as ambassadors for the University, as educators and leaders, we have a responsibility to show the rest of the world that the University of Denver is a very special place. We hope to be able to prove over the years to come that this was not just a “flash in the pan”—that we have the right values, the right work ethic, talented staff, outstanding student-athletes who have a shared vision of having greatness here at DU. This is an incredible university with top-notch faculty and incredible alumni who aspire to be the very best they can be.

We also embraced a “One DU” approach. All of our programs are valuable; athletics is very much a part of the academic mission here. Our student-athletes graduate faster than nonstudent-athletes. We are very proud of the fact that we are part of the DU community. We’ve made a very conscientious effort to connect with our alumni, our faculty and staff, and most importantly our students as we build this. We are blessed with a beautiful campus, great faculty, incredible alumni. This is a place where we have been able to attract some of the best young coaches, retain the best seasoned coaches and have created an esprit de corps that there is a sense of energy and commitment. There is a universal feeling of, “It’s great to be a Pioneer.”

Carrie Wigglesworth

Q

What does it mean to the University to have such a successful athletics program?

Resort partnership creates learning laboratory

Sports

Something’s

going on under the water in the pool at the El Pomar Natatorium. Above the water, it all looks rather fun—competitive, yes—but definitely fun. Beneath the surface, though, is a lot of kicking, scratching, holding, poking and even pulling on swimsuits. Above the water a whistle pierces the humid air. No doubt, a referee has spotted one of those infractions. The offender is sent off to the penalty box for a 20second stretch. Welcome to water polo—University of Denver style. One thing that’s not going on under the water: feet touching the bottom. For much of an hour, players swim the length of the “field” back and forth. “It’s a workout,” says Ben Kincses, an international business major from Hungary who played the sport as a kid. “On average, a player swims about 1.5 miles in a game.” Players describe water polo as a mix of soccer, basketball, ice hockey, wrestling and rugby. Ouch. It does get rough. “Players get poked in the eye, take hits to the face, and there’s bleeding sometimes,” Kincses says. Plus, there’s plenty of yelling. When the word weak echoes off the walls, it means somebody on the “weak side” of the defense is open and possibly able to score. The words we’re up or we’re down mean they’re up or down a player because of a penalty. The sport pits two teams of seven players each (six “field” players and one goalie) against each other. The aim is simple: Score more goals than the other team. The playing area is 30 meters by 20 meters; the floating goals are one meter high and three meters wide. The ball can only be caught and thrown by one hand. When a team gains control of the ball, it has just 35 seconds to shoot. Kincses started the DU water polo club in 2005. By the start of the 2006–07 school year, he had a team of 25 sanctioned by the Collegiate Water Polo Association. In that first year, DU hosted the Rocky Mountain Conference Championship and placed a respectable third of seven teams from Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Today about 25 students, both men and women, play water polo throughout the school year; 14 play competitively in eight games during the fall against other schools such as the University of Utah, University of Colorado, Utah State University, University of Wyoming, the Colorado School of Mines, U.S. Air Force Academy and Colorado State University. Maura Shandley, a junior from Illinois who played in high school, says she “fell in love with the sport immediately” because of the team aspect. “It was such a great change from swimming. It’s absolutely challenging,” Shandley says. “We’ve had several people come out who’ve never played, and they all loved it. Many even stuck with it the entire season and became key players.” Katie Bernell, a sophomore from Texas, says a friend urged her to try it. “More or less I tried it to see if I could tread water for more than five minutes,” Bernell says. “I kept afloat … gained some skills and made some great friends.”



16 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Wayne Armstrong

Polo, pool-style

By Doug McPherson

Wartgow named interim dean at Morgridge College

DU installs locks, introduces video to maximize campus safety

Former Denver Public Schools (DPS) Superintendent Jerry Wartgow will serve as interim dean of DU’s Morgridge College of Education while the search continues for a new dean, Chancellor Robert Coombe and Provost Gregg Kvistad announced in August. Wartgow started on Sept. 3. Former Dean Ginger Maloney left the position this summer after seven years. She will remain with the college as director of the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy, which began this fall. “The Morgridge College is one of the few named education schools in the country, and soon we will break ground on its new building,” says Kvistad. “It’s important we have strong leadership during this crucial time and that we do not rush the national search currently under way. We are grateful that Jerry has agreed to lead the college while we search for a new dean.” The college recently completed a $35 million fundraising campaign, which includes construction costs associated with the new building, three endowed faculty positions, and the creation of new institutes and scholarships. Wartgow was an educator for 40 years, including four years as head of DPS. He left that position in 2005. Wartgow graduated from DU in 1972 with a PhD in education.

As students returned to some buildings on campus this fall, they noticed a new safety feature on virtually every door. During the summer, thumb latches were installed on classroom doors so they can be locked from the inside with one action. The locks are another in a series of initiatives designed to keep faculty, students and staff as safe as possible in the event of a shooting on campus. The University also has purchased rights to use a new training video that will show the campus community what to do if there is a gunman on campus. All DU students and employees are encouraged to view the video, which is available through the Campus Safety Web site. It’s only available to individuals with a DU identification number, which needs to be entered prior to viewing. University officials also hope that incoming students and new employees will register for the Critical Incident Notification System (CINS). Text, e-mail and voice messages are sent through CINS for emergency situations that include shootings, tornado warnings and a fire on campus, or for snow closures. Students, faculty and staff can register by logging in to their account through MyWeb. After logging in, select “personal information” and “notification preferences” to enter contact numbers. —Jim Berscheidt

Religion

—Jim Berscheidt

Disaster psychology students put what they learn into practice On her birthday, Linda Baker arrived in Belize City, Belize—not to celebrate but to volunteer for the Pan American Health Organization. It was a part of her summer internship for the DU International Disaster Psychology Program. The circumstances were difficult; two weeks prior to her arrival, tropical storm Arthur had flooded much of the country’s eastern coast. Baker, a second-year graduate student, says there were numerous injuries and seven fatalities due to flooding. Baker and fellow student Alyson Welch worked with the World Health Organization, helping train psychiatric nurse practitioners about how patients would normally react in a disaster and helping develop a national mental health disaster plan. The International Disaster Psychology Program at the Graduate School of Professional Psychology develops partnerships with governmental and nongovernmental agencies, working with communities affected by disaster to create the internship possibilities for students. Currently, international disaster psychology students have opportunities to work with the Pan American Health Organization, a division of the World Health Organization, in Belize and Jamaica or with a variety of nongovernmental agencies in Bosnia. —Kristal Griffith



Opera & American Music

Climate Change

Film

Art Politics

University of Denver Magazine Update 17

Research

Bridges to the Future series focuses on education’s future

In 2008—and for the first time in human history—most people on the planet will live in cities. Given this monumental transition, societal concerns about the long-term sustainability of urban settlements, and urban life in general, are at an all-time high. The University of Denver-Bologna International Center for Civic Engagement (ICCE), an international venue for research and study, has received a multi-institution, $180,000 grant from the European Union-United States Atlantis Program to develop and implement an international “Excellence in Mobility” project to address problems confronting contemporary cities. The project will create a curriculum shared among four partner institutions— the University of Denver, Portland State University, University of Bologna and the University of Nottingham—focused on the study of social and natural transformations of urban areas in Europe and in the United States.  The program will include an exchange of 48 undergraduate students and some teaching faculty equally divided among the partner institutions. The project brings together students and scholars from across the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on urban problems and to work toward sustainable urban futures. Teresa Conley, a marketing professor at the Daniels College of Business, will lead a course in the spring. Students attending the grant-funded program will take classes on the Italian language, The Role of Business in Civic Engagement, and Democracy and the City: Moving Towards an Engaged Citizenship. They also will participate in a civic engagement practicum to apply classroom learning into real-world situations utilizing the civic backdrop of Bologna.

A crowd of nearly 1,400 heard author, educator and activist Parker Palmer discuss challenges facing America’s education system as the seventh year of Bridges to the Future kicked off in September. The theme of this year’s Bridges lecture series is “A Nation Still At Risk: The Future of Education.” Palmer, founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal, told the crowd that trust needs to be put back in the education system and all educators need to explore self-knowledge, no matter their spiritual beliefs, in order to be better practitioners. DU invited teachers and administrators from 13 Front Range school districts to attend the event and other activities before and after Palmer’s address in order to engage them in the conversation. Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet is scheduled to appear with a panel of educators Feb. 9 to continue the discussion surrounding K-12 reform. Reservations for the free event will be taken after Jan. 5. DU also is producing a series of one-hour television specials on education in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS. The series will feature Bridges speakers. The first segment will air in December. Visit the Bridges to the Future Web site at www.du.edu/bridges for additional information.

By Kristal Griffith

New

research by Scott Phillips, DU associate professor of sociology and criminology, delves into racial disparities in death penalty cases in Harris County, Texas. The research suggests that the district attorney was more likely to pursue the death penalty against black defendants and on behalf of white victims. The study, “Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment,” was published in the Houston Law Review this fall. “Conventional wisdom holds that the race of the victim is pivotal,” Phillips says. “But current research suggests that the race of the defendant and victim are both pivotal.” Phillips studied whether race influenced the district attorney’s decision to pursue a death trial or the jury’s decision to impose a death sentence against defendants indicted for capital murder in Harris County, which is in the Houston area. He spent several years looking at more than 500 capital murder cases that occurred from 1992–99. “Harris County is the capital of capital punishment,” Phillips says. “If Harris County were a state, it would rank second in executions after Texas.” While Phillips’ research shows a clear racial disparity in the district attorney’s decision to seek the death penalty, the professor is not accusing the district attorney Scott Phillips at the time, John Holmes Jr., of being racist. The office has a long-standing practice of removing the race of parties from the memo that the district attorney uses to decide whether to seek death. “Discrimination implies purposeful action,” Phillips says. “I am certain that the Harris County D.A. does not intend for race to influence the process. Nonetheless, it appears that it does.” In fact, the percentage distribution suggests that the district attorney sought the death penalty against black and Caucasian defendants at the same rate. However, the racial disparity is found when looking at the nature of the crime because black defendants committed murders that were less serious, according to objective measures. After controlling for the nature of the crime, the findings demonstrate that the odds of the district attorney pursuing a death penalty trial were 1.75 times higher against black defendants than Caucasian defendants. “To impose equal punishment against unequal crimes is to impose unequal punishment,” Phillips says. Phillip’s work was highlighted in April by reporter Adam Liptak in The New York Times. The American Constitution Society (ACS) distributed a brief on his work to its members in October. Emily Chatterjee, the national program law fellow for ACS, says Phillips’ work ties into their mission to ensure human dignity, individual liberties, genuine equality and access to justice in American law. “Phillips’ work investigating racial disparities in capital punishment and his proposals for how to help limit such disparities very much falls under our mission,” Chatterjee says. “It is important that research like this is highlighted for ACS members and shared as widely as possible.”

—Kristal Griffith

—Jordan Ames

Library program gets federal grant of nearly $1 million iStock

The University of Denver Morgridge College of Education Library and Information Science Program and its partners—DU’s Westminster Law Library and the Sturm College of Law—will recruit and educate 10 new law librarians, known as the Law Librarian Fellows, thanks to a grant of $999,360 from the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant was one of 31 awards given to institutions nationwide as part of a $20.3 million initiative of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. Partnering with law librarians on outreach initiatives from the State of Colorado Supreme Court Library, the law librarianship students will participate actively as members of the Rural and Small Practice Attorney Library Support Center at DU. They will be assigned a list of clients and provide legal reference, document retrieval and other services under the guidance of Westminster law librarians. Clients will include rural attorneys, academic and public libraries with legal collections, rural government agencies, and nongovernmental legal organizations serving low-income individuals and families. IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. —Jim Berscheidt



18 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



Wayne Armstrong

Bologna program to address concerns over urban life

Crime and punishment

University of Denver Magazine Update 19

People

The master of faster

Students harvest produce to help local food banks

By Doug McPherson

Don’t

—Jordan Ames

Elsbeth Williams found a world of opportunity at DU. As a double major in music and international studies, Elsbeth Williams was able to mix and cultivate her passions. Her DU experience included study in France, Vienna and a service-learning trip to India. “My global perspective was enhanced at DU thanks to the opportunities I received and a scholarship funded by Gwen VanDerbur Mitchell (Law ’54).” – Elsbeth Williams, BM, BA, MA, 2007 Find out more about Elsbeth and how you can help students like her.

Visit us at www.giftplanning.du.edu

Innovative. Dynamic. On the move. www.giftplanning.du.edu



DUMag_Fall08GiftPlngAd_FINAL.indd 1

20 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Office of Gift Planning 800.448.3238 or 303.871.2739 E-mail: [email protected]

10/14/08 11:11:03 AM



University of Denver Magazine Update 21

Wayne Armstrong

judge Chase Squires until you walk a mile—no, scratch that—until you run 100 miles in his shoes. Squires, a DU senior public affairs specialist and University of Denver Magazine writer, is what you call an ultradistance runner—the folks who use a marathon to get warmed up and often run 100 miles. For those counting, that’s just a little jaunt from DU’s campus to CU-Boulder’s campus, back to DU, and, uh, back to CU. “I think a lot of folks think we’re nuts,” Squires says. You might not pick Squires out of a crowd as someone who could run 100 miles, or even one mile for that matter. He’s 5-foot, 4-inches tall, thinning on top and weighs in at about 150. He’s a self-described 42-year-old “desk jockey, nothing special.” “I’m not an athlete, just some slug who’s too dumb to quit when his whole body hurts and his mind tells him to call it a day.” But that gets at the message Squires wants most to impart: “You can do this.” He’s kind of an evangelist for the sport of ultrarunning, the father of farther, the pastor of faster. “I really believe that people cheat themselves if they say, ‘I could never do that.’ Heck, did you try? I’ll bet you never tried!” The key, he says, is to get three miles under your belt “until you think that’s nothing.” From there, you just build on the miles. Maybe five at first, then seven, then 10. “Before you know it, 18 miles isn’t that far,” he says. Squires himself entered the sport slowly. In 2001, he weighed 205, ate a lot of pizza, burgers and fried chicken and nursed a cholesterol level north of 300. His wife signed him up for a YMCA class. “I went in, walked 20 minutes on a treadmill and thought I was going to die.” But he kept at it. From 20 minutes to 30 minutes, then jogging. First two miles, then three. About 18 months later he bagged his first marathon in 4 hours, 30 minutes. He was hooked. Four months later he broke four hours. “That’s when I got serious,” he says. And today he’s completed several 100-mile races. The most recent was in February 2008: the Rocky Raccoon 100 in Texas. He’ll race in Hawaii’s HURT 100 in January. What’s it like to run 100 miles (which takes Squires 28 hours, on average)? “From about midnight on … you see some weird things. I start hallucinating from sleep deprivation.” One time he says he looked down at a puddle at 3 a.m. and saw a duck sitting in it next to a miniature statue of the Stanley Cup. “Weird. By the time the sun comes up, I’ve got 10 or 20 miles to go and I just want to finish. My body hurts and it’s slow going.” Nevertheless, he likes it. “You know what? It’s fun.” And he adds that ultras are typically in “wild and fantastic” settings. “There’s a saying in the sport: ‘Thanks to ultrarunning, I’ve thrown up in some of the world’s most beautiful places.’”

Wayne Armstrong

More than 70,000 people across Colorado enjoyed fresh produce in September thanks in part to volunteers from the University of Denver. Seven undergraduate and graduate students, led by University Chaplain Gary Brower, spent a day at Petrocco Farms in Brighton, Colo., cutting and boxing cabbage in a gleaning project for COMPA Ministries. The cabbage was distributed to 170 shelters and food pantries in the Denver metro area and across Colorado. During harvest season (September and October), COMPA works with volunteers from local churches, civic agencies and community groups to harvest fresh produce donated by area farms. The organization supports the acquisition, production and distribution of healthy food to the “working poor” to help promote self-sufficiency and prevent homelessness. The DU group joined nearly 100 other volunteers. In just two and a half hours, the volunteers had cut and packed enough cabbage to fill three flat-bed trailers and a 24-foot van. Brower organized the DU contingent as a way to unite students from across campus to work toward a common cause.

Views

All that remains Photograph by Wayne Armstrong

Class of 2012 sets high academic standard

Students get lessons from topsy-turvy market

This fall DU welcomed 1,145 new first-year, first-time students hailing from 44 states and 26 nations. More than 42 percent of the new students were in the top tenth of their high school class, and more than 75 percent were in the top quarter. SAT and ACT scores were higher than ever, and the mean high school GPA was 3.66. Ninety-seven freshmen are enrolled in DU’s Honors Program, up from 61 last year. The Class of 2012 is “the most capable new class we have ever had,” Chancellor Robert Coombe said in his September Convocation address. Admission criteria for the class also were tougher than ever. More than 7,144 students applied for DU’s freshman class; just 64.4 percent of those were accepted. Female students comprise 55.8 percent of the class, and 15.5 percent of the new students are domestic minorities. More than 52 percent are from out of state, and 6 percent are international students.

On Monday, Sept. 29, DU students in the Marsico Investment Fund course watched $21,000 disappear from their investment portfolio in the wake of the stock market’s historic plunge of 777 points. That was real money, not play money as in stock market simulations. Before Monday, the fund was at $524,000. But on Monday, it plummeted to $503,000. Then on Tuesday, it rose to $514,000. Course instructor Mac Clouse says the class is a “great teaching experience.” His students are having to look at “defensive stocks” that can do well in a down economy. Some of those picks include Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson because the students anticipate that consumers will still buy products such as soap, shampoo, toothpaste and Band-Aids. Another stock is CXW, a private corrections facility builder. “The idea is that when times get tough, people turn to crime,” Clouse says. As bad as losing $21,000 sounds, it’s not the worst students have seen. In the two years after the dot-com bust, the portfolio lost $290,000.

—Media Relations Staff

—Doug McPherson

Nanotech conference offers up big plans for tiny things Some of the world’s top innovators in nanotechnology descended on the Cable Center in July for the first annual Nano Renewable Energy Summit. The event focused on the nexus where research on a molecular level—nanotechnology—meets the quest for renewable energy. Potential uses for nanotech breakthroughs in renewable energy include: new methods of producing biofuels; new materials to help produce and transmit power through wind turbines; lighter and stronger materials to make autos more fuel efficient; glass for office buildings and cars that dissipates heat from the sun; and new ways to gather solar energy that would make solar power a viable, cost-effective alternative. The only common thread is the minute nature of the work, crafting these breakthroughs from the smallest of particles. Rahmat Shoureshi, dean of DU’s School of Engineering and Computer Science, told the assembly of educators, researchers, government leaders and business professionals that the University has added 22 faculty members interested in research and development of nanotechnologies in computer science and engineering fields. DU plans to offer a graduate program focusing on nanotech issues within three years, he said. Not a bad field to consider, if former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater’s numbers are right. At the conference, Slater said commercial applications and other investments in the broad field are expected to make nanotechnology a $2 trillion industry by 2015.

The

cornerstone of the Memorial Chapel was laid in 1910, but it wasn’t until December 1917 that the building was dedicated in honor of those who died in World War I. Only one of the chapel’s original four towers remains; the rest of the building was destroyed by fire in 1983. Today, the Buchtel Memorial Tower houses DU’s Victory Bell—moved from Old Main—which tolls for Commencement.



22 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

—Chase Squires



DU_Alumni_Du_Today_1/4page.indd 1

University of Denver Magazine Update 23

7/1/08 1:26:11 PM

By Richard Chapman Photography by Marc Piscotty

Million Dollar

Donald Sturm (LLB ’58) is an expert at making money—and giving it away.

W

hen the man whose name sits atop diplomas at the Sturm College of Law showed up at DU in 1955 to begin classes, the law school dean looked at him and blustered: “What are you doing here?” Don Sturm was four months late for class. Sturm may have said he was there so he could get out of the Army three months early. Or that he chose law because he didn’t want to be a doctor, dentist or accountant. Or because of nifty murder trials he’d stopped off to watch on the way home to Brooklyn after cruising through liberal arts courses at City College of New York. Sturm doesn’t remember what he actually replied, only that it was the right answer. He had a letter of admittance to DU, military benefits, a 1947 Mercury he’d bought for $200 and driven from an Army base in Alabama, and an intellectual engine “revving” for the law. “I was a class of one,” recalls Sturm, now a 76-year-old DU trustee. “But it worked out. I caught up. I went through in two years and two months. “The GI Bill paid for tuition, fees, books, but you couldn’t live off it. So I worked. I took the bar exam in December 1957, found out I passed on Valentine’s Day 1958, finished course work a few weeks after that. I was sworn in and I left.” Sturm was debt free but dollarless. Fifty years later, he sits at the head of a financial group that owns 42 banks with

24 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

$2.2 billion in assets, employs more than 850 people and has loans out totaling $1.7 billion. He’s been on and off the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans and has involved himself in so many businesses he can’t remember the number. He earned a master of laws degree in taxation from NYU, litigated for the IRS across a nine-state region and earned his way to the vice chairmanship of Peter Kiewit Sons, one of the largest employee-owned companies in the nation. (Kiewit’s Colorado credits include the Eisenhower Tunnel, Glenwood Canyon and the T-Rex project in Denver.) Sturm helped pull Continental Airlines out of bankruptcy, came an eyelash from owning the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and Pepsi Center, and was instrumental in helping Colorado and other western states rebound from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and ’90s. He runs a $60 million philanthropic foundation whose gifts, when combined with the charitable endeavors of his companies, provide about $4 million a year to communities across five states. Sturm has given nearly $30 million to the University of Denver, where his name graces Sturm Hall, a major academic building that houses social sciences and humanities programs. His other DU namesake, the Sturm College of Law, enrolls more than 1,200 aspiring lawyers. He has served on the DU Board of Trustees for 16 years and in spring 2008 received the prestigious Evans Award for professional achievement and service to DU.



University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 25

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ot bad for someone who calls himself “just a kid from Brooklyn.” For someone who grew up in a onebathroom, ground-floor duplex that the family lived in to get a break on rent. For someone whose family cooked meals on the coal furnace in the basement, never took a vacation and couldn’t afford a car. For someone who grew corn in the backyard during World War II and didn’t learn to drive until he was 23. But someone with a drive to excel, who plotted, sacrificed and pushed himself to do well, then went out and did it. “Get good education from good schools,” Sturm urges. “Get good experience. Get into some professional activity. Invest your time, hard work and money. Work in something that doesn’t seem to be work, [something] that’s fun.” And give back to society in ways where you can see the results. “I think anybody could do what I did,” he says. “I really believe that.” If only Sturm’s father, Mark, had been born under a luckier star. “My father worked his heart out for his family,” Sturm says reverently. He was a “self-taught guy” who had emigrated from Austria to the U.S. as an 8-year-old raised by an aunt. He saved, invested and rose to prominence as a restaurant manager, then lost everything in the crash of 1929. “I remember once he took me to Sheepshead Bay when I was 10 years old to show me property he once owned,” Sturm says. “He wound up working as a waiter. Until he died, that’s what he did. He hated what he did, but he did it to provide for his family.” The elder Sturm also scraped together $50 a month to help his son through law school at DU. Decades later, dad’s sacrifice is a cobalt blue memory that can still redden Sturm’s no-nonsense eyes. The rich, stentorian voice with which he hammers together multimillion-dollar business deals quavers. The tough-guy image that people presume about him falls away. “Don is completely devoted to his family and extended family,” says Susan Sturm, 25 years his junior and married to Sturm since 1987. The couple has two teenagers, and Sturm has two older children from a previous marriage. “He gets that [devotion] from his father, who grew up with nothing and yet used so much of what little he had to take care of other family members,” Susan adds. “That’s a very deep, important part of Don: loving his family and helping them in all ways.” The Sturms have helped more families than just their own. Some 100 families own homes today because of funding the couple provided. The Sturms have given money to fund 14 charter schools and helped libraries, the Children’s Hospital, Denver Art Museum, Boy Scouts of America and myriad charities in the states where they do business: Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and Arizona. They’ve even created a religious support group called Judaism Your Way, which provides services and assistance to interfaith



26 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

couples like the Sturms and to Jews who don’t wish to affiliate with area synagogues. Events the group ran for High Holy Days last year attracted 1,700 people. “We talk a lot at the family dinner table about gifts we’re making and what the purpose of them is,” says Susan, a former Foreign Service brat who as a child lived in Peru and West Germany for a time and who spent three years with the Central Intelligence Agency after graduating with honors from Princeton. A savvy businesswoman, she serves as CFO of the holding company that controls the couple’s 42 banks. “Our kids work every single summer,” she says, adding that they’ve exposed their children to poor villages in Kenya and hospitals in Costa Rica. They’ve even taken a field trip to the Brooklyn neighborhood where Don Sturm grew up. “[Don] wanted his kids to see the circumstances that he grew up in, that [those circumstances] were much more hard-scrabble, much more hand-to-mouth than the way they’ve grown up.” Susan and Donald Sturm

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he turning point in Sturm’s humble past may have been in 1964 on a nondescript Midwestern morning in Nebraska. That was the day he found the answer to a $35 million problem and his career took off. While working as an IRS attorney in Omaha, Sturm had caught the eye of Peter Kiewit, the highway construction mogul once dubbed by Forbes magazine “the Colossus of Roads.” Kiewit hired Sturm as a tax attorney and asked him to get the company out from under a $35 million tax deficiency the IRS said the company owed. Sturm was 32. “I woke up [that morning] and said, ‘Wow, is that right?’ I ran to the office to see if I was right, and I was. I thought about something that nobody else thought about.” Sturm’s epiphany turned a $35 million obligation into a $5 million refund. The IRS answered by retroactively revoking the ruling the young attorney had used as the basis for the reversal. Sturm pushed back. “It took a year to get them to revoke the revocation,” he says proudly. “Then they made the payment. I was king of the road.” Being king brought greater responsibility at Kiewit and the freedom to go beyond taxes. It led to the chance to negotiate lucrative coal contracts and acquire and manage Fortune 500 level companies. Each became a real-world business experience that got Sturm’s feet wetter and better. The efforts also helped push Kiewit down the road to immense success. The company didn’t forget. Kiewit had a long tradition of rewarding key employees by letting them buy shares of company stock. Sturm bought as much as he could. He borrowed money to buy stock. He bought a house fully financed so he could spend his money on stock.

“We had a cleaning lady who asked if it was against my religion to buy furniture,” he laughs. “I sacrificed quality of life to build a nest egg.” The strategy paid handsomely. Sturm’s ownership share eventually amounted to 11 percent of the company, which at the time he left in 1991 was making $400 million in his unit alone. Eight years previous, Sturm had invested in his first bank, a small family owned operation in Macomb, Ill. It wasn’t lucrative, but it taught Sturm banking. Four years later, he bought a bigger bank in Cheyenne, Wyo. When Kiewit decided to sell off Continental Group, a Fortune 500 company Sturm had acquired and managed and believed in, Sturm saw the profitable sale through, then cashed his chips. He walked away with a lot of money—about $160 million, according to Forbes. At the time, the nation’s banking system was a mess. Banks and savings and loans, also known as thrifts, were losing money or failing, investor confidence was teetering, government supervision was poor, and in some cases managers ended up in handcuffs. The collapse of Silverado Savings and Loan by itself cost taxpayers $1.3 billion of the estimated $124.6 billion taxpayer bailout the federal government spent to resolve the crisis. Sturm found himself in the middle of all this armed with a banking background, business experience, a reputation for honesty and a wad of cash. “The deals were so wonderful you couldn’t pass them up,” Sturm recalls. “All the crappy loans I gave back to the government and they gave me cash—100 cents on the dollar. “I bought two failing banks, four failed thrifts and one failed bank in eight months.” Sturm later bought one bank in Kansas City for $1—“and I overpaid!”



The bank was failing, its shareholders wanted out and several people involved previously had gone to jail. They offered the shares to Sturm for $1. He took the offer, pumped in $5 million to keep things afloat and turned the bank around in two years. Today, the bank makes $4 million to $5 million annually and operates as Premier. “Colorado was really flat on its rear end,” recalls Susan, who worked hand-in-glove with her husband. “There wasn’t a solvent bank in the state when we came in and started buying financial institutions … There were situations where we were the only bidder. They had a lot more to sell than there were people to buy.” But like phoenixes rising from the ashes, the banks returned to health and began reinvesting in their communities, which Susan says has made the couple “pleased and proud.” Along the way were some missteps. Sturm lost a lot of money in the WorldCom collapse, where at one time he owned 5 percent of the company, and in Level 3 stock, where his stake was nearly $600 million, according to Forbes. He’s had to fend off lawsuits aimed at his deep pockets, deflect untold schemes and solicitations, and settle a 1988 insider-trading dispute with the SEC from which he had never traded or profited. But none of that deterred him from pursuing his three principal priorities: family, work and charity. Plus Nebraska football, Yankees baseball, Final Four basketball, fashionable ties and 20 laps in the pool nearly every day. Among things nearest his heart is DU, which Sturm has served vigorously since former Chancellor Dan Ritchie recruited him for the Board of Trustees in 1992. Today, Sturm’s drive is to raise money for DU scholarships, expand the number of donors, and improve the law school’s ranking and bar passage rate. He chairs the trustees’ Bar Passage Committee and has expressed strong feelings about the issue that haven’t always been well-received. Unafraid to mince words, Sturm is pressuring the law school to accept stronger students, offer more financial aid, toughen standards, help students who struggle, emphasize excellence over opportunity, and tweak the curriculum to achieve greater business and international exposure. “I’m sure people at the University, particularly at the law school, think I’m a pain in the ass,” he says with a laugh. Susan Sturm contends that it’s just Don following his managerial instinct to walk inside the factory, roll up his sleeves and make things better. “Don doesn’t see any point in warming a chair,” she says, emphasizing how proud of DU he is when he’s on campus and watching things hum. “My concern in addition to rebuilding the campus is quality of education,” Sturm says. “The product is not a building, not a football field or a basketball court. The product is the education that you provide the student. At the end of the day, that’s the key.” University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 27

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Baby boomers have become the new ‘seniors’ on campus By Doug McPherson Photography by Wayne Armstrong

BacktoSchool

Jackie Brown is 54. She has a part-time job. She has a mortgage. And tonight, she has homework: a case study paper on how to help a teenage girl who was physically abused by her father and who is now fighting depression and anxiety because she’s about to leave a foster home she’s known since puberty. Brown wears a University of Denver sweatshirt and a smile. She’s happy. Very happy. “When I’m in class and I’m asked to share my experiences, that makes me feel really good,” Brown says. “It makes me feel accomplished. I feel like my life and my dreams have collided; I’m just really happy.” She has plenty to be happy about. Her dream and life are wrapped tight as a rope. Brown, who grew up in Indiana, says she always wanted to live in Colorado, have a full-time, on-campus college experience and learn how to help the elderly. Today she has all three. A couple of years ago, Brown began some soul-searching about a more fulfilling career. For most of her life she worked in management information systems technology in the steel and banking industries. Then, last year, Brown heard from a friend about DU’s PROGRESS program (Providing Real Opportunities for Gero-Rich Experience in Social Work Services) for students interested in geriatric social work. She applied to the Graduate School of Social Work, was accepted, packed her bags, left her banking job and is now a full-time college student working on her master’s degree. “A lot of the professors are around my age, which is nice. And the students have taken me in, too,” she says. “I just blend in with the rest of them.”



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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 29

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Brown’s not alone. Baby boomers—those age 44 through 62—are blending in with their colleagues on college campuses throughout the country. The U.S. Department of Education reports that in the last decade the number of baby boomers heading back to school has jumped by 20 percent to nearly 2 million. And officials predict those numbers will keep rising as boomers opt for books over bingo. The trend is palpable at DU, which hosts 800-plus boomers today, according to the school’s Office of Institutional Research. That’s not surprising to U.S. Census folks, who say Denver has a burgeoning baby boom population that will reach 300,000 people ages 55–64 in fewer than two years. Some have even dubbed Denver the boomer capital of the United States. That may explain why over the last year the Executive MBA program at the Daniels College of Business witnessed the largest enrollment jump in its history. The obvious question: Why are boomers going back to class? Some want a promotion, a bigger paycheck or some kind of career change or advancement. “Education is a lifelong process now,” says Daniels Assistant Dean Barbara Kreisman, Executive MBA program director. “It’s very apparent via research and reality that people need to garner new skills every few years nowadays to stay current in their profession or to be able to change careers as theirs may become outdated and irrelevant.” Kreisman says Executive MBA students range in age from 30 to 65. “Even some of the older students have been seeking skills which could be applied in their next careers,” she says.



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What boomers really want is meaningful work, and more than two-thirds want to take part in lifelong learning, according to a 2007 study sponsored by the Rose Community Foundation, which gives grants for health, education, aging and other causes. And another study from the Met Life Foundation and Civic Ventures, a nonprofit organization that focuses on issues of aging Americans, found that half of adults between ages 50 and 70 said they are interested in taking jobs now or in the future that help improve the quality of life in their communities. Brown herself is an example of this growing network. She explains that a trip to the hospital kindled her need for more meaningful work. A few years ago, she says, she took her mother to the hospital for a checkup and noticed an elderly lady there alone. “That just kind of stuck with me,” she says. “It was so sad; somebody needed to be with her. It’s just not right. We treat the elderly like all of the sudden they just appeared here, but they’re people. They have histories.” Brown says her goal is to help the elderly through policy and advocacy. “I think that’s the way I can make a bigger impact,” she says. “Policy is the forum where the rules are made and where attitudes are changed.” Lynn Gangone, dean of DU’s Women’s College, says she’s seeing more and more older students who are “truly interested” in changing the world through advocacy and are earning master’s and doctoral degrees in fields such as social work, law and education—“fields where they believe they can make a difference.” The typical Women’s College student is a late-boomer born in the early 1960s, Gangone says. “They’ve grown up as women deeply engaged in their communities as volunteers. They understand that the achievement of the baccalaureate degree is not just for career purposes, but for life.” And even though the bachelor’s of business administration remains the most popular degree at the Women’s College, Gangone says, the school is seeing more interest in the law and society major, which is tailored specifically for students interested in understanding how law matters in people’s lives, how people’s lives matter in law, and how law empowers and constrains individuals, groups, organizations and communities. Tiffani Lennon (JD ’04), who teaches law and society, says many of her boomer students are passionate about affecting change and plan to use their degrees to do just that. “Our students walk into the classroom with substantial skills, truly diverse perspectives and the passion to ignite change,” Lennon says.

Karen Newman, a Daniels professor who has researched generational trends, says boomers aren’t the only generation to return to college after their teen years. “Previous generations often did it because, for one reason or another, they did not get a chance to go to college or get all the way through college when they were younger,” she says. Now, because of increased access to higher education, Generation Xers [those born from 1965 to about 1980] are more likely to return to college or go to college for the two reasons above rather than just to say they did it.” Another phenomenon causing the return of boomers to the classroom, Kreisman says, is telecommuting—people who feel isolated working from their homes. “We have more and more students enrolling who say they not only need new skills, but they want to be a part of something—they want collaboration and stimulation they can’t get working alone.” She adds that for many boomers, college played an important role in their lives during the 1960s. “As a result, there is data that shows many boomers are returning to the campuses to engage in more dialogue and learning,” she says. But increasingly, boomers themselves are reporting that they want more than just more money or a spacious corner office. They want to make a difference. They want to tackle the big problems: illiteracy, poverty, race relations, child abuse and education. Kreisman has seen the trend in her MBA students. “Absolutely, there are folks here who want to find value in what they do,” she says. “They’re seeking purpose because many have lived lives in a corporate environment focused on profits, and that left some of them unfulfilled.”

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Back to that Rose Foundation study, which also found that boomers actively seek many sources—friends, the Internet, churches, nonprofits and colleges—where they can learn how and where to put their efforts to work for good. And therein lies an opportunity, the study suggests, for organizations to develop a clearinghouse of resources. Perhaps a college could offer a series of courses to give individuals information they need to make informed decisions about options in community service.



DU is on the case. In fact, the Rose Community Foundation has given DU’s University College—which offers continuing professional studies for older students—a $5,000 grant to study what such a clearinghouse might look like and how it might work, according to Jim Davis, the dean of University College. University College offers master’s degrees, certificates and an undergraduate degree completion program. But it also supports the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)—a 600-member program that offers non-credit, eight-week classes for those ages 55 and “better”— and the Enrichment Program, which features short, non-credit courses on topics including literature, art, history, contemporary issues and science. Each session attracts about 900 students, many of whom are boomers. The Rose grant, Davis says, is helping University College create a center for life transition that will match people’s civic advocacy interests with community resources and needs. Other center services will include skill courses so visitors can make an easier transition from an industry to the nonprofit sector. “They might learn about fundraising or project management,” Davis says. “We’ll design a series of courses to help these transitions.” The college has applied for a second Rose grant to develop a business plan for the program, and Davis says he expects the center will open by September 2009. The Women’s College continues to stretch its welcome mat for older students by introducing academic certificates, including one in leadership that emphasizes social change and advocacy. The school is also developing leadership skills in students by placing them in area nonprofits. “I believe that as we widen our certificate offerings and our scope of non-degree programs, we’ll see a lot more boomers at the college,” Gangone says.

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To Davis, older students seeking to do good has a lot to do with the way they see retirement. “I think boomers are thinking differently about retirement today; they aren’t going to settle for the old definitions of retirement,” Davis says. “They want something more—continue their employment, make lateral moves or move from work into volunteering. It’s a generation not content with stuffing envelopes. They want to make a true difference.” That makes sense to Brown, who plans to graduate in June 2009. “I could have stayed in my banking job and kept making money,” she says. “I was making good money, and I knew I was going to take a big pay cut in social work. And I like golf, and I have a retirement fund. But there’s more out there for me.” Brown, whose course work involves several internships, worked with the local Alzheimer’s Association last spring. “I loved talking with senior citizens; there’s a lot of living history there. “The way our society is today, it makes the world smaller. I think I can make a difference.” She gives a short laugh. “I was thinking, you know, it’s not going to be too long before I’ll be getting old—I guess it’s an investment in my own future, too. ” University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 31

Saving

By Janalee Card Chmel Photographs by Wayne Armstrong

Seph Faith fuels alumna Lori Ware in her battle to save her son’s life.

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“He will be dead by the time he’s 18. Take him home and love him.” With those words, a doctor threw Lori (Watkins) Ware (MBA ’89) into the

fight of her life: The fight for her son’s life. Just weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana coast, Lori’s

3-year-old son, Joseph, was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an incurable genetic disease that destroys a body’s muscles. It is fatal; children with Duchenne typically die in their late teens. At the very moment Lori received what she calls “the death sentence on my baby,” she had the instinctive reaction that would guide the rest of her life. She fought back. She challenged. She told doctors, “That’s not good enough.” Today, Lori believes she can help her son to “avoid the wheelchair,” that he “will grow to be a man.” But her battle is one that entails buying time for her son, staying on top of worldwide research efforts, and, at the heart of it all, massive amounts of prayer and faith. She frequently tells people in her friendly Southern accent, “You know as well as I do that God’s gonna take care of this.” So far, God seems to be fulfilling Lori’s expectations.



32 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Lori and Seph Ware

many parents face when they learn that their son has DMD. One mother told Lori that their doctor said their son would be “short and fat and he will die.” “And then doctors get mad when they have a crying mama in their office,” Lori says. Although muscular dystrophy is the most common lethal genetic childhood disease, there is so little awareness of it that even doctors who should be experts in the field lead families to believe there is no hope. But Lori believes there is hope.

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Seph and physical therapist Melanie Massey

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ori was raised in West Monroe, La., a town of approximately 150,000 people about 300 miles northwest of New Orleans. She’s married to Joe Ware, whom she’s known since high school, and she has two daughters—Hannah, 13, and Mallori, 12—in addition to son Joseph (they call him ‘Seph’ because there are already so many Joes, Joeys and Josephs in the family). Monroe is a small town built around the Ouachita River. The humid climate supports enormous trees and plants with leaves the size of car tires. Lori’s home rests on eight acres of a 20-acre plot that’s been in the Watkins family for generations. Her parents live next door on the same plot of land. When Seph passed his first birthday and months kept ticking by with no sign of him walking, Lori became concerned. Everyone around her kept saying he was fine and that she should relax. But, exhibiting a trait that would later guide some of the biggest decisions of her life, Lori ignored the people who “thought I was crazy” and took Seph to physical therapy when he was 15 months old. Physical therapist Melanie Massey agreed that Seph was developmentally delayed and began strength training. The therapy seemed to work and, by the time Seph was 17 months old, he was walking. He could not run, but Lori believed that would come. Then one day Joe was wrestling with Seph and noticed something: When Seph was on his back and Joe would push his legs up



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Seph and members of First Baptist Church of West Monroe in prayer

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oys with Duchenne or Becker’s muscular dystrophy—very few girls get these types of MD—have a problem with their body’s production of dystrophin, the ‘glue’ that holds muscle cells together. Boys with Becker’s muscular dystrophy produce small amounts of dystrophin, so their bodies can typically maintain functionality for much longer. Boys with Duchenne, however, produce no dystrophin, which causes such rapid muscle deterioration that they are usually in wheelchairs by the time they turn 9. As the disease progresses, they lose the use of their arms, and then their respiratory and cardiac muscles deteriorate, typically causing death before age 20. During those painful weeks of waiting for DNA results, Lori recalls a co-worker repeatedly saying, “Lori, let’s just pray it’s not the ‘D’ one. You’ll be OK if it’s not the ‘D’ one.” On Oct. 24, Lori and Joe went to the clinic to hear the news: Seph had Duchenne. “I was set up for Becker’s because the doctor kept saying it had to be Becker’s, so when he told me Duchenne, I crumbled,” recalls Lori, who still cries at the memory. “I said, ‘What does that mean?’ and he said, ‘He will be dead by the time he’s 18.’” The Wares asked what they could do for Seph. “He said, ‘Take him home and love him.’ He gave us no options, no standard of care.” Lori looks back on that moment as a common snapshot of what

toward his head, Seph would grimace. Joe couldn’t get his son’s legs farther than a 90-degree angle without causing Seph pain. Lori thought that was odd, so a few days later, she mentioned it to the doctor. “He said to me: ‘You don’t normally see that in a child unless he has muscular dystrophy, which he doesn’t, but you might want to ask your physical therapist about it.’” Two days later, Lori saw Massey, who confirmed that she saw signs of the disease in Seph. Lori learned that there was a simple blood test for the disease, so on Oct. 5, 2005, she and Joe took Seph in for the test. They believed the results would take several days. Two hours later, the Wares learned that their son had muscular dystrophy. By this time, Lori had done enough research on the Internet to know the disease has no cure and can be fatal. She knew that Seph could have one of two main types of muscular dystrophy: Becker’s, a slow-progressing version of the disease in which boys grow to become men and even into old men; and Duchenne, a fast-moving, highly lethal form of the disease in which boys typically die in their teens. Seph’s blood test only revealed that he had muscular dystrophy, not which kind. For the rest of the story, Seph needed a DNA test. The next day, Joe and Lori took Seph in for that test, but those results would take weeks.



he primary source of that hope is faith in God. Raised in a Baptist church—her great-grandmother was a charter member— Lori frequently discusses God’s power to deliver a miracle for Seph. Barring a miracle, Lori says she can accept that Seph will be in heaven if he dies before her, though she cries every time she considers it. “It’s a God thing,” she says. “Without my faith, I would have nothing. No hope.” Joe also relies on his strong faith and says he tries to enjoy every day without worrying about what the future may hold. “That boy gives me such joy today, and he does every day,” says Joe, tearing up. “He makes me so happy now. I don’t want to be sad. I want to be happy … There will be plenty of time to be sad.” Lori also found hope through the Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy Web site—parentprojectmd.org—and its founder, Pat Furlong. After learning of Seph’s “death sentence,” Lori e-mailed the organization. Within an hour, Furlong herself called Lori. Furlong lost her two sons to Duchenne within six months of each other in the 1990s. She, too, had faced a doctor who told her there was no hope for her sons and, she says, at that moment, “I turned into a terrorist.” “I’m usually a very reserved, consistent person,” says Furlong. “But I lost that side of myself that very day. I pulled that doctor by his tie up to my nose and I said, ‘If I have to choose today who lives and dies, you are on the top of my list.’” The doctor told Furlong she was “overreacting,” to which she responded, “I will overreact about my children until the day I die.” She’s held to that promise. Today, Furlong is the executive director of the Parent Project, an organization she established when she realized that research into her sons’ disease was sparse at best, that researchers weren’t communicating with one another and that there was no standard of care for boys with DMD. In her quest, she traveled the globe on her own money, lied to get into doctors’ offices, tricked renowned scientists into chairing research panels, and demanded that experts come up with options for “these lost boys.” Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy now is a multimillion-dollar fundraising, awareness-building, advocacy and research-generating organization with its finger on the pulse of the field’s hottest research and best doctors. University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 35

“Part of getting Seph the best medical treatment that I can is through building awareness,” she says. “The reason 70 percent of pediatric cancers are curable today is because people raised awareness.” “I cannot be passive,” she adds. Lori attends annual Parent Project conferences, where she makes it a mission to meet the doctors who are working on treatments for DMD. She has made business cards with Seph’s picture on them and hands them out to the doctors. “This is my son, Seph,” she tells them. “He is the reason you must keep working for a cure.” Lori also goes to Washington, D.C., to work with Parent Project lobbyists and to speak with representatives from every state. She has helped raise money for other families facing the disease. She once approached a nonprofit in her hometown to raise money for a Romanian family who wanted to take their son to Wong. She raised $11,000 from one meeting and two radio broadcasts. “That was God,” she says, brushing off any credit for herself. “You don’t raise $11,000 from 30 minutes of effort without God’s help.” While Lori’s journey with DMD is extraordinary and, by her own measure, “a nightmare,” she also lives the life of a typical mom. She teaches special education at West Monroe High School. Hannah and Mallori have diverse interests and, of course, no driver’s licenses, so Lori is their chauffeur. Seph attends weekly physical therapy, and Lori helps care for her ailing dad. Twice a year, Lori takes Seph to Cincinnati. During her most recent visit, she received news that cemented her faith in a miracle. Seph surprised Wong. He is actually improving. Lori maintains a Web site about Seph—www.caringbridge.org/visit/ seph—and, from Cincinnati, she wrote that Wong was “very impressed with how well Seph is doing. His time getting off the floor with no hands DECREASED by one second ... to most of you that may not be a big deal, but for us it is HUGE!!!” She went on to explain that Seph would begin taking human growth hormone (HGH) and that “Dr. Wong really believes that as good as Seph is doing now, with the addition of the HGH, it will be YEARS before we see any significant DMD signs. YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, THANK YOU LORD!”

Seph and his dog, Max

But when Furlong called Lori, it was one mom to another. “The first words out of her mouth were, ‘How are you?’” Lori recalls. “Well, my baby had just received a death sentence. I dissolved.” In that initial conversation, Furlong quizzed Lori about Seph’s DNA, his genetic codes and her plans for treatment. She also gave Lori hope. “Pat said, ‘You need to know that your son will grow to be a man,’” Lori says. “She told me that there was a lot of research coming down the pike. It was the first time I had heard that.” Furlong asked Lori where she was taking Seph for treatment. Lori simply said, “You tell me to go anywhere in the world and I will go. Where do I take my baby?” Furlong recommended Dr. Brenda Wong at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Lori immediately booked an appointment and made travel plans. But again, she had to ignore people around her. Just as when she first took Seph for physical therapy, Lori continued to face doctors and acquaintances in Monroe who thought she was grasping at straws. “People kept looking at me like I was crazy,” Lori remembers. “One doctor told me that Cincinnati would just waste my money and use my son as a guinea pig.” But Lori was undaunted and in December 2005, she and Joe took Seph to see Wong. Wong is credited with establishing and running one of the country’s most progressive DMD medical centers. She has gathered experts from 17 specialties—ranging from cardiology and neurology to endocrinology—to comprehensively treat each of her now 500-plus patients. “It’s the most amazing place of hope,” says Lori. “When I’m there, I feel like it’s going to be OK.”



36 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Both Wong and Furlong believe that there will be a treatment for DMD patients, but they differ in how soon they think it will come. Wong points to several drugs that are in or near clinical trial phases, and she believes there may be a useful treatment—but not a cure—within four to five years. Furlong, however, seems to believe a treatment is further away. “I believe that, within the next three to four years, doctors will be able to rule some things out and rule some things in.” Ruling in and ruling out is not a cure, and to Lori, that’s just not fast enough for Seph.

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eph, who is 6, is about the size of a 4-year-old, but what he lacks in height, he makes up for in a hyper-speed imagination. Coming home from an errand with Mom, he races inside, dons his Superman cape, races back outside in his socks, climbs into his kidsize, battery-powered, Caterpillar-brand truck and does laps around the driveway. If Seph sees a pen and paper, he is physically unable to stop himself from drawing space aliens. His gigantic brown eyes seek attention from everyone in a room as he explains the role that each person will play while he “saves the village from the evil bad guy space monster aliens.” It’s unbearable, Lori says, to think of him in a wheelchair, to think of him unable to feed himself, to think of him unable to breathe. “Most days, it’s easy to just go along in a routine and forget the bigger picture,” Lori says. “But then reality slaps me in the face and washes over me like a bad smell.” So, in addition to her duties as mom, public school teacher and lifesaver, Lori is an awareness-builder.

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ori admits that all of her efforts amount to one goal: Buying time for Seph. The longer she can keep him walking, the more of a chance he will have when the cure is discovered. Until then, Lori believes Seph should get to be a normal 6-year-old boy, as much as his body allows. He recently played on a T-ball team that took the league championship. As her little boy shuffle-ran into home plate and turned to give her two thumbs up, Lori’s blue eyes welled up and she said, simply, “Isn’t that beautiful?” Then, she sighed, believing each moment was proof of her favorite scripture—Jeremiah 29:11. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

For more information on DMD, visit Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy at www.parentprojectmd.org. To follow Lori and Seph’s story, visit www.caringbridge.org/ visit/seph. See a slideshow of Seph and his family at www.du.edu/magazine.



Duchenne muscular dystrophy: The facts Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common fatal genetic disorder diagnosed in childhood, affecting approximately 1 in every 3,500 live male births (about 20,000 new cases each year). Duchenne can be passed from parent to child, but approximately 35 percent of cases occur because of a random spontaneous mutation. Because the Duchenne gene is found on the X-chromosome, it primarily affects boys. It occurs across all races and cultures. DMD results in progressive loss of strength and is caused by a mutation in the gene that encodes for dystrophin. Because dystrophin is absent, the muscle cells are easily damaged. The progressive muscle weakness leads to serious medical problems, particularly issues relating to the heart and lungs. Although there are medical treatments that may help slow its progression, there is currently no cure for Duchenne. —Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy

University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 37

Education Reimagined By Tamara Chapman

“Broad and deep learning, especially at the undergraduate level, is fundamentally important for a well-lived life.” —Gregg Kvistad, provost

The Marsico Initiative has transformed DU’s undergraduate arts and sciences curriculum. In 2002, DU alumni Tom and Cydney Marsico presented the University of Denver with a $10 million gift to be spent over five years and directed toward the intensification of the undergraduate arts and sciences programs. Made with no strings and few provisos, that gift launched an experiment—dubbed the Marsico Initiative—in which DU faculty devised an undergraduate experience reflecting their highest ideals and best ideas. It resulted in a host of new programs and significant curricular change, all while expanding educational opportunities for students across the disciplines. It added 24 new tenure-track faculty positions and 20 lecturers to key programs and created a number of new centers designed to reinforce academic priorities. “It was a bold act of philanthropy,” says Provost Gregg Kvistad, one that resulted in a “renovated and renewed” undergraduate program. Just as important, he adds, it conveyed a powerful message to students, faculty and alumni: “that broad and deep learning, especially at the undergraduate level, is fundamentally important for a welllived life.”

DU’s Old Main, paper sculpture by Jeff Nishinaka



38 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 39

“We really wanted to generate excitement about the arts and sciences. It really was a cultural transformation that we had in mind.” —George Potts, psychology professor



J

Just seven years ago, the Marsico Initiative was little more than a dream deferred, a half-formed notion that great things could be accomplished, if and when, when and if. “When I was appointed provost by Chancellor Dan Ritchie in 2001,” Chancellor Robert Coombe recalls, “he and I began a long dialogue, which extends to this day, about moving the academic enterprise at DU forward. In those early days … we talked frequently about where the greatest challenges and opportunities were to be found among the many units and programs of the University.” Ritchie shared these conversations with Tom Marsico, founder and CEO of Marsico Capital Management, who had expressed interest in supporting an academic initiative. “Dan asked which unit I thought we should propose for such an initiative, and I responded that … it should be for a major advance in the arts and sciences disciplines,” Coombe explains. “My reasoning was that if we were going to be a great university, we had to have top-ofthe-line programs in these disciplines. These were the disciplines in which we had an extraordinary opportunity to blend a learning environment characterized by small classes and close studentfaculty interactions, like those found at the very best liberal arts colleges, with great faculty and nationally competitive scholarship of the sort found at the best research universities. Our students could have the best of both worlds.” Before the Marsicos would commit to funding, they wanted reassurance that their money would be spent on significant changes. Coombe was charged with fleshing out DU’s game plan. “To start this process, I appointed an ad hoc ‘idea group’ of about 20 faculty members from the arts and sciences disciplines to think through some initial ideas. We met for several weeks, bouncing ideas off one another. There were some really good thoughts, but the whole thing just wasn’t congealing,” he recalls. “At the next meeting, I told the group that I thought we were being insufficiently bold, and asked that each person put forward a single big idea, no matter how off the wall, right then and there. We went around the table, and each person spoke. There were some pretty wild thoughts, or at least they seemed so at the time. I remember in particular that Gregg Kvistad’s idea was that classes be limited to 15 students, and everyone laughed. How could such a thing be possible?” Once sights were set sufficiently high, and once the Marsicos issued a green light, the University plotted its strategy for maximizing the opportunity. Coombe and Kvistad—then dean

40 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

priorities and creating a “cell”—or subcommittee— for each. The cells focused on enriching the first-year experience; fostering intellectual depth; expanding opportunities for experiential learning; enhancing writing and rhetorical skills across the four undergraduate years; and developing quantitative reasoning skills. A sixth cell was created to assess the effectiveness of all programs introduced under the initiative. The cells were charged with developing programs related to their topics. “We went with the pilot approach,” Keables says, noting that the committee asked the arts and sciences faculty to submit proposals. In keeping with the freedom given the steering committee itself, Keables says, “we issued a call to faculty with minimal guidelines.” That way, the committee could encourage experimentation and risktaking. To ensure the proposals supported initiativerelated objectives, the steering committee required that each include a mechanism for assessment. Proposals were submitted by the dozens, some from individual faculty members, others from individual departments and still others from interdisciplinary groups eager to collaborate. Throughout the proposal evaluation and pilot phase, the steering committee sought input from the entire faculty. “One of the things that we decided very early on was that we had to keep faculty involved through every stage,” Potts says. To foster transparency, the committee launched a University intranet presence, where all relevant materials were posted for review. Once the programs were piloted and evaluated, the steering committee recommended several for permanent funding. Recommendations were based on program effectiveness and on the scope of their impact. As Keables notes, “A lot of it came down to bang for the buck: Put your money where it will have the biggest impact.” As Kvistad sees it, the bang has exceeded expectations. “This is, I believe, a textbook case for how academic, especially curricular, change needs to occur,” he says. “It happened at the University of Denver only because the faculty embraced the challenge of transforming the undergraduate experience and believed that the University would find the resources to make that happen if they actually did it. Boy, did they do it.”

of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences—believed that the faculty should play the lead role in shaping the initiative. After all, Kvistad says, “Curricular change, programmatic change, has to fundamentally involve the faculty, who do the conceptualization, who do the tinkering, who are responsible for the curriculum.” Faculty leadership took the form of a steering committee made up of 12 members elected by their peers from the three divisions at the center of the initiative—arts and humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and mathematics. The committee also included a handful of administrators appointed by Coombe. Psychology Professor George Potts chaired that steering committee for the first three years of its existence. The first summer, committee members met frequently to define what they wanted to accomplish. “We really wanted to generate excitement about the arts and sciences. We wanted to stimulate this intellectual community. … It really was a cultural transformation that we had in mind,” he recalls. Given the amorphous nature of transformation and the problematic dynamics of committees, the Marsico group could have floundered indefinitely trying to reach agreement on goals and strategies. Committee member Michael Keables, currently acting dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, feared just that. “Large committees tend to be fairly dysfunctional,” he says. “They take a long time to reach consensus. Sometimes they never reach consensus. But there was a commitment from this group to make this work.” Potts attributes that commitment to faculty enthusiasm. “Faculty have been saying for a long time that it is wonderful that we are getting donations for buildings, but we really need money for programs,” he explains. “I felt from the start a real responsibility to show that when you do that, good things happen.” The committee was also encouraged by the institution’s promise to develop permanent funding for the initiative’s best ideas. That meant the committee could contemplate long-term proposals, even those that involved hiring additional faculty and staff. According to Kvistad, “The message from central administration was, you produce a good program, and we will find ways to fund it.” Keeping that promise meant scrupulous review of expenses and revenue. To fully fund the Marsico Initiative, the University added $4.4 million to the base annual budgets of the divisions involved. Thanks to faculty engagement and the promise of continued funding, consensus came early, with steering committee members settling on a handful of

T

Thanks to the Marsico Initiative, today’s undergraduate students plunge into learning even before classes start. Their education kicks off with an academically rich orientation period, continues with a topic-focused



first-year seminar, gains steam with required writing and rhetoric classes, develops quantitative reasoning skills through an emphasis on numeracy and reinforces new knowledge through experiential learning opportunities. And that’s just the Reader’s Digest version. Much of the initiative’s focus centered on the first-year experience. That’s because the first year is so important in terms of establishing expectations and setting tone, Potts says. “If you are going to transform the culture, you have to start from the beginning.” At the Discoveries orientation program, students begin interacting with faculty, enjoying presentations about academic topics and meeting with the instructor who will lead their first-year seminar. Where the previous orientation program emphasized social and extracurricular activities, Discoveries reminds students they are embarking on an academic journey. That message is reinforced in a new first-year seminar, capped at 15 students. This seminar replaced the required Campus Connection class, originally offered for one hour per week during the student’s first quarter. Under the Marsico Initiative, the seminar was expanded to a four-hour course focusing on a topic to be examined thoroughly. According to Keables, this move alone made a huge difference in the quality of the student’s introductory year. He should know. Having taught Campus Connection classes and the new first-year seminars (his focus is on environmental issues), he finds vast differences between the two. Real depth simply wasn’t possible with the Campus Connection courses, where the 60 minutes per week were too often spent helping students acclimate to University life. The four-hour seminar, on the other hand, allows instructors to guide students through challenging topics, showing them how to approach college-level work. “One thing it has done is it hits the students, from the time they walk in the door, with the message that academics are important,” Keables explains. As proof, Keables points to the change in attendance during his office hours. Today, he sees many more of his first-year students more often. They arrive with fewer questions about how to drop a class or change a grade and more questions related to academics. Not only that, they often continue their relationship with him long after the seminar has ended. According to Kvistad, that kind of relationship makes the DU experience transformational. The new seminar puts a caring professor in a central role at a critical time, when they can serve as teacher, mentor, advocate and adviser. The professor can also demonstrate the pleasures of discovery fueled by intellectual passion and curiosity. “This relationship is intended to

“It hits the students, from the time they walk in the door, with the message that academics are important.” —Michael Keables, acting dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008 41

—Gregg Kvistad, provost



42 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

the math behind the topic while helping students become “numerically wise.” A quantitative reasoning laboratory, installed in Sturm Hall, offers state-of-the-art software to help students develop their analytic skills. Outside the classroom and the laboratory, a Visiting Scholars Program helps create what Chancellor Coombe calls a campus culture “bubbling and percolating” with ideas. The program brings experts from all over the world to campus to share their insights with students. Stays range from two days to a couple of quarters. Long-term visitors generally teach or co-teach at least one course. All visitors are asked to engage undergraduates in lectures, special programs and activities. The Visiting Scholars Program provides opportunities, Keables notes, for undergraduate and graduate students to interact with some of the thinkers who are shaping their fields. In fall quarter, the program (in conjunction with the Department of Mass Communications and Journalism Studies, the Center for Multicultural Excellence and Partners in Learning) brought filmmaker Beverly Seckinger to campus for a panel discussion on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues and a screening of her documentary Laramie Inside Out—a chronicle of how her hometown reacted to the murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. To foster experiential learning, an Arts and Sciences Internship Program develops opportunities for students to test their knowledge and develop their skills in a work setting, while an Undergraduate Research Center, currently under development, will promote hands-on research opportunities with faculty members. Among its many responsibilities, it will coordinate funding for undergraduate research projects and support students working on capstone and Honors thesis projects. Complementing the University’s emphasis on internationalization and study abroad, a Language Center, also under development, will make it easier for students to prepare for a future in the global marketplace. By 2009, the center is expected to host a Summer Intensive Language Institute. Reviewing the initiative’s accomplishments, Kvistad takes pride in their sweep and ambition. “The curricular changes wrought by the initiative,” he explains, “demonstrate the seriousness of the University’s commitment to liberal learning—not to one discipline, to one profession, or to one body of knowledge, but rather to developing the capacity of each student to think broadly and deeply, to write with skill, to understand quantitative data, to view the world as a classroom, and never to stop learning.”

DU Archives

“The curricular changes wrought by the initiative demonstrate the seriousness of the University’s commitment to liberal learning.”

last the entire year,” he says. “As it happens, because we are human, it goes on longer than that.” The Marsico Initiative also replaced first-year English classes with a two-quarter writing and rhetoric sequence. To develop and administer that sequence, the University launched a comprehensive Writing Program, directed by Doug Hesse, a nationally recognized expert on writing pedagogy and author of the Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers. Recruited from Illinois State University, Hesse was charged with creating a program that treats writing both as a discipline and as a foundation of serious work in other disciplines. Hesse began by building a team of 19 full-time lecturers—all experts in writing and rhetoric, all versed in DU’s ambitious goals for student achievement. Members of the writing faculty collaborate with one another and the rest of the faculty about the best practices for developing writing skills. They deploy those practices in more than 70 first-year classes offered each quarter and capped at 15 students. This approach differs dramatically from traditional writing programs, which typically enlist adjunct instructors who often have little sense of institutional priorities. By contrast, all of DU’s writing lecturers are full-time faculty, and their chief priority is working with students. Writing efforts at all levels and in all majors are supported by a new Writing Center directed by Eliana Schonberg. In addition to tutoring students, the center lends support to professors teaching writing-intensive classes for juniors and seniors. These classes—another component of the Writing Program—are offered in the core curriculum and throughout the majors. Tutoring also is available to graduate students. Finally, says Hesse, the Writing Center aims to create a writing-appreciative culture on campus, not just through rigorous instruction but also through programming that showcases different kinds of writing. “Our goal is to get people to see the whole breadth of writing,” he explains, adding that today, DU students of every major are writing far more than they were just five years ago. The Writing Program is attracting national recognition for its thorough approach. In 2008, it became one of only 23 programs internationally to have earned a Certificate of Excellence from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Other programs implemented under the Marsico Initiative are equally ambitious. For example, a series of math foundations courses, proposed by the math faculty for non-science majors, aims to develop quantitative reasoning skills. Focusing on topics like cryptography, these courses are designed, Potts says, to explore

48 Class notes challenge 49 Book bin 53 Reunion recap 54 Pioneer pics 55 Alumni director 58 Announcements

In the 1950s, students who lived on campus paid $249 for room and board each quarter. Today, room and board starts at $1,960 per term. What did you pay for student housing during your DU days? Please share your memories of living on campus.



University of Denver Magazine Connections 43

The classes 1945

Bill Smyth (BFA ’49) of Littleton, Colo., began exploring photography in the eighth grade. In 1946 Bill established his first commercial photo studio in Englewood, Colo. In addition to his career as a Realtor, Bill also worked as a freelance photographer for the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver Post, the Englewood Herald and the Littleton Independent. He continues to display and sell his photographs.

1950

Stanley Wonderley (BA ’50) of Lakeview, Ore., is the author of six books and wrote a syndicated column, “Kids Are My Business,” which appeared in 40 newspapers from 1974 to 2004. Stanley, who also worked as a thirdgrade teacher and curriculum coordinator, currently teaches at the Portland State University Graduate School of Education. He has been married to his wife, Ellen, for 59 years and has three grown daughters and five grown grandchildren.

Robert Larson (BA ’50, MA ’53) received the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award for the best Western biography of 2008 for his book Gall: Lakota War Chief (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007). Robert graduated from DU Phi Beta Kappa and received his PhD in Western history from the University of New Mexico. Robert worked as a teacher and administrator for Denver Public Schools and taught at the University of Northern Colorado for 30 years. Although retired, Robert continues to research, write and lecture about the American West. He lives in Denver with his wife, Peggy.

Courtesy of Marion Downs

Trailblazer Marion Downs

1954

Philip Fox (LLB ’54) of Beverly Hills, Calif., bought an insurance company that concentrates on seniors. Philip is having a great time traveling for clients and visiting his 11 grandchildren, who all live outside California—some in New Zealand. He says he has no plans to retire soon.

For her upcoming birthday, 94-year-old Marion Downs (MA audiology ’51) says she plans on going skydiving—again. Even as she approaches the century mark, Downs—who went skydiving for the first time to celebrate her 90th birthday—rarely allows her age to interfere with her desire for adventure. She admits, however, that in her younger years she almost let negative thoughts and habits prevent her from enjoying life. Twenty-two years ago, Downs believed she was going to die. Both of her parents died at age 72, and so Downs had prepared herself to follow suit. Her physician pointed out, however, that advances in modern medicine unavailable to her parents could now prolong her life well past the age of 100. Ironically, Downs says, at the time, the information frightened her because she had no idea how to navigate the next phase of her life. “In the 80s you get ambushed by all sorts of physical problems that you aren’t prepared to deal with,” Downs says. “If you don’t enjoy life you don’t want to live to be 100.” Like so many other times in her life, Downs dealt with uncertainty by striding forward, one day at a time. “You can always tell the pioneers,” Downs says, “because they’re the ones with arrows in their backs.” Without a road map to aging gracefully, Downs invested herself in a common-sense philosophy: “If you are fit physically then you are fit mentally.” Despite high-blood pressure, arthritis and other physical ailments, Downs religiously engaged in daily exercise—including skiing and tennis—and relied on reading and crossword puzzles to keep her mind sharp. Not only has this regimen carried her through to her 94th birthday, it has enabled her to maintain a high quality of life—something Downs says she could never sacrifice. Downs, who believes she’s learned enough about life to pass that knowledge on, published a book—Shut Up and Live! (Avery, 2007)—expanding upon her recipe for longevity. Downs hopes that her advice will benefit readers by inspiring them to take responsibility for their lives. Downs is looking forward to taking another 17,000-foot plunge because for her, life simply isn’t fulfilling if she doesn’t have yet another challenge to overcome.

1956

Richard Berry (BSBA ’56) logged more than 10,000 railway miles on a recent six-week trip around the world, including a journey from London to Vladivostok, Russia, via the TransSiberian route. Between trips Richard enjoys his retirement in Diamond Head Beach, Hawaii, with his wife, Bette.

1958

John Manesis (BA ’58) practiced medicine in Fargo, N.D., for 22 years. Since his retirement in 1996, John has concentrated on his poetry. His second poetry book, Other Candle Lights (Seaburn Publishers Group, 2008), was published in June. John’s poems explore memory and themes related to his medical career and Greek-American heritage. John and his wife, Bess, live in Fargo and spend summers in Sun City, Calif.

—Samantha Stewart



44 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Connoisseur Sandy Sardella When Sandy Sardella got her business degree from DU, she expected to spend her work hours helping clients with their finances. A tax degree nearly two decades later further deepened her ties to the world of numbers. But life has a funny way of turning out. Back in 1989, Sardella (BSBA statistics ’68, MT accounting ’83) and her husband were tired of his odd work hours and her business trips getting in the way of their life together. She started looking for a business to buy and ended up opening an art gallery. “I had no experience in retail, and I had no idea what I was doing,” Sardella says. “I rented a small place for a year to see if I’d like it. Eighteen years later, here I am.” Sardella may have tentatively stepped into the art world, but today she’s firmly grounded as owner of Pismo Fine Art Glass with galleries in Denver’s Cherry Creek shopping district, Beaver Creek, Vail and Aspen. The four galleries feature jewelry, beads, furniture, paintings and sculpture created by some of the glass world’s biggest names. Local artists had warned Sardella against focusing on glass when she first opened her mixed media gallery, but she noticed that the more glass she offered, the more she sold. Since glass was the art form she loved best, in 1995 she made it her primary focus. One of Sardella’s business strategies is to offer a wide range of works, from small, affordable pieces to expensive, museum-quality works. “People can enjoy Dale Chihuly and not be intimidated by the gallery because they know there’s something they can afford,” Sardella says. “I think it makes us more accessible. We’ve tried really hard to keep the quality high regardless of the price range.” The gallery has carried works by renowned artist Dale Chihuly for 16 years. The relationship was critical when a fire in one of the gallery’s previous Cherry Creek locations forced the business to relocate the week before Christmas 2004. The new location had a one-man show featuring Chihuly in April 2005, which helped reestablish the business. Sardella says a show with an artist of Chihuly’s stature usually takes a couple of years to set up. As a former financial consultant, Sardella hasn’t forgotten her business background, but credits it with helping her succeed. “I enjoy this a lot more,” she says. And when she describes what she sees in glass, you begin to understand. “It’s amazing to see what can be done with glass,” Sardella says. “It’s the beauty, the color, the reflective nature of it, the fluidity. It’s kind of magical.”

Wayne Armstrong

Virginia (Collins) Putnam (BFA ’45) of Lakewood, Colo., received the Legend of Dance in Colorado award from the Carson-Brierly Dance Library. Virginia was both an organizer and the first president of the Denver Civic Ballet and one of three founders of the Colorado Concert Ballet. She also directed and taught in her own ballet school for many years.

1949

—Brenda Gillen



University of Denver Magazine Connections 45

1960

Anita West (BA ’60, MA ’62, PhD ’69) worked at the University’s Denver Research Institute for 25 years; she published extensively on mathematical solutions to engineering problems and educational technologies. In 1984, Anita became director of the institute, retiring as senior scientist

emerita in 1989. Anita now is a board member for the DU Retiree Association and volunteers as a math tutor for Denver Public Schools. She also has returned to her love of music and piano. She still lives close to the DU campus.

Shopkeeper Harvey Miller iStock

Harvey Miller (JD ’72) has never been much of a tea drinker. So what makes a longtime lawyer who doesn’t drink tea open a tea shop? The desire to brew a balanced life. “The stress of practicing law can be pretty overwhelming,” says Miller, who’s been practicing law for more than 25 years. “I didn’t want to burn out.” For two years, Miller and his wife, Nenita, ran a small tea shop on the weekends in July and August out of their vacation home—a re-purposed old general store—in Eagles Mere, Penn. When they saw an open storefront during a walk in their Lancaster, Penn., neighborhood, he thought, “Let’s take this a little more seriously.” In 2004 they opened the Pemberley Tea Shop just two blocks from their home. Miller works full time at the tea shop and practices law part time after the shop closes in the late afternoon. Although the shop is named for the Pemberley estate in Pride and Prejudice (one of Nenita’s favorite books), the shop’s décor is not the typical Victorian high-tea style. “People have described it as ‘fusion,’” Miller says of the blended modern and classic food and surroundings. The remodeled warehouse space has exposed beams and pipes, lots of natural light, and while it’s decorated with some tea-themed items, it has a mix of local art and unconventional furnishings. “We don’t do frou-frou,” Miller laughs. “But it’s very homey and comfortable.” The 1,500-square-foot shop serves 50–60 varieties of loose tea, plus baked goods (prepared by Miller), sandwiches, soups and other café fare. “I never drank tea before opening the shop because I never really liked it,” Miller confesses. “Like most people, I was forced to drink plain Lipton tea when I was sick. But there are 2,000–3,000 types of tea, so there is so much variety.” Running the shop also has given the Millers some “deeply enjoyed” time together. “For 30 years, she went off to teach and I went off to do law, and we never got in a situation where we got to work together,” says Miller, who recently celebrated his 35th wedding anniversary. Miller says his favorite time of day is at 4 p.m. when the shop closes and the couple enjoys a pot of tea together. They’ve even made a game of it. “The person who makes it tries to surprise the other, and you get three guesses to name the tea. It really sharpens your skills,” he says.

1962

1966

Diana Etheridge (BA ’62) of Merritt Island, Fla., has self-published Cook-n-Rhyme With Kids, a cookbook full of healthy recipes that tell a story. Diana’s daughter, Juliana (Etheridge) Sasson (BFA ’92), illustrated the book. Diana began writing the cookbook when her daughters were young and, at the urging of her husband, decided to publish it for the benefit of her granddaughters and all parents and kids who love to cook. >>www.cook-n-rhymewithkids.com

David Erickson (JD ’66) of Denver is the principal at the law firm David L. Erickson LLC. He also is the official historian for the Colorado Bar Association (CBA). In his capacity as historian, David wrote the book Early Justice and the Formation of the Colorado Bar, which the CBA published this year. Law Week Colorado featured David and his book in its May 26 issue.

1967

Ted Kleisner (BSBA ’67) of Hershey, Pa., president and CEO of Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Co., participated in the 54th Annual National Security Seminar, held at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. One of the purposes of the seminar is to give War College students the opportunity to hear various citizens’ viewpoints on defense and security matters. As a participant, Ted attended seminars and discussed national security issues.

1963

Howard Kellough (BS ’63) of Scottsdale, Ariz., joined Davis LLP as a partner and member of the firm’s national tax group. Howard received his law degree from the University of Saskatchewan Law School in 1966. Prior to joining Davis LLP, Howard was chair of the Canadian Tax Foundation and the National Tax Section of the Canadian Bar Association, and co-chair of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

1964

Cynthia (Facer) Clark (MA ’64) of McLean, Va., is the administrator of the national agricultural statistics service for the United States Department of Agriculture. Previously, Cynthia lived in London where she worked as the executive director of methodology for the Office of National Statistics.

46 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Jerold Waltman (MA ’70) of Hewitt, Texas, published a book, Minimum Wage Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Algora, 2008). Jerold is a political science professor at Baylor University.

1971

Tamie (Walker) Bulow (BA ’71) of Colorado Springs, Colo., was named best up-and-coming meeting professional by Colorado Meetings and Events magazine. Tamie worked for 25 years as a sales representative for Riedell Skates and managed ice arenas for 13 years before becoming an event planner for the American Birding Association. Her new career has allowed her to add numerous entries to her bird-sighting list.

for 16 years as a K–12 library coordinator. Alma has held numerous professional offices, including president of the Arizona Chapter of the Special Libraries Association and editor of Learning and Media, the official magazine of the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association.

1973

Christopher Dunn (BA ’73) of Atlanta was appointed to general manager of NSF International’s Beverage Quality Program. For the past four years Christopher served as president of his company DunnWorks LLC, a consulting firm that provides services to beverage and consumer package goods industries. Thomas Jasin (MS ’73) (pictured on left) received NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal on June 9 in recognition

1972

Alma Howell (MA ’72) of Phoenix retired from Intel in January after more than 17 years as a senior information specialist and research manager. Prior, Alma worked at Arizona State University for three years and at Bensalem School District in Pennsylvania

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Glory (Muskat) Weisberg (BA ’64) of Englewood, Colo., was one of five women who received the Triumphant Women award from the Excelsior Youth Center at their annual gala on May 30. Glory received the award for overcoming obstacles and succeeding in her chosen field. She has worked for The Villager of Greenwood Village, Colo., for 23 years, currently as the society editor. She writes a weekly column called “GloryUs Goings On” in addition to writing and photographing for the publication. She and her husband, David, have five grandchildren.

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1970



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of his service as director of the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program and chair of the NASA Project Review Standards Panel. He also provided oversight management on deep space missions, served as a review board member and provided support to the agency’s earth science mission. Thomas lives in Lancaster, Pa.

Condoleezza Rice (BA ’74, PhD ’81) and Michelle Kwan, a junior international studies major at DU, represented the United States at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing on Aug. 24. Condoleezza and Michelle were part of a seven-member delegation. Michelle is the State Department’s American public diplomacy envoy.

1978

Susan Carr-Templeton (BSBA ’78) of Oak Brook, Ill., launched Stafford Wells Advisors, a wealth management firm catering to investors with $1 million to $10 million in assets. Susan also worked as a senior vice president with William Blair & CO and CEO of Templeton Associates Ltd. Craig Moodie (BA ’78) of Franklin, Mass., published the young-adult novel Seaborn (Roaring Brook Press, 2008). Craig is the author of five other novels, including The Sea Singer and Salt Luck. After college Craig worked on a commercial fishing boat, an experience that has inspired many of his books.

1979 Kynewisbok

1974

Stephen Holden (BA ’74, MSBA ’76) has been named president of Davis Vision Inc., one of the nation’s largest vision care companies. Stephen has past experience as a president and a founding board member of the National Association of Vision Care Plans. Prior to his appointment at Davis Vision, headquartered in Plainview, N.Y., Stephen lived in Edwards, Colo., and served on the board of Small Champions, a charitable foundation that provides programs for young children with diverse disabilities.

Book bin

Class notes challenge

1980

Rod Jahner (MBA ’80) of Wake Forest, N.C., recently returned to the U.S. after spending 10 years in Singapore, where he served as commissioner of the Singapore American Football League. Rod now works as an executive recruiter for Sports Group International, placing middle and senior managers in the sporting goods industry. Sharyl Peterson (MA ’80, PhD ’83) of Fruita, Colo., wrote a book, The Indispensable Guide to Pastoral Care (Pilgrim Press, 2008). Christian Century listed Sharyl’s book as one of Pilgrim Press’ top-five best-sellers in its May 6 issue.

1984

Deirdre McKay (BA ’84) works as a museum educator at Stepping Stones Museum for Children in Norwalk, Conn. Deirdre previously worked as a journalist and art teacher in Manhattan. She now lives in Rye, N.Y., with her teenage children, Wiley and Isabel. John Shugrue (BA ’84) joined Reed Smith LLP as a partner in its Insurance Recovery Group in the firm’s Chicago office. John graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law with honors in 1987. He started his career at Jenner & Block and became a partner with the firm in 1995. Prior, John was the managing partner for Morgan Lewis’ Chicago office.

Financial trouble nearly destroyed the University in the 1980s, but just a decade later DU began the most dramatic physical transformation in its history. A new book, Built for Learning (University of Denver, 2008), traces DU’s architectural renaissance and tells the story of Chancellor Dan Ritchie, architect Cab Childress and the other people who made it possible. The substantial hardback includes hundreds of photos of University of Denver campus landscapes and architecture, beginning with DU’s first buildings constructed more than a century ago and continuing through to the campus of today. Its 200-plus colordrenched pages explore Ritchie and Childress’ quest “to build a sustainable and future-focused environment that will serve students and the community for generations to come.” The book describes not just architectural features, but the ways that those features enhance student learning and benefit the community—how and why the University looks the way it does today. The limited-edition book, dedicated in memory of Childress, is peppered with the late architect’s notes and drawings and provides unique insight into his vision and collaboration with Ritchie. “Our job is to bring light into dim places,” Childress said. “It’s not a matter of tearing things down.”

Class of 1979: You’re up! A lot has happened in the last 30 years, and we want to catch up with as many of you we can. Your classmates want to hear from you, too! What have you been up to? Share photos and family news, discuss your travels and hobbies, or reminisce about your time at DU. You can post your note online at www. alumni.du.edu, e-mail [email protected] or mail in the form on page 57. Class of ’79 notes will appear in the summer issue. We’ll randomly select a prize winner from all entries received by Feb. 1.

Mary (Chihoski) Sparks (BSBA ’84) of Dolores, Colo., graduated from Fort Lewis College in April with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance. Mary is now an accountant.

This book is available at the DU Bookstore and www.dubookstore.com.

48 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

The answer can be found somewhere on pages 43–58 of this issue. Send your answer to [email protected] or University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd, Denver, CO 80208. Be sure to include your full name and mailing address. We’ll select a winner from the correct entries; the winning entry will win a prize courtesy of the DU Bookstore. Congratulations to Cheryl Nygaard (BS ’82) for winning the fall issue’s pop quiz.

—Chelsey Baker-Hauck

cOOrs Fitness center

1990

Sharon White (PhD ’90) wrote the book Vanished Gardens (University of Georgia Press, 2008), which takes readers on a journey through some of the past and present gardens of Philadelphia. Vanished Gardens received the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction. Sharon also is the author of a collection of poetry, Bone House, and a memoir, Field Notes: A Geography of Mourning. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches writing at Temple University.

1991

Jennifer (Newberry) Hogan (BFA ’91) celebrated the first anniversary of her art business, Seahorse Designs. Jennifer also has worked as an artist for various companies, most notably as a graphic design project manager for North Face and a consultant to the Arts Council of Northwest Florida in Pensacola. Jennifer lives and works in Alexandria, Va.

FinD yOUr Fit with excLUsive du alumni aLUmni rates FOr FamiLy anD inDiviDUaL memBerships. discounts TAKE ADVANTAGE OF GREAT MEMBER BENEFITS LIKE:

• DISCOUNTED PRICING ON DU RECREATION ACTIVITIES • 10 FREE VISITS TO THE COORS FITNESS CENTER • 10% DISCOUNT ON DENVER APPAREL & MERCHANDISE • FREE PARKING IN DESIGNATED LOTS

visit the coors fitness center and find your fit today! 303.871.3845 • recreation.du.edu i-25 & University BLvD. • University OF Denver • ritchie center



? Which Pioneer enjoys skydiving?



DUMagazineAd_Fall08_FINAL.indd 1

AT H L E T IC S & R ECR E ATION University of Denver Magazine Connections 49 10/9/08 9:58:49 AM

1993

1995

Angel Cortes (MA ’95) earned a doctorate in history from the University of Notre Dame. He is an assistant professor of history at Holy Cross College and lives with his wife, Marcy, and sons, Bernal and Tobias, in South Bend, Ind.

1996

Rodney Broome (MTEL ’96) recently returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, after recovering from back surgery at his home in Lone Tree, Colo. Rodney is a mentor to the Minister of Defense Installation Management Division of the Afghan army. Bonnie Clark (MA ’96) of Denver is a historical archaeologist at DU. Bonnie’s current research into the history of the American West has garnered the attention of several publications nationwide, including the San Francisco Chronicle. Josh Stone (BA ’96) is a meteorologist at WMBD 31 in Peoria, Ill. After graduating from DU, Josh got a master’s of science degree in broadcast meteorology from Mississippi State University. He began his broadcasting career in Grand Junction, Colo., where he was named “Best Weathercaster” by the Colorado Broadcaster’s Association; he later worked in Sioux Falls, S.D. Josh also is working toward a private pilot’s license.

Class Notes Challenge: 1998 Mulyadi Alamsjah (BSBA ’98) is the founder of PT Asian Pak Chem, a selfadhesive tape manufacturer; PT Goldfox Group International, a trading company; and PT Embrio Graha Makmur, an interior design company. Mulyadi lives in Tangerang, Indonesia, with his wife, Caroline, and sons, Vincent and Ryan. Tara Beiter-Fluhr (MA ’98) was appointed to Colorado’s Sheridan City Council in January 2008. Tara also works as a staff tax analyst for Qwest Communications, focusing on the correct billing of taxes for customers. She lives in Englewood, Colo., with her son, Nicholas. Matt Branaugh (BA ’98) relocated to Wheaton, Ill., with his wife, Sarah, and two children, James and Mattea, in 2006 to take a job with the Christian magazine publisher Christian Today International. In January Matt became the editor of Your Church magazine. Prior, Matt worked as a business reporter and editor for the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo. Despite the geographic relocation, Matt says he has remained a fan of Colorado athletics, especially DU hockey.



50 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Gary Compton (MM ’98) is the chair of the fine arts department at an independent school in the Tampa Bay, Fla., area. Gary received his PhD in music education from the University of Southern Florida in 2006. In addition to his teaching and administrative duties, Gary also maintains an active performing career as a trumpet player. He lives in Wesley Chapel, Fla., with his wife and two daughters. Allison (Noblett) Coyne (BA ’98) and her husband, George, celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary this year with a 12-day trip to Ireland. Allison received a master’s degree in early childhood special education from George Mason University in 2003 and works as a special education teacher for Arlington Public Schools. George works as a psychotherapist. Allison and George live in Alexandria, Va., with their 2-year-old son, Jackson.

1997

Entrepreneur

Tania (Gabriel) Garcia (BA ’97) of Camarillo, Calif., was promoted to director of development and alumni relations at California State University, Channel Islands.

Renee Pepys Lowe

1999

Renee Pepys Lowe, founder, president and CEO of CoCaLo Inc., has been in the juvenile retail business since she was a kid. Her mother was a pioneer in the concept of coordinated baby bedding in the early ’70s and included Pepys Lowe and her three siblings in the entrepreneurial endeavors. But while her mother may have paved the way in children’s room decor, Pepys Lowe (BSBA ’87) is blazing her own trail today. Pepys Lowe started CoCaLo from scratch in 1998, and it quickly became one of the most prominent infant bedding designers and manufacturers in the industry, with products sold at more than 400 retailers, including JC Penney, Babies ‘R’ Us, Kohl’s and the Burlington Coat Factory. “Our job at CoCaLo is to make life easier for moms and to give them the tools to create the most beautiful nursery possible for their baby,” says Pepys Lowe, who works closely with her mom-led team (24 of her 27 employees are mothers) to create fashionable room collections. “It’s all about the way that we apply color, pattern and theme ... that’s what sets us apart,” she continues. “When we take 11 different fabrications and textures and prints and colors, our designs become very eclectic, and many buyers would never think of putting that all together.” After majoring in retail and marketing at DU, Pepys Lowe spent a few years working for Robinsons-May department stores before joining her mother’s business, NoJo. When the company sold in 1996, she received offers from Martix and OshKosh to design and produce children’s bedding lines under their brands. But, it wasn’t long before she had created her own licensed brand, CoCaLo Baby— named for her two daughters, Courtenay and Catherine. Pepys Lowe’s entrepreneurial spirit isn’t the only family value she’s continued. Near her home in Southern California, she is involved with Orangewood Children’s Foundation for abused and neglected children. On a national level, she sits on the board and executive committee of K.I.D.S. (Kids In Distressed Situations)—meeting needs of the 13 million children in the U.S. living below the poverty level. “I have grown up in a family where it was important to give back,” she says. >>www.cocalo.com

Lori Asher (JD ’99) of Shelbyville, Ind., had a baby girl, Sophia. Lori and her husband, Brian, are also the proud parents of three boys—Bryce, Luke and Aidan. Geoffrey Deweese (JD ’99) of Fayetteville, N.C., was appointed group judge advocate for the only active duty psychological operations group in the Army. Geoffrey earned an LLM in military law from the Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School at the University of Virginia. As a group judge advocate, Geoffrey oversees a staff of 14 and provides legal advice on all areas of military law. Geoffrey also is on “jump status,” which means he occasionally parachutes from helicopters and airplanes.

WINNER!

Joshua Holmberg (MBA ’98) of Littleton, Colo., wrote the book The Teen’s Guide to Personal Finance (iUniverse, 2008). Joshua hopes that the book will help teens and adults avoid financial pitfalls and take advantage of the time they have to build wealth through goal-setting, saving, investing and maximizing tax advantages. Matthew Neal (BA ’98) of Hutchinson, Kan., is chief of police for the Halstead Police Department in Kansas. Matthew served for seven years with the Hutchinson Police Department as a patrol officer, school resource officer, gang enforcement officer and hostage and crisis negotiator. Matthew also serves as a consultant and trainer for a Dallas-based law enforcement and leadership training company. Anita Wesley (MA ’98) of Denver has been appointed philanthropy adviser to the Rose Community Foundation, where she will assist donor families with their philanthropic work. Prior, Anita was a project coordinator for the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform and director of annual giving and major gifts for the Denver Health Foundation.

Stephanie Hager Photography

Angela (Rubel) Boots (BSBA ’93) has been working in various capacities of real estate for the past nine years, most recently leasing retail space for Highwoods Properties in Kansas and Missouri. Angela lives in Kansas City, Mo., and spends her spare time traveling, writing, running marathons and working toward her real estate broker’s license and certified commercial investment member designation. Angela and her husband, Brian, welcomed a baby boy, Finley, on April 24.

William Lee (JD ’99) moved back to Denver to work as an expert witness for real estate transaction and mortgage finance lawsuits. For the past three years William worked as an executive for a Clearwater, Fla., real estate developer and ran the company’s mortgage lending subsidiary. Chad Rogers (BSBA ’99) of Malibu, Calif., is on the Bravo cable channel show “Million Dollar Listing,” which gives viewers an inside look at three prominent Los Angeles Realtors. Chad received his real estate license at the age of 18 before graduating from DU.

2001

Bharat Chowrira (JD ’01) of San Francisco joined Nektar Therapeutics as chief operating officer and head of the PEGylation business unit. Previously, Bharat worked for Merck & Co. as the executive director of worldwide licensing and external research. Khalid Rosa (BS ’01, MAS ’08) of Denver graduated from DU with a master’s of applied science degree in computer information systems. Khalid plans on completing additional graduate work in database administration and information systems security. Katherine Schaff (BA ’01) of San Francisco received a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley, in spring 2008. Katherine is employed by the Alameda County Public Health Department, where she focuses on eliminating public health inequities.

2002

Joseph Labrecque (MA ’02) of Thornton, Colo., and his wife, Leslie, are proud to announce the birth of their baby girl, Paige, born on Aug. 19. Lauren (Hachmeister) Metz (BSBA ’02) opened a boutique, Delish Demure, in Greenwood Village, Colo., in August after two years of preparation. Lauren opened the store hoping to put Denver on the fashion map. Lauren’s love of fashion began when she lived in London while studying abroad and working for Burberry.

—Janna Widdifield



University of Denver Magazine Connections 51

2003

Gayle Herde (PhD ’03) and her husband, Bryan, celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in July. In addition to her practice as a litigation consultant, Gayle joined her husband’s company, Integrity Services Group, to do communication research. They live in Centennial, Colo. Lauren Kisser (MBA ’03, MS ’03) of Seattle reached the summit of Mt. Rainier on July 8. The climb took Lauren three days, which she describes as both exhausting and exhilarating. Lauren also raised $5,334 to support the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for the Climb for Breast Cancer. Joy Zarra (MA ’03) of Wheat Ridge, Colo., won a regional Emmy award July 20 for best community/public service campaign. Joy, who has worked as a juvenile diversion counselor for the past five years, created the campaign, “Uninterrupted,” to address

the communication gap between adults and adolescents. Joy plans to continue working with teens and media in an effort to expand the project globally.

school science in Flandreau, S.D., and Ryan works as a project engineer at Verasun Energy in Aurora, S.D., where the couple resides.

2004

Abrian Suazo (BA ’04) has lived in Madrid, Spain, for the past two years. She teaches at the American School of Madrid, where she co-directs the high school drama program and teaches singing lessons. She also is a member of the British Theater Madrid Players. Living in Spain has given Abrian ample opportunity to travel throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.

Katherine Johnson (BS ’04) of Littleton, Colo., graduated in May from the University of Southern California with a doctor of dental surgery degree. Katie lives in Pocatello, Idaho, where she is completing a one-year advanced education residency in general dentistry. Elizabeth (Johnston) McMillan (BS ’04) and Ryan McMillan (BSME ’05) are happy to announce their marriage on June 7 in Brookings, S.D. Elizabeth teaches middle

Reunion recap Last March, Arthur Saunders (BA ’73) of Wayzata, Minn., participated in a reunion of 20 Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers (pictured below left). Participants traveled from seven states—Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia—and from across Colorado to attend the annual home hockey series against DU archrival Colorado College. The group also participated in the 2008 Beta Theta Pi initiation ceremony, spent time reminiscing over old pictures and videos and gathered at the Retreat Bar, owned by fellow reveler David Lowe (BSBA ’75). Randle Loveland (BSBA ’72) of Vancouver, Wash., organized the weekend.

Bryan Villano (BSBA ’04) of Deerfield, Ill., returned from Israel after six months abroad. While in Israel, Bryan worked for Arava Power Co., a solar power utility company. The company hopes that its first power field, to be completed this year, will provide 10 percent of Israel’s total power using photovoltaics.

In June several members of the University of Denver Chicago alumni chapter participated in “Chicago Cares,” an annual philanthropic event to support Chicago’s public schools. DU’s Chicago group spent the day repainting a portion of an elementary school. Pictured above right (back row, from left): Nicholas Sauer (BA ’05) of North Barrington, Ill.; Adam Sauer, junior business major; Adam Gunzberg (BSBA ’93) of Chicago; Tim Heath (BA ’98, MTEL ’03) of Chicago; Julia Brennan; Kevin Friduss (BA ’05) of Chicago. Front row (from left): Jonathan Brosk (BSBA ’05) of Chicago; Aimee Marx (BA ’07) of Northbrook, Ill.

Chancellor’s

Innovation Fund

Career corner

Funding Innovation • Funding Excellence • Funding DU

Q: A: •

The Tradition Continues With You

•

invest in the future, invest in our students

•

The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund, supported by your annual gift, strengthens scholarships and priority programs for our students.

• •

To contribute to DU, please visit

www.giving.du.edu iStock

•

University Advancement 2190 E. Asbury Ave., Denver, CO 80208 303.871.4677 800.448.3238



52 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

•

I’d like to work abroad. How do I go about finding a job in another country?

If you’ve set your sights upon finding a job overseas, there are some things to consider before you send a résumé to lands unknown: Employment rates are not the same in every country. Research the country’s embassy Web site to find statistics. In some countries a basic knowledge of the language is important, while in others, the fact that English is your first language is a bonus. L  iving standards, and therefore pay levels, are not the same in every country. Your travel costs could exceed a local person’s annual salary. Y  our cultural competency about the country you’ll be living in may not match your new supervisor’s, or vice versa. It may be difficult to adjust to social mores. W  ork-abroad programs are only available during certain times of the year and within a specified time of your graduation. P  ersonal safety in the country you’ll be working in varies; research reports on illnesses, traffic accidents and theft. Check with alumni who are from the country you want to work in for networking opportunities.

The Daniels College of Business Suitts Center for Career Services can assist graduate alumni with international job searches; call 303-871-2154. Undergraduate alumni should contact the DU Career Center at 303-871-2150.



Tips reprinted from the March 2007 NACE Journal with permission of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, copyright holder.

University of Denver Magazine Connections 53

Pioneer pics

Alumni Director Jeffrey Howard

Gerald Cortinez (BFA ’84) and husband David Chase of New York City pose with a copy of the University of Denver Magazine at Uluru (Ayers Rock) while on vacation in Australia in March 2008. While there, they attended the 30th celebration of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney and spent a week in Melbourne. Nancy (Schniedwind) Duffy (BA ’70) of Hillsborough, N.J., stands with her son, Pat Duffy (BSBA ’06) of Vernon, Conn., in front of the Roman Colosseum while on a family vacation. As you pioneer lands far and wide, be sure to pack your DU gear and strike a pose in front of a national monument, the fourth wonder of the world or your hometown hot spot. If we print your submission, you’ll receive some new DU paraphernalia courtesy of the DU Bookstore. Send your print or high-resolution digital image and a description of the location to: Pioneer Pics, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208, or e-mail [email protected]. Be sure to include your full name, address, degree(s) and year(s) of graduation.

Jeffrey Howard has been named executive director of alumni relations at the University of Denver. He joined DU in the fall from the U.S. Olympic Committee, where he worked as the director of education and outreach programs in corporate communications. Howard returns to DU after nearly a decade; he previously was assistant athletics director for public relations, coordinating media relations during DU’s transition to Division I athletics and the construction of the Ritchie Center. “Returning to DU in a capacity to help further engage the University’s alumni and advocate for the many great programs and initiatives under way on and off campus is a great personal and professional opportunity,” Howard says. “I am a believer in lifelong learning, and the chance to return to an environment that fosters that philosophy at such a high level is exciting. I am truly proud to join a staff and campus community that inspires excellence in so many different areas of focus.” Howard brings extensive experience in project management, marketing and public relations to his new role at DU. During his time with the U.S. Olympic Committee, Howard oversaw significant programming in alumni relations, education and athlete career transition services. His experience also includes coordinating programming and publicity both internally and externally. Howard graduated from Metropolitan State College in Denver with a bachelor of science in sports information and reporting. He holds a master’s degree in sports organization management from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in France. Howard is married to DU alumna Gerri Gomez-Howard (MA ’93), and the couple has three children. —Sarah Satterwhite

Deaths 1930s

Gerald Lovins (BS ’31), Santa Fe, N.M., 7-7-08 Burton Smead (BA ’34, JD ’50), Hope, Maine, 1-13-08

1940s

Dorothee (Comnillo) Peterson (BA ’46, MA ’72), Aurora, Colo., 5-22-08 William Hockett (MBA ’49), Mount Dora, Fla., 2-1-08 Wayne Roush (BA ’49, MA ’51), Little River, S.C., 2-5-08 J. Daniel Smith (BS ’49), Fairfax, Va., 6-26-08

1950s

William Pryich (BS ’50), Rock Springs, Wyo., 6-20-08 W. Lynn Smith (MA ’52, PhD ’54), Denver, 6-11-08 Natley Breningstall (BSBA ’53), Denver, 5-19-08 Stan Miles (BS ’53), Centennial, Colo., 6-23-08 Randell Ericson (BSBA ’55), Roswell, N.M., 3-21-08 John Grow Jr. (BS ’55), Denver, 5-30-08

1960s

Tom Richardson (BA ’61, MA ’63), Grand Junction, Colo., 6-5-08 Jay Spangler (BSBA ’61), North Highlands, Calif., 5-22-08 William Sparks (MA ’62), Lubbock, Texas, 6-15-08 Esau Ali (BFA ’63), Ingleside, Wash., 5-13-08 Thayer Rudd Jr. (BSBA ’69, MBA ’70), Hinsdale, Ill., 7-16-08

1970s

Katharine Dodge (MA ’70), Denver, 5-27-08 Stephen Schuyler (JD ’71), Denver, 7-16-08 Doug Phillips (JD ’73), Denver, 7-15-08 Carolyn Crain (MA ’74), Arcadia, Calif., 5-8-08 Randall Bruns (MBA ’77), Beaverton, Ore., 5-24-08 Dorothy Wilcox (MA ’77), Longmont, Colo., 8-14-08

Do you ever

wonder what your alma mater has been doing since you left?

1980s

Mary Murray (MT ’85), Greeley, Colo., 7-10-08 Rick Hall (JD ’87), Omaha, Neb., 6-15-08

Come to a DU on the Road event and

1990s

find out. University representatives

Jonathan Kindred (BA ’93, MS ’97, MSF ’97, JD ’97), Leawood, Kan., 5-19-08

will travel to cities this winter and

2000s

developments and the vision and goals

spring to provide an update on campus behind them. All DU alumni are invited

Narendar Barry (JD ’04), Albuquerque, N.M., 7-19-08

to enjoy an evening of food and drinks

Students

with fellow classmates, faculty and staff.

Devany Carroll, senior psychology major, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 8-18-08

Faculty and Staff

Look for us this winter and spring as we travel to the following cities: Atlanta, GA Las Vegas, NV San Diego, CA Seattle, WA

Friends

For more information, please visit www.alumni.du.edu/DUontheroad or call 1.800.871.3822.

Ann “Lee” Albi (BA ’48), admissions office (retired 1986), Denver, 6-25-08 Eric Arnold, history professor emeritus, Denver, 8-6-08 George Boyd, associate vice provost of internationalization, Denver, 9-2-08 Marie Younkerman (BA ’07), assistant to the director in the Daniels College of Business statistics department, Lakewood, Colo., 7-8-08 Johnston Livingston, husband of longtime DU Trustee Pat Livingston, Denver, 9-29-08



54 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



WinterOTRad_FINAL.indd 1

University of Denver Magazine Connections 11/10/08 2:16:30 PM 55

Pioneer generations

Christine Fuhrman (MSW ’05) moved to Gardner, Kan., to work as the director of transitional living programs at TLC for Children & Families. Prior, she worked at Third Way Center in Denver. Cash Parker (BA ’05) of Boulder, Colo., received a juris doctorate in May from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Cash was elected to the Order of the Coif and also was a member of the CU team that won the national championship at the American Constitution Society’s Constance Baker Motley National Moot Court Competition.

2006

Matt Carle (attd. 2003–06) of Anchorage, Alaska, has been traded from the National Hockey League’s San Jose Sharks to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Carolyn Munoz (BA ’06) of Englewood, Colo., is in charge of public relations and marketing for the Colorado Run for Congo Women. The run/walk/hike benefit aims to raise money to provide physical and emotional aid for Congolese women who have survived sexual violence. Carolyn and her fellow volunteers are part of a global movement that has partners in 10 states and four countries.

2007

Yvonne Guzman (BBA ’07) of Thornton, Colo., is working toward her MBA with a specialization in international business at Regis University. Yvonne works for a global investment company and hopes that many more career paths open up after her graduation in March 2009.

2008

Peter Mannino (BSBA ’08) of Farmington Hills, Mich., has signed a one-year, twoway, free agent contract with the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders. Peter



56 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008

Republican Ryan Greenawalt

Proud. This word describes Julianne (Rose) Hennings’ (BSBA ’82) feelings about her family’s Pioneer legacy. A Colorado native, Julianne’s family ties to the state go back more than 100 years when her great-grandparents chose to homestead at the foot of the Rockies. The first member of Julianne’s family to graduate from the University was her grandmother, Bertha (Boyd) Reed (BA ’49, MA ’50), who was 50 years old at the time and working full-time as a teacher. One year later Bertha’s daughter Alice (Reed) Siddeek (BA ’50) obtained her degree from the University. Julianne’s pride for the accomplishments of her mother and grandmother stems from the fact that they both earned degrees during a time when relatively few women did. She concedes that she’d be nothing but proud should her 16-year-old daughter choose to attend DU. Although Alice lives in Casper, Wyo., and Julianne lives in Littleton, Colo., mother and daughter enjoy discussing what they read in the University of Denver Magazine.

Ryan Greenawalt (BSBA ’02) is senior vice president at Jefferies & Co., a publicly traded bond firm on Wall Street, where he works in the Fixed Income Group serving the needs of public entities. He also is a founding member of DU’s Young Alumni Endowed Scholarship Fund and one of its biggest donors. He was raised Catholic, loves sports and is a passionate member of the Republican Party. And he is gay. Greenawalt says he spent several years learning how to “be Republican and be gay.” His path led him to the Log Cabin Republicans, a political organization that champions Republican fiscal values as well as equality. “I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative,” says Greenawalt. “I believe in controlling your own destiny, limited government, free markets. That being said, I believe the party is headed down the wrong path because it is focusing on social issues, things that the government shouldn’t be involved in.” Greenawalt is now the organization’s national board director and chairs its New York state political action committee. Of course, he frequently must respond to people who wonder how he supports a party that seems hostile to his lifestyle, but again, this incongruous piece fits once he explains his perspective. “Ninety percent of the gay community is focused on supporting the liberal agenda,” he says. “We need people on both sides of the aisle to support equal rights.” Greenawalt is equally passionate about serving and supporting his alma mater. He has given nearly $25,000 to the Young Alumni Endowed Scholarship Fund and serves on its board. “I want to help people in need, whether those people are students or people who have no rights.”

Joseph Moran

Brent Brackle (MBA ’05) recently won the annual FTI Denver Office Golf Tournament. Brent works at FTI Consulting as a senior consultant and lives with his wife, Lindsay, and dog, Bailey, in Arvada, Colo.

Inventor George Lof Courtesy of George Lof

2005

On Parkway Drive in the Englewood, Colo., neighborhood of Cherry Hills, a piece of history is for sale. Years ago, however, the technology which makes this item distinct was of little interest or value to anyone other than its owner. That’s because the heating system employed in the house on Parkway Drive—although powered by clean, renewable energy—was too expensive compared to other sources of fuel. Completed in 1957, George Lof’s home at 6 Parkway Drive has the distinction of being the oldest known solar home. Lof (BSCHE ’35) designed and constructed the house’s solar-energy heating system, which provides between one-half to two-thirds of the total heat, after building a similar residence in Boulder, Colo. Lof first became involved with solar energy while earning a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He later pursued solar-energy research at the University of Colorado, directed the Industrial Research Institute at DU and worked for Colorado State University until 1999 as a professor and director of the university’s Solar Energy Application Laboratory. Lof also designed, manufactured and installed home solar-heating systems for the Solaron Corp. The efficiency of solar energy, however, could not offset its considerable expense in the minds of government, researchers and the public. Consequently, interest and progress in the field of solarenergy dwindled for several decades. Today, however, “we are now at a point where solar is going to move ahead,” Lof says. “Instead of having to make solar cheaper, what needed to happen was for other fuel sources to become more expensive.” Now, with green energy all the rage, the rows of solar panels on Lof’s roof could make the oldest known solar residence more valuable in the eyes of potential buyers. —Samantha Stewart

—Samantha Stewart

Contact us Tell us about your

Name (include maiden name)

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accomplishments, awards,

Address

births, life events or whatever else is keeping you busy. Do you support a cause? Do you have

—Janalee Card Chmel

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us know! Don’t forget to

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send a photo. (Include a self-addressed, postage-paid is expected to make his professional debut next season with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the American Hockey League.

envelope if you would like

Post your class note online at www.alumni.du.edu, e-mail [email protected] or mail in the form on page 57.

your photo returned.)

Question of the hour: What do you think is the biggest issue facing higher education today?

Post your class note online at www.alumni.du.edu, e-mail [email protected] or mail your note to: Class Notes, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208.



University of Denver Magazine Connections 57

ANNOUNCEMENTS Lifelong Learning OLLI DU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is a membership program designed for men and women age 55 and “better” who wish to pursue lifelong learning in the company of like-minded peers. Members select the topics to be explored and share their expertise and interests while serving as teachers and learners. >>universitycollege.du.edu/learning/viva/

Enrichment Program Noncredit short courses, lectures, seminars and weekend intensives explore a wide range of subjects without exams, grades or admission requirements. >>universitycollege.du.edu/learning/ep/

Get Involved The Denver Scholarship Foundation, which helps students overcome obstacles to education by offering tools and flexible scholarships to participating Colorado post-secondary schools, including DU, is looking for volunteers for a variety of projects. Contact Alan Jimenez (BA ’84, JD’ 87) at [email protected] for more information.

Mark Your Calendar Founders Day The March 5 gala will honor

DU Photography Department

alumni award winners and raise funds for scholarships. >>www.alumni.du.edu/Participate/Founders

DU on the Road Find out what your alma mater has been doing since you left. See if DU is coming to a city near you. >>www.alumni.du.edu/DUontheRoad Volunteer Days Provide assistance to the homeless community April 24 at Project Homeless Connect, held on the DU campus. For more information, contact Katie Symons at 303-871-3332.

Contact us

Nostalgia Needed If you have ideas for nostalgic topics we could cover in the magazine, please send them our way. We’d love to see your old DU photos as well.

Pioneer Generations How many generations of your family have attended DU? If you have stories and photos to share about your family’s history with DU, please send them our way!

Calling All Experts We’re trying to get to know our alumni better while developing possibilities for future articles. Please send us your ideas. We would especially like to hear about readers who: • are farmers or ranchers • were DU Centennial scholars • are members of the Class of 1979 • are involved in hospice/palliative care • served in the Peace Corps • are experts in early childhood education

Career Connections Pioneer Alumni Network Join other Denver area alumni for free networking events each month. >>www.alumni.du.edu

Essayists Wanted The University of Denver Magazine is accepting proposals for reflective, first-person essays on any subject (600 words in length) for possible publication. Opinion pieces will not be considered. Materials submitted will not be returned.

Stay in Touch Online Alumni Directory Update your contact information, find other alumni and “bookmark” your alumni friends and classmates. You also can read class notes and death notices. Online class note submissions will automatically be included in the University of Denver Magazine. >>www.alumni.du.edu

University of Denver Magazine 2199 S. University Blvd. Denver, CO 80208 [email protected] 303-871-2776



58 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008



University of Denver Magazine Connections 59

Miscellanea

Wayne Armstrong

Centenary celebration

This Colorado license plate was procured for Chancellor Chester Alter in 1963 as a Christmas present to celebrate the University’s impending 100th anniversary in 1964. Gov. John Love (BA ’39, LLB ’41) authorized the Department of Motor Vehicles to change Alter’s vehicle registration slip to “DU-1964” after the department had denied an earlier request. The 45-year-old license plate is part of the University Archives.



60 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2008