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.
Len Ackland
Sschool of Journalism and Mass Communication
Personal web page:spot.colorado.edu/~ackland/
Associate Professor Len Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism, joined the faculty in 1991 and became founding director of the CEJ the following year. In 2008 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is author of Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (U. of New Mexico Press, paperback edition 2002). Before coming to CU he was editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and previously worked as a reporter at newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and Des Moines Register. He received a George Polk award for reporting on local issues in 1978 and under his leadership the Bulletin won the National Magazine Award in 1987 for a special issue on the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Ackland began his journalism career as a free-lance journalist in Vietnam in 1968 after graduating from CU as a history major. He has a master's degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Krister Andersson
Department of Political Science
Krister Andersson (Ph.D., Indiana University, 2002) joined the faculty in 2005. His current research focuses on the politics of environmental governance in two different policy domains: forestry policy reforms in developing countries and International climate change mitigation strategies. Andersson's research has appeared in World Development, PS: Political Science and Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Public Administration and Development, Climate Policy, Journal of Environment and Development, among other journals. He is author of two books. The first, The Samaritans' Dilemma (Oxford University Press, 2005) examines the institutional incentive structures of development aid and is co-authored with Clark Gibson, Elinor Ostrom and Sujai Shivakumar. The other book features his dissertation work in Bolivia, published in Spanish by Plural Editores (2005) in Bolivia (¿Cómo Hacer Funcionar La Gestión Forestal Descentralizada?).
Douglas B. Bamforth
Department of Anthropology
Douglas Bamforth is an archaeologist who works mainly on the Great Plains; He has also worked in the Colorado mountains, coastal California, the California desert, the Great Basin, Germany, and Ireland. He has a major technical interest in the study of how ancient people made and used stone tools. His research has focused on how human use of the Plains landscape responded to long-term environmental change during the Paleoindian period (from roughly 11,000 to 8000 BC); recently, his interests have shifted toward the archaeology of farmers on the central and northern Plains during the last 1,000 years. He is currently involved in a long-term field project that examines the archaeology of the Ceramic Period along the Pine Ridge in northwestern Nebraska.
Nichole Barger
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
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
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.
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.
Deserai Anderson Crow
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Assistant Professor Deserai Anderson Crow is Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Journalism. She joined the faculty in 2008 and teaches broadcast news and media studies courses. Crow earned her PhD from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Colorado at Denver's School of Public Affairs. Her research interests include environmental policy and the role that mass media and other factors play in policy decisions.
She is particularly interested in environmental issues in the western United States. Her dissertation, completed in 2008, focuses on the adoption of non-consumptive recreational water rights by Colorado communities and the factors that influenced policy change within these communities, including mass media, policy entrepreneurs, stakeholder group involvement, and citizen engagement. After earning her B.S. in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder, she worked as a broadcast reporter, anchor, and producer in Nebraska, West Virginia, California, Colorado Springs, and Denver.
John Daily
Director of Center for Combustion and Environmental Research
Most of Professor Daily's academic career has been devoted to the field of combustion and environmental studies. He has worked on combustion and heat transfer aspects of propulsion and power generation devices, studying such topics as fluid mechanics of mixing, chemical kinetics, combustion stability, and air pollution. He also works on the development of advanced diagnostic instrumentation (including laser based) for studying reacting flows and environmental monitoring. Most recently he has been working in the areas of biomass thermochemical processing and source characterization, wildfire behavior, the environmental consequences of combustion, optical biopsy, and MEMS devices for aerospace, energy and instrumentation applications. He has been using molecular dynamics and quantum mechanical modeling methods to study biomass thermal decomposition and chemical kinetics, the behavior of electrospray based space propulsion devices, and atmospheric particulate formation. He has consulted in the areas of engine combustion, product safety, accident reconstruction, fire safety, toxic air contamination and air quality. Dr. Daily teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the thermal-sciences, including thermodynamics, heat transfer, energy and power, combustion, direct energy conversion, experimentation and measurement, optical diagnostics and design. He recently has taught courses in chemical kinetics and molecular modeling
Vivian Delgado
Department of Ethnic Studies
Vivian Delgado (Yaqui) is an avid researcher, and lecturer of Indigenous People's and Life ways. Many of her teachings were acquired experientially prior to her academic career. Some of her passions include: comparative studies of indigenous peoples, primarily Indigenous Mexican Americans and Federally Recognized, disappearing land based cultures, Indigenous women leaders, sprititual landscapes and social justice.
Her most recent publications include: "You're Not Indian, You're Mexican," a comparative study of near identical histories of Indigenous Mexican Americans and Federally Recognized from 2007 and her work in progress, "Anguamiis," a narrative world view, of a male Ojibwe experience, and how patrilineal inheritance facilitates one's heritage.
Lisa Dilling
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
Lisa Dilling is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and a member of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her career has spanned both research and practice arenas of the science-policy interface, including program leadership for NOAA and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Her current research focuses on the use of information in decision making and science policies related to climate change, adaptation, and the carbon cycle. She is a co-editor of the book Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating climate change and facilitating social change from Cambridge University Press.
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.
Jay Ellis
Program for Writing and Rhetoric
Jay Ellis grew up in Mesquite, Texas playing drums at stock shows, shopping malls, and VFW halls. Ellis earned his BA from the Berklee College of Music, an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature at the University of Texas at Dallas, and a Ph.D. in American Literature at NYU. Publications include No Place for Home: Spatial Constraint and Character Flight in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy (Routledge), which received an Eaton Faculty Award from CU's Center for Humanities and the Arts.
Current projects include a second novel, as well as interdisciplinary scholarship on the spaces of novels, film, and culture, particularly in intersections of history, imagination, gender, and figurations of domesticity in putatively masculinist narratives. Ellis teaches in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, including an Upper Division writing course cross-listed with the Center that informs his new book, Don't Fence Me In: Spatial Ambivalence in American Literature and Culture.
Michelle Ellsworth
Department of Theater and Dance
Ellsworth is nationally known for her witty and innovative solo performance work. She has performed at venues such as the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Lee, MA), P.S. 122 (NYC), Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), Diverseworks (Houston, TX), The Sushi Gallery (San Diego, CA), The Telluride Experimental Film Festival (Telluride, CO), and the Solo Mio Festival (San Francisco, CA). Her cartoons and spreadsheets have appeared in the journal CHAIN.
Currently she is working on a performance piece with poet Thalia Field, composer Michael Theodore and filmmaker Robert Schaller. She is also building a pentagonal dress which solves problems, and working on a seven inch record with experimental drummer Sean Meehan.
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.
Matthew Jelacic
Architecture and Planning
Matthew Jelacic is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder for the College of Architecture and Planning. His research consists of a global history of "temporary" urban structures as found historically in Roman military camps and currently in refugee camps, and a project using international humanitarian aid standards, such as the Sphere Project, to hyper-program "shelter" to address public health, nutrition, and cultural concerns.
Stephen Graham Jones
Department of English
my first publication was my first semester doing my MA work, I think. a story called "Paleogenesis, circa 1970." BLACK WARRIOR REVIEW. discovered Thomas Pynchon and Philip K. Dick soon after that; have no clue how I ever pretended to have gotten along without them. wound up finally at Florida State, snagged a PhD there, then lucked into getting my dissertation published. back then it was called FOR THERE NEEDED NO HORSES (a Kafka-line). by the time the book got published, it would be THE FAST RED ROAD, A PLAINSONG. was working in the warehouse at Sear's at that time, moving fridges all day. with my back, yes. which was soon to be trashed, stranding me in the land of deskjobs. to celebrate FRR's publication, my wife and I ate a plate of fried zucchini at a sit-down restaurant. it tasted very good. my next novel was ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SINNERS. it's not my second book, just my second published. I wrote five between FRR and ATBS, I think. one of them THE BIRD IS GONE: A MANIFESTO, came out right after ATBS. have written a few since then, too. can't seem to stop.
Alphonse Keasley
Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs
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.
Penelope Kelsey
Department of English
Penelope Kelsey is Seneca (patrilineal descent) with familial roots in western Pennsylvania and New York. She is Associate Professor of English at University of Colorado at Boulder. Her book, TRIBAL THEORY IN NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE, was published by University of Nebraska Press in 2008. She is the editor of STRAWBERRIES IN BROOKLYN: MAURICE KENNY, MOHAWK POET which will be published by the State University of New York Press in 2010; the collection features essays by Joseph Bruchac, Eric Gansworth, Lisa Brooks, James Stevens, and others. Her current ms., BUILDING A LONGHOUSE, examines contemporary Haudenosaunee literature, film, and epistemology and the role of activism at their intersection.
Sarah Krakoff
University of Colorado Law School
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.
Phoebe Kropp
Department of History
Phoebe Kropp teaches and writes about the cultural and environmental history of the modern United States and the American West. Her first book, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (University of California Press, 2006) examined public memories of the Spanish past, the built environment, regional development, and race relations in Southern California between the 1880s and the 1930s. She is currently working on a book for Oxford University Press on the history of camping and sleeping outside that explores the meanings and politics of nature in American culture. Two forthcoming articles draw upon this research: "Wilderness Wives and Dishwashing Husbands: Comfort and the Domestic Arts of Camping Out, 1880-1910," Journal of Social History, Fall 2009; and "Sleeping Outside: The Political Natures of Urban Camping," Cities in Nature: Urban Environments of the American West, ed. Char Miller (Univ. of Nevada Press, 2009). She has received fellowships from the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Council of Learned Societies, which awarded her the Oscar Handlin Fellowship for 2010.
Sandra Laursen
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CARTSS)
Sandra Laursen works in both research and practice in science education. As co-director of Ethnography & Evaluation Research (E&ER), she leads research and evaluation studies of education and career paths in science, engineering, mathematics and technology. Her research interests include underrepresentation of women and minorities in the sciences, professional socialization and career development of scientists, teacher professional development, and science education reform. As a research associate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), she collaborates with scientists and K-12 teachers to communicate science effectively to students and the public. She has developed inquiry-based teaching materials and led professional development for educators and scientists on a wide range of topics in Earth and physical science and inquiry-based teaching and learning.
Laursen earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and previously taught at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. She has published chemistry curriculum manuals, journal articles in chemistry, education, gender studies, and the Journal of Irreproducible Results, co-directed a documentary film, and recorded a CD with Resonance Women's Chorus. She became a Westerner in 1998 when she took the Oregon Trail to Colorado, although she did not drive a covered wagon.
Stephen Lekson
Department of Anthropology
University of Colorado Museum
(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.
Merrill Lessley
Department of Theatre
Merrill J. Lessley is currently a professor in the Theatre Department at the University of Colorado. He has a Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Utah, an MA in Scene, Costume & Lighting Design from the University of Minnesota, and a BFA in Theatre Design from the University of Utah.
Dr. Lessley was Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities from 1997-2002. He was Interim Chair for the Department of Fine Arts from June 1996 to December 1996. He has been a CU-Boulder faculty member since 1994.
Other credits include: Previously Interim Chancellor, 01/93-08/93; Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, 1988-1993; Resident Dean of Graduate School and member of the Graduate Faculty, 1988-1994; Professor of Communication/English, 1988-1994; University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. Dean, College of Professional Studies & Fine Arts, 1983-1988; Chair, Drama Department, 1981-1983; Professor of Drama, 1970-1987; San Diego State University. Assistant Professor of Speech, Metropolitan State College, 1969-1970. Production Manager, Dance Department and Shakespeare Company, University of Utah, 1966-1967.
Alan Lester
Department of Geological Science
Alan Lester is a Senior Instructor and Research Associate in the Department of Geological Sciences, CU-Boulder. A native of Oregon, Alan came to Colorado in 1985 (with a B.S. from the University of Oregon). After receiving a Ph.D. in Geology from Cu (1993), he remained as a Research Associate and Lecturer, and later as an Instructor.
Alan has done research in a variety of geological sub-disciplines including mineral structures, paleomagnetism, isotope geochemistry, and igneous petrology; all of which have been directed at understanding the origin and subsequent evolution of continental crust in the Rocky Mountain region.
A recipient of multiple university-wide teaching awards, Alan focuses on teaching at the undergraduate level. He also serves as the undergraduate academic advisor for geology majors in the Department of Geological Sciences.
Both Alan and his wife Melissa are rock- and mountain-climbing enthusiasts. They particularly enjoy combining their interest in geology with visits to climbing areas all over the western United States; sometimes adding to the adventure by flying small airplanes to their destination.
William M. Lewis, Jr.
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
William M. Lewis, Jr., received his Ph.D. from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1973. He is currently the director for the Center for Limnology, and a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
His current research projects include: estimation of nitrogen yield from watersheds; fate and transport of organic nitrogen in streams and rivers; denitrification in inland waters; studies of trophic dynamics by use of stable isotopes; comparison of tropical and temperate inland waters; nutrient dynamics in inland waters. More about Dr. Lewis' current research projects can be read at the Center for Limnology's Current Research Projects.
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.
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.
Doreen E. Martinez
Department of Ethnic Studies
I am of Mescalero Apache, Mexican and Dutch descent; born in San Antonio, Texas but primarily raised in east central Pennsylvania My ancestral and community life ground my interest and academic work. I am a Sociological ethnographic researcher and my work focuses on cultural beliefs, traditions and applications of "meaning making" through comparative cultural racial and gendered ways of knowing and practices. I utilize three sites to explore these issues: education, health and popular discourses primarily in Indigenous communities. I have taught numerous courses reflecting these areas of expertise including undergraduate and graduate theory, Indigenous Representation, Indigenous Women, Race and Ethnicity, Ethnicity in the Americas, Ethnicity in the Media, Medical Sociology, and Masculinities.
Most recently, my scholarly activities have been acknowledged with the invitation and subsequent acceptance in the Women of Color Leadership Project through the National Women's Studies Association.
Selected publications include "Knowingness, Negotiation and Beauty: Recognizing and Sharing Indigenous' Knowledge and Voice." The Authentic Dissertation: Alternative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation, "My Child Will Have Two Brains, One Maasai, One Educated: Negotiating Traditional Maasai Culture in a Globalized World." Humanity and Society., "Children's Issues in the United States." The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children's Issues Worldwide: North American and Caribbean.
Danika Medak-Saltzman
Department of Ethnic Studies
Dr. Medak-Saltzman (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is committed to working in the broad field of Global Indigenous Studies while staying focused on the specificity of American Indian history and experience. With this as an ultimate goal, her work has explored the exportation of American Indian Policy to Japan in the 1870s and its influence on the lives and experiences of the Ainu people who are indigenous to parts of, what is now, northern Japan. Her current and future work examines the presence of Native peoples at World's Fairs, specifically at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.
By illuminating the manners in which Native peoples have been equal actors in unequal histories, Medak-Saltzman intends for her work to help nuance and complicate our understandings of Indigenous Studies, "America," U.S. foreign policy, and colonial interactions. She is interested in comparative Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, American Indian history, Red Feminism, and contemporary cultural production.
She has taught classes in American Indian Studies, American Indian Literature (from a historical perspective), and Comparative Ethnic Studies for a number of years at the University of California, Berkeley where she received her doctorate. Before studying at Berkeley, Dr. Medak-Saltzman lived in Japan for three years where she studied at Nanzan University and taught high school in Iwakura-city in Aichi Prefecture.
Jeffry B. Mitton
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Jeffry Mitton's primary research interests focus on the evolutionary forces that influence genetic variation within and among populations. DNA sequences of mitochondrial, chloroplast, and nuclear genes, and electrophoretic variation of proteins are used to characterize variation in populations of plants and animals. Phylogeographic studies are used to describe patterns of variation and to make historical inferences about glacial refugia and routes of migration.
His current research projects include: Phylogeographies of ponderosa pine, limber pine, pinyon pine, aspen, and mistletoe, using both mtDNA and cpDNA markers, conservation genetics of cutthroat trout and northern pocket gophers, and dual uniparental inheritance of mtDNA in mussels and cryptic species of Brachidontes in the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific.
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.
Jason C. Neff
Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences
Professor Neff focuses on a broad range of research topics in a range of different ecosystems. The thread that runs through all of his studies is a goal of understanding how the earth is changing and how humans interact with natural ecosystems. Sometimes those studies focus on basic ecological processes, and at other times, the work is directed toward issues-such as carbon cycle and dust research-that have broad significance to society.
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.
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
Director, 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
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
Boulder, CO
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.
Paul A. Sutter
Associate Professor of History
Professor Sutter teaches modern U.S. history and environmental history. He is the author of Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (2002) and The Art of Managing Longleaf: A Personal History of the Stoddard Neel Approach (with Leon Neel and Albert Way, 2010), and he is the editor of Environmental History and the American South: A Reader (with Christopher Manganiello, 2009). He is currently working on two book-length projects. The first, Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon" and Southern Environmental History, examines the history of soils and soil erosion in the U.S. South through the lens of a particular place: a network of massive erosion gullies now protected as Providence Canyon State Park. The second, tentatively titled Pulling the Teeth of the Tropics: Environment, Disease, Race, and the U.S. Sanitary Program in Panama, 1904-1914, is an environmental and public health history of the construction of the Panama Canal. Dr. Sutter is also the editor of the "Environmental History and the American South" book series, published by the University of Georgia Press, and he has received fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution, the Huntington Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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
University of Colorado Law School
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
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CARTSS)
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.
Leaf Van Boven
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Leaf Van Boven is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. He is interested in what it feels like to be human and how that phenomenology influences our judgments and decisions in the social world. These interests have led him to investigate adult perspective taking, hedonic psychology, and basic processes in judgment, decision making, and behavioral economics.
Thomas T. Veblen
Department of Geography
Thomas T. Veblen, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1975, is a Professor interested in biogeography and plant ecology. His main research areas are vegetation dynamics in relation to natural and anthropogenic disturbances and climatic variation, including tree-ring applications in forest dynamics. His current projects include work on the interactions among fire, blowdown and insect outbreaks in Colorado forests, and work on the effects of introduced herbivores and climatic variation on vegetation recovery following fire in the southern Andes of Argentina. His work is supported by NSF, USGS and the U.S.D.A Forest Service. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Physical Geography, Journal of Biogeography, Dendrochronologia (Italy), and Global Ecology and Biogeography.
Mary Ann Villarreal
Department of History
Dr. Villarreal joined the department in Spring of 2008. Her research focuses on south Texas and the formation of a Texas Mexican identity through the lens of business. Her teaching areas include oral history, the American West, and Chicano/a History. She is currently working on her manuscript tentatively titled, Con Ganas y Amor: Texas Mexican Women and Family Owned Businesses, 1930-1950. An oral historian, Professor Villarreal published "Finding Our Place: Reconstructing Community through Oral History," The Oral Historian (Vol. 33, Issue 2), 2006. The article focused on conducting interviews in rural south Texas and writing about women cantantes (singers) in South Texas. She has an article forthcoming, "Becoming San Antonio's Own: Reinventing 'Rosita,'" Journal of Women's History.
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
University of Colorado Law School
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
Library Administration
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
INSTAAR, Arctic #amp; Alpine Research
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.
