students

Student meteorology society named local chapter of the year

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 21:42:42 +0000

Student meteorology society named local chapter of the year Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/22/2026 - 15:42

Members of the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chapter of the American Meteorological Society on a tour of the NCAR Research Aviation Facility.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chapter of the American Meteorological Society recognized for cultivating lasting student networks and leading impactful community outreach

The University of Colorado Boulder chapter of the American Meteorological Society (CUBAMS) has been named local student chapter of the year by the national organization.

The honor recognizes the chapter “for cultivating lasting student networks, leading impactful community outreach and establishing a strong, visible presence throughout the American Meteorological Society.” It will be presented at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) annual meeting in Denver this January.

Members of the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chapter of the American Meteorological Society on a tour of the NCAR Research Aviation Facility.

“This AMS recognition highlights the dedication of our chapter and the broader (atmospheric and oceanic sciences) community to creating an academically supportive, professionally engaged and collaborative environment,” says member Amanda Bowden, a fourth-year PhD candidate in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC). “It recognizes the efforts of our members to strengthen the atmospheric sciences community at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� through professional development, education, outreach and service. It also demonstrates how our students and faculty contribute beyond the university by sharing their knowledge and giving back to the broader public community.”

CUBAMS was formed after ATOC began offering an undergraduate major in fall 2016, explains Andrew Winters, an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and CUBAMS faculty advisor. “A group of students came to me with interest in building one of these chapters as a way to help undergrads who are very much new to the program, to build community,” he says. “In 2021 we really initiated the chapter—students wrote a constitution; they got approved by national organization and got registered as a student organization at CU.”

Anna Hagberg, a senior majoring in applied mathematics and ATOC, says that when she joined CUBAMS, she had just changed her major to ATOC “and was looking for people that I could be friends with (and talk about the weather with). I was also curious about the possible career paths that existed within atmospheric and oceanic science.”

The student-led organization has organized events from tours of the NCAR Research Aviation Facility to eclipse viewing and a weather balloon launch, as well as tabling at AMS conferences.

Wade Julian, a senior ATOC major who also is pursuing an interdisciplinary climate science minor and a certificate in arctic studies, says that participating and serving as an officer in CUBAMS has been one of his most valuable ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� experiences.

“Through the chapter, I have developed a lot of leadership and organizational skills, especially through serving as an officer and helping plan events for our members,” Julian says. “I have also had opportunities to attend professional conferences, meet atmospheric scientists and learn about careers that I would not have been exposed to through my classes alone.

"These experiences have helped me become more confident about pursuing a career in atmospheric science and have given me a better idea of the areas of the field that I am interested in, particularly climate and arctic science.”

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Members of the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chapter of the American Meteorological Society at an eclipse viewing event.

Members of the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chapter of the American Meteorological Society launching a weather balloon.

CUBAMS officers on a Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets (FARMS) visit.

Students and faculty tabling for the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the annual American Meteorological Society conference.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chapter of the American Meteorological Society recognized for cultivating lasting student networks and leading impactful community outreach.

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All photos courtesy Anna Hagberg

Visualizing the brain with 3D-printed models

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:59:07 +0000

Visualizing the brain with 3D-printed models Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/15/2026 - 09:59

Blake Puscher

3D-printed model brains are more accessible and ethical than conventional alternatives, says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Jennifer Stratford

When studying anatomy, students often use models, which recreate the structure of an organ or other part of the body in a form that is easy to study.

Although donor bodies are generally considered the gold standard in higher education because they are the only resource that allows students to directly study real anatomy, the number of donor bodies is limited, making them difficult to access, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Models are somewhat more accessible, but if they are anatomically accurate, similar challenges apply, because they must be based on real donor anatomy to provide educational value. Accurate models are also expensive. However, if educators could 3D print their own models, cost would be less of a barrier, says Jennifer Stratford, a University of Colorado Boulder teaching professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Jennifer Stratford is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� teaching professor of psychology and neuroscience.

In a recent analysis conducted with colleagues in the CU Anschutz Modern Human Anatomy Program as well as other institutions, Stratford details the learning benefits of 3D printing brain models.

Why brain models?

Neuroanatomy, or the anatomy of the brain and other parts of the nervous system, is a challenging yet important area of study, according to Stratford. Clinical specialties like neurology, psychiatry, anesthesiology, radiology, physiotherapy and more rely in part on knowledge of the brain to correctly diagnose and treat patients. However, Stratford explains, “the human brain is much more difficult to understand than other organs.

“If I showed you a model heart, you could make some educated guesses about how the heart works,” she continues. On the other hand, “if I give you a model of a brain, and I asked you how you think it works just by looking at it, it is almost impossible to guess. That makes learning neuroanatomy tricky,” Stratford adds, and it makes resources that can help students learn particularly valuable.

“I think a lot of people do not realize all the effort, expense and ethical considerations that go into a human brain model,” Stratford says. “It can cost hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars to buy that model from a company.” Additionally, “a lot of original brain models were created without asking for permission,” whether from cadavers that a lab had access to or from bodies that were donated without specific consent to make models based on the brain.

While brain models are more accessible than donor brains, they can still be difficult to obtain, especially in large enough numbers for a whole class of students. 3D printing addresses this by giving educators the option to produce anatomical models themselves at a reduced cost, either using brain scans they take themselves or data from open-access repositories like the CU Modern Human Anatomy Hub, which was created by the research team behind the paper. Putting scan data online comes with additional ethical considerations, but the authors provide ways of managing these, such as data anonymization, and online resources make it possible for people all over the world to create their own models.

“What 3D models help us do is to give students, other educators and the public the opportunity to hold some of these specimens in their hands,” Stratford says.

Collecting and processing data

Stratford and her co-authors describe a five-step process that educators can follow to create and use a 3D model, beginning with selecting or acquiring a model of the brain. These models are ready to use, but if an educator wants a custom model, it can be created from patient data or a physical, donated specimen.

A revised Bloom's taxonomy applied to 3D prints of neuroanatomy, explaining learning objectives at each step of the taxonomy. (Infographic courtesy the paper authors)

Patient data includes CT and MRI scans of the brain or other nervous-system structures. A 3D object can be extracted from this data using a process called segmentation.

“All the patient data, at least that we use, is digitally created with a computer, but it does not have all the brain structures picked out,” Stratford says. “It is not very clean, so one of the goals of extraction is to clean up the 3D rendering of the brain, both making it more crisp, but also highlighting different areas.”

This process also can be described as “removing artifacts.” In this context, artifacts are errors introduced by the way information is captured, such as a lens flare in a photograph.

Additionally, the different regions of the brain are not easily distinguishable from raw data, so highlighting some of them can make the final product a better teaching tool. According to Stratford, while some programs can segment data automatically, they are still new and error prone, so most people currently do segmentation by hand, and it can be one of the more labor-intensive parts of the rendering process.

Physical specimens can also be turned into 3D models using scanning technology, including commercial 3D scanners or even digital cameras or smartphones. Scanners make models by measuring the distance between the scanner and the surface of the object, while cameras algorithmically combine a series of photos in a process called photogrammetry. Scanning also introduces some artifacts, so digital editing is necessary either way, and it is considered the second step in the process.

Thirdly, Stratford and her co-authors recommend licensing the model with a Creative Commons license and making it open access online. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that has developed free copyright licenses designed to help content owners reserve some rights while waiving others. In this case, a Creative Commons license would allow the owner or owners to retain control over how their work is used while making it free to access. According to open access principles, research literature and especially medical resources should be free so that healthcare providers are not prevented from taking advantage of potentially vital information by paywalls or other such barriers.

An example of 3D brain prints by printing level. (Infographic courtesy of the paper authors)

Printing and using models

The fourth step is to actually 3D print the model. This requires converting data collected in the first step into instructions the printer can use, which is done by software applications called “slicers,” referencing how most 3D printers create physical objects by laying down material in layers or “slices” of the object.

“That’s what we do in 3D printing in general,” Stratford says, “not just for brains. It is like you are printing multiple sheets every time, and each sheet is made of little bumps in different places, and then you push those together to make a 3D rendering.”

This step can vary significantly in terms of cost and complexity depending on the model of printer and type of materials used. To reflect this, Stratford and her colleagues split the printing process into three difficulty levels ranging from beginner to advanced. According to Stratford, while the beginner level is cheapest and requires only a basic 3D printer, it limits the product to a single color.

“They are really cheap and easy to make, so those are the type I typically use when I do outreach. If somebody drops something, I am not worried if they get damaged, and I am not looking for a ton of detail there.

“From there, you can get more sophisticated. Different 3D printer models that are more expensive can print, for instance, in two colors,” she continues, allowing different parts of the brain to be color-coded. “For instance, you could highlight what is called the spinothalamic tract. That is one of the classic pathways in the brain, but anatomically, it is hard to pick out on its own.”

Multiple colors help with this by creating contrast. The most expensive 3D printers allow for the use of more than two colors.

“One of the things we used to 3D print” at Anschutz, Stratford says, “was taste buds from your tongue. In your taste buds, there are lots of different cell types, and so we could make each cell type a different color and then have that printed in the 3D model. It was really cool to see how that looked.”

Besides different colors, printers can use different filaments (the materials the models are made from), some of which are easier to work with than others. A beginner print may use bioplastic (PLA) filament, which is less expensive and does not have a strong odor, but models made from PLA can be brittle. Advanced printing may involve multiple materials or higher-quality materials like resin. However, both require more expensive printers, and liquid resin releases toxic fumes, so personal protective equipment is needed when working with it.

Finally, once the model has been printed, it can be used for education.

“One of the things they are really useful for,” Stratford explains, “is when you want to teach the overall structure of the brain. That is called gross neuroanatomy. Being able to give individual groups of students their own models can be helpful. Because traditional models are so expensive, most classrooms cannot afford to have more than maybe two or three.”

Because 3D-printed models are cheaper, the ratio of models to students can be better. “For instance, in my class of about 45, we had 15 models to work with, so even though people had to triple up, it is much better than having only one or two models for people to look through.

“Another aspect is, you are generating models based on real brains, whereas if you buy an anatomical model from a company, that is more like a cartoon of the brain. So, what is nice is that you can show a student what your brain actually looks like. Students really do identify with that. I will ask students, ‘What is the biggest thing that sticks out in your mind from this semester?’ And many of them will say it is the 3D models, because it seems so personal.”

For example, models can show what different neurological diseases and types of brain damage look like as well as how they differ from each other.

“It addresses so many different needs. It is better from a teaching perspective, the ethics are better compared to past options, and it is just more widely available,” Stratford says. “Growing up and as a young person, I did not have a lot of access to these things, just because they were so expensive. So, I am really excited about the opportunities this provides to people.”

James P. Lister, Andrew Cale, Zach D. Stetter, Jamie E. Cronin, Steven R. Summers, Paul G. McMenamin and Maureen E. Stabio are co-authors of this paper.

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3D-printed model brains are more accessible and ethical than conventional alternatives, says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Jennifer Stratford.

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Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:12:39 +0000

Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/03/2026 - 17:12

The newly established fellowship, named in honor of ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration

Isabella Perrin, a University of Colorado Boulder undergraduate student studying molecular, cellular and developmental biology and public health, has been selected as one of 176 inaugural Cech Fellows by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

The fellowship, awarded to an inaugural cohort of undergraduates from 109 institutions in 36 states and territories, is named in honor of Nobel laureate Thomas Cech, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� distinguished professor of biochemistry, former HHMI president and current HHMI investigator.

The Cech Fellows will spend nine weeks this summer conducting hands-on research with HHMI scientists at universities and research institutions across the country, as well as at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus in Virginia. They will contribute to research while receiving professional mentorship and exploring potential careers in biological and biomedical research.

"I’ve always believed that getting students into real research environments early is one of the most powerful things we can do for them and for science,” said Cech. “I’m deeply honored that this program carries my name, and I look forward to seeing what this first cohort of Fellows will go on to achieve.”

Leslie Vosshall, HHMI vice president and chief scientific officer, noted that a single summer in the right lab can kickstart a scientific career: “By asking real questions alongside scientists at the top of their fields, this year’s Cech Fellows will have the opportunity to see what a life in science actually looks like.”

Perrin, who is working with researchers at the University of California Berkeley this summer on immunology research about the pathways and mechanisms that relate to autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, has previously conducted RNA research with Robin Dowell, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and Mary Ann Allen, a research associate professor with the BioFrontiers Institute.

“As a Cech Fellow, I’m honored and excited to join a diverse community with engaging and curiosity-filled science research,” Perrin said. “I value this opportunity not only to learn from mentors and peers about how to conduct meaningful research but also to engage in research that, at its core, is based in bettering individuals’ quality of life.

“I hope to learn and use new skills to contribute to the field in a rigorous manner, and to use a creative mindset to approach challenging questions. I love learning about the capabilities and quirks of the immune system and am thrilled to be a part of a lab that focuses on applying this work to human health conditions.”

Summer research experiences are “often where undergraduates discover their passion for scientific inquiry,” said Joshua Hall, HHMI lead senior director and scientific program officer at HHMI. “The Cech Fellows Program gives talented students direct access to some of the most exciting science happening anywhere in the country, and we’re thrilled to welcome this inaugural cohort.”

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The newly established fellowship, named in honor of ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration.

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Students create better ways to communicate science

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:58:11 +0000

Students create better ways to communicate science Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/10/2026 - 09:58

Joselyn Ramirez (left) and Genessis Garcia (right) with an interactive display board based on Institute for Behavioral Genetics research finding that playing video games doesn't show consistent associations with impulsivity.

Rachel Sauer

In a program with Northglenn High School students, Institute for Behavioral Genetics researchers ask for creative and innovative ideas on how to talk about science

With all due respect to the dedicated and passionate scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, but Northglenn High School students Joseph Zuniga and Alecsander Morain’s main goal was to “convert this study into a manageable format for normal people,” Morain explains.

The study in question was a recently published paper finding that children’s early interactions with music shape—but don’t determine—their musical lives decades later. The research, based on 40 years of data from surveys of 1,900 people in The Colorado Adoption/Twin Study of Lifespan Behavioral Development and Cognitive Aging (CATSLife), also considered shifting genetic and environmental influences.

Northglenn High School senior Carla Camacho holds the graphic novel that she and her fellow students created from an Institute for Behavioral Genetics study.

“It took quite a few readings to understand what the study was saying,” Zuniga says, and Morain adds, “and even then, we get to the results and there’s this graph that makes zero sense.”

Daniel Gustavson, first author of the study and a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� assistant research professor in the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG), was standing fairly near as Zuniga and Morain expressed their honest opinions, but no hard feelings. That insight was why the two young men, along with more than 100 of their fellow Northglenn High School students, were gathered at the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC) Thursday morning.

They were participating in a program envisioned and led by Analicia Howard, a psychology and neuroscience PhD student and Gustavson’s research colleague at the IBG. The program, which is funded by a Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship grant, is part of a broader research study called Comunidad, which is centered at IBG but has collaborators across campus and at Washington University.

“We were designing this study so that the community we’re most interested in, which is here in Colorado, is more involved in that development part of the study—that they are engaged in every aspect of research,” Howard explains, adding that a lot of effort in the first several years of community-based research like theirs should be focused on building partnerships.

“An issue with academia in general is there’s such a tough history with a lot of scientific research, especially if it includes human subjects in marginalized communities. So, we’re wanting to connect with the community in a way that’s mutually beneficial and leverage community partnerships in the future with established, trusted organizations. Schools felt like a natural segue to reaching broader audiences and meeting our goal of communicating science better. We were asking, ‘How do we communicate in a way that’s engaging, in a way that reaches the communities we’re interested in reaching?’”

They thought: Let’s ask the students.

Explaining science better

The idea is straightforward: select a handful of IBG research papers and ask students, working in groups, to choose one and create a project focused on how to better communicate the science to their broader community.

Howard and Gustavson approached Northglenn High School because CU Science Discovery and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research had previously worked with students and faculty there, “so there was already an established relationship and trust,” Howard says.

As a STEM high school, Northglenn requires every class to have an aspect of STEM, “but we were still thinking in terms of the accessibility of the science when we were choosing the papers, because the theme of genetics can be difficult to parse if you’re fairly new to it,” Gustavson says.

Meet the student award winners

Award for scientific accuracy

Ricardo Ayala
Brandon Diaz Renteria
Maddy Duncan
Alex Dunn
Caleb Ewudzi-Acquah

Award for innovation

Alex Trillo Salais
Will Watt
Joey Marquez
Angel Mendoza Maldonado
Frankie Pillar Cornell

Award for accessible presentation

Carla Camacho
Jane Heslop
Kimberly Olivas
Aylin Ramirez

The IBG scientists selected six of their papers that centered on topics that might be interesting to teenagers—video games, music, mental health—and presented them to Amy Murillo’s and Cheyenne Rost’s multicultural literature classes.

“Every year we incorporate a practice-based learning project into the curriculum, and we thought this was a real-world opportunity that the kids could grab onto,” Murillo says. “It’s been part of our research and analysis unit, so for the first few weeks we were talking about things like misinformation and fake news and why it’s important to read these studies.”

Then Murillo and Rost and about 120 students—all seniors except for one junior graduating early—arrayed across four classes spent a week reading a practice study.

“We were going through it step by step, learning how to read a scientific paper and trying to give them the autonomy to make mistakes and learn from them,” Rost says. “We were talking about things like how to understand results and how a layman would understand the jargon.”

Howard and Gustavson also visited the classes to answer questions once students had chosen the papers on which they’d focus their projects.

Thinking creatively about science

As for the projects, “we knew we had to make the paper simpler,” says Joselyn Ramirez, who along with classmate Genessis Garcia chose an IBG-led study finding that playing video games didn’t show consistent associations with impulsivity, but rather screentime in general is associated with impulsive tendencies in adulthood.

“There was a lot of stuff where I had to go back and go back and go back because I didn’t understand it,” Ramirez says, and Garcia adds that if they, as students at a STEM high school, had such difficulty understanding the study, what would it be like for a non-scientist community member to try reading it?

So they created interactive videos, which they showed on a screen they set up on their display table Thursday morning.

Zuniga and Morain also thought to adapt the music research to a format Murillo and Rost teach their students—a recipe, with ingredients, steps and finished product. Students also were encouraged to think creatively and in multimedia terms as they designed their projects, so Zuniga and Morain created a survey on a poster board on which event attendees could mark the kind of instrument they’d like to play.

For Carla Camacho, Jane Heslop, Kimberly Olivas and Aylin Ramirez, thinking creatively about communicating the science meant writing, designing and drawing a graphic novel. They also chose the video games and impulsivity research and created a story about two twins, Samantha and Sammy, and how each is affected by screen time.

“The study is based on twin research, so we thought that’s where we should start,” says Camacho, who drew the final graphic novel.

“There was a lot of rewriting and rewording, because we were summarizing and trying to use simpler words,” says Heslop, who drew the original storyboards for the novel. “But I think I have better time management and better communication skills now, because we had to think about what we really needed to say and how we should say it in a way that people would understand.”

The students’ projects were judged Thursday by volunteer IBG faculty members and graduate students, and part of the judges’ assessment was how clearly students expressed their ideas on how to communicate science better.

“Definitely more visual appeal,” says Chloe Ibarra, who with classmate Alejandra Franco also chose the video games and impulsivity study. “If you look at the study, there’s nothing that really catches your eye, but if you look at ours,” and she indicates a poster on an easel behind them that takes a vision board approach to communicating the science, “there’s color everywhere and it’s interesting to look at.”

For Isaac Aranda and his project partners Josue Sanchez and Leo Lin, who also chose the video games and impulsivity study, a key to communicating science is using language that people will understand: “We had to look a lot of stuff up,” Aranda says, “and I don’t know if everyone would have the patience to do that.”

But it’s important to find the right words and the right way to talk about the science, Sanchez says, because “this study isn’t saying video games are bad, it’s really saying we shouldn’t be on our phones all the time.”

Alejandra Franco (left) and Chloe Ibarra (right) with their project that emphasizes the need for visual interest when communicating science.

Institute for Behavioral Genetics scientist Daniel Gustavson (right) talks with Northglenn High School students about their science communication project.

IBG research associate Jeff Lessem (left) talks with Kimberly Olivas (center) and Carla Camacho (right) about their science communication project, which won the award for most accessible presentation.

Alecsander Morain (left) and Joseph Zuniga (right) with their project communicating research finding that children’s early interactions with music shape—but don’t determine—their musical lives decades later.

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In a program with Northglenn High School students, Institute for Behavioral Genetics researchers ask for creative and innovative ideas on how to talk about science.

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Top image: Northglenn High School students explain their science communication project to IBG judges. (All photos by Arielle Wiedenbeck/PACES)

Young voices must rise in the climate conversation

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:27:51 +0000

Young voices must rise in the climate conversation Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 14:27

Cody DeBos

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� geography PhD student Ethan Carr joins colleagues worldwide to confront climate change across continents

Ethan Carr has always been drawn to cold places. Growing up, he spent summers exploring national parks and winters immersed in the stark beauty of Alaska.

Now, as a PhD student in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Geography, he spends his days researching the world’s melting ice and participating in an innovative youth leadership forum alongside fellow climate activists from around the world.

They are part of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum, an ambitious new initiative connecting young people from mountain and polar regions to amplify voices in the climate fight and search for new solutions.

“Not everybody needs to be a scientist or a strict climate activist to have an impact. Really, all you need is to have a voice and a passion for it," says Ethan Carr, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� PhD student in geography. (Photo: Ethan Carr)

From soldier to scientist

“It’s been a long, kind of windy road to get to where I’m at today,” Carr says.

That road, it turns out, began at West Point.

Carr didn’t originally set out to become a climate researcher when he enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But a mandatory earth-science course nicknamed “DIRT” sparked an interest he didn’t know he had.

“That was kind of the first time I realized that you can make a career out of studying and being in really cool environments while you do it,” he says.

After graduating in 2020 and serving as an infantry officer, Carr’s career was redirected by an injury, forcing him to reassess his path forward. Business school wasn’t appealing, but geography still was.

“I took a couple of pre-MBA courses and couldn’t have been more bored in those,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘I have this geography degree, I might as well try to make a career out of it.’”

That decision led him to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, one of the country’s top hubs for cryosphere research. He moved to the area before even getting into grad school, taking a chance on himself that would soon pay dividends.

First came a master’s degree. Then he turned his attention to pursuing a PhD in geography with support from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Climate leadership across continents

Carr was recently named part of the inaugural class of youth champions in the HKH - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum, a yearlong fellowship launched by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal. The forum brings together 12 young leaders from some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions.

Carr first saw the application on LinkedIn and was intrigued not just by the opportunity, but by the forum’s emphasis on public education and policy.

“One thing I’ve realized in my scientific journey so far is you have a lot of scientists who are obviously very intelligent, but not everyone wants to engage in public education, especially on the policy side,” Carr says.

Coming from a military background, he was already used to thinking geopolitically, so he saw the forum as a way to merge science with diplomacy while making a real impact.

“Within our cohort, we represent nations that are some of the largest emitters, being the U.S., China, and India,” Carr explains. “But we also have representatives from some of the countries that are experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand.”

While studying at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Ethan Carr took a mandatory earth-science course nicknamed “DIRT” that sparked an interest he didn’t know he had. (Photo: Ethan Carr)

In the Arctic, Carr points to the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, a reality threatening both biodiversity in the region and Indigenous fishing economies. Meanwhile, countries like Pakistan, Nepal, and India, home to thousands of Himalayan glaciers, are confronting retreating ice sheets that underpin their water security.

“We see a lot of similarities in how things are changing, but this collaboration shows the kind of differences in who’s being affected and the populations being affected more so,” he says.

Data meet lived experience

As part of his doctoral work, Carr studies glacial lake outburst floods in Greenland—events in which meltwater lakes suddenly burst through glaciers, often with destructive force. He relies on satellite data to track water levels, but he’s also learned to listen to what local people are witnessing on the ground.

“Local fishermen have been noticing trends where, after these drainage events, they see an increase in primary productivity in local fjords. That has a significant impact on fishing for the year,” he says.

“That’s not something I would have expected as a scientist just looking at satellite imagery.”

This experience is one among many that has shaped Carr’s belief in combining scientific knowledge and the lived experiences of those native to the regions being studied. It also helped reinforce his understanding of the importance of bringing more voices to the table.

“Our generation and the generation after us are going to be the ones that are inheriting the climate mess we’ve been given by former generations, so those voices need to be heard,” he says.

Speaking of his fellow members on the leadership forum, Carr adds, “These are people that are passionate and empowered youth that have good ideas.”

A global generation

Carr sees connection as a unique advantage in his generation’s ability to catalyze change in the climate arena.

“We’re the most globalized generation there has ever been. My parents couldn’t pick up the phone and directly communicate with someone living in Bangladesh or Bhutan. But we can do that and form genuine working relationships with somebody 12 hours across the globe and work on projects that connect our regions,” he says.

He says the ability to collaborate across borders and cultures is a crucial advantage in the fight against climate change.

But so is perspective.

In his conversations with peers in South Asia, Carr has come to appreciate just how immediate the crisis is elsewhere and why people closer to home might not be able to recognize the urgency.

“In the U.S., I think sometimes we can be kind of separate from understanding what’s really happening in the world. Obviously, we’ve had massive disasters, but we’re not going to be seeing the 10-, 15-million people being displaced in Southeast Asia if sea level rises a few centimeters,” he says.

Ethan Carr (bottom row, left) and his colleagues in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum. (Photo: Ethan Carr)

“These are real impacts happening on that side of the world that we can be pretty ignorant to in the U.S., and it’s something I’ve become way more aware about after talking with folks from over there. They have a lot more urgency in their fight for climate solutions because they can’t afford to wait as long as other parts of the world can,” he adds.

A message for future climate leaders

When asked what he would say to those who feel overwhelmed by the negativity surrounding climate change, Carr doesn’t hesitate. He knows the scale of the crisis can feel suffocating, but he’s also quick to challenge the idea that only scientists belong in the fight.

“Not everybody needs to be a scientist or a strict climate activist to have an impact. Really, all you need is to have a voice and a passion for it,” he says.

Carr believes that the most effective climate solutions will come not just from labs or policy think tanks, but from every corner of society. In fact, he sees this diversity of thought as essential.

“We need climate-minded people in all professions, from business to economics, engineering, and especially journalism. The more we talk about it, the more awareness we can bring to the issue,” he says.

He also sees a need to reframe how climate change is discussed.

“The same rhetoric that’s been used the last few decades of, ‘This is bad because our planet is warming up, and we aren’t going to be able to live,’ hasn’t delivered. Changing how we discuss it to focus on what climate change will do in certain regions and how it will affect local people and economies, I think, is a better way to look at it,” Carr says.

More than anything, Carr encourages young people to speak up and get involved—even if they don’t have a degree or defined role yet.

“The world needs the youth to step up in these spaces. Don’t wait to be asked. Make a space for yourself and move into it. Use your voice to make good things happen in the world.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� geography PhD student Ethan Carr joins colleagues worldwide to confront climate change across continents.

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Top image: Ethan Carr (third from left) and fellow member of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum (Photo: Ethan Carr)

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� commits to green chemistry

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 18:47:17 +0000

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� commits to green chemistry Rachel Sauer Tue, 11/04/2025 - 11:47

Rachel Sauer

In May, campus leaders signed the Green Chemistry Commitment to practice and teach sustainable chemistry—an effort being encouraged and advanced by students

For much of the history of chemistry, the science was done how it was done—with fleeting or no thought given to things like lab energy consumption or the environmental persistence of toxic chemicals used in experiments. Those things were simply considered the wages of scientific progress.

As early as the 1940s, however, some chemists began asking if there were better, less hazardous, less environmentally damaging ways to do the science. By the 1990s, chemists Paul Anastas and John Warner had given a name to this new approach: green chemistry. In their 1998 book Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, they detailed the 12 principles of green chemistry, which include preventing waste rather than trying to treat it or clean it up after the fact and designing chemical products to preserve efficacy of function while reducing toxicity.

Since that time, green chemistry has become a movement as universities and labs around the world evolve the practice and teaching of chemistry to reduce its impact on environmental and human health and safety.

In May, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Chancellor Justin Schwartz and Department of Chemistry Chair Wei Zhang signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, not only committing ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� to green chemistry in practice and principle but joining a worldwide network of universities working to expand the community of green chemists and affect lasting change in chemistry education.

The University of Colorado Boulder has been very involved in the green chemistry movement, and in May Chancellor Justin Schwartz and then-Department of Chemistry Chair Wei Zhang signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, not only committing ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� to green chemistry in practice and principle, but joining a worldwide network of universities working to expand the community of green chemists and affect lasting change in chemistry education.

“Signing (the Green Chemistry Commitment) is an important step toward integrating green chemistry into curriculum, theory, toxicology and lab applications,” says Forrest Yegge, chair of the Green Chemistry CU Student Government (CUSG) Environmental Board subcommittee and a junior studying philosophy and ecology and evolutionary biology.

“Social justice-wise, I think it’s our responsibility to be more aware of the effects we are having on the environment,” adds Jules Immonen, a first-year student studying chemistry who serves as secretary of the CUSG Environmental Board. “Obviously, sustainability is something I’m passionate about, but even people who aren’t should be able to learn how to incorporate these practices in an easy way.”

Doing better chemistry

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� embrace of green chemistry has been growing for years, says Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Green Labs Program manager. The Department of Chemistry and Green Labs have been partnering on green chemistry efforts on campus, leading initiatives on everything from education opportunities to sustainable lab practices. Signing the Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC) is an important step, Ramirez-Aguilar says: “It’s a huge opportunity to involve students in designing curriculum, and it aligns with CU’s Climate Action Plan outlined last year.” In fact, she adds, members of the CUSG Environmental Board have been at the vanguard of bringing the GCC to the attention of campus leadership.

Ashley Ley, a chemistry graduate candidate and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee, emphasizes that green chemistry is most importantly about practice, not just theory. “If you look at someone like Dr. (Jacquie) Richardson, she’s been making changes to methods, working toward greener methods using less harmful chemicals in the Organic Chemistry Teaching Labs. In Organic Chemistry 2, there’s a lab focused on atom economy, and one of the previous (Green Labs Chemistry) team leads worked with Dr. Richardson to incorporate acetone recycling, so now organic chemistry teaching labs only use recycled acetone for cleaning.

“These labs have also started using water recirculatory buckets because there are reflux reactions where you need a ton of water and normally it would go through the condensers and down the sink. Now it’s being recirculated, and we’re saving a lot of water. Last summer, they incorporated no-touch doors in the labs [as part of a collaborative project with Green Labs], so you can get in and out of the labs without having to take off your gloves.”

In another campuswide green chemistry application, Amrita George, a professional research assistant of many years in the Department of Integrative Physiology and volunteer lead for the Green Labs Team, is working on introducing a chemical sharing initiative in which research labs share chemicals within their research building.

Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar (left), ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Green Labs Program manager, and Matt Wise (right), director of chemistry instruction and Department of Chemistry associate chair, give a presentation about incorporating green chemistry into the introductory chemistry curriculum. (Photo: Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar)

“This has a lot of support from the Environmental Health and Safety group,” George says. “It aligns with one of the principles of green chemistry, which is to reduce the total amount of hazardous chemicals used and, therefore, waste created. [The initiative] allows researchers to see the chemical inventory of other labs within their building and share amongst themselves rather than ordering new stocks for each lab, which is usually what researchers do. Often these stocks sit on the shelf and expire before the lab ever uses them again.”

Ramirez-Aguilar adds that the chemical sharing initiative is also a money saver for labs by reducing purchasing—which also benefits a reduction in carbon emissions similar to a campuswide focus on reducing labs’ energy consumption, as labs are among the most energy-intensive spaces on campus.

Valentina Osorio, a chemistry graduate student and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee, adds that General Chemistry teaching faculty have adapted student experiments and lab processes so that they can use drops of a chemical rather than milliliters of it. This makes a significant difference when thousands of students are conducting the experiments each year.

Performing research sustainably

While the benefits of green chemistry practice and teaching are broad and affect many communities and populations, among those most affected are students, says Ana Curry, a chemistry graduate student and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee: “I’m currently working in materials chemistry, and I believe strongly that if my research is focused on sustainability, I should also be performing that research sustainably.”

Osorio notes that while her research focus is environmental chemistry, “I’m studying the impacts of air and water pollution, and while I’m not really synthesizing anything, what I’m researching is largely impacted by what humans are doing.”

Yegge adds that in addition to the environmental and social justice benefits of green chemistry, “as I prepare for grad school and I’m increasingly worried about securing funding, I think that sustainable practices on campus and in labs are crucial for resilience in academia and in research. We need to be adopting these strategies so we can keep doing the science we’re doing.”

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In May, campus leaders signed the Green Chemistry Commitment to practice and teach sustainable chemistry—an effort being encouraged and advanced by students.

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Students finding strength in numbers

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 20:57:16 +0000

Students finding strength in numbers Rachel Sauer Wed, 10/29/2025 - 14:57

Participants in the Colorado Math Circle engage in a hands-on math learning activity. (Photo: Silva Chang)

Rachel Sauer

Started by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� applied mathematics Teaching Professor Silva Chang, Colorado Math Circle is celebrating 20 years of bringing middle and high school students together in a community that has fun with math

It’s not always easy to be the student who does math for fun.

Even if the other kids aren’t weird about it, they still might not understand, so sometimes it can be easier to just brush it off. “Oh, math? Yeah, it’s OK.” But no, math is wonderful.

When one of Silva Chang’s high school teachers showed her a brochure for the six-week Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) program, she wasn’t necessarily doing math for fun in her free time, but she was very good at it.

Silva Chang, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� teaching professor of applied mathematics, was inspired to start the Colorado Math Circle in part from her high school experience in the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program.

“I think he knew that I needed to get out of the city,” recalls Chang, a University of Colorado Boulder full teaching professor of applied mathematics. “My parents were not college educated, they didn’t speak English, so I think he saw it as an opportunity that would open up my worldview.

“(HCSSiM) was a program where we did math 24-7, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had. I can say I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today if I hadn’t had that experience. (The program) was transformative, it made math really fun, it made it silly, it presented math as an art form that’s not just useful for practical applications, but that’s beautiful by itself.”

Chang’s experiences at HCSSiM inspired her 20 years ago to start the Colorado Math Circle, an extracurricular organization that offers opportunities and mentoring for middle and high school math enthusiasts around Colorado. Further, she was interviewed about how HCSSiM inspired her for the documentary “Hunting Yellow Pigs,” of which there will be a free screening at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2, in Benson Earth Sciences room 180.

“I knew of certain students along the Front Range—all top students, some nationally ranked—and I wanted to be able to bring them together so they would have peer support,” Chang explains of starting Colorado Math Circle in 2005. “Some students can find peers, but some can’t. If you say, ‘I enjoy doing math problems all day,’ people might laugh at you, and you might try to hide that interest. I thought there should be a place where students didn’t have to hide their enthusiasm for math.”

‘Come and enjoy math’

For Chang, an interest in math grew from attending John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, New York, a school with a nontraditional pass/fail grading system and a longer, eight-hour day that allowed students to take more classes and explore their interests.

If you go

What: Free special screening of “Hunting Yellow Pigs,” a documentary about the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program

When: 3:30-5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2

Where: Benson Earth Sciences room 180

Chang’s parents had emigrated from southeast China, and while they may not have been intimately familiar with the vagaries of the U.S. educational system, they knew that education led to opportunity, Chang says. However, when Chang’s teacher suggested she attend the six-week HCSSiM, her parents initially didn’t understand the significance.

With some parental convincing and bolstered by her membership on a New York City-wide high school team of top math students, Chang applied and was accepted. Initially, her family was asked to pay a small amount to attend, “and my parents said no. They didn’t have a lot of money, but I don’t think that was their reason. They were nervous about me leaving home. So, someone from HCSSiM called me up and said, ‘You turned down the acceptance, can you tell us why?’ and I said the reason was financial, so they offered a full scholarship.”

HCSSiM was started by Hampshire College founding faculty member David Kelly, who died June 20. Program organizers describe it as “college-level mathematics for talented and highly motivated high school students. It is demanding and expanding. Participants spend a major portion of each day actively engaged in doing mathematics (not simply learning the results of mathematics).”

“(David Kelly) was running the program when I attended in the 1970s, and he set the tone,” Chang says. “He just made it fun. Some of us were coming from more competitive or grade-oriented backgrounds, but his perspective was, ‘Come and enjoy math. Math is fun, math is beautiful, get what you can out of this program, take away what you can.’ They were teaching fairly high-level math, but it wasn’t competitive at all. It was like, ‘Let’s all do math together, let’s all learn together.’”

Creating a community

Participants in the Colorado Math Circle engage in a hands-on math learning activity. (Photo: Silva Chang)

After Chang came to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and her children entered high school, she began thinking that she’d like to create a program similar in spirit and practice to HCSSiM, where students could come have fun doing math with others who love it, too. She also thought about the New York City-wide math team of which she’d been a member and wondered if there was a way to combine the two.

In 2005, she began contacting Front Range high schools and students to assemble a 15-member team that would compete in the 2006 American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) national math competition at the University of Nevada. The team won first place in its division that year “and that was very motivating,” Chang recalls, “because we were competing against teams from around the country.”

Colorado Math Circle has sent a team comprised of students from around Colorado to that competition every year since, but after that first year Chang thought it was important to create a place for students who may not want to compete but who want to get together to do, discuss and learn math.

During the school year, students either come to the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� campus or participate in weekly problem-solving Zoom sessions. Initially created with a focus on high school students, Colorado Math Circle grew to include middle school students and help those who are interested prepare for the MATHCOUNTS competition.

“The first year we were more focused on preparing for competition, but after that we expanded it to a place where students could come learn about a variety of math topics,” Chang says. “Members of my department have come to give talks about their work, and we’ve been doing it long enough that we have math circle alumni coming back now.”

For the first 17 years of Colorado Math Circle, Chang was the sole director, but now program alumnus Thomas Davids serves as co-director and ARML coach.

In its 20 years, Colorado Math Circle has steadily grown; last year, more than 110 students from 45 Colorado schools participated. Over the years, students from as far as Grand Junction, Pueblo and Rangely have participated. “We don’t draw many students from any one school—the two largest are Fairview and Cherry Creek—it’s often one student from one school,” Chang says. “The main goal of the Colorado Math Circle is to teach students math, yes, and teach them problem-solving skills, but what we really provide is a community.

“These students teach themselves a lot of math, so the need we fill is helping them to create a community of friends who love math, too.”

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Top image: The 2023 Colorado Math Circle team that competed in the American Regions Mathematics League national competition, coached by program alumnus Thomas Davids (far left, holding plaque). (Photo: Silva Chang)

Fifty years of Fiske, 50 years of hits

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:23:24 +0000

Fifty years of Fiske, 50 years of hits Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/29/2025 - 18:23

Alexandra Phelps

Love the music and laser shows at Fiske? They’re the work of a dedicated team of students led by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� astronomy alumnus Jeremy Osowski

When looking at over 50 years of music hits, how would you narrow down the list to only 15 songs? This difficult question led to the creation of Fiske Planetarium’s 50th anniversary music show, which debuted Friday.

Fiske Planetarium is kicking off its 50th anniversary, and what better way to celebrate than with some historical hits? “Flashback at Fiske,” a music and laser show that combines the iconic music of the previous five decades and space, will leave people walking out with the line between science and art blurred, say its creators.

The man behind the lasers

Jeremy Osowski is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� astronomy graduate, Fiske Planetarium music show lead and visual arts specialist.

The man behind the show is Jeremy Osowski, a University of Colorado Boulder astronomy graduate, Fiske Planetarium music show lead and visual arts specialist.

Osowski began at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� in the aerospace engineering program. However, after taking some time to consider his interests, he decided to study astronomy. During his undergraduate studies, he worked at Noodles & Company and was offered the position of assistant general manager. Needing the weekend to consider the offer, he attended a show at Fiske Planetarium and realized that students were the ones running the show.

Equipped with no experience, he walked into the planetarium the next day and asked about a job. Initially, he was told that he could scan tickets and sweep floors. Osowski remembers thinking, “‘That sounds like a good gig to me.’ For the first two years I was an usher, scanning tickets, doing odds-and-ends things. Being a junior, there wasn’t a lot of availability in moving up and navigating and presenting in the planetarium. But what did have an opening was the outreach program.”

Working in the outreach program, he began presenting Fiske’s inflatable planetarium, solar telescope and meteorites lab at area schools. When COVID-19 hit, he was able to work at home with one of the laptops that contained the software the planetarium used to develop the music shows and began to experiment with the visuals and the playlists. During a livestream performance, he consulted on the playlist and performed some of the visuals. Finally, his bosses were beginning to see he knew how to put together a show.

When in-person shows resumed, Osowski got his break. One night the music show navigator was MIA while he was ushering. Despite starting out on the sidelines, he jumped in to save the show. Afterwards, he was hired as a temp worker with a nine-month term limit before a required hiatus. During his break, he worked as a dark skies ranger at Great Basin National Park in Nevada. Thursdays through Saturdays, he guided hikes, led telescope observing sessions and more. He enjoyed this so much he made steps toward a career in teaching, first as a substitute teacher and then considering a master’s in teaching at CU Denver, but life had other plans for him.

Flashback at Fiske

A laser show for the decades, "Flashback at Fiske" is a retrospective of iconic music spanning five decades accompanied by Fiske's legendary artistic laser and liquid sky wizardry. "Flashback at Fiske" will play weekends through May 2026, and the next show is Saturday, Oct. 4, at 10 p.m.

Learn more

Three years ago, he was pulled back into Fiske’s orbit when Director John Keller told him about the new Science through Shadows educational program, which focuses on eclipses, occultations and transits. Osowski applied to manage the program and got the position. Now his job is 75% managing the program and 25% managing the music shows.

One of the shows that Osowski has been working to create is Fiske’s 50th anniversary show, “Flashback at Fiske.”

Five decades of hits

The “Flashback at Fiske” playlist began with five decades of Billboard Hot 100 charts, Rolling Stone magazine and other music charts. Searching for what songs were popular or celebrated was the easiest way to begin planning the playlist. After Osowski had narrowed the list down to around 100 songs, he shared it with the rest of Fiske’s staff. Together, they voted on songs. “It came down to what songs were popular in those decades and what songs flowed together best,” Osowski explains. After the challenging process of debating and voting, Osowski and his colleagues managed to narrow the playlist to 15 songs.

It was hard to only pick a few songs from each decade,” he explains. “But I looked at 1975—the year we opened—and one of the top songs was Pink Floyd’s ‘Welcome to the Machine,’ and I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, so it’s a nod to all (my) planetarium shows; I have to have a Pink Floyd song.”

There is a lot of personal touch within the playlist, he adds; despite some of the songs being iconic, they still hold a, special place for many of the staff who contributed to the project. “There’s one song from the ’80s that not many people may know, but it’s our director’s favorite song,” he says. “I tried to keep it either songs people will remember listening to or that embody the feeling of the decade or genre it comes from.”

Visually, the song choices played an important role in creating the laser imagery, he says, adding that the artist who created the graphics for the featured Beyoncé song wanted them to mirror the pop sound of the song. If the song is EDM or bass music, for example, there are more beam lasers that shoot over audience members’ heads.

Because it’s a planetarium, the base of all shows is the specialized planetarium software, DigitalSky2. Within the music shows, including the 50th anniversary show, there is the element of being flown through space by the navigator: “I like to say we blend science, nature and art,” Osowski says. “I like to drop science on people without them realizing they’re learning.”

Throughout the fall of 2025 and more dates coming in 2026, different students will run the same show. Although the playlist and lasers will remain the same, the students have full creative freedom to choose what space imagery they want to use. This allows visitors to be flown through different parts of space each performance.

A full roster of shows

While the 50th anniversary music show has been months in the making and is a highlight in commemorating Fiske’s milestone anniversary, the planetarium is maintaining its full calendar of science and other music shows.

All of Fiske Planetarium’s shows are an hour long and the usual schedule is three shows a night on Thursdays through Sundays—one science show followed by two music shows. The music shows used to be designated Laser Sky or Liquid Sky, but among other changes, Osowski is blending the two styles.

One of the most challenging aspects of Fiske’s show, he says, is that they don't change every week like in movie theatres. Osowski considers how once people have seen a show with a certain artist, they may believe they don’t need to see it again because it won’t have changed. He is working to create shows that change from one year to the next, allowing fans to consistently experience something new.

Osowski says he and the team of students and staff are working hard to develop new shows, and that all of Fiske’s shows are either student-made or student-run. He notes Caroline’s Classic Rock Show, which features hits of the 1960s and 1970s and debuted Sept. 19, adding that it sold out by Sept. 16. Another show showcases Ariana Grande’s hits, and Osowski is currently creating a Twenty One Pilots show. Part of the art of putting together this and other shows is featuring an artist’s hit but not making it a “greatest hits show,” he says. Often, creating shows means finding a balance between what Osowski or his colleagues like and what they believe the audience will want to hear.

Fiske Planetarium is more than just a venue for the light shows; it’s a place for learners of all ages. The planetarium hosts K-12 field trips and CU student classes during the day, so Osowski and his colleagues have been creating music shows that cater to those audiences.

A surprise career

When Osowski took an astronomy class in high school, he didn’t believe he could make a career out of it. Working on the MAVEN Mission with spacecraft and model data, he realized that it was the science behind space and not building that he was interested in.

“When I started doing outreach with the planetarium, I realized what I really loved was sharing science with people,” he says. “I would much rather be going to a school or setting up a solar telescope in front of the planetarium and interacting with others than working on a computer by myself.”

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Love the music and laser shows at Fiske? They’re the work of a dedicated team of students led by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� astronomy alumnus Jeremy Osowski.

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Tales as old as time … yet we still love them

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 15:36:10 +0000

Tales as old as time … yet we still love them Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/04/2025 - 09:36

Rachel Sauer

With yet another Snow White adaptation currently in theaters, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Suzanne Magnanini reflects on the enduring appeal of fairy tales

Once upon a time—this time, in fact, and many of the ones that came before it—there was a story that never grew dull in its telling.

It possibly leaped the porous cultural and national borders of narrative, carried by caravans or ships or ethernet cables and planted in the ready imaginations of successive generations of story lovers—those who tell them and those who hear them.

Maybe it’s the story of a young person who ventures into the unknown, where they encounter magic and beasts of all sizes and a resolution specific to the tale’s time and place. Maybe there really even are fairies involved.

Suzanne Magnanini, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of Italian and chair of the Department of French and Italian, notes that fairy tales' malleability helps them remain fresh and relevant over centuries of retellings.

And we never seem to tire of hearing about them.

The recent theatrical release of Disney’s live-action Snow White—one of countless retellings of the tale over more than 400 years—highlights the place of honor that fairy tales occupy in cultures around the world and in the hearts of people hearing them for the first time or the thousandth.

One of the reasons they remain fresh through countless years and iterations is their malleability, says Suzanne Magnanini, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of Italian and chair of the Department of French and Italian. “The Italian author Italo Calvino, who also edited a seminal collection of Italian folktales, writes of fairy tales as being like a stone fruit, where you have that hard core center that is always the same—you’ll usually recognize a Sleeping Beauty story, for example—but the fruit can be radically different around that.”

Stories of time and place

As a researcher, Magnanini has published broadly on fairy tales, including her 2008 book Fairy-Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the Fairy Tales of Straparola and Basile. She began studying fairy tales while working on her PhD, finding in them a fascinating dovetailing between her interests in monstrosity and otherness.

“As a scholar, I take what’s called a social-historical approach,” she explains. “I’m really interested in all those little details that link a tale to a very precise place in time where it was told, and I’ve written about the ways in which fairy tales are used to elaborate on and think about scientific theories of reproduction that hadn’t really been nailed down at the time—questions that were still being circulated about whether humans could interbreed with animals, for example, and would that produce a monstrous child?

“You look at a some variations of Beauty and the Beast, like Giovan Francesco Straparola’s story of a pig king, where it’s a magical version of these questions, and maybe what’s actually happening is that fairy tales are a way to think through the anxieties and interests of the time.”

Fairy Tales at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��

The ATU Index is one of the search elements that Suzanne Magnanini and her students are including as they develop the database for Fairy Tales at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��. The project aims, in part, to improve access and searchability of the more than 2,000 fairy tale collections that are part of the Rare Books Collection at Norlin Library.

The project is a partnership between undergraduates and graduate students under the direction of Magnanini and Sean Babbs, instruction coordinator for the University Libraries' Rare and Distinctive Collections, as well as Hope Saska, CU Art Museum acting director and chief curator, who has trained students in visual-thinking strategies. The project is supported by Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, the ASSETT Innovation Incubator, the President’s Teaching Scholars Program and the University Libraries.

Fairy Tales at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� will host a showcase of CU's fairy tale collection from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. April 16 in Norlin Library M350B. Learn more here.

Though fairy tales may be spun in response to what’s happening in a specific time and place, they also often address concerns that aren’t specific to one location or culture but are broadly pondered across humanity. “Andrew Teverson has written that fairy tales are literature’s migrants because they can move across borders, they can move across boundaries and then make themselves at home and assimilate to a certain extent in different cultures,” Magnanini says.

For example, the Brothers Grimm heard a tale called “Sneewittchen” (Snow White) from folklorist Marie Hassenpflug, as well as from other sources, and included it as tale No. 53 in their seminal 1812 Grimm’s Fairy Tales. However, says Magnanini, there was a similar tale called “The Young Slave” in Giambattista Basile’s 1634 work Pentamerone. In fact, Snow White is type 709 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index), which catalogs and describes common motifs and themes in fairy tales and folklore around the world.

Not so happily ever after

The origins of many fairy tales can be traced as far back as ancient Greece, Rome and China, Magnanini says, which speaks to their ability not only to help people of particular times and places explore their anxieties and questions, but to address the feelings that have been central to the human condition almost since our species emerged from caves.

“When I think about fairy tales, I think about number of characteristics that make them really appealing across time and space,” Magnanini says. “If you think about it, the protagonists are almost always young people heading out into the world—much like our students are heading out—leaving home behind, having to make their way in world, facing challenges. That experience can be very transformational, so in a way these stories are all about metamorphosis and change.

“A lot of times that’s when you’re living your life in Technicolor and all the emotions are new. So, even if you’re no longer in that moment of life, fairy tales tap into experiences like the first falling in love, the first adventure from home. And they often end right after the wedding, so you don’t see someone having to do their taxes or being like, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve been in this relationship for 30 years and I’m bored.’ I think part of the reason we don’t get tired of fairy tales is because they capture this fleeting time in life.”

“If you think about it, the (fairy tale) protagonists are almost always young people heading out into the world—much like our students are heading out—leaving home behind, having to make their way in world, facing challenges," says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Suzanne Magnanini. (Photo: Disney Studios)

While fairy tales, particularly as they’ve been interpreted and simplified by Disney, are stereotyped as having “and they lived happily ever after” endings, fairy tales pre-Disney more commonly ended with justice served, Magnanini says. For example, the version of “Snow White” in the 1812 Grimm’s Fairy Tales ends with the evil queen being forced to step into a pair of red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, it’s the happy ending that’s the appeal of fairy tales,’ but it’s important to remember the vast majority of fairy tales end with the deliverance of justice—something really unjust has happened, someone has been discriminated against, there’s some evil in the world, and justice is delivered,” Magnanini explains. “People who study the formal aspects of fairy tales always talk about how the ‘happy ending’ is found in justice.

“Disney Studios has a tendency to remove the ambiguity from these tales and remove most of the violence—simplifying them in a lot of ways. If you read the French version of Beauty and the Beast, Charles Perrault’s version, there were other siblings in there; there was a complex family structure with complex interactions and a lot of really heavy issues—the family must deal with economic disaster.”

In fact, the field of fairy tale scholarship addresses everything from feminist interpretations of the stories to the ways in which children use fairy tales to help navigate psychosexual rites of passage. Generations of authors have told and continue to retell these familiar stories through different lenses of gender, sexuality, geography, racial identity, economic status and many, many others.

“What makes these stories different, and what I think is a big part of the appeal of fairy tales, is the magic or the marvel,” Magnanini says. “For it to be a fairy tale, scholars would say there has to be magic in there—not just the presence of magic, but magic that facilitates the happy ending by allowing the protagonist to overcome whatever obstacles are in the way of what they desire, maybe the marriage, the wealth, the happy ending. There’s something so satisfying about that, because it doesn’t happen in your quotidian day-to-day life. I mean, imagine if you met a talking deer.”

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With yet another Snow White adaptation currently in theaters, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Suzanne Magnanini reflects on the enduring appeal of fairy tales.

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Top image: Disney Studios

CU prof fighting to keep Latin classes alive through video storytelling

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:51:17 +0000

CU prof fighting to keep Latin classes alive through video storytelling Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/01/2025 - 09:51

Cody DeBos

For Reina Callier, learning Latin ‘is like lifting weights for your brain’

When a student in one of Reina Callier’s Latin classes said, “I came for the language, I stayed for the vibes,” she laughed, but the phrase stuck with her.

It captured something essential about Latin classrooms. Beyond conjugations and declensions, they offer students a haven for community, curiosity and a shared passion for the ancient world.

In recent years, though, that community has been shrinking.

Reina Callier, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� teaching assistant professor of classics, notes that “Latin survives because people love it. And as long as we keep sharing that love, it’s not going anywhere.”

“Enrollment in Latin classes, especially at the secondary level, has largely been declining,” Callier explains. “During COVID, Latin classes were seen as non-essential, so they lost a lot of students. And they’ve been having a hard time bringing the numbers back up.”

For Callier, a teaching assistant professor of classics and the Latin Program Coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder, this trend is more than an academic concern.

She wasn’t alone in her worries. In response to falling enrollment rates, the Colorado Classics Association (CCA) formed a committee dedicated to promoting interest in Latin classes.

The solution? A project that would convey the benefits of learning Latin to students in their own words.

A language in decline

Across the country, Latin programs have struggled to justify their existence in an education system increasingly focused on STEM fields and workforce development. In some districts, administrators have proposed cutting Latin entirely, forcing teachers and students to fight for their programs.

In collaboration with the CCA and local high school educators, Callier helped spearhead You Belong in Latin, a video project designed to remind high school students why Latin is worth learning.

“We finally came up with the idea for a video, because it’s something you can share easily. It’s more entertaining than just looking at a brochure that says, ‘Here’s why Latin is a good thing to take,’” Callier says.

The project quickly took shape as teachers across Colorado filmed interviews with their students, capturing firsthand accounts of what Latin means to them. They also collected footage of classrooms filled with laughter, animated discussions and moments of discovery.

“One of the things we noticed is that once students get into Latin class, they really love it,” Callier says. “You just have to get them in the door.”

The team secured a grant to bring the project to life, which allowed them to hire a former ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� student who majored in film—and took several semesters of Latin with Callier—to professionally edit the videos.

Over the course of a year, the raw footage was transformed into a compelling series of short videos, each emphasizing a unique aspect of the Latin classroom experience.

Now available on YouTube, the You Belong in Latin videos are a vital resource for teachers, students and parents to share.

Latin is for everyone

A central theme of You Belong in Latin is the tight-knit community formed in Latin classrooms. Unlike more popular language programs, Latin classes tend to be small, allowing students to form deeper relationships with their peers and instructors.

“At ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, if you take Latin, aside from the first semester where there are two sections of Latin I, after that, everybody’s in the same class together,” Callier explains. “You continue to see the same instructors in the department as well. So you get to know them, and you get to know your peers in a way that’s not really very common at the college level.”

The same holds true in high schools, where Latin students often stay in one cohort across multiple years and gain a sense of unity and belonging.

The videos also seek to challenge the misconception that Latin is elitist—a subject reserved for Ivy League prep schools and aspiring academics.

“Latin actually isn’t elitist. Everybody’s starting from the same level when they walk into Latin class. There’s no barrier, and everybody can benefit from it in various ways,” Callier says.

And while Latin’s reputation as a “dead language” often turns students away, Callier argues that its benefits are very much alive. Latin gives students a foundation for English vocabulary, enhances their analytical skills and prepares them for careers in law, medicine and the sciences, she says, adding that it also provides direct access to Latin texts, “which is immensely beneficial to anyone who is enthusiastic about Roman literature or history.

“Latin actually isn’t elitist. Everybody’s starting from the same level when they walk into Latin class. There’s no barrier, and everybody can benefit from it in various ways.”

“Learning Latin is like weightlifting for your brain,” she says with a smile.

Keeping the momentum going

Now that the You Belong in Latin videos have been published, Callier is working to spread the word.

“We have been sharing our Colorado Classics Association YouTube channel with educators from around the country who are looking for different ways to promote Latin,” she says.

Feedback on the project has been encouraging for Latin educators who rarely receive recognition for their efforts.

“What we are doing as Latin educators is something that is really having an impact,” Callier says. “Students are getting a lot out of Latin in various ways, and they’re really appreciating what we bring to the table.”

At its heart, this project isn’t just about keeping Latin alive but also celebrating what makes it special. As Callier and her colleagues know, the language is only the beginning. The real magic comes from the people who learn and teach it.

Callier says, “Latin survives because people love it. And as long as we keep sharing that love, it’s not going anywhere.”

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For Reina Callier, learning Latin ‘is like lifting weights for your brain.'

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