2009 Winter: University of Denver Magazine

Winter 2009

U N I V E R S I T Y

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MAGAZINE

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

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UN I V ER S I T Y O F MAGAZINE

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE

Robots to the Rescue

Views

Fall snow
Photograph by Wayne Armstrong

October storm dumped more than 13 inches of snow on the metro Denver area two days before Halloween, causing the DU campus to be closed for a day. Fortunately the sun came out the next day, melting much of the remaining snow to clear the way for trick-or-treaters and Homecoming celebrants. This view is from the Mary Reed Building looking west.

A late

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Contents
Features

22 28 32

Welcome to the White House
Alumna Ellie Schafer was handpicked to show visitors around President Obama’s new home.
By Richard Chapman

Building a Better ’Bot
DU researchers are leading the development of autonomous robots that could someday save lives.
By Chase Squires

Full House
Four parents and two kids make for one big happy family.
By Jessica Centers Glynn

Departments

44 45 47

Editor’s Note Letters DU Update 8 News New international security center 10 Sports Soccer stadium kicks off 13 Academics Studying Shakespeare in London 14 People A soldier’s sacrifice 17 History Arapahoe Acres 19 Arts Trumpeter Al Hood 21 Essay Homeplace Alumni Connections Are we addicted to debt?
Americans live by credit, sometimes well beyond their means. And often, the lifelong dance with debt starts in college.
By Jan Thomas

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Online only at www.du.edu/magazine:

Q&A: Movie producer Roger Birnbaum (attd. 1968–71) Research: The effects of reading on the brain
On the cover: DU researchers are carving a niche developing robots that can collect information and save lives; read the story on page 28. Photo by Wayne Armstrong. This page: Americans are facing a “perfect financial storm” that has led to record foreclosures and credit card debt; read the story online at www.du.edu/magazine. Illustration by Steve Schader.

University of Denver Magazine Update

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U N I V E R S I T Y

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Editor’s Note
When I started my freshman year at DU 18 years ago, I wasn’t concerned about debt. I was just happy to be going to college at a good school. So what if I would graduate with some student loans? I saw them as an investment in my future. By the time I headed to graduate school, I was beginning to worry about debt—I had credit card debt and a car payment in addition to my undergraduate loans. Still, the investment argument won the day. Really, I had no choice but to take out
Craig Korn

MAGAZINE

w w w. d u . e d u / m a g a z i n e
U N I V E R S I T Y Number 2 Volume 10, O F M A G A Z I N E

UN I V ER S I T Y O F MAGAZINE

Carol Farnsworth

Publisher A Z I N E MAG

UNIVERSITY

OF

Managing Editor

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

Greg Glasgow
Associate Editor

Tamara Chapman
Editor

Kathryn Mayer (BA ’07)
Editorial Assistant

loans if I wanted an advanced degree. When I pay off my student loans in about 20 more years, I will have paid more than $100,000 in principal and interest. Do I regret taking out those loans? Not at all. I still see them as an investment—simply part of the upwardly mobile, professional American lifestyle, just like the house payment and the 401(k). What I do regret is spending so freely with credit cards. Two years ago, my husband and I realized that we were making no progress on clearing the credit card debt we’d racked up in college and that we were still likely to be buried when we reached retirement age. So we enlisted the help of a “financial fitness” professional who prodded and coached and sometimes even shamed us into better spending behavior. I’m pleased to say that after two years of hard work, we’re about to zero the balance on our credit cards for the first time in nearly 20 years. If only my debt epiphany had come a decade or two sooner. Be sure to read our online feature article about debt published at www.du.edu/magazine. It includes some wonderful tips for students and their parents to help avoid the debt trap that has snared so many Americans. I hope it helps.

Laura Hathaway (’10)
Staff Writer

Richard Chapman
Art Director

Craig Korn, VeggieGraphics
Contributors

Wayne Armstrong • Richard Chapman • Justin Edmonds (BSBA ’08) • Jessica Centers Glynn • Allison Horsley • Doug McPherson • Josh Miller • Sarah Satterwhite • Steve Schader • Nathan Solheim • Chase Squires
Editorial Board

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

Printed on 10% PCW recycled paper

Chelsey Baker-Hauck Managing Editor

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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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Letters
Celebrating Stuart
Thank you for publishing Margaret Whitt’s remembrance of Stuart James [Essay, fall 2009]. I attended the first class he ever taught at DU, in the fall of 1957 at the old downtown campus. During that class he mentioned flying the B-17 Flying Fortress, and after class I told him I, too, had piloted that plane. He invited me to join him for a beer, and we began what became a lifelong friendship. He was my mentor at DU, and after his retirement we got together nearly every Tuesday for the last 12 years of his life to have lunch, drink an occasional beer, and talk literature. He was the closest and dearest friend I ever had.
Jesse Gatlin Jr. (PhD ’61) Colorado Springs, Colo.

to work, where they get their food, etc.” A little friendly coercion will be necessary if someone deviates. Ms. Lyndsay Agans, lead author of this plan, correctly recognizes that “The hard work starts now.” Knowing which light bulb to use, how to properly grow flowers and when it’s OK to use a car will take moral clarity and perseverance. Maybe a “green” book can be produced to delineate which actions are correct and which are not. Now that the University can feel good about itself by setting goals to reduce its carbon footprint, wouldn’t it make more sense to just close the University and really go carbon neutral?
Igor Shpudejko (MBA ’77) Mahwah, N.J.

Council. And, as noted on page 4 of every issue, our paper contains 10 percent post-consumer recycled waste. (Cost and availability limit our options for higher-recycledcontent papers.) We also encourage those concerned with the environment to read the magazine online at www.du.edu/magazine rather than subscribing to the print edition; readers can e-mail [email protected] to unsubscribe. After reading “Going Green” I remain tremendously skeptical about DU’s carbon neutral plans. As a 2008 graduate of the School of Education I am on campus two to three times a week, mostly at the Ritchie Center. On my way to work out, I see water sprinklers watering the lawn during the noon hour, wasting precious water. I don’t see any recycle bins on my way to the Ritchie Center or other buildings. I realize some are there, but they are not easy to find. I see a large open refrigeration unit across the workout area check-in station, keeping drinks and sandwiches cold with the unit’s cold air escaping into the room, again wasting energy. Worst of all, there are no water conservation policies in the men’s showers. No auto-off, no water-saving shower heads, no signs asking users to limit their shower times. In fact, countless times I see swim teams stand in the showers for up to 30 minutes, just standing under the hot water, wasting not only energy to heat the water, but the water itself. I see why it will take 40 years to obtain carbon neutrality. DU does not have the environmental culture that other colleges have, such as CU-Boulder. It will take a long time to change students’ attitudes, especially since many have never had to sacrifice. I wish you luck in your endeavors, but it makes me sad to see that nothing really changes. It is easier to put in large solar and wind energy systems than promote the turning off of water or a light switch, but it is the little things like not
University of Denver Magazine Letters

Thanks so much for a wonderful reminder of the impact and influence one teacher can make. I was a student yearning to learn more about literature, and Stuart James put it in front of me. He engaged the classroom to speak up and prodded our sleepy minds to realize the force and impact that the written word could have— through Hemingway, Cather, Faulkner, Twain and O’Connor. He opened up a world for me, and I thank him for being a catalyst when I needed one. I’ve been fortunate to have had a small handful of teachers like Stuart James. They are gold.
Doug Hall (BA ’81) Waltham, Mass.

Green gripes

After reading “Going Green” [fall 2009] it is apparent that the green “commissars” have finally appeared at DU. They have ostensibly come to re-educate the masses at DU on the merits of “sustainability.” Of course it’s all for the “good” of the people, even if some may disagree. Clearly “members of the University community will be asked to change the way they do things: the way they teach and learn, the way they get

You seriously missed the boat in your article on DU going green. Nice sentiments. But how about demonstrating the University’s commitment to going green by having the magazine go green? Right now, you’re using a high quality unrecycled paper to print the magazine on. And are you using soy-based ink? Not that I can tell. How about you cut out the luxury paper and go for something with a high recycled content? Frankly, I’m appalled and disappointed that the choice wasn’t made to do so at the outset. Make your alumni proud and be a little bit progressive. Go green yourself and don’t just write an article about it.
Leigh Phipps (BA ’82) Denver

Ed. response: We continue to seek ways to mitigate the magazine’s environmental impact while also keeping costs down. Soy-based inks are not available for our cost-effective high-volume printing process, but we do print on elementalchlorine-free paper certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and Forest Stewardship

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watering during the noon hour or limiting your shower time that will make the big difference. Hopefully someone will note these little problems, which truly add up, and do something about them.
James Rogers (MLIS ’08) Denver

Going up

I’m appalled at the “The Rising Cost of College” [fall 2009]. I started at DU in 1955, when tuition was $210 per quarter, or $630 per year, and this was considered high compared with in-state tuition for the state universities such as CU. If my math is correct (I’m an engineer, not an economist), the average rate of inflation of tuition at DU over the past 50-plus years has been 7.65 percent. My economic advisers tell me the average

inflation rate of the Consumer Price Index over the same period has been between 4 and 5 percent. If tuition had kept pace with the 4 percent inflation of the CPI, it would be about $5,300 per year. If it had been a 5 percent increase per year, tuition would have been a whopping $8,700 per year. The difference between $8,700 per year and $34,000 per year shown on page 33 is staggering beyond belief! You wonder in the article how you can contain the rate of increase. I say you should strive to decrease the tuition, and costs, of education at DU. Attending DU was of value to me— with an MS degree in chemical engineering I landed in a Fortune 500 company, had a productive career and was able to retire fairly comfortably. However, had I had a debt load of three times my starting annual salary when I graduated, things would have been considerably different. I certainly could

not have afforded to attend, since I was supporting myself with a part-time job whilst attending, with an hourly rate only slightly higher than minimum wage. There would never have been a way I could have earned enough to cover tuition and living expenses with a minimum-wage job nowadays. Your bean counters should get together with your educators and figure out how to use technology to reach the masses, lest DU and other traditional schools be left in the dust.
Henry Greeb (BS ’59, MS ’60) Rockford, Mich.

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

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

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Convocation recap Plant lawsuit Branding initiative National ranking Volunteer profile

Justin Edmonds

Jose Sanchez, 10, celebrates after scoring a goal on the fifth and final day of the Miracles on Ice hockey camp sponsored by the Gary and Leslie (MBA ’03) Howard Family Foundation. Sanchez was one of 33 Bridge Project students who took to the Magness Arena ice for a hockey game Aug. 7 following a week of skating lessons, classroom instruction in math and reading, and listening to motivational speakers. The camp teaches students the importance of maintaining a strong mind and healthy body while encouraging discipline, commitment and team play.
University of Denver Magazine Update

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Top News

International security center opens at Korbel school
By Chase Squires

Josef Korbel School of International Studies will educate a new generation of international security specialists and diplomats at the SIÉ CHÉOU-KANG Center for International Security and Diplomacy, an addition to Ben Cherrington Hall that opened in August. The SIÉ Center will provide leadership training for SIÉ Fellows, a program consisting of 10 international security specialists and diplomats that will begin in fall 2010. The center also will provide students at the Korbel School with a new resource for studying global security, policy and diplomacy issues. The center is named for Sié Chéou-Kang, the father of DU trustee John Sie. Sié Chéou-Kang was a diplomat, educator, author and playwright who spent much of his adult life in Europe forging relationships on behalf of China. “This center is extremely important to the University of Denver, this city, the region and the world,” Chancellor Robert Coombe told a crowd of nearly 300 supporters at the building’s opening ceremony on Aug. 7. “If the city of Denver is to be a great international city, then the University of Denver must be a great international university, and that is our objective.” Coombe said the SIÉ Center provides another opportunity for the Josef Korbel School to build its reputation as one of the premier international studies programs in the world. “Our students will have many outstanding opportunities to interact with top leaders in the fields of security, policy and diplomacy,” he said. “Like so many of our graduates who now hold pivotal positions throughout the world, they will be prepared to address the great issues of our time.” The center has many Asian design elements, including a roof of blue-glazed Asian tiles and a Japanese-style courtyard garden of rock forms focused on a magnolia tree. It was constructed using the Green Building Rating System, which focuses on the highest standards in energy conservation as developed by LEED—Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The center and the annex constructed for it were developed through a $5 million commitment from the Anna and John J. Sie Foundation. In addition, the foundation has endowed a chair for a scholar to lead the program. John Sie delivered an emotional address at the opening ceremony, recalling the important lessons he learned from his father and mother and his hope for the future of global relations. “Today marks the opening of a building and a new commitment at the University to international security and diplomacy,” he said. “I’m simply overwhelmed.” Sie spoke candidly about his father’s work as a respected diplomat. He said he learned integrity, the pursuit of excellence and selfless commitment to others from his father. And through his mother, Sie said he developed a moral compass that guides him today. “Today we are here to honor my father and mother,” he said.
University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

DU’s

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Wayne Armstrong

Coombe says University is weathering financial storm with ‘sacrifice’
The economic condition of the nation is still trying the resiliency of the University, Chancellor Robert Coombe said in his Oct. 2 Convocation address to faculty and staff. “If we bend but don’t break, they are times of extraordinary opportunity,” Coombe said. He said the University finished fiscal 2009 with a positive operating margin and predicted DU will stay on track for another balanced budget this year. Coombe attributed DU’s good financial footing to a combination of budget cuts, a moratorium on salary increases in 2010 and last winter’s realignment—in which DU staff was reduced by 122 positions. The full impact of realignment, he said, will be felt in the current year and years to follow. Of the money saved this year, more than $4.5 million has gone to support increases in financial aid for undergraduate and graduate students. Another $3.5 million of the realignment funds were used to support new faculty positions and fill essential positions left vacant after some staff members took voluntary buy-outs as part of the realignment, Coombe explained. The rest of the saved funds were used to hold down tuition increases. While Coombe spent time addressing the University’s financial position, he also took time to highlight the University’s accomplishments. Fall enrollments for the University total more than 12,000 students, greater than in any year since World War II. Coombe called the quality of students “unabated,” adding that nearly half of the first-year students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. >>Transcript: www.du.edu/chancellor/speeches/convocation09.html
—Kathryn Mayer
Wayne Armstrong

Scholarship fundraising at DU
Scholarship donors

5,414

$53,819,576
New scholarships

Scholarship gifts

143

$42,036,179
New endowed scholarships

Gifts to endowed scholarships

72

Gifts to non-endowed scholarships

$11,783,397

—For period July 2006 to June 2009; compiled by Sarah Satterwhite, Office of University Advancement

DU a top destination for Jewish students
DU is one of the top 60 schools Jews choose, according to Reform Judaism, the world’s largest circulated Jewish magazine. In the magazine’s fourth annual Insider’s Guide to College, DU is ranked No. 28 for the top private schools Jewish students select. Twenty percent of DU’s undergraduate student population is Jewish, the magazine reports. Organizations for Jewish students at DU include Hillel, Chabad, Jewish Rainbow Alliance and the ALEPH Institute for Jewish Culture. DU boasts egalitarian and reform worship on campus and offers around 20 Judaism-related courses. Students also can minor in Judaic studies through DU’s Center for Judaic Studies. The Merage and Allon Hillel Center provides Jewish students with an alternative place to gather. >>www.du.edu/crs
—Laura Hathaway
iStockphoto

Sports

New soccer stadium kicks off
Media Relations Staff

was a banner day for the DU soccer program. Not only did the women’s team win its first home game of the season, but it did so under the lights in the brand new University of Denver Soccer Stadium, a $9.2 million complex that’s been in the works since fall 2008. Construction began in winter 2009. “We’re very fortunate here at the University of Denver that the Ritchie Center provides many of our sports programs with first-class facilities,” says Stu Halsall, assistant vice chancellor for recreation, athletic events and Ritchie Center operations. “I think the soccer stadium adds that for our soccer program. For student-athletes, for alumni, for future players coming in, it’s a great home. The whole energy and excitement around the program has drastically increased.” The 1,915-seat stadium has lights for night games and a public address system. The top of the stadium is on the same level as the entrance to the Ritchie Center, giving soccer fans access to interior restrooms and concessions. A lighted stadium does more than provide comfort for fans. Night games ramp up DU’s ability to schedule top opponents, which builds fans both on campus and off. Players play harder under the lights before a crowd, coaches say, and youngsters from the soccer-rich Denver sports community can attend games with their parents and coaches more often when they take place at night. Attendance helps establish a strong connection with DU players. Moreover, having a stadium allows the University to bid to be an NCAA tournament site, which would further cement ties with the Denver soccer community. “We want to show kids what college soccer is all about,” says men’s soccer coach Bobby Muuss, noting that the program is working to build a winning tradition. “It takes pioneers to do it.” In addition to the stadium, the project includes an 11,000-squarefoot strength and conditioning center and a 12,500-square-foot art annex, both of which will be open by midDecember. The one-story art annex will be attached to the southwest corner of the Ritchie Center—behind the Shwayder Art Building—and used as studio space for drawing and painting. It will be tucked partly into the ground and will feature a large skylight and side windows to allow the natural light artists crave. The state-of-the-art strength and conditioning center, which is built into the body of the stands, will be available to athletes in all 17 DU Division I sports. It will replace crowded space in the Ritchie Center and provide opportunities for training to enhance team unity and performance, prevent injuries and aid recovery. While the strength and conditioning center helps coaches build a better team, it’s hoped the new stadium will build a bigger fan base for Pioneers soccer. “Right now we’re averaging 1,000 fans a game—it’s something that our players at home have never experienced,” Muuss says. “Playing at night and really being able to expose the Denver soccer community as well as the Denver student body to DU soccer—it’s a win-win for everybody.”
Just days before this issue went to press, the women’s soccer team won the Sun Belt Conference championship and was headed to the NCAA tournament. Follow the team at www.DenverPioneers.com.

Aug. 28

Wayne Armstrong

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Student lawyers reach endangered plant settlement
University of Denver law students don’t back down when they head into court, even if their target is the United States government. Students and faculty at DU’s Sturm College of Law Environmental Law Clinic have been battling for years with the Department of the Interior on behalf of an Arizona-based environmental group seeking endangered species protection for two plants found only on the U.S. Virgin Islands. On Aug. 18, the clinic reached a settlement with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior that will see the government revisit an earlier decision to deny endangered species protections for the two plants. The dispute dates back to 1996, when the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources sought to have the rare plants listed. In 2004, the Tucson, Ariz., based Center for Biological Diversity started pressing the federal government to rule on the request, which languished for years in bureaucracy. The center also challenged the government’s ultimate 2006 decision not to protect the plants. DU’s student law office has been representing the center. Professor Michael Harris has been overseeing the endangered plant case. Under the most recent development—the Aug. 18 settlement in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia—the government agrees to revisit its 2006 rejection. In addition, the government agrees to pay more than $50,000 in legal fees to the center. The Environmental Law Clinic also filed suit in federal court Aug. 6 against Xcel Energy over the operation of the Cherokee Station coal-fired power plant.The suit on behalf of WildEarth Guardians contends Xcel repeatedly has violated federal standards for limiting and monitoring opacity levels from the emissions of four coal-fired units at the plant north of Denver. Opacity levels act as an indicator of whether a unit is emitting particulate matter and other pollutants that pose a serious health threat to the public.
—Chase Squires

Trygve Myhren named chairman of DU Board of Trustees
Prominent Denver businessman Trygve Myhren has been elected chairman of the University of Denver Board of Trustees. Myhren, a DU trustee since 1995, began his term Sept. 1, succeeding Joy Burns, who will remain on the board. Myhren is president of Myhren Media Inc. He previously served as president of the Providence Journal Co. chairman and CEO of American Television & Communications (now Time Warner Cable), chairman of the National Cable Television Association and on the boards of eight public companies. He is a founder or co-founder of six cable TV networks, including the Food Network, Northwest Cable News and E! Entertainment. At DU, Myhren has served on several trustee committees, sequentially chairing the University’s audit, finance and budget, and faculty and educational affairs committees. Myhren and his wife, Vicki, are the principal supporters of the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery in the Shwayder Art Building. Burns, a DU board member for 28 years, served as chairman from 1990 until 2005 and again from 2007 until Aug. 31, 2009. An icon of Denver’s business, civic and professional sports community, she is president and CEO of the D.C. Burns Realty and Trust Co. and president and owner of the Burnsley Hotel in Denver. Peter Gilbertson (BA ’75), founder and CEO of Anacostia & Pacific Co. has joined the board as a new member.
—Media Relations Staff
HOLIDAY 2008

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University of Denver Magazine Update

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Late DU philanthropist established University’s first fully funded chair
Alumnus Leo Block, a philanthropist who contributed more than $2.5 million to DU, died Aug. 31. He was 94. “His energy and intellect belied his age,” says Chancellor Emeritus Dwight Smith. “Leo was a delightful and generous man to whom we in the DU community will remain indebted.” Block is the namesake for the Leo Block Alumni Center and the Leo Block Endowed Chair. “Simply put, Leo loved DU. He credited DU with giving him an international perspective and a passion for learning,” says Scott Lumpkin, associate vice chancellor in University Advancement. Block (BA ’35) met Smith in 1985, when Block attended his 50th reunion at DU. “He invited me to visit him in San Antonio, an invitation which I accepted, and those visits continued both there and in Denver,” Smith says. Block contributed $1 million for the first fully funded chair at the University. “[The chair] brought a series of visiting professors to DU for 20 years, beginning with former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm,” Lumpkin says. Lamm has remained at DU as executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies. “Because of its timing, this gift and the addition of Lamm to the faculty represented a real and morale-boosting enhancement for our academic community at a critical juncture in our history,” Smith says. In 2008, Block permanently assigned the chair to the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. Block was the founder and owner of Block Distributing Co., now called Republic National Distributing, which became the largest wine- and liquor-distributing outlet in south Texas.
—Kathryn Mayer

Oil portrait of Leo Block by Seymour Simmons III

China Rising

The University of Denver Presents

The next Bridges to the Future event will occur during the winter academic quarter. Please visit www.du.edu/bridges for program information.
Most people in the U.S. know very little about China, yet the country may soon become the No. 2 economy in the world. As a result, China will play a larger role in international affairs and take on other new responsibilities of a rising world power. But it also is feeling the pain of rapid industrialization and growing international engagement. Join the discussion as the 2009–10 Bridges to the Future lecture series at DU explores the myths, realities, and challenges for America of China Rising.

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Academics

Students in love ... with Shakespeare
By Kathryn Mayer

It’s

nothing new for Americans to study the work of Shakespeare. But it’s usually cooler to do so in the country of that famous writer. And way cooler to do so when actually at the theater in which the Bard’s famous plays were first performed. DU students studying abroad in London can get that experience when they take Shakespeare: Text, Performance and Culture. The course is held at Shakespeare’s Globe, a modern reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, which burned down in 1613. “It was one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taken,” says Callan Cobb, a senior communications major who took the class in fall 2008. “Not only was it taught in the exact replica of the Globe Theatre, but the people teaching us were so knowledgeable and in love with Shakespeare that you couldn’t help but feel the same way.” In love with Shakespeare? Not surprising considering the ongoing popularity of a man who lived nearly 400 years ago. The course focuses on the universality of Shakespeare’s plays, which helps students relate to the issues he wrote about centuries earlier. “We learned how to look for different meaning in his plays and poems,” Cobb says. “A lot of times what you read is not what he intended you to take away. The most significant part of the class was tying London history to the writing and using the history to make guesses as to what Shakespeare was alluding to.” DU has partnered with Globe Education—the education program offering courses at the Globe Theatre—since 1998. The 12-week fall course is designed for liberal arts students and is especially popular with theater and English majors. During the class, students read and study some of Shakespeare’s plays and examine their language, meaning and characters. They also learn about performance space, props and clothing and the relationship between actors and audience members, says Madeline Knights, university courses manager at the Globe. DU English Professor Eleanor McNees helped organize DU’s partnership with the Globe when she was working to develop the University’s faculty-led London study-abroad program. Students in the program are able to choose either the Shakespeare course or an art history course as part of the program’s curriculum. “Since the [Globe’s] regular season ends in early October, students are able to actually use the stage—quite a spectacular experience for them,” McNees says. In addition to watching plays, students perform a scene of their own to an audience at the end of the class. Senior political science major Eliza Reed says performing was easily her favorite part of the class. “We took lessons in acting and drama, and after spending several weeks learning the lines and the appropriate movement on stage, we got to perform a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in front of our peers,” she says. Reed played Lysander. “There were seven people in the course, and we were split into two plays. My group was all women, so two of us got to play the male roles, which is ironic because men played female roles in Shakespeare’s time,” Reed says. Plays at the outdoor theater are performed as they were in the 16th century, Reed says. There are no microphones or stage lighting, and a crowd of 1,600 can pack into the theater and hear Shakespeare’s famous lines clearly through the Globe’s natural acoustics. “The architecture and detail of the Globe is breathtaking,” says marketing and theater senior Brooke Tibbs. “It’s a marvelous theater. Standing in the middle of the theater you can look up and see the sky and wonder if it’s the 1500s or present day.”

John Tramper

University of Denver Magazine Update

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People

A war of remembrance
By Doug McPherson

Libman still cries when he talks about his friend Leonard Kravitz. Libman (BA ’53) and Kravitz (the uncle and namesake of rock musician Lenny Kravitz) grew up together in Crown Heights, a largely Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Lenny was always there when you needed a friend,” says Libman, 78, who now lives in Hollywood, Fla. “He wasn’t what you’d call a ladies’ man [or] a great athlete. Lenny was the guy who was always picked last for games we played. But when I got to choose, I’d always pick him right at the start. We were very close.” But near the end of high school, as Libman’s future gained clarity, Kravitz’s grew cloudy. “He wasn’t going to college, didn’t have a job and had no idea what he wanted to do,” Libman says. “I know he wasn’t happy and his parents were very concerned.” Kravitz eventually decided to join the Army to fight in the Korean War. “He and his parents argued often about it for months, and they finally gave him permission,” Libman says. It was a deadly decision. And one that would shape Libman’s future for the better part of a half-century. On March 6, 1951, Kravitz and two platoons came under heavy attack from Chinese troops. A U.S. machine-gunner was wounded, and Kravitz took over. Kravitz and the men successfully fought off two early assaults, but then a larger group with automatic weapons and grenades rushed forward. The sergeant ordered a retreat. But Kravitz refused to leave the machine gun and yelled that he would cover his fellow troops, nearly 40 by Libman’s estimate. According to eyewitness reports, Kravitz said, “Get the hell out while you still can.” Troops testified they heard Kravitz’s weapon firing after they reached safety. Then a barrage of hand grenades exploded. Then silence. The next morning they returned to the site. The bodies of Chinese soldiers were scattered all around Kravitz, who lay over his machine gun, dead. It wasn’t until that summer, while Libman was home on break from the University of Denver, that his mother told him of Lenny’s death. “Most of the year was a pretty big blur,” Libman says. “I went through a pretty rough period and kept everything to myself.” Libman returned to DU. After graduating, he was drafted for service as a combat engineer and served in Korea in 1954 and 1955. When he later learned that Kravitz had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second highest honor, “I was very happy he had been recognized,” Libman says. “At that time I didn’t really know what he had done, but I knew he was considered a hero.” Still, Libman says, “I wanted to know what could possibly have put Lenny into the situation to make the decision to give up his life so all the others could get out of there alive.” Libman’s search for details took on new meaning in the mid-1980s, when he learned Kravitz had been nominated for the Medal of Honor—the military’s highest award—but that the Pentagon had downgraded it to the Distinguished Service Cross. “I had to know why that happened,” he says. “I’ve read the criteria for the Medal of Honor many times, and Lenny’s actions fit it perfectly.” Adding fuel to his effort was a comment from Jerry Murray, who had served with Kravitz. “He told me, ‘They don’t give the Medal of Honor to Jews.’ Up until then I was trying to get information. But that spurred me on even more. It wasn’t the first time I had heard it, but based on my personal experience with Lenny’s medal, I’d say it was very accurate.” Libman’s quest took him to the pinnacle of U.S. military power. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush examined his request that they award Kravitz the medal. At one point, an assistant at the Pentagon told Libman the paperwork was on President Bush’s desk waiting to be signed. But it turned out she was mistaken. “Both Clinton and Bush did what they were supposed to do, but officials at the Pentagon have turned down the request,” Libman says. “They only say that they believe the Distinguished Service Cross is the proper medal and nothing else.” They did tell him they wouldn’t review the case again unless he could produce more proof. Libman persisted and began working with Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., who eventually introduced the Leonard Kravitz Jewish

Mitchel

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Courtesy of Mitchel Libman

Mitchel Libman

War Veterans Act of 2001. It mandates that all cases in which Jewish veterans were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross be reviewed to determine if the Medal of Honor should have been given. Wexler says he believes it’s “unconscionable” that JewishLeonard Kravitz Americans were “systematically denied medals they earned … due to prejudice and anti-Semitism in the Pentagon.” Pam Elbe, an archivist at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C., says of the halfmillion Jews who served in World War II, only three received the Medal of Honor. “I believe there was some discrimination going on there,” says Elbe, noting that the number of Jews who served in Korea isn’t known. Lt. Col. Nate Banks of the Army public affairs office in Washington, D.C., says the list of soldiers being considered for the Medal of Honor is not public. “The Medal of Honor is awarded to individuals based on merit, and it’s not based on race or religion,” he says. So far, just one Jewish veteran has received the Medal of Honor because of the Kravitz act—Tibor Rubin, who has become friends with Libman and who also believes Kravitz deserves the medal. “I do think he should get it, but I also believe Mitch deserves the Medal of Honor for all he’s done,” Rubin says. “Mitch is a wonderful man, and he’s been fighting for his friend for a very long time.” Libman believes Kravitz eventually will get the medal. But for now the request is still in limbo, somewhere in an office in Washington, D.C. Libman says a woman in the Pentagon called him in early 2009 and said Kravitz remains on the list to be considered for the Medal of Honor. He’s also spoken with an assistant to Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff. “I still wait for the mailman every day,” Libman says. “I’ve never given up because Lenny was my friend. Because he earned it. And because Lenny never gave up. He stayed to finish what was so important to him behind that machine gun. This is the least I can do for him. “I spend a lot of time trying to understand what it must have been like for him … behind that weapon,” Libman says. “It’s very upsetting. It haunts me. He was there, all alone. He never even tried to leave. The proof of that was they found him still at his position, lying over his weapon, only six bullets left in his machine gun. “Lenny knew me well enough to know I would go to any length to make sure the world knew what he did,” Libman adds. “His next thought, I’m sure, would be, ‘What the hell is taking you so long?’”

University of Denver Magazine Update

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Pioneers Top 10

Redesigned DU home page headlines new branding initiative
A new brand strategy is at the heart of the redesigned DU Web site that launched Sept. 14. The home page (www.du.edu) now has links for different audience groups and top-level pages that focus on prospective students. The Web site is just one component of a larger University-wide initiative to bring focus and clarity to DU’s mission to be a great private university dedicated to the public good. “This effort is intended to be a logical extension of our vision, values, mission and goals statements, one that further clarifies them for the University community and gives them voice for a much broader audience,” Chancellor Robert Coombe wrote in an August memo to deans and administrators. “Our goal is to develop greater visibility for DU as an action leader, as an institution that proactively addresses the great issues of our day,” Coombe wrote. “We need to tell our story well, with many examples.” The alumni relations office also has launched a new Web site and expanded its ePioneer online community. The new site includes the latest information about programs, events and alumni benefits. The ePioneer site enables alums to find old classmates and add them to a personal friends list, add or view photo albums, and add and link content from sites such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Visit www.alumni.du.edu and click on the ePioneer online community button to create a free, secure personal profile.
—Media Relations Staff

Post-1960s musicals
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Avenue Q Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk Cats Company The Lion King Sunday in the Park With George Tommy Urinetown Wicked

10. The Wiz

iStockphoto

In alphabetical order; compiled by Allison Horsley, assistant professor of theater.

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

History

Modern living
By Greg Glasgow

School of Architecture and Planning was only around for six years—1946 to 1952—but it left its modernist mark on south Denver. Tucked away in a maze of side streets in Englewood, less than two miles from the DU campus, sits Arapahoe Acres, an astounding group of 124 mid-century modern homes right out of the Frank Lloyd Wright playbook. The project was conceived in 1949 by Denver developer Edward Hawkins, who bought a 30-acre parcel of land for $5,250. For his architect, Hawkins chose Eugene Sternberg, a Czech-born professor at DU’s architecture school. “Gene was very interested in this neighborhood for its social engineering,” says Arapahoe Acres resident and historian Diane Wray. “He wanted affordable homes, he was interested in the environmental aspect, and he was also very concerned that the houses be financially accessible to a variety of people, and also people at different stages in their lives.” In 1998, thanks to Wray’s efforts, Arapahoe Acres became the first post-World War II subdivision listed as a National Register Historic District. The end of World War II marked a huge housing boom in America. GIs were returning from abroad, wartime restrictions on manufacturing and construction were lifted, and new materials like plastics and synthetic resins were introduced into the market. Eager to capitalize on the trend, the Revere Copper and Brass Co. sponsored a national program encouraging modern design. Hawkins and Sternberg applied and were accepted, and construction on Arapahoe Acres began in October 1949. The resulting neighborhood is like something out of “The Jetsons” or “77 Sunset Strip”: an oasis of contemporary design in a surrounding sea of middle-American split-levels and Cape Cods. Drawing from the International and Usonian styles—both related to the work of Wright—Arapahoe Acres abodes are all flat roofs, jutting eaves, low angles, large windows, flowing interiors and natural light. “What’s so cool about Arapahoe Acres is that it’s kind of like driving into a little cocoon, like a time warp,” says Dana Cain (BA ’81), host of the annual Denver Modernism Show. “The street signs, the layout of it—you go in and you’re surrounded by it. It’s not like a lot of places where they have some good examples of mid-century architecture but they’re sitting next to this or that. When you’re in Arapahoe Acres, it’s complete immersion.” The Hawkins-Sternberg partnership didn’t last long: After Hawkins sold a model home for more than the agreed-upon price, Sternberg left the project. About 20 homes in Arapahoe Acres were built on Sternberg’s plans. Hawkins assumed the design of the remaining homes, assisted by Gerry Dion, who had studied under Sternberg at DU. In her Arapahoe Acres guidebook, Wray writes that the DU School of Architecture and Planning was discontinued in 1952 after the University of Colorado established a school of architecture in its college of engineering. Modern architecture fell out of favor after the 1950s, due in part to FHA rules that required larger down payments for houses built as part of what the agency considered a fad. But with the recent resurgence of mid-century modern style, Arapahoe Acres has a new cachet among retro-minded Denverites. “We love living in the house; it’s essentially like living in a piece of art,” says 10-year resident Dave Steers, who started his own business restoring and renovating mid-century homes shortly after moving to Arapahoe Acres. “We know a tremendous amount of people in the neighborhood because we all have the neighborhood in common.” Even those not lucky enough to live there are welcome to walk, drive or bicycle through—perhaps as part of a south Denver mid-century tour that also includes nearby enclaves Krisana Park, Arapaho Hills and Mile High. “It’s like a little slice of paradise; it’s a total gem,” Cain says. “I would give anything to live there.”
University of Denver Magazine Update

The DU

Wayne Armstrong

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DU ranked in nation’s top 100
The University of Denver is keeping its place among the top national universities in the 2010 U.S. News & World Report college rankings. The magazine’s annual ranking of undergraduate education, released Aug. 20, again places DU among the nation’s top 100 universities. DU ranks 84th—up five positions from last year—tied with American University, Marquette University and the Stevens Institute of Technology. DU ranked high for its freshman retention rate (88 percent), its acceptance rate (64 percent) and its percentage of full-time faculty (74 percent). The rankings also recognize DU for having small class sizes. In addition, DU ranks No. 8—tied with the University of Southern California and the University of Vermont—in the “up and coming national universities” category. The category spotlights universities regarded by top college officials as “making promising and innovative changes.” The Daniels College of Business ranked 83 on a list of 183 undergraduate business programs nationwide. Daniels was tied with 17 other schools, including Texas Christian University, Loyola University Chicago, Brandeis University, Marquette University and George Mason University. Daniels ranked 83rd in the 2009 rankings as well.
—Chase Squires

One to watch

Arda Collins, creative writing
Ask Arda Collins why poetry is important, and the acclaimed poet will be the first to admit it’s not a popular genre that will ever “fly off the shelves.” “I think of it as important in the same way as if you spent a day with someone going to the movies and you have some sort of magical day, or you eat something and it’s delicious,” Collins explains. “Maybe it’s not so important, but … it makes life worth living.” Art—especially in the context of words—is something that makes life worth living for the second-year student in DU’s creative writing PhD program. For the 34-year-old Collins, what some may consider a dalliance has become a promising profession, not to mention the envy of most writers with similarly lofty aspirations. Collins’ poems have appeared in The New Yorker and American Poetry Review. She is a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was one of hundreds of poets vying for acceptance into DU’s creative writing program, the only writing program in the country that focuses exclusively on doctoral study. Last year, Collins won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the annual event of the Yale University Press that publishes the first collection of a promising American poet under the age of 40. Collins’ It Is Daylight was published in April 2009 and garnered positive reviews from critics who called her work “dramatic,” “mesmerizing” and “electric.” For Collins, writing is where “things I imagine become real.” Take her poem “Low,” for example, in which she writes, “It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting for the light to change; a bakery. It’s a lake. It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by pines.” Her images are simple; her sentences short and sweet. The New York native is finding solace in the “smallness” of DU’s program. “It’s just a good place to work,” Collins says. “I like what is happening here creatively.”
—Kathryn Mayer
Wayne Armstrong

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Arts

In tune
By Nathan Solheim

Al Hood has found the perfect gig at the University of Denver. Hood, an associate professor of trumpet at DU’s Lamont School of Music, plays dozens of concerts per year in crowded jazz clubs, swanky concert halls and ornate cathedrals around Denver. When he’s not on stage, Hood coaches a number of student ensembles and tutors 13 trumpet students on melodies, mouthpieces and Miles Davis. Hood also helped resurrect the Rafael Mendez Brass Institute—a weeklong summer music camp that brings together aspiring professional brass players and some of the world’s best brass musicians for a week’s worth of master classes, workshops and concerts—by opening up the Lamont School of Music’s performance and teaching facilities to the institute. And in February 2009, Hood released his first solo album, Just a Little Taste: Al Hood Plays the Writing of Dave Hanson. James Brown, eat your heart out. “I have no complaints about my job,” Hood says. “I love teaching and performing equally. And I teach classical music and jazz to all my students.” Some of his students have gone on to some pretty nice gigs of their own in ensembles as diverse as the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. “He pedagogically opened my eyes,” says Brittany Branscom, a former student who works in the Lamont public relations office and freelances around Denver. “He’s methodical in his approach to teaching, but he’s very supportive of his students’ creativity.” Hood came to DU from the University of Miami, where he was working on a degree in jazz performance. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music performance from the University of Kentucky and Northern Illinois University, respectively. The 45-year-old father of one and Rochester, N.Y., native started playing trumpet in junior high school and turned to jazz after his high school music teacher lent him a few records. Over the course of his career, Hood has performed with jazz giants such as Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, Gerry Mulligan, Curtis Fuller and Arturo Sandoval, as well as popsters Phil Collins, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole and Engelbert Humperdinck. He’s played with some of his trumpet idols along the way, too, including Doc Severinsen and Clark Terry. Around Denver, Hood is an A-lister, playing in groups such as the Ken Walker Sextet and the Denver Brass. While he’s played with some of the industry’s best, he’s quick to laud Denver’s top-notch scene. “I can name you five or six world-class players on each instrument—the roster is huge,” Hood says. “And you can catch someone great pretty much any night of the week.” Hood collaborated with one of those world-class musicians, Lamont adjunct instructor Dave Hanson, on Just a Little Taste. Hanson, Hood says, is as good as any arranger in Los Angeles or New York. A collection of five originals and seven standards arranged for jazz trumpet and orchestral strings, the album garnered strong reviews and airplay on Denver-area jazz radio and worldwide. Hood financed production with a pair of DU grants and his own money and plans to submit the album for Grammy consideration. “It’s kind of a shot in the dark from an unknown, but why not?” he asks. “People tell me I have my own sound and that it’s a little different. Those are probably the biggest compliments I can get.”
University of Denver Magazine Update

Musician

Wayne Armstrong

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Volunteer Spotlight

Sheldon Arakaki
While he was a student at DU, Sheldon Arakaki (BSBA ’84) spent time volunteering in the admission office, where he developed friendships with many staff members. Twenty-five years later he is still building on the relationships he made at DU by participating in the Ammi Hyde admission interviews for prospective students. Arakaki is one of more than 300 alumni volunteers who conduct interviews each November and February. The voluntary interviews probe students’ motivation to learn, openness to new ideas, and personal values. DU faculty and staff also conduct Hyde interviews. “I like talking to students and listening to what they have to say about their motivation for getting a college education and why they are choosing this university,” says Arakaki, an e-commerce analyst who conducts interviews in the Seattle area, where he lives. “I enjoy finding out how the last several years have shaped what they want to do with themselves.” And what does he look for in a future DU student? “People who understand that it’s all about getting an education to further open your mind and seeing what all the possibilities are, then applying it to life,” Arakaki says. “Who knows where life is going to take you? You’re going to have multiple careers, and so [college] is just about preparing you for life. To me, the really good applicants just recognize that.” Nashwa Bolling, associate director of admissions, says the Hyde interviews are a win-win for everyone involved. Alumni get to reconnect with the University, and the admission office gets valuable insight into prospective students. “It’s always good to have outsider input on the application—to get somebody else’s perspective on the student and to learn a little bit more about them as individuals and highlight characteristics that we’re not going to see by just reading the application,” Bolling says. Before the Hyde interviews existed, Arakaki was part of the Alumni Admissions Council. Volunteering always has been a part of Arakaki’s life, and helping the admission office is just a continuation of what he did in high school and college, he says. He’s been volunteering with DU for 20 years. “He had a great experience at DU and just wants to share that with students and give back to the University,” Bolling says.
—Laura Hathaway
Courtesy of Sheldon Arakaki

Celebrate 146 years of excellence!
Save the Date for Founders Day 2010!

Thursday, March 4th
Founders Day
18 6 4
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

Seawell Ballroom

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Essay

By Chelsey Baker-Hauck

Homeplace
I walked into a packing and shipping store and set down my burden—two urns containing the remains of my grandparents. I had loved them and nursed them and held them when they died, and now, tearfully, I was asking whether I could mail them home. Home is Oregon—Granddad’s birthplace, not mine. Home is the Mohawk River Valley and its stands of pine and cedar, birch and hazel; its covered bridges; its rambling roads edged with berry brambles. Down Old Marcola Road, past the grange, is the homeplace. Now a derelict trailer lists where my great-grandparents’ farmhouse once stood, but a few of their apple trees are still there. Across the way—on a patch of the original 200-acre homestead—my mother’s cousin Clyde still lives where he was reared, skipping distance from his grandparents. And further along, down a quiet, shaded lane, is my great-aunt Louise’s old place, where when I was a girl we camped one summer in the meadow, and I picked thimbleberries for pie and left food for the gnomes I thought lived under a footbridge. Devil’s Kitchen is still there—a swirling black hole in the Mohawk River where Granddad learned to swim and where generations of our family frolicked and then hauled out of the icy water to warm themselves on the slickrock bank. As the mortal remains of my grandparents headed home by UPS, I traveled to Oregon by plane, meeting them again at the rustic Upper Mabel Cemetery—burying place for the pioneers who settled the Mohawk. There, generations of our family came together under sighing pines to commit my grandparents to the earth with hymns and prayer and abiding love. Granddad Alva Clum, pictured with a niece circa 1939 They lie next to my grandfather’s parents, his siblings and their families. They rest in the woods that swallowed Granddad and his brother Jasper on boyhood adventures, when they would disappear into the wild with only fishing poles, a frying pan and pockets full of potatoes. They rest less than a mile from where my 85-year-old great-grandfather spent a day cutting fence posts from the forest and floating them home across the river before he walked home, laid down and died in his sleep. My great-grandmother joined him in the family plot little more than a year later. When we buried my grandparents, Aunt June—my grandfather’s sister—turned to me and said, “There probably won’t be anyone here when they bury me.” I promised her I would come, and I intend to keep that promise. In the meantime, I’ve tried to return each summer to the homeplace. I visit the cemetery and pick moss off the stones of my kin. I stand on the bridge and watch the water eddy at Devil’s Kitchen. As they have for decades, the family gathers nearby—four generations now—on the banks of Shotgun Creek for a potluck reunion on the third Saturday of each July. The youngsters swim in the creek; the older ones laugh as they watch the kids shiver and shriek with delight in the waters that froze all of us once upon a time. We sit, and we talk, and we remember. Most of our family elders are gone now, and Aunt June is among the last. As we bid our goodbyes this summer, she said she didn’t know if she’d be around for another. She’s waiting, it seems—biding her time until she too is called home.

In 2006,

University of Denver Magazine Update

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Alumna Ellie Schafer was hand-picked to show
The text Sue Gersick got from her daughter, Ellie Schafer, last March was deceptively innocent. “POTUS just came in and wished me happy birthday!!!” Gersick shot back: “POTUS? Who’s POTUS?” “PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!!” Then the pictures arrived. There was the nation’s 44th POTUS, wedged into a cramped outer office in the East Wing of the White House. He was standing with a candle-lit sheet cake drenched in milk chocolate icing with Irish green trim, waiting to honor Schafer, the 41-year-old Pueblo, Colo.,

University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Wayne Armstrong

Welcome to the White House
By Richard Chapman

visitors around President Obama’s new home.
native and University of Denver graduate who lived out of a suitcase for 654 days on his advance team in an effort to get him elected. “We figured out that I had gone around the world eight times,” says Schafer (BA ’90). Once he was elected, Barack Obama rewarded Schafer’s loyalty by appointing her head of the eight-person White House Visitors Office. If you want to see where every president except George Washington has lived, you have to go through your congressman, the Secret Service and Ellie Schafer.
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She’s off the road now, working down the hall from where Franklin Roosevelt broadcast his fireside chats, Abraham Lincoln lay in state and Theodore Roosevelt’s kids raised such a ruckus that he built the West Wing to get away from them. Her job is to make the White House what the Obamas want it to be: the most open, accessible presidential home in the nation’s history. She is the welcoming face for celebrities, dignitaries and just plain folks. It’s a big job, and it’s a big step from hanging out in the pub in Driscoll North, which was the place to be on Wednesday nights in 1986. Or partying at Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, where big brother Tom Schafer was a member and his kid sister, Ellie, had unquestioned access. Or dropping into Fagan’s on Evans Avenue and Downing Street for beer and wings with journalism Professor Laurie Schultz after Advanced Media Criticism class. “There was not a social situation that Ellie did not blossom in,” recalls Amy van Orman (BA ’90), still Schafer’s close friend nearly two decades later. “No matter where you went on campus, if you were with Ellie, she knew somebody. ... Your circle kept getting bigger because Ellie was so good at connecting.” Which is how you go from grinding through homework in J-Mac to taking on the nation’s work in Washington. After all, you don’t get to run the White House Visitors Office by applying. There is no competitive exam. You land the job by winning POTUS’ trust. For Ellie Schafer, that process began in California in 2006 when she was a political consultant in San Francisco and then-Senator Obama needed logistical help for his book tour. The connection that began with The Audacity of Hope incubated on the campaign trail and blossomed on election night 2008. As thousands of people jammed into Chicago’s Grant Park, waiting with a national TV audience to hear from the president-elect, it was Ellie Schafer who was in charge of getting the Obama family where they needed to be. “I was in work mode the entire night and emotionally and physically exhausted,” she recalls. “I heard them call the race, but I had a job to do so I was numb to news. It wasn’t until the next morning, when I was lying in bed listening to the ‘Today Show’ and heard Matt Lauer say ‘President-elect Barack Obama,’ that it hit me. I shot out of bed and started jumping around in my PJs and cheering and hugging Julie and the dogs [Maddie and Bo].” “Julie” is Julie Colwell, Schafer’s partner and a high school teacher in Evanston, Ill. Their relationship took root at a softball tournament in San Diego in 2005 and culminated in a formal commitment ceremony in Del Mar, Calif., on Aug. 4, 2007. Barack Obama couldn’t make it because it was his birthday. But he called. “Ellie’s very focused, very passionate. And she knows when to laugh and not let the weight of the world get on her,” Colwell says. “She’s also a big-picture person. She sees it and breaks it down, then says, ‘Let’s go. Let’s get it working.’ Once they gave her three days to put on an event for 60,000 people. She said, ‘OK, where do you want it?’ How many people could do that?”

Pete Souza

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Barack Obama helps Ellie Schafer celebrate her birthday.

Schafer’s efficiency on the campaign trail proved the perfect endorsement for follow-up assignments on the transition and inauguration teams. In January, when the First Family moved into Blair House, traditionally the stepping-stone to taking over the White House, they invited Schafer to move in with them. It was quite an honor, and symbolic of the level of trust that had developed. “She was there with the family,” says Gersick, her proud mom. “The president’s sister was there. And some of Mrs. Obama’s family, Grandma [Marian] Robinson and Ellie and Julie. That was it.” Schafer ate with the family, spent time with the family and bore witness to their emergence from the mainstream of America to a special place in history. When the inauguration was over and the administration under way, Schafer took over the visitors office. In the first six months, they got 3 million tour requests, including one from actor Jimmy Smits, who had portrayed President Matt Santos on the TV show “The West Wing” but had never visited the real White House. “We brought him in through the front entrance of the West Wing, which has the Marine on duty,” Schafer recalls. “He was like, ‘Wow!’ “You know, not a week goes by that you don’t see somebody brought to tears when they walk through these doors.” In her 10th week on the job, Schafer supervised a White House event for 30,000 people. It was the annual Easter Egg Roll, which has been a White House staple since Rutherford Hayes was president in 1877. The kids and their families came from 48 states. They were organized on the green outside the 18-acre White House grounds, run through security magnetometers, herded into a

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Pete Souza

Michelle Obama and Ellie Schafer enjoy the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll.

“clean” pen, then ushered onto the South Lawn “every two hours in chunks of 6,000.” Once inside, the kids bounced, rolled, ran, played, danced, had their faces painted and flat-out had fun. Schafer’s uncle, a 6-foot, 5-inch confirmed Republican from Greeley, got to play the Easter Bunny. And no child was lost or left behind. “It was a long day,” she says, “but it was a blast.” In August, when the Obamas took seven days to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Schafer’s staff threw open the White House doors to more than 36,400 visitors over five 12-hour days. It was exhausting, she says, but every person who wanted to get in was admitted. Just the way the First Family wanted it, she says. With Ellie Sue Schafer as their official smile. “The mystique of this place has not worn off,” she says during a tour in late summer. “I still get chills just coming through the gate. Or showing someone around and saying, ‘This is George Washington’s sword.’ I’m like, George

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Washington’s sword! How cool is that?!” Schafer laughs heartily, her ever-present grin seeming a mile wide. Passion for her job and the electricity she sparks could run a town. “Seeing the look on people’s faces when they come through the doors of the White House, whether they’re a Make-a-Wish child, a celebrity, somebody here for a public tour—that you can’t buy. They’re all just, ‘Wow! I can’t believe I’m here.’ “If I have a bad day, it’s still a bad day ... at the White House! So it’s not that bad.”

Schafer’s long, winding road to Washington started when she graduated from DU and went to work on her father’s campaign for governor of North Dakota. Ed Schafer (MBA ’70) won the race and served from 1992 to 2000.

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Wayne Armstrong

Ellie Schafer, head of the White House Visitors Office, greets guests in September.

“We really saw her talent come out in 1992,” recalls brother Tom. “[Dad] was the underdog, polling third of eight when we came to the convention. Ellie and her team had lined every route the delegates could take to the convention with yard signs. We started seeing one, then another, then another the whole way in. We got to the convention and we had more signs than anybody—more passion, more excitement, more enthusiasm. That was all her. “She’s perfect in politics: detail-minded and a great organizer.” By 2000, when Ellie Schafer began working for Al Gore, she already had a lot of campaign experience, having worked for a host of California candidates and advocacy issues. The Gore race led to work for John Kerry in 2004, and when Kerry announced he wouldn’t run for the White House in 2008, the Obama campaign got on the phone to her fast. “I can’t tell you where you’re going, but are you in?” Obama’s then-political director asked. That was the winter of 2007. “I had an inkling as to what it was about, but we never talked about it,” Schafer says. “Next thing I knew I was in Springfield [Illinois] setting up his announcement tour as part of the advance

team. We were there about 10 days before he arrived.” What followed was an unrelenting stream of travel and organization, problem-solving and working out details to make sure Obama’s campaign stops were smooth. She accompanied him to the Middle East and traveled to every state but Alaska on his behalf. “Back then the campaign was a bunch of people huddling around a folding table and chairs. We had one printer in the middle that we shared. You’d get four rooms; one for Obama and three for everybody else.” Quarters were close and no detail was too small. Obama once found himself in need of shaving cream and a razor, and he asked Schafer to run to the grocery store. She tossed him a bag of toiletries—his brands—and said, “There you go.” Having a spare set was just part of the job, as was giving the candidate a sense of home on the road. She did that by arranging for Obama’s meals to be served on real dishes with real silverware. It was a little touch, but it won points. Especially when the candidate saw that everyone else was eating off paper plates. The Obamas reciprocated.

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Campaign File Photo

Barack Obama and Ellie Schafer on the campaign trail.

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“When they’re on the road, it’s a family affair,” Schafer says. “It’s not just ‘here’s our family and there’s the staff.’ It’s more like, ‘We’re going out to grab some burgers, does anybody need anything?’ They genuinely care.” It was a good attitude to have in the campaign, where millions of details need attention and things can go wrong in a flash. “Jimmy Buffett has a song called ‘No Plane on Sunday.’ You can get upset and kick your luggage and get mad, but there’s still no plane on Sunday. You might as well just make the best of it. [Buffett] has gotten me through quite a few nights on the campaign trail.” It also helped for Schafer to stay in touch with her family, recalls stepfather Joe Gersick. Sometimes she’d call up exhausted; sometimes she’d call up to share. Never to complain. “She told us once how the staff was sitting around having a beer and Obama was talking about his ears,” Gersick recalls. “Everybody was teasing him and making fun. And Ellie was thinking, ‘This guy could be the most powerful man in the world one of these days, and we’re teasing him about his ears!’”

As it turned out, whether Schafer’s candidates won or lost didn’t get noticed as much as her skill in the political arts. “I did a [district attorney’s] race in San Francisco, and we ended up losing by just a couple of hundred votes,” she recalls. “I went home for Christmas and I broke down—just started crying in the shower. You’re devastated, but it opened another door for me. Somebody said, ‘You weren’t supposed to get as far as you got; you did fantastic; we’d like you to run this bigger campaign.’ “Sometimes in politics it’s not always about winning or losing. It’s really about the job you do and the choices you make.” One of those key choices happened years earlier when Schafer was a varsity basketball player coming out of Pueblo East. She

chose not to play when she enrolled at DU, opting for softball and intramurals instead. That expanded her social and academic opportunities on campus. It was a key decision. Throwing herself into her father’s campaign in North Dakota, where she earned real-world experience, was another key decision. “I went into my first campaign with a chip on my shoulder— saying I wasn’t going to stuff envelopes and lick stamps—and ended up stuffing envelopes and licking stamps.” In 1995, she moved to San Francisco for a job that evaporated when she got there. By chance, she met a group of women who invited her to join their softball team. That also was a key decision. One teammate was the political reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. The others also were well-connected, and their friendship helped involve Schafer with local campaigns and opportunities. Before long, she had a thriving business as a political consultant. How important was joining the San Francisco Gay Softball League? “Huge,” Schafer says. “I probably wouldn’t have stayed [in San Francisco] if it wasn’t for them. They were and still are my core group of support there.” In the end, the picture focuses like this: The 10-year-old girl whose smile adorned boxes of Mr. Bubble bubble-bath, which her grandfather’s company made, became the teenager who organized beer bottles in her family’s beverage business in Pueblo and the young adult who endured “ramen noodles days” scuffling for candidates in San Francisco. That woman—that former queen bee of pizza nights and legal 3.2 beer in Johnson-McFarlane Hall, that unofficial sweetheart of Lambda Chi—now works in the White House, has the trust of the president and plays third base for STOTUS, the Softball Team of the United States. “Gotta go, Bo,” she tells her dog each morning. “Gotta go make the world a better place.”

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nanotechnology. In a field that finds its way into everything from industrial applications to toys, DU researchers are carving a niche developing robots that can wriggle, fly or roll into the Earth’s harshest environments—including crumbling buildings, guerilla hideouts, battlefields, forest fires and congested city skyways—to collect information and perform life-saving functions more safely and more efficiently than ever. There even are applications for colonoscopy robotics. “We are looking at innovations in sensing, systems that can relay back vital information from difficult environments,” says Rahmat Shoureshi, dean of DU’s School of Engineering and Computer Science. “And we are looking at imaging technologies, intelligent systems that can make sense of what visual information they are gathering and send that information back to the operator.”

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rom maze-like fortresses buried in caves behind enemy lines to a trafficchoked intersection at rush hour, researchers at the University of Denver imagine robots boldly going where no human should want—or need— to go. Quietly emerging as a DU specialty, the study of robotics is garnering interest among researchers in computer science, engineering and

DU researchers are leading the development of autonomous robots that could someday save lives.
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Building
By Chase Squires Photography by Wayne Armstrong

Who goes there? DU researchers are developing a host of miniature robots to go where humans can’t—or shouldn’t. This one, with a pair of video camera “eyes,” can conduct war zone surveillance and even ride alongside troop transports to detect roadside bombs.

a Better ’Bot
University of Denver Magazine Fall 2009

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ssociate Professor Richard Voyles’ wriggling, crawling, clamoring search robots are dubbed “TerminatorBots” for the way they drag themselves along, like a wounded robot in the movie Terminator. The idea of a band of TerminatorBots probing the rubble of a devastated building for earthquake survivors might seem as far-fetched as the idea of fleets of unmanned airplanes blasting enemy positions. Yet half a world away, Air Force Predator drones scan rugged Afghan mountain ranges for threats and target al-Qaida positions with air-to-ground missiles while the “pilots” control their flight with a joy-

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From civilian to military applications, Valavanis and his team see unlimited possibilities for making dangerous work safer and delivering time-saving and life-saving information.

stick from a virtual flight deck at a Nevada base. Robots are already a reality. At DU, researchers are making them better: tougher, smarter, more mobile, less expensive, smaller and more sensitive. “What we try to do is look at how robots operate in unfriendly environments,” Shoureshi says. “That might be under the ground, in space or in enemy territory. For that work, not only are unmanned systems crucial, but they must be machines that can survive in these harsh environments.” Voyles is lead investigator on a $2.1 million program funded by the National Science Foundation and others. He says with each discovery or application, researchers find new challenges. Working underground, for instance, standard visual monitoring systems are stymied by total darkness and require development of better self-adjusting sensors. And when TerminatorBots proved adept at clawing their way deep into ruins, scientists realized wireless communications were impeded by tons of concrete. While wires that the robots trail behind them could connect them to their masters above the ground, the weight of the trailing wire

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began to add up at greater distances. “Eventually, no matter how strong your robot is, the tether is too heavy to pull,” Voyles says. Faced with a choice of limiting his robots to shorter leashes or adding more power-hungry motors to them, Voyles began looking for another option: wires that actually propel the robot using rhythmic blasts of fluid along the wires. By controlling shunts opening and closing at extremely high rates, alternately allowing fluid to flow and then stopping it abruptly, operators can use the force of the fluid’s forward momentum to push the control wires along behind the robot. That technology led to an unexpected application: the possibility of incorporating nano sensors with water-hammer propulsion to make it easier for doctors to operate colonoscopy tools, making the process more comfortable for patients. “Essentially, we’ve learned how to push on a string, which has a great many applications beyond traditional robotics,” Voyles says. When efforts to use robots to help rescuers get a look inside a collapsed Utah mine failed due to mobility limitations, Voyles and his team found a new challenge. Now they are working on engineering propulsion systems that will allow direct side-to-side movement so the robots can navigate narrow passages without having to turn in tight quarters. In the pipeline are basketball-sized robots that can climb steep piles of debris and others that can slither like a snake through tiny openings; whatever it takes to get to places people can’t go and gather the information people need. obots aren’t just good in tight spaces. Kimon Valavanis, chair of DU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has his eyes on the sky. Bringing his Unmanned Systems Laboratory with him from the University of South Florida, Valavanis has established DU as a player in the universe of remote guidance. Funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office and the Army Research Laboratory and a number of other agencies, Valavanis and his team of graduate research assistants (nicknamed “the Dirty Half Dozen”) imagine a dazzling array of possibilities in aerial and unmanned ground surveillance. From civilian to military applications, he and his team see unlimited possibilities for making dangerous work safer and delivering time-saving and life-saving information. With a fleet of 11 unmanned helicopters in varying sizes and five fixed-wing unmanned airplanes, plus six groundroving robots (five of which are custom built for the Army Research Laboratory), Valavanis and his students struggle to find the perfect combination of precise control and excellent

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data delivery with ease of operation and deployment. It’s tough enough to keep miniature choppers flying and collecting surveillance information, but factor in Colorado’s thin air and unpredictable weather patterns and the challenge is even greater. “But just imagine the benefits,” Valavanis says. “Imagine one helicopter that can deliver this realtime information. There’s an accident, you deploy one unmanned helicopter, you can get past the traffic quickly, and immediately you have your engineers routing traffic to alternate roads; you determine if you need emergency vehicles, roadside assistance, all delivered instantly. And forget the time and expense of putting up a full-size helicopter. This is cheap. It’s fast, and it’s safe.” Take those same miniature choppers onto a battlefield, and soldiers using controllers built on the same principles as the video games they played at home can peek behind hillsides and hover over cramped city alleys. Put the guidance and sensing technology into ground-roving vehicles, and soldiers can create a rolling mini-convoy around troop carriers, detecting roadside bombs before they can detonate. Working feverishly in a tiny campus workshop, Valavanis’ Dirty Half Dozen pulls apart miniature models, fashions parts, and tests and calibrates rolling and flying robots, cameras, power sources and controllers in a quest for the perfect combination. The work is hard, but the team oozes enthusiasm. “We’re here pretty much all the time, every day, but where else can I do this?” asks PhD candidate Allistair Moses. “It’s an opportunity to get into all of this, to learn and to experiment and test. It’s exciting.” Within the next 20 years, Valavanis says, the growing field of unmanned aircraft systems will be a $52 million annual industry. He rattles off a list of potential applications: wildfire spotting, homeland security, border patrol, mapping—even inspecting power lines that stretch across huge spans of the American West. The DU researchers are poised to play a part. They’re already collaborating with military and space exploration programs and have been demonstrating their robotics technology for some commercial giants. Chancellor Robert Coombe says DU’s focus on bridging the gap between raw research and commercial application brings that innovation to the world. At a recent questionand-answer session with parents, he noted that “more than a quarter of the engineering students who get a degree at DU also leave the University with a business degree.” “We work as a business incubator with the idea of letting our students and our faculty take what they create to the next level, a level that will impact the community and the economy,” Shoureshi says. “The goal is not to educate traditional engineers, but engineers who find solutions for global challenges and economic prosperity.”
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Full House
Four parents and two kids make for one big happy family.

By Jessica Centers Glynn Photography by Justin Edmonds

n the sidelines at his son’s football game, Geoffrey Bateman is filled with a watery-eyed sense of nostalgia and wonder. Zian, 8, is completely in his element as a “Crusher,” barreling into other little boys. They look like stocky, miniature men in their full pads and helmets. Geoffrey can’t help but think back to his own experience playing football in middle school and high school, and it makes him cringe. He hated it. “I would never wish that on my child,” he says. “But when you come out and you watch it and you see him out there—he loves it. He needs that. He needs a coach who’s going to kick him in the ass, basically, and get him to do what he needs to do, and I can’t be that person. As parents, you can’t be everything. You want them to find those niches, those things that make them who they are, and it’s this wonderful puzzle to figure out what’s the best context for that.” Geoffrey hated football because it wasn’t his niche, but it was what he thought boys were supposed to do. Zian and his 6-year-old brother, Eliot, are being raised in a very different context when it comes to gender roles. A few years ago, when Zian was obsessed with construction toys, Geoffrey offered to help him with a building game he was planning. “No, Daddy, this is a game for moms,” Zian told him. “You can go cook dinner.” Geoffrey, a full-time lecturer in DU’s writing program, is Zian and Eliot’s father. They also have two moms— lesbian couple Indra Lusero (a DU law student) and Allison Hoffman Lusero—and another father, Geoffrey’s partner, Mark Thrun. The boys took their mothers’ last name—Lusero. “People often ask how does it affect the kids, having four parents,” Geoffrey says. “For them, that’s just the way it is. I remember being in the Portland airport. Zian is 3 or 4, and he walks up to this complete stranger and says, ‘I have two moms and two dads,’ but in a very proud way. “Another night, around the same time, we were talking about other families we know and their parental arrangements, and Zian said, ‘Aw, they only have one mom and one dad,’ and he said it with this sense of sadness, like, ‘That’s not as many as we have,’ like it was a deficiency instead of the norm.”

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Clockwise from top: Zian Lusero, Eliot Lusero, Mark Thrun, Indra Lusero, Geoffrey Bateman and Allison Hoffman Lusero.

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“People often ask how does it affect the kids, having four parents,” Geoffrey says. “For them, that’s just the way it is.”
Geoffrey, Indra and Allison met 17 years ago during their freshman year at the University of Puget Sound. They were involved in a gay and lesbian student group and distinctly remember the day when some gay and lesbian families came to speak to them. One family had two moms and a dad. “That was a radical idea we all were intrigued by,” Indra says. The idea stayed with them when the three roomed together their senior year. Four years after college, Indra and Allison—who by then had returned to Denver, where they both grew up—decided they were ready to start a family. They wanted their children to know their father, and they wanted the father to be Geoffrey. “We were nurturing that idea, and our relationship, all those years,” Indra says. “We referred to ourselves as family, and we were deliberate about maintaining our family.” Geoffrey donated sperm so that Allison could conceive through artificial insemination, but he was living in California finishing up his master’s degree. “I was trusting I was going to be a part of the family and we would figure out the distance thing,” Geoffrey says. “When it became tangible, shortly after Allison got pregnant, I began to think, ‘What the heck am I doing? I want to be there.’” Zian was born in April 2001. Geoffrey finished his master’s program in June and immediately moved to Denver. Within six months, he had bought a townhouse next door to the moms and met and fallen in love with Mark, who quickly became a second father, aka—“Papi”—to Zian. The family’s plan always had been to have two children, with Allison and Indra each taking a turn as the biological mom. When the time came for Indra to get pregnant, they asked Mark if he wanted to be the biological dad, but he decided he wasn’t quite ready. So Geoffrey also fathered Eliot, who was born in 2003. That’s when the parents began hunting for the house where they would raise their children. The home they bought in 2004 was a charming new duplex in northwest Denver that today boasts a
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The legal landscape
holding family meetings with a social worker and creating signed contracts. It isn’t just for the sake of keeping their relationships healthy; it’s about doing everything they can to ensure that their family decisions are kept within the family—and out of the court. “Colorado state law doesn’t really protect us in any way, especially Mark or me with my nonbiological child,” Allison says. Catherine Smith, an associate professor in DU’s Sturm College of Law, is an expert on the lengths nontraditional families must go to to protect themselves. She’s not only a lawyer; she’s a lesbian and a mom whose daughter is not biologically hers. Colorado law doesn’t recognize the nonbiological parent. “So you do everything you can,” Smith says. “In Indra’s family and mine and countless others, you use contracts and agreements to cobble something together to protect that family unit, but whether it’s going to withstand any kind of review is really in question.” Smith recently wrote an essay for the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity section of the American Association of Law Schools about a scenario in which a parent dies in a car accident. A child of a biological parent would have a right to wrongful death claims, Social Security and a whole host of things that a child of a nonbiological parent would not because there’s no legal relationship. There have been some improvements. In 2007 Colorado became the 10th state in the country to allow second-parent adoption, meaning a parent can adopt his or her partner’s biological child without that parent losing parental rights. But it doesn’t apply to kids like Zian and Eliot. Likewise, a new state designated-beneficiary law enables two unmarried adults to designate the other as the person entitled to certain financial protections and decision-making power in major life events. Smith says these laws are adding more options for gay and lesbian families but still without full equality or full recognition of families. “You’re still cobbling together what you can, where a lot of these rights are automatic with heterosexual couples with families,” she says. And these issues are not unique to gay and lesbian parents. “I think it’s important for people to realize, even outside the context of gay families, that a lot of heterosexual families are trying to do this as well, with step-parents and extended families that might not be recognized in law,” Smith says. “Families like Indra’s are going to push boundaries for those families as well. We all have something to learn from this family of four parents and two kids.” Elizabeth Suter, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at DU, recently completed research on nontraditional adoptive families and has been studying lesbian and adoptive families for years. “The intentionality of these family forms, however they choose to bring children into their lives, is remarkable,” she says. “Researchers for a long time were trying to prove that lesbian and gay families were a deficit model. Now what we know in 2009 is when you are so intentionally forming your family and you are having to do additional parenting agreements and contracts and legal arrangements and social worker meetings, I think—and research shows—these are people who are phenomenal parents, and it’s anything but a lesser form of family. “You get people who are in it, who know what they are doing and who are 110 percent for their children, for their family.”
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llison, Indra, Mark and Geoffrey have made every attempt to communicate their intentions as parents,

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“Generosity has been important as a reminder of how we want to be with each other—when things are hard or in conflict or not going how we want, we try to be generous with each other.”
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swing set with a climbing wall in the backyard, alongside a basketball court and a massive garden that Allison and Geoffrey tend together. The dads live in one side of the duplex and the moms on the other, but the homes are connected by a door they built between the boys’ bedrooms. “I get the whole house and my parents only get half,” Zian explains of the setup. As soon as Geoffrey moved to Denver, the parents drew up a contract and put their values down in writing. Words like simplicity, sharing and generosity became their mantra. “Simplicity and sharing are part of why we decided to live so close to each other, so we didn’t have two of everything,” Indra says. “Generosity has been important as a reminder of how we want to be with each other—when things are hard or in conflict or not going how we want, we try to be generous with each other.” In the beginning the parents also met monthly with Lynn Parker, an associate professor in DU’s Graduate School of Social Work. “They’re an amazing group of people who are very proactive,” Parker says. “They wanted a facilitator to help them through various issues and help them make conscious plans. They are the most intentional family I have ever seen, even without my help.” As part of their plans, the parents decided to raise the boys Catholic—and send them to Catholic school—but not before calling around to ask how different schools would deal with a gay family. Even though the boys’ school is progressive and does not fall under the Archdiocese, Indra says it was a careful process for the parents to decide they were going to align themselves with the Catholic Church at all. “It was certainly a decision made with a mix of emotions, not the least of which is a general sense of betrayal by the church and a sense of not being wanted—or actively being excluded,” Indra says. Ultimately, the parents decided that Zian and Eliot would not only attend Escuela de Guadalupe, but they would go through the Catholic rituals of baptism and first communion as well. Last year, Mark’s dad, a deacon, baptized the boys in a ceremony in which all of their families took part. “It ended up being the first time that our family was publicly, ritually affirmed,” Indra says. “It’s definitely not something any of us imagined or could have seen coming, but here we are, and it feels right.” Mark, Indra and Allison all were raised Catholic, and Indra and Allison attend a local Catholic church together. Geoffrey is not Catholic, but he appreciates the difference the school is making in his kids’ lives. “Religion, spirituality and faith are rich things,” says Geoffrey, who likes that his non-Catholic role gives the boys a built-in outsider’s perspective. “They’re learning about community, ethics. They’re getting some good human stuff by being in that school.

It’s academically rigorous, they do exceptional things. The Catholic package just makes it more complicated and interesting.” Having so many hands on deck has allowed the parents all to maintain rich careers while making sure there’s always someone around to care for the children and cheer on the sidelines. Mark is a doctor at Denver Health Medical Center. He also leads all the HIV prevention work around the city and county, manages a staff of about 30 and is campaigning for the Colorado State House. Indra works part-time from home as the assistant director of the Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Allison is a postsecondary coach at Mapleton Public Schools. As a social worker, she recognized early on how important it would be for the family to come together to talk. “There is a lot to work out,” she says. “Couples when there are two people have interpersonal relationships to work out. That’s quadrupled with us.” The parents live their lives openly in an effort to be role models for other nontraditional families and to hopefully squash stereotypes. Though they’re bracing themselves for a time when Zian and Eliot meet the cruelty of kids, so far the parents have not seen the cruelty of adults. Colleagues, teachers, fellow parents and coaches all have been supportive. “I’m always ready for those judgey people with my fists up,” Allison says. When Zian had just started preschool, he came home with a Mother’s Day gift for her, a painted pot. She called the teacher that night to confront her about why there was only one pot. Before Allison could say anything, the teacher asked, “Oh, did you get your gift? I was all ready for Zian. I bought two pots. I was ready to talk to him about his special family and he has two moms and how special that is and he gets two pots … and he said, ‘No, I’ll do one this time and next time I’ll do one for Mimi [Indra].’” Allison hopes the boys won’t come to her one day as adults and say how crazy or hard it was growing up with four parents, but it’s not something she worries about. Instead, she feels very conscious of how privileged the boys are to have the attention of four parents and four sets of grandparents and live in their big house, and she worries about keeping them grounded. Her hope for them is pretty simple: that they will do things that make them happy. “I don’t know that it’s anything more complicated than that,” she says. “Their family is their family, and the way it complicates their life is just what they get.” So far, the parents have no regrets—not about the big stuff, anyway. Like any parents, they second-guess the little things all the time. People often ask Geoffrey if he cares if his kids are gay or straight, and his answer is a resounding no. “It’s fun to speculate in any direction for them and their future about career or personality or identity, but none of that really matters,” he says. “You just want them to be who they are.”

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Book bin Pioneer pics Death notices Pop quiz Announcements

DU Archives

A pair of anonymous students engage in one of the 1970s’ great fads—streaking—during a Pioneers hockey game in the DU Arena. If you have any memories of student hijinks you participated in or photos you would like to share, please let us know.

University of Denver Magazine Connections

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The classes
1948
Robert McQueen (BA ’48, MA ’49) was named to the faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, and as chairman of the department of psychology, in 1955. Robert also completed a term as dean of the school’s college of arts and sciences. During his teaching years in Reno, Robert was elected to the Washoe County School Board and, following 20 years as a school trustee, his fellow board members named a new high school after him. Robert resides in Sparks, Nev. Charles Redman (BS ’48) is a World War II veteran, a retired White Sands Missile Range federal employee and a New Mexico State University retiree. He resides in Las Cruces, N.M.

Author Sandra Dallas
There are plot twists in the books of Denver-based author Sandra Dallas that surprise even her. “The thing I’m writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have this daughter,” says Dallas, who earned a BA in journalism from DU in 1960. “I thought, ‘OK, we have to do something with the daughter’ … then I realized she’s not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she’s become to me the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn’t even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she’s become very important in this book.” Dallas, 70, is the author of eight historical novels, most of them set in the American West. Her latest book, Prayers for Sale (St. Martin’s Press), which came out in April, was her first to reach the New York Times bestseller list. She celebrated the feat with her friend Arnie Grossman, a fellow author and DU alum (BA ’59). “I thought it was spectacular but I wasn’t surprised,” Grossman says. “I knew it was one day coming because I have a great deal of faith in her writing skills, and she has a growing audience. Each book seems to do a little bit better than the previous one. I’m very proud of what she’s done.” Set in 1936 in a fictionalized version of Breckenridge, Colo., called Middle Swan, Prayers for Sale takes place in the world of gold-dredging, an early 20th century industry in which giant barges scooped rocks and gravel from the bottom of mountain streams in an effort to find gold. The book’s protagonist, 86-year-old Hennie Comfort, is a quilter whose daughter has left the harshness of Middle Swan for a better life in the lowlands. When a young bride and her gold-dredging husband move to Middle Swan, Hennie and the young woman strike up a friendship. Hennie shares stories about her life inspired by the squares on her quilt. Dallas has many stories of her own to share. She’s lived in Denver most of her life, residing for the past 40 years in a stately home near Eighth Avenue and Downing Street. A year after she graduated from DU she was hired on at the Denver bureau of Business Week, eventually becoming the magazine’s first female bureau chief. While at Business Week she wrote several short books on local history, and when she turned to fiction writing in her late 40s, she continued to use the West as her primary setting. She says she strives for an authenticity her fellow Western authors don’t always achieve. “I try to make my characters true to the time,” says Dallas, whose other novels include Tallgrass and New Mercies. “We have what I call the ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’ syndrome today, where you have 21st century women in long skirts, and they love Indians and they protect the environment and they stand up to men and they’re doctors and lawyers. They’re great role models, but they’re not very accurate.”
— Greg Glasgow

Joseph Butner (BA ’49) and Rose Mary Butner (BA ’47) are retired and live in Sun City, Ariz. Joseph worked for the United States Courts Administrative Office as an assistant chief of probation—after earlier positions with the Colorado Parole Department and United States Bureau of Prisons—and Rose Mary worked as a nurse. Joseph has spent his retirement writing; in 2007, Heritage Books published his book The Chihuahua Rangers: The Disposable. The couple has two sons, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

1949

1958

Richard Charlifue (BA ’58), a World War II veteran, was presented with a medallion from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Richard was recognized for his role in liberating Saipan from the Japanese in 1944. He resides in Aurora, Colo.

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Courtesy of Sandra Dallas

1960

Robert Lee (MSW ’60) of Tigard, Ore., recently celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene. Robert has two children and four grandchildren.

Retreat Center in Divide, Colo. Donna also established an office in Woodland Park, Colo., to provide resources, counseling and support groups for veterans, service members and families. She resides in Woodland Park. Gary McCool (MA ’67) received the award for excellence in faculty service from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, N.H., where he has been a faculty member and librarian since 1978. Gary resides in Rumney, N.J.

Treva O’Neill (MSW ’67) worked for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and then taught in the social work program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Treva has been in private practice in the area of labor and family law since obtaining a law degree in 1981. She’s on the Illinois State Bar Association Family Law Council. She lives in Anna, Ill.

1961

Mary Lewis (MSW ’61) of Houston was inducted into the Alabama Social Work Hall of Fame in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Mary officially retired from teaching at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work in 2004, but she continues to teach two courses a year and remains “on call” for other projects.

Book bin
Possibly no other city in America is as closely identified with certain types of food as New Orleans. Chicago has its hot dogs, New York has its pizza, but New Orleans has gumbo, red beans and rice, trout amandine, crawfish etouffee, beignets and many other popular dishes that have ended up on menus around the world. New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories (University Press of Mississippi, 2009), edited and co-written by Susan Tucker (MA librarianship ’73), delves deep into the city’s food culture, devoting each chapter to a different menu item, from sazerac—a cocktail with whiskey, bitters, anise-flavored liqueur, sugar and a twist of lemon—to turtle soup (the real, not the mock). In the book’s introduction, Tucker writes that she chose 14 dishes that “tell the stages of adaptability, the centrality of public encounters with food, the passion for ingredients and talk of food, manners of serving, and social and economic forces that lie behind the way New Orleanians cook. The 14 dishes are those foods for which the traces of historical documents, recipes, and other written and oral accounts show how cooking became a hallmark of the city.” Although each chapter includes at least one recipe, New Orleans Cuisine is not a cookbook. Through chronicling each dish, the writers uncover information on the city’s history, geography, sociology, politics and more. Consider contributor Cynthia LeJeune Nobles’ chapter on Oysters Rockefeller, which is full of historical and social context. The dish was invented by Jules Alciatore, owner of the restaurant Antoine’s, in 1899. It was so rich in flavor that Alciatore named it after John D. Rockefeller, one of America’s richest men. President Franklin Roosevelt tried it in 1937. But Nobles delves even deeper, informing readers that the French settlers in New Orleans regarded oysters as inedible until Native Americans introduced them to the bivalves’ subtle flavors in the mid-1700s. Indeed, it is New Orleans’ rich cultural heritage that gave rise to its multitextured signature dishes. As S. Frederick Starr writes in his foreword, “Yes, there were strong influences from France, the West Indies, and, through them, Africa.” But contributions also came from the Germans, Sicilians, Cubans, Canary Islanders, Croatians and Chinese. Tucker—who wrote the book’s chapter on bread pudding—is the curator of books and records at the Newcomb Center for Research on Women at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she resides.
—Greg Glasgow

1962

Douglas Decker (BS ’62) has been selected for induction into the Energy Efficiency Forum Hall of Fame. After graduating from DU, Douglas started a 43-year career with Johnson Control Inc., rising to the position of vice president of government business before retiring in 2001. He has received a number of awards for his leadership in promoting energy efficiency. He resides in Pawleys Island, S.C.

1964

Dona June Murphy (BFA ’64) married Robert Murphy (BA ’63, MBA ’66) and has two daughters and two grandchildren. Dona worked as an interior designer for the last 45 years. Dona enjoys bridge, golf, reading, painting and cooking. She resides in Larkspur, Colo. Rexford Thompson (MSW ’64) and his wife, Joyce, moved from El Cajon, Calif., to Key Biscayne, Fla.

1967

Donna Finicle (BA ’67, MSW ’72) was recognized as the 2009 outstanding social worker of Colorado’s Pikes Peak Region by the National Association of Social Workers. She has a small nonprofit, Welcome Home Warrior, and conducts free military-family weekend retreats at Golden Bell Camp and

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Joyce Revis (BA ’67) of Santa Rosa, Calif., retired from a medical management position 10 years ago and moved to a retirement community after the death of her partner last year. George Stewart (MA ’67) published Yoknapatawpha, Images and Voices: A Photographic Study of Faulkner’s County (University of South Carolina Press, 2009). The book is a pictorial study of William Faulkner’s mythical north Mississippi county of Yoknapatawpha. George resides in Decatur, Ga.

1968

Daryl Kosloske (MSW ’68) of WinstonSalem, N.C., retired after 40 years in the behavioral health field. Most recently, he was president and CEO of Behavioral Health Resources Inc. Previously, he was vice president and executive director of behavioral health services at Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem. Larry Weirather (MA ’68) has published an illustrated biography, Warlord Cowboys in China: The Fred Barton Story of the World’s Greatest Horse Drive (CreateSpace, 2009), that covers the life of a Montana bronc-buster and adventurer who canvassed Siberia to site

the world’s largest horse ranch for a Russian czar. Larry also published a suspense novel, Tell Me the Night (CreateSpace, 2009), under the pen name Cara Mitchell. He lives in Vancouver, Wash.

1969

Charles Daily Jr. (BA ’69, MSW ’71) has been ordained as a priest and is the vicar at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Shawano, Wis. He also is the chaplain of the Shawano Community Hospice and the Shawano Medical Center. Charles lives on a ranch in Shawano with his wife and enjoys working on his tractor and farm machinery.

Artist Joel Sheesley
An airplane flies over a row of suburban houses. Parents have a conversation while watching their children play baseball. A woman stands inside a bedroom, peering through a window to the sunny street outside. They’re scenes of mundane, everyday life, but as depicted by painter Joel Sheesley (MFA ’74), they become magic moments frozen in time; the opening scenes of short stories whose plotlines are left up to the viewer. “He takes these scenes that on the surface look so ordinary Sheesley’s “The Fulness of Time” or everyday, but then the longer you look at the pictures you start realizing that there’s more to it than, say, two people talking at a baseball game, or a person in a room,” says Gregg Hertzlieb, director of the Brauer Museum at Indiana’s Valparaiso University, which hosted a Sheesley retrospective, “Domestic Vision,” last year. When he was at DU in the ’70s Sheesley was an abstract painter, but as time went on he switched to more representational work. When he moved to Chicago in 1974 to teach at Wheaton College—a job he still holds today—he found himself in a strange new world worth documenting. “I found myself in a kind of society I had never been in before, which was the suburbs of Chicago,” says the artist, now 58. “And the whole nature of suburban life was a brand new and very strange experience for me. I found myself wanting to engage that life. “I was also at that point aware of literary figures like John Updike and John Cheever. Their take on that upper-middle-class lifestyle became a way for me to interpret and start to understand what was going on around me.” Sheesley’s paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the country. In the 1980s he published Sandino in the Streets, featuring his photographs of revolutionary street art in Nicaragua. In 2008 Lutheran University Press published Domestic Vision: Twenty-Five Years of the Art of Joel Sheesley, a companion book to the Valparaiso exhibit. “It was an opportunity to look back over 25 years and to see all of these works come together and to find continuity and find difference at the same time,” Sheesley says of the exhibition. “For me, painting has been a process of discovery, and I think that discovery happens through observation. “I think one of the great things that painting and most art practices teach you is to be ever more observant and careful about what’s happening around you.”
—Greg Glasgow

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

DU on the Road
Between Homecoming, Founders Day and Pioneers hockey games, hundreds of alumni return to the DU campus each year. For those who can’t make the trip, DU comes to them in the form of DU on the Road, an alumni event that sends representatives from the University to 10 to 12 U.S. cities a year to host alumni get-togethers. The two-hour events take place at local restaurants and other venues and are an opportunity for area alumni, parents and friends to get to know other Pioneers in their community. “They’re very proud to be Pioneers and they’re so excited to hear about campus,” says Ann Beckmann, director of donor relations and stewardship for the Office of University Advancement. “Unfortunately, a number of alumni have not had the opportunity to return to campus since they graduated, and they want to learn about all the changes that have taken place.” Beckmann says DU on the Road events typically attract around 50 alumni, parents and friends, ranging in age from recent graduates to those who graduated more than 50 years ago. Most find out about the events via postcard and e-mail, but some alums hear about the events a little more informally. “A Philadelphia-area alumna brought a fellow classmate who was in town from San Francisco to the Philadelphia event this fall,” Beckmann says. “It had been years since they had seen one another, and that day they ran into each other and she invited him to DU on the Road to meet other alumni and reminisce about their time at DU.” Most of the night is devoted to socializing and networking among alumni, but University Advancement has added a popular new feature to the short welcoming segment: a drawing for a $1,000 scholarship to be donated to the department of the winner’s choice. In addition to Philadelphia, this fall DU on the Road visited Colorado Springs, Dallas, Miami and Phoenix. Selected cities in winter/spring 2010 include Aspen, Colo., Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and Stamford, Conn. >>www.du.edu/alumni
—Media Relations Staff

Suresh Kulkarni (PhD ’71) retired in 2003 after 31 years with Thiokol Corp. in Promontory, Utah. He was the vice president of engineering and provided technical direction for 55 successful launches of the solid rocket motors for the Space Shuttle. He now volunteers as the chair of the Brigham City Community Hospital and on the land use board for the city of Perry, Utah, where he and his wife, Diane, reside. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.

1971

had regional responsibilities in Asia. Krishen now is adviser to the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program in New York and the Global Financial Integrity Group in Washington, D.C., and is on the Asia Advisory Council of Human Rights Watch. He resides in New York.

1974

1973

Camila Alire (MA ’74) of Sedalia, Colo., recently began her term as 2009–10 president of the American Library Association (ALA). Camila is the chief elected officer of ALA and a professor for Simmons College’s PhD program in managerial leadership. She also is a professor for the master’s in library and information science managerial leadership program at San Jose State University. Richard Berman (PhD ’74) retired as director of Lapeer County Community Mental Health Center in 2001. He also retired from his second career as a full-time faculty member at the School of Social Work and with the Department of Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of NevadaLas Vegas. Richard and his wife serve as foster parents for Olive Crest, a nonprofit agency. Together, they’ve fostered 35 infants. He lives in Henderson, Nev. Kim Dorwin (MSW ’74) began a statewide volunteer program for troubled youth for the Virginia Department of Youth Services, recruiting more than 500 volunteers. Kim earned a graduate degree in information technology and managed the installation of the network for the department of social services. She resides in Richmond, Va.

Sheila Hollis (JD ’73) chairs Duane Morris’ Washington, D.C., office and serves on the executive committee and partners board. Gary Means (PhD ’73) is a retired colonel in the Army Reserves and former dean of liberal arts at Colorado State University at Pueblo. Gary also was the dean of continuing education at California State University in San Marcos and dean of continuing education and public service at Georgia Southern University. Currently he is the provost at Georgia Southern. He resides in Statesboro, Ga., with his wife of 34 years.

1972

Sara Jones (MSW ’72) of Denver worked for Denver Social Services in child protection until her son was born. Her son is now married. She would love to hear from other Graduate School of Social Work alumni. Krishen Mehta (MBA ’72) recently completed a 30-year career with Pricewaterhouse Coopers spanning offices in Denver, New York, London and Tokyo. He was a partner in international tax and

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Renae Levin (MA ’74) of Greenwood Village, Colo., is on the board of the Women’s Library Association for DU’s Penrose Library. Renae retired after 25 years of teaching speech and English administration in Denver public schools. She enjoys friendship, book clubs, travel and family functions with her husband and grandchildren.

1976

Mark Fraser (MSW ’76) published a book, Intervention Research: Developing Social Programs (Oxford University Press, 2009), which describes how to design and test program manuals and protocols. Mark lives in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Eugene Kotlarek (MBA ’76) created and leads Ideal Gensis Corp., an administrative services company headquartered in Denver. Eugene is the president of the U.S. Olympians Association’s alumni in Colorado. He also was a member of the 1960 and 1964 Olympic ski teams and head coach for the U.S. Olympic ski teams in 1969 and 1970. Eugene lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Team player Lisa Johnson
Lisa Johnson (BA psychology, communications ’80) came close to getting an NBA championship ring last year. But the Denver Nuggets fell to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals during the 2008–09 season. Johnson wishes the team would have advanced to the finals, and she certainly would have liked a ring, but she says of the Nuggets: “I’m still so proud of my guys.” That’s right—she can call them “her guys.” As director of basketball administration for the Denver Nuggets, Johnson talks to the players on a daily basis. She books their travel, sets up their public appearances and mends their schedules. At times, she’s even gotten a little too close. For two years, Johnson’s office was in the Nuggets’ locker room. “I was the only woman, and they had to put up curtains,” Johnson laughs. “It really wasn’t as fun as people might think it was.” What is fun for her is scheduling the team members’ appearances in the community. “Our guys are great with getting out in the community,” she says, “and it always just makes me feel so good. “We’re involved closely with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and if taking a kid to a game or practice can help them and make them feel good, it’s all worthwhile, the long hours and everything.” Johnson put together the Nuggets’ community appearance program and pitched it to the NBA, which now uses it as its model. The NBA requires each player to make 12 appearances each year. “The people that I’ve met is absolutely my favorite part of the job,” she says. Overall though, “it gets a little hectic, but it gets in my blood,” she says. Hectic as in 82-game seasons and long hours, nights and weekends during the season. Her favorite part is opening night. “I get excited walking into the arena, seeing 19,000 people cheering for my team,” Johnson says. “If one day I walk out and I’m not excited then maybe that’s the time to move on, but it hasn’t happened yet.” Johnson began working for the Nuggets in the sales department (“I had never sold anything in my life,” she admits) after graduating from DU in 1980. She worked her way up slowly and found herself in the director position five years ago. “I feel like a mother hen trying to get [the team] to do what they have to do,” she says. “You know, half the time I’m rolling my eyes at them … but they’re good guys. “Chauncey [Billups] is as nice as can be,” she says of the 6-foot-3-inch point guard. And although center Chris “Birdman” Andersen is a showman on court, he’s actually quiet and reserved off-court, she says. Former Nuggets coaches Doug Moe and Dan Issel are Johnson’s close friends, as is Nuggets Hall of Famer Alex English. “They’ve always been a big part of my life, and they continue to be, and that’s really nice.” For the Nuggets, there’s always next year. And for Johnson, possibly quite a few more. “They’re my family. The Denver Nuggets have been such a part of my life,” she says. “I don’t want to leave. I’ve got too much time invested in the team.”
—Kathryn Mayer

Wayne Armstrong

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

1977

Daisy Berl (MSW ’77) is a social worker in Denver, treating couples and families. In her free time, she plays tennis, hikes and travels to visit her two children and six grandchildren. Wendi Harford (BFA ’77) of Denver has displayed her artwork at Denver’s Ironton Gallery.

1982

Albert Mrozik Jr. (JD ’82) is a municipal court prosecutor for City of Newark, N.J., and just transferred to domestic violence court. Albert resides in Cream Ridge, N.J. Lee Patton (MA ’82) of Denver published his second novel, Love and Genetic Weaponry: The Beginner’s Guide (Alyson Books, 2009). The first novel in this series, Nothing Gold Can Stay (Alyson Books, 2000), was a finalist in the 2001 Lambda Awards. Nancy Reinisch (MSW ’82) recently published her breast cancer memoir, Chemosabee: A Triathlete’s Journey Through the First Year of Breast Cancer (Novel Road Press, 2008). Nancy, her husband and their two grown sons live in Glenwood Springs, Colo.

Quotable notes
Thank you to everyone who responded to the summer issue’s question of the hour: Which academic quarter was your favorite—fall, winter, spring or summer—and why? “Spring—knew fellow students better, and trees and flowers were blossoming.” Renae Levin (MA ’74) Greenwood Village, Colo. “Spring. The campus was so pretty and alive with flowers and blooming trees.” Lisa Johnson (BA ’80) Centennial, Colo. “Spring. Cheesman Park was jumping.” Albert Mrozik Jr. (JD ’82) Cream Ridge, N.J. “Summer—it was intense yet more relaxed, and the weather was great. I also didn’t work then.” Sue Eilersten (MSW ’91) Colorado Springs, Colo. “Spring. Although longer, it had the most to look forward to at its conclusion.” Stuart Fox (BSBA ’07) Englewood, Colo.

1978

Robert Warren (PhD ’78) of Denver has been a social worker for 30 years, helping sex offenders and men who are sexually addicted. He enjoys spending time with his nine grandchildren, attending classes at DU and playing bridge and golf with his friends.

1979

Bill James (MBA ’79) of Denver was publicly elected to the board of directors of the Regional Transportation District to represent District A, which includes the DU campus. Bill’s interest in RTD was in part generated by his involvement with Transportation Solutions, a transportation management association for which DU is a client.

1983

Kirk Leggott (BSBA ’83, MA ’86, JD ’86) recently was appointed as chief information officer for the North Carolina Industrial Commission. Daniel Minzer (JD ’83) of Denver joined the real estate team at Fairfield and Woods P Daniel has been involved with real .C. estate development projects for more than 25 years. Daniel also is heavily involved in condemnation and urban renewal issues. Julie Nagel (MSW ’83) of West Hills, Calif., works at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services in the youth adoption program. She works with children who have been in out-of-home care for multiple years and have lost hope of ever having a permanent family.

1980

M. Kay Teel (MSW ’80, PhD ’05) of Denver was appointed assistant professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Her research interests include maternal child health and the development of culturally appropriate interventions for mothers with infants who are exposed to alcohol and other drugs.

1981

Catherine Faris (BA ’81) has been married for 23 years to Brian Faris, an architect and general contractor. She has three children: Stephen, 22, Sarah, 20, and Francesca, 17. Catherine is associate vice chancellor for donor relations and development in university relations at the University of California-Santa Cruz. When her children were younger, the family lived in Italy for a year, and they now have a home and an olive orchard in southern Italy. Catherine lives in Santa Cruz, Calif.

1985

1987

Pam Hurley (MSW ’85) of Denver has worked in neuropsychology treatment, child and family protective services and hospice. She also has served as an adjunct for Colorado State University and for DU’s Graduate School of Social Work’s Four Corners Program in Durango, Colo. Frode Mauring (MIM ’85) recently accepted a position as resident coordinator at the United Nations in Moscow. Previously, he was employed as development coordinator for the United Nations.

Christian Itin (MSW ’87, PhD ’97) of Eureka, Calif., recently was promoted to full professor and granted tenure at Humboldt State University in California. He directs the school’s master’s in social work program and remains an active scholar in adventure therapy. Morri Namasté (MSW ’87) of Denver works in collaborative divorce, assisting families in reaching agreements that lead to positive post-divorce relationships. Morri also is a singer-songwriter and plays guitar, mountain dulcimer and African kalimba. He is working on his fifth album.
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Hao Tian (MA ’87) of New York City is an operatic bass who is featured in the oneman show “From Mao to the Met,” running through mid-December on PBS. The performance is based on his autobiography of the same title.

1988

Kenn Briggs (MSW ’88) helped found Youth Ventures, a child placement agency in Colorado Springs, Colo. He serves as executive director and therapist at the agency. Kenn enjoys rock climbing and bike riding.

1989

Evangelist Lori Carrell
They say there are three topics you should never discuss in polite conversation: sex, politics and religion. But Lori Carrell (PhD speech communication ’91) has regular conversations about God—in front of a television camera. Carrell hosts “Ask God,” a weekly Christian TV talk show. The program, offered on the Total Living Network, JCTV and other religious networks, is available to 60 million viewers in five cities in the Midwest, and via the Internet. Carrell, who also is a communication professor at the University of WisconsinOshkosh, stresses dialogue in her TV program. “The goal in dialogue is inclusion, not finding ‘the winner’ or the person with ‘the right answer,’” Carrell says. “Ask God” gets fuel for its dialogue from on-the-street interviews in the Chicago area. Participants are asked: “What is the one question you would ask God?” Carrell selects responses with universal appeal. Topics have ranged from “Is God Pro-War?” to “Do I Have to Forgive?” During the show, Carrell moderates a rotating panel of four professional theologians who bring different viewpoints and experiences to the conversation. Producer Joel Mains says Carrell makes the conversations accessible to everyone, keeping the program from turning into Christian jargon. “Dr. Lori says, ‘Hey, this doesn’t need to be limited to just theologians and ministers. These are things that we can all discuss,’” Mains says. As host, Carrell facilitates the conversation, but she’ll also enter the discussion if she suspects guests are holding back. “I’m looking for the clash, where the actual differences of opinion are,” Carrell says. “I try to draw out that difference but also still try to make it light and fun.” Carrell hopes the show encourages people to talk about the issues with friends, family and others. “There’s no way in my one life that I can come up with the answer to why there’s pain and suffering in the world. How presumptuous of me,” Carrell says. “But if they all share their wisdom, do you think we’ll have a better answer?” >>www.askgodtv.com
—Josh Miller

Charles Hobbs (JD ’89) has been appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter as a district court judge in the 13th Judicial District, which serves Kit Carson, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington and Yuma counties. Charles has been a municipal court judge for the city of Fort Morgan, Colo., since January 2007. He specializes in criminal defense, bankruptcy and general civil litigation. Sarah Neumeier (BSBA ’89) received a master’s of science in health informatics from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She lives in Edina, Minn.

1990

Mary Long (MSW ’90) is a social worker in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Mark Lostak (MBA ’90) recently relocated to Houston from Vienna, Austria, after almost five years of living abroad. Mark is president of Air Liquide Industrial U.S. He is married and has two young sons. Tammy White (BA ’90) is the chief of staff for the D.C. legislative affairs office for the Boeing Co. Tammy lives in Alexandria, Va.

Courtesy of Lori Carrell

1991

Mary Baydarian (MSW ’91) is director of the Park County Department of Human Services. She lives in Bailey, Colo. Sue Eilertsen (MSW ’91) received an Excellence in Practice award at the Colorado Summit for Children, Youth and Families. Sue was honored for her service and dedication to helping the children of Colorado and for making the community a better, safer place for families. Sue won as a member of the Family Visitation Center unit, which she supervises at the El Paso County Department of Human Services in Colorado Springs, Colo. Katherine Golas (BA ’91) recently was named chief operating officer of health communication and public affairs for Spectrum. Katherine will assume responsibility for overall management of the firm’s day-to-day operations. She resides in Takoma Park, Md.

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Janis Mahan (MSW ’91) has worked in the field of child abuse and neglect since her 1988 Graduate School of Social Work internship at the Arapahoe County Department of Social Services. She now is a program manager for Children’s Home Society in Florida. Janis lives in Lutz, Fla., and enjoys gardening and spending time with her grandchildren.

Pioneer pics
Robyn (Thomas) Hartmeyer (BA ’98, left) and Jordana (Feves) Levenick (BA ’98, right) discovered their love of geography and the environment through the environmental science department at DU. Upon graduation they celebrated their passion for outdoor adventure by traveling across the country, exploring as many national parks as possible in a four-month, 25,000-mile trek. Both graduates now live in Portland, Ore., with their husbands. While work, family and responsibilities would not allow for a four-month reunion tour, they did manage to sneak away for a long weekend last November, when they traveled to Redwood National Park and the southern Oregon coast and proudly wore their DU gear. As you pioneer lands far and wide, be sure to pack your DU gear and strike a pose in front of a national monument, the fourth wonder of the world or your hometown hot spot. If we print your submission, you’ll receive some new DU paraphernalia courtesy of the DU Bookstore. Send your print or high-resolution digital image and a description of the location to: Pioneer Pics, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816, or e-mail [email protected]. Be sure to include your full name, address, degree(s) and year(s) of graduation.

1993

Leslie Keffel (PhD ’93) was the keynote speaker at the annual awards reception of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of South Thuringia, held in Suhl, Germany. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.

1994 1995

Gary Dark (BA ’94) is the lead singer of the bluegrass band Blue Canyon Boys. He lives in Arvada, Colo.

David McEntire (MA ’95, PhD ’00) gave up his position as PhD coordinator in the Public Administration Department and became associate dean in the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at the University of North Texas. David has received research grants from FEMA and the University of North Texas to conduct a comparative emergency management study. The research will include the United States, Canada,

Contact us
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.)
Question of the hour: What do you think of DU’s efforts to help the environment? Name (include maiden name) DU degree(s) and graduation year(s) Address City State Phone E-mail Employer Occupation What have you been up to? (Use a separate sheet if necessary.) ZIP code Fax Country

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

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Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica and other countries in Latin America. The findings will be published in a book in 2010. He resides in Corinth, Texas. Chris Pruchnic (MA ’95) of Aurora, Colo., recently returned from a mountaineering expedition to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America. Chris successfully led four of six teammates to the summit. Tom Romero (BA ’95) of St. Paul, Minn., has been granted tenure by the Hamline University Board of Trustees and has been promoted to professor of law. Tom also is actively engaged in legal issues beyond the Hamline campus and has been particularly devoted to serving communities of color. Tom has been involved in the work of the Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association.

1997

Elizabeth Cheroutes (MSW ’97) has a private practice specializing in trauma and women’s issues in Jackson Hole, Wyo. She has two children: Charlie, 5, and Sophie, 3. Elizabeth enjoys hiking, biking and skiing. Davida Hoffman (MSW ’97) has been with Pikes Peak Mental Health Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., for 10 years and is director of child and family services and the military outpatient program. Joan Murray (MA ’97) of Northglenn, Colo., recently published a cookbook, Creative Cuisine Collection (AuthorHouse, 2007).

Rocky Mountains since November 2008. She oversees the agency’s efforts in the Denver metropolitan area and in Las Vegas. Alison and her husband, Blake, recently welcomed their first child and live in Denver. Sue Hoenshell-Brown (MSW ’98) of Greeley, Colo., is a bilingual caseworker in child protection for Colorado’s Weld County Department of Human Services. With co-workers, she formed a team called Caseworkers for a Cure for Greeley’s Relay for Life.

1999

1998

Alison Hancock (BA ’98, MSW ’04) has been a regional director of community education for Planned Parenthood of the

Jeanne Golden (MSW ’99) of Mesa, Ariz., works as a child and family therapist and clinical liaison for Jewish Family and Children’s Services. Previously, she worked with children and adults in equine therapy.

Motivator Rory Vaden
Even as a student at DU, Rory Vaden talked to people incessantly about how to be successful. The key, he said, was self-discipline. To be successful, you had to do the things other people weren’t willing to do. His college roommate—and a fellow member of the Pioneer Leadership Program—heard the argument often, and he used it to make fun of Vaden once on an airport escalator: “Mr. Discipline doesn’t even take the stairs,” he said. “After I smacked him,” Vaden jokes, “I thought there was something about that that really resonated with me, that simple decision every day between taking the stairs or an escalator.” The 27-year-old has since earned his MBA from DU, won second place in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking, co-founded a multimillion-dollar company that puts on motivational sales training conferences for people by the thousands and grown his own personal brand: Take the Stairs. Vaden was raised by a single mom in a trailer park outside of Boulder, Colo. While other kids played video games, he practiced martial arts and became a black belt by the age of 10. In high school, he studied instead of going to parties, and the work paid off in the form of a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship to DU. When he was a freshman, another student recruited him to the Southwestern Co. internship program in which college students relocate for the summer and sell children’s books door to door for commission. He spent that first summer break in Montgomery, Ala., getting thousands of doors slammed in his face. “It would have been easier for me to go home and be a lifeguard, but that would have been the escalator,” Vaden says. “Taking the stairs means I’m going to make sacrifices. If I had never gone through that, there’s no way I would have a multimillion-dollar company. There’s no way companies would have me come and speak to them. I would have no right.” He made $17,000 that summer and came back to DU to recruit a team of students for the following year. He started speaking publicly about self-discipline at high schools, colleges and youth groups. He graduated in June 2006 and moved to California to co-found the business Success Starts Now (SSN), which will bring its motivational sales training conference back to Vaden’s home in Denver in December 2009. Vaden now travels the country giving his trademark “Take the Stairs” speech at conventions and corporate functions. “It’s while you’re on the stairs that’s the fun part,” he says. “If you’re on the escalator, you’re not doing anything, not growing, not changing. You’re being dragged through life. On the stairs, you’re moving, learning, failing—but you’re getting better.” >> www.disciplinedynamic.com
—Jessica Centers Glynn

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Courtesy of Rory Vaden

William Sutton (BA ’99) earned his doctorate in psychology and received his license last January. He now has a thriving private practice in San Francisco and San Rafael, Calif., working with teens, families, couples and individuals and providing neuropsychological assessments. William recently was elected president of the Association of Family Therapists of Northern California. He and his wife live in Kentfield, Calif., and are expecting their first child in January.

LaTra Rogers (MSW ’00) of Denver received his PhD in educational and human resource studies from Colorado State University. LaTra works as an assistant professor of social work at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Listiani Wijaya (MACC ’00) is an entrepreneur and business consultant in Semarang, Indonesia.

2002

Jeb Bennett (MSW ’02) of Boulder, Colo., has been working since graduation on the intensive adult outpatient team at the Mental Health Center Serving Boulder and Broomfield Counties. Jeb also has a small private practice specializing in addictions treatment that he’s planning to expand soon. Christi Fuller (BBA ’02) works for ValueCheck Inc., a company that provides data and software solutions for the banking and real estate industry. Of the company’s 15 employees, five went to DU, including founders Steve Belmear (BSBA ’88, MBA ’90) and Tom Kammer (BSBA ’89). Christi resides in Castle Rock, Colo. Bryan Walpert (PhD ’02) has published his first collection of poetry, Etymology (Cinnamon Press, 2009). Bryan teaches creative writing at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

2001

2000

Nancy Barraclough (MSW ’00) works as a manager for the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. She is mother to 1-year-old Hope and 18-year-old Zach. Nancy enjoys photography and traveling throughout Europe with her family. She resides in Portishead, England. Brenda Brown (MSW ’00) is a psychotherapist specializing in clients with Asperger’s syndrome and autism at an outpatient mental health clinic in Worcester, Mass. She resides in Sturbridge, Mass.

Sarah Kick (MA ’01) is the outreach coordinator in the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sarah is responsible for coordinating events sponsored by the program. SJ Purcell (MSW ’01) is the clinical manager at Shiloh Home, a treatment center for neglected and abused boys. She lives in Littleton, Colo. Michael Schneider (MA ’01) is president of McPherson College. He resides in McPherson, Kan.

Bookstore

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for pioneer spirit!

University oF Denver

Shop for all your holiday gifts at www.dubookstore.com or call 800-289-3848.

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47

2004

Noel Cassidy (MSW ’04) of Denver is employed as a licensed clinical social worker for Denver Health and Hospital Authority and is working on her doctorate in pharmacy through Creighton University. Ian Ivarson (BSBA ’04) of San Francisco is the founder of Ivar, a company that manufactures and sells ergonomic backpacks. George Pennock (MBA ’04) recently accepted a position as a financial consultant at Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. in Englewood, Colo. Previously, he was employed at U.S. Trust Bank of America Private Wealth Management as an associate wealth strategist. George also passed the Florida bar exam in 2007 and earned his JD from the University of Miami.

Class notes challenge: 2004
A lot can happen in five years, and we want to catch up with as many of you as we can. Your classmates want to hear from you, too! What have you been up to? Share career and family news, discuss your travels and hobbies, or reminisce about your time at DU. You can post your note online at www.alumni.du.edu, e-mail [email protected], or mail in the form on page 45. Class of ’04 notes will appear in the summer issue. We’ll randomly select a prizewinner from all entries received by March 1.

Amy Peterburs (BFA ’04) of Burlington, Wis., received a master’s of science in art therapy with a concentration in counseling from Mount Mary College. Marie Wanasz (BSAC ’04) and Jameson Guthrie (BA ’99, MBA ’05) are happy to announce their marriage. The couple honeymooned in Italy. The Guthries reside in Denver and are in the beginning stages of

building their dream home in Observatory Park. Marie is studying interior design at the Art Institute of Design.

2005

Mallory Delany (BS ’05) and her husband, Brian Bau (BSBA ’05), welcomed a daughter, Kinsley Morgan. The family lives in Denver.

Deaths
1930s 1940s
Blanche Cowperthwaite (BA ’32), Denver, 6-17-09 Leo Block (BA ’35), San Antonio, Texas, 8-31-09 Dorothy Proper (BA ’42), Hamburg, Iowa, 4-29-09 Anna Willman (BS ’43), Marion, Ind., 10-21-08 Lois Midgley (BS ’44), Kimball, Neb., 12-2-07 Robert Stoffel (BA ’46), Evergreen, Colo., 6-12-09 Elinor Klein (BA ’47), Seattle, 5-17-09 Gwyneth Keith (BS ’48), Denver, 6-1-09 Kenneth Nelson (BA ’48, MA ’50), San Diego, 3-5-09 Glen Hines (BS ’49), Arvada, Colo., 12-14-08 Andrew Mair (BA ’49), Fort Collins, Colo., 4-25-09 Martin Reisch (BA ’49), Haltom City, Texas, 6-8-09 Col. William Walters Jr. (BA ’49), Santa Fe, N.M., 3-22-09 Donald Coover (MA ’50), Littleton, Colo., 2-12-09 Scott Marshall (BS ’50), Lakewood, Colo., 5-8-09 Edwin Perkins (BS ’50), Cedaredge, Colo., 6-13-09 Cynthia Foley (BA ’51), Denver, 12-27-08 Anna Halvorson (MS ’51), Bloomington, Minn., 5-15-09 John Kurz (BS ’51), Denver, 8-5-08 Denis McCormack (BS ’51), Buena Park, Calif., 2-12-09 Esther Shapiro (MA ’51, PhD ’61), Binghamton, N.Y., 5-26-09 Frances Newsom (MA ’53), Olympia, Wash., 1-12-08 Kenneth Selby (LLB ’53), Alamosa, Colo., 1-01-02 Ellen Moose (MSW ’56), Arlington, Va., 11-19-08 Meredith Dalebout (BME ’57), Colorado Springs, Colo., 3-24-09 Theodore Johnson (BS ’57, MBA ’62), Littleton, Colo., 10-14-04 Joseph Krainock (BA ’58), Poway, Calif., 5-21-09

1960s

Donald Walrafen (PhD ’60), Ashland, Ore., 10-15-08 James Wilson (BS ’60), San Antonio, 6-26-09 Michael Floyd (BSBA ’61), Sheboygan Falls, Wis., 4-30-09 Elinor George (MA ’68), Roseville, Calif., 4-2-07 Thierry Smith (BA ’75), Aurora, Colo., 8-24-09 Isaac Pendergraff (MSW ’76), Louisville, Colo., 6-8-08 Ida Walters (BA ’78, MA ’82), St. Louis, 6-2-09 Eleanor Sabin (BA ’79), Littleton, Colo., 5-25-09

1970s

1980s

Laura Callier (MA ’81), Denver, 5-4-09 Neil Dolinsky (BSBA ’81), Chaska, Minn., 5-29-09 Devon Campbell (BSBA ’89), Centennial, Colo., 10-22-08 Audrey French (MA ’89), Albuquerque, N.M., 5-18-09

1950s

Faculty and Staff

George Bardwell, math professor emeritus, Denver, 6-22-09 Elizabeth Everhart, biological science faculty (retired 1986), Princeton, N.J., 2-21-09 Alvin Goldberg, speech communication professor emeritus, Denver, 5-30-09 Marie Johnson, purchasing amica (retired 2005), Littleton, Colo., 3-12-09 Mildred Marteney, Colorado Women’s College professor (retired 1971), Englewood, Colo., 7-27-09 Helen McGraw, athletic department amica (retired 1990), Littleton, Colo., 5-16-09 Kenneth Millsap, political science professor emeritus, Iowa City, Iowa, 7-24-09

Friends

Myra Levy, friend and major donor, Denver, 6-1-09

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Post your class note online at www.du.edu/alumni, e-mail [email protected] or mail in the form on page 45.

2006

Danni Bultemeier (MSW ’06) is married, has a 2-year-old daughter named Charlotte and works full-time as a fee-for-service outreach clinician south of Boston. Danni hopes to work with refugees and victims of political persecution and trauma in the future, as well as in social welfare policy. She resides in Attleboro, Mass. Juli Bunyak (BM ’06) won first place in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition for her soprano performance. Juli received an award of $6,000 from the Galen and Ada Belle Spencer Foundation. She is studying at Northwestern University in Chicago. Cody Medina (BM ’06) won third place in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild (DLOG) Competition for his bass-baritone performance. Cody was awarded $4,250 from Stasia Davison and DLOG members. Cody is studying at Indiana University in Bloomington with professor Timothy Noble. Hilary Mills (MSW ’06) works in mental health at the VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic in Greeley, Colo., where she lives. Her daughter was born in January 2009. Jenny Woodard (MSW ’06) and her husband, Brian, of Fort Collins, Colo., welcomed twin boys, Hudson and Miles, on Feb. 9, 2009.

2008

Stephanie Hackett (MA ’08, MSW ’08) of Denver is employed by the City of Aurora office of emergency management. Stephanie is a member of the North Central Regional Special Needs Committee, where she works to better educate vulnerable populations and caregivers on how to prepare for natural and man-made disasters. She is Aurora’s emergency management specialist, focusing on citizen outreach and volunteer management among other local and regional efforts. Paul Tontz (PhD ’08) received his commission in the United States Navy Reserves as an METOC Ensign. He will be stationed in San Diego.

Sal Quintana (JD ’09) of Denver is now one of three immediate family members to have graduated from DU. Estrella Quintana (BBA ’09) would like to focus on a career in finance or accounting. Gilbert Quintana (MSW ’75) is retired after a long and successful career in social work and management. Sal would like to start his law practice in corporate, transactional or litigation law. Brittany Wiser (BA ’09) has been selected as Miss Montana 2009. Brittany will travel to Las Vegas in January 2010 for the Miss America competition. This year, she has been traveling through Montana speaking on suicide prevention, which is her platform. She resides in Bozeman, Mont.

2009

Philip Del Vecchio III (MA ’09) of Glendale, Colo., is a sports psychology consultant. He recently hosted a free sports psychology clinic for baseball coaches, parents and players at the senior center in Longmont, Colo.

2007

Kelly Carroll (MSW ’07) works for Volunteers of America in a women’s substance abuse residential treatment facility. She recently was promoted from therapist to clinical program director. The facility serves 33 women who struggle with alcohol and drug issues. Kelly resides in Sheridan, Wyo. Stuart Fox (BSBA ’07) married Katie Barabe (BA ’07, MA ’09) on May 30, 2009, at Evans Memorial Chapel on the DU campus. Stuart works for RevGen Partners as a consultant. Stuart and Katie reside in Englewood, Colo. Matt Slaby (JD ’07) of Denver is a photojournalist and member of Luceo, a photography collective that had work on display this summer at the photography festival Look3 in Virginia.

?
Which alum was the first female bureau chief for Business Week? The answer can be found somewhere on pages 37–49 of this issue. Send your answer to du-magazine@ du.edu or University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 802084816. Be sure to include your full name and mailing address. We’ll select a winner from the correct entries; the winning entry will win a prize courtesy of the DU Bookstore. Congratulations to Kathleen Tisdale (BA ’59) for winning the fall issue’s pop quiz.

University of Denver Magazine Connections

49

ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Get Involved Mentoring Join the Pioneer Connections Mentoring Program and start mentoring a DU student today. Contact Cindy Hyman at alumni@ du.edu for details. Local Chapters Just moved to a new city and
don’t know anyone? Need to expand your professional network? Want to attend fun events and make new friends, or reconnect with old ones? Join a local alumni chapter: Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Minneapolis/St. Paul; New York; Phoenix; and Washington, D.C. To find out how you can get involved, call the Office of Alumni Relations at 800871-3822 or visit www.du.edu/alumni.

membership program designed for men and women age 55 and “better” who wish to pursue lifelong learning in the company of like-minded peers. Members select the topics to be explored and share their expertise and interests while serving as facilitators and learners. >>universitycollege.du.edu/olli

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

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

online at www.du.edu/annualreport.

On the Web Annual Report DU’s 2008–09 Annual Report is Alumni Symposium More than 250 alumni

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

participated in the third annual Alumni Symposium Oct. 2 and 3. See photos online at www.flickr.com/ photos/uofdenver.

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

Mark Your Calendar Newman Center Presents The 2009–10

Newman Center Presents series continues this winter and spring with performances by the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (Jan. 15), the Russian National Orchestra (Feb. 24), the Martha Graham Dance Company (April 20) and more. >>www.du.edu/newmancenter

Calling All Experts
We’re trying to get to know our alumni better while developing possibilities for future articles. Please send us your ideas. We would especially like to hear about readers who: • re graduates of DU’s art programs a • re working (or former) journalists, especially a those working in “new media” • ork in the food and beverage industry w • re working/serving in Iraq or Afghanistan a • ere DU Centennial scholars w • erved in the Peace Corps s • erved in AmeriCorps s

Dads and Granddads Weekend Fathers and

grandfathers of current students are invited to campus for events and lectures Feb. 19 and 20. >>www.du.edu/studentlife/parents has been doing since you left. See if DU is coming to a city near you. >>www.du.edu/alumni

DU on the Road Find out what your alma mater

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

Alumni Connections Pioneer Alumni Network Join other Denver-

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009

Stay in Touch Online Alumni Directory Update your contact

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

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Miscellanea

Invitation only

DU Archives

Given to DU Archivist Steve Fisher by a local postcard collector who found it at this year’s Rocky Mountain Book and Paper Fair, this 1911 invitation is to an appearance by then-President William Howard Taft at the DU gymnasium. According to a New York Times account of the president’s Denver visit, he gave two speeches on Oct. 3, 1911—“one to the Public Lands Convention and the second to members of the Republican organization, including the State Central Commission and various committees.” “We are in favor of progress and construction,” Taft told his fellow Republicans. “We are in favor of prosperity and of doing nothing that will interfere with the business growth of this country provided that business growth be along lines that are legitimate and within the statutes.” According to the Times article, Taft also went to the “baseball park” on Oct. 3, where he presented trophies to members of the minor-league Denver Bears, recent Western League champions. He also was made an honorary member of the Denver Press Club.

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University of Denver Magazine Winter 2009