Faculty Advisory Council Bios
Ellen Aiken
Sewall Residential Academic Program
Ellen is a core faculty member in the Sewall Residential Academic Program at CU–Boulder, where she teaches The American West, the foundation course for the Center's Western American Studies Certificate Program. The Sewall RAP works closely with the Center to introduce undergraduate students to the West as a unique region and to engage them in current Western debates, including land use and public lands policy, energy use and development, native peoples' rights, and immigration. She also teaches the History of Colorado course in the Department of History.
Her chief pedagogical pleasure is hiking with students in order to foster first–hand knowledge of western landscapes. She has established a reciprocal relationship between the Sewall Academic Program and the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks staff in which OSMP naturalists and rangers lead field trips in exchange for the opportunity to inform Boulder's college population about Boulder's accessible, yet fragile, Open Space areas.
Ellen completed her doctorate in 2002 under the direction of Patty Limerick. Her research interests revolve around the transformative relationships that distinct cultures in the West developed with the land and with each other. Her present book project focuses on the Union Pacific coal towns of southern Wyoming.
David Armstrong
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
David Armstrong has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder since 1971. He grew up in Greeley, Colorado and holds a BS from Colorado State University (1966), an MAT from Harvard (1967), and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas (1971). At CU he was a member of the former Department of Integrated Studies and the Center for the Interdisciplinary Studies, and since 1993 has been in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In addition, he is a member of the Core Faculty of the Environmental Studies Program and is a Museum Associate Curator in the University Museum. He has won the SOAR Teaching Award and also BFA Excellence Awards in Teaching and in Service.
Armstrong's research is on biogeography, ecology, and systematics of mammals of western U.S. and northern Mexico. He has published books and articles on mammals (and their habitats) of the Great Plains, the Southern Rockies, and the Colorado Plateau. His research is put into practice in conservation work, especially management of conservation easements on Sylvan Dale Ranch west of Loveland, where he is Resident Naturalist.
Nichole Barger
As an aridlands ecologist, Nichole Barger's research mission is to better understand the impacts of changing climate and land use on plant communities and soil resources in dryland ecosystems; research that crosses the boundaries of community, ecosystem, and landscape ecology. In her research program, she employs a variety of techniques in the fields of terrestrial plant ecology, soil biogeochemistry, and dendrochronology to address questions that not only further our knowledge of the structure and function of dryland ecosystems, but also address contemporary issues in sustainable restoration and management of these ecosystems.
Kenneth Bickers
Professor and Chair
Department of Political Science
American Politics and Public Policy. Kenneth N. Bickers joined the faculty at CU-Boulder in 2003. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988 and his BA from TCU in Fort Worth in 1981. His first position out of graduate school was at Rice University. During 1991-92, he was a visiting scholar at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. From 1992-2003, he was on the faculty at Indiana University, where he was Associate Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. While at Indiana, he twice won University-wide teaching awards.
He has published articles in numerous journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Choice, Administration and Society, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. His most recent books include Public Policy Analysis: A Political Economy Approach, with John Williams (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) and Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy, with Robert M. Stein (Cambridge University Press, 1995). His current research focuses on the consequences of the devolution of federal policy activities to states and local communities. A book in progress, tentatively titled America's Post-Entitlement Employment Policies, politics of designing national welfare and employment policies that accommodate local economic and demographic problems. He is also in the early stages of a book co-authored with Robert M. Stein, to be titled Politics in Metropolis: The Impact of Devolution on the Electoral Connection, that asks whether devolution of federal responsibilities to state and local government has created conditions for strong cooperative ties between national and subnational elected officials and thus linked the electoral trajectories of politicians across levels of government.
Maxine Burkett
Associate Professor of Law
Maxine Burkett joined the University of Colorado Law School faculty in January 2006. Prior to her appointment, she attended Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford. She received her law degree from Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Burkett served as a law clerk with The Honorable Susan Illston of the United States District Court, Northern District of California after completing her position as the first Public Interest Law Fellow at the Honolulu, Hawaii law firm Davis Levin Livingston Grande. There she conducted, among other things, legal and policy research on Native Hawaiian land claims. Following her clerkship, she practiced in the private sector at Paul, Johnson, Park and Niles, a Honolulu firm specializing in commercial and real estate law.
Professor Burkett's courses include Torts, Environmental Law, Race and American Law, and International Development. She has written in the area of Race, Reparations, and Environmental Justice. Currently, her work is in "Climate Justice," writing on the disparate impact of climate change on poor and of-color communities and the United States' moral and legal obligation to these communities, nationally and internationally. Her March 2007 conference "The Climate of Environmental Justice," at the University of Colorado, brought together leading academics, activists, and legal practitioners in the Environmental Justice field to consider the emerging interplay between race, poverty, and global warming. This summer, Professor Burkett will be presenting her research on Climate Justice in West Africa, and presenting a paper on African-American reparations in Berlin, Germany.
Cathy Cameron
Department of Anthropology
Catherine Cameron is an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department. She specializes in the archaeology of the Ancestral Pueblo people of the American Southwest. She conducts excavations in southeastern Utah at the Bluff Great House, a Chacoan site and at the Comb Wash Community, a post–Chacoan great house. These excavations explore the 10th to 12th century Chacoan regional system and its aftermath. Cameron has published a book on Puebloan architecture and a number of articles and book chapters on her work in southeastern Utah and prior work in Chaco Canyon.
Bud Coleman
Department of Theatre and Dance
Bud Coleman is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance. A former dancer with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Fort Worth Ballet, Kinesis, and Ballet Austin, he has directed/choreographed Seussical, A Grand Night for Singing, Pippin, Wonderful Town, Songs in the Key of...Caffeine (also librettist), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Mikado, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along, Lysistrata, Dames at Sea, Hair, Six Degrees of Separation, the opera Being of Sound Mind, and numerous other productions.
Bud has a Ph.D. in Theatre History and Criticism from the University of Texas at Austin, and his publications have appeared in the St. James Press Gay & Lesbian Almanac, qlbtq.com, New York Native, Theatre History Studies, The Austin American–Statesman, Theatre InSight and Choreography and Dance. With co–editor Judith Sebesta, they published Women in American Musical Theatre: Essays on Lyricists, Writers, Arrangers, Choreographers, Designers, Producers, and Performance Artists, 2007. In addition to being a playwright, Coleman's writing includes analytical articles on the performance of gender, musical theatre, and American Theatre History.
Sharon Collinge
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Sharon Collinge's research is based primarily in grassland ecosystems of the American west. She integrates theories and methods of conservation biology, restoration ecology and landscape ecology to examine how changing landscapes affect plant and animal movement, population dynamics, and interactions among species. Her research centers on how habitat loss and fragmentation affect persistence and diversity of organisms such as grassland butterflies and beetles in riparian woodlands. She studies how landscape change influences the dynamics of infectious diseases, specifically the impacts of landscape alteration on plague dynamics in prairie dogs. Dr. Collinge's work also uses ecological theory to guide efforts to restore native ecosystems that have been degraded by human activities. Her large–scale restoration experiment with vernal pool plant communities examines factors that influence the formation and dynamics of these imperiled plant assemblages. Dr. Collinge's work demonstrates that landscape structure can strongly influence the diversity and abundance of native species as well as the characteristics of interactions among species.
Dr. Collinge is an active participant in the University of Colorado's Center for the American West, an interdisciplinary center that integrates perspectives from the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences to inform Westerners about public policy. Collinge recently served a term as Member–at–Large for the Ecological Society of America and has served as a delegate and faculty resource person for the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). She provides scientific advice for local and national non–profit organizations on habitat conservation and restoration issues and for government agencies on matters related to endangered species and habitat protection.
J. Andy Cowell
Department of French and Italian
Andrew Cowell is in the departments of Linguistics and French and Italian. One of his main research interests is the indigenous languages of the western US, and the directs the Center for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the West (CSILW). He has published extensively on Arapaho, and also works on Gros Ventre, Cheyenne, and Miwok. His interests include both formal linguistics and linguistic anthropology, and he is also involved with language preservation work in the field of endangered languages.
Elizabeth Dunn
Department of Geography
Assistant Professor of Geography and International Affairs, Elizabeth Dunn's work focuses on the economic origins and effects of foodborne illness. Recently, she has been investigating how new rules about cattle production affect farmers, meatpackers, consumers and the environment. She has also looked into how rules about pig production have forced smallhold farmers out of the market in Poland, and how the collapse of the canning industry in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia has led to hyperendemic botulism.
Much of her previous work focused on labor and industrial management. Her recent work includes a book, Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business and the Remaking of Labor (Cornell University Press, 2004). Professor Dunn serves on the Boulder County Board of Health and as a foster parent for Boulder County.
Nicholas Flores
Department of Economics
Nicholas Flores is an Associate Professor of Economics and departmental chair at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research interests are decision making and the environment/public goods, environmental and public goods valuation, and research methodology in environmental economics. He teaches multiple upper division economics courses ranging from "Introduction to Statistics with Computer Application" to research methods workshops. Alongside his course teachings, he has also hosted the annual CU Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop since the summer of 1999. He has collaborated with the Social and Economic Values Unit, USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station since 1986 and just recently joined the National Center for Earth–Surface Dynamics which is a National Science Foundation sponsored Science and Technology Center. He collaborates and teaches in the Carbon, Climate and Society Initiative program through the University of Colorado, funded by the National Science Foundation as well. On top of it all, he is an avid runner and trains with the Boulder Striders on the side.
Chuck Forsman
Department of Art and Art History
Chuck Forsman has long been a landscape painter, depicting human impact on the landscape of the American West. Currently, he is working on a series of paintings that join images of Vietnam and the United States, symbolically uniting the two countries. A book of his photographs, Western Rider, has just been published and he is currently working on other photo projects in addition to the paintings.
David Getches
University of Colorado Law School
David Getches is the Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law at the University of Colorado School of Law. He teaches and writes on water law, public land law, environmental law, and Indian law. Professor Getches has published several books including: Water Law in a Nutshell (1997); Searching Out the Headwaters: Change and Rediscovery in Western Water Law and Policy, with Bates, MacDonnell and Wilkinson (1993); Controlling Water Use: The Unfinished Business of Water Quality Control, with MacDonnell and Rice (1991); Water Resource Management, with Tarlock and Corbridge (1993); and Federal Indian Law, with Wilkinson and Williams (1998). He has written many articles and book chapters that appear in diverse scholarly and popular sources, including recent articles calling for reform of Colorado River governance and criticizing the Supreme Court's departure from traditional principles in Indian law.
Michael Hannigan
Mechanical Engineering
Michael Hannigan resides in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is involved in the environmental engineering program at the University and thoroughly enjoys teaching courses to both mechanical and environmental engineering students. He has an active research program that focuses on air pollution and energy use.
Alphonse Keasley
Department of Minority Arts and Sciences Program
Dr. Alphonse Keasley has had the great good fortune of an interesting and varied career with the University of Colorado, Boulder, working alongside some of the campus's most talented faculty, students and administrators. He presently serves as the director of the Minority Arts and Sciences Program (MASP). Dr. Keasley loves teaching in a research university setting, having contributed to such campus programs as Honors; the Ronald E. McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement Program (for which he wrote the original grant proposal that brought this unique program to the Boulder campus); the Leadership Certificate Program and his beloved MASP.
Sarah Krakoff
School of Law
Prior to joining the CU School of Law in 1996, Sarah Krakoff spent three years living and working on the Navajo Nation, as a founder and director of the DNA's Youth Law Project in Tuba City, Arizona. In this position, she litigated class action discrimination cases in federal court on behalf of Native American schoolchildren, obtaining favorable settlements for her clients. She also drafted a "Street Law" program for Native American Youth. In 1996, she became the director of CU Law School's Indian Law Clinic. In this position, Professor Krakoff expanded the Clinic's efforts to support Native American jurisprudence, involving students in projects that summarized opinions of tribal courts or aided tribes in the creation of their own legislation. One of her major achievements as director was obtaining permanent University funding for the Clinic, funding that ensures its future.
She became an associate professor in 1999. Professor Krakoff's scholarship focuses on Indian law and natural resources issues, from a variety of perspectives. Her current projects include a book that examines the social, legal, philosophical and environmental consequences of the enormous increase in outdoor recreation, she development of the Navajo Nation's legal system.
Steve Lekson
Curator of Anthropology
Associate Professor of Anthropology
(Ph.D., University of New Mexico, 1988) Lekson's research area is the archaeology of the North American Southwest. His research interests are in the origins of government, regional patterning, and architecture. His publications encompass the archaeology of Chaco, Mesa Verde, Mimbres Mogollon, Hohokam, and Casas Grandes; Apache ethnohistory; and archaeological method and theory. He also teaches and publishes in Museum Studies.
Patricia Limerick
Department of History
Born and raised in Banning, California, Patricia Nelson Limerick is a Western American historian, with particular interests in ethnic history and environmental history. She received her B.A. in American Studies in 1972 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Ph.D. in American Studies in 1980 from Yale University.
From 1980 to 1984, Limerick taught at Harvard University as an Assistant Professor, before joining the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the Chair of the Board and Faculty Director of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado. She is the recipient of a number of awards and honorary appointments—State Humanist of the Year, 1992, from the Colorado Endowments for the Humanities; University of California, Santa Cruz 1990 Alumni Achievement Award; the Hazel Barnes Prize, the highest award for a faculty member at the University of Colorado; and Official Fool of the University of Colorado from 1987 to 2008 (the appointment was arranged to run one year longer than Coach Bill McCartney's fifteen–year contract). In 1995, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Limerick has published a wide variety of books, articles, and reviews. Her best known work, The Legacy of Conquest, has had a major impact on the field of Western American History. In addition to numerous scholarly articles and book reviews, she has written frequent columns and op–ed pieces for The New York Times, USA Today, the Denver Post, the Daily Camera, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Rocky Mountain News. A collection of her essays, Something in the Soil: Field-Testing the New Western History, was published by W W. Norton in March of 2000. She is a contributor to The Atlas of the New West, edited by William Riebsame Travis and published by W. W. Norton, and she and Travis are now at work on The Handbook for New Westerners, a cultural literacy and etiquette guide to life in the region.
Yan Linhart
Museum Associate Curator
Yan Linhart is the Museum Associate Curator and Associate Chair in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research interest is in the dynamics of evolutionary change in plants. His current research includes: evolutionary consequences of plant–animal interactions, long–term studies of the population dynamics and evolution of forest trees, and investigations of the factors that cause genetic differentiation of populations. His current courses are Genetics and Host/Parasite Interactions.
Daryl Maeda
Department of Ethnic Studies
Daryl J. Maeda is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and is currently conducting research and revising his book, Asian American Cultural Formation, which examines Asian American identities and cultural productions from the 1930s to the 1970s. He received an M.A. from San Fransisco State University in Ethnic Studies as well as both an M.A. and his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in American Culture. His current scholarly binterests include comparative ethnic studies, Asian American studies, American radicalism, history of the 1960s, and social movements. In addition, he has conducted research on Japanese American incarceration during World War II.
Brian Muller
Urban Planning and Environmental Design
Brian Muller is an assistant professor of planning and design at the University of Colorado, Denver. He received his BA from Yale University and MPA at the University of Texas. His research includes land use modeling, geographic information systems, agricultural/open space land preservation and regional economic development. He teaches geographic information systems, natural resources planning and management, environmental impact assessment, and planning methodologies.
David O. Norris
Department of Integrative Physiology
Dr. Norris has done research in environmental endocrinology and neuroendocrinology for more than 35 years, investigating the role of natural (e.g., photoperiod, temperature) and anthropogenic environmental factors (metals, pesticides, industrial pollutants) on thyroid, adrenal, and reproductive endocrinology in regards to development, sexual maturation, seasonal reproduction, and aging. Most of his research has involved salmonid fishes and urodele amphibians.
Dr. Norris has worked in the area of forensic botany with Dr. Jane H. Bock, PhD., since 1982, primarily on developing the use of plant cells in the gastrointestinal tract to aid in homicide investigations. This work began with the encouragement of Dr. Ben Galloway who at that time was Deputy Coroner for Jefferson County, Colorado. Dr. Norris and Dr. Bock have been involved in investigations in numerous states as well as throughout the state of Colorado. Dr. Norris has been certified as an expert witness in this area for the State of Colorado. With Dr. Bock, Dr. Norris also has consulted on other botanical evidence for criminal investigations. He also is a charter member of Necrosearch International, Ltd., a nonprofit association of Colorado law enforcement personnel and scientists organized to provide expertise in the location and excavation of clandestine graves in Colorado and throughout the world and to conduct scientific research on grave sites.
Kenneth Orona
Deparment of Ethnic Studies
Kenneth Orona's current research study, Muddy Water: Power, Contest and Identity in Central New Mexico, 1848–1947, examines the middle Rio Grande valley in central New Mexico as a test case in how the people and local, state, and federal governments worked to provide flood control and drainage. He is in the process of preparing his manuscript for publication. Professor Orona's scholarly interests fall at the intersection of environmental, legal and political history, situating his work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, his area of expertise is in U.S. Western History, especially in the timeframe of the U.S. Progressive movement. Within the broader context of United States and Western American history, he contributes to the rich body of work that examines the transition framework. He revisits ideas that link American western history to larger political, legal and environmental topics.
His project has, in many ways, clarified his thinking about the approach and direction he wants to take as a scholar. This work has provided a solid foundation and method to launch his future work. Given his empirical grounding in late nineteenth and early twentieth century history, he is currently undertaking research about the first Hispano United States Senator, Dennis Chavez. In a political biography, he will illuminate the role Chavez played in securing the poorest state in the nation. Using Chavez's papers at the Center for Southwest Research, housed at the University of New Mexico, as well as archival material in Washington, D.C., Professor Orona will trace Senator Chavez's career from junior Senator to influential statesman.
Karen E. Ramirez
Sewall Residential Academic Program
Karen Ramirez is a Core Faculty member at the Sewall Residential Academic Program, where she teaches the Center's introductory course, "The American West" and courses on western American literature and Native American literature. She has received the Dorothy Martin Faculty Award for excellence in teaching and activism concerning women's issues as well as a Marinus G. Smith award for her impact on CU undergraduate students.
In 2003, Ramirez received her Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where her research focused on reconceptualizing popular, nineteenth– and early twentieth–century, western American literature. She is the author of Reading Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (2006). Her current book project, Women's Periodical Writing and the Transnational American West, 1870–1920, will be the first book–length study of women's periodical writing about the American West from this time period when both periodical writing about the West and women's publication in periodicals expanded dramatically. Ramirez is currently the Co–Vice President of the Western Literature Association, and in October 2008, she will bring the Western Literature Association's annual conference to Boulder.
Outside of her professional activities, Ramirez is a mother, a singer with the semi–professional a–cappella choir Ars Nova, a runner, and an outdoor enthusiast.
Thomas Riis
American Music Research Center
Thomas L. Riis, the Joseph Negler Professor of Musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center at the College of Music, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, received a BA from Oberlin College and an MA and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. In 2001, he served as the Albert Seay Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colorado College. Dr. Riis is a specialist in Musical Theatre and writes and lectures frequently on many topics in 19th and 20th century American music. His book Just Before Jazz, devoted to African–American Broadway shows, received an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award in 1995. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar, he will be teaching in Lueneburg, Germany, 2005–2006. His other interests include medieval song, historical performance practice, and the music of Frank Loesser. Riis remains active as a conductor, choral singer, viola player, and cellist.
John-Michael Rivera
Department of English
Professor John–Michael Rivera is Assistant Professor of English and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research and teaching interests include: 18th–, 19th–, and early 10th–century American and Chicana/o literature; culture studies; cultural geography and political philosophy; critical race studies; American and ethnic studies; visual studies and photography. He earned his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992 and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. His most recent selected honors and awards are the Summerlee Foundation Research Grant in Texas History for 2004/2005 and the Junior Faculty Development Award from CU Boulder in 2003. His current projects are a creative project, Somewhere in Amexica and a book, The Location of Chicano Literature.
Brenda M. Romero
College of Music
Brenda Romero is both an ethnomusicologist specializing in music and spirituality and music and cultural interaction. Her specializations are in North American Indian and Latin American musics, especially the music of the borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico. Her long–term research is focused on the Matachines Danza found on both sides of the border, and representing a mixing of European and New World Indigenous music and dance traditions.
Lynn Ross-Bryant
Department of Religious Studies
Lynn Ross–Bryant research focuses on nature and religion in the U.S. and at this time particularly on National Parks. She is interested in the symbolic power they have had in American culture and how that has affected our views of nation, nature, and culture. She teaches courses in religions in the U.S., women and religion, religion and nature in America, and religion and literature. Her current research is in the area of nature and religion in America with a focus on national parks as sacred sites. Her publications include Imagination and the Life of the Spirit and "The Land in American Religious Experience."
Joseph Ryan
Civil Engineering
Joe Ryan is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering. He has been teaching and doing research at the University of Colorado since 1993. His research focuses on the role of colloids and surfaces on the fate and transport of contaminants in natural waters. He teaches courses that echo these interests: Water Chemistry, Environmental Organic Chemistry, and Aquatic Surfaces and Particles.
Before coming to the University, he was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boulder. He came to Boulder from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degree in environmental engineering. Before graduate school, he worked as an environmental consultant for a couple of years in Minneapolis. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in geological engineering from Princeton University, which is located just a few miles south of where he grew up in New Jersey.
He and wife, Martha, a sculptor and instructor at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, and their two children, Odelia and Henry, live at an elevation of 8,700 feet a few miles west of Jamestown.
Bob Sievers
Environmental Program
Professor Bob Sievers and his students have studied air and water quality in the American West. He and his students specialize in studying aerosol particles so small that their diameter is one–hundredth the width of a human hair, and can enter the alveoli of human and animal lungs. They have learned how to synthesize and coat aerosol particles of pharmaceuticals so that drugs can be administered by inhalation rather than by needle injection and have been awarded several patents. Professor Sievers received CU's Robert Stearns Award in 2003 and several scientific awards earlier.
JoAnn Silverstein
Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
JoAnn Silverstein received her Ph.D. in Civil (Environmental) Engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1982. From there she went on to become an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder and holds that position presently. She has been a Register Professional Engineer (Colorado #26151) since 1989. Current awards include the Distinguished Engineering Educator from the Society of Women Engineers in 2000 and the NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers from 1992 to 1997. She holds national committee memberships with the National Water Research Institute, Women in Academia — Society of Women Engineers and WEF, Biosolids Committee.
Seema Sohi
Assistant Professor Department of Ethnic Studies
Seema Sohi is currently completing her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She earned B.A. degrees in both U.S. history and literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her M.A. in U.S. history from the University of Vermont. Her current project traces the development of a transnational anti-colonial movement organized by Indian radicals and migrant workers in the United States during the early twentieth century. Additionally, her interdisciplinary research interests include Asian American transnational political movements, radicalism, labor, Asian American literature, and comparative ethnic studies.
Her work engages with critical theories of race and she is committed to advancing students' understanding of the ways in which institutional structures and social and political practices constructed racial formations and reinforced racial hierarchies in the United States. She looks forward to teaching various courses in the Ethnic Studies Department including the Introduction to Asian American Studies, Women and Gender in Asian American Studies, and Asian American transnational political movements.
John Stocke
Department of Astro and Planetary Sciences
John Stocke is a Professor of Astrophysics and Space Astronomy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His teaching interests are: Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation, General Astronomy and Ancient Astronomy. His research interests include: the evolution of quasars and BL Lacertae objects; the structure of extended radio galaxies; the environment of active galaxies and its effect in the active nucleus of these galaxies; isolated galaxies; x–ray emission from quasars, Seyferts, BL Lac objects, and normal stars; and Herbig–Haro objects as interstellar shock fronts and tracers of bipolar outflows from young stars.
John Stocke is an extragalactic observer who uses all manner of space–based and ground–based telescopes to study normal and active galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and intergalactic gas. His primary interests have been in using the Hubble Space Telescope's spectrographs to discover, inventory, and study intergalactic gas clouds and to figure out their relationship to galaxies. This study has led to the first–ever detection of matter in voids. John is a member of the science team building the COS Colorado University and Ball Aerospace.
Paul Strom
Kittredge Honors Program
Paul Strom came to Boulder from New Mexico to attend CU in 1967 where he earned a BA in Mathematics and Physics. He was also able to take advantage of the first Study Abroad program at the University of Lancaster, England. It was during the turmoil of the Vietnam War era that Professor Strom became interested in other matters that seemed urgent, and so he pursued a Ph.D. in "Religion and Social Change," which he received in 1990 from the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology. Soon after completing his doctorate, he was invited to teach a course for the Kittredge Honors Program called "The Ethics of Ambition."
Not only has he been teaching a version of this course ever since, but the teaching opportunity led to the invitation to direct the Kittredge Honors Program in 1999. This relationship continues to be both challenging and rewarding and he remains quite happy to be back in Boulder and at CU. He also teaches "Nonviolence and the Ethics of Social Action" which reflects his personal, research, and writing interest in the strategies of nonviolent social transformation, matters which are of great urgency. He can often be spotted riding his skinny-tired bike around campus (summer and winter) or on the roads in the area plus on the hiking trails in the mountains.
William Travis
Department of Geography
Travis is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His teaching and research focus on human behavior in the environment, including studies of the human dimensions of climate change, land use and the interaction of people and ecosystems. He was general editor (as William Riebsame) of the Atlas of the New West (W.W. Norton). His book, New Geographies of the American West, on land use change and regional development, is due out in April, 2007, from Island Press as part of the Orton Foundation's "Innovation in Place" series. Travis was a land use fellow with the Orton Family Foundation in 2005–06. His web page is at: http://spot.colorado.edu/~wtravis/.
Lorenzo Trujillo
Assistant Dean
Dean Trujillo became the Assistant Dean of Students and Professional Programs at the University of Colorado Law School in 2004. He is the supervising professor of the externship program and teaches Legal Drafting in Spanish for Family Law. He administers Student Organizations (SBA), Law Journals (3), Legal Writing Program, Clinical Education and Clinics, ABA Accreditation, Academic Assistance Program, Moot Courts, Student Fee Committee, Loan Repayment Assistance Program, among other responsibilities.
He has served and serves in numerous professional capacities on committees of the Colorado Supreme Court, The National Endowment for the Arts, and other regional and national agencies of the government, business and public sectors. Currently, he is the General Counsel to the National Hispanic Bar Association and is a member of the 17th Judicial District Nominating Commission. He is "Of Counsel" with the law firm Sherman and Howard, L.L.C. He has practiced law, consulted, taught, lectured and published concerning matters in education law, immigration law, family law, business law, language equity law, juvenile law, the arts and public policy.
He plays the violin with the Southwest Musicians, a group that specializes in the music of the 1840's of Colorado and New Mexico, and with the Mariachi Alegre.
Brad Udall
Western Water Assessment
Brad is director of Western Water Assessment, one of seven RISA (Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments) programs funded by the Office of Global Programs at NOAA. These programs are designed to develop partnerships with regional stakeholders and tailor NOAA data products to meet their needs. Lessons learned here are also contributing to NOAA's emerging "National Climate Service," the climate analog to the existing National Weather Service.
WWA was created in 1999 and is a joint effort between CIRES and the Climate Diagnostics Center. Using multidisciplinary teams of experts in climate, water, law, and economics, the Western Water Assessment provides information about natural climate variability and human-caused climate change. This information - usually in the form of climate forecasts and regional vulnerability assessments - is designed to assist water-resource decision makers such as Denver Water.
William Wei
Department of History
As with many other Coloradans, William is a transplant from the East Coast. He received his early "socialization" in New York's lower east side, where he ran with immigrant youth from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. He is one of the few Asian Americans with Chinese, Jewish, and Puerto Rican values and attitudes, making him a product of multicultural America.
He received his doctorate in modern Chinese history from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Since then, he has also developed a specialty in Asian American Studies. His major works, Counterrevolution in China (University of Michigan Press, 1985) and The Asian American Movement (Temple University Press, 1993), reflect these two intellectual interests.
He has taught history at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1980. Among the assignments that he has had at CU, serving as the Director of the Sewall Residential Academic Program has been the most satisfying.
Jan Whitt
School of Journalism
Jan Whitt is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Having begun her career as a reporter and editor in Texas, Whitt recently completed a manuscript entitled, Women in American Journalism: A New History (2007). She also published Allegory and the Modern Southern Novel (1993). She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American and British literature, literary journalism, media studies, news reporting, popular culture, and writing. Her research focuses on diversity issues in literature and contemporary media.
Her articles appear in American Journalism, Clues, Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas, Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Journal of the West, Journalism Educator, Popular Culture Review, Society of Environmental Journalists Journal, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Studies, Studies in Popular Culture, Society of Environmental Journalists Journal, and the Southwestern Mass Communication Journal. She has chapters in several books that deal with the history of women's press clubs, women in local television, lesbian publications, Southern literature, detective fiction and film, and American literature. Whitt received her B.A. degree in English and Journalism from Baylor University in 1977 and her M.A. in English from Baylor in 1980. She then received a doctorate in English from the University of Denver in 1985.
Charles Wilkinson
Professor of Law
Prior to joining the faculty of CU Law School, Charles Wilkinson practiced law with private firms in Phoenix and San Francisco and then with the Native American Rights Fund. In 1975, he became a law professor, teaching at the law schools of the University of Oregon, Michigan and Minnesota before moving to Colorado in 1987.
Professor Wilkinson has received teaching awards from his students at all three law schools where he has taught, and the Universities of Colorado and Oregon have given him their highest awards for leadership, scholarship, and teaching. He has also won acclamation from non-academic organizations. The National Wildlife Federation presented him with its National Conservation Award, and in its 10-year anniversary issue, Outside Magazine named him one of 15 "People to Watch," calling him "the West's leading authority on natural resources law." He has served on several boards, including The Wilderness Society, Northern Lights Institute, and the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado.
James Williams, II
Dean of Libraries
James F. Williams, II has been Dean of Libraries at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1988. His career includes 13 years as a Medical Librarian and 23 years in research library administration. His research interests include health sciences librarianship, strategic planning, leadership in research libraries, and resource sharing and networking. He has been a member of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, and a Visiting Scholar and Senior Fellow at UCLA's Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
He is past Chair of the Greater Western Library Alliance, a past member of the Board of Directors of Educom, and a past member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). He is past chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), immediate past–Chair of the PubMed Central Advisory Board at the National Library of Medicine, and a member of the Board of Visitors for Libraries at Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the Board of Visitors for the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, and a member of the National Council at Washington University in St. Louis.
He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Portal: Libraries and the Academy. He was awarded the Melvil Dewey Medal by the American Library Association in 2002. He is past–Chair of the Board of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (the Alliance), is a past member of the Board of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, and he is currently a member of the Board of the Boulder Community Hospital and the Boulder United Way. He is also a Trustee of the Denver Art Museum. He holds baccalaureate and graduate degrees from Morehouse College and Atlanta University.
Mark Williams
Department of Geography
Dr. Mark Williams, Fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research Professor of Geography, at the University of Colorado, received his Ph.D in Biological Sciences with an emphasis in ecology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1991. He is also on the core faculty of Environmental Studies. His research interest is the ecology of mountain areas, looking at the interaction of organisms with their environment, focusing on classical environmental variables such as soil, rocks, and minerals as well as surrounding water sources and the local atmosphere. The majority of his research has been conducted in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada of California, and the Tien Shan, China. Mark is on the faculty of the Hydrology Program in Geography and his classes can be used to satisfy the Hydrology Certification Program in Geography. Mark is the PI of the Niwot Ridge LTER program.
Richard Wobbekind
Leeds School of Business
Dr. Richard L. Wobbekind is Director of the Business Research Division and Associate Dean for External Relations at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He joined the faculty at the Leeds School of Business in the fall of 1985. He assumed his current position as associate dean in July of 2000. As Director of the Business Research Division his responsibilities include developing an annual consensus forecast of the Colorado economy and performing various economic impact assessments of the Colorado economy. Currently he is involved in several market research and strategic planning projects with public and private entities throughout Colorado. Richard also produces a quarterly economic indicator series for Boulder County. He participates annually in the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank Regional Economic Roundtable and is a contributor to the Western BlueChip forecast newsletter.
He is a member of the Governor's Revenue Estimating Advisory Committee, the Denver Regional Council of Government's Forecast 2025 Advisory Committee, the Colorado Tourism Office research advisory council, and the Boulder Economic Council. For his efforts in community development and outreach, Richard was awarded the 1997 University of Colorado Bank One Community Outreach Award.
Richard teaches senior undergraduate and M.B.A. students in macroeconomics, public policy, and managerial economics. He has received three awards for teaching excellence from the students of the Leeds School. Richard has lived in Colorado for 25 years and has spent much of his time studying the development of the Colorado and regional economies. Richard received a BA in economics from Bucknell University and an MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Thomas Yulsman
School of Journalism
Thomas Yulsman received his undergraduate degree from Harpur College, State University of New York at Binghamton with a specialization in environmental journalism in 1977. In 1980, he earned his graduate degree from Columbian University Graduate School of Journalism with a concentration in environmental and science journalism. He is currently an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder as well as Deputy Director for the Center for Environmental Journalism and School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is also a faculty member of the Environmental Studies Program at CU. He has been a collaborator at the Center for Astrobiology since 1998.
Some, of the many, non–academic positions held as a professional journalist include: Contributing Editor for Astronomy Magazine and for Earth Magazine; Editor–in–Chief for Earth Magazine; and desk editor for both the Medical Tribune Company and the New York Times Magazine.
He teaches news editing, science writing, electronic information strategies, precision journalism and as an overload, co–teaches a weekly seminar for the Scripps Fellows in Environmental Journalism. Along with teaching, he has developed many courses, as well. These include: Science Writing, a redesigned graduate–level class in science journalism; Science Journalism, a new class cross–listed with Environmental Studies designed to introduce seniors to science and environmental journalism with the goal to spur critical thinking in areas like media coverage; and Carbon, Climate and Society, a class that integrates science, policy, economic and journalistic perspectives.