Fall 2010

U N I V E R S I T Y O F

MAGAZINE

N I V E R S I T Y O F
A G A Z I N E
UN I V ER S I T Y O F
MAGAZINE
UNIVERSITY
MAGAZINE

From Road to Rail

 Office of the Chancellor
Contents
Features

26 Plugged In
Electric vehicles are more than a hobby for engineering
Dear Readers: grad student Eva Hakansson.
By Chase Squires
We are living in interesting times. After years of the war on terror, a series of natural disasters of historic magnitude, a great
recession and the abrupt rise of new culture driven by technology and demographics, the sense of global upheaval and
imminent broad and deep change in America is almost tactile. It feels as though our nation and the world are once again 30 Return to the Rails
passing through a time when things are turned upside down, when pressures built up over generations produce a sudden The solution to America’s transportation problems could be 100
years in the past.
wave that changes much of the life and culture that we’ve known and had expected to continue indefinitely. There have
By Todd Neff
been a number of such periods in our national past: the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Great Depression and New
Deal politics, two world wars, the rise of the nuclear age, the civil rights movement and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Throughout, our national character and the values that lie at its roots survived and were refined and clarified by the trial.
36 Testing the Waters
Alumna Kristin Waters is floating reform ideas in Denver’s
As an institution that serves the public good, we at DU must do everything possible to ensure that that is the result this roughest schools.
time, as well. How do we move to do so? Here are some examples: By Richard Chapman
• We’ve partnered with Denver Public Schools (DPS) to develop the Denver Teacher Residency Program, which will
train talented people to teach in our urban schools. This program (which recently received an $8.2 million federal grant) 40 Give Me Shelter
will ultimately train 25 percent of all of the teachers in DPS and could make an enormous difference in the social and Professor Frank Ascione has discovered a disturbing link between
domestic violence and animal abuse.
economic fabric of the city. (Turn to page 36 to read about one DU-trained educator who is making a difference.)
By Tamara Chapman
• Colorado’s government is in dire financial condition and is anxiously looking toward the arrival of the financial “cliff ”
that will appear when federal stimulus funds run out. The state Legislature has asked DU to conduct a thorough review
of the finances of state and local government in Colorado, something that hasn’t happened here since 1959. We will pres- Departments
ent this study to the Legislature in February, and the report’s findings will inform the critical decisions to be made in the
coming years—decisions that must be based on information that is real and reliable, not on conjecture or sound bites. 44 Editor’s Note
•W
 ithin the next decade, the population of those aged 60 and older in the Denver area is expected to approach 600,000,
doubling in just 15 years. And the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in Colorado is expected to increase 124 percent
45 Letters
by 2025. These are just two aspects of an enormous demographic shift that will change the nature of our society. In
response, the University has established a new multidisciplinary Center for the Study of Aging that will couple biomedi-
47 DU Update
cal and bioengineering research with programs in the social sciences, law, business, public policy and other areas in an 8 News $17.5 million gift
effort to extend and improve the lives of the aged and their family members. (Read more about the center on page 8.) 13 Arts Theater prof Anthony Hubert
•O
 ur Strategic Issues Program report on immigration is gathering steam. The report is the result of 18 months of research 14 Academics Internship grants
and deliberation by a broad-based panel of Colorado citizens, and its 25 recommendations reflect the extraordinary 17 Q
 &A Seth Masket
consensus reached by this diverse group. The report, which was sent to every member of the U.S. Congress, is much in 18 History 100 years of DU tennis
demand as the nation heads toward elections this fall. (The report is available online at www.du.edu/issues.)
21 P
 eople Medical librarian
These are just a few examples of our many efforts to work for the public good during these times of great change. In virtu- 23 V
 iews Humanities Gardens
ally every case, our principal resources are the people of the University community and the intellectual capital concentrated
on our campus. We’ve focused these on the points of greatest leverage in the hope of producing the greatest good for the 24 Essay What we wear in this life
greatest number of people. Most important, though, we continue to educate our students for lives of integrity, purpose
and significance in a world of continuous change, few boundaries and near total globalization. After all, it is those lives that 45 Alumni Connections
must ultimately carry our national character and values forward. They will determine the future for all of us.
Online only at www.du.edu/magazine:
Research Sex trafficking
Sports Lacrosse player in England
On the cover and this page: DU’s Intermodal Transportation Institute says switching
freight and people from the highway to the rail could help solve America’s transportation
Office of the Chancellor problems; read the story on page 30. Cover photo by P Phillips/Shutterstock.
Photo at left by Fedor A. Sidorov/Shutterstock.
Mary Reed Building | 2199 S. University Blvd. | Denver, CO 80208 | 303.871.2111 | Fax 303.871.4101 | www.du.edu/chancellor
2 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 3
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F

Editor’s Note Letters

MAGAZINE
U N U
I V
N IEVRE SR IS T Y Y OO FF
I T
w w w. d u . e d u / m a g a z i n e
U N I V E R S I T Y
Volume O F
11, Number 1
M A G A Z I N E MA
MGAA
GAZ ZI INNEE
UN I V ER S I T Y O F
MAGAZINE
UNIVERSITY OF
Our students have a knack for making me MAGAZINE
U N I U
VNE IRV S
E IR T
M A GMAAZGIANZ E
S Y
I T Y
I N E
O FO F
U N I V E R S I T Y OOFF
UN I V ER S I T Y
Publisher
feel inadequate. They needn’t even try. Take M AMG AAGZAIZNI E
NE
Carol Farnsworth U NUINVI E
VRER
S SI ITTYY O
O FF
sophomore real estate major and U.S. Army veteran MA MG AAGA ZZ
INI NEE
Condi controversy she should be held a medical marijuana initia-
Neil Duncan, who lost both legs while serving in Managing Editor accountable for her tive. Unsurprisingly, in Venice
I am very disturbed to learn that
Chelsey Baker-Hauck (BA ’96)
Afghanistan. As I sat behind a desk this summer, Condoleezza Rice will give the key- policy decisions in the Beach, Calif., as well as other
rearranging commas and moving a mountain of Assistant Managing Editor note address at the 13th annual Korbel Bush administration locations, the medical-mari-
Greg Glasgow Dinner and receive the 2010 Josef Korbel and recognized for juana cards are handed out like
paperwork, Neil was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
Outstanding Alumni Award [“Facing both her achievements and failures. so much candy, with little, if any, regard for a
with other amputees, advancing the cause of Associate Editor Forward, Looking Back,” summer 2010]. Gabriel Kadell (MA ’06) true medical need. The same will happen in
wounded veterans, taking school supplies to African Tamara Chapman There are several other distinguished Denver Colorado, if it has not already.
orphans, and proving that he could overcome graduates from the Josef Korbel School While I agree that the legalization of
Editor
of International Studies who have dem- I totally understand that Ms. Rice is a marijuana is a separate issue from medi-
seemingly insurmountable odds. Kathryn Mayer (BA ’07, MA ’10)
Wayne Armstrong

Students like Neil defy adjectives. They are
out there changing the world, and I am doing what,
exactly?
I’m helping to make it possible for them to go out and change the
world.
I had a powerful reminder of this in May as I sat, riveted, in the
audience of TEDxDU, a passionate celebration of thinking and doing, of
ideas that could change the world. Many of the speakers have been featured
on the pages of this magazine at one time or another; engineering student
Eva Hakansson, a TEDxDU presenter, is profiled on page 26. (See all of the
TEDxDU presentations online at TEDxDU.com.)
My role is to help uncover the stories of remarkable DU people doing
remarkable things and to share those stories with the world. (You’ll read
more about Neil Duncan in our spring 2011 issue.)
Many others join me in this effort, including TEDxDU steering
committee member and University of Denver Magazine founder Carol
Farnsworth, who is retiring in September after 16 years as vice chancellor
of DU’s communications division.
Her work, my work and the work of the rest of DU’s communications,
advancement and alumni relations team raises funds and raises awareness,
making it possible for DU to continue educating students for, as Chancellor
Coombe says, “lives of integrity, purpose and significance.”
Making it possible for them to move mountains.
Chelsey Baker-Hauck
Managing Editor
Editorial Assistants
Elizabeth Fritzler, Deidre Helton (Class of 2012)
Staff Writer
Richard Chapman
Art Director
Craig Korn, VeggieGraphics
Contributors
Wayne Armstrong • Jim Berscheidt • Kim
DeVigil • Justin Edmonds (BSBA ’08) •
Jeff Francis • Larry Getlen • Kristal Griffith
(MBA ’10) • Jeffrey Haessler • John Kloeckner •
Rose Lincoln • Doug McPherson • Todd Neff •
Nathan Solheim • Chase Squires (MPS ’10) •
Lisa Trank-Greene
Editorial Board
Chelsey Baker-Hauck, editorial director •
Jim Berscheidt, associate vice chancellor
for university communications •
Thomas Douglis (BA ’86) • Carol Farnsworth,
vice chancellor for university communications •
Jeffrey Howard, executive director of alumni
relations • Sarah Satterwhite, senior director of
development for research and writing •
Amber Scott (MA ’02) • Laura Stevens (BA ’69),
director of parent relations
Printed on 10% PCW recycled paper
The University of Denver Magazine (USPS 022-177) is
published quarterly—fall, winter, spring and summer—by
the University of Denver, University Communications,
2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816. The
University of Denver (Colorado Seminary) is an Equal
Opportunity Institution. Periodicals postage paid at Denver,
CO. Postmaster: Send address changes to University of
Denver Magazine, University of Denver, University
Advancement, 2190 E. Asbury Ave., Denver, CO 80208-4816.
onstrated honor, integrity and the com-
mitment to improve the well-being of
humankind and who deserve this award
much more than Condoleezza Rice. As
a fellow alumnus of the Korbel School,
I am very ashamed to be associated with
Condoleezza Rice. While there is no
doubt about her intellectual and lead-
ership capabilities, she definitely lacks
integrity and the ability to mobilize all
the facts before making a major decision,
as she most clearly demonstrated prior to
the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq
in 2003.
I am among the critics who believe
the Bush administration will be ranked
as one of the worst in history. I have
met several refugees from Iraq who have
deeply suffered as a result of the war
there. For Condoleezza Rice to proclaim
that there will be democracy in Iraq is
totally naive. Given the current situation
in Baghdad—where electricity and sewers
run very poorly and security forces and
sectarian violence loom despite national
elections—I personally do not foresee a
stable and democratic Iraq any time soon.
Instead, in the wake of Condoleezza
and the Bush administration’s irresponsi-
ble and misguided decision making, thou-
sands of United States soldiers have died,
over a million Iraqi civilians have per-
ished, millions more have fled the country
as refugees and there are currently over
2 million internally displaced people.
As Condoleezza Rice has retreated
to academia, violence and instability
continue to plague Iraq and the Middle
East. While some believe she has earned
the outstanding alumni award, I believe
DU alumna, and it is important to cover her
as part of the University of Denver Magazine.
What amazes me is how much of a bubble
she continues to live in.
I was very disappointed to read this
paragraph: “Throughout her career, Rice has
made history and generated controversy—as
the first female national security adviser, as a
provost who took aggressive steps to balance
the budget, and as the foreign policy adviser
who, in the months preceding the Iraq War,
first warned about the dangers of smoking
guns and mushroom clouds.”
You failed to mention that while Rice
did “warn” about the dangers of a smoking
gun and mushroom clouds, she did so with-
out any sort of valid information to back it
up. It was mere conjecture to drum up the
fear, uncertainty and doubt necessary to send
us to war in a country that we had no busi-
ness going into.
It just makes me ill to read statements
like this. I was a fan of hers when she was
appointed national security adviser, but by
the time she became secretary of state it was
clear she was merely a puppet for the Bush
administration.
How about a cover article about
someone who truly deserves it? Madeleine
Albright. At least her moral compass isn’t
out of alignment.
Brian Garrett (MCIS ’00)
Denver
High times
I read, with considerable interest, the
article on medical marijuana in Colorado
[Q&A, summer 2010]. I was struck by
the similarity of the issue in Colorado and
California. Voters in both states approved
cal marijuana, the planning for a voter
approval of marijuana usage, beyond medi-
cal marijuana only, is already under way in
Colorado. The effort to legalize marijuana
generally, following the approval of medical
marijuana by the voters, will follow, just as
surely as night follows day. California voters
will vote on this very issue this year.
To frame the issue as one that simply
involves providing marijuana to the medi-
cally needy is hardly accurate. This is not a
matter of social justice, and the issues go far
beyond what is presented in the article.
Richard Parry (BA ’72)
Laguna Niguel, Calif.
Radio days
I read the two letters regarding KVDU in
the fall 2009 issue of the University of Denver
Magazine. As a former program director and
manager of KVDU in the early ’60s, I have a
personal interest in this subject.
When I first started as a DJ on KVDU,
we joked a lot about the poor carrier current
signal and the real difficulty in receiving the
KVDU signal in Johnson-McFarlane Hall.
Eventually, we learned that the transmitting
equipment was not working, and the station
had not been “on the air” for the entire quarter!
I recently corresponded with Sandra
Dallas, who was in the School of Journalism
while I was at DU. In her book Tallgrass
(St. Martin’s Press, 2007), Dallas writes that
the J-school classes were taught in a World
War II-era wooden structure that came from
the Amache Internment Camp in southeast
Colorado. It turns out that all those struc-
tures, including the home of KVDU, were
moved from the camp near Granada, Colo.,
to DU.

4 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Letters 5

 KVDU proved to be a useful testing
ground for those wanting to be on the radio.
In that era we were able to experiment with
a variety of formats and “try our wings” in
broadcasting. Some went on to broadcasting
careers. Many others enjoyed the experience
and moved on to other endeavors. While we
railed against the limitations of the carrier
current signal, those technological limita-
tions helped us to experiment and test the
limits of the radio medium.
Burnill Clark (BA ’63, MA ’64)
Woodinville, Wash.
Take the tram
I had two experiences that would be called
“Tramway Tech” [Alumni Connections,
spring 2010]. The first started when I was 10
years old in 1932 and I would ride the No. 8
tram to see the DU football team play. We
saw the games for free by going in a small
doorway in the north fence. DU called us
the “Knothole Gang” and sat us in the east
stands except on Thanksgiving, when DU
played CU. Then we were allowed to sit in
the bleachers behind the north end zone.
The second time was in 1947. When
I enrolled in the business school in March
1946, I was given 50 hours of credit for
military activities during World War II. The
business school at that time was downtown
on 15th Street. Because I was on the varsity
tennis team I rode the tram to the tennis
matches and to practice.
I. Bernard Munishor (BSBA ’48)
Denver
Hockey memories
I read with great interest the article
“Excellence on Ice” in the fall 2009 issue,
which brought up a lot of memories of
Pioneer hockey. As I grew up in south
Denver, I am one of the original fans of the
Pioneers.
We used to walk, probably beginning in
1949 or 1950, from our home in University
Park to the arena for freshman hockey games.
They played CU, CC, School of Mines and
others. Admission was 10 cents. We most
always went home with a broken but useable
hockey stick. No helmets. They cleaned the
ice with snow shovels and surfaced with
55-gallon drums on wheels—lots of hard 9 TEDxDU conference
work to prepare the ice for the next period.
I remember celebrating wins at the 11 Ruffatto Hall
Campus Lounge. Sounds like that has been a
longtime tradition for Pioneers hockey fans. 15 Stadium dedication
Tom Sand (BA ’62, MA ’70)
Dayton, Ohio
16 Colorado Book Award
20 Advice for parents
Correction The Alumni Connections section
of our summer 2010 issue featured a photo 22 Law Commencement
of a Pioneers baseball game we mistakenly
referred to as a home game. As reader and for-
mer varsity baseball player Mike Shepard (BSBA
’92) points out, the picture actually was of an
away game at Colorado State University in Fort
Collins.
Send letters to the editor to: Chelsey Baker-
Hauck, University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S.
University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816. Or
e-mail du-magazine@du.edu. Include your full
name and mailing address with all submissions.
Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The University of Denver Presents

Richard Clarke, Keynote Speaker

Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, LLC, Former White House Counter-Terrorism Czar

Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7 p.m.

Newman Center for the Performing Arts

Wayne Armstrong
2344 E. Iliff Ave.
Like other notable dates in history, Sept. 11 is one that will always remind us of a day that changed our lives.
During the 2010–11 academic year, the University of Denver will explore why it happened and how society is being For graduate student Terrie Taziri, just studying public art wasn’t enough. She decided to create and install it—and she
challenged to rethink our values. Join the discussion as DU’s Bridges to the Future series hosts 9/11: Ten Years After.
did so with a giant avocado on the DU campus in July. Taziri, a master’s student studying visual art and design in DU’s
University College, created the 8-by-4 Styrofoam avocado for her capstone project, intending to study how the sculpture
changed or enhanced the environment around it. It was first in the Humanities Garden before it moved onto the grass
RSVP to scp@du.edu or 303.871.2357
between Penrose Library and the Driscoll Student Center. Read more on Taziri’s blog, http://ttaziri.wordpress.com, and see
Watch it live at DU.edu/bridges a video of the installation at www.youtube.com/uofdenver.

6 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 7

 Top News
Gift establishes center for study of aging
By Jim Berscheidt Accreditation team invites comment about DU
Pioneers Top 10

A $17.5 million gift, among the largest in the University’s history, will be used in part to
establish a center at DU for the study of aging.
Betty Knoebel, widow of Denver food-service pioneer Ferdinand “Fritz” Knoebel, announced the gift in May. It includes the
B Bar K Ranch—a 996-acre property in Morrison, Colo., valued in excess of $10 million—and a future cash commitment.
DU is using the funds to establish the Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging and to support the School of Hotel, Restaurant
and Tourism Management (HRTM) in the University’s Daniels College of Business.
The Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging will expand DU’s
role in interdisciplinary research on aging and aging-related con-
ditions. Faculty positions will be added in molecular life sciences
and bioengineering. When the ranch is sold, DU will apply up to
$10 million from the net proceeds to help fund construction of
facilities to house the Knoebel Center and support its programs
and research.
At HRTM, Knoebel’s gift will increase student scholarships,
faculty support, industry partnerships and experiential learning
This fall DU will undergo a comprehensive re-accreditation evaluation by a visiting team representing the
Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
The public and members of the University community are encouraged to provide comment about the
Tips for
maintaining
University in advance of the November visit.
For more than two years, DU has been engaged in a process of self-study, addressing the commission’s a healthy
requirements and criteria for accreditation. The evaluation team will visit campus Nov. 8–10 to gather evidence that
the self-study is thorough and accurate. The team will make a recommendation to the commission about continuing
relationship
DU’s accreditation status.
The HLC is one of six regional accrediting agencies recognized by the U.S. Department of Education that 1. R ecognize that great
provides institutional accreditation on a regional basis. Institutional accreditation—a voluntary process—evaluates an
relationships take effort.
entire institution and accredits it as a whole. Other agencies provide accreditation for specific programs. The com-
mission accredits approximately 1,100 institutions of higher education in a 19-state region.  ake your relationship a
2. M
The University has held HLC accreditation since 1914. priority.
Submit comments about the University to: Public Comment on the University of Denver, The Higher Learning 3. Go out on a date once a week.
Commission, 230 S. LaSalle St., Suite 7-500, Chicago, IL 60604.
Comments must be received by Oct. 8 and should address substantive matters related to the quality of the

Andrey Milkin/iStockphoto
programs with the overarching goal of achieving international institution or its academic programs. They must be in writing and signed, should include the name, address and
distinction. The school has been named the Fritz Knoebel School telephone number of the writer, and cannot be treated as confidential.
>>www.du.edu/accreditation2010
of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management.
“Betty Knoebel’s generosity to DU will benefit both our
—Jim Berscheidt
students and the broader public that we serve,” says Chancellor
Robert Coombe. “The population of older Americans is growing
rapidly. The work of the Knoebel Center will help to extend the
lives of the aged and improve the quality of their lives and those
TedxDU showcases what DU has been doing 4. Learn a new hobby together.

of their family members. We are particularly excited that this in the world  ake time each day to talk as
5. M

Wayne Armstrong
friends.
gift will usher in an expansion of our partnership with Denver
Health. And we are proud that our HRTM program will bear the Regan Linton (pictured) was  ompliment and thank each
6. C
name of such a prominent business leader.” one of 18 speakers and performers at other.
In 2007, DU and Denver Health agreed to partner on sev- “TEDxDU: a Celebration of DUing”  hen you need to talk about
7. W
May 13 at DU’s Newman Center for
eral health care-related research initiatives and programs. a difficult issue, set aside a
the Performing Arts. The DU master’s
“As the graying of America occurs, there is a tremendous specific time to do it when you
candidate in social work, who has
need for understanding the processes of aging and the will both be able to listen well.
used a wheelchair since a 2002 car
approaches to keep us healthy into old age,” says Denver Health accident injured her spinal cord, is  et help as soon as you think
8. G
Wayne Armstrong

CEO Patricia Gabow. “As an institution that cares for one-third a member of Denver’s Physically you might need it (check
of Denver’s population and as a partner with DU, we see this Handicapped Actors and Musical Art- out websites like www.
center for the study of aging as a unique resource for this region ists League. loveyourrelationship.com;
DU’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management has been named in
honor of donor Fritz Knoebel.
that will achieve important advances in this needed area.” “In my life I sometimes feel disap- www.TwoOfUs.org; and www.
Denver native Fritz Knoebel founded Knoebel Mercantile pointed that I don’t have enough time, rhoadesconsulting.com).
Co., a bakery distributor, in 1929, and built it into the nation’s largest privately owned food-service distribution company. Known energy or womanpower to dedicate
 o your part to be the best
9. D
as Nobel Inc., it was acquired by Sysco Inc. as a subsidiary in 1982. to all of the amazing causes, passions and initiatives that exist out in the world,” Linton says. “But [this] event gave me
partner you can be.
Fritz Knoebel was chairman of Nobel/Sysco Food Services Co. until his retirement in 1999 at age 90. He died in 2005. Betty a sense of peace, knowing that each of us can continue to focus our energies on what we do best because there are
Knoebel, now 78, and Fritz Knoebel received honorary degrees from DU in 1992 in recognition of their role in the Denver business so many extraordinary people out there covering the other bases.” 10. L earn more about ways to
More than 900 people attended TEDxDU, an independently organized event licensed by TED, an organiza- communicate.
and philanthropic communities.
tion that arranges for leading thinkers to share “ideas worth spreading.” TED stands for technology, entertainment
“I’m so pleased to be able to honor my husband’s legacy and recognize the nationally ranked programs of the Daniels College,
and design—three areas TED officials believe shape the world’s future. The speakers and performers—about half of
particularly the longstanding reputation and industry partnerships of the HRTM school,” says Betty Knoebel. “Likewise, I want to whom were affiliated with DU—discussed some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as combating poverty, Compiled by Galena Rhoades,
support the University’s plans to further develop aging-related programs that will improve lives everywhere.” Howard Markman and Scott Stanley
getting clean water to those in need and creating widespread policy change. of DU’s Center for Marital and
>>TEDxDU videos online at TEDxDU.com Family Studies
—Media Relations Staff

8 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 9

 Alumni SY M P O S I U M Classes begin in new Ruffatto Hall
The University’s newest building, Katherine A.

Wayne Armstrong
October 1-2, 2010
Ruffatto Hall, opened in June.
Courses began in the building June 14, and fac-
ulty and staff moved into the new home of the Mor-
gridge College of Education throughout the summer.

REFLECT. DISCOVER. LEARN. Construction began a year ago on the

73,568-square-foot, $21.6 million building located

alumni.du.edu/alumnisymposium on the corner of Evans Avenue and High Street. The

building is the result of a gift from Mike and the late
Joan Ruffatto and the Morgridge Family Foundation. It
is named after the Ruffattos’ daughter, Katherine (BA
biology ’05).
Return to campus and discover Jane Loefgren, the primary architect in the
the joy of learning again. design of Ruffatto Hall, says the building has been con-
structed to provide spaces for collaboration. Ruffatto
Hall houses approximately 75 faculty and staff. It also
houses the John and Tashia Morgridge Sr. Literacy
Featuring keynote addresses Intervention Clinic, the Marsico Institute for Early
Learning and Literacy, the Institute for the Develop-
by two prominent DU alumni: ment of Gifted Education, the James C. Kennedy
Institute for Educational Success, the DU Learning
Effectiveness Program and Disability Services.
Jami Miscik, MA ’82 —Kim DeVigil

President and Vice Chairman,

Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Iraq ambassador to head Korbel School of International Studies
Christopher Hill, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, has been named dean of the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel
School of International Studies. His appointment began Sept. 1.
Hill served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq since 2009; prior, he was assistant secretary of state for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs. He also served as ambassador to the Republic of Korea. He worked in the Senior Foreign
Service for more than 30 years.
Andrew Rosenthal, BA ’78 “If one considers his tremendous experience and great success as a Foreign Service officer and diplomat,
Editorial Page Editor, it’s apparent that this is just the sort of career for which we are educating our students at the Korbel School,” says
Chancellor Robert Coombe. “He’s going to be a great dean.”
The New York Times In 2005, Hill was selected to lead the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear
issue. He served as U.S. ambassador to Poland (2000–04), ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia (1996–99)
and special envoy to Kosovo (1998–99). He also served as special assistant to the president and senior director
for southeast European affairs in the National Security Council.
Earlier in his Foreign Service career, Hill served tours in Belgrade, Warsaw, Seoul and Tirana and worked on
the State Department’s policy planning staff and in the department’s Operation Center. While on a fellowship with
the American Political Science Association he served as a staff member for Congressman Stephen Solarz, working

Courtesy of U.S. State Department

on Eastern European issues. He also served as the State Department’s senior country officer for Poland.
Hill graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, with a BA in economics. He received a master’s
degree from the Naval War College in 1994.
Hill received the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award for his contributions as a member of the
U.S. negotiating team in the Bosnia peace settlement and was a recipient of the Robert S. Frasure Award for
Alumni Relations Peace Negotiations for his work on the Kosovo crisis.
—Jim Berscheidt

10 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 11

 One to Watch Arts
Joel Portman, international studies/business Getting in on the act
By Greg Glasgow
A full plate and busy schedule are nothing new for Joel Portman. Through DU’s undergraduate/graduate

Whether
dual degree program, he completed his bachelor’s degree in international studies in June 2010 and will receive they end up becoming great actors or not, every kid can benefit from taking an acting class,
his MBA in June 2011. says DU theater Assistant Professor Anthony Hubert.
Originally from St. Louis, Portman has dabbled in a little bit of everything during his time on the DU “Most human beings are extremely insecure, and we wear all these masks to try to cover that insecurity, to appear
campus, including positions at the Center for Multicultural Excellence and on the Undergraduate Senate. In
strong,” he says. “I think theater teaches you how to recognize the mask. It teaches you not how to diminish your ego to
2006 he founded Never Again!, a student organization that raises awareness about the Holocaust and current
the point where you’re insignificant, but it teaches you how to integrate your ego into the ensemble. It teaches you how to
genocide in countries such as Sudan and Rwanda. In 2008 he studied abroad in Israel.
deal with suffering, how to deal
“He works tirelessly, and in doing so he’s brought a different level of awareness to his peers,” says Kerrie

Wayne Armstrong
Rueda, assistant director of Campus Activities. with joy, how to deal with pain,
In St. Louis, Portman is the assistant scoutmaster of his old Boy Scouts troop, Troop 310. He helped how to deal with pleasure—how
Jeffrey Haessler

young boys muster the courage to complete swim tests during the Dad ’N’ Lad program held at Camp Famous to deal with all the things that
Eagle in July. life throws at you.”
This summer Portman also interned at the Build-A-Bear Workshop corporate headquarters in St. Louis, Four years ago, shortly after
where he learned about international business firsthand. coming to DU, Hubert and his
“It was a great opportunity,” says Portman, who is considering careers in diversity consultation and international business operations once he wife, Jamie Roehrig-Hubert,
receives his MBA. “It’s been great to see how what we’re learning in the classroom applies to the real world beyond the work I’m doing at DU.” founded the Rocky Mountain
Portman received the University of Denver Pioneer Award, the University’s most prestigious student recognition, in 2010. He says becoming part Conservatory Theatre, a youth
of the campus culture has changed the way he thinks about his future.
theater company that runs
“The things I’m involved with now are not at all the things I’d thought I’d be involved with,” he says. “The way my life might go is not at all the way
summer camps and weekend
I thought it might when I started at DU. I just had a lot of phenomenal opportunities to get involved, learn new things and meet new people who have
workshops at DU. The camps
really shaped my interests and helped me develop a passion for making the world a better place.”
—Deidre Helton
ran for three years in Margery
Reed Hall before moving to
the Newman Center for the
Performing Arts this summer.
CHANCELLOR’S Kids ages 6–17 come from

INNOVATION FUND
FUNDING INNOVATION • FUNDING EXCELLENCE • FUNDING DU
as far away as Mexico and
Germany (though most are from
Denver) to study acting basics
and stage their own versions of
musicals such as West Side Story,
Guys and Dolls and Charlie and
INVEST IN OUR FUTURE the Chocolate Factory. Campers
learn all aspects of putting on a show; each day is divided into several classes with rotating activities, such as acting, music,
INVEST IN OUR STUDENTS dance, art and rehearsal.
The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund, supported by Hubert (pictured center during a lesson) has been working with kids for 25 years, but he’s an accomplished theater
your annual gift, strengthens scholarships and professional in his own right. He’s directed 20 plays and starred in 16 others, and he was a guest star on TV shows such as
priority programs for our students. “Sins of the City,” “Safe Harbor” and “Sheena.” A playwright as well, he just finished writing a screenplay about his father.
“I grew up in the projects in Atlanta, Georgia, from sparse means, to put it nicely,” he says. “I used to go to all these
summer camp programs that were for kids of low means. I remember people coming out from IBM and from Xerox and all
these companies that would say things to inspire us to strive for a better life. I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years
old, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘When I grow up I’m going to come back and I’m going to talk to people the way
To contribute to DU, please use the enclosed envelope or visit they talk to us.’ It was very inspiring to have that experience.”
WWW.GIVING.DU.EDU Hubert now looks to inspire other young people in the same way. Whether he’s working with DU students or his
theater campers, he says it’s rewarding to see their skill and confidence grow.
“A young life, you see the hope. They have so much hope and they believe in the impossible sometimes, and it
University Advancement becomes the possible because of that lack of knowledge of the world,” he says. “You want to try to guide them to achieve
2190 E. Asbury Ave., Denver, CO 80208-7500
whatever they can imagine.”
303-871-2311 800-448-3238
>>www.rmctonline.com

12 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 13

 Academics
Granting opportunities
By Kathryn Mayer Athletic training facility, soccer field dedicated DU by the Numbers

Sara Shanahan couldn’t have landed a more perfect job.

The senior biology major with minors in psychology and neuroscience spent her summer
working in the genetics of taste lab at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Specifically, she studied the bitter taste bud and
Athletes at the University of Denver have some new exercise equipment to break in this fall. The Pat Bowlen
Training Center—named for the Denver Broncos president and CEO and DU Board of Trustees member—opened
in May during a ceremony at the
University
College*

Wayne Armstrong
whether “our ability to taste bitter affects our diet and overall lifestyle.” Ritchie Center. Bowlen donated
Perhaps more exciting for her is that the museum is the first in North America to have a community-supported lab, meaning $1.5 million toward the $6.3 mil-
museum visitors are recruited to participate. Although the lab is funded by the National Institutes of Health, it’s run by volunteers, lion project. Graduate students
lab techs and interns like Shanahan.
The training facility was
constructed simultaneously with
1,100
But her experience wouldn’t have happened without a gift she
CIBER Field at the Univer-
received from DU. This year, Shanahan (pictured at left) was one of eight
sity of Denver Soccer Stadium,
Undergraduate students
undergraduate students who received a $2,500 grant for an internship
that normally would be unpaid.
which was dedicated in April. 160
The $9.2 million complex
“Many students work at summer jobs to earn money rather than includes a stadium, lighted playing Lifelong learners through the non-
take internships that would further their career development,” says field, and strength and condition- credit Enrichment Program and
John Haag, internship director in DU’s Career Center. “The grants allow ing center for the Pioneers’ Divi-
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
deserving students to intern in situations that matter to their future.” sion I student-athletes.
Committee members choose students they expect to grow The field is named for 2,600
professionally and personally throughout the course of the internship, CIBER Inc., an international
explains Ruth Prochnow, who runs the grant program. More than 50 IT outsourcing and software Number of U.S. states represented
implementation and integration by students
students apply each year.
“Even though it’s very rewarding to have the financial help from the
consultancy based in Greenwood
Village, Colo. 50
grant, I feel the recognition alone was a great payoff,” Shanahan says. She
The training complex is located beneath the stadium seating and is attached to the west side of the Ritchie Center.
says teaching the public about the world of genetics was “heartening.” The complex includes warm-up areas, weight lifting, cardio and rehabilitation stations, 12 Olympic lifting stations, a Number of countries represented
“I think the hard sciences like biology and chemistry are often video screening room and a 66-yard turf track for speed and agility training. by students
stereotyped as being cold and difficult to understand by those who don’t
focus study on them,” she says. “When I applied for this internship, I was
—Media Relations Staff
7
really aiming to break down that wall.”
Graduate programs offered
The program is a “win-win for both the student and for the Newmans give to arts at DU
organization,” Prochnow notes. Students have worked in locations 10
ranging from Denver and Duluth, Minn., to Kuwait and Kenya. “It gives Robert and Judi Newman, best known at DU for the Robert and Judi Newman Center for the Performing
them much better focus on where they do or do not want to take their Arts, have pledged a leadership gift to further arts programs and other initiatives at the University. Graduate certificates offered
careers,” she says.
Not to mention giving them an edge in a tough job market that’s
Half of their commitment is designated for graduate students in the Lamont School of Music. Starting in
the 2010–11 academic year, one graduate student in voice and one in another Lamont program each will
40
making internships more desirable than ever. Students with internship receive a $25,000 stipend. It is a way for Lamont to attract high-caliber students and compete with the top
music programs in the country. Languages available to study
experience “undeniably” are more employable when they graduate,
Prochnow says. “Internships are the new entry-level jobs.”
“Bob and Judi Newman have helped us put Lamont on the map in so many ways—first with their leader- 9
Wayne Armstrong

ship in building the world’s finest music facility, secondly by serving on our visiting committee, and now with
Senior international studies major Lauren Hartel was another of
a major gift for scholarships, stipends, professorships and program needs,” says Joe Docksey, director of the Average age of enrolled students
this year’s grant awardees. She worked for Project C.U.R.E., a nonprofit Lamont School of Music. “We are all grateful to be working in such a wonderful place largely made possible by
humanitarian organization that delivers donated medical supplies such generosity.” 37
overseas. Within the first four weeks of her internship, she wrote a $25,000 grant proposal on her own. The Newmans say they are very proud of how the Newman Center has been embraced by the commu-
“It’s been an amazing opportunity for me because I have a direct mentor who oversees my work and makes sure I am getting nity. Now it’s time to keep it well maintained and help the Lamont School of Music achieve its vision, they say.
firsthand experience,” says Hartel, who got the internship primarily to learn how to write grants. “Arts education is the core of what we hope to achieve with our philanthropy. The goal is to provide wider
The internship program began about 10 years ago, says Mary Michaels Hawkins, director of the DU Career Center. It was based access to students in all forms of music study and choral groups,” says Robert Newman, a DU trustee. *DU’s school of professional and
The Newmans also pledged support so Lamont’s opera program can stage a second production each year. continuing studies
on an idea Chancellor Robert Coombe had while he was provost.
Their gift supports the dean of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the women’s golf program as well. Compiled by Michael McGuire,
“He’s always had a strong focus on internships,” Hawkins says. Since its inception, the program has been funded by a $20,000 assistant dean for administrative
annual allocation from the provost’s office. “By doing this, we hope to expose people to arts and education,” Judi Newman says. “We hope others operations at University College
might follow us.”
“It’s just great to support the students,” Hawkins says.
—Kristal Griffith

14 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 15

 Q&A

DU poet wins Colorado Book Award

Seth Masket on the 2010 midterm
DU English Professor Bin Ramke has received a Colorado Book Award
elections
Interview by Kathryn Mayer

Wayne Armstrong
for his recent offering Theory of Mind: New & Selected Poems (Omnidawn,
2009).
ment has had to make many drastic spending cuts to balance its bud-
The awards, given out by Colorado Humanities and the Colorado
Center for the Book, were announced June 25. They recognize outstanding get. Many Coloradans will be thinking about declining funds for public
contributions by Colorado authors, editors and photographers in a number education and other areas when they head to the polls.
of categories. This year 146 books were entered in 13 categories.
Ramke beat out the other four poetry category finalists, including one
of his former students. Dan Beachy-Quick (BA English ’95) was a finalist for
his book This Nest, Swift Passerine: A Poem (Tupelo Press, 2009).
Q Because of the criticism President Obama has received on
his response to the BP oil spill, do you predict this issue
will hurt Democrats this year?
“This award was gratifying because of the quality of the other books

A
under consideration,” Ramke says. “I am pleased to be associated with the It’s difficult to say what, if any, effect the BP oil spill will
Colorado Center for the Book and the Colorado Humanities—it is good
have on Democratic prospects this fall. Many congressional
for us who work in colleges and universities to be reminded of the accom-
Democrats have been arguing for many years for tighter regulation
plished and dedicated people also engaged in literature and scholarship in
of the petroleum industry and for limits on offshore drilling, and
the rest of the community.”
those arguments are certainly gaining traction. On the other hand,

Wayne Armstrong
Ramke has been with DU since 1985 and currently teaches poetry
to undergraduate and graduate students. He also edits the Denver Quarterly voters may simply blame Democrats because they are the party in
and has authored an additional nine books of poetry. power right now. Nonetheless, if BP is successful in largely stopping
—Nathan Solheim the leaks, the issue will fade from the headlines, even if the environ-

Q
mental impact will be felt for many years.
What would you say is the No. 1 issue for the upcoming
elections?

You don’t have to visit Denver to

reconnect with your alma mater,
A The No. 1 issue remains the economy. It’s the issue that put
Obama in the White House, and it’s the one on which he and his Q If the GOP reduces the Democratic majority to just a
few seats in the House and Senate, do you see President
Obama pivoting and taking a more centrist approach?
fellow Democrats are being evaluated and will be held accountable. By
DU is coming to you this fall.
A
most measures, the economy has been improving this year, President Obama has shown himself to be very pragmatic and
Please join us for an evening but voters will be thinking about whether it’s been improving not interested in taking on fights he can’t win. Working with
of light hors d’oeuvres, drinks, quickly enough. a narrower Democratic majority, he would likely still push a solid
and the opportunity to mingle
Democratic agenda but would likely make a number of concessions
with fellow alumni, university

On the Road Q
to Republicans. As Republican numbers increase in the Senate, so
leadership, and staff. You’ve done extensive research on the effects
does their ability to sustain a filibuster.
Look for us this fall as we travel unemployment has had on midterm elections and found
to the following areas: that there hasn’t really been much correlation between the two.

Q
But doesn’t unemployment tie into the state of the economy? What is your prediction for the fall?
Milwaukee, WI
September 30, 2010
A There are many different aspects of the economy, only some of

A
6:00- 8:00 p.m. which seem to affect people’s vote choices. The level of unem- Voters tend to think about the recent past when cast-
The Iron Horse Hotel ployment, however important it is to many people’s lives, doesn’t ing their votes. The results of the election will hinge on
www.theironhorsehotel.com seem to particularly affect midterm elections. In 1982, President how strongly the economy improves over the next few months.
Reagan was overseeing an unemployment level near 10 percent. Democrats are almost sure to lose seats in the Congress, but faster
Salt Lake City, UT However, Republicans only lost 26 House seats that year, which is just economic growth can mitigate some of those losses. Should the
October 7, 2010
about the average over the past 60 years. economy stumble back into recession, that could certainly lead to a
6:00- 8:00 p.m.
Lugano Restaurant Republican takeover of both chambers.
The Radda Room
www.luganorestaurant.com

For more information, please visit

Q What are the key issues facing Coloradans this cycle?

Seth Masket is an associate professor in DU’s political science department who

A Colorado has weathered the recession somewhat better than specializes in political parties, campaigns and state legislatures. He is the author of
www.alumni.du.edu/DUontheroad
No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize
or call 1-800-448-3238, Ext. 0 other states, but it’s still taken a great toll. The state govern- Legislatures (University of Michigan Press, 2009).

16 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 17

 History
Advantage DU

DU Archives
By Richard Chapman

A century ago, the University competed in four intercollegiate sports—football, basketball, baseball and
tennis. Today, while basketball flourishes, football has been scrubbed and baseball sent down
to the minors as a club sport. Tennis, meanwhile, enters its second century quietly racking up accolades with forehands,
backhands and serves.

DU Archives
In nearly every decade since 1910—the acknowledged
beginning of DU tennis according to the athletics
department—DU net stars have notched championships
and captured awards. They’ve earned athletic and academic
All-America honors, won titles in prestigious state and
national events, pioneered and promoted the sport, and
been inducted into DU and Colorado halls of fame.
All this in a century in which the sport of tennis
struggled against race, gender and opportunity barriers,
adjusted to major changes in equipment, rules, dress and
comportment, and became internationalized to the point
that last season only 25 percent of DU’s varsity tennis
players hailed from the United States.
Adam Holmstrom of Sweden, perhaps DU’s top player
ever, finished his DU career in 2007 as the 37th best college
player in the nation. He earned Division I All-America
honors for the first time in school history and dominated Though DU didn’t have an intercollegiate women’s tennis team until the 1970s, women played
recreational tennis on campus as far back as the early 1900s.
the record book for career singles wins (112–23), doubles
wins (100–27) and winning percentage (.828).

DU Archives
Holmstrom’s era was a far cry from tennis in its early days, when the game was primarily A mid-1960s men’s team poses for a portrait.
an elite East-Coast activity played on grass courts in exclusive private clubs and dominated by
the Ivy Leagues. At DU, it was a pedestrian pursuit on rough courts donated by The Denver Post. “It was a rough beginning,” she recalls. “The first season we shared warm-up [outfits] with the women’s gymnastics
Even so, the University excelled, fielding a strong enough team to capture the Rocky Mountain team. They’d take them off and clean them up and we’d wear them.”
Conference from 1917 to 1921. The team had money for balls, travel and an occasional meal, but nothing for footwear, racquets or strings. A team
Conference affiliations shifted frequently over the decades, but DU was always at the top of mother sewed uniforms, and the weeds on the courts
the game, winning titles in the Big 7, Colorado Tennis, Colorado Athletic, Continental Divide and sometimes were so bad that opposing teams refused to
Skyline conferences, the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), the National play.
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and the Sun Belt Conference, in which DU competes “But I got encouragement and support from the
today. University and wonderful students to work with,” she
“We had three concrete tennis courts,” recalls Alvie Willis (BSBA ’55, MA ’70), whose says. “What was special was that women were given the
legendary 1950s-era team dominated the decade. “No lights, no indoor facilities, white balls, opportunity to compete, and they hadn’t been given that
wood racquets. I used Jack Kramer and Davis Tad [racquets] until they quit making them.” before.”
Willis, who continues to win 75-and-older tournaments even today, was DU’s No. 1 in 1954 Under Chrisman, the Pioneers won the Colorado
and ’55. His doubles partner, Clayton Benham, dominated as DU’s No. 1 in 1951 and ’52 and was Tennis Conference, the AIAW district title and the
inducted into the University’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006. Continental Divide Conference. In October, she’ll be
Another member of that ’50s team, No. 2 Jack TerBorg, went on to win six major Colorado inducted into the DU Athletics Hall of Fame.
Women’s player Debbie Gersten (BSBA ’95)
singles titles. And the team’s No. 5 player, Irwin Hoffman, became a teaching pro and helped reaches for a shot.
Today, DU has state-of-the-art outdoor courts at
develop a junior program that today attracts thousands of Colorado youngsters annually. Both its Stapleton Tennis Pavilion—completed in 1998—
were inducted into the Colorado Tennis Hall of Fame. and competes on a national level. The women’s team in
Another Colorado hall of famer, Carlene Petersen Chrisman, coached DU’s first women’s team, starting in 1974 and 2009–10 was ranked as high as 34th in the nation and
DU Archives

continuing for 10 seasons. the men 25th.

The Ivy League’s best men’s team finished 65th.
In 2007, Adam Holmstrom (BSBA ’08) became the first NCAA Division I All-American in DU history.
18 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 19
 Parent to Parent People
Encouraging successful roommate relationships Body of knowledge
By Larry Getlen
Fortunately, most roommate relationships work out well. Usually you just have to get

Tim Ryan
“Medical
used to living with a “messy” person or someone who is obsessed with neatness. Conflicting students are very bright to get into medical school. But they’re totally ignorant of medical
sleep schedules, varying musical tastes, etc., also can be problematic. However, much of the literature.”
time wonderful lifelong friendships begin during the college years. There are some common This provocative statement comes from one who should know. Lucretia McClure (MA ’64) learned her trade at the
elements that make life with roommates successful—or not. Here are some topics you might
University of Denver’s School of Librarianship (now the Library and Information Science Program) and is now one of the
consider discussing with your kids regarding life on campus:
oldest practicing librarians in the Medical Library Association (MLA).
• Every shared living experience involves give and take.
• Encourage them to try to be the kind of roommate they would like to have.
As a medical librarian, McClure is charged with knowing the full breadth of medical research materials old and new—
• Tell them to consider that their roommates have to put up with them and their stuff also. from journals to textbooks to specific articles on any medical subject—thereby serving as an essential resource for a doctor
• Open, honest communication can go a long way; weekly meetings can help a lot. in need of crucial information.
• Some things just come with the territory; patience, love and forgiveness can be key. “I see medical students who have not been given the instruction
• Help them think through what they can tolerate and what their limitations are. in college they used to give,” says McClure, who spent almost 30 years
• Remind them that they will not have their roommates forever. at the Edward G. Miner Library at the University of Rochester Medical
• Share your story—were you a Felix Unger? An Oscar Madison? How about your Center and now works at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard
roomies? Medical School, where she has been for nearly 15 years. Now 85, she
• Encourage them to be willing to discuss University policies, i.e. “live the code.” takes the one-hour flight to campus from her home in Rochester, N.Y.,
• RAs and the housing department can help when conflicts seem irreconcilable. every week and stays at her apartment in Boston.
As parents of college students, our role is to try to help our kids become independent
“It’s presumed that anybody in college is computer literate and
problem solvers. As tempting as it can be to become involved because we want to rescue them, we often help the most when they see us as a resource
doesn’t need help,” she says. “But they do, because there’s so much
and a sounding board.
wonderful old medical literature, and students who never look at it are
DU Parents Council member John Kloeckner and his wife, Carol, live in Broomfield, Colo. Their son David will be a junior in the fall of 2010. missing what makes medicine so rich.”
McClure grew up in Denver, attended the University of Missouri
and moved to Rochester with her husband in 1951. As their two sons

ammi hyde interviews

got older, McClure wanted a career. She enrolled at DU in part because
she and the boys could stay with her mother while she attended school.
After college, McClure returned home to Rochester. In 1964 she
got a job at the Miner Library, where she worked for almost three
decades, eventually rising to the position of director.
Help us build the future of DU, She became eminent in the field, serving as president of the
one student at a time Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries and the MLA and
sitting on the New York State Board of Regents Council on Libraries.
Every year, we rely on alumni volunteers Along the way, she became a prominent advocate for her

Rose Lincoln/Harvard University

to help us conduct Ammi Hyde Interviews profession: fighting hard to secure funding, speaking at industry events
in cities across the country. The Hyde and representing the MLA’s position on various issues.
Interview allows the University to admit McClure’s husband passed away in 1992 and she retired a
year later, but when a friend at the Countway Library asked for her
students who embody DU’s core values
assistance on a project, she couldn’t say no. She became a Countway
and who can succeed in our challenging
employee shortly thereafter, and she has been there ever since.
academic environment. Join us in “She’s the quintessential librarian and a fountain of knowledge,” says Judith Messerle, the former director of the
November and January for this unique Countway Library. “Lucretia understands the literature of medicine and the history of the field, so she can talk the same
opportunity to make a difference at DU. language as doctors and medical students. And because she knows the literature, she’s an incredible sleuth. She can find the
hardest answer.”
McClure has thought about retiring again, but she understands from experience that an attempt at retirement could be
To Volunteer: just the next step on what has been a long, distinguished and rewarding career.
Contact Andy Losier “As soon as I retired the first time, I got calls asking me to do things,” she says. “I figure the same thing will happen
at the Office of Admission: again—something will come my way that I hadn’t planned. So I figure that I’ll find out when I retire what’s out there.”
1-800-525-9495
alosier@du.edu

20 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 21

 Views

Law Commencement speaker shares words

Quiet reflections
Photograph of Harper Humanities Gardens by Wayne Armstrong

from the heart

The University of Denver’s Commencement speakers often offer words of advice: work hard, dream
big, stay true to your ethics. But as the Sturm College of Law Class of 2010 prepared to graduate on May 22,
one classmate offered them something even bigger: a lesson in living life itself.
Frank Bingham—selected by his classmates as the ceremony’s student speaker—graduated after over-
coming a tragedy so great few could imagine it. During his first year of law school in November 2006, a drunk
driver crashed into him and his family as they crossed a downtown Denver street. Only Bingham survived.
He lost his wife, Becca, and their two children, Macie, 4, and Garrison, 2.
Standing on the stage before his class, Bingham said the most important thing is to remember how
interconnected everyone is and how to appreciate small things.
“I started law school as a husband and father, but before the end of my first semester, Becca and Macie
and Garrison were gone in an instant,” he told the hushed audience at DU’s Magness Arena. “The bottom
line is life is uncertain and anyone’s life can change in the blink of an eye.”
The graduating class of about 375 wore white ribbons on their graduation gowns in support of Bingham
and in remembrance of his family.
Bingham, proving how resilient the human spirit can be, announced to the class that after years of griev-
Chase Squires

ing and learning to move on, he is again engaged to be married.

“Hope, faith, forgiveness and love can survive even the worst that life can throw at us,” he said.
—Chase Squires

A GREAT EDUCATION
DRIVES GREAT
DREAMS
A DU Gift Annuity is a great way
to help make dreams come true.
Beloved DU social work Professor Eleanor Barnett devoted
her life to helping others. She set up a number of gift annuities
that supplemented her income and upon her passing created
a lasting legacy at DU. Through her generosity, more than
70 students have been able to pursue their dream of becoming
a social worker.

“It’s been a privilege receiving the Barnett scholarship and

Office of Gift Planning
1.800.448.3238 or 303.871.2739
E-mail: gift-planning@du.edu
www.giftplanning.du.edu
“Moving water…
has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and
knowing alumni care about the success of students like myself,”
says recipient Liz Covarrubias. “DU has prepared me well for associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand
my plans of working internationally on health, education and shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.”
economic issues relating to women.” — Rodreck Haig-Brown

22 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 23

 Essay

What we wear in this life

By Lisa Trank-Greene

I arrive

Ion-Bogdan Dumitrescu/Getty
in Los Angeles for my mom’s 78th birthday, her first birthday in 55 years without my dad. The first
30 minutes in the house are odd and difficult—I’m looking for my dad asleep on the couch, his
simple hospital bed in the corner of the dining room, opening his soft blue eyes and saying, “Hi, sweetheart,” as if I hadn’t
lived away from L.A. for 25 years.
My mom bought herself fuchsia and purple dahlias and put them around the house. She tells me she let herself open
presents that had arrived early, instead of waiting until her birthday. “Why not enjoy the presents for as long as possible?”
We take ourselves out to a new French bistro and pretend we’re on the Left Bank, surrounded by handsome waiters
joking with each other in French. I tell the waiter it’s my mom’s birthday, and she is serenaded in a combination of French
and Portuguese.
The next morning, after breakfast and a visit from my mother’s next-door neighbor, Mom and I head upstairs to the
guest room.
My mom sits down on the daybed with a yellow legal pad. I slide open the closet door. His clothes hang waiting, but
not for him. I stand in front of the clothes and sigh. My mom says she doesn’t really feel anything, since he’d stopped
wearing most of them long ago.
We sort through his sweaters first. I choose two for myself, a red wool V-neck and a brown cashmere pullover. I count
them out and my mom writes it down, wanting to record what we are giving away. Next are his shirts, which make me
remember something I always loved about my dad—the way he kept his shirts clean and pressed despite a full day of hard
work. The subtle stripes and tight plaids, the creases that have held despite his not wearing them for a number of years. I
put aside a paisley print shirt in red, brown and green—my mom’s favorite.
I’m glad I’m the only one his shirts will fit: my brothers too tall, my husband too broad, my nephews too cool. We
move on to his short-sleeved shirts, the ones he wore most of the time, first at the store and then at his watchmaker’s
station. He liked the open feeling of the short sleeves and also didn’t wear a tie or jacket at the office—one of the perks of
working for himself.
A rhythm begins—clothes off the hangers and onto the bed. Counted and then moved to another part of the room.
We get to his pants. Khakis, wool gabardines, various slacks. Even a pair of cruise ship whites that makes my mom and I
giggle. All are perfectly folded over steel and plastic hangers but obviously have not been worn in a very long time. Lines
of dust rest along each crease.
But in the middle of the neat order, a pair of jeans appears. His jeans, a pair of Levi’s, with the belt still in the loops.
Somehow the pants seem warm and the denim very soft, but not worn out. The belt left in the loops is out of place, I choose a tie for my husband, with my dad’s knot still in it.
nothing my father would have done. He would have pulled the belt out and hung it up with the others on the hanger The clothes are all out. I proceed to pull down an old slide projector. Endless travel bags. Shoe polish kits. Old perfume
designed for that purpose. and faded yarmulkes. Empty watch repair envelopes, the ones I used to carefully log in my dad’s record book when I was
The weight of the belt, a black Pierre Cardin, offers a form that is no longer here, no longer form-able. I run my hands old enough to be trusted with the task. Two hours later, the closet is empty. I tell my mom I’ll take care of the rest, not
down the jeans and cry. When my father arrived alone in Toronto, after a train, a boat and then another train took him wanting her to have to watch the clothes get placed into black garbage bags.
away from the Nazis, he owned one outfit of summer clothing. I fold the clothes and put them inside the bags, six in all. Before I close the bags, I put my head close to the openings
In the end, this is the list, a final tally of my dad’s clothing: and take in one last deep breath. I carry the bags down and place them neatly in a corner of the garage. They will be picked
up sometime next week.
Five sweaters, two sweater vests We wear clothes for many reasons: to keep us warm or cool, to communicate to the world a story of who we are. I’m
Eight pairs of shoes, one pair of slippers happy that as I slip my arms into the few pieces traveling home with me, I will feel the memory of his arms having entered
Three pairs of pajamas in and out of these same sleeves many times. I will wear my dad’s story in the form of a red V-neck sweater, a brown
Twelve short-sleeved shirts cashmere pullover and a paisley raw silk shirt, another way of keeping his story going.
Ten long-sleeved shirts But I have to wonder: How long will it take for the form of his life, which is in every piece of clothing, to take the
Twenty-two pairs of pants, one pair of Levi’s jeans shape of another? If I was walking down the street in Los Angeles, or in Colorado, would I recognize a shirt, a sweater,
Fifteen ties and eight belts, two pairs of suspenders his softly worn Levi’s on someone else’s body? Will I look for them? For him in them? How far will his clothes travel? And
Three sweatshirts and three zip-up jackets what will I feel toward that person lucky enough to wear my dad’s clothes—kinship?
Ten sport jackets and five suits, including the suit he wore to my wedding I hope I will, and to that I add: Amen.

24 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 25

 e
Electric vehicles are
more than a hobby
for engineering grad
student Eva Hakansson.

By Chase Squires

Even before she can remember, Eva Hakansson was building things.
“I was 2 years old when I got my first pair of scissors, because I was always
taking everyone else’s to make things,” she says. “I’m told when I was 4 years old, I built
a model nuclear power plant out of cardboard boxes and cans.”
But her real passion didn’t emerge until her later years … when she turned 6.
She virtually grew up in her father’s workshop while he pounded metal on metal,
grinding his own parts and crafting handmade racing motorcycles.
Fast-forward to 2010 and Hakansson—with a toolbox of self-taught engineering
skills and a competitive and inquisitive spirit—is pursuing a mechanical engineering
master’s degree at the University of Denver’s School of Engineering and Computer
Science. Between calculus and engineering classes, the 29-year-old Swedish native who
speaks three languages and already has written a book on hybrid cars is hard at work
chasing her dream of breaking the world speed record for electric motorcycles.
When she’s not studying, Hakansson and her husband, Bill Dubé, are holed
up in their workshop, which is crammed with lathes and drills and welding torches
and electrical components of every size. Scavenging the parts they need from eBay
and Craigslist, they hunt down sponsors and travel the world in search of the next
breakthrough technology.
And what they can’t scavenge, borrow or buy, they make.
Nothing is ever finished, she says. There’s no project that can’t be improved.
The electric bikes she and her husband develop are in a constant state of change. In
June, the couple’s ElectroCat became the first electric motorcycle to conquer the Pikes
Peak International Hill Climb, a grueling 12-mile, twisting, turning uphill motor race to
the 14,100-foot summit of Pikes Peak outside Colorado Springs, Colo. Although she
was sidelined for the run after a crash in testing that left her with a metal plate in her
arm, Hakansson already is plotting her next mission: a run at the world speed record
for electric motorcycles on her new custom cycle, a sleek rocket of a beast dubbed
KillaJoule.
Photo illustration by Wayne Armstrong

“It’s human nature. People have always wanted to go fast. Everyone wants to go
faster,” she says.

26 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Update 27


H Hakansson’s passion doesn’t end with motorcycles. An
environmental scientist before she moved into racing and electric
vehicles, Hakansson first delved into water management. She
came to realize that anyone can have clean water if they have
enough energy. Deserts that border oceans can desalinate the seas.
Landlocked scorched plains can bloom if there’s the energy to
transport water. Polluted rivers can be made clean with enough
energy. The only thing that can’t be replaced is the energy itself.
There has to be a better way to build batteries, to make
vehicles run more efficiently, to generate and deliver energy,
Hakansson says. Conserve that one resource, find a better way to
use energy, and the rest of the world’s problems fall into line.
O
A competitive spirit seems to be part of Hakansson’s DNA.
As a child she was eager to learn from her parents, both engineers,
and to keep up with her two older brothers, both now engineers
as well. Her house in Nynäshamn, Sweden, was a hive of activity.
Her brothers were the disassemblers, taking things apart to learn
how they worked, while her father toiled in his shop crafting his
racing cycles.
“When I went to high school, I was already very much into
science because of my brothers. My oldest brother had won the
school’s science competition. He traveled to Germany and London
and got these awards. So I had to beat him,” she says. “I won the
contest twice.”
While she was writing a book in 2007 (loosely translated from
Swedish: Hybrid Cars, The Future is Now) she tracked down Dubé,
a government research scientist who designed the world’s quickest
electric-powered motorcycle. Dubé’s low-slung racing machine
boasts 500 horsepower and hits 60 mph in less than a second.
“I just wanted to use a picture of his electric motorcycle,”
she recalls. But they were kindred spirits, incessant tinkerers and
designers, absorbed in what would become for both an extremely
expensive “hobby.”
She finally met him in Los Angeles. Two years later they were
married, and Hakansson found herself in a Denver suburb with a
husband, a garage full of industrial metal-shaping equipment and a
28 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
Wayne Armstrong
passion to go faster.
While she’s never shied away
from getting her hands dirty,
Hakansson also values the
classroom.
“There is so much I
want to do, but I realized I
simply didn’t have enough
knowledge, and in particular I
didn’t have the engineering math I
needed. Newton was able to figure out
calculus on his own. Most of us can’t do
that,” she says. “And if you don’t understand
calculus, you’ll never be a good engineer. This is too expensive to
do by trial and error; it has to be engineered.”
Of course, knowing her way around a drill press helps, too.
At 5-foot-2, she looks at home in racing leathers, muscling one of
her bikes in and out of a trailer, cranking on winches and lugging
batteries. Hakansson says marrying the math and science with
hands-on experience pays the biggest benefits. A square hole is
easy to draw on an engine design with a computer-assisted design
program. But in the metal shop, drilling a square, flat-bottomed
hole is a daunting task. Engineers who understand how a concept
translates from blueprints to bolts can best turn ideas into reality.
“What I like about DU is the overall attitude. They want
people to succeed, they want you to do something,” Hakansson
says. “My advice to students: ‘Do something.’ You can write
every paper in the world, but if you go out and build something,
future employers can see it. It’s something they can look at. You
don’t just tell them you can do it, you show them.”
Rahmat Shoureshi, dean of the engineering school, says
Hakansson’s passion for energy efficiency and innovation
exemplifies what the University does best: finding solutions that
“The whole reason we do this is
to promote electric-powered vehicles.
The only way we can do that is to make
something really fast and really powerful
and really sexy. Something
serve the common good and advance the science the world needs. that will make your
“Eva’s innovative approach to problem solving is inspiring
and emblematic of how we strive to educate our engineering neighbors notice.”
students to tackle the great challenges facing our global
t
community,” Shoureshi says. “Eva is a true pioneer in the field
of electric vehicles and is a tremendous ambassador for our
addresses all this in pragmatic fashion. People like powerful
engineering program, where one of our key areas of focus is
vehicles, she reasons. People don’t care what makes a vehicle
the development of optimized energy systems using renewable
powerful.
resources.”
“The whole reason we do this is to promote electric-
powered vehicles. The only way we can do that is to make
something really fast and really powerful and really sexy.
Something that will make your neighbors notice,” she says.
The near-term barrier for Hakansson and her team lies on
“Everybody wants the fastest, the biggest. If people don’t believe
30,000 acres of scorched, lifeless earth on the Bonneville Salt
electric vehicles are fun to drive, they won’t buy them. Guilt only
Flats, 120 miles west of Salt Lake City: the 176 mph speed record
sells so many electric cars.”
for an electric motorcycle. The next goal is 400 mph. And after
that, Hakansson simply wants to see the world convert to electric
vehicles and ditch the polluting, inefficient gasoline engine. She Watch a video of Eva Hakansson’s TEDxDU presentation at TEDxDU.com
University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 29
 T
o understand the marriage of transportation and land use,
look no further than a pair of old maps—in this case, maps
of Denver, though they could just as easily be those of Des
Moines or Detroit.
In 1900, Pitner & Fergie’s Official Map of Denver depicted a
downtown webbed with streetcar lines. Lonelier spurs reached out
along dirt roads in various directions, to what were the fringes. One
such line tracked south to Evans Avenue and then east to the DU
campus. Another went south along Broadway to Hampden Avenue
in Englewood.
But by the time the Hotchkiss Map Co. printed its Map of Denver
and Surroundings in 1952, not a single streetcar line remained. The
“surroundings” dwarfed the old downtown. In Denver and through-
out the United States, the automobile had reshaped the landscape.
“We built an awful lot of highways and automobiles because gas
was selling for 29 cents a gallon,” says Gilbert Carmichael, a former
federal railroad administrator and founding chairman of the board of
directors of DU’s Intermodal Transportation Institute (ITI). “When
you get a cheap fuel, you get a system based on it.”
Americans still love their cars. But the sprawling human
landscapes cars have enabled are now costing us $87 billion a year
in wasted fuel and lost productivity—$750 for every U.S. traveler.
That’s about a week’s worth of fuel as well as time, the Texas
Transportation Institute says.
And the problems don’t stop there. The American Society of
Civil Engineers has projected a $115-billion-a-year shortfall for
road and bridge maintenance and improvements in the next five
years. The transportation sector, powered overwhelmingly by liquid
(petroleum) fuels, accounts for one-third of U.S. greenhouse-
gas emissions, according to figures from the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). Though fuel
prices have dipped because of the recession, oil remains a finite
resource. The U.S. imports 60 percent of what it burns, thereby
sending more than $25 billion a month to overseas coffers, says the
EIA, and a healthy portion of those imports come from politically
volatile regions.
In the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President
Obama said that “our continued dependence on fossil fuels will
jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it
will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”
America’s challenge is to keep people and goods moving at low
cost, with minimum congestion, and with as little environmental
and geopolitical impact as possible. The answer for Denver and
elsewhere, land-use and transportation planners increasingly agree,
is to shift back to the nation’s roots on the rails, despite the high
cost of trains that move people as opposed to goods.
“In this case, there are bad solutions and worse solutions,” says
Thomas Finkbiner, a longtime transportation executive and senior
chairman of the ITI board of directors. “The consensus shortcut
that people are coming to recognize is the modal switch. The one
thing you can do in terms of improved productivity is switch both
freight and people from the highway to the rail.”
Such a switch would have impacts far beyond people’s choices
in how they get from point A to point B. A return to the rails
would, like previous transportation revolutions, reshape American
landscapes and redefine American life.

Return to the Rails

By Todd Neff

The solution to America’s transportation

problems could be 100 years in the past.

Steve Crise /Transtock/Corbis

30 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 31
 T here are four primary modes of transportation: air, water,
rail and road. We use them in two ways: to move ourselves
(passengers) and to move stuff (freight). On the freight side,
matters are more settled. Nearly half of U.S. freight, measured
in ton-miles, moves by rail, according to the U.S. Department
of Transportation (DOT). About half of that is coal, followed by
grains, chemicals, foodstuffs and fuel.
The fastest-growing area of freight transport, intermodal,
involves moving metal containers roughly the size of 18-wheel
truck trailers. Such containers arrive on ships with 2,500 of their
ilk stacked in a multicolored LEGO mélange. The containers,
transferred to rail, can then ride double-stacked on low-riding
flatcars. They are transferred to trucks for the final legs of their
travels.
Intermodal freight has grown explosively as manufacturing
has globalized. From 1980 through 2008, according to the DOT,
intermodal shipments by rail grew from 3 million containers to
more than 11.5 million.
Rail is the most efficient way to move freight over
land. Carmichael says the classic “steel wheel on a steel rail”
configuration is almost frictionless, able to move a ton of freight
more than 400 miles on one gallon of fuel.
A 2009 Federal Railroad Administration study comparing
rail and truck fuel efficiency showed that, depending on the
route and the commodity carried, railroads are up to 5.5 times
more fuel-efficient than trucks. Depending on the type of freight
and the distance hauled, a single cross-country intermodal
double-stack train can replace 280 trucks and save up to 80,000
gallons of fuel.
Yet the rail freight system faces problems, Finkbiner says.
Rail infrastructure is wearing down, and it’s not clear how to
finance its rebuilding and upkeep. At the same time, consolidation
of the freight system has shrunk the freight rail network from
nearly 165,000 miles in 1980 to nearly 94,000 miles in 2008,
mainly via the removal of redundant freight tracks. But such
tracks are looking less and less redundant. The U.S. Department
of Transportation expects tonnage on the nation’s rail system to
increase 88 percent by 2035. And that’s not even taking passenger
rail increases into account.
y contrast, America’s passenger transportation systems beg
not only for enormous investment, but also for strategies
related to land-use development and allocation of resources.
The U.S. highway network extends roughly 160,000
miles. It was a key driver of postwar development patterns and
the popularity of suburban living. In the 1950s, 57 percent of
metropolitan-area residents lived in central cities. By 1970, the
figure had fallen to 43 percent, and by 2000 it was just 30 percent.
Steve Rudy, director of transportation planning for the Denver
Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), which is responsible
for the region’s transportation-funding priorities, expects at best
a 10 percent expansion of the area’s road network in the next 25
years. In that same span, an additional 1.5 million people will
32 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
Breakdown of U.S. freight
by mode (in ton-miles)
Rail Truck Water Air
45 percent 37 percent 18 percent <1 percent
Source: Research and Innovative Technology Administration, 2003
join the region—tantamount to another Salt Lake City moving to
Denver, Rudy says.
Rudy’s DRCOG colleague Jill Locantore, a senior land-
use planner, says the Denver of 2035 will be about the size of
Washington, D.C., today.
“[D.C. has] mass transit, but also a lot of congestion.
Regardless of what we do, it’s going to be more congested,”
Locantore says. “I think the question for policymakers and taxpayers
is how much do we want to invest in providing alternatives?”
At D.C. scale, we’ll still need to get around, as well as buy
things arriving on trucks with which we’ll continue to share
the road. While hybrid-electric vehicles (combining electric and
internal-combustion engines) and all-electric vehicles will cut back
on fuel consumption, they won’t reduce traffic. And the impacts of
electric vehicles on land-use patterns remain unclear. If people can
drive an electric vehicle 50 miles on a charge and then plug in while
at work, they could still live in distant exurbs and continue postwar
development patterns, Rudy says.
s_oleg/Shutterstock
“I don’t think that’s what any of us want to see,” he says.
What’s more, Rudy says, long-distance electric-car commuters
could stress the electric grid during peak daytime hours—rather
than charging at night and serving as distributed “vehicle-to-grid”
power generators by day, as some envision. Rail vs. truck fuel consumption by distance traveled
That means creating places in which people can shop for
Vehicle-navigation technology may soon help congestion, groceries, get kids to school or go to work without having to 1400
though. Randal O’Toole, a transportation analyst and senior fellow
Fuel Gallons Consumed
get in their cars.
at the Cato Institute, suggests that more advanced versions of 1200
In addition to economic trends—principally the price
adaptive cruise control—available now, and with which cars can stay of gasoline—demographic and cultural trends seem headed 1000
a fixed distance behind the car in front of them—could allow for a toward higher density, too, says Katherine Iverson, interim
tripling of vehicles on the roads. 800
director of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute at DU’s
“Increased automobility will lead to increased decentralization Sturm College of Law. Less than one-third of American 600
of cities,” O’Toole says, adding that the net effect would be a households will have children mid-century, she says, resulting
continuation of the postwar trend toward suburbanization and 400
in “a much older population, with much less demand for an
falling population density in urban areas. Ozzie-and-Harriet-style single-family home with a family 200
Such a view goes against urban-planning conventional wisdom, yard.” In the nearer term, Locantore adds, empty-nester baby
though, which now views higher-density development as the 0
boomers and young people choosing to remain childless or
best long-term answer to America’s transportation conundrum. waiting longer to have kids tend to prefer urban lifestyles.
DRCOG believes at least half of new housing and 75 percent <300 300-500 500-1000 1000-2000 >2000
“They want amenities close by. They don’t want to have to
of new jobs by 2035 ought to be in urban centers, Rudy says. Route Distance (Miles)
drive everywhere,” Locantore says.
Source: Federal Railroad Administration, 2009
University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 33

I n cities across the country, light rail has become a linchpin of
land-use and transportation planning. In Denver, 122 miles of
light rail and commuter rail known as FasTracks—for which voters
approved a 0.4 percent Regional Transportation District sales-tax hike
in 2004—eventually will connect the hub of Denver’s Union Station
with Denver International Airport, Boulder, Longmont, Wheat Ridge
and Golden.
FasTracks is both a reaction to metropolitan Denver’s current
urban form and a means of shaping its future. By deliberately
establishing fixed transit arteries, as railroad and highway planners
once did, RTD’s marquee project is an attempt to steer growth toward
higher density and away from sprawl.
“I think FasTracks and the transit-oriented development that it’s
instigating are the biggest things that are changing the transportation
land-use configuration in the Denver metropolitan area,” says
Professor Andrew Goetz, chair of the DU geography department.
The transit-oriented development surrounding south Denver’s
Englewood Station, which opened in 2000, offers a taste of what could
be the future for dozens of FasTracks stops—and, for that matter,
transit-oriented developments around the country. Just north of
Hampden Avenue and Santa Fe Drive, the development is a cluster of
retailers, restaurants, a fitness club, the Alexan City Center apartment
complex, the Museum of Outdoor Art and the Englewood civic
center. Just beyond the eastern edge of the multistory development is
a Wal-Mart and a handful of other big-box stores.
Robert Corona, who works in downtown Denver, was just
getting off the train at Englewood one recent afternoon. He had
driven his Jeep less than a mile to the station’s park-and-ride lot and
34 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
Tyrone Turner/National Geographic Society/Corbis
Do you approve of the federal government’s investment in high-speed rail?
Take the poll: www.du.edu/magazine
the book Transport Revolutions. RTD’s FasTracks program, initially
budgeted at $4.7 billion, is now slated to cost $6.5 billion, the result
of ballooning costs. At the same time, plummeting sales tax revenues
have left RTD with a shortage of funds to complete the project.
“That’s a perfect storm, when costs escalate and revenues
decrease,” says RTD FasTracks spokeswoman Pauletta Tonilas.
To build the system out by 2017 as planned, RTD needs to fill
a $2.4 billion budget gap, Tonilas says. The RTD board recently
decided to delay a ballot issue asking voters to approve a second 0.4
percent sales-tax increase. But without that money and a $1 billion
assist from the federal government, FasTracks won’t be finished until
2042, RTD officials say.
Denver is not alone. The Maricopa Association of Govern-
ments—the DRCOG of greater Phoenix, Ariz.—would like to
expand the 20-mile light-rail system it opened in late 2008, says Eric
Anderson, the association’s transportation director. As has been the
case with Denver’s southerly light-rail lines, ridership has exceeded
expectations, with the line carrying 34 percent more passengers in
2009 than anticipated. The region would like to build another 37
miles of local rail, Anderson says. Money is lacking, though.
“Revenues are down, and costs turned out to be quite a bit
higher than in the plan,” Anderson says.
Indeed, passenger rail’s high costs don’t end when construction
wraps up. Amtrak carried about 27 million passengers in fiscal
taken the train downtown. 2009 but needed $1.5 billion from the federal government to cover
“It beats the hell out of paying gas money,” he says. operating and capital shortfalls.
Thirteen years ago, Corona would have been outside an Light rail in the United States is heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
abandoned shopping mall. The 1.3 million square-foot Cinderella O’Toole calculates that light rail costs eight times the price per mile
City was demolished in 1998 to make way for the development. as urban driving.
Englewood still owned the land underneath it, says Harold Stitt, “Huge subsidies are required to make these modes of transit
an Englewood senior planner. That fact provided unusual sway in attractive to people,” he says.
pressing developers otherwise cool to the idea of integrating RTD’s O’Toole says buses, if less sexy, are cheaper to buy and operate
planned light-rail stop, Stitt says. and don’t force transportation planners to predict financial needs,
Englewood officials considered the work of transit-oriented development patterns or ridership decades into the future.
development pioneers such as Portland, Ore., and the San Francisco “With bus transit, you see where people are going and you go
Bay Area, “learning about [transit-oriented development] almost at that way,” O’Toole says.
the same time as developers were,” Stitt says. Gilbert points to trolley buses—buses on an electrified net-
While the impact on property values is hard to quantify, Stitt says work in places like Cambridge, Mass., and Vancouver, B.C.—as a
the city believes land as far as a half mile away from the station sells at promising alternative to light rail at one-tenth the cost.
a premium. Indeed, a recent survey by Denver real estate investment “They’re not quite as good as light rail, but you can deploy a lot
group Grubb & Ellis showed that apartment seekers are willing to more of them,” Gilbert says. “They’re very energy-efficient, quiet,
spend 4 percent more on rent for apartments within a quarter mile and relatively inexpensive.”
of a light-rail stop. Developers pay a 25 percent premium for land in
such areas, too, the study found.
DRCOG’s Rudy calls the development “the first and greatest A rethinking of transportation systems—and, by extension,
land use—can’t stop at the metropolitan boundary’s edge.
Long-distance travel also is at a crossroads. In the coming decades,
initial [local] example of a different way to develop, one where
freeways are not the primary driver. Now all of a sudden, you have a Gilbert believes domestic U.S. airline travel will increasingly cede
way to say, ‘There’s a different way we can develop.’ Now that you’ve to regional high-speed rail links—to the extent that the number of
got some transit, you’ve got an inkling of what you could do.” airports will shrink 80 percent to 90 percent by mid-century.
But light rail comes with a catch. It is expensive: $80 million a Fuel cost will be the main challenge, Goetz says. It takes an
mile being a typical figure, including the rolling stock, says Richard immense amount of power to plow through the atmosphere at
Gilbert, a Toronto-based transportation analyst and co-author of more than 400 mph, leaving energy-packed—and, analysts believe,
increasingly pricey—liquid fuels the only option into the foreseeable
future.
But if Gilbert is right, regional high-speed passenger rail will
be the biggest threat to airlines. The Obama administration’s 2009
stimulus package jump-started the decades-old vision of a U.S.
high-speed rail network, spending $8 billion on 13 regional high-
speed rail efforts, with the promise of $5 billion more over the next
five years. Carmichael says that as rail takes hold, commuter planes
and many domestic flights will eventually disappear.
Investing in a high-speed passenger rail network of 100-mile to
600-mile-long intercity corridors “builds on the successful highway
and aviation development models with a 21st century solution,” but
one focusing on “a clean, energy-efficient option,” according to the
Department of Transportation’s strategic plan for high-speed rail.
One of the proposed routes extends from Cheyenne, Wyo., through
Denver south to Albuquerque, N.M., and El Paso, Texas. The
Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Rail Authority currently is
developing plans for passenger rail lines along the state’s I-25 and
I-70 corridors.   
To Carmichael, it’s a familiar vision. He has been advocating
something he calls the “Interstate II” for years now. The system
would add 30,000 miles of high-speed railways to existing rights of
way to create “a 21st century intermodal transportation system for
passengers and freight.”
Regions around the country submitted $55 billion in requests
for the $8 billion in high-speed rail regional stimulus funding. The
largest recipients were California ($2.25 billion for a Los Angeles-
San Francisco route) and Florida ($1.25 billion for a Tampa-Orlando
link).
A web of regional high-speed rail networks would be expensive.
O’Toole estimates the latest plan would cost $150 billion to build,
and that’s assuming that certain regions settle for trains topping out
at 110 mph rather than 220 mph. Complicating matters, Finkbiner
says, is that most of the rights of way, not to mention the rails
themselves, are privately owned by freight carriers.
“The freight carriers are steeling themselves for the shared
usage of mainline routes for railroads,” he says.
How America’s collective transportation choices will shape
future maps, one can only guess. But in 2006, nearly six decades
after the University of Denver campus saw its last streetcar, the first
light-rail train arrived. Rather than running along Evans Avenue,
it rode on the southeast rail line, 19 miles of tracks built as part
of RTD’s $1.6 billion T-REX project to improve the Interstate
25 corridor south of the city. Passengers boarding across Buchtel
Boulevard from the Ritchie Center are downtown in 17 minutes.
Perhaps one day the line will link up with high-speed rail to
destinations across the country. It depends as much on priorities as it
does on money, Carmichael says.
“An ethical transportation system, that doesn’t kill people and
doesn’t waste fuel and doesn’t pollute the air, is what we ought to be
building,” he says. “One that uses each mode—water, rail, highways
and airways—in its most efficient way.”
University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 35
 Testing
the Waters By Richard Chapman
Photography by Justin Edmonds

Alumna
Kristin Waters
is floating
E Early this spring, a gathering of parents sat in the west stands of DU’s Magness Arena and beamed as
73 high school seniors from Denver’s Bruce Randolph School accepted their diplomas.
Bruce Randolph was one of more than a dozen Denver high schools that held graduation
ceremonies in Magness, but this event on a sunny day in May was more than just another springtime
rite of passage. It was a progress point, a high-water mark in Denver’s efforts to fix its failing schools
and a report card to educators on techniques that work.
reform ideas Back in 2005, Bruce Randolph was one of the worst schools in the state. Gang rivalries had turned
the building into a battleground, recalls former principal Kristin Waters. Veteran administrators had clamped
in Denver’s down hard, which suppressed the fighting, but they weren’t able to focus on academics.
roughest “In some classrooms teachers were doing a good job, working hard and making progress with kids,
but in most classrooms students were not learning,” says Waters, who served as principal from 2005 to
schools. 2009. “Students were not being served.”
  Waters got the job of turning things around. Her attack plan was twofold: first, get the district and the
union off her back; and second, emphasize classroom expectations, accountability and confidence in the
kids. That was key, she says, and the reason she retained only six of the school’s 45 teachers when she
came in as principal. Those who didn’t unequivocally express belief in the students’ ability to succeed
were replaced.
Five years later, on May 18, 2010, the first group of Randolph students who started under the Waters
regime walked across the stage and accepted diplomas. Nearly 97 percent of the school’s seniors gradu-
ated that day, with the few who missed the cut working to fulfill remaining requirements by mid-June.
Compare that to the graduation rate for Denver Public Schools as a whole—76.9 percent.
Moreover, nearly 95 percent of Bruce Randolph’s seniors got into college.
All in a school where nearly every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunches, the district’s
measure of poverty; where only seven seniors speak English as their primary language; and where only
two seniors have parents who graduated from college. Overwhelmingly, Bruce Randolph’s seniors are the
first in their families to get a high school diploma.
“You pushed back,” Waters proudly reminded the seniors at commencement. “You tested us on
whether we would stick to our high expectations. We did. And by late November of that first year you rec-
ognized that we were going to help you learn and keep pushing you and not back down.”

36 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 37
 T The Bruce Randolph turn-around system of pushing kids hard
was among the reasons Superintendent Tom Boasberg, Board of
Education Chair Nate Easley Jr. and a slew of DPS officials attended
the Randolph commencement. And why The Denver Post carried the
story on the front page of its local section.
It was also why the Randolph class of 2010 chose Waters as its
commencement speaker. The click-click-click of her high heels in the
hallway and her ever-present smile were indelible symbols of what
they’d been through and how much progress they’d made.
“The kids would hear those high heels and you could see every-
one sitting up a little straighter in their chairs because they knew
Dr. Waters was coming into the room,” recalls Jessica Chandler, an
eighth-grade language arts teacher. “She’d come in, pull up a seat
and talk to the students. It wasn’t just sitting back taking notes. She
wanted to be involved. Always with a big smile; you could tell she
loved being in the classroom.”
Sixth-grade language arts teacher Stewart Amos remembers
Waters’ style as charismatic, hands-on and fair.
“She never raised her voice, she just told people what they
needed to do,” he says. “She was our leader. We were a team, but you
knew that what she said went.”
Cesar Cedillo, who succeeded Waters as principal in 2009,
remembers Waters’ work ethic. “She was always the first one here
and the last one to leave. Saturdays, Sundays, she would have her car
parked out front. She had these cool pink tennis shoes she’d wear
whenever she got tired of high heels. The kids would say, ‘Hey, those
are tight.’
“And she was always beaming. Nothing got her down.”
Not even her struggle to win waivers from district and union
rules so she’d have greater freedom to make the changes she thought
best, particularly as to budget, hiring and school calendar. They were
modest changes, Waters says, but the effect was huge. “They let us go
into the classroom and start guiding.”
Waters’ turn-around plan not only put Bruce
Randolph School on a new trajectory, it also generated
original research—a case study on her first year
at Bruce Randolph—that in 2006 earned her
a doctorate from DU’s Morgridge College of
Education.
Three years later her efforts got her
promoted to Superintendent Boasberg’s office,
where as assistant to the superintendent for
reform and innovation she oversaw charter
schools, innovation schools—which
use the state’s Innovative Schools
Act to make adjustments similar
to the ones at Randolph—and
performance schools, which are
new schools created from the
ground up.
Waters was praised for her
accomplishments in school reform
during a special visit in 2009 by U.S.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
and feted as a “transformational leader”
38 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
by Rocky Mountain PBS. In July 2010, she accepted a new job with
DPS as instructional superintendent, guiding high school principals
in becoming better leaders.
“The two things that have the most impact on a student’s learn-
ing are the teacher and the school leader that supports that teacher,”
she says. “If we don’t have excellent teachers and leaders, none of the
other things are important.”
Waters’ new mission underscores the fact that as much as anyone
in DPS, she has come to symbolize school reform and the formula
behind it: goals, high expectations, accountability and unwavering
confidence in kids’ ability to achieve.
“We didn’t put programs into place,” Waters, 46, says of her
efforts at Randolph. “The programs weren’t it. We had high expecta-
tions and we supported them. Yeah, I know. Every school has high
expectations. No, they don’t. At Bruce Randolph every kid went into
AP language and composition. Every kid! Not only the kids who
T
were prepared; every student went in. Now that’s a high expectation.”
Teaching isn’t rocket science, she says to anyone willing to listen.
And it isn’t sweeping changes and new laws. It’s figuring out where
students are, building on that and not dumbing things down as you
go along.
“You keep pushing and you keep providing the support so they
can be successful,” she says.
Sounds simple, but stare into the byzantine world of public edu-
cation and you don’t have to look far to find a labyrinth of process,
crushing rules, resistance to change, conflicting messages, suspicion,
anger, vested interests and enough edu-babble to qualify as a foreign
tongue.
“We have our principal trainings and everyone talks the talk,
but they can’t always go back and do it,” Waters complains. “They
struggle with saying, ‘OK teachers, go look at your assessments, look
at the results, group your students, see what they’re missing, teach
that.’”
Not much rocket science there. More like a primer on the
mechanics of teaching, but an important piece that reformers such
as Waters and Boasberg believe needs to be reinserted as broadly as
possible while the chance is at hand.
Pressure on Colorado schools to perform has come barreling
down from the Obama administration in the form of the $3.4
billion that states are competing for in the Race to the Top school
turn-around program, and Secretary Duncan has been aggressive in
calling out everyone from teachers to the schools that train them.
In May, teacher tenure reform took center stage in the Colorado
Legislature, and Denver Public Schools Board of Education
meetings often roil with sharp disagreements.
Boasberg isn’t deterred. “That’s natural,” he told the Denver
Board of Realtors in April. “Change is tough. But the status quo is
unacceptable.”
Which is why he has Waters on his team. “She does a great job
at challenging the status quo in a determined and passionate way,”
he says. “When Bruce Randolph was one of the worst schools in the
state, she took it on. She said, ‘Here’s what I need,’ and it was the
W
right request.’”
Waters is the first to admit that innovative schools aren’t
for everyone. She’s careful to counsel teachers who want greater
control about what getting their wish really means.
“Helping them do what they want to do pushes on schools
in the system everywhere, and that makes a lot of people
uncomfortable,” she says. The process requires urgency to get
things done but also patience so no adult is left behind.
“She wasn’t looking for perfect teachers,” recalls Greg
Ahrnsbrak, high school physical education teacher at Bruce
Randolph and the school’s union representative. “She was
looking for teachers who were willing to get better and
grow with their students.”
But in a reasonable way. For years, Ahrnsbrak
says, principals were under so much pressure to
get students’ math scores up that they forced math
into everything: physical education, art and all
the electives. When Waters came in, Ahrnsbrak
steeled himself for more of the same, politely
asking how she wished him to work math into
teaching volleyball. “Dr. Waters just looked at
me and said, ‘Why would I want you to do
that? That’s not your job.’”
Ahrnsbrak was instantly impressed.
“She didn’t know anything about PE, but
she knew about teaching. She could break
down the mechanics. I was amazed at the
eye she had.”
Five years later, if you ask Ahrnsbrak
and other Randolph faculty members
what made Waters a great principal, you get a long list that begins
with charisma, moves quickly to mentoring teachers and culminates
in building morale. The litany goes on: Be direct and hold people
accountable for the results—not the talk, the results. Have a plan and
push it hard. Make decisions based on what’s best for the kids, not
the adults.
“You’ve got to be an administrator, building manager, PR
person, do the books, be a disciplinarian—and most importantly,
you’ve got to be an instructional leader,” says Ahrnsbrak, a 17-year
DPS veteran. “How many people can wear all those hats? What
we’re asking principals to do is really almost impossible.”
Which is why institutions such as DU’s Morgridge College
of Education focus on equipping graduates with the skills to make
a difference in some of DPS’ roughest schools. The Morgridge-
based Ritchie Program for School Leaders, which in May produced
its seventh group of graduates, combines a heavy dose of internship
with classroom courses to prepare principals for low-performing
schools in Denver and Adams counties.
Another initiative at Morgridge, the Denver Teacher
Residency Program, this summer launched its second wave of
students whose five-year track is aimed at developing skills for
Denver’s high-needs classrooms. With the help of an $8.2 million
federal grant, the program aims to produce 75 teachers a year when
it hits its stride.
“The relationships that were built through the Ritchie
program paved the way for the Denver Teacher Residency,” says
Morgridge Assistant Professor Susan Korach. “Denver wanted to
be a true partner instead of a university saying, ‘No, this is our
program and we’ll prepare your teachers.’ [DPS] knew that we
believed in sharing the work.”
Other DU programs also are helping meet DPS needs,
including a Morgridge partnership with the Daniels College of
Business to produce MBA students able to apply business expertise
to public schools.
Better include a course in herding cats, Waters quips. She
fumes at how slow even effective steps can be and how urgent the
needs are. “You only get one shot at these kids and then they’re
gone,” she says, already thinking of how else DU might lend its
educational legerdemain to DPS difficulties. Maybe expertise in
continued mentoring, she muses—some ongoing way to help
teachers get better and to make sure good teachers stay teachers
instead of jumping into administration to advance their careers.
“Once they’re trained, they’re dumped off in the schools and
what happens to them?” she says. “Is the support we provide as a
district meeting their needs? Sometimes, but a lot of times not.”
Waters’ voice trails off as the wheels turn. She’s noodling a
solution, working out a better way of looping back to DU the
lessons of what’s working in DPS classrooms and what isn’t—
where teachers and principals feel prepared and where they don’t.
It’s school reform at its simplest: a dedicated educator reaching
into a thicket of intellectual thorns for a good idea.
“There needs to be ongoing dialogue,” Waters says decisively.
She doesn’t have all the details yet, but she will. For now, it’s a
matter of pushing hard, solving problems and not backing down.
For the kids, she emphasizes. Always for the kids.
University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 39
 Professor Frank Ascione has
discovered a disturbing link
between domestic violence
and animal abuse.

Give Me Shelter
By Tamara Chapman
Photography by Wayne Armstrong

F A
rom his modest office in Craig
Hall, home to DU’s Graduate
School of Social Work (GSSW),
Professor Frank Ascione thumbs through
a volume of data about animal abuse in
domestic violence settings. He points to
a child’s drawing—a Noah’s ark of family
pets. Here a chick, there a pup, here a
hamster, there a kitten.
The drawing depicts dearly departed
family pets, casualties of cruelty and
violence.
The executive director of GSSW’s
Institute for Human-Animal Connection,
Ascione is one of the nation’s leading
researchers on the dynamics of
domestic violence, child abuse and
animal maltreatment. His work is full of
disturbing revelations, but one conclusion
never ceases to shock: Animals are often
used to control and manipulate abuse
victims. Ascione sums it up this way:
“Do what I say or the kitten gets it.”
psychologist by training, Ascione came to DU in summer 2009. He holds GSSW’s
American Humane Endowed Chair, established to foster the emerging field of ani-
mal-assisted social work and to research the bond between humans and animals.
Since arriving in Colorado, he has put his expertise to good use. In early 2010, he testi-
fied before the Colorado General Assembly in support of legislation ensuring that, in cases
involving domestic violence, pets and livestock can be included in civil protection orders. A
few weeks later, Gov. Bill Ritter signed Senate Bill 80 into law, making Colorado one of a
handful of states with such legislation on the books.
For Linda Newell, the state senator who sponsored SB 80, Ascione’s testimony pro-
vided the evidence needed to convince skeptics. Colorado lawmakers, after all, are known
for a Western-hued pragmatism that considers animals property and property rights sacred.
“On the floor, I went up to people, starting to talk with them about the bill. I had a few
just look at me and start to laugh,” Newell recalls. “‘Oh my gosh, now we’re having protec-
tion orders for pets. What kind of deal is that! I have better things to talk about.’”
Then Ascione shared his research. To illustrate his data, he relayed a simple story,
stripped of sensational details. He is careful not to traffic in what he calls “violence porn,”
no matter how much the occasion begs for lavish adjectives and adverbs.
The story went like this: An abused woman went to a shelter. She left her dog at home.
Her husband smuggled an audiocassette tape to her—a recording of her dog being tortured.
She packed her bags, she left the shelter, and they never saw her again.
“You could have heard a pin drop,” says Newell, recalling the testimony.
“What helps with legislators in committee is the data and the story,” she adds. “We
looked for a story, and what was very difficult was finding a story where the survivor was
willing to testify. They don’t want to relive it, they don’t want to go there mentally again,
rehash it all. … When Dr. Ascione got up and gave his story about the woman, never to be
seen again, never to be heard of again, that was exactly what we needed.”
For Amy Miller, public policy director for the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic
Violence and a supporter of SB 80, Ascione’s research confirms the human toll of animal
cruelty. “It’s a method used to intimidate, threaten or coerce a child or adult victim,” she
says. “It sends a really clear message that, ‘You’re next. I will do this to this living being, and
if you don’t do what I tell you to do … if you don’t come back to me, I will chop up the
dog and send it to you in packages.’”
“That,” she adds, “was an actual case.”

40 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 41

A scione’s work on animal cruelty and domestic violence began
more than 20 years ago at Utah State University, where he
served on the psychology faculty. While evaluating materials related
to humane education—a concept that aims to increase compas-
sion—he was asked by an animal welfare advocate for some insight
into children who are cruel to animals.
He couldn’t offer much. “Except for some psychoanalytic clin-
ical literature, which was primarily case-study literature, I couldn’t
find anything in child psychology that focused on this phenom-
enon,” he recalls.
Curious, Ascione launched a research project to explore the
issue. His first efforts yielded few results, largely because his meth-
odology proved unwieldy. Then he began comparing data from the
general population with information gathered from special popula-
tions. Within the general population, he learned, only about 5 per-
cent of parents reported that their children engaged in some form
of animal cruelty. The percentage increased among children served
by mental health clinics.
“It jumped to 20 percent to 25 percent,” he says. “But it still was
a low-frequency behavior, comparable to vandalism or fire-setting.”
Ascione and his research team kept probing. “We decided in
order to study this phenomenon more effectively, we probably
should look to environments where the likelihood of this behavior
is higher.”
They began with juvenile detention facilities and residential
treatment programs focused on mental health issues. They hit pay
dirt once they began interviewing a handful of children who had
accompanied their mothers to domestic violence shelters.
“In some instances, the abuse
was purposefully done in front
of the children. The children
were made to watch.”
“What we found in this very preliminary study,” Ascione
explains, “was that many of the children at the domestic violence
shelters not only engaged in animal abuse themselves, but they
were exposed to often horrific animal abuse, perpetrated by their
mothers’ partners, whether it was a father or stepfather or boy-
friend.”
Ascione then launched a small-scale study of 38 women enter-
ing a shelter in Utah. “One of the basic questions we asked was,
‘Do you have pets?’ because I could find no data on the demo-
graphics of pet ownership among women entering shelters for
intimate partner violence,” he says. “We discovered that 74 percent
of the women had companion animals in their homes. And that’s
comparable to the national statistics on pet ownership in families
where there are school-age children. It’s between 70 and 90 percent.
It’s typically the highest pet-owning demographic in the country.”
Through a series of follow-up questions, Ascione and his team
attempted to discover whether these pets had been harmed, threat-
ened or killed by the women’s partners. “We were startled by the
number of women who said yes to the question,” he says.
Troubled and intrigued, Ascione went on to study 100 pet-
owning women at five different Utah shelters. This time he
recruited a comparison group of another 100 women, all of whom
had pets and all of whom reported that their adult relationships
were violence-free.
Of the comparison group, Ascione says, 5 percent said they
had pets that had been harmed or killed. Of the shelter women, 54
percent reported that a pet had met a similar fate.
By this time, Ascione’s research was attracting international
attention. “That study,” he says, “served as the basis for a study in
Australia, where a doctoral student at Monash University asked to
use the same assessment instrument that I developed.”
She also focused on 200 women—100 from domestic violence
centers and 100 from a comparison group. In the latter group, not
one woman reported that she had had a pet harmed or killed, but
of the domestic abuse victims, 53 percent claimed their pets had
experienced violence or cruelty.
“Very, very similar results,” Ascione notes. “Different country,
different culture in some ways, but it just confirmed that this was
not an isolated phenomenon. It wasn’t a Utah phenomenon—this
was something that probably is more pervasive.”
Another finding from Ascione’s studies suggested that the
phenomenon had alarming repercussions for children. More than
60 percent of the children in shelters whose families had pets had
been exposed to animal abuse.
“In some instances, the abuse was purposefully done in front
of the children. The children were made to watch. It’s very clear
from the examples that these women shared with us that these
were not accidental episodes of animal abuse. … In some cases
these were methodical ways of frightening and terrorizing mem-
bers of the family.”
It wasn’t uncommon for an abuser to buy a child an animal,
wait for the attachment to form and then kill the animal, sometimes
with the child watching. A few weeks later, the scenario would play
out again.
“We don’t know yet what those repeated experiences of loss
and replacement, loss and replacement, might do to a child in
terms of their attitudes toward living things,” Ascione says, noting
that some survivors develop acute empathy, while others go on to
become abusers themselves.
If that finding wasn’t horrifying enough, Ascione also learned
that the presence of pets in the house often kept domestic violence
victims from seeking help. Of those women who had reported that
their pets had been harmed or threatened, 34 percent said concern
for their pets kept them from going to a shelter. “More than one in
three said this was an obstacle to getting to safety sooner than they
did,” Ascione says.
Count Angela McMahan among them.
Several years ago, on an evening when her husband’s violence
escalated beyond endurance, McMahan checked into a hotel to sit
out the fury. Unfortunately, she found little peace at the inn.
That’s because she worried all night about the scene back
home, where her husband remained with her two best friends—
sisters Jessie and Jasmine, the tail-wagging offspring of a retriever
mom and a black-Lab dad. “To hurt me,” she explains of her ex-
husband’s motives, “they ended up being hurt.”
McMahan returned home and stayed with her husband for
more of the same—more emotional abuse and more violence. Then
one day, she recalls, “I literally woke up facedown in the garage in a

Defining animal abuse

Philip Tedeschi, clinical director of the
Graduate School of Social Work’s Institute for
Human-Animal Connection, knows exactly how
much animals mean to people.
“We have, in this country, probably 70
million people who have dogs. There’s no health
care plan that has that many people in it. We
have more children who will grow up with a
companion animal this year than with a father,”
he says.
Armed with a $200,000 grant from the
Animal Assistance Foundation, Tedeschi aims to
honor that bond by improving the way society
deals with animal abuse. Along the way, he hopes
to make a difference in the lives of humans as
well.
Working with Frank Ascione—the institute’s
executive director—and project manager Jim
Pyle, Tedeschi is spearheading work on the two-
year LINK project, named for the connection
between violence to people and violence
to animals. The project calls for a detailed
examination of how first responders and other
professionals handle animal abuse cases, from
inception to final disposition.
“We have many calls for investigation and
very few that get formally addressed,” Tedeschi
explains. “We might see thousands of animal cru-
elty investigations, but very few of them come to
the attention of the criminal justice system or the
courts. We’re interested in why that happens.”
Tedeschi suspects that the failure to reach
resolution on so many abuse cases stems from
systems problems. Too many agencies and
professionals lack a structured way of defining,
identifying and addressing abuse.
“In the early days of domestic violence
intervention, there was a phenomenon that was
quite similar to this. You had a high prevalence
of domestic calls and officers needing to make a
determination on site as to what was happening
and how to resolve the situation,” Tedeschi says.
“The result was that many of these cases never
ended up getting identified as family violence or
intimate partner violence.”
In 2009–10, the first year of the study, the
research team delved into how animal abuse
cases are addressed by the many different
professions likely to encounter them. These
include animal control officers, law enforcement
professionals, veterinarians, child welfare
workers and animal shelter workers.
The problems these professionals face
became immediately apparent. Take the task
confronting an animal control officer.
“These officers have to try to distinguish
which cases warrant a more significant criminal
justice response, which are appropriate to get
a summons or a ticket, and which just get a
warning,” Tedeschi says.
To make decisions easier, it helps to
have data, much the way criminal justice
professionals and social workers have data
about, say, sex offenders. Someone who flashes
a passerby is not in the same category as
someone who molests a child.
“Already we know that we probably have
in the neighborhood of at least 10 distinct types
of animal abuse profiles,” Tedeschi says. The
categories run the gamut from hoarders who
simply can’t care for the dozens of critters
they’ve collected to psychopaths who torture
animals.
In the project’s second year, the LINK
team aims to establish best practices to support
investigations and interventions. “We’re not just
trying to gather data,” Tedeschi says. “What
we’re trying to do is embed practices within the
unique disciplines’ own standards of training and
professional competencies so that they become
institutionalized as a practice.”
Here’s what that might look like. Say a
child welfare worker is called to investigate
a particular household. She should know,
Tedeschi says, “to look at the health of the
animals, at whether there’s evidence of abuse
or fear in those animals. … That’s relevant on
a lot of levels—one being the animal’s welfare,
which is in and of itself a worthy cause.”
Should the child welfare worker see signs
of animal maltreatment, that may help trigger an
intervention—even if there are no signs of child
abuse. As Tedeschi notes, “Kids see animals in
their homes as members of their family. If we
have kids who are growing up in a home where
a member of their family is chronically starved,
chronically beaten, chronically neglected or
targeted, this is a tremendous level of family
violence.”
—Tamara Chapman

42 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 43

pool of my own blood. … I don’t know how long I was out.”
She called an emergency shelter, hoping to find respite for
herself and the dogs. The overextended facilities had barely enough
room for another human victim, but they certainly couldn’t accom-
modate two large pets. “As a matter of fact,” she recalls, “I was told
to leave them, just leave them and get out. That obviously wasn’t an
option for me. … I just wasn’t going to leave them.”
McMahan didn’t leave them, but she did begin making plans
to escape the “’til death do us part” clause of her nuptial vows. By
the time her divorce became final two years later, the three survivors
had their share of battle scars.
“We all left with a limp,” she says.
A fter Ascione began sharing his data and recounting similar
stories at national conferences, he started fielding phone calls
from animal welfare and domestic violence agencies. They wanted
to know how to establish programs for all the victims of domestic
violence.
“I’m the ivory tower person, the number cruncher,” Ascione
says, “but what I realized was that if people are calling Frank Ascione
for advice about this topic, there must be a void in information.”
To remedy that, Ascione sought a grant from the Geraldine
R. Dodge Foundation to interview 41 organizations addressing the
issue. Half were animal-welfare organizations, half were domestic
violence agencies. His goal was to answer, in one handy volume, the
major questions associated with operating programs for humans and
animals. What legal issues must be resolved to accommodate people
and pets? What screening tools work best? What costs are associated
with the enterprise?
“My rationale was, why should each agency have to reinvent
the wheel?” Ascione says.
The entire print run of Ascione’s resulting handbook, Safe
Havens for Pets: Guidelines for Programs Sheltering Pets for Women Who
Are Battered, was mailed to every domestic violence agency in the
country. Today, the book is out of print but a PDF is posted at The
Zero (www.vachss.com), a website maintained by Andrew Vacchs,
a child protection attorney and consultant. (The book also can be
downloaded at www.humananimalconnection.org.)
The resource has played a significant role in expanding ser-
vices nationwide. In fact, Ascione says, information collected by
the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
indicates that pet-sheltering programs are increasing substantially.
“The last we heard, from the 2008 directory, was that over 700 or
800 agencies have some kind of pet-sheltering program available,”
Ascione says. “I suspect had they done that survey in 1998, it would
have been only a handful of agencies.”
To give this momentum an adrenaline boost, the American
Humane Association, which supports human-animal bond research
at GSSW, launched its Pets and Women’s Shelters program in
February 2008. Known as PAWS, the program aims to help shelters
incorporate accommodations for animals, whether on site or in part-
nership with animal welfare and fostering agencies.
In spring 2010, PAWS took its campaign to the general public
by pursuing grant money from Pepsi’s Refresh Project, a widely
44 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
49 Reunion recap
51 Quotable notes
53 Book bin
54 Pioneer pics
58 Announcements
Angela McMahan’s shelter, Arising Hope, is a safe haven for abused
women and their pets.
publicized promotion that urges consumers to vote for the initiatives
they consider most worthy. To garner public support for its grant
bid, the association tweeted about the campaign on its Twitter feed,
talked it up on Facebook and posted an educational YouTube clip
featuring pop singer and former American Idol judge Paula Abdul.
As domestic violence and animal-welfare advocates see it, this
kind of publicity could translate into much-needed awareness and
assistance. One day, they hope, no woman will need to subject her-
self to danger because she’s worried about a pet.
T oday, more than two years after she divorced her husband,
Angela McMahan operates Arising Hope, a domestic violence
shelter she founded with women like her in mind. It welcomes
pets—big dogs, little dogs, antisocial cats and assorted damaged crit-
ters suffering from post-traumatic stress. “We all cohabitate, the pets
and the people,” she says.
In its first year, Arising Hope offered beds to 19 women, five
children, two teens and four pets. In its second year, the numbers
jumped to 23 women, 15 children, four teens and 11 pets. One of
the cats living at Arising Hope even bequeathed the shelter a litter of
kittens.
DU Archives
It’s not always a peaceable kingdom—sometimes a little fur
flies—but for the survivors seeking safety at Arising Hope, it repre-
sents a second chance at a normal life.
For Ascione, the emergence of shelters like Arising Hope and The Homecoming queen hopefuls of 1968 pose for a portrait. Homecoming this year is
the passage of legislation like SB 80 represent a scholar’s dream Oct. 14–17. If you can tell us more about this image or have any Homecoming photos of
come true. What could be better than seeing data put to work?
“Sometimes I’m asked, ‘How do you do this?’” he says, “and
your own to share, please let us know.
my only answer is, it has been so satisfying to see research findings
translated into programs that promote human welfare.”
Watch a video about DU’s Institute for Human-Animal Connection at www.du.edu/
magazine
University of Denver Magazine Connections 45
 The classes
1941
Barbara Jo (Floto) Jacks (attd. CWC
1941–42) left the Women’s College to work
as a secretary in the security department
of a Denver Montgomery Ward store. In
1943 she moved to Wendover, Utah, to
marry Master Sgt. Robert Jacks. The couple
moved to Denver in 1946 and lived there
for 60 years. Barbara has two daughters and
now lives in SunnyBrook Assisted Living in
Fairfield, Iowa, where her roommate is Twila
(Heston) Cebulski (BA ’45). The two have
kept in touch for 68 years.
1942
Roberta (Bivans) Winn (BS ’42) of
Woodland Park, Colo., is a retired Denver
Public Library librarian. She now works
for a nonprofit that assists senior citizens.
Barbara shared her memories of Dec. 7,
1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl
Harbor. A librarianship student at the time,
Roberta remembers hearing the news on
the radio with her classmates.
1945
on the Western Slope and its environmental
effects. Previously, two of Elizabeth’s plays
were chosen for the annual Roaring Fork
Playwriting series and were given full
performances in Aspen in 1985 and 1986.
Elizabeth is married to former Denver
attorney Maxwell Aley; she has four children
and four grandchildren.
Twila (Heston) Cebulski (BA ’45) has two
children and seven grandchildren. With her
husband, Stan, who worked for AT&T, she
spent many years in New York City. Twila now
lives in SunnyBrook Assisted Living in Fair-
field, Iowa, where her roommate is Barbara
Jo (Floto) Jacks (attd. CWC 1941–42).
1947
Barbara (Peters)
French (BA ’47)
of Anaheim, Calif.,
has taught creative
writing for the
North Orange
County Community
College District for
the past 18 years.
She was named teacher of the year in 2003.
She spent 11 years acting on radio shows
1949
Patricia (Tool) McHugh (BF ’49) of
Sacramento, Calif., had her watercolor
paintings on display at Park Fine Art
in Sacramento. The show, An Aquarian
Connection, ran April 1–May 10, 2010.
1951
JoAnn (Corbett) Huff (BA ’51) of Albu-
querque, N.M., founded the Kiwanis Club
of Albuquerque’s annual Christmas toy drive
for children in need. A former schoolteacher,
JoAnn also is a greeter at the Albuquerque
International Sunport and an usher at the
Albuquerque Little Theater. She has worked
on the New Mexico arts commission and
numerous boards and governor’s panels. She
received the Governor’s Award for Outstand-
ing New Mexico Women in 1990 and the
lifetime achievement award from the New
Mexico Commission of the Status of Women
in 2004.
1954
Harry Gee (MM ’54) of Terre Haute, Ind.,
is a music professor emeritus at Indiana
State University. His wind orchestrations of
works by Beethoven and von Weber have
1963
Marlow Ediger (EdD ’63) of North
Newton, Kan., will have his biography Innkeepers Jim and Diane Peiker
included in the 2010 edition of Who’s Who
in the World. He recently published articles
Just as the castles of yore
or has articles forthcoming in Reading
Improvement, the Journal of Virginia Science protected their inhabitants
Education, Montana Mathematics, Hawaii from enemies, Castle Marne
Mathematics Teacher, College Student Journal protects its guests from the
and Education. Marlow was reappointed as a hectic, technology-tweaked
member of the editorial board of Edutracks, pace of modern life. There are
a professional educational journal published no cell phones ringing here, no
in India.
televisions blaring, no computer
cursors blinking, begging you to
1964 type what’s on your mind.
Mary Peace Finley (BA ’64) of Boulder, Instead there is a grand-
Colo., is an award-winning children’s book
author. Her latest book, The Midnight Ride
father clock softly chiming the
hours, aging photos and knick-
of Blackwell Station (Filter Press, 2010), is a knacks inviting your unhurried
book of historical fiction that follows the
perusal, thick walls blocking out
actual events of May 1886, when Blackwell
Station in southeastern Colorado was the noise of the traffic outside,
hijacked, moved three miles and set down and a jigsaw puzzle in the sunlit
in a spot that overnight became the town tower, where guests can while
of Lamar, Colo. Mary has worked as a away an afternoon matching
teacher of English as a foreign language and colors and shapes, no high-speed
as a scriptwriter for the PBS nature series connection or electrical outlet
“Marty Stouffer’s Wild America.” Her four
needed.
previous historical young-adult novels set
“We wanted to take the

Elizabeth (Berg) Aley (BA ’45) of Paonia,
Colo., wrote the one-act play Paradox
Colorado, which was given a staged reading
in Aspen, Colo., in December 2009. The
Hudson Reed Ensemble read the play, which
deals with the proliferation of gas drilling
at KLZ-CBS in Denver before getting
married and moving to California. In 2009
she published Someday Street, a novelized
memoir about growing up in Denver during
the Great Depression. Barbara has two
sons, three granddaughters and two great-
granddaughters.
been performed by the Brazil, Indiana,
Concert Band. Harry has music published
by Ludwig-Masters and Kendor Music.
1957
Chuck Yim Gee (BSBA ’57) of Honolulu,
Hawaii, has been reappointed to the
University of Hawaii Board of Regents
Wayne Armstrong
in southeastern Colorado have earned her
the Top Hand Award from the Colorado house back to the way it was and
Authors League, the Colorado Book Award, really create a storied experience
the Benjamin Franklin Award from the for folks who come to stay,” says
Publishers Marketing Association and the
EVVY Book Award.
Jim Peiker (BSBA ’57), who bought the dilapidated 1889 building in Denver’s City Park West
neighborhood in 1988 and spent five months turning it into a bed-and-breakfast inn.
Peiker and his wife, Diane (Carpenter) (BA ’57), run the nine-room inn with their
Rexford Thompson (MSW ’64) and Joyce
Thompson (MSW ’61) moved to Key daughter, Melissa, son-in-law, Louie, and three grandchildren, ages 11, 14 and 15. Jim and

Classified information for a five-year term from 2010–15. The

autonomous body of 15 regents oversees a
statewide system of 10 campuses with an
enrollment of more than 58,000 students.
In hopes of helping DU graduates market their businesses to one another and find service
In September 2009 Chuck’s textbook World
providers within the University community, the Alumni Relations office is creating a classified ads
section as part of the ePioneer alumni network.
of Resorts: From Development to Management
was published by the AH&LA Educational
Institute.
Interested alumni can join the online network and place an ad describing the services they
offer. The new section comes in response to alumni requests for a resource for reaching out to
other DU graduates.
“We would like to enhance the brand that ‘Pioneers hire Pioneers,’” says Cynthia Hyman,
1960
Richard Hupp
associate director of alumni career programs. (BS ’60) of South
By signing up to join the classifieds section, alums also will become part of the Professional Bend, Ind., received
Network, a mentoring service that allows them to become a career resource for students and the distinguished
service award from
other alumni.
the Rubber Division
With approximately 625 people currently involved in the Professional Network, the Alumni of the American
Relations office anticipates the classifieds section will increase the occurrence of DU graduates Chemical Society.
networking together and ultimately working with one another. Richard worked in
“We just want you to reconnect,” Hyman says. “We hope you value your degree, and we rubber product manufacturing for 45 years.
want you to know we still value you.” He and his wife, Gini, have six children and
eight grandchildren.
>>www.alumni.du.edu
—Deidre Helton
46 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
Biscayne, Fla., in October 2009 to be closer
to their youngest daughter and family in
Coral Gables.
Diane live in the carriage house right behind the castle; Melissa, Louie and the grandkids live
six blocks away.
“Everybody cooks, everybody cleans, everybody does all of the jobs,” Peiker says. “It’s a
three-generation family business.”
1969 It was in another American recession that the Peikers first hatched the dream of owning
their own bed and breakfast.
Deborah (Becker) Pignatelli (BA ’69) of
Nashua, N.H., has served on the governor’s “My daughter and I were both out of work—this was ’87, ’88—quite literally we were
executive council in New Hampshire since standing in the unemployment line,” Peiker says. “We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s
2005. She was a state senator from 1992– got to be something better than this.’”
2002. She has two sons, Adam and Ben. They looked into restaurants, bars, copy shops and oil-change centers, but they kept
coming back to the bed-and-breakfast concept. And once they discovered Castle Marne,
1971 they were hooked. It took six months to pull the financing together and almost as long to
renovate the mansion, but the Peikers imbued the house with a Victorian-era charm that
Joanne Aaronson
(BA ’71) of Reston, keeps visitors coming back.
For Peiker, the real magic of Castle Marne is the community it creates. Strangers around
Va., is an intuitive life
coach through her the breakfast table often become friends, he says, and the couple has seen many of the same
own company, Life faces coming back to stay, year after year.
Transformation LLC. “I joke about the whole concept of six degrees of separation; around here we only have
In December 2009 about three,” he says. “It’s fascinating the way that everything fits together.”
she was ordained
>>www.castlemarne.com
as a spiritual, non-
denominational minister to help individuals —Greg Glasgow
in corporate America find balance and
University of Denver Magazine Connections 47
 harmony. She also founded Josan Press to
support her inspirational writing; its first
release was The Circle of Life: A Journey
Ted Zerwin (MSW ’71) of Westminster,
Colo., published Managing and Raising Money
That is Not Your Own: Financial Management
Jerry Wartgow (PhD ’72) of Golden,
Colo., has been named interim chancellor
of the University of Colorado-Denver.
Margaret “Bunny”
Nicholson (MSW
’73) of Denver
Reunion recap

James Beverly
Through Grief to Understanding. and Fundraising in Non-Profit Organizations Jerry previously served as superintendent of was recognized by Doris Finnie-Shade (BA ’41)
(Vandeplas Publishing, 2009). The book Denver Public Schools, head of the Colorado Colorado Gov. Bill
remembers paying her tuition when
James Hudspeth draws on Ted’s 25 years as president and community colleges system and interim dean Ritter for her work
(BA ’71) moved CEO of the Arthritis Foundation’s Rocky of DU’s Morgride College of Education. helping abused and she was a student at the University of
to Taylor Falls, Mountain chapter. Ted is an associate clinical neglected children. Denver in the late 1930s—$75 per
Minn., in 1974 professor in DU’s Josef Korbel School of Bunny’s 41-year quarter.
to teach special International Studies. 1973 career includes “But that kind of money was
education. He met Dinah Lewis (BSBA work as a child protective services caseworker,
just as hard to come by as $25,000
and married his ’73, JD ’81) was supervisor, therapist, trainer, researcher and
wife, Christine, in 1972 named the new chief program director, including a stint as director or whatever it is today,” said Finnie-
1976; they have Michael Ruddy (BSBA ’72) authored financial officer and of the Family Center, a national child abuse Shade, one of about 300 alumni, faculty
two children, Ira Conflicts With Interest (Rodeo Publishing, director of the Finance and neglect demonstration project. Ritter and staff who gathered June 4 for the
and Erin. James has been volunteering in 2010), a thriller set in the world of and Administrative conferred the recognition in his office on April Emeritus Tea, an annual celebration in
schools since he retired in 1985. He is a homebuilding and construction. Michael Services Department for 29, 2010, with Bunny’s colleagues, family and
100-percent-disabled Vietnam War veteran spent 40 years in the construction business, Broward County, Fla. friends in attendance. which alumni who return to DU for Ernest Moore (BS ’60) and Joan Moore
and remembers the turbulent times at DU and his experiences inspired many of the She previously spent 10 their 50-year class reunion are inducted
during the war. events of the story. He lives in Boulder, years in private law practice in Denver and into Pioneer Alumni Legends (PALS), a
1975

Colo., with his wife, five children, dog served as director of administrative services
and horses. for Lee County, Fla. Phil Goodstein (MA ’75) of Denver published
The Ghosts of University Park, Platt Park, and
Beyond (New Social Publications, 2010), a
history book about the University’s influence
on Denver’s social, political, economic and
James Beverly
group for alumni who graduated 50 or
more years ago.
And Finnie-Shade recalled
dancing—between classes. Yes,
organized dancing, sometimes as early

Storyteller Caroline Stutson legal life and ghost sightings in buildings

including Mary Reed and the Chamberlin
Observatory. Phil is a well-known Denver
as 10 a.m.
“We’d dance upstairs in the
historian who has written several books on area student union building—it was on Evans
As she was writing her latest children’s book, Cat’s Night Out (Simon & Schuster, 2010),
history. back then, it’s burned down now.
Caroline Stutson (BA ’62) didn’t give much thought to the poor fellow who would end up
There’d be between 50 and 100 of us
illustrating the thing. M. Emily Miller (BA ’75, MA ’79) has lived in
“In my mind I had all these cats with flip-flops and all these costumes, and I never up there dancing and having a grand Roger Poulson (BS ’50) and Peter Firmin, professor emeritus
Santa Fe, N.M., Missoula, Mont., and Moab,
thought how hard that would be for an illustrator—to have 20 cats dancing,” she says with a Utah (where she currently resides), since time. That’s where I met my second in the Daniels College of Business
laugh. her days at DU. She has worked primarily in husband,” said Finnie-Shade, who was
Born from Stutson’s love of cats, dancing and New York City, the picture book is a Africa since 2000, doing agribusiness, trade the first female editor of the DU yearbook.
counting tale that tells the story of what 20 footloose felines get up to once the human and marketing development. She hopes to hear LeRoy Marx (BA ’49, MA ’52) didn’t get to attend those dances. When he was a student,
from her classmates of 1975.
beings have gone to bed in the Big Apple. Marx said, DU’s student union building was a makeshift room in the basement of the Carnegie
“Traditional [counting books] are often from one up to 10 and sometimes back down Nancy (Cook) Spade (BA ’75, MA ’76) is a Library.
again to one,” Stutson says. “But I wanted to think of something different, so I made this one second-grade teacher in Pacific Grove, Calif. “About all you could do was get a drink and a sandwich,” he said. “And upstairs there
counting by twos going up to 20. Each time a couple of cats come out and they go through She has two college-aged children, Matt and was a little room that was the bookstore, nothing at all like the one we have today. That one is
the samba and the waltz and the boogie and the twist—there are 10 different dances that the Anna. really nice.”
cats are doing in the middle of the night in the city.” Several alumni recalled DU being much different before World War II than after.
Stutson has been writing picture books for kids since 1993; her titles include By the
1976
Courtesy of Caroline Stutson

Light of the Halloween Moon (Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1993), Pirate Pup (Chronicle Books,
Pat Ferullo Halperin (MSW ’76), who has
2005), Night Train (Roaring Brook Press, 2002) and Cowpokes (Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, retired from private practice, lived aboard a
1999). She says she had at least 100 rejections before she finally sold her first book. ship called the Reflection for 2½ years with her
“[A literary agent] came to Denver for a conference, and I sent her some things in husband, “Captain Ray.” Their travels took
them from Maine to Key West with visits to
advance,” Stutson says. “She handed them all back to me at lunch and said, ‘There’s one poem
in here that I like, and if you could turn it into a book I could sell it.’ I think I stayed up all Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake, then
night doing that, and that was my first published book.” on to the Bahamas. The couple has traded that
lifestyle for “cruising on land” in an RV.
A theater major with a minor in education, Stutson honed her storytelling skills as a kindergarten teacher, owner of her own puppet
show business and a member of the Littleton, Colo., chapter of Spellbinders, a volunteer group that tells stories to children.
Heraldo Muñoz (MA ’76, PhD ’79) of New
“It’s been fun, and it keeps me in touch with which stories work and which don’t,” she says of her Spellbinders service. “I don’t tell York City has been appointed the assistant
my own stories, but I tell adaptations of books. I think kids are just great, and especially when they’re young, they’re so excited about secretary-general and assistant administrator
everything—if you can get their attention at that age, my hope is that they’re going to be readers for the rest of their lives.” and director of the Regional Bureau for Latin
>>www.carolinestutson.info America and the Caribbean of the United
—Greg Glasgow Nations Development Programme.
“Before the war it was a playhouse; we frolicked,” said Gwendolyn Scott (BFA ’48, MA
’68), who remembers playing touch football in intramural sports. “The art club, the Daubers,
we had a fine time. But after the war, when the GIs came, school got a lot more serious, and
we started studying more.”
Marvin Meyers (BA ’56, MA ’59) recalled working for $1 an hour in the maintenance
department.
“I installed heating units and threaded pipe, all kinds of things,” Meyers said. “But DU
was a great school for me. It was a place to think, to learn, to analyze, and it taught me how to
assist others.” Meyers has spent much of his career advocating for people with disabilities and
veterans and still talks with Colorado legislators about issues affecting both groups.
Perhaps it was people like Meyers that Chancellor Robert Coombe had in mind when he
told the group that DU sets students off on “a path of purpose and significance.”
“I know all of us can point to DU alumni who have changed lives,” Coombe said. “The
measure of a university is its alumni, and we’ve graduated some extraordinary individuals.”
—Doug McPherson

48 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Connections 49


Roy Wilson (MA ’76, MS ’83) wrote a paper,
“The Third Way of Agent-based Social
Simulation and a Computational Account of
Emergence,” that is slated for publication in
the peer-reviewed online Journal of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulation.
1977
Roger Manley (attd. ’77) is the director of the
Gregg Museum of Art and Design at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh. He has
worked as a curator for more than 40 other
institutions, including the Collection de l’Art
Brut in Switzerland and the Illinois State
Museum. A photographer, filmmaker and
writer, Roger has received fellowships from
the NEA and the NEH. His feature film
Mana: Beyond Belief premiered at the Lincoln
Center in New York in 2005 and has won
awards at several film festivals. He is married
to writer and photographer Theadora Brack.
David Molden (BS ’77) of Denver received
the 2009 Scientist of the Year award from
the Consultative Group on International
Agriculture Research. David is deputy director
general for research at the International
Water Management Institute. The award
recognized his leadership in bringing the
issue of water scarcity to prominence in
the policy arena worldwide. David has had
long-term assignments in Egypt, Nepal, Sri
Lanka, Lesotho and Botswana and short-
term assignments in China, India, Pakistan,
Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico and South Africa.
Melanie (Livengood) Tem (MSW ’75)
is director of the Waiting Child Program
at Adoption Alliance, a nonprofit child
placement agency in Denver. She also has
a second career as a writer. Her short story
collection In Concert (written in collaboration
with her husband, Steve Rasnic Tem) was
published in spring 2010 by Centipede Press,
and her play Comfort Me With Peaches was
produced in May at the Academy Theater in
Meadville, Pa. Melanie also is a professional
storyteller. The Tems have four adult children
and four granddaughters.
1979
David Ballentine (PhD ’79) of Overland
Park, Kan., published Gunbird Driver: A
Marine Huey Pilot’s War in Vietnam (Naval
Institute Press, 2010), in which he recalls his
experiences as a young pilot flying an armed
UH-1E with Marine Observation Squadron
Six in Vietnam.
Craig Runde (MLL ’79) of Saint Petersburg,
Fla., is the author of Developing Your Conflict
Competence (Jossey-Bass, 2010), the third
book in his series on leadership and conflict
management. Other titles in the series
include Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader
and Building Conflict Competent Teams.
Jack Weinberg (BSBA ’79) of Glencoe,
Ill., was honored in May for his support
Quotable
Lorie Bohm Klumb (MSW ’82) is manager
of volunteer services at Denver’s PSL/Rocky
Mountain Hospital for Children. Lorie
also serves on the planning committee for
Metropolitan State College of Denver’s new
MSW program, which is slated to begin in fall
notes
2011. Lorie served on DU’s Graduate School
of Social Work staff from 1997–2009, most Thank you to everyone who responded to the
recently as director of outreach. spring issue’s question of the hour: What was
your favorite on- or off-campus eatery and why?
1984 “There wasn’t much eating out going on
Nancy Sarchet (MSW ’84) of Platteville,
Colo., retired in May after 25 years working for me when I was at DU, but I have fond
in public education. A past president of her memories of a few meals at Canino’s and an
school board, she also served on the executive occasional swing by Rocky Built.”
committee of the Colorado Association of
Caroline MacLachlan Stutson (BA ’62)
School Boards.
Littleton, Colo.

Cinematographer Robert Smith

of the Loyola University Health System.
Jack received the President’s Medal for
Distinguished Service for his philanthropic
support, advocacy, community outreach
and volunteerism on behalf of the health
Today he’s a seven-time Emmy winner who’s well-known for his work on TV shows
system. Jack and his wife, Sheila, founded
and commercials, but Robert Smith (BA ’85) didn’t always want a career in show business.
Pro Consulting Associates Ltd., a business
He started at DU as a music major but changed his mind and decided to study film and consulting firm in Glencoe.
video instead. He graduated with a degree in mass communications and a minor in art.
As a child, Smith admired his father, a weekend nature photographer who built his
9-year-old son his own darkroom. Smith started a photography program at his middle
1981
David Black (MBA
school, then discovered his love for cinematography in high school. “I realized as I got ’81) of Spokane,
older that I didn’t care for the introverted process of still photography,” he says. Wash., is a real estate
While at DU, Smith produced a documentary about the University’s theater executive with Black
Realty Inc. He stays
department. He also wrote movie reviews for the Clarion. He met the Denver Broncos
busy raising two boys
photography staff and landed a filming job with the team, where he captured John Elway’s and participating
first year as a Bronco. in sports including
“These were pre-video days,” Smith explains. “Frame by frame, coaches would analyze skiing and
swimming.
plays until the film broke or melted.”
Courtesy of Robert Smith
1985
Rebecca Woulfe (BFA ’85) of Lakewood,
Colo., is the founder and CEO of Acadium
Inc., an educational technology company
that has found ways to harness the power of
the cell phone for use in education. Rebecca
and her team have designed a system that
uses the cell phone as an audience response
device so learners or seminar attendees can
actively participate in the class or seminar.
1986
Naomi Nakano-Matsumoto (MSW ’86) of
Sunnyvale, Calif., was selected as California’s
11th state senate district’s woman of the year
for 2009. A social services advocate for 27
years, Naomi has served since 2005 as execu-
tive director of West Valley Community Ser-
vices, a nonprofit that provides food, shelter
and emergency assistance to more than 4,000
“Chipotle was my favorite restaurant because
those big old burritos satisfied even the most
ravenous hunger! I’m so happy that Chipotle
has made its way to the East Coast. Every
Chipotle has a picture titled ‘Chipotle #1—
Evans Avenue’ hanging near the counter. I
smile every time I see it!”
Allison (Noblett) Coyne (BA ’98)
Alexandria, Va.
“Pete’s—great breakfast meetings with fellow
students.”
Suzanne Peters Payne (MSW ’94)
Lafayette, Colo.
“The original Chipotle. Back then the burritos

From there, Smith interned with a motion picture and television rental house. A Mark Ward (MBA ’81) of Newton, Iowa,
few years later he started his own business, Lightsmith Electrical and Grip Co. By the has been appointed vice president for
academic affairs and dean of the college at
1990s, Lightsmith had become Colorado’s second-largest lighting rental company, thanks
the University of Dubuque. Mark previously
to Smith’s advocacy for local film production. But Lightsmith doesn’t limit itself to local
was the associate provost of Trinity Christian
projects; the company supplies equipment to production companies all over the world. College.
Smith’s resumé is heavy on TV commercials—he has partnered with the Colorado Lottery, Denver Film Festival, cable channel Encore
and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, to name a few. He even filmed a series of commercials for John Hickenlooper’s first mayoral
campaign. Smith has seven Emmy Awards for his work on local and national television commercials. 1982
Diane Keller (MSW ’82) was promoted to
Despite his expertise with commercials, Smith still has the movie bug. He served as director of photography on the 2007 independent
feature Skills Like This, which was filmed in Denver and won the Audience Award at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. The
senior campaign manager of the Steier Group,
a national fundraising and development
movie follows a young man who decides to quit writing and start robbing banks. According to Smith, “It’s about a bunch of affable screwups.” firm based in Omaha, Neb., that specializes
Smith moved to Los Angeles with his family in January 2000. He has worked on TV shows for Comedy Central and Animal Planet, as in feasibility studies and capital campaigns.
Diane works out of the Steier Group’s
well as on commercials for American Crew hair products and K-Swiss shoes.
Denver office and has managed numerous
Although he spent years educating himself in video production, Smith sees his success as a result of his ambition. projects including church, high school and
“I learned early on that education is a very important part of one’s personal growth,” Smith says. “But it’s what you do with your community projects. Before joining the Steier
knowledge and talents that helps you succeed in life. I still enjoy what I do for a living after 30 years.” Group in 2005, Diane served as a medic in
—Elizabeth Fritzler the U.S. Army and spent 16 years working
in development with Catholic churches in
Denver.
local residents annually. Naomi also serves were muy grande!”
on the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits
leadership team, the Housing and Community Reid Husmer (BSBA ’96)
Development Advisory Commission of Santa Littleton, Colo.
Clara County and the United Way Silicon Val-
ley board of directors, and she is the director “Len and Bill’s, because beer and good
at Midori Kai, a professional organization for
company was always there.”
Japanese-American women.
Nancy (Cook) Spade (BA ’75, MA ’76)
Pacific Grove, Calif.
1987
Carol Harvey (MBA ’87) of Indian Rocks
Beach, Fla., is the executive secretary of the
Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs. She
acts as a liaison between native tribes and the
state of Colorado. Carol previously was an
energy attorney in Santa Fe, N.M.
Grayson Hoberg (MBA ’87) is the chief
executive officer of Dakota Prairie Organic
Flour Company in Harvey, N.D. His company
makes 70 flours from 40 different grains,

50 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Connections 51


specializing in organic and gluten-free flours.
The company has been operating since 2004
but expanded in 2009 with an $11 million
facility and equipment investment. Hoberg
runs Dakota Prairie with his brother, Eric.
Alan Willenbrock (MBA ’87) is vice
president and financial adviser for Morgan
Stanley Smith Barney in Tucson, Ariz. He
has more than 24 years of experience in the
financial services profession. Alan has been
a member of a number of professional and
civic organizations, including the Greater
Arizona Development Authority. He was
recognized in 2004 as a leader of the global
investment profession by the CFA Institute.
1988
Sandy Reay (MCIS
’88) and her fellow
songwriters of Colo-
rado Sandstorm Music
released I Wanted to
Fly, a collection of
songs with the theme
of space and time
travel. Sandy wrote or co-wrote all 14 songs
on the CD. She lives in Monument, Colo.
1989
Jingyi Song (MA ’89) is an associate
professor of history and philosophy at State
University of New York at Old Westbury.
Her book Shaping and Reshaping Chinese
American Identity: New York’s Chinese During
the Depression and World War II was published
in 2010 by Lexington Books.
Gary Turner (MA ’89) of Soldotna, Alaska,
has been confirmed by the Alaska state
legislature for a second three-year term
on the State of Alaska Select Committee
on Legislative Ethics. Gary also chairs the
senate ethics subcommittee. He is the
college director and CEO of Kenai Peninsula
College, a unit of the University of Alaska.
1990
Steve Allred (MSW ’90) has been serving
men, women and their families in the U.S.
Air Force since 1990. With Holly, his wife of
more than 25 years, and their four children,
he’s been stationed in Japan, Oklahoma,
Colorado, Washington, Guam and Texas.
Now based in the Colorado Springs, Colo.,
area, he’s a lieutenant colonel serving as
flight commander (director) of the Mental
Health Clinic at Peterson Air Force Base.
Previously, Steve served as program director
for domestic violence programs, director of
mental health clinics, director of drug and
alcohol abuse programs, deputy director of
a college counseling center at the Air Force
Academy, director of a family support center
and executive officer for a general officer.
But the biggest challenge of the past 19 years
was beating the odds of surviving two rounds
of surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2004
and then learning daily life over again.
1991
Sue Eilertsen (MSW ’91) received
an excellence in practice award at the
Colorado Summit for Children, Youth and
Families. She was honored for her service
and dedication to helping the children of
Colorado and for making the community a
better, safer place for families. Sue won the
award as a member of the family visitation
center unit, which she supervises at the El
Paso County Department of Human Services
in Colorado Springs, Colo.
?
Book bin
Harry MacLean (JD ’67) wrote The Past is Never Dead: The Which alum worked for the
Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption Denver Broncos?
(Basic Civitas Books, 2009) with history and the present day in mind.
Contemporary racial conflicts heavily influenced his nonfiction legal The answer can be found
drama, which carefully examines concepts of justice and humanity in
somewhere on pages 45–58 of
the Deep South.
this issue. Send your answer
The story is a detailed account of a long-overdue trial. Ku Klux
to du-magazine@du.edu or
Klansman James Ford Seale was arrested in 2007 for assisting in the
torture and drowning of two black youths. But he committed the University of Denver Magazine,
crime in 1964, more than 40 years before his arrest. That the case 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver,
took so long to come to trial—and the fact it came to trial at all—are
CO 80208-4816. Be sure to
evidence of the difference in racial attitudes between 1960s Mississippi and the state today, MacLean says.
“There could have been two defendants in this case: James Ford Seale and the state of Mississippi,” he
include your full name and
writes. “Seale for kidnapping and murder and Mississippi for complicity.”
mailing address. We’ll select a
winner from the correct entries;
The gap between the crime and conviction represents Mississippi’s painful struggle with racism. There
was no physical evidence during Seale’s trial—and hardly any witnesses testified—but the state still felt a duty the winning entry will win a prize
to prosecute. Despite this tug-of-war relationship between progress and tradition, MacLean still tries to courtesy of the DU Bookstore.
portray Seale as a human being influenced by the deep-seated racism of his Southern culture.
MacLean, a lawyer and best-selling author, lives in Denver. He graduated magna cum laude from DU Congratulations to Al Batten
and has written several true crime books, including the best-selling In Broad Daylight, which won an Edgar
(MS ’72) for winning the summer
Award and was made into a TV movie starring Brian Dennehy and Marcia Gay Harden. The Past is Never
issue’s pop quiz.
Dead has been nominated for Stanford University’s William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
—Elizabeth Fritzler

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Post your class note online at www.alumni.du.edu, e-mail du-magazine@du.edu or mail your note to: Class Notes,
University of Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO 80208-4816.

52 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 University of Denver Magazine Connections 53

 Pioneer pics Susan Nofziger (MSW ’91) has a private
counseling practice in Louisville and Boulder,
Colo., with a special interest in relationships Recycler Reid Husmer
Dan Shrader (BSBA ’63) is pictured in front of the and other adult issues.  
Mayan pyramid El Castillo (the Castle) at Chichen Itza on the

Wayne Armstrong
Erin (Wilde) Stang (MSW ’91) works
Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.
at the University of Colorado at Denver
“It is 79 feet high and was built around A.D. 800. It Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center in
served that community for about 500 years,” Shrader writes. Aurora, Colo.
“I am now retired and my wife and I visited El Castillo and
three other ancient sites in Mexico in February 2010.”
As you pioneer lands far and wide, be sure to pack your
1992
Tricia (Jones)
DU gear and strike a pose in front of a national monument, Bernhardt
the fourth wonder of the world or your hometown hot spot. (MEPM ’92) of
If we print your submission, you’ll receive some new DU Larkspur, Colo.,
is a project
paraphernalia courtesy of the DU Bookstore. manager for
Send your print or high-resolution digital image and Tetra Tech, an
a description of the location to: Pioneer Pics, University of environmental
Denver Magazine, 2199 S. University Blvd., Denver, CO consulting firm.
Tricia, who has
80208-4816, or e-mail du-magazine@du.edu. Be sure to
26 years of experience in environmental
include your full name, address, degree(s) and year(s) of permitting, is the project manager for the
graduation. Genesis Solar Energy Project in Southern
California. Tricia and her husband, Reve,
have four grown children and volunteer
regularly at the Casa Guatemala orphanage in
Guatemala.

Deaths
1930s
Georgia (Marrs) Gellert Penfield (BA ’37), Seattle, 1-5-10
Lois Roslund (BA ’37), Denver, 4-2-10
1940s
Alice McClain (BA ’40), Bozeman, Mont., 3-15-10
William Jolly Jr. (BA ’43), Richardson, Texas, 1-11-10
Barbara Ann (Bidwell) Winn (BA ’43), Lubbock, Texas, 10-8-08
Melvin Farver (BS ’45), Fort Collins, Colo., 12-31-09
Robert DeNier (BS ’47), Durango, Colo., 4-14-10
Jack Horan (attd. ’47–’53), Greenwood Village, Colo., 2-5-10
Shirley Suson (BA ’47, MA ’50), Denver, 2-26-10
Margaret (Anderson) McClary (BA ’48), Fort Morgan, Colo., 3-31-10
Warren Chandler (BA ’49), Westminster, Colo., 5-22-10
John Fertig (BS ’49), Rio Rancho, N.M., 9-24-09
1950s
Harold Lane (BS ’50), Centennial, Colo., 1-31-10
Richard Tosaw (JD ’50), Sherwood, Ore., 9-16-09
Frances (Hall) Goe (BA ’52), Denver, 12-18-09
Irian Bounds (BA ’53), Edmonds, Wash., 3-24-10
Margaret (Schurch) Klovdahl (BSBA ’54), Estes Park, Colo., 3-22-10
Norman Leake (BSBA ’54), La Conner, Wash., 4-9-10
Elaine (Petersen) Lorenz (BS ’57), Laguna Woods, Calif., 3-26-10
Michael Palij (MA ’57), Lawrence, Kan., 1-21-10
Duane Pearsall (BS ’57), Denver, 4-11-10
Vance Park (BSBA ’58), Schuylerville, N.Y., 2-8-10
54 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010
1960s
John Meier (MA ’60, PhD ’65), Redlands, Calif., 4-14-10
Martha Sue (Groening) Perry (BA ’66), Bisbee, Ariz., 3-7-10
Susan Frank (BA ’69), Chicago, 2-11-10
1970s
John Osborn (MBA ’73), Denver, 3-27-10
David Schump (MBA ’76), Windsor, Colo., 5-2-10
Dale Mitchell (MT ’79), Loveland, Colo., 3-31-10
1980s
Paul Braun (MBA ’82), Denver, 3-15-10
Scott Whitsett (BA ’82), San Francisco, 4-21-10
Jeannine Hiester (MA ’86), Denver, 1-21-09
Stephen McCeney (MA ’87, PhD ’94), Denver, 3-27-10
1990s
Virginia Newton (PsyD ’99), Boulder, Colo., 3-28-10
Faculty and Staff
Laurance Herold, geography professor emeritus, Denver, 3-30-10
Pamela Landon (MSW ’67, PhD ’75), professor of social work, Las
Cruces, N.M., 9-27-09
William McIntyre, assistant professor of art (1963–77), Broomfield,
Colo., 2-2-10
Terry Fowler (JD ’92) of Denver
co-authored the book Law and Mental
Health Professionals (American Psychological
Association, 2006), a thorough review of the
laws in the state of Colorado as they relate to
the mental health profession.
Mike King (JD ’92) of Parker, Colo., has
been named the executive director of the
Colorado Department of Natural Resources
(DNR). Mike previously was the deputy
director of the DNR. Prior to that he was
assistant attorney general in the natural
resources section of the Colorado Attorney
General’s Office.
1993
Stephen Shanor (JD ’93) of Roswell, N.M.,
has been elected president of the state bar
of New Mexico. Stephen is a partner in the
Roswell office of Hinkle Hensley Shanor
and Martin LLP, where he works primarily
in the areas of medical malpractice, general
liability, water law and real estate transactions.
Stephen and his wife, Heidi, have three
children, Katelyn, Andrew and Matthew.
1996
Rebecca (Watson) Hudson (JD ’96, LLM
’97), former assistant secretary for lands
and minerals management of the U.S.
Department of the Interior, has joined the
Reid Husmer (BA international business ’96) despises clutter. When he feels his
life is disorganized, he cleans. He boasts that his home has achieved a bare minimum
of efficiency—TV, couch, kitchen table, bed. His 7-year-old son’s room, though, is a
different story.
“I get to the point with my son where his room has too much stuff, because kids
like a toy for five minutes and then put it aside,” Husmer says. “Adults aren’t that
different; they love their toys, too. They’ll just pile them in the garage instead of their
bedroom.”
And when adults want to get rid of their toys, they can call Husmer’s company
Gone For Good, which he started from his home in 2008 and now runs from a
storefront in Littleton, Colo.
The premise is simple: Husmer and his employee, Jonathan Inaba, will come
to your house and, for a price, haul away a roomful of junk. The philosophy is more
involved: There is value in what others throw away, and there also is a responsibility to
the environment.
“We’re an eco-friendly hauling company,” Husmer says. “A lot of companies will
haul things from your house. We sort through it and try to resell it. If we can’t, we
donate it to charity. If we can’t do that, we break down the materials—wood, metal,
foam—and give it to our recycling partners, instead of it going into a landfill.”
For the business to thrive, Husmer has built fruitful relationships with professional
organizers, Realtors, recyclers and charities (the Epilepsy Foundation is a sizeable
beneficiary). Customers get 30 percent of resales after 30 days—a figure that has ranged
from $30 to $300—and Husmer says he’s been surprised by how many items he’s been
able to resell.
“You go on Craigslist or eBay, and it’s amazing what people will buy. What’s not
valuable to you is valuable to someone else,” he says. “Instead of just dumping it away,
we can give it a better home.”
>>www.goneforgoodstore.com
—Jeff Francis
University of Denver Magazine Connections 55
 law firm of Welborn, Sullivan Meck and
Tooley P.C. in Evergreen, Colo. Rebecca
has more than 30 years of legal and policy
experience in the fields of conventional and
renewable energy, natural resources and
federal environmental law. Prior to her job at
the Department of the Interior, she served as
the assistant general counsel for energy policy
at the U.S. Department of Energy in the
George H.W. Bush administration.
1997
Amelia Daniel Caudle (MSW ’97) of
Winston-Salem, N.C., is the mother of two
boys, Ellis, 7, and Bailey, 4. She is a PRN
therapist for behavioral health resources at
Forsyth Medical Center and works in the
outpatient substance abuse and mental health
treatment facility. She also is a contract social
worker for Carolina Adoption Services.
department of Jewish Family Service of
Colorado. She is a field instructor for social
work students at DU and Metropolitan
State College of Denver and serves on
advisory boards at DU, Metro and Denver’s
Senior Companion Program.
James Lough (PhD ’97) of Savannah, Ga., has
published his second book, Spheres of Aware-
ness: A Wilberian Integral Approach to Literature,
Philosophy, Psychology, and Art (University Press
of America, 2009). He is the chair of the writ-
ing department at Savannah College of Art and
Design.
William Zahler (BSBA ’97) of Baltimore
spent 20 years in the construction and
development business before forming his
own company, Zahler Construction and
Development LLC. William formerly worked
for Artery Homes, Struever-Rouse Homes
co-chair of the Maryland Residential Green
Building Council. William is joined in the
business by his wife, Gina, a certified interior
decorator. They have a 3-year-old son, Aaron.
1998
Allison (Noblett) Coyne (BA ’98) of
Alexandria, Va., and her husband, George,
welcomed their second son, Gavin Paul,
on Feb. 26, 2010. Gavin joins older brother
Jackson, 4. Allison teaches preschool education
for Arlington public schools.
Christopher McGee (JD ’98, MBA ’98) is
president of Prepaid Incentives, a provider of
prepaid debit cards branded with corporate
logos for use as sales incentives and employee
rewards. Chris lives in Draper, Utah, with his
wife and three children.
income school-aged children with a week’s Michele McCandless (MSW ’05) of Beth Wilson Llovet (MSW ’07) is a clinician
worth of free clothes to encourage school Englewood, Colo., has been promoted on an adult unit at the Colorado Mental
attendance and self-esteem. It has served more to director of the University of Denver Health Institute at Fort Logan, a Denver
than 2,000 Denver children since opening in Disability Services Program, where she has psychiatric hospital. 
September 2008. worked for more than nine years. She has two
grandsons, Connor, 5, and Foster, 2. Aaron Shipman (MSW ’07) is a training
specialist at the Denver STD/HIV Prevention
1999 Wes Riesmeyer (MA Training Center. Aaron also co-authored
Christopher Johnson ’05) and his wife, a new course, “Using Focus Groups for
(MRECM ’99) of Jennifer, welcomed Adapting Effective Behavioral Interventions,”
Chicago joined their first child, Hadley for the Centers for Disease Control and
Capgemini Consulting Katherine, on Jan. 21, Prevention for use by the National Network
as a lead consultant in 2010. The family resides of STD/HIV Prevention Training Centers.
the business process in Arlington, Va.
outsourcing group. Athena Terry (MSW ’07) is a clinical social
Christopher previously worker in the emergency department at
was managing director of facilities planning and 2006 Denver Health Medical Center. She lives in
strategic sourcing for United Airlines. Breanne Berch (BSBA ’06) of Santa Monica, Denver with her partner and their 1½-year-
Calif., married Robert Blesse on Dec. 12, old daughter.
Leila Johnson (BS ’99) of Rio Rancho, N.M., 2009, at a private residence in Aspen, Colo.
is the founder of the Spirit Driving Institute,

Jennie Winters Creasey (MSW ’97) of

Englewood, Colo., has worked for 10 years
at the senior solutions/care connection
and U.S. Home in Denver. He is on the
boards of the Home Builders Association of
Maryland and the Certified Master Builders
and Remodelers Council and was the founding
Mary Overington (MSW ’98) of Lakewood,
Colo., is one of the founding members of the
nonprofit Clothes to Kids of Denver Inc. The
organization’s mission is to provide low-
which teaches entrepreneurs and professionals Jamie Grim (BA ’06) 2008
how to take a spiritual approach to their was selected as one Chris Ferguson (MSW ’08) of Avondale,
professional lives. Her self-published book of the “Outstanding Pa., successfully defended his dissertation
Driving to Success: Let Your Spirit Take the Wheel Women in Fort Collins” at the University of Pennsylvania in March
is available as an e-book. A published version is by the Mildred Arnold 2010. He received his doctorate of education
slated for release in October. Foundation at Colorado in higher education management on May
State University. Jamie, 15. His dissertation was about colleges
who has a master’s that use social networking sites to recruit

Designer Traci Tisserat 2003 degree from Northwestern University in undergraduate students. Chris is director

Wayne Armstrong
Sarah Moore Curry (MSW ’03) and Patrick Illinois, serves as a district representative of admissions and an assistant professor at
Curry welcomed daughter Amelia Ann on for Congresswoman Betsy Markey in Wilmington University in Delaware.
It started with a name, but it’s become a business. March 7, 2009. Sarah works part time as Colorado’s 4th Congressional District.
a social worker at a life-care community Sara (Becker) Forist (MSW ’08) is a victim
In 2008, University of Denver alumna Traci Tisserat (BA
center in Fayetteville, Ark., and Patrick is an Jessica Ham (MSW ’06) of Parker, Colo., advocate for the Children’s Advocacy Center
’05) and friend and roommate Shawna Sambrano came up with accounting controller at the WACO Title Co. has been an elementary school social worker in Holland, Mich.
the idea to start a business and call it “TraSh Bagz.” for Douglas County, Colo., since 2006. Her
That was the easy part. The hard part was coming up with a triplet girls—Nora Cate, Adelyn Sophia and Elizabeth Rouillier
business to match. 2004 Emma Grace—were born May 13, 2009. (MA ’08) married Scott
Being artistic helped. So did being socially conscious and Amy Bishop (MSW ’04) of Denver is the Stiegman on July 16,
active. The germ of an idea grew into a business. The two take SB94 education advocate for Colorado’s 17th Hillary Jonas (MSW ’06) of Yelm, Wash., is a 2010. She works for
Judicial District. medical social worker at a home health agency, St. Stephen Catholic
old, discarded handbags and use a variety of techniques and
assisting people with new and chronic illnesses. School in New Orleans
media to turn them into works of art. It’s haute couture with a Azusa Kijima (MSW ’04) lives in Toronto She also addresses end-of-life issues, providing as a middle school math
green twist: trash to treasures, handbags to handiwork. and works at a children’s aid society in grief counseling and crisis intervention. She and science teacher, eighth-grade coordinator,
The creations are Cinderella stories in themselves—bags Ontario. She’s worked in children’s services and her husband are enjoying life with their graduation coordinator and coordinator of
collected from vintage clothing shops and closets across the since graduation. son, Cody, who was born in 2008. religious education.
region turned into glamorous pieces decked out in sparkles and feathers and hot pinks and zebra stripes.
Amanda Wagner (MSW ’06) works as a
“All of them are one of a kind,” says Tisserat, displaying a host of bags piled up in the swank Chrysalis Boutique in Centennial, Colo., south
of Denver. “You’re never going to see someone with the same bag. You get one of our bags, you know it’s something special, and you’ve done
2005 mental health professional at Saint Joseph’s 2009
Laura Folkwein (MSW ’05) is program Mercy Care Services in Atlanta, providing Amy Salins (MSW ’09) works as a youth
something good for the environment by recycling a bag.” director at Growing Home, a small nonprofit psychiatric care to the city’s chronically home- advocate and case manager for New Horizons
Tisserat, 26, and Sambrano, 32, toil as much as 20 hours a week, sometimes more, on the complexities of designing, creating and marketing in Westminster, Colo., that houses the less and mentally ill. Amanda and her husband Ministries in Seattle. She calls her work with
their creations, which sell for about $40 to $200 each in boutiques, mobile “trunk shows,” private “purse parties” and online. The pair partners homeless, feeds families and cares for have a 2-year-old daughter, Alexandra. the organization, helping homeless and street-
with area charities, donating 10 percent of their profits back into the community. children. In spring 2010, Folkwein planned involved young people get off the streets, “a
to fulfill her requirements for ordination as true blessing.”
The two hope to make the company their full-time vocation soon. Deals are in the works to get TraSh Bagz in more stores in Denver, with an
eye toward cities across the country. They’ve already seen orders come in from as far away as Hawaii. a pastor in the United Church of Christ, a 2007
progressive Protestant denomination.  Meg (Spohn) Bertoni (PhD ’07) married
But it all goes back to that one night when two friends dreamed of starting a business. As the labels on the bags note, “TraSh Bagz is a unique
handbag company established over a cheap bottle of wine by an artist and designer who have an extreme passion for fashion and individuality.”
Seth Iniguez at the Bindery Space in Denver 2010
Eva Klemens (MSW ’05) is a mental health on July 17, 2010. The couple resides in Idaho Kyle Reppert (BS ’10, MS ’10) married
>>www.trashbagz.com therapist with Imagine Behavioral Health Springs, Colo. Ashton Luhrs on Dec. 12, 2009, in Denver.
—Chase Squires Services in Lafayette, Colo. Kyle works for the KPMG accounting firm in
Denver.

56 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010

Post your class note online at www.alumni.du.edu, e-mail du-magazine@du.edu or mail in the form on page 53.

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and Southern California. To find out how you can get involved, call
the Office of Alumni Relations at 800-871-3822 or visit Lifelong Learning
http://alumni.du.edu/chapters. OLLI DU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is a membership
program designed for men and women age 55 and “better”
Women’s Library Association A group of DU alumni and who wish to pursue lifelong learning in the company of like-
friends regularly come together to raise funds for Penrose Library minded peers. Members select the topics to be explored and
and participate in continuing education initiatives. Regular programs share their expertise and interests while serving as facilitators
include lectures, teas, special events and book sales.  and learners.
>>http://library.du.edu/site/about/wla/wla.php >>http://universitycollege.du.edu/olli
Ammi Hyde Interviews DU’s admission department is Enrichment Program Noncredit short courses, lec-
looking for alumni volunteers to conduct interviews of prospective tures, seminars and weekend intensives explore a wide
students in major cities throughout the country in mid-November range of subjects without exams, grades or admission
and late January. Registration will open in September. Contact requirements.
Ammi Hyde Interview Coordinator Andy Losier at 303-871-7651 >>http://universitycollege.du.edu/learning/ep
or alosier@du.edu with questions. Exclusive DU Alumni Offers Family Pass Buddy Pass Savings
>>www.du.edu/apply/admission/ammihyde/index.html Salon Series DU’s Humanities Institute offers an (4 Tickets) (2 Tickets)
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Mark Your Calendar vate home with a faculty member from the Division Nov. 26 Denver Cup Classic Day 1 $50 $30 up to $22
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Pioneers, watch the parade, enjoy great food and live music, tour exchange ideas.
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Alumni Symposium Take part in a weekend learning experience DU on the Road Find out what your alma Dec. 5 DU Women vs Vanderbilt $16 $12 up to $16
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58 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010 F11.Fall_full page.p1.indd 1
59
6/28/2010 1:59:03 PM
University of Denver Magazine Connections
 Miscellanea
Ancient footsteps

This sandal woven from yucca fibers more

than 5,000 years ago is among the artifacts
discovered by DU archaeologists at the
Franktown Cave in southeast Colorado.
The University of Denver Museum of
Anthropology received a $6,000 grant
from the National Endowment for the
Humanities in January to organize some
of its collections from the Franktown
Cave and the Kenton Caves in northwest
Oklahoma, which DU archaeologists
have been studying for decades. The DU
Museum of Anthropology houses more
than 6,000 objects from both sites.
Wayne Armstrong

60 University of Denver Magazine Fall 2010