2011 Winter University of Denver Magazine

U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A G A Z I N E

U N I V E R S I T Y O F

M A G A Z I N E


M A G A Z I N E



Winter 2011

DU readies to host Colorado’s first-ever presidential debate.

Setting the Stage

2 University of Denver Magazine Winter 2011

For as little as $250, you can be a part of this transformation and pay lasting tribute to the Pioneer in your life.

With the purchase of a commemorative book binding, destined to hang in the new Academic Commons at Penrose Library, you can:

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Order your book binding today at www.du.edu/academiccommons/gift

The three-dimensional book bindings, constructed of fine metals, will have a prominent and permanent home inside the new Academic Commons at Penrose Library.

Give a gift that speaks volumesThe University of Denver is transforming Penrose Library to meet the

evolving needs of faculty and students.

University of Denver Magazine Update 3

ContentsFeatures

28 Straight Shooter Compromise and common sense mark the career of Wyoming

Senator Mike Enzi. By Rob Jordan

32 Corps Values For half a century, the Peace Corps has provided DU alumni and

students with a life-changing chance to serve. By Laurie Budgar

38 Stoked Alumna Keri Herman is at the top of her game as one of the best

female freeskiers in the world. By Nathan Solheim

42 Blame the Banks? Professor George DeMartino says economists also had a

hand in causing America’s Great Recession. By Mike Cote

Departments

44 Editor’s Note

45 Feedback

47 DU Update 8 News Presidential debate 11 History Tuskegee Airmen 14 Arts DU’s modern artists 17 People Student actress 18 Views Campus architecture 19 Research Ballistics lab 20 Q&A Presidential candidate Fred Karger 23 Academics Educating tomorrow’s lawyers 25 Sports Skier and golfer Lindsay Cone 27 Poetry “Seed Starters”

45 Alumni Connections

On the cover: DU will host the first presidential debate of the 2012 election on Oct. 3; read the story on page 8. Illustration by Craig Korn and James Steidl/Shutterstock.

This page: The DU-based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System has proposed an innovative new way to train future lawyers; read the story on page 23. Photo by Wayne Armstrong.


On Oct. 3, 2012, millions of people will turn their attention to the University of Denver as DU hosts a U.S. presidential debate in advance of the November general election.

We’re one of only three schools nationwide selected to host a presidential debate—the first in Colorado’s history (see story on page 8). To say that we’re excited is an understatement.

DU is planning a number of educational pro-grams and events in the months leading up to the

debate. One of the first will be on Feb. 2, when the 2011–12 Bridges to the Future lecture series— “Undercurrents of the 2012 Election”—continues with Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department (RSVP at www.du.edu/bridges). During fall quarter, the lecture series brought former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles to campus (read more about his talk on page 24).

The University is committed to helping students, alumni and the community learn about and engage in the political process, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted about all of the debate activities. Start by visiting www.du.edu/debate2012 to learn more.

Civic engagement and leading through action are central to DU’s mis-sion, and our faculty, students and alumni embody that spirit of “DU-ing.”

In this issue, political science Associate Professor Seth Masket shares his list of the most important issues affecting the outcome of the 2012 election (page 9), and international studies Professor George DeMartino discusses the role of economists in causing America’s Great Recession (page 42). DU alumnus Mike Enzi, a Republican senator from Wyoming, imparts lessons on bipartisanship (page 28), while alumnus Fred Karger discusses his run for the Republican presidential nomination (page 20). And starting on page 32, DU’s Peace Corps alumni share stories of service in action.

I hope you’ll attend some of the upcoming debate events or participate online. And please share your own stories of engagement and action. What are you doing to effect change in your corner of the world? Email us at [email protected].

Chelsey Baker-Hauck

Managing Editor

w w w. d u . e d u / m a g a z i n e

Volume 12, Number 2

PublisherKevin A. Carroll

Managing EditorChelsey Baker-Hauck (BA ’96)

Assistant Managing EditorGreg Glasgow

Associate EditorTamara Chapman

Editorial AssistantAmber D’Angelo Na (BA ’06)

Art DirectorCraig Korn, VeggieGraphics

PhotographerWayne Armstrong

ContributorsJordan Ames (BA ’02, MPS ’10) •

Katy Armstrong • Laurie Budgar • Mike Cote • Kim DeVigil • Justin Edmonds (BSBA ’08) •

Andrew Fielding • Brenda Gillen (MLS, CERT ’06) • Meghan Howes • Kristal Griffith (MBA ’10) • Rob Jordan • Lisa Marshall • Seth Masket •

Doug McPherson • Pat Rooney • Chase Squires (MPS ’10) • Nathan Solheim •

David McKay Wilson

Editorial BoardChelsey Baker-Hauck, editorial director •

Kevin A. Carroll, vice chancellor/chief marketing officer • Thomas Douglis (BA ’86) •

Jeffrey Howard, executive director of alumni relations • Sarah Satterwhite, senior director of

advancement communications • Amber Scott (MA ’02) • Laura Stevens (BA ’69),

director of parent relations

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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Editor’s Note

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Printed on 10% PCW recycled paper

Feedback

Building a better DUI am a proud graduate of the University of Denver. My undergraduate degree served as an excellent base upon which I built two master’s degrees and a doctorate. For this, I shall always be grateful to DU.

However, there is no way on God’s green earth that I would recommend anyone attend DU these days due to its ridiculous costs. Chancellor Robert Coombe matter-of-factly noted in the fall 2011 issue that one year of room, board, tuition, books and other expenses adds up to $52,770 per year! In good conscience, how can anyone encourage an under-graduate, her parents and various donors to contribute to such an outlay, which is supposedly made more palatable, accord-ing to the chancellor, by being “substan-tially lower than the sticker price of our private competitors across the nation”? As my Jersey Shore friends would say about spending more than $200,000 over four years at DU: “Forget about it!”

It saddens me that DU administra-tion has drunk the same business model Kool-Aid that has coursed through the veins of academia forever. Essentially, the chancellor is saying, “Despite all the accu-mulated brain power on campus, we have yet to figure out how to offer a $50,000 education for only $25,000.” Frankly, I doubt that such a thought has ever occurred to administration. The result is that the University is cranking out stu-dents too stupid to have realized the folly of college-loan enslavement.

Please, Chancellor Coombe, spend some of your grant money on hiring IDEO, the design consultancy (with which I have zero affiliation), and turn academia on its ear by revolutionizing educational costs without governmen-tal subsidy. Then you would truly be a “Pioneer” and students would flock to the better-built mousetrap at the corner of University Boulevard and Evans Avenue.

Don Burgess (BA ’67)Fort Worth, Texas

On “Brain Power” [fall 2011], about Clinical Associate Professor Kim Gorgens and her research on brain injuries

Kim truly is a rock star! What I missed in this article is Kim’s staunch belief in getting her students (or even DU students

that she doesn’t teach!) to get involved with her research, outreach, and practice. I would not be where I am right now without Kim. I doubt I am the only one to say that about her, as well.

—Adam O’Neil, student Graduate School of Professional

Psychology

On “The Nature of Sound” [fall 2011], Wayne Armstrong’s portraits of Lamont School of Music Students

WONDERFUL photos Mr. Armstrong! You are an incred-ible talent!

—Scott Gordon

Spectacular images! The photography speaks louder than the text. Amazing creativity. Inspiring! Thank you for making my morning.

—Bob Payne

Great article! The photos are so dynamic and really speak to the text! It’s really refreshing to see photographs that actually tell a story. Thanks for this reminder.

—Emily McCleod

Excellent creativity and depth. Very insightful reflections regarding each individual’s per-sonality. Bravo Wayne!

—Ben Pewthers

On the fall 2011 profile of high school theater teacher and donor Florence (Dunning) Sikes (BA ’55, MA ’60)

Florence Dunning made an amazing contribution to many of us at West High in Denver dur-ing the late 1950s. Plays, drama class, vaudeville and a real inter-est in the lives of her students made all the difference. A won-derful sense of humor, coupled with an academic demand she made the student believe was within his capability, separated her from most teachers and human beings. I was one of the lucky ones.

—Gary Mullennix

Comments from our online readers

Join the discussion! Read stories and post comments of your own at www.du.edu/magazine

The University of Denver Magazine won several awards for editorial excellence in 2011.

Managing Editor Chelsey Baker-Hauck (BA ’96) received two first-place awards from the National Federation of Press Women: one for magazine editing and one for profile writing for her spring 2010 story about Steve Shaffer (BSBA ’72), a volunteer at the WOLF rescue organization and sanctuary for captive-bred wolves and wolf dogs.

Former Production Editor Kathryn Mayer (BA ’07, MA ’10) received a first-place award from the federation for her work editing the magazine’s DU Update section. Baker-Hauck and Mayer won the same awards from the affiliate Colorado Press Women prior to the national awards.

Baker-Hauck also won a bronze award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Region VI for her essay “Homeplace,” from the winter 2009 issue. The magazine won CASE’s regional bronze award for overall excellence.

Finally, photographer Wayne Armstrong won a bronze Mercury Award—an interna-tional recognition—for his portrait of Eva Hakansson that appeared in the fall 2010 issue.

University of Denver Magazine Feedback 5


All your fAvorite brAnds, All in one convenient plAce When it comes to showing your Pioneer pride, there’s no better place to start than the DU Bookstore. You’ll find all your favorite brands—Champion, JanSport, Under Armour, Nike, Adidas and more—in all your favorite styles. So whether you’re shopping for yourself or looking for a great gift, you’re sure to find the perfect fit at the DU Bookstore.

regular store Hours Monday–Thursday: 8:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m. | Friday: 8:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Saturday: 10 a.m.–3 p.m. | Sunday: closed

shop online anytime at www.dubookstore.com

university of denver bookstore 2050 E. Evans Ave. | Denver, CO 80208 | 800.289.3848 | 303.871.3251

UNivErSiTY OF DENvEr BOOkSTOrE


12 Car-sharing program 13 Colorado budget fix 16 Government reform 21 Convocation address 22 Ban Ki-moon speech 24 $1.4 million grant

Students take part in the Pioneers’ Homecoming parade on Oct 22. The day also included a family fall festival, a “Taste of DU” event featuring food from neighborhood and alumni-operated restaurants, and a hockey game. As part of the Homecoming celebration, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock declared Oct. 22, 2011, “University of Denver Pioneer Athletics Day.” They issued proclamations celebrating DU’s outstanding athletics performance during the 2010–11 academic year.>>See more pictures of DU’s Homecoming and Pioneer Athletics Day celebration at bit.ly/DUMagPAD

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T he Commission on Presidential Debates has selected the University of Denver as

the host site for the first 2012 U.S. presiden-tial debate. The debate will be held on Oct. 3 in Magness Arena at DU’s Daniel L. Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness.

“The University of Denver is excited for this opportunity to partner with the Commission on Presidential Debates to bring this historic event to our campus, our city and our state,” says DU Chancellor Robert Coombe (pictured at right). “Debates are an important part of our nation’s election pro-cess, and as this is the first-ever presidential debate to be hosted in Colorado, the national and international spotlight will be on the University of Denver and the entire Rocky Mountain region.”

DU has hosted many prominent events and speakers over the years, including

then-presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2010 and current presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2007.

University officials announced the event at an Oct. 31 news conference, which also featured Denver Mayor Michael Hancock (pictured at left), who congratulated DU on behalf of the city. “We will do whatever we can to help you pull off a very successful presidential debate here,” Hancock said. “We know you’re ready to do it, but you have a partner in the city of Denver. We are awfully proud of you and we will, as a city, stand with you to showcase our great city to the rest of the world.”

Coombe says DU was one of 12 univer-sities around the country vying for a chance to host one of four nationally televised

debates that will occur just before the November 2012 general election. This is the first time the University has applied for host consideration.

“With today’s announcement, DU will focus its attention on building a world-class event that will engage our campus and com-munity in educational opportunities that will last long after the debate and election have passed,” Coombe said at the news conference.

The University is seeking sponsors to help cover the $1.65 million cost of the debate, Coombe said.

The University is planning a number of educational programs and events that will be held in the months leading up to the debate, inviting students and the larger community to learn about and engage in the political process.

>>www.du.edu/debate2012

TOP NEWS

DU to host first presidential debate of 2012By Media Relations Staff

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Pioneers Top 10

Issues impacting the 2012 election

1 The economy. If it recovers, Obama’s in. If it goes

into another recession, he’s

toast.

2 Wars. If the death toll rises

substantially anywhere, that

hurts Obama.

3 The ideological extremism of the Republican nominee

4 The Supreme Court’s ruling on health care reform

5 Voter turnout efforts

6 Redistricting. This will affect quite a few House members’ chances.

7 Voter eligibility rules

8 The price of gas

9 Illegal immigration

10 Social Security

— Seth Masket, associate professor of political science

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TOP NEWS

DU to host first presidential debate of 2012By Media Relations Staff

DU ranks with the best

DU was ranked No. 82—up from 86th last year—in U.S.News & World Report’s annual

college rankings for undergraduate education. U.S.News & World Report’s 2011 grad school rankings put

the Sturm College of Law at No. 77 on the list of top American law schools and the

Professional MBA (PMBA) program at the Daniels College of Business at No. 59 out of

166 part-time MBA programs. The Daniels College of Business was ranked No. 15 on a list

of the world’s top 100 business schools in the Aspen Institute’s 2011–12 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes,

a biennial survey and alternative ranking of business schools. And DU’s creative writing PhD program was

ranked the No. 1 creative writing PhD program in the country by Poets & Writers magazine.

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Student law clinic sues feds to protect sharksIn August, DU’s Sturm College of Law Environmental Law Clinic filed a federal lawsuit to protect

the porbeagle shark—a relative to the great white shark—from overfishing that has pushed the species to the brink of extinction.

The suit, filed by the student law clinic on behalf of WildEarth Guardians, asks a federal court in Washington, D.C., to overturn a ruling by the Department of Commerce that denied WildEarth Guardians’ 2010 bid to list the species as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The species is known to be highly intelligent—even seen engaging in playful behavior—and researchers say the shark plays an important environmental role, ensuring natural balance in its ecosys-tem. The porbeagle has a slow reproductive rate and is not rebounding from overfishing.

“By refusing to consider the petition to protect the porbeagle shark, the government has again arbitrarily refused to follow the law when it comes to species prized by the commercial fishing industry,” says DU Environmental Law Clinic director and lead attorney Michael Harris. “But the ESA is not merely intended to only protect cute, fuzzy species with no commercial value; the law should protect all species in order to maintain diverse and healthy ecosystems.”

—Chase Squires


University of Denver surpasses $300 million in fundraising campaign

New emergent digital practices degree to focus on technology and innovation

Law bar passage rate hits 90 percent

Professor brings students, homeless women together through writing

Grad student Eva Hakansson speeds her way to world record

Visiting astronaut tells DU students there’s a place in space program for all disciplines

Research focuses on psychology of Burning Man attendees

Students camp out for hockey tickets

@ DU Today Look for these stories and more news at www.du.edu/today

Student saves a life in Colorado high country

Scott Larson, a 21-year-old senior international business major, is credited with saving a man’s life on June 18 near Buena Vista, Colo. That afternoon, as Larson was returning to his car after hiking Mount Antero, a man ran toward him, screaming for help.

That man, Jim Denton, told Larson that his friend was drowning. Larson and Denton ran to the near-freezing Baldwin Creek, where 69-year-old Jim Taylor was trapped under an all-terrain vehicle. He had been driving the ATV when he hit a snow bank, lost control and rolled into the creek.

Taylor was stuck on his back, facing downstream, and couldn’t get his head above water. After exerting all of their strength for several minutes, Larson and Denton eventually lifted the vehicle and freed Taylor from the rushing water.

Larson removed Taylor’s wet clothes and wrapped him in a fleece blanket to prevent hypothermia. He did a memory check to make sure Taylor was coherent. Several men who had arrived at the scene helped load Taylor into Larson’s SUV. Larson drove as fast as he could down a treacherous backcountry trail to the main road for cellphone reception.

He called 911 just before Taylor went into shock.“By the time the paramedics got to us he was visibly shaking,” says Larson, who received certifications

in first aid and CPR as part of his student job at the Ritchie Center. He also is an Eagle Scout and has extensive outdoors survival training.

As a result of his efforts, Larson received the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Citizen Citation for Distinguished Service.

—Amber D’Angelo Na

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I t took communication majors Shane Carrick (BA ’08) and Bobby Deline (BA ’07) a few

tries to find the right subject for their docu-mentary film, but when they met Lt. Col. James Harvey they knew they had their man.

Harvey, who lives in Denver, was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, an elite group of black pilots who fought in World War II.

“It was something I think people don’t know a lot about,” says Deline, pictured at left. “A lot of people know the blurb in the history book that’s, ‘Oh, by the way, the Tuskegee Airmen were an all-black fighter pilot squadron in World War II.’ That’s liter-ally about all I knew.”

He and Carrick (pictured at right)learned a lot more about the group in 2007, when they made The Black Birdman, a 13-minute documentary on Harvey, for their documentary film production class. They interviewed the pilot in front of a green screen, onto which they later superimposed historic photos and old video footage of the Tuskegee Airmen.

In the film, Harvey, who grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, says his first experience with racism came when he was drafted into the Army. At home he had been class president and captain of the basketball team, but on his way to basic training he was forced to sit in the back car of a train with the other black soldiers.

“They classified us in the category of the ape and the baboon. We were nothing,” he says in the film. “That’s why a lot of people said, ‘Why send them to flying school, why teach them to fly? They can’t learn; they’re nothing.’”

In fact, Harvey says, the Tuskegee experiment originally was set up to prove that black pilots were inferior to white pilots, but the exacting specifications to which the Tuskegee pilots were expected to perform actually made them even better in the end.

“When we graduated, we were better than the instructors,” he says in the film.

HISTORy

Taking flightBy Greg Glasgow

Carrick and Deline received praise from their classmates on the film, but once they graduated they moved on. Deline started a film and video production company in Denver, and Carrick worked in television. When Carrick had the idea to format The Black Birdman to run on the station he was working for, he called Deline, who recut the film with new historic footage and new music.

They liked the improved version so much they decided to submit it to a pair of film festivals. Birdman won the best historical short award at the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Tenn., in October 2010

and was an official selection at the San Diego Black Film Festival in January 2011.

But the film’s most important audience was Harvey himself.

“When Shane and I went over to show it to him, I was scared to death of what he was going to think about it,” says Deline, who is now producing The Aviation Cocktail, a ’50s-set dramatic thriller filmed in and around Denver. “This is his story. I just remember that once the movie ended, he was silent, then he looked over at us and said, ‘That’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.’ It was pretty powerful.”

>>www.tuskegeetopgun.com

Photo illustration by Wayne Arm

strong

Watch the Black Birdman trailer online at bit.ly/DUMagBirdman


Undercurrents of the 2012 Election

Anne-Marie SlaughterFormer Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Departmentand Professor at Princeton University

Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 7 p.m.Gates Concert HallNewman Center for the Performing Arts2344 East Illiff Ave.

In 2011–12, Bridges to the Future will explore the “Undercurrents of the 2012 Election” in a series of lectures on the economic, domestic and international issues shaping voter perspectives during the 2012 presidential campaign.

RSVP at du.edu/slaughter or 303.871.2357

ADMISSION IS FREE

Presents

Car sharing arrives on campus

The University of Denver partnered with Enterprise Rent-A-

Car—which is led by CEO Andrew Taylor (BSBA ’70)—to bring the

company’s WeCar car-sharing program to campus in September.

WeCar offers 24-hour access to hourly, daily and overnight rent-

als, allowing members to maintain the benefits of a personal car while

paying for the vehicle only when they use it. WeCar’s national campus

car-sharing program is especially popular with students because it pro-

vides a solution to car rental age restrictions and to financial concerns

associated with having a car on campus.

DU students 18 and older, faculty and staff are eligible for mem-

bership, as are 21-and-older drivers in the surrounding community.

Once members register online, signing up to use the car is entirely

automated. Hourly rates start at $7.50 and daily rates start at $55.

>>wecar.com/du

—Chase Squires

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Law grad dedicates statue in memory of his slain family

On Nov. 10, 2006, University of Denver law graduate Frank Bingham endured his greatest personal tragedy when a drunk driver crashed into his family, killing his wife and two young children as they walked across a downtown Denver street.

On May 10, 2011, Bingham stood before civic leaders and support-ers on a warm afternoon and presented the city of Denver with a massive kinetic statue that reflected spring sunshine off shining blades of titanium. From his tragedy, he said, comes a symbol of strength and light.

The huge project, the work of artist Robert Pietruszewski and a team of donors, is titled Connections and is dedicated to the memory of Bingham’s family: wife Rebecca and children Macie, 4, and Garrison, 2.

Speaking briefly to the assembled crowd, Bingham recalled early talks with city leaders and how they led him to want to give something to the city that transformed the intersection at 15th and Arapahoe streets “from a place of darkness to a place of movement and light.”

With the statue’s glistening blades drifting in slow circles behind him, Bingham said, “In my mind, it’s a total success.”

Bingham, who graduated from DU’s Sturm College of Law in 2010, closed the brief ceremony by reading from a work by poet Maya Angelou.

“When great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly,” he read. “Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”

—Chase Squires

Panel says state budget fix may require cuts, taxes

Without taking definitive action, Colorado in 12 years will generate only enough sales, income and other general-purpose tax revenue to pay for the three largest programs in the general fund: public schools, health care and prisons, according to a new report by the University of Denver Center for Colorado’s Economic Future (CCEF).

Phase two of a study requested by the Colorado Legislature finds that by 2025 there will be no tax revenue for public colleges and universities, the state court system, child-protection services, youth corrections, state crime labs and other core services of state government. The entire budget will be consumed by what center Director Charlie Brown calls the “big three.”

The nonpartisan center undertook the study last year at the request of the Legislature. The CCEF’s first report—issued in February—demonstrated how the current balance of expenditures and revenues is unsustainable. Phase two finds the situation is more dire than earlier forecast. It also details the extent of a loom-ing structural gap as costs for the three biggest budget items rise beyond the capacity of existing revenue streams.

Models developed by the CCEF show projected spending for all programs in the general fund will exceed projected revenues by nearly $3.5 billion by fiscal year 2024–25.

The enormity of this gap suggests that Coloradans consider tax increases and spending cuts, the center finds. Attempting to dig out of the hole solely through cuts is problematic. Many state functions are mandated by law, Medicaid spending is regulated by the federal government, and extreme cuts to K-12 education may not be acceptable to residents and lawmakers. But, the center finds, there is hope for balance through a combination of cuts and increased revenue.

“The solutions are going to be very difficult,” Brown says. “Some very tough choices lie ahead, but doing nothing is not an option.”

The center modeled several options for raising revenue. Among those with the most potency to address the long-term problem: restructuring and rebalancing the state/local partnership in financing K-12 education; a graduated income tax; and expanding the state sales tax to more services.

Cuts could include the elimination of subsidies to state college tuition or even entire state services.

The center is only offering each proposal as an option for lawmakers to consider and has not taken a position on which specific actions must be taken. CCEF instead takes the stance that something must be done, and the only workable solution may be a combination of cuts and revenue enhancement.

“What we’re hoping is this kind of information can get out to local leaders, civic leaders and the general public, and that they will recognize this cliff that we’re heading toward,” Brown says.

>>www.du.edu/economicfuture

—Chase Squires

Watch a video of Frank Bingham’s speech at bit.ly/DUMagBingham


I n 2011, when pretty much anything goes in the world of visual art, it’s hard to imag-

ine what a big deal it was 60 years ago when a handful of Colorado artists left the realm of the real behind to go in a more abstract, modern direction.

With 10 DU art instructors—includ-ing Vance Kirkland (BA ’25) and William Sanderson (BA ’26)—in its ranks, a collec-tive calling itself simply 15 Colorado Artists split from the Denver Artists Guild in 1948 to follow its modernist muse.

“We are not trying to break up the guild,” Kirkland told The Denver Post in November 1948. “We are simply interested in progressive ideas in art and the guild isn’t.”

In December 1948, the two groups held side-by-side exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum, and people came from all over the city to see the schism, which the newspapers covered extensively.

This summer the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art in Denver featured work by the rebel group in the exhibit 15 Colorado Artists: Breaking With Tradition. Co-curated by Hugh Grant and Deb Wadsworth, the show featured more than 100 pieces from the artists who were once at the forefront of modern art in the state.

“It’s hard for us today to put ourselves back in 1948 and really imagine these pieces being as controversial as they were,” says Maya Wright, membership and events man-ager at the Kirkland Museum. “People wrote scandalous things in the paper about the work [of the] 15, but to us they don’t actually look so cutting edge because now we’re in an era where art can be really, really crazy.”

Artwork in the exhibit ranged from purely abstract works by Kirkland, John Billmyer and Eo Kirchner to representa-tional, if nonrealistic, pieces by artists such as Paul Smith and Mina Conant (BFA ’49), who specialized in whimsical paintings of characters drawn from the worlds of fairy tales and childhood. Married couple Conant and Billmyer met as art students at DU in

ARTS

Power of 15By Greg Glasgow

the 1930s and later came back to teach at the University. Other DU art faculty who were part of the original 15 were Marion Buchan, Kirchner, Duard Marshall, Louise Emerson Ronnebeck, J. Richard Sorby and Frank Vavra.

“Ten of the 15 worked at DU and were friends and worked together that way, so some people see DU as part of that energy that helped create the 15,” says Wright, who is working on a master’s degree in art history with a concentration in museum studies from the University of Denver.

This summer’s show also included a collection of newspaper articles from the late 1940s that detail the rise of the 15 and Denver’s differing views on modern art. A February 1948 editorial by Lee Casey in the Rocky Mountain News opines that “within a few years an original Picasso or Cezanne will be valued mainly for the frame.”

“In Western art, Western literature and bourbon,” Casey wrote, “I’ll take mine straight.”

The 15 Colorado Artists collective (membership was by invitation only) lasted until the 1970s and ended up with far more than 15 artists in its ranks. But the Kirkland exhibit dealt only with the original 15 and the impact they had on modern art in Colorado.

“It was a magical, seminal moment in Colorado art and emblematic that modern art was becoming widespread in America,” Grant says. “Just as regionalism became a truly American art form, modern art by regional artists in different parts of our country cre-ated truly American art forms. … This piv-otal moment in the history of Colorado art strengthened and is integral to the develop-ment and expansion of American art.”

John Billmyer, “Abstract No. 5” (1954). Kirkland Museum collection

Watch a video documentary about the 15 Colorado Artists collective at bit.ly/DUMagArtists


Frank Vavra, “Colorado

Mountain Town” (late 1940s).

Kirkland Museum collection

William Sanderson, “The Transfigured Night” (1952). On loan from the Sanderson Art

Collection, Northeastern Junior College Foundation, Sterling, Colo.

J. Richard Sorby, “The Thorns” (c. 1954). Courtesy of the

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; gift of the Denver Art

Museum

Mina Conant, “Birthday Party” (1974). Kirkland Museum collection Eo Kirchner, “Flight of the Squares” (1963). Wayne Yaffee collection


Strategic Issues Panel calls for changes to Colorado governmentIn a report issued Oct. 3, the University of Denver Strategic Issues

Program finds that Colorado—like many other states—suffers from a cyclical and structural fiscal imbalance that undermines the state’s fiscal stability over the long term.

The Strategic Issues Program (SIP) panel says that while Colorado’s budget situation may slowly improve as the economy recovers, the state is poised to founder once again at the next economic downturn. Given Colorado’s fragile financial situation, the panel concludes that achiev-ing a strong and sustainable fiscal environment requires a fundamen-tal rethinking of traditional governmental practices.

The nonpartisan SIP panel of 20 experts in business, governance and academia heard from 34 speakers who bluntly assessed the state’s problems funding and operating nearly every aspect of government. The SIP, which was started in 2005, has authored

reports on other issues, including immigration, water rights and the Colorado constitution.

In the end, panelists agreed by consensus to recommendations and con-clusions that include calls for using private contractors to provide services where appropriate and to foster competition. Furthermore, the panel recommends

the state focus on residents rather than institutions when allocating resources, a principle that is evident in the panel’s call for redefining how K-12 and

higher education are funded. In higher education, students could receive a stipend or voucher

to be used at the state institution of their choosing, rather than allowing the state to determine how much each school receives annually. The panel also recommends the state consider repealing the restrictive

K-12 school funding rule known as Amendment 23 and suggests

substantial changes to the Taxpayers Bill of Rights.

>>www.du.edu/issues—Chase Squires

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The Academic Commons at Penrose Library is getting a much-needed facelift, providing significant renovations and new construction to the existing complex, including: quiet study suites with comfortable seating, enhanced academic support clusters for students, group study and presentation practice rooms equipped with media technology, and lively gathering spaces, including a café.

g i v i n g . d u . e d u 8 0 0 . 4 4 8 . 3 2 3 8

our COMMON GOAL

DU has designated the Academic Commons as one of its highest fundraising priorities.

Honor your commitment to this vital initiative. DU is offering personalized commemorative book bindings for gifts $250 and above that will be displayed within the renovated Penrose Library. Gifts of any size will provide endless opportunities. Make your online gift today!

The Academic Commons at Penrose Library: A Contemporary Library for a 21st Century University


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Jenna Bainbridge auditioned at schools across the country and found the best fit

practically in her backyard.Bainbridge—a sophomore voice major

from Castle Rock, Colo.—received a DU Provost Scholarship, a scholarship from DU’s Lamont School of Music and a private scholarship.

While DU made good financial sense, the University also was a good fit for Bainbridge for its willingness to accept her as she is.

An actor. A singer. And a person with a disability.

“The whole reason I am going to school is to try and bring awareness to the fact that disabled actors and performers are [often] not cast and to try and break down those barriers,” Bainbridge says. “I want to go into major theater and movie companies and con-vince them that just because a part isn’t writ-ten as disabled doesn’t mean you can’t have a disabled person act it. In every aspect of life you are going to meet people with disabilities and they’re doing all sorts of jobs and doing all kinds of things. So who is to say that they can’t be in a movie or a stage play?”

Bainbridge became paralyzed from the shoulders down at just 16 months. To this day, doctors are unsure what caused the paralysis.

Today it hardly seems the energetic Bainbridge could be slowed down, but she is still partially paralyzed from the waist down and has a limp. Her disability didn’t stop her from making her theater debut at age 10, and it hasn’t kept her from excelling in numerous roles.

Bainbridge has performed in tick, tick… BOOM! and Side Show at the University of Denver and in seven productions by the Denver-based PHAMALY (Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League), including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Urinetown and Beauty and the Beast.

But Bainbridge also has seen opportuni-ties pass her by.

She’s been told that she wasn’t cast for several roles because “they didn’t think they could make a limp work.”

In her junior year of high school, Bainbridge auditioned for colleges at a national thespian conference in Lincoln, Neb. She asked representatives from the schools that didn’t call her back what she could do differently at her next audition.

“I had two or three schools tell me that the reason I didn’t get a callback was because they had a heavy dance emphasis at their school and they didn’t think I could do the

dancing. Or they didn’t want to accept some-one that couldn’t do the dancing and have to change the program for them,” Bainbridge recalls.

Besides her roles as student and per-former, Bainbridge recently was named Miss Castle Rock 2011. She placed in the top 15 in the Miss Colorado pageant in June 2011 and plans to compete again next year.

Long term, Bainbridge says she’s waiting to see where life takes her, and she has some idea of where she’d like that to be.

“My dream would be to be on Broadway one day or to be a major actress and singer in movies,” she says.

Wayne Arm

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PEOPlE

Stage fightBy Brenda Gillen


C an you match these architectural details to the DU buildings on which they

appear?

1. Craig Hall

2. Daniels College of Business

3. Newman Center for the Performing Arts

4. Nagel Hall

5. Chambers Center for the Advancement of Women

6. Mary Reed Building

7. F. W. Olin Hall

8. Ricketson law Building

9. University Hall

10. University of Denver Soccer Stadium

VIEWS

Where in the world?Photographs by Wayne Armstrong

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Answers: 1:F, 2:I, 3:C, 4:H, 5:A, 6:E, 7:G, 8:J, 9:D, 10:B


The University of Denver blows up, shoots at and blasts holes in more stuff before

noon than most universities do all day.Measuring and documenting havoc

wreaked by .50-caliber bullets, cannon blasts of ball bearings and dozens of explosive concoctions, researchers at DU’s Applied Research and Technology Institute toil at a remote ballistics lab tucked between hillsides on the rolling prairie east of Aurora, Colo.

“A lot of what we do, we do for small businesses,” says Steven Ford, who man-ages the ballistics lab. “They’re working on a material and need to test some properties. They can come to us and get extremely accu-rate measurements and work done to their specifications. One reason people come to us is that they have some proprietary stuff, and that proprietary stuff stays proprietary.”

So a company working on a new type of armor for a vehicle might send stacks of plates made of composite materials. Ford and others at the facility can blast bullets as thick as a man’s thumb at the plates and record detailed data, including X-rays and photos taken by an imaging tool that records at a rate of up to 100,000 frames per second. That data goes back to the manufacturer, and the DU lab never needs to know what the samples were made from.

Need to know what a pea-sized pellet will do to material that could one day form the skin of NASA’s next-generation space vehicle? The facility has a huge “gun” that can propel that pellet up to 7,000 feet per second to simulate speeding space debris.

Research associate Justin Wiley shows off silver-colored plates with holes blown through them by the device. In the lab,

accurate test results are vital. In space, those same holes could kill a crew of astronauts.

Clients have included the computational physicists at Corvid Technologies; the U.S. Missile Defense Agency; emissions control researchers at Neumann Systems Group; and the Littleton, Colo., division of ARA, a company that has done research for the Army on weapons effectiveness and target vulnerabilities.

“The capabilities they have out here are really useful for a company like ours,” says Fred Sandstrom, an ARA scientist. “It’s better turnaround time, and it’s cost effective.”

Capping a day of demonstrations and exhibits on the prairie, research engineer Donald New showed off two sticks of explosives—one dynamite, the other a concoction similar to the materials used in

the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Without a blasting cap, the materials are safe to handle. But once New attached the detonators and flipped the switch, the resulting blasts shook the ground and sent a shock wave guests could feel 200 yards away.

Not many people would be eager to have such a facility next door. Fortunately, the nearest neighbors to DU’s range are barely visible in the distance.

ARA researcher Scott Hardesty says the company used to have access to its own range, but suburban sprawl encroached on the facility and has made ranges such as DU’s increasingly rare.

“There just aren’t many places like this left,” he says. “This is one of the few sites on the Front Range. It’s very useful.”

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RESEARCH

Having a blastBy Chase Squires


”

Since announcing his intention to run for president in

2012, longtime campaign consultant Fred Karger (BA speech

communication ’72) has made a name for himself as the

openly gay, Jewish, Republican candidate whose platform

includes reforming education, lowering the voting age and

bringing a spirit of cooperation back to Washington.

Q Does it dismay you at all that in 2011, sexual ori-entation is still such a big factor when it comes to

something like running for president?

A There’s a generation out there to whom it’s far less important, but as we’re seeing in polls, there are still a

lot of people who are very concerned about it. I go into meet-ings and I can tell whether people are at ease or not—it was a lot easier when I was in the closet. I’ve been in thousands of meetings and I’ve never had anyone act uncomfortably around me or anything. Well, now I do sometimes. And I’m thinking, “Gee, what am I doing this for? Why am I out there?” I have to remind myself that I really want to do this to make it easier for younger people, so if I can help in that respect then I can take some more bruises.

Q What do you mean when you say you’re doing this to make it easier for young people?

A As the first out gay candidate to run for president of the United States, it sends a very powerful message to

young LGBT people around the country: “You can do anything

Q & A

A conversation with presidential candidate Fred KargerInterview by Greg Glasgow

you want; feel good about yourself; you’re just fine; you can even run for president.” I said on “The Rachel Maddow Show” that I’m doing this for younger people and I got a wonderful Facebook message that night from a gentleman who said, “Just know, Fred, that you’re not doing this just for younger people. I’m 82 years old, I’ve been in the closet most of my life, and you’re an inspiration to me. Thank you.” I hadn’t thought of that, that there are so many people struggling and who have struggled.

Q Do you think the novelty factor of being an openly gay Republican candidate has also helped you in

some regards?

A It makes for a good headline, I’ll tell you that. I understand that because of the novelty, it gets me

the story in The Washington Post, it gets me a lot of the early coverage, but I’m starting to move beyond that. It’s an interesting story because of my personal situation and having been in the closet for so long, having been involved in a lot of high-level campaigns. But I want to talk about the issues, and that’s what my main goal is, is to talk about how I can help transform this country.

Q In addition to working on the campaigns of Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, you worked for Ronald

Reagan on his initial campaign and on his re-election campaign in ’84. What lessons can you take away from his campaigns or his presidency?

A What he did was very unique. Here’s a very conservative Republican from California, but he went to Washington

and the speaker of the House of Representatives was Tip O’Neill, a very liberal Democrat who had been there for many terms, and Reagan invited him to the White House right off the bat and they became friends. Miles apart philosophically, but they forged this alliance and they got a lot done based on friendship. When President Obama came into office, he didn’t invite the Republican leader of the Senate to the White House for a similar one-on-one meeting for 18 months. One of my first actions would be to invite all the leadership, Republican and Democrat, for one-on-one meetings. Have them over, watch football, have dinner. I want to bring back a cordial feeling and getting along in Washington.

Read the full interview online at bit.ly/DUMagKarger

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Q & A

A conversation with presidential candidate Fred KargerInterview by Greg Glasgow

www.du.edu/magazineJust click the button at

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Coombe highlights financial aid, diversity in annual Convocation speech

Chancellor Robert Coombe outlined strategic goals for the coming year at the annual University Convocation on Oct. 5.

Chief among those goals is continuing to recruit outstanding students and helping those students cover the cost of their education. Coombe said that DU now competes with the nation’s top private universities, many of which have larger endowments from which to draw student financial aid. DU is commit-ted to attracting a bright, engaged and diverse group of students, and building resources to help students meet financial needs is key, he said.

Other goals include a renewed focus on campus diversity. That means more than just recruiting a diverse student body and faculty, but also integrating those elements into campus life. Coombe said diversity must be built on inclu-sion if the campus is to grow and benefit from a variety of viewpoints, beliefs, perspectives and cultures.

There also will be a renewed focus on the sciences in the coming year, he said. The nation is turning out a new generation of scientists and engineers, and DU needs to be ready to offer excellent programs for students seeking new skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

—Chase SquiresWatch a video of Chancellor Coombe’s Convocation speech at bit.ly/DUMagConvocation$5.2 million gift makes DU owner of

the Highlands Ranch Golf Club

In November, the family of late DU Trustee Ron Moore

(BS finance ’54) made a gift of the Highlands Ranch Golf Club to

the University of Denver Division of Athletics and Recreation. DU

athletics will take over complete control of the club on Jan. 1.

The semi-private facility, which was named the official home

of the DU men’s and women’s golf teams on Aug. 24, is the second

largest gift to athletics in University history. The Highlands Ranch

Golf Club gift, with a book value of $5.2 million, will be matched

dollar-for-dollar with funds allocated as part of the University’s

ASCEND campaign in order to provide tuition scholarship endow-

ments for men’s and women’s golf student-athletes.

A member of the University of Denver Board of Trustees

from 1986 until his passing in 2003, Moore served as chairman

of the board’s investment committee and gave time and financial

support to the University. Moore—who earned a golf scholar-

ship to the University of Denver in 1951—was inducted into

the University of Denver Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002. He was

a member of two Skyline Conference Championship teams and

advanced to the NCAA tournament in 1952, ’53 and ’54. Moore

credited his time on the Pioneers golf team as one of the turning

points in his life.

—Media Relations Staff

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Why Wait ?Double your impact withDU’s matching program!

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

Twin sisters and DU scholarship recipients Katie and Elizabeth Bhappu (Class of 2012) are about to tackle the challenges of the world, equipped with a DU education.

Scholarships enable the University to attract talented students from all walks of life regardless of their economic resources. As part of DU’s ASCEND campaign, the University will imme-diately match your bequest commitment for an endowed scholarship that will benefit students right away!

By letting DU match your estate gift, you will see first-hand how your future generosity can impact students’ lives in a meaningful way now. Call for details.

Katie Bhappu, ’12, and Elizabeth Bhappu, ’12, DU seniors

“I love the smaller class sizes and know that my professors care about my success.” –Katie

“DU provided us with endless opportunities to get involved and with an eye-opening study abroad experience that we will treasure for a lifetime.” –Elizabeth

U.N. leader speaks at DU’s Korbel Dinner

In one of his first major U.S. trips since his re-appointment in June as United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon told an audience of about 700 at the 14th annual Korbel Dinner in August that a revolution in thinking and action is needed in sustainable development, and that “now is the time to think big.”

The University of Denver honored Ban Ki-moon at the event with its Global Advancement Award. “These issues are relevant for every country, including this one,” said Ban Ki-moon, who is known for

his passionate agenda on human rights, climate change and efforts to engage world leaders in protecting people.

“We now live in a world where no country, no matter how powerful, can solve problems on its own. No global challenge, no matter how pressing, can be addressed in isolation,” he said. “The essence of leader-ship, and our collective challenge, is to step up and work together.”

He noted that DU students are making an impact—now and in the future.“Your students are shaping our world. They are making a difference throughout the ranks of the diplo-

matic corps, in the United Nations, in nongovernmental organizations, in businesses and civil society across the country and around the world,” he said.

The Korbel Dinner also honored Timothy and Bernadette Marquez with the Josef Korbel Humanitarian Award. NBA star and former Denver Nugget Chauncey Billups received the University of Denver Bridge Builder Award.

—Kim DeVigilWatch a video of Ban Ki-moon’s speech at bit.ly/DUMagKorbel

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The University of Denver is leading a charge that will change the way today’s

lawyers are taught to navigate tomorrow’s legal world, battle-testing students while they are still in the classroom and challeng-ing them to think like lawyers instead of law students.

In August, the DU-based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) launched an initiative with 15 law school partners—including DU’s Sturm College of Law—calling for innovation that bucks years of traditional law school education. Called Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, the initiative is being promoted nationally and provides a plat-form to encourage law schools to showcase innovative teaching.

Instead of graduating lawyers with an understanding that they will continue to learn on the job as associates in big firms or at government posts, the initiative recog-nizes that tomorrow’s jobs will require stu-dents to be practice-ready from the moment they pass the bar exam.

“Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers lever-ages the Carnegie model of learning,” says Rebecca Love Kourlis, executive director of IAALS and a former Colorado Supreme Court justice. “Our project provides support for shared learning, innovation, ongoing measurement and collective implementa-tion. We are very excited to launch this project to encourage new ways to train law students and to measure innovation in the years to come.”

Key to the program is a website that provides a forum for educators to exchange ideas and share resources. At its heart, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers calls for teaching that forces second- and third-year students to put all that casework they’ve been memorizing to work, applying it in class-room exercises that are more like real-world legal practice than theoretical discussion.

William Sullivan, lead author of a 2007 Carnegie Foundation report titled Educating

ACADEMICS

Tomorrow’s lawyers, todayBy Chase Squires

Lawyers, will direct the initiative. Kourlis and Sturm College of Law Dean Martin Katz will serve with Sullivan on the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers executive committee.

“Our goal is to encourage law schools that are already committed to innovation to share what they know in a structured, col-laborative place so that other law professors may discuss and develop new teaching tech-niques,” Sullivan says.

At DU, Katz has been an advocate of reinventing the law school experience to

produce lawyers ready to work from day one.

“We want to help law schools integrate three sets of values, or what the Carnegie Foundation calls ‘apprenticeships,’” Katz says. “They are knowledge, practice and professionalism. We believe this initiative can change how law professors and deans, students and ultimately the legal profession respond to our changing world.”

>>www.educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu

Wayne Arm

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DONOR SPOTLIGHT

Tiffani LennonCarmella Lucia

Fredo Lennon was a tena-cious woman who made a lasting impact on many people, especially her granddaughter, Tiffani Lennon, chair of the law and society program at the University of Denver Women’s College.

“I’ve never known a stronger, more powerful woman,” Tiffani Lennon says.

In her grand-mother’s memory, Lennon recently donated $25,000 to the Women’s College to endow a scholarship for undergraduate law and society majors. DU will match her $25,000 gift.

Carmella Lennon, who was born in 1904 in Calabria, Italy, was 85 when she took on the task of raising then-10-year-old Tiffani. “She grew up in a time when women couldn’t vote and couldn’t drive. She entered into an arranged marriage at 16,” Tiffani says. “By traditional markers, she wouldn’t be considered a woman leader—but she was deeply respected, extraordinarily selfless and incredibly driven. She saved my life in a lot of ways.”

Lennon sees many parallels between her grandmother and the women she teaches in the interdisciplinary law and society program. Students in the program are headed for law school, the public sector or advocacy work, she says, and they are attracted to the program’s strong focus on social justice.

Lennon says administrators from the Women’s College will select scholarship recipients based on criteria she has established.

“My grandmother taught me how to succeed in life, so I’m looking for students who have all the skills necessary to be a leader, who are academically strong, deeply professional and driven to achieve,” she says.

Lennon intends to continue to donate to the scholarship fund over the years, and she dreams of being able to fully fund a number of Women’s College students.

“Professor Lennon’s expression of support for her stu-dents sets a leadership example among the members of the DU community,” says Women’s College Dean Lynn Gangone. “Through her deeply generous gift in establishing the Car-mella Lucia Fredo Lennon Endowed Scholarship, Professor Lennon epitomizes the college’s mission of bold leadership in celebration of and on behalf of women.”

—Jordan Ames

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Bridges to the Future series kicks off with former White House chief of staff

Erskine Bowles says the U.S. deficit is like a cancer that will destroy the country from within.

Bowles—a former White House chief of staff—spoke to a crowd of more than 1,300 people at DU’s Magness Arena Oct. 10 as the first speaker in the 2011–12 Bridges to the Future season. This year’s theme is “Undercurrents of the 2012 Election.”

Bowles’ talk, “American Politics and Issues: The Economic Outlook,” addressed the work he did in 2010 as co-chair of the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

“We cannot solely grow our way out of this,” Bowles said of the deficit. “We cannot solely tax our way out of this, and we can’t solely cut our way out of it.”

Bowles said he and his co-chair on the commission, former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, tried to make recommendations that were reasonable, responsible and biparti-san. Their goal was to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

To do that, Bowles said Congress had to get serious about budget cuts, including cutting Social Security and military spending.

“We spend more on our defense than the next 14 largest countries combined,” he said. “We need to take strong steps to reduce military spending; we cannot afford to be the world’s policeman.”

—Kristal Griffith

Watch a video of Bowles’ speech at bit.ly/DUMagBowles

Professor receives grant to study cell development

In June, University of Denver biology Professor Todd Blankenship learned he had landed a $1.4 mil-lion National Institutes of Health grant to pay for five years of research. The money, he says, will keep his laboratory funded and stocked with necessary research tools. It also will help him supply graduate students with stipends and scholarships.

Blankenship and his students study how cells line up in the correct places to make us look like—and function like—the beings we become, using a benign breed of fruit fly as a model. Because of the flies’ rapid life cycle, blooming from egg to fly in little more than a week, researchers always have plenty of embryos, which they watch through a powerful, high-speed microscope to see how cells are arranged as the embryos develop.

With the grant, Blankenship says the lab will acquire a super-precise laser that can target tiny proteins within individual cells and study how they react when stimulated. Their findings could someday help other scientists understand the ramifications of developmental malfunctions and perhaps unlock cures for diseases such as cancer.

—Chase SquiresWatch a video about Todd Blankenship’s work at bit.ly/DUMagBlankenship

Shutterstock.com


N o one would give it a second thought if Lindsay Cone decided to pack away

her golf bag to spend more time honing her skills on the ski slopes. Cone, after all, has won a pair of All-America honors since join-ing DU’s ski program, and she has emerged as one of the top athletes in all of collegiate skiing.

Cone’s golf skills may not measure up to her feats on the slopes, but those skills are good enough for her to occupy a place on the high-performing DU women’s golf team. Cone’s participation on the ski team and women’s golf team make her one of the most distinctive two-sport athletes in col-legiate athletics today.

“They are two extremely different sports. But the pressure you get when you’re golfing is similar to the pressure you get in an important ski race,” Cone says. “They take different talents and abilities to perform in each, but at the end of the day, it is the mental toughness that lets you deal with that pressure.”

Cone grew up on the slopes in her native Killington, Vt., learning to weave her way down a snowy mountain not long after she took her first steps. In September 2011, she made national news when she had to hike out of a Hurricane Irene-damaged Killington to make her flight to Denver to start her senior year.

Cone boasted a burning competitive drive in skiing pretty much from the begin-ning, but her golf game evolved a little less deliberately. Cone began golfing at 7, firing rounds mostly for fun on weekends and during the summers.

Before long, though, Cone began enter-ing golf tournaments and discovered her competitive edge was just as focused on the links as it was when she lined up at the starting gate.

“[Golf] started to be a little more com-petitive, and I started to do a couple tourna-ments here and there,” Cone says. “I found that the better my golf game got during the summer, the better I was able to compete

SPORTS

Double dutyBy Pat Rooney

the next year in skiing. I found that they correlate really well mentally.”

Cone began her collegiate career at St. Lawrence University, where she won the 2009 NCAA championship in the giant slalom. Her success continued as soon as she transferred to DU, where she finished second in the slalom during each of the past two NCAAs. Cone also finished second in the giant slalom in 2010 to help lead DU to its 21st national championship, and she has earned first team All-America honors in each of her two seasons.

“I went to a ski academy, so in my high school years I skied competitively all through the winter—traveling all over Europe and throughout the world to com-pete. It sort of became my life,” says Cone, a

finance major who was named to the NCAA all-academic team in skiing in spring 2011. “I think the biggest thing is just practicing and preparing and teaching yourself. You are out there alone, whether you are on the golf course or on the ski hill. Your teammates can help you, but at the end of the day, it is all about you being able to perform.”

DU’s head ski coach, Andy LeRoy, is quick to credit Cone’s sharp mind for much of her success.

“Lindsay is a very bright individual, and she has used that intelligence to excel past most of her peers in the sport of ski racing,” LeRoy says. “I am not much of a golfer, but I believe golf rewards some intelligence too, so I’ve never been surprised at her success on the links.”

Wayne Arm

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ONE TO WATCH

Joseph Zhang, international business

If you saw a dollar on the ground, would you pick it up? In his winning entry for the University of Denver Magazine “Communities of Change” video contest, junior international business major Joseph Zhang asks this ques-tion to explore the issue of community change through the value of a dollar. A buck doesn’t buy much in the U.S., but in Ethiopia it can buy food, clothes and education for one student for a day, Zhang says.

At Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs, Colo., Zhang was involved with the Cunningham Foundation—a nonprofit that promotes sustainability and education in Ethiopia—and he became enamored with the cause. He co-founded a DU chapter of the foundation last year with fellow Pioneer Leadership Program student Hannah Merten.

Leadership is serious business for Zhang, a Boettcher Scholar who started DU’s mock trial club and is part of the Asian Student Alliance and several University honor societies.

“He has an uncanny ability to quietly rally a group around an important issue or project, organizing them into a productive team of collaboration,” says Linda Olson,

director of the Pioneer Leadership Program. “This is a true mark of a citizen leader.”Zhang plans to pursue an MBA at DU, then a law degree on the East Coast. In fall 2011 he began studying

transnational law in a yearlong study abroad program at King’s College in London. Zhang was born in Harbin, China, where, he says, the law didn’t benefit the people.

“That’s changed a lot, but human rights is still an issue over there,” Zhang says. He immigrated to the U.S. when he was 5 years old but visits China every year. He doesn’t have Internet

access when he’s there, which he finds refreshing.“You’re forced to talk to people, play card games with people,” Zhang says. “I think it’s better to make face-

to-face connections.”He strives to make personal connections at home in the U.S. as well.“I’ve never had Facebook. I always miss out on parties because of that,” he jokes. “I only have 100 texts

[on my cellphone plan] and I don’t want more because once I run out, I’m forced to call people. And I only have 200 cellphone minutes because when I run out I’m forced to go see people. If you’re forced to do something like that, you will eventually make those connections a lot more real.”

—Amber D’Angelo NaVisit bit.ly/DUMagDollar to watch The Value of $1.

DU by the Numbers

Greek life

Sororities

7Fraternities

9Percentage of undergraduate students who are members of

Greek chapters

22New members recruited in fall 2011

420Hours volunteered in 2010–11 during two Greek Service Days

1,500Average GPA of DU sorority and

fraternity members

3.33Community service hours

performed by each member per quarter

10

Compiled by Katy Armstrong, graduate assistant in DU’s Office of

Campus Activities

The University of Denver’s three-year overhaul and energy upgrade at Johnson-McFarlane residence hall—commonly

known as J-Mac—has earned the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star certification, placing the facility in the top 25 percent of college residence halls nationwide. Buildings that earn the

certification typically use an average of 35 percent less energy and release 35 percent less carbon dioxide.

The University replaced existing windows with better insulated windows, upgraded the heating system, installed more

efficient hot water exchangers, upgraded lighting and painted the roof white to better reflect summertime sun.

The EPA Energy Star program measures buildings against similar facilities nationwide. The program was instituted in 1992 as

a voluntary partnership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency.

GREEN DU

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POETRy

Seed StartersBy Meghan Howes

Meghan Howes is the director of communications at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She has a BA in English from the College of Wooster—where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Vonna Hicks Adrian Poetry Prize for an outstanding body of poetry—and an MFA from the University of Montana, where she was a poetry fellow and served as poetry editor of Cutbank. She has been published in numerous magazines and journals, including Ascent, Artful Dodge and High Grade. “Seed Starters” won the blue ribbon at the inaugural Denver County Fair poetry competition in summer 2011.

Yazmin C

oveney

Strange how the rain comes

on days like this, when blue

in any context is a lie, a scratch

on the sky’s socked-in surface,

and the gutters on the house next door

leak like sieves, cracked and bowed,

dropping water into sidewalk ponds.

We let the sound in when

it suits us, note the downpour

but cannot feel the storm.

Cities wrestle for sky, jostle

for land. Every single tree

in this western town was planned

and planted by hand, century-old

wood sentries still standing

despite fickle Front Range weather.

And each spring in North Denver

amidst jungles of broken glass,

brownfields and bindweed, backyard Edens

wake from their Superfund-site slumber

and prove the naysayers wrong.

We order starter kits, lower the downspouts,

sift our compost and shed our socks.

Next weekend we’ll turn the raised bed,

let it rest a spell. And before we know it

we’re parents, standing over our bright

seedlings, cooing. The tomatoes wake first.

We cannot stop smiling.


Straight ShooterMike Enzi, Wyoming’s plain-spoken senior senator, doesn’t exactly fit the part of love guru. H The 67-year-old grandfather is a straight-arrow Eagle Scout and one-time aspiring minister. He serves root-beer floats at campaign events and revels in paleontology. H Despite appearances, Enzi (MSBA ’68) knows his stuff when it comes to human relations. His advice to couples is simple and effective. The secret to his happy 42-year marriage is the same philosophy that guides his legislative approach. He calls it the “80-percent rule.” H Put simply, it means focusing on the approximately 80 percent of any given issue that most people will agree on. Bypassing the other 20 percent fosters harmony and occasional breakthroughs. H “There are some things you don’t bring up unless you want to spend a lot of time haggling over them, and probably reaching no conclusion, and having some hurt feelings when it’s over,” Enzi says. H The 80-percent rule explains the Republican’s knack for working across the aisle. Consistently ranked among the Senate’s most conservative members, Enzi nevertheless has made a career of finding common ground with his political opposites. H Enzi worked particularly closely with the late liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy. The unlikely pair was instrumental in passing, among other legislation, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000, which increased on-the-job protection for health workers, and the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006, the first significant improvement of mine safety regulations in 30 years. In his 2009 memoir, True Compass, Kennedy wrote admiringly of Enzi. H “It wasn’t what we compromised on, it was what we left out,” Enzi says of his negotiations with Kennedy. “You had these two extremes, and yet we were able to come together.”

Straight ShooterBy Rob Jordan

Compromise and common sense

mark the career of Wyoming

Senator Mike Enzi.

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E nzi is no stranger to extremes. Growing up amid Wyoming’s dramatic expanses and often harsh climate instilled in him

a love of the outdoors and an abiding spirit of individualism and idealism. Although he had only ventured out of Wyoming once—to a Boy Scout jamboree in Valley Forge, Pa.—the teenaged Enzi envisioned a future in the foreign service. He had been deeply influ-enced by the 1958 story collection The Ugly American, by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, and wanted to improve the U.S. image abroad.

Shortly after arriving in Washington to attend George Washington University (GWU), Enzi had a change of heart.

“I got there and found out it was a big city,” he recalls. “I didn’t like big cities, so I figured I wouldn’t like big cities in foreign countries.”

Enzi changed his major from international affairs to accounting and started plotting a business career. He passed up a GWU business school scholarship, however, because of a stipulation that he perform two years of government service after earning a graduate degree.

“I knew I wasn’t going to do that,” he says with a laugh.Back West, Enzi enrolled at the University of Denver College

of Business Administration (since renamed the Daniels College of Business) in 1966. He was fascinated by the University’s mainframe computer and used it to work through equations from a statistics class. The computer would accept punch cards one day, process them the next and spit out answers on the third day.

Alonzo May, a professor of complex enterprise, made a bigger impression than the room-sized computer. The professor required his students to keep a journal of ideas they gathered from class read-ings. The journal was a revelation for Enzi, who says he discovered that “the whole world functions on ideas.”

Since then, Enzi has written a report on every book he reads. At a rate Enzi claims to be one book per week, that amounts to more than 2,000 reports. His favorites include anything by C.J. Box (BA ’81) and Homer Hickam, The Last Trail by Zane Grey, and Two Hands and a Knife by Terry Gibson.

“I read everything from the aspect of seeing if there’s an idea that will work,” Enzi says. Often he stays up half the night reading and typing up thoughts. His staffers are accustomed to 2 a.m. brain-storm emails from the boss.

Significant as it is, Enzi says his ideas journal wasn’t the best thing to come out of his time at DU. On the last night of school, in the midst of a final book assignment, Enzi made a fateful choice: He went on a blind date with a 19-year-old University of Wyoming stu-dent named Diana. She was in town visiting a mutual friend.

“He is really straightforward,” Diana says of her husband. “He never has an ulterior motive.” In the early days of their mar-riage, Diana says, Enzi’s no-conflict personality was hard to get accustomed to: “For two years, I would have the fight on both sides.”

Since then, the Enzis have raised three children and become grandparents to four. Enzi has been present at each grandchild’s birth.

A year after earning his master’s degree in retail marketing, Enzi was back home in Wyoming. He opened and ran a suc-

cessful chain of shoe stores and volunteered with a local Jaycees group. Life felt settled, but it was about to change drastically.

The turning point came when Enzi gave a speech about a young men’s leadership training program at a Jaycees event. Wyoming state legislator and future U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson approached him afterward.

“He took me by the elbow, took me over in the corner and said, ‘I don’t even know which party you’re in, but it’s time you put your money where your mouth is on this stuff,’” Enzi remembers. Simpson urged the young businessman to run for mayor.

In the years that followed, Enzi served two terms as mayor of Gillette, Wyo., presiding over an economic boom powered by coal and natural gas extraction and a tripling of the town’s population. Enzi went on to serve in the Wyoming state legislature before life took another dramatic turn.

When Simpson announced his plans to step down as Wyoming’s senior senator in 1996, friends and colleagues lobbied Enzi to run. He wasn’t convinced. He had just undergone open-heart surgery and had little interest in what promised to be a gruel-ing primary campaign against eight other Republican candidates.

Sitting in church one Sunday morning, Enzi had an epiphany.“I was thinking about how I’d like to hunt and fish, and I got

this little nudge that I wasn’t kept alive to hunt and fish.” Enzi went home crying and asked his wife and three children

to help him decide what to do.With his family’s support, Enzi threw his hat in the ring. He

won the primary by only 1 percent of the vote before taking the gen-eral election. Voters liked the certified public accountant’s common-sense approach.

“I sold legislation the same way I sold shoes,” Enzi says. “That means you have to know who the customer is. You have to listen to what they want and see how that matches up with your inventory.”

At any given time, Enzi is working on about 35 different bills for his Wyoming constituents. Mining and natural resources are major points of focus. Enzi is proud of his work to secure coal bed methane royalties for Wyoming communities and health care for miners whose employers go out of business.

Enzi’s causes are far-ranging and sometimes surprising. He has pushed to simplify the college loan application process and ensure that accountants aren’t unduly punished by financial regulations. In typical Enzi fashion, he “stayed up all night reading and writing down ideas” before a high-level discussion of AIDS funding. When the Senate delegation arrived for the meeting, the


Senate majority leader turned to Enzi unexpectedly. “Well, Enzi, you know a lot about this,” Enzi recalls him saying. “Take it away.”

During his three terms in the U.S. Senate, Enzi has made a name for himself as a champion of bipartisanship. “Here’s a guy that just wants to get things done,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) says of Enzi. “He’s not partisan. He’s not a demagogue. He’s just results-oriented.” Of Enzi’s 80-percent rule, Carper says, “If more people in the Senate took that as their attitude, we could be a whole lot more productive.”

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) describes Enzi as “thoughtful,” “pragmatic” and “willing to reach across the aisle.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) calls Enzi a “reasonable negotiator” with a small business owner’s valuable perspective. “Even when we have differing views on the best way to resolve issues, he has shown a willingness to come to the table and discuss the areas that we can agree on,” Durbin says.

E nzi’s high-ceilinged office is a veritable museum of Wyoming artifacts and personal mementoes. There’s the

DU ceremonial doctoral hood, a photo of Enzi as a 14-year-old Boy Scout, a moose antler, a duck carved from a weathered fence post, a photo of Enzi and his son, Brad, with the gleaming wooden canoe they built together.

If Enzi is anxious to keep his office, he doesn’t let on. He’s coy about what he will do when his current term ends in 2014.

“People spend too much time thinking about re-election instead of thinking about doing what’s right,” he says.

Only the ninth Wyoming senator to serve as chairman of a standing committee, Enzi headed the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) from 2005 to 2007. As chairman, he guided a committee full of outsize personalities (seven former presidential candidates among them) to a surprising number of legislative agreements.

Under Enzi’s leadership, the committee formulated the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act—“the first civil rights bill of the 21st century,” Enzi says. But he is quicker to trumpet the committee’s success in passing a pension-protection bill in record time. The 2,000-page bill was subject to only an hour of floor debate and two amendments. At the time, the Senate parliamentarian of more than 30 years told Enzi he had never seen a bill that big pass so quickly.

“Because we were so diverse, people figured if we could come together, it was OK,” Enzi says of the HELP committee. The secret to the committee’s success? The 80-percent rule, of course. If it works for political relationships among U.S. senators, it can work for relationships between work colleagues, friends, and even couples, Enzi says.

“It’s just a good rule everywhere.”

Mike Enzi’s Guide to Leadership“Look for the common ground, and build on the common ground.”

“It’s not the compromise that works, it’s what you leave out.”

“Most people are busy thinking about what they’re going to say next rather than actually taking in what the other person is saying. Listening is an underrated art.” “There should be a purpose to every meeting.” “Know that every action has a customer. Know who that customer is. Listen to the customer. Even when they aren’t talking about their needs, they are talking about their wants. See if your inventory matches their wants.”

“People don’t really listen to your floor speeches, so it helps if you talk with them one-on-one.”

“If you have the possibility of a really heated town meeting, you want to hold it in the biggest building you can find. If you pack them into a small room, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. People really get hot over that.”

“Make sure there’s a standing microphone not behind a podium. People don’t get quite as heated if they’re exposed. If they can hide behind something, the temperature goes up.”

Courtesy of M

ike Enzi’s office


Donald U

hrbrock, Time and LIFE Im

ages


For most of today’s students, the Peace Corps has always existed. But when

President John Kennedy launched the program in 1961, it was considered

visionary—and not a little risky. We were sending our nation’s youth into service to

promote global peace and intercultural awareness—laudable ambitions by most

standards—but often to regions of the world where war, famine and unsanitary conditions

posed real dangers.

Now, as the Peace Corps celebrates its 50th anniversary, much has changed in the

world. And much has not.

“Volunteers continue to work on pressing issues like poverty and hunger and preserving

the environment,” says Janice Laurente, a spokeswoman for the organization. According to

its website, the Peace Corps has three goals: helping the people of interested countries in

meeting their need for trained men and women; helping promote a better understanding of

Americans on the part of the peoples served; and helping promote a better understanding of

other peoples on the part of Americans.

Serving in the Peace Corps always has required courage, compassion and commit-

ment. From the start, University of Denver students have stepped up to the challenge.

Beginning with Kevin Dixon (BA ’62), more than 400 DU students and alumni have partici-

pated in projects all over the world; today’s students have worked in countries ranging from

Burkina Faso to Ukraine.

In 2011, DU ranked No. 2 among colleges and universities participating in the Peace

Corps’ Paul D. Coverdell Fellows program, which permits returned volunteers to pursue

master’s or doctorate degrees in more than 60 universities around the country at a reduced

cost. The Josef Korbel School of International Studies also sponsors students in the Master’s

International program, which allows students to begin coursework on campus, serve in the

Peace Corps for two years on projects related to their studies, then return to campus to

finish their degrees.

No matter when or why they joined, or where they went, one theme stands out among

Peace Corps volunteers: The experience helped shape the direction and flavor of their lives.

“I think I told myself that it was something I couldn’t do; it was something too exciting

that I wouldn’t be able to be a part of,” says Sandra Meek (PhD ’95), who taught English in

Botswana from 1989–91 as a Peace Corps volunteer. “You just go and figure it out when

you go. It really changed me as a teacher, a writer, an editor and a person.”

For half a century, the Peace Corps has provided DU alumni and students with a life-changing chance to serve.

By Laurie Budgar

ValuesCorps

Donald U

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You’re never too oldJudy Bennett is proof positive that the Peace Corps isn’t just

for twentysomethings. At the age of 52, and with a lifetime of experience in nonprofits, she began serving in Ignalina, Lithuania, in 1999 as an adviser to nongovernmental organizations. On the side, she also helped develop tourism there and taught English to adults.

Though she had toyed with the idea of joining the Peace Corps when she was younger, Bennett says she wasn’t prepared then to commit to the two-year obligation. But when she turned 50, “I rented a little cabin on the coast of Maine for a few days and decided to divorce my husband, sell my house and do some kind of international service work,” she says. “I [still] liked the philosophy of the Peace Corps, the support that it gave, and I was ready for the commitment.”

Bennett says she reapplied for another two-year stint about three years ago, but she did not clear medically.

Instead, she and her current husband now work on water projects in the Dominican Republic with the Rotary Club. “We talk about ways we could do something similar to the Peace Corps. He’s up for the challenge, and I would love to live in another country again. Now that I’m 64, I’d like to be somewhere where I have running water. I’m not as adventurous as I used to be.”

—Laurie Budgar

Judy BennettDU experience: BA sociology ’69

Peace Corps assignment: Advising nongovernmental

organizations in Ignalina, Lithuania, from 1999–2001

Hometown: East Bloomfield, N.Y.

Current position: Retired director of the West Ontario County

American Red Cross, now living in Rochester, N.Y.

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Rebuilding in BotswanaTony Carroll’s determination to join the Peace Corps grew in

part out of a family tragedy. In 1968, his older sister was killed in a car accident. One week after the funeral, her acceptance letter from the Peace Corps arrived.

“That gave me more inspiration,” he says. “I was old enough to remember the creation of the Peace Corps and how much it meant to my older sibling’s generation.”

In 1976, he found himself standing on a dusty African airstrip in the fourth poorest country in the world, tasked with helping

newly independent Botswana rebuild after decades of neglect.

“They had a terrific shortfall in human capacity and they realized they were going to have to fill it with outsiders. They could either borrow money from the World Bank and hire expats, or take a chance on young American

volunteers,” says Carroll, who served as district officer, spearheading a multimillion-dollar development aid program, including construction of schools, hospitals, roads and clean water systems. “Here I am, 23, and being asked to right a ship that had been sinking for decades.”

Today, Carroll uses the skills he learned at DU and in Botswana in his work as an international trade and investment adviser specializing in sub-Saharan Africa. He also has dedicated countless pro bono hours to nonprofit organizations working to improve health, ease trade and deter corruption in Africa.

In August, Carroll left for Botswana to take his daughter, a freshman at Vassar College, to the village where it all began for him.

Her plans after college?She’s thinking of joining the Peace Corps.

—Lisa Marshall

Tony CarrollDU experience: BA economics ’75; JD ’84

Peace Corps assignment: District officer in

Botswana from 1976–78

Hometown: Albany, N.Y.

Current position: Managing director of

Manchester Trade Ltd., an international

trade consulting firm in Washington, D.C.,

and adjunct professor in the Johns Hopkins

School of Advanced International Studies

Adjusting to Kenyan standard timeSecond-year graduate student Theresa Munanga has

volunteered in different capacities since she was 14. “I love helping people—it’s one of the things I’m most passionate about,” she says. Her other great passion is computer programming. At DU, she is pursuing a degree in digital media studies; as a Peace Corps volunteer, she created a program that helps people learn to use a computer without needing a teacher.

“It was life-changing, and I decided I want to do that as a career,” she says.

Set to graduate in March 2012, Munanga also wrote and published a book, No Hurry in Africa: Life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya (iUniverse.com, 2010), about her Peace Corps experience. “Basically, it’s the emailed newsletters I sent home once a month, plus my journal entries during the time,” she says. “It may not be the best book in the world, but it’s the type of book I was looking for to read before I left for the Peace Corps.”

In the book, Munanga writes of the Kenyan concept of time: “They have a saying in Kenya that ‘the watch is yours, but the time is mine.’ In the Peace Corps, we were trained that if we want to set up a meeting we must keep in mind that they will be late. Kenyans are very polite people and won’t want to disappoint you, so they’ll say, ‘Yes, I’ll be there at noon,’ but what they don’t tell you is that at noon they first have to feed their children, hang the wash on the line, etc., before they can leave their homes. So they will come when they can.”

—Laurie Budgar

Theresa MunangaDU experience: Currently a second-year graduate

student in digital media studies, with an emphasis in

instructional design

Peace Corps assignment: Information communications

technology volunteer in Kenya from 2004–07

Hometown: Kauai, Hawaii

Anna Om

elchenko / Shutterstock.com


Helping developing countries move forwardMary Jane Parmentier was already hooked on international travel by the time she was 20. She had

spent her junior year (at Southern Connecticut State University) abroad in Spain. “My year there sort of woke me up politically, and this propelled me on into graduate school focusing on international studies,” she says.

So it didn’t take much to convince her to join the Peace Corps when the opportunity arose. She spent two years teaching English to 11th and 12th graders in a rural village outside of Marrakesh, Morocco. That’s also where she met her husband, Bill, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. When she returned to the U.S., she joined the DU community, first as a study-abroad coordinator, then as a PhD student. Since earning her PhD in 1999 she has been on staff at Arizona State University, where she teaches graduate-level courses in international development at the school’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes.

In her classes, Parmentier focuses on the role of technology in international development, which she says is just as important as basic needs like food, shelter, clothing and medicine.

“If you ignore new information and communication technologies, then countries are going to move further and further behind the rest of the world,” she says. “In Malawi, infant mortality began decreasing just because of a program that would allow women to text when they were going into labor, and an ambulance would come and get them. Education is the real key to bringing a society ahead. You also can’t go into a village without clean water and food and say, ‘Here is a computer.’ You need both.”

—Laurie Budgar

Mary Jane ParmentierDU experience: Study-abroad coordinator from 1989–95; PhD

international studies ’99

Peace Corps assignment: Teaching high school English in Morocco

from 1986–88

Hometown: Cheshire, Conn.

Current position: Senior lecturer in international development and

international politics at Arizona State University, with a focus on

technology and socioeconomic and political development, particularly in

Latin America and the Middle East

Shutterstock.com


Blazing a trail for PioneersKevin Dixon (BA ’62) is pretty sure he’s the first Peace

Corps volunteer from the University of Denver. He didn’t know that when he signed up in 1962, but about a decade after he returned from service, he was in town for a conference.

“I went to DU and talked to my old basketball coach, Hoyt Brawner. He was so enthusiastic that I was the first volunteer,” Dixon says. “He went into great detail about how the FBI had come out and interviewed people at the school about me—whether there was anything negative about me that would embarrass the United States if they sent me overseas.”

Dixon wasn’t an obvious choice for the Peace Corps. He had never traveled outside the U.S. He attended DU on a basketball scholarship and played on the baseball team, and he majored in physical education and recreation—not English or pre-med or any of the other skills that were in high demand in developing nations. He was an all-star first baseman in an

amateur league, but “nobody was knocking on my door,” he says.

So he applied for the Peace Corps, and in the early summer of 1962 he was accepted, with an assignment to set up sports programs at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. When the university was on break, Dixon and his fellow volunteers traveled elsewhere in Colombia, hosting basketball clinics and exhibition games.

Today, Dixon’s family has deep connections to Colombia. He met his wife—also a Peace Corps volunteer—in a barrio there. And his now-grown daughters are returned volunteers themselves.

The experience, he says, “opened up a lot for me in the world,” including a lucrative job in Saudi Arabia, where he set up women’s programs and Little League teams to help retain contractors. “I didn’t think anything of going—

didn’t even give it a second thought,” he says. “I knew how easy it was to travel, and how to be a guest in a foreign country.”

—Laurie Budgar

Read stories of more DU Peace Corps volunteers at bit.ly/DUMagPeaceCorps

Kevin DixonDU experience: BA physical education and

recreation ’62

Peace Corps assignment: Established physical

education programs and coached basketball and

baseball in Medellin, Colombia, 1962–64

Hometown: Norwood, Mass.

Current position: Retired property manager,

now living in Spokane, Wash.

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Alumna Keri Herman is

at the top of her game as

one of the best female

freeskiers in the world.

Keri Herman raced toward the jump going backward. She hit it fast and launched into the air. Herman whipped her body to the right, spun around 720 degrees (two complete revolutions) and grabbed one of her skis. She glided back to earth, landed backward and sped off to the next feature.

In slopestyle skiing, the move is called a switch-cork-7. And until Herman nailed it at the 2011 Winter X Games in Aspen, she was mired in last place. But by completing a snow stunt only a few women in the world can pull off, Herman vaulted into second place and earned an X Games silver medal in slopestyle skiing for the second year in a row.

2011 has been a good year for 29-year-old Herman, whose slopestyle exploits make her one of the best freeskiers in the world. Herman (BSBA ’05) won her second consecutive silver in the European Winter X Games and turned in a couple of podium finishes on the Dew Tour, the main competitive slopestyle skiing circuit in North America. By season’s end, Herman was ranked the No. 2 women’s slopestyle skier in the world by the Association of Freeskiing Professionals.

To top it off, she’s been named to the U.S. national freeskiing team and hopes to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

“I was pretty stoked with everything I did this year,” Herman says.

By Nathan SolheimPhotography by Justin Edmonds


By Nathan SolheimPhotography by Justin Edmonds


t raditional skiers have been doing flips, catching air and jumping over stuff for more than a century, but Herman’s

brand of freeskiing was born on the slopes of Whistler, B.C., in the mid-1990s. Tired of moguls, some two-plankers decided to start hitting the rails, tabletops and half-pipes that started showing up on the slopes after snowboarding became cool. The activity they called freeskiing eventually joined snowboarding in the category of competitive winter sports known as slopestyle.

The idea is simple: Freeskiers—or “tricksters”—ski down a terrain park dotted with jumps and other features and use them as launching points to show off a stable of moves, or tricks. Breaking the laws of gravity is strongly encouraged.

What makes her story all the more incredible is that Herman didn’t get an early start in the sport like a lot of other successful athletes. The 5-foot-7-inch, 130-pound skier first tried slopestyle in her early 20s, when she was an undergraduate at the University of Denver.

Like many DU students, Herman studied abroad. She chose Australia, where the seasons run opposite of the Northern Hemi-sphere. As a result, she ended up having an entire year of summer. When she returned to DU, she’d had enough of high temperatures and too much light, so she promptly moved to Breckenridge, Colo., to balance things out with some winter. That’s when she hit her first rail.

“It was scary,” Herman recalls. “I fell quite a bit. I completely

bruised my legs and butt. But I wanted to keep going. Progressing and learning new tricks gives you a rush like no other.”

Growing up in Bloomington, Minn., Herman had skied on local hills most Coloradans would think were prairie dog mounds. She also skied on family trips out West. But in Minnesota, land of hockey, Herman focused on skating rather than skiing, even star-ring on her middle and high school girls’ hockey teams and holding her own with a few teammates who went on to play the college game.

Bonnie Blaylock, who coached Herman in youth hockey, credits Herman’s success to above-average athletic ability.

“She picks things up quickly and was the kind of person that has a certain grace about their movement,” Blaylock says. “Things look easy for her even when they aren’t.”

Herman’s mom, Diana Herman, says her daughter’s athleticism is only part of what makes her a slopestyle force. At a very young age, Diana says, Keri’s daredevil streak became evident. Keri always had to climb the highest tree in the backyard, jump off the balcony of their home onto a couch, or launch herself off their deck onto a trampoline when her parents weren’t home.

Diana also says her daughter didn’t exactly go along with all the other neighborhood girls when it came to sports.

“She liked to do things other girls weren’t doing,” Diana says. “She wanted to play hockey when no girls were playing hockey. She wasn’t interested in figure skating.”


In a typical season, Herman headquarters in Breckenridge for most of the winter. When the Colorado snow begins to

melt, she’ll head out to ski areas in California or Oregon to keep honing her tricks. She spends a portion of her spring competing in European events, then heads to New Zealand to practice during the North American summer.

In her downtime, Herman bikes and hikes Colorado’s moun-tains and hangs out with friends. This summer, Herman also took a job waiting tables. Given her status as a top international athlete, that’s like John Elway taking a summer gig washing cars.

“I do it because I enjoy talking to people,” says Herman, who likes to high-five people so much she got the words tattooed on her palm. “It’s boring sitting around doing nothing. I like to keep active.”

This season, Herman plans to compete in the Winter X and European Winter X Games, the World Ski Invitational in Whistler, the Nine Queens big-air competition in Serfauz, Austria, and several Dew Tour events. Her sponsors include Monster energy drinks, Under Armour outerwear and Scott ski gear.

In 2014, Herman could add the biggest event of her sporting life to her schedule. Over the summer, the International Olympic Committee added slopestyle skiing and snowboarding to the slate of events at the 2014 Winter Games. As the top-rated women’s trickster in the United States, Herman is considered by many to be the country’s best threat to win a medal in the sport’s initial Olympic outing.

Mike Douglas—known as the godfather of freeskiing—was one of those Canadian skiers who helped found the sport

back in the mid-1990s. Nowadays, he broadcasts for ESPN during the Winter X Games. He’s watched Herman compete and says she’s the top American right now.

“Keri is someone who is really consistent,” Douglas says. “She’s rarely the one who puts down the flashy moves, but she’s always among the top girls. She’s got a good style and good flow and a good attitude to top it off. What makes her stand out is that she can throw tricks in both directions. There aren’t a lot of girls doing that well now.”

With Herman’s globetrotting lifestyle and stupendous success, it’d be easy for her to get caught up in all the hype. But for Herman, life is still about doing what she does—getting outside every day and playing with friends. It just so happens that while she’s doing it, she’s perfecting some of the world’s most dazzling “air ballet,” as her mom describes it. With another season of competition getting started in December, Herman is taking it all in stride.

“It’s all about having fun and having a good time,” Herman says. “I’m lucky to live the life I live.”

Watch video of Keri Herman at www.coldasice.tv

“She’S rarely the

one who putS down

the flaShy MoveS,

but She’S alwayS

aMong the top

gIrlS. She’S got

a good Style and

good flow and a

good attItude to

top It off.”

blame the banks?


blame the banks?TThe financial crisis that erupted in 2008—and shows

no sign of ending any time soon—has prompted a debate among economists: How much were they to blame?

Considering how many scapegoats have been maligned for their role in the Great Recession—Wall Street bankers, Washington regulators, overextended homeowners—it seems fair game to point the finger at the professionals who predict where the economy is heading and advocate policies that influence its direction.

“It’s the first time in my generation that the economics profession has started to ask the question, ‘How did we get it so wrong, and what responsibilities do we bear for not having predicted or warned about the crisis?’” says George DeMartino, professor of international economics at DU’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

The crisis opened a window of opportunity to promote discussion of a subject DeMartino says his profession has not only neglected, but purposely avoided: the ethical responsibilities of economists. Building from a paper he wrote in 2006, the professor tackled the subject in book-length form in The Economist’s Oath: On the Need for and Content of Professional Economic Ethics, published in January 2011 by Oxford University Press.

While conducting research, DeMartino learned that professional groups, including the American Economic

Association (AEA), have consistently rejected the idea of professional economic ethics.

“It wasn’t an oversight. This was done by design. Over the last 100 years there had been a number of times when individual economists had proposed to the AEA the need for the organization to adopt a code of ethics or other ethics initiatives,” DeMartino says.

Since the release of his book DeMartino has traveled widely, advocating that economists embrace ethical discussions and that ethics become part of the economics curriculum, especially at the graduate level. Most recently he was invited to join the World Economic Forum’s global agenda council on “Values in Decision Making,” which took him in October to the council’s meetings in Abu Dhabi. He also has been invited to attend the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this January in Davos, Switzerland.

DeMartino says he tries to make it clear in his talks that he is proposing ethics training, not a code of conduct.

“You don’t need a binding code to get people to think differently about what they do, but you do need to give them some help,” says DeMartino, who has served on the Korbel School faculty since 1993. “You need to give them instruction and support to help them think carefully about their role in the world. In economics, for the new students coming up, we don’t give them anything whatsoever.”

Professor George DeMartino says economists also had a hand in causing America’s Great Recession.

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TThe path that led to the Great Recession can be traced in part to policy decisions by the Federal Reserve, driven by the belief that markets would operate optimally if left unrestrained by regulations, DeMartino says.

“Economists not only pressed for the removal of existing financial regulation but also resisted new government oversight of the financial assets and market contracts that proliferated from the 1990s onward,” DeMartino writes in The Economist’s Oath. “In the face of concern by members of the U.S. Congress regarding subprime and collateralized lending practices and other financial innovations, Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan consistently reassured policymakers and the public about the sufficiency of market mediation to discipline financial markets.”

DeMartino argues that economists advocated policies based on assumptions that proved to be faulty.

“They actually contributed to the crisis through the theo-ries they teach: essentially the efficient-markets hypothesis, which says that the markets always get it right, and that’s the model that economists have been teaching for 30 years at least,” DeMartino says. “If you believe that theory and you teach that theory, you’re not inclined to think that there’s a financial bub-ble because bubbles don’t exist in that model. If prices are going up really fast, it must mean that something is happening to the underlying fundamentals that is driving the price increase, and you don’t have to worry about it.”

The subprime lending market—marked by the bundling of loans that were repackaged and sold—ultimately led to a housing market collapse and chaos in the financial markets as the inability of homeowners to pay their mortgages caught up with the byzantine chain of investors.

Economists and businesspeople underestimated “the viciousness of the debt cycle,” says William Greiner, president and chief investment officer for Scout Investments, a division of Kansas City-based UMB Financial Corp.

“Economists who don’t look at the variables from a monetary standpoint … would really shrug off debt as not a major issue,” he says. “I think that concept led us—not just the government, but us as a society—to accept more and more debt and not really ask those cutting-edge questions, such as, ‘What happens when this merry-go-round stops going around?’ I think that led to some real problems.”

Greiner, who is working with UMB to present a series of economic lectures at his alma mater, Washburn University, says graduate programs for economics students need to present a wider variety of theory.

“I think diversity of opinion and diversity of economic thought is really something that is important for people to

understand,” he says. “Not just one general theory in econom-ics, but a number of different theories because they all bring some meat to the table.”

DeMartino wants to take it a step further: Doctoral students who focus their attention primarily on economic models are unprepared for the political ramifications of their jobs, he says.

“Economics at that level is just applied mathematics,” he says. “Within two or three years they might be working at the World Bank and traveling around the world and finding themselves in extraordinarily complex situations for which they have not had any training whatsoever by the profession.”

Tucker Hart Adams, a Colorado Springs, Colo., economics consultant who has taught with DeMartino, remembers her first encounter with politics as a young intern. She had been instructed to evaluate the economic impact of a project that involved persuading businesses to set up shop in other locales around the state rather than in Denver.

“It didn’t take me very long to realize that if you did that, that they would just say, ‘Never mind, I’ll just go to Santa Fe or Salt Lake City,’” Adams says.

Adams soon got a dose of political reality when an assistant to the state official who commissioned the report bluntly told her that its goal was support for his position, not facts.

“I think it would be a really good idea for graduate students, even those who have no intention of doing anything but work in academics, to have an internship and have some hands-on time,” she says.

Economists should not be addressing ethical dilemmas in isolation, says DeMartino, who will continue the conversation in his forthcoming book for Oxford University Press: a “handbook” featuring articles about ethics by nearly three dozen leading economists.

“I don’t think we should leave it to each individual economist to just sort out what it means to be a good guy,” he says. “The economics profession has to face up to the fact that it has an ethical duty to begin to train economists and to begin to have a conversation about what it means to be an ethical economist.”

“I think that concept led us—not just the government, but us as a society—to accept more and more debt and not really ask those cutting-edge questions, such as, ‘What happens when this merry-go-round stops going around?’ I think that led to some real problems.”

47 Class of ’5648 Alumni Symposium52 Book bin55 Pioneer pics58 Announcements

University of Denver students go caroling at a campus dorm in this photo taken sometime in the 1950s. If you have any information about this photo, or photos of your own to share, please let us know.

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University of Denver Magazine Connections 45


1946lowell Duffner (BSBA ’46) of Billings, Mont., received the Montana Society of Certified Public Accountants’ highest honor, the George D. Anderson Distinguished Service Award, on June 23,

2011, at the organization’s 98th annual meet-ing. The award recognizes Lowell’s contribu-tions to the accounting profession and his involvement in community, charitable and civic activities.

1948Victor Weidensee (MA ’48) of Rapid City, S.D., received the Outstanding Service in Arts Education Award at the 20th annual Governor’s Awards in the Arts ceremony on March 16, 2011. South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard presented the award, which honors Victor’s work as an organizer, fundraiser and performer in music outreach projects.

1953Robert Smith (JD ’53) of Del Mar, Calif., has authored four publications about his maritime interests, including boating and cruising guides, a guide to maritime museums in North America and a history of the Erie Canal. He was elected to the San Diego Maritime Museum board of trustees in 2002. Robert spent his career in higher education fundraising. He is married to his former high school classmate Helen and has four children.

1957Irwin Keinon (BA ’57, MA ’60) of Orinda, Calif., taught in the Denver Public Schools for 32 years. He taught at the elementary level for seven years and at the high school level for 25 years.

1962Irvin Jones (BA ’62) of Gallup, N.M., is a consumer relations specialist with the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, where he promotes energy efficiency conserva-tion in the Navajo

The classes Nation. Irvin has been married to his wife, Norma Jean, for 50 years. They have three adult children and five grandchildren.

Ruth Manning (BA ’62) of Aurora, Colo., worked at the Colorado Department of Human Services as an accountant. She is retired and enjoys visiting her two grandchildren in California. Ruth also

collects dolls and has more than 2,000 in her collection.

1964Robert Perito (BA ’64) of McLean, Va., co-wrote a book, Police in War: Fighting Insurgency, Terrorism and Violent Crime (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010). Robert (pictured

at right) directs the Center for Security Sector Governance at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. He previously was a United States Foreign Service officer with the state department and director of the Office of International Criminal Justice, where he chaired the task force on combat-ing international alien smuggling.

1965Susan Clarke-Battenburg (BA ’65) of El Paso, Texas, is a physical therapist at Provi-dence Memorial Hospital. She is involved with the hospital’s altered mental status program, which works with patients experi-encing brain injuries, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, chemical and electrical changes, and seizures. She previously was involved with the Wounded Warrior Project.

1967libby Bortz (MSW ’67) of Littleton, Colo., was honored on May 19 at the 2011 conference of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials in Breckenridge, Colo. Libby helped create the Littleton Housing Authority in 1971. She has served as board chairperson for the authority for 40 years.

1969Paul Wahlstrom (BSBA ’69) of Irving, Texas, recently was elected the 61st president of the Press Club of Dallas. He previously was executive producer for the Irving Community Television

Network. Paul, now retired, worked in the television production industry for more than 40 years.

1971Tom Malmgren (BSBA ’71) of Frisco, Colo., was honored as Realtor of the Year by the Summit Association of Realtors. Tom is a booster of the Copper Mountain Ski Resort. He was on DU’s ski team for four years and was a candidate for the U.S. Olympic team.

1973Sidway McKay (BA ’73, MA ’78) of Boul-der, Colo., on May 14, 2011, received the Outstanding Physical Therapy Professional Award from the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education

Alumni Society. Sidway is a physical therapist at Concentra Medical Centers in Denver and a lecturer and adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Physical Therapy. She previously was an athletic trainer for the University of Connecticut women’s field hockey, basketball and softball teams.

1974Jim leventhal (JD ’74) of Denver was invited to join the Inner Circle of Advocates, an invitation-only group of the nation’s 100 best trial lawyers. Jim is the founder and senior partner of Leventhal, Brown & Puga, a medical malpractice and personal injury law firm. Jim became chairperson of the Ameri-can Association of Justice’s professional neg-ligence section in July 2011. In 2010, he was named the best medical malpractice lawyer and best personal injury lawyer in Colorado by Best Lawyers in America.


Reunion: Class of ’56 A few years ago, a group of alumni from the tight-knit Class of 1956 decided

the standard 10-year reunions weren’t cutting it. Now they reconvene every five. “We were having such a good time that we said, ‘We ought to get together

more often. We’re getting older. We’d better step up the parties,’” says Ann (Richardson) Stolfus (BA mass communications ’56).

More than 160 members of the Class of ’56 celebrated their 55-year reunion at DU Aug. 1–2. University officials welcomed the alumni and provided campus updates at the reunion, which included coffee hours, campus tours, luncheons and dinners. Attendees also got a backstage tour and a private piano and organ recital at the Newman Center.

Returning alumni recalled that DU was drastically different in the 1950s. A streetcar line connected the main campus to DU’s downtown campus, where the business and law schools were located, earning the University the nickname “Tramway Tech.” The main campus included University Hall, the Mary Reed Building, Marjorie Reed Hall, student dorms and apartments, a student union and Buchtel Chapel—which burned down in 1983.

For students who lived a sheltered childhood during World War II, college meant a bright new opportunity.

“It was a very freeing time,” says Ralph Wheeler (BA mathematics ’56). “During the war you had rationing; you couldn’t go places.”

Most DU students worked their way through school to pay for tuition, which cost $11 per credit hour in 1955.

“You could work a 36-hour week and still have your weekends off to study,” says Bob Moorehead (BSBA statistics ’56). “You didn’t have to miss any parties.”

While alumni remember the ’50s as a time of innocence, one campus scandal was an exception: a panty raid in the women’s dorms.

“I don’t think sex was very common among students when I was in college, so this was a big, bold thing that the guys would run through the women’s dorms, get into their underwear and run across campus,” Wheeler says.

Men and women had separate dorms then, and female students had a 10:30 p.m. curfew. They couldn’t live in their sorority houses, which were for chapter meetings only, but men could live in the fraternity houses.

Attire was different, too. Unlike today, students wouldn’t dare attend class in T-shirts and sweatpants. Females donned skirts and cardigan sweaters and men’s threads included corduroys and nice shirts, Stolfus says. Women wore fancy dresses for school dances.

DU had a football team in 1956 and a marching band, too. The Parakeets pep squad cheered for every DU sports game.

While reminiscing at their reunion dinner, Jean (Low) Hussong (BA humanities ’56, MA education ’60) says she and former classmates sang the DU cheer for old times’ sake: “D-Rah, E-Rah, N-Rah, VER-Boom.” “Most of us still remembered the words,” she says.

>>If you have memories of the 1950s at DU to share, email us at [email protected] or send a letter to University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816

— Amber D’Angelo Na

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More than 400 alumni and friends registered for DU’s fifth annual Alumni Symposium Sept. 30–Oct. 1. The event highlighted the University’s rich academic tradition and connected alumni with the intellectual life at DU.

This year’s keynote speakers were Peter Funt (BA mass com-munications ’69), a syndicated newspaper columnist and former host of the TV show “Candid Camera,” and Cindy Courville (MA international studies ’80, PhD international studies ’88), former special assistant to President George W. Bush and U.S. ambassador to the African Union from 2006–08.

At a dinner on Sept. 30, Funt reminisced about working at the Clarion and the KVDU radio station. He talked about the power of laugh-ter as he showed video clips from “Candid Camera.”

Speaking at a luncheon on Oct. 1, Courville (pictured) showed photos from her time in the White House and encouraged audience members to have passion and confidence in their dreams of making an impact on the world.

The symposium also included five seminars in which DU faculty members taught 25 classes on a variety of subjects. Classes included a look at a book of historical photographs by DU Archivist Steve Fisher; a presentation by political science Associate Professor Seth Masket on how American political parties select presidential candidates; and a lecture by physics and astronomy Associate Professor Barry Zink about trends in nanotechnology.

“I’ve attended all of [the Alumni Symposiums] over the years, and

Marc Meyers (PhD ’74) of Del Mar, Calif., is a distinguished professor of materials science at the University of California, San Diego. He is an expert in explosives and set up the first explosives lab for the Brazil-ian military. Marc also has written three science and engineering books, including a textbook, Dynamic Behavior of Materials (Wiley-Interscience, 1994), and has penned two novels, Chechnya Jihad (Sunbelt Pub-lications, 2010) and Mayan Mars (Sunbelt Publications, 2005).

1976John Medbury (BSBA ’76) of Worcester, Mass., was awarded the Alexis de Toqueville Award by the United Way of Central Massa-chusetts. The award recognized John for his outstanding leadership, inspiration to others, volunteer spirit and philanthropic values. He serves in leadership roles for several nonprofits.

1977Mike Margolies (MA ’77) of Issaquah, Wash., published a book, The Athlete Within You: A Mental Approach to Sports and Business

(Headwaters Publications, 2011). In the book, Mike examines how people achieve success in sports and business.

1978Bill Scarnato (BSBA ’78) of Dallas joined MedSyn-ergies Inc.—a provider of hospital-physician align-ment solutions—as man-aging director of business development. Bill has more than 25 years of

experience and previously was executive vice president of West Hudson Inc., a health care management consulting firm. He also was vice president of business development at Quorum Health Resources and senior vice president of operations and business develop-ment at Compirion Healthcare Solutions.

Roy Wilson (MA ’78, MS ’83) of Pittsburgh has worked, consulted, researched and taught in the areas of sociology, computing and education. He posted a blog entry, “Anger Management, Anyone?,” on the Working-Class Perspectives blog at Youngstown State University.

1979Michael Hettich (MA ’79) of Miami Shores, Fla., has published 12 books and chapbooks of poetry since 1991, including Swimmer Dreams (Turning Point, 2004), Flock and Shadow: New and Selected Poems (New Rivers Press, 2005), Many Loves (Yellow Jacket Press, 2007) and Like Happiness (Anhinga Press, 2010). His most recent book of poems, The Animals Beyond Us, was published in October by New Rivers Press.

Nancy Mervar (PhD ’79) of Lyons, Colo., is a retired teacher and principal. She recently published her first children’s book, Nana’s Silly Goats (Indian Gap Press, 2010). She and her husband raise goats and golden retrievers on their small ranch.

linda Weis (MA ’79) of Manhattan, Kan., was appointed chairman of the Kansas Arts Commission by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. Linda is the supervising broker-owner of Weis Realty Executives. She has worked as a public school teacher, professional musician, curricu-lum development and implementation facilita-tor and private school owner. Linda is married and has three children and six grandchildren.

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they keep getting better every year,” said alumnus Mike Sutherland (BSBA ’81, JD ’84). “Ambassador Courville’s lunchtime talk was fascinating for me as an attorney. Our family has always been fans of ‘Candid Camera,’ so [Funt’s] talk was great and definitely entertaining. I also attended Professor Martin Rhodes’ class, Crisis in the Eurozone. That helped me get a handle on what’s going on in that part of the world. It was a tremendous presentation.”

Cheri Stanford, event coordinator at the Office of Alumni Relations, said attendance at the symposium increases every year.

“The event is a shining example of the University of Denver experi-ence—seeing firsthand the issues that faculty and students are tackling and the amazing things DU alumni are doing in the world,” Stanford said.

— Amber D’Angelo NaWatch videos of the keynote speeches at bit.ly/DUMagSymposium


ProfileSHAMAN Ellen Winner

Most patent attorneys don’t include shamanism in their list of hobbies, but for Ellen Winner, the combination is a natural fit.

Winner (JD ’81) says her interest started in 1984 when she read The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner. She attended a seminar and took classes, then traveled to Katmandu, Nepal, for apprenticeships with indigenous shamans.

Shamanism has been practiced around the world for more than 30,000 years. Shamans believe spirits reside outside of physical matter, beyond what humans can experience with ordinary senses.

Several spirit worlds exist in shamanism. Upper and lower worlds contain compassionate human, animal and nature spirits. Two middle worlds also exist: the world of everyday reality and a spirit world containing both helpful and harmful spirits.

Winner, who lives in Boulder, Colo., says she navigates the worlds and communicates with spirits to bring information and healing to her clients. She says she can clear negative energy and help clients find lost objects, gain insight into challenging situations and deal with fears of death and dying.

Shamans operate in an altered state of consciousness. In native cultures, some shamans use psychedelic drugs to alter their consciousness, but in the Western world many shamans use a drumbeat instead.

“A drumbeat yields a more controllable experience,” Winner says. “It’ll put your brain in the theta brainwave state, which is the one next to sleep, and it makes you less critical and more open to what you’re experiencing.”

For a while, Winner hid her unconventional practice from co-workers and clients in her law firm.

“I thought my co-workers wouldn’t feel that it reflected well on them to have somebody that was doing shamanism who’s ‘weird,’” she says.

Winner now works from home, where she conducts shamanic work and hosts a weekly drumming group. She also teaches at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

“I really like when I’m teaching somebody how to journey for the first time and they find an animal spirit and they get incredible information,” she says. “They’re so excited—it’s like the spirit was waiting to be able to communicate with them for years.”

She has experienced personal benefits from the practice, as well.“It’s given me a worldview that’s more hopeful, like miracles are really possible,” she

says.And to the naysayers who doubt the legitimacy of shamanism, Winner shrugs. “I say just try it; see if it works.”>>www.worldshaman.org


Courtesy of Ellen W

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1982Scott lowery (BSBA ’82, JD ’85) of Denver was appointed to the executive advisory board of DU’s Daniels College of Business by Dean Christine Riordan. Scott is founder and chairman of SquareTwo Financial, an asset recovery and management industry firm. He has more than 20 years of experience building entrepreneurial companies and previously was an attorney. He is on the board of direc-tors of several Colorado nonprofits and serves on DU’s campaign steering committee.

1984Shaunna (Forister) Howat (BA ’84) is the academic coordinator for the Potter’s School, an online school that serves secondary students in 42 countries. Shaunna lives with her husband, Kyle Howat (BA ’82), near Cincinnati.

1986Tim Buresh (JD ’86) of Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., was hired as Southern California regional director for the California High Speed Rail Authority. He previously was chief operating officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District and vice president of special projects for Tutor-Perini, a civil engineering and building construction company.

1987Rich Kiesel (BSBA ’87) of Kentfield, Calif., is a sales manager at InvestmentNews and was a finalist for Min magazine’s Sales Executive of the Year Award.

1988Ralph Hubregsen (MBA ’88) of Denver became chief executive officer at Decision-Point Systems Inc., an enterprise mobility and radio frequency identification systems inte-grator. Ralph previously was vice president of worldwide channels at Symplified.

Ken lund (JD ’88) of Littleton, Colo., became executive director of Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade on Aug. 1, 2011. Ken previously was the chief legal counsel in Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office. Prior to that, he was managing partner at Holme Roberts & Owen. Ken serves on the board of directors of the Metro Denver Sports Commission.


Anna-Marie Rooney (BA ’88) of San Diego is vice president of marketing and external relations for the San Diego Foundation. She also manages planning and development of the

foundation’s eight regional charitable founda-tions. Anna-Marie recently was recognized as one of 20 “women who rock San Diego” by San Diego Metropolitan magazine.

1991Pat Cordle (MBA ’91) of Monroe, Conn., was inducted into the Convenience Store News Industry Hall of Fame in November 2011. The hall of fame recognizes convenience-store industry professionals. Pat is vice president of field sales for BIC Corp. and has held sales management positions for the past 25 years.

Patrick Dawson (MS ’91, MRCM ’91) of Highlands Ranch, Colo., wrote Lessons in the Journey (CreateSpace, 2011), a novel that highlights the importance of learning from life’s lessons. Patrick also is a composer,

lyricist and singer. His musical works have been showcased in concerts at churches and schools. He works as a business consultant and IT professional for a national aerospace company.

1992Arjun Narayanamurti (BSBA ’92) of Sum-mit, N.J., was promoted by Goldman Sachs to be co-director of Goldman’s research division in the Americas.

1993Joseph Mudd (MT ’93) of Westfield, N.J., was appointed as the national director of tax for Reznick Group, a certified public account-ing and tax services firm. He previously was the founder and managing

director of the Specialty Tax Services Group and has held several other leadership posi-tions in the tax industry.

1994Marianne Goodland (MS ’94) of Engle-wood, Colo., is the director of consumer education and the public information officer for the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies’ Division of Insurance. She previ-ously was chief legislative reporter and social media manager at the Colorado Statesman newspaper. In the 1990s Marianne worked in DU’s communications department, where she won several awards for news release writ-ing and media placements.

1995Valerie Haynes (JD ’95) of Pueblo, Colo., was appointed as a judge in Pueblo County Court by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in June 2011. Valerie has practiced law for 16 years and most recently was the assistant Pueblo County attorney. Prior to that, she was a prosecutor in three jurisdictions and practiced law at Petersen & Fonda.

Todd Kaiser (BS ’95, MS ’99) of Aurora, Colo., is chief engineer for the command, control and communications unit of Ray-theon Intelligence and Information Systems. In June 2011 Todd was named a Raytheon

of of of Sports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & WellnessSports & Wellness Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime Pioneering a Lifetime

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Engineering Fellow. The fellows program recognizes the top 4 percent of the com-pany’s technical employees.

Brian Weaver (BA ’95, MA ’97) of Denver was inducted into the Colorado Academy of Educators for the Gifted, Talented, and Creative. He serves as a drama and debate teacher at the new

Noel Community Arts School in the Denver Public Schools district.

1996Richard levin (JD ’96) of Denver joined Baker & Hostetler, where he represents early stage and publicly traded companies in the finan-cial services industry. He represents clients before the United

States Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Congress and foreign regulators. Richard worked on Wall Street for the past 12 years. Most recently, he was director and global head of product development for compliance and operations for a large German invest-ment bank.

1997Margaret Webb (JD ’97) of Cambria, Calif., was named volunteer of the year for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and was honored at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. Margaret has served on the sanctuary advisory council since 2004. She also is involved with several organiza-tions, programs and events that clean up and monitor beaches and marine life in Northern California.

1998Michael Carroll (BFA ’98, MA ’04) of Broomfield, Colo., was selected as elementary art educator of the year by the Colorado Art Education Association. Michael is a teacher at Kyffin Elementary School in Golden, Colo., and an adjunct faculty member at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.

ProfileSUPERFAN Damien Goddard

Damien Goddard may be part rebel, but he’s all Pioneer.The University of Denver graduate, blogger and DU hockey über-fan doesn’t always

toe the school line, but his devotion to the hockey program, the fans, and ultimately to DU school spirit is unquestionable.

Goddard, 46, graduated with a business management degree in 1988 and works in his family’s Houston business producing patented plastic widgets for industrial application. But in his spare time, the lifelong bachelor pores over Pioneer-hockey-related news stories, hunting up tidbits from sources around the country for his popular blog, LetsGoDU, and promotes activities that are aimed at pumping up fans and students.

“The blog’s entire mission—and it’s always been the mission—is school spirit,” Goddard says. “The blog is about hockey, but its theme is school spirit. If you look at the blog any day, you’re just as likely to see shots of the mascot or the band or students cheering or alumni having a good time as you are a hockey player.”

The blog got its start in 2005 and quickly went from 30 hits a day to 1,000 visitors daily during the season. It’s a mixture of articles written by Goddard and Gene Lake (BA political science ’78), sprinkled with links to stories others have written in newspapers and on websites around the country. Goddard leans heavily on DU’s student paper, the Clarion, for contributions and has built a strong relationship with editors there.

Goddard’s efforts to build school spirit go back to his college days, a time he refers to as “the best five years of my life.” It started in 1986 when, disappointed by lagging student attendance at games in the old arena, he created what came to be known as the “Bleacher Creatures.” With promotions and cheers and signs, he says he helped build student attendance from about 50 sitting in the student balcony per game to 500. More recently, he helped resurrect the pioneer character Boone as DU’s unofficial student and alumni mascot.

“Schools that have high school spirit have very high alumni support, like Notre Dame,” he says. “We’ve always felt that DU can and should have that kind of school spirit.”

>>letsgodu.blogspot.com —Chase Squires

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Justin Constantine (JD ’98) of Arlington, Va., was elected to the Wounded Warrior Project’s board of directors in July 2011. He has worked as an attorney for 12 years and has broad U.S. military and federal experience. Justin works for the U.S. Department of Justice on counterterrorism issues and is the founder and president of Got Pride LLC, which raises awareness of veterans’ resources. He received the Purple Heart, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon for his military contributions.

2000Glen Elias (MBA ’00) of Amherst, N.H., was appointed executive vice president of finance at EBI Consulting.

listiani Wijaya (MAcc ’00) of Semarang, Indonesia, recently published two books in Canada: The Greatest Inspiration—a book of poetry—and Courageous, Considerate and Cre-ative Cooking. Listiani is a business consultant and entrepreneur.

2001Bharat Chowrira (JD ’01) of Hillsborough, Calif., is the chief executive officer of Addex Pharmaceuticals. Bharat has more than 17 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He previously was senior vice president and chief operating officer at Nektar Therapeutics. He also is a registered U.S. pat-ent attorney and a member of the Colorado Bar Association.

Sean Menke (MBA ’01) of Denver is presi-dent and chief executive officer of Pinnacle Airlines Corp. He previously was managing partner at Vista Strategic Group and has 20 years of airline management experience.

ProfileARTIST Morehshin Allahyari

Not long after artist Morehshin Allahyari came to the University of Denver from Iran in 2007 for her master’s degree in digital media studies, she says she became “uncomfortable and shocked” by people’s perception of her native country.

“[Iran is] more than donkeys in villages, women in hijab, the poor and the angry Muslims chanting, ‘Death to America,’” Allahyari (MA ’09) says.

But she also came to realize something more positive: “I’ve learned American people are very open-minded and willing to listen and learn,” she says. “That makes me want to try harder to present a more balanced view of Iran and the daily life in Iran.”

Much of her time since she arrived in the United States has been spent trying to achieve that balance, using art as her diplomatic tool. Her DU master’s thesis, “IRUS Art” (IRUS as in Iran and the United States), was an intercultural collaborative art show between artists in the two countries.

With help from friends in Iran, Allahyari and an art co-op called the Kinda Collective recruited a team of artists in Tehran and a team in Denver. They chose “dialogue” as their theme and then mailed incomplete artworks back and forth and eventually created a collection of finished pieces that includes paintings, video art, drawings, photographs, software, street art and design.

“I really think the process went great,” says Allahyari, who spoke on the importance of cultural art projects at the 2011 TEDxDU event. “It made all of us realize how we could use art as a global language to humanize each other. I remember how excited all of us were when we got the first works from Iran and realized how close our approaches and perspectives were.”

More recently, Allahyari co-curated another collaboration between Iranian and American artists called “Your Night/My Day” on the nature of the dysfunctional dialogue between Iranian and American governments.

—Doug McPhersonTo watch a video of Allahyari’s TEDxDU talk, visit bit.ly/DUMagArt

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Book binDedicated to those who serve

in silence, Don’t Tell (Lethe Press, 2011) chronicles a romantic relation-ship between two women in the military in the 1980s. Author Kathy Kron (JD ’99) says the story was inspired by her own experiences in basic training and military service at Fort Carson, Colo., before the recently reversed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy went into effect.

Don’t Tell’s protagonist—a woman named Gray Edwards—unexpectedly falls in love with Annie Randall during basic training. After

training ends, the two characters are stationed in different parts of the country and spend years trying to get back together. After Annie narrowly survives a deployment mission gone wrong, Gray decides to give up her military career so they can be together. The decision leads to a less-than-happy ending.

Don’t Tell isn’t just a love story. Kron wrote the book to share the struggles that thousands of gay and lesbian

soldiers were forced to keep quiet. Soldiers who didn’t hide their sexual identities or whose identities were discovered were discharged

from the military back then, Kron says.“You had to be a totally different person

with a split personality,” Kron says. “There were limited situations when you could be ‘out.’ Someone could always see you or find you.”

Kron—now a lawyer in Lewisburg, Pa.—says Don’t Tell is the start of a series of books she’s writing on the subject of gay relationships in the military. In her opinion, a lot of books in the gay and lesbian genre lack storylines and contain too much erotica, but Don’t Tell is different.

“This is real life; there’s nothing special or different about gay people,” she says. “Why can’t you have women as main characters who like other women? It should be mainstream. The characters only have one difference.”



Sean was executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Republic Airways Holdings Inc. and president and chief executive officer of Frontier Airlines. He also held management positions at Air Canada, United Airlines, West-ern Pacific Airlines and America West Airlines.

2002Martina (Pospisilova) Hamplova (BSBA ’02) of Prague married her husband, Ales, on Aug. 14, 2010. She is the order-to-cash manager for SAP, one of the world’s largest business man-agement software companies.

TJ Karklins (MBA ’02) of Little Rock, Ark., is chief executive officer of Clearview Inter-national. TJ previously led finance, strategy and planning for the organization. He also is a former Army aviator.

2003Jessica (Owens) lenhardt (BA ’03) of Lakewood, Colo., and her husband, Brad, welcomed their second child, daughter Brielle Frances Lenhardt,

on Feb. 28, 2011. Jessica is a billing production technician in DU’s bursar’s office.

Monica Narang (BSBA ’03) of Sierra Madre, Calif., teaches English at a junior high school in New Delhi, India. She previously taught English to high school students in Osaka, Japan, as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. She was awarded the 2011–12 Fulbright Nehru English Teaching Assistantship. Monica also worked as a collaborative fellow at the National Endowment for Financial Education in Colorado and taught English to immigrants and refugees at Denver’s Emily Griffith Opportunity School.

2004Amy (Robinson) Daly (MBA ’04) recently married Eric Daly (MA ’10). The couple lives in Denver.

Katherine lotz (BA ’04, MA ’09) moved to Pune, India, in July 2009. She works at a nonprofit that promotes social and cultural awareness through online film festivals.

2005Derek Blass (JD ’05) of Denver wrote Enemy in Blue (Rogue Books LLC, 2011), a novel about police brutality and racism. Derek is a civil litigator and received the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association’s Outstanding New Hispanic Attorney Award in 2011.

ProfileKING OF THE HILL Mike Kaplan

A lifelong skier who learned the sport on a tiny ski hill in Wisconsin, Aspen Skiing Co. CEO and President Mike Kaplan (MBA ’93) now runs one of the world’s top ski complexes. Aspen has four resorts offering a wide range of terrain: the beginner’s paradise at Buttermilk; the steeps at Aspen Mountain and Aspen Highlands; and the sprawling, family-friendly Snowmass.

Kaplan set his heart on a career in the ski industry while ski bumming at New Mexico’s Taos Ski Valley Resort, where he headed after earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado. At Taos, he taught skiing, worked the graveyard shift running the snow guns and learned the science of avalanche control on the ski patrol.

Needing a stronger foundation in management to make his next career move, he enrolled at DU’s

Daniels College of Business to earn his MBA.“I’d come to realize that most managers in the ski industry back then had come up

through the ranks and had gotten on-the-job training,” recalls Kaplan, who lives in Aspen with his wife, Laura, and four children. “A business degree was a good next step.”

He started as director of Aspen’s ski school then moved up to operations. In 2005, he was named chief operating officer; a year later, he was appointed CEO and president.

Five years later, Kaplan says Aspen is poised for renewed growth. Health-conscious baby boomers are reaching their 50s and 60s still in shape, with money to spend, and with legs strong enough to head down a run in a foot of fresh powder. Better mountain grooming and improved ski technology has also improved the on-mountain experience.

Those years, however, won’t last forever, and Kaplan—like the rest of the ski industry—knows Aspen needs to reach out to the younger generation to get more skiers and snowboarders up on the mountain.

“Things are good right now, but down the road, we need to replace those baby boomers with Gen X and Gen Y,” Kaplan says. “We need to build and nurture Gen X, and Gen Y is a different generation. It’s more diverse, and our business is not that diverse. We need to diversify our customer base to compete for those vacation dollars.”

—David McKay Wilson

Cou

rtesy

of

Aspe

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ass

Construction is under way

The new Academic Commons at Penrose Library is

being transformed from the inside out. Learn more

and show your support today.

du.edu/academiccommons


Anthony Schwairy (BSAC ’05, MBA ’05) of Lakewood, Colo., and his wife, Jenn, wel-comed a daughter, Scarlett Anne Schwairy, on April 22, 2011.

Alexis Sinex (BSBA ’05) of Baltimore married Ashley John Stuart Thompson on June 18, 2011, at Ashley’s parents’ home in Lutherville, Md. Wedding guests included Gabriel Tramiel (BSBA ’06), Katherine Sollers (BA ’06), Jona Goodman (BSBA ’06) and Dana Cash (BSBA ’05).

2006Michael Comer (BSBA ’06) of Englewood, Colo., joined IQNavigator as a consultant in professional services.

Todd Martinez (BA ’06) of Washington, D.C., received his master’s degree in inter-national economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he received the 2011 Christian A. Herter Award, the school’s highest academic honor. Todd works at the Institute of Inter-national Finance, Latin America Department, where he conducts economic research and analysis.

Ryan Moehring (MRLS ’06) of Evergreen, Colo., released his first book, The Fried Twinkie Manifesto: and other tales of disaster and damnation (Gringo Tree Publishing, 2011). The book is a collection of humorous stories and essays.

Adam Odekirk (BSBA ’06) of Centennial, Colo., is director of management services for JSN Property Management. Adam recently married his wife, Keri.

2007Erin Perko (BS ’07) of Scottsdale, Ariz., married Tyler Garvey in July 2010. Erin graduated from medical school at the University of Vermont in May 2011.

She is a general surgery resident at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.

Kristine Poston (JD ’07) of Lakewood, Colo., joined the real estate finance practice at the Polsinelli Shughart law firm. She represents real estate lending clients in financing transac-tions. Kristine previously worked at Rothger-ber Johnson & Lyons.

Cristel Shepherd (JD ’07) of Centennial, Colo., joined Polsinelli Shughart as an associate attorney in the law firm’s financial services department. She previously was with Castle Meinhold & Stawiarski. Cristel has

legal experience in the areas of bankruptcy, residential foreclosure and creditors’ rights.

2008Erin Chalmers (MPS ’08) of Savannah, Ga., was appointed director of alumni relations and annual giving at Armstrong Atlantic State University. She previously was manager of alumni ser-vices and relations at DU’s

Daniels College of Business. Prior to that, Erin was director of career, alumni, internship and work-study programs at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.

Thank you for a great 2011....

watch for new cities in 2012!

Boston Seattle

San Diego

Miami

Minneapolis

ChicagoWashington DC

New York

Phoenix

Dallas

San Francisco

Fort WorthHouston

Tampa West Hollywood


DenverPioneers.com/storeor stop by the Ritchie Center today!

Visit us online

YouR Destination

foR offiCial, DenveR PioneeRs athletiC aPPaRel

this holiday season, Give the Gift

of Pioneer spirit!

the Denver

Pioneer store

During the holiday season, invitations to social events are abundant. Accepting them can advance your career or, if you are in job- search mode, can provide important network-ing opportunities. Whether you are a natural extrovert or find social gatherings painful, having a plan can make you more comfortable and the event more productive. Follow these tips:

Define a goal in advance. This can be any-thing from talking with a particular person to meeting three new people.

learn to balance a drink, enjoy the holiday food and shake hands. If you are only drink-ing, hold the glass in your left hand with a napkin around it. If you also need to balance a plate, hold it in your left hand, leaving a small space on your plate where you can set your drink when you need to shake hands. The napkin keeps your hand from becoming too cold to shake.

Act like a host. Strive to make others feel comfortable. Introduce new acquaintances to others.

Whom do you talk to? Seek out those stand-ing on the sidelines. Alternatively, join a group of more than two people so you don’t interrupt a private conversation. For business-related events, be sure to take business cards so others remember you.

Have some ready discussion topics. Read the news before you attend so you can discuss cur-rent, noncontroversial subjects. When it’s time to exit the group, thank them. For example, “I enjoyed talking with you; enjoy the rest of the evening.”

Cindy Hyman is DU’s associate director of alumni career programs. For more information on career resources available to alumni, visit bit.ly/DUMagCareers.

Pioneer picsDewey long (BS

’62), Debby long (BA ’65) and Hilary Harty (BA ’65) wore their DU T-shirts on a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru. After Machu Picchu, the trio traveled to the Galapagos Islands, where they observed “splendid natural sights in and out of the water,” Harty says.

As you pioneer lands far and wide, be sure to pack your DU gear and strike a pose in front of a national monu-ment, the fourth wonder of the world or your hometown hot spot. If we print your submission, you’ll receive some new DU paraphernalia to take on along on your travels.

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 email [email protected]. Be sure to include your full name, address, degree(s) and year(s) of graduation.

Career Corner


Contact usName (include maiden name)

DU degree(s) and graduation year(s)

Address

City

State ZIP code Country

Phone

Email

Employer Occupation

What have you been up to? (Use a separate sheet if necessary.)

Question of the hour: What student organizations or activities were you involved with on campus?

Post your class note online at www.alumni.du.edu, email [email protected] or mail your note to: Class Notes, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816.

Tell us about your

career and personal

accomplishments, awards,

births, life events or

whatever else is keeping

you busy. Do you support

a cause? Do you have

any hobbies? Did you just

return from a vacation? Let

us know! Don’t forget to

send a photo. (Include a

self-addressed, postage-paid

envelope if you would like

your photo returned.)

Marika Pappas (BSBA ’08, IMBA ’08) of Chicago was promoted to treasury manager at Treasury Strategies, where she works with large financial institutions on pricing, market penetration and product development strategies. She also is treasurer for the Hellenic Professional Society of Illinois, a professional networking and philanthropic organization.

2009Stefanie Bednar (BA ’09) of Omaha, Neb., completed 10 months of full-time service to communities in need with AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps. The program’s projects support disaster relief, the environment, energy conservation, infra-structure improvement, and urban and rural development.

Mark Jordan (MBA ’09) of Aurora, Colo., is an associate recruiter of professional resources for Hudson in Denver.

Jill Schroeder (MM ’09) of Denver became director of the Summit Choral Society—a volunteer group of 35–40 singers—in June 2011. Jill’s background is in French horn, and she has master’s degrees in vocal performance and choral conducting. She is pursuing her doctorate in conducting at the University of Northern Colorado.

Ryan Westberry (MBA ’09) is the business manager of operations for Denver Health’s Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center. He lives in Denver with his wife, Susan.

2010Jamie Berg (BA ’10) of San Antonio gradu-ated from the Naval Hospital Corpsman School. She is stationed at Fort Sam Houston for six months as a lab technician with the U.S. Navy Medicine Training Center.

Craig Branton (MS ’10) of Denver is a com-mercial loan officer at Terrix Financial.

Mila (Morgese) Gates (MA ’10) of Aurora, Colo., mar-ried Jon Gates on March 18, 2011, in Parker, Colo.

Antoinette Gomez (MSW ’10, CRTG ’10) of Commerce City, Colo., is a functional family therapist at North Range Behavioral Health. She previously was an AmeriCorps volunteer and interned with the Denver Family Institute, where she provided counseling to low-income individuals and families. Antoinette serves in the graduate chapter of Zeta Phi Beta sorority and is a mentor with the Challenge Foundation.

Marissa loken (BSBA ’10) of Denver recently joined advertising agency Karsh\Hagan as an account coordinator. She interned with the agency her senior year.

Sarah Taber (MS ’10, MBA ’10) is a market-ing analyst for Avenue Capital Group in New York City.

Post your class note online at www.du.edu/alumni, email [email protected] or mail in the form below.

Which alum has a blog that gets as many as 1,000 visitors per day?

The answer can be found somewhere on pages 45–58 of this issue.

Send your answer to [email protected] or University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816. 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.

Congratulations to Jim Bain (BA ’65, MA ’73) for winning the fall issue’s pop quiz.


Deaths1930sAlberta (Iliff) Shattuck (BA ’31, MS ’32), Denver, 6-9-11Charles Milligan (BA ’39), Denver, 6-14-11Margaret Spencer (attd. ’39), Denver, 4-27-11

1940slouis Clinton (attd. ’40), Denver, 2-14-11Marjorie Hands (BA ’46), Amarillo, Texas, 7-21-11Calvin lenhart (BS ’46), Scottsbluff, Neb., 6-7-10Robert Welborn (LLB ’46), Franktown, Colo., 5-24-11Celia (Brown) Townsend (BA ’47), Highlands Ranch, Colo., 4-20-11William Chapman (BS ’48), Alpharetta, Ga., 3-19-11Barbara (Beatty) Dellinger (BA ’49), Garden Grove, Calif., 5-20-11John Glover (BS ’49), Arvada, Colo., 12-17-09Curt lippoldt (BS ’49), Pocomoke City, Md., 5-18-11Jerry Reed (BA ’49), Denver, 6-8-11Milford Wilson (BS ’49, MA ’57), Edgewater, Colo., 6-26-11

1950sJohn Chesnick (BS ’50), Wheat Ridge, Colo., 5-14-07Robert Phillips (BSBA ’50), Las Vegas, 4-12-11Paulino Zatica (BSBA ’50), Homedale, Idaho, 6-18-11Donald Brandon (BA ’52), Bronxville, N.Y., 6-15-11Dorothy (Boone) Dismuke (BA ’52), Ballwin, Mo., 8-11-11Fred Vote (BS ’55), San Clemente, Calif., 3-22-11Gunther Katz (BSBA ’58), Encino, Calif., 2-13-11Daniel Rothstein (PhD ’58), Sherman Oaks, Calif., 5-25-11Jasper Morris (attd. ’59), Keyser, W.Va., 5-21-11

1960sEugene Hetland (BS ’60), Denver, 8-5-10lloyd Wilson (BA ’60), Denver, 7-25-11Faye (Kingsbury) Carey (MA ’62), Louisville, Colo., 8-9-11Dan Gossert (MSW ’62), Westminster, Colo., 8-10-11Florence “Gail” (Tippett) Schofield (MA ’65), Denver, 12-30-10Martha (Groening) Perry (BA ’66), Bisbee, Ariz., 3-7-10Pamela (Williams) Phillips (BA ’68), Pearland, Texas, 5-2-10Gail Reader (MSW ’68), Fort Collins, Colo., 7-27-11

1970slarry littlefield (JD ’70), Ault, Colo., 5-27-11Eric Aspaas (BA ’71), East Aurora, N.Y., 5-14-11Marylu Casey (MA ’72), Yucaipa, Calif., 5-29-11Donna Selger (MA ’74), Reading, Mass., 12-13-10

1980sPaul Keilt (BSAC ’84), Denver, 6-10-11James lutey (MBA ’86), Painesville, Ohio, 5-31-11

1990sCorey Carlson (BSBA ’93, MSS ’95), Anchorage, Alaska, 7-30-11Felecia Mahaffie (MSW ’97), Denver, 7-26-11Gina Salazar (MSS ’97), Thornton, Colo., 8-10-11

2000sJorge Mora (MLIS ’06), Pueblo, Colo., 5-31-11

Faculty and StaffHarold “Hal” Bloomenthal, former adjunct faculty member at the Sturm College of Law, Denver, 8-22-11Martha (Eastman) Edwards (BA ’36), former DU lab nursery school instructor, Denver, 5-14-11Noel Jordan (MA ’50), retired radio and television professor, Denver, 8-4-11Gordon Milliken, retired economics professor, Centennial, Colo., 6-9-11Myron Plooster, retired senior research engineer at DU’s Denver Research Institute, Louisville, Colo., 5-14-11 William Slaichert, education professor emeritus, Denver, 7-28-11Frank Stanley, faculty member and coach at DU’s Ricks Center for Gifted Children, Englewood, Colo., July 2011

This is your magazine, and here’s your chance to

TELL US wHAT yOU THINK.Take the survey online at www.du.edu/magazine


Alumni ConnectionsRocky Mountain Alumni Chapter Join other Denver-area alumni for networking events each month.>>http://alumni.du.edu/PAN

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.>>http://alumni.du.edu/DUontheRoad

Alumni News Biweekly e-newsletter con-tains information on alumni events and news happening on campus and around the country. E-mail [email protected] to sign up.

Mark your CalendarNewman Center for the Performing Arts The 2011–12 Newman Center Presents season continues with Europe Galante’s “Vivaldi Pyrotechnics” (Jan. 29), Chucho Valdes (Feb. 14) and L.A. Theatre Works’ production of “The Rivalry” (March 1).>>www.newmancenterpresents.com

Winter Musical The Lamont School of Music and the DU theater department team up to pres-ent Urinetown Feb. 23–25 and March 1–4 at the Newman Center.>>www.du.edu/thea

Founders Day Celebrate 148 years of Pioneers excellence. The annual Founders Day Gala will be held on March 8, 2012, at the Seawell Grand Ballroom in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Contact Hallie Lorimer, [email protected], for details, or call 303-871-2701.

Lifelong LearningEnrichment Program Noncredit short courses, lectures, seminars and weekend inten-sives explore a wide range of subjects without exams, grades or admission requirements.>>http://universitycollege.du.edu/learning/ep

AHSS Faculty Lecture Series DU’s Humanities Institute offers a free monthly lecture series to showcase the current research, creative endeavors or recently published works of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences faculty.>>www.du.edu/ahss

Get InvolvedAmmi Hyde Interviews The Office of Undergraduate Admission is looking for alumni volunteers to conduct interviews of prospective students in major cities throughout the country in late January. Contact Ammi Hyde Interview Coordinator Andy Losier at 303-871-7651 or [email protected].>>www.du.edu/hyde

Mentoring Join the Professional Network and share your career experience and advice with current DU students and alumni. Email [email protected] for more information.

Regional Chapters Join a regional alumni chapter: Atlanta; Boston; Northern California; Southern California; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; Minneapolis/St. Paul; New York; Phoenix; Portland; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. To find out how you can get involved, call 800-871-3822 or visit http://alumni.du.edu/chapters.

Women’s Library Association A group of DU alumni and friends regularly comes together to raise funds to benefit research scholarships at DU and Penrose Library. Programs include lectures, teas, special events and the Book Stack used book store in the Mary Reed Building. >>http://library.du.edu/site/about/wla/wla.php

Summer Business Institute The Daniels College of Business offers an intensive program designed exclusively for non-business majors who are interested in supplementing their educa-tion with critical topics in business and leader-ship. The program will run June 13–29, 2012. For more information, contact Becca Mahoney, program manager, at 303-871-4833 or [email protected].

Pioneer GenerationsHow 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!

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

On the webMedia Find photographs of campus, events, sports, students and more at bit.ly/DUMagPhoto. DU videos are at bit.ly/DUMagVideo.

Apps Available for iPhone and Android, the DU app gives users access to campus news, an events calendar, DU videos and photos, the athletics website, maps and polls, a checklist for prospec-tive students and more.

Annual Report DU’s 2010–11 annual report is online at bit.ly/DUMagReport.

DU Today Find up-to-the-minute news on campus and community, academics, arts, history, athletics and more at bit.ly/DUMagToday

Calling All ExpertsWe’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:• work or have worked in public radio• work in the nuclear energy industry• took a “gap year” in between high school and

college• have family members who went to Colorado

College• work in social media• have been affected by the recession

Stay in TouchOnline Network Connect with other DU alumni and friends. Update your contact infor-mation, connect to your Facebook page, search the directory and post class notes. Online class note submissions will automatically be included in the University of Denver Magazine.>>http://alumni.du.edu

Contact usUniversity of Denver Magazine

2199 S. University Blvd. Denver, CO 80208-4816

[email protected]

www.du.edu/magazineTwitter: DUMagazine

ANNOUNCEMENTSWinter


ElEv

ating Our gamE

WinnEr, 4 cOnsEcutivE

yEar

s

For full schedule information, call 303.871.2336 or go to DenverPioneers.com.21 Means 21

Division i hoopsGUYS & GALS niGht OUtdECEmbEr 19DU Men vs. WyoMing, 6:00pM

$12.50 = 1 TICKET, 1 HOT DOG, 1 BEVERAGE*Offer AvAilAble At DenverPiOneers.cOm/tickets & ritchie center ticket Office.subject tO AvAilAbility.

tiCkEt bLOwOUt

dECEmbEr 14DU WoMen vs. Minnesota, 7:00pM

dECEmbEr 22DU Men vs. CitaDel, 7:00pM

TICKETs On sAlE fOR jusT $2 fOR 48

HOuRs pRIOR TO GAmE TImE!

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subject tO AvAilAbility.

Don’t Wait in Line...Buy tickets direct at

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Dec 5 7:00pm montana

Dec 11 1:30pm oregon

Dec 14 7:00pm minnesota

Dec 28 7:00pm troy

Dec 31 1:30pm UaLr

Jan 15 3:30pm Western KentUcKy

Jan 25 7:00pm arKansas state

Feb 4 1:30pm miDDLe tennessee

Feb 15 7:00pm LoUisiana-LaFayette

Feb 18 1:30pm LoUisiana-monroe

Feb 26 3:30pm north texas

DU Women’s Basketball

Dec 3 4:00pm texas soUthernDec 7 7:00pm ionaDec 17 4:30pm boise stateDec 19 6:00pm WyomingDec 22 7:00pm citaDeLDec 29 7:00pm troyDec 31 4:00pm UaLrJan 15 1:00pm Western KentUcKyJan 26 7:00pm arKansas stateFeb 4 4:00pm miDDLe tennesseeFeb 16 5:00pm LoUisiana-LaFayetteFeb 18 4:00pm LoUisiana-monroeFeb 26 1:00pm north texas

DU Men’s Basketball

F12.Winter_Athletics_full page.indd 1 9/30/2011 2:02:17 PM


Using canceled stamps she got from international student applications, Betsy Pike—now an admission coordinator for

University College—made this world map when she was a work-study student in the Office of International Student

Admission. Pike (BA ’03) says the recent increase in online applications results in far fewer exotic stamps making their

way to the international admission mailbox. DU currently has 1,329 international students representing 93 countries;

the University received almost 5,000 international applications for the 2011–12 school year.

Wayne Arm

strong

MISCEllANEA

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2011 Winter University of Denver Magazine

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