2009 Fall: University Of Denver Magazine

Fall 2009

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Going Green

Office of the Chancellor

Dear Readers: We begin this new academic year with great pride in the University and optimism for the days that lie ahead. Despite the nation’s continuing economic troubles, DU has remained strong and is opening the year with the largest and most capable class of incoming first-year students we have seen in many years. More than 1,200 new first-year, first-time undergraduates are expected to arrive, and they will bring with them extraordinary academic credentials, with nearly half ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class. The proportion of domestic minority students among the entering class will reach a new high of 18 percent, and more than 5 percent will be from countries other than the United States. Enrollments among our graduate and professional schools are expected to be up as well, and persistence among continuing students remains strong. All together, anticipated enrollment this fall of undergraduates, graduate students and “pre-collegiate” students at DU (students in the English Language Center and kids in the Fisher and Ricks centers) is about 12,000—our largest enrollment since the post-World War II era. We’ll have a few more students than we had planned for, but I am very pleased with these results. We have remained competitive—even as an expensive private institution in a very bad economy—because of the clear value of the student experience at DU. Although we have grown to be a doctoral-level research university of national distinction, we have held on to our student focus. Faculty members at DU are nationally and internationally competitive scholars, but our professional lives still revolve around our students and the quality of their experience at the University. Our students are priority No. 1, and that can be unusual among universities these days. We are constantly making choices about how to concentrate our resources in a manner that builds the quality of our educational programs as defined by outcomes for students: the knowledge and abilities they gain, and their intellectual and personal growth. In recent years we added the elements of the undergraduate Marsico Initiative—at an annual cost of more than $4.5 million—and developed the Cherrington Global Scholars study-abroad program at a cost that exceeds $10 million per year. We developed dual-degree programs that continue undergraduate financial aid through a fifth year and a master’s degree. We’ve made major investments in our programs for students who are extraordinarily talented athletes, artists or musicians. For graduate students, we’ve added a host of new faculty members and programs in law, business, international studies, social work, education, professional psychology and the arts and sciences, and we’ve expanded our research capabilities. DU is an innovative and entrepreneurial institution, and we are continually generating ideas and creating programs in search of academic quality for our students. The other side of the value proposition is the cost to students and their families. We work hard to make DU affordable for a broad range of students through financial aid. More than three-quarters of our students receive some measure of financial aid that comes from both internal and external sources. External sources include federal and state funds as well as support from foundations. Internal sources include discounted tuition, scholarships supported by our endowment, and new scholarship gifts to the University. We make a great effort to raise money every year, with the bulk of these funds providing financial aid for students or financial support for faculty. Over the past three years, we’ve been able to substantially increase our financial aid funds for new and continuing students, and this year we also increased our fund for emergency financial aid. Access to the DU experience for capable students is broadening, even in a tight economy. I am convinced we are doing well because we are focused on the value of what we provide for our students, and because we work hard to make that value affordable for them and their families. As an institution, we are committed to our students’ success. In turn, we are blessed with alumni who are committed to the success of the University. That’s how higher education really should work.

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



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Contents Features

26 Going Green

DU plans for carbon neutrality by 2050.



By Chase Squires

30 The Rising Cost of College

Ever-expanding costs are pricing college out of the reach of many. At DU, administrators are working to change that equation.

By Jan Thomas

36 Excellence on Ice

DU celebrates 60 years of Pioneers hockey.



By Greg Glasgow

40 Keeping the Faith

Baptist preacher Terrance Carroll brings passion and humility to his “other” job—Colorado’s Speaker of the House.

By Richard Chapman

Departments

44 Editor’s Note 45 Letters 47 DU Update



08 News  Community garden 10 Research  Lincoln’s legacy 14 Q&A  Enrollment strategies 17 People Chef Angelo Camillo 19 Essay Remembering Stuart James 20 Views  Mount Evans observatory 23 History  Flu of 1918 24 Arts  Chinese painter

45 Alumni Connections Online only at www.du.edu/magazine: Academics Studying the drug war Sports Club Taekwondo On the cover: Leaf from a tulip poplar tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), a specimen in DU’s Alter Arboretum. DU has announced a comprehensive plan to green its campus; read the story on page 26. Photo illustration by Wayne Armstrong.



This page: Colorado Speaker of the House and DU alumnus Terrance Carroll in the state Capitol; read the story on page 40. Photo by Wayne Armstrong.

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Editor’s Note

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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 10, Number 1 M A G A Z I N E

Did our bright green cover catch your attention? Good. DU has some big sustainability plans afoot, and you should know about them (read the story on page 26). While it’s cutting its carbon footprint, DU also is aggressively cutting expenses to try to keep tuition prices manageable for students (read more on page 30). We’ve tightened our belts here at the magazine, and even though our unit cost is more than 25 percent lower than that of the average college magazine, we need to trim expenses wherever Craig Korn

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possible. That doesn’t mean we plan to stop publishing the magazine. We included a survey with our summer issue, and nearly 100 percent of our respondents reported that the University of Denver Magazine is the No. 1 way they keep up with DU. They also said it’s important that they continue to receive the magazine, and that they prefer to receive it in a printed format. If you are one of those who don’t mind reading the magazine online, please e-mail us at [email protected] to unsubscribe from the print edition. Every dollar we save ultimately will benefit our students. Is the University of Denver Magazine a good investment? According to the survey results so far, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” Still, we need to hear from more of you. If you love the magazine and want to ensure it keeps showing up in your mailbox, or if you think we could do things better or differently, let us know. If you still have your summer edition lying around, please complete the survey at the back and mail it to us right away. Or take the five-minute survey online at www.du.edu/magazine. Your feedback is important; we rely on it to shape every aspect of the magazine. Thank you in advance for sharing your views.

UN I V ER S I T Y O F MPublisher AGAZINE

UNIVERSITY

Carol Farnsworth MAGAZINE

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Managing Editor

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

Greg Glasgow Associate Editor

Tamara Chapman Editor

Kathryn Mayer (BA ’07) Editorial Assistants

Laura Hathaway (’10) Kyle Schettler Staff Writer

Richard Chapman Art Director

Craig Korn, VeggieGraphics Contributors

Wayne Armstrong • Jim Berscheidt • Janalee Card Chmel (MLS ’97) • Steve Fisher • Kristal Griffith • Jeff Haessler • John Kloeckner • Doug McPherson • Steve Schader • Nathan Solheim • Jack Sommars • Chase Squires • Samantha Stewart (BA ’08) • Jan Thomas (BA ’80, MA ’81) • John Trujillo (BSBA ’95) • Margaret Whitt (PhD ’86) Editorial Board

Chelsey Baker-Hauck, editorial director • Jim Berscheidt, associate vice chancellor for university communications • Thomas Douglis (BA ’86) • Carol Farnsworth, vice chancellor for university communications • Jeffrey Howard, executive director of alumni relations • Sarah Satterwhite, senior director of development/special assistant to the vice chancellor • Amber Scott (MA ’02) • Laura Stevens (BA ’69), director of parent relations

Printed on 10% PCW recycled paper

Chelsey Baker-Hauck Managing Editor



4 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

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 80208-4816. 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 80208-4816.

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Letters

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Wild West roundup I enjoyed “Our Wild West” [summer 2009]. As Wallace Stegner said, “I may not know who I am, but I know where I’m from.” The article “Colorado’s College War” was of more than passing interest because my husband is a Mines graduate. It is a fine issue. Carol Savey Abel (BA ’57, MA ’64) Golden, Colo.

“Alumni Connections” in the summer 2009 issue brought back many memories of my time as a student at DU. I had spent five years in the USAF Strategic Air Command as a radar navigator on a B-52 and returned to college in June 1969 to finish an engineering degree and MBA. I selected DU. Those three years at DU and the turmoil over Vietnam changed my view of the world and politics for life. It made me more sensitive to the needs of others and the impact of our country’s decisions for generations to come. I remember sitting on the lawn in front of the Science Building discussing the events of that time, and graduating with armbands, not caps and gowns. Needless to say, as a veteran it was difficult to see how the vets were being treated at the time. I am truly grateful for my DU education, the faculty and staff that I got to know and the positive impact the time at DU had on me over the past decades. Simply stated, thank you! Alan MacIlroy (BSEE ’69, MBA ’70) Princeton, N.J.

Our men’s book club was reading one of Chuck Box’s Joe Pickett novels [“Mystery Man,” summer 2009]. We asked if he’d be interested in coming to our



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meeting in Denver, and he said he’d be there. For three hours we discussed plots, motivations, guns, wine and book sales: “If you want one of my books, get it in hardback; I make three bucks more.” He was an absolutely great contributor to our group and a charming guy. His books emphasize the difficulty of doing the right thing and the rewards of that struggle—not exactly a universal theme in these times, yet they’re exciting and fun to read. An alum to be treasured! Gerald Moore (BS ’56) Denver

KVDU story plays on First, I want to thank Peter Funt and others for constructing the KVDU facility. Secondly, I want to take strong exception to Funt’s analysis of the restricted playlist [Letters, summer 2009]. I had a show on KVDU and was ordered to play only certain songs. I had hoped to use the medium to enrich the ears of my listeners with fresh music instead of what they could hear plenty of on commercial radio. Instead, I was forced to pretend it was the 1950s instead of the ’60s. I didn’t understand. Was there actual research that demonstrated what student listeners wanted to hear? I never saw it. I was also too idealistic to even consider the possibility of payola. After graduation I applied to KFML, a contemporary music station. My KVDU experience was more of a hindrance than a help. When I discovered the huge improvements with KCFR, I was stunned. Night and day. I felt vindicated. Too bad it didn’t happen a few years earlier; I might have had a good career in radio. David Bell (BA ’70) Middleton, Wis.

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I was very interested in the letter concerning KVDU that appeared in the summer 2009 issue. I was in the communications program in 1949–53 when the whole department consisted of Noel Jordan and Bob Mott and KVDU was housed in a ramshackle temporary building that always threatened to collapse with the advent of a thunderstorm. Gilbert Fried (attd. 1949–52) Hallandale Beach, Fla.

Global connections I’m a double DU graduate for my BSBA in marketing and my Master of International Management. I have since moved back to Indonesia, and I’m so excited to hear about DU. Thanks to technology, it’s not impossible to reconnect with old friends. I even heard about [Daniels College management Professor] Dave Hopkins’ recent retirement from friends just one day after his farewell party. It’s wonderful to hear the stories of alumni still living close to DU, but I think you should diversify a bit and do a global search for DU’s foreign alumni, especially those who didn’t really participate in college activities. As much as I love to hear about the American students, I always wonder what happened to my Thai and Taiwanese friends, the Greek guy I took English class with, and also those professors who taught just a few classes. Linda Salim (BSBA ’98, MIM ’01) Indonesia

Send letters to the editor to: Chelsey BakerHauck, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816. Or e-mail [email protected]. Include your full name and mailing address with all submissions. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

University of Denver Magazine Letters 5

save the date

DU Homecoming & Family weekend

2009 oct.

28 - nov. 1

Join us for a fun-filled weekend with your Pioneer Family! Some fun activities for students, alumni, parents, faculty, staff, family and friends to look forward to: • Recent Graduate Wine Reception • Pioneer Pep Rally • Pioneer Hockey Games • Parent and Alumni Activities • DU Parade • Festive Activities for the Entire Family • And Much More!

www.alumni.du.edu/homecoming



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9 Smoke-free campus 11 Kwan’s graduation 12 Logging lawsuit 15 Bike sharing 16 Chinese sculpture 18 New lacrosse coach 22 Advice for parents

Wayne Armstrong



Workers install a stained-glass window—a gift to the University from DU’s Class of 2009—in the Driscoll University Center in late May. The $3,000, 3-by-6-foot piece of stained glass depicts three of DU’s most prominent towers: the Mary Reed Building, Buchtel Tower and the Ritchie Center’s Williams Tower. Colorado artist Steve Skelton worked on the window for months, cutting each individual piece of glass and soldering them together.



University of Denver Magazine Update 7

Top News

DU’s Bridge Community Garden takes root By Samantha Stewart

Wayne Armstrong

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you have SOLE power? DU does, now that the Bridge Community Garden is up and running. SOLE—an acronym used to denote food that is sustainable, organic, local and ethical—aptly describes the fruits and veggies grown in the garden, located across from Centennial Halls at 1819 S. High St. Members of the DU Environmental Team (a student organization) and the All Undergraduate Student Association Senate worked throughout the 2008–09 academic year to obtain administrative approval for the garden. “It started out certainly because of environmental reasons. But now I can see the huge benefits for the community in terms of building stronger bonds and mobilizing to tackle other issues,” says Ben Waldman, a senior international studies major and coadministrator of the Garden Steering Committee. A May 30 ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the end of a two-month effort by volunteers from DU, the surrounding neighborhoods and Denver Urban Gardens to transform the land—purchased by the University in 2005—into a workable garden. The garden contains 12 plots, an herb garden, a tool shed and a community-compost system. Picnic benches, chairs and a grill also enhance the space. A federal work-study position has been established to assist the Garden Steering Committee with managing conflicts and organizing monthly workshops on topics such as organic pest control, basic gardening, composting, canning food and conserving water. A desire to share her perennials, collaborate with other experts and develop a relationship with students prompted neighbor Dawn Gardener to get involved. “It’s a small little way of showing the neighborhood that gardening can really be a way to bring about community involvement. It has been really rewarding,” says Gardener, who planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, watermelon and pumpkins on her plot. Plot-holders must abide by the University’s license-and-use agreement as well as a number of stipulations devised by the Garden Steering Committee. They also must pay an annual fee of $25. Gardeners who adhere to these rules are eligible to retain their plots the following year. To date, developing the garden has cost $6,000. Waldman contributed $1,000 he received as a Morgridge Community Scholar, and the AUSA Senate covered the rest. Several neighbors have credited the Bridge Garden with helping to break down the “invisible wall” between DU and the surrounding community, according to Zoee Turrill, a former AUSA Sustainability Committee member who graduated in June. While this partially explains the garden’s name, it was also somewhat fated—explains Gail Neujahr, a neighbor and co-administrator of the Garden Steering Committee—as students found a broken footbridge on the property as they were developing the garden. They repaired the bridge and re-installed it on the site. And because Bridge gardeners want the entire community to enjoy the garden, a basket of free produce donated by plot-holders is available at the front of the garden throughout the growing season, making it easier for everyone to have a little more SOLE power. Students, faculty, staff and neighbors interested in obtaining a plot can send a request via e-mail to duenvironmental@ gmail.com or visit dugardens.org for more information. Plots are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

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An effort to simplify and extend the University policy on smoking will go into effect Jan. 1, 2010, making DU one of a handful of smoke-free campuses in Colorado. The decision comes on the heels of nearly two years of surveys, letters, petitions, research and debate on smoking policy that considered everything from smoking areas marked by yellow umbrellas to a total ban on all tobacco products. After reviewing the evidence, DU Chancellor Robert Coombe decided. “A complete ban on the use or possession of legal tobacco products among the DU community is not reasonable,” Coombe said in a letter to the DU community. “[DU] does not regulate legal personal choice unless such choice has a deleterious effect on the community as a whole. … At DU, personal choice is a part of personal growth.” The policy will prohibit smoking in all locations on campus except for an area 25 feet from public perimeter rights-of-way. Also exempted from the ban are two yet-to-be-designated smoking areas outside the Ritchie Center and the Newman Center that will be available to smokers during public events. University officials said the new standard also will apply to off-campus University-owned buildings. “It’s a public health issue,” says Dr. Sam Alexander, director of the Health and Counseling Center, who spearheaded a DU Tobacco Task Force that examined the issue. “Our main concern was the effect of secondhand smoke on the health of people who choose not to smoke.” Nationally, there are about 150 institutions that are smoke free or tobacco free. According to a survey conducted by the DU Tobacco Task Force, 62 percent of students, 73 percent of staff and 61 percent of faculty support a smoke-free campus. The survey indicated that 4 percent of students smoke regularly on campus, another 4 percent smoke socially on and off campus, and 8 percent smoke socially off campus. According to research compiled by the Tobacco Task Force, the danger for nonsmokers is in the carcinogens in secondhand smoke, which can cause lung cancer, heart disease and asthma in nonsmokers and pose a danger even in “occasional exposure.” —Richard Chapman

Courtesy of Deborah Howard

Campus to be smoke free under new policy

Professor’s artwork accepted into Holocaust Art Museum Four portraits of Holocaust survivors drawn by Deborah Howard, associate professor of art and art history at DU, were accepted into the permanent collection at the New Holocaust Art Museum in Jerusalem. The museum is part of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. It houses some 10,000 works and according to the museum is the largest and most wide-ranging Holocaust collection in the world. Howard started with one person and through word of mouth has drawn 25 survivors. The entire work is titled “Portraits of Child Holocaust Survivors.” Howard traveled to Israel to visit Yad Vashem and meet museum members. The curator selected four of her portraits to go into the permanent collection. —Kristal Griffith

DU introduces nanotech graduate program The study of nanotechnology does not just affect the production of the latest iPod. Nano-scale science and engineering are the foundation for the next generation of technological breakthroughs, says Rahmat Shoureshi, dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science (SECS), and DU will begin playing a role in these breakthroughs. SECS and the Division of Natural Science and Mathematics (NSM) have added a new master’s and PhD graduate program in nanoscale science and engineering. DU is the first university in the Rocky Mountain region to offer such graduate degrees. Alayne Parson, dean of NSM, says DU expects to draw more students from local industries because of the program. SECS has identified four areas within nanotechnology as possible areas of study. They are nanoenergy, nano-aerospace structures, nano-medicine and nano-security. By focusing nanotech studies on areas related to energy, aerospace, biosciences and security, SECS hopes to attract interest from local industries and educate the future workforce. The degree programs begin this fall. For more information, visit http://secs.du.edu or www.nsm. du.edu. —Laura Hathaway



University of Denver Magazine Update 9

Research

Everybody loves Lincoln By Jack Sommars

Wayne Armstrong

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16,000 books have been written about the man, more than anyone except Jesus and Shakespeare. And this year, which marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, dozens of new volumes will be eagerly read by scholars and schoolchildren alike. Why does Abraham Lincoln continue to fascinate us? “There is something in his life for everyone,” explains DU history Professor Susan Schulten. “From his humble beginnings and the drive to improve himself to his complex understanding of the nation’s plight and, of course, his tremendous capacity for leadership and compassion. It’s remarkable to think he is both a heroic figure to Americans as well as someone we consider sympathetic and relevant.” Schulten, a member of Colorado’s Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, says every generation seeks to “get right with Lincoln.” “People want to make sense of his legacy for their own lives and particular problems,” she says. “Scholarship around Lincoln is often a reflection of our own contemporary concerns rather than a timeless biography we continually enlarge. Recently, Americans have been more interested in his psychological health and his personal relationships.” The commission’s purpose is to promote understanding and appreciation of Lincoln’s impact on the U.S. and how he shaped the destiny of Colorado and the West.  “The more you know about Lincoln, the more complex a man you find,” Schulten says. “He becomes less a distant icon—someone carved in stone—and more of a man faced with impossible choices. He has come to represent our larger struggle to make sense of the nation and its meaning.” Schulten believes Lincoln’s greatest contribution to American political thought was linking the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the more pragmatic aspects of the Constitution. “Prior to the Civil War, Americans considered the Declaration a largely symbolic document,” she says. “It was, after all, just that—a declaration that began our separation from Great Britain. “The Constitution, on the other hand, was the authoritative document that grounded the Union, yet it contained little in the way of values. For example, the word ‘equality’ doesn’t appear in the Constitution. “As Lincoln struggled to plead his case against slavery, he used the Declaration to show that equality contradicts the notion of slavery. He reconciled these two documents and by appealing to law, morality and reason, shifted our nation’s course. Two hundred years later, we live in the world that Lincoln wrought.” Schulten says the most contentious debate about Lincoln continues to be his role in freeing the slaves. “Some people are shocked when they discover he was really a pragmatist when it comes to emancipation, especially those who want to see him as this heroic figure who does this for moral reasons,” she says. Lincoln imposed emancipation as a military measure, Schulten says, and for a time he even advocated returning black Americans to Africa. “Thus, the title ‘Great Emancipator’ does little justice to the complex process by which slavery ended in this country,” says Schulten, who has written about how Lincoln has influenced our current president. “Barack Obama understands Lincoln’s depth, his complexity, his nuanced thought and especially the dilemmas he faced,” she says. “What encourages me most is to see our new president so clear-eyed about Lincoln’s importance. He doesn’t shy away from discussing Lincoln’s limitations, especially his pragmatic approach to the problems of race and slavery. “Yet Obama also recognizes the enormous role Lincoln played, not just as a pragmatic politician, but as a strategic thinker who changed our country’s understanding of the Constitution.” >> www.colincoln200.org.

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Wayne Armstrong

Figure skater Michelle Kwan adds DU diploma to list of accomplishments Figure skating champion Michelle Kwan (BA ’09) joined more than 1,000 graduating seniors at the University of Denver’s undergraduate Commencement ceremony on June 6. Kwan—who came to DU in 2006— received a BA in international studies from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. She minored in political science. Kwan has won nine U.S. championships, five world championships and two Olympic medals and is the most decorated figure skater in U.S. history. “It was a turning point in my life when I came to DU,” says Kwan (pictured at the ceremony with Chancellor Robert Coombe). “From seventh grade on I had tutors while I was training and competing, and it was a big transition to go from full-time skating to full-time student.” She recalls spending the first few weeks at DU on crutches following hip surgery. Kwan says initially she was shy when it came to asking questions in class and that the back of the room was her preferred location. But DU’s small classes and wonderful professors made it easy for her to become more engaged, Kwan says. Shortly after coming to the University, Kwan was asked to participate in what she describes as the ultimate internship for an international studies student. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (BA ’74, PhD ’81) appointed Kwan the first American Public Diplomacy Envoy to help promote an understanding of America by sharing her story in a cross-cultural dialogue with international youth. Kwan has no plans to stop traveling on behalf of the U.S. She recently met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss continuing her role with the State Department. However, Kwan will still have tests waiting for her when she returns from each trip. She has been accepted to the graduate international affairs program at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

University adds health care leadership master’s degree As the debate over what to do about the U.S. health care system rages on in the nation’s capital, the University of Denver has launched a new master’s degree in health care leadership. The Master of Professional Studies is offered through University College, the college of professional and continuing studies at DU. The degree is designed to help people currently in the health care field move into leadership roles. It also will address current needs of the industry. University College Dean Jim Davis says the school’s officials interviewed providers and associations to learn exactly what professionals in the field need to know to advance their careers. He notes that a specialized program like this one is rarely found in traditional medical and nursing schools. The program explores the functions of various health care entities, including providers, insurance companies, government agencies and professional associations. Also addressed is the manner in which different technologies, laws, leadership styles and financial models affect the system. There are several distinct specialty concentrations: health care policy; law and ethics; medical and health care information technologies; and strategic management of health care systems. —Jim Berscheidt

The Ammi Hyde Interviews Help us build the future of DU, one student at a time. Every year, we rely on alumni volunteers to help us conduct Ammi Hyde Interviews in cities across the country. The Hyde Interview allows the University to admit students who embody DU’s core values and who can succeed in our challenging academic environment. Join us in November and February for this unique opportunity to make a difference at DU.

TO VOLUNTEER: Contact Nashwa Bolling at the Office of Admission: 1.800.525.9495 [email protected]

—Jim Berscheidt



University of Denver Magazine Update 11

iStockphoto

DU law clinic sues feds over Rio Grande headwaters DU’s Environmental Law Clinic filed suit June 2 against the United States government, seeking to stop proposed logging on southern Colorado lands that feed the headwaters of the Rio Grande. The river is a major source of drinking water for millions of people in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas and provides water for agriculture in the United States and Mexico. The suit, prepared by third-year student Jacob Schlesinger and Environmental Law Clinic Fellow Ashley Wilmes under the direction of Environmental Law Clinic Director Michael Harris, names the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Agriculture. It was filed in federal court in Denver on behalf of environmental groups Colorado Wild and WildEarth Guardians. The 17-page complaint alleges the proposed 3,500-acre Handkerchief Mesa Timber Project in the Rio Grande National Forest near Alamosa in southwestern Colorado will impact lands stressed by previous clear-cutting and an ongoing spruce budworm infestation. Allowed to proceed, the project could lead to continued soil damage, including erosion and compaction, impacting the flow of water to the Rio Grande and thousands of communities downstream. The Environmental Law Clinic hasn’t balked at taking on big agencies and organizations. Students at the clinic in recent years have challenged state wildlife officials over prairie dog shoots and challenged Xcel Energy’s environmental record at a Colorado power plant. 
 
 Based in Santa Fe, N.M., WildEarth Guardians brings people, science and the law together in defense of the American West’s rivers, forests, deserts and grasslands. Colorado Wild works from its headquarters in Durango, Colo., to protect, preserve and restore the native plants and animals of the Southern Rocky Mountains, with particular attention given to habitat protection of Colorado’s forested, roadless public lands and other ecologically important areas. —Chase Squires

China Rising

The University of Denver Presents

James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly Monday, September 21, 7 p.m. Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave. Most people in the U.S. know very little about China, yet the country may soon become the number two economy in the world. As a result, China will play a larger role in international affairs and take on other new responsibilities of a rising world power. But it also is feeling the pain of rapid industrialization and growing international engagement. Join the discussion as the 2009–10 Bridges to the Future lecture series at DU explores the myths, realities, and challenges for America of China Rising.

RSVP to [email protected] or 303.871.2357



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Pioneers finish strong in Directors’ Cup

Donor Spotlight

The University of Denver capped its second-best year in NCAA Division I history by finishing No. 54 in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics announced June 29. The Pioneers sent 11 sports programs to NCAA postseason competition and finished with 396.5 points. DU also finished first among Front Range schools for the second consecutive season, followed by Colorado (No. 69), Air Force (No. 105), Colorado State (No. 127), Wyoming (No. 192) and Northern Colorado (No. 271). DU also was the highest ranked Sun Belt Conference institution, outdistancing No. 76 Middle Tennessee by more than 135 points. The Pioneers also were the highest ranked I-AAA school for the second consecutive season, topping No. 65 UC Irvine by more than 80 points. “We are once again honored to represent the Front Range as Denver’s University,” says Peg Bradley-Doppes, DU vice chancellor for athletics and recreation. “We are growing into a consistent contender on the national scene of Division I athletics. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are proud of this year’s accomplishments.” The Pioneers earned 100 points for their 20th NCAA skiing championship, 75 for a fifth-place NCAA finish in women’s golf and 52.5 for gymnastics’ 19th-place finish at NCAA nationals. In addition, Blake Worsley earned DU 47 points for his performance at the NCAA men’s swimming and diving championships. DU also earned 25 points each from men’s soccer, women’s soccer, hockey and women’s tennis. The men’s golf team chipped in 22 points with its seventh consecutive NCAA appearance.

Ann Spector Lieff (BA ’74) grew up the daughter of an entrepreneur. Her father, Martin Spector, owned Spec’s Music— record shops that were a staple in the Miami music scene. Spector Lieff worked weekends and summers in the stores, and she always thought she’d be a businesswoman. Still, when she headed west for the first time in her life to attend the University of Denver, Spector Lieff studied sociology. “As it turns out, having a liberal arts background was very helpful in business,” Spector Lieff says. “You look at things a little differently.” Spector Lieff graduated and immediately returned to help her father. “When I graduated, it was a small business, very entrepreneurial, with maybe four or five stores,” she says. “With my help, we started to expand and one thing led to another. We decided to take it public.” In 1998, the company was named one of America’s Top 500 Women-Owned Businesses by Working Woman magazine. Later that year, she and her father sold the company to Camelot Music and Spector Lieff launched her own consulting company. Along the way, she stayed involved with DU and was increasingly excited about her alma mater’s future under then-Chancellor Dan Ritchie’s leadership. Equally excited, Spector Lieff’s father came up with the idea of starting a scholarship for women studying in the Daniels College of Business. The Spector-Lieff Endowed Scholarship Fund was born in 1997 and annually supports undergraduate students—predominantly women—who are chosen on the basis of academic merit, financial need, leadership and community work. “The support I receive from Ann is truly something I couldn’t get through school without,” says senior international business major Alexandra Mikros, who works three jobs and holds a 3.67 GPA. “Her assistance has given me the option to afford an education that I couldn’t get on my own.” That’s exactly what Spector Lieff and her father hoped to provide. “I hope that our scholarship gives these young women an opportunity to get an education that they might not otherwise have the funds to receive,” Spector Lieff says. “Once they have an education, they can do great things. No one can take away an education.”

Ann Spector Lieff

University adds full-time Arabic faculty DU students now can learn Arabic from a new faculty member, the first full-time Arabist in DU’s history. Maha Foster, who also speaks French and German, joined the languages and literatures faculty this spring as a lecturer in Arabic. She has taught Arabic for more than 15 years. “Ever since the federal government lamented the fact that there was a lack of critical languages speakers, Arabic has become one of the foreign language classes most sought after by college students,” Foster says. Victor Castellani, chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures, says it’s important for DU to offer Arabic because it’s the fastest-growing of all world languages at U.S. colleges and universities. —Kristal Griffith

Courtesy of Ann Spector Lieff

—Media Relations Staff

—Janalee Card Chmel



University of Denver Magazine Update 13

Q&A

Vice Chancellor Tom Willoughby on enrollment Interview by Jan Thomas

Q

Wayne Armstrong

Given the recession, many will assume enrollment at private universities is down. That may not be the case for DU. How did the University stay ahead of the curve?

A

We read the writing on the wall and planned for the challenges the recession would likely present. We knew we were entering a period of great uncertainty in which predictable patterns of behavior might shift in how students and their families choose colleges and universities. In the fall, an independent marketresearch firm confirmed our initial thoughts. Some 11,000 high school students were surveyed to determine if the economic climate was affecting their college search plans and ultimately their application and enrollment decisions. We learned that students were more likely to apply to more schools, more likely to consider schools offering more generous scholarship and financial aid awards, more likely to stay closer to home, and more likely to make enrollment deposits to more than one school to keep options open throughout the summer. We knew other colleges and universities would be mindful of the financial challenges families were facing and would likely admit more students and offer more generous financial aid to enroll their targeted class. Students receiving multiple offers of admission and financial aid could potentially mean fewer students accepting DU’s offer to enroll than in previous years. If we were going to compete in this challenging marketplace, we knew we needed to think differently and implement new strategies. We needed to maximize the size of our applicant pool, encourage more students to complete the application process, admit more students and admit them earlier in the process, increase financial aid and communicate value repeatedly. We also increased the number of students offered a spot on our wait list.

Q A

How many more students did you admit this year?

Our goal was to enroll a first-year class of 1,145 students this fall. Without compromising academic quality, we

14 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

admitted 5,925 first-time, first-year students, compared to 4,595 admitted last year. We predicted that 3–4 percent fewer students would accept our offer of admission, and that’s exactly what happened. But as of July 31, we had 1,232 deposits, almost 90 more than expected.

Q

You said one of the University’s strategies was to increase the number of applicants. How did you do that?

A

The approach was very tactical. We created a streamlined Web application that was pre-populated with information we had captured previously about the student. The application only asked for essential information we needed and as a result was easier and more efficient to complete. The No. 1 consideration for students today is efficiency. They are accustomed to doing everything online. We designed an application with all of that in mind, and as a result we witnessed a 29 percent increase in applications.

Q

One of the things that differentiates a university most is the academic quality of its students. Are you sacrificing quality for numbers?

A

Not at all. We not only had a larger applicant pool this year, but the academic quality of the students applying improved. The academic profile for those expected to enroll this fall is as strong as ever. One of the academic measures we track is the percentage of students enrolling who graduated from the top 10 percent of their high school class. This fall, 47 percent of our new students are from the top 10 percent. That compares to 42 percent last year and 35 percent two years ago. Equally important, the racial and ethnic diversity of our new students increased from 15.5 percent to 18 percent of the class.

Tom Willoughby has been DU’s vice chancellor for enrollment since 2004.

DU by the Numbers

Wayne Armstrong

Women’s Library Association Bookstack Statistics Number of volunteers

20

Chancellor Coombe, Mayor John Hickenlooper, Mary Jean O’Malley and Zoee Turrill celebrate the launch of the bike-sharing program May 18.

35,000

DU to launch bike-sharing program

Categories of books

Chancellor Robert Coombe and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper commended University of Denver students May 18, recognizing the students’ commitment to sustainability as the University launched a new bike library program. The pilot program, which establishes a pool of 20 bicycles that can be borrowed free of charge on campus this fall, will eventually roll into a citywide bike-sharing program. The city initiative will include about 600 bikes and scores of pick-up and drop-off kiosks around Denver. DU will host two of those kiosks when the city program starts next spring. In the meantime, it will be up to DU to test the program. Hickenlooper, speaking on campus to nearly 100 students, faculty and staff, said he was especially impressed by the dedication of seniors Mary Jean O’Malley and Zoee Turrill. The two partnered with the city, then worked with campus supporters to raise $50,000 to help bring the city bike-share program to DU. Academic departments, student groups and campus organizations all donated. Coombe thanked the students for their involvement from the start and for finding new ways for DU to become more environmentally friendly. “It is really wonderful to see the campus community driving this effort forward with such vigor,” he said. “We have an obligation as an institution to act in a responsible way with the land and the air and the environment as a whole … We intend to keep up our part of the bargain.” Hickenlooper also thanked Coombe for his willingness to support new projects. “You are more fortunate than you can ever imagine to have someone like that at the helm,” Hickenlooper told the assembled crowd. In 2007 Coombe signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. With that, he formed the campus Sustainability Council, comprised of faculty, staff and students who have crafted a plan to make DU carbon neutral. Off to a fast start, the council has been part of recycling and composting initiatives, power-saving programs and the bicycle library. Hickenlooper closed the event with a surprise by reading an official city proclamation. Recognizing the efforts of the students who helped join the University of Denver and the City of Denver in bike sharing, May 18, 2009, will forever be known in the city of Denver as “Mary Jean O’Malley and Zoee Turrill Day.” >>For more about DU’s green efforts, see Going Green on page 26.

90 plus

Boxes of books donated each month

1,400

Average number of books sold each month on campus

1,100

Average number of books sold online each month

122

Total monthly sales online and on campus

$2,350

—Compiled by Evelyn Reid, president of WLA —Chase Squires



Number of books

WLA book sales take place in the Mary Reed Building Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

University of Denver Magazine Update 15

Morgridge College of Education has new dean

Pioneers Top 10

Dining etiquette tips 1. A  s a guest, don’t select the most expensive item on the menu. 2. D  on’t be the only person at the table to order an appetizer.

4. B  efore you begin to eat, wait for all of the individuals seated at your table to be served and for your host to begin eating. This holds true for each course. If your host indicates that it is all right to begin eating, you may do so. 5. Use your cutlery from the outside in. 6. O  nly cut enough food for the next mouthful. 7. I f you wish to stop eating temporarily and don’t want the server to take the plate away, cross the fork and knife on the plate.

9. P ass both the salt and the pepper when asked, “Please pass the salt.” 10. Pass food to the right.

iStockphoto

Compiled by School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management professor and etiquette expert Robert Mill



16 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

—Jim Berscheidt

Chinese sculpture debuts at Penrose Library Sometimes you have to seek out art, explore its subtleties and ponder its muted hue. Then there’s Happy Life #8, a bold, bright new sculpture that stands tall and proud in DU’s Penrose Library lobby. The fiberglass sculpture by artist Chen Wenling features a smiling Chinese farmer hoisting an immensely fat sow on his shoulders. The sculpture is an accessible and enjoyable piece that can be viewed on a variety of levels, says Dan Jacobs, DU art curator and Myhren Gallery director. And at nearly eight feet tall and coated in bright red automotive paint, it’s hard to miss. At first blush, the sculpture is eye pleasing and whimsical. But look a little deeper and, Jacobs says, there are messages from the artist. There’s a story of interaction between Western and Eastern worlds. In Asia, Jacobs says, the pig is seen as a sign of prosperity and good times. In the West, the pig can signify greed and excess. Combine the two, and you start to see a Chinese farmer who appears happy but is saddled with something so enormous it raises questions about the moment’s sustainability. The sculpture has a distinct Chinese quality about it, Jacobs says, employing both a farmer with Asian features and the color red, which often is associated with China. But it also has a Western echo, as Jacobs notes the clear similarity to iconic European works of a farmer carrying a calf on his shoulders. Happy Life is at DU indefinitely courtesy of Michael Micketti, Tom Whitten and Robischon Gallery; it will move to the Shwayder Art Building this fall. —Chase Squires

Jeff Haessler

8. T o signal the server that you are finished, place your fork and knife together in the four o’clock position.

Wayne Armstrong

3. I f you must leave the table in the middle of the meal, put your napkin on the seat of your chair, never on the table.

Chancellor Robert Coombe has appointed Gregory Anderson as dean of the Morgridge College of Education. Prior to his position at DU, Anderson was an associate professor of education at Columbia University. He was on leave from the school while serving as a program officer of highereducation policy at the Ford Foundation in New York City. “We are delighted that Greg Anderson will lead the Morgridge College as we seek to position it as a catalyst for positive change in education,” Coombe says. At the foundation, Anderson oversaw one of the largest portfolios of international and domestic higher-education grants. He is a member of executive committees of multi-foundation partnerships and foundation-wide initiatives involving the U.S., Africa, Central and Latin America and Asia. He also serves on the foundation’s Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program Division, leading a strategic planning team responsible for developing a new vision for U.S. and international higher-education planning.  The Morgridge College of Education recently completed a $35 million fundraising campaign, which includes construction costs associated with  a new building, three endowed faculty positions and the creation of new institutes and scholarships.

People

Taste of success By Nathan Solheim

Camillo has earned the right to be a food snob. The Italian native and professor at DU’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management has worked in hotels and restaurants around the world, including the German Presidential Palace, where he served dignitaries such as Queen Elizabeth and Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Camillo is an expert in Italian cuisine, wine and coffee and a member of the Colorado Chefs Hall of Fame. In his personal kitchen, he makes 95 percent of his own food—hand-rolling pasta and cooking with olive oil from his family’s olive grove in Italy. “Italian food is so simple; that’s why it’s the best in the world,” he says. “What you find here in America is not true Italian food. In Italy, we use six or seven spices—and oregano is only for pizza.” Whether it’s in the classroom or the kitchen, Camillo takes time to educate those around him. For instance, he’ll tell you that a certain omnipresent coffee chain perpetuates an abomination that passes for espresso only in the United States. From his humble beginnings in the small village of Sante Croce Di Magliano—located in one of Italy’s poorest regions—to his success in restaurants and hotels in the United Arab Emirates, England, New Zealand and elsewhere, Camillo brings a lifetime of experience into the classroom. “Whether my experience was good or bad, the students will know what to do when it happens to them,” says Camillo, who also has taught at the California Culinary Academy and San Francisco State University. Many of his lessons could only come from his years in the trenches. He can talk about dealing with the local media. He can talk about developing relationships with local police and fire departments. He can talk about what to do when someone dies in your hotel. “He brought a lot of practical industry knowledge to the classroom,” says Josh Robbins (BA hospitality and finance ’08), who’s now the staff accountant for the Four Seasons Resort and Hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Brian Green (BS hospitality ’08) remembers Camillo’s senior restaurant class as a hands-on experience. “It was common to discuss something in class and head down to the kitchen for the second half of class to put the theory into use,” says Green, now the bar manager for the Little Nell Hotel in Aspen, Colo. Camillo seems to have found a place to finally settle down after a nomadic career. Though he traveled to China for research and to teach management classes at South China Normal University in Guangzhou this past July, he can’t wait to get back into his classroom at DU and teach. “There’s no better reward than to walk in a classroom and see 30 faces waiting for you to tell them what they’re going to learn today,” Camillo says.



Wayne Armstrong

Angelo

University of Denver Magazine Update 17



DU names new men’s lacrosse head coach

Josef Korbel School dean announces retirement

Former Princeton men’s lacrosse coach Bill Tierney has been named the head men’s lacrosse coach at the University of Denver. During his 22 seasons with Princeton, Tierney led the Tigers to six NCAA championships, eight NCAA championship games, 10 NCAA Final Four appearances and 14 Ivy League championships. He compiled a 238–86 career record at Princeton and has a career collegiate record of 272–93 for a .745 winning percentage. In 1992, Tierney won the Morris Touchstone Award as the Division I Coach of the Year to go along with the Division III Coach of the Year honor he received in 1983 at Rochester Institute of Technology. He was elected to the Long Island Chapter Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1994 and the New Jersey Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1999. Outside of his collegiate coaching honors, Tierney coached the United States to a world championship in 1998 and was inducted into the U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame as part of the 2002 class. Tierney replaces Jamie Munro, who resigned on May 7 after posting a 91– 70 mark in 11 seasons. Tierney began as head coach of the Pioneers on July 1.

The person who helped build the Josef Korbel School of International Studies into one of the best international studies programs in the nation will step down next year. Dean Tom Farer plans to leave the position on June 30, 2010, after 14 years. Farer says he plans on teaching and writing after he leaves the post. When Farer became dean, the program was known as the Graduate School of International Studies. In 2008 it was renamed in honor of the school’s first dean, Josef Korbel, the father of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Farer also oversaw construction of an addition to Ben Cherrington Hall, the Korbel School’s home. Chancellor Robert Coombe says Farer will become a University Professor, a special designation held by only two others at DU. The chancellor says he’s confident someone with an extraordinary background will be recruited to lead the Korbel School. A search committee will be formed to recruit a new dean.

—Media Relations Staff

—Jim Berscheidt

18 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

Essay

A little remembrance By Margaret Earley Whitt

DU Archives

Stuart

James placed his briefcase on the desk. Maybe he would open it right then, or maybe not. He looked at the class, called someone by name and asked a question. The question might be something like this: “‘Space is license.’ Who said that? What do you think it means?” Or “What is guilt?” And the called-upon would venture a response. We always had the idea that Stuart wasn’t fishing; he was starting a conversation. These questions were attached to an early American literature class, and the subject matter would have been the Puritans. Stuart preferred—it seems to me now in retrospect—to suggest things, to make connections by associating one text with another, one idea here with something he had just read the other night. At this point, he would reach into his briefcase and pull out a book. Another time he would stop in the middle of a point— maybe he had the whole class laughing about something— and his face would grow somber. He would get that faraway look in his eye, and, for a minute, we ceased to exist for him. He would tell about a World War II mission he flew. About what his crewmates’ response was when they dropped a bomb. All laughter stopped. Then he would look at the class again and say: “Happiness is going through life with blinders on.” Then just as suddenly as the mood changed one way, he shifted it in another direction. Many people considered Stuart James their best friend. When I asked him why so many people liked him so much, he shrugged his shoulders and made a reference to John Singer. He was talking about a deaf mute in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Singer was the one everybody wanted to tell their problems to, even though they all knew he couldn’t hear a word they said. When I wrote my first paper for Stuart, he showed me how it wasn’t very good by drawing a series of short lines on a scrap of paper. He pointed to the spaces between those lines: “Here is what you left in your head. You didn’t write it down.” I understood instantly what he meant, and that image has helped me more than once in my own writing and in the way I would come to talk to students about their writing. Stuart said he thought teaching was a lot like throwing a baseball into the Grand Canyon. You keep waiting for some sound to come back to you. Sometimes you just wait. Stuart James was a mainstay in the DU Department of English from 1957 until he retired in the early 1980s. As a graduate student, I was fortunate to have him for two classes, and when I think about my own teaching at the University of Denver, I know it was Stuart James who shaped the teacher I became. He taught me the importance of telling stories and teaching by suggestion and association. Some teachers we just don’t forget; Stuart James was one who made a difference in the lives of thousands of us over the years who had the opportunity to expand our worlds through exposure to his vision.

Margaret Earley Whitt (PhD ’86) taught English at DU from 1987 until her retirement to North Carolina in 2008. Stuart James died in 1995 and is memorialized by a monument at the southwest corner of DU’s Sturm Hall. A Gaelic inscription at its base reads “Go deo inar Chroi”—always in our hearts.



University of Denver Magazine Update 19

Views

Higher ground

Photograph by Wayne Armstrong

Most

of the DU community is familiar with Chamberlin Observatory near campus, but DU astronomy students and faculty get even closer to the stars at the MeyerWomble Observatory, located on Mount Evans near Idaho Springs. Near the mountain’s peak at 14,148 feet, the observatory offers the secondhighest vantage point of any telescope on Earth. And because it stands above 40 percent of the atmosphere’s lightdistorting effects, images produced by the observatory sometimes can rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope in clarity and resolution. DU constructed an A-frame building at the summit of Mount Evans in 1935 to support expanding cosmic ray research. In 1972, DU’s first summit telescope replaced the structure, and in 1996, the Meyer-Womble Observatory opened at the location. A gift of $3.8 million from the estate of William Womble (BA ’34) funded construction of the facility and endowed the Womble Professorship in Astronomy. Eric Meyer—an anesthesiologist who designed the telescope—and his wife, Barbara, donated the $1 million telescope and brought the telescope optics from Chicago personally. >>www.physics.du.edu



20 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009



University of Denver Magazine Update 21

Wilcots named associate provost After an extensive internal search, Barbara Wilcots (PhD English ’96) has been named DU’s associate provost for graduate studies. In her new position, Wilcots is responsible for overseeing graduate admission, graduate financial aid and doctoral fellowships, and for enhancing graduate program quality. She also will work closely with deans and faculty members to promote opportunities for collaboration and interdisciplinary programming. Wilcots most recently served as associate dean in the Division of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. A tenured associate professor of English, Wilcots also has served as director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of English and interim director of the First Year English Program. Wilcots received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and graphic arts from Drake University; her master’s degree in journalism and public relations is from Drake as well. She also holds a master’s degree in American literature and rhetoric from Texas Woman’s University. She obtained her PhD in 20th century American literature from DU. —Media Relations Staff

Parent to Parent

Support your student’s spiritual growth Many young people experience a crisis of faith while attending college. Once they find themselves on their own, some kids seem to falter when exposed to conflicting value systems and less overall supervision. As parents, we don’t want them to lose their way after we have spent years nurturing their spiritual growth while under our wings. Consider the following suggestions to help students thrive in their spiritual life during their college years: 1. E  ncourage students to discover ways to stay in communion with God while at school—for example, campus ministry groups that reach out to students. Be willing to assist in exploring the available options. 2. A  sk them about the ways they have seen God working in their lives at school—in class, dorms, discussions with professors or among friends. Also help them recall ways God has helped them in the past. 3. C  hallenge them to pray for more than just success on their exams and papers; remind them to consider the needs of their classmates and professors and pray about these things as well. College can be a great time to get to know God even better.

Reach higher… Make your mark in our community Give to the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund. Support the excellence of a DU education with your gift to scholarships, financial aid and quality programs.

4. A  sk them about the ways their faith has been challenged at school. Reassure them that these things can be a normal part of their growth process and can be used as fuel for their own spiritual fire. 5. B  e mindful of your reactions to things students tell you. This is where some of your best listening skills can be extremely helpful. You can influence your student’s thinking through open discussion. 6. S uggest they find a spiritual mentor on campus with whom they can regularly spend time (our son has received great support through his weekly meetings with one of the campus ministry leaders at DU). 7. S peak words of life and blessing over them, trusting that God will be present and active in their lives. Remember that God loves them and try to resist the temptation to worry or be fearful. 8. A  nd, of course, pray, and ask others in your faith community to help you in this vital role. —John Kloeckner

giving.du.edu



22 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

1-800-448-3232

DU Parents Council member John Kloeckner and his wife, Carol, have been married for more than 25 years. They have five children, including David Kloeckner, who is in his second year in DU’s Pioneer Leadership Program. DU supports students from all faith traditions through its Center for Religious Services (www.du.edu/crs).

History

When campus caught the flu By Steve Fisher

needless crowding … Smother your coughs and sneezes … Wash your hands before eating … ” These words of advice bring to mind warnings heard around the world during the recent H1N1/swine flu scare, but they were actually uttered in the fall of 1918 by Dr. William Sharpley, Denver manager of health. The Spanish influenza had finally come to Denver. More than 1,000 had already died in Boston, and more than 100 in Chicago. The first Denver fatality was a young DU student named Blanche Kennedy, who died at the home of her brother William on Sept. 28, 1918. Kennedy is something of a mystery. Twenty years old at the time of her death, she came from a prominent Colorado pioneer family. Her father, also named William, had been a member of the Colorado This emergency hospital in Fort Funston, Kan., was similar to the temporary hospital built at DU to treat Constitutional Convention of 1876 and was influenza victims in 1918. later city attorney of Leadville. Her uncle was D. F. Crilly, who built the Windsor Hotel in Denver. According to a Rocky Mountain News article at the time, Blanche acquired the flu while visiting family in Chicago. A week later, brother William also died of the flu, becoming Denver’s sixth casualty. William had been a Denver assistant city attorney and left behind a wife and child. His home at 2070 Birch St. was immediately quarantined. Records in the registrar’s office show that Kennedy attended the DU Preparatory School from 1916 to 1918, though she never appears in the student yearbook, the student newspaper or in any other DU administrative records. Classes at DU had just begun when Blanche died. On Oct. 2, 1918, DU and all other schools in Denver were shut down by order of the city board of health. A week later, all outdoor gatherings in Denver were banned. Though DU astronomer Herbert Howe noted in his diary on Oct. 7 that “no one of our students is known to be ill with [the flu],” what most concerned then-Chancellor Henry Buchtel was the fact that 266 Student Army Training Corps (SATC) members were living in close quarters in the Alumni Gymnasium, training for possible future deployment to Europe. World War I was raging, and earlier in the year military training had become compulsory for all men younger than 30 enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts. Soon, so many SATC men became ill that a temporary hospital was built next to the gymnasium. It quickly filled to overflowing. There do not appear to have been any fatalities on campus, however. World War I brought great changes to campus, but now the war was winding down. An armistice was signed on Nov. 11 —during the flu closure—bringing an end to the war. That same day, Sharpley lifted his orders mandating that schools be closed. On Nov. 16 the football season was allowed to begin and DU beat the Aggies. On Nov. 18, DU officially reopened. The four platoons of SATC men were mustered out on Dec. 20. Statistics of the period are unreliable, but it’s estimated that between 40 million and 100 million people died of the flu worldwide between 1918 and 1920, 675,000 of them in the United States. There were between 3,000 and 8,000 flu victims in Colorado, around 1,500 in the city of Denver. Blanche Kennedy appears to have been the only one with a direct DU connection.



Courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

“Avoid

University of Denver Magazine Update 23

Arts

Ancient technique, modern world By Greg Glasgow

Wayne Armstrong

For

a different view of many of DU’s iconic buildings, one need just visit the on-campus studio of Chen Hao, a Chinese painter and visiting scholar who came to the University to share his expertise in urban landscape with students and faculty. Chen grew up studying his country’s traditional method of painting. But unlike his ancestors, he spends most of his time in the urban world, not the world of nature. Using a hand brush, Chinese ink and rice paper, he creates delicate visions of the modern world as beautiful and evocative as the ancients’ depictions of trees and mountains. “Why not use traditional Chinese painting to express [feelings different than those of] the ancient people?” says Chen, who lives and paints in a studio apartment in DU’s Nagel Hall. “We are not ancient people. We can learn the techniques of the ancients but we can express our feelings about the modern world.” Chen, an associate professor and deputy director in the painting department of the Xu Beihong School of Arts at Renmin University in Beijing, received a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council to come to the U.S. as a visiting scholar. Through connections with Elizabeth Owen, DU assistant professor of Asian art history, he chose to come to Denver. The 38-year-old artist started his one-year residency at DU in April, and by summer he already had completed numerous paintings of DU buildings. He also ventured into downtown Denver in the spring to sketch snow-covered streets and buildings. “As a modern painter in traditional styles, Chen uses painting modes, spatial features and other characteristics of the past to re-invigorate and inform the art of the present,” Owen says. “In this, he adds his own modern twist by incorporating modern, urban settings, skyscrapers and other city scenery within his subtle and nuanced landscape images.”

“Night View of Nagel Hall”



24 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

“A Far View of Denver”

You’re likely to see Chen carrying a sketchbook around campus, but rarely a camera. Working from a photograph, he says, doesn’t allow an artist to access his emotions about a scene. “If I see something, it’s more accurate and more exciting than cameras and videos,” he says. “If I’m just walking through campus and see sunlight or a sunset that’s so beautiful, I will remember it and when I get back to my studio I will try to paint it.” Chen is well known in China. His paintings have been collected by the China National Museum and foreign dignitaries, and he has written two art textbooks, including a 2007 book on urban landscape. He also designed two commemorative postage stamps in honor of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics. “I don’t think the DU community is really aware of what a young, famous ‘superstar’ we have in our very midst,” Owen says. “Professor Chen’s scholarly and artistic talents are definitely an asset to our students and faculty.” During his time at DU, Chen will visit studio classes and courses on Asian art history, and he will give a lecture this fall. In addition, he will demonstrate his technique and exhibit his paintings.



University of Denver Magazine Update 25

Wayne Armstrong

DU plans for carbon neutrality

Going Green by 2050.

By Chase Squires



26 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

H

umans first learned how to release carbon into the atmosphere with smoky campfires at the dawn of time. Since then, if there’s one thing we’ve gotten truly great at, it’s producing carbon, more and more of it, stuffing our atmosphere with greenhouse gases and turning our planet into a hothouse on the verge of catastrophic climate change. Now, the University of Denver is announcing what may prove its most ambitious initiative: a Universitywide commitment to sustainability. DU is poised to produce a new generation of leaders dedicated to planetary sustainability and a campus that will be entirely carbon neutral by 2050. Fulfilling the University’s pledge to the American College and University Climate Commitment program, the DU Sustainability Council—comprised of students, faculty and staff—spent 15 months hammering out the University of Denver Sustainability Plan and Report. In June, the 93-page blueprint was delivered to senior administrators. With backing from the Board of Trustees, it was approved by Chancellor Robert Coombe. “We have only just begun with the sustainability initiative at DU,” says Provost Gregg Kvistad, who serves on the Sustainability Council, lending the administration’s support to an array of environmental initiatives. “An enormous amount of hard work is ahead of us, but we have the people, the commitment, the ingenuity and the institutional will to move it forward.”

U

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nder the plan, DU will achieve climate neutrality by 2050, drastically reducing its share of the greenhouse gases blamed for polluting the atmosphere and impacting the world’s climate. Along the way, the council has committed to adopting new technologies as they are developed, meeting interim mileposts and achieving reductions at every opportunity. Members of the University community will be asked to change the way they do things: the way they teach and learn, the way they get to work, where they get their food, how they design learning spaces and how they grow flowers. Nothing is untouchable. Even the climate inside University buildings is fair game, as DU began raising thermostats in offices and classrooms this summer to cut energy consumption. “The hard work starts now,” says Lyndsay Agans, clinical assistant professor at the Morgridge College of Education and lead author of the plan. “We have the resources to do this, to be a national leader. This truly fits the mission of our university. We can do this. But it will take work.” The plan is a roadmap, spelling out details of a multifaceted approach to sustainability that goes beyond the nuts and bolts of fossil fuels and renewable energy. It is all-encompassing, pressing for change in the way people interact on campus, both with their environment and with one another. It calls for a lifestyle that embraces understanding and conservation across the DU campus.



Fred Cheever, a Sturm College of Law professor who chaired the council from its inception in February 2008 until the sustainability plan was delivered to Coombe in June, says incorporating sustainable goals into every part of campus life is the ultimate aim, making sustainability a concern before undertaking any action, even something as simple as turning on a light switch or turning up the thermostat on a chilly day. “The cheapest kilowatt-hour is the one you don’t use,” he says. Beyond energy consumption and conservation, though, the plan calls for incorporating sustainability into DU’s curriculum, teaching students the importance of conservation and sustainable development. “Sustainability has made it into the public consciousness, and the University of Denver, in particular, has done a great job of stepping out and understanding the burden, the responsibility, that higher-education institutions bear in relation to sustainability,” Agans says. “Universities and colleges are obligated, given their role as social institutions, to educate students and change the citizenry with programs built around sustainability,” she adds. “It’s about changing the dominant paradigm, and universities play a key role in that. They’re the essential location for changing that.” The plan calls for the incorporation of sustainability issues into student orientation, the introduction of locally grown foods into dining halls, the use of organic fertilizers and pesticides on campus University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 27

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landscapes, and care to ensure that DU’s institutional investments continue to reflect the University’s commitment to global social responsibility. And the plan is about people, too, calling for continued efforts to foster diversity and equity through everything from diversity initiatives to domestic-partner benefits. DU already has taken concrete steps. The Sustainability Council didn’t just discuss issues; members came to monthly meetings prepared to act. Since September 2008, the University has rolled out a massively revamped recycling program, announced a bike-sharing partnership with the city of Denver, installed a vehicle fueling station for cleaner-burning compressed natural gas, retrofitted a skating rink and the lighting system in the Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness for greater efficiency, and created a pilot parking program that rewards the owners of energy-efficient vehicles with prime parking spots. On the academic side, DU for the first time this fall offers an undergraduate minor in sustainability that can be tailored to mesh with virtually any major. Agans, who focused much of her doctoral work on the role of sustainability in education, says adding an undergraduate educational component was a natural start. Across DU’s decentralized campus, many educators already were teaching aspects of sustainability, but it took a concerted effort—one she says many were open to—for the curriculum committee to pull together a minor. Next, Agans says, there’s room for even more focused efforts, such as graduate programs, research projects, the incubation of new technologies and business models, and cross-campus collaboratives connecting different colleges. “When you think about higher-education institutions changing society, there are a lot of student efforts, a lot of grassroots efforts, a lot of civic-engagement efforts, but we’ve also got to look at what we do as educators,” Agans says. “There’s an amazing amount of research being done by our own faculty, so it’s a matter of connecting that and saying, ‘Yes, we are engaged in sustainability.’ It’s about preparing students for that new green economy.” From the start, the faculty and staff members on the council have embraced student participation, welcoming undergraduate and graduate students as peers. And students have led the way on new initiatives. It was Daniels College of Business master’s candidate Charlie Coggeshall who took his pilot recycling program at Daniels and worked with facilities managers and administrators to turn it into the campus-wide “Get Caught Green-Handed” single-stream recycling program. It’s proven so popular in just one academic year that offices and classrooms are turning in more recyclables than trash. And it was undergraduate students Mary Jean O’Malley and Zoee Turrill who latched on to a budding Denver bike-sharing proposal to develop a city/University partnership and launch a campus pilot program that will meld with the city program in 2010. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper came to campus to help celebrate the launch, which drew national attention. Hickenlooper showed great enthusiasm at DU’s involvement and recognized O’Malley and Turrill with a city proclamation.



28 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

“You don’t have great cities without great universities,” the mayor said. “DU was the first institution that stepped up right away and said, ‘How can we be a part of this? It’s a perfect match with our core values and principles.’” Chancellor Coombe has backed the sustainability effort from the start, dating back to 2007, when he signed the Climate Commitment. From there, he has championed the nexus where DU’s many missions come together, encouraging the University community to harness the creative energy in laboratories and classrooms across campus, serve the public good and deliver quality educational programs. “This is going to be a great learning experience for our students, one that couples student engagement in real issues with deep classroom learning about how to reasonably interpret those issues,” Coombe says. “This is one of those areas where we can serve both our students and the public good by graduating capable, wellinformed men and women whose lives can influence the future, and by using our intellectual assets to develop new ideas that can have a direct impact.”

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ooking ahead, Agans sees campus engagement as a key component to maintaining the momentum. The road ahead is long, and the work will take many hands and hearts to carry forward, she says. Setting a goal that’s 41 years in the future may seem like the easy way out, but Agans says it’s actually harder, because it demands patience and persistence, commitment to the larger goal while hitting interim targets along the way. Patience comes in as DU waits for new technologies that make solar, wind and hydrogen power more efficient and economically feasible. And a big, often overlooked, component to sustainability is the fiscal sustainability of DU, she says. A university that spends itself out of existence is carbon neutral. But it also doesn’t do any good. It might be easier for the University to simply buy its way into carbon neutrality, purchasing carbon credits as needed. And though offsets are indeed a part of the DU plan, Kvistad says credits alone are not the answer. “Credits are a market device to displace responsibility,” he says. “And that is not consistent with the University’s values.” So the future will come as it comes, and Agans says the council must continue to drive innovation, collaboration and action. “This year comes down to the people and the students and giving the people of our community room to do and to follow their passions,” she says. “It’s also about doing what we say we’re going to do. “When we were writing the report, part of it was deciding what was going into it and being transparent and authentic, not saying [we would do] something that we couldn’t do. A lot of institutions will say they’re going to be carbon neutral. We wouldn’t just say it. We were checking our science and checking our math independently— can we really do this?” She’s optimistic. Attitudes do change. People do change. “A few years ago recycling was an odd thing,” she says. “Now we recycle more than we throw away. That’s been a very quick change. We can do this.”

Counting carbon DU has a lot to consider when measuring its carbon footprint. It’s not just about the fuel combusted to heat buildings on campus; it’s the University’s share of coal burned at the power plant, it’s fuel burned by company-owned vehicles, it’s even the carbon emitted by airplanes taking students to their study-abroad destinations. Below are some of the actual greenhouse gas emissions produced by DU in 2008, followed by projected amounts in 2012, 2020 and 2050 under the sustainability plan. The University plans to make reductions in as many categories as possible and offset any remainder for a net balance of zero emissions by 2050.

2008 (ACTUAL)

2012*

2020*

2050*

UTILITY COMBUSTION:

10,946

9,748

10,675

5,338

VEHICLE FLEET:

272

196

196

196

PURCHASED ELECTRICITY: 44,084

39,543

33,263

8,238

COMMUTING:

14,188

9,579

9,047

9,047

AIR TRAVEL:

11,276

10,704

10,704

10,704

Total:

80,766

69,770

63,885

33,523 * Projected

AMOUNTS ARE IN CO2 METRIC TON EQUIVALENTS. ONE CAR EMITS APPROXIMATELY 6.8 MTEs PER YEAR.

Visit www.du.edu/green for the full report and an inventory of DU’s greenhouse gas emissions.



University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 29

The Rising Cost of College By Jan Thomas Illustrations by Steve Schader



30 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

Ever-expanding costs are pricing college out of the reach of many. At DU, administrators are working

U

to change that equation.

Until the 1944 GI Bill rewrote the script on higher education, few outside America’s

elite could afford to attend college. But under the bill’s umbrella, and with help from a host of other financial and societal changes, college attendance surged, tripling between 1960 and 1975 and increasing 65 percent between 1975 and 2007, according to U.S. Census data. For many, college became more rite of passage than unattainable American dream—at least for a while.

Tuition and attendance fees rose 439 percent between 1982 and 2006, according

to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and the American middle class, battered by deep recessions in the 1980s and ’90s, felt the pinch. By the time the current recession hit its stride in 2008, college affordability was already a national concern.

Now, with layoffs and foreclosures continuing, personal lines of credit constricted, job openings shaky and real economic stability at least two years away, parents, politicians and academics can’t help but wonder if there really is such a thing as a highereducation bubble. And if so, has that bubble finally burst?



University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 31

“If costs continue to escalate, the audience for private higher education will simply grow narrower and narrower,” says DU Chancellor Robert Coombe.

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conomic bubbles occur when commodities sell at a level far greater than their actual value—and it’s that five-letter word, v-a-l-u-e, that makes what’s happening in higher education a hot topic of debate. In a May 2009 editorial written for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Joseph Marr Cronin, former Massachusetts secretary of educational affairs, and Howard Horton, president of New England College of Business and Finance, argue that the term is apt. “Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot for a home are now asking whether it is worth spending $1,000 a week to send their kids to college,” they write. “There is a growing sense among the public that higher education might be overpriced and under-delivering.” On the flip side are data that prove higher education generates results. Among the most compelling are U.S. Census statistics that show that workers with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $57,181 and those with an advanced degree earned an average of $80,977 in 2007, while those with only a high school diploma earned an average of $31,286. The obvious takeaway is that those with college degrees earn more and almost always recover the cost of their higher-education investment. Still, arguments that point only to higher education’s long-term value don’t address the fundamental concerns of parents like John Worden (BA ’81), who spend months looking for schools that are a good educational and financial fit, only to reach the conclusion that “unless you have a bucket of money available somewhere, a college degree is very difficult to obtain.” Private colleges and universities nationwide are being forced



32 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

to confront the very real potential for middle-class flight to more affordable public counterparts. Although DU hasn’t encountered that problem yet— applications for the 2009–10 academic year were almost 30 percent higher than they were in 2008—the sentiment that leads some families to choose public over private education is understandable. “Private higher education has gotten to be very expensive. It’s an extraordinary investment for students and their families,” says DU Chancellor Robert Coombe. “We have been working hard to control costs, but we are well aware of the fact that if costs continue to escalate, then no matter what their origin, even if they’re just associated with the real cost of doing business, the audience for private higher education will simply grow narrower and narrower.” For Worden, sticker shock caused scholarships to become the determining factor in his family’s college search. “My kids are student-athletes,” Worden says. “We’re finding colleges willing to help them [with financial aid], but basically schools that are not interested in my children coming and playing athletics are completely ruled out. That narrowed the field considerably. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s definitely affected the schools we look at and the choices we feel we have.”

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n a 2008 National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education survey, 55 percent of respondents said a college degree is necessary to succeed, but only 29 percent said qualified students can afford the investment. Combine statistics like that with a chorus of voter complaints about higher-education costs, and politicians take notice. This year, the Obama administration announced 2010 budget

proposals for higher education that include establishing a Pell Grant maximum of $5,550 for the 2010–11 academic year and indexing the maximum grant to grow faster than inflation; increasing the tuition tax credit for the first two years of college from $1,800 to $2,500 and making it partially refundable; increasing Perkins Loans from $1 billion to $6 billion a year and from 1,800 participating schools to 4,400; providing new student and parent loans through the federal government; and a new five-year, $2.5 billion fund to improve college access and completion. The administration also streamlined the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). These changes fall on the heels of those mandated when former President George W. Bush signed the Higher Education Opportunity Act into law in 2008. A portion of the act created six College Affordability and Transparency Lists that will document, among other things, the top 5 percent of institutions with the largest percent change in tuition and fees over the past three academic years. Schools that fall into this category will be required to submit letters to the secretary of education that identify the portions of their budgets that generated the largest cost increases, explain why those increases occurred and outline their plans to reduce similar cost increases going forward. Uninvited policymaker tinkering may be part of the new normal for higher education, but it’s not government intervention that really has schools worried. “All you have to do is take a look at data concerning the socioeconomic distribution of college graduates today,” Coombe says. “Something like two-thirds of all students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree by the time they’re 24 come from families in the top quartile of family incomes; less than 10 percent come from the bottom quartile. [Because] students who earn a bachelor’s degree or higher have far greater incomes throughout their lives, their children are far more likely to go to college and graduate. There is a feedback loop that contributes to economic polarization. “To the extent that higher education becomes less and less accessible to those with lower family incomes or to students coming from families where they are the first generation going to college, this polarization widens,” Coombe adds. “It’s imperative that higher ed respond in ways that make higher education more affordable for a very broad socioeconomic distribution of people.”

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hat will that response look like? Voluntary limits on tuition increases are clearly step one. Earlier this year, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities reported that private, nonprofit colleges and universities enacted the smallest average increase in tuition and fees since 1972. DU’s 4.9 percent tuition increases for the 2008–09 and 2009–10 academic years were its lowest in a decade. Step two requires schools to find innovative ways to cut costs. “The primary driver of expense increases is people. This is an extraordinarily labor-intensive combination of both education and student-life programs,” says DU Provost Gregg Kvistad. In the coming year, faculty and staff compensation is expected to comprise nearly 60 percent of the University’s operating expenses—an increase of 7 percent in five years. “Cost is a big deal,” Kvistad adds. “There’s a fair amount of rhetoric, as there is with all sorts of policy issues about waste and inefficiency, but certainly universities and colleges need to tighten



DU UNDERGRADUATE TUITION Dollars $34,596

35,000

350

$32,976 $31,428

30,000

300

$29,628 $27,756

25,000

250

20,000

200

15,000

150

10,000

100

5,000

50

0

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

2008-09

2009-10

0

2004 05

up. They need to look at what they’re doing and be very critical of that, both from the perspective of what is being produced by the dollars they spend and who is being employed to do that work.” Approaches vary campus to campus. Last fall, DU initiated a series of cost-cutting measures that ranged from a voluntary and non-voluntary staff severance program that reduced headcount by 125 positions to streamlining supply and expense budgets. The effort cut expenses by more than $12 million and did so in a manner that, Coombe says, “has no adverse impact on our mission to provide the highest quality education to our students, grow a thriving and productive research enterprise and actively serve the public good.” The savings were funneled into critical areas such as financial aid, where they provided a bump to the base amount of money qualifying students receive, increased the base amount of merit scholarships, and added $4 million to the University’s fund for emergency financial aid. Currently, about 80 percent of DU students receive some form of financial support, with roughly 44 percent receiving need-based aid from the University, 22–24 percent receiving talent and merit scholarships, and the remainder receiving student loans from federal and private resources. The pool of undergraduate institutional financial aid—DU scholarships and grants, tuition waivers and student employment—has increased by an average of 9.9 percent annually since 2004, and the University awarded more than $46 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 33

06

million in 2008–09, says Julia Benz, assistant vice chancellor for scholarships and financial aid. (Financial aid numbers for 2009–10 were not yet available when this article went to press.) Even so, DU can’t match the likes of Ivy League offers of free tuition for families earning less than $60,000 annually. So while the University’s rising reputation attracts the best young minds, it has to work doubly hard to retain them, says Tom Willoughby, DU’s vice chancellor for enrollment. “We’ve experienced a significant increase in the number of appeals to financial aid decisions, and the reality is that there is increased financial need,” Benz says. “We require updated documentation to review appeals, and what we receive often shows huge changes in financial circumstances. “We also field a lot of phone calls from people asking about want-based aid,” Benz adds. “It usually happens when there isn’t a huge shift in the family finances, but they’re worried about the

596$34,596

350

$34,596

350DU

REVENUES Millions of Dollars

350

300

300 300

250

250 250

200

200 200

150

100



0

EXPENSES Millions of Dollars

350

300

300

300

250

250

200

200

200

150

150

100

100

100

100

00 20042004 2004 05 05 06050607 060708 0708 08

W

250

150

150

50 5050

9-10 2009-10 2009-10

DU 350

350

150

100

5050 50

00

0

2004 05 05 07 06 2004 2004 05 06 06 07

34 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

future. We work very closely with these families to let them know that if the bottom drops out, if they lose their job, we’re here for them—but until that event happens or we have something that documents that their financial situation has changed, it’s hard for us to respond.” Ultimately, budget cuts, headcount reductions, streamlined operations and greater need for financial assistance are just one part of the big picture. Endowments, which fund scholarships and often are used to pay a portion of schools’ operating budgets, lost value— DU’s dropped 22 percent from a 2008 high of about $300 million before beginning to climb back with help from recovering markets and fundraising efforts. “We have to work independently to address cost concerns apart from whatever the federal or state governments may do,” Coombe says. “Leaders of colleges and universities have to be thinking about how to change their fundamental operating model in a manner that makes it more affordable for students. “For us, it really gets down to the value proposition. Are the value of the education and the vast array of experiences associated with it worth the net cost? In investigating any school, if I were a student or a parent, I’d be asking, ‘What’s the nature of the education here? What’s the nature of the special experiences? What sort of person am I likely to become? What am I going to be capable of doing when I graduate from this place? And what does that look like relative to comparative costs and to net costs?’”

08 07

08

hile colleges and universities feel their way across the changing higher-education landscape, the terrain hasn’t altered much for students and families struggling with the conundrum of needing degrees they can’t afford. The grants, federal loans, federal work-study and federal tax credits and deductions they receive—more than $143 billion during the 2007–08 academic year, according to the College Board—rarely cover all their costs. Two years ago, students borrowed about $19 billion from state and private sources to finance their educations, and many then turned to credit cards to fill the remaining gap. A 2008 Sallie Mae study reports that 30 percent of undergraduates used a credit card to pay tuition and almost one-fifth of college seniors carried balances greater than $7,000. Even those who aren’t funding college with credit cards or loans from questionable sources feel the strain. “My father told me, wherever you get in, I will pay the tuition. He set the bar pretty high,” says Tom Cryer (BSBA ’76). “I wanted to say the same to my kids.” Cryer’s oldest, Caroline, graduated from Duke. His middle son, William, is enrolled at Notre Dame. His youngest, Andrew, starts DU this fall—but the economy is in a very different position now than it was just four years ago. “I sell real estate,” Cryer says. “When Caroline started at Duke in 2005, we paid her tuition out of cash flow. It wasn’t a big deal. This year we took money out of savings for the first time to pay tuition.” Knowing what their families are sacrificing to pay for college is tough for some students to handle. “I think this causes all of us to re-explore our values,” says Jo Calhoun, associate provost for student life. “I think students, in general, love being here, but they’re trying to be as thoughtful

“It’s imperative that higher ed respond in ways that make higher education more affordable for a very broad socioeconomic distribution of people,” Chancellor Coombe says.

as they can about how they can make ends meet and how they can graduate from DU.” During spring quarter 2008, the University created positions for two part-time student advocates whose sole purpose is to work with students who are considering leaving DU because of financial concerns. “We connected the advocates with financial aid, mental health services and student life, then we sent a notice to faculty, staff, RAs, anybody in a student leadership role—literally everyone at the University we could think of—to let them know the student advocates were available,” Calhoun says. More than 40 students took advantage of the new resource in the spring quarter alone, and administrators from other colleges have expressed interest in replicating the program on their campuses. “This was a really homegrown idea,” Calhoun says. “Because of the size school that we are, we’re able to keep a handle on our undergraduate student population. I don’t mean that we can identify every student who’s leaving, but we have a good enough network that, if somebody’s struggling, there’s usually somebody who knows it, be it a faculty member, a resident assistant or a student life staff member. We have that advantage.”

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ithout question, the steps most incoming students take to earn a degree will be far different than those taken just a generation before. Some students work. Some sleuth out little-publicized funding opportunities and then create a patchwork of loans, grants and scholarships that meets their needs. Some take a circuitous route to a



degree, starting at a lower-priced community college, then transferring to a large public or private university. Some, like Sajal Klee (MMP ’09), do all of the above. Homeschooled through elementary and high school, Klee started mapping a path to a college degree early in his senior year. “Economics were a big consideration,” he says. “One of the ways I saved money was to do two years at a community college to fulfill all my general education requirements, then transfer to a university for my junior year.” Klee had DU, Metro State College and the University of Colorado-Denver on his short list, but “DU would only be affordable if I could bring the costs similar to what CU-Denver would be,” he says. “There are certain things that happen automatically when you apply, but a lot of times it really does fall to the student to lead the initiative. I took out federal loans and a couple of private loans. I did work study in the financial aid office and I did DU’s 4+1 program to make everything work.” Under the 4+1 program, Klee earned undergraduate and graduate degrees simultaneously and retained access to undergraduate grants and scholarships from the school. He graduated in August with a BA in political science and public policy, a master’s in public policy, and about $45,000 in student debt. According to a survey conducted by the Project on Student Debt, more than 50 percent of college graduates say the need to pay back student loans is a significant consideration when making a career decision. Even with student loan debt far below that of many of his peers, Klee is definitely part of that debt-conscious group. He drives his mother’s 10-year-old car, has no plans to buy a home anytime soon and plans to live very frugally for the next few years while launching a career. “My dream job would be to be a senior adviser to the president. That’s what I’m shooting for,” Klee says. To get there, he’ll need to go law school. “I’ve applied for three different financial aid advising jobs at George Washington University. The nice thing is, once I work there for six months, I get a tuition waiver so I’ll be able to go to law school part time for free,” Klee says. “Again, it’s all about being proactive and looking at different avenues to finance an education. “I mean, it is your college and your future. In my case, I’m not going to sit around and wait for someone to tell me what I should do or what I should look for.” For more information on scholarship fundraising activities, go to www.du.edu/magazine. Go to www.du.edu/annualreport to download the University’s 2007–08 annual report; DU’s 2008–09 annual report will be released later this fall.

University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 35

Excellence By Greg Glasgow Photos courtesy of DU Archives and DU Athletics Department

DU celebrates 60 years of Pioneers hockey.

Keith Magnuson (above) was a two-time All-American at DU and led the Pioneers to the national title in 1968 and 1969. His death in a car accident in 2003 helped spur the Pioneers to another NCAA victory—their first since Magnuson left DU—in 2004.



36 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

on Ice F

ootball may have left DU in 1961, but Pioneers hockey more than filled the gap, going from an athletic also-ran in the late 1940s to one of the country’s most talked-about college programs in the 1960s. The DU hockey program, which began in 1949, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. The Pioneers are tied for second all-time in NCAA Division I wins with seven NCAA Championships, including back-to-back wins in 1960–61, 1968–69 and 2004–05. DU battles archrival Colorado College every year for the Gold Pan, a trophy that goes to the winner of the annual series between the two local teams. (CC leads 10–6 in 16 years of Gold Pan competition.) As part of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association the Pioneers also have won 11 regular season championships (MacNaughton Cup) and 15 playoff championships (Broadmoor Trophy). Many Pioneers have gone on to play in the National Hockey League, including Chicago Blackhawks great Keith Magnuson (BSBA ’69), Hockey Hall-of-Famer Glenn Anderson (attd. 1979; played for the New York Rangers and Edmonton Oilers) and recent standouts Paul Stastny (attd. 2004–06; Colorado Avalanche) and Matt Carle (attd. 2003–06; Philadelphia Flyers, San Jose Sharks). In 2006, Carle became the first DU player to win the prestigious Hobey Baker Award, an annual honor given to the top NCAA men’s hockey player. Under coaches such as Vern Turner, Neil Celley, Ralph Backstrom and the legendary Murray Armstrong, the Pioneers played on the ice in the DU Arena until 1999, when Magness Arena was completed. In 2004 the Pioneers had their most emotional victory, winning the school’s first NCAA hockey championship in 35 years in memory of former All-American Magnuson, who died in a car accident in December 2003. “Any program that has success, there is a certain culture that is developed through the years that’s passed from one player to the next,” says current coach George Gwozdecky, who joined the Pioneers in 1994. “There’s a tremendous amount of pride in the program that each and every player helped build on. “[Fifty years] is a long time for any program to be around, and to be able to have the continual success that this program has had over the years, it says a lot not only about the commitment from the athletes and students but from the University in general.”



DU hockey players Tim Gould (3), Keith Magnuson (2) and Dale Zeman (6) celebrate their 1969 NCAA victory (their second in a row) by carrying head coach Murray Armstrong onto the ice after a championship game against Cornell in the Broadmoor Arena in Colorado Springs.

Jim Wiste and Cliff Koroll celebrate the Pioneers’ 1968 NCAA victory.

The 1949–50 University of Denver men’s ice hockey team poses for a group portrait with a Packard automobile at Reed Auto Sales in Denver. University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 37

Neil Celley was DU’s head coach from 1951 to 1956.

Coach Murray Armstrong led the Pioneers to six regular-season conference titles, two post-season tournament championships, 11 Frozen Four appearances and five NCAA championships. He was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1974.

Pioneers Head Coach George Gwozdecky came to DU in 1994 and led the team back to national prominence. Under his leadership, the Pioneers won back-to-back NCAA national championships in 2004 and 2005.

In 2006, Pioneer Matt Carle became the first junior defenseman—and the first DU player— to win the Hobey Baker Award for the top player in college hockey.



38 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

DU Captain Ryan Caldwell presented President Bush with a DU hockey jersey in 2004, the year the Pioneers won the school’s first NCAA hockey championship in 35 years.

The 2004–05 Pioneers team poses on the ice after its 4–1 win over North Dakota. Head Coach George Gwozdecky is at far right.

DU alumnus Paul Stastny, who played for the Pioneers in 2004 and 2005, now plays for the Colorado Avalanche.

Matt Carle in action.



A 60th anniversary DU hockey reunion is planned for Oct. 9–11, 2009; visit www.dhaa.org for more information.

University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 39

Wayne Armstrong

Baptist preacher Terrance Carroll brings passion and humility to his “other” job — Colorado’s Speaker of the House.

Keeping the Faith By Richard Chapman



40 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

D

Deep in the stacks of Penrose Library are seven volumes of biography about the Founding Father who owned Terrance Carroll’s great-grandfather. The books have plenty to say about the owner, but the only place you might find Carroll’s ancestor mentioned is in the slave manifests in the appendix, where 330 people are inventoried. There’s nothing in the books about how Great-Grandfather Carroll came to be freed, or why he kept the name of his owner as his own. They don’t tell about his life sharecropping with his son. Nor do they hint at how decades later, this freed slave’s granddaughter, Corine Carroll, came to live in a tough neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where at age 51 she bore Terrance and struggled to raise him as a single mom. The biographies don’t explain how Terrance Carroll immunized himself against the sickness of the streets of southeast Washington and made his way to Colorado to pursue a PhD. They don’t tell about his run for state legislature or how in 2008 he was elected speaker of the House of Representatives—one of the four most powerful positions in Colorado government. None of the books point out that 266 paces north of the Penrose stacks, where the biographies sit unnoticed, Terrance Carroll earned a law degree from the University of Denver in 2005. Or that in Magness Arena, some 250 paces farther on, Carroll addressed the Sturm College of Law’s 2009 spring graduating class as Commencement speaker. Or that 80 years before Carroll became House speaker, the job was held by a Klansman. The dusty biographies don’t tell any of that. They do speak of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a 19th century “conservative abolitionist” who was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and who represented Maryland in the Continental Congress and the U.S. Senate. They speak of how the famous statesman argued with Thomas Jefferson, wrangled with Ben Franklin and might have been the nation’s second president instead of John Adams had he pursued the job. They tell of Charles Carroll’s importance as a Founding Father and his influence on Maryland. But then they stop, unaware that five generations later and 1,658 miles away Carroll’s famous name is carried by another to new acclaim. That the great-grandson of a Carroll plantation slave is courageously steering Colorado into the future. That the Carroll story is still going on. “I ran because I thought I would be a good speaker and would be able to do a good job for Colorado,” Terrance Carroll says. “And my colleagues thought the same. When someone said, ‘Oh, you’re the first black speaker,’ I said, ‘Really?’ “As Dr. King said, we’ve moved toward looking at the content of a person’s character as opposed to the color of their skin. That says a lot for Colorado.”



University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 41

T

o find Speaker Carroll’s story you need to read the newspapers and check the political blogs. Mostly, you need to sit in the gallery at the Capitol. From that historic balcony you can see Terrance Carroll’s leadership in action, the strong arm of the 65-member House swinging the gavel to reform education, involve parents in schools, attract businesses to the state, cut unemployment, finetune criminal justice, ease the effect of foreclosures and trim state spending as revenue streams run low. “I judge myself very harshly at times because I want to do well,” Carroll says. “I understand the position I’m in, and I understand the times, and I don’t want to fail in the tasks ahead.” Those tasks require one more year as speaker, the cap to a career in the legislature that began in 2003 representing House District 7, a stepladder of communities in northeast Denver that includes Stapleton, Montbello, Green Valley Ranch, Montclair, Mayfair and parts of Park Hill. “I think House District 7 is one of the most diverse districts in the state,” Carroll says. “By looking at the microcosm of my House district, it gives me a better perspective of how we should improve the state at the same time.” Which is why Carroll put so much muscle behind bills to regulate mortgage brokers, create jobs and ease the impact of foreclosures. “Montbello and Green Valley Ranch were hit tremendously hard by bad mortgages: stated-income loans, balloon payments, adjustable-rate mortgages,” he says. “It’s a shame what some of those folks did up in that neck of the woods.” Carroll has no illusions about the number and magnitude of problems at the General Assembly’s feet. He believes firmly in the legislature’s ability to right wrongs and provide relief, and he is cautious about legislative “tinkering” that can drown progress in a wave of reform. Which is why he comes at his job not as an ideologue, but as a pragmatist, applying a lawyer’s reasoning, a scholar’s intellect and a preacher’s passion to the mission at hand. It’s a self-confidence ignited by a tough upbringing and hardened by his mother’s cold-steel courage. “I learned how committed my mother was to my success when she went to school for a parent-teacher conference. The teacher said, ‘You know, Mrs. Carroll, your son’s never going to amount to much because of where he grew up. He doesn’t have a father; you’re raising him and you don’t have a good education.’ “And my mother, a very religious woman who didn’t have any formal education but who was spunky and had a world of wisdom behind her from growing up on a sharecropping farm, looked at this teacher and said, ‘My son will do great things because God has touched my son.’ “I’m maybe 7, 8 years old, [but] that story never left me. Despite our limited resources, my mother still had faith in me that I could do great things.”



42 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

Karen Steinhauser doesn’t need convincing. The Sturm College of Law adjunct professor taught criminal procedure and trial advocacy classes when Carroll was working in the legislature by day and taking law classes at night. “He’s a natural leader,” she says. “He always had a smile and time for his classmates. He inspires confidence in people.” Steinhauser, an attorney with Denver-based Isaacson Rosenbaum, believes Carroll’s perspectives benefited her classes greatly, even though Carroll says he tried not to dominate class discussion. He didn’t want to be seen as “the politician who talks on everything.” But it was hard. Carroll was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in his last year at DU, so he’d often arrive at class still dripping with key state issues. “It was a tough balancing act, especially after the Democrats took the majority,” Carroll says. “I would constantly come into class late, especially on nights when my committee met.” Steinhauser didn’t mind, nor did DU law Professor Tom Russell, who taught American Legal History. “The last two speakers of the House [Carroll and Andrew Romanoff] were students of mine,” Russell laughs. “So I like to think that the road to the speaker’s office comes through my class.” Carroll isn’t certain about that, but he is convinced that what he learned at DU has helped him in the General Assembly. Law school gave him an understanding of how lawyers look at law, he says, which helped in drafting bills and making sure the legislature’s intent was clear. “The other benefit law school gave me was that I was able to have an analytical understanding of the law that went along with the policy and political perspective of what we did crafting law. I think that combination was very helpful.” It’s what you might expect from a lawyer, but not necessarily from an ordained minister, which Carroll is. He also earned a master of divinity degree from the Iliff School of Theology in 1999. “I always felt like there was a call for me to the ministry,” Carroll says, noting that he preaches about four or five times a year at Baptist churches throughout Denver. Carroll doesn’t impose his religion, but if you ask for his favorite Bible passage, he doesn’t have to think very hard to come up with one. It’s Micah 6:8: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord your God.” “That’s what I use as my guiding principle in dealing with people,” Carroll says. “I try to be as humble as I possibly can. Do justice and love mercy.” And in his spare time ride bikes, both road and mountain; or relax with a copy of Jesus and the Disinherited, by role model Howard Thurman; or zone out with a favorite TV show, which until it was canceled after 15 seasons was “ER.”

Wayne Armstrong

When someone said, ‘Oh, you’re the first black speaker,’ I said, ‘Really?’

Carroll’s favorite character? Dr. Peter Benton, played by Eriq La Salle and described on the “ER” Web site as “a talented surgeon with a hot head.” “I liked Dr. Benton because of the nature of how he grew up. He was an African-American character who managed to get out of a tough neighborhood. His mother had Alzheimer’s; my mother had Alzheimer’s. I could identify with him, being a successful black man and how people misconstrued him as being possibly arrogant.” These days, Carroll’s shows of choice are “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Kings,” a dramatization of the Book of Kings. “Most people don’t get that I’m actually quite shy,” the divorced 40-year-old says. “I love nothing more than to sit at home by myself on the couch watching TV.”



But his Baptist faith won’t let him. Listen to him preach and you’ll hear both urgency to action and abiding faith. His words sound like evangelism but they wear the cloth of the intellectual, not just the passion of the true believer. No TV-preacher tricks here. Carroll’s message is a pledge to do more than wave Bibles at a “wretched, nasty, broken world”; it’s a promise to embrace life with diligent, consistent, zealous faith. “I preached my mother’s funeral from this very pulpit,” he tells followers at the New Hope Baptist Church in Denver on a bright morning in June. “That was probably one of the darkest times in my life.” Carroll tells of his mother’s love and guidance and the loss he felt at her passing. He speaks of his search for meaning, his quiet, heartfelt words touching listeners, connecting deeply. University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009 43

David Zalubowski/Associated Press

From left, Colorado House Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, joins Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll and the Rev. James Peters during the Pledge of Allegiance at the opening session of the Colorado Legislature on Jan. 7, 2009.

“Amens” pepper the sanctuary. “I learned by my mother’s death that I had to untether myself from what the world thought,” Carroll says, “and tie myself explicitly to what God thought.” The “amens” grow more earnest. Carroll presses his message. Proclaiming faith is hardest when times are rough, but that’s when it’s most essential. “Anybody can be a witness when things go good.” It’s when there’s turmoil “that you have to.” You think back to the $1.5 billion the legislature had to cut in 2009 and you worry what’s in the cards for 2010. Sales tax revenue is down and further cuts may be needed. How will Carroll’s evangelistic fervor echo in the Statehouse in January when the 120-day clock starts ticking and lawmakers bend to fixing an already-lean state? “The whole [2009] session could have blown up very easily,” recalls House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville. “When you’re fighting over limited resources, it’s easy for things to get nasty real quick. That they didn’t is a testament to [Carroll].” Charisma helps, Weissmann adds. Not the John Elway kind that stops traffic, but the quiet, confident charm you warm to then count on. The kind of relaxed, free-flowing temperament that characterizes Carroll whether he’s running the House, preaching the gospel or exhorting DU law grads to go out and fight for liberty and opportunity.



44 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

The kind of leader who isn’t afraid to try a new idea or make a mistake, who calls himself an intellectual but regrets having spent “way too much time in school”; who reads theology, quotes Thomas Jefferson and uses Twitter; who jokes that his mother never forgave him for weighing 10 pounds, 10 ounces at birth; and who affectionately tweaks friends like former state Senate President Peter Groff (JD ’92), now a member of the Obama administration. “My life was much easier when I wasn’t speaker,” Carroll tells the New Hope congregation. “I could actually sit down in a restaurant and eat a meal in peace and quiet. No one would come up to me. Now folks walk up to me wherever I am and say, ‘I know you.’ Sometimes I pretend they don’t know me. I say, ‘I’m Peter Groff.’” The congregation roars. They’ve heard Carroll joke before— about being “long-winded” in sermons; about church politics being rougher than politics at the Capitol. They know that behind the jokes is a leader who fights hard. For principle. For faith. For opportunities for others. “I’ve been given so much in my life,” Carroll told DU’s 2009 law grads. “I once heard Dr. King say that the true measure of a person is where they stand in times of great challenge and controversy. So I feel a special obligation to go out and fight ... for opportunity, for liberty, for justice. “To stand tall.”

Book bin Class notes challenge Pioneer pics Death notices Announcements

DU Archives

48 51 54 56 58

In June 1944, photos of the Pioneer Dudes and Dames, a student organization dedicated to square and folk dancing, appeared in a Sunday issue of the Denver Post. The photo spread included several verses of accompanying lyrics, including: “Ladies bow low and gents bow under, Hug those gals and swing like thunder, (Maids went flying with their fellers, Long before we had propellers).” This photo was taken on the west side of the Mary Reed Building. If you have any memories of student organizations you participated in or photos you would like to share, please let us know.



University of Denver Magazine Connections 45

The classes

Graduate Lloyd Hightower

1942

1946

Anne Bihlmeyer (BS ’46) retired from being an assistant professor in 1981, married in 1994 and became a widow in 2008. Anne currently resides in Hartford, Conn., and would like to hear from any of her 1946 classmates.

1950

Keith Hendee (BA ’50) and Ellen Hendee (attd. 1944–45) live in Pompano Beach, Fla. Keith has fond memories of his time at DU and wanted to share this photo of him and Ellen on Pioneer Day during the 1940s. Although Keith says he sometimes wishes he lived closer to DU, a trip to Colorado before Christmas to visit his son in Fort Collins convinced him otherwise, as he experienced record-setting subzero temperatures.

1963

Paul Coffee (BS ’63) was appointed senior vice president and managing director for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Rocky Mountain Region. Paul comes to Stifel after 34 years at A.G. Edwards/Wachovia Securities, where he served as the Western regional director, overseeing 70 offices. He resides in Littleton, Colo.

Wayne Armstrong

Virginia (Raum) Lacy (BA ’42) lives with her oldest daughter in Pasadena, Calif. She enjoys spending her time traveling and attending concerts and plays. In 2008, Virginia and her daughter toured Greece and the surrounding islands. This year the two plan to take a riverboat tour from Antwerp, Belgium, to Vienna, Austria.

Lloyd Hightower isn’t the typical graduate you’d see representing the Class of 2009. For one thing, he’s 87. Plus, Hightower finished his DU business degree in 1951. But 58 years later, Hightower finally has a diploma to prove it. Hightower received the diploma during a ceremony at his Denver home on May 16. Daniels College of Business Professor Barbara Kreisman presented Hightower his diploma in front of his cheering family. Hightower, though, was shocked. The whole thing was a surprise. “It bloomed from a little family gathering but turned into a big family reunion,” daughter Patty Matson says, adding that her father thought it was a gathering to celebrate his 87th birthday. Hightower’s children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren flew in from across the country to watch him receive the diploma. Hightower attended DU on the GI Bill after he returned home from World War II. But in February 1951, he was called up as a pilot for the Korean War, months short of graduation. He finished his finals with correspondence courses, “but I lost contact with them, and they lost contact with me, so I never got my degree.” Until now. “Everybody hummed ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ as I walked out to the backyard, attired in my doctoral cap and gown,” Kreisman says. “Lloyd just stood there, in front of about 25 people, and was totally stunned. We had him slip into the gown, then I draped the hood over his shoulders and everybody clapped.” After receiving a matted and framed diploma—a BS in business management— Hightower took off his cap and tossed it in the air. “It was the biggest surprise of my life,” Hightower says. The fact that he never received a physical diploma has always weighed on his mind. “He really wanted a diploma,” Matson says. “He mentioned it all the time.” Enough times that Matson decided it needed to happen, so she called DU early this year and got the diploma a couple of months ago. Now, though, the “family joke” is over, Hightower says. “When I moved back to Denver [from Missouri] with my wife in 1977, DU would send me these publications in the mail, or cards asking about donations. I thought, ‘They can find me for donations and all that, but not for my degree,’” he laughs. He’s probably prouder than most graduates this year. “He was absolutely thrilled,” Matson says. “I’m very grateful for the education I received, and I got to expand on my knowledge of aviation,” says Hightower, a retired pilot. “It only took me about 60 years to get my degree,” he says. “But I have it.” —Kathryn Mayer



46 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

William Cross Jr. (BA ’63) was the recipient of the 2009 Social Justice Education Award, which is given annually by Columbia University’s Teacher College. Georgia Southern University has created a lecture series in his name. Also, William gave the W.W. Law Lecture as part of the annual Savannah Heritage Festival. William resides in Henderson, Nev. Marlow Ediger (EdD ’63) of North Newton, Kan., published the following articles: “Scope in the Social Studies” in Edutracks; “Motivating Student Learning in Science” in the CT Journal of Science Education; “Reading in the Social Studies” in the Florida Council Social Studies Newsletter; “Modern School Mathematics” in the College Student Journal; “Reading and Writing Poetry” in the Reading Council Journal; “The Student, School, and Society” in Experiments in Education; and “Writing, the Pupil, and the Social Studies” in Society and the Environment.

1964

Emily Morrison (BA ’64) is a retired education administrator from Tucson, Ariz. Since graduation Emily has been busy serving as a board member and chair for several organizations. She and her husband have two daughters and four grandchildren.

1966

Dennis Powers (JD ’66) has published his 10th book. Titled Taking the Sea (AMACOM, 2009), the novel is about old-time ship salvagers. Dennis recently returned from

a six-week trip with his wife, Judy, to 10 countries in South America, Africa and Europe. When not traveling, they reside in Ashland, Ore.

1967

Linda Brott (BSBA ’67) has retired from a career in public relations in Arizona and Colorado. Linda resides in Fort Collins, Colo., where she enjoys playing golf, volunteering and crafts. John Grassby (JD ’67) began his career as a corporate anti-trust counsel for IBM before opening a law firm in Steamboat Springs, Colo., where he resides. John is on the AAA International Roster of Mediators and Arbitrators and is on the 2022 Committee, which mediates cross-border commercial disputes.

Nancy Ferries

Hall of Famer Chuck Ferries Even though Chuck Ferries has spent much of his life racing down mountains, his life has been anything but downhill. “I’ve done pretty much whatever I wanted to do my whole life, so I guess you’d say I was free-spirited,” says Ferries, a Pioneers skier who helped lead the 1961 and 1963 teams to NCAA championships and who was inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame in October 2008. That free spirit emerged early for Ferries. At age 16, he jumped out of his bedroom window in Michigan with about $200 in his pocket and took a train to Utah for skiing lessons, only to return home a few weeks later with a broken leg. But he returned west to finish his senior year of high school in Aspen, Colo., so he could get in-state tuition at the University of Colorado. That didn’t work either—instead he won a scholarship to the University of Denver. “At DU, I could take winters off to ski because it was on the quarter system, and Willy [Schaeffler, DU’s ski coach] was very, very good,” Ferries says. The move put him in the DU history books. Aside from appearing on a 1963 Sports Illustrated cover with the headline “Best U.S. Skier,” he became the only American ever to win the Hahnenkamm slalom in Kitzbuehel, Austria, and he skied in the 1960 and 1964 Olympic games. He says the NCAA championship wins over CU were “great fun … we were friends with [the CU skiers], but we were taught it was always more fun to win.” Hennie Kashiwa, DU’s assistant Nordic ski coach, says Ferries left a lasting impression on DU skiing. “He made a huge impact at DU, and he’s been a great supporter of DU skiing for a long time,” Kashiwa says. Today, Ferries, 69, lives in Sun Valley, Idaho, and still skis occasionally. He says he was “a couple of credits short” of actually graduating from DU in the 1960s. His advice for skiers at the start of this ski season: “Take a lesson, have fun and watch out for the snowboarders.” —Doug McPherson



University of Denver Magazine Connections 47

Nicholas Moussis (PhD ’67) has worked with the European Commission in Brussels. After having occupied various posts, he retired in 2000 as an adviser to the commission. Nicholas has written many books and articles about European Union legislation and policies. His book Access to European Union: Law, Economics, Policies (Rixensart: European Study Service, 2008) has been translated into 14 languages, and he recently launched a Web site, www.europedia.moussis.eu, based on the book. He resides in London.

1968

Larry Tomsic (BA ’68) left his corporate position to serve San Francisco’s privately held and growth-oriented businesses as CFO on an as-needed basis. Larry brings more than 24 years of experience to the part-time job with B2B CFO. Larry resides in San Francisco and is passionate about community outreach.

1969

John Wren (BA ’69, MBA ’80) of Denver has formed the Denver Startup Forum, a community of practice for entrepreneurs, business owners and their advisers.

1970

Freddy Bosco (BA ’70) published his second book, Neurotic Meditation: The Spiritual Journey of Chauncy Farnsworth IV (Publish America, 2008). Freddy also writes a weekly column for the Denver Daily News and is employed by CHARG Resource Center in Denver, where he resides.

1971

Bill Hopkins (JD ’71) of Marble Hill, Mo., had his play The Almond Checkmate produced by First Run Theatre of St. Louis. One of Bill’s three-act plays, Cotton Lesson, was a finalist in the 2007 playwriting competition sponsored by First Run Theatre. It is still being developed for production.

1972

Grayson Drexel (BA ’72) has joined Wachovia Securities as senior vice president of investments in Evergreen, Colo. Grayson specializes in investment growth and income strategies. Grayson also serves as a member of the board of directors of Mt. Evans Hospice and Home Health Care.

1973

Terrence Toy (PhD ’73) of Bemus Point, N.Y., was the 2008 recipient of the William T. Plass Award, given by the American Society of Mining and Reclamation. The award is the society’s most prestigious lifetime achievement award for overall career accomplishments in reclamation.

Susan Tucker (MA ’73) edited the book New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories (UP of Mississippi, 2009). Each chapter is dedicated to a quintessential New Orleans food and contains essays on the production and reception of the city’s food culture. Susan is the curator of books and records at the Newcomb Center for Research on Women at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she resides. Paula Underwood (BS ’73) took command of the U.S. Army medical treatment facility in Heidelberg, Germany, on June 26, 2009.

1975

T.J. De Soto (MBA ’75) of Danville, Calif., is now a client director for Dimension Data. He spent the last 30 years in the information technology business in sales and management capacities. T.J. is eager to hear from alumni who graduated from the 1975 MBA program. Theodore Thomas (BS ’75) was appointed chief of staff for the Scripps Mercy Hospital

Book bin “I am seastruck—someone entranced by great and small waters alike,” reads the author’s note in Seaborn (Roaring Book Press, 2008), a young-adult novel by Craig Moodie (BA English ’78). After his mother abruptly moves out prior to the family’s annual sailing trip, 16-year-old Luke and his angry and confused father set out alone on the weeklong voyage. The routine journey becomes a fight for survival when an unexpected summer storm pulls Luke’s father overboard. Without anyone to rely on or any knowledge of his father’s condition, Luke must figure out how to navigate himself to safety. As the book explores typical feelings associated with teenage angst—dislocation, confusion and anger—it offers possible solutions. Only by accepting the unavoidable circumstances before him, both in terms of his oceanic entrapment and his familial turmoil, can Luke hope to move forward. Rather than paralyzing him with fear, the harsh reality of Luke’s predicament brings him clarity, and he realizes that his attitude toward his life and family have been misguided. At that moment, Luke becomes “seaborn.” Moodie’s affinity for the ocean began while he was growing up in Cape Cod, Mass., where he spent his spare time exploring beaches and coves with friends and family. Later, as an adolescent and adult, Moodie made a living working as a deckhand aboard commercial fishing vessels. His reverence for the ocean’s beauty and his understanding of its power has influenced many of his books, including Salt Luck, A Sailor’s Valentine and Our Perfect Youth. Moodie lives with his wife and children in Franklin, Mass., and works as a creative director for the EMC Corp. in Westborough, Mass. —Samantha Stewart



48 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

in San Diego, where he resides. Theodore has been practicing at Scripps Mercy Hospital since 1987 and is board certified in internal medicine and nephrology. He and his wife, Inez, have two college-aged daughters, both of whom were born at Scripps Mercy Hospital.

1976

Chris Meeks (BA ’76) recently released a novel that features the University of Denver in a few of its chapters. The novel is titled The Brightest Moon of the Century (White Whisker Books, 2009). Chris lives in Los Angeles.

1977

Chris West (BA ’77) of Darien, Conn., and his hockey team recently finished second in the USA Hockey Nationals over-50 division. He is looking forward to a win next year.

1979

Carol Fenster (PhD ’79) published her eighth gluten-free cookbook, 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes (Wiley, 2008), and launched www.gfreecuisine.com and www.glutenfree101.com. Carol lives in Centennial, Colo., and works for Savory Palate Inc. as an author and consultant.

1980

Ricardo Dadoo (BSBA ’80) of Mexico City sold his start-up company, Logistics Assistance, and has started a new company in the logistics industry, Logistics Dadoo. Ricardo enjoys running, golf, the Broncos, skiing, a good book and Mad magazine. He would love to visit Denver and would like to receive a note from Adde and Halleh.

1981

Masoumah Al-Mubarak (MA ’81, PhD ’82) of Safat, Kuwait, has become one of the first four women to be elected to

Kuwait’s Parliament. Masoumah also is the first woman to be appointed as minister of planning and minister of health in Kuwait. Mary Carraher (MSW ’81) of Loveland, Colo., was recognized by her alma mater for her commitment to single parents in need and her work at the nonprofit Project Self Sufficiency. James Strickland (MSW ’81) of Dublin, Ga., recently completed his PhD in holistic ministries and has published his first book, Hospice—A Holistic Journey Through the Shadow of Death (Outskirts Press, 2009).

1984

Laurie (Younggren) Goodman (BA ’84) was elected to the Board of Education in Ridgewood, N.J. Laurie is a freelance writer and lives in Ridgewood with her husband, Paul Goodman (BA ’84), and son, Pete. Laurie and Paul’s daughter, Marya, is a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire.

Reunion recap

Quotable notes

In March of 2009, these alumni got together for a ski trip in Aspen, Colo. Although they all live far away from one another, they quickly dusted off memories from their days at DU when they joined together again. Back row, from left: Erik Friis of Oslo, Norway; William Wittusen (BSBA ’02) of Englewood, Colo.; Marius Piene (BSBA ’01) of Oslo, Norway; Tyler Craig (BSBA ’01) of New York City; Max Mulligan (BSBA ’99) of Middlesex, United Kingdom; Jayme Smithers (BSBA ’01) of Vancouver, British Columbia; David Viele (MBA ’01) of Vail, Colo.; and Camilla McKee Lund (BSBA ’02) (kneeling) of Oslo, Norway.

Thank you to everyone who responded to the spring issue’s question of the hour: How did you celebrate your graduation?

PHOTO: F09 Reunions.jpg

“With my mom and Bob Perito (also ’64), who was then my boyfriend.” Emily (Kittle) Morrison (BA ’64) Tucson, Ariz. “My best friend, Grace Whiteley, and our families celebrated.” Paula Underwood (BS ’73) Woodbridge, Va. “Very stressful. April 1980, I graduated a quarter early because I attended summer school in 1978. There was no activity. I was more interested in passing Maclyn Clouse’s make-up final exam on Corporate Finance as he was nice enough to give me a second chance at life.” Ricardo Dadoo (BSBA ’80) Mexico City



University of Denver Magazine Connections 49

1985

1988

1986

Scott Menefee (BSBA ’88) of Golden, Colo., is the vice president of real estate for Opus Northwest, a development firm. He is currently working on the Pinnacle at City Park South and recently completed the penthouses of 1400 Wewatta and Wynkoop Residences in lower downtown Denver.

Ahmad Ismail (MA ’85) of Petaling Tay, Malaysia, has been appointed mayor of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ahmad has been a Malaysian administrative and diplomatic service officer for 32 years and the secretary general of the housing and local government ministry since January 2006.

John Sleeman (JD ’86) of Denver was appointed managing senior associate university counsel for the University of Colorado at Boulder. John served as the deputy attorney general for state services in the Colorado Attorney General’s office.

Virginia McCann (MSW ’88) of Denver received the Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2008–09 from the Department of Psychology at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Virginia was recognized for her volunteerism around the world during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Ernest Pelikan (BA ’88) is the executive director of the Putnam Land Conservancy, a land trust in Palatka, Fla.—a small town about 50 miles south of Jacksonville. Previously, Ernest was executive director of the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia and policy director for Scenic America in Washington, D.C., after changing careers from practicing law. Ernest resides in Palatka. Cindy (Murr) Rayfield (BA ’88) recently accepted a position at FranNet Colorado as franchise consultant. She provides free guidance and support to individuals who are interested in career alternatives through franchised business ownership. Cindy resides in Englewood, Colo.

Diane Stahl (BA anthropology and psychology ’80) used to amuse her coworkers with her vacation plans. Instead of plane tickets and a passport, Stahl’s itinerary involved seed packets and a spade. The backyard of her Washington Park home substituted for an exotic locale. Now, as the owner of Urban Roots, Stahl no longer has to leave work to indulge in her passion for plants. Urban Roots, located on the corner of 10th and Acoma streets in Denver, specializes in small-space urban gardening. Stahl’s decades of experience have taught her about the challenges that come with gardening in urban settings—including heat, wind, pollution, old sewer lines, deep tree roots and limited space—and how to overcome them. “You don’t just buy a plant from Urban Roots,” says Melissa (Goldman) Turner (BA ’79, MBA ’83), a longtime friend and customer of Stahl’s. “Diane makes sure customers know how to care for the plant, that they have the right soil or plant food and that the customer is purchasing a plant that works best for the environment or their living situation.” Urban Roots also offers on-site consultations and strives to ensure that landscaping designs complement the client’s home décor. While Stahl has wanted to open a gardening store since college, the impetus for opening Urban Roots came during a vacation she took with her husband in 2000. The couple visited Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, and while she was sitting on the famous arched bridge, something inside Stahl clicked. “It was so peaceful and so [emotional] for me. It was kind of like when you’re falling in love, you just kind of did it,” Stahl says. “I just remember saying, ‘I want to be here. I want to work here. … I want to learn.’” Two years later, she left her corporate fundraising position and opened Urban Roots. “I wasn’t interested so much in opening a business. I was more interested in helping people learn how to garden in the downtown corridor,” Stahl says. But the business, now in its eighth year, has thrived thanks to Stahl’s customer-centric approach. “She is a woman I admire so much,” says local resident and customer Rhonda Knop. “She gets to live her passion.” As she sits in a wicker patio chair surrounded by an eclectic assortment of planters and plants, seeds and seedlings, it’s easy to see that Stahl finds her life extremely fulfilling. “Gardening is really spiritual. It connects us with our Earth and our heart. It really grounds us,” she says. “That’s why people love to garden.”

Samantha Stewart

Gardener Diane Stahl

—Samantha Stewart



50 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

John McGuigan (BA ’89, MA ’97) and his wife, Mary, co-curated and contributed to the catalogs for two art exhibitions that opened in New York: “James E. Freeman, 1801-84: An American Artist in Italy”; and “America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900.” John and Mary, both art historians, specialize in 19th century American artists who worked in Italy. The couple resides in Isle of Palms, S.C. Chris Romero (BA ’89, MS ’91) recently was appointed dean of instruction for transfer education at Front Range Community College, Larimer Campus, in Fort Collins, Colo. Chris has been a faculty member in biology at the college for the past 12 years. He successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in February, graduating in May 2009 with a PhD in education from Colorado State University.

1990

Steve Vickner (MBA ’90) and hundreds of other cyclists raised funds for cancer research by riding 180 miles in two days in August 2009. In October, Steve will pedal more than 500 miles in a weeklong trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise funds for the Arthritis Foundation. In his personal journey in life, he just passed another milestone—seven years cancer free. Steve, who resides in Columbus, Ohio, is the chair of the MBA program at Franklin University. He is also the founder of OutdoorMetrics, an economic research consultancy focused on environmental policy, sustainable management of natural resources and market research for the outdoor recreation industry. Patricia “Patty” Wellinger (MA ’90, JD ’90, MA ’93, MAC ’02) of Aurora, Colo., is the reference services coordinator at the Westminster Law Library. Patty will be the 2009–10 chair of the grants committee for the American Association of Law Libraries. She is also co-chair of the 2009–10 local arrangements committee for the national law library conference that will be held in Denver in July 2010. Patty is involved in DU’s Connecting Staff Women group and in her spare time she shows her Burmese mountain dog in rally and obedience.

1989 Kynewisbok

1989

Class notes challenge Class of 1989: A lot can happen in 20 years, and we want to catch up with as many of you as 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 54. Class of ’89 notes will appear in the spring issue. We’ll randomly select a prize winner from all entries received by Nov. 1.

Money matters Recent market activity has forced investors to examine their investment strategies. The volatility provides an opportunity for people to evaluate how much risk they can withstand and reminds them that financial health must be constantly assessed. It’s also a good time to make sure your financial adviser is familiar with your unique circumstances. With complex issues like wealth management in a volatile market, a close relationship will produce better returns because your adviser truly understands your needs. The adviser transitions from a wealth consultant to a wealth advocate. There are three characteristics to evaluate when selecting an investment adviser: effective listening, account approach and proactive asset allocation. First, an adviser may make imprudent investments if he doesn’t carefully listen to his client’s story. This includes family dynamics, legacy ideas and charitable interests. Having a thorough understanding of the client’s goals, beliefs and circumstances is paramount when creating a customized plan. Second, having a team of experts focused on the client’s wealth is instrumental. The team approach provides access to multiple professionals who understand client goals and can bring specific expertise to the investor’s overall financial well-being. Finally, asset allocation must be forward-looking and nimble in order to react to the fastpaced environment of information transfer and the ever-increasing global market. History can be a useful indicator, but if a wealth manager is making decisions solely based on what has happened before, he will undoubtedly miss what is occurring right in front of him. Your relationship with your investment adviser is one of the most important business partnerships you will ever have. When choosing an adviser, it is wise to consider who best understands your unique wealth management needs and will serve as an advocate in making financial dreams a reality. John Trujillo (BSBA ’95) is a senior portfolio manager with UMB Asset Management in Denver. E-mail him at [email protected].



University of Denver Magazine Connections 51

Courtesy of Jason Wanderer

Entrepreneur Jason Wanderer For the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, producers wanted 3,000 Houston-area children to simultaneously swarm the playing field to cheer on the performers. But who could they call upon to orchestrate such ordered chaos? As the founder of Precision Event Group, an event-management and experiential marketing agency, Jason Wanderer (BA social sciences ’97) knows how to make the impossible possible. He considers his role in the 2004 Super Bowl the most rewarding project in a long line of successful projects for clients including MTV, Universal Pictures, Disney, Pepsi and Glamour magazine. Despite his company’s meteoric rise in the industry, the 33-year-old from East Brunswick, N.J., says he never expected this level of success. “It’s surreal, but I feel like I started back in 1993. I had four years of real-world experiences in college,” Wanderer says, referring to his extracurricular activities at DU that laid the foundation for his career. Eager to work in the top tier of event management, Wanderer moved to Los Angeles in 1999. There, he found lucrative, albeit exhausting, employment that left him burnt out after only two years. After taking a brief reprieve from the real world, Wanderer intended to look for work. Instead, work found him as former clients solicited him to manage various projects and events. Wanderer reluctantly founded Precision in 2001 at the urging of his accountant, who told him, “Like it or not, you have a business.” From there Precision evolved into one of the country’s premier eventmanagement and marketing agencies, with offices in Beverly Hills, Calif., and New York City. Unlike a party-planning agency, Precision conceives and produces events intended to translate the marketing goals and brand messages of its clients into reallife experiences. “The challenge for us is finding ways to do things that haven’t been done before,” Wanderer says. “Our clients rely on us to give them events that are pressworthy and cutting-edge.” In 2008, Precision was named one of the top 100 event agencies in the country by Event Marketer magazine and one of the top 50 event companies by Special Events magazine. Despite these accolades, Wanderer’s goals have remained modest. “We’re not looking to be on the New York Stock Exchange,” he says. “We’re looking to be a medium-size business that produces quality, large-scale events. We want to continue with our stable of clients that we enjoy working with and projects that we enjoy working on.” —Samantha Stewart



52 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

1992

Jean Fujikawa (BS ’92) is the GIS/database manager for the Oahu Invasive Species Committee. The Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) presented the Oahu Invasive Species Committee with a 2008 Special Achievement in GIS Award at the annual ESRI International User Conference in San Diego. The award honors organizations that make significant contributions to society through their use of geographic information systems. Jean resides in Honolulu. Matthew Phillips (BA ’92, MS ’95) and Calysta Phillips are proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Sebastian Drake Phillips. Their son was born on April 28, 2009, in Ketchum, Idaho, where they reside. Their other child, Isabelle Claire, was born Aug. 2, 2006.

1993

Greg Cohen (BA ’93) of Los Angeles organized a benefit for autism in conjunction with Autism Speaks and NBC’s show “Heroes.” The event raised awareness and funds for autism research. Greg works in the camera department on “Heroes” and is a professional photographer. Cynthia “Paige” Stoyer (BA ’93) of Portland, Ore., had her collaborative photography project “The Long Journey: Surviving Domestic Violence” exhibited on March 17 at the New School Aaronson Galleries in New York City. The exhibit documented the daily lives of women victimized by domestic violence and included photographs taken by the women themselves. Paige, in partnership with Sanctuary for Families (a nonprofit dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence), worked with the women for nine months and taught them photographic techniques.

1994

Patty Cockell (MBA ’94) joined Wachovia Securities in Greenwood Village, Colo., as the associate vice president of investments. She previously lived in Monument, Colo., and worked for Smith Barney. Patty has more than 18 years of experience in the financial services industry.

Alison Kane (BBA ’94) of Littleton, Colo., joined the Denver Newspaper Agency as the senior vice president of interactive media. An expert in online media innovation and monetization, Alison has 25 years of experience with strategic marketing, technology and operational expertise. She previously worked for Local Matters, a Denver-based technology solutions and online media company, where she was executive vice president for online media.

1996

Stanley Gradisar (JD ’96) recently formed his own law firm, Stanley J. Gradisar Attorney at Law, located in Castle Rock, Colo., where

he resides. His practice focuses on patent prosecution and intellectual property law. Stanley was formerly with Merchant and Gould PC and prior to that with Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP. Andrew Murray (MBA ’96) of Arvada, Colo., joined Valen Technologies as the executive vice president and chief financial officer. Andrew will oversee all of the company’s financial and legal interests, human resources, investor relations and administration services. He has more than 25 years of technology industry and financial experience.

1997

Antone “Tripp” Baltz (MLS ’97) of Arvada, Colo., recently published a book, The Pro’s Pro: Warren Smith, Golf Professional (Outskirts Press, 2008). The book includes interviews with Arnold Palmer and others about Smith, who was the head professional at Cherry Hills Country Club from 1963–91 and the 1978 PGA of America Professional of the Year. Camsie Matis (BA ’97) has been selected from a pool of 500 educators nationwide to receive the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship. Camsie will be working for the National Science Foundation. She resides in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Wayne Armstrong

Foodies Noah Stephens and Emily Welch It may have taken a jaunt across the Atlantic Ocean for Noah Stephens (BA art history ’05) and Emily Welch (BA international studies ’06) to cross paths, but when they did, the two alums formed a friendship over food. The two met in Paris after they graduated from DU. Both were attending culinary school. After they finished, they returned home— Stephens to Minnesota and Welch to San Francisco—to work at restaurants. But Stephens wanted to bring European-style cuisine to Denver. He bought a space in the West Washington Park area, oversaw construction for eight months, went antiquing every day for a month to create the right atmosphere and asked Welch to join in the project. Voila! Vert Kitchen, located at 704 S. Pearl St., opened in February 2009. With just 13 seats and about 750 square feet, the location is small but ideal, the owners say. “We really wanted to be a part of this community,” Stephens says. It’s easy to see the French influence on the shop. The décor evokes a small Parisian bistro and the food is “most definitely” influenced by traditional French cuisine, Stephens and Welch say. The turkey sandwich (their most popular item) comes with figs, chevre and pine nuts; a skirt steak sandwich includes arugula and walnut mustard; and a lemon tuna confit features albacore, chervil, cucumber and Greek yogurt. Their personal favorite, they say, is the tortilla Española, a classic Spanish dish. “We’re still working on getting that recipe as authentic as possible,” Welch says. Vert, which means green in French, signals the duo’s desire to keep their business organic. “You have to put love in your food,” Stephens explains. For them, love means using fresh, local, organic ingredients. “It’s better for the environment,” Welch adds. “It’s important to me. I don’t like to eat chemicals in my food.” Stephens handles day-to-day operations while Welch is in charge of ordering the food. Vert has just one other employee, so most of the work rests on the pair’s shoulders. “It’s all been fun,” Stephens says, adding that he’s forgotten all about the hard parts of managing a business. “When a customer’s plate comes back completely clean, that’s when I’m happiest.” —Kathryn Mayer



University of Denver Magazine Connections 53

Pioneer pics

Kathleen (DeLio) LaForte (BSBA ’83) was recently in Harbin, China, judging the singles and pairs figure skating portion of the World University Games. LaForte works for 9News as sales research director, but in her spare time she volunteers as an official for U.S. Figure Skating and the International Skating Union. 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 80208-4816, or e-mail [email protected]. Be sure to include your full name, address, degree(s) and year(s) of graduation.

Alumni Symposium DU alumni have the chance to return to the classroom and be students for a weekend at the third annual Alumni Symposium, running Oct. 2–3 on campus. “It was an idea of the chancellor and others at the University to ensure that we had a program that really showcased our outstanding faculty as well as offered a lifelong-learning opportunity to our alums,” says Jeffrey Howard, executive director of alumni relations. “It also serves as a platform to invite back some of our most prestigious alums to talk about what their University of Denver experience was like and how it helped them.” During the two-day event, alumni have the chance to participate in classes taught by DU faculty. This year’s list of topics is expected to include the 2008 financial breakdown, Caribbean steel drums, civic leadership, professional ethics and more. “The symposium allows alumni to connect back directly to the classroom, in terms of what DU’s current students are hearing and learning,” Howard says. “It also allows the faculty to talk about the issues of the day with alumni. It’s definitely a format that allows for discussion, versus faculty just giving a presentation.” In addition to time in the classroom, attendees also will have the opportunity to listen to keynote addresses by prominent alumni. This year’s keynote speakers are Roger Birnbaum (attd. 1968–71), a film producer whose credits include The Sixth Sense, Bruce Almighty and 27 Dresses; and Cindy Courville (MA ’80, PhD ’88), who was the first U.S. ambassador to the African Union. The symposium is open to all alumni; admission is free, but registration is required. >>303-871-2701; www.du.edu/alumnisymposium —Media Relations Staff

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54

Question of the hour: Who was your favorite professor and why?

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 80208-4816. University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

www.dubookstore.com

Bookstore

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C

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E

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Monday–Thursday: 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday: closed University of Denver Magazine Connections 55

2002

Kimberly Albanes (JD ’02) married Andrew Scott Ginsburg on April 4, 2009, at the Vanderbilt Mansion at Fisher Island Hotel and Resort in Miami Beach, Fla. Until recently, Kimberly was an associate at the law firm Greenberg Trauig, where she specialized in land use and environmental law. She resides in Miami Beach with her husband. Joseph Labrecque (MA ’02) of Thornton, Colo., was appointed an Adobe Higher Education Leader by Adobe Systems Inc. Leah (Fessinger) Press (BA ’02) and her husband, Craig, welcomed their son, Caleb Eli, on Feb. 23, 2009, in St. Louis, where the couple resides. Leah and Craig are originally from Scottsdale, Ariz.

2004

Jamey Hastings (BA ’04) won the 2008 first-place Colorado Broadcasters Association Award in the “Photo Essay With No Reporter” category for non-metro markets. His piece was titled “7-election.” Jamey is a photojournalist at KKTV in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Amy Larson (BA ’04) of Denver was a producer for KBDI-Channel 12’s awardwinning special “Snapshots From DNC.” The award for the best news or publicaffairs special for TV was received at the 2009 Colorado Broadcasters Association’s Celebration of Excellence Gala.

Melanie Spence (MA ’05) of McLean, Va., is an associate program manager for Population Services International, a Washington, D.C.based nonprofit that helps with social marketing and health behavior changes in 60 developing countries. Melanie is responsible for the West and Central Africa region.

2005

2006

Patricia Bennett (MSW ’05) of Denver started Colorado Youth at Risk, a communitybased mentoring program that seeks to produce lifelong growth for young people. Jeff Grabner (BSBA ’05) of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, is responsible for pushing the company Cardinal Fastener into the wind energy industry. Jeff works for Cardinal Fastener in the outside sales department and fielded questions from President Obama’s transition team before the president’s visit to the company. Jeff enjoys outdoor activities as well as exploring Cleveland’s nightlife. Teresa (Jennings) Russo (MA ’05) and Peter Russo are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Maeghan Amelia. Their daughter was born on Jan. 24, 2009, in Key West, Fla., where the family resides. Big brother Nicholas welcomed Maeghan.

Deaths 1940s

Robert Buell (BA ’40), Redondo Beach, Calif., 4-16-09 Dorothy Hix (BA ’41), Tulsa, Okla., 1-25-09 Norris Nereson (MS ’41), Los Alamos, N.M., 2-21-07 Margaret “Curley” (Roche) Unrein (BS ’43), Littleton, Colo., 1-19-09 James Easton (BS ’48), Denver, 3-21-09 Charlice Gillespie (MA ’48), Jackson, Miss., 4-1-09 V. Paul Ricken (BS ’48), Murrieta, Calif., 2-6-09 Flake Vickery (BSBA ’48), Arvada, Colo., 1-23-09 Francis Bobbin (BS ’49), Springfield, Mass., 4-16-09 Doris Bunce (BA ’49), Lone Tree, Colo., 11-18-08

1950s

Edna Newkirk (BS ’52), Monument, Colo., 1-12-09 Jerome Levy (MA ’53, PhD ’56), Albuquerque, N.M., 2-6-09 Leonard “Howard” Stoker (BS ’53), Littleton, Colo., 2-9-09



56 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

Lauren (Wax) Casady (BSBA ’06) married Richard “Ricky” Casady (BS ’06) on Oct. 25, 2008, at St. Elizabeth’s of Hungary in Denver. Ricky is the regional director of ticketing for Live Nation and Lauren is in sales and marketing. The couple lives in Centennial, Colo. Misty Ewegen (JD ’06) recently returned to Colorado and opened a law practice focusing on environmental and natural resources law. In March 2009, Misty took the oath of admission in the District of Columbia to give her practice a broader range. She works from home in Denver and loves the time she gets to spend with her two kids.

1960s

Luella Sprague (BA ’60), Long Beach, Calif., 11-2-08 Donald Walrafen (PhD ’60), Ashland, Ore., 10-15-08 Vernon Wetherbee (MA ’62), Waupaca, Wis., 1-8-09 Maybeth Melton (MA ’63), Lebanon, Ky., 4-4-09 Jon Morris (MA ’65), Fairfax, Va., 1-31-09 Dixie Roberts (MA ’65), Cedaredge, Colo., 3-3-09

1970s

Florence Arnn (BA ’70), Colorado Springs, Colo., 3-30-09 Nina Spitzley (BA ’70), Crested Butte, Colo., 10-3-08 Donald McCann (PhD ’77), Scottsdale, Ariz., 7-30-08

1980s

Richard Booth (BSBA ’83), Denver, 4-17-09 David Hovey (JD ’88), Olympia, Wash., 12-31-08

Faculty and Staff

Erik Bluemel, assistant professor of law, Denver, 5-6-09 Roger Campbell, admission dean emeritus, Poinciana, Fla., 4-26-09

Brenda Gillen (MLS ’06) of Denver has launched Writing Matters LLC, offering writing, editing and proofreading services. Prior, Brenda was an editor at the University of Denver. Rory Vaden (MBA ’06) of Longmont, Colo., started a company with two friends during graduate school that has grown into a multi-million dollar company with about 30 employees. The company, Success Starts Now, presents motivational sales training conferences. Rory also has a book, Take the Stairs, coming out soon. He has been on the Take the Stairs World Climbing Tour, climbing the 10 tallest buildings on the globe to help raise money for charities.

2007

Rupert Jenkins (MBA ’07) curated two recent exhibitions of photography at Redline in Denver. One show is a 60-year retrospective of works by Hal Gould, owner of the Camera Obscura Gallery in Denver. The other is a companion exhibition of contemporary photography and video by four artists from Colorado and elsewhere. Rupert resides in Denver.

2008

Erin (Grorud) Clark (MM ’08) and Paul Clark are happy to announce their marriage on Nov. 8, 2008, in Anoka, Minn. They reside in Saint Paul, Minn.

?

Which alum was inspired to start a business while sitting in Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France? The answer can be found somewhere on pages 45–57 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.

Andrew Romanoff (JD ’08), former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, has been awarded the Sue O’Brien Award for Public Service for spearheading a successful campaign to provide live video coverage of the proceedings on the House floor. He resides in Denver.

Congratulations to Phyllis Hansen Nemeth (MA ’65) for winning the summer issue’s pop quiz.

Post your class note online at www.alumni.du.edu, e-mail [email protected] or mail in the form on page 54.

The University of Denver Office of Alumni Relations is excited to announce our new and improved Web site and Online Community! Our new site has been redesigned with a fresh look and has been updated with the latest information about our programs, events and alumni benefits. Additionally, the ePioneer Online Community now offers new and enhanced features to better serve you and fellow alumni. Once you’ve created your secure personal profile you’ll have immediate access to many useful services, and best of all — it’s free! • • • • • • • • • •

Connect your Facebook member page to your ePioneer profile page for single sign-on  dd content from LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and more A  ind old classmates and add them to your personal friends list F Post class notes Connect and engage with other alumni who share the same interest using Groups Easily update your contact information to keep in touch with other alumni and the University Add or view photo albums Post your resume Register for alumni events And much more!

Get Connected Now! Go to http://www.alumni.du.edu and click on “Online Community”

•

•

Select “First Time Login” Find and verify your alumni information

•

Update your profile, share new information and connect with DU friends & classmates

•

Questions? Please contact the Alumni Relations Office at [email protected] or 800.871.3822.



University of Denver Magazine Connections 57

DU Photography Department

ANNOUNCEMENTS Get Involved Mentoring Join the Pioneer Connections

Mentoring Program and start mentoring a DU student today. Contact Hallie Lorimer at hlorimer@ du.edu for details.

Local Chapters Just moved to a new city and

don’t know anyone? Need to expand your professional network? Want to attend fun events and make new friends, or reconnect with old ones? Join a local alumni chapter: Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Minneapolis/St. Paul; New York; Phoenix; St. Louis; and Washington, D.C. To find out how you can get involved, call the Office of Alumni Relations at 800-871-3822 or visit www.du.edu/ alumni/chapters.

Lifelong Learning OLLI DU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is a

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!

Mark Your Calendar Newman Center Presents The 2009–10

Newman Center Presents series kicks off Sept. 26 with New York-based dance organization Keigwin + Company. Other performers on the schedule include Mariza, Dec. 14; the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Jan. 15; and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, March 16. >>www.du.edu/newmancenter

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 facilitators and learners. >>universitycollege.du.edu/olli

DU Law Stars The Sturm College of Law’s annual fundraising event is scheduled for Oct. 1 at the Hyatt Regency. Money raised from the event supports the Student Law Office and DU Law General Scholarship Fund. >>www.law.du.edu/index.php/alumni/law-stars

Enrichment Program Noncredit short courses,

Alumni Symposium Take part in a weekend

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

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: • a re working (or former) journalists, especially those working in “new media” • have struggled with personal debt (including student loans and credit cards) or are experts in debt management • work in the food and beverage industry • are working/serving in Iraq or Afghanistan • were DU Centennial Scholars • are members of the Class of 1989 • served in the Peace Corps • served in AmeriCorps • do volunteer work

Contact us University of Denver Magazine 2199 S. University Blvd. Denver, CO 80208-4816 [email protected] 303-871-2776

Nostalgia Needed Please share your idea for nostalgic topics we could cover in the magazine. We’d love to see your old DU photos as well.

58 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

learning experience on campus during the third annual symposium Oct. 2–3. Enjoy a wide variety of class sessions with DU faculty, hear from distinguished keynote speakers and network with alumni and friends. >>www.du.edu/alumnisymposium

Homecoming Come back to campus Oct. 28–

Nov. 1 to cheer on the Pioneers, watch the parade, trick-or-treat with your family, enjoy great food and live music, tour campus and more. >>www.alumni.du.edu

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 Career Connections Pioneer Alumni Network Join other Denver-

area alumni for free networking events each month. >>www.alumni.du.edu

Stay in Touch Online Alumni Directory Update your contact

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

Family Pass Buddy Pass (4 Tickets) (2 Tickets) ICE HOCKEY Nov. 27 St. Cloud $50 $30 Jan. 1 Wells Fargo Denver Cup Day 1 $50 $30

up to $23 up to $23

MEN’S BASKETBALL Nov. 13 Northern Iowa Nov. 25 Wyoming

up to $16 up to $16

$20 $20

$14 $14

Savings

ALL NEW SUPER FAN PACK

One low price gets you 4 or 2 tickets to each of the games listed below! Oct. 9 Hockey vs Vermont $84 $48 Nov. 19 Men’s Basketball vs Montana For information on season packages, group ticket pricing or schedules call 303.871.GOAL.

*NOTE: Upon processing your ticket order you will be contacted to confirm final payments and ticket pick-up options. All tickets are price level 3 and subject to availability.

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Miscellanea

Face time

Wayne Armstrong

This mask from Indonesia is part of a donation of 56 masks Denver resident Henry Strauss recently made to the DU Museum of Anthropology. It depicts Garuda, a Hindu deity that is half-man, half-bird. Strauss and his family have spent decades traveling the world. He purchased his first mask in 1955, and eventually his collection grew to represent indigenous cultures from all over the world, including Africa, South America and Asia.



60 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009