Rachel Sauer

Students nurture a heart to give back

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Students nurture a heart to give back Rachel Sauer Fri, 11/21/2025 - 07:30

Rachel Sauer

Undergraduate students Josiah Gordon and Miles Woods formed a nonprofit to provide scholarships for students at their former high school, determined to make positive change in their community

Josiah Gordon and Miles Woods have been friends since kindergarten. They know each other��s families, have been in and out of each other��s Denver homes and can communicate in a shorthand that comes only with knowing someone that long.

They played on some of the same basketball and Arapaho Youth League football teams, had many of the same teachers at Highline Academy and moved on to Thomas Jefferson High School with similar attitudes toward education: Eh, it��s fine.

��I understood (education) was really important because my parents harped on it, but I couldn��t really say I enjoyed it,�� Woods says.

Josiah Gordon (left) and Miles Woods (right) are CU Boulder pre-med students majoring in integrative physiology and participating in the Miramontes Arts and Sciences Program. Last year, they decided to raise money for scholarships for students at their alma mater high school.

��For me,�� Gordon adds, ��when I was younger it was not stressed. I come from a low-income family, but as Miles and I were growing up and our moms were getting to know each other, I was picking up a little bit on that emphasis on education.��

The COVID year changed everything. It was a reset button for both of them, helping them connect with their faith, giving them a bigger-picture perspective on what they want their lives to be and making them realize they really needed to get serious about school.

Fast forward several years, and they��re both pre-med students majoring in integrative physiology at the ��. Both are also part of the Miramontes Arts and Sciences Program and both focused on goals that are big enough to motivate hard work but not so big that they��re out of reach.

They also know, however, that the future can��t happen without everything that came before it, so last year they hatched an idea to help students at their former high school who see the value of higher education but aren��t sure how to pay for it.

In 2024, the two undergraduates with no previous experience doing anything like this started the Hem of Hope Foundation��originally called Manum Dare, which means ��to lend a hand�� in Latin��to fundraise and award scholarships to students at Thomas Jefferson High School.

��Senior year, I think I applied to something like 26 different scholarships��everything I could find,�� Gordon says. ��For me, that was the start of this��just going to school with our peers, a lot of individuals who wanted to go to college and worked hard but just couldn��t make it happen financially. I think we just have a heart to give back and do what we can to help.��

Learning to love learning

Both will admit, though, that the path to this point has been winding, and they didn��t always care this much about education. Woods had the example of his mother, who was the first in her family to go to graduate school��she��s an attorney��and his father, who was the first in his family to go to college. They emphasized education to Woods and his sister, who recently graduated the University of California at Berkeley, and to Gordon when he visited the Woods�� home. The message took a little while to sink in.

��I wouldn��t say I was a bad kid by any means,�� Gordon recalls, ��but I was definitely not a teacher��s pet. I gave my teachers a little trouble growing up, and that��s common in young boys. I just didn��t like school. I would say it wasn��t until I got to high school that I started to take things a little bit more seriously. Plus, I had little more autonomy with choice for classes, and that made a difference.��

They took a human anatomy class together, which planted a seed: ��It was like, wow, this stuff is pretty cool,�� Gordon says, so he tucked the thought away for future reference.

Miles Woods (second from left) and Josiah Gordon (right) with the two Thomas Jefferson High School students to whom they gave scholarships for which they fundraised. (Photo: Josiah Gordon)

��We were learning about the body in a way that��s really applicable,�� Woods adds. ��Sometimes I��d be sitting in class like, why am I learning this? Sitting in algebra or whatever, it could get kind of boring. But in that class, it was really interesting, really immersive, and it got me thinking about the body and thinking ��Oh, that��s how that works.�� I remember one day (the teacher) was teaching us about tattoos and why they are permanent and how they stay in the body, and thinking that was so interesting.��

Both young men were also chasing dreams of playing college basketball, but things worked out how they were supposed to work out, Woods says. He originally committed to play basketball at another Colorado school, but the arrangement fell through a few weeks before the deadline to accept his admission to CU Boulder.

Meanwhile, Gordon broke his foot during his senior year, but because he��d applied for so many scholarships, he was able to pursue an academics-based path rather than a basketball-based one.

��We��d been planning to go our separate ways and chase the hoop dream, but then here we both were at Boulder,�� Woods says. Gordon declared pre-med from the beginning, but it took Woods a semester of studying business to know for sure that medicine was his path.

��Let��s just try��

In Summer 2024, Gordon and Woods participated in Startup Summer through the CU Law School, a 16-week program that supports students in entering the world of startups, innovation and emerging companies. The program helps students come up with business ideas, work on pitches, partner with mentors in the business world and, at the end of the program, pitch a business proposal to a room of investors.

They had some business ideas and even developed one as far as the pitch stage, but their thoughts kept returning to the idea they��d had in high school, from which they were only a year removed.

��We kept thinking about our close friends who couldn��t make it to college because they couldn��t afford it,�� Gordon explains, so they thought: What if, instead of a business, they started a nonprofit?

It was an audacious thought for people still in their teens, but they��d spent the summer in rooms with great business minds, people who��d started incredibly successful companies, and they��d soaked up the lessons.

��We thought, why not do it now?�� Gordon says. ��Let��s just try to raise a little bit of money and give it to someone at our alma mater.��

Josiah Gordon (striped shirt) reads to children at an elementary school in the neighborhood where he grew up. He and Miles Woods (not pictured) are active community volunteers in addition to scholarship fundraisers. (Photo: Josiah Gordon)

Their initial goal was to raise $1,000, so they established a GoFundMe, promoted what they were doing on social media and harnessed the power of word of mouth. A day and a half after they started, they��d raised $2,000. Not long after, a web developer who��d seen what they were doing offered to build them a website. Other Thomas Jefferson alumni contacted them and offered support, including former NFL player Derrick Martin, who gave them a shout-out on social media.

They figured they should get serious about the nonprofit, so Brad Bernthal, then-director of the Startup Summer and an associate professor of law, put them in touch with law students who helped them create a 501(c)(3) as Manum Dare, later renamed Hem of Hope.

They established scholarship criteria��a 3.25 GPA and involvement in extracurricular activities among them��and developed an application on their website, which included an essay. Gordon��s mother helped them read the essays, and in the spring they selected two $1,000 scholarship recipients.

��It��s definitely kind of rough knowing you can��t help everybody how you want to, but I think you can find solace in the fact you��re helping somebody, and the little bit you can do right now for someone is better than not doing anything,�� Woods says. ��I think that��s the stance you have to take.��

Bring positive change

Since awarding the first two scholarships, they have renamed the foundation Hem of Hope to reflect their faith, established a board, brought on CU School of Medicine student Sandra Appiah as a community impact ambassador and are exploring opportunities for mentorship and community collaboration. They��re also discussing fundraising strategies for next year��s scholarships.

��We��ve been thinking of bake sales, maybe a 5K,�� Woods says. ��Now that we have a 501(c)(3), we��re hoping to find businesses to partner with on grants.��

Gordon adds that they��ve talked with representatives from other nonprofits, who have given them advice on grant writing, fundraising and community outreach.

They balance this with being third-year students in a demanding major, volunteering as practice players for the CU women��s basketball team and planning for MCATs, medical school applications and graduation.

��Just being on the pre-med track itself is tough, but I think the way we grew up and some of our values definitely pay off,�� Gordon says. ��We don��t party; we don��t go out to the Hill or anything like that, so that gives us extra time. The analogy that pops in my brain is a see-saw: You��re not ever really going to be perfectly balanced, but I think that act of teetering is a kind of balance itself, kind of learning and establishing a good routine.

��And it��s important to us. You make time for the things that are important to you, and we want to bring positive change to our community.��

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Undergraduate students Josiah Gordon and Miles Woods formed a nonprofit to provide scholarships for students at their former high school, determined to make positive change in their community.

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Top image: Miles Woods (left) and Josiah Gordon (right) at the spring scholarship presentation. (Photo: Josiah Gordon)

Eat, pray, learn

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 03:13:10 +0000

Eat, pray, learn Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/17/2025 - 20:13

Rachel Sauer

Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship helps students see real-world work to balance tourism with environmental and cultural preservation

Tourists certainly visited Bali before Elizabeth Gilbert��s 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, but they came in droves after it became an international bestseller. And when the film based on Gilbert��s memoir and starring Julia Roberts was released in 2010, some frustrated residents began hanging ��Eat, Pray, Leave�� signs.

Bali, like many heavily touristed��some might say over-touristed��spots around the globe, exists in an uneasy d��tente between the tourism that represents 80% of its economy and the growing recognition that with tremendous tourism comes previously unseen environmental, economic and cultural impacts.

Students who participated in the Summer 2025 Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship not only learn first-hand how Bali��s residents and leaders are grappling with previously unseen environmental, economic and cultural impacts related to tourism. (Photo: Laura DeLuca)

Participants in the three-week Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship not only learn first-hand how Bali��s residents and leaders are grappling with these issues for which there aren��t many roadmaps, but how they��re creating innovative, sustainable solutions for dealing with these environmental and socioeconomic challenges.

��It��s a very hands-on course,�� explains seminar director Laura DeLuca, a �� assistant teaching professor of anthropology and faculty member in the Stories and Societies Residential Academic Program. ��Students are seeing first-hand these social innovations that are designed to improve human and ecosystem viability in ways that are effective, efficient, long-term and just.

��These innovations also serve as models that can be adapted to other cultural and socioeconomic contexts beyond Bali. The application of these approaches is driving the emergence of new and creative ��solutionary�� paradigms that address the concerns of people, animals and the environment.��

Potential benefits, potential impacts

The Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship first took place in Summer 2024 and was led by Caroline Conzelman, an anthropology teaching professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Residential Academic Programs (RAPs).

The seminar had its genesis in ��this idea of decolonizing the study abroad experience and challenging some of these notions of extractive tourism or ��voluntourism,�� Conzelman explains. ��Sometimes we don��t really examine our positions of privilege and power when we are just regular tourists, even with study abroad, so I always bring this into the conversation with students: What are we doing here, what are potential benefits, what are potential impacts?��

Conzelman and DeLuca, who were in graduate school at CU Boulder together, both brought a passion for sustainability to their respective areas of anthropological study��Conzelman in Bolivia and DeLuca in Tanzania��and together developed a 1000-level course on sustainability, social responsibility and entrepreneurship that they taught in several RAPs.

Apply by Dec. 1

Applications for the three-credit Summer 2026 Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship close Dec. 1. Students from all majors are invited to participate.

For more information, contact Scott Funk, Education Abroad program manager for the Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneuriship.

Learn more

Though neither had previously studied or done research in Bali, ��I��m on a listserv for environmental anthropology, which has always been my focus, and I kept seeing information about the Bali Institute,�� Conzelman says. ��On Oct. 13, 2021, I had my first Zoom meeting with the director of the Bali Institute, and we talked for an hour and a half. We were on the same level in terms of being extremely aware of differentials of power and privilege that exist in study abroad and other sorts of programs like that.

��We talked about upending the status quo of voluntourism, we talked about creating a viable business model for longer-term engagement in terms of Balinese people inviting foreigners into their own communities and guiding them in this cultural exploration.��

Tri Hita Karana

Working with the Education Abroad office and with the Bali Institute as a local partner, Conzelman began developing a three-week summer program that would allow students to study community-led coral restoration and regenerative rice farming projects, spend time with social entrepreneurs and learn about local traditions in medicine, food and religion, as well as strategic efforts to make tourism more sustainable.

The Balinese practice of Tri Hita Karana is woven throughout all the lessons, DeLuca says, which is the ��three causes of wellbeing�� or the ��three causes of prosperity and happiness��: harmony with the divine, harmony among people and harmony with nature and the environment.

��The principle of Tri Hita Karana guides many aspects of life on the island and is seen as a strong pillar for maintaining the residents�� sustainability and quality of life,�� DeLuca explains.

Clementine Clyker, a senior majoring in environmental studies, first participated in the seminar as a student in 2025 and then as a teaching assistant (TA) in 2025. As a student, she says, ��some of my most memorable experiences were getting to know the Balinese people, especially our guides. I still remain in contact with most of them. They have shown me different ways of life that put my own into perspective. Additionally, I met many loving individuals who work hard to promote social equity and equal opportunities for marginalized groups such as women.��

Because of her experiences in Bali as both a student and a TA, she adds, ��I have also started to prioritize community more. Bali is a warm and welcoming place that is deeply rooted in community, something I feel we lack in the States. Getting to see the lives of Balinese locals has made me realize how important it is to have that community and to nurture it.��

For Cal Curtis, a sophomore majoring in biology with a leadership minor, participating in the Summer 2025 Bali Global Seminar "opened my eyes to a new community and ecosystem. I learned about the devastating impact of overfishing on our oceans, which sparked my passion for conservation.��

"Bali taught me so much about empathy, the importance of community and the impact that our actions directly have on the environment," adds Summer 2025 participant Skylar Armstrong, a sophomore majoring integrative physiology.

DeLuca notes that Bali is at the frontlines of addressing the exploitative overtourism also seen in places like Barcelona, Cairo and Venice, ��which, basically, takes more than it gives,�� she says, and has led to crises of pollution, reef destruction, affordable housing, access to health care and maintaining private places to worship.

��Because of the partnerships we have with people who live there, Bali is a living classroom for our students,�� DeLuca says. ��It��s a place that��s really romanticized and that I think a lot of people dream of visiting, but it��s also a place where the people who live there are trying to figure out how they can sustainably undo some of the damage that��s being done by this industry that represents the majority of their economy. And we have these deep connections and relationships with people there who are willing to teach our students about this work.��

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Bali Global Seminar in Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship helps students see real-world work to balance tourism with environmental and cultural preservation.

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Top image: Guillaume Marques/Unsplash

It was a very good year (for movies)

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:51:36 +0000

It was a very good year (for movies) Rachel Sauer Wed, 11/12/2025 - 13:51

Rachel Sauer

The films of 1975, currently featured in CU Boulder��s International Film Series, reflected the times and the culture in ways that hadn��t been seen before, says film scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Mu?oz

It wasn��t all bad news in 1975. On July 5, Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win Wimbledon, and several months later, on Oct. 11, Saturday Night Live debuted, the same day that Bruce Springsteen earned his first Top 40 hit with "Born to Run."

But then��

It was also the year that Saigon fell, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, two assassination attempts were made on Gerald Ford and U.S. unemployment peaked at 9.2%. Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing, and Patty Hearst was captured in San Francisco.

��Between the political context and the historical context and technological developments 50 years ago, it created this environment for a lot of exceptional filmmaking,�� notes Ernesto Acevedo-Mu?oz, a CU Boulder professor of cinema studies and moving image arts.

The times felt raw and upside-down, so filmmakers responded by making indelible, groundbreaking art.

Of course there have been other momentous years for films now considered classics, but perhaps none so densely populated as 1975: Jaws, Nashville and Dog Day Afternoon. One Flew Over the Cuckoo��s Nest, Barry Lyndon and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Shampoo, The Stepford Wives and 3 Days of the Condor.

��Between the political context and the historical context and technological developments 50 years ago, it created this environment for a lot of exceptional filmmaking,�� says Ernesto Acevedo-Mu?oz, a �� professor of cinema studies and moving image arts.

A new era

Some might argue, Acevedo-Mu?oz says, that the films of 1975 had their genesis in November 1963 with the assassination of John F. Kennedy: ��It��s seen as this breaking point in American history that leads to a decade of cynicism and that ends with the fall of the Nixon administration. From ��63 to ��75, a number of historical events��from Kennedy to Johnson to the Tet Offensive, My Lai, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the end of Vietnam, the end of Nixon��we haven��t had, I don��t think, that amount of public and social turbulence in such a compact amount of time since then.��

The filmmakers who began creating during this time��including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and others now considered legends��were not only embedded in and products of the times but represented the first generation to study the history and craft of filmmaking and cinema at university, Acevedo-Mu?oz says.

Further, they came of artistic age during a time that wrote the epitaph for Hollywood��s Golden Age, when the producer was king and the studio system ruled everything from actors�� contracts to production and distribution deals with movie houses. This new generation of filmmakers ushered in the era of the director and the so-called American New Wave, because they were not only studying filmmaking, but were strongly influenced by international films and filmmakers.

This was the time that also saw the end of the Hays Code��Hollywood��s self-imposed morality guidelines that some say creatively cowed the industry from 1934 to 1968��and the ��rise of the rating system that we know, which allowed for more frank representations of sex and violence,�� Acevedo-Mu?oz says.

See the films of 1975

The International Film Series is Boulder's first arthouse series and has been locally programmed since 1941. Its main venue is Muenzinger Auditorium, with a secondary venue in the Visual Arts Complex Auditorium.

This semester, CU Boulder's International Film Series has highlighted notable films from 1975 among the other films on its full schedule and will feature two more before the winter break: Barry Lyndon Sunday, Nov. 16, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show Thursday, Dec. 4.

Learn more

��So, there��s this context of general pissed offness, there��s the generation gap of the ��60s, we��re getting our asses whupped by guerillas in Vietnam, we��ve seen a U.S. presidency collapse, and there��s this sense of, ��Let��s be pissed off and make movies that rattle cages.��

��Nothing to compare it to��

For Acevedo-Mu?oz, one of the great examples of this evolution is Robert Altman��s Nashville, which he considers the best movie of the ��70s because ��there��s nothing to compare it to. It��s sui generis. This movie was in production in 1974, and it��s about a presidential primary with a third-party candidate who��s challenging the establishment. And then it��s got this massive scope of 24 principal characters and five days of continuous action and this music that goes from magnificent to abject��I think some of the advertising for Nashville said it��s ��the damndest thing you ever saw��and it ends with the assassination of a celebrity by a nut with a gun.��

The films of 1975 not only mirrored the political and social upheaval of the times but represented a certain creative daring and willingness to explore previously taboo topics. The Rocky Horror Picture Show��which wasn��t an American movie but made its way to Hollywood via Australia, the West End and Broadway��made the case that ��everybody��s queer and it��s perfectly fine and even monsters are not really monsters, it��s the normal people who come off as squares and weird," Acevedo-Mu?oz says. "It��s one of the reasons why Rocky Horror has never really gone away, and if anything has become more and more of an anthem for all things marginalized and all things kicked off center by The Man and a sign of rebellion.��

The events and themes in Dog Day Afternoon, including robbing a bank to help pay for a character��s gender-affirming surgery, had never really been seen in a major Hollywood production before, said CU Boulder film scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Mu?oz. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

And the events and themes in Dog Day Afternoon, such as robbing a bank to help pay for a character��s gender-affirming surgery, had never really been seen in a major Hollywood production before, Acevedo-Mu?oz says.

��Sidney Lumet directed it, and he was bringing to the discussion topics that would have been unthinkable a decade before, starting with a trans character,�� Acevedo-Mu?oz says. ��And he was highlighting the frustration and the anger of the times, and we see that evolve into the street crowd that starts being curious about what��s happening in the bank and then ends up cheering for Al Pacino��s and John Cazale��s characters and applauding as they drive away to the airport.

��That anger from a criminal element previously would have been completely marginalized, not just in the decade and a half before, but also in the censorship system that predated the current rating system, where the bad guys could never be sympathetic. They could be charming, which Hitchcock did in the ��40s, but they couldn��t be sympathetic. But here everybody��s heartbroken when Al Pacino��s character gets caught. The crowd outside of the bank are you and me in the movie theater, and the bank is a symbol of The Man, of the establishment, of capitalism. It��s a beautiful and, in so many ways, a beautifully shocking movie.��

Irreverence and creativity

The filmmakers of 1975 also saw the introduction of the Steadicam, a revolutionary camera stabilizer mount invented by Garrett Brown that entered the market that year. The technology allowed for greater movement and mobility in shooting and was notably used in filming Rocky the following year.

Even if filmmakers weren��t using the Steadicam, the growing preference for dynamic shots with more movement was still evident in many of the films of 1975, Acevedo-Mu?oz says. One Flew Over the Cuckoo��s Nest is noted for its gritty, almost handmade quality. ��Suddenly movies didn��t have to be so pretty anymore, and they could do things like lens flare, they could play with grain in ways we hadn��t seen before.��

He adds that it wasn��t all gritty political and social commentary in 1975. Shampoo, for example, could best be described as a sexy romp��women and men having fun in a hair salon, legendary actors at their height of beauty, a loving farewell to the hippie era.

The films of 1975 are bookended by other exceptional films released in the previous and following years but symbolize the core of a decade when everything seemed to change, Acevedo-Mu?oz says, adding that subsequent eras have seen the events of the times reflected in their films, but not in the way that they were in 1975.

��Take September 11,�� he says. ��It was a traumatic event, and what did it lead to? It led to more Marvel movies, it led to vision after vision after vision of New York being destroyed and a group of good ol�� Americans dressed in red, white and blue kicking alien ass. We��re now getting a couple of good movies that appear to address January 6��Civil War is the best, I think��but we��re not seeing a wave of it and we��re not seeing a concentration as we did, not coincidentally, a year and a half after the collapse of the Nixon administration. (The year 1975) was exciting because anger brings irreverence and also creativity.��

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CU Boulder commits to green chemistry

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

CU Boulder commits to green chemistry Rachel Sauer Tue, 11/04/2025 - 11:47

Rachel Sauer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

��Social justice-wise, I think it��s our responsibility to be more aware of the effects we are having on the environment,�� adds Jules Immonen, a first-year student studying chemistry who serves as secretary of the CUSG Environmental Board. ��Obviously, sustainability is something I��m passionate about, but even people who aren��t should be able to learn how to incorporate these practices in an easy way.��

Doing better chemistry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Performing research sustainably

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

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

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

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

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Students learning dam good lessons from nature's busy builders

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 13:54:40 +0000

Students learning dam good lessons from nature's busy builders Rachel Sauer Fri, 10/31/2025 - 07:54

Rachel Sauer

In a capstone project partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective, Masters of the Environment students study what it means to live alongside beavers

Beavers are so much more than nature��s most eager builders. In many ecosystems, they play a key role in nature-based solutions to flood control, habitat restoration and fire mitigation.

They are a keystone species that can increase biodiversity in suitable habitats, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), but they also are a source of human-wildlife conflict in Colorado. For example, beavers have been known to build dams and inadvertently flood areas that ranchers or homeowners don��t want flooded.

Jack Carter, Amanda Opp and Colin McDonald (left to right) completed a Masters of the Environment capstone project studying beavers and how they live alongside humans in partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective. (Photo: Masters of the Environment program)

The question for conservationists, land managers and any human who cares about wildlife, then, is how to live alongside this native species that broadly engenders mixed feelings. It��s a question that �� Masters of the Environment (MENV) students Amanda Opp, Jack Carter and Colin McDonald addressed in their capstone project, which they will publicly present today at the 2025 MENV Capstone Symposium.

Partnering with the Boulder Watershed Collective (BWC), Opp, Carter and McDonald examined the social perceptions and ecological impacts of beavers via surveys, research and data collection. They talked with land and wildlife managers across the Front Range to study how public agencies make beaver management decisions, and they participated in two beaver reintroductions, developing a monitoring plan to measure ecological metrics at the sites where the beavers were reintroduced.

��I think we all read the book ��Eager�� by Ben Goldfarb, about beavers in America and how there was a high reduction in numbers from trapping in the 19^th century,�� McDonald explains. ��Now there��s a movement to reintroduce them, and we have this thing about ��coexistence�� as one of those kind of trigger words. We tried to come up with multiple things like ��living with beavers�� in place of ��coexistence�� or ��reintroduction,�� which somehow give off the vibe that your life is going to change by the presence of these animals coming back, which isn��t necessarily the case.��

Back from the brink

Not too long ago, the North American beaver was on the verge of extinction because of 19th-century fashions that required the under fur of beaver pelts. At their population peak before the fur trade began in earnest, there were anywhere between 60-400 million North American beavers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), but by 1900 there were fewer than 100,000.

As beaver populations began to rebound in subsequent decades thanks to conservation and reintroduction efforts, another issue emerged: Humans had moved into beaver habitat, converting ��wildlife-rich wetlands into agricultural lands�� and building towns nearby, according to USFWS.

For many years along the Front Range, beavers and humans have lived in an uneasy and sometimes nonexistent d��tente, so one of the goals of the students�� capstone project was to gather data that might help inform CPW��s beaver conservation and management strategy, which is currently being developed.

Some of the points of conflict that Opp, Carter and McDonald learned about as they collected data included ranchers concerned about losing rangeland to flooding and homeowners who were ��very concerned about mosquitoes and thinking that if beavers are creating marshy areas, the risk for West Nile increases,�� Opp says.

One of the beaver releases on private land near Nederland in which Amanda Opp, Jack Carter and Colin McDonald participated for their MENV capstone project. (Video: Colin McDonald)

Working with the Boulder Watershed Collective, they learned the nuances of effective conservation, which must include education, collaboration and partnership between stakeholders, Carter says: ��Due to conflicts over public infrastructure and Colorado water law, reintroducing beavers is not as easy as it may seem.��

At the beginning of the 20th century, the North American beaver was on the verge of extinction because of 19th-century fashions that required the under fur of beaver pelts. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

��I think BWC, and a lot of people involved with conservation, when they��re conveying the message of ��Hey, these are beneficial animals,�� they have to meet people where they��re at,�� Opp says. ��One of biggest concerns in Colorado is fire mitigation, so when we��re thinking about unique solutions, nature-based solutions that might not have been considered in the past, beavers have been a really important pitch: ��If you have a wet environment with wet soil and healthy grass, you��ll probably have reduced risk of fire reaching your property.��

Not just a cute animal

The two reintroductions in which Opp, Carter and McDonald participated happened on private land near Nederland, with the landowners inviting BWC to release beavers in ponds or wetlands on their land. Several of the reintroduced beavers came from Aurora, where they had been causing problems, McDonald says, so BWC and Aurora wildlife officers worked together to ensure that the beavers were trapped in families so they could be released together.

��Beavers aren��t endangered anymore, so there��s zero protection for them,�� Carter explains, adding that the areas in which the beavers were released are far from settlements, hopefully giving the beavers the greatest chance to thrive.

At one of the relocation sites, the beavers had monitors attached to their tails, enabling researchers and wildlife officials to track their movements, Opp says. And at both locations, the landowners are reporting their visual observations of beaver movement to BWC, which is included in the MENV students�� monitoring plan. Their plan also includes measuring how wide the bodies of water into which the beavers were released become.

For the students, each of whom came to the MENV program as committed conservationists, their work with beavers for their capstone project was about more than busy, charismatic rodents.

��I��m really passionate about conservation and passionate about protecting animals in the wild, and this project instilled in me how rewarding this work is,�� Opp says, a sentiment that McDonald echoed, adding that he appreciated learning how to build community partnerships and how to maximize impact at small nonprofits.

��Before this, I don��t think I really appreciated beavers,�� Carter says. ��I didn��t realize how important they are to an ecosystem. One of the biggest things that��s happening right now is biodiversity loss, and beavers create essential habitats for moose, for certain amphibian species. A lot of amphibians are going down the drain, especially in a state like Colorado, and beavers can help solve that problem.��

��The best way to move forward with all the damage humans have done is to realize we��re not separate from our environment,�� Opp says. ��We have to do everything we can to protect it, and beavers are a really awesome keystone species that��s not just this cute animal; they can play an important role in solving the climate crisis.��

Jack Carter, Colin McDonald and Amanda Opp (left to right) on their way to release a beaver on private land near Nederland. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

A beaver after being released on private land near Nederland. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

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In a capstone project partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective, Masters of the Environment students study what it means to live alongside beavers.

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Top photo: Amanda Opp

Students finding strength in numbers

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

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

Rachel Sauer

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

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

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

When one of Silva Chang��s high school teachers showed her a brochure for the six-week Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) program, she wasn��t necessarily doing math for fun in her free time, but she was very good at it.

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

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

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

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

��I knew of certain students along the Front Range��all top students, some nationally ranked��and I wanted to be able to bring them together so they would have peer support,�� Chang explains of starting Colorado Math Circle in 2005. ��Some students can find peers, but some can��t. If you say, ��I enjoy doing math problems all day,�� people might laugh at you, and you might try to hide that interest. I thought there should be a place where students didn��t have to hide their enthusiasm for math.��

��Come and enjoy math��

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

If you go

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

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

Where: Benson Earth Sciences room 180

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

With some parental convincing and bolstered by her membership on a New York City-wide high school team of top math students, Chang applied and was accepted. Initially, her family was asked to pay a small amount to attend, ��and my parents said no. They didn��t have a lot of money, but I don��t think that was their reason. They were nervous about me leaving home. So, someone from HCSSiM called me up and said, ��You turned down the acceptance, can you tell us why?�� and I said the reason was financial, so they offered a full scholarship.��

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

��(David Kelly) was running the program when I attended in the 1970s, and he set the tone,�� Chang says. ��He just made it fun. Some of us were coming from more competitive or grade-oriented backgrounds, but his perspective was, ��Come and enjoy math. Math is fun, math is beautiful, get what you can out of this program, take away what you can.�� They were teaching fairly high-level math, but it wasn��t competitive at all. It was like, ��Let��s all do math together, let��s all learn together.��

Creating a community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In its 20 years, Colorado Math Circle has steadily grown; last year, more than 110 students from 45 Colorado schools participated. Over the years, students from as far as Grand Junction, Pueblo and Rangely have participated. ��We don��t draw many students from any one school��the two largest are Fairview and Cherry Creek��it��s often one student from one school,�� Chang says. ��The main goal of the Colorado Math Circle is to teach students math, yes, and teach them problem-solving skills, but what we really provide is a community.

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

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

New learning center more than just a place to study math

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:30:48 +0000

New learning center more than just a place to study math Rachel Sauer Mon, 10/20/2025 - 15:30

Rachel Sauer

The Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center, opened last month after a summer-long renovation, invites students to collaborate, hang out and learn

In one corner of the common room, Ben Sewald is writing an equation on a whiteboard. A first-year �� student, he��s still deciding whether to major in aerospace engineering or applied mathematics but knows one thing for sure: Discrete math is his favorite class.

��The whole time before this, I��ve been learning math, but in this class it��s about how we can prove that these things are true,�� he explains as he writes.

Ben Sewald, a first-year CU Boulder student, writes an equation for his discrete math class in the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

Not far from him, but on a different whiteboard, Atticus Fretz, a sophomore studying environmental engineering, is tutoring two Calculus I students, pointing with a blue marker to explain each part of the equation as he writes it.

And through the rest of the common area��and in the three classrooms arrayed from it��the hum of applied mathematics hovers around students solo studying or clustered in groups; around tutors explaining the finer points of differential equations, algorithms and data structures and every level of calculus; and around faculty members expanding on what they taught in class��but from the comfort of a lounge chair.

It��s the middle of a Thursday afternoon, and the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center (CALC) is hopping.

Opened last month after a summer-long, $1.7 million renovation of a section of a classroom wing in the �� Engineering Center, CALC is designed to be ��a warm, inviting space for undergraduate students, especially engineering calculus students, to learn, hang out and work on their coursework,�� explains Mark Hoefer, professor and department chair of applied mathematics.

The space, in ECCR 252, formerly was a computer lab, ��but it wasn��t heavily used,�� says Silva Chang, a full teaching professor of applied mathematics. ��So, we started talking about creating a comfortable, welcoming place where students could feel at home and hang out with their friends while they study and learn.��

When it was a little-used computer lab, the space was darker and not especially comfortable, so the renovation included jackhammering through concrete walls and replacing them with glass to allow in natural light, painting the walls in lighter colors, replacing carpeting and lighting and arranging comfortable chairs and benches around the space.

��We want this to be a space that supports collaboration,�� Chang says.

CALC will become a home to all-day drop-in office hours with faculty members and teaching assistants; tutoring with applied mathematics-trained tutors; small, learning assistant�Cled study groups; workshops on study strategies; and proactive student outreach, Hoefer says. Further, faculty and staff will continually work with students to assess how they��re using the space and what would improve or enhance their experiences in it.

��I think people are slowly discovering this space,�� Silva says, gesturing to students grouped around tables and in comfortable chairs or writing on whiteboards. ��It��s especially important for first-year students to have a place where they can find mentors and connect with classmates; those things are so important for student retention, so they can feel that this is a place where they belong.��

For Maxwell Minson, a first-year student studying bioengineering and, on this particular afternoon, writing Calculus 3 equations on a whiteboard, CALC is a place where ��I feel really comfortable,�� he says. ��I��m here all the time.��

Atticus Fretz (kneeling, wearing purple hoodie), a sophomore majoring in environmental engineering, tutors Calculus 1 in the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

The Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center offers drop-in hours with faculty members and teaching assistants as well as tutoring with applied mathematics-trained tutors. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

Renovation of a little-used computer lab in the CU Boulder Engineering Center included replacing concrete walls with glass ones to let in more light, including one etched with the Department of Applied Mathematics logo. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

Elizabeth Wallis McGuire (crouched, pointing at whiteboard), a junior studying electrical and computer engineering, tutors Calculus 1 in the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

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The Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center, opened last month after a summer-long renovation, invites students to collaborate, hang out and learn.

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Long live the King in modern music

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:51:19 +0000

Long live the King in modern music Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/30/2025 - 18:51

Rachel Sauer

In what would have been B.B. King��s 100^th birthday month, CU Boulder music scholar Shawn O��Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025

B.B. King was born to sharecroppers on a cotton plantation in Leflore County, Mississippi, and began his musical career in the church choir, teaching himself to play guitar while listening to the ��King Biscuit Time�� radio show.

Sabrina Carpenter was born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and began posting videos of herself singing Adele and Christina Aguilera songs on YouTube around age 10. As a teenager, she starred in the Disney Channel series ��Girl Meets World.��

Culturally and musically, they��re about as different as two artists can be. But if the roots of rock ��n�� roll and even pop grow from blues��which they do��then it should be possible to hear B.B. King and other legends of blues in the sly pop confections of Sabrina Carpenter.

Shawn O'Neal is a CU Boulder assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and Center for African and African American Studies executive committee member.

So, Shawn O��Neal, a �� musicologist and assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies, cues up Carpenter��s song ��Manchild,�� currently No. 6 on the Billboard Top 100: ��Right away, the first thing I hear is that call and response of where she��s singing something and then answering her own question or statement back to herself,�� he notes. ��Call and response is such a foundation of blues music��whether Sabrina Carpenter knows that or thinks about it, or even has to, she got that from somewhere.��

Further, he asks, who were some of the first to sing about taking care of business��working all day, making a home at night��while a no-good partner is off catting around? The women of blues.

��They were the first to talk about sexuality, to talk about the issues they were having with their partners, even sometimes to talk about the fact that they were having love interests of the same sex,�� O��Neal says. ��All of those tropes are very defined in (Carpenter��s) music, and then there��s just that drumbeat, that very four-on-the-floor beat that��s a hallmark of blues. I think you could take that Sabrina Carpenter song and turn it into a blues song very easily.��

And it��s not just Carpenter. Even on current Top 40 lists that seem to owe more to computers and electronics than to the sawdust floors of Delta juke joints, blues touchpoints are audible. B.B. King, who died in May 2015 but would have turned 100 this month, and other legends of blues live in the music of 2025.

��B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey��I hear them in all this pop music,�� O��Neal says. ��I can��t not hear it, because it��s there; it��s in the DNA.��

��What they call rock ��n�� roll��

In 1957, a Hearst interviewer asked rock ��n�� roll pioneer Fats Domino, ��Fats, how did this rock ��n�� roll all get started, anyway?�� and Domino replied, ��Well, what they call rock ��n�� roll now is rhythm and blues. I��ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans.��

It was an acknowledgment that what felt revolutionary and sonically groundbreaking was actually a long time coming��the latest brick in a long- and well-established foundation.

It��s a direct lineage, O��Neal says: Pop grew from rock ��n�� roll; rock grew from blues, jazz and gospel; which grew from spirituals and field hollers; and those were first-generation descendants of African musical and narrative traditions brought to North America by enslaved people.

��Spirituals were sung in the cotton fields on the plantations,�� O��Neal explains. ��People were creating this music as subliminal communication, and the enslavement masters didn��t understand what they were talking about. They had to create a new language, and so much of it was speaking to spirituality��save us, help us, let me find some solace. It comes from pain and struggle and being completely removed from who you are, and we can sugarcoat it and syrup it up, but foundationally that��s where American music is coming from.��

Though the roots of American music are twisting and complex��and also woven of European folk and classical traditions��there��s a through line of African American musical tradition, O��Neal says. Gospel evolved from spirituals and give birth to its lyrically secular offspring of blues, which birthed jazz, rock and pop, as well as the direct descendants that are rap and hip-hop.

CU Boulder music scholar Shawn O'Neal notes that blues legends like B.B. King stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe (pictured above), Lead Belly and Robert Johnson. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The earliest blues artists began developing a distinctive sound that became known for 12-bar chord progressions��a form based on the I, IV and V chords in a musical key��that are fundamental to the blues genre and are prominent in rock ��n�� roll, O��Neal says. Classic blues music also followed a pattern of one line being repeated four times in a verse, which 20th-century artists evolved the AAB pattern that became the blues standard: a three-line verse structure in blues music where the first line (A) is repeated, and the third line (B) offers a conclusion or response, often using a "question-question-answer" pattern within a 12-bar blues progression.

Blues legends like B.B. King, who stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Lead Belly and Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, experimented with the foundational elements of blues, which also included the ��walking bass�� rhythms and pitch-flattened ��blue notes,�� and broadened the sound and scope of the genre. Rock and pop, as well as myriad blues subgenres, were natural progressions, O��Neal says.

Drenched in the blues

Even now, as cross-pollinated and subdivided as music is, O��Neal says, listeners hear the blues regardless of whether they recognize it: ��For example, when you think about the foundations of electronic music or EDM, we��re talking about house music, and those DJs were originally playing rhythm and blues records. And in pop, you hear that foundation of disco, and they were also playing soul and rhythm and blues in the clubs.

��None of this music being played today was conjured out of thin air; it��s based on musical traditions that go back 100, 200 years.��

He adds that in hip-hop culture, B.B. King has been sampled from the earliest days of the genre ��because those were the records in our parents�� record collections. And obviously it��s never been just Black artists who��ve sampled and built on the blues. If you start at a place like Led Zeppelin, they obviously were heavily influenced by B.B. King and just drenched in blues, Jimmy Page especially. You take songs like ��Since I��ve Been Loving You�� or ��The Song Remains the Same�� and slow them down to that really draggy riff��that��s blues.��

When O��Neal has taught students to hear these influences in Reiland Rabaka's Introduction to Hip Hop Studies classes and Critical Survey of African American music, ��they come up to me after almost every class saying, ��I never knew that was in there.��

The challenge, he says, is respecting the artistic quest for newness and innovation while acknowledging and honoring the foundation on which it lives.

��As an artist, you have to understand that even if you want to think it��s your own original song, it��s still based off things that already happened,�� says O��Neal, who also is a renowned DJ and musician. ��Taylor Swift? Well, that��s Motown, that��s what she��s doing��three chords, simple progressions, prominent melodies, emotional lyrics. Whether artists now want to acknowledge it or not, the sounds they��re playing started a long time ago.��

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In what would have been B.B. King��s 100th birthday month, CU Boulder music scholar Shawn O��Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025.

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Top image: B.B. King playing at the University of Hamburg in November 1971. (Photo: Heinrich Klaffs/Wikimedia Commons)

We Are Art Buffs building an arts community

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:40:21 +0000

We Are Art Buffs building an arts community Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/25/2025 - 13:40

Rachel Sauer

At Sept. 17 gathering, representatives of the arts at CU Boulder, in Boulder and across the Front Range built connections in the nascent We Are Art Buffs initiative

First, the question: What is an art buff?

��There is a journey within this question that speaks to the heart of what we are trying to curate,�� said John-Michael Rivera, dean of arts and humanities in the �� College of Arts and Sciences. ��We��re fostering not simply an appreciation of the arts but cultivating a lived and embodied inquiry into the creative. To engage the arts is a trait that all should appreciate in daily life.��

Then the idea: What if CU Boulder was the heart of the arts in Boulder, on the Front Range and in Colorado��a place where every student is supported in creative inquiry; where partnerships are made and strengthened between the university, artists and arts organizations in communities across Colorado and, someday, the nation; where there are infinite paths to the infinite ways of engaging with the arts?

John-Michael Rivera (at podium), dean of arts and humanities, speaks at the Sept. 17 We Are Art Buffs gathering.

So, dozens gathered Sept. 17 in Norlin Library, representing the arts at CU Boulder, in the broader Boulder community and across the Front Range��taking steps and building connections in an initiative called We Are Art Buffs.

��From the very beginning��18 months ago, 19 months ago��we said, ��Let��s really start talking about the arts at CU and have more pathways and connections with the community around us,�� Rivera said, addressing leaders from organizations including the Museum of Boulder, the Clyfford Still Museum, the City of Boulder Office of Arts and Culture, the Arvada Center, the Dairy Arts Center and many others.

��Right now is a tough time to be an artist, but it��s also a wonderful time to be an artist because the arts are really going to be the place that interprets this world we��re living in right now.��

CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz noted the importance of the arts in ��connecting us as people to one another and to ourselves. The arts not only provide richness to our lives, they provide unique and different types of connection to people. The fact that we are such a vibrant arts community is what makes us such a strong community in general.��

A key outcome of the partnerships that will grow through the We Are Art Buffs initiative is strengthening student success, Schwartz added: ��We know successful learning experiences outside the classroom are vital to student success. We talk about student success internally, and we��re also going to be looking to our community to help us advance the success of our students.��

With community partnerships, Rivera said, ��we can guarantee that our students find their way or, better yet, create new paths as they walk them; whether in the arts or arts-adjacent fields or any profession, our students will show employers what we already know: that creative inquiry transforms every career, transforms every life.

��We owe students a vision of their future, a future with all of us in it.��

��We know successful learning experiences outside the classroom are vital to student success," said CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz. "We talk about student success internally, and we��re also going to be looking to our community to help us advance the success of our students.��

We Are Art Buffs, Rivera added, also is about creating venues for coming together to create pathways and break down barriers between the university and the community. For those in attendance Wednesday, that could include many things, from the practical to the philosophical��from clearer information about parking on campus to broader access to venues on and off campus, expanded work-study opportunities for students and interdisciplinary research projects.

��We have space that��s available to rent��it��s kind of small but let us know if that��s something you��d be interested in,�� said Tracy Travis with The New Local in Boulder. ��Or if you��re interested in getting students involved in seeing how a nonprofit runs, seeing how a gallery runs, seeing how you can get the community involved.��

��We would love to open pathways between our student bodies,�� said Erin Hauger, professor and chair of visual arts at CU Denver. ��We have a great film program; we have a thriving visual arts program that I think has different majors than CU Boulder and we would love to infoshare and love to create different opportunities for students between downtown Boulder and downtown Denver.��

��We��re a giant building, so we have lots of possibilities for partnerships,�� said Jen Clements, deputy director of the Dairy Arts Center. ��One of the programs we have is our co-production program, which is a mechanism for early-career artists, for emerging artists to get their foot in a venue without the financial risk that is usually associated with getting your foot in a venue�� and we also have ample volunteer opportunities always.��

Erika Randall, interim dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, also emphasized the importance of building connections between students and the arts outside of campus: ��I have so many folks who are artists at heart or artists in major or art curious, and they only see it as way to extend the time to graduation and a way to disappoint their parents. We need help changing that story, and we need all of you to help in that because we know that the soft skills are not soft, they are hard-won and they are hard-fought.��

While the We Are Art Buffs initiative is in its nascent days, Rivera said that a foundational element is already in place, which is creating venues for coming together ��in very perilous times. What is it we want to be as a collective? What is it we want to do for the arts? How are we going to create pathways and break down barriers between the university and the community? I hope this is the beginning of all of us getting together and thinking what we want for the future of Boulder, the future of Colorado, and then becoming a national model.��

Cindy Sepucha (holding microphone), artists and venues program manager for the City of Boulder Office of Arts and Culture.

Collin Parson (laughing), Arvada Center director of galleries and curator, talks with Chris Taylor, executive director of Museum of Boulder.

Jim Walker, CU Boulder Norlin Scholars teaching faculty member

A participant takes notes at the We Are Art Buffs gathering Sept. 17.

Attendees at the Sept. 17 We Are Art Buffs gathering responded to the question "What can we learn from your career experience about how to affect students?"

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At Sept. 17 gathering, representatives of the arts at CU Boulder, in Boulder and across the Front Range built connections in the nascent We Are Art Buffs initiative.

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It��s not a glitch in the matrix, it��s a mathematical phenomenon

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:37:27 +0000

It��s not a glitch in the matrix, it��s a mathematical phenomenon Rachel Sauer Wed, 09/10/2025 - 16:37

Rachel Sauer

CU Boulder applied mathematician Mark Hoefer and colleagues answer a longstanding question of how to understand tidal bores in multiple dimensions

The photos and videos were all over Chinese social media last autumn: a grid-like pattern that suddenly appeared in two colliding waves on the Qiantang River and looked��if you didn��t know better��like a glitch in the matrix.

This rare phenomenon, called a matrix tide, is caused by two tidal bores��or events in which the front edge of an incoming tide forms a wave that travels up a river against the current��approaching each other from different directions, colliding and forming a grid pattern.

It��s visually stunning and, until very recently, mathematically confounding. However, in newly published research, Mark Hoefer, �� professor and department chair of applied mathematics, and his research colleagues detail how they��ve cracked the mathematical code of matrix tides.

Mark Hoefer, CU Boulder professor and department chair of applied mathematics, and his research colleagues recently cracked the mathematical code of matrix tides.

Previously, matrix tides were only studied in one dimension but, because of their characteristics, needed to be studied in two. Adding that second dimension, however, required developing computationally intensive numerical simulations and the mathematics to interpret the results, building on the previous work of mathematicians Gerald B. Whitham, Boris Kadomtsev and Vladimir Petviashvili.

��There are certain equations that model how these waves change in time and space, and those equations simplify when you��re working with just one-dimensional waves,�� Hoefer explains. ��They start out as Euler equations, the partial differential equations of three-dimensional fluid dynamics��basic models in engineering and science broadly��and when you restrict shallow water waves to move in one dimension, they can essentially be simplified. In some cases, you can simplify them further to ordinary differential equations, which is something we teach in lower-division, fourth-semester calculus. They are much easier and accessible to analyze mathematically.

��When you add more dimensions, you��ll inherently get a partial differential equation in time and space, and, for the matrix tide that we studied, the equation will be nonlinear and not reducible to an ordinary differential equation. Nonlinear means that the nature of the waves you see��how fast they move, their shape and the patterns they make��all depend on how big they are. These are all factors that challenge the mathematical analysis of the patterns in these multidimensional, nonlinear waves.��

Studying the matrix tide

In some truly propitious timing, Hoefer and his colleagues Gino Biondini and Alexander Bivolcic at the University of Buffalo had been working on the question of multidimensional, nonlinear waves when Hoefer's wife, Jill, showed him a video that his mother-in-law had sent.

��I started this research because the general field of study I work in is waves,�� Hoefer says, adding that he studies waves in a variety of applications, including the types whose expression can be seen in undular bores, which are tidal bores with smooth, wave-like profiles. ��Waves like undular bores arise in a variety of physical settings��from waves in water, air, light and even matter in quantum mechanics��and the fundamental mathematical reason why that��s the case is that all of them are modeled by similar partial differential equations.��

For a long time, the study of these wave phenomena focused on analyzing them in one dimension, in which they move in one direction and there��s no variation in the perpendicular or transverse direction. ��But my colleagues and I recognized that we really needed to extend their mathematical description to more than one dimension because the world is multidimensional,�� Hoefer says.

A numerical simulation of the matrix tide.

So, the researchers began studying undular bores in two dimensions. They had made good progress and had core results by fall 2024, which is when Hoefer��s mother-in-law sent an Instagram video to his wife, saying, ��These waves are so cool, you��ve got to show Mark!�� he recalls. ��I thought, ��Whoa, this is awesome!�� I immediately realized, ��Oh, these are the waves we��re predicting in our mathematical analysis.��

Hoefer contacted former CU Boulder applied mathematics PhD student Yifeng Mao, now a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and who is from China, and asked her to help him get to the bottom of the images and videos he was seeing on social media. She discovered that a tide association for the Qiantang River completed a tidal survey last fall, adding a new tide type to the eight previously identified ones. Piecing together that and other data, Hoefer and his colleagues identified the multidimensional waves they had been studying as what was seen on the river��s surface in the matrix tide.

Expanding the model

Among the challenges in studying waves in undular bores is that while certain physical effects can be disregarded at the outset when studying other types of waves, they must be considered with undular bores, Hoefer says. For example, when the wave oscillations are short enough, gravity causes them to move slower than longer waves. This effect, called negative wave dispersion, can be set aside in the mathematical analysis of longer waves because there are principles that account for it.

��In this setting, though, those effects are things we can��t neglect in our first pass-through,�� he says. He and his colleagues used a supercomputer at the University of Buffalo��s Center for Computational Research and graphical processing units to run many wave simulations in a few hours that would each take a day on a regular computer.

A simulation of the Mach stem and colliding undular bores.

They used shallow-water wave models, in which fluid depth is much less than the horizontal wavelength. ��Counterintuitively, shallow water models can apply even in the open ocean,�� Hoefer says. ��The reason is when you have something like a tsunami, where an earthquake suddenly shifts the ocean bottom and displaces huge amounts of water at the surface, it generates a wave that can be many, many miles wide. Fishermen may be on their boat and not know that a 200-mile wavelength wave is passing under them. There, the tsunami wave is so long that dispersion can be neglected. It��s only when it gets close to shore and the depth gets lower that the waves shorten, compressing the energy and creating destructively large waves. So, the same kind of dispersive wave model that describes near-shore tsunamis is what we used to describe this bore.��

Hoefer and colleagues�� mathematical analysis of two obliquely colliding undular bores predicts that, for a special collision angle, the biggest waves in the matrix tide are eight times the size of the original waves: ��This critical angle prediction was borne out in our wave simulations and marks a fundamental change in the shape of the waves from a matrix tide to another pattern called a Mach stem,�� he says.

Hoefer adds that the applications to describing these waves in more than one dimension extend beyond the surface of water��to fiber and crystal optics, quantum mechanical Bose-Einstein condensates and magnetic materials, meteorology and other applications.

��We have a number of directions to go,�� Hoefer says. ��We are looking for examples of the Mach stem from colliding undular bores. Maybe this will be the tenth tide type discovered during the next river survey.��

On the mathematical modeling, Hoefer adds that the model he and his colleagues used "is what we would consider in the field to be the simplest model to describe this setting. Another thing we assumed was that the waves are not too big, so they��re not breaking. But if you look at the Instagram videos of this phenomenon, you see them break. Another assumption we make in this model is that the variation in the direction that is transverse to wave propagation is not too large, so we want to quantify what that means and see if there are any other possible wave patterns.

��There are these assumptions in the model, so we want to gradually start adding more terms to the equations representing more physics and allow for more complications to see if new things happen. This will make the mathematics harder, but the challenge and reward of predicting new physical phenomena from mathematical models is why I keep doing applied math research.��

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CU Boulder applied mathematician Mark Hoefer and colleagues answer a longstanding question of how to understand tidal bores in multiple dimensions.

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Top photo: the grid pattern of a matrix tide (Photo: �� Creative Commons)

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