About the Center

The Center of the American West, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is one of the region's most creative and innovative organizations in identifying and addressing such crucial issues as multiculturalism, community building, fire policy, and land, water, and energy use. The Center brings together, for meaningful conversation and interaction, people as diverse as the American West itself. To understand the region, we believe that the exploration of the minds of its residents is as important as the inquiry into the workings of its cultures and ecosystems. Enterprising and inclusive in its embrace of a wide range of disciplines and strategies of communication, the Center strives to illuminate the challenges and opportunities facing this complicated geographic and cultural area. Ultimately, we want to help citizens of the West become agents of sustainability – citizens who recognize that their actions determine the region's future and who find satisfaction and purpose in that recognition.

The Center's History

The University of Colorado's Moses Lasky Professor of Law Charles Wilkinson and History Professor Patty Limerick had both been inspired by the Sun Valley conferences on the American West, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. They were particularly struck by the diversity of participants, and the example set there for congenial expressions of divergent points of view. In 1987, Wilkinson decided to move to the University of Colorado, just at the same time as Limerick decided to stay in Boulder. Out of the recognition that a law professor and a history professor shared so much common ground came the idea of founding a center that would engage faculty from every imaginable discipline, and then direct that intellectual energy toward issues of public concern. Founded in 1989, the Center of the American West, in its first years, held three well–attended and effective conferences; the harvest of those early events appears in the book, A Society to Match the Scenery.

Reorganized in 1995 to pursue a more ambitious agenda, the Center has become an influential and often–cited source of regional thought and activity. Having presented well over 250 public events since then, the Center has become an engaging and highly visible outreach organization devoted to the American West. The Center's greatest strength lies in its proven capacity to bring together unusual combinations of people with divergent points of view to address issues of mutual concern. The Center supports faculty, students, staff, and community volunteers in a coordinated program of presentations, discussions, local and regional education, outreach activities, and printed and electronic publications. We believe that the perspectives of university–based researchers and thinkers can offer unexpected and productive approaches to familiar public problems, while engagement with the public deepens and grounds the work of scholars. In the process of building solid and sturdy bridges between the subculture of academia and the larger world, the Center follows the mission of cross–cultural bridge–building in other areas of division as well:

  • among representatives of different levels and branches of government (especially among federal agencies and state, county, and municipal units)
  • among Western ethnic groups
  • between newcomers and longer–term residents
  • between environmentalists and the various units of the public who see environmentalism as removed from, and even hostile to, the needs of human beings
  • among humanists, social scientists, natural scientists, engineers, artists, businesspeople, ranchers, religious leaders, and others.

The Center Now

The Center is associated with faculty from departments across the university, drawing, as appropriate, on a wide range of disciplines including: English, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Religious Studies, History, Film Studies, Theater and Dance, Linguistics, Ethnic Studies, Women Studies, Anthropology, Political Science, Economics, Geography, Sociology, Environmental Studies, Geology, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Law, Music, Business, Journalism, Education, the Museum, and the Library. We believe that the practitioners of these disciplines and the residents of this region share many loyalties and goals.

The Center annually produces 30 to 40 public events on a multitude of Western topics. The Center has hosted great Western thinkers such as Wallace Stegner, Richard Rodriguez, Senator Alan Simpson, Terry Tempest Williams, Daniel Kemmis, Wes Jackson, Rudolfo Anaya, John Nichols, Sherman Alexie, and Annie Proulx. In addition, the Center has hosted conferences on Western issues such as tourism, the role of scientists in shaping the future of the West, the relationship between race and environmental issues, the region's boom and bust economy, wildfire in the West, noise issues in the National Parks, the Nuclear West, and how Western music has shaped our regional culture. Several of these conferences have given rise to more in-depth reports focused on critical Western issues. In addition to these reports, the Center has published a number of books, including the Atlas of the New West, Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West, A Society to Match the Scenery, Arrested Rivers, Thomas Hornsby Ferril and the American West, and the upcoming books, Healing the West and The Handbook for New Westerners.

The Center in the Future

The Center's plans for the future respond to existing and emerging challenges in the region:

  • The Center will continue to publish and distribute “Reports from the Center” on important Western issues.
  • The Center will continue its research efforts in examining the changing dynamics of ranchlands in the West, as well as charting region–wide development patterns and their implications for ecological and social communities.

Major Accomplishments of the Center

1988 – Center of the American West launches conference with Wallace Stegner as keynote speaker

1994 – Center receives line–item university budget for basic operating expenses and staff

1995 – Reorganization of the Center to a more visible outreach center, with 30–40 public events per year

1997 – Publication of the Atlas of the New West increases dramatically the Center's national and international visibility

1998 – Center receives its first major grant, a $75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for the “Justice for All” conference

1999 – Center receives a grant from the Hewlett Foundation for the Handbook for New Westerners

2000 – Center receives a substantial programmatic grant from the Hewlett Foundation to expand its outreach throughout the region

2000 – ThinkWest (a coalition of Western academic centers) holds its first meeting

2001 – Center initiates the “Western Futures” program to assess and project Western demographic, economic, and land use change

2001 – Center releases major study on projected growth in the West to the year 2050

2001 – Center publishes first in a series of “Reports from the Center” to inform Westerners on important Western issues. The first report is entitled, Facing Fire: Lessons from the Ashes

2001 – Center receives a grant from Yellowstone Heritage Trust to study changing ranchlands around Yellowstone National Park

2002 – Center receives one–year renewal of Hewlett programmatic grant

2002 – Center scales back its public events agenda in favor of applied research with widespread impacts; begins to distribute widely its “Reports from the Center.” Releases its second report, “Boom and Bust in the American West”, on the West's economic cycles

2003 – Center submits a manuscript for the Handbook for New Westerners

2003 – Center launches new website (www.centerwest.org) to better communicate its mission and provide public access to Center research

2003 – Center releases two reports, “What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy” and “Making the Most of Science in the West: An Experiment”

2003 – Center begins an important series, “Inside Interior: Conversations with Secretaries of Interior on their Role in Shaping the West,” bringing in former and current Secretaries for a conversation on the management of public lands

2005 – Center releases two reports, “Western Futures: A Look into the Patterns of Land Use and Future Development in the American West”, and “Cleaning Up Abandoned Hard Rock Mines: Prospecting for a Better Future”

2006 – Center celebrates 20th Anniversary with the following events:

2007 – The Center continues on with a lineup of quality events:

View all past events