Rachel Sauer

Scientist lives by the Serengeti Rules

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 02:17:06 +0000

Scientist lives by the Serengeti Rules Rachel Sauer Mon, 03/16/2026 - 20:17

Rachel Sauer

Author, filmmaker and scholar Sean B. Carroll, formerly a CU ��ý�� postdoctoral researcher, will deliver the Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture in Science April 7

When Sean B. Carroll came to the ��ý�� in 1983, right out of graduate school and newly hired as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of molecular, cellular and developmental biologist Matt Scott, he was somewhat indifferent to Drosophila melanogaster, better known as the fruit fly and Scott’s research focus.

“I was coming from an immunology background, working with furry animals, and my attitude was that studying fruit flies wouldn’t teach us anything general,” Carroll recalls. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with humans or important things, or so I thought. But that was a really narrow view, because it turns out that all these genes that build fruit fly parts are in us—they build parts in us—so fruit flies became a passport to the whole animal kingdom.”

Scientist, author and filmmaker Sean B. Carroll, a former CU ��ý�� postdoctoral researcher, will deliver the Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture in Science April 7.

And with that passport, Carroll has roamed the planet as an evolutionary developmental biologist and award-winning author and filmmaker, observing life from individual cells to continent-spanning populations. Through his observations and experiences emerged what he came to call “The Serengeti Rules,” based on the idea that everything in the living world is regulated.

He will discuss the discovery of The Serengeti Rules, on which he elaborates in his book of the same name, during the Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture from 4-5 p.m. April 7 in the CASE Chancellor’s Hall Auditorium.

The Serengeti Rules, as he describes them, are ecological rules that regulate the numbers and kinds of animals and plants in any given place, and how they are being applied to restore some of the greatest wildernesses on the planet.

“Every cell contains a society of molecules, every organ a society of cells, every body a society of organs, every habitat a society of organisms,” he writes in The Serengeti Rules. “Understanding the interactions within each of those societies are the primary aims of molecular biology, physiology and ecology.”

Diversity in the animal kingdom

Before he had roamed the globe as a scientist and filmmaker, however, Carroll was the kid growing up in Toledo, Ohio, flipping over rocks to see what was under them. “I have a love for the entire animal kingdom,” he explains, which guided him to a bachelor’s degree in biology from Washington University and a PhD in immunology from Tufts University.

During his graduate studies, he became very interested in the question of how animal bodies evolve—in understanding how all the diversity in the animal kingdom came about. So, he hatched a plan to solve the mysteries of development.

“Changes in development are what lead to changes in form,” Carroll says. “The whole diversity of the animal kingdom is rooted in development, so we had to crack the black-box mystery of development to get any traction in understanding how the physical diversity of the animal kingdom evolved.”

Thus, the fruit flies. He wagered that studying them could be a key to unlocking the diversity of the animal kingdom—and the genes that govern development—and came to CU ��ý�� determined to pick the lock on that black box.

If you go

What: 2026 Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture in Science—The Serengeti Rules: The Regulation and Restoration of Biodiversity

Who: Sean B. Carroll

When: 4–5 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, with reception to follow

Where: Chancellor’s Hall Auditorium, Center for Academic Success & Engagement (CASE)

Learn more

“During this time, 1983, oh my god—how an egg turns into a complex creature was a mystery,” he says. “It was a spectacular pageant we could watch from the outside, but we didn’t know what was going on inside. We needed to identify the genes that are necessary for that process, figure out what the genes did.

“It’s hard to overstate both how deep the mystery was but how thrilling these clues were as they started to unfold. Those days were incredibly exhilarating and intense, the lab was a beehive, people worked all days and nights and weekends because, first of all, we were fascinated. Also, we felt we had a shot at some really fundamental discoveries. Looking back, these times don’t happen very often in science where you really have a black-box mystery, and it breaks open—and it broke open partly because of what we did in Matt’s lab and partly because of what our peers around the world did.”

One eureka moment from Carroll’s time in ��ý�� came about 18 months into his research. He had taken on the task of seeing genes in action inside developing fruit fly embryos, working every day in the lab, trying this technique and that technique until his bag of tricks was almost empty; he was no closer to understanding which genes caused wings to grow, for example, or determined their shape.

He remembers a particular time when he took his samples down to a borrowed microscope, flipping on an ultraviolet light because he was looking at fluorescence, “and the best thing I can say is that it was a ‘holy sh^t!’ moment. I remember looking down, and I saw these embryos that had these beautiful green rings circling them, which is the mark of a gene that turns on every other segment.

“That’s the day when the dam broke, the door blew open, the clouds parted. It’s almost overwhelming because now so many things are possible. I went from having nothing to show anybody to essentially having the tools that would allow me to really untangle this puzzle.”

During his April 7 lecture, Sean B. Carroll will discuss the Serengeti Rules, the ecological rules that regulate the numbers and kinds of animals and plants in any given place, and how they are being applied to restore some of the greatest wildernesses on the planet.

A discovery of wings

After completing his CU ��ý�� postdoc, Carroll joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where he continued studying the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. There he “saw something in the microscope that nobody had ever seen before,” he remembers.

He and the other researchers in his lab isolated the handful of genes that are activated in caterpillars to become butterfly wings. This discovery, published in the journal Science, garnered a feature in The New York Times, an interview on PBS News Hour and an invitation to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

From there, Carroll built a career that marries both research and discovery with science communication—as an investigator and vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and head of the HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, where he executive produced or was executive in charge of more than 30 documentary films, including the Oscar-nominated and Peabody-winning All That Breathes. He has won three Emmys and been nominated for an additional five.

During that time, “I decided, ‘I’m telling the same story again and again, so I probably should write this down,’” he says. “So, I wrote a book, then I wrote another book.” He has written six books, including Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for nonfiction, and The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters, which will be the foundation for his CU ��ý�� lecture.

Carroll, who is a distinguished university professor and the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland, credits the depth and success of his career in large part to the collaborations of which he’s been a part. “I like to think my toolkit has grown over the years, but it doesn’t happen all at once and it doesn’t happen alone. I didn’t write a full-length book until I was 45 and truly an expert in my field.

“I think people might look at my portfolio and say the science portfolio is pretty good, the external indicators are good; the writing career, there’s been a fair amount of output; the film career has been good. But in no way could I have done it alone. Science is a hugely collaborative thing; filmmaking’s even more collaborative. An individual like me gets a lot of credit for a body of work owned by an enormous community.”

Through it all—from his extensive travels through the Serengeti to the red carpet at the Academy Awards to the quiet moments in the lab—the joy of discovery and mystery-solving has never ebbed, he says. “I love science because I love nature and I love trying to figure out how nature works. I love the privilege and thrill of peeking into that box and going, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s how it is.’”

About the Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture in Science

The Litman Lecture celebrates the legacy of an exceptional scientist and educator with a lifelong passion for research and a firm commitment to keeping rigorous inquiry at the heart of university life.

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Author, filmmaker and scholar Sean B. Carroll, formerly a CU ��ý�� postdoctoral researcher, will deliver the Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture in Science April 7.

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Don’t just explain the science, dance it

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:14:04 +0000

Don’t just explain the science, dance it Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/12/2026 - 10:14

Rachel Sauer

Asia Kaiser, a bee researcher and ecology and evolutionary biology PhD candidate, is named social sciences category winner in the international Dance Your PhD contest sponsored by the journal Science

There’s a lot going on with bees right now. Because it was an unseasonably warm winter, queens may be emerging from hibernation and beginning to lay the eggs of their first broods. And since queens can choose the sex of their offspring, they are now or soon will be producing daughters.

It’s fascinating information about one of the planet’s most complex and charismatic insects, but how to convey it in dance?

PhD candidate Asia Kaiser (in a scene from her Dance Your PhD entry), studies how human land use affects different insect groups and, consequently, the ecosystem services they provide in coupled human-natural systems.

Start with a shimmy—reminiscent, perhaps, of the movement of bees’ wings or the vibration of their flight muscles. Then weave undulating patterns with fellow dancers, gliding and twirling in a choreography of bees in motion. And bring it home with a question about what happens when we remove native flowers from urban environments or destroy bee habitat to build roads or houses (answer: nothing good).

In short, dance your PhD. So, that’s what Asia Kaiser did.

Kaiser, a PhD candidate in the ��ý�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EBIO) and researcher in the Resasco Lab, this week was announced the social sciences category winner in the international Dance Your PhD contest sponsored by the journal Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Now in its 18th year, Dance Your PhD seeks, through a spirit of fun and of marrying art and science, to address a scenario that scientists commonly experience: “The party is just getting started when the dreaded question comes: ‘So, what’s your PhD research about?’ You launch into the explanation, trying to judge the level of interest as you go deeper. It takes about a minute before someone changes the subject,” contest organizers explain.

“At times like this, don’t you wish you lived in a world where you could just ask people to pull out their phones to watch an online video explaining your PhD research through interpretive dance?”

“I was a dancer all through college, so I have a background in belly dance and Latin dance,” Kaiser explains. “And I like to make music, so I thought this could be a really fun way to explain my research.”

Learning to dance

And what is that research? Bees. Specifically, how human land use affects different insect groups and, consequently, the ecosystem services they provide in coupled human-natural systems. Her research aims to improve the resilience of urban agroecosystems, increase equitable access to fresh produce and promote environmental justice in cities.

As for the dancing, Kaiser had wanted to take dance lessons while growing up in Philadelphia, but there wasn’t room in the budget for them. So, after graduating high school she took a gap year in Brazil to do service work and finally began learning dance. She started with belly dance, then branched into samba and other Latin styles.

When she began her ecology and evolutionary biology undergraduate studies at Princeton University, “I thought, ‘I’m going to invest in my secondary dream,’” Kaiser recalls, which meant stepping away from the books sometimes to immerse herself in the vibrant dance scene in Princeton and the broader New York City and Philadelphia area.

She also is a cellist, so when she came to CU ��ý�� to pursue her PhD she began making music with other people in her department.

When she heard about Dance Your PhD, it dovetailed with so many of the things she loves: dance and music and science. However, the deadline to submit entry videos was Feb. 20, and she decided to enter the contest a mere two weeks before then.

She started with the music, composing a piece to score the story in her mind: “I wanted to tell a story of bees emerging in early spring in your backyard and what they’re up to. People know a lot about honeybees, but not other bee species, so I wanted to highlight how important they are to urban ecosystems.”

Kaiser put out a call for dancers and fortunately, the response from her fellow PhD students and candidates was abundant and eager. Then she and Ella Henry, a violinist and EBIO PhD student, recorded the music.

Science as art

Because of the quick turnaround, the troupe had time for just two rehearsals before their afternoon of filming in front of the EBIO greenhouses on 30th Street in ��ý��. It was an EBIO community collaboration. PhD students Manuela Mejía, Lincoln Taylor, Gladiana Spitz, Kaylee Rosenberger and Ella Henry danced Kaiser’s choreography alongside her. PhD student Luis de Pablo helped with sound engineering and Scott Taylor, EBIO associate professor and director of the Mountain Research Station, was cinematographer. Kaiser’s husband, John Russell, provided voiceover narration for the final video.

And despite the extremely short timeframe, it all came together, Kaiser says. For example, she happened to have a pair of gold Isis wings, a traditional belly dance prop, that Lincoln Taylor wore “to depict the fact that male bees spend their lives flying around,” she says.

The dance, music and costumes united in a science-as-art visualization of her PhD, which she uploaded to YouTube and clicked submit on her Dance Your PhD entry. She was up against scientists from around the world, so learning that she won her category was especially significant.

“Obviously, I love bees,” she says, “and I love to dance and make music, so it was a really cool experience to create this piece with my friends and find a different way to talk about my research.”

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Asia Kaiser, a bee researcher and ecology and evolutionary biology PhD candidate, is named social sciences category winner in the international Dance Your PhD contest sponsored by the journal Science.

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Film builds science into beaver tales

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:46:49 +0000

Film builds science into beaver tales Rachel Sauer Mon, 03/09/2026 - 10:46

Rachel Sauer

CU ��ý�� alumna Emily Fairfax shared her scientific expertise as the beaver consultant on the new Pixar film Hoppers

Emily Fairfax came home one evening from her job as a weapons engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory feeling a bit sad. Yes, she was using her degrees in chemistry and physics, but the work just wasn’t a good fit for her.

She sat on the couch and turned on the TV, happening across an episode of Nature on PBS called “Leave it to Beavers.”

“I was so hooked,” recalls Fairfax (PhDGeol’19). “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. There were all these aerial images of beaver wetlands in places like the Nevada desert, which was amazing and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So, I thought, ‘I’ve got to go to grad school and study beavers.’”

CU ��ý�� alumnus Emily Fairfax (PhDGeol’19) was the scientific beaver consultant for the new Pixar film Hoppers. (Photo: Emily Fairfax)

Fast forward to the evening of Feb. 23 on the red carpet outside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California. There, wearing a beautiful teal and black dress with a lace and sequin overlay—and having received glam tips from her grad students—Fairfax posed for photographers in front of a yellow screen bearing the images of animated beavers she’d helped bring to life.

Fairfax, whose “a-ha beavers!” moment led her to the ��ý�� Department of Geological Sciences, was the scientific beaver consultant for the acclaimed new Pixar film Hoppers, which opened nationwide Friday.

The story of an animal-loving college student whose mind is transferred into a robotic beaver so she can help save a pristine glade from being paved for a freeway, Hoppers highlights a keystone species in a scientifically accurate way that is, frankly, adorable.

“People need to know that they’re a keystone species,” says Fairfax, who signed on to the film project with the assurance that this point would be emphasized. “When you lose the beaver, you lose the ecosystem, and I think (Pixar filmmakers) made that crystal clear.

“The other point that I really wanted to be in the film is that beavers are not just off in national parks. You can have beavers living in cities, living adjacent to cities, and we can coexist with them to our benefit, not just the benefit of the beaver. I wanted to highlight the idea that protecting beavers and habitats isn’t just about protecting nature out of the goodness of our hearts; we benefit greatly.”

The force of a glacier

Long before her pivot from Los Alamos to CU ��ý��, Fairfax, who now is an assistant professor of geography, environment and society at the University of Minnesota, was a Girl Scout in a troop that took its role as stewards of the natural world very seriously.

“We learned the basic principles of ‘Leave No Trace’ very early on, but then our troop leaders took it a step further,” she wrote on her personal website. “They urged us to put in that little bit of extra effort and leave things better than we found them. When we went camping this usually panned out as picking up trash off of trails, but the sentiment stuck with me. If everyone strives to leave things better than they started—even if only by a little bit—then the overall state of things will consistently improve.”

It’s a sentiment that dovetailed neatly with her graduate work at CU ��ý��, where she studied beavers through the lens of ecohydrology, combining remote sensing, modeling and field work to understand how beaver damming changes the landscape and the timescales on which that change happens.

“I’m at heart a water scientist—how fast it’s moving, if it’s being slowed or stored or just blasting downstream superfast,” Fairfax says. “I care about the shape of rivers as a geomorphologist, and I’m very hyper-focused on how one specific animal controls water or the shape of water.”

Her first Colorado field site was in Lefthand Canyon west of ��ý��—where, if you drive slowly and look closely, it’s possible to see an 11-foot-tall beaver dam from the road—and her dissertation research was inspired by “Leave It to Beavers”: “In the documentary, they were interviewing hydrologists and geomorphologists, who kept bringing up how beaver wetlands in these areas are the only things staying green during droughts.

Emily Fairfax takes measurements of a beaver dam in Lefthand Canyon west of ��ý��. (Photo: Emily Fairfax)

“I get that beavers can seem really chaotic—they don’t draw any blueprints, they don’t pull permits, they don’t let anybody know what they’re going to do before they do it. But beavers are second only to us, humans, in terms of animals that can change the physical earth. They’ve been damming for at least 7.5 million years, maybe as long as 25 million years, so thinking about beavers as this geological force is really intellectually exciting—this rodent in my yard carries the force of a glacier.”

Inquiry from Pixar

Two years after earning her PhD and joining the California State University Channel Islands faculty, where she worked before joining the University of Minnesota faculty in 2023, Fairfax presented a Zoom webinar about beavers and drought in California that several Pixar employees attended. “I thought, ‘OK, cool, they have a right to be interested in what’s going on in their state,’” she remembers. Several months later, she received an email with the subject line “Inquiry from Pixar” and thought it was a prank.

Nope: It was legitimate.

Pixar filmmakers wanted her to give a presentation to studio staff about beavers, which she did. It turns out that Pixar was making a film about them, and after signing reams of non-disclosure agreements and securing a promise that the filmmakers wouldn’t even think about having the beaver characters eat fish—because beavers do not eat fish—Fairfax was officially the Hoppers beaver consultant.

At first, Fairfax answered a lot of basic questions about beaver behaviors, ecology, what they can and can’t do, how long they live, their family units, their size and why their teeth are orange. Then the questions started getting more specific: What other animals would you see in a beaver wetland? How do beavers get along with humans? If someone tried to build a road by a beaver wetland, how would beavers react? She brought a group of Pixar filmmakers to Lefthand Canyon for a week of beaver observation, which yielded even more questions.

“At every step along the way, they were turning seemingly disconnected beaver facts into scenes,” Fairfax says. For example, as with humans, beavers’ tailbones tuck under, allowing them to sit on their tails like little chairs. So, the scene in Hoppers in which the real beaver George sits on his tail is accurate, and the fact that the character Mabel sits with her tail outstretched is a clue that she’s not a real beaver.

The dam-building sequence in Hoppers is also scientifically accurate: “A lot of people don’t know how beavers build dams,” Fairfax explains. "It can be very sudden, and they will often use relatively large cobbles and stones to start, which they put along the base of their dams. Then they’ll put on some sticks and then pack it with mud. Everyone thinks they pat the mud on with their tails, but they actually use their paws. So, the sequence in the film where you see these super buff beavers lifting up stones and rolling them down, then you see other beavers waddling in carrying mud and patting it down, that actually shows the real sequence of dam building.”

Among the questions that Pixar filmmakers asked scientist Emily Fairfax was how beavers relate to and get along with other animals in the areas where they live. (Photo: Disney/Pixar)

Throughout the filmmaking process, Fairfax received scenes to review, so the accurately rotund beavers in the film are her doing. “The very first time I saw one of the (film) beavers, I told them it was too skinny. Beavers are shaped like a bowling ball, so when I saw it again it was a little fatter, and then I saw it again and it was a little fatter. Finally, people with Pixar were like, ‘If it’s sitting on its tail, it needs more rolls’ and ‘It should be jiggling more when it’s running.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is adorable.’ They’re like big, fuzzy bowling balls, and I’m collecting all the little plushies.”

Science and storytelling

Through the process, Fairfax says, the filmmakers balanced storytelling and science. There were times when total accuracy had to concede a little to the story, “but they always asked me, ‘Is this realistic enough? Is it going to hurt beavers, is it going to hurt climate change work if we do it this way?’ They were always really good about asking me how much certain things mattered, because they are people trying to create a compelling narrative, but they also wanted to respect the science.”

(And speaking of respecting the science—and scientist—the full name of the film character Dr. Sam is Dr. Samatha Emily Fairfax.)

Fairfax’s work on the film was also a matter of balancing the often solitary, generally unglamorous work of science with the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood. She jokes that she considered wearing her waders to the Hollywood premiere, but her grad students stepped in with hair and makeup tips. And then she was on the red carpet with A-list stars like Jon Hamm, then inside the ornate theater watching the velvet curtain rise on her research via Hollywood movie magic.

“It was just so surreal,” she says. “I’d seen the movie many times before that, but it was so real in that moment, packed into this theater, all the voice actors there, and immediately I’m crying. In many ways, it felt like there was a lot of myself on that screen, and seeing people’s reactions to it felt like seeing reactions to my research.

“Trying to translate what I know in a way that’s relevant to artists was not a normal part of my job, and it felt very high risk at first because what if people don’t like the movie and it sets beavers back? Beavers are still coming back from the fur trade, plus we have the rising challenge of climate change, so it felt risky. But it’s a beautiful movie and people seem to love it, so that makes me feel very hopeful about how science and storytelling can benefit all species.”

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CU ��ý�� alumna Emily Fairfax shared her scientific expertise as the beaver consultant on the new Pixar film Hoppers.

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Top image: Disney/Pixar

Students blend suds and science at Earth on Tap

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:17:41 +0000

Students blend suds and science at Earth on Tap Rachel Sauer Tue, 03/03/2026 - 16:17

Rachel Sauer

The March 9 event at Rayback Collective in ��ý��, open to all, invites scientists and non-scientists to gather for discussions of climate research

It started, as good things often do, with CAKE. In this case, that’s the Climate Action Knowledge Exchange, a group formed by ��ý�� atmospheric and oceanic sciences (ATOC) graduate students Max Elling, Dora Shlosberg and Josh Gooch. They noticed, the further they progressed in their studies, that there are “a lot of different people working in climate, but not necessarily working together,” explains Shlosberg, a PhD student.

If you go

What: Earth on Tap

When: 5:45-7:30 p.m. Monday, March 9

Where: Rayback Collective, 2775 Valmont Road in ��ý��

Who: All are invited

Learn more

So, they formed an interdisciplinary outreach group, CAKE, to break down silos and build partnerships between scholars, industry professionals and community members. From there, CAKE began collaborating with ATOC’s existing Outreach Committee, a group dedicated to educating the public on Earth science through engaging and interactive learning. Outreach teaches children through their SEEDS program, bringing live demonstrations on Earth-system science to local elementary schools.

Then, last semester, they began discussing what more they could be doing to involve adults in science, particularly those who aren’t professional scientists but are science curious.

Earth on Tap organizers express that there has been a lot of misinformation spread about science, and there is sometimes an element of mystery among the public as to what it is local scientists do. Earth on Tap aims to break down these barriers and connect people of all backgrounds to the science being done in their own backyard.

The key is to make it fun, says ATOC PhD student Maggie Scholer. But how?

The answer: Beer.

Not to make the science go down easier, but as a tool to bring science out of the lab and field research sites and into spaces where all are welcome, where community grows, where learning can happen with a chocolate stout and a shared plate of sliders. So, that’s how Earth on Tap came to be.

An event at which all ages are welcome—though you’ll have to show ID if you want that beer—Earth on Tap features climate scientists discussing their research with a focus on how it applies to and affects the broader community.

The second Earth on Tap will be from 5:45-7:30 p.m. Monday, March 9, at the Rayback Collective in ��ý��. Nels Bjarke, a hydrologist with Western Water Assessment and CU ��ý�� PhD alumnus, and McKenzie Larson, an ATOC PhD student and researcher in the Synoptic Meteorology Research Group, will discuss the impacts of low seasonal snowfall and the development of downslope windstorms.

Telling science stories

Monday’s Earth on Tap topic is especially timely, Josh Gooch says, because he and his ATOC colleagues frequently discuss how “to communicate how abnormal this winter has been and contextualize it to the future. Each week we have a weather discussion that one of our professors leads, and we get these branching discussions of, ‘If we make up the precipitation deficit in the future, what does that mean in terms of more fuel for wildfires?’ So, one of our goals (with Earth on Tap) is to set the context of what current weather events that are occurring on the Front Range may lead to in future seasons. That’s a concern that a lot of people share.”

Max Elling, an ATOC PhD student and researcher in the Oceans and Climate Lab, notes that the ��ý�� area is interesting because of its large population of scientists as well as its population of non-scientists, who are nevertheless involved in Earth science, yet there still can be a disconnect between the research that’s happening in this area and what community members know about it.

“With Earth on Tap, we’re learning more about what people are curious about,” Elling says, adding that he and his colleagues are learning to better understand their audiences and tailor their outreach style accordingly.

“We have an inherent language that we use as scientists, certain acronyms, and we’re taught to present at conferences where everyone is aware of this language,” Gooch says. “We need to be more aware of situations where an audience member might not be as familiar because they don’t interface with these things every day.”

Jonah Shaw, a post-doctoral associate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) who spoke at the inaugural Earth on Tap in January, adds that all of his communication training in graduate school was in a conference environment, which doesn’t necessarily translate to climate discussions over beers at the Rayback.

“Something that I think is really important when you’re communicating within a scientific field is a story, but it becomes even more important when you’re communicating with the general public,” Shaw says. “It’s meeting people where they are, so for me, instead of talking about what I do on a day-to-day basis, I talked about a satellite mission I worked on, the story of that mission. I was talking about the narrative aspects and connecting with people’s experiences, and I was incredibly excited to see how well attended it was by non-scientists. Everyone is in their own realm and able to connect (with the science) in their own way.”

Scholer says that Earth on Tap organizers learn from event to event how to better involve audience members in the presentation, including trivia questions with prizes and QR codes that people can scan to submit questions if they’re not inclined to raise their hand. Ideally, she adds, people will come to Earth on Tap and have a great time and be more inclined to take climate action when opportunities arise.

“I think, especially in atmospheric science, ideally the outcome of what we do in the field is actionable for policy makers,” says ATOC PhD student Lucas Howard. “I think having the public more informed about not just the science in terms of outcomes, in terms of uncertainty, but the process of what goes into generating the science, can only have good downstream effects.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about atmospheric and oceanic sciences? Show your support.

The March 9 event at Rayback Collective in ��ý��, open to all, invites scientists and non-scientists to gather for discussions of climate research.

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Exploring what it means to take up space

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:26:03 +0000

Exploring what it means to take up space Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/19/2026 - 10:26

Rachel Sauer

Multimedia Takin’ Up Space performance Feb. 21 at Fiske Planetarium will highlight historical, cultural, environmental and social justice narratives as an act of reclaiming Black spaces

There are a lot of ways to take up space. The most basic is simply a function of being born—existing on this planet, possessing mass, moving across its horizontal surfaces.

There’s also taking up space in the cosmological sense: pondering the farthest reaches of the universe, soaring through this spiral galaxy and beyond, transcending gravity as an act of belonging in time and in space.

And then there’s taking up space as an act of taking back. This is a reclamation of spaces previously occupied, of being in them, of filling them as an act of defiance and homecoming.

CU ��ý�� professors Shawn O'Neal (left) and Kalonji Nzinga (right) envisioned Takin' Up Space, in part, to "revisit our past in order to have a better evaluation of the present and build better futures," O'Neal explains.

Considering these possibilities and more is Takin’ Up Space III: Holding Space, the third iteration of an event envisioned by Shawn Trenell O’Neal, a ��ý�� assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and associate faculty director of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), and Kalonji Nzinga, an assistant professor in the School of Education.

The free event, which will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at Fiske Planetarium, is a multi-act, multimedia performance produced, arranged and performed by O’Neal and Nzinga, with special performances by Denver singer-songwriter Kayla Marque and wellness guide-somatic artist Soraya Latiff.

The title Takin’ Up Space acts, on one level, to “reintroduce us to spaces we’ve been systematically removed from over decades,” O’Neal explains, adding that themes of space and time are intrinsic to African culture.

“Harriet Tubman, when she was leading folks from enslavement on the Underground Railroad, read the stars and nature. So, another aspect of this is realizing we are one with nature, though we’ve been systematically removed from it for decades. I’ve never thought it was a coincidence that 1964 was the year of the Civil Rights Act and the Wilderness Act. In a way, it was opening the door to Black people’s human rights and closing our access to nature and space.”

If you go

What: Takin' Up Space III: Holding Space, a multi-media performance produced, arranged and performed by Shawn Trenell O'Neal and Kalonji Nzinga, with special guests including Denver singer-songwriter Kayla Marque and wellness guide-somatic artist Soraya Latiff

Where: Fiske Planetarium, 2414 Regent Drive

When: 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21

The event is free but tickets are required.

Learn more

Takin’ Up Space will include O’Neal’s all-vinyl live scoring of the 1926 silent film The Flying Ace, whose cast members are all Black, followed by an immersive somatic meditation led by Latiff, during which she will guide reflection on the meaning of “holding space.” Nzinga will perform selections from his hip-hop soul catalog, synced with film visualizations aligned with his storytelling, and then Marque will bring “emotive vocals, electronic textures and cinematic storytelling,” inviting the audience “into a shared cosmic dream,” according to event organizers.

Occupying spaces of Blackness

For O’Neal, performing a live score to an almost-forgotten film represents the confluence of art, history and culture that has long motivated his scholarship and creative life. He first scored a silent film in 1998, when he was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and realized he had a gift for DJing.

“My friend had this idea that, ‘Hey, we should score a silent film,’” he recalls. They took on the challenge of scoring the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin, and each night of the performance was different.

“I realized, ‘Wow, this is a really creative way to mix records and use my record collection in a different way than just dancing,” he says. “It was my way to push against how we collapse all these art forms into very limited, narrow views of what they can be.”

His goal evolved from literal-minded soundtracking to close consideration of subtext, mood and feeling—scoring as an artistic act of composition that embraces what the film shows both on and beneath the surface. So, on a recent Saturday in his home studio in his Denver basement, The Flying Ace is cued on his laptop, and he is a blur between two turntables and a soundboard.

Shawn O'Neal experiments with sound as he composes a score for the silent film The Flying Ace. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

The scene playing is a joyous moment of flight, when pilot Finley Tucker takes to the air with Ruth Sawtelle, the woman he hopes to marry.

“When the plane is in the air, I want a big, bright blast of sound, probably something Sun Ra-ish,” O’Neal explains, bent over a milk crate of LPs that represent a winnowing from the many hundreds in his collection. “Then from that moment I want a very feminine sound—Mahalia Jackson to Alice Coltrane.”

If the choices are unexpected—leagues from the calliope plinks traditionally associated with silent movies—it’s partly because “something that’s always interested me about public performativity is the opportunity to capture feelings and emotions that are flowing through the audience, maybe even things people didn’t think they were ready to deal with.”

O’Neal says he wants to give people what they’re not expecting, pursuing a goal of introduction and reintroduction: “We’ve allowed Black music and Black art to be sold so short, so as we’re reintroducing ourselves to spaces of Blackness, that includes a musical heritage that is so broad and so deep.”

In fact, the scaffolding of Takin’ Up Space is built from the Africana aesthetics regarding the five pillars of hip hop studies: DJing, MCing, dance, graffiti/visual art and knowledge. O’Neal, Nzinga and their co-organizers also draw deeply from the symbols and stories in African cultures, including Sankofa of the Akan people of Ghana, represented as a bird with its head turned backward and an egg in its mouth, symbolizing the idea of looking back at the past to learn from it and move forward.

“We’re not doing this to say, ‘This is better than anything else,’ but to revisit our past in order to have a better evaluation of the present and build better futures,” O’Neal says. “We intend to take up space.”

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Multimedia Takin’ Up Space performance Feb. 21 at Fiske Planetarium will highlight historical, cultural, environmental and social justice narratives as an act of reclaiming Black spaces.

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From EDM to ‘I do’

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:16:49 +0000

From EDM to ‘I do’ Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 18:16

Rachel Sauer

For Fiske Planetarium off-site education lead and CU ��ý�� astrophysics alumna MacKenzie Zurfluh, the famed dome isn’t just where she works, but where she found love

Did MacKenzie and Tanner Zurfluh fall in love and get married because of Fiske Planetarium? Not exactly, but it is where they met and it is where she works; plus, Tanner is frequently there helping out at various events. So, credit where credit is due, let’s say that theirs is a Fiske love story.

It began in October 2018, when MacKenzie was serving in the U.S. Air Force and stationed in South Dakota, and Frederick native Tanner was living in ��ý�� with several roommates who attended the ��ý��.

MacKenzie and Tanner Zurfluh met at a Fiske Planetarium show in October 2018. (Photo: MacKenzie Zurfluh)

With all due respect to South Dakota, “there wasn’t a lot to do there when you’re 19 and living on base,” MacKenzie says. So, she and her then boyfriend decided one weekend to drive to Denver for an electronic dance music (EDM) show at Red Rocks and scouted around for something to do the other evening of their visit. They happened across the ILLENIUM laser show at Fiske.

Meanwhile, one of Tanner’s roommates knew someone on the Fiske production team, and that friend of a friend got tickets to the ILLENIUM show for the group.

So, that was how two 19-year-olds who didn’t know each other—one of whom had a boyfriend that she would break up with a week later—ended up at the same Fiske Planetarium EDM show on the same evening.

The show was great—“because all shows at Fiske are,” says the unbiased MacKenzie—and afterward most of the audience migrated to the lobby to chat and make new friends. Tanner was in one amorphous circle and MacKenzie was in another, and eventually the two circles merged.

The closest they came to actually talking, though, was when MacKenzie complimented the jersey that one of Tanner’s friends was wearing. And that was it.

“But we kept running into each other,” Tanner recalls.

Because of the aforementioned South Dakota issue and the fact that Colorado’s Front Range is an EDM hub, MacKenzie drove down most weekends and kept happening across this guy whose name she couldn’t quite remember.

Tanner, however…

After an EDM show at the Ogden Theater in December 2018, Tanner waited outside the theater for 45 minutes to see if she’d come out, not knowing she’d already left.

“My friends had to drag me away,” he says. “It was the first night we talked, and I remember thinking, ‘Come hell or high water, she is going to be my wife.’”

A few weeks later, at the 2018 New Year’s Eve Decadence festival at the Colorado Convention Center, MacKenzie walked up to a group and put her arms around the two nearest people, one of whom happened to be Tanner.

By that point, she remembered his name. SnapChats were exchanged. They were officially Talking with a capital T—not dating, but it wasn’t 100% platonic, either. “After we’d been talking for a while, he looks at me and says, ‘Were you at Fiske on this day wearing this color beanie at this show?’” MacKenzie says.

On Feb. 4, 2019—yes, they remember the exact day—they decided: We’re doing this.

MacKenzie Zurfluh (left, with husband Tanner Zurfluh) graduated at Fiske Planetarium and was a speaker at the ceremony. (Photo: MacKenzie Zurfluh)

Black holes and relativity

In the beginning, MacKenzie left base on Friday afternoon, arrived in ��ý�� late Friday night and drove back to South Dakota Sunday afternoon. Tanner made the trip north a few times, but they both agreed there was more to do in Colorado.

However, MacKenzie was also getting ready to deploy to the Middle East and tried to give Tanner the ol’ “Go live your life, don’t worry about me.”

“And I remember he goes, ‘That’s fine if you don’t want to have a relationship, but can I still be your friend?’” MacKenzie says, adding that while the deployment ended up being canceled, she was still there and he was here. “That gave us the opportunity to build a really strong friend foundation. There were times where things sucked, and I had him to talk to.”

When she planned to exit the military, MacKenzie knew she wanted to pursue a degree but wasn’t sure where. On the cusp of returning home to California, Tanner offered her an alternative: “Come live here."

Without MacKenzie knowing it, he’d spent months finishing his mother’s Frederick basement. She could live with him there and study astrophysics at CU ��ý��, which is what she did. In the middle of earning her degree, while she was going to school full time and working as a server at a brewery in Longmont, she applied for a job at Fiske and got it.

“I wouldn’t be making as much, so I was really worried about how I was going to pay my bills, but I kept thinking that NASA doesn’t care if I was a waitress, they care if I worked at Fiske,” she says.

“You were chasing your dreams,” Tanner adds. “Studying space and being in the field was always the goal.”

“So, he said to me, ‘We’ll figure it out,’” MacKenzie finishes, and that’s what they did.

In class she was studying black holes and relativity, and at work she was helping them come alive. And in the middle of all this, on the last day of finals in May 2022, kneeling in the chaos of their home remodel—because they’d bought a house in Dacono—Tanner proposed.

She said yes, but with the caveat that they couldn’t even think about planning a wedding until after she graduated—which she did at Fiske Planetarium in May 2024. Seven months later, their wedding in California was essentially Fiske West because so many of MacKenzie’s colleagues attended.

“Our director (Professor John Keller) calls Tanner a Fiske in-law,” says MacKenzie, who is now the Fiske off-site education lead. “Any time there’s an event, he’s here helping.”

“It’s great to be part of the Fiske family,” says Tanner, who co-owns Jayhawk Tile LLC. Fiske has been part of many of their important moments, MacKenzie adds, and in fact her colleague Amanda Wimmer Flint, Fiske on-site education lead, programmed the ILLENIUM show at which they unknowingly first “met.”

Now, sitting in MacKenzie’s office in the depths of Fiske, Tanner can be honest: “As cheesy as it sounds, I fell in love with her smile and her laugh. I genuinely felt a connection.”

MacKenzie beams at him and gestures to her left. “And it happened right out there.”

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For Fiske Planetarium off-site education lead and CU ��ý�� astrophysics alumna MacKenzie Zurfluh, the famed dome isn’t just where she works, but where she found love.

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Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up)

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:06:01 +0000

Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up) Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/20/2026 - 08:06

Rachel Sauer

The world of campsite reservations is increasingly cutthroat, so why are so many campers not showing up? CU ��ý�� economist Jon Hughes applies numerical modeling to understand campground no-shows

Throughout the United States, and especially here in the West, snagging a preferred public-land campsite has become a take-no-prisoners battle royale with little room for weakness or sleep or mercy.

If your friends seem especially haunted and jittery these days, it’s possibly because they’ve been up for hours, hitting refresh every 30 seconds on every computer, tablet and smartphone in the house, trying to reserve a summer campsite the millisecond it becomes available online—six months to the day in advance and at midnight for Colorado state parks and 8 a.m. MST for federal lands.

With so much summer enjoyment on the line, then, and reservations more precious than gold, it’s a central mystery of outdoor recreation why park managers and users report high summer campground vacancy rates due to no-shows.

Jon Hughes, a CU ��ý�� associate professor of economics and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow, found through numerical modeling that that increasing fees, either overnight fees or no-show fees, decreases campsite no-shows.

“I think we’ve all probably had this experience,” says Jon Hughes, a ��ý�� associate professor of economics and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow. “You show up and the campground is half empty, and you think, ‘How is this possible? It was so hard to get this reservation.’

“I think part of it is it’s hard to know what our schedule’s going to look like in six months, so we make these reservations and optimistically tell ourselves we’ll be able to go camping—even up to the last minute.”

Based on his experiences as an outdoor recreator seeing no-shows firsthand and as an economics researcher who has long studied transportation and climate issues, Hughes wondered: How do park pricing policies contribute to no-shows—and the associated inefficiencies—and can policy changes correct these inefficiencies while meeting park managers’ goals of adequate revenue and improved access?

In research recently published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Hughes aimed to answer these questions via numerical modeling, simulating pricing policies at a hypothetical but representative national park. He found, among other results, that increasing fees, either overnight fees or no-show fees, decreases no-shows, which on one hand is a positive outcome but doesn’t address the perennial issue of equitable access to public lands.

“One of the things park managers are always really worried about is equity,” Hughes says. “This is all of our land—this isn’t only for rich people. If you want to design a system where every site is used and sites go to people who most want to camp, you could just auction (reservations) off. In economic terms, that would be very efficient, but if you think your desire to camp is maybe positively correlated with income or wealth, it might create a system where certain folks are able to camp and others aren’t.”

The economics of no-shows

In part because of his own experiences trying to get a summertime campground reservation, and based on his previous research studying access to and use of public lands, Hughes began considering how to understand the economic impact of campground no-shows: “We have finite capacity (on these lands), so how we best use these resources I think is a really interesting question.”

He consulted with Montana State University Professor Will Rice, a former park ranger, whose research on management of public lands inspired Hughes to call him—a conversation that highlighted the growing problem of no-shows.

“I got off the phone with him and wrote down a simple, intermediate microeconomics model for how consumers would think about this decision (to cancel or no-show),” Hughes says. “There’s some desire to go camping, some understood utility you’d get from having a campground reservation and you pay some monetary fee to take that reservation, but then there’s some uncertainty.

“If you don’t go, you might have to pay a fee or you might have to pay with your time if you decide to cancel. If you can’t go, you think about, ‘How do I minimize the cost?’ That lends itself to a really simple economic model that generates some interesting predictions: If you make it more costly to cancel, people aren’t going to cancel and you’ll have more no-shows. If you charge a fee when people don’t show up, they’re less likely to no-show. The theory model predicts that raising (reservation) fees will discourage no-shows, but it actually leads to another effect where if you increase fees, that just makes it more expensive for everyone, whether they camp or no-show.”

“When I decide to no-show, I’m robbing you of the benefit of camping. My decision negatively impacts you, so how do we ensure that people who want to enjoy public lands are able to?” says CU ��ý�� economist Jon Hughes. (Photo: Dave Hoefler/Unsplash)

Through numerical modeling, Hughes found that cancellation fees can increase or decrease no-shows when campground capacity constraints are not binding, but they strictly increase no-shows when capacity constraints are binding. Further, he found that increasing trip prices strictly decreases no-shows and that increasing no-show fees strictly decreases no-shows.

Simulating a $40 increase in reservation fees or no-show fees, he found that higher reservation prices could increase park revenue by as much as 56% but reduce consumer surplus. However, a $40 no-show fee might modestly increase park revenue but increase consumer surplus by as much as 12%.

Further, he notes in the paper, a $40 increase in reservation price increases the mean income of reservation holders by $2,900, or 2%, while a $40 increase in no-show fee causes little change in income. This could mean that no-show fees wouldn’t push access to public lands further out of reach for those in less wealthy income brackets.

He also estimated outcomes under an optimal no-show fee of $150—equal to the marginal external cost of a no-show, or the lost consumer surplus of a user denied a reservation—which eliminates no-shows and increases consumer surplus by 14%. But even the more modest $40 fee captures nearly all of the benefit of the optimal fee, Hughes found.

Enjoying public lands

All of this, of course, leads to the question of how to collect no-show fees.

“Your doctor is going to charge you if don’t show up, your car mechanic will charge you if don’t show up, my barber will charge me if I don’t show up,” Hughes says. “Logistically, charging a no-show fee is one of the challenges in managing public lands. The only places where it’s currently possible are staffed campgrounds, because hosts are there seeing who hasn’t shown up, but oftentimes a host doesn’t want to cause problems.

“I think technology can save us here. Recreation.gov has implemented an app with the added benefit of your phone knowing where it is all the time, or there are some areas now where you use geofencing. If you want to do the Wave at Coyote Buttes in Arizona, you can get a permit a day or two before your trip, but you have to be within a certain geographic area to get it. It might be possible to do the same with no-shows: You reserved this site, you go, your phone knows if you were there. This is a problem that’s solvable with technology.”

These findings, which Hughes will present to a group of economists with the U.S. Department of the Interior next month, solve two problems, he says: how to best optimize the limited capacity of America’s public lands, which are increasingly in demand, and how to address a “negative externality.”

“When I decide to no-show, I’m robbing you of the benefit of camping,” Hughes explains. “My decision negatively impacts you, so how do we ensure that people who want to enjoy public lands are able to?”

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Top photo: Xue Guangjian/Pexels

Wally the Wollemi finds a new home

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Wally the Wollemi finds a new home Rachel Sauer Mon, 12/01/2025 - 07:30

Rachel Sauer

CU ��ý�� alumni Judy and Rod McKeever donate a tree once considered extinct to the EBIO greenhouse, giving students a living example of modern conservation

Wally probably doesn’t know he’s a dinosaur.

He’s just living his best life in a bright spot—but not directly sunny, he doesn’t like that—in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology greenhouse on 30th Street.

This guy! Talk about charisma. People have certain stereotypes and expectations for what he should be, and he defies them. For starters, he’s here and not, after all, extinct.

Yes, Wally the Wollemi is something special—a Cretaceous Period pine tree thought to have gone extinct 2 million years ago, rediscovered in a secluded Australian canyon in 1994 and, with a few steps in between, recently donated to the greenhouse.

. “Where we are right now with climate change, we’re losing plants and animal species and insect diversity at an extremely rapid rate, so as scientists and horticulturists and curators it’s our job to maintain the diversity of the world in collections, and Wally is an important part of that," says Malinda Barberio, EBIO greenhouse manager.

“The Wollemi pine is an interesting story about paleobotany as well as conservation,” explains Malinda Barberio, greenhouse manager. “Where we are right now with climate change, we’re losing plants and animal species and insect diversity at an extremely rapid rate, so as scientists and horticulturists and curators it’s our job to maintain the diversity of the world in collections, and Wally is an important part of that.”

Back from extinction

How Wally came to live in a quiet spot in the 30th Street greenhouse is a story that started in the Cretaceous. Scientists theorized that herbivorous dinosaurs living then dined on Wollemi pines, which belong to a 200-million-year-old plant family and are abundantly represented in the fossil record dating as far back as 91 million years.

Where they weren’t abundantly represented was in the living world. They were theorized to have gone extinct, living only in stone impressions.

However, in 1994, New South Wales (Australia) National Parks ranger David Noble was rappelling in a remote canyon about five hours west of Sydney when he happened upon a stand of pine trees unlike anything he’d seen before. They had fern-like foliage, distinctive bumpy bark and a dense, rounded crown. They towered over other trees in the canyon.

“Typically, you think of pines as Christmas tree-shaped, fairly triangular, so that dense top crown that’s very rounded is a little odd for pines,” Barberio says. “And you typically expect large, fluffy branches, but the Wollemi’s branches are covered in thicker, flat needles that are in two rows parallel to each other along the sides of branches, which is really distinctive.”

Intense scientific investigation followed Noble’s discovery, including comparison to the fossil record, until it was agreed: This was the Wollemi pine—back from extinction.

The ongoing threat of extinction loomed large, though, because there were fewer than 100 trees in that canyon, whose location remains a closely guarded secret. So, in 2006, and in an unusual partnership between the National Geographic Society, the Floragem plant wholesalers, conservationists, botanists and scientists, 10-inch Wollemi pines were offered for sale in National Geographic’s holiday catalog.

Follow Wally and his friends in the greenhouse at @CU��ý��EBIOGreenhouse on Instagram.

“You are now the owner of a tree that is a survivor from the age of the dinosaurs, a miraculous time traveler and one of the greatest living fossils discovered in the twentieth century,” began the catalog description of the 10-inch saplings selling for $99.95.

That’s what caught Judy McKeever’s attention.

A tree named Wally

“My husband (Rod) does bonsai and loves his bonsai garden, so when I saw the advertisement for National Geographic selling these trees, and it was a love story about finding a dinosaur in an Australian canyon, I thought it would be the perfect addition to his collection,” recalls McKeever (A&S’76). “But he never got bonsaied or really trimmed at all, and just kind of grew out of control.”

The couple named him Wally because it sounds like Wollemi, and he lived in a sheltered, south-facing spot on their ��ý�� deck in the summer and under a grow light in their basement in the winter. Between seasons, they toted him up and down the stairs—and every year he was bigger.

CU ��ý�� alumni Judy and Rod McKeever donated Wally the Wollemi pine tree to the EBIO greenhouse in October.

“We didn’t really do anything special, just treated him like every other plant we have,” McKeever says. “He lived a sheltered little life, occasionally got fertilized, and he was very happy. We just let him do whatever he wanted to do; he’s an Australian free spirit.

“We just loved Wally, but he grew a few inches every year and with the soil and pot, he just got to be too heavy to take down to the basement every winter.”

In early autumn, McKeever began looking for places that might be interested in adopting Wally and found the EBIO greenhouse. There was an element of homecoming since both Judy and Rod are 1976 CU ��ý�� graduates (Rod in chemical engineering); Wally would be staying in the family.

“We are very happy to bring Wally into our collection,” Barberio says. “For the university to have a Wollemi pine is a really special privilege. It allows students to have an example of conservation efforts that are modern and recent in history and shows them that they have the opportunity to participate in these efforts as well.”

Plus, she adds, Wally is a great opportunity for public outreach: People can schedule time to visit him in the greenhouse and see science, conservation and worldwide partnerships at work. And students in future paleobotany classes will be able to see just how close scientists and artists got in visually rendering the Wollemi pine from fossil evidence.

“It’s surprisingly accurate how well they were able to reproduce (Wollemi pines) in theory,” Barberio says. “We have all of these animals and plants that are extinct, and having this living example is a really cool way to show how close we got it.”

A part in plant diversity

As for the care and feeding of Wally, who actually isn’t only male since pines produce both male and female cones, he likes acidic soil and bright but not direct light, given that he’s prone to sunburn. He likes regular watering and doesn’t like his soil to completely dry out, but he also dislikes “wet feet,” or for the bottom layer of soil to be damp.

Because his very few wild relatives live in a protected canyon, it may be implied that Wollemi pines prefer protection from rapid temperature changes, Barberio says, adding that so far, he’s shown no signs of producing cones.

“We would love to have Wally produce cones in the future,” she says, “and of course we would try to plant and grow them.”

Until that time, Wally the Wollemi pine will be a signature plant in the greenhouse collection and an example, Barberio says, “that we can play a part in maintaining the diversity of the plant world.”

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CU ��ý�� alumni Judy and Rod McKeever donate a tree once considered extinct to the EBIO greenhouse, giving students a living example of modern conservation.

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Students nurture a heart to give back

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

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

Rachel Sauer

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

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

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

“I understood (education) was really important because my parents harped on it, but I couldn’t really say I enjoyed it,” Woods says.

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

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

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

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

They also know, however, that the future can’t happen without everything that came before it, so last year they hatched an idea to help students at their former high school who see the value of higher education but aren’t sure how to pay for it.

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

“Senior year, I think I applied to something like 26 different scholarships—everything I could find,” Gordon says. “For me, that was the start of this—just going to school with our peers, a lot of individuals who wanted to go to college and worked hard but just couldn’t make it happen financially. I think we just have a heart to give back and do what we can to help.”

Learning to love learning

Both will admit, though, that the path to this point has been winding, and they didn’t always care this much about education. Woods had the example of his mother, who was the first in her family to go to graduate school—she’s an attorney—and his father, who was the first in his family to go to college. They emphasized education to Woods and his sister, who recently graduated the University of California at Berkeley, and to Gordon when he visited the Woods’ home. The message took a little while to sink in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Let’s just try’

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

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

“We kept thinking about our close friends who couldn’t make it to college because they couldn’t afford it,” Gordon explains, so they thought: What if, instead of a business, they started a nonprofit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bring positive change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eat, pray, learn

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

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

Rachel Sauer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potential benefits, potential impacts

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

The seminar had its genesis in “this idea of decolonizing the study abroad experience and challenging some of these notions of extractive tourism or ‘voluntourism,’” Conzelman explains. “Sometimes we don’t really examine our positions of privilege and power when we are just regular tourists, even with study abroad, so I always bring this into the conversation with students: What are we doing here, what are potential benefits, what are potential impacts?”

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

Apply by Dec. 1

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

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

Learn more

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

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

Tri Hita Karana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Top image: Guillaume Marques/Unsplash

Rachel Sauer

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